Fired brick houses made up the large town of Spes, some single floored while others spanning two to three storeys high with a scattering of different paints coloring the townscape in vibrant blues, dry greens and warm reds. The streets running in between each house are paved with earthy red pebbles giving foothold to thousands of denizens going about their midday lives as the sun shone down through the day’s clear skies.
This scene surrounded a grand plaza of kept grass littered by market stands and benches with a large marble cathedral as its centerpiece. The marble cathedral rose well higher than the tallest buildings, its architecture of harsh gothic make combined with gleaming crystals embedded into its pillar-bases glowing a pearly white and filling its every corner with light.
Flanking the looming structure and surrounding the plaza were four more large buildings each unique in their shape and aesthetics. Caretakers, priests and people flowed in and out of the cathedral slowly going about their day. So it was the same at each other building at the plaza, except one.
Second on the cathedral’s right around the plaza stood a tall building with two smooth stone floors and an upper wooden one, it lay wider than the cathedral itself but not the widest of the five. The building was lined with oaken windows each having a banner falling off their sils from the second floor and down to just a foot above the street’s ground. Above these banners and inbetween the third floor’s windows jotted out large trophies of mixed make. From the skulls of fearsome monsters to statues of great heroes and more.
Stepping to the building from the plaza one would find its large entrance wider than four doors yet still almost clogged with the eb and flow of its denizens. Crowds of greatly diverse people scoured outside of and within the large structure, greeting one and all with a simple crescent sign above its entrance of oaken make. Carved into the sign haphazardly and painted a dull white lay three words.
The Dungeoneering Guild.
Within rose a vast hall taking up all of the first and second floors from ground to ceiling while above hanging over the ground floor lay pathways following the walls and sometimes crossing over like bridges, three times on either side and twice across intersecting each other. Directly at the entrance lay a long line of receptionists behind a wall of windows flanking a second large doorway at their center which divided the first quarter of the building’s depth. On either side of this entry area and leading to the receptionists were long wooden fenced lines whilst along the walls people sat over simple wooden cushioned chairs around stone tables that jotted out of the walls themselves.
At one of the receptionist stands. calmly yet quickly worked a young lady turning from one page to another across several books she swiftly marked in writing. Her hair oblique striped black and white and cut just below her eye line of gentle black irises, with fair milky skin she bowed to her current charge showing two long ears rising out from either side of her head like a horse’s, each also black and white striped.
“Welcome to the guild, please make yourself available at testing hall four!” She spoke assertively and the younger human boy she was attending stepped aside then to reveal her next and seemingly last charge.
Also young as she was used to seeing recruits to the guild being, the boy before her was a half-orc youth with dark ash gray skin and a head of carefully short-shaved black hair above stoic murky green eyes. He was muscular as all of his kin usually are but as she glanced between him and at the looks other Orc-kin in the area gave him she knew he was what they’d call a ‘runt’.
“Gin son of Gore Bowbreaker.” The young boy spoke softly, the anxiety in his tone palpable.
“Kay, I’ll be your guild representative today, welcome Gin!” She said warmly offering the boy a hand he carefully shook.
“Ah! We received your letter of introduction last month! Yes yes, I have it right…here!” She scrounged below her desk for the paperwork, glancing it over briefly before returning to one of her many open books.
“We have you down here as a Martial fighter with a focus on archery, is that correct sir?”
“Ye-yeah.” Gin nudged his head at the longbow and quiver strapped over his back.
“Alright you match the drawing sent in with the letter, take this badge here and please make your way to testing grounds four.” Kay hands the boy a dull bronze badge inscribed with the word ‘Candidate’.
Gin took the badge as he nodded, placing it over his heavy leather armor’s left bicep with its metal clip. Quickly then turning away and moving towards the next entrance, he suddenly briefly paused and looked back at Kay. Awkwardly he pointed at the door as if confirming the conversation was actually over or not.
Kay smiled and nodded to him which Gin took as so, moving on into the guild proper.
“Ah, that’s everyone I guess!” She sighed, glancing at one of her books with a list of ticked names, all but one marked as accounted for. Kay looked up at the large clock that hung above the guild entrance’s interior. Merely a minute before closing time and she can move on to relegating this year’s recruits to their test.
“I wonder what happened to this one, though I guess we do have dropouts each year.” She pondered looking back down at the list then shrugged and began closing down her area, whistling as she worked and listening to the chattering crowd ahead flowing to her coworkers.
