11 – The Many Rings

The laundromat exterior hadn’t changed since the last time Erika stopped by with Leslie. Boards covered the windows, a For Lease sign hung from the door, bits of paint peeled from the brickwork, and somehow, even the weathered old bike rack outside looked uninviting. Peering through a crack in the window boards, Erika saw nothing but an empty tiled room, lit only by a faint few streams of light piercing through other cracks.

There was a faint film around the entire building. It couldn’t obstruct Erika, but she watched a passerby take a wide berth around the entire building, almost stepping off the sidewalk and into the street. The man moved without seeming to notice, absorbed in his phone the entire time, yet he still drifted back toward the center of the sidewalk once he got far enough away.

When Erika pulled open the front door, she walked into an operation. Half a dozen people moved about between tables in a well-lit workshop. Machines whirred atop tables; spinning drums tumbled brass in soapy water, a worker arranged bullet casings in what looked like food dryer trays, grinding machines filed away parts of the casings, and a little carousel rotated brass around—they went in as empty shells and came out tipped with a bullet. One worker carried a box of completed cartridges to the other side of the room.

While the left half of the laundromat looked like some cartel armory, the other side was far more mystical in ways Erika expected from a mage. Various stations were set up with candles in a plethora of colors—it wasn’t just the wax, but the flames themselves burned in a rainbow of reds, greens, yellows, and blues. Utilizing long tongs, workers held the tips of the bullets over the candles, staining the metal in the respective color.

“Agent!”

The Warrior stepped out from behind a partition of cubicle walls. Soot marred her face and the tips of her fingers were entirely black, but she had a friendly smile on as she stepped up to Erika. Dark streaks ran down the sides and hips of her lavender sundress. Erika didn’t have to guess where those streaks came from as she absently tried to wipe her hands off on herself.

“Might I say how marvelous you’re looking today.”

Erika glanced down at herself. She didn’t think she was wearing anything particularly special, just a loose band tee, a light jacket, and baggy pants. “Thanks?” she said with a shrug.

“I am sorry for my sorry state, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy!”

“I can tell.” Erika made a show of glancing around again. “You’ve stepped things up since last time.”

“In partial thanks to you,” The Warrior said. She rubbed her fingers around the shoulder strap of her dress, doing little to clean her fingers but making even more of a mess on her clothes. Fiddling with her amber tinted glasses, she looked around the mystical side of the room. “With the catalyst able to enhance the enchantment making process, my new apprentices here are able to work what would otherwise be complicated magic without the years of study required.”

She stopped talking and frowned a little as she looked over the apprentices. Marching over to the boy with the blue flame—a scrawny little kid maybe as old as Carter—she pulled out a fistful of bullets. With one hand still lightly rubbing the rim of her glasses, she examined the tips, frown growing with every passing moment.

“These need to be redone, Pete.” Her tone remained polite but carried an edge to it. “All of them. Do you not see the uneven coloring?” she asked, dropping all but one bullet and holding it in front of his face. “It’s too faint too, the enchantment hasn’t taken hold. Two days on and these will be just regular bullets, not magic bullets.”

“Y… yes ma’am,” he said, ducking his head in embarrassment. All the other workers slowed what they were doing to rubberneck, and he obviously noticed, looking at them more than he was The Warrior.

The Warrior stared, then slowly looked around the room once. She stood fully upright, dropping the bullet back into the basket from high enough that it landed with a loud clatter. A faint pulse of chill air rushed through the room.

“This is not a joke or a matter to take lightly,” she said, managing to project her voice over the machinery without raising her volume. “People will die if these are not enchanted properly. Daisy!”

“Yes!” A young girl, maybe even younger than the boy, jumped to her feet from near the washing station.

“You’ll be inspecting every bullet we’ve made over the last two days. Flag any that appear to be fading.”

Her face fell. “E… Every bullet?”

The Warrior stared, and for a moment, Erika thought she was going to insist before letting out a small sigh. “Five bullets from every box, a random sampling will be enough.”

“Five… Okay. Yes. I can do that.”

“Then do it,” The Warrior said with a perfect mix of exhaustion and patience. Turning back to Erika, she flashed a far more strained smile. “Sorry about that. This way please.”

Erika hesitated a moment, frowning as she realized that all the workers looked like children of varying ages. She had been too focused on the machinery and magic to notice before. Daisy looked excited, clearly psyching herself up as she ran off to a rack of bullet boxes. A glum look took hold of most of the others. Pete had it the worst, getting the lecture directly, but Erika noted signs of nervousness on basically everyone’s face as they waved their bullets over the flames with a bit more care and concentration.

It put Erika off. The whole vibe of the laundromat took on a more sinister feel as she stepped toward the partitioned back half of the workshop. The moment she crossed the threshold, all sound of machinery and rattling metal cut off, leaving a quiet, almost peaceful breeze in the air.

The back room was far more aesthetic, looking like the fortune teller parlor that Erika and Daniel had seen on their first meeting with The Warrior. Motes of light hung in the air, a tablecloth of blue stars and black moons covered a heavy wooden desk, and little whirly gizmos adorned walls and shelves.

