The link between a bonded companion and a skill user is a strong one. A bonded companion generally cannot be compelled to turn on its bond-mate, with the exception of the application of extremely powerful skills, or in the rare cases when the bonded companion has been severely mistreated. The boons that such a bond instill are various, not only in their effect, but in their efficacy. Some bonded companions may gain a boost to their intelligence, others to a physical characteristic, while others still may instead gain some kind of facsimile of a skill. The strength of such improvements depends on the level of the skill user as well as the strength of the skill itself. In general, however, one can assume that a skill which only allows one creature to be bonded will offer a greater boon to its recipient than one which would allow a skill user to bond with multiple creatures. There is some implication that this link is tethered somehow to the very soul of the skill user and their bonded companion. Should one member of the pair die, it is common for the other to sink into a long lasting state of depression, with one of the most common complaints being along the lines of feeling that ‘a piece of me is missing.’ While this is mostly anecdotal, the fact that certain maladies of the soul or other skills that can damage the soul in some way have been observed affecting both parties, while the target was only one member of the pair.
-The Taming of Beasts, Both Large and Small
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He quickly exited Valteria’s shop and took wing, flying to The Ruby Chair. He looked over the seated groups of diners in the inn, hoping to spot his team. Unfortunately, it seemed that they’d already eaten, or had yet to eat, as Xander was unable to see any of his teammates. He resigned himself to checking each of their rooms individually and gathering them one by one. Luckily, each of his teammates had retired to their rooms, and it was a straightforward task to get them all gathered in his as yet unused room at the inn.
“So, you took the contract?” Graffus asked.
“Yeah, I did,” Xander said, looking at his teammates, who were gathered in the room, Gabrelle and Atrax having taken seats on the bed, Frazay and Graffus remaining standing.
“What’s it involve?” Frazay asked.
“I’m supposed to help rescue someone important to the Dardian government that’s in exile here. Well, technically I’m just supposed to transport the team and help make a distraction if needed. The stealthy people are going to be doing the actual rescuing.”
“Mmm. I’m assuming, with how selective and secretive they’re being about the whole thing, that this person is very important, and also that they’re going to be pretty heavily guarded, am I right?” Axtrax asked.
Xander nodded. “They’re in a whole prison camp... So probably lots of guards. And there’s the matter of finding the single person amongst all the prisoners. The people who are supposed to extract him do know the guy, though, so that might make it easier.”
“Wait, you’re going to be sneaking into a Thraskian prison camp?” Gabrelle asked. “It is a Thraskian prison camp, right? I can’t imagine there’s many other kinds of prison camps around anywhere nearby.”
“Yeah, the liaison told me that they’re pretty bad,” Xander said.
“When it comes to skill users, especially higher leveled ones, it’s only worth keeping them if they hold some kind of value,” Gabrelle explained. “Since it’s so labor intensive to keep people who have powers that could wipe out entire groups of soldiers. So there’s guaranteed to be a large contingent of guards at the camp, to overwhelm anyone who thinks about escaping. The prisoners will be heavily watched all day and all night, and they’ll spend every second of it in shackles, probably chained to the prisoners next to them. I know they said that you’ll only be needed if they need a distraction, Xander... but to me it sounds like a distraction is going to be a necessity. Are you sure that you and one other person can handle what amounts to a small fort?”
“Well... they did say that the other person’s skills lent themselves to large scale combat. But I don’t know exactly. I mean, I can definitely make a distraction, for sure. I shouldn’t have to take on the whole fort, just... keep their attention for a while. Right?”
“Maybe,” Graffus offered. “They’ll have to keep at least some amount of guards in the camp to prevent some kind of riot or breakout attempt.”
Xander nodded. “That might actually be a good distraction too... Fly in there and start breaking people loose. I really do hate the idea of leaving people there... Just extracting one person doesn’t feel right. I’d at least like to give them a fighting chance to get out of there.”
“A mass breakout or riot would make a good distraction,” Atrax commented.
“But it might make it a lot harder to find the person you’re looking for with a riot going on,” Gabrelle pointed out.
“That’s true. Maybe the stealth team can figure out where he is before they need a distraction?” Xander wondered out loud.
Frazay shrugged in response. “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s only so much planning you can do without seeing the camp and observing it for a while. That might be your best bet. Setting up somewhere unseen, watching the camp, figuring out the guard rotations, and identifying your person of interest and where they’re generally being held.”
Xander sighed. “You’re right. I can try and game it out all night, but I’m just not going to know for sure until I see the place. But it’s good to have some ideas for what to do. I still think starting an escape attempt could be effective. Of course, that depends on whether the prisoners are in any kind of shape to even try and break out... Brinn Grefelt mentioned that starvation was pervasive in these kinds of camps,” he said darkly.
