Chapter 55: Ch. 51: So It Begins Part I

“With the coming of aerships, the growth of trade among the coastal cities and with other races, the institution of the Adventurers Guild and the entry of Mages Guilds into commerce, it became necessary to draft a system of standards for valuation of goods and services. The process was long and arduous and over several decades, the entities with stakes in the market could not agree on a standard for measuring a unit of weight; in fact, there wasn’t even a common standard in the first place. It made the valuation of tangible goods, artefacts, and ingredients very difficult. The use of arbitrary units of measure also led to complaints among customers of different races and affiliations. Something needed to be done, and fast, before the economy of Alkerd stalled.” -Excerpts from Archival Records of the Merchants Guild, Antecian Calendar Year 1220.

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“ Quickly,” Nora hastened as they set down the beastmaiden in Arthur’s tent. Nora let out a click of distaste at the soiled rags they’d used to bind her wound with. Dirt and grime caked the thing as blood wept from the aggravated wound and onto the hoverboard they used as a make-shift stretcher.

“[Purge]!” the dhampir incanted, disintegrating the bindings into rags. The skill scoured away the filth and clotted blood, revealing a pale toned belly underneath. There was a puncture wound just below her ribs. As soon as the obstruction was gone, fresh blood began welling up in the injury.

“ She’s bled from the inside. A little higher, as she would have died there and then― “ Nora said. “[Cleanse] that blood, Arthur; [Regeneration] or not you do not want that poison on you .”

Arthur noticed that some of the blood had gotten on him; luckily, he’d gotten out of the dungeon without a scratch on any open areas that he could see. And just as Nora was about to cast another skill, Arthur remembered the mage’s words. Showing Nora's skills out in the open, especially with a sylvmaiden and one other adventurer hovering outside, would invite unwanted questions.

“ I’ll stand guard outside,” Arthur said, suddenly conscious of the openness of the tent flap. The thick leather made it hard to see the silhouettes of people from the other side.

“ We shall talk,” the dhampir said over her shoulder. Arthur nodded, exhaling a breath of relief as he left the dhampir to her work.

However, he ran face first into someone as he was exiting the tent.

There was an audible thwack as the adventurer went sprawling on the grass whilst cradling their forehead. Arthur reeled from the smarting pain; he felt as though he had suddenly brained himself on a low lying door beam as his eyes watered. Maybe his skull was not made of dragon-adjacent skeletal structure…yet.

“Strina’s bosom pillows!” the woman cried out.

“ Frag! I am sorry, I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?” Arthur called out, squinting past his throbbing brow.

“What are you? A mallet-snout gigan? And don’t just stand there, help a damsel out, “ she groused, stretching her hand out for Arthur to take. Arthur averted his eyes from her ruffled state of dress as he held out his hand.

‘What even is a gigan?’ Arthur thought.“ That’s what you get for snooping around people’s tents,” Arthur said, pulling the woman to her feet. Inadvertently unaware of his own strength, he also realised that the female adventurer was quite small as he pulled her up and quite hefty despite the fact. She was about Nora’s size, but her grip was sure as steel. Only then did Arthur discover that there was something peculiar about her.

In the light of the campfire, Arthur had to do a double take at the woman’s skin and hair; especially the hair. It was a blue so dark that it reflected the light from the fire like obsidian glass.

Well chiselled features complemented her complexion, giving her the appearance of dark, polished marble, while her eyes, large and in the shape of almonds, lacked pupils. Her nose had a subtle upturn.

Over what Arthur assumed to be a shoulderless half surcoat half corset, the buxom woman wore a cardigan with a collar that drooped down one side. A cowl, with a half tattered cape covered the upwelling of her bosom with its folds. Rustling against her double slit leather skirt were a grimoire, a couple of summoning orbs and various reagents in vials. The items were secured on one hip with an embellished black apron belt.

Finally, adorning her well-fleshed athletic legs were high leather boots with wooden heels and gartered stockings. Arthur found himself unconsciously measuring the practicality of her get-up against the rigours of adventuring.

A grin with shark-like teeth met him when he returned his gaze to her face.

“ What? Never seen an Ahrakni before?”She sniffed in contempt. Her aura flared threateningly. Arthur’s ring of obfuscation grew warmer.

“ I don’t know what you’re playing at, but you can let go of my hand now,” Arthur said, suppressing a sudden urge to scowl at the impromptu strength measuring contest.

“ Nethers!” she cursed, letting go of Arthur’s hand. The woman had the wherewithal to look abashed as she stared at Arthur’s sleeved arm with unfettered curiosity in her black eyes.

