Westgrove is the epitome of the provincial township. Located on the sloping banks of the river Fane, its cobblestones streets often change into bridges that connect the town to each side of the river which gently streams through it from north to south. No wall surrounds the exterior of the town and most of the trade in and out comes not through the wide river dock Westgrove sported on its southern side, but through a continuous drip of farmer’s wagons and vehicles bearing construction equipment from the nearby limestone quarriers.
Heading into the town, Halford leads us through the bustle of the noonday farmer’s market and, begrudgingly, allows time for a stop so that Bali might peruse various magical instruments which she does not yet have the money to purchase. As we continue east through the town, the stalls in the open-air market change to tidy storefronts, the wealthiest of which can afford glass to display their wares behind. Westgrove exists as the only town within a hundred miles where one might be able to find clothing made from the flesh of magical beasts or tools infused with condensed magic that make them exceptionally good at carrying out their given task. Once, when I had first arrived in Westgrove and became enamored with the idea of magical tools, I had taken a simple looking gardening trowel and used it to pry up a cemented cobblestone out on the street as easily as scooping up a slice of applejack pie.
The idea of magical armor does not so much interest me as the idea of magical clothing in its own right. I was dismayed to discover that even though Westgrove was the largest gathering of people I have ever experienced, it is not wealthy enough that the tailors of the town can afford such extravagant materials to create them. The only reason that there existed magical armor to be had is due to the existence of a small arm of the Adventuring Administration of Gale. Ostensibly, administering the various components of the large-scale infrastructure that is required to oversee the adventuring profession: discovering monsters, facilitating and regulating the trade of magical goods, and keeping track of essentia bearing citizens of Gale, is something that falls under the complete authority of the King. With the addition of international adventuring guilds vying for the attention of prospective adventurers and seeking to leverage influence into power, the Adventuring Administration is a much more nuanced and complicated environment.
In the reach of Westgrove and the surrounding lands that it’s Adventuring Administration had claims jurisdiction and responsibility for, there are only a handful of third rank individuals and only a single fourth rank. This fourth ranker is the object of attention for every young adventuring team, our team being no different.
“What should we get?” Bali asks as she skips out of a small boutique which specializes in the creation of magical wands. “We have enough now to be picky.”
“That won’t stop me from hunting for a deal,” Halford says, nodding down the street and expecting the group to follow after him. “Best to stock up on the important items. We haven’t heard the outline of this competition yet, but I think it would be safe to expect that the only missions we might be given along with it would be for the disposal of rank one monsters and greater.”
“Not too many of those,” Kapin says. “Might be first come first served.”
“So…horses?” I venture.
“Might be worth it,” Halford agrees. As he continues walking his eyes flick back and forth in concentration. “We have enough for a full complement of horses. Best if we merely rented them for the duration. Even with that we should be able to purchase adequate supplies, though adequate is only a guess when considering a fight with an unknown monster.”
“Rank one monsters rarely have any abilities other than being big and strong,” Bali says.
“That boiling python also had poison,” Kapin says.
“Good thing you all took my advice and avoided being bitten then,” Bali says. She looks at me and winces. “Well, almost all of you.”
I open my mouth to respond, but Halford holds up a hand to cut off my reply. “Considering that it was our first rank one monster, and also considering that it had a nest of lesser pythons along with it when we attacked, I would consider our mission a roaring success. It’s good that we discovered this before the contest Arabella Willian is running begins in earnest.”
“That’s the fourth ranker’s name?” Kapin asks. “I thought that was still a secret or something. No one seems to know anything about them beyond the notice being posted in the job hall. ‘The Willian Guild has taken an interest in the young adventurers of this town and is seeking to recruit members from the area. Rank one adventurers are encouraged to take place in a contest of skill, discernment, and strength that will be held in the area. Top competitors will be awarded handsomely for their participation, and there may even be the opportunity to join our prestigious order.’ I’m guessing that this woman’s name being Arabella Willian is important somehow.”
“You would guess right,” Halford says.
“Important how?” I ask.
“The Willian Guild has branches in all the major territories of the continent. The person who I got the name from didn’t have much for me beyond the fact that the offer of great rewards is very real, and that all due respect should be given to their representative.”
