“Ho! Morning, Lyrian!” Jenkins’s voice echoed through the Foundry, interrupting my thoughts. “Guess I’m never going to get an earlier start than you, eh?”
“Oh! Morning, Jenkins!” I turned to see the dark-skinned craftsman walking towards me. “Why on earth would you want to start early anyway? You have a pretty wife-to-be to stay in bed with!”
“I-uh…” Jenkins suddenly coughed in embarrassment, watching the grin spread across my face.
“It’s about time you proposed to Shelia anyway!” I continued, watching the man break into a nervous smile. “We were all wondering when you’d finally get around to it!”
“Well…I-I mean, she wakes up with the sun for her morning prayers,” Jenkins stammered before he managed to collect himself. “I try not to leave until she does.”
I smiled knowingly at the man and nodded. “Have you two set a date yet?”
“Not yet to be honest,” Jenkins replied, clearly happy to be on more familiar ground. “With all these new settlers… we aren’t sure when we’ll have a chance.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I told the man while shifting my glance back to Razor. “We just need to get everyone settled in.”
“True, though I’m happy to say that everything is going well so far!” Jenkins said enthusiastically before waving a hand at Razor. “Something wrong with your sword?”
“Wear and tear I’m afraid… I think its days are numbered.” I sighed as I showed Jenkins the sword.
“It’s certainly been well used.” Jenkins nodded his expert eye looking over the blade. “As much as it pains me to say, starting fresh would be the best course. There isn’t much left we could do to repair this blade. Smelting it down and re-forging it again would likely weaken the core too much for it to be trustworthy in battle.”
“I know.” I turned the blade over in my hand before returning it to its sheath. “We really need to get that new smelter working, so we can start smelting the iron we’ve recovered from the Tower.”
“Do you really think that will make a difference?” Jenkins asked with a quizzical expression on his face. “I’ve worked with metals for nearly a decade and a half, and I’ve never seen iron behave the way that the scraps you’ve recovered do.”
“I don’t think it’s just iron anymore,” I replied motioning to the armor that I was wearing. “I think it’s been…changed.”
“Changed? You mean blackened?” Jenkins asked with a frown, waving a hand at my gear. “Like the armor you’re wearing now?”
“No, not like that…” I paused, trying to think of a way to best explain my theory. “The armor I’m wearing now, I’m inclined to believe, was made with regular iron and had a pigment added to it, hence the blackened tint, then given a simple enchantment for strength and agility.”
“The scrap we’ve recovered from the pillar of iron in the Tower, on the other hand, is different. Despite being blackened in the same way.” I pulled a forearm long shard out of my inventory, holding the dark metal to the light. “The other day, I tested this very piece in the heart of our forge for hours, along with a scrap of leftover armor, the armor completely melted, but the shard didn’t. In fact, it was completely cool to the touch once I pulled it out of the forge.”
“Really?” Jenkins looked intrigued, “I hadn’t thought to touch it… but then again I’d really rather not have lost my hand if I were wrong.”
“Why does everyone think I touched it with my hand?!” I gave the smith an exasperated look, having heard the same thing when I had mentioned it to my friends.
“You… um, have a bit of a reputation for… touching things that shouldn’t be touched,” Jenkins managed to cough out, giving me an embarrassed look.
“Oh, come on!” I exclaimed while rolling my eyes. “You touch one magic crystal that happens to unfreeze several hundred spiders frozen in time and everyone thinks you have a problem!”
“Didn’t I hear that you also singed your hand touching Donovan’s rod too?” Jenkins asked pointedly.
“You want to think about what you just said?” I shot a raised eyebrow back at Jenkins. “Because that didn’t sound right to my ears.”
“What? I have no id—oh!” Jenkin paused then barked a short laugh at his verbal slip up. “Anyway, the shard was cool?”
“It was, and I have no idea why,” I explained while indicating the open-hearth forge that was under construction at the center of the Foundry. “I’m hoping that this new forge will be able to melt the shards, and eventually, large pieces of the iron pillar we found - if we can ever get it back to Aldford.”
