Vainglory 3.26 - All in the Bag

Here's today's chapter :) Thanks for reading!

-Plum

26 – All in the Bag

Grace scoffed, shaking her head. “That’s not a thing.” A flicker of doubt marred her smug expression, though, and she said, “Is it?”

“I don’t know. You saw that skeleton pull a sword out of this pouch, though, right? We weren’t hallucinating.”

She shrugged. “I suppose. When you think about it, these catacombs are riddled with weird spaces that don’t make sense. Teleportation and some kind of spatial magic aren’t so far-fetched in that light.”

“Well, I’m not gonna stick my hand in there without testing it first.” Ward stooped to pick up the skeleton’s broken sword. Holding the bag in one hand, he gingerly began to slide the sword into the darkness inside. Part of him was expecting to get a few inches of the blade into the pouch before it hit the bottom, but that part of him was quickly silenced as the entire sword sank into the pouch, even the crossguard somehow, despite it being wider than the pouch’s opening.

When he held only the pommel between his fingers, Ward drew the sword out again, and it looked exactly as it had before he’d put it into the little container. “Didn’t seem to hurt it,” he murmured.

“How are you supposed to know what’s in there?”

Ward shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Should I put my hand into it?”

“Start with just a fingertip—what if it kills living matter!”

Ward nodded, dropping the sword to the ground and extending a sacrificial pinky. “Just the tip.”

“That’s what she—”

“Low-hanging fruit, Grace!” He chuckled nervously and put the first joint of his smallest digit into the blackness. He didn’t feel any pain, but something else happened: his vision went dark, and he suddenly saw into the bag. He saw a room-sized space with shadowy gray boundaries. He saw a stack of rusted weapons—all sorts and sizes—at the center of the space, taking up much of the room, but he also saw several books, some clothing—difficult to categorize because they were piled in a heap—and several leather and burlap sacks and packs. “Holy shit,” he said, struggling to wrap his head around what he was seeing.

“What is it?” Grace asked, nudging him enough to jostle his hand. When his pinky came out of the pouch, his vision returned to normal, and he looked at Grace, grinning stupidly. “It really is a bag of holding! When my finger went inside, I could see everything in there. Like a hundred weapons, piles of clothes—all sorts of stuff.”

“Is it full? Anything valuable?”

“Not sure. The weapons look about as good as that sword, but there might be some that are well-made and just need some maintenance. Not sure if the bags are empty, but I don’t think so. The books—”

Grace grabbed his sleeve and tugged him toward the opening where the skeleton had emerged. “We should check that stuff out, but first, take a look in the alcove this guy came out of. We don’t want to get jumped while you’re staring into space like an idiot.”

“Right.” Ward stopped short, resisting her pull, and went back to the skeleton. “Let me get these boots first.” He could feel Grace’s urgency, her worry, so he decided to try the pouch out. He yanked the boots off the skeleton’s bony feet and, one by one, held them toward the mouth of the little bag. It seemed to sense his intention because he hardly had to get the toe of the boots into the opening before each one was pulled from his hand and added to the pouch’s capacious interior.

Grinning, very pleased with his latest acquisition, Ward pulled the pouch closed and slipped it into a pocket. He figured he’d tie it to his belt after he was done exploring its contents. He drew his sword, then, and approached the opening in the wall where the skeleton had emerged. It turned out that Grace’s worry was unfounded. Beyond the opening was a small square room about five feet by five. It was utterly empty except for a pair of rusty iron levers mounted to the rear wall.

“Probably for the gates blocking the pathway,” he mused.

“That would make sense. I suppose that means this is a fairly safe place to rest. You should take a look at your hemograph, Ward. I’m curious if I was right about your dreadmarked bloodline.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Ward slid his sword into its scabbard and then dug the pouch out of his pocket. “First, I want to get a closer look at some of the stuff in here.”

Grace nodded and sat down near the wall, folding her legs under her. She always looked perfectly comfortable, and this was no exception. Ward narrowed his eyes at her. “I wish there was a way we could get you a little more freedom. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could check on Haley?”

“Well…” Grace closed her mouth, tapping one polished nail against her chin before shaking her head. “Never mind. It wouldn’t help in this situation.”

“What?”

“It was just a fleeting thought; I really don’t want to talk any more about it. I’m afraid you’ll become obsessed, but…” Again, she trailed off.

“Just say it, dammit!”

“Oh, fine! There’s a ritual we could perform to bind me to an object. An amulet or ring or some such. That way, the person wearing the object, so long as they’ve bonded with it through yet another ritual, would be able to host me.”

“More than one person could bond with the object? Me and Haley, for instance?”

“Yes, but what good would it do? It’s not like you can give her the object if you’re separated like this.”

Ward folded his arms, his narrowed eyes becoming a glower of suspicion. “I mean, it wouldn’t help now, but I can think of plenty of times you’ve said you wished you could do something with Haley instead of me. Why haven’t you mentioned this?”

