A few days later, Sera found herself in the dining hall with Tiriana and a pair of other adventurers. Tiriana looked dissatisfied, so she was assuming they weren’t the ones she had hoped to recruit. Neither had said a word since entering the room, not to each other and not to Sera. They hadn’t even greeted Tiriana when she entered a moment ago.
One was easily greater than six feet in height, but was wearing a full suit of plate mail armor, so Sera couldn’t determine much else about them. The armor was shiny and well maintained, though, not the beaten and battered equipment associated with a veteran knight in fiction. Sera knew enough about metals to understand that meant this figure was the more competent one, however.
The other barely reached the first person’s hip. Were she to go on fantasy tropes, Sera would assume the woman to be a gnome or halfling- something of that nature. She seemed to have a permanent scowl on her face, which was framed with what Sera initially thought to be green hair but was actually more like leaves or grass after a closer look. Rather than armor, she wore hunting leathers, and had a bow slung over one shoulder. While she would normally think a bow a poor match for someone too small to draw one with much power, the existence of mana suggested the bow was more dangerous than it looked.
“Thanks for coming, Layla, Rinnie,” Tiriana said after taking a seat beside Sera, nodding to the armored one and the short one in turn. “I take it this means you’re at least considering cooperating with us?”
“That depends on what you wish to propose,” Layla said, her voice low, deep, and muffled, but still identifiable as a woman’s. “At the moment I only know you found something.”
“You’re not exactly helping your case by asking me to work with this brute,” Rinnie added, side eying Layla openly. “I mean, really, she can’t even be bothered to take her armor off for a meeting.”
“Neither have you,” Layla countered with a scoff. Rinnie rolled her eyes.
“This isn’t my armor, it’s what I wear to not get cut by pointy plants. And I’ll have you know it’s damned comfy.”
“Hmph.”
“Yes, well, my first choices were Jonas and Ixtris, but unfortunately for all of us, those two decided to hook up and now they’re on some sort of weird couple’s honeymoon. Because apparently they find weird-ass trees romantic,” Tiriana informed them acerbically, covering her eyes with one hand for a moment. “Look, we found a fort- a city, really- and three people aren’t enough to explore it safely. Five isn’t much better but I’m only getting so many people to agree to work together.”
“Five?” asked Layla, and Sera imagined she was narrowing her eyes right now by the tone in her voice. “I see three adventurers here, and presume you mean to add Vivi. You mean to bring the mistwalker as well?”
“And this is why you weren’t my first choice.”
“Do not make me the unreasonable one. I’m not the one intending to bring a noncombatant into danger.” Layla’s head turned, placing her eyes upon Sera. Or so she assumed. Her faceplate was a blank oval with five circular cutouts and two were probably for eyes. “If you insist on placing yourself in harm’s way I can’t stop you, but I won’t be protecting you either.”
“After the warm welcome you’ve given me I wouldn’t trust you to do that even if I paid you,” Sera shot back, her mouth moving faster than her brain at that moment. Layla apparently took offense to that, but before she could reply, Tiriana cut her off.
“Enough. I’m more than capable of defending one person myself, Layla. And please don’t provoke her, Sera. Can we get to the actual details now?” she asked in exasperation. Layla huffed, by she nodded. “Great. This is going to sound ridiculous, so let’s get it out of the way first. We found a stone turtle carrying a city on its back, probably a couple dozen square kilometers in size. There was no sign it was still occupied but there was a battle there recently, so I’d rather not risk going in without extra muscle.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped you from going in the moment you saw it. What did?” Rinnie asked, eyes narrowed.
“It’s a several hundred meter climb with no other way up. We’ll need Vivi’s help with that. And while we haven’t run into anyone out there yet, someone took all the bodies from both the battlefield and the base we found. I think we might be reaching the point where acting alone isn’t tenable.”
“You’re aware I’m a wilderness specialist, right? You’re asking me to scout a city.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I don’t know what I’m asking you to scout. But are you really going to pass up being part of the first team into a mobile city bigger than anything you’ve ever heard of before?”
Rinnie clicked her tongue in annoyance, but the hungry look on her face said everything. She wouldn’t have been out here if she wasn’t interested in that sort of thing.
“At any rate, the best case scenario is that Vivi finds us an alternative to climbing the whole way. Worst case is going right up the side with nothing but handholds. If it comes down to that, can you do it in full armor, Layla?”
“I can,” she answered in confidence. Once again Sera had to remind herself the woman was probably inhumanly strong. A couple dozen kilos of metal were probably nothing to her. “Can she?”
