Cerise slept with the eggs tucked up in her body heat and made a nursing sling from the canvas bag Gohren gave her for her kit. She padded them with her rough pants, and moved carefully while she made her rounds.
Using her Stabilize skill on the eggs when her Triage Aura warned her they were fading seem to be just what they needed. She used her Mana Sensing to see if her hunch was right, and the eggs were soaking in the traces of mana her skill imparted.
There were more than a few of the oxen, not to mention Daisy, that waffled at the eggs any time she was near. Tamrin's ox was not one of them, so she paused longer with him.
"Eh. They may be near turning dire, they may be, if they're interested in the mana of your eggs. Not a bad thing, that, but you'll need to hustle up your skill growth if your mare's close," he opined.
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Cerise felt relief to see the town walls come into view. Mykhal found her just a few minutes later. "Miss Sanyel wants us to go ahead with her!" He said. "How are the eggs?"
"Fine. Let's go," Cerise said, giving Mykhal a strained smile. The odd attention from the beasts was unnerving. Her strain made him fuss at her, which she waved off, hurrying to meet up with the caravan master.
Miss Sanyel proved to have something like the Quick Step skill. They made short work of entering the town, and Miss Sanyel didn't even need to ask where the Free Lancers Compound was.
A bustling building fronted a walled off yard, with a few rooftops visible beyond. Miss Sanyel commented as they approached, "The red door at all the Free Lancers Compounds are for the people who are not members of their Company, Guild, or Consortium. If you're not a member, the other doors don't matter."
She entered through the red door, also the closest door to the street, sending Mykhal in first, Cerise next, and herself last, but inside she took the lead again. There were two clerks behind a counter style bar. One set under a sign reading "Requests" and the other under a sign for "Appraisals". Miss Sanyel led them to the bored looking appraiser.
"We request a confidential appraisal," Miss Sanyel stated.
The appraiser gave her a pained smile. "I'm sure it's not--."
Miss Sanyel cut him off, repeating herself with the disapproving authority she had learned to convey by tone alone as a caravan master dripping from every word. "We request a confidential appraisal."
The appraiser pursed his lips, and Cerise felt his mana wash over them. The pursed lips disappeared. He pulled a placard from behind the counter, set it at his position, and said, "Please follow me, Misses, Mister."
He led the way to the side door, then down a hallway and into a small, fully enclosed room. The room had cabinets along the back wall and a table in the center. Light came from runes on the ceiling.
Miss Sanyel cleared her throat when the appraiser closed the door, and glanced meaningfully at the plate of metal by the door.
Based on his initial attitude, Cerise rather expected the man to roll his eyes, but instead he seemed intrigued, and slid the plate over the door gap, making contact with a similar plate held fixed in place on the door. The room became encased in mana, cutting off Cerise's Mana Sensing at the walls, as well as the sounds from the corridor.
"For your information, activating the Privacy Rune Ward does alert the officers, and there will be an escort waiting for the door to open," the appraiser said.
"Good," Miss Sanyel replied. "Miss Cerise, please show the Mister what Mister Mykhal found."
Cerise nodded, and carefully set down her improvised egg sling on the table. She rearranged the folds of fabric to display the eggs. In the better light, the dire fox kit eggs were a mottled brown, tinted red. The alarune egg was more speckled browns over pale green.
The appraiser looked eager for a moment, eyes brightening, then a touch sad, and then his mana washed by Cerise again, and he grinned with delight. "They're all still alive! And in good condition, too!" He looked up sharply, asking Miss Sanyel, "Do you know where they came from, or how to hatch them?"
Miss Sanyel tapped Mykhal's shoulder. "Yes to the first. Cerise?"
She was watching the eggs suck in the ambient mana, and said, "I have an idea, but I can tell you how to keep them alive."
"Oh, we have stasis runes for that," the appraiser said. "In fact, let me just get them--," he started to say.
"What's your offer first? We don't need your runes if we can't agree on a price."
"Well, the contract price --" he began.
Miss Sanyel arched her brow.
He faltered as he finished, "-- is a silver leaf an egg."
"We are not Free Lancers. We have signed no contracts, and we can hatch these ourselves. My consortium does not supply [Tamers], but we do supply [Alchemists], and we can make more profit from their parts than that. So, what is your real offer?"
"We don't need you to tell us where the spawn point is," he said.
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"Am-Nahar's Temple offers a reward for showing their champions where to find spawn points. We don't need your reward, either, or the confidentiality contract that comes with it." Miss Sanyel managed to say that with a pleasant neutrality.
"Let me get an officer," the appraiser said, waiting for Miss Sanyel's, "Please do," before he broke the contact between the plates and opened the door.
As he'd warned, an armed and armored woman waited outside.
"I need the Purser," the appraiser said, smiling. Then his smile turned pained. "And Master Cafriel."
The woman widened her eyes a bit before she nodded and departed.
Within minutes a lanky man with slightly pointed ears and brightly curious brown eyes showed up. He wore a fancy robe that seemed heavier, by the drape of the stiff fabric, than anything Cerise had seen before. Another man, also wearing a fancy, but significantly lighter, robe hurried after him.
The second man was heavyset with a bit of a paunch. "Hello!" He greeted Miss Sanyel before looking to the appraiser. "Phan, what seems to be the problem?"
"The clients have asked for confidentiality," the appraiser, Phan apparently, said by way of a non-answer.
The lankier man had already looked in the doorway. His eyes fixated on the alarune egg. In a surprisingly deep voice, he said, "Let's go in."
The room felt quite crowded once all six people were inside and the Privacy Rune Ward was re-invoked.
Introductions were made, and the lanky man turned out to be the Guild Master for this compound, an [Alchemist] and [Scout] type. The heavyset fellow was the Compound's Purser, a Mister Tymens.
