“Do you want one, Mr. Cayd?” Boldbounty asked over his shoulder as he stood in front of a small vendor on the street. Behind the vendor’s cart was a small woman in nomad-styled clothes. A small magically summoned flame was heating up a cast iron griddle in front of her.

  “Excuse my cultural ignorance, Enoch, but I have no idea what a syrup swirl is.”

  “Oh dear, Gavundari?” the woman asked with a wide grin.

  “Yes, I’ve only been here for a few months.”

  “Then you absolutely need one! Don’t worry Sergeant,” she said as the paladin reached for another coin. “This is on me. I’ll have his business forever after one bite anyway.”

  Cayd stepped forward beside Boldbounty to watch the girl work. She poured a decanter over the griddle, spilling a thick golden batter into two puddles. The smell of sweet bread filled the air as the batter began to set. The girl reached for a box and sprinkled the contents onto the cakes. Brown sugar, cinnamon, and chopped, roasted nuts fell down and buried themselves into the cakes’ uncooked tops. Though Cayd had eaten a large breakfast, the sweet smell made his mouth water.

  After watching the cakes cook for a beat or two, the girl took a spatula to them and flipped the topped side down to a buttery hiss. The fragrance was doubled as a result and Cayd looked up to see Boldbounty grinning like a child.

  Just a moment more and the girl used the spatula to roll the cakes into tight spirals, wrapped them in wax paper, and handed them to her customers. “Give it a second to cook the last bits, Mister Wanderer of Kraagheim, and then tell me what you think!”

  Cayd looked down at the creation and took in its nutty, sugary smell. The brown sugar had caramelized and turned to a thick syrup with the griddle’s heat and was dripping down the inside of the wax paper. When he could no longer resist, he took a bite of the warm pastry and, to his surprise, let out a pleased laugh.

  “This is delightful!” he exclaimed. “I’ve never had anything like this.”

  “I’ll see you again soon, then, yeah? The girl asked with a wink before moving to help another customer.

  Cayd looked at Boldbounty to see him taking the final bites of his cake. “Is this what patrol is, Enoch? Street food and small talk?”

  Boldbounty laughed. “I mean, until the Sea Witch arrives,” he said looking around. “Pretty much! You have to have good community outreach, you know?”

  The two men laughed as they walked through the busy city center of Dawnbreak. As they patrolled past the crowds of shoppers and merchants, Cayd’s attention was seized by a brick storefront immediately off of the main thoroughfare.

  The multi-story brick building was made out of the same white bricks that built the Dawnbreak Chapel, but a massive, dusty window showed Cayd that the inside of the shop could not be any more different. Odds and ends spilled across a display table immediately against the window and even larger, more strange items were mounted on the wood-paneled walls inside. A man even dustier than the window was too busy at something behind a large glass counter to notice Cayd’s staring. A complex sign hung over the door reading “Keeping Focus, Magical Supplies for Dawnbreak.”

  “Window shopping is also an important part of patrolling,” Bouldbounty said to Cayd.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” he replied, looking down at the items. “I’ve always been so interested in Talnorel’s blue magic.”

  “We can go into the store, you know?”

  “Do we have anywhere to be?”

  Boldbounty let out a deep laugh before pushing the door to the shop open. A hanging bell welcomed them loudly and the storekeeper looked up.

  “Hello Sergeant! Are you looking for a priest focus?” the storekeeper asked cheerfully, nodding with his head since his hands were busy at work with some fashion of metal box.

  “Not today, sir,” Boldbounty waved the idea away as he glanced around the cluttered shop. “Just looking.”

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  Cayd silently walked the small room, his eyes narrowing and widening with each discovery. At one end of the store was a series of church-style foci for gold magic. Censers, scepters, grails, candlesticks all sat haphazardly, but the lack of organization was charming. Across from those items, and just as disorderly were blue magic foci. Lamps, tomes, staves, and even more unusual knick knacks rest on tables or hung from mounts in the wall.

  “Let me know if you see anything you like, sir,” the man called over to Cayd.

  “Yes, yes, thank you.” Cayd’s gaze fell on a small lantern of twisted bronze. The metal was worked into tight braid-like cords that were wound together into the lid of the lantern. A bulb of bright red glass hung beneath it. There was no structure inside to hold the light. Cayd grinned as he reached forward, and as his hand approached, a red light began to glow and grew brighter as his hand approached. He mouthed a shocked “what” as he watched it.

  “Is that unusual?” Boldbounty asked as he watched Cayd play with the lantern’s light.

