Kya and Rory exited the ritual room after nearly an hour of deep conversation. They had gone over a great many things, and ultimately, decided on a plan of action for the rest of morning.
For her part, Kya was somewhat reeling from the conversation, and somewhat relieved at everything she’d been able to say and been able to learn from Rory.
“Pause for a moment in the lobby, I’ll grab the dwarf, and meet you there.” Said Rory, his tone brooking no dissent. This was the first time she’d heard him be this straightforward and blunt, rather than his usual air of tired amusement.
Nodding without feeling the need to respond, Kya continued onwards out into the lobby, a single young woman with a newborn baby swaddled in her arms anxiously pacing around. Tom had come back out some time ago and was attempting to talk to the woman. As she walked in, she heard what was clearly the middle of an almost comical conversation:
“-just think that if I could take a simple look” Tom was saying.
“No, no” Said the mom, her voice soothing and calm while her body language was anything but “I think that we’ll wait for Rory dear, yes, we will, waiting is not... a… problem.” with each last word, she booped the baby on the nose, getting an exceptionally weak laugh in response.
Still bouncing and walking the baby around, the mother took a deep, shaky breath. Then forced a smile, blowing lightly on the baby's face.
“Yes, but I’m sure that I can give the perfect potion for this if I could just examine the child more closely. I know that last time wasn’t ideal...”
He trailed off at the utterly withering look he received from the mother, but persevered with a hard swallow and a voice a full octave higher than he had been using “b-but I assure you nothing like that will happen this time, just a simple cursory examination and we’ll-”
“Tom dearest” Said the woman, maintaining the soft warm tones while her words were anything but “I am not letting you anywhere near my child without direct oversight from Rory. Better yet, I think we’ll just wait for Rory.”
Tom sighed, and continued looking on with nervous and anxious energy matching the mothers own, though for rather different reasons, Kya suspected.
Interestingly, Kya paid specific attention to the baby with her aura, as it was giving off an unexpected response. When she felt magical beings, be they monsters or users, they felt like flames. She had no other word to describe, they were warm and bright, the more powerful they were the brighter and hotter the flame. When she felt normal people, it was still warm and still bright, but like the flame of an oil lamp. It was controlled and contained, not wild and free like magical beings, and each felt like the same level of intensity. No bigger or smaller than any other.
But this infant, less than a year old if Kya had to guess, felt like something else entirely. Still a normal flame, still contained in glass like other normal people, but… Kya struggled to identify what exactly she was feeling. Like the flame of the child's spirit was sputtering one moment, and the next blazing as brightly as the Hellhound Alpha she’d fought. The fluctuations were indescribable, and Kya knew she could easily have spent hours simply sitting eyes shut and contemplating the meaning behind these sporadic bursts of energy.
“Ah, there you are Rory,” Said the mother, her tone finally breaking from the gentle cooing “he’s got a fever again and he’s eating far less than he should. Why do you have a dwarf...?”
Turning, she watched Rory set the dwarf down gently into a chair, which groaned its loud protestations at the presence of Taln in its confines. Walking over, he took the child from the mothers' arms in such a tender and caring way, Kya might have thought the child was his own. His eyes flashed chartreuse for a moment, and then he tsked softly under his breath.
“Tom” he said in a half whisper “How many health and mana potions do we have left in stock?”
Tom scratched his chin for a moment, then answered “I’m not sure, maybe two crates of basic health and a half dozen basic mana? Fewer of the more powerful ones. I’ll go to the guild later to put in another order. Those crafters are also so stingy with their bulk order purchases, especially for a clinic like ours.”
Rory nodded along, sighing, then said “Alright, bring me two basic health potions and a single basic mana potion.”
Turning to the mother, and gingerly handing back the small bundle of blankets that was the baby, Rory said “Alright, same process as before. Morning and evening, light feedings from the red bottle, then around noon, light feedings from the blue one. No feeding should last for more than ten minutes, but try and get at least a good five minute in. He’ll be okay, but the fever isn’t where it should be. Did he take well to the last bottle?”
“Yes, he loved it! Downed almost the entire thing on the first day actually!”
“No, no, no. That’s probably why he isn’t improving. An instant wave of healing isn’t what he needs, it has to be a slow maintained process for at least the full week! Again, no more than ten minutes of feeding the entire week. This time I’ll give you two, please make them last the whole time, or at least as long as you can. The blue bottle especially, you cannot let him down too much of that all at once. A little is great, a lot is dangerous.”
