Talbert Macklutz's page

That hurt! Dutch was digging her fingers into Talbert's shoulder. She kept talking to the stranger, but none of it made sense. They weren't cousins, and his name wasn't Edwin. Why was she lying? Whenever he tried to speak, she just squeezed harder, so it didn't take him long to stop trying.

After a few minutes more of this, it was agreed that the stranger, Rando, would give them a ride. Dutch had offered to ride up front with Rando, while "Edwin" would ride in the back. That suited Talbert just fine! It would give him more time to read. He had pointed to a place on the map, and now Dutch was expecting him to take her there. He knew it was somewhere in the Mourning Forest, but beyond that...

The wagon bounced over loose stones and ruts in the dirt as it worked its way back onto the travel-smoothed road. Talbert sat, leaning his back against one of the miniature casks, and pulled the leather-and-silver-bound tome from his pack. He flipped through the pages, searching for the skull diagram. There had to be more information... something that would give him some idea of what direction to go, or what to look for...

Talbert stumbled on a loose stone. He had been shining his lantern too high, looking at the road ahead rather than paying attention to his footing. Why did we have to leave so early? he wondered once he had regained his balance. He tugged on the strap of his pack and hurried a few steps to catch up, this time keeping the light on his feet. He kept the light a bit too low though, and nearly ran headlong into Dutch.

Dutch whirled, hearing the quickened footsteps advancing too quickly behind her. One hand shot up to Talbert's shoulder, stopping him up short. The other had already instinctively wrapped itself tightly around the hilt of the dagger at her belt, and she had taken up a stance that would allow her to divert the force of a larger, stronger attacker.

Seeing the surprise in Talbert's eyes deep-blue eyes, dulled to grey by her darkvision, she softened her grip. Whoa, where's the fire? she asked, her tone a disarmingly gentle tease.

Sorry. Talbert said sheepishly. He couldn't see her in the darkness, but he dropped his eyes to avoid meeting hers all the same, and nervously adjusted his pack.

Take it slow. You need to practice navigating with that. She stepped past him, moving her blocking hand over his shoulder to pat him on the back. The sun will be up in another hour. Why don't you take the lead until then? She hoped a little confidence was all he needed. Either way, at least this way she could keep an eye on him, and with the road only going one way, he could only screw up the navigation so badly.

Talbert's lead was clumsy at first, but as he went on, he found that it was getting easier. I can do this! He was thinking to himself a while later, as he begun to pick up the pace. Only moments later, his light went out, the spell having run his course. It was then that he realized the sky had gone from black to blue. The sun was not yet anywhere to be seen, but morning had clearly begun, and the lantern was no longer necessary. Talbert shoved the cool metal device into his pocket and walked a little faster, hoping to stay far enough ahead that Dutch wouldn't notice him blushing.

Talbert went downstairs to get a meal from the common room and arrange a bath. That night, he actually slept in the small room's smaller bed. Though he hadn't given it any thought, Dutch must have purchased another room for herself. That or she never slept, which was a possibility. He had heard that elves didn't sleep, and he had noticed the points of her ears, but he didn't think they weren't long enough for her to be a full-blooded elf.

The book's strange symbols were still in his dreams, but now they wrapped themselves into tight helices that rose into the sky. He was walking through a forest of them, and the breeze made low humming noise as it passed.

As he trekked deeper, the strange runic trees got larger and closer together, and the hum got higher, sounding like a massive groan. He fought his way through, sometimes having to squeeze between the symbols that made up adjacent trees. Their serifs had begun to sharpen and bend outward, becoming jagged thorns. The groaning now sounded like thousands of voiced yelling angrily in the distance, but Talbert couldn't make out any words.

Then there was no space to walk between the trees, and he had to climb to find a path through. His skin was raged from the thorns, and the wind had become a deafening scream in his ears. He could see a clearing up ahead. He continued until he reached the edge, and he looked out into the dark nothingness.

