The Tasker clicked the lock, opened the door, and the two burst inside with their blades at the ready—Max looked around, checking the corners of the room, his pulse hammering, but he saw nothing at first.
“Wait for it…” said the Tasker.
Then, right on cue, the arachnids began emerging out from the gloom. The rat-sized Cellar Spiders crawled over the countertop and came out of the bookshelves, where they’d been hiding in the empty spaces. A few lowered themselves from the ceiling on thin strands of webbing. They were black and hairy, their clusters of eyes bulging, their blade-like legs long and nasty. And as they began scurrying towards Max and the Tasker, eight in total, one thing also became clear:
They hated visitors.
The Tasker jumped forward and swung her sword in a horizontal arc, which caused all the advancing spiders to pause and lean away in defense. The nearest had just recovered when it found itself flying backwards in the air—the result of a well-timed boot.
“Don’t hesitate to kick ‘em!” yelled the Tasker. “Stomping works too!”
Max squared off against two spiders of his own. He tried thrusting forward with the point of his dagger, but its reach was too short and the spiders easily avoided his unpracticed, telegraphed attacks. Max swung his dagger back and forth as the spiders advanced, just in case one decided to jump onto his chest. He didn’t know if they could do that, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Then, following the Tasker’s lead, he suddenly lunged forward without warning, stomping down hard on one of his assailants. The sickening mixture of a crunch and splat Max felt underneath his boot nearly made him shiver.
The remaining Cellar Spider circled back, raising its two front legs menacingly. Its glistening fangs opened and the creature began emitting a chitter-like noise—in response, two more spiders separated from the other group and joined their chittering brethren. Now three strong, the spiders again moved forward, 24 black inhuman eyes set upon Max hungrily.
The spider who’d chittered jumped up—but Max was faster. He slashed out with the dagger, catching the spider across the belly. It fell to the floor, spilling its green guts. Before it hit, however, the other two had already rushed forward to attack Max’s legs. He managed to kick one sideways, skittering across the wooden floor, but the other had gotten to his defenseless leg. Max felt it crawl up the outside of his breeches, but before he could do anything, the spider sunk its fangs into the soft flesh of his behind.
“YOW!” Max yelled, as he impaled it with a swift stab of the dagger. He brought it away and the skewered spider twitched, then curled up on the end of the blade, dead. With his other hand, Max rubbed his behind—the bite stung!
“Not bad for a noob,” said the Tasker, who’d finished up killing the other spiders. She winced when she noticed the puncture wounds in Max’s pants. “Got you, did it? Better put some Cooling Cream on that, sooner rather than later. Otherwise it’ll itch so bad you won’t be able to sleep. Trust me on that one.” The woman walked over to a set of stairs leading up to a closed door on the second level of the building. “Yo Tids! You can come down now. The task is finished.”
After a flurry of noise and footsteps, the Evaluator appeared, opening the door ever-so-slightly. When he was certain the area was indeed clear, he emerged fully and walked down the stairs in a huff. He was short with a pinched face, and was wearing an odd conical hat. “About time! Do you KNOW how much business I lost waiting for you?”
The Tasker rubbed her temples. “You know, Tids, it was only eight this time. You’re telling me you can’t handle eight Cellar Spiders?”
“Eight?! I’m an Evaluator, not an Exterminator!” The small man disappeared into a back room behind the counter. When he came back out, he was carrying a coinpurse. He tossed it to the Tasker. “Here! For your services, late though they were. Now please leave! I must clean up this mess. I wouldn’t expect you to know how quickly spider blood stains a wooden floor!”
“Pleasure as always, Evaluator.” The Tasker turned towards Max, opened the coinpurse, and spilled half its contents into Max’s hand. “Nice work, your share. You earned my recommendation, too. What’s your Home Inn?”
When he'd seen how much he'd been paid for such quick work, Max couldn't stop his eyes from widening ever so slightly—it was as much as a full day in the mines. “The Magnificent Dog,” said Max, trying to keep his voice steady.
“Great. I’ll drop it off sometime, then.”
“We’re, uh— we’re actually having a party tonight. The inn is, I mean.”
“Oh yeah? That’s cool, my Home Inn doesn’t do anything like that. Then again, my inn also has dirt floors, so…” The woman looked at him for a moment. “Okay, I’ll think about it. Maybe I could drop off the guild recommendation then, too. We’ll see. What’s your name?”
“M—” Max caught himself. “Mmm, Pariah.”
“Say again?”
“Pariah.”
“Right, okay—sorry. It just you said your name like a dessert for a second there.” The Tasker laughed. “Anyway, I’m Knocks. Thanks for the help, Pariah, and for the party invitation.” She shook Max’s hand. "Either way, I’ll get the guild rec to you sometime, so you’ll have it if you ever want to join the Taskers.”
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Knocks briefly inclined her head then left the shop, off to complete another task elsewhere in the city; she’d mentioned a stolen case of wine, or something to that effect. When she’d gone and the door shut behind her, Tids the Evaluator emerged from the backroom holding a mop and bucked. He noticed then that Max hadn’t left with the Tasker.
“Eh? What’re you still doing here? For the last time, I AIN’T paying the guild any more than the minimum!” The small man brandished his mop like a weapon. “Especially not after waiting hours! No way!”