Guild Master Cafriel gently lifted the alarune egg and studied it throughout the negotiations, haggling really, ongoing between Miss Sanyel and Purser Tymens. At an appropriate point, he interjected, "Do you know how to hatch this egg?"
Miss Sanyel looked at Cerise. "I won't make any promises, but I can tell you what my Diagnose skill tells me the eggs need," Cerise said.
Cafriel's eyebrows shot up. "Diagnose? Have you considered joining a team with our guild?"
"Hey!" Miss Sanyel squawked. "Have the grace to recruit my employees behind my back!"
That broke some of the tension Cerise was feeling, and the haggling continued on.
They settled on a price of one branch for each dire fox kit egg and two branches for the alarune, with a bonus of a silver leaf if Cerise's information helped the eggs hatch. The Free Lancers paid another two silver leaves for their silence about the spawn point location, and Mykhal's map to locate it, once the location was verified.
Only after the contract was signed did Miss Sanyel allow Cerise and Mykhal to turn over their knowledge.
Cafriel left and returned with a large planting pot filled with mana-bright soil. Cerise stopped him before he could get the pot near the egg. "That's too rich! It'll poison the egg!"
He set the pot on the ground, looking with interest at Cerise. "Really?" He asked.
"Really!" She snapped. "You can't just go throwing mana around and hope it makes everything better! Bodies can only handle so much at a time! What do you think mana sickness is?"
Cafriel's expression slackened as if he just got smacked in the face with an epiphany. After a moment with his gaze unfocused, he snapped back to the present and ran out of the room. He returned even quicker this time with a pot of regular soil and an empty pot.
"Guide me in the mixing," he ordered, and Cerise did. Then he made everyone but Cerise leave the room, asking her to remain hovering in the doorway as he planted the alarune's egg.
Even through the clay pots, Cerise could feel the egg sucking in the mana in the soil, until it reached an equilibrium point a few minutes later.
Cafriel was frowning, somewhat concerned, Cerise thought. "Okay. Now start sprinkling the mana soaked soil over top. Sprinkle! Don't dump it!"
Cafriel glanced sharply at her, but some of that concerned tension turned into concentration as he followed her instructions. She guided him in when to add more and when to pause for the egg to catch up.
After ten minutes or so of the careful additions, she heard a *CRACK* from the pot and the bit of life her Triage Aura reported on changed names in her Appraise skill from alarune egg to alarune sprout.
Cafriel's face went pale on hearing the crack, his expression all horrified dismay. And then he sagged in relief, before flushing with joy. "Yes!" He yelled, jumping and punching the air. "YES!" He cackled with delight as he peered into the pot, his entire body vibrating with manic glee.
And he then stilled. His body slackened and his face filled with reverent wonder. A single manly tear trickled down the side of his face, ran down the line of his jaw, and dropped gently from his chin into the pot. "Thassia. What a beauty you are," he whispered.
Watching the scene play out before her, Cerise could only feel her own desire to become a [Tamer] increase.
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They met back up with the caravan, and handed over the two silver leaves and eight grand coppers that was Miss Sanyel's broker fee. As great a windfall as the sale of the eggs were, they were concerned about the envy it would draw. It cost them five silvers and a few grands to buy a cart and complete equipping themselves with the tools and goods they would need to start a new life.
The rest they decided to share equally with the caravaneers. When some of them tried to refuse, Cerise and her family insisted, saying different versions of the same thing.
"Everyone among you helped us when we had nothing but our legs, our hands, and our heads. Consider this our way of making it easier to help out the next time you find someone like we were before you helped us."
If anyone grumbled that they hadn't shared more, Cerise never heard it.
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When Cerise checked her profile that evening, she discovered to her surprise that she had leveled, and her Focus had improved to Good, along with her Mana and Stamina Pools reaching Moderate ratings.
For her eighth level skill slot, she had new options, but only one that stood out. Pain Block won out over Dull Pain, Paralyze, Lend Vitality, and Sense Life. She was ambivalent about the Surgery skill. Cutting into someone to heal them seemed counterintuitive, and she spent some time trying to imagine when it would be more useful than just using one of her Heal skills.
When she saw that she had unlocked [Tame Monster], she regretted spending her general skill slot on Greater Cleanse.
Cerise
Race: Human
Age: 13, Youth
Total Level: 7
Class(es): [Arcane Healer Novice]
Social Strata: Commoner, Freeman
Pools:
Health: Low
Stamina: Low
Mana: Low
Attributes:
Focus: Good
[Arcane Healer Novice] (8)
Arcane Healing: B-6
Heal Wounds: B-3
Heal Toxins: B-2
Heal Diseases: B-1
Triage: B-8
Stabilize: B-2
Diagnose: B-4
Pain Block: B-0
General Skills
Slots: 1, Used: 1
Acting: P-8 (I-9)
Animal Handling: B-5
Appraise: P-1
Blades: B-9
Cleanse, Greater *†: B-3
Cooking: P-8 (I-3)
Cyphers: B-7
Drawing: P-4
General Anatomy *: B-5
General Craft *: P-8
Hunting: B-6
Logic: P-8 (I-3}
Mana Proprioception *: B-9
Mana Sensing *: B-6
Natural Weapon Combat: P-2
Oration: P-7
Potion Brewing *: P-2
Quick Stepping: B-8
Research: P-8 (A-4)
Scribing: P-8 (A-8)
Staves: B-3
Stealth: P-0
Skill Unlocks
Mana Sight
Mana Scent
Mana Hearing
Tame Monster
Dull Pain *
Paralyze *
Lend Vitality *
Sense Life *
Surgery *