Briefly she thought she heard a struggle ahead, looking up just in time as a bellowing voice shook her poor sensitive eardrums.
“WAIT!” A young boy basically screamed in a cracking voice as he charged through the entry crowd, frantically pushing his way through with wide panicked emerald eyes below a mess of shaggy hazel hair.
As less people stood in the way the more concerned Kay got at the sight of the youth. Worn out ragged leathers for armor, a mess of feathers sprawling his entire body and hair as he held onto a whole ass live chicken under one arm and no weapon in sight.
“Oh boy” Kay mumbled as she watched him rush over like a deer in headlights.
“I’m here! I’m here!” He shouted coming to rest at her window, the smell of something dead oozing into her stall.
“I am not late, please god tell me I am not late.” He said in a hoarse voice, as Kay glanced at the clock and then at the last unticked name on the list.
“T-Tod Ether?” She asked tentatively to which the boy nodded furiously before looking back at the clock himself, the frazzled looking bird also turning to look.
“Oh, oh I’m not late.” He mused, as both he and the chicken slowly turned back to stare at Kay.
“Wha-”
“Y-Yeah! Ether! Tod Ether present teach!” He exclaimed, standing at attention and causing the chicken to bawk.
“Right, yes.” Kay adjusted her awkward stance, then checked her drawer for the drawing of the recruit under said name. Pictured on the paper was a young human looking boy, lanky tall but athletic and with a huge grin. She eyed back at Tod finding him leaning over the counter and staring at his own picture, far too close to the liking of her nose.
He kept staring, and Kay met eyes with the chicken, she thought she saw a glimmer of thought in there.
“Ahem.” Kay coughed out, and Tod suddenly looked up and grinned.
“Right, I am Kay, your guild representative for the day.”
“Hi Kay!”
“Please take this badge and find your way to testing hall four.” She ticked next to his name and handed him the pin, which he proceeded to hand to the chicken.
“Four? Four okay.” Tod nodded then turned to leave, pausing mid step before turning right back to her.
“Oh! Almost forgot! Can ya hold her for me? Thanks!” He then proceeded to take back the badge from the chicken and handed the bird over to Kay who unconsciously took it as she then watched him stroll off.
“What-” Kay looked down at the chicken who was staring up at her.
“Bawk.” The chicken pooped.
Emotionlessly, Kay put the bird down on the desk, finished closing her station’s wooden shutters before grabbing her purse and rolled up a cigarette. With chicken under her arm and an unlit cig in between her unamused lips she stepped out of the door in her station’s back.
“It’s gonna be a long day huh.” She grumbled to herself, entering into the guild hall proper as a vast tavern lay sprawling in front of her. Warriors and mages of all kinds sat and stood about respective groups or solitarily at tables of varying sizes whilst barmaids traveled to and from a counter at the far end doubling as a bar and a window into a large kitchen feeding the hungry adventurers.
“Awesome!” Tod mused right beside her, almost giving her a heart attack as she stumbled back to the door.
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“Kid!” Kay exclaimed clutching her throat before breathing out in exasperation.
“Yeah?”
“You know what, nevermind.” Kay sighed, recovering herself before quickly ushering the gleamy eyed boy down the right path.
“Okay okay now I am going to be late, this way come on!” She tried to reclaim her customer service smile as she found her way through the tavern’s end, picking out a door out of a dozen labeled ones she led Tod as he turned and dragged on staring wide eyed at the guild members that walked past.
All the while Kay wondered who the fuck was this kid, why did he smell like a kennel and why the fuck was she still holding onto a chicken!
Questions for later it seemed to her, stomping down a handful of turns and past several rooms labeled as Testing grounds with numerical values, until they came upon the fourth door. Laying open, she waved Tod inside before following down herself as it led down a long circular staircase lined with fiery torches.
A whole six storeys worth of stairs down later, they came to a short corridor.
“Past the two doors ahead, just keep going.” Kay said as she followed the boy out into a vast opening. Not quite a room, the walls and floor were roughly hewn rock lit up by a bright yellow crystal jotting out of the ceiling’s center. Along the walls lay stone steps with wooden cushioned seatings leading down to a sudden drop of ten feet straight into a rocky arena.
Glancing around she counted the eleven other recruits that sat scattered across the place joined by four adults she knew to be experienced guild members sitting in their own group. Standing in the arena waiting expectantly was a tall Elven man donning an ornate red gambeson with gleaming silver chainmail over it and a set of leopard decorated silver platelegs.