“I’d respect her anyway,” Kapin says. “Reaching fourth rank…now that is really something.”
“It is,” Halford says. “We would do well to keep that in mind. Don’t want to get punted through a wall if we can afford it.”
“She wouldn’t do that,” I say. “Would she?”
Halford is about to answer when Bali speaks up. “Where did Jellian go?”
We stop in the middle of the street to look around, spying the man nowhere.
“Sneaky bastard,” Kapin swears. Bali turns a baleful look on the man. “What. It’s not because he is an elf! He is literally sneaky!”
Halford sighs and shakes his head. “Hopefully he is at the adventuring hall. If not, we can find him after we get paid for this contract.”
Off the main road, past the municipal building where the Westgrove judge and mayor, both the same man, busies himself with the bureaucratic duties of administering the town’s affairs, a three-story building of gray bright and peeling green paint stands as the hub for adventurers in Westgrove. Juxtaposed against the stately office of the mayor and head judiciary, a practical wooden complex which devours a good portion of the local tax dollar to maintain its impeccable facade, the building claimed by the Adventuring Administration of Gale, looks more akin to the busy storehouses found on Westgrove’s wharf district on the southern end of the town. The flow of grizzled and exhausted looking men and women shuffling in and out of the place only lends to its odd characterization, and when some group in time long forgotten began to call it the Warehouse, the name stuck.
Halford unslings the packs from his back as he nears the door before holding it open for a group of three men with as much age as dark bags under their eyes. I watch in quiet amusement with Bali as my brother and Kapin enact a strange dance to get the overfull packs through the front door rather than taking the time to walk around the back where much wider loading doors always stand open. The front room of the Warehouse often confuses first-timers when they came in, looking more like a dockside bar with a perpetual sprinkling of beer and sweat in the air. Entering, dozens of eyes turned to the door, their hesitant excitement turning to disappointment as they see just who was coming in. Halford grunts as he hefts the bags back over his shoulder once again, putting on an act, and leads the group over to a half-empty table on the eastern wall of the Warehouse.
“Full house tonight,” Bali says as she tosses her things down and sits in the chair with a stretch and a groan.
“Tonight?” Kapin asks.
“Whatever,” Bali says.
“There really are a lot of people,” I agree. Looking around the bar lounge of the Warehouse I spot several people that I recognize and many more that I don’t. I have spent enough time in Westgrove that I have gotten a pretty good handle on things, but the sheer mass of adventurers tossing their reward money back to the adventuring administration for a few pints of beer is more than I have ever seen in the place before. I have no real concept of how many adventurers there are in the region, and I doubt anyone has ever stopped to count, but looking around the bar then, I count more than a hundred at least. Most are about mine or Halfords age, late teens or early twenties, and have paired off into bunches that allow for an easy tally of how many adventuring parties are in attendance.
“I told you that this competition was a big deal,” Halford says. He sets the bags against a wall, slapping Kapin’s hand away as he reaches to open one.
“I guess you were right,” Kapin says as he massages the back of his red hand. “Isn’t that Tamis Grove?” He points to a woman sitting three tables away talking to a pair of men that look more like bodyguards than companions.
“Oh yeah,” Bali says when she sees the woman. Bali turns to me and says, “This was before your brother went back to your apple farm and grabbed you to drag through swamps and dank caves.”
“Pear orchard,” Halford corrects.
“That’s what I said,” Bali says. “Anyway, one of the first contracts we were given was a cooperative between three parties; we were hunting a big cat that was on fire. We found it first, of course, and Kapin had the thing in this bear hug trying to crush the life out of it when this woman, Tamis over there, appears out of a flash of light and stabs it in the neck with a dagger. The admins said that since technically she got the kill, her group would receive the kill reward for the contract.”
“And one of her hangers-on disenchanted the fire cat,” Kapin complains. “His ability made a dagger that can catch on fire with it. She still has the damned thing.”
“That just means we have to pay her back when this competition starts,” Halford says. He finishes his digging through one of the packs and retrieves a parcel of bound python leather. “This should qualify as proof of completion.”
“Or that snake fang,” Bali says.