Something stirred below, and he saw the skull from the book rising toward him. It was immense. The skull itself stood taller than the third story of his father's warehouse, and he couldn't even fathom how large the rest of the creature at the end of that bony neck that rose out of the void must be. The skull came level with him, its empty eye socket seeming to stare at him for a long moment. Then it pulled back and turned to face him. It's terrible maw opened, revealing rows upon rows of pointed teeth. It came toward him, and just as the massive jaw snapped shut, his body convulsed, and he was sitting upright in bed.

The room was still dark, but he could make out the outline of a figure in front of him in the diffuse light that seeped through the curtain from the lanterns on the street below. Good, you're up. Dutch's voice spoke softly in the quiet room. He was startled when out of the darkness, he was struck in the chest by the weight of something tough, but compliant. It was only his long coat, folded over. Let's get going.

Treasure? Talbert thought to himself, I don't even know how to translate the word, and I don't think I'd know it if I saw it in here. Treasure, gold, cache, hoard, trove, stash... He mentally listed off another dozen synonyms, none of which he had ever encountered a word for in this strange language. He could have read right over it, and only seen another untranslatable word. What I need is another source. Something to add context so that I can figure out more of this language.

Well? Dutch broke in. Talbert had been sitting there looking blankly at her for almost a minute.

After another moment, he began frantically flipping through pages. The map... the skull... something about the forest? If there was more information to be found... As he flipped through the pages, suddenly there it was. He stood and grabbed the crinkled map of Iewiuf, spreading it over the table and comparing it to the drawing of the skull.

There. He planted his finger on the map, indicating the Mourning Forest. The have to go there.

Dutch strode over to look at the map. With Talbert standing in front of his chair, she had to stand awkwardly close. He could smell the scent of her hair, and felt her hip brush up against him as she leaned in to inspect the map. He began to sweat, and was suddenly painfully aware that he hadn't bathed since he secluded himself in this room, weeks earlier. There was still soot in his hair from the explosion, and he must smell atrocious. He tried to take a step back, but with the chair right behind him, he stumbled and fell into it.

Dutch's eyes darted over to Talbert as he toppled clumsily back into the seat he had inhabited all these weeks. She stared at him probingly for a moment that seemed to stretch on into eternity. Talbert stared back, and he managed to crack a nervous, lopsided smile.

Dutch stood up straight again without breaking eye contact. Fine. She finally said, looking down at him. Gather your things and get some rest. I want to head out before first light. She turned on her heel and walked out, sidestepping the spilled stew that was already seeping into the floorboards. She paused for only a beat to look at the bird, narrowing her eyes crossly before she slipped through the door.

When Dutch was gone, the bird spread its wings and glid down to the floor, plucking the largest piece of meat from the spilled stew with its beak. Talbert just sat there. She hadn't given him much time to prepare...

Fey type, but he hasn't bothered to name it yet.

Over the next several weeks, Talbert never left that room. He spent every waking hour studying the book, and when he wasn't awake, its strange symbols danced in his dreams. He couldn't make any sense of most of it, but he was astonished to find that, interspersed with the scribblings in the strange dead language, the book was full of arcane writing. They were spells! Dozens, maybe hundreds of them!

The method used to write them was truly ancient (the book must have been at least a thousand years old), and most were far beyond his comprehension. As the weeks went by, however, the notes began to fill the margins, often overflowing onto additional sheets of parchment tucked between the pages, and some of the writings began to make sense.

As he read the arcane writings, he could feel the book burn with arcane power. The jewels and crystals embedded in the cover must make the book itself act as an arcane focus!

During this time, Dutch was climbing the walls, sometimes literally. Sometimes she would leave, returning minutes later (or were they hours, or days? Talbert was so engrossed that he couldn't always be sure) with bread and stew, or a leg of mutton from below. Sometimes there was fruit from the market. Other times she would fetch supplies so that Talbert's research could continue. Her demeanor dripped with impatience, but Talbert remained oblivious. He could never figure out what was going on inside a woman's head when he gave it his full attention, and these days, he didn't have any attention to spare.

Talbert is the third son of a Haryson Macklutz, a moderately wealthy merchant who sells high-end furniture to Rydwyrna's elite. Haryson's two older brothers joined the family business, and he originally hoped that Talbert would do the same. When Talbert became a teenager, Haryson became less enamored with the idea.

