Chapter 32: Chapter 31: Angry Outbursts

Tess took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself as she opened the door to one of the guild’s private rooms. She stopped for a moment as she surveyed the room. Ker, Ilmir, and Eyfura were all there, but, surprisingly, so was Ava.

“You’re here.” Ilmir said flatly. “Are we going or what?”

Tess cleared her throat a little. “No. We need to talk, Ilmir.”

Ilmir looked around at the gathered people. “Oh. That’s why Ker and Ava are here. Spit it out, what do you want?”

“We have to talk about your attitude.” Tess took a seat across from Ilmir. “I want to know why you’re so hung up on stats. That isn’t normal, even I can tell that much.”

“None of your business,” Ilmir grumped. “Doesn’t matter much to you, does it?”

“It does,” Tess said firmly. “If we’re going to be working in a team, I need to know why you don’t like me. I didn’t do a thing to you and you’ve been nothing but rude and condescending to me.”

Ilmir growled, a sound that was more akin to that of a beast than that of a person. “I said it’s none of your business.”

Tess looked Ilmir directly in the eyes. “Then stop acting like a child. If you don’t want to talk about it, then start treating me like a person and not a walking set of stats. If you’re not capable of doing that, then we need to talk.”

Uncertainty flickered across Ilmir’s face, but she held Tess’s gaze. “You haven’t been through the ringer.” She replied. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into. You’re only going to get yourself and the people around you hurt. You think you’ve got something going for you, but once you come across a real opponent you won’t have a leg to stand on.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little unfair, dear?” Ava asked. “I don’t think her abilities have had a chance to settle. She’s rather lopsidedly built at the moment but that’s not going to stay the case.”

Ilmir paused, not taking her eyes off of Tess. “How do you know? That’s all just theory, and I learned the hard way that reality doesn’t always conform to theory, no matter how much you want it to.”

“I know because I helped put her abilities together.” Ava said calmly. “And, in this case, we can guarantee that reality will conform. What makes you think otherwise?”

“I…”

“I think it’s good for you to talk about it.” Ava continued. “You’ve been thinking about this alone for a while, right?”

Ilmir briefly broke Tess’s gaze, eyes flickering over to Ava and then right back to Tess. “But…I thought…”

“That it’s confidential? It is, but nothing’s really confidential between Appointed. For the purpose of confidential information, we’re treated the same as our god. Tess already knows a little about it, and we’ve gotten permission for The Rumors to know, due to it being pertinent information for training you.”

“You told Tess?!” Ilmir exclaimed, horror briefly flashing across her expression “Yesterday when we talked you said you wouldn’t tell anyone!”

“She didn’t, I did.” Eyfura interjected. “And I didn’t give her any real details, I only let her know about my side of the story, my mistakes. She doesn’t know anything other than I misjudged things and you suffered for it, and that your opponent was of far higher stats than you.”

“So,” Tess said, “we can either talk about it, or you can continue to be a child and try and bully me for something that’s not my fault.”

 “You’re younger than me. Stop calling me a child.” Ilmir pouted.

“Well, you don’t act like you’re older than me. I shouldn’t have to lecture you about basic courtesy. So, since you obviously don’t want to talk, can you stop treating me like dirt?”

Ilmir hesitated. “And if I refuse to do either?”

“Then you get kicked out.” Tess said flatly. “I’m not going to tolerate you acting like this.”

“Grandma goes with me if you do. We’re a package deal,” Ilmir said, a hint of smugness to her tone. “She’s not going to prioritize you over her own kin.”

“Wrong,” Eyfura said. “At the very least I won’t be helping you for the month you would have to be with Tess. And if you’re being this stubborn, I’m going to have to consider dropping you entirely, at least until Tess has been trained more. She’s basically family too and getting an Appointed into fighting shape is more important than training a spoiled brat. Talk it out or stop being so mean.”

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Ava laid a hand on Ilmir’s thigh. “It’s alright to talk about it, sweetie. No one here is going to make fun of you. Remember what we talked about yesterday.”

Ilmir fully broke Tess’s gaze, turning to Ava and whispering something that she presumably thought Tess couldn’t hear. “How do I back down while retaining my pride?” Ilmir asked. “And I can’t just…go against what I just said a minute ago.”

“I think it’s fine to just go back on it,” Ava whispered back, winking at Tess. “We won’t think less of you. It’s a traumatic thing, we understand.”

“If you understand, why are you making me talk about it with people I barely know?” Ilmir hissed.

“Because it’s affecting how you treat them, and because I think they’ll be able to help make you feel better. Give it a go, you don’t have to carry this burden yourself.”

Ilmir let out a heavy sigh. “Look, none of you are allowed to make fun of me, alright? You all wouldn’t have done much better.”

Tess nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t do something like that.”

Ilmir gave Ava another hesitant glance, and, after getting a nod from Ava, slowly began to talk. “It was a couple of years ago. I had just hit level thirty, and my kit was starting to click into place. I had gotten pretty lucky with Skills and Classes, and, out of everyone close to my level, I was far and away the strongest I knew of. I got cocky and started pestering Grandma to let me go on one of her Appointed trips. Not one of the ones that required real high-level stuff, I wasn’t that dumb, but I thought one of her easier ones would be well within my capabilities.”

