OP Max Mage - Chapter 3

Three years earlier.

The crack appeared on a Tuesday.

Max had been kneading dough when he heard it. A sound like knuckles popping, but deeper. He looked up from the worktable, flour on his hands, and saw the line running down the side of his oven. Thin at first. Then wider.

He stopped kneading.

The crack spread as he watched, branching like a river delta across the clay facing. Something inside the oven shifted and then settled. A piece of the interior wall fell inward with a soft thump.

Max stood very still. He'd built this oven himself, years ago, mixing the clay and sand and straw in the exact proportions his father had taught him. The bricks had come from a demolished church on the other side of town. The iron door had been a gift from a blacksmith who'd liked Max's bread. Every part of it had a story.

Now it was breaking.

He finished the dough anyway. Shaped it, covered it, and set it aside to proof. Then he crouched in front of the oven and looked at the damage.

It was bad. The crack went deep, past the facing into the firebrick beneath. The internal structure had shifted, which meant the heat distribution would be uneven even if he patched the visible damage. He could probably use it for another few weeks, maybe a month, but the bread would suffer. Hot spots. Cold spots. Inconsistent crust.

He sat back on his heels.

The bakery was quiet. Late afternoon, that dead time between lunch and dinner when customers were scarce. Through the front window, Max could see the street, the cobblestones, and the people walking past without looking in. Thornhaven went about its business. The oven continued to crack.

He got up and made tea.

The numbers ran through his head while the water heated. A new oven would cost at least thirty silver crowns, more if he wanted quality materials. He had maybe eight saved. The Bakers' Guild offered loans, but their rates were crushing. Fourteen percent annual interest, compounded monthly. He'd known bakers who'd taken guild loans and spent decades paying them off. Some never did.

He could try to repair it himself. Buy clay and firebrick, tear out the damaged sections, and rebuild from the inside. It would take weeks. He'd have no income during that time. And if he did it wrong, he'd have wasted the materials and still need a new oven.

The tea was bitter. He'd let it steep too long.

Max sat at his worktable, hands wrapped around the cup, and tried to think.

His father had died when Max was seventeen. His heart, the doctor said. Too much work, not enough rest. His mother had followed two years later. She'd just gotten quieter and smaller until one morning she didn't wake up.

The bakery had been theirs. Now it was his. A small building on a quiet street, living quarters upstairs, oven and worktables below. He'd been running it alone for almost a decade, and he'd never gotten ahead. Never saved enough to expand, to hire help, to take a day off without losing money.

And now the oven was broken.

He finished the tea. Washed the cup. Went back to check on the dough.

The dough was fine. Rising steadily, surface smooth, that slightly sour smell that meant the yeast was happy. At least something was working.

He couldn't bake it today. Not with the oven compromised. He punched it down, covered it again, and put it in the cold box to slow the fermentation. Tomorrow he'd figure something out. Maybe the oven would hold for one more bake. Maybe he'd wake up and the crack would have sealed itself through some miracle of masonry.

He didn't believe in miracles. But he was too tired to think of anything else.

The next morning, the crack was worse.

Max stood in front of the oven with a candle, examining the damage. The line had spread overnight, branching further, and a chunk of the interior facing had fallen away entirely. He could see the firebrick behind it, and the firebrick was cracked too.

He tried a small fire anyway. Just enough to test the heat distribution.

It was worse than he'd feared. The left side of the oven ran almost two hundred degrees hotter than the right. Any bread he baked would burn on one side and stay pale on the other. Useless.

He let the fire die and sat on the floor of his bakery, back against the wall, staring at the oven that had been his father's and his grandfather's before that.

Three generations of bread. Over.

He stayed there for a long time.

Eventually, he got up. He had to do something. Even if he couldn't bake, he couldn't just sit on the floor forever.

So he went for a walk.

Thornhaven was busy in the mornings. Merchants opening their stalls, carts rolling through the streets, the smell of food cooking in dozens of kitchens. Max passed through the market square without stopping, past Mirella's tomatoes and Garrett's flour and the egg vendor whose name he didn't know yet. He wasn't shopping. He was just moving.

The recruitment poster was on a wall near the eastern gate.

He'd seen it before, of course. The Adventurer's Coalition kept posters up all over the city, trying to attract new blood. Most people ignored them. Adventuring was dangerous work, and the pay was only good if you survived long enough to take on serious quests. The entry ranks barely made enough to cover equipment and lodging.

But Max stopped this time. Something about the poster caught his eye.

JOIN THE COALITION Protect the realm. See the world. Earn your glory.

And at the bottom, in smaller text:

Sign-up bonus: 40 silver crowns

Forty silver crowns.

Max stood in front of the poster for well over a minute.

He'd never thought of himself as adventurer material. He wasn't strong, not particularly. He'd never held a sword. He knew a few small spells, things he'd taught himself from a damaged book he'd found years ago, but nothing that would help in a fight. He was a baker. That was all he'd ever been.

