Lilly was at home, bustling round the kitchen cleaning and generally distracting herself. I found her mopping the floor. The water in the bucket was clean. Too clean for the floor to have needed mopping.
“You came home. I was worried for a while there. Jessie sent a boy to let me know that you ran for the bell. Don’t scare me like that.”
I stood in the doorway of the kitchen, watching the tension ease out of her.
“I’m sorry you were worried. It’s been a busy day,” I said after a moment.
“Have a seat. You look worn out. I will make tea.”
I put down the robe and staff on the table, and took a seat, letting the comfort of home remind me that nothing had really changed. All the way back I felt disconnected, as if my world had been rocked, but just being here in this run down home put that to rest. The chipped mug put in front of me brought fragrant steam to my nose, clearing the lingering goblin stench. My hands wrapped around it almost of their own accord, taking the comforting heat into them.
“Tell me what happened?” Granny Lilly asked. I couldn’t refuse her, and it wasn’t all bad.
So I did. She sat there listening, nodding along in places. Then she stopped me when I mentioned my headache and generally feeling ill.
“You are talking about a dungeon sickness. It’s the mana, but it shouldn’t have happened. You only went to the first floor?”
“There only was one. We couldn’t find another and the lair shook when we cleared the first floor.”
“Something is off. Dungeon sickness doesn’t happen in an afternoon in a single floor lair. You’d need to be there for days, or be deeper.”
“It felt wrong, Lilly. Each room the pressure grew. It was as if we did go deeper with each room.”
“Huh. This is something to think about. Nothing about this is sitting right. There shouldn’t have been a goblin lair undetected so close to the town. It should have had multiple floors; goblins don’t spawn on the first level. This heart was too big for the type of lair. And you got sick. Did anyone else?”
“No it was just me. Ilsa was fine. The Clearers mentioned dungeon sickness and so did Ilsa. The sun helped.”
“Of course it did. Mana breaks down in the sun. You took a dose that was too big. You don’t have the resistance yet. But that will come, most new adventurers get sick a few times. It just part of the life. You mentioned going to the guild. Did you grade up?”
“Well, not quite. Came close. My Strength, Constitution, and Agility are all E. Dexterity is F. And my Intelligence and Wisdom are both G+. I even have skills.”
“Skills should take longer, but I guess we shouldn’t complain. You do know your stats don’t reflect your actual physical ability just yet?”
“I noticed that I haven’t changed, just grades on the card.”
“Yes. That is it. You will but even the gods aren’t going to change the simple rules of biology for you. Changes take time, and work. You have pushed hard enough to increase your grades but food and rest are needed now. We can work on your skills tomorrow. But right now, I’m going to feed you and send you to sleep off your sickness.” She got up and readied the stove. It looked like I was going to be eating eggs.
“Why is everyone being so weird about the lair? I don’t understand the problem.”
“You know the lairs and dungeons are caused by one of the gods?”
“No. I thought it was just how it is.”
“Looks like tomorrow you are going to the temple. You need to hear this from a priest.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s been a long time since I heard it and might miss something out. But this is why everyone is being weird, as you put it, about the lair. Something is not right about this. It breaks too many of the rules.”
“Before you herd me to bed, I have something to give you.” I reached into my pouch and pulled out the coin, the gold glittering brightly in my hand.
“What?” She said, turning back from the stove. Her eyes caught the gleaming treasure in my palm. “How did you get gold? Is it real?”
“I sold the heart at the guild. Master Kerril paid top price for it. Is this enough to fix this place up a bit?”
“More than enough. And more than I dreamed you would be able to pull in for a long time. I will get started on it while you eat.” She turned back to stir the eggs, before they burnt.
She served me up a big plate of scrambled eggs and left me after I took my first bite. They were hot and filling, if not exactly tasty.
I left my plate in the sink, and went up to bed. I did feel rough, tired and worn thin in ways that I wasn’t used to.