She began to talk faster now, as if she had gotten over her hesitance. “I was wrong, of course. We went to prevent a potential despot from gaining too much power, and things got…ugly. I wanted to take the despot out myself and impress Grandma, and the guards around the despot’s house I was able to take out with no problem, so even though Grandma had told me the despot was too strong for me, I figured it would be pretty safe if I went on ahead. How tough could the despot be if her guards were that weak? They’re theoretically supposed to be stronger than her so they can guard her, right? So, I slipped away from Grandma while she was fighting five or six of the guards, and I made my way to where the despot’s room was.

“The despot was…a lot stronger than I thought. She had good stats and was at least twenty or thirty levels higher than me with really good gear. She overpowered me with barely any effort, and it turns out she had some Skill that let her possess people. I was a prisoner in my own body as she had some guards ‘tie me up’ and leave me somewhere Grandma would find me. They had given me a small dagger with the venom of some really, really nasty monster on it and were going to use me to stab Grandma when her guard was down.”

“Grandma found me, of course, and dispatched the guards ‘guarding’ me with barely a thought. Then, as she was untying me, the despot made me get a good hit in on the hand that was undoing my bindings. She had to take a moment to get rid of that venom, and the despot wriggled away, using my own body to take me hostage. She said if her original body was killed while she was possessing someone she would just remain in the body forever, so she told Grandma to leave if she ever wanted to see me again.

“Grandma didn’t want to take any chances and went into Descent, and the despot slit my throat then and there. She wanted to make Grandma waste time with me while she ran away, and…well, Grandma didn’t want to leave me and didn’t have healing that would get me back on my feet quick enough to let her still catch the despot through whatever exit plan the despot had set up.

“So, she threw me over her shoulder and there was apparently some discourse with the gods, because War gave me my Blessings then and there. I was able to use them to heal back up, but Grandma didn’t let me go. Grandma, still in Descent, waded through a ton of guards with even less trouble than she had before, despite only having one free hand. She chased after the despot, but while the despot had been possessing me, she had someone take her body away, and they teleported somewhere.”

Ilmir balled her fists and glared at Tess. “We followed them through one or two teleports, but Grandma ran out of time for her Descent and didn’t have the Skills or Mana to follow any further. We failed and it was because of me, get it? I thought that unusually synergistic Skills and really good stats would carry me through level difference and let me do more than I should be able to at my level, but I didn’t even get the opportunity to try anything. I was crushed with raw stats before I could. That defeat made me stop even trying for a long time, and you’re going to have to deal with this stuff every day!

“So…if I couldn’t, what makes you different?!” She was almost yelling now, her voice rising in intensity as she spoke. “Why does everyone tell you that you can get by with Skill synergies when I know that’s not always going to be the case! What are you going to do against people so much stronger than you that you might as well be level one?! What does it matter that your ailments always hit if you can only ever do chip damage?! I’m not even a tank and a surprise attack with a million different bonuses only did a third of my health!”

She stood up, glaring down at Tess. “I don’t get it, why would Fortune pick someone like you?! Why would she purposefully pick someone with such low potential when someone with such high potential was right next to you?! You’re not even Uncle Evan’s real granddaughter! Why do you get such special treatment and I don’t?!”

She stood there, panting as she finished her rant.

That last bit, about not being Gramps’s real granddaughter was the last straw, Tess wasn’t going to take this anymore. She stood up, taking a deep breath. “Anything else?” She asked icily. “Because I think it’s my turn to talk.”

Not waiting for a response, she continued. “You have no right to determine whether or not I’m Gramps’s ‘real’ granddaughter.” She said in a low, cold voice. “And what do you know about the wringer?! Do you even know what life’s put me through? My entire biological family is dead! No siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, anything! I don’t know anyone in your family other than Auntie, or if they’re alive or what the deal with that is, but even if they’re not alive, at least you had someone else! I would have been put in an orphanage if it wasn’t for Gramps!”

Tess glared defiantly at Ilmir. “Do you know what that feels like? Waking up one day and suddenly being all alone? Realizing that you’re about to be thrown into a notoriously cold-hearted, even abusive system? How many times have you cried yourself to sleep because you knew you weren’t going to see the people you loved most again? Have you ever pondered suicide because you felt there wasn’t anything else left for you and thought even the chance of seeing your family again was worth it? I was ten when I was thinking that.

“But those long nights crying myself to sleep? Gramps always came in and sat with me until I was finally asleep, no matter how long it took. He was the one to remind me that there were people who cared, that there was still worth in living life. He never treated me any different from Ellie, and while I never knew my biological grandparents, if that’s not being a ‘real’ grandparent then I don’t know what is. So, shut up. You know nothing about my relationship with Gramps.”

Ilmir recoiled, visibly taken aback. “I…didn’t think, I…”

“Of course you didn’t think.” Tess snapped. “You haven’t spent a second thinking about how I feel this entire time.” Tess took a moment to collect herself. She wanted to rub the fact that she and Ellie were dating in Ilmir’s face, but…that’d be stooping down to Ilmir’s level. It might make her feel better in the short term, but that wouldn’t do anyone any good in the long run.

Ilmir sat down, face a bright red. “I’m sorry.” She whispered. “I didn’t realize.”

Tess was feeling a bit calmer now, though she could tell her face was also bright red. “Right. I…got a bit carried away there. And, well, there are reasons for why Fortune picked me. I don’t know if I can tell you them…”

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