  “Not here. But back home? Very. We actually don’t use foci too often in Gavundar. Not the standard blue magic users, though.”

  “Is that right?” Boldbounty asked, looking down at a priestly focus, a small statuette of a man in bright armor. “How do you all pull off your big spells?”

  Cayd thought for a moment. “I suppose I misspoke. We do use foci, just not like Talnorel.” Cayd sighed, and looked over at the shopkeeper, who had stopped his work and was widely grinning. Cayd then pushed his left sleeve up past his elbow. Black markings were etched into his already dark skin. Sharp angles and strange loops twisted and turned all over, everything just a different shade of black. The tattoos went up under the sleeve of the cloak, but ended abruptly at the wrist.

  Behind the counter, the shopkeeper nodded in admiration of the marks, but Boldbounty looked wide-eyed at them. “That is impressive! An art in itself, Mr. Cayd. But, what am I looking at?”

  “My notes,” Cayd said proudly. “Thank you for the compliments. They are etched in a cipher of my own design so my own spells can never be read and used against me. The same way your priests use their focus to call on a particular aspect of faith, or how blue magic users here use a physical object to remind them of their magical ideals.”

  “So those are all just notes? On what? The meaning of life?”

  “Ah ha,” Cayd said as he let his sleeve fall again. “Another place where we differ.” Cayd looked over to the shopkeeper. “Correct me if I ever assume too much of Talnorel’s casting, sir, but I understand the scholarship of blue magic is different on this land?”

  “You would be correct, friend!” The shopkeeper nodded enthusiastically. It was clear he loved his job, and loved when others seemed to care as much. “Blue magic, whether you like it or not, Sergeant, was a product of the Church of the Will,” he said, firing a playful glare at Boldbounty, who laughed.

  “I’ve been a paladin all my life, sir. And my wife is from Duskfall! If I weren’t aware of our Church’s charred past, I’d be as good as blind.”

  The shopkeeper grinned and nodded with understanding. “Well, as one would imagine, the philosophical strain of being held underfoot of a faith you do not believe proved too much for those who put more stock in mortal will than faith, and there they discovered power. With the correct frame of mind and an understanding of the world around, the will of a mortal could be imposed on the world, both natural and unnatural. Suddenly,” the shopkeeper lifted his hands from his work to excitedly gesticulate. “The realms of green and red magic would be bound as one!”

  “Did faith magic not give them enough?” Boldbounty asked rhetorically, but the shopkeeper ran with the idea.

  “No, for why, though?”

  “Because now we did not need the Will of a god to decide what could or couldn’t be done,” Cayd said, watching the lantern glow again and smiling. “Just convince yourself first, and then convince the world.”

  Boldbounty grinned as he watched Cayd childishly play with the lantern. “So how does that make Talnorel different from Gavundar in blue magic?”

  “The convincing, as you so brilliantly worded it,” the shopkeeper said to Cayd, “took a more philosophical and historical spin here as Duskfall attempted to socially break from the Church of the Will and the Throne. For a mage on Talnorel, that lantern as a focus could help them remember that their brilliance, their will, their magic is a light in the darkness. A staff may remind them of the stalwart, upstanding nature of mortals. All this helps them channel their will.”

  “As for Gavundar,” Cayd said, looking up from the lantern. “We took a more practical approach to expressions of will. Study of the physical or living world helps to offer a natural foundation to our spells, while mathematics helps us to aim and control them. Honestly, I admire the Talnorel style. They can wield their spells with the same finesse, but do not need the constant mental acrobatics of calculation on the battlefield.”

  “Battlefield, Mr. Cayd?” Boldbounty asked, wondering if he was about to learn more of his guest’s nebulous past.

  “Sir, how much for the lantern?” Cayd asked, ignoring the paladin’s question with a friendly smile.

  “Normally I would ask ten geld for such fine Duskfall craftsmanship,” the shopkeeper mused. “But it seems to have taken a liking to you.”

  Cayd’s face fell. “Enchanted?”

  “No, no,” the shopkeeper urged. “Just a figure of speech. My apologies for the confusion. Five geld, though, is all I will charge you.”

  “That’s perfect.” Cayd fished out five glimmering coins and exchanged them over the counter, and the trio offered their farewells.

  The sorcerer looked with pride at his purchase as his paladin friend led him out of the shop’s door. “How often do we go on patrols?” Cayd asked.

  “I try to get out of the keep as much as possible.”

  “I think I may need that gold slip exchanged after all.”