Cassandra was sitting next to Jason on a blanket. Humphrey and Gabrielle had their own blanket, like Jason and Cassandra, but Humphrey kept shooting nervous glances at his mother watching over them.
“It feels like it’s been all work and no play lately,” Jason said. “Sand pirates, underground lairs, sand pirates again.”
“There’s been a little play,” Cassandra said, lips curving in a tantalising arc.
“You are a beacon of luminous delight in a dark sea of obligation,” he said and gave her a gentle kiss.
“See?” Gabrielle said. “It isn’t that hard.”
Humphrey looked nervously at his mother again.
“Uh…”
Rufus stood up from his position at the picnic table, raising up a glass.
“Here’s to our iron-rankers and their first bronze-rank monster,” he said. “Not to mention two racial power evolutions.”
As the others raised their glasses, Jason smiled, Humphrey looked embarrassed and Clive looked surprised to be involved at all.
“Jason,” Rufus said. “You’ve come a long way from the confused, half-naked man we met in a basement in a cannibal’s cage.”
“You say that like we weren’t in cages too,” Gary interjected.
“Thank you, Gary,” Rufus said, then turned back to Jason. “Even then, you were something special. Something strange, certainly, but also special. Some of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your actions that day. Now, look at you. Taking down bronze-rank monsters; terrorising Danielle’s poor trainees. We’re all adventurers here and, I think, rather good ones. You may have come to us from very far away, but you belong here, just as much as any of us.”
Jason rubbed a hand over his mouth, misty-eyed. He got to his feet, glass in hand and looked over the assemblage of friends.
“Thank you, Rufus,” he said. “Thank you all. I’m a stranger in a strange land, and I know I can be… difficult, even at the best of times. You’ve all helped me, guided me, taught me, challenged me. Put up with me, more often than not.”
“No kidding,” Farrah called out.
“Quiet, you,” Jason admonished. “I’d just like to express how grateful I am to all of you. I’ve built a better life here in months than I did in my old world in years, and I have all of you to thank for that. I couldn’t ask for better people to be stuck down a hole with, which is lucky, because I recently was.”
He raised his glass.
“Here’s to all of you.”
“That’s right!” Gary yelled out, hoisting a goblet the size of Jason’s head. “We’re pretty great.”
“You haven’t regaled us with the story of fighting the marsh hydra yet,” Farrah said. “By the time we got back from our own contract, Cassandra had already whisked you away.”
“Fair enough,” Jason said. “Clive, Humphrey, get over here; we have a tale to tell.”
They left out the part about the skill books. Jason suspected it intersected with the confidential mission that brought Rufus, Gary and Farrah to Greenstone, and after some consideration, asked Humphrey and Clive to stay quiet. He decided not to put the adventurers in a position where they had to ask Jason to stop investigating, although it was Clive doing the actual investigating.
At the end of the tale, Jason pulled out the item they had looted from the hydra. It was a bronze-rank, five-tailed whip with biting mouths at the end of each tail. The whip tails seemed to have a life of their own, waving madly and snapping at people as Gary waved it around. Jason had handed it over to demonstrate, as he couldn’t use bronze-rank items himself.
Humphrey had his own news—he had been promoted to two-star, which drew another round of toasting. By this point people were starting to get woozy, especially with Gary trying to get people to toast to day-drinking. Even Jason was in his cups, sharing the same bronze-rank liquor as his friends to get past his resistances.
“Why didn’t we all get awakening stones?” Jason asked Vincent, the only Adventure Society official present. “Killing that hydra was super-hard. It almost ate my boy Hump!”
“As a rule,” Vincent said, “we don’t give out awakening stones to people for killing monsters above their rank. It would just incentivise people getting themselves killed trying to jump ranks.”
“That’s right,” Rufus said. “Jumping ranks isn’t something to take lightly. A good adventurer should be able to jump ranks, but only against the right monster.”
“Don’t tell them that,” Vincent scolded.
“I think I should give it a try,” Rick said.
“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Vincent said. “Iron-rankers rushing off to their deaths.”
“I’ll do it in the mirage chamber,” Rick said, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Come on, Jason, you can come too.”
“Sit back down,” Danielle told him. “How many times do I have to tell you children about using the mirage chamber while drunk?”
“I’m fine,” Rick said, unconvincingly.
“Such a lightweight,” Phoebe said, shaking her head at her brother.
“The mirage chamber is booked today anyway,” Danielle said. “The bronze-rankers are practising sandy terrain encounters.”
“They have a whole desert for that!” Rick complained.
The drink continued to flow and the conversation roamed. The wiser iron-rankers went easy on the drinks to catch any loose-lipped reveals from the bronze and silver-rankers.
“…a committee,” Danielle was saying. “All silver-rankers who spent decades buying up monster cores while they sat on their backsides. Thalia, do you remember when we were the age of these kids? Crazed, we were; knocking out contracts faster than they could post them. Now they’re all sitting around like fonts of wisdom, deciding what to do about pirates that they never would have gone out to catch in the first place!”
“Your mum seems to like the sauce, Hump,” Jason said.
“She can get a bit boisterous when Father isn’t around,” Humphrey said. “Or when he is, for that matter.”
“Hump takes after his father,” Phoebe said to Jason. “His dad is the straight line to his mum’s squiggles. Kind of like Hump is for you.”
“There you go, Hump,” Jason said, throwing an arm around Humphrey’s broad shoulders. “Jeez, you’re a biggun.”
“Please stop saying Hump.”
Later, Rufus addressed all the iron-rankers in a group.
“Don’t go rushing off to fill all your awakening stone slots. There’s an opportunity coming up. I can’t tell you about it, but in about a month there will be a… thing.”
“What kind of thing?” Jason asked.
Rufus drunkenly frowned at Jason.
“It’s a thing. Shut up.”
Drink and the soporific afternoon sun left most of the group aggressively lounging. Jason and Cassandra were laid out on a blanket with Humphrey and Gabrielle on another, next to them.
“It sounds like your problem is the butter,” Jason said to Gabrielle. “You want to take it out of the cooler box and let it stand for fifteen minutes; no more, no less. Oh, and get a stand mixer instead of creaming it by hand. You can get good ones from Artifice Association.”
“Maybe you can show me?” Gabrielle asked.
“Sure,” Jason said. “Madam Landry gives me free run of the kitchen, and learning about biscuits is very important. There’s this whole country where I come from that call scones biscuits. They’re all lunatics.”
The memorial service for the lost adventurer was held at the Adventure Society campus. The mausoleum occupied a portion of the campus abutting the north shore of the Island. The shore of the artificial island was raised up from the water, with lawn seeded atop. The service was held overlooking the water.
The adventurer’s remains had been cremated before the service and were stored in an urn kept by the family. The adventurer’s badge was presented to them by Humphrey, while the tracking stone they had followed to his remains was ceremonially placed within the Hall of Fallen Heroes. The mausoleum held not the remains of adventurers, but the stones held by the Adventure Society that marked their lives and service.