Here, Rory clasped the woman on the shoulder and said, “You want him to improve?”
The mother gave a silent nod in affirmation, looking both hopeful and stricken at his words.
“Then please do exactly as the instructions say, okay?”
At that moment, Tom came out from the back rooms, bringing over with a small wooden box, a note with a wax seal attached to the top.
Switching the baby to one arm, she took the box in the other and cradled them both close to her chest. “Thank you, Rory, I-” She cut off her sentence with a suddenly sharp inhale, then let out the shaky breath before smiling and simply saying again “Thank you.”
Rory returned the smile and told her “Please come back if anything changes for the worse, I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night, we’ll figure something out.”
After the woman left, Rory gave instructions to Tom about watching over the office while he was gone, and to specifically not do any invasive procedures until he returned. No matter how justified they might seem. Basic life support in an emergency, and routine examinations in all other cases.
Making their way outside and smelling the pungent and intoxicating aromas of Sugg’s restaurant, Kya decided that at the earliest possible opportunity, she’d be returning for a meal. But not just yet, there was too much to do for the moment.
As they walked to the transport terminal. Kya still didn’t know to call it a bus or a train or a flying nimbus, she looked over at Rory and asked, “How are potions made?”
He readjusted Taln, still completely out cold and breathing in a slow contented rhythm, before responding “The alchemists make them, there’s a workshop here in the city actually owned by the crafters. Mostly Knowledge and life users. The actual process is relatively straightforward, but getting reliable and stable potions is a notoriously difficult process. Doubly so as the rarity and potency rise.”
“What would you rate this one?” She asked, taking out one of the dozens she had stored away.
Rory stopped in his tracks and eyed the potion imperiously. He didn’t put down Taln, however, and after a moment, continued on, leaving Kya to stow away the potion and catch back up.
“It’s not… bad. It’s just not great either. Granted, I am not an alchemist, and this is a cursory look at a potion I myself haven’t tried, but I’d say it's a middle of the pack potion. You got that from your looting ability?”
She nodded her confirmation, this being one of the several topics they covered in their earlier discussion.
Rory just nodded, apparently unsurprised “Looting abilities, like your identify skill, aren’t unheard of. They are rare, and extremely uncommon together, but their effects are still widely known. Monsters will always produce potions of a lesser quality than whatever they themselves were. I’m guessing most of the potions you have are from the 1-Star monsters in the forest. So, they’ll work relatively well for zeros, but significantly worse for a 1-Star user. They might be able to stop a headache for me, and they’ll be a refreshing beverage for anyone 3-Star and up.”
Kya thought for a moment, then asked “Could you use potions like that one in the clinic though? It seems you treat mostly civilians anyway.”
Rory laughed a little, then grunted as he readjusted Taln “We could if you have some to spare, but I usually get bulk orders in the hundreds of potions every month. Not to mention yours seem to be a single dosage each. They’d be helpful, sure, but with the city subsidizing… what are you… doing. Oh, sweet Ferona, are you kidding?” With a resounding crash, Taln hit the paving stones, causing the pile of roughly five dozen health vials to clatter and begin to fall.
It was about two thirds of her current supply, she kept another three dozen with her, and was intending to get more of a higher quality variant before returning to outright combat. Besides, if they could be helpful to Rory and the clinic, what did she care?
“Kya, this is… each of these is worth at least a couple of curens, this has to be at least fifteen agrens, this is a lot to just give away, are you sure?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“There’s a phrase where I come from… well, an old obscure phrase that not many people know, in a language that no one actually speaks anymore except for pretentious assholes and military branches when they want to have a cool sounding motto. Anyway, it says the phrase is ‘the good of the people should be the highest priority’ or something like that. Rory, I don’t need these, and I don’t need the money. Trust me, I have a whole warehouse of stuff to sort through and sell off at some point. Take the potions. Use them to help people.”
Rory was giving her a look of pure gratitude and happiness, and that alone made Kya sure this decision was the right one. He began to collect them all up, storing them in his own spatial ring, before finally they continued on, discussing the crafters guild, and the potions master at its head. They were a reclusive 3-Star user that no one had seen for quite some time. Rory wasn’t even sure the gender or race of the person, just that they oversaw operations and regularly put out an insane number of 1-Star potions, a respectable number of 2-Star ones, and even an occasional batch of 3-Star creations that were immediately shipped off to Loterre.
