Chapter 9 The Joy Clause #2
The pickaxe was absurdly small in my hands. I’d adjusted my grip three times already, finally settling on a one-handed hold that let me use my shoulder for leverage instead of my wrists. It wasn’t ideal. My back was going to hate me tomorrow.
It was infuriating. But I couldn’t give up, because it worked. Sort of.
I swung the tiny pickaxe into the crystal-studded wall, and a chunk of stone broke free with a satisfying crack.
Three small crystals tumbled out, clattering to the chamber floor in a shower of rock dust. I dropped to my knees to examine them.
All three were cloudy gray, their light dim and flickering.
“Anything?” Barnaby called from twenty feet away.
“No.” I tossed them into the discard pile we’d started and went back to swinging.
Barnaby had surprised me. After his initial despair at the size of the task, something in him had shifted.
He’d grabbed one of the smaller chisels and gone to work with a determination I hadn’t seen since before the Challenge was served.
His technique was different from mine—more precise, working at the seams between stones rather than trying to break through them. But it was effective.
Having a clear target helped him, I realized. No anxiety spiraling, no catastrophizing about impossible odds. Just: find crystals, bring them to Grix, repeat. Simple. Achievable. Concrete.
Nearby, Grix sat on his boulder like a particularly judgmental gargoyle, muttering under his breath as he made notes on his papers. Occasionally he’d cross something out with enough force to tear through the page, then mutter something that sounded vaguely like cursing.
“…ridiculous contract clause… who even writes this garbage… seventeen subsections for a simple non-compete…”
Another crystal tumbled free from the wall in front of me. This one was pale yellow, its light steady and warm. I added it to my growing collection. I’d gathered seven so far, none of them right according to Grix’s continued indifference to our pile.
Barnaby hopped over with two more crystals clutched in his paws. Both were small, barely larger than marbles, and pulsed with a soft pink light. He added them to the pile, wiped rock dust from his fur, and went back to his section of wall without a word.
The rhythm of work was almost meditative. Swing, crack, examine. Swing, crack, examine. The chamber filled with the steady percussion of stone breaking and crystals falling. Dust hung in the air, glittering in the light from the embedded gems.
My shoulders burned. The too-small pickaxe handle was digging grooves into my palm despite my calluses. But I kept swinging.
Thirty minutes in, I’d extracted maybe fifteen crystals. Barnaby had twice that. His more delicate approach was slower but yielded more intact specimens. The discard pile had grown to a small mountain of cloudy, dim, or cracked crystals that apparently contained nothing useful.
I was reaching for another section of wall when a crystal the size of my fist suddenly broke free, tumbling down with enough force that I had to step back to avoid getting hit. It landed with a heavy thunk that was different from the lighter clattering of the smaller gems.
This one was unique. Deep blue, almost black, with veins of silver and red running through it like lightning. And it was bright—bright enough that I had to squint against the sudden glare.
Grix’s head shot up. “Oh! You actually found something!”
He didn’t bother moving from his boulder. Instead, he imperiously gestured for us to approach. I picked up the crystal and carried it to him, half-expecting this to be a complete failure, too.
Grix snatched it from me and turned it over in his clawed hands with the focus of a jeweler examining a diamond.
“Impressive.” He held it up to the light. “Most clients take hours to find even one piece of usable information. You got lucky.”
“What does it contain?” Barnaby hopped closer, ears perked forward with interest.
“Give me a moment.” From the inside of his suit jacket, Grix produced a small hammer and a velvet cloth. He wrapped the crystal carefully, then gave it a sharp, precise tap.
The crystal fractured along invisible seams, and light poured out. It was not the steady glow of the embedded gems, but something brighter, more focused. The light coalesced into an image hovering in the air above Grix’s palm.
A figure ran across a field. Fast. Impossibly fast. The landscape blurred around them, and I realized after a moment that I was watching from the runner’s perspective. The image showed what they saw as they moved.
The image shifted. Now the runner was standing in front of obstacles that appeared without warning—walls of fire, pits of ice, thorny hedges that grew as fast as the runner approached.
But each obstacle bore riddles written in flowing script, and choosing the wrong path caused the walls to shift, creating dead ends or looping paths.
“Physical prowess and intellectual cunning,” Grix announced. “The first two components of the Challenge of Competency.”
“I used to be fast, but not anymore,” Barnaby murmured. “And Reynard’s been outwitting people since before the days of Charlemagne.”
“You don’t have to win both.” Grix let the broken crystal fall to the floor. “There’s one more component, and it’s the most important.”
He suddenly stood, gathering his papers with deliberate casualness. “I need better light for this section.” He moved away from his boulder, gesturing vaguely at the wall behind where he’d been sitting. “You might as well try there. The stone’s denser, so it’ll be harder work, but…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
I approached the spot where Grix had been camped. The wall here was different—smoother, darker, with fewer visible crystals embedded in the surface. I raised my pickaxe and swung.