“ What are you hiding?” she asked.

“ That’s a peculiar way of greeting someone you just met,” Arthu said, sidestepping her as she tried to press him. Arthur shook his head at her brazenness; or perhaps that was just her eccentricity. He caught sight of the sylvmaiden he’d saved at the beginning, getting up from her spot by the fire. Her hands were visibly clenched, bunching up Nora’s borrowed shawl.

The two other adventurers he’d been acquainted with and the strange creature were nowhere to be found. He figured they must gone into the dungeon when he’d alerted them to the other adventurers in the dungeon

‘I think her name was Elenaril?’ Arthur thought, making his way towards her. ‘The Guild sounds like some entity I would want to have in my corner; then again, she’s from Aldmoor.’

“ Aven tidings, Mage…Mage Crafter Arthur I presume?” the sylvmaiden, enquired eyeing Arthur as if unsure of herself. Arthur was who was just about a head taller than she was which put her firmly around 6 feet tall. “How is she?” she stuttered, biting her lip to arrest the tremble of her voice. She was still convalescing, and Arthur could see that she was just barely holding on. Her skin was still pale and the bags under her eyes were too hard to miss.

“ Aven tidings to you as well, please sit,” Arthur said worriedly. “ My companion is tending to her; hopefully she is out of danger, but I cannot say,” Arthur added, motioning towards the fire. He kept an eye out towards the dungeon entrance.

‘What’s taking them so long?’ He thought.

“ I hope I can impose on you for your assistance; my joints are still on the mend,” Elenaril said, smiling wanly; Nonetheless, she seemed more hopeful at the update on Ysinnia’s condition.

“ Don’t mind if I do,” Arthur said as he stepped on the other side of the log and assisted the sylvmaiden down to her seat. She let out a sigh of relief as soon as she was no longer in danger of toppling over.

Were it any other human from Earth, they would have been out of commission for days but the sylvmaid was recovering fast. And as Arthur went to sit down, the yet unintroduced woman chose that moment to rudely interpose herself between the two of them.

“If anyone bothered to ask, my name is Margaery!” she fumed.

 

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“I suspected you’d been attacked. But to think they were assassins?” Arthur gawked. He suppressed a shudder and suddenly he was more alert.

“But that doesn't make any sense—” Margaery chipped in, knocking a ladle against the cauldron where some pottage simmered. She didn’t seem so shaken by the revelation.

“I would have thought so too,” Elenaril muttered, nodding glumly; over the past few pars she'd narrated her ordeal. Several times her hands shook at the memory and she had to pause to catch her breath. The experience had been traumatic, leaving her nearly dead but she was quite a trooper to muster some courage to narrate the ordeal.

“I cannot fathom why they would have left a task half done. I imagine it was their intention all along—” she trailed off suppressing another involuntary shudder. It was understandable that she would have sought to rationalise the reasons why it even happened. She blamed herself for slacking at her swordcraft. Arthur could not even begin to imagine just how helpless she must have felt.

“I think they meant to sow chaos—terrorists if you will,” Arthur said.

“Terrorists? There’s such an appellation?—” Margaery snorted, giving Arthur a one-arched eyebrow look Arthur winced.

“ Peculiar—to what end would driving fear into the hearts of adventurers benefit them?” Margaery added, oblivious to Arthur’s slip up.

“ We wouldn't have a motive if we don't even know who we are dealing with—apart from the fact that we know they are assassins ,” Arthur pointed out.

“ He is right,” Elenaril agonised tiredly. She clutched the shawl closer to her frame and stared at the steam wafting off the pot. Arthur realised that he was hungry too. A few breaths passed in silence before the Ahrakni spoke up.

“It is not unlike the Guild to be late like this—” she said. They should have been here as soon as you cast that emergency beacon. “ I do not have a good feeling about this—”

“ Off the top of your head, who could benefit from—,”Arthur asked. Suddenly he felt pressure between his eyebrows; the ear cuff he'd almost forgotten about was warming up. His immediate thought was to head to the tent to check on the dhampir but he didn't move; rather, he feigned a dry cough in place of the interruption.

‘Nora?’ Arthur mentally sent.

“You mean who would seek to upend the standing of the Guild and benefit from it, yes?” Margaery filled in for him.

‘I am done, Arthur—she is out of danger but it doesn't look like she will gain consciousness anytime soon. Can you come about? We need to have that talk before we do anything else.‘ Nora sent. ‘ Also ask Elenaril come see her too.’

“Master Arthur?” Elenaril said, peering into his face.

