Darc, along with his newfound associates approached the guild. It stood near the center of town, around a 15 minute walk away from the tavern. Nearby there were the clangs of a hammer hitting metal from the only blacksmith he had seen so far in the town as well as a building with open windows, a slightly purple haze billowing out from them out into the open air. The guild itself was nearly 20 feet wide and 40 feet long, reaching up to 2 stories high. It's faded-yellow bricks spoke of its age and there were four guards standing watch near its sturdy wooden out-swinging doors that had the carvings of the crown emblem etched into them. Thormak received a nod from them as they entered.

Inside, Darc came to the conclusion that this was the centerpiece of the town. There were at least 30 people standing at the far side wall on the right looking upon its billboard which stretched nearly its entire length. The billboard was innundated with papers, some of them looking rather rough or worn. In the far corner from him by the back end wall were long counters with a few workers manning them and to his immediate left stood a door in the center of the inner wall. He received a nudge in his ribs from Thormak and he followed him across the wooden floor through the door on the left.

Within the room, another guard was sitting on a bench to the right and straight across at the back of the room was a wooden altar with an open book radiating a soft golden light from between its pages. Thormak, Eileen and Zanis moved forward, kneeling on one knee before the altar with Darc following suit. They had been over this on the way over. As the others made strange ritualistic motions with their hands Darc mimicked them to the best of his abilities, wondering if he was doing it right. It wasn't long before something happened.

Darc instantly found himself standing in the room by himself, the transition jarring him, causing him to stagger for a moment. Looking around the room he could see bookshelves now lined along the walls, the bench and guard also no longer present. He turned around and saw that the door they had just come through was open. Through it he saw a view of himself from above. Shaking his head at the disorienting change of perspective, he focused on the task at hand. He came here for a purpose. As he approached the nearest bookshelf on his left he felt ... something. Gingerly placing his hand upon one of the shelves he withdrew it quickly.

Martial. War. Destruction. were the impressions that were left upon him when he had touched the shelf. Placing his hand upon one of the reddish-glowing books narrowed his impression further. Sword. He took a moment to scrutinize all of the bookshelves. Some of them were distinctly different, one being composed of white-gold, another seemed to be made of flesh. All of the rest were made of wood except for the steel colored metal one which he reached out towards. Earth. His hand trembled. Drawing in a deep breath and steeling himself he continued his exploration of the room. Intellectual. Social. Crafting. Spells. Feats. He noticed that upon the flesh shelf of Feats none of the books gave off any indication of glowing as the others had for some reason, nor did they "speak" to him.

Reaching for the section for Intellectual pursuits, he searched the books until he came upon the one the others had told him to find. Written Language. The tome seemed old and withered, the pages between its covers emitting a faint bluish glimmer. As he opened the tome, the blue light encompassed him, enfusing itself into him. He felt like it was filling a void within him that he didn't even know was there and he immediately felt a mild headache as the knowledge slammed itself into his brain.

As the light faded from his eyes, he found himself in the center of the room again, the book no longer within his hands. The bookshelves were still there however, as was what he assumed to be the exit back into his real body. He started thoroughly going over all of the books, mentally cataloguing the ones that stood out to him. It seemed like there was another book for written language under the section for Earth and the written language book under Intellectual had returned, though its volume seemed thicker. The light it radiated also slightly denser, brighter.

He took a moment to gather his thoughts as the awe of what this room represented hit him. Given a large enough void within himself, he could do anything... be anything. Shaking his head, he focused. Regardless of what this represented, he had goals. Or one overarching goal for now, anyway. In order to reach Bradford, he would have to travel. When asked, Thormak had told him that the order of Estra was in another country nearly a thousand miles away. 30 days of travel. Ideally. It would be dangerous, foolhardy even, to go unprepared. As he came to a decision of what he wanted to be, he selected the books he had in mind one by one.

