002 - NO PROFIT FOR SAVIORS
Conrad stepped forward, feet moving as he had been drilled by his grandfather in a shuffle step. He raised his shortsword, ready to take the thing’s arm - or its head - whatever came through completely first.
“SHIELD HIGH!” his grandfather bellowed. And indeed, Conrad had let his shield drop as he had prepared to put his full might into his attack. A bad habit he had not yet broken. Where before the round disk of wood and iron would have covered from the bridge of his nose almost to his legs, it hung low toward the middle of his thigh.
The glass window shattered. Small shards and chips flew and to the sound of glass plinking off his mail and his mother behind him screaming, Conrad flinched back against the stinging cuts of the glass. What wasn’t blocked by his mail spattered his unprotected face and neck, leaving small cuts and scratches but, fortunately, sparing his eyes.
Above the shrieks of his mother, his grandfather’s voice rang, loud, a commander on a battlefield pitching his tone to be heard first among all else, “DISTANCE AND RECOVER!”
The idea was simple, and he had practiced it a few times. If an enemy gets too close for you to maneuver properly he was revealing a weakness while attempting to exploit your own - he didn’t want space. So that was what you created.
Conrad backpedaled awkwardly, raising his shield and doing his best to follow the command. Before he could recover his stance and prepare for the next attack the creature, a lizardkin, had launched itself at him.
It was small for a man but big for a child, with lithe limbs ending in long claws, and tough scales on the backs of everything making armor close enough in strength to thin, hardened leather. It leaped onto his shield, hanging on with one arm and two feet, tail whipping around crazily as its free hand raked at his mail.
The weight of it! Conrad dropped his shield, surprising the lizardkin, and swung hard. The blade cut deep into the creature’s scaled back but even Conrad knew it was only a flesh wound.
“FULL ATTACK!”
Conrad obeyed, pulling back his sword as the creature cringed and turned to run. He swung again, catching it in the hind quarters, then again with his backswing. It scrambled away, but this time it was Conrad who closed the distance. If it reached the opposite wall he would have it. A turn would show a clean opening to its soft underbelly where the same slashes that only pained the monster on its armored hide would split it wide open.
But the lizardkin wasn’t so easily cornered. It scrambled straight up the wooden inner wall of the shop and turned its climb into an aggressive leap, dropping its bulk into Conrad and sending them both to the ground in a scrambling heap of limbs, claws, and steel.
Ground fighting hadn’t been part of Conrad’s meager training yet. All talk of careful angles of attack, of measured distances, blocks, parries, and counters, all of it vanished from his mind as the breath of the monster cascaded over his face. The lizardkin raked at him with all four limbs, scrabbling to pull his guts out like a mountain cat while it bit at him, jaw clacking audibly as he just barely kept it back with his free hand.
“DISTANCE!” his grandfather was bellowing while his mother screamed.
He couldn’t though. There was no distance to make. The whole battle had shrunk to the scrambling heap of the two of them and it was only steel between Conrad and death.
Steel!
Swinging was out of the question, but his shortsword was of high quality, honed to a near-razor sharpness. He thrust at the lizardkin’s side, missing narrowly but wedging the sword in between them, blade scraping against his mail and forcing the monster to pull its own, soft underbelly away.
It wanted space now.
And when your enemy wanted space, you took it from him.
Conrad wrapped his free arm over the back of the monster, his sword still trapped, one cutting edge against his chest and one threatening the lizardkin above him that was now struggling against Conrad’s other arm. It had forgotten to continue scratching at him, legs now planted on the ground while two arms held Conrad’s sword arm down. It pressed mightily, but against the strength of a grown man, it was a slow, losing battle.
Full attack. Conrad grunted with the effort of pulling the monster down against him. It made an attempt to bite his exposed neck but, shifting himself aside sent the thrusting jaws into the ground and brought the body of the creature against his blade.
It screamed as the soft flesh parted against sharp steel and, scrambling, lost its footing. Conrad rolled it over and pressing now with the weight of his body to aid his arms, the sword edge sank deep into the lizardkin, crunching past bone and sinew into organs underneath. It sputtered blood as its strength ebbed.
When it could resist him no longer Conrad stood and perfunctorily sank the point through its chest, ending it completely.
A rush went through him. A sense of accomplishment and victory, not emotional but coming with the same meaning that often accompanied the feelings. It was magic, the rush of experience points that were the reward for travelers on Order’s path for defeating Chaos.
Conrad had earned experience before, of course, for countless tasks and usages of his Merchant skills, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Not just the magnitude - he earned over fifty XP for killing the creature - but the sensation of earning it was altogether different from that of earning it through mundane tasks.
The ecstasy of it was interrupted by his grandfather, “Don’t lose yourself in it,” he admonished, “Fight’s not over.”
Conrad straightened, suddenly wary. Outside it was more than just monsters rampaging through the streets, now. Callouts of one adventurer to another giving instructions or shouting positions of monsters and warning their comrades were intermixed with the hissing and screeching of lizardkin, both fighting and dying.