“ Sorry, I have to pick this―” Arthur said, looking over his shoulder. Arthur cringed again as the two maidens looked at him with befuddlement.

“ Ah, that was a [Message] spell?” Margaery perked up in realisation. She got bowls from the bag of holding at her side and began to ladle the food into them. “Somehow I didn’t take you for someone with that kind of magic.”

‘ Phew. They wouldn’t know an Earth human from just that.’ “ Close, but not quite,” Arthur sighed. The Ahrakni’s quirks were not unlike a precocious child’s. “ I have something that requires my attention, but my companion says; you can go see her after you're done with your meal, “ Arthur said to the sylvmaiden.

Elenaril nodded, murmuring a word of thanks for the food. The casualness with which the new entrants had taken to things was all he needed to know that adventurers were used to much peculiar circumstances. Even when there was an open maw of death just a few paces away.

‘Know an Earth human from just what?’ Nora sent back; there was an undertone of mirth.

‘ Frag, I slipped again.’ Arthur thought. It must have been the nervousness getting to him. He’d known it was coming, but still―

‘ Though unwarranted, paying too much attention to your mannerisms will just draw even more attention.’ Nora sent.

‘ Call it paranoia I guess.’ Arthur replied, walking back towards the tent. He kept an eye out at the entrance of the dungeon . A chromastone lantern sat by the entrance , illuminating the vicinity; Arthur cast his eyes about, looking for the dhampir.

’ Behind the tent. There’s a couple of tree stumps to sit by,’ Came Nora’s response. Arthur felt butterflies flutter in his stomach. Volemhir’s letter had made him conscious of Nora not merely as a person who’d come along for the ride but as a woman.

Not that he was oblivious to the fact, but it had been one event after another, and he had never let his mind dwell on it much. He knew what they were about to talk about, but that did not make his steps behind the tent any easier.

He turned the corner―and stopped in his tracks. Nora sat amongst the stumps of the trees with her back turned to him. Her glamorised silver hair, previously white shimmered with a lavender sheen, catching the myriad twinkles of glimmerflies flitting through the clearing.

In keeping with her disguise, she had changed her entire garb into a sylvmaid’s, by wearing an olive green doublet over her wraparound tunic. Underneath she had sylvani boots and brown breeches that looked like riding trousers.

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‘ She looks committed,’ Arthur thought, slowing his pace. Nora had truly gone all out with the pendant. The glamour had taken on an altogether different aura; he couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it had definitely done something different.

The pendant had made it so her facial profile was more refined around the cheeks and chin, and her dhampir pointed ears a little longer. Arthur could swear they twitched a little like he’d seen Szephia’s whenever she was expressive.

Crimson irises were of course replaced by aquamarines that was prominent among the sylvani. Only Arthur could tell she was the same person because the changes were subtle. But if that wasn’t what one would call hiding in plain sight, Arthur didn’t know what was.

“ Will you always stare at every woman who mesmerises you ?” Nora called out. “ Always a good way to get yourself charmed you know,” she grinned toothily. Now that he was paying attention, even her teeth were blunted.

“ You’re not going to let me live that down huh?” Arthur blushed, rubbing at the nape of his neck.

“Well, then. Won’t you sit? I don’t know how much longer until the rest of the adventurers come out of that dungeon.” Nora said. Arthur crossed the few paces between them and sat down at her side.

“ You know, you don’t have to be so on edge around me,” Nora said, furrowing her brows teasingly.

“ You’re literally cheating,” Arthur said, referring to her ability to sense the palpitations of his heart.

“ I can’t help it; it's a skill I honed until it became a habit,” Nora said, staring off into the darkness between the brush.

“ Yeah well…so the letter?” Arthur prompted. Nora seemed to eye him with an inscrutable expression as though there was something on his face; Arthur tried in vain not to squirm as her glamorised irises bore into him as though weighing the worth of his soul. He felt gooseflesh rippling through his forearms as he repressed a sudden urge to wring his hands with nervousness.

“ You’ll do,” Nora hummed,seemingly coming to a decision. A gentle smile bloomed on her heart shaped lips as she produced the letter. Arthur let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“ You sure know how to keep a man waiting,” he chuckled wryly as he vanished the letter into [Inventory Chest]. He didn’t need to reread it to reappraise himself of the grand scheme that the Elder had concocted from the start.

Their trip in the Undergrove, the vouch of identity and their meeting with Madame Siofra of the Morning Dew had been staged in a long game that was starting to culminate, and somewhere inside that plan was a red herring. Arthur just knew there was.