After he drew the last one, which had only come 3 books later, he found that the books on the wooden shelves were no longer shimmering, laying dormant at rest within their shelves. Only the white-gold bookshelf of spells contained active rolled-up parchments within its recesses though most of them were also dormant. He continued his selection until there was no light left within the room except for what was leaking through from the exit. Moving forwards, he left the room, immediately finding himself kneeling once more.

In control of his real body once more, he looked about the room. The others were sitting on a bench waiting for him, talking amongst themselves. "-you're on." Zanis finished whatever exchange he had been having with Eileen. She smirked, full of confidence, "Hah, it'll be your loss!"

Darc stood up and approached, "What's going on?" Thormak just waved a hand dismissively, "Another bet between the two. They always do this when they get bored."

As they all stood to leave together, Thormak made a gesture towards Zanis who proceeded to speak, placing a hand over his shoulder, "So... Darc... we were just making a small wager. Just a little friendly competition." The elf looked over his shoulder at Eileen with a grin that didn't reach his eyes. "See, you were taking awhile so we took a look at the quests and there's one that caught our eye. Just think of it as a test. Make sure you're good enough before we head off to deal with the Tunnelers."

Thormak looked slightly uncomfortable as he added, "It was not my idea, but I agree. You do not have to accept if you-" Eileen cut him off with a roll of her eyes, "Oh c'mon, he's not a baby. And we all agreed." She ended with a huff.

Darc looked between them before asking, "So... what's the quest?"

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Darc was looking on into the dimly lit darkness ahead of him. He could hear faint scratching coming from underneath a recently unlocked and opened cellar door in the far corner of the backroom. The owner of the bakery had fled in a hurry after doing his duty and the others of his group stood by the entrance, ready to help him if necessary. Holding out his hand, a ball of light coalesced into being. Willing it forward he followed it into the cellar.

As soon as the light entered the cellar, the scratching stopped and some noises of hurried shuffling followed before silence set in. There were wooden shelves lining the walls with bags of flour sitting on most of them. Near the back of the small cellar there were drag marks along the dirt floor leading towards a dark corner he couldn't see into. He caught the glimpse of a bald tail barely peaking out over the top of one of the shelves on the left. Inching towards it, he kept his eyes trained on his surroundings but found nothing. When he got within distance, he leapt, stabbing his dagger at the beast on top of the shelf, feeling it sink into flesh as a screaming squeak emerged out of the darkness.

At the same time he felt a searing pain erupt over his lower back and he rolled forward, spinning to see what had struck him. There stood a rat standing about a foot tall on its two hind legs, hate gleaming in its eyes. Another one had been sneaking closer as well, however his roll had put him out of its reach. Running towards the one that had blood trailing down its claws, he whipped out his arm, slicing his dagger at it, however it nimbly leaned forwards, ducking underneath the swing. He swiftly backswung his dagger, sinking it into its skull as he kept his eyes locked on the last ratman who had just leapt to attack. He quickly sidestepped backward and to the right and the rat flew right past him as he brought his dagger out into another slash towards the thing. The rat backflipped entirely over his sweeping slash, surprising him, however he caught it as it landed with a stab deep in its body. He must have hit its heart because the rat simply collapsed onto the ground.

Quickly glancing around, checking for anymore surprises, he continued forward and sent his light towards the corner which was still unlit. It looked like the rats had been stealing bags of flour and dragging them through a hole in the corner, however the corner was now blocked, one of the bags being too large to fit. There were scratch marks around the sides of the hole where the rats had apparently been digging into the earth, attempting to widen the hole.

Turning around he saw Tormak and Eileen there, the dwarf was checking the bodies as he said, "Good work. A little messy however. You let them catch you off guard."

Eileen was all smiles as she commented, "Yeah, not half bad. Zanis won't be too happy though. One moment, allow me." She moved around him and reached out with a hand, holding it to Darc's back. A light crept through her fingers, sinking into him as he felt his flesh slowly knit itself together. Breathing a sigh of relief he asked a question that had been bothering him, "So why leave this type of work for us? What about the town guard?"

