This story has been stubbed! You find the entire first book i or audio formats on Amazon, Audible or Spotify starting February 18th. If you already read the first book and you're here because you want to see how the story tinues, skip ahead a feter to find Chapter "2.1 Apartment Hunting".

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  Bernt leaned over a backed-up toilet and flourished a shabby-looking wand. Casting an all too familiar spell for the fourth time that day, he scolded the wooden throne’s owner.

  “You ’t just pour expired healing potions down the drain. They i with the living matter in the pipes and down in the sewers to form slimes by the dozens, and those little bastards will tto every pipe ireet to feed on what es washing down.” He khat from experience, having spent the st week w his to the source of the problem – the ba of this alchemist’s workshop.

  The middle-aged alchemist really should have knower.

  The toilet gurgled as the water, sewage and the living gealed matter in the pipes boiled. A few droplets spurted out the top, spattering o’s already filthy work robe, then the whole mess began to drain down and out into the sewer.

  Of course, the culprit, who didn’t look chagrined so much as annoyed, did know better. Expired potions were trolled substances, meaning that they had to be destroyed by trained professionals at specialized facilities - for a fee. While dumping them down the drain was illegal, the man would only be fined once per proven viotion. So, as long as he dumped a lot of potions down the drain at once, he’d likely saved a bit of silver in the bargain. That it came at the expense of the entire neighborhood and his own clogged up toilet didn’t seem to him overmuch.

  He didn’t even try to deny it. Instead, he pinched his nose and made a shooiure at him.

  “Mind who you’re talking to, Underkeeper. You couldn’t afford one of my potions even if I bottled it on your end of that drain. Just do your job a out of my shop. Your smell is going to drive away the paying ers.”

  Bernt sighed. What was the point in arguing? Pulling out a sheaf of damp papers, he filled out a citation for illegal waste disposal, imbued it with his mana to sign it, and cast a minor duplication charm for the alchemist’s records.

  In his first year, he’d repeatedly written to the city magistrate to make him aware of the iiveness of illegal dumpiies, but the magistrate didn’t care. The citations brought in a bit of revenue, and the city had more urgent issues to deal with. Monster incursions, political tensions with neighb states, anized crime, and the occasional rogue warlock left little time for things like updating city sanitatiutions. Besides, the problem was already solved. After all, that’s what City Maintenand, more specifically, the Underkeepers were for.

  Swallowing his irritatio hahe man his copy of the citation and turo go. He’d finally tracked the slime outbreak to its sourd made the neighborhood drains safe to use again. It wasn’t gmorous, but it mattered to everyone who’d woken up to find sewage bag up into their homes over the past week.

  Behind him, he heard a scoff as the alchemist remarked. “I don’t know why you filthy crap-crawlers even bother with the paperwork. Just send me a bill ime.”

  Berated, jaw g.

  ime.

  Without answering, he stepped outside and closed the door just a little too firmly, feeling the blood pulsing at his temples. Before he could thier of it, he whipped out another sheet of paper. A quick duplication and an adhesion charm ter, the citation osted to the alchemist’s door. Word would get around, he was sure.

  “Hey, that’s a pretty good glue trip!” came a friendly voice from behind him.

  Bernt’s momentary sense of satisfa withered and died.

  Pasting a rally friendly expression on his face, he turo greet the newer.

  “Hello Therion. o see you.”

  Therion was Bernt’s former cssmate at the mage’s academy. He was also a painful example of what Bernt could have bee with the right kind of bag – a fairly successful adventurer and already a rank 3 arist. Unlike him, Therion was the s of an adventuring family, born with es and mohat Bernt couldn’t even begin to grasp.

  Of course, anybody could bee an adventurer. Quests were posted publicly by the Adventurers’ Guild. But that didn’t mean that just anyone could survive adventuring. Even low-ranked quests were dangerous, and people who didn’t e prepared with expensive equipment and healing potions were uo survive very long.