But I couldn’t sleep. The mystery of the lair that everyone went on about confused me and spun around in my head. What could it be that scared everyone? Was it something really bad coming for us? It was more than I knew but I would have to find out. There were many more capable but few were so directly involved. The lingering sickness filled my muscles with energy, twitching and aching. My head throbbed with not pain, but something and my eyes danced behind my eyelids, threating to open. But eventually I drifted into something enough like sleep that I lost track of the time. I could feel the mana seeping out of my body, slowly leaching away. It was like blood leaving drop by drop taking with it my energy. It hung in the air around me, tainted with anger and violence, like the goblins. If anything it felt like I was back in the lair, minus the music, whatever caused that. Each drop sizzled in my flesh, changing me, and I could feel it like worms beneath my skin, wriggling, consuming, and leaving me altered and weak.
The diffuse light of the cloudy sky drifted through my window, grey and bleak. It matched the mood that hung over me with the sickness and taint of my recent experience. I forced myself to get up and move, even when my head spun at every moment. Standing took more effort than it should have, but I was faster, just a touch. My reactions felt smoother and sharper, each on crisp as I compensated for the unexpected speed and landed in a heap. Note to self: be careful when stats increase.
This must be what Lily was on about, it taking time to get used to it. While I was faster, it wasn’t natural. That should ease as I got used to it. Much like when I went through a growth spurt and had to deal with what felt like an extra inch of height overnight. Man, that was rough and I was clumsy for a long while as everything felt both further away and closer to match the increased distance from the ground and the longer limbs.
Picking myself up with more care I tried to assess how much I had changed. Physically I looked the same. Young, slim, and far too frail for the task of adventuring. Inside my head I could feel something hovering under my skin, diffuse and murky. That must have been the mana, or was that magic now that it was in my body? It hung in lines, if I was imaginative, along my limbs, through my core and up my spine. Slight tremors in the diffuse stuff matched the movements that I made. A pulse as I moved an arm or a leg. Something less as I moved a finger. Maybe it was just for large movements. Agility was speed and Dexterity was finesse, maybe. So it would follow that an increase in my Agility only affected larger movements.
I was stronger too. But that was harder to feel. I felt lighter as if the weight of me was less strain. I guess, I would find out when I trained, that’s when any increases would shine through better than this awkward assessment with nothing to measure it against.
I tried to put it out of mind for now as I recalled that I was supposed to go to the temple today and hopefully find out what was with all the weirdness. And I was really going to have to figure out something else to call it rather than weirdness. Not the most easily explained term. But then none of this was easily explained.
Once I was down stairs I noticed that there were people in the house. Work people by the looks of their rough clothes. I must have been foggier than I thought to miss the sounds of hammers and saws while I was upstairs. Thankfully, I wasn’t going to outside the warding today, where the same fogginess could get me killed.
Lilly was in the kitchen, small though it was, directing the teams of workers through what I could only guess was the foreman.
“I want this wall knocking down and the new stove placing against the new wall about three feet beyond this one. We have the space to really expand and we will. Oh, Graey,” She called me as she noticed me standing in the door way. “Don’t mind the mess. I made some breakfast for you. It will be cold. Sorry about that but the stove is out of action for a little while. You slept longer than I expected. How do you like the changes?”
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I took a moment to consider the changes. Everything was covered in a layer of dust and sawdust so it made it hard to make out. But men were pulling up floorboards and replacing them. Others worked on the walls, stripping the panelling and plaster to expose the bare bricks that made up all the homes in this part of town. I caught glimmers of magic in the hands of some of the workers, doing… something.
“Looks good. What is actually changing?”
“Well, my husband, Gods rest his soul, drew up some plans to make this a perfect place to teach and train adventurers. Unfortunately, those plans never got put to use other than some basics. So, eventually, when everything is done, we will have a training area for combat, a full kitchen, a workshop for crafts, a library for mages, a fully stocked alchemy lab and apothecary bench. An enchanters desk and so much more. This place has all the arcane workings to be great, he saw to that before we retired. It was a dream of his, and mine to train the next generation to fight the war better than any that has gone before. You are going to be the start of that, Graey.”
I blinked. That was a lot, with a corresponding cost. A few gold coins would get it started but the library alone would cost several thousand.
“I know its going to be expensive and I cant expect you to provide everything, but we can get started and prioritise what we need first. So its going to be kitchens and the combat area first and the rest will come as we get more funds.”