Grace mimicked him, folding her arms. She didn’t look angry, though; she looked vulnerable. “Why do you think?”

It sounded like the answer should be obvious, so Ward put himself in Grace’s shoes, and it didn’t take long to see things from her perspective. “It’ll give us a lot of control over you. You’ll be stuck with the object. If I got sick of you, I wouldn’t have to give you Haley, I could put you in a box and seal it up like that asshole demon in the artifact.”

“That’s true,” she said softly, “but it goes even beyond that. If you die now, I’m free. I can roam about, hoping to find a new host. Maybe not so easy in a place like this, but in the city? It’d be trivial. If I’m bound to an object, things wouldn’t be like that. I wouldn’t be free to…” She trailed off, shrugging.

Ward nodded. “I get it.”

Suddenly, she was standing before him, and she grasped his right hand, her fingers gentle as she pulled his arm away from his chest so she could hold his hand close to her. “I trust you, though, Ward! That’s why I mentioned it. I don’t believe you’d lock me away. I know Haley wouldn’t either. Still, there’s some risk.”

“All right, well, it’s a moot point at the moment. It means something to me, though, that you felt you could tell me about that.” Ward squeezed her hand in return, and when she looked into his eyes, acknowledging his words with a quick nod, he let go, tugging the pouch from his pocket. “Let’s see what’s in this thing.”

Considering his filthy, shredded pants and shirt, he decided to look through the pile of clothing first. In the weird, gray light of the magical bag, he couldn’t get a good idea of the clothes’ condition, so he started pulling the articles out, one by one. The pile of garments turned out to be a tangle of faded fabrics, leather straps, and torn wool. One object, in decent repair, was a heavy cloak, dark gray and stitched with silver thread along the hem, with a silver clasp shaped like a bird mid-flight—wings outstretched, beak open wide.

Digging further, he found a thick gambeson, half-folded beneath a pair of leather breeches that were stained with something dark around the knees. He pulled out half a dozen shirts and tunics, one of which was colored a dull red and looked almost ceremonial; its chest was marked with strange symbols that had been partially burned away. Tucked between a pair of leather greaves was a child-sized yellow linen dress, fragile with age and missing its buttons. Ward scowled, seeing the little garment.

Grace must have read his thoughts written plainly on his face. “I hope these aren’t the belongings of that skeleton's various victims over the years.”

“Yeah, me too.” Ward sorted the clothing into three piles—clothes he might be able to wear if he had to, clothes he couldn’t wear but looked possibly valuable, and then a third pile of things that were too badly worn, torn, or stained to be of any use. That pile, he’d leave behind. When he finished sorting them, he pulled on the pair of leather breeches, finding them just a little roomier than necessary but comfortable. He’d found several pairs of woolen socks, so he pulled on a pair before stuffing his feet into the skeleton’s boots. They were, again, a little too big, but he preferred that to too small.

“Put this on.” Grace nudged a frayed but well-made gray sweater. Ward shrugged and took off his ripped-up shirt, tossing it in the discard pile. Then he pulled on the sweater, pleased by its soft, comfortable texture.

He rubbed the thick fabric between his fingers. “Not bad.”

With the clothes sorted, he piled the things he was going to keep back in the pouch’s interior, this time folded far more neatly. “You know much about weapons?” he asked, eyeing the stack of killing implements. He could see swords, knives, spears, axes, and a dozen more exotic weapon types.

“A little. Do you want to make room in the bag? If not, just save those for when we get back to town.”

Ward shrugged and nodded. “All right. Let’s look through these bags, then.” Ward pulled them out, one by one. Most of the containers were empty—leather sacks and burlap satchels lying crumpled like long-forgotten skins. One empty pack he paused to examine more closely had a broken strap, its stitching frayed beyond repair, and a stale smell clinging to its interior. Another rustled with brittle scraps of parchment and a single, cracked ink vial. It was clear that whoever had used those bags hadn’t been around for a very long time.

A few of the bags and packs held remnants of their former utility, however. One leather pack contained a compact flint-and-steel kit, finer than the one Ward had left behind in his own travel bag. Another had a sealed tin marked with a sunburst tucked away under some moldy parchment—inside were dry tinder shavings and a twist of twine. Yet another held a length of rope coiled tightly and a small vial of oil wrapped in wool cloth.

The most intact pack, one made of supple leather and sewn with double-layered stitching, had a pair of worn gloves, a cracked waterskin still half-full, and a small bone-handled knife tucked into an inner sleeve. Rolled up next to the knife was a small map, nearly blank except for a few hand-drawn lines and a crude “X” labeled simply Gravepit.

The bags and supplies, mostly discarded with the clothes Ward didn’t want, gave him an uneasy, almost mournful feeling as he looked at them. He had a good feeling these were things left behind by people who’d died in the Garden Gates, perhaps to the skeleton’s violence. It was a depressing thought—those people, those dead adventurers, being reduced to such a pitiful pile of worn-out belongings.

