Lilith: Origin of Succubi

Korrim had been staring at the ceiling for almost five minutes now, just contemplating the ritual circles I showed him.

Eventually, I had to break the silence so I cleared my throat. "Excuse me Korrim, but uh..."

He looked back down at me and frowned. "Sorry, I became lost in thought. These ritual circles you developed could change a lot about how we do things. I am a little unsure how everything will play out with something this monumental changing our processes. How long did it take you to develop these ritual circles, it couldn't have been easy to come up with such a brilliant way of measuring. Light magic? Who would have ever guessed?"

I shared a glance with Morrigan before putting a serious look on my face. "Truly, you don't want to know."

He nodded. "I can see this being your life's work. I'm honored you chose to share these circles with me first. Setting aside maps, this could change a lot about the construction industry as well."

"And about my measurement test?" I pressed.

"What? Oh yes, that's what you came here for." He leaned back in his chair. "Hmm... rather than giving you a field mapper certification as we discussed, I'd be willing to make you a journeyman cartographer instead. That's quite the jump under the circumstances, though stricter and more accurate measuring techniques are all you would normally learn as an apprentice since your draftsmanship is already so strong. In addition to working with the adventurer's guild on dungeon mapping, being a journeyman would let you work in other fields like construction and surveying as well."

Torien tapped my shoulder and looked like she wanted to say something. I nodded and motioned for her to speak. Her eyes widened, likely expecting me to lean over for her so she could whisper in my ear. When I didn't relent she licked her lips and turned to Korrim instead.

"With all due respect Guild Master Korrim, I hope you don't mean to trade Miss Baphomet's circles for a journeyman license. As you said yourself, it has the potential to be much more valuable," Torien said.

Korrim sighed and shook his head. "No, of course not. I would love to but I'm just as aware of their value as you five are." He tapped the desk with one hand in thought. "I will offer you one hundred gold after more experienced journeymen and masters have an opportunity to test your ritual circles, provided they are as effective as they appear to be. I can give you ten gold today as an advance, and the rest in installments once they have had some time to work with them and provide some feedback. I can have this paid through the adventurer's guild. How does that sound?"

Torien having already stepped into the negotiator's role continued to speak for us, "What about exclusivity? Is that sum for the monopolization of this new measuring technique?"

Korrim almost looked offended by the question. "Gods no! I would rather you make a similar deal with the local masonry guild. That's why I'm happy you came to me first, you're allowing me to not get boxed out of this new development. No, the one hundred gold would be as a permanent allowance to use this ritual magic, as well as develop it further and make modifications without reprisal from the king's courts."

Torien glanced at me and I gave her a small nod. "That sounds fine, though you have better contacts with such people. Would you be willing to make further negotiations on our behalf? We're more interested in adventuring and we're leaving town soon. If you could make similar deals at a favorable rate, and spread these new measuring techniques to other professions, it would help everyone."

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling. "This makes things a bit easier on me in some ways but quite a bit harder in others. It would be useful to be in control of this magic's spread, though this will require a lot of leg work on my part. How about a commission rate if I'm going to be involved?"

Torien smiled. "That would be perfectly acceptable. How—"

"Two-tenths," he said cutting her off.

Torien's smile faltered. "That rate is quite large, much higher than the average for a deal broker of this kind. One-tenth," Torien countered.

"Aye, but I'm not normally a broker," he replied. "I'm a busy guildmaster believe it or not, my time is valuable and this takes time away from my other duties. If I didn't believe this was worth the effort, I'd be annoyed that you even asked me to do something like this. Two-tenths."

Torien's face turned neutral. "We're both aware how valuable this is and how valuable other professions having this ritual magic would be for you. If we dropped this negotiation and didn't spread this measuring ritual, you would be more inconvenienced than we would. Though, I do acknowledge that this isn't your normal responsibility, so why don't we settle on three-twentieths." Fifteen percent I quietly calculated for myself.

"Bah, fine. Your servant there is quite aggressive, you're lucky to have her," he said to me. "Is it still acceptable to go through the adventurer's guild or do you have a bank account? I can have them put the money on your ledgers and send you copies of the contracts through letters."

"The adventurer's guild would be preferable," I stated. Last thing I wanted to do was deal with opening a bank account on top of everything and this sounds more convenient for me. Though I'll have to inquire if the guild takes fees or anything.

"Good. I'll have my assistant draft up a contract while you mark down the ritual circles for us onto this sheet of parchment so that we can copy them. I'll be right back." He said before standing up and leaving the room.

Torien gave a huge sigh of relief and looked at me with nervous energy. "Was that good?"

I patted her on the shoulder. "That was great Torien, much better than I probably would have done. I... honestly didn't realize how big of a deal this would be for them."

She nodded. "I hadn't either, though perhaps I should have." I shrugged in response.

