Gabe paused for a moment as he entered the Adventurer’s Guild Hall, taking in the lively scene. The interior was filled with adventurers of various races and professions, their voices intermingling in a symphony of excitement and camaraderie. He had always found comfort within the hustle and bustle of the Guild Hall. There was always a vibrant energy that coursed through the air as ragged-looking teams came back to turn in bounties and others in fresh clothes and eagerness in their eyes sought the next quest that would bring them fame and fortune.
Looking around the hall, he was greeted by a familiar sight at one of the clerk's desks. Behind it sat a mischievous-looking young woman, Freya, who had become a close acquaintance over the months he had spent in the town. Her fiery red hair and impish grin always added a touch of liveliness to his day. When Gabe had first come to Aranthia, Freya was the first person he met at the Guild Hall. He had confidently strolled up to her desk and informed her that he was a trained medic and life mage and wouldn’t she be so kind as to inform him the best way for him to let others know he was hiring out his services for teams seeking out the riches in the mountains.
The truth was, despite all his bravado, Gabe’s journey to Aranthia hadn’t been easy and he’d run out of food that morning and he only had a few copper pieces left. It had been a few days since he last bathed in a river he had come across, so in short he was broke, hungry, dirty, and likely smelled yet he met her eyes with all the forced confidence he could muster. That confidence quickly left when she informed him that it cost 20 copper to leave a job listing.
Feeling dejected, Gabe was about to leave when Freya informed him that while it did cost money to put up a listing, it was free to look at the listings already up and wouldn’t he know it, she was fairly certain she had seen a listing that might interest him. Once Gabe returned from the job, he insisted she let him buy her a drink at the tavern for how she’d help him out. Though she told him she was just doing her job, Freya wasn’t one to turn down free ale and the two soon became fast friends.
"Morning, Freya," Gabe called out with a friendly smile, leaning on the desk.
Freya looked up from her paperwork, her green eyes sparkling with amusement. "Ah, Gabe, the great and powerful healer graces us with his presence. What brings you here today? In search of wounded hearts or just looking for a chat?"
Gabe had gained a bit of a reputation in Aranthia during the time he’d been there. While his magical abilities weren’t all that amazing, the way he paired it with his medic training allowed him treat wounds that were much more severe than could normally be treated with a simple tier one spell. On the last job he worked, one of the members of the team that hired him took a pretty big slice to chest from a dire cave bear they’d run into. Fortunately the rest of the team was able to hold off the bear while Gabe quickly stitched and then healed the wound, using multiple castings of Repair.
During his medic training, he had discovered that if he sewed a wound closed with sterile spider’s silk, he could use Repair on the wound and it would heal over the silk without any ill effect. Since he no longer needed to use his hands to cast, he could stitch and heal almost concurrently, healing the large wound layer by layer. After the group had returned to Aranthia, the adventurer he saved insisted Gabe let him buy him several rounds of drinks and exclaimed to the whole tavern that the bear’s claws had slashed right through his heart and that it was only Gabe’s magical skill that saved his life. No one seemed to hear Gabe when he tried to explain that the claw hadn’t actually reached the adventurer’s heart.
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Gabe chuckled, feigning a haughty demeanor as he knew Freya was trying to get a rise out of him. "You know me, always on the lookout for hearts in need of mending. But I thought I'd check if any adventurers require my healing prowess."
Freya rolled her eyes playfully. "Prowess, huh? Well, sorry to disappoint, O' Mighty Healer, but there haven't been any new jobs posted just yet. Looks like the adventurers are being quite cautious today."
Gabe sighed, his shoulders drooping slightly. "Ah, well, can't blame them for being careful. I guess I'll have to check back later then. Maybe something will come up."
“You know, you could always join a team full-time. It might be nice to work with the same group of people, actually getting to know them instead of just being the guy they paid to heal them.”
Gabe’s brows furrowed slightly as she spoke. This was an argument they had frequently and no matter how many times he tried to explain his reasoning, she wouldn’t let it go. In her mind, being an adventurer was the ultimate form of freedom. Completing quests, hunting bounties, searching for lost relics of ancient civilization that hold the key to ultimate power, all while fighting monsters and overcoming obstacles with a group of trusted companions by your side.
Freya herself had been an adventurer, until an ill-fated trip up the mountain led to the rest of her party dying as she barely escaped with her life. Whatever her team came across was terrifying enough that once she had recovered, she hung up her bow and instead joined the Guild’s administrative staff. She didn’t like to talk about that mission and Gabe usually avoided bringing it up, but the truth was what happened to her team was the exact reason he didn’t want to join a team full-time.
“We’ve been over this before Freya, I’m not looking to join a team or become an adventurer full-time. I want to become a true Knotted wizard, and to do that I either need someone to train me or enough gold that I can figure it out on my own. Yes, if I join a team full-time, I’ll get a larger share of the rewards and would likely be able to buy the knowledge I need more quickly, but as a healer for hire, I can refuse any mission that seems too dangerous. You know how adventuring groups are. The more quests they complete, the more rewards they acquire, the harder the next challenge has to be to be worth it. There’s a momentum to these things, a momentum that leads to groups biting off more than they can chew until, well, eventually…. eventually someone dies. ”
Gabe looked away as he said that last part. He hated reminding Freya of the death of her previous team, but she of all people should understand why he didn’t want to be an adventurer full-time. There were just too many risks and the challenges always seem to get harder and harder. In his current role he was essentially a mercenary, a hired-on addition to other people’s team. He purposely declined offers from teams who were planning to go deeper within the Iochant mountains, instead accompanying those whose quest goals kept them out of the insane danger that other groups never stopped looking for. His most recent encounter with the dire cave bear was the most danger he’d seen since coming to Aranthia, and that was an accident as the cave they were searching was supposed to contain some fungus the Alchemy Guild posted ongoing collection quests for. It wasn’t that Gabe was afraid of danger, no, he just knew the limitations of his magic. He’d done well so far combining his medic training with Repair but it was just a tier one spell.
Freya’s expression turned hard as she locked eyes with Gabe when he glanced back at her. There was a storm of emotion behind her emerald eyes, a contained fury that Gabe worried was about to be unleashed on him. He knew she thought he was being cowardly. She’d told him time and time again that even if he saw his powers as weak, they had saved many people and was exactly what adventurers going on dangerous missions needed. Life mana was one of the rarer ones people had access to and so most adventurers had to rely on expensive healing potions to get them out of critical situations. There was a reason so many teams had offered Gabe a spot, even if he did only know a single spell. Gabe was spared from Freya’s rebuke though, as right before she could continue their long-standing argument, the doors of the Guild Hall burst open with a loud thud.