“There’s gotta be at least two bands out there fighting,” Conrad called back over his shoulder as he picked up his shield and moved closer to the broken window. He looked over the mechanism for the shutter but there would be no repairing it right now, “Maybe three.”
He moved closer to the window to get a better view when his grandfather admonished, “More than we’re used to seeing out here, still, keep back, keep ready. And keep your shield high, damn it! Don’t make the same mistake you just did.”
It was good advice. Conrad took a few deep breaths and shook out his arms before heeding it and taking up a ready posture.
“We can cover the window,” his mother said, “Move one of the shelves in place to keep any more of them out while the adventurers clean up.”
“That’s good thinking, Bridgitte,” his grandfather said, “Get to it while Conrad holds the window.”
She moved up toward the front of the shop, picking her way among the shelves and racks that filled the space.
The sounds of fighting intensified outside and the front of the shop shook as something huge slammed into it, rattling the windows and shaking loose broken glass.
Grabbing a rack of armor, Conrad’s mother yanked on it before realizing it was hopeless and starting to remove the rack’s contents. Conrad glanced back and was about to offer help when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw another shape fill the broken window of the shop.
This one was huge. If the scales of the other lizardkin had been a leather jerkin, this one wore proper mail armor. It hissed at him as it thrust its arms through the window, its huge bulk needing more work to fit through.
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“Mauler!” his grandfather shouted, “Bridgitte, get back!” he got to his feet and began hopping forward to help, blade bare, the old man as ready to fight as he could be.
Suddenly a woman’s voice came from behind the Mauler, “Making it too easy!”
A swordpoint emerged from the center of the thing’s chest and it let out a pained gasp. Frantically it grabbed at the sword which pushed further through, cutting its fingers.
“Too,” squelch “Easy!” the voice continued as it drove the sword the rest of the way through. The creature collapsed on the window sill, revealing a muscular woman wielding a long two-handed sword.
She had on an androgynous, functional breastplate, hard leather tassets, and what appeared to be iron knee and elbow protection. Her brown hair was up in a braid, pinned in place around her crown, and was further held in place by an armored hachigane that provided partial protection for her head.
Standing there with her confident smile and blood dripping off her sword, if Conrad had been merely a spectator to the whole series of events, she would have been the furthest thing from what he would have called beautiful. But seen through eyes juiced to the rims with adrenaline, Conrad felt that this was a beauty worth dying for.
The woman yanked the sword from the dead Mauler and took a lazy look around her before leaning her head in through the window.
“Oh,” she sounded mildly surprised seeing the three people standing around inside the shop, then over her shoulder, “This one’s still full. Check if there’s others.”
She leaned forward over the top of the dead monster like it was just a cushion on the windowsill and asked, “What kinda place you got here?”
They all stared at her, a mixture of caution, confusion, and good-natured, automatic desire to welcome a patron into their shop.
“Is it… is it over?” Bridgitte, Conrad’s mother, asked.
The woman looked lazily over her shoulder, the sound of fighting all but having disappeared, “Could be, could be,” she said, “Or could be they come back.” She eyed the shelves of potions, weapons, and adventuring accoutrements of all kinds, “Might need to gear up and heal up before that happens. No telling, after a fight like this,” she gently thumped her fist on the dead lizardkin Mauler, “if we’re even ready for it. Know what I mean, shopkeeps?”
“Let’s not keep her waiting then,” Conrad’s mother said, confidence returning to her tone as she sensed a deal to be made, “Conrad get this mess cleaned up while I talk discounts with our new friend…” she trailed off meaningfully as she moved to the door to unlatch it.
“Karina,” the woman said as she moved to enter, “Berserker.”
Conrad stood where he was, eyeing Karina. Berserker wasn’t a class he had heard of but, given the name, he could imagine what role they filled in an adventuring band. A hand on his shoulder brought him back to reality.
“Not a total disaster for your first fight,” his grandfather said, “But we’re way behind. Without that mail, you’d be lizard food. Going to push your mother for more of your time spent training and - ”
But Conrad had stopped listening. His mother was showing Karina a molded, female breastplate of better quality than the standard one she had on and helping her to remove the original. Conrad partially expected a more masculine figure beneath the armor given her class, but the woman’s chest made him wonder how she had fit into the other breastplate to begin with.
His grandfather quit talking, noticed where Conrad’s attention had landed, and gave him a slap across the back of the head, “That’s worse danger than the Mauler.” Conrad grinned and his grandfather gestured to the corpses, “Best get these cleaned up, we’ll discuss your failures later.”
Conrad waved him away and shoved the dead Mauler outside the window. He lifted the dead lesser lizardkin when Karina called over, “Didn’t notice that one - you kill that yourself?” There was a light tone of teasing in her voice, but Conrad had heard adventurers ribbing each other like this in the local tavern and the beer halls of Edge whenever he had the chance to visit.