“Well,” he said, putting the things he wanted to keep back into the pouch—the flint and steel, the tinder box, the rope, and a few odds and ends. “Just the books left.” There were four, and he took them out one by one, holding them on his lap so Grace, sitting beside him, could easily see what he was looking at. In the dim gray light of the pouch, he could get an idea of the books’ size and shape, and he left the one with the most promise for last—a thin, leather-bound one with a metal clasp.

The first one he took out turned out to be some kind of bestiary. It was hand-illustrated and labeled, with sketches of all sorts of creatures, many that Ward considered “real,” like wolves and lions, and then dozens of others that seemed like fairy-tale fodder—unicorns, gryphons, gravehounds, bonecrows, lantern ghasts, skyhowlers, and many more. Some of the monsters and animals were marked with a red, hand-drawn X. Frowning at that, Ward said, “I wonder if those are creatures he killed.”

“Killed them or found they weren’t real. Why he, by the way?”

Ward shrugged. “I guess I’m a sexist. I just imagined the monster hunter as a man. Anyway, I don’t think you’re right—there’s an X beside wolves and bears, so…” Ward closed the book, handed it to Grace, and then pulled out the next. It was a thick, gilded volume and, just as Ward guessed, it proved to be some kind of religious text.

When he flipped through the pages, he found it heavily edited—lines blacked out, prayers rewritten, and annotations covering nearly every margin. It reminded Ward of a Bible—structured similarly—but it referenced a pantheon of gods and goddesses he’d never heard of, with writings from all sorts of prophets.

“Weird,” he muttered, the book suddenly feeling almost illicit in his hands. “I wonder how old this is, or from what world. Imagine what a religious studies professor back on Earth would do to get their hands on something like this.” He closed the book and put it on top of the bestiary in Grace’s lap.

The next book he pulled from the pouch was small, about the size of his palm, bound with red, cloth-covered wood, and filled with about twenty pages of children’s rhymes. “Jesus,” Ward sighed, handing the book to Grace. “Add another depressing annotation to your notes about this damn bag.”

Grace nodded, her eyes distant as she ran her fingers along the cover of the little book. “I wonder if it belonged to the little girl with the yellow dress.” She blinked rapidly, then asked, “Is that all?”

“One more,” Ward said, pulling out the book he’d saved for last. It looked quite different in the light of the sun—blue-stained leather with a tarnished silver clasp. It was thin, and Ward could see there were only a handful of pages inside the binding, reminding him of his own grimoire. He turned it over and back several times, scanning for any hint of runes, but didn’t see any. “If it’s a spellbook, I don’t think it’s warded.”

“It might have the wards inside the binding. Do you want to risk it?”

Ward felt impulsive. They’d spent a lot of time digging through the pouch with little to show for it. He shrugged and opened the book, squinting like he expected it to burst into flames. To his relief, nothing of the sort happened, and he was rewarded with what looked very much like a spell page—meditative positions, rhythm lines, words of power, and a description. “Yes!” he hissed, turning the page to see if he’d found more than one, but the following sheets of paper were blank.

“One’s better than none! Read it!”

Ward nodded, turning back to the front page. When he focused on the words of power, for the first time since he’d gotten the spell he’d used to bring Haley back, he found them painful to gaze upon. Still, he forced himself to look them over, mouthing them softly as he went, “Veskal Truinvar Selneth.” As he finished, a stab of pain hit him behind his eyes, and he squeezed them shut, cradling his head until it faded.

“What?” Grace grabbed his wrist, trying to pull one hand away from his head.

Ward shook her off, muttering, “They’re powerful words. Hard for me to focus on.” As the pain faded, he moved his attention to the flowery handwriting beneath the spell’s meditative poses:

The first time I used Memory Walk, I was gentle—too gentle. I whispered the words over a sobbing man who claimed to remember nothing of the fire that killed his kin. I thought I’d be peering into a broken moment, maybe smoke and screams. But no—what I saw was a sunlit orchard, birdsong, his sister laughing beneath a cherry tree. Beautiful. Safe. But I lingered, pressing my insistent questions, and the memory shifted. The laughter died. Flames bloomed behind the blossoms, and he felt me there. He screamed in the waking world, and the orchard burned around us. I got out, barely. The spell works, but be warned: the mind does not like to be trespassed upon. Even memories lie. Especially the cherished ones.”

Ward frowned, puzzled. “What do you make of that?”

“It sounds to me like you can pull memories out of a person’s head.”

“Yeah, but what about the bit about memories lying?”

Grace traced the words with her finger as she replied, “I think it means that the person can try to resist showing you the real memory. Like in the story, the sorceress thought she saw a pleasant memory of a sister laughing, but when she lingered, the memory shifted, and the real story emerged. It sounds dangerous, though! It sounds like the fire from the memory almost hurt her.”

“She?” Ward grinned.

Grace grinned back, whispering in his ear, “Well, I guess I’m a sexist—when I think of powerful sorcery, I picture a woman.”