But forty silver crowns would cover a new oven with ten to spare. He could be back in business within a week. He could keep the bakery alive.

He read the poster again. The requirements were minimal. Show up for an assessment. Demonstrate basic competency. Register and receive your sign-up bonus.

Basic competency. He could probably fake that. He was competent at lots of things. Kneading. Proofing. Knowing when bread was done by the sound it made when you tapped it. None of those were adventuring skills, but maybe competency was competency.

He was rationalizing. He knew he was rationalizing. But the oven was broken, and he had eight silver crowns, and the guild would bury him in debt, and what else was he supposed to do?

He went home. Made tea and stared at the cracked oven.

The next morning, he walked to the Coalition office.

It was a squat stone building near the center of town, flying the Coalition banner, which was a sword crossed with a staff on a field of blue. The door was heavy oak reinforced with iron. Max pushed it open and stepped inside.

The waiting room was more crowded than he'd expected. A dozen people sat on wooden benches, most of them young, most of them armed. A woman with a bow slung over her shoulder. A man with a sword that looked too big for him. Two kids who couldn't be more than sixteen, whispering to each other and looking nervous.

Max found an empty spot on a bench and sat down.

He was the only one without a weapon. He was definitely the only one with flour on his clothes, though he'd tried to brush it off before leaving.

A clerk at a desk looked up. "Name?"

"Max Thorne."

"Purpose?"

"I want to register. As an adventurer."

The clerk looked at him. Looked at his flour-dusted robe. Looked back at his face.

"You're aware of the requirements?"

"I saw the poster. Basic competency assessment."

"And the risks?"

"I read the fine print."

He hadn't, actually. He'd been too focused on the forty silver crowns. But he wasn't going to admit that.

The clerk made a note. "Take a number. Wait to be called."

Max took a number, and he waited.

The room slowly emptied as names were called. Some people went through a door at the back and didn't return. Others came back looking pleased or disappointed. The two young kids went together and came back arguing about whether the assessment had been fair.

Max's number came up after about two hours.

"Thorne. Assessment room three."

He stood. His knees cracked. He was tired from sitting on the hard bench, and he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and this was a terrible idea. He went anyway.

Assessment room three was small and bare. A table with a crystal on it. A bored-looking examiner sat behind the table. Scorch marks on the floor from previous assessments that had apparently gone poorly.

"Thorne?" the examiner said.

"Yes."

"Any prior combat experience?"

"No."

"Magical training?"

"Self-taught. A little."

The examiner made a note. "Place your hand on the crystal. Channel your mana."

Max looked at the crystal. It was about the size of his fist, pale blue, sitting on a metal stand. He didn't know what it was supposed to do.

"I'm not sure how to channel mana," he admitted.

The examiner sighed. "Just touch it and concentrate. Think about... I don't know. Light. Warmth. Whatever spell you know."

Max touched the crystal. It was cool under his fingers.

He thought about light. The little glow he sometimes made to see by during early morning bakes. The way it felt to shape it, to hold it in his mind like a ball of dough ready to be formed.

The crystal exploded.

Max stumbled backward, hand stinging. Shards of crystal scattered across the room, embedding in the walls, the table, the examiner's hastily raised shield. The metal stand was bent. The table was cracked.

The examiner stared at the wreckage. Then at Max. Then at the wreckage again.

"What," he said, "was that?"

"I don't know. I just thought about light."

"That wasn't light. That was..." The examiner trailed off. He looked at his notes. Looked at the destroyed crystal. "That was a lot of things. None of them light."

"I'm sorry about the crystal."

"The crystal costs forty silver crowns."

Max's stomach dropped. The sign-up bonus. Gone before he'd even registered.

"I can pay for it," he said, though he couldn't. "Eventually."

The examiner was still staring at the wreckage. He seemed to be having some kind of internal debate. Finally, he made a note on his clipboard.

"Copper rank," he said.

"What?"

"You're registered. Copper rank. The lowest tier." The examiner gestured vaguely at the destroyed assessment station. "The crystal was inconclusive. Equipment malfunction. We get that sometimes. I'm not doing the paperwork to explain this."

"But I broke it."

"Equipment malfunction," the examiner repeated, more firmly. "Sign here. Take your bonus. Don't blow up anything else."

Max signed. He took the pouch of coins that the examiner pushed across the cracked table. He walked out of the assessment room in a daze.

Forty silver crowns. Heavy in his hand.

He bought a new oven the next day. A good one, better than his father's. The craftsman delivered it within the week. Max spent two days installing it, adjusting the flue, and testing the heat distribution.

It worked perfectly.

He baked his first loaf in the new oven on a Sunday morning. The crust came out golden and even, the crumb open and airy, the flavor rich from the long fermentation he'd let the dough undergo while waiting for delivery.

He ate it standing at his counter, watching the sun rise over Thornhaven.

He was an adventurer now. Copper rank. The lowest tier.