Layla hadn’t looked at her this time, but it was obvious who she was talking about. Sera didn’t have armor, but she knew what the other woman meant without needing clarification. It was a valid question, admittedly. While Sera was in excellent shape, she lacked the magical conditioning Layla and Rinnie most likely had, as well as the magic Tiriana could cast. Granted, she wasn’t sure what Tiriana had that might help her climb a rock face, but Layla wasn’t questioning Tiriana about it, so there must have been something she could do.
“If I run out of steam and fall then that’s my own problem,” Sera answered, unable to say with perfect confidence that she could climb that far. Especially without a rope and harness. But she didn’t think it would come to that, regardless. Vivi’s theory about there being another way in had been solid, and they were talking about the worst case scenario here.
“Hm. Fine. I’ll accompany you. However, you are not my leader, Tiriana, and I will not take orders. Is that understood?”
“Psh. Everyone knows why you’re out here instead of working for a company, paperweight,” Rinnie scoffed in response to Layna’s declaration. Layla turned towards her fully, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Do not pretend you are better than me, shrub, lest I accidentally trample you,” Lalya ground out as she stared the smaller woman down, but Rinnie wasn’t intimidated.
“You’re so slow I’d have a pitfall dug by the time your foot came down, tin can,” she countered, uncowed. “Or would you prefer an arrow through your eye slits?”
As the two adventurers began to bicker, Tiriana held her head in her hands, having lost control of the meeting again. Sera patted her on the back in solidarity.
“I feel your pain.”
“This is why I wanted Jonas and Ixtris. They’re the only two that actually get along. It just turns out they get along a bit too well…” Tiriana said under her breath, only just loud enough for Sera to hear her. It probably wasn’t necessary; the other two weren’t going to be hearing much over the sound of their argument.
“Aisinct seemed reasonable enough. Was he not an option?” Sera asked.
“Layla tries to physically fight him every time they’re together for more than five minutes and he’s still angry about the time Rinnie mistook him for a dragon and shot him.”
“…there are dragons around here?”
“No, there are not.” Tiriana took a deep breath to calm down and looked up at the quarrelling duo. “Rinnie, I still don’t have your answer,” she cut in.
“Ugh. I’ll meet you there. I want to check out that base you mentioned before we look at the fortress, and I’d rather not travel with the big lug,” she answered, ducking around Layla and darting out the door before Layla could retort. For her part, the armored woman growled and stomped out as well, either because she was done talking or to chase Rinnie.
“Be careful not to disturb the barrier I placed!” Tiriana yelled after Rinnie.
“You carved that into the ground with a laser.” Sera gave Tiriana an incredulous look, wondering how Rinnie could possibly disturb it on accident.
“Listen, I’m not putting anything past this bunch of fractious weirdos.”
“I’m definitely starting to understand what you’re talking about, but I’m still not sure why you joined them if that’s how you feel.” Sera rested her head on one hand, her elbow propped on the tabletop.
“Did I ever mention I knew Vivi before coming here?”
Ah. Sera saw where this was going.
“You heard about Vivi’s divination. Is that it?” Tiriana reacted with mild surprise, but not quite shock, at that.
“She told you about that? Yeah, I heard from her that this was likely to be something big. I signed on with Vivi, but the only other people that wanted in were types that weren’t suited to working back in the inner ring and thought even the middle ring was too civilized,” Tiriana explained with a voice tinged in frustration, speaking to efforts spent in vain trying to find other adventurers.
“Aren’t expeditions to new frontiers a regular thing?”
“A little too regular. Percentage wise, the rate of new frontiers appearing hasn’t changed, but if you look at it in terms of absolute land area, it’s accelerating.”
That…stood to reason. There were three ways the expansion could be happening. Randomly, at a constant rate, or at a constant percentage increase. As far as Sera knew there was no particular reason for it to be any of those over the others, but her understanding of why Omichlódis was expanding in the first place was poor at best.
“So because every ring is bigger than the last, more land has to appear to maintain the same rate of expansion?”
“Exactly. A more professional group would have gotten to this region eventually, but all the veteran groups are already committed to other frontiers, and there’s only so many of those,” the elf said with a sigh, letting her forehead rest against the table.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have joined one of those groups or waited for one, instead of hitching your wagon to this one.” If Tiriana understood how poorly organized this group was then she had to have known it wasn’t going to go well once it got on the road. The elf’s next words were spoken directly into the table, rather than towards Sera.
“Because I trusted Vivi when she told me if we weren’t both here, something very, very bad was going to happen.”