“Yeah, uh, I’m not with the Taskers. I’m here to Evaluate something…”
At this, the man brightened, his entire demeanor changing immediately. “A customer? Well why didn’t you say so! Come, lad, come!” Tids dropped the mop and bucket down by the hairy spider carapaces without a second thought. “The customer always comes first! That’s what my pa always liked to say,” chuckled the now-jovial Evaluator as he walked behind the counter again. “So, what do you have for me today?”
Max plucked the purple-black stone from his inventory and set it upon the counter. It was the first time he’d really had a good look at the item since the mines, and sitting there in the Evaluator’s shop it seemed just as much an enigma as he remembered. In this light, it appeared pitch black—if he hadn’t seen the purple hue earlier, he wouldn’t have even known it was there.
The Evaluator’s eyebrows furrowed as soon as he laid eyes upon the stone—Max wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He picked it up gently, first running his hands over the smooth, glossy surface before holding it up to the daylight shining in through the window. “Interesting, interesting,” he said, but aside from some vague mumbling and the occasional grunt, Tids offered nothing else as of yet. He produced a magnifying glass from somewhere, peering at the stone as he turned it over and over. The Evaluator then lit a wide candle and passed the stone across the flame several times; it was then that Max saw the purple translucence again. Still, after all this, Tids said nothing that might identify the item. Then, without any explanation what-so-ever, the man picked up the stone and hurried into the backroom of the store.
“Excuse me?” said Max, briefly considering if he should jump over the corner in case the Evaluator was trying to make off with the item.
“Just a moment!” came the reply.
Max peeked his head over the counter. The backroom door was still open, and Max was surprised to see that it stretched back farther than he would’ve guessed. Inside, bookshelves were pressed wall-to-wall in the modest space, each filled top to bottom. Other books laid stacked on top of each other on the floor. Tids was rummaging through one such pile. “I’m sure I left it here last time,” the man grumbled, tossing aside book after book when it wasn’t the one he seemed to be looking for.
“Aha!” he exclaimed after a minute. The Evaluator emerged from the backroom shortly afterwards, holding a small leather-bound book. He placed it on the counter and began flipping through the pages, which looked old and smudged with charcoal fingerprints. “At first I thought this might’ve been some kind of Opal or similar gemstone, but no… I would’ve identified that as soon as I picked it up. Then I remembered this journal…” Tids continued searching through the pages. Many held hand-drawn sketches of what looked to be different gems, metals, and other materials. “Sethlan the bladesmith traveled all of Aletheia looking for the finest crafting materials known to this realm… This was long before your kind arrived here, that is… But I remembered a page… Yes, here it is…”
Tids tapped on a passage in the small book and cleared his throat in preparation to read. “‘I’ve finally reached the small village, after many months of following rumors and dead ends. I had thought I’d uncover a hidden vein of strong, unique ore in the surrounding mountains… but if the elders here are to be believed, it is not a vein of material but rather a single specimen.’” The Evaluator emphasized these words. “‘They ascribe some kind of intelligence to the stone, claiming it changes to suit the warrior. Of course, they also say the knowledge of how to forge such a material has been lost since the First Age—how convenient. They keep the stone locked and guarded so as to not fall into the wrong hands, but seeing as I was alone and no threat, they allowed me a glimpse... I’ve included a sketch below. Though I only saw it from a good distance off, I must say it appeared wholly normal to my trained eyes…’”
Below the paragraph was a rough sketch of a smooth stone. It looked eerily similar to the one currently sitting on the Evaluator’s countertop, though it was drawn as completely black—no purple.
“He goes on to say the villagers called it a ‘Wrath Stone’, though includes that nobody could tell him why it was named such,” said Tids. He pushed the stone back across the table. “So there you have it.”
Max tapped the stone. The box that appeared now read:
Wrath Stone (crafting material)
?????
It wasn't quite what he expected to find. “There’s no description though,” Max said, frowning.
Like the flip of a switch, Tids digressed back into his former irritable self. “How MANY times must I TELL you people?” The man’s cheeks turned redder as his voice increased in volume. “Just because I’m an EVALUATOR doesn’t make me a know-it-all! For most rares and up, I can ONLY tell you so much. Got that?”
“But this is almost useless! What am I supposed to do now?”
“Look, I’m not an exterminator, I’m not a know-it-all, and I most CERTAINLY am NOT a babysitter! I don’t know, try asking a Master Smith!” The Evaluator came around the counter and picked up the mop and bucket again. “Ahh! My floors! Unless you’ve got OTHER work for me, please be on your way. Business is slow as-is, and now who’s going to come to an Evaluator’s with flooring dyed green from spider guts?! I wouldn’t! In fact, if I came into a place of business with green f—””
The man was still grumbling as Max backed out the front door and shut it behind him.
Max sighed. He’d come so far, only to learn the item’s name and class but basically nothing else. A crafting material. All hopes that the stone would turn out to be a rare, expensive gem had dissipated with the visit to the Evaluators. Still, a crafting material could be potentially valuable if he could figure out just what could be done with it. That journal entry had been… curious. Perhaps Max could go around asking Tiann’s blacksmiths, but he also felt that if this Evaluator couldn’t tell him more, none of the common city smiths would be able to do much better.
He dropped the Wrath Stone back into his inventory. After what had happened outside Brix, there were still important questions that needed answering. What had been written in that old bladesmith’s journal had only complicated matters—had the villagers called it intelligent? On the walk back to the Magnificent Dog, Max suddenly felt very uneasy...
With this newest information, perhaps it was time to risk bringing Entrails and Nesto into his circle of confidence.