“With no way to know how bad off they are until you see them, you’re just going to have to try and be flexible,” Graffus cautioned. “Don’t get hung up on this massive riot and escape plan and ignore other ideas just because you want to get as many people out as possible. Remember, as a mercenary, the contract comes first.”
Xander huffed. “I still don’t like it. But they did make it clear that priority number one was getting this guy out. And that getting him out could mean the difference in stopping whatever Thrask is planning.” He shook his head, clearing the frustration from his mind. “Thanks for talking it over with me, everyone. I’ll try to keep all the advice in mind. I guess I’ll let you all get back to your rooms, I’m sure you’ve all got things you like to be doing.”
Graffus shrugged. “Eh, not really. If you ever want to talk over any plans, I’m all ears.”
The general consensus of the room was the same: they were all happy to help Xander with any planning he had, but that no one had any specific ideas at that time.
With nothing more to go over, Xander’s teammates began to file out of his room and make their way back to their own accommodations. Xander sat down on the bed, slumping his shoulders. The idea of not trying to rescue everyone at what he was beginning to equate to a gulag was gnawing at him. It was too late to go to Valteria’s, she was likely already in bed, and his teammates had nothing further to offer on this front. Needing a distraction, Xander decided that he might as well set out to start the frame of his new vehicle. At least it might be of use in liberating the camp, if he was able to do so at all.
If one happened to be observing a certain abandoned field outside of Rock’s Bay that night, one would have been able to observe a figure circling around what appeared to be a growing amalgamation of metal tubes and sheets. If anyone was watching, they left Xander to his own devices. Xander did feel like he was being watched out there, by someone or something as he circled the APC that he was slowly fabricating from the wheels up.
He’d begun by making twelve tires, interlacing thin steel cable into the rubber, making it sturdier. Then he made an axle with bearings on it to link up each set of tire and bound them down the center with another rod. On top of this frame, he attached a steel sheet to act as a floorboard. The side and roof of the vehicle came next, with a cutout for a front window and two side windows, as well as the rear hatch and top hatch. The glass panes and hatches were subsequently added, leaving the empty, unruned shell of the armored vehicle. The sun had already risen in the sky by the time Xander was finished, its position marking the time as early morning. Xander stepped a few feet away and looked over his partly finished creation. He sighed. It looked... squat and blocky. Artistic design wasn’t exactly his forte. Feeling a little discouraged, he decided he’d better take a break. Besides, he’d promised that he’d still make time for Valteria and not to spend every waking moment from start to finish on the APC.
Taking a last few minutes to engrave some mana gathering arrays onto the giant hunk of metal – just in case he was held up by something, he didn’t want to come back to a pile of dust in an empty field – Xander winged into the air and made his way towards Valteria’s home. Landing in front of her shop entrance and letting himself inside, Xander was surprised to see several people in the shop all at once.
“Oh, hi Xander!” Valteria called out, noticing the door opening and tossing a glance in his direction as she dug through a shelf cluttered with different products.
“Hey,” he answered back, taking in the scene playing out in front of him.
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Looking over the four people in the shop, Xander guessed that they were mercenaries, probably all together from the same group, judging by the way that they were idly chatting with each other as Valteria continued to pull out odds and ends from her haphazardly organized product storage.
Noticing Xander eying their group, one of the members, a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties and wearing leather and chainmail armor offered a polite nod in his direction. Xander offered one back, and awkwardly moved his eyes elsewhere, feeling that it would be rude to continue to stare. That left him the option of staring at Jarrett, who was currently tallying something up in a ledger – also awkward, staring at a workbench or random wall – too boring, or watching Valteria as she moved through the shelves and workbenches, pulling together what Xander assumed was the group’s order – more interesting and also pleasant on the eyes. So he did just that.
Xander watched as Valteria moved from one shelf to one of her workbenches, opening a drawer and taking out appeared to be two metal bulbs on stakes with a large amount of string wound about them. She withdrew three more pairs, each one including its own length of string, and brough them over to Jarrett, who marked something on the ledger as she did so.
“Okay,” Valteria said, rather breathlessly. “So that’s four pairs of screamers, two water purifiers, a flameless cookpot, and the runed crossbow. Did I forget anything?”
Another member of the party, this one a woman wearing leathers with a cloak draped over her figure, obscuring most of her body, shook her head. “No, that was everything.”
“Excellent! The total is… ah, Jarrett, what’s the total?”
