“You’re really standing up for him?” Bidane asked, pressing herself incredibly close to Sahara. “You almost died! Do you know how much it sucks for a wizard to die? How many spells would you lose?”
Sahara sighed and looked at her feet. “All of them. I would lose all of my spells.”
“Exactly,” Bidane said. “There was literally no reason for him to risk all of our lives by getting into some kind of needless fight!”
“Come now,” Kylian said, “we’ve been through worse problems than my nephew jumping the gun on a fight. If you think that Sir Reginus had anything other than violence on his mind, you’re woefully naive. The only thing that Capella did wrong was attack first, incurring a penalty on himself.”
“I don’t think it’s fair to say that he would have attacked us,” Van said as he stepped in between the shouting members of the party. They had gotten very heated, and everyone was up in arms. Capella was nowhere near the group; he had respawned somewhere far off, making the argument even more pointless. “But regardless of who was going to attack who first, I want to make it very clear to this group: we are a team. We are not here to point fingers, blame one another, or shout. If we have a problem, we’re going to solve it through an arbitration process.”
“Feh, your arbitration process can go right to hell,” Bidane spat.
“Sure, you say that now, but think about it,” Van said. “Right now, we’re arguing over one problem. We’re an adventuring party full of many different people with different ideas about how things should work. As we grow larger, we’re going to continue to have problems. Do you want to handle each problem on a case-by-case basis? Or would you rather have a system in place that handles all of the problems automatically?”
Bidane chewed on those words for a moment. She nodded a little. “Okay, I understand what you’re saying. So how does this arbitration process work?”
“It’s simple,” Van said. “If there’s a complaint, we bring it up during the camping phase. We discuss it, bring the charges up, and allow the offending party to defend themselves. Then we have a group vote and, if the party votes guilty, I then mete out a punishment that fits the crime.”
“Sounds pretty simple,” Bidane said. “But why do you get to be the one to choose the punishment?”
“Because I’m in charge,” Van said. “And I’m going to make decisions that are in the best interest of the group.”
Bidane shrugged at that and began to walk away. “Fine, okay. Whatever—we’ll handle this matter in arbitration when we camp.”
Van grinned. “Perfect; glad that worked out.” He turned to face Sang, who had been hovering nearby. She had been watching with curiosity, but hadn’t said a word during the argument.
“Nice work,” Sang said. “You think up that system on the spot?”
“Nah, it’s always how I handle disputes. It works because it cuts down on the drama, reduces the chances of infighting, and most importantly, since camping takes place after several hours of fighting and exploring, everyone tends to forget about the problem unless it was really serious,” Van said with a chuckle.
Sang nodded. “Good thinking. So…” she paused and took a deep breath. “We need to keep moving. We can’t afford to wait for Capella to get back here.”
Van shrugged. “Look, I understand your desire to move, but we’re pretty banged up here. It’s gonna take a few hours for Bidane to use all of her healing spells to repair us, and we’re out of potions. Getting to Bikorn tonight just doesn’t seem feasible.”
“I’m not trying to be pushy here, Van,” she said, “but you’ve got to realize that we’re on a timer. If we don’t get some kind of results soon, I’m going to be in a ton of trouble with my supervisors.”
“I know, I know,” Van said. “But I can’t push them any further. It would be reckless and would probably get most of us killed. The only way to Bikorn is to push through this side of the mountain, and there are a ton of Trolls and Rocktossers waiting down there. Unless you have some proposed method of getting us through dangerous territory unnoticed, we’re going to have to hang out here.”
“What about Reginus’ forces? Won’t they be looking for us?” Sang asked.
“There’s a lot of places for a player to hide,” Van replied. “If they wanted to search for us, it would take them days to comb a fourth of this mountain. We’re going to be safe.”
“Look… we just don’t have time!” Sang said. “And I don’t know what to tell you other than that we can’t waste another day waiting to get to Bikorn.”
“Fine,” Van said, throwing his hands up. “If you feel like you have some method of circumventing a ton of dangerous obstacles so that we can get down the mountain faster, go for it. But until then, the rest of us are going to be focusing on healing and building up a camp so we can rest for the night.”
Van hastily walked away from Sang, fuming from the conversation. Her insistence and pressure were beginning to wear down on his nerves. He had worked incredibly hard to move the team at a breakneck pace, and it still wasn’t enough for her. Yes, he understood that the government had recently come under threat of investigation by some blustery senator, but it wasn’t his problem. Sang was the CIA operative with experience, so she should be able to convince her bosses that the project wasn’t going to wrap up in just a few days. Instead, all she did was pressure him.
Van glanced over at his compatriots, who were busy working on the camp. Bidane had created a shelter by running a tarp over rocks, Kylian was digging a well using one of his survivalist skills, and Sahara was lighting fires to illuminate the area. While he had only been travelling with these characters for a few days, he found that he preferred their company to Sang’s. They were fun, jovial, and above all, they were grateful. Even though it had been a rocky start with him trying to lie to them, they had accepted his leadership and were performing admirably. Even in spite of a major hiccup with Capella attacking a small army, they had managed to stay cohesive enough to rally and win the fight. They were Van’s kind of people, and he sincerely felt an aching urge to just stay in the game and forget all about the alien hunting nonsense. Yes, it was important that he helped save the world, but did he really have to feel so unappreciated for his hard work?
As Van pondered the situation, a loud clamor caught his attention. There were shouts of excitement and a yapping sound. He glanced up to see that the entire party had gathered around Sang, who was holding Jet in her hands.
“Whoa!” Sahara said, slowly reaching her hand out to touch the dragon. Jet nipped at her fingers, causing her to jump back.
“Is that a real dragon?” Kylian asked.
“No way, it’s some kind of illusion spell or something,” Bidane said as she placed a hand on top of Jet’s head. Jet seemed to like her, and allowed her to touch him.
“It’s real, alright,” Sang said. “My very own dragon companion!”
“This is crazy!” Sahara said. “I thought only Draco pros got dragon mounts!”
“Well, I actually did a very important quest a while back,” Sang said, smiling at the group. They were all so enamored with the dragon that no one bothered to look at Van as he approached.
“I’ve never heard of a quest that could get you a dragon…” Kylian said. “And I’ve been playing this game for a long time.”
“It’s true,” Van said. “She did some special event or whatever; landed herself a dragon egg. It hatched a while back.”
“Well, this is definitely our team mascot!” Bidane said. “Hah—other jerks have to ride horses, but we’re going to be riding a full-grown dragon!”
There was a triumphant cheer from the rest of the group.
“Well, that’s the thing,” Sang said. “There’s only one way to help this little guy grow.”