“This the one?” A loud, gruff voice sounded out from the bearded man before Arik. It carried a heavy Hulendorian accent, which was odd as he was supposed to be from Wendown. His body was covered with rippling muscles and scar tissue, and his head was bald save for the mass of brown facial hair across his face.
“Ah, yes.” Mr. Lapenbaum wrinkled his nose. “It’s good to see you, John. Less good to smell you.” The second comment was muttered under his breath.
“Aha! You too, Khrissy!”
Lapenbaum’s face morphed into a scowl. “Would you mind telling us more about your… ‘Spartan Citadel,’ Johnseph Girillen?”
Johnseph scowled right back. “I told you not to use my full name, Khris.”
“And you know I don’t like being called Khrissy! Now, spill it already, you’re late and I’m supposed to be teaching the younger kids in another hour.”
“Fine, fine,” the Journeyman said. “Well, there’s not really much to know. We’re the Spartan Citadel, named after our founder, Leo Spartan. Sadly, he died a year before the project went public, but we chose to honor him by naming it after him.” A moment of silence passed. “Anyways, his idea was that the crown could fund a project that taught Journeymen and intersoldiers how to act and properly hunt monsters. Etiquette and stuff, y’know. Make sure that they don’t go around Full Murderhobo-ing the moment they get their licenses. It’s really Something to see.”
Ignoring the fact that John had found a way to capitalize words in his speech, Lapenbaum continued his interrogation. “And it’s safe?”
“Oh, absolutely. Well, mostly. There is reduced risk of dismemberment.” Lapenbaum gave him a hard look. “Yes, yes, it’s safe. He’ll be with experienced Journeymen for most of his stay, and there are healers if he gets hurt.”
Shaper Lapenbaum looked at Arik for a while. “You’re sure about this, kid?”
The boy bit his lip. Sounds pretty risky. Do I really want to do this? He thought himself pretty tough, but Arik was no masochist. He said it was mostly safe. “What are the chances of me dying at this Citadel of yours?”
John waved a hand in the air. “Negligible.”
“And what is that supposed to mean, idiot?” The Shaper’s scowl grew even deeper.
“Ey, don’t be so feisty. I just mean that the only way he dies in the Citadel proper is by being especially stupid and not following orders while in an internship or outing of some kind. The only time when you might even really be in danger is if you’re in a club that deals with Beasts and your advisor is an idiot.”
“If I were to participate in one of those, what odds would you give for me dying?” Is this really worth it? Sounds good so far.
“Eh, maybe one in a thousand?”
Lapenbaum sucked in a breath and glanced at Arik. “That’s still pretty bad.”
“Not really. We anticipate there to be at most a hundred students who will be around Beasts. They’ll be around Journeymen the whole time. Even if he’s in the most dangerous clubs and classes, he’ll be fine, unless he tries to solo an entire DEL by himself. Nothing you’ll have to worry about, I trust.” John gave Arik a hard look, and the boy gulped.
A moment passed while Arik and Lapenbaum thought.
“I’m not too certain about this, son,” the older Shaper warned.
“I’ve gotta do something, and this doesn’t actually sound that bad.” He turned to John before asking, “So, if I play it safe and follow the rules, I should be alright?”
The jacked man nodded. “I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that there’s no possible way you could die– accidents happen all the time, even to the most careful and experienced people– but there is almost no way you’ll be irreparably injured.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Lapenbaum still seemed uncertain, but Arik had made up his mind.
“When do we set off?”
===
Before they left town, the ex-Journeyman had some armor to pick up from a nearby blacksmith. The sign read, “Freddy’s Fervent Forge,” and it had a metal mask painted onto it. An odd name, but the work was high-quality, according to John. Apparently, he’d put the order in many months ago, but the smithy’s owner had moved from Wendown to Jexticar, with the gear in tow. The topic seemed to upset the burly man named Johnseph, but the excuse seemed perfectly reasonable to Arik.