Jarrett glanced at the ledger and provided the number. Payment was handed over without argument, and Valteria took the pouch of coins to a small lockbox, which she procured the key to from one of the many pockets on her apron. Money safely stashed, and business finished now that the customers has left, she traipsed over to Xander, who was still watching her.
“What are you staring at, hmm?” She asked.
“Oh, just enjoying the sights and scenery,” Xander replied, giving her a smile. He hoped she knew that the ‘sights and scenery’ was her.
Valteria wiggled her shoulders a little bit, clearly in a good mood and pleased by the complement. “I’m glad you made time to come by! I was worried you were going to get sucked into your project.”
Xander chuckled a little bit and then sighed, letting out a little frustration. “It’s hard to get sucked into a project when you take a step back and the first two words that come to mind are ‘squat’ and ‘ugly.’”
“Oh come on, it can’t be that bad, can it?” Valteria asked.
“I mean, it’s got plenty of space, and it will get the job done from what I can tell. I might have to add some arrays to make it lighter, so it doesn’t sink into the dirt too much, thought. It’s just not pretty. Guess I’ll just have to settle for function over form on this.”
Valteria shrugged. “That’s an aesthetic all on its own, you know.”
Xander gave a short laugh. “You’re right.”
After spending a couple of hours chatting with Valteria as she worked, Xander decided he should get back to work. However, he was still feeling bad about having to leave Freyja for who knew how long. He decided he’d head to the inn first and then walk with her to the open field where she could get some exercise and time in the sun while he went back to work.
In a nearby field, two cloaked figures shared a spyglass between themselves as they sheltered in the brush.
“Looks like he’s back to work on... whatever the hell that thing is.”
“Well, he’d better be – he's on a two-week deadline. I assume that’s the transport he’s supposed to be making. Damn thing looks like it could go through a castle wall.”
“And he brought his pet.”
“Who the hell keeps a ‘pet’ like that? That cat is huge!”
“I heard it was a bonded companion.”
“Ah, that makes more sense.”
“So you think he can make the transport in time?”
“Are you kidding me? The night watch said the body of that thing practically sprang from the ground! If he keeps up at this pace, he’ll be done well before he needs to be,” one of the cloaked figures said to the other, lowering the spyglass to look at their compatriot.
“What’s he doing now, anyways?”
“Beats me, he’s crawled under the thing to do some work it looks like. Here, take a look for yourself.”
“Yeah I can see his legs sticking out from under it. Hey, where’s the cat?”
“What do you mean you can’t see the cat? It’s huge!”
The figure with the spyglass frantically panned over the field they’d been watching. “Shit, shit, shit, where is the cat? It was just there!”
Freyja was having fun stalking. She knew people had been watching her, and Xander. She could feel their eyes on her fur, and she could smell them not too far away. She wasn’t sure if they were bad people, yet. That was Xander’s job – he helped decide who was and wasn’t bad. So she knew she wasn’t supposed to maul her new playthings, at least not yet. She needed Xander to know they were there so he could give her a sense of whether or not they were bad. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun sneaking up on them before she let Xander know where they were.
Xander was startled from his focus on runing the underside of the APC by screaming and yowling. He started upward, slamming his head into the steel of the vehicle above him. He cursed. It didn’t hurt, but it was still annoying. He crawled out from under the APC as fast as he could and took off in a sprint towards the ongoing yelling and the sound of Freyja yowling. Xander’s thoughts were racing. Had she pounced on some poor, unsuspecting farmer? Despite all his many thoughts in the short time he spent in a dead sprint towards the uproar, what he saw was not a scenario he’d imagined.
Freyja was standing with one massive paw on the back of two cloaked people, a man and a woman, who were alternately yelling and groaning under the weight of Freyja’s weight. He could see a brass spyglass laying in the grass nearby. Freyja’s yowling was the loudest part of the cacophony.
“Freyja?” He called out, cautiously. Freja quieted down with a final, drawn out yowl, but did not remove her paws from her would be prey.
Xander turned his attention to the two people that his bonded companion was currently pinning down. “Uh, sorry. This isn’t normal behavior for her.” He remembered the spyglass he’d seen, and then turned to look back at his worksite. There was a clear view to it from this spot. “Wait, were you spying on me?”
“Lady Grefelt sent us to make sure you were on task,” the woman managed to grunt out under Freyja’s weight.
Xander sighed. Politics and politicians. Or nobles, in this case. Wasn’t it enough that he’d agreed to the contract? They really had to be spying on him, too? “How much have you been watching me?” He demanded.
“Just out in the field,” came the strained reply, once again from the woman. At least they’d both given up hollering and yelling.
Xander wiped a hand down his face, inadvertently leaving a little dirt behind. “Ugh. Freyja let them up. They’re on our side. Technically,” he added, grumblingly.