  “Excuse me, I o–”

  “Hey, hat’s this?” Therion eering over Bernt’s shoulder, reading the citation with an intensifying frown. “Old Julian’s been dumping his old potions down the drain?!” His eyes so Bernt, then back to the citation, and then back to Brent. “Wait a minute, what? You’re a muck mage?”

  Bernt sighed.

  “Underkeeper.” He corrected. “I’m an underkeeper.” Underkeepers, more casually referred to as muck mages, sewer sorcerers, or waste wizards were the dregs of magery everywhere – the ones who didn’t have what it took to make it as a real mage – specifically the es and resources to bee an advehe raw talent to be sponsored as a war mage, or the funds to purchase membership from the Mages’ Guild, allowing oo practice privately iy.

  This was the versation that he didn’t want to have.

  “What happened?” Therion asked, wide-eyed.

  He didn’t get it. People like him never did. As far as he was ed, the startup costs of a freshly graduated mage were an afterthought. Even if he didn’t personally have moo un adventuring career, he could simply borrow from his family. Alternatively, he could have leveraged his es to have the guild lising fees waived - not that he o. He was always going to be an adventurer.

  Bernt sighed.

  “Nothing happened.” He said, trying not to sound too defensive. “I just ’t afford adventuring equipme. I’ll be out there soon.”

  Therion’s facial expression became painfully awkward.

  “Oh… Uh… Do you need… I mean, you wao see if I –?”

  “No!” Bernt interrupted, scowling now. “I don’t need charity!”

  Help from some rich adventurer pring was the st thing he needed. He khe way the world worked. Accepting a favor like that would e back to bite him ter. Even if the man was just being would cost Bernt something more important – his autonomy. People like Therion built small crowds of followers that way, bought and bound to live in his shadow.

  That wasn’t going to happen to Bernt. Nobody was going to rope him into service – no matter how genial they were about it.

  He was saving what he could and it was adding up. Slowly. A few more years, if everythi well, and he could wash off the stench of the Underkeepers ond for all - both figuratively and literally. And he’d do it himself, so that wheime came, he couldn’t be pushed in any dire he didn’t want to go.

  “Right, right, I remember. Rex, I didn't mean anything by it.” Therion replied, eyi’s wand with more than a little skepticism. The magical focus looked like something that a goblin enter might have cobbled together while drunk. It might have been, for all he knew. Bernt had found it in a clog in one of the city’s storm drains. But it was serviceable, and that was all that mattered to him. Every copper he didn’t blow on mediocre equipment today was money he could spend on reliable adventurier.

  “...It’s just, you’re wasted here!” Therio on, clearly uo help himself. “Pyromancers don’t grow on trees, you know? It would hardly even be charity, I bet my father could have a word with the guild–”

  He stopped as Bernt's expression tio darken, and held up his hands, palms out.

  “Alright, alright, easy! It was just an idea, o take offense. I’m sure you have it all handled.” He gnced back at the citation again, ging the subject. “Looks like you handled old Juliay well. We fought a bunch of those slimes downriver a few days ago, you know? They’ve been a menaonths, harassing nearly every party to e up the road. They crept up on us while we slept, and one nearly got our healer. She’s still waiting for a specialist to arrive from Teres to help with the scarring. Those chemical burns are brutal.”

  His jaw ched a Bernt’s eyes a could actually see purple fractals of are energy flickering in Therion’s suddenly intense gaze. “Thanks for catg him. I’ll make sure wets around.”

  Mollified, Bernt o him.

  “Well, I really do o get going. ” He said, turning away. “I’ll see you around.”

  As he left, he could feel Therion’s eyes on him, sidering. Moments ter, the feeli away to the sound of the door exploding off its hinges into the shop, and then Therion’s voied dowreet with exaggerated cheer, magically amplified for the be of the public.

  “Oh hi, Julian! Would you believe what I found posted on your door!?”