“Did that snake even have fangs like that?” I ask.
“I don’t think so,” Halford says. “It’s your power, so you would know how it works better than anyone else.” He stands, Bali and Kapin rising along with him.
I almost join them before I remember and relax back into my seat. Given that I am not of the first rank with only one essentia to my name, I do not meet the minimum requirements for acceptance into the adventurer’s association, and non-members are restricted to sitting around in the front lounge while all of the important and real operational business happens in the back. I blow out a long breath and start looking around for Cindra who was usually on duty tending to the front of house customers during the day.
“We won’t be long,” Halford says. “We will be back in a few minutes, split up the loot, and try to see if we can’t get everything we want in the market before sundown. The job notice just said that the competition starts sometime in the morning, so I want to get up as early as we can manage for tomorrow.”
“I don’t know about you, but I am going to sleep as much as possible,” I say as Kapin and Bali start their walk to the far door that leads into the back of the Warehouse. “I think that I will need to soak in a bath for a while to fully get rid of all the muck.”
“I plan for us to get plenty of sleep tonight,” Halford says, grinning. “Thanks to you and that ability of yours we can afford two of the nicer rooms at the Charging Bull. I think we can afford to spend at least a silver to celebrate our victory today.”
My eyes boggle. “A whole silver? I thought you wanted to spend the money on kit. You’re always talking about how important it is to get outfitted. Maybe now you can actually afford to wear some armor instead of fighting monsters in just a shirt.”
“Bali and Kapin have first priority for armor,” Halford says with a shrug. “There is no shortage of things that would be useful to us, but what is the point of becoming an adventurer if we don’t take the time to enjoy it?” He set his huge hand on my shoulder. “We killed a dangerous monster today, and you helped. Who knows what that thing would have gotten up to if it was allowed to keep roaming about and eating livestock. The money is nice, don’t get me wrong about that, I love the money, but I think us clearing our first rank one contract deserves a little bit of self-congratulations. Do you have anything you would like to eat tonight?”
“Anything sweet and syrupy,” I answer.
“You got it.” He turns to stride over to where his friends wait for him at the back of the bar. “Look after the stuff,” he calls back over his shoulder.
“Sure.”
----------------------------------------
“Still in back,” Jellian says as he takes a seat at the table across from me.
I look up from my finished plate of seared river eel and bread. I have never taken the time to get to know Jellian all that well, I find the elven man a bit stand-offish. Jellian drops a bundle covered in black canvas onto the ground near his seat and motions for Cindra to bring a mug of beer over to the table.
“I’m sure they will be out soon,” I reply as I hand my empty plate to Cindra. The brunette woman gives me the same smile that she employs for every adventurer that comes into the Warehouse, even those who seem made of rudeness.
“Sure,” Jellian says. He motions with his fingers toward someone I hadn’t seen, standing behind me. A tall man walks to our lonely table, accompanied by the clink of metal greaves across the hardwood of the Warehouses' floor and the smell of an exotic flower that I can’t place. All elves smell like flowers to me and I am not alone in noticing. It has something to do with their innate magic, part of what sets them apart from the other descendant races of Exeter. Of everything, the natural poise, the unageing beauty, the guaranteed talent of a master in some area of skill, I envy that scent the most of elven gifts. I know there are things which humans have as an advantage from the great ancestor: increased ability to recover from grievous injuries, the ability to bond weapons, and great endurance. That smell, I would trade it all away for that.
“This is my nephew, Kendon Kori,” Jellian says. “Ken, this is Charlene Devardem.”
“Nephew?” I look askance at Jellian. I had thought the man couldn’t have been even into his thirties, but then again, I always have difficulty judging age with elves.
“I have several older siblings,” Jellian explains, smirking at my obvious confusion. “My family affairs can be a bit…complicated.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Kendon says, offering me a slight bow before he pulls a chair away and takes a seat next to his uncle. When I look for it, I can spot the family resemblance. Though Kendon’s hair is a metallic copper whereas Jellian’s own is a platinum blonde that only hints at the metal sheen most elven hair possesses; even though Kendon is a large and muscular man--for an elf at least--and Jellian is slight, both men share stark angular cheekbones and red, piercing eyes. I inspect the man’s dress. Typical of an adventurer, he wears armor that sports several scrapes, dents, and hints at sharp objects raking across metal. Unlike many adventurers, Kendon wears a full outfit of heavy armor; strong layers of linen and leather bound over the arms and legs, hidden beneath a steel breastplate and gauntlets that extended up to his elbows.
