Crystallis Verdantglass's Arc

Chapter 1 of 18

Crystallis pushed open the glassblower's workshop door and stopped. Two voices drifted from the back room. One belonged to the glassblower he'd come to meet. The other voice was selling something. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The workshop smelled like wood smoke and hot metal. Display shelves lined the walls, each one crowded with vases and bowls that caught the afternoon light. The voices grew louder as he approached the doorway to the back room. Through the gap, he saw the glassblower standing with arms crossed. A woman in a leather apron gestured at a wooden crate on the workbench. Glass clinked as she lifted something out. "These panes won't crack in winter," the woman said. "I've treated them with a resin compound. Flexible but strong." Crystallis recognized the sales pitch. She was offering durability. The same advantage he'd planned to offer with his enchantment. He'd spent two weeks preparing this meeting. He'd chosen the glassblower carefully—someone who supplied the Silverbrook Inn and understood quality. Someone who could afford to take a chance on enchanted glass. If this buyer said yes, other druids might finally see the marketplace as real instead of a fantasy. Now someone else was already here, offering a competing solution. The glassblower nodded slowly at the woman's demonstration. "Show me the test results again." Crystallis stepped into the doorway. Both of them turned. "I'm here for our appointment," he said. The glassblower glanced at the woman, then back at him. "Right. Give me a minute to finish here." "Actually," Crystallis said, walking to the display case that dominated the center of the room. The opal frame shimmered with rainbow colors around a blown glass sculpture—a tree with delicate branches spreading wide. "I'd like to show you both something." He pulled a glass pane from his satchel and set it on the workbench. Then he picked up a hammer from the tool rack. The woman's eyes widened. The glassblower moved forward, but Crystallis had already swung. The hammer struck the pane dead center. It rang like a bell and didn't crack. "Resin wears off," Crystallis said. "Magic grows stronger with use." He turned to the glassblower. "And I can teach your apprentices to shape it themselves." The woman grabbed her crate and left without another word. The glassblower picked up the pane, turning it in the light. His marketplace had just opened its first negotiation.