Casual Heroing

The Gardens are something I cannot even describe.

So far, my adventure in this fantasy world has been very close to a medieval fair but smellier. Daily life is made of ordinary people with weird skills. Nothing has felt extremely special besides the pointy ears all around me and the higher percentage of hot girls.

But when I first laid eyes on a greenhouse where special roots grow, it left me speechless. It’s a building entirely made of glass, fully transparent, with a spiral-like structure of long rectangular containers, thin and stretched, full of earth, with one long rooty plant in each. You can see the roots pushing against the glass in some places, giving a very wormy feeling. The multitude of colors in the roots is exactly what you would expect from a place of magic.

“The glass helps to keep the roots warm. There are only special roots in this building, and it was commissioned by Amorium fifty years ago. It’s where the original Green Walk had started before they added new buildings and entry points. The glass is magical and enchanted to provide a higher density of Mana for the plants. There’s a crystal at the top of the building that can convert the solar rays to Mana. More than once, a thief has tried to steal it, but the place is so heavily warded that it’s basically a little fortress.”

“It’s breathtaking,” I say with eyes wide.

“It is,” Lucinda says while getting a bit closer and leaning on my arm.

It’s one of those buildings you could only find in a genius architecture student’s master project on Earth. Something extremely impractical but so beautiful, it would definitely earn him a full mark cum-laude. In Italy they have this thing called ‘the academic kiss’ for the most honorable students. In this case, the person who designed this place should get the ‘academic make-out session.’

“Are those pillars levitating?” I ask while looking at the inner ring of the glass.

“Yes. The [Architect] was rumored to have reached level 60 before attempting this design. It’s not as large as other works, but it’s one of the most incredible, if not the one. Amorium is built on a place of power, and the [Architect] studied the natural composition of the landscape for an entire year before making this building. Legend has it he’d just come out here and sat for hours and hours, staring at the place. One day, someone asked why he wasn’t taking any notes, making sketches, and so on. He replied that the building was slowly being shaped in his mind, that he was carving the place out of the ground. One day, he sat up, took his pencil, and drew the full blueprint in one go, and right after, they started building it.”

Wow.

That’s one Michelangelo-like nutjob.

“The [Councilmen] were so afraid of not recouping the costs that they pleaded the [Mayor] to stop the construction when they saw how much money was going into it. The [Mayor] refused and told them to shove it,” Lucinda laughed, “story goes that the [Mayor] was one of the most stubborn people to ever walk down the streets of Amorium. Once they finished the place, though, they started renting the containers for roots that no one else in the entire Kingdom could grow. It attracted the greatest [Gardeners], [Herbalists] and [Green Mages] from all Lucerna. It took ten years to finish it, and only a truly visionary man could have given his approval to something so long-term. Following his steps, other great buildings were constructed. But to this day, this building exemplifies how the people of Amorium should be. Long-term learning, not afraid to take risks. Every [Mayor] after that one kept the tradition, and even though some of the projects sunk, we still became one of the richest cities in Lucerna. Even the academy sends their [Alchemists] here to purchase the best goods. Before the war, there was a bigger population of humans too.”

While saying the last part, Lucinda shoots me a quick glance.

I do not miss it.

“I’m not part of whatever Humans you are fighting with if you are worried about that.”

“I’d like to know more about your past, Joey,” Lucinda said while looking at me.

“My past is a bit weird, but I’ll let you in on the secret soon. I just need time. Going back to this beautiful building, what’s its name?” while talking, I sneakily draw Lucinda even closer to me. We are basically cuddling in the middle of the street now, and some people are shooting unfriendly stares at me.

“It’s the Amor Vitrorum,” she smiles. “It means—”

“Love of the glass, or glasses, depending on if you mean glass as a general category or as individual parts,” I say, almost in a trance.

“You know Ancient Elven?” she looks at me with surprise in her shining emerald-green eyes.

“A word or two, I guess,” I say while still staring into the distance at the magnificent building.