“Well… we certainly have the manpower for it now.” Jenkins waved a hand to indicate the rest of the town. “Never thought I’d see so many people in Aldford so soon; I can’t believe how quickly we’ve grown!”
“It’s coming together.” I nodded happily at Jenkins. “Hopefully, this group of Adventurers will be as well behaved as the others.”
“So far so good,” Jenkins replied optimistically before his face took a slightly concerned look. “The Adventurers did bring quite a few… odd things with them though, Ritt and Bax have been forced to set up a quarantine for a few items.”
“Hang on.” My eyes shot wide open at that statement. “A quarantine? What exactly did they bring?”
Jenkins snorted and rolled his eyes. “What didn’t they bring? I wish I knew what crossed the heads of some of these Adventurers.”
“Uh, I should probably check this quarantine out,” I said, feeling suddenly nervous. “Where is it?”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Jenkins agreed. “It’s just outside of the Town Hall for the time being. Léandre was pretty adamant about keeping it far away from the Crafting Hall.”
“Oh, fantastic!” The nerves that I was experiencing intensifying at the news. If it was bad enough that Léandre didn’t want anything to do with it, then I knew it was serious. I waved at the Smith and began to move towards the Foundry entrance. “See you later, Jenkins!”
Whatever reply he had was drowned out by the sound of my running feet.
Chapter 7
“Can you describe the snake to me?” Bax’s voice was the first thing I heard as I jogged up to the quarantine, spotting him, Ritt, and a swaying half-orc Adventurer standing around a crate of boxes.
“Yeeaah…” the half-orc’s speech was slurred as he replied to the scoutmaster. “It looked like… an angry rope.”
“How is that even helpful?” Ritt’s voice demanded angrily, his temper already shot for the morning.
As I approached the trio, I could see that the Adventurer was clutching his arm and his grey-green skin was extremely pale.
“It’s a Rope Snake. It really does look like a length of rope. Bought it from a mage’s lab, back in Eberia,” the Adventurer replied, slowly shaking his head. “I think he may have been transfigured from a garden viper or something, but he’s not normally so bitey. All the people around here are making him nervous.”
“You fucking Adventurers are making me nervous!” Ritt practically yelled at the Adventurer. “What the hell possessed you to take a snake that looked like a rope with you?”
“I-I thought he looked coooool.” The half-orc swayed on his feet drunkenly as he took a step back from Ritt’s verbal assault. “I was hoping to bind him as a familiar one day. His venom is p-p-pretty potent.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Bax was looking at the Adventurer with growing concern. “You should go see Shelia and get her to purge your system; you look awful.”
“Oookay, yeah… I think I’ll do that, I’m… really not feeling that great.” The Adventurer slowly turned his body towards the Town Hall, looking increasingly unsteady on his feet with every second that passed. “Please let me know if you find Noodles… I know he didn’t bite me on purpose. I just want him back in one piece.”
“You named your snake Nood—” Ritt began to say with exasperation before the scoutmaster interrupted.
“If we find hi
m, we’ll let you know,” Bax replied gently, shaking his head as the Adventurer stumbled away from us.
“Uh, morning guys,” I greeted the pair hesitantly, my eyes looking over at several stacks of crates that had been grouped together, almost all of them had bright red lettering on them stating ‘DO NOT OPEN - DANGEROUS’.
“Morning, Lyrian.” Bax was the first to greet me, the muscular half-elf giving me a cheerful wave as I approached.
“How is everything working out?” I asked cautiously, noting the contrast between the frazzled looking Ritt, and the calm, relaxed demeanor that Bax projected.
“Not too bad, all things considered,” the white-haired scoutmaster replied evenly, wiping his hands on the sleeveless leather tunic he wore. “We only have a few crates left that have been unclaimed. Likely belonging to those who didn’t survive the bandit attack, and a handful more that just need to be stored in a secure area before we release them back to the Adventurers that own them.”