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“The pleasure is mine, I’m sure.” I return the slight bow.
“I was hoping that Halford would have finished turning in the contract by now so that I could apologize for leaving like that. When I noticed that Kendon was in the town I needed to go and greet him before I could conduct any business. He will be competing in this competition against us tomorrow apparently. He fills the guardian role for his team.”
“I would say that I am more of a Shieldbreaker,” Kendon says.
“You can be both,” Jellian allows with a shrug.
The terminology that adventurers like to bandy about often passes me by. The roles which different people fill in an adventuring party however, is something that I have been able to pick up over the few months of following my brother around. Guardians are typically what people who wear heavy armor and focus on maintaining the attention of monsters are called. There exists certain powers that allow some people to be able to withstand a staggering amount of damage without going down. Shieldbreakers on the other hand are almost the exact opposite; their powers allow them to focus on overcoming an enemy’s defenses and to even help their team pour on the damage.
“Are you first rank as well?” I ask.
“I’d have to be. This competition is open only to first rankers,” Kendon says. “I know my uncle specializes in scouting. Where do you fall in with your team, if you don’t mind my asking? I’ve been told that your older brother is the leader of the team, and I’ve heard curious things about the man.”
“I’m not actually on the team,” I mutter into the mug of fruit juice in front of me. “I haven't completed my set of essentia.”
“Really?” Kendon says with a raised eyebrow.
“She is more like a support follower,” Jellian says, stepping in. “Though she isn’t a full member of the party or the adventurer’s association, the single power she does have proves quite valuable. It is a disenchanting ability.”
Kendon’s eyebrows rise even further at that. “That is quite rare to have,” he says. “Especially if it is the only ability you have. My team has been looking for someone with an ability like that for a while.”
“It’s not all that impressive,” I say. “All I can really do is clean up after Halford’s team. I am like a janitor.”
“A useful janitor,” Jellian says.
“It’s nice of you to say so.”
“With an ability like that in your team’s complement, your team will be well prepared for this upcoming competition I’d guess,” Kendon says. “It looks like I was right to assume the competition would be fierce.”
“Your preparations for whatever we are about to undertake must be considerable as well,” Jellian says.
“They are,” Kendon says, smirking as he rises from his chair. “Not that I am going to divulge any of them to you on the eve of the contest.”
“You shame me. Implying that I may be trying to leverage an advantage over my own family,” Jellian says, feigning injury.
“I would shame my mother more if I directly went against her advice and underestimated your competitiveness,” Kendon says. “It has been a genuine pleasure to make your acquaintance Charlene, perhaps we shall meet again out in the field.”
“If it comes to that,” I say, “I hope that you will go easy on me.”
“You, of course,” Kendon bows. “Your brother and his party, never.”
I feel a genuine smile pull at my lips as I incline my head toward the muscular, elven man. “It was a pleasure making an acquaintance of one of Jellian’s relatives,” I say. “If you don’t mind me asking before you go, which of you two is older?”
Both men share a mischievous glance, but keep their lips sealed on the subject.
----------------------------------------
“Come on glowbug, time to get up.” The insistent shaking on my shoulder drags me kicking and screaming out of the sweet bliss of sleep.
“You’re not my mother,” I murmur as I roll away from Bali. Out the window of the room in the hostel where the group has been staying for the last five weeks, a curtain of bluing night announces its lack of sunlight. “What time is it.” I let my eyes close and start to drift back out.
“Don’t make me dump water on you,” Bali says.
“You wouldn’t.” I, with the stubbornness of a mule, curl my legs tight to my chest underneath the woolen blanket. A drip of water splashes against my cheek, and my eyes shoot open. Bali stands over me, hand outstretched over my face. “Fine!” I shout, kicking the blanket off.
