Chapter 12 of Wayward Ranger by J Scott Miles
Together Aidan, Elease, and Tarna limped the twenty feet, through the sprite and bug corpses covering the glade, over to the gnarled oak tree trunk. Aidan cast Minor Heal onto Tarna as they went, as well as onto himself, draining his mana pool completely.
Elease took a potion bottle from her pack, uncorked it, and took a sip, but instead of draining the bottle, she got Tarna’s attention and poured some of its contents onto her familiar’s tongue.
“Here, drink the rest of this,” she said, passing the bottle with the remainder of its contents to Aidan. “It should be enough to get you back into fighting shape, and it will work faster than your healing spell.”
“Thanks.” Aidan said, taking the bottle and eyeing the remaining red liquid with a mixture of gratitude and dread. On one hand, he’d be grateful to relieve the throb in his leg, which had returned with a vengeance now that the distraction of the battle had passed. On the other hand, he remembered all too vividly the burn of the last healing potion. I wonder how many of these she has? They’re not cheap and if I’d known she was going to use one now, I wouldn’t have cast my healing spell.
Drinking the bottle’s contents, he delighted in its familiar creamy fruit flavor, but as soon as it was down his gullet, he felt the fire of its magic ignite. Clenching his teeth, he refused to utter a sound as it raced around his body, finding and binding his wounds.
The potion left him breathing heavily, but feeling much better, with only a slight soreness remaining in his lower leg where the beetle knight had skewered him. That wasn’t quite as bad as the first healing potion. Probably because I knew what to expect, but also probably because I only used a third of a dose.
While he’d been concentrating on the healing potion, Elease and Tarna had gotten ahead of him and made it around the backside of the thick oak tree trunk. When he reached them, Elease was kneeling in front of a small chest of dark wood with metal straps.
He remembered the notifications he’d dismissed, and he mentally brought the one about the quest back up.
Quest update: Green Hollow Raiders. The path of spring completed.
The Glade King will not forgive you and yours for killing his favorite daughter. Nor will he be pleased to lose the treasures she was keeping.
Collect your bounty. Eat, drink, recuperate, and rejoice. For in due time, you will need to choose your next path.
Something in the notification’s wording unsettled him. We killed the Glade King’s daughter. She didn’t seem very nice, and she basically said she was going to cook us and eat us, but still, we invaded her home, not the other way around. This is what adventuring is, though. Exploring and killing creatures for loot and titles, before they can get too numerous and out of control.
“What’s in the chest?” he asked Elease, who had already opened the chest’s lid and was just starting to pull things out.
“Food and drink first!” she replied enthusiastically as she removed two large wooden tankards, trying not to spill their contents. She sniffed, then tasted the liquid in the first mug. “Oh yeah, that’s a good vintage. This one is mine.” She sampled the second tankard the same way and grimaced. “Ack, that one’s definitely yours.”
Aidan took the wooden mug from her, which was full of a foamy amber liquid. It looked and smelled like ale, and he desperately wanted to taste it, but he hesitated. “You’re sure this stuff is safe and not some kind of trick by the Glade King to poison us?”
Elease turned her head to look at him incredulously as she put her tankard down beside her and pulled a third from the chest. “That’s not how dungeon loot works. It’s not poisoned.”
Aidan frowned. Since reaching the Untamed Lands it had become painfully clear how little he knew about the world, but it had also become clear that those he’d once thought of as experts, like his old mentor, Ranger Dallen, weren’t as well informed as he’d thought they were either. “How do you know? How many dungeons have you actually been in?”
He took a small sip of the ale and none of the warnings he occasionally got from his Taste Hazard ability when he ate something tainted or past its prime, went off. She’s probably right. These drinks and food are probably fine.
Elease frowned at him again as she set the third tankard, which appeared to contain clear water, over in front of Tarna. “I’ve been in enough.”
“How many is enough?” He pressed.
She looked back into the chest, then removed an impossibly large platter holding an entire roasted goose surrounded by vegetables and baked fruits. The bird’s golden-brown skin glistened with a coating of thin gravy and as soon as the platter cleared the lip of the chest, the mouth-watering aroma of the feast filled Aidan’s nose.
“Alright, it looks like that’s all for the food and drink portion of our reward.” Elease said, setting the platter down and pointedly ignoring his question about how many dungeons she’d been in. “Let’s see what the loot portion looks like.”
She closed the lid, then immediately opened it again.
“Ooh, alright, not terrible for the first mini-boss.” She said as she reached back into the chest and pulled out a handful of mixed gold and silver coins.