It might not be pure praise, but it wasn’t the “failure” his grandfather called it. And perhaps, just maybe this woman with her light tone was looking for a transaction with him that wasn’t exactly financial.
“Bagged it while the rest of you took your sweet time clearing the streets,” he said, winking roguishly.
Karina smiled and pointed at him in mocking menace, “You’re welcome for that, by the way.”
She turned back to continue haggling with Conrad’s mother, smile still lingering. His mother set in immediately, and though Karina didn’t know it, was taking advantage of her good mood and magnanimous sense of having earned something for free for killing the Mauler.
She began with a small potion, “For your refreshment. On the house, of course.” Before leading into the need Karina’s band, strangers to the area and on their first trek to Edge and the Warren Dungeon, would need for their dive.
A Deep Dive Potion kit was presented. “The last in stock.”
Then it was all compliments of the woman’s armor and weapons, but if she would just follow Bridgitte over to the mirror she could get her cleaned up and, “Oh, so there’s a dangerous woman of a different kind under all that blood and sweat,” she remarked to a flattered Karina.
It wasn’t long before Bridgitte had outfitted Karina in a new, feminine-shaped breastplate, augmented her look with baubles and trinkets that served no purpose other than to feminize the Berserker, and added to her supplies a whole kit of cleaning supplies - both personal and for equipment.
All that was before Conrad’s mother took a gentle, but critical tone of the woman’s weapons, “Now that we can see them properly with cooler heads.” And presumed a whole lot more about those of her band.
A shining new sword was added to Karina’s order.
And still, in the way of the master negotiator that she was, Bridgitte had not yet mentioned a price for all of this at all.
Conrad felt a little bad for Karina as his mother went on about small flaws in the woman’s equipment and how such things could create problems, her craftsman friends assured her, especially in an unfamiliar environment like the Warren Dungeon.
Karina was clearly capable as an adventurer, she was pretty, and in a fight, he had no doubt she could keep calm. But in the world of business and financial transactions, she was an idiot. Part of him wanted to rescue her from her fate, it seemed wrong on some level to upsell and essentially fleece a woman who had likely saved their lives and to do it so completely. But there was a mercenary aspect to being a Merchant that, classed or not, his mother understood intuitively and had drilled into him.
“Our goods,” she repeated often, “Are worth what people will pay for them.”
Conrad was mopping lizard blood off the floor when the final tally was shown to Karina, instantly wiping the confident smirk from her face.
“You want what?” she asked.
His mother looked as shocked as Karina as she added, mollifying, “Ah, of course, for a friend who came to our need I will of course add a five percent discount bringing the total to… thirty-five gold, fifty silver. But if the price is too steep… if you can’t pay then we’ll need to put a few things back.”
She reached for the clasps on the sides of Karina’s new breastplate, which she of course was already wearing.
Karina leaned away.
“Never said can’t,” she said defensively, causing Conrad to groan inwardly for the woman, but he couldn’t fault his mother’s skill.
“Push them away,” she would say when training Conrad on how to properly haggle, “then pull them back in”.
“We are of course traders and dealers here at the Border Zone,” his mother soothed, “And if the gold price is not agreeable, then perhaps as an adventurer you’d be willing to barter some of the material and equipment you’ve gathered?”
The woman was. They all were. Adventurers rarely had any idea what the market was willing to pay for what they had - that was the whole story behind how Conrad had gotten his Merchant Class Tome, after all.
And it seemed that Karina was no exception.
When all was said and done she had handed over a pile of weapons, mismatched armor, potion ingredients, and fifteen gold pieces. At a glance Conrad could tell she had taken a loss in the deal, a large one, and though Karina clearly didn’t have the same ability to quickly price items that he did it was clear from her face that she knew that somewhere along the way she had been taken for much, much more than she had received. Her expression and demeanor had soured, and when Conrad’s mother stuck out her hand to finalize the deal she stared at it for a full ten seconds, mouth twitching with suppressed frustration and anger.
Despite it all though, she shook his mother’s hand. Bridgitte winced as Karina squeezed much too hard, and seemingly in retaliation Bridgitte said, “I almost forgot, we have a special on antidote potions if you’d like to augment that potion set you-”
“No,” Karina said hotly and turned to leave. She stopped at the door and looked at Conrad. Her face still showed her frustration but also a glint of something else.
The female adventurer glanced back at his mother and then locked eyes with Conrad. The frustration was replaced with something else - a greedy hunger, the promise of which was at once terrifying and exciting. He had only ever seen anything like it on the face of gamblers and cheats in the worst of the bars in Edge, but as incongruous as it looked on Karina’s previously bright face, it held him in its spell, all sense of caution replaced with the insisting sense of, “Yes, but what if?”
“Come say hi to us a little later,” she said, voice low, “Your mother recommended a neighborhood called The Down. Don’t see why I shouldn’t take the advice of such an… upstanding woman. We’ll be there. I’ll be there. Waitin’.”
Conrad gave her a confident smile and nodded. She looked him up and down, that look of hunger still locked into her expression, before exiting the shop.