Bali grins wickedly as she returns to her own bed in the small living space we have been sharing. No, that isn’t right. I blink and rub the crumbs of sleep from my eyes as I look around at the room illuminated by a lantern resting on the table between us. The room I woke up in was much larger than I remembered, a chest of drawers and two trunks sits against the north wall and an ajar door leads to a small bathing area at the back of the room.
“What?” I ask as I plant naked feet on cool floorboards. “Wait. That’s right. We rented new rooms.”
“You must really have been tired,” Bali says as she uses a comb to loosen the tangles in her hair that have formed overnight.
“I still am,” I say, yawning and stretching the tingling from my arms. “I thought we were getting up at sunrise.”
“No,” Bali corrects. “Your brother wants to leave at sunrise. That means that as soon as the sun is up, he will be knocking on our door, expecting us to be kitted up in five minutes and on our way.”
“I guess that’s fair.” I bend to grab a large jug of water set beneath the table next to my bed. I pour myself a drink as I watch Bali retrieve a sealed container from her bag. Bali opens it and dips her hand inside, coating her fingers in the beige oil that she keeps with her at all times before she runs her hands through the frizz of her hair to conquer it, at least a little bit.
“I think I had too much wine last night,” I say. I finish gulping down my water and start digging through the trunks for my clothes.
“Where I’m from, you wouldn’t be allowed to drink wine at all,” Bali remarks. “Unless you were married of course.” Bali applies a great deal of the oil to the frizz of her hair, weighing down the auburn curls and giving herself the appearance of someone who has just come out of the bath. The one time I had asked Bali to try the hair oil I just ended up just looking like a damp twelve-year-old.
“Then it’s a good thing we are here then.” I find the new change of clothes I had purchased the day before with my pittance of the group’s pay from the last job. They are nice, a practical and thick cotton blouse dyed sky-blue and a new set of leather trousers that don’t smell of marsh water and snake blood. “Did we keep any food?”
“We have field rations,” Bali says. I return her a flat look. “There might also be some fruit in my trunk. Don’t think I bought any jerky last night. I was hoping that there would be enough time this morning to buy fresh food.”
“From the way Halford was carrying on,” I say as I flip the lid on the trunk that holds Bali’s belongings, “we shouldn’t expect too much time before whatever happens, happens.” A ceramic bowl rests atop neatly stacked pieces of hard leather inside the trunk. I pluck a plum from the bowl and savor the sour-sweet taste of the fruit as I take ravenous bites. Bali appears at my shoulder, her long, slender arm reaching past me to grab a sweetpear, which she tosses onto her bed. I move aside as the woman starts to unpack her gear from the trunk, tossing the pieces of hard leather and straps onto the floor as she digs for some underclothes.
I relax back into a half-snooze on my bed while I watch Bali put on a matching set of tough blue clothes before she begins strapping on vambraces, leather leg-guards, and a set of shoulder guards. She takes the hickory-brown leather vest she bought the evening before back to her bed and begins applying oil to its surface. Of all the pieces of armor that Bali had bought on their shopping spree the day before, only the vest holds any kind of enchantment on it. I vaguely recall that it was nearly as impenetrable as steel and would slowly repair itself over time. It doesn’t look all that impressive, the pieces that did were all well out of our price range, but there was a sturdy utility to it that I admire, especially once it had been oiled up a little.
“Will you help me get this on?” Bali asks as she slips the armor piece around her chest.
“Mmmnnnh,” I reply through closed eyelids.
“If you’re like that then I’ll leave you to get that breastplate on all by yourself.”
With an exhausted sigh, I lever myself up from the bed. Bali raises her arm to allow me access to the multiple straps on her side. I cinch them tight and try to shake the vest when I am done, finding it snug on the sandstone woman.
“Your turn,” Bali says.
Looking out the window, the dark expanse of the sky has changed to a navy blue and near the horizon threatens to announce the rising sun. I sigh once more as I kick open my trunk with my foot and pull out the steel breastplate I had bought with the team the day before. It is not enchanted like some of the things that the actual adventures bought, but a solid steel will stop most things from getting at my soft and vital bits. It would have stopped the boiling python. The brass embellishments that rivet the piece of armor with straight, smooth lines was the deciding factor in my decision to spend the majority of my savings on it. Bali helps me fit it in place.