Without saying more, she began shoveling the loot into her backpack.
“Don’t worry,” she said when she noticed him watching her. “You’ll get a full tally of the loot in your updated sheet. It’s up to me to distribute it once we’re out of here, but I couldn’t hide the final count from you, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
She reached into the chest for a second handful and came back out with more coins, as well as a small, rolled parchment. After depositing the coins into her pack, she unrolled the parchment.
“Not bad,” she said with a nod as she read. “This is a learnable spell, not just a onetime-use scroll. It’s a pretty rare drop. And since you found this place, I think it’s only fair you take this first piece of real loot.”
She handed him the scroll.
Spell: Firefly’s Light. Learnable, any class, any level. Summons a swarm of fireflies to light the caster’s way. Size of swarm varies based on caster’s level and mana pool size. Maintenance mana cost: Minimal. Duration: Variable based on caster’s mana pool size.
Aidan had to agree the spell wasn’t bad at all and suited him well. I was just thinking I needed to get a spell that did something like Elease’s glowing ball. And here one is. I wonder if the dungeon tailors its loot drops to our needs. The food and drink that it provided certainly seems to point in that direction. I’ve never heard of that happening out in the real world, though.
The realization the new spell was probably intended for him by the dungeon made Elease handing it over seem far less benevolent, but even so, he wasn’t about to complain about receiving it. A few seconds after reading the description on the parchment, he received a prompt.
Would you like to learn Firefly’s Light? Assimilation time: Short. Assimilation cost: None. Assimilation chance: 100%.
Aidan hesitated for a second before accepting. If Elease isn’t worried about any of the food being poisoned, that probably means we don’t have to worry about any of the loot being cursed either.
He accepted the prompt, and immediately a pressure built behind his eyes. The sensation was very similar to what he’d experienced when he’d assimilated his Internal Warmth and Minor Heal spells. Thankfully, it passed quickly, and he couldn’t suppress the smile that spread across his face as the parchment scroll crumbled to dust in his hand.
Elease was grinning at him. “Well? Come on, let’s see it.”
He tried casting his new spell, but he’d already drained his mana pool, casting Minor Heal onto himself and Tarna.
“I’m out of mana,” he said sheepishly. “It’ll be at least an hour or two before I’ll be able to cast the new spell.”
Elease chuckled. “Oh well, we’ve still got the dungeon’s bugs overhead for now. It’s probably better to save it for when we really need it, anyway.”
After picking out all the remaining coins, Elease closed the chest lid again and tried to reopen it, but the thing refused to reopen a third time.
“Looks like that’s all we’re getting from killing that little bitch,” she said.
No sooner had she spoken than the chest crumpled to dust the same way his spell-scroll had, and a doorway materialized in the backside of the thick oak tree-trunk. The door set within the doorway slid open of its own accord, revealing the circular anteroom they were in earlier.
Aidan stared through the opening, certain he must be mistaken. That has to be a different room that just happens to look the same as the other one we were in. We walked at least several hundred yards through these forest rooms and corridors. Not to mention that a room that size couldn’t possibly fit inside this tree.
“The dungeons play by their own rules.” Elease said with a shrug, as if in answer to the question he hadn’t asked.
She slung her pack, then picked up her tankard along with Tarna’s, and the platter. Balancing the large plate of food, along with the cups, and all her gear, she looked a bit like a proper tavern wench.
Aidan grinned. “If this adventuring thing doesn’t work out for you, you could always go ply those skills at an inn.”
Elease glowered at him. “Cute. I might be able to get a job as a serving girl, but you’re not fit to do anything more than carry the peels and dung to the rubbish heap. So, I guess you’d better hope this adventuring thing works out for both of us.”
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Aidan continued to grin as he followed her through the doorway and into the anteroom. As soon as they were both inside, the door closed behind them, and the few fireflies that had followed them winked out, plunging them into darkness.
“Why don’t you use your new spell to give us a little light?” Elease asked from just ahead of him. “Oh wait, you can’t, because you have a mana pool the size of a thimble, and you already wasted it all. I guess this serving girl is going to have to save your worthless ass again.”
“The size of my mana pool is fine,” Aidan replied defensively, as Elease’s glowing orb flickered into existence. “And I didn’t waste my mana. I used it casting heal on Tarna and me.”
“The healing potion I shared with you was way more effective than your healing spell will ever be,” Elease replied sweetly. “So, I repeat, you wasted it.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know you had more of those or that you were going to use one.” Aidan grumbled.