Resting ahead of him and held by his overlapping hands by the hilt rose a wide cutlass-like silver blade adorned with more leopard facsimiles on the pommel and blade faces. The elf himself was an intimidating looking man with long pale blond hair tied up into a tail, one harsh violet eye and another closed by a massive gaping vertical scar.
He looked to Kay as she entered, immediately giving her a chill down her spine as he always does. Suddenly, Kay realized what she looked like. Cigarette still in mouth but unlit, and chicken in hand.
Out of pure desperation, she handed the cig to the chicken while keeping eye contact with him.
“Miss Dew, is that the last?” The man asked with an imposing tone.
Coming to her senses Kay nodded.
“Yes sir Fel, we have twelve recruits today!” She replies before shooing Tod to the seatings.
“Very well, please start us off.”
Kay puts the chicken down momentarily, fixing up her hair before standing up.
“Uhm, please all potential recruits be seated!” She announced, causing some of the standing youths to sit, ignored seemingly by one that quickly joined Tod on her shitlist.
“We begin today the bi-yearly recruitment test for our venirated Dungeoneering Guild. This is the fourth of ten tests being processed today. I, alongside our town’s own Martial Copper class Dungeoneer Fel’Indelis and four other Silver class Dungoneers will be your evaluators.” Kay goes through the spiel she has officiated three times before.
“Before being accepted as any class of Dungeoneer, you will undertake three tests for us to ascertain your merit and capabilities. The first of which, all of you present have passed.” She said with finality, enjoying the confusion among the youths.
“Miss Dew likes to toy with you, she means you have passed her test of punctuality.” Fel added bemused, before turning his gaze to the latest boy, Tod.
“The rule of punctuality is strict with us Dungeoneers, and take this to heart. In the Dungeon, being late will lose you and your party precious lives.”
Tod paled a few shades.
But not because of what Fel had said, as much to Kay’s chagrin she also noticed. It was by his feet.
The fucking chicken was in the arena.
As it roamed doing what it well damn wanted Kay tried to continue.
“Ah- The second test will be a combat contest-”
When she noticed Tod was also now in the arena trying to usher the chicken back to the stands.
“Young man.” Fel stood staring the boy down as he lay crouched cooing the bird closer.
“Uh, me?” Tod looked up to the elven warrior, realizing now his mistake.
“It seems you have never been taught proper decorum. I am lacking in the understanding why you would bring your live dinner with you here but, alas I may as well make use of it.” Fel pronounced, swiftly and suddenly grasping his heavy scimitar and raising it straight to his side causing the sand beside him to rise with.
“We have a volunteer, to be the first. Come boy announce yourself, where is your weapon?” Fel asked, seeing him unarmed.
Tod took a step back smiling awkwardly.
“Oh I uh, I’m Tod Ether, I do not use a weapon.” He said plainly, kicking off his sandals before tightening the bandages he had wrapped around his hands.
“I see. Very well, mister Ether.” Fel nodded, then took a fighting stance with his sword.
Kay took the scene in stride, clearing her throat before speaking once more.
“As I was explaining…The second test will be combat with Fel’Indelis. He is not obliged to keep his attacks non-lethal, as this arena we stand in is heavily enchanted to avoid such circumstances. Yet as Tod Ethel is about to find out, this does not stop either of them from feeling pain as if the actual attack fully landed. If an attack was to severe your hand, the enchantment will protect it but render it limp. Understood?” She glanced at the youths again, this time all paying heavy attention to her words.
“Then, let the second test of the fourth grounds, the first round evaluated by sir Fel with testee Tod Ethel..”
Kay then noticed a floating chicken landing into her arms, glancing at the stands she then saw a very amused young mage quickly putting her wand away.
Another to the book of grudges.
“Begin!”
Tod stretched out his arms, flexing his fingers before bringing them back in ahead of himself into enclosed fists. His eyes briefly adjusted to their proximity, enough that it delayed his reaction to Fel’s sudden rush forth with merely two steps and closing in the fifteen feet distance between them like the wind.
Grasping his weapon with two hands Fel swung widely from his left, slashing right into the boy’s left wrist sending waves of pain rushing up his arm as he stumbled back from the shock. But Fel didn’t stop there, stepping to immediately and shoulder bashing the boy’s chest, taking the breath out of him and sending him rolling five feet backwards.