“Lyrian,” Ritt’s voice sounded like it was on the verge of becoming unhinged. “These Adventurers… they’re bringing creatures into the village! That man’s snake is the least of our worries!”
“Creatures?” I asked, looking over the crates one more time. “What sort of creatures?”
“All kinds!” Ritt exclaimed, slapping his hand down on a crate, which started buzzing angrily. “I think there is a hive of bees inside this one, and in at least three others! For what purpose someone would want bees, I don’t know.”
“Honey, maybe?” I offered, my eyes going wide as other boxes began to buzz in sympathy with the crate Ritt had slapped.
“If that’s the only reason, I’m still inclined to throw the crates into Crater Lake and let them sink!” Ritt scowled at me. “I don’t need to deal with this!”
“Could always make mead with the honey,” Bax suggested as he crossed his heavily scarred arms over his chest. “I’m sure some of the farmers outside the town would be happy to buy the hives too. Could be worth a fair bit of money.”
“I’ll think about it.” Ritt grunted, his avarice clearly not allowing him to turn down the opportunity to make a profit. “As long as I’m not the one who has to worry about moving them!”
“But that’s still not all I have to worry about!” Ritt motioned for me to follow him to yet another a pile of crates that had a thick tarp thrown over them, and had been roped off preventing easy access. As we got closer, I couldn’t help but notice that the tarp had been pinned down to the ground by rather heavy looking stones. “Another one of these lunatic Adventurers, brought cages filled with cockatr—ah!”
Ritt let out a loud yelp as he suddenly spotted Amaranth sitting on all fours behind the piles of boxes, staring at something moving beneath the tarp. Almost immediately Amaranth’s eyes fixated on mine, and his cool voice filtered into my head.
“Uh, Ritt,” I turned to look at the distressed merchant. “What exactly is under there? Amaranth wants to eat it.”
“Shit! Sorry. The cat scared me! I thought something had gotten loose!” Ritt took a deep breath to help steady his nerves. “In these cages are half a dozen cockatrices. You know, those half-chicken, part-bat, part-lizard things that can paralyze you with a glance and poison you with the barb on their tail?”
“Y-yeah?” I couldn’t help but stutter at the final part of Ritt’s description. “Do you know who brought them into the village?”
“Oh, of course, I do!” Ritt moved over to a second tarp an arm’s length away from the cockatrice filled crates and pulled the covering free, revealing a paralyzed dwarven Adventurer lying flat on the ground, his arms splayed out before him. “I told him to move these stupid chickens outside of Aldford, but the idiot had to peek into the cages and got caught full blast by the glare of all six of the birds, ten hours ago. I covered him with a tarp in the hope he could still sleep while paralyzed.”
“Ritt! Why didn’t you get Shelia to try and cure him?” I practically shouted at the young merchant.
“Because he brought six fucking birds that could paralyze half the town while they died of poison! He needed a lesson!” He pointed a finger at me angrily, before waving at the Town Hall. “The only reason I haven’t gotten Constantine to set these boxes on fire is because, despite the threat that these stupid cockatrices pose to the town, their eggs are delicious, and literally every Adventurer in Aldford has offered me a fistful of coins if I can get them a dozen eggs or more.”
“Wait, they lay eggs?” I felt myself falling behind in the conversation, having momentarily panicked when Ritt mentioned ‘Constantine’ and ‘Fire’ in the same sentence.
“Yeah, in fact, I have a hard boiled one right here.” Without breaking stride, Ritt pulled a large speckled egg out of a pouch on his waist. “Ragna just boiled a handful for me less than an hour ago, should be fresh.”
“Uh, thanks.” I took the egg from Ritt calling up the food’s stats in my vision, my eyes instantly widening in surprise.
Hard Boiled Cockatrice Egg - Food - Meal
Benefit: Satiate Hunger for 3 Hours.
Regenerate 3 health every 5 seconds for 3 Hours when not in combat.
+1 to all Attributes for 3 hours.