“What’s this?” Bali asks once she had made certain the piece of armor is securely in place. Bali bends into the trunk, pushing aside my pack and boots, and lifts out a small crossbow, the bolt quiver hanging limply off of it.
“I thought that it might be a good idea to get one,” I say, snatching the weapon away from Bali.
“Do you know how to use a crossbow?”
“What’s to know. Point it at the thing you want to shoot and pull the trigger,” I say. I untangle the quiver of the crossbow from the weapon itself and start affixing it to my left thigh.
“I think that there is a bit more to it than that,” Bali says.
“Jacob showed me how to load it,” I say, I fiddle with the leg straps, unable to find a tightness that was both not too uncomfortable while also feeling like the whole thing won’t start sliding down my leg if I run.
“Jacob?”
“The man who runs the fletcher’s shop,” I reply. “He introduced himself to you and Jellian yesterday.”
“I’m awful with names,” Bali says. She tilts her head as the sound of movement in the next room begin to rapidly pound through the floor. “Looks like the boys are up.”
“I guess we get to wait on them today,” I say. I hang the crossbow from a hook on my belt and hold up her arms. “Do I look like an adventurer today?”
“Actually,” Bali says, “if I didn’t know any better, I would say that you do.”
“That was almost a compliment.”
“Come on,” the tall earthspeaker woman says as she slings an arm over my shoulders, “Let’s see if there is anything downstairs to eat before Halford and Kapin can get to it.”
“They do have a bit of a problem sharing food,” I say.
“A bit of a problem!” Bali explodes into laughter as she opens the door to the room and ushers me toward the stairs. “A bit of a problem.”
----------------------------------------
Dawn at the Warehouse is odd. The team is still wiping sleep from our eyes as we trudge through the town toward the adventurer administration building. Inside, all of my suspicions that my brother might be blowing this competition out of proportion fade away as we find twelve other teams of first rankers sitting around in the front room of the Warehouse. A chorus of yawns passes through the assembled every few minutes, followed by muttering conversations, and the sound of sipping sparktea.
“I hate this,” Kapin says, thumping half of his bread loaf against the wooden table, it sounds more as if he were beating the table with an iron bar than food.
“Then maybe you should have woken up early enough to get breakfast,” Bali says.
“You snake,” Kapin mutters as he snaps an end off his bread.
“Here you, big baby.” Halford says, tossing Kapin a handful of cheddar. “Why can’t you ever take care of your own meals?”
“Why should I have to?”
“I think it’s starting,” I say. The others at the table go quiet and turn to me. Around the room there is a general quieting as one-by-one the other tables of young adventurers taste the changing mood in the air--there are eighteen groups in all by now. I sense something before anyone at my table has caught on, but when a powerful spiritual force presses into the room from the hallway I am deaf to it. I watch as each of the adventurers nearest the hall tense, like water has been poured over their back, followed by the adventurers further away, like a wave of tension racing to me and over me, unfelt.
“This is a fourth ranker,” Bali says. I watch mist puff out with each of Bali’s breaths and a shiver shake her. Eyes huge, she watches the door.
“Yes,” Halford says, a manic smile spreading over his face. “This must be it.”
I notice my own breath freezing in the air in front of me, but my body does not feel the least bit of a chill. I blow air into my hand, feeling the sticky-warm condensation wetting my palm.
The door opens.
A pale, delicate hand pulls wide the door to reveal a woman’s silhouette in shadow beyond. As she steps into the room, I realize that I might be experiencing a part of what the first rankers around me do for the first time. A vision of perfected beauty glides into the common room. Hair as blue and clear as the sky floats about her in long waves of an almost luminescent light, blowing in a summer breeze only she knows. Eyes, violet and dangerous, peek out from an alabaster face that has never known the touch of the world, while rose lips smirk at the frozen audience of young men and women before her. She wears a dress that flows like mercury, a shifting play of interwoven scales of metal that cannot decide their place. Her slender fingers move with the dexterity of a goddess, rolling a ball of translucent, purple light about her hand. This is Arabella Willian, and she is ageless.