“ In my world, such things would be so out of time. People rarely get engaged after a nundines, well…we have weeks. In fact, a few months is too soon―and we’ve barely known one another for one,” Arthur said.

“ Moon…”

“ Huh?” Arthur gawked, gaze darting skywards. Ceralisa the coral moon was a waning crescent. Oonaris the white was long gone.

“ I meant in Eryth we refer to them as moons, not months,” Nora giggled.

“ Oooh,” Arthur exclaimed. “ Moons…ah, of course. I was still puzzling out your weird calendar.”

“ One can only learn so much,” Nora said. “ Good thing you have me…hmm?”

“ So you accept?” Arthur’s eyebrows literally flew to his hair.

“ Hmm,” Nora nodded, trailing off. Patting down nonexistent detritus from her sylvani breeches, she made to stand as she looked back towards the camp. She left Arthur hanging on a cliff as she started to walk off―

“ You’re so oblivious, Arthur . Besides, they already know,” Nora said with a devious smile. “ I told them…”

“ Huh!” Arthur was left drowning in the air. “ What?”

She paused, as though taking something in, across the distance, asking, “ Are you coming? It sounds as though our acquaintances are here― and they seem alarmed. Did you miss something on your way in or out?”

‘Hold on a moment, that was too cheap,’ Arthur left unsaid as he scrambled after the dhampir in a sylvmaiden’s disguise.

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By comparison, Arthur’s exit had been more pristine, even if he’d gotten some of the Canis ranger’s blood on him. On the other hand, the party that came trudging out of the dungeon looked like they’d fought with a meat grinder and lived to tell the tale.

Of Wyvern’s woe, only the warrior and the rogue seemed to be in any shape to walk as they buoyed up their exhausted comrades but they were equally winded. Behind them emanated the loudest croak of any frog that Arthur had ever heard, thrumming like a bass drum. The newer entrants who had gone in after Arthur came trailing behind, holding the rear guard.

“ Aindreas?! What in the nethers happened there? What happened to my summon?!” Margaery shrieked, crossing the sodden clearing in haste. Her summoning grimoire was open and brimming with magic.

Aindreas, the party’s [Spellblade], was firing off a crescent of magic from his sword. His half cape and burnished armour was covered in filth and blood.

“ Swallowed, we ran into trogs!” Aindreas yelled back. “ [Aero Blade]!” he fired off another one of his wind shearing skills.

“ Strina’s bosom pillows!” Margaery let out a scream of aggravation that ended in colourful invectives. She rifled through her grimoire and let out another cry. “ Bawdspawn! We’re not leaving here until I have that core back―I broke my favourite boots to get that monster!”

‘Just how fragging big does the trogs have to be to swallow a 7 foot summoned creature?!’ Arthur thought. Remembering the state of some of the people in the camp he turned to Nora.

“ Get them ready to move!” He called out to the dhampir, as he drew his arcane pistol. Elenaril looked on with worry before Nora nudged her away. Turning towards the dungeon, Arthur approached the dungeon entrance. Margaery had stalled some ways away from the entrance and was doing something frantic with her grimoire.

It was then that the Jhordic half giant came out last. Arthur saw him swing his shillelagh to rebuff a bulk of the dreaded trog, fouling its aim of green acidic slime towards the walls. Its green mucosal ejection sizzled and smoked as it hit the rocks.

Half troll half frog, the monster had warty stony skin and loomed large, about 9 foot to the half giant who was easily pushing 7. Rather than the squat physiology Arthur had associated with amphibians, it was elevated higher on longer front legs so much that it almost seemed to be walking on knuckles like a silverback .

It was so tall it scraped the bottom of the cavern ceiling—a true monster. “ [Eryth’s Grasp]! [Dryad’s Bind]!” the half-giant bellowed. Purple waves and interchanging green mana roiled off him and sunk into the ground just before the entrance. A crude arm of rock burst out of the ground and grasped at the trog’s back leg.

Its attempted leap ended in a graceless thump into the ground that even Arthur felt on approach. Vines as thick as a man’s arm with thorns followed, snaring the rest of its limbs and wrapping around its girth as they tightened like a barbed garrote. Shards of its stony skin cracked and splintered off as the trog struggled against its restraints; the vines groaned ominously.

Despite all that, its throat, marked by a series of grooves running on the underside, ballooned as it reared up for another spurt of its noxious slime. Its trajectory was evidently, a trailing Wyvern’s Woe warrior and the mana sick mage he was dragging along.

Aindreas was occupied with swinging his sword against a swarm of berserking bog rats who were coming out of the dungeon en-masse while Margaery was too overtaken with mania at the loss of her most precious summon as she looked through in her grimoire who could match up to the trog―Ralf and his compariot would get hit in the back.

