Ranthia’s plan for the day was to visit the Adventurer’s Guild to finally figure out what she needed to do about her team registration now that it was just… her. It was a plan that summoned tears when she realized that she needed to get it done. But it had to be done.
She had seen in the mirror that she had a nasty bruise across her chin, dark and ugly. She had suffered worse though, and really, she only barely felt it. She was still conscious of the stares she got from the employees and other tenants of the Owl’s Sanctum while she made her exit after she got dressed.
Then while she was in line at a food stall nearby that was selling bowls of scrambled egg with cheese and spicy sausage, a member of the city guard approached her and ushered her out of line. Warily, she followed the man somewhere out of the way.
“Ma’am, apologies, but I needed to check: did your husband do this to you?” The guardsman asked.
It took a surprising amount of willpower to clamp down on her urge to laugh.
“No, I’m not married. I’m an Adventurer and—”
In the span of a moment the guard’s face turned from concerned to a derisive scowl.
“Guilded or not, you can’t be starting fights.” The man seemed to be working himself up to a full-blown rant.
What on Pallos was with guards and their absurd conclusions?!
“Good to know Ariminum’s finest protectors train so gently they never bruise.” Ranthia snapped icily before she stormed off.
The man had the sense to not pursue her, at least. Grudgingly, Ranthia passed the stand with the heavenly smelling food and changed course for the day. It was clear that she needed some cosmetics if she was going to get through the day without cutting someone.
“Oh my goddess, what happened to you?! I know you did dangerous work, but that looks so painful!” Hexara gasped as soon as she arrived in the lobby to greet her client.
Ranthia groused.
“It was a training accident and it’s not that bad, but I need it concealed so people stop giving me a hard time over it.” Ranthia explained.
The young woman at the counter was doing her best to look like she wasn’t paying attention, but the bemused grin on her face spoke volumes.
“A training accident… right…” Hexara repeated in a plainly unconvinced tone while she beckoned Ranthia to follow her back.
Ranthia just quietly followed her girlfriend until she was sat in Hexara’s chair, just the two of them in the small room.
“You sure it won’t hurt you too much when I put the cosmetics on you?” Hexara asked concernedly.
“Babe, do I need to pin you against the wall and make out with you for a while to convince you I’m not badly hurt?” Ranthia retorted in a playful tone.
“Yes. Oh! Er, I mean no! I’ve got another customer that should be arriving soon and…!”
Ranthia reveled in her girlfriend’s flustered expression and reaction before she sighed and leaned back in the chair. As much as she wanted to push her luck, she didn’t want to get Hexara in trouble. The job seemed to be very important to her girlfriend, given how proud she had sounded when she talked about getting it.
Hexara composed herself and carefully prepped the necessary cosmetics.
“As much as I enjoy the extra business and more opportunities to see you, I really need to work on teaching you to apply your own cosmetics.” The woman noted while she began to work on Ranthia.
“Oh my, are you inviting me to your home for some private one-on-one time?” Ranthia teased.
“You…! Just keep your [Sexy] lips shut and hold still.” Hexara chided with a light blush while she worked.
It required a thicker layer of makeup than Ranthia preferred, but the bruise was concealed to the point that it was hard to discern even when she looked for it. Even better, the cosmetics had been applied swiftly, between Hexara’s experienced hand and her Skills.
And, of course, the best bit was yet another Skill level.
[*ding!* [Sexy] has reached level 84!]
The skill was clearly just as obsessed with Hexara as Ranthia was.
Ranthia was impatient to resume flirting though.
“As amazing a job as ever! I can’t wait to find out what else your fingers can do when I finally get that promised second date.” Ranthia rewarded her girlfriend with a quick, careful kiss. Hexara might literally murder her if she ruined her makeup immediately.
“Girl, you are trouble!” Hexara barely managed to get the words out before she expelled her embarrassment with a laugh.
Ranthia just waited patiently, with a smile on her face. Which was a small miracle, given that on the inside she was a complete knot of nerves as she worried about whether she was being too pushy or if Hexara was still interested or…
“Well, my next day off is in four days…” Hexara offered, with a smile.
YES!