Elease sat and spread their meal out before her on the circular stone floor. After taking a long drink from her wooden tankard, she tore one of the legs from the goose and tossed it to Tarna. The wolf licked the golden-brown skin, then huffed, but she only hesitated a moment before stripping the bone clean with remarkable speed. When she was finished crunching down the bone, she huffed again.
“Gods, you’re such a diva.” Elease sighed as she reached for her pack. “That’s fine though. It just means more of this deliciousness for me.”
“For us,” Aidan corrected as he sat down cross-legged beside her.
“Oh, you’re going to brave the scary, possibly poisoned, dungeon food?” Elease asked as she took a few pieces of the uncooked panther meat from her pack and tossed them to her familiar.
“Stop being like that,” Aidan said. “I’m sorry I compared you to a serving girl, okay. It just struck me funny the way you were carrying all that stuff.” He tore himself off a piece of still warm goose meat and sipped the ale that filled his cup. “And besides, almost every serving girl I’ve ever known has been cute. So, you should have taken it as a compliment.”
Elease shot him a sidelong look. “Nice try. But admitting you think I’m beautiful isn’t going to get you back on my good side, not after you called me a serving wench.”
“I didn’t use the word wench,” he replied, happy to see the beginning of a smile on Elease’s face again. “And I didn’t say beautiful either.”
“Maybe not, but I know you were thinking them both,” she replied as she took another long drink from her mug.
Aidan let a bit of a silence stretch out between them as they ate and drank before venturing a question. “How long do you think we can rest in here before we have to try another door?”
Elease shrugged. “Hard to say. As long as we want, probably. Or as long as we have provisions for. We could most likely cut and run back to the surface through the seed door if we wanted right now as well. If we were to leave, there’s no guarantee we could reenter the dungeon though, and we’d probably have to redo the princess path if we were able to come back in at all. Possibly for no reward the second time.”
“It sounds like you know a lot about dungeons.” Aidan said around a bite of potato. “How many have you been in?”
Elease looked away at his question, clearly hoping to avoid it again.
“How many?” he pressed.
“Why does it matter?” she asked defensively. “I’ve been studying this shit all my life, and I clearly know way more about all of it than you do. What’s your sudden obsession with how many dungeons I’ve been in?”
“I don’t doubt that you know way more about all this than me,” Aidan replied. “And it’s not an obsession. I’m just curious how many you’ve been through. You talk like you’ve been through hundreds. But you also talked like you were hundreds of years older than me and hundreds of levels higher than me, too. And neither of those were true.”
Elease frowned. “I am way older and way higher level than you.”
“No, you’re not. At least not that much older, and especially not by elven or half-elven standards.” Aidan replied. “But stop trying to change the subject. How many dungeons?”
“What do you know about elven standards?” Elease muttered.
“How many?”
“Two, okay.” Elease shot back. “And clearly it is an obsession with you.”
Aidan was surprised. He’d been pretty certain she wasn’t as experienced as she made herself out to be, but from the way she talked, he’d figured her dungeon tally had to be in double digits at least.
Tarna growled from a few feet away, where she chewed on her hunk of panther.
Elease glared at her familiar, but the wolf held her gaze and growled again.
“It’s two.” Elease ground out through clenched teeth. “The first one was with one of my father’s groups, and the second one… Well, the second one still counts, even if Tarna and I went in alone and were in over our heads and left before we actually fought anything. We paid the penalty for fleeing, though, so I’m counting it.”
A variety of emotions clouded Elease’s face as she spoke. Everything from anger, to embarrassment, to frustration. They seemed to de-age her and in those few moments, as much as Aidan wanted to be upset with her for misleading him about her experience, he couldn’t. He was seeing her in a different light. As more of a peer who was also trying to find and prove herself, as opposed to the self-assured, accomplished adventurer that she tried to project.
Several snide comments directed at the half-elf came to him, but he pushed them away. He couldn’t see any benefit to speaking them, and he knew they wouldn’t bring him any pleasure either. I can’t go pouring salt on her wounds. Not if I ever want us to be friends.
Elease’s moment of vulnerability passed quickly. Her self-assured persona reasserted itself within a few short heartbeats, and she was once again the arrogant woman he’d grown accustomed to over the past few days.
“I don’t think we should waste too much time in here.” She said. “We were only in that princess wing of the dungeon for a few hours, and it’s too early to bed down. We should finish up eating and then keep moving. I can pack up and save any leftovers we have.”