Most teenagers go through an awkward phase as their bodies begin to change, but Talbert was more awkward than most. He grew tall and skinny, and had a tendency to trip over his own feet. By the time he turned 20, he had stopped growing, but the awkwardness remained.

Falling every once in a while is one thing, but Talbert's accidents tended to be... expensive. He would spill ink on the intricately-embroidered upholstery of the most expensive chair in the shop, or forget to latch the back of a cart delivering hundreds of GP worth of fine Tindari rugs, resulting in the whole shipment breaking loose and rolling across the marketplace. He once fell in the warehouse, and his flailing arms knocked over a newly-finished ironwood bookcase, intricately engraved with images of fey creatures. It fell, and took the other four in the set down with it, falling like dominoes. Each let out a horrible cracking sound as it snapped in two.

Haryson had to hide his relief when Talbert worked up the courage to tell him that he wanted to join the academy. Talbert didn't just want to sell expensive trade goods like his father and brothers. He wanted to train as an alchemist. He was fascinated with magical devices, and wanted to learn to craft his own. He had dozens of sketches for things like a portable doorway, or a contraption to redirect arrows back toward their shooter. Most were not actually possible to build, but he was enthusiastic nonetheless. Haryson couldn't wait to get his youngest son out of the house, and he immediately took him out to purchase goggles and a heavy, protective leather coat suitable for use in an alchemy lab.

The arcane academy was expensive, but it was a small price to pay compared to what it was costing to have Talbert around Haryson's wares.

So, Talbert joined the academy. Luckily, they don't just give new students access to the reagents. He had to take two years of classes before they would even let him into the alchemy lab. Talbert took enthusiastically to the book work, soaking up as much information as he could get his hands on. With access only to the common texts, there was only so much damage he could do.

After two years, he passed his basic exams, and was accepted to the alchemy program. Even then, it was another few months of lectures and demonstrations before the students were permitted to use any reagents themselves.

Finally, it was time. One day he entered the lab, and there was a standard reagent kit waiting. He went through some basic formulas. He learned to make ink, antitoxin, even a healing potion. When he started looking for more interesting formulas to try, he found that these kits were assembled specifically so that no combination of their reagents could produce anything more dangerous than a dizzying smoke.

The next semester, students were finally permitted to check out materials to work on their own formulas under supervision.

One day, he stayed after class, attempting to finish a formula that he was finding particularly tricky. The instructor had to leave for an appointment, but Talbert begged to stay a few more minutes to finish. The instructor looked at what he was working on. It was a relatively safe formula, so he conceded, and told Talbert to lock up when he was done.

Talbert finally finished his formula, then realized that he had been left alone with access to all of the reagents in the lab. He cautiously set up a fire suppression hood, then pulled out some of the reagents that he had been dying to experiment with, and pulled one of the advanced formula books off the shelf. He completed two advanced formulas with relative ease, then began to set up for a third.

He was distracted, wondering why these were considered advanced formulas, when he bumped one of the vials with his elbow, spilling it over the lab table. He cursed and reached for a rag to clean up the mess, and another vial fell over. The table's surface began to smoke, and then a hole started to open up as the potent mixture burned through it.

He had accidentally created a powerful acid, one ate through even the chemical-resistant tables in the alchemy lab. He was panicked, and trying to remember whether the fire suppressant in the suppression hood could neutralize an acid while the hole got bigger. The hole continued to expand until the rack of reagents he had laid out fell through it. Glass broke, and half a dozen advanced reagents mixed together. Only now did it occur to Talbert that that the reason these reagents were considered advanced wasn't because they were more difficult to use, but because they were so dangerous if used incorrectly.

Talbert was momentarily blinded by a bright, silver-colored flame from below the table. This was a disaster, but at least he knew what to do about fire. He flailed about for a moment before his hand found the chain hanging from the suppression hood. He gave it a firm tug, and the suppression agent flowed out over the flame. If he was actually in the advanced class, he would have known what would happen next.

The suppression agent was a special mixture that could put out any type of flame, but for particularly aggressive flames like the silver one before him, this could only be done by allowing one of the components of the mixture to explode, rapidly removing all fuel from the area. If this had been a small spill, it might only have destroyed the surrounding tables. This was not a small spill.