Eileen muttered with a scowl, "What, those fools? They just get paid to watch more important things. Like the grainery or the lord's warehouse." She rolled her eyes at that. "Sure, they'd eventually get around to driving them out but they sure do love taking their sweet time." Thormak nodded before adding, "Indeed. And they might make further demands. Over twice of what we get paid."

Darc frowned, "How much is that?"

Thormak held up 3 fingers. "3 dimes."

Darc sighed as he thought of the ramifications. 3 dimes would only pay for a single night at the inn with a penny left over. The rats were weak and he'd had backup this time, however it was still risking his life. I should've gone for being a weaver. Or maybe a blacksmith, heard they make good money... Shaking his head, he asked, "How long have you guys been doing this?" Zanis was walking down the steps into the cellar at this point as Eileen answered, "Oh... for me, around a year. Thormak's been around longer and Zanis is the weakling of the group."

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The elf in question scowled, an expression which grew darker as he saw the aftermath of Darc's fight. "Fuck!" He promptly stomped back out of the cellar, soon as he had entered.

Looking askance at Eileen, she answered him with a grin, "Ah, yes our wager... he thought you'd get through this without so much as a scratch." Darc furrowed his brow at that. "Oh, don't beat yourself up. Little freaks are fast and they got good eyes. I'm actually surprised you didn't come off worse."

Thormak added his piece, "Indeed. If you can deal with this bunch, the Tunnelers should not be a problem."

After around 5 more minutes Darc was fully healed. During that time, Thormak had cleaned out the corpses, leaving them outside on the road. They proceeded to block the tunnel that had been dug into the corner of the cellar, using a heavy barrel the baker had down in his cellar before reporting it to the guild. Apparently he needed to register in order to turn in a quest. The elven woman at the counter eyed him with a look of appraisal before asking for his information. She raised an eyebrow at his explanation for where he was from, however it all went rather smoothly, only asking for his name, age, country, lord and position.

In the end she placed an orb upon a small brass stand on the counter and asked him to place his hand upon it. The orb was swirling with streams of white within the black void inside. As he placed his hand upon it, the swirls spiked out from the center towards the edges of the orb and he felt the sense of static building up as his hair started standing on end. "Hmm. Rank E." She held up a slip of parchment for him to see.

Name: Darc Glass, Age: 22, Country: None, Lord: None, Position: Fremen, Rank: E.

"That will be 2 dimes which will be deducted from payment of your quest. Thank you and good bye." Accepting his payment of 1 dime from the elvish woman, Darc grumbled with his hair spiking out from static as he pocketed it before they headed back to the inn.

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Eileen was holding up the contract again, it's paper filled with words:

"You will work together with all signees for the duration of this contract. You will not steal from one another. You will not bring bodily harm to one another. You will split all monetary gains as evenly as possible amongst each other from completed quests. All other gains while on a quest will be split according to contribution. You will not work towards the detriment of the group. To exit this agreement, you must speak before the entire group and utter the words 'I am leaving the party.'"

Seems simple enough, Darc thought as he signed the paper, his signature appearing next to the others'. It felt like a chain had coiled itself around his heart for a second before the discomforting feeling vanished. "So what are these Tunnelers and how much are we getting paid?"

Thormak answered as the contract vanished, blinking out of existence, "We will be paid one pound for this." At Darc's questioning look he added, "50 Shillings. The lord of this town pays well. It is a good thing that he is currently fighting in the war against the Swarm or we would never have had such-"

Eileen cut the dwarf off, answering the other question, "And the Tunnelers are mean little beasties. Can't see too well but they got claws long as swords and they're strong. About as strong as a man.. " She eyed Darc's muscles through the shirt's ever-spreading holes, "Well, most men." She finished before adding, "You need a new shirt. Almost like you're not wearing one at this point."

Darc looked down at the rags he was wearing. "Uh.. sure, I'll get right on that." He rubbed his growing stubble before asking, "What information do we have on them? Numbers? Location?"

