WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
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◈ The Wizard's Memoir ◈
Chapter 17: Cemetery
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Etran stretched and opened his eyes wide.
The past few days had been a hard march through the mountains, but a good night's sleep in a soft bed had cleared away all his fatigue. The others envied him, making comments about the strength of teenagers, the power of youth, and how nothing beat being young.
“Aren't you going to have breakfast?”
He asked the person in the next bed, but there was no answer. The former mercenary didn't sleep much, but once asleep, they weren't easily woken.
Etran considered shaking them awake, then decided against it. They weren't outdoors, where they had to get moving quickly, and his roommate wasn't a growing youngster who wanted bread the moment they opened their eyes. In other words, Etran was hungry.
The magical boy, master of teenage turmoil, got dressed, pulled on his boots, and headed cheerfully downstairs to the first-floor hall.
Zero hour, sunrise, had only just begun, but there were already quite a few customers. Judging by their sorry state, they hadn't come early for breakfast. They had been drinking and had passed out there overnight.
“Hey, Etrannie! You're up early!”
The tavern keeper greeted him while tying on an apron. They had a habit of doing strange things to people's names, but it made sense given their work. This wasn't just any proprietor, and these weren't ordinary customers.
“Is breakfast free?”
“Of course not. What would we live on?”
“Put it on our leader's tab, please.”
Etran was perfectly confident. It came out of the shared funds anyway, so Olivia ought to pay. The tavern keeper, who didn't know the party's arrangements, simply thought he was an amusing boy and served him breakfast.
“Oat porridge cooked in sheep's milk.”
Wool was a specialty of the Northern Highlands. Naturally, the region also produced plenty of sheep's milk, mutton, lanolin, and other by-products. To a boy from far to the south, it felt rather luxurious.
Etran emptied the bowl in no time and ordered some bread as well. There was no jam at this time of year, but he received freshly baked barley bread. Leaning back in his chair, he gazed out the window like an old man with all the time in the world.
Being in the middle of the market, the place was noisy from early morning.
A cart blocked the narrow street, starting a shouting match. Then a passing drunk vomited, and fists finally flew. One punch, two punches, a block, then a third to finish. The combination was so neat that this clearly wasn't a rare event.
“The north is certainly lively.”
As if on cue, the drunk two seats over toppled to the floor with a crash!
Etran wondered how much anyone had to drink to lose control of their own body, but that wasn't entirely fair. Unlike Etran, the customer couldn't simply sit down on a chair. They had stacked two boxes beneath it first. Without a good sense of balance, it was all too easy to fall.
“Urrrgh...”
Ironically, the same build that required such tricks also allowed them to fall without getting hurt. A dwarf with a thick, shaggy beard stood up, scratching the back of their head.
“Hey, you half-pointy-ears! How many times did I tell you to get a dwarf-sized chair?”
Definitely a dwarf. Nobody could match them for rude remarks. But the half-pointy-ears in charge of the northern branch was no pushover either.
“Ha! Next you'll want dwarf-sized tables and beds! Do you think this is a dwarf den?”
“Yes! Now that you mention it, change the beds! We're not baby goats. Why should we sleep on straw? Stone! Put in stone beds!”
“A stone bed seems a little...”
Etran trailed off under the other race's burning glare. As befitted the genius mage Storm-Seed was so proud of, he stood firmly by his beliefs.
“Good for your health, I'd imagine.”
“Right? Exactly! I knew you magic folk were clever!”
Etran gave the tavern keeper an apologetic look. The proprietor merely looked sorry that a cranky old customer had latched on to him, then fled to the kitchen.
“Staying here, are you? An adventurer, then? Brave of a young girl!”
“...I'm a boy.”
“What? But you haven't got a beard.”
“I'm still young.”
“What's age got to do with... Oh, right. Humans have to start withering before their beards grow, don't they? No wonder the streets seemed full of women... What a pitiful race.”
Etran had excellent self-control. He firmly held back the observation that dwarves were the only race whose beards grew before the hair on their heads. Whether the dwarf understood his feelings or not, probably not, they moved eagerly into the seat beside him. This time, without boxes beneath the chair, they sat much lower.
“I've had plenty of questions for a magic user, so this is perfect. Your kind read lots of books and argue all the time. You must know a great deal.”
“I'm still rather inexperienced...”
“Doesn't wearing that ring mean you can pull your own weight?”
Between human beards and magic rings, the dwarf certainly seemed to have picked up plenty of information.
The dwarf ordered a beer to cure their hangover. Etran gave up trying to understand.
Bread and beer, each made from barley, disappeared into their respective stomachs. A small burp marked the start of the real conversation.
“I'm ‘Graystone’ Grom.”
“Ah, yes. I'm Mage Etran.”
“Something's happened back home. We need human wisdom.”
“Where is your home?”
“I just told you! Graystone!”
“...So it wasn't a nickname.”
Humans often used their hometowns as family names too, so it wasn't strange, though few explained the practice by shouting angrily.
“What happened that you need help with?”
With his excellent intuition, Etran predicted that it couldn't be anything serious. Someone who had spent yesterday and today drinking couldn't possibly have come on an important mission.