“How about this, in three days I’ll stop by your place just after sunset with food and wine, that way we have a bit more time together?” Ranthia countered, mostly failing in her effort to keep a silly grin off her face.
Hexara considered the offer for a moment, before she smiled—widely!— and nodded.
“It’s a date!”
Ranthia left the salon in a great mood. She was forced to cling, desperately, to that high while she dealt with the Adventurer’s Guild.
The task was depressing enough, codifying the deaths of Tatius and Pupius and reducing her Adventurer status from a team to an individual. But what proved to be worse was her own confidence. When she was offered the opportunity to update the scroll herself, she took it.
Sure, she needed to ask about some of the words on it. Yes, she had to guess at how to write a few things that she needed to. But she could read and write! Sardonia’s Guildmaster had taught her well, even if they hadn’t met as often or as long as he would have preferred.
“B-Ranked Adventurer Ranthia, please consider attending the reading and writing lessons that I and the other clerks offer to our Adventurers every other day at antemeridianum tempus.” The clerk had said, shortly after he began to review her scrollwork.
Ranthia was still fuming about it when she left. They hadn’t insisted she attend or anything, just… emphatically encouraged it. She wasn’t even expected to attend every lesson, just those she could work into her schedule. As if she didn’t have better things to do with her amorphous pre-lunch period of her day!
Realistically, she knew she was being ridiculous and that she shouldn’t have developed quite so much pride in her ability to read and write. She knew, deep down, that she still struggled sometimes with it. [Fast Learner] appreciated the tedium, but Ranthia still hated just sitting still and learning. She preferred to be in motion.
Still, she was cranky. Which meant she needed to do something fun.
And, well, she had wanted to get some additional income going…
Realistically, there were Adventurer jobs she could take without any functional armor. In-city investigations, the inevitable pile of chores that somehow ended up on job boards, and even certain mundane security detail jobs that called for less obvious muscle. In practice, Ranthia wasn’t about to take a job without her armor. Danger liked to crop up without warning, after all.
This left her with a final option, one that she hadn’t indulged in since the last time she and Pupius had snuck out after Tatius had settled down for the night.
Gambling!
Gambling in Remus often took one of two forms. The first were the games of skill, which were fun to watch but terrible for actual gambling since usually whoever was at the highest level with a relevant class won every single time. [Divine-Touched Identify] gave Ranthia an incredible edge for that sort, but she personally lacked any classes that gave her much of an edge in any of the skill-based games that were popular. And passively gambling on the feats of others was wildly disinteresting for her.
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The second were games of chance. Games where Skills shouldn’t directly intervene on the odds of success, like dice or animal fights. And yes, the operative word there was ‘shouldn’t’. Skills designed to cheat at games of chance—in addition to more mundane efforts—weren’t exactly uncommon, but that was just knowing how to pick your table.
A knife placed on a table—or in enough of a dive, impaled into the table—was a threat that cheaters that got caught would be attacked. Of course, that led to the commonplace issue where cheaters would put their own knife on the table and sit with their friends to scam unwitting victims, but Pupius had taught her a simple way to combat that problem.
Ranthia strolled into a decently seedy tavern and, after perusing her options, found the table that she intended to join. It was a bit of a wait until one of the men got up from the table in a huff, but she slipped into the abandoned chair and set her own knives on the table.
Typically, only the one who owned the dice bothered, but there was no rule that prevented those who joined from piling on the threat. One of the men, the only one that had a level less than a hundred, looked hard at her before he paled slightly and quickly got up. The other two laughed, and the coward was soon replaced by another.
Tali was Ranthia’s favorite game. Each player had four long four-sided bone dice with 1, 4, 5, and 8 on each face. There were only four possible rolls that mattered: All 1’s, a dog, was the worst roll that required the player to add four times the table minimum (6 coins, for this game, thus 24) to the pot; all 4’s (the crow) or all 8’s (the dove) required the player to add two times the table minimum (here, 12) coins to the pot; a single 5 with at least two other dice showing the same face (the gods’ eye) required the player to add the table minimum (6) coins to the pot; and when someone(s) inevitably rolled the Guardian (a 1, 4, 5, and 8) they got the pot. Any other roll had no effect. The table also added the rule, if two or more received the pot, they had to duel—adding to the pot—until one of them took it.