He didn’t really have any objections to moving on. He wasn’t ready to bed down either, but hearing her call the part of the dungeon they’d just left the princess wing, brought back his misgivings from earlier.
“Do you ever feel bad about raiding dungeons and killing monsters?” he asked as he drained the last of the ale from his cup.
Gods, I have really missed good ale. I hope when we complete the next section of this dungeon, our reward has more ale in it.
Elease glanced at him as she wrapped up the rest of the goose and vegetables. “No. That’s what the gods put them here for.”
“Well, I know that’s what the clerics say, but it just seems… I don’t know… Wrong.” The word didn’t quite encapsulate his feelings, but he couldn’t think of anything better. “It’s not like that sprite princess and her soldiers were a threat to us before we came in here. And that dragon in the forest…”
Elease didn’t poke fun at him for his misgivings the way he feared she might. Instead, she nodded and looked thoughtful.
“As far as I understand it, dungeon creatures differ from creatures out in the world. In here, the creatures are generated by the gods purely to serve the dungeon.” She said. “They don’t seem to have memory or purpose beyond their dungeon. If they have souls or real consciousness, it just seems to be recycled and reset by the gods each time a new group comes in. If when we finish this raid, the dungeon door is still there, and it were to let us come in again, or if another group finds the entrance and they come in after us, the creatures in here will all be here again with no memory of our raid having come and gone. It will reset like we were never here.”
Aidan nodded along. “So you believe they don’t remember what happened to them?”
“I do.” Elease replied. “The reason to hunt creatures out in the real world is different, though. If they’re not hunted and thinned by adventurers, they eventually become a danger to the higher races. Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, centaurs, etc.… All the higher races worry about the monster races becoming too plentiful and powerful. Countless wars were fought with the orcs and goblins before they were beaten back into the mountains of the untamed lands. It’s even said that an orc-ish navy once made it all the way to the human kingdom’s shores several hundred years ago.”
Aidan nodded again. He’d heard bard’s tales that hinted at as much.
“And given a few more years, maybe a decade.” Elease continued. “That green dragon we killed would have become as big as a horse and a real menace to the settlements around here. The human kingdoms, as well as the Elven lands, rely on the raw materials and loot that harvesters and adventurers ship back across the seas from this part of the Untamed Lands.” She stood and wiped her hands on her leather pants. “We’re all here at the gods’ pleasure and playing the games they’ve set before us for their entertainment. All we can do is hope we play it well enough to get a seat at one of their tables one day. So, what do you say we stop talking about it, and go kill some more sprites, or whatever this dungeon has in store for us next?”
Aidan got up as well and began collecting his things when he remembered the level-up notification he’d received after their last fight but hadn’t reviewed. I can’t believe I forgot all about leveling up.
When he closed his eyes, he found the notification waiting.
Congratulations, level 11 reached.
He was overjoyed to have reached level eleven by just twenty experience points thanks to the sprite princess, but other than that, it was a little anticlimactic.
Aidan Praxerson: Human male.
Age: 19
Class: Ranger — Level 11
Strength 10
Dexterity 13 (15)
Constitution 15
Intelligence 12
Wisdom 10
Charisma 11
Experience: 14,242
Upgrade-points: 133
Party: Elease’s Wayward Rangers.
Quests:
* Untamed Lands Fledgling quest: Stage 1
* Green Hollow Raiders: Stage 2.
Spells:
* Internal Warmth, 1
* Minor Heal, 1
* Firefly's Light, 1
Abilities:
* Taste Hazard, 1
Skills:
* Animal Harvesting, 55
* Camp Cooking, 31
* Evasion, 15
* Improvised Weapons, 2
* Fire Making, 25
* First Aid, 65
* Foraging, 90
* Herbalism, 10
* Snares & Traps, 10
* Stalking, 25
* Ranged – Bow, 55
* Polearms – Spears, 4
* Short Blades – Knife, 10
Soul-bound Items:
* Spear of the Lynx – Plus 2 Dexterity
Boons and Blessings:
* Nanaya’s Kiss
A few things had changed since the last time he’d looked at it, but not a lot. The party, quests, and soul-bound items lines have updated. And I have an extra couple skill-points in polearms, but those wouldn’t have been a result of the level-up.
The really nice thing was the fifty extra upgrade-points that came with the level-up. With one-hundred thirty-three points, he probably still wouldn’t be able to afford anything in the upgrade market, but hopefully by the end of the dungeon, he would.
“You ready?” Elease asked, pulling him from his thoughts.
“Yep.”
“Alright then. Let’s go see what’s behind door number two.”