Tod took a choked breath in when he came still, quickly rising to his feet to face the elven warrior who once again took a fighting stance. His chest aching and his left hand now limp with heated pain pulsating off it, Tod glanced at the man’s blade realizing how much of an advantage its reach gave him.
“Resilient, and quick to return to your feet.” Fel mused.
“Yet lacking in reaction time. How will you adapt?”
Tod raised his limp hand back up retaking the same stance with his right foot ahead and his left planted behind him, both hands up but only his right capable of forming a fist.
“I’m sorry sir, I am awake now.” He said, his eyes now looking different than before. The childish grin, gone. Replaced with a grimace as he bore his strangely pointed teeth, like a carnivore’s fangs.
As if fully recognising the threat before him, his stance also solidified. His shoulders no longer slacked, his arms no longer wavered. His eyes focused.
Fel tested the boy’s new conviction.
Once again Fel moved like the wind, rushing forth into a wide slash aiming for Tod’s right fist.
And once again, Fel’s speed overtook Tod’s reaction time, slashing right into the wrist and sending waves of pain down the boy’s arm. Yet this time, Tod moved in on Fel as his sword slashed by, closing the distance between the blade and Fel’s face as he clenched his no longer limp left fist and pummeled the elf right in the jaw.
Tod did not stop there, like a ravenous beast he continued his assault, slapping Fel with his now limp right hand before continuing the motion into a low spinning kick surprising the warrior and sweeping him off his left foot.
Fel tried to fall back and reposition but Tod wouldn’t let him, quickly charging his shoulder into the elf’s chest and sending him tumbling back a foot. Fel looked down as he tried to bring his wide blade inbetween himself and his assailant like a shield. Faster than Tod could react the silver blade stood between them now.
Still Tod continued, punching the blade with his left fist before clenching his right also no longer limp and punching it once more, each inching the warrior back with the boy’s surprising strength. When Fel suddenly saw Tod’s left hand grip the dull edge of his blade, watching as the boy used the elf’s own solid stance to lift himself up onehanded, grab the elf’s head with his other, and flip over him entirely.
Fel tried to turn around only to come faced with Tod’s left foot slamming into his ear, staggered back the warrior recovered quicker and stepped back further regaining his advantage of distance.
Wide-eyed, Fel stared down Tod with renewed respect, the boy could fight. As he stared, he then noticed another oddity. Fel wasn’t the most seasoned dungeoneer, but even he knew what this feeling was. Having met many hungry a monster within the depths of the dungeon, an instinct is trained within when such eyes glare you down from the shadows. Fel felt those same eyes staring him down now, more than animalistic, but inhuman.
Fel then looked closer, the boy’s green eyes, his regenerative ability, his lanky but athletic frame. Taller than most boys his age for a human. His ears untipped, his skin pale as the humanfolk of this town yet, Fel knew he had missed something.
But he was given no more time to consider, as Tod decided it was his time to go on the attack.
Clenching his fists tighter Tod rushed forward as Fel brought his sword back to separate them with a parry, expecting the first punch from the boy’s left, he did not expect the next move though as Tod full on body slammed into his sword’s broadside. Grasping on once again even though the sharp edge was on top, Tod raised himself over the sword and double kicked the elf in the face sending Fel stumbling back. Fel recovered, but not quickly enough as Tod was already once again upon him with a left fist, landing into the side of his chin before attempting to land a right.
Fel blocked the fist with his gauntlet, and each from the flurry of attacks that followed, noticing that none of them had any actual strength behind them too late as Tod suddenly dropped low and tackled his legs. Fel felt himself being lifted, a full grown elven man in chainmail and platelegs, before watching the ground come rushing to his face.
Face bloodied, Fel kicked the boy off his feet and tumbled back into standing. Enough was enough, Fel thought, it was time he brought the boy in line. Watching as the animalistic recruit quickly stood up and rushed at him once more, Fel stopped holding back.
With one swift motion, Fel stepped forward and slashed downwards, cutting the boy’s frame down the middle from top to bottom. The enchantment in the half stopped his blade at the boy’s forehead but he knew it fully landed the blow as he watched Tod’s eyes roll into the back of his head and his body fall unconscious to the ground.
Fel breathed a sigh of relief.
“I will need a tankard of caffeine if each of you is this persistent.” The elf mused. “Tod Ethel.”
“Has advanced.”