“Its more than I ever expected. I guess, I lucked out when you took me in.”
Lily beamed at the compliment. “That you did. More than you knew. And I got lucky finding you. I had given up on this before you came along. Now, eat your breakfast. You have to get to the temple today.”
I nodded and grabbed the covered bowl that lily passed me. It was nothing special, some cold hard boiled eggs and some toasted bread, but it settled my stomach and calmed the muddle in my head. It was welcome even if it was cold.
The temple didn’t dominate the centre of town like I heard it did in others. Here we had the main guilds in the square. It was tucked out of the way just behind the adventure’s guild in a small, unimposing white stone building. I don’t really know what I was expecting but I was disappointed nonetheless.
Walking through the peeling wooden doors I was struck by how much light streamed in through the glass window in the celling. Okay, this was more like it. I stepped through thick golden light, in stark contrast to the cloudy weather. Magic? Or something less common? I didn’t know but it was nice and warm, comforting like being wrapped in the arms of my mother before she died. I was at peace here. And distracted. So distracted that the arrival of a priestess by my side went unnoticed until she spoke.
“Takes everyone like that the first time. This is your first time here, isn’t it? She asked.
I could do nothing more than nod, struck dumb by the shock of her being so close. Tearing my attention away from the comforting light I looked to her.
She was young, like so was I but with her it was more than just age. She felt young. Her voice vibrated with compassion and humour. Her pale green eyes glowed with reflected light and a gentle smile hung upon her face, giving her dimples. Her blonde hair was severely tied up in a tight tail but strands escaped to dangle in her face, catching the corner of her mouth.
“Good. It’s been ages since I’ve been able to welcome someone new. You have the look of an adventurer and we just don’t get many of them as they are so busy fighting the war or glorying in their gods given strength.”
“It’s not just gods given though. They work for it,” I said.
“Well, that is their point, but it is given by the gods to fight the dungeons spread. Otherwise they would be stuck at mortal levels of strength. There would be no breaking stone with their bare hands or calling down lighting for them if that was the case now, would it?”
“I guess not. Although I have heard that magic is a natural talent. So even without the gods and the status cards we could work to get spells.”
“Pish. That talent comes from the gods. Let me tell you a story, and you can decide for yourself.”
I thought about it for a moment. This is what I came here for, and it would be rude to just ignore her.
“Okay.”
“Great. Let’s take a seat then and I will tell you a story they don’t tell baby adventurer’s.” She gestured to the pews that were arranged in lines on either side of the room. They had seen better days, like everything here, I noticed as I sat down and felt rough patches where the varnish had peeled off, or been picked by bored members of the congregation, if there even were any.
“Right, back when this world was made, the gods each had a role. One made the seas and one the land and one the sky. Another made the plants, and another the animals. Another made thinking beings, the elves and the dwarfs and the orcs and the men. Each had a role.
Except one. They were jealous of the creations of the others so they cast their jealousy down on the peoples of this world. They made mana. And with mana everything changed.
The gentle peoples of this world were struck down with sickness. Animals and plants changed into monsters and certain areas spawned more and more of these monsters.
The gods saw what the other had done and despaired for their creations suffered, but even though they were many they had not the power to undo what was done. They created, they changed, they could not destroy unless it was together. So they sentenced the other to remain trapped in the core of their creation. Together they bound them with chains of light and stone, and they remain there to this day. But this binding is the source of mana, and why it gets thicker and stronger the deeper within a dungeon or lair you go.
The other seeks to escape. With their dungeons they dig deeper and deeper, each layer getting closer to their prison.
Knowing that a prison wasn’t enough, the gods wrought more changes upon this world and us. They gave us the power to absorb the mana and use it for our own purposes. They made the sunlight destroy mana to prevent sickness. They gave us skills and strengths to fight against the creep and claim the land back for ourselves. And they gave us their blessing in the home that we can do what they cannot. Since then they have not been seen or heard from but we can feel them in the touch of light or in the strength of each other as we stand in parties fighting.”
She looked at me expectantly.