But Erika’s eyes remained locked on The Warrior.

“You running some kind of sweatshop now?”

“It’s hardly as bad as it looks, I promise, but as I said, this is not something they can take lightly.” The Warrior took on a weary look, letting out a breath. “You don’t want to fire your gun only for a black hole to eat you alive, do you?”

“No, but they’re kids. Can’t you get older people to do it? Where’s Simone?”

“Can’t help it, honestly. Don’t have any adult mages in The Puppet, so no choice; most are children of some of our cultists. Unfortunately, most might even be too old.” She glanced off to the side, listless. “Seems as if the world likes to stamp out the wonder of magic at younger and younger ages with each passing year.”

“Is that… important?” Erika glanced back to the doorway, looking out as one kid used tongs to hold a bullet over a bright red flame. “They’re just warming bullets.”

“I think you know they’re doing more than that,” The Warrior said, almost offended. “If someone hasn’t managed to use magic by the time they’re about thirteen, they don’t ever use magic. The cold claws of reality rip out any wonder or belief that things could be different than they appear.

“It’s not like I’m not paying them. Teaching them the ways of magic as I am, maybe they’ll become like me one day. If they work hard enough.”

Erika stared out, wondering if she would have put up with The Warrior bearing down on her when she was their age if it meant being able to learn a bit of magic. It wasn’t an apples-to-apples comparison since she had her own power, but… who was she kidding, of course she would have. Even now, she glanced over to The Warrior.

“Think I could learn magic? I don’t think my power is the same as your magic, but I’ve been using it since I was a kid, so maybe it counts?”

The Warrior reached up, lightly brushing the rim of her glasses. “Possible, if you’ve maintained some wonder in your heart. I’d rather not speculate on your capabilities, however. You would undoubtedly break every expectation I could have, for better or worse, which is also why I won’t offer any training for you.”

“Sounds like I could be the greatest mage the world has ever seen.”

“Or the worst. Terrifying to think about, really,” The Warrior said with an involuntary shudder.

Erika huffed in faux annoyance. She doubted she had time to learn magic anyway. It did get her thinking however… “What about someone older, say fourteen, who still believes magic is real and knows about supernatural stuff? Could they use magic? Or would the cruel world have stripped away any wonder?”

“Ehhh…” The Warrior wiggled her hand back and forth. “I’d have to know more.”

“I’ll send her your way,” Erika said, figuring that Bethany would be like her and put up with a harsh mistress in exchange for some magic.

“I didn’t really… I guess I can offer a consultation,” The Warrior said, not sounding particularly enthused. “Sucks to break young people’s hearts, but better that they know and abandon foolish notions than imagine themselves special when they clearly aren’t.”

“Ouch.”

“But that is not for today!” The Warrior snapped her fingers.

The star and moon tablecloth did a flip, jumping into the air before settling back upside down. The reverse side shifted the colors, turning the stars white and the moons gold, but what was on the cloth made Erika stare.

Rings.

Rings and rings and rings. Piles of them; gold rings, silver rings, engraved rings, diamond rings. Erika wasn’t much for such jewelry, feeling like rings on her fingers were more clunky than they were fashionable, but she recognized at least some of them as being real enough that they probably would sell at a pwan for a fair chunk of cash. A few were propped up on little claw-like mounts, one of which she actually recognized. The One Ring—the elvish inscription gave it away. That one didn’t look like genuine gold though.

“Obsessed a little?”

“I consider myself a master enchanter,” The Warrior said, rounding the desk to stand in front of the comparatively simple office chair. “I am not particularly skilled in verbal magic, nor do I feel adept in glyphs, mantras, cantrips, alchemy, summoning, consecration, or any other branch of magic. I can use them when needed, but it requires effort, time, focus, and attention whereas enchanting simply comes to me naturally. And why bother with a fiddly little analysis spell when I can simply enchant my glasses to do the hard work for me?”

Erika laughed a little, feeling like The Warrior unintentionally nailed an issue that she had been experiencing her whole life. “Why bother fixing something when I can just break the problem until it’s gone?”

“You get it,” The Warrior said with a grin. Picking up one of the rings from the clawed holders, she turned it over, checking both sides, then snapped her fingers. “But a ring is something special. There is something about the loop that causes magic to cycle about. This tends to be unstable.”

As she spoke, the ring started to whine—the sound of metal strained to its breaking point. The Warrior held on for a moment longer, watching as the gold started to tarnish and darken like aged silver. With a shake of her head, she tossed the ring off into the corner of the room. It landed atop the pile of blackened, misshapen metal, letting out a thick black cloud of smoke that was quickly vacuumed off through a small pipe.

Even though the smoke got suctioned away, Erika couldn’t help but hack out a few coughs. The room reeked of brimstone, thick and almost tangible in the back of her throat, until The Warrior flicked the switch on a small desk fan.

“I’ve made one successful enchanted ring ever,” The Warrior said, readjusting her glasses once again as she slotted a fresh ring into the claw-like stand. “But I learn better through picking apart other people’s work than failing over and over again.”