The explosion shook the ground and brought down a large portion of the roof. Talbert was thrown backward and out through the darkened window of the lab. It would have been lethal if not for the advanced healing potion he made, the fumes of which had been mixed with the air he was breathing by the heat of the fire.

He blacked out for a moment, but when he came to, he saw the destruction, and he ran.

He was headed for the gates, planning to flee the academy and never return. He turned briefly to glance behind him, and he ran into something. The next thing he knew, he was again sprawled on the ground, but this time he wasn't alone. He turned to see what he had hit, and saw a beautiful elven girl with strawberry-colored hair ending just above her shoulders. No, the ears were too short, she must be a half-elf.

Then he looked down and saw the book splayed out between them. He recognized the script there. It was a dead language that he had studied, but he'd never seen a text like this one. He instantly forgot his situation as he began to read part of the passage aloud.

The girl sat up and looked back at him in surprise, then down at the book. The snatched it up and wrapped it back up in her cloak. She got quickly to her feet and poised herself to run, when she turned back to Talbert. He had been reading from the book. She couldn't make any sense of it herself, and would need help deciphering its secrets.

She wrapped her long, slender fingers around Talbert's bony wrist. Her touch was cool against his skin. He looked up, and her pale green eyes met his dark blue ones. No words were spoken, but he knew he had to come with her. He had to know what was in that book.

He stood, nearly pulling her slender frame back to the ground on top of him. They ran out of the gates and down the street.

She pull him around a corner, into a narrow alleyway. She approached the back door of a closed shop and did... something to the lock. The door clicked open, and she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him inside. She left him there and went to check the other door to the shops's sparse back room. Daylight poured in from the street through the big window in the shop's front, but she didn't seem to see anyone inside. She clicked the lock shut all the same, and whispered across the small room to him, Keep a lookout.

Talbert pushed the door mostly closed, leaving only a crack to peek out. He wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for, but imagined he would know it if he saw it.

It was quiet, and as he looked out, focussed on the street, after a moment it occurred to him that she might have slipped out of the room another way, leaving him behind. He turned to look, only to get an eyeful of bare flesh. She had turned her back to him and stripped off the green and gold courtier's outfit she had been wearing. She was just now shrugging on a dark, form-fitting tunic.

His eyes snapped back to the street. He hoped she hadn't noticed him looking, but the blood rushing to his face was sure to give him away. Only a moment later, she was again fully dressed, looking like a different person as she released the knot of long, black hair that had replaced the red, and let it cascade like water down her back.

She shoved the book into his hands and told him to hide it under his coat. She then reversed her cloak, turning it from a velvety forest green to a drab black, and draped it over his shoulders. She slipped a narrow tricorn hat from a hook by the door where it had been left, and pulled it low over his face.

She stepped back and looked him up and down disapprovingly, then stepped close again and pulled the hat even lower, nearly blocking his vision. It will have to do, come on. She led him hurriedly back out the door and onto the street, then slowed her pace by half, blending into the crowd.

They walked briefly back in the direction they had come before turning away onto a larger thoroughfare. She shoved him ahead, and glared daggers at him when he tried to look behind them. Eyes forward! she whispered. They took a turn into a crowded market, and she pulled him to a stop in front of a fruit vendor. She lifted a large green apple and made a show of inspecting it. She put it back and picked up another, sneaking a look back the way they had come. She tossed a coin to the man in the straw hat behind the table, then took the apple and continued on.

She led him through a few more turns, and up the back stairs into a seedy inn. Pulling him into one of the rooms, she peeked through a moth-eaten hole in the curtain, down to the alley they had just passed though. After a moment, she seemed satisfied that they had not been followed. You can call me Dutch. What's your name? she asked, as she tossed the apple to him.

He fumbled with it for a moment before dropping it to the floor. As he reached down to pick it up, he felt the mass of the book under his coat, and had to bend awkwardly to reach it. When he finally spoke, his reply came out sounding more like a question than an answer.

Talbert?

Wizard character (in progress).