I didn’t really have anything to say to the story just yet. It was interested and something that I hadn’t really heard all in one place. There were a few mentions of what the dungeons were or why we could upgrade our stats but it was nothing like this and my first instinct was to dismiss all of it. It just sounded too neat and tidy to be true. As if the first priests needed someone to blame for the dungeons and mana sickness back before we figured out warding. But enough rang true with things like the party blessing that I couldn’t do that.
“So the dungeons are the other god’s attempts to free themselves?” I asked.
“You don’t believe it?”
My scepticism must have bled through.
“I didn’t say that. I honestly have no idea why there are lairs and dungeons. It just seems odd that they start on the surface and get deeper. Wouldn’t they start at the bottom and work up?”
She smiled at that. “I asked the same question. I was told that there is a reason for that. That they need to connect to the surface first because of the changes the gods made. That the path the mana takes needs to have an escape before it can cut deeper. It’s not in the pooling of the mana but its flow that the path is made. Like lightning, we can only see the path from the sky to the earth but the first comes from the earth to the sky.”
I guess, that made sense in a way. It was something I would need to think on, but it didn’t really help me with the current issues.
“Okay. So how about if I told you that I was in a lair that only had one floor but each room felt deeper than the next?”
“I would say you are lying. But someone else came this morning about the goblin lair. I thought they were lying or mistaken, so I sent them away. Now that you have said the same thing, I feel I own her an apology.”
“Can you tell me about the party blessing, please?”
“The gods love us and wish us to do well but are limited in what they can do to aid us. One of our greatest strengths is the ability to work together. We need to from the moment we are born. Just as creating life takes more than a single person, our best qualities come through when working with others, for others. The party blessing is the epitome of this, a grace given to those that work together, and to guide them in working better together. It is stronger for those that work in small groups and for long periods of time. Just as you grow closer to your team mates, the blessing grows, giving greater bonuses to your effort. For those that work in large groups the blessing is more varied, giving flexibility equal to the composition of the party.”
“Right, so working with the same people over and over again gives more. But working with larger groups changes what the blessing gives?”
“Yes and no. I’m just a junior priestess. I don’t have a huge amount of experience with parties. I know what I have been taught. The temple has its own party blessing as all priests work as one to help in the war against the other god. We get good bonuses to learning related skills and to intelligence and faith stats. What an adventurer would get depends on the party composition and even beyond that what each member brings to the team. If you had lots of skills and experience you might get a wider variety of bonuses or great bonuses in a few areas. Its complex.”
“I thought it might be. Thank you for your help. I have one more question, well two.”
“Feel free to ask. It’s what we are here for, after all.”
My first one is what is your name? I feel incredibly rude for having such a long conversation with you without knowing. I’m Graey Thorn by the way.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I was so excited to be able to tell the story to someone new. It must have slipped my mind. Nice to meet you Graey, I’m Cynthia Foundling.” She met my gaze at the mention of her surname.
An orphan, likely left in the care of the temple. If they did such things. She would find no pity from me, I had my own issues.
“And my second question is learning skills and readings performed here. I’ve heard and experienced that it is possible to learn skills and upgrade stats without an adventurer’s card. Also that learning them properly confers greater advantages. Could you tell me anything about it?”
“That is even more complex than the blessing. The gods acknowledge a certain level of skill and give an extra something to products of it as well as the bearer. While the same is given to those skills learned through the use of a skill book, it is not of the same quality. The gods reward hard work. The upgraded stats come from the skills themselves. Certain skills lending themselves to such traits. For instance, blacksmithing involves lifting a hammer all day, in the heat, so stats such as Strength and Constitution would naturally increase. That is about the limits of my knowledge on the matter. Someone higher in the faith may be able to tell you more, but they are difficult to arrange to see.”
It made sense. Far more sense than I would have thought, given that it was cloaked in the faith in gods that hadn’t been seen since the dawn of life. But before the adventurer’s guild it was likely the temples that guided adventurers.
“Thank you, Cynthia. I’m sorry to have disturbed your day and will leave you in peace now.”
“You are always welcome here, Graey. Please do come again. As you can see, its quiet here, and there isn’t too much to do.”
I waved my goodbye and left. I had much to think about.