But even a genius was only human, and he had judged wrongly. He was no better than a dwarf who assumed anyone without a beard was a woman. That race would ask for beer even if the world were about to end.
“Our ancestors' graves have been stolen.”
“...Pardon?”
Grom looked away, apparently embarrassed. When Etran asked again, the dwarf burst out angrily once more.
“Someone robbed our cemetery! A very evil thief!”
@
Etran frowned.
Every race with a “civilization,” humans included, placed great importance on their ancestors. Civilization was knowledge and rules, and those who passed them down naturally became objects of worship. It went so far that even asking “why” was considered strange.
Dahlia came downstairs, yawning widely, and their eyes lit up.
“An ancestral cemetery? Is it a mine? A gold mine? A silver mine? This time it'll be gold!”
“What kind of nonsense is that? Why would we put our ancestors in a mine? Do you plant your parents in a carrot patch?”
“We did bury them nearby...”
Halflings weren't an easy race to understand either. Etran comforted the downcast Dahlia and asked the question he hadn't managed to ask earlier.
“What do you mean by an evil thief?”
“All thieves are evil!”
“...Well, that's true.”
“But this one's especially evil.”
Dwarves were even tougher than they looked.
They were short, but their sturdy bodies made them natural fighters. Many wore full suits of iron armor and served as tankers, or used mechanical crossbows as artillery.
Yet their race had one weakness. No matter how hard they tried, they could never become mages or sorcerers. They were born without mana.
“They didn't just steal the bits of gold inside the coffins. Damn it, I get chills just thinking about it. Another beer here!”
“One for me too. What's going on?”
Olivia came downstairs in a shirt. They had taken off their chain mail but still wore their mace and estoc. With one hand resting on the sword hilt, the warrior's well-trained biceps, triceps, and forearm muscles were plain to see.
Growing uncomfortable as the party members gathered one by one, Grom spoke very quietly.
“They didn't just steal our ancestors' grave goods. They stole our ancestors too.”
“...They stole what?”
“The bodies, the bones are gone. From the entire cemetery. This has to be a magic user's doing. There's no other explanation. An evil mage thief, no doubt about it.”
Unfamiliar things tended to seem dangerous. Even sturdy dwarves were uneasy around magic. Grom Graystone needed a magic user's help to catch a magic user.
@
Graystone was a dwarf village at the northern edge of the Northern Highlands.
Grom rattled off a dwarf-style family history full of factions and branches, but in short, it was an old clan. Truly old, even by the standards of dwarves, who lived three to four times as long as humans. Their ancestral cemetery was impressive in size as a result.
“Have you filed a request with the Guild?”
Etran glanced at the tavern keeper. Even if they didn't get along with the dwarf, they weren't the sort to neglect their duties. Sure enough, a sulky answer came back.
“It needs a mage, so no party's willing to take it.”
As they had seen yesterday, few parties included a mage. Besides, everyone's attention was on the Guild request concerning the stolen sacred relic. A minor request to investigate a dwarf cemetery received little interest. Nobody had died, and nobody seemed likely to, so the branch couldn't ask the other branches for assistance either.
“It isn't really our kind of work.”
Olivia's party mainly explored dungeons. Nobody had made a firm rule about it, but that was what their leader preferred.
“What do you mean? I've explained all this, and now that you've heard me out, you're refusing?”
“We never asked you to explain.”
“This magic user was begging me to tell him!”
Etran used his entire body to deny ever doing such a thing. The party trusted a companion who had shared danger and hardship with them over a dwarf they had never met before. Etran had asked a casual question, but he certainly hadn't begged.
“Come on, help us. Or at least introduce me to someone who will.”
“We only arrived yesterday ourselves. We don't know anyone.”
“Then you've got nothing to do, have you?”
Grom seemed to have taken a liking to Etran and wouldn't give up easily. When Olivia looked conflicted, the dwarf sensed an opening and piled on the bait.
“If you help our village, I'll tell you a dungeon secret carefully passed down in Graystone. And of course, I'll pay the full commission fee.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand dena.”
Dahlia snorted with excitement. The village was rather far away, and the details were still unclear, but the reward was beautiful.
“Shall we take a majority vote?”
Dahlia immediately voted in favor. After some thought, Etran agreed as well. The connection between bodies, a cemetery, and magic troubled him.
Olivia folded their arms and looked toward the second floor. There was an even number of party members, so if Rolf voted against it, Olivia could reject the job.
“What's going on?”
Not quite the demon, but right on cue, Rolf came downstairs with a coat draped over their shoulders. Etran and Dahlia flanked the crossbow wielder and quickly explained the situation. Rolf ordered a beer, drank quietly, and made a casual decision.
“Rather than simply waiting for news of a dungeon, I think we'd do better to find out for ourselves. With Etran here, it may be easy enough to resolve. I'm in favor too.”
Etran was taken aback by these excessive expectations, but the decision stood. Olivia slapped their knee with a smack! and made the final announcement.
“All right. Let's take the job.”
“Hooray!”
Several faces brightened. To be precise, one human, one halfling, one dwarf, and one half-elf. The last was simply delighted to be rid of a troublesome customer.
In any case, they were off to an ancestral cemetery. Not a dungeon, but something like one.
After another day or so of rest, that was.
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