Part of a balanced breakfast.
“Uh… sure,” I replied looking down at the massive cat and cracked the shell of the egg on my knuckles before beginning to peel it. “I can see why Adventurers would want to have a ton of these! They also seem to be well loved by Ætherwarped Pumas too!”
“It wouldn’t be too difficult to set up a farm to breed them,” Bax spoke up, clearly more open-minded to embrace challenges than Ritt was. “We can fashion a hood to take their paralytic glare away, and cut the barb out of their tails. Besides, this type of cockatrice is much more manageable than their Greater Cockatrice cousins, whose glare can turn you to stone instead of just paralyzing you.”
“If you can make it work, I’d say to go for it.” I nodded at the scoutmaster and an increasingly pale looking Ritt.
“A cockatrice… farm?” Ritt whimpered nervously, “We’ll see what the dwarf says about that when he wakes up.”
“Fair enough,” I said as I finished peeling the cockatrice egg and gave it to Amaranth, watching it vanish down the cat’s throat in a single bite.
“Is there anything else that I should be worrying about?” I asked, feeling reasonably confident that if Ritt became overwhelmed, Bax could step in and take over the quarantine duties.
“Not really, at least assuming nothing gets loose,” Bax replied with an easy shrug as he waved at the pile of crates. “So far, the strangest things we’ve found is a glass box of what I think is part of a gelatinous cube, or maybe the entire creature, never can be completely sure with them. After that, there was a crate completely filled with bones if you can believe it, with a separate box containing half a dozen skulls to match. Plus, a crate full of unlabeled plants, powders and something that might be an acid that we want Marlin to look at before we figure out to do with it. Oh, and a small box of really strange mushrooms that start shrieking whenever they’re exposed to light.”
“Don’t forget about that Rope Snake,” Ritt added, clearly not sharing Bax’s easy assessment.
“Eh, it’ll turn up, and everything will be okay… or it’ll bite someone else, and they’ll just kill it out of hand.” Bax shrugged indifferently. “Either way, the problem will solve itself.”
“With my luck, it’ll bite me,” Ritt snorted pessimistically.
A burst of noise and footsteps coming from the Town Hall had all of us turning as a fairly large group of Adventurers left the building an
d made their way towards the southern entrance. Despite the early hour, all of them looked to be rather excited and moving with purpose, a handful even waving in our direction as they passed.
“That’s the Hallowgarde guild,” Bax told me, motioning towards the group. “They’ve asked Aldwin for permission to start their own settlement about a day’s travel to the north, on the edge of the plains up there and he’s allowed it, seeing how we don’t have any eyes that far from the town. They might actually succeed at it too since they actually stopped to ask and then listen to what some of the other Adventurers and myself had seen out that way.”
“That’s good I guess.” I watched the departing group with slightly ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, I was happy that we had managed to get a decent group of motivated individuals out into the region, but on the other, I was a little disappointed that they had decided to leave Aldford to strike out on their own. Finding motivated and self-driven people was hard enough out here, and seeing twenty of them leaving when we could definitely use their help was a little frustrating.
But it’s not like we won’t see them again, I thought optimistically. A day isn’t that far to travel, and if they do succeed, we’ll be a prime trading partner. It’s better to make sure that they know we’re nearby to help if they need it.
“We’ll have to send some people to check up on them in a few days and see how they’re doing,” I said, making a mental note to follow up later on in the week.
“Maybe we can give them these bees!” Ritt added hopefully, nodding at me in agreement. “That’d be plenty far enough away for my tastes!”
“I can check on them lat—oh, heads up, Lyrian.” Bax cut himself off as three more people emerged from the Town Hall, this time turning directly towards us, moving quickly and with purpose.
Crossing the short distance between us and the Town Hall, I had just enough time to identify two of the people as being Samuel and Quincy, the two Eberian mages we had rescued from both Graves and the Goblins in the Tower’s underground chamber. The third man in front of them, however, I had never seen before today.
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