Vale of Tears, the store is called. It’s where sorcerers go to get the best tears and it’s the best store of its kind in the capital city.
Most generic magic supply stores have a barrel of tears in the back that a wizard can dip a cup into for cheap. Tears aren’t exactly scarce. Those barrels contain a giant mix of tears, though, like a cheap blended whiskey. One can buy mixed tears by the gallon.
There are potions and spells that call for specific tears, though. To call up a major demon, for instance, or to truly curse a person, one needs tears of a specific nature. For spells of confinement, hard glamour, hidden doors, and jaunts, among many other things, this is the store to go to.
Vale of Tears. There is a menu on the front glass for passers by. It’s an impressive list but it’s far from a complete accounting of the store’s contents.
Up front near the entrance, there are artfully arranged glass jars filled with tears shed in anger and tears shed in pain. There are jars of tears shed in laughter and tears shed for absent friends. There is a brisk traffic in baby tears and the tears of orphans. These jars usually contain what the pedestrian mage wants.
Beyond that, there is a whole section labeled simply Love.
Bitter tears for broken hearts are here, lonely tears for love unrequited, angry widow tears for love lost to war, quiet tears from marriages no longer fulfilling but still going. Tears of love separated by years. Tears of first love and tears of final love. There are thirty-six kinds of love tears. The wizards that have passed the first wall of tears generally tend to find what they’re looking for here.
Further back, it gets more specific and more expensive.
There are crocodile tears here, falsely shed. There are the tears of the blind. People with palsied faces tend to cry from one eye when they eat and there are jars of those one-eyed tears here as well. There are tears here that are from famous people along with signed certificates of authenticity and where possible, photographs of the subject crying. There are blood tears here. There are tears that have cooled on recently deceased faces. There are tears from extinct and imaginary animals here.
This is the room that only the most talented magicians swan through. It's here that they gossip and assess the competition. The store's famous boast on all of its literature is that it's protected by over six thousands spells of warding and protection. The Vale of Tears chooses no sides. Evil is as welcome as good. It is here in this room that the most powerful can talk with no fear of attack. It's a room where many duels are arranged and many secrets are traded. For the price of the room for ten minutes, most magicians would have to sell their own souls. Three actually have.
Behind that, for recognized dealers and close friends of the owner, there is another room.
In the protected safe in the back are the tears more valuable than anything else in the world of magic. It was what the economy is based on.
These are the tears of people that have only shed one tear in their life. Close track is kept of these people if they are still living. Each day that goes by increases the risk that they may one day cry again. Gossip of their lives is a constant chatter of marketplace supposition. Each teardrop rises and falls in price accordingly. Recent tragedies in the tear-producer’s life may increase his chances of crying again. This means that the tear in question must be used immediately to be effective.
The owner of the shop, a dry old man named Shickory Teasdale, has boosted the protection spells around the safe. There are rumours of a tear-eater on the loose from one of the hellcages. Shickory doesn’t take chances.
Surrounded by gallons of salty water, he thinks to himself, and not a drop to drink.
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