In time, they arrived at the terminal, boarded the fluffy cloud that was the intercity transport, with several strange looks and wide eyes, and were off to the guildhall at last.
Looking out the windows as the city sailed by, she realized she could see the dormitory building she’d paid for off in the distance. In the less affluent part of town, it stood out for being several stories tall, where most every other building was only one or two floors at most.
Kya felt a sudden, almost overpowering urge to just head there right now. To collapse into her bed, to take a warm shower. She’d only slept there a single time, but that had always been one of her great skills: making herself at home wherever she was.
She was rudely interrupted from her reminiscence when the cloud bus slowed and descended to a terminal. When last they’d rode to the guild hall, it had been a straight shot without any stops. Giving Rory an inquisitive look, he just shrugged “Different days, different routes, stops for wealthy or important people that aren’t normally scheduled, or for people on specific guild orders. Could be any number of things. It’ll add an extra minute or two at most but then we’ll continue onwards.”
Kya relaxed then, realizing she had grown immediately tense after the bus had begun to slow. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d begun to fear the worst out of any unexpected situations. But honestly, a bus making a stop was about as ordinary as situation as she could ask for… It was at this moment that Kya noticed that Rory was also slightly tensing, growing more so by the second.
“Rory, what’s…” she started to say, before she too felt it with her Aura. Two other users were waiting on the platform outside, both of them moving their arms animatedly. The doors hissed open, and they both boarded, their conversation now suddenly audible.
“... makes no sense!” Said the first to board, a lean but muscular male Elf with a high and tight haircut, black tank top and black cargo pants. He looked like some paramilitary force, or John Mclean in the middle of saving Christmas. “How could they do something that large without serious help? I don’t even give a damn about that woman anymore, we have bigger problems.”
Following was a shorter woman with dark almond skin and twist braids all taken back into a tail held in place by a simple dark red hairband. She responded in a light accent “Yes, but how the hell are we going to explain that? ‘We looked all over the place and found a thousand things we should have already known about, but no sign of the woman’ would make us look like idiots.”
Kya looked at Rory, who was already staring wildly at her. From there, they had an entire conversation with their eyes alone. He flicked his gaze at them, then opened his eyes wide for a split-second while giving a slight nod. Taking what she assumed to be his hint, she quickly used to identify on both newcomers as they took their seats on the opposite end of the bus so all they could see was the back of their heads. She started with the woman first, then immediately followed up with the man.
- - - - -
Koen Soeri
Class - {Fire} - 1-Star
- - - - -
Felix Reager
Class - {Earth} - 1-Star
- - - - -
Turning back to Rory, she shrugged, holding up a single finger on both hands. They could both sense them as 1-Star users, but it was good to have definitive confirmation.
Rory then seemed to think for a moment, before shrugging in return, holding a finger to his lips, apparently a universal, interplanetary gesture to be quiet before we do or say something dumb, and then simply slouched lower into his seat.
Kya snorted through her nose and did likewise. Undoubtedly, the pair would have sensed Rory and Kya just as readily as they had sensed them, but still, best to avoid any unnecessary conflicts for as long as possible.
They listened intently for the remainder of the trip to the guild hall as the pair at the front continued to gripe about their situation. They didn’t go into any specifics, being intentionally vague Kya assumed, but she was still able to glean quite a bit from them.
Clearly, the pair had been sent after her, and instead found the remnants of the rituals she’d interrupted, then come back to report their findings, even without locating her. Why they’d been looking into Kya herself was still up in the air, but Kya had to assume it wasn’t a friendly checkup to see if she was doing okay. People in this town didn’t seem to stoked on spatial users in general, so she felt this was a safe bet to make.
The moment they arrived, the two bustled out, while Rory stayed absolutely still for a moment longer. He hurriedly whispered to her “We’re going to wait a minute to let them get ahead, then we’re going straight in to see Maggie and drop him off with the peace users. After that, we’re heading back out, quick as we can. Understand?”
“What about turning in my quest? You said I just needed to talk to the clerk, and it would only take a few seconds.”
Rory drummed his fingers in quick staccato bursts before finally whispering back “Fine, we’ll split up. You get to the quest hall and turn it in, tell them you want to defer payment until later. They’ll add it to your personal ledger, and you can leave more quickly. Just find the piece of paper, give it to the guy, and leave. I’ll drop him off, then we’ll meet in the lobby with Maggie and then leave.”
