Chapter 60: 4.3 – Into Noviel

Robin’s sneaking suspicions stepped out into the light a lot sooner than he expected. Before the ink of his signature was even dry, Zahn was speaking.

‘Now that’s out of the way, I have an assignment for you.’

‘All right,’ Robin said. Because that wasn’t alarming at all.

‘It’s recently come to light that a cache of treasure long thought lost is…not so lost. Now, I cannot be seen expending resources on a treasure hunt, but you? Hunting for treasure is exactly what everyone expects a new recruit fresh to the adventuring game to do.’ Zahn smiled toothily.

‘How did it come to light if no one brought it back?’ The whole thing sounded suspect to Robin.

‘How much do you know of Noviel?’

‘Not much. A few things Fiamah told me.’

‘We are quite an old city, and one of the strongest in the region. Our wealth and prosperity stems in a large degree from our geography.’ Zahn didn’t quite have the lecturing skill of Fiamah, but he managed to tell an entertaining enough story. ‘Noviel is situated atop a living dungeon, The Yawning Gyre, and we—that is the Adventurers Guild—have maintained close and cordial relations with it. She, rather. Refers to herself as Gyrfalcon.’

‘A renewable resource,’ Robin said. Of course the city was wealthy and full of magic! It had what amounted to a sentient well of pure energy that could repeatedly and reliably produce all manner of rare and powerful matter from within itself.

‘Yes! Very well put. A renewable resource. I like that.’ Zahn chuckled. ‘Gyrfalcon exists in the caverns far beneath the city, though there are a few entrances that connect her to the surface. Two that we know of outside the city limits, and several in the sewers, though they tend to shift. Gyrfalcon abhors stasis and regularly shifts her composition, even abandoning sections of herself that she’s become bored with.’

‘And this treasure is in one of those abandoned sections.’

‘We believe so, yes. Many of our younger members do contract work in the sewers, clearing out infestations or rogue monsters that escape or flee from Gyrfalcon and ascend towards us. One of these parties stumbled across some unfamiliar tunnels through a gap in a crumbling sewer wall. They explored, naturally, and eventually came across this cache. They managed to grab a few handfuls of gold and jewels before they awoke something—it’s not clear if it was a guardian of some kind or a trap or a degraded spell—and nearly the whole party perished.’

Robin listened, fascinated. This was proper adventuring nonsense, this! It probably should have given him second thoughts about engaging in this profession, but it really didn’t. He was, if anything, even keener to get started.

‘There was only a single survivor—the group’s healer. She did not handle the experience well, I’m afraid. Though she brought back some dregs of treasure, the experience has quite unseated her mentally. We have reliable descriptions of several of the more interesting pieces of treasure, and a few ideas as to what might be down there with it, as a guardian, but no knowledge of the location or just how much else is down there.’

‘And you can’t scry it out for some reason,’ Robin observed.

‘No. Gyrfalcon is very good at warding against divinations of all kinds. She hates her surprises being foiled. She’s very private that way.’

‘So you want me—’

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‘And a party. I don’t think going down alone is the wisest course of action.’

‘—to gather a party—’

‘Yes, though perhaps it’s best if they don’t know the full particulars of what you’re looking for, hmm? I expect you’ll need to nudge them along a good bit. You should probably find solid, dependable sorts who will follow your lead, even as they don’t realise you are leading.’

‘—trick them into going treasure hunting beneath the sewers, find this treasure—’

‘So long as you retrieve one particular jewel, that’s all I’m really interested in. You can keep the rest. It’s called the Eye of Na’Vec. Incredibly powerful. Incredibly cursed. Bring me that gem, and I’ll grant you free lifetime membership in the Adventurers Guild and a rank within the White Star Company to boot.’

Alright, Jafar. Nothing but the lamp. Got it. Because this wasn’t shadier than the plane of shadows at dusk.

‘And are you going to provide me with any kind of operating budget?’ Robin asked. ‘This is swiftly becoming quite the undertaking. I’ll need food, lodging, supplies—’

‘I’m sure a resourceful individual such as yourself can make do,’ Zahn replied. ‘I understand your performances brought in quite a bit of coin in Bordertown. Why, enough to pay your yearly membership fee here, and that is not an insubstantial sum.’

Robin attempted to barter at least some free room and board in the Adventurers Guildhouse, but Zahn wouldn’t budge.    

‘Think of this as your trial by fire. Succeed, and you can write your own way.’ Zahn didn’t mention what would happen if he failed.

He didn’t have to. Robin’s imagination was already running wild with thoughts of the poor healer and whatever she had faced in the depths that made her that way.

Well, if he was going to do it, he certainly wanted to get paid twice for doing a single job if possible. More times, if he could manage it. There would be the treasure he managed to salvage, and Zahn’s reward, but since Zahn was so interested, others surely were as well, and honestly, this seemed like the sort of thing his interface usually granted a quest for—

Right on cue, a notification appeared.

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