The impact sent vibrations up my arms that made my teeth rattle. The pickaxe barely left a mark.
Barnaby hopped over with his chisel. He struck the wall with his usual precision, and the chisel skittered off the surface without gaining purchase.
“This is going to take a while,” he muttered.
We worked in tandem. I swung the pickaxe with all my strength, creating shallow divots. Barnaby worked his chisel into the cracks, widening them bit by bit. The stone resisted like it was alive, like it didn’t want to give up whatever it held.
Sweat dripped down my back. My hands were blistered now, the pickaxe handle slick with blood and rock dust. Barnaby’s breathing was labored, his white fur coated in gray dust.
But slowly, gradually, the stone began to yield.
A crack appeared. Then another. The cracks spread like a spiderweb across the darker stone, and suddenly a small section broke away entirely.
A crystal fell out. It was tiny—no bigger than a robin’s egg—and pure white. It glowed with a warmth that reminded me of sunlight, of spring mornings, of everything good and gentle in the world.
Grix was there before it hit the ground, catching it with both hands. “This is it.”
He didn’t use the hammer this time. He simply held the crystal between his palms, and it shattered on its own, light pouring out in streams that filled the entire chamber.
The image that formed wasn’t a single scene but multiple visions overlapping—children laughing as they hunted for eggs, families gathering around tables laden with spring food, gardens blooming with new life.
But beneath each image, I could see a measurement, a number that rose and fell with each scene.
“The Joy Coefficient,” Grix explained. “The measure of genuine happiness and renewal a Title-bearer brings to the world. It’s weighted more heavily than the other two components combined because the Mantle doesn’t just go to the strongest or cleverest. It goes to whoever brings the most authentic joy. ”
Barnaby’s whiskers started twitching spasmodically. “Oh… That’s how I beat Reynard the first time. I remember now.”
The images shifted. Now I saw Barnaby, younger, vibrant, hopping through fields with baskets overflowing with decorated eggs.
The Joy Coefficient number soared. Then the image changed to something more recent—Barnaby trudging through his duties, the magic feeling forced, mechanical. The number plummeted.
“Clearly, you couldn’t beat him now,” Grix pointed out. “These numbers are worse than I expected.”
He shot me a look that practically screamed ‘I told you so’. Clearly, he must have had some sort of idea of what was going on. But perhaps even he had his limits to the type of information he could excavate.
In a strange way, that gave me hope. “Reynard isn’t joyful either, is he? What’s his Joy Coefficient? Can this thing tell us?”
Grix swept his claw over the crystal. “Hmm… Let’s see. There’s only one way to find out.”
The crystal flashed, and then I saw them.
Reynard and Isengrim, seated together at a table.
Apparently drinking cappuccinos. If the numbers floating in the air were to be believed, Reynard was very pleased indeed.
“Well, there you have it. Things have changed. Just look at Isengrim. The wolf used to be Reynard’s nemesis.
Now they’re…” He gestured vaguely. “Whatever they are. Reynard must have found something that brings him genuine satisfaction.”
The image faded. The white light vanished from the crystal fragments on the ground.
“So that’s it.” Barnaby stared at the fragments like they’d personally betrayed him. “Physical prowess I’ve lost. Intellectual cunning I never had. And joy…” His ears drooped until they nearly touched the floor. “I can’t even remember the last time I felt truly joyful.”
I could. He felt joy with Hazel. But I’d already decided we couldn’t involve her. I couldn’t endanger her, not even for Barnaby’s sake.
Desperate, I turned toward Grix once again. “There has to be something. Some way to boost the Joy Coefficient quickly. Maybe… Making children happy?”
That had always been the essence of the Easter Bunny, right?
Grix sneered at me, as if I’d just said something very stupid. “Even Santa struggles with that consistently.”
He produced a device from his jacket, similar to the ones the young kobolds had used.
“Animals, perhaps? Caring for innocent creatures?” He stopped, tapped something on the screen, then turned it toward us.
“There’s an event coming up this Sunday.
The Rescue Paws Gala and Bake-Off Competition.
Wealthy donors, abused animals finding homes, public celebration of compassion and renewal. ”
He drummed his claws against the device thoughtfully. “Feeding and caring for wounded, innocent souls. That’s powerful magic. It could give you the boost you need.”
Barnaby’s ears flattened completely. “Brok. That’s… there are going to be dogs there. What if they’re like Timmy’s Rottweiler? What if they all—”
“They’ll be controlled. On leashes. It’s a fancy gala.”
Barnaby was still hesitating. “But the bake-off part. Brok, we can’t cook!”
I looked at him—really looked at him. At his quivering, feeble body that was somehow still standing after an hour of hard mining labor. At the exhaustion written in every line of his frame.
Then I looked back at the screen. “Maybe we don’t have to.”
A simple idea stirred at the back of my mind. We didn’t need to be what we weren’t. We just had to use all the tools at our disposal. And I knew exactly where I needed to start.