Thormak shook his head before intoning, "We know very little. We only know that they are in the northern end of the forest west of here. The lord's man sent out notice a week ago to all the surrounding towns but not many have answered the call. A few groups left before us but most haven't returned."

Darc raised his eyebrow, "And you think we'll do better?"

Thormak shrugged, arms crossed before him, "They were greedy. The others went in pairs, hoping for a greater reward."

"What about those other two that were here yesterday? Couldn't we ask them for information or to join us?" Darc continued his inquiry in a thinking pose.

Eileen scoffed as Thormak answered, "They will not work with others."

After excusing himself, Darc made a short stop at one of the tailors and got his clothes and jacket patched up. The cost was 3 Dimes. Checking over his shoulder as he worked, it seemed like the tailor was using a spell to repair the clothing. The end resulted in the once hole-ridden shirt being instead filled with rough seams all over. His jacket which had 5 long tears along the back was similarly roughly patched. Damn, should've thought this through... new clothes might've been cheaper. By the time he returned to the inn across the street, the others had finished their preparations. Thormak was now wearing a dark shade of blue gambeson and Eileen was sporting an iron shortsword by her waist. Zanis hadn't changed a thing. The innkeeper didn't seem to like him very much and he wasn't sure why. "See ya... Wilford, we'll probably be back tomorrow." He said with a wave while trying a friendly smile. The others were looking at him oddly as they left, Wilfred remaining behind with deadpan eyes.

At the behest of Thormak, they made a short stop at the guild, his reasoning came as, "It is the basics of being an adventurer. After any fight or battle, we check to see if the gods will impart more to us. We do not know what will await us, so we must be as prepared as possible."

Upon reentering his soul, as Darc was now calling the room in his mind, he found 7 orbs floating above the book.  They followed along the wall in a straight line, one foot of separation between each one. They exuded small sparks of electricity every few seconds in the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white and purple. When his hand drew near he received impressions from them. Strength. Dexterity. Agility. Constitution. Intelligence. Wisdom. Perception. As he was moving back along the line, his hand drew a bit too close. One of the sparks from wisdom fell onto his hand and the orb began pulsating, before a shock of lightning connected to where the spark had landed. He fell unconscious. Unsure of how much time had passed, he shakily stood up from the center of his soul. Shaking his head, the fog that had enveloped his mind vanished. The orbs were no longer there. The hell was that? I don't feel any different. After a moment's pause he checked the bookshelves over only to find them all dormant except for some simple spells he wasn't interested in.

Upon returning to his body, he explained what had happened to Thormak and Eileen who had been watching over him. Eileen stated, "Huh, so you got your first orb? Figured you would have gotten it the first time, living out in the wild." Darc shrugged, "I never did any of the fighting, my father wouldn't let me." Eileen merely tilted her head in response.

As they entered the common room of the guild, they saw Zanis across the room, wildly gesticulating towards a woman standing with arms crossed at about 5 foot 2 inches tall. She had shoulder-length brown hair and emerald green eyes that look tired and spoke of weariness. "-us, just think about it, this job is huge! Enough to live well for 3 months!"

Darcs eyes widened as his heart skipped a beat and he let out a whisper, "Lina?" Thormak's ear twitched.

She hadn't noticed him, her attention still focused upon her assailant as she responded in a tired, yet lilting voice, "Look, I don't know who you are, but I'm not interested. All I'm looking for is something easy with a-" She was swept up in an embrace by Darc, her eyes widened in shock as she instinctively slammed a palm into his face. He immediately let her go as he stood back, rubbing his chin where she'd struck him before saying with a grin, "Nice to see you too."

Her widened eyes shot him a look of guilt as she realized who it was that had grabbed her. "You! I thought..." tears were forming in her eyes as she flung herself at him, hugging him tightly. "Idiot! How could you- Why didn't you-" She couldn't seem to finish her sentences as she buried her face into his chest to hide the tears. Darc just stood there, holding onto her as he rubbed her back, trying to calm her.

