The next morning, Jubel walked downstairs at the crack of dawn, restless excitement pushing him out of bed far earlier than usual. To his surprise, not only was the innkeeper already working on breakfast, but Vivi was waiting by a table, cup of tea in hand.
“Morning!” She greeted cheerfully.
“Morning. You’re up early.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You know Lucas wasn’t kidding when he said I only need four hours of sleep, right? I’ve been up for 3 hours by now.”
“I need 8,” Jubel replied with a yawn, “And I got around 6, so I’m slow on the uptake this morning.”
Lucas, who Jubel had somehow not noticed in spite of his absurd height, silently thrust a cup of coffee into his hands. Jubel blinked in confusion and shot a questioning glance to the caffeine addict. “I’ve already had three,” the mercenary muttered as he poured himself a fourth cup. “Plus, we need you awake today. We’ll probably need to wait another hour or two to head out though. Damaia’s also up, but she’s trying to upgrade the stove.”
Jubel sighed. Even when he got up early, he was somehow still late. “How’s that working for her?” he asked before reluctantly chugging the bitter brew Lucas had handed him.
“Pretty well,” Vivi said with a smile. “In fact, a minute ago she took a break to have tea with me. Apparently she’s already done modulating the output, whatever that means, and just needs a more efficient power source.”
Jubel knew just enough about Milassi engineering to realize how absurd that statement was. “Damaia!” he called into the kitchen.
“Yeah?” came a muffled, echoing reply.
“Are you trying to upgrade the power crystal?”
“Yup!”
The cheerful reply left Jubel dumbstruck. “As in, the crystal that stores raw energy and converts it to whatever the device needs to run?” He clarified.
“That’s what a power crystal is,” the felblood responded brightly.
“...How? That kind of stuff takes months of work and thousands of gold!”
“If I was working from scratch on modern tech, yeah! This piece is simple compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen back home, though. Reminds me of the radio in Westwind - well made, but outdated. That’s why I offered to fix it!” The echoey quality faded from Damaia’s voice as she crawled her way back out of the stove she was working on and emerged from the kitchen, covered in soot. “I’m done now,” she added with a toothy smile.
Relieved that the felblood had not, in fact, decided to spend the next few months tinkering on a passion project, Jubel nodded slowly turning back to face the rest of his team -
But they were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a man in a white suit with a dark red tie sat at the table they’d previously occupied.
“Good morning, Jubel,” Nihlus said with a grin that was just slightly too wide. “It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? Though, to me, the few weeks since our last meeting has felt fairly short.”
“Where is everyone?” Jubel was immediately on edge, his eyes scanning the room for any signs of life, but Damaia and the innkeeper seemed to have vanished as well.
“Your friends are unharmed,” Nihlus replied in a slightly exasperated tone. “Honestly! Why does everyone always ask that? Do you mortals lack any kind of object permanence?” He sighed for a moment before shaking his head. “This is a dream, Jubel. It’s easier to talk to you when you’re not fully conscious.”
“You could’ve led with that,” the half elf replied, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as he took a seat across the table from the mysterious man.
“I’ll warn you next time,” the entity said dryly. “Would you prefer a full orchestra signaling my arrival, or something simpler, like an unscheduled eclipse?”
“Nevermind,” Jubel hastily insisted.
“I thought so. Now, I’ve come to grant you a new gift - one you’ll need for your mission.”
“Which one - my team’s dungeon quest, or the whole soul debt thing?”
Nihlus took a deep breath and closed his eyes before answering. “Which do you think?”
Jubel opened his mouth for a moment, then stopped. “It was a pretty stupid question, huh?”
“Incredibly,” the man that wasn’t truly a man replied. “As it turns out though, the two are not as separate as you might have thought. I believe the hilt of the blade lies beneath your feet even now - which is why I will grant you this.” He held out one pale hand, upon which sat a dark disk roughly two inches across. Covered in shimmering motes of light and with occasional drifting streaks of purple and dark blue, the thing almost looked like it had been carved from a fragment of the night sky. Wanting to take a closer look, Jubel reached out to take it, but the second his hand touched the disc, it vanished. At the same time, he felt a dull pulse of pain in the back of his head as a sudden rush of understanding came to him. He closed his eyes and focused.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
It was a compass. It was also nothing. Now, he was the compass, and he pointed towards… the hilt. It felt like a hilt, in any case. It was an impossibly strange sensation, but he adapted to it quickly, opening his eyes to find his … employer? Creditor? Whatever term might best apply to him, the man that didn’t exist smiled at the half elf.
“I trust my modifications to the process made this gift less… unpleasant than the last? Yes? In that case, I will leave you to finish processing what you’ve learned, and trust that you will have results for me the next time we speak. Good luck, Mr Heartfell.”
Jubel sat bolt upright as his dream ended, his head pounding and his heart thundering in his ears. He quickly got dressed and went downstairs to find -
Vivi was waiting by a table, cup of tea in hand.