Kya nodded, and they both rose at the same time, Rory surging forward and throwing Taln over his shoulders in a fireman's carry.
“Seriously, how strong are you?”
“Just hurry and go Kya, Ferona help us.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Alder was staring at Maggie, mouth slightly agape as he reeled at the sheer implications of what Maggie had just told them, Wade was as well, but trying consciously to control her face.
“And all of that is happening right now!?! Are you sure?” Wade asked, in a much louder tone than she’d intended.
Maggie didn’t seem to mind, as she was simply engrossed in the telling of her theory to a captive audience. “I’m not sure, but the sheer influx of occurrences all happening at once, and even the possibility of space and time users appearing like this is impossible any other way. There certainly could be other explanations I’m just not aware of, but to me, this seems the most likely. Even if it is just…” she let out a low whistle rather than finish the thought.
“In the past, how many have there been at any one time?” Alder asked, finally regaining control of his faculties enough to rejoin the conversation.
“No idea. Thousands probably, at a minimum. Tens of thousands seems a more likely number, if a bit on the larger side.”
“I just… I can’t believe this.” Alder said, shaking his head “If this is true…”
Wade and Maggie nodded, the latter finishing the sentence “It will throw the world into chaos… yeah.”
“So then, what happened last time? Was there an end to it, or will there be more?”
“That’s the most interesting part for me, actually-”
Alder let out a barking laugh “That’s the most interesting part? All of this is insane!”
Maggie sheepishly smiled at Alder “You’re not wrong. But still, it would seem that…” She trailed off, rising to her feet “It would seem that our time is at an end for now. Those are the scouts there. Go talk to them and then head up to hear the full report with the guild master.”
Looking over, Wade saw the two people who had just walked in, looking like a bickering old married couple, and then stood and stretched out her arms with a mighty all-consuming flex until they shook.
“You can stay for a moment longer if you’d like. I’ll go talk to them and let them know we’ll be listening in.”
Alder simply nodded his head, a thousand-mile stare telling Wade his thoughts were racing far, far away with everything they’d just learned. She didn’t blame him at all, either.
Wade thought as she walked that a large part of her didn’t think it was even remotely possible what Maggie had just told them, there was too much there that didn’t make sense to her, but then again, she’d also witnessed first-hand the birth of a spatial user that by all rights shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Waving to get the attention of the two scouts, Wade jogged the short remaining distance between them and said, “Were you the scouts sent out after the spatial user this morning?”
“That’s right” Said the man, an earth user judging from the golden eyes “Why, who are you?”
“I’m Wade, from Loterre. We talked with the guild master this morning. Myself and the 2-Star over there are going to listen when you brief your findings.”
The woman let out a suffering sigh, while the man full on slapped his own forehead “That’s just great, we get to brief the foreigners as well as the guild master.” He turned to the woman “Isn’t that great?”
The woman just shook her head “You do the talking, if I have to, I’ll probably throw up.”
Wade laughed and asked, “First briefing?”
They both nodded in unison, the woman answering “We’ve been scouting for a few months now, but usually it’s little stuff. We come back and file a report about monster sightings in the area or about a bandit group or whatever. We had to tell a 2-Star about the bandits, but that was fine. Telling the guild master himself, plus an officer from Loterre?” She shook her head again, her dark skin visibly paling.
Wade laughed again and was about to respond with some advice, before trailing off, her eyes snapping to the double doors of the guild hall.
Kya and Rory had just walked in, and was that… a dwarf on Rory’s shoulder? What the hell? The pair had clearly noticed her and the scouts as well, because they both froze in their tracks, staring at her as she stared back at them. The two scouts, wondering what was happening, turned and they too stopped to stare at the two newcomers.
This was fine, this was what they’d wanted in the first place. Now they could all talk to each other calmly to sort out exactly what was going on and determine if this knowledge clerk Maggie had any idea what she was talking about.
Raising her hand, she was about to call out when Alder came jogging over saying “Hey, what are we all staring a- Gaius below that’s the spatial user! And a dwarf for some reason? Hey! What are you doing with a dwarf!? We need to talk to you, anyway, come here!”
Rory and Kya looked at Alder, looked at each other, and simultaneously they both turned on their heels and left out the front door.
Wade started running forward, calling over her shoulder “Alder… learn to read a room, good gods.”