“Sir, you left no address for me to have your order sent! I hadn’t seen you in 7 months! I wasn’t going to delay my family’s move for an entire year just to get a single order to its owner marginally faster.” The smith complained, his accent a more traditional Wendowian when compared to Pedagogue’s heavy Hulendorian. I’ll have to ask about that later, Arik thought.
“You couldn’t have just left it to the previous owners? Moron.” The last part was uttered under his breath.
“No, he seemed sleazy.” The smith seemed defensive. “I wasn’t just going to let someone handle one of my creations with no guarantee that it would have found its way to its intended owner. That would be assisted robbery!”
John muttered something that Arik couldn’t understand. Another language? “Fine, fine! What do I owe you?”
“1,700 credits.” The smith looked down his nose at the larger man, having to lean back a bit to accomplish the effect. It ended up looking silly.
A squint. “Wasn’t it 1,500 then, and 1,500 when I came to pick it up?”
“I’m taking a holding fee.”
John looked down at the owner of Freddy’s Fervent Forge. A vein throbbed in his neck. “What the heck we’ve been over this. We can swear here, Freddy?! We both know that’s not my fault!”
The smith frowned. “What? My name’s not Freddy.”
John and Arik both blinked at him. “What? Then why does the sign say that it’s Freddy’s Fervent Forge?” Arik asked.
“What sign?” The smith seemed even more confused than they were. “I don’t have a sign.”
John jumped back into the conversation. “No no, you’re not getting out of this one, not-Freddy. That sign’s been up since back in Wendown. I swear, it was hanging outside the door when I first walked in. The ridiculous name was what got me in the door. I was coming to check out what kind of failure would call his forge fervent.”
The smith squinted. “There is no sign.”
John grinned. “There is too, and I’ll prove it to you right now. In fact, let’s take a bet. If there’s a sign hanging up there, I pay 14,000 credits and get to call you Freddy.”
“And if I win?” Not-Freddy asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I’ll pay 18,000, no questions asked.” This elicited a nod, but a quick amendment to the agreement from the unnamed smith. “You also don’t ever get to mention any dumb signs that clearly don’t exist to me again, alright?” The men shook hands, and stepped out into the street, where the sign, the one that proudly declared that this was Freddy’s Fervent Forge, was simply… gone.
“What in the…” John stared at the place the sign had been with a lost look.
“See? No sign, now pay up.” The smith grinned at his customer. John fished the money out of a pouch, and not-Freddy closed up his shop with a cackle. The Journeyman’s armor was chucked out an open window in a huge sack moments later.
“What… what just happened?” Arik was deeply confused at what had just happened.
The burly man simply scratched at his head and picked up his ear. “Probably some kind of illusion or conjuration Magick. I wouldn’t question it too much. An illusionist or conjuror strong enough to trick me would be able to mess you up pretty bad, and it wasn’t even that much money, so just consider it a harmless prank. Let’s go.”
Seconds later, John was shoving his way through the crowd, a still-confused Arik scrambling to keep up.
===
“Alright kid, what’s the first thing you do before you leave a city?” John asked, having stopped just outside the gate.
Arik’s brain momentarily short-circuited, but he eventually answered, “Check your supplies, I suppose?”
John waved a hand. He seemed to do that a lot. “Eh, close. That’s the second thing. The first thing you need to do is open your eyes. There’s a lot of things that you’re going to have to pay attention to from here on out, including your supplies. If you’re not paying enough attention, you might get injured. Get injured, and you might not ever get home. So, with your eyes open, check through your supplies and tell me what you’re missing.”
Arik opened his bag, and spent a few minutes looking through everything he’d brought. “Well, I don’t have very much. I didn’t bring any food, and I don’t have a weapon.”
“You don’t have armor, either. Good eye on that food, though. I’d have slapped ya if you said that I’d brought enough for you. I did, but you should never expect someone you’re with to be able or even willing to give you their food. Always bring your own supplies, even if someone else says they’ll handle it.”
They started walking.