Tatius had been the one to teach Ranthia to play, not that he approved of her gambling, he had intended it just as a way to pass time when they were together. Pupius taught her how to spot cheaters (and, yes, several different ways to cheat). Sometimes she swore she could almost hear the men once the game got underway.
The pot built up rapidly, but Ranthia became increasingly certain with every hand that the dealer was cheating. The question was how. She needed to figure out his trick before she could confront him, else she’d look like a fool to those uninvolved.
Every throw of the dice, he moved his hand oddly while he threw them—only for a single instant—and the man got the god’s eye almost every single time. [Laborer – Wood] level 113 and [Laborer – Earth] level 63 weren’t exactly classes or elements that screamed cheating (it wasn’t like he had Gravity, Mirage, Wind, or Gale) and he wasn’t a [Mage] which meant it was fairly unlikely that he could directly manipulate the dice or the table—though Ranthia had no idea if Earth could manipulate bone either way.
The minor loss almost every single time was the most damning thing about it, in Ranthia’s eyes. As Pupius had once put it: A stupid cheater won every single hand and ended up knifed over a paltry sum. A slightly more intelligent—though still stupid—cheater had rolls that resulted in nothing until they won big, at which point they got knifed. A smart cheater had minorly bad luck consistently until their luck suddenly changed for a big pay-out.
It drove Ranthia nuts—especially because she just knew Pupius would have caught on to the man’s methods by then—but finally after a few more rounds Ranthia figured out the man’s trick. The dice weren’t properly balanced, each finger length die had more weight on the 1 face—the side opposite to the 5. The odd hand movement was because he was letting three of the four dice leave his hand then flicked the final up a bit, to make the odds of getting at least one 5 all but certain.
Honestly, she really should have noticed sooner! It wasn’t even that clever of a trick.
Ranthia briefly considered confronting the man—there was only two people in the tavern that out-leveled her, and one of them was just an [Artisan] that was already incredibly drunk complaining to the bartender about some sort of art project that wasn’t going well and his displeased patron. She was reasonably certain that even if it became a brawl, she’d be safe enough.
…At least until the guards came. The thought immediately cooled her eagerness for a fight.
Grudgingly, Ranthia decided to play it out instead. After all, the cheat was simple enough with just a bit of dexterity.
And she had far more than a bit of dexterity. Which meant she had everything she needed to negate the trick.
Ranthia began to flick her dice forward, while she put on airs about being excited about how large the pot had gotten. Yes, she could earn more from a good B-ranked job, but it wasn’t like anyone else at her table was an Adventurer. The sum was a small fortune to most people in Remus.
The dice were painted for each player, so there was no risk that her green would get mistaken for the dealer’s black. Not even when she sniped the black die—the one that the man flicked upward—out of the air every single hand.
The man was visibly frustrated but couldn’t do much complaining since the dice still all landed on the table—she was careful to not use too much force after all. The game continued while he tried every tactic that he could to protect his precious rigged toss, but the game required them to all throw at more-or-less the same time. If he delayed until her dice were on the table, it would have made him look suspect.
Honestly, it was kind of fun. The man was infuriated but he couldn’t do anything about it. No matter what he did, Ranthia countered it effortlessly. And he couldn’t even confront her, since all she was doing was erasing his own efforts to cheat!
Pupius would have loved it. Not that it was even remotely the right opportunity to let herself get emotional.
And then, by absolute fluke, Ranthia and the dealer each got a Guardian on the same hand. One of the men cursed and left the table, but a small crowd had gathered to watch what would happen.
“Looks like it’s a duel then, shall we?” Ranthia asked smugly, while she flicked her middle finger lightly within plain view of the man. Then she looked meaningfully down at her knives on the table.
It was meant as a challenge, to show him that she already knew his trick.
Or maybe she was hoping he’d go for a more literal duel. If he started it, she was much more confident about her ability to get away with sending him to a [Healer] (or a funeral pyre, whichever way the odds fell).
The man eyed her and glanced at his own knife, weighing his odds. It was a fair bet that he didn’t have [Identify], most people that never left the city seemed to avoid taking it or any skill like it. Ranthia always felt like it was beyond reckless to remain ignorant about how powerful any given individual that you pissed off might be, but stable societies tended to make people ignorant about dangers. They put their trust in guards and walls and acted as if they were untouchable.