“ Not if I can help it!” Arthur thought out loud. He’d loaded the last tube of aqer aspected monster cores and found his line of sight. “ [Affinity Augmentation]! [Aer Shot]!” he felt silly for calling them out loud, but that was the convention in group battles.

The shots streaked towards the trog’s head as Arthur aimed for their nostrils. Three went wide, bursting onto the thing’s stony skin, coating it in rime. They were ineffectual and only served to aggravate it further. However, two shots did not miss.

As the trog was rearing up with an inhale, two of the aqer aspected cores coated in runed silver found their mark and went in through its vent-like nostrils. Its croak suddenly hitched and regressed into a fit of choking, then hoarfrost, like fast growing parasitic lichen on rock, crawled out of the orifices.

The half giant druid exploited the momentary interruption of its attack and capitalised on it, sealing its cavernous mouth with thorny vines. The monster thrashed further against the restraints, dislodging the arm made of rocks and crushing the swarming bog rats as its mouth and nostrils froze over. Its movements grew noticeably weaker as frost reached its eyes, then it just slumped as though falling asleep―

“ Is it―?” Arthur dared to voice his thoughts.

“ No you fool. They don’t call them trogs for nothing. It’ll take―more than that to kill a trog!” Aindreas griped. He was a dervish as he curved up the bog rats that were escaping through the sides, fleeing from the frenzy inside the dungeon. It seemed like a roiling tide of hair and crimson eyes was coming from further in.

“ Margaery, what in Nethers are you doing?! Get your breeches over here we need a battering ram― that trog is going back where it came from. Slen! The entrance. Get ready to block it off!” Aindreas yelled. Then turning to Arthur “ You [Artificer] with the strange wand! Watcher position; corral the bog rats! Buy him time to seal up the entrance.”

Arthur had no idea what the watcher position was all about, but corralling the bog rats he could do. He exchanged the last of his aqer aspected munitions for aer aspected ones.

“[Affinity Augmentation]! [Aer Shot]!” It barely took a heartbeat before he was shooting into the fray.

The silvered rounds of aer aspected monster cores strafed the entrance before the main host of bog rats happened upon the threshold. Then they crackled with chain lightning. Given its forced hibernation, the dormant trog barely reacted. However, the head of the bog rat swarm suddenly seized up as the lightning jumped from one monster rodent to another. Those behind rear-ended into the tangle of fur in hisses and squeaks of alarm.

“ Blood and steel Marg! Where is that hammer?! [ Gyre Blade]!”Aindreas stepped in, swinging his broadsword from his hips as he augmented his sword. Turquoise wisps rippled around him, fluttering his half-cape. Arthur saw the aer mana coalesce into the spellblade. He was building a big one―

A squall of wind that would have shorn the skin to the bone burst like a twister and mowed across the entrance, eviscerating the impromptu dogpile of bog rats and toppling the maimed horde backwards― blood, viscera and severed limbs flew. Margaery yelled her own workings into existence.

“Nethersdamn you Aindreas! [Summon; Gigan]! [ Art; Battering Charge]!”

A spectral creature that looked like a sideways reptilian rhino charged into existence building speed, augmented by the summoning magic that gave it its ephemeral form. The humongous creature had a bulk to rival a juvenile humpbeast that sent its six pairs of elephantine feet rocking the ground.

Arthur jerked out of the way, feeling the gusting winds that came with its passage; it was like standing next to a passing locomotive. And then it hit the trog with the clamour of a locomotive meeting a wall.

The trog fetched against the disoriented swarm of bog rats still picking themselves from the last attack into the dungeon proper. Margaery banished her summon, recalling her spell orb. In the same moment, Slenlog, the half giant druid, released the casting he’d been building up in the time they’d bought him.

“ [Terra Fort] !” He rumbled, thumping his shillelagh onto the ground. The ground quaked as amethyst motes radiated from the half giant― a wall of compacted stone several centa thick erupted from beneath.

The group all watched, with bated breaths as the seamless construct rose to meet the cavern ceiling; it was three quarters of the way to the top when they heard the unmistakable sonorous croaking bellows of more trog. It sealed just in time for something to collide with it from the other side sending tremors though the dungeon’s hillock. The air stilled; the wall held.

Margaery slammed her grimoire shut with a sullen look. Slenlog hummed and sat down where he stood. Aindreas had an inscrutable look on his face as he sheathed his sword. Then he met Arthur’s gaze with a scowl writ large on his face.

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