“Morning!” She greeted cheerfully.
“Morning. You’re up early.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You know Lucas wasn’t kidding when he said I only need four hours of sleep, right? I’ve been up for 3 hours by now.”
“I need 8,” Jubel replied with a yawn, “And I got around 6, so I’m slow on the uptake this morning.” He said it reflexively, only to freeze as a thought pierced the groggy haze clouding his mind. Wasn’t this -
He opened his hand just in time to have a cup of coffee forced into it by Lucas, who’d silently appeared next to him with a spare. “Thanks,” he said before Lucas could say anything. “What’re you on now, your fourth cup?”
Lucas blinked in surprise. “Soon as I get this one refilled, yeah,” he said with a nod to the empty mug in his other hand.
“If one of you tells me Damaia is fixing the kitchen stove right now, I will scream,” Jubel warned the pair as he chugged the coffee, nearly burning his throat in the process.
“How did you -”
“DO NOT!” He interrupted Vivi’s astonished question loudly, only to have an angry innkeeper stick their head out of the kitchen.
“Some of my other guests are still sleeping!” he hissed at the half elf with a glare. “Have a little respect!”
“My apologies,” Jubel stage whispered with a wince. “It won't happen again.”
A quick glance at his concerned teammates was enough to tell him that he wasn’t going to get away with not explaining himself. His hopes of a peaceful breakfast dashed, the half elf sighed and took a seat.
----------------------------------------
“I still don’t like it,” Lucas muttered darkly for what felt like the thousandth time as they reached their destination.
Jubel took a deep breath, simultaneously trying to calm his growing annoyance at the mercenary and ingrain the taste of fresh air in his mind.
He’d been deliberately vague about his dream, not mentioning any more than he strictly felt he had to about Nihlus, or the nature of his pact. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but talking about how he owed his soul to a mysterious entity that could apparently invade his thoughts to chat whenever he slept made him feel uncomfortable.
Scratch that. Upon reflection, it made perfect sense why he wouldn’t enjoy discussing that particular topic.
“You don’t have to like it,” he said bluntly as he followed the muscular man down the long ladder into the grimy depths of the sewers. “I don’t think I like it either, to be honest. The magic is great but…”
“You’d rather have earned it yourself?” Vivi called out from above him. He reflexively looked up towards the elf, only to freeze, suddenly very aware of the fact that his teammate had chosen today of all days to exchange her typical traveling pants for a skirt.
“Y-yeah,” he said hurriedly, looking down in embarrassment. “I’ve never been too good with magic before, but I always wished I was. Now, I get exactly what it was I’d been doing wrong before, but it feels less like a prize, and more like… I dunno, an inheritance? Like, I was just given it because I happened to stumble into the right circumstances, not because of anything I really did.”
“I don’t really understand why that means you owe this guy a sword,” Lucas rumbled as he finally reached the bottom of the ladder. He dearly wished he’d thought of a way to block out the smell of the sewage. His senses grew sharper when he shifted, so transforming down here might incapacitate him altogether. “But I guess I’ll let it slide,” he added as he did his best to cover his nose, “given that you’re all willing to deal with the whole werewolf issue.”
“That reminds me,” Jubel said with a smirk. “I got you something. Have a treat, boy!” He chucked one of the small honey treats they’d purchased for Izzy the other day at the shapeshifter’s face, where it bounced off his forehead. The mercenary laughed just long enough to get the half elf to laugh with him before leaning in and whispering, “Next time you wanna pull a stunt like that, I want you to remember: I know you looked up.”
Jubel just glared at him, mouthing ‘You wouldn’t.’
The silent ‘Try me’ he got in response sent a chill up his spine.
The entrance to the dungeon itself wasn’t too far from the ladder. It was, however, guarded by someone none of them were excited to see.
“Hello Maximus,” Vivi said tersely to the racist guard.
“Nice to see you,” he said in a suspiciously cheerful tone.
Each and every member of Valorous scowled at the man. “Really?” Damaia said skeptically. “You didn’t seem too happy to see us yesterday!”
The man stared at her for a few seconds before his smile slipped slightly, morphing into a distinctly malicious smirk. “I didn’t want you in the city,” he said, all friendliness gone from his voice, “and now, you won’t be! A whole team of guards tried to explore this place before the quest was even sent to the guild, and only one made it back alive. But I’m sure that a ragtag group of treacherous, scheming ‘adventurers’ like yourselves will easily survive something that nearly killed our Captain.” His voice practically dripped with scorn and sarcasm as he glared at them, not even flinching when Lucas stared down at him.
“I can’t wait to see the look on your face when we prove you wrong,” the lycanthrope said with a smirk.
Maximus merely chuckled as he stepped aside, gesturing towards the narrow passageway that spiraled into the depths. The four newly licensed adventurers were so irritated by the obnoxious man’s presence that not a single one of them noticed the small pool of red liquid at his feet as they walked past him.