Up until they did something stupid like trying to attack an Adventurer that significantly out leveled them, just because she seemed young.
(Un?)fortunately, the man found some measure of sense.
“We’ll see who the gods of fate and chaos favor.” He grumbled.
Ranthia successfully kept herself from laughing, and they began to play. Both threw fairly, with enough forward momentum to offset the minor weight on the dice. Ranthia got a dog while he got nothing, the pot grew. Both got nothing. Crow and dove each, the pot grew a bit more. Nothing. Nothing. Ranthia got the gods’ eye, and the pot grew a tiny bit larger.
Ranthia was mostly certain that she’d gracefully accept things if he won, but with Xaoc invoked…
…She wasn’t even slightly surprised when she won.
Ranthia whooped and snatched up the wooden bowl the instant the outcome was solidified. A few people offered congratulations, and the crowd waited to see how generous the winner would be. The dealer glared, but wisely chose to pack up his dice and make his exit.
Ranthia was not stupidly generous—buying a round for the crowd would have eaten almost her entire profit, after all—and instead waited for another game to start up. She didn’t have to wait long.
She really should have quit while she was ahead. Ranthia lost the next two games, then won a tiny pot (whoo, 3 coins). Admittedly, it reminded her of the time Pupius had excitedly pulled a winning hand on the very first round… only to realize that no one had thrown a hand that required them to add to the pot. He won nothing, and Ranthia enthusiastically mocked him for days.
The memory brought a smile to her face and tears to her eyes. She decided that marked a great time to depart the tavern, even with only a very small profit. It had been fun, and she hadn’t actually lost money, at least.
But it had gotten late, and she needed an opportunity to be emotional until she was finally impatient enough to try her dance practice again (without sandals on her feet!).
The next morning, Ranthia enjoyed the breakfast she had been denied the previous morning, before she hit the baths. After that was shopping for some more of the cheap men’s tunics she favored, then after she dropped off her purchases, she—oh so grudgingly—attended one of the reading and writing training groups.
[*ding!* [Fast Learner] has reached level 84!]
Oh, just what she wanted. Incentive.
Ugh!
Ranthia was nervous about her pending date and still kind of avoiding life. Had she actually been honest with herself, she would have acknowledged the fact that she was using the wait for her armor to put off… well, pretty much everything.
She had even decided to avoid trying to find opportunities for chaos until she had her armor, not that one had anything to do with the other unless things went profoundly wrong.
Instead, Ranthia threw herself into training as a distraction. She trained [Image Recall] by day and her dance moves or knife combat by night, occasionally mixing it up with using her mirror images. The levels came slowly, but she made headway.
Ranthia had promised food and wine, but she actually had no idea what sort of wine Hexara favored. Ranthia was well aware that the wine she preferred tended to be considered low quality and undesirable by most, since she preferred the least sweet reds that she could find.
The season provided a good solution though. Ranthia bought two jugs, one with a popular sweet red, the other a cheap watery wine meant to be seasoned and mulled over a fire or stove. It wasn’t exactly cold, but winter was setting in and that provided a great excuse, plus it felt like every eighth stall was selling pouches of seasonings meant for mulled wine.
Beyond that Ranthia loaded up the basket she had bought with a few loaves of bread and other foods that would keep for a couple of days and didn’t need to be cooked until, at last, the sun was setting, and she was ready to head over to Hexara’s place.
Ranthia was nervous, but excited. Hexara probably was too, since she answered mere moments after Ranthia knocked at her door.
“Hey. …What’s all this?!” Hexara was immediately distracted by the basket filled with snacks and food.
“Well, you mentioned that you had only a very small wood burning stove, so I wanted to bring easy food we could share while I was over. No cooking or leaving the house required.” Ranthia answered, suddenly shy.
Hexara’s face reddened a little at the implication, but she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the taller, younger woman. Ranthia transferred the basket to a single hand, then wrapped her newly freed arm around her girlfriend.
The two kissed.
And they continued to kiss, with escalating passions, until they backed into Hexara’s home and slammed the door shut behind them.