Freyja rumbled out a low growl, managing to sound disappointed, but did step off of her catch, albeit reluctantly.
The two cloaked watchers scrambled to their feet and backed away from Freyja, still wary of the big cat.
“Thanks,” said the man who’d yet to speak, dusting himself off while still keeping an eye on Freyja. “Sorry about the spying, but, orders are orders. You know how it is,” he said with a small shrug.
“Brinn Grefelt doesn’t seem like the kind of noble you can slack off on your duties with,” Xander admitted. “I doubt there’s any getting rid of you, is there?”
The woman shook her head. “Even if we left – and we’d be sacked as soon as it came out that we abandoned our post – the next watch would be here in another couple of hours anyway.”
Xander sighed frustratedly. “Fine. You can keep watching, but if you don’t want Freyja to keep stalking you, just... quit hiding.”
“I guess it’s not like we’re much of a secret anymore,” the man admitted. “We’ll let the next shift know what’s up, too.”
Xander returned to his work, awkwardly followed by the two spies. They spent the rest of their shift watching Xander pore over the vehicle as he runed the panels for strength, elemental resistance, weight reduction, as well as the necessary arrays for making it move. The next watch shift came, confused that the crew they were relieving was sitting out in the open near to Xander and Freyja. After some conversation, they were enlightened as to the situation, and they took their compatriots’ spot in the grass, as the original watchers slunk away, likely dreading informing Brinn Grefelt of their situation.
Three days passed, with Xander intermittently visiting his team and Valteria, filling the rest of his time going over the vehicle. He runed the exterior, set it up to be able to move, and added seats and seatbelts, cushions, a windshield wiper, and plenty of cargo netting in the back. On the fourth day, he tested it out. It drove like a tank, which is to say it felt clunky, but it did have a near zero turn radius. After gaining some speed and driving it around the field, tearing up the grass in places as he tested out turning in circles, Xander was satisfied with the basic functions of the APC. And he still had over a week to work on the mounted gun he wanted to put on the top of it.
Xander had been thinking on and off about what kind of weapon he would add to his brand-new APC. A cannon felt like it would be too clunky and complicated, and he more frequently dealt with large groups of people or monsters than with a single, large enemy. However, he didn’t want just a machine gun – if he did come across something large, he wanted to still be able to take some chunks out of it. He needed something in the middle. Something… like an automatic grenade launcher. He could vary the type of grenade, too, which would give him even more flexibility. And so, on the roof of the APC near the front of the vehicle, Xander began to mount a grenade launcher. He wanted to be able to feed it grenades from a storage area inside vehicle, which was going to be the most complicated part.
He ended up doing something similar to his own rifle, but scaled up. The grenade would rest in a tube – one end accessible from the inside of the APC, and would runically be fed up the tube – which was in the direct center of the launcher so that it could be swiveled and not put the tube out of alignment - and into the firing mechanism of the grenade launcher, which was also runically powered, similar to the mortars he’d made at Ilbek. Now, he just needed to make it able to move from side to side and up and down. Those runes were simple. And a use of [Golemancer]… Xander mentally commanded the empty launcher to point itself to the left, and clapped his hands together in satisfaction as the launcher swiveled to match the command. He created some dud grenades – these were more reminiscent of a 40mm grenade so they would be more aerodynamic – and fed them into the tube. He then commanded the turret to fire at random spots in the field, observing how the launcher faired. It was accurate enough for something that was designed to explode on impact. Now he just needed to create and store some grenades, which he could do in his off time.
He walked over to the pair of watchers who were sitting under the shade of one of the few trees in the area. They perked up, standing as he approached. Xander thumbed behind himself as he said, “I think it’s done. Can I maybe store it at the governor’s place? I don’t really want to just leave it laying around, ya know?”
The pair of watchers looked at each other for a moment. “I think that could be arranged,” one said, finally.
“Want to ride with me, then?” Xander offered. He figured he’d have less trouble getting into the governor’s estate if he had a couple of more official people with him.
“You’re sure it’s… safe?” The other watcher asked, hesitantly.
“Sure!” Xander said. “It’s sturdier than any carriage you’ve ever ridden in, and it’s all rune powered, so nothing can explode.”
“Uhhh huh,” the hesitant watcher replied, unenthused by the mention of explosions. “I suppose it would be wisest the travel with you, since we’re supposed to be observing you.”
“Well, hop on in the back,” Xander said, leading them to the APC, “and don’t forget to strap in your seatbelt.”
“Seatbelt?”
“It’s a safety feature!” Xander said unhelpfully. Surely they’d figure it out. How hard could a seatbelt be?