“Do you not realise the condition you’re in right now? You can barely move!”
“But I can move,” Sophie said. “The Duke’s household guard laid a trap, but now we know to be ready. His bronze-rankers can fight, but they can’t chase worth a damn.”
“The Adventure Society has been pressuring the duke to stay out of it,” Belinda said. “I haven’t been able to find out why, but it’s been good for us. That’s over now. The complaints from his high-society friends must have outgrown his unwillingness to push back against the Adventure Society.”
“We plan around it,” Sophie said.
“Do you even understand how lucky you were to get out of there?”
“This time it was luck. Next time will be preparation.”
“Next time you’ll probably get killed.”
“The Duke getting involved buys us time,” Sophie said. “Ventress can’t accuse us of slacking if we take extra time to adapt. There’s only so blatant she can be about setting us up. Whatever she’s up to, she won’t burn her reputation to get it.”
“You do realise she’s not the only one trying to set us up now,” Belinda said. “The pressure is mounting and old friends aren’t as reliable as they used to be.”
They reached a solid metal gate in a high wall. Belinda leaned Sophie against the wall and cautiously pushed on the unlocked gate to peer inside. There were a handful of labourers in the yard, moving materials through a newly made hole in the wall to the yard next door.
“Those adventurers aren’t here,” she told Sophie, “but there’s some kind of construction happening. Just stay there, and I’ll go get him.”
She ducked inside the yard, the workers not looking up as she walked past them and into the back of the clinic. She saw Jory escorting a patient out of his exam room.
“…just apply the salve every morning,” he was explaining, “and you shouldn’t have any trouble through the day.”
“Jory,” she called out.
“Belinda!”
Jory’s eyes lit up as he turned around, then narrowed on the blood staining her clothes. He quickly ushered the patient through a doorway.
“Janice,” he said through the door, “no new patients for the moment. No one is to come back here until I say otherwise, understood?”
He closed the door and rushed over to her.
“Are you hurt?”
“Not my blood,” she said. “Sophie is out back.”
“Show me.”
In an Old City restaurant, Jason was served a dish of rice dumplings in the shape of a three-sided pyramid.
“They have this shape because of how they’re wrapped in the bamboo leaves to cook,” he said, picking up his chopsticks.
“I could never get the hang of chopsticks,” Humphrey said as the waiter placed bowls of dumpling soup in front of Humphrey and Clive. Cheap and easily replaced chopsticks were the primary utensil in the delta and most of Old City, but Humphrey grew up with silverware. Jason had been amused to discover the most common utensil in the high-society was the spork.
They chatted lightly over their lunch. Their empty dishes were taken away and replaced with a tray of fried, sticky rice cake.
“So what did you really want to talk about?” Humphrey asked. “I’m guessing you didn’t just call us out for lunch, excellent as it was.”
“I have a contract,” Jason said. “Two-star. They won't let me take it without a minimum team of three.”
“Minimum team?” Clive asked. “That means the danger is either large or unknown.”
Humphrey’s face darkened. “Unknown usually means it's killed an adventurer already.”
“That's right,” Jason said. “A solo adventurer took a one-star contract for something called a marsh wyrm. The tracking on his badge recorded his death mid-afternoon, the day before yesterday.”
All three men looked down soberly. They were all adventurers, and even the less-active Clive knew that death was always a possibility.
“Alright, then,” Clive said. “So the job is to find the body and clear the monster?”
“Yeah, that’s the job,” Jason said. “Kill the monster and find the body. If nothing’s left, then we at least bring back the badge.”
“Not much to return to the family,” Humphrey said, “but better than nothing.”
“I looked up the marsh wyrm,” Jason said, “and whatever’s out there, I don’t think it’s that.”
“No surprise, there,” Humphrey said. “Monsters don’t always turn out to be what they’re reported as.”
“What does your ability say?” Clive asked Jason.
“It says the monster that killed him,” Jason said. “Which doesn't tell us what it is, but means there should only be the one.”
Quest: [Contract: Fallen Comrade]
An adventurer has fallen in the course of their duties. Complete their task and bring home their remains.
Objective: Eliminate the monster that killed your fellow adventurer 0/1
Objective: Retrieve the remains of your fellow adventurer 0/1
“It could be a lot of things,” Humphrey said. “There are quite a few giant worm and serpent-type monsters that appear in the delta.”
“There are a few that could be mistaken for a marsh wyrm,” Clive said. “At least by someone who didn’t really know monsters. Most people only know monsters that commonly spawn in their area, and usually by description. Most run before they ever get a good look.”
“If it took down an adventurer already, we can't dismiss the danger,” Humphrey said. “Any monster strong enough to take down someone who went looking for a marsh wyrm alone will be at the top of the iron-rank power scale, or maybe even bronze. It won't be some lesser elemental that anyone could punch apart with sufficient determination.”
Not all iron-rank monsters were created equal. Their rank was a function of their magical density, not actual power. If bronze rank damage reduction and resistances were ignored, the most powerful iron-rank monsters were stronger than the weaker bronze examples. The difference was usually made up in numbers, with weaker monsters appearing in greater numbers.
“So,” Jason said. “Are you in?”
“Of course,” Humphrey said.
Clive nodded. “It could be any of us, someday. If it's me, I hope I'm not left at the bottom of a bog somewhere. Do you know anything about the adventurer?”
Jason nodded.
“I asked Vincent about him.”
“I’d like to hear it,” Humphrey said.
Sophie stood under the shower in Jory’s clinic. Designed to wash less-abled patients, the shower had no walls or curtains and was open to the room. Arms out in front of her, hands against the wall, she leaned forward, letting the water spray down onto the back of her head and neck. After several of Jory’s strongest potions, spaced out to prevent toxicity, all that remained of her injuries was the blood the shower was sluicing off her body.
When she emerged, wearing spare clothes provided by Jory, the alchemist shoved a large bottle full of red liquid into her hands.
“Drink it,” he said, bluntly. “Now.”
“What is it?”
“It will stop your blood from responding to tracking abilities,” he said. “I made it up while you were getting clean.”
She looked at Belinda standing behind him.
“What did you tell him?” Sophie asked her.
“Don’t tell me anything,” Jory said. “Then I don’t have to lie if it comes to that.”
Sophie looked down at the bottle in her hands.
“If I wanted to deal with you,” Jory said, “all I had to do was not help you. Drink it, before whoever did that to you arrives at my door.”
“Drink it, Soph,” Belinda said. “We need to get moving.”
She frowned at the bottle but drained it dry.
“Let’s go, Lindy.”
Sophie made for the back door, Belinda in tow. Belinda stopped at the door, looking back at Jory, still standing in the hall. Their eyes met and his hard expression softened at the apology in hers.