The streets of Grand Vale were smooth. That was the first thing Marc, or rather his chest, noticed. After asking, he learned it was some kind of magical wood that dryads could move across normally, removing a restriction they generally had. It was also, as Nico pointed out, fireproof.
The second thing was that the houses were tall, almost all of them three stories tall or more, and with sharp sloping roofs. Their doors were a solid 2 feet taller and twice as wide as normal.
They were moving straight to the Slayers’s Society, of which Helen was a member. Apparently, Nico was a member of the Alchemists’s Guild, and Barry was more or less born into the House of Quills, which was a magical organization. He didn’t know what Fray was part of since no one offered. Here in the Sage Lands, all three were closely tied, but the House of Quills was local only, and the Alchemists were rivals of the Slayers in Trinity City.
All of the different factions, though, were part of the broader Society of Adventurers. There were agreements and rules to be followed to be a member, no matter which you were in. Though in certain places like the “Mortocracy of Visica”, some rules were bent.
Marc really didn’t want to visit anything called a Mortocracy.
People looked at them strangely. Probably because of the man handcuffed and carried inside a wheelbarrow. Still, just from his point of view Marc saw that he was in a capital-r Realm. Humans were common, but there were also several Elves walking around with paper white skin, the occasional wood-armored Dryad with their heavy steps, and a few exceedingly tall humanoids with moose heads, though he hadn't seen any with antlers yet. The latter two explained the size of the doors.
“We’re here.” Nico said.
They rolled through the door, Barry having moved the wheelbarrow to be in front of him, and a veteran looking man was at the front desk. “What in. . . Oh it's you four. Didja kidnap summun on the road?”
Helen responded, “Hey Berk, no, we found a weird Outsider. Need to figure out what kind.”
“Outsiders is bad news”
Barry defended them, “Angels are outsiders”
Berk turned to Barry, “My poin’ ‘xactly. Take ‘im to room two, I'll send Jacky in after.”
Barry pushed the wheelbarrow into room two, as Helen told Barry to not bother with Berk, “He's been here longer than you've been alive, and not once in the years I've known him has he changed his mind.”
The other 4 sat down in chairs within the room that Fray picked up as they were moving through the general area. It was a dark gray stone on all sides, with no airflow once the door closed. There was a large stone slab raised up in the center.
“So, what now?”
Nico answered, “We wait for- ” a dryad walked through the door. Not opened the door, just walked through it like it wasn't there, “-her.”
Jacky was a Dryad. She was shorter than Marc, and unlike the dryads on the street she didn't wear wooden armor, only a dress of woven grasses. Orange eyes looked at him with curiosity, and her hair was a collection of braided vines. She carried in hand a metal staff, and as she walked further into the room one of her hair-vines tethered itself to the wooden door.
“Helen! I hope the delve went well!” She said with a high pitched voice. Helen smiled back.
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“We aren't dead yet, yeah? Anyways, we can catch up after getting Guy taken care of.”
The dryad nodded to her friend, and turned again to Marc.
Nico gave her the information they already had as Jacky began circling the room, using her metal staff as an oversized stick of chalk. The slab had the Esoteric symbol drawn on it, while each of the walls and much of the ground had their own, different symbols. They were far more complicated than Marc could remember, and it wasn't like he could do magic anyways.
Eventually, she was done, and asked for them to get to the four corners of the room as to not interfere with the ritual, and unlocked Marc.
Barry and Fray lifted him onto the slab and returned to their corners. It was still painful, but at this point in the day he was more or less used to it.
As her chant began, Marc felt the magic wash over him. Barry's healing spell, the only one Marc had experienced so far, was like the heat from a fire. Maybe a bit too close, but familiar and warm. This felt like a buzzing all over him, like he was being swarmed by hundreds of insects. Friendly ones, but the feeling still caused Marc to tense. He’d never been great around insects, and tended to cringe away whenever there was buzzing too close to his ears.
Here, however, he was forced to get used to it. The ritual lasted 10 minutes by his guess, and Marc was uncomfortable for every second of it. At the end though, he saw a scroll of paper had fallen out of the slab he was on.
Apparently, the magical MRI doubled as a printer. More reliable than any of the ones he’d ever used, at that.
He decided to lay there for a moment, as Jacky reached down and grabbed the scroll. She began reading off, “Ok, his subrace is. . . Farlander? Isn’t that the ones that are from outside the Boundary?” Helen turned to Nico with the biggest grin Marc had ever seen. Nico reached into his bag and started counting out coin. Without waiting for an answer, Jacky continued, “Class is Wanderer, Level 5, Echelon 1, really good Resilience for where he is. His Might is also pretty high. Naturally attuned to Esoteric power, and. . . he’s at critical health with 9 broken ribs.”
That explained a lot. The party's eyes widened.
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After getting the report, which Marc was given a copy of (the magic MRI-slash-printer tripled as a copier), the group brought Marc out into the main area of the Slayers’s Society, and Fray volunteered to go and grab a healer from somewhere, Helen got their reward for the mission they had actually been out on before encountering the Spider. Her and Jacky were close friends, and discussed what each had been doing recently.
While waiting, Marc watched the people within the building. There were more humans and dryads than elves here. Heck, even those Moose-people were more populous than Elves. After asking Nico, who was making some potion on the table, Marc learned that most Elves didn’t become adventurers, let alone Slayers.
Barry had gone to the House of Quills to contact his father a few towns over, and hadn't yet returned when Fray did with the healer, an elf with fully silver hair. Like the other elves within the city, he had incredibly pale skin, to the point it would be unhealthy in humans. Marc wondered if he had some kind of cataracts with how white his eyes were, before the potion Nico was making was pushed into his hands.
“Drink, you’ll need it”, the younger elf said. Marc did as he was told, and the elder began casting a spell on him once he had finished.
Whereas Barry’s had felt like a campfire and Jacky’s a swarm of bugs, this spell had the same sensation as his leg falling asleep, but applied to his entire body. Or, rather, Nico's potion did. He could feel, vaguely, things in his chest moving around and did his best to not pay attention to it. The pins and needles feeling went from his skin all the way to where his nerves stopped, and Marc was very, very glad that Nico had given him the potion. If it felt like this with it, he could only imagine what it felt like without.
After another irritating minute, the shifting and tingling sensation wore off, and the healer wished Marc well before turning and immediately leaving. It was past sundown, and Marc was exhausted despite spending yesterday asleep and today in a wheelbarrow.
YOU HAVE BEEN CURED OF {WOUNDED}
Dismissing the tablet, he walked towards the front desk. After talking with Berk, he was allowed to stay the night since Helen was a member of the society, but would need to either join or start working for them in order to earn another night.
Marc looked up at the ceiling, wondering what the next day would hold for him. He’d been conscious for maybe 8 hours total. One single workday, and his entire perspective had been flipped on its head.
He shut his eyes and lay on his side. Just before he could drift off to sleep however, he remembered something.
“Barry still has my bag”.