I want what she has.
As if the wave that had run through the assembled teams of adventurers flows backward with the tide, the tension and shivering leave them. The breath from my own mouth fails to puff into mist, and I note the same was true of those around me.
“Good morning,” Arabella says, and though the woman does not raise her voice, no one fails to hear her. She approaches a stage raised two steps off of the ground floor--usually reserved for local musicians. “I had not really intended to begin until around noon, but seeing as how you young people could not help but come this early, I thought that we might as well get down to business.
“I am Arabella Willian, and I have the great pleasure to announce the Willian Guild’s interest in the first rankers of this territory. You may be far from the major cities, and the monsters and villains this far out may be limited, but we no longer feel that the people of these rural lands should be. The Willian Guild plans to extend to the adventurers here a piece of the advantages that it can offer, in the hopes that when you find yourselves out in the greater world one day you might remember us.” Arabella paused and began to applaud. The teams arrayed before her stayed silent and still, while she beamed down the smile of an angel at them.
“That, unfortunately for those of you here today, will not be happening for some years to come. I am here ahead of that kind of major operation to see if bringing our resources this far away will be worth it for the guild. I have reason to believe that it will be.
“Undoubtedly, all of you are gathered here today because of the job notice that was posted a few weeks ago. Everything in the notice was true of course, but I am here to elucidate the details.”
The ball of purple light which Arabella plays with leaps away from her hand. I watch, opened mouthed, as the ball expands in the air, forming an image that floats in the air just to Arabella’s right. Arabella gestures with two fingers and the image resolves into the violet outline of a mountain that slowly rotates.
“I was assured that you locals would recognize this mountain, if only because you were warned as children to stay away,” Arabella says.
“The Green Mountain,” a woman a few tables ahead of me says, not realizing that in the deadly quiet of the room she can be heard by everyone. As eyes turn on the woman, she groans and buries her head in her arms.
“That is right,” Arabella says, taking the attention back. “The grounds that this competition will be held on is the slopes of the Green Mountain. The magical matrix in this territory has detected the spawning of an azure rabbit somewhere on the slopes of the mountain. While they may sound and look cute, azure rabbits are nothing to let your guard down around. They begin as rank one monsters, and in the higher reaches of the rank ones at that. The only issue is that as time passes and as azure rabbits eat all the life around them, they absorb magic from the firmament and convert that into permanent boosts to some attribute of theirs. An azure rabbit of strength might become strong enough to blow apart mountains with its hopping, one of speed might get to the point where it can outrace lightning, and, gods forbid, if it begins accruing strength of spirit, it can become almost unstoppable. For those of you who know the term, it is a growth monster, and one that eats other monsters at that.
“For those of you whom did not grow up with the warning folktales of the natives, the land around the Green Mountain is prone to constant mudslides during the rainy season, and when its dry you need to scale sharp and sheer cliffs to make it to the lip where trees begin to grow. Given the dangers of reaching the mountain proper, the monsters that spawn there have gone largely unculled by the adventurer's guild here. I have confirmed, using the arcane matrix, that the azure rabbit is not the only rank one monster on that mountain, but it is the only one with the potential to grow out of hand before anyone can deal with it.
“The rules of this competition are simple.” Arabella snapped her hand closed, and the rotating image of the mountain vanished. “The first team to kill the azure rabbit will receive ten ounces of gold and six runes of attunement; I have brought an assortment with me so you will have your pick. If you really manage to impress me, I have been authorized with inducting individuals into the Willian Guild, and if you do not know how big of a deal that is, we must regularly turn down the sons of barons, counts, and even dukes when they do not meet our high standards.”
Arabella motions toward the back of the room. Every head swivels to follow her gesture. Twenty or more women, ranging from young to old, but all wearing the same blue habits, stand with rapt attention. “These women will be the overseers of this competition to make certain that everything is carried out in a fair manner. We do not wish to see young adventurers turning their powers on each other out there, that will weigh heavily on my opinions.
“Now,” Arabella claps her hands, bringing the attention back to her. “Allow me to officially announce the commencement of the competition. Does anyone have any questions?”
The room erupts into motion.