Zanis was standing a bit to the side, rubbing the back of his head as he sent glances back towards Thormak and Eileen, unsure what to do. Thormak was the one to speak up first, clearing his throat in advance, "Friend of yours?"

Lina stiffened up at the deep echoing voice of the dwarf and turned around, a fierce protective look in her reddened eyes though the dwarf had tried to sound friendly. Darc nodded as he said, "Yeah... long story, look, maybe we should take this outside." Looking around, they had started to draw stares from the other citizens. Thormak nodded, "Indeed."

They walked out onto the street, talking as they went to nowhere in particular, Lina's hand held firmly in Darc's own. "So... Lina was... a childhood friend." Her grip tightened painfully. Darc winced as he continued, "When we, when our kingdom fell, my father and I got split up from the others as we ran. I thought they were all dead. No... I had to know they were gone." His words floated off to meet the silence of the group. Eileen broke the silence, "Well, can she fight?"

Lina shot a look towards the redhead, "I can hold my own."

Darc nodded in affirmation, "Yeah, when we were kids she was always pretty good at swordfighting. Better than me anyway."

Eileen glanced at Thormak who only responded with a nod, "Alright, well... how about you talk it over with Darcy boy for a bit. About whether you want to join us. We'll be back by the inn when you're ready, Darc."

"Yeah, will do. We won't take long." Darc responded, coming to a stop with Lina as the others walked off.

Once the others had walked a fair distance, she turned towards him. "Childhood friend?" Darc winced again. "Really, that's the best you could come up with?" She leaned in, tilting her head upwards as her arms wrapped his neck, drawing him in for a kiss. He reached around in response, gently grabbing the back of her head, his other hand around her waist as he returned it. They stood there, enjoying each other's company for a moment before Darc opened his eyes. Ah shit... Darc thought as he saw her nose wrinkle. "Uh... guess I need a bath." He sniffed the air, just now noticing how pungent he was. Leaning forwards he repeated the motion. She pushed him back, glaring daggers, "I wasn't going to say anything. You really are an idiot sometimes." Darc shrugged with a grin, "Yeah, guess so. Good thing I got you to set me straight." He noticed she was trying to sneakily determine her own situation.

After asking around, the two of them found themselves in one of the public baths. Apparently in this world they had no qualms about mixed bathing. On the way over, they'd already briefly gone over what they had been up to before meeting. Lina had tried holding on to he and Bradford as they were stretched through the wormhole, however she'd lost her grip near the end. She winded up alone a few miles east of Westhaven which was an area full of rocky hills. She'd arrived much earlier than he at the eastern gate and had sold her mirror for a hefty sum of 25 shillings. The inn she ended up staying at had cost 2 shillings for the night, so coming to the same conclusion as Darc, she'd figured that she needed to know how to make money. The guild had seemed like the best place to start and that was when Zanis had found her. He probably assumed she was an adventurer looking for bounties given her foreign clothes and the dagger tucked into her boot.

As they sat relaxing off to the side of the pool, Darc brought up the topic that he'd been tasked with. "So, this job we're going on pays 1 pound. It's ah... 50 shillings. It's probably going to be dangerous. Numbers unknown, location not certain. I assume they're like the other beasts in this world, so... pretty intelligent. Maybe carnivorous.  Those wolves me and Brad ran into yesterday were acting like bandits. Had a roadblock up and everything."

Lina had a frown on her face as she voiced her concerns then asked, "I don't like it. Too much risk. And what about those others? Can we trust them?"

Darc sighed as he responded, holding her against him, "Yeah... to be honest I'd rather you not go, but... we both know that's not gonna happen. The others seem decent enough. Not sure about Zanis, but the dwarf and redhead seem reliable."

Lina playfully slapped his cheeks as she said, "Oh you know me so well. You try to leave me now, I'd track you down no matter what. Wouldn't be the first time I dragged you out of hell." Darc nodded in response as they dressed themselves and left towards the Wobbly Willow. "By the way, when's the last time you prayed?"