I sat down and pulled out some ink I had started to carry around regularly. I opened my book of recollections and began to meticulously copy the ritual circles onto the parchment, large enough to be able to easily reference later. I'm not sure how they will choose to use these, since I find random map makers unlikely to be able to copy these on the fly, but maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. Journeymen and Master cartographers may be able to copy these reliably, but what about less experienced draftsmen? Maybe they will carry some prewritten circles on wood slats or something, though that might be a bit wasteful. [Light Scribing] would naturally be the best choice for this kind of thing, but I feel a bit differently about spreading that information at this point. If it were applied toward demon summoning magic, that would be unfortunate. I'm not really sure what to do about that, and right now this magic is my only personal edge outside of my raw stats and abilities to transform people, so I'd rather keep it somewhat close to the vest for now.

Korrim came back with his assistant, a handwritten contract on thick paper, and a small bag of gold. I handed him the completed circles drawn onto the parchment and he nodded. "What is the maximum range on these circles?" he asked.

I tilted my head. "I have never thought to test that," I admitted. I tapped my chin and thought back to the ritual circle components I used. "I think it probably wouldn't go more than 50 yards at most."

He furrowed his brows. "That's a weirdly specific number... Er, well, if that's the case then this magic isn't suitable for land surveying, only really useful for getting accurate measurements of structures. That's fine in itself but something more useful for surveying would also be very beneficial for us. If light magic can be used in this way, then perhaps it could be applied to long-distance maps as well."

The auto-translation magic from my title often did weird things when translating measurements to others and I didn't think to say it in their units.

"I'll consider it," I promised. "It would probably require starting from scratch with different components, I'm not sure how easy it would be to duplicate that with ritual magic."

"Would learning light magic be helpful?" he asked. "I've never seen anyone use light magic to cast rituals before and you seem to know a lot more light magic than anyone I've ever heard of, even mages."

I shrugged. "It could be but I don't know. I was noticed by Sorsette for creating that magic and I haven't taught it to anyone else yet. The measurement stuff I developed myself as well, so I don't think there's any specific light magic equivalent to it. Anyone learning light magic in your field would probably get the usual stuff unless they were specifically experimenting with it like I am."

Korrim nodded. "I was afraid of that. Still, perhaps if this ritual magic becomes as widely adopted as I think it may be, the system may begin to offer measuring light magic to new people learning the skill."

I looked at Morrigan who smiled and nodded. "Things like that have happened before," she told me.

Torien handed me the contract. "Everything looks good, I was looking over it while you two were talking. I'm not a scribe that specializes in contracts or anything, but everything looks good to me."

I skimmed it. Legalese hasn't yet gotten out of control in this world so it was quite understandable for a contract. Nothing looked out of place to me either so I nodded in agreement. It covered the permission to use the ritual magic for the cartographer's guild as well as the guild master to act as my agent to spread it for a fifteen percent cut of any deals he makes. I picked up my pen again and scribbled my new signature across the bottom of the page and handed it to him. He began to sign it and I was given a second identical copy to sign as well. Before photocopiers, it looks like it was easier to just create two duplicates. When I finished with that one he signed the copy as well and handed me the original one I sighed.

"Your servant said that you were leaving town soon. Is that true?" he asked.

"Yes, within the next week. Likely in a day or two from now. Since the cartography training went faster than expected I already picked up a job to take a merchant back to Traehall. I still have some obligations with the guild master there so I'm trying to get them over with."

"I see. It's a shame, the capital is the heart of the kingdom. I wish you would have had more time to explore it, though considering you're staying at the Northern Greens' embassy, your circumstances must be complicated."

"Unfortunately, they are," I agreed, deciding to leave it at that. "Not that the atmosphere has been very welcoming for our kind since we've arrived here."

Korrim sighed and nodded. "Our idiot of a king is a moron. Inviting the Tamin church into his city to basically run things is going to come back and bite him. Sooner rather than later. Tension is high in the city, it's fortunate that you have been able to stay out of it using your connections with the elves. I'm afraid to go anywhere near the southern quarter after the riot the other day."

"Things are looking rough in the city, that's why I'd like to be far away from here when things boil over."

"Well, I'm glad the one smart enough to develop these new ritual circles has a sense of self-preservation. That's not always common for those who are recognized by the Goddess Sorsette. Take care of yourself, Miss Lilith Baphomet, and friends."

Recognizing the dismissal, our group all started to file back down the stairs and out of the guild, now ten gold richer. I suddenly felt less bad about blowing so much at the book store but at least I've built my reserve back up a little. A boon I wasn't really expecting. I actually feel like a bit of an idiot for not considering the actual value something like that would have. I was just trying to create something useful and see if people liked it. We grabbed up Raya, Sibyl, and Tenna and headed back to the embassy.

I shook my head and refocused my thoughts. Now that most of the other chores are done, it's time for something that has been making my stomach twist in anxiety all day. It was time to meet with Sophin and discuss the Order of Lilith.