“Not that this isn’t interesting,” Erika said, still wafting her hand back and forth in front of her face. “But you’re spending an awful lot of time on the why, which only makes me nervous about the how. You want a magic ring to examine. I got that much already. How do we get it? More specifically, how do I fit into all this?”

The Warrior grinned, eyes lighting up. “So glad you asked. You see, enchanted rings are rare, but there are a few dozen known rings that have entered even the public’s consciousness.”

Erika’s gaze drifted down to The One Ring in its claw holder.

The Warrior laughed. “Not that one. No, there exists a specific chalchihuitl—a turquoise stone of Mesoamerican culture—which was set into a ring by early Spaniards doing their conquistador business a few hundred years ago. Technically, the stone was enchanted before it was set into the ring, but the ring still enhanced the stone. If I’m being honest, that sounds more useful to me anyway. Instead of enchanting fifty self-contained rings, I could enchant five and then swap out much easier-to-enchant stones as needed.”

“I sense you drifting off topic again,” Erika said, trying to keep things focused.

“Yes, yes.” The Warrior rolled her eyes. “Long story short, this ring has made its way north. Stop me if this sounds familiar:

“There exists a small group out in the boons of Ohio—”

“Ohio,” Erika said, tone flat. “Really. Your magic ring ended up next door?”

“I’m talkin’ here,” The Warrior said with a halfhearted glare. “They sit atop some old salt mine in a little insular community, and got themselves a religious exception for the handling of the deceased. They cake up dead bodies in salt, mummify them, and set them up for display in some ever growing town hall.” Plucking a photograph from her desk drawer, she handed it over to Erika. “The ring sits on the finger of the mayor, allegedly pushing a hundred and ten years old this year but doesn’t look a day over seventy.”

Nothing about the man in the photo looked particularly noteworthy. It was just an old guy, one of those upper-teeth-only smiles, and sun-weathered skin. His wispy white hair fluttered in the breeze as he rested a hand on the backside of a horse so thin and scrawny, it was either ancient or anorexic. The ring, unassuming and remarkably plain, was barely visible on his hand.

However, the story did make Erika pause. A little religious community wouldn’t have sounded alarming a few months ago, but strange practices regarding the dead, potential immortality if his age was to be believed, and the obvious magical aspect of the ring made Erika raise an eyebrow. “You think this is a cult of The Mummy?”

“Has a few key traits, doesn’t it? Sounds like that Chinese rural farming place with the golden mask.”

“If you squint,” Erika said, looking back down at the photo. “The Fixer might know more. They’ve been investigating cults since… since they were born, I guess. I feel like they should have mentioned one that close, but… No. I’m not surprised they didn’t.”

“Well I really only care about the ring. I just thought this might pique your interest a bit, get you a little enthusiastic about the whole thing.”

“Still not sure why you need me.” Erika raised an eyebrow. “Unless The Puppet is so weak they can’t beat up and rob some geriatric?”

“Ah, but then we tie the story back to the ring.” Dragging out a long blueprint-like scroll from her desk, The Warrior flipped the starry tablecloth to its empty side with a snap and spread out the papers. A blown-up diagram of the ring from the man’s finger was covered in notes, annotations, and arrows pointing out every little facet of the stone. “Everything around it is preserved. There is this ontological inertia around it that keeps things as they are. The Strategist and I tried to venture on our own a few years ago, but couldn’t even step into the village’s land. Like the ground itself rejected our advances.”

“There’s a plow hooked up to the horse,” Erika said, tapping her nails against the photo. “And more farmers in the background if you look close enough. They’re clearly changing the ground far beyond just stepping on it.”

“They have the ring.”

Not knowing enough about magic rings, or magic in general, Erika didn’t have a counter argument. “Alright. I haven’t met an effect I can’t break, so I guess it doesn’t matter to me. When are we headed out?”

“I want this ring before the meeting with The Monk—”

“Is it a good idea to bring a tool of The Mummy straight to its chief cultist?”

“Please, I’m not stupid. I do want to examine it, especially if it has protective features I can co-opt before the meeting. So… You’ve got about three days to bring it to me. That’ll give me enough time to look it over before this party.”

Erika blinked, almost startled. “You aren’t coming?”

The Warrior laughed, waving back to the partition. “Someone has to keep these kids from blowing themselves up. And if you want even one black bullet before this weekend, that requires my personal attention. Can’t leave that to the children if we want Chicago standing at the end of it.”

“I feel like you should be doing this work out in the wilderness,” Erika said with a grimace. “Maybe a boat in the dead center of the lake?”

“Too turbulent,” The Warrior dismissed. “Anyway, you get me my ring, I get you your bullet with maybe a spare if you’re lucky, everyone’s happy.” She flashed a quick, emotionless grin. “Talk to The Strategist; he can provide location, terrain layout, nearby cities, and maybe even what to expect from the villagers if you have to interact with them. And you cannot take The Stalker with you, unfortunately, as she is needed here at the moment.”

Erika felt a pang of disappointment. For better or for worse, The Stalker had grown on her over the last few months.

But it didn’t shake the odd feeling when she looked back at the photograph. The mayor’s brown eyes, half sunken into his old face, felt like they stared right through the lens and at her.