“Y-you do?” I couldn’t help but interrupt with surprise. We weren’t asking for an overwhelming amount for those looking to join the village, just twenty pieces of food, herbs, leather, or ore.
With metal being probably the most valuable item on that list, I was surprised, yet happy, to see that Thorne was willing to part with so much of it just to help Freya and Helix out.
“Sure,” Thorne shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. “I managed to mine quite a bit before we left Coldscar, but with how low prices were there, I never sold any of it.”
“Thorne, are you sure?!” Freya asked with disbelief. “You don’t have to.”
“I’ve yet to even see any raw metals so I can truly appreciate its value,” Helix added quietly. “I really don’t mind hunting to earn my own keep.”
“I am very sure,” the dwarf stated clearly. “Freya, without your leadership we’d have all likely committed virtual suicide a few days ago. And without your help Helix, Freya would have likely been killed by that wolf. Not to mention all the food you and your other friends brought with you.”
“It is really the least I can do.”
With their protests completely quashed, I led the three Adventurers directly to Aldwin and Ritt. After depositing sixty pieces of copper ore with Ritt, Aldwin was more than happy to have them write their names down on Aldford’s Charter.
“That makes fifteen that have joined us so far, Lyrian!” Aldwin whispered to me with a confident gleam in his eye, while we watched Freya, Helix, and Thorne sign the Charter. “I hadn’t expected things to move so smoothly after yesterday…”
“Me too,” I whispered back with a nod. “I imagine nearly a week under a tyrant’s thumb puts quite a few things into perspective.”
“That it does.”
“So, Lyrian,” Helix asked me, having been the first to sign the Charter. “You said something about offering training to those who wished to improve their skills?”
“Yeah, between all of us, we have a pretty wide range of skills that we’ve all learned.” I nodded at the giant lizardman. “Was there something specific you wanted to learn?”
“My friends and I wisssh to learn weapon skills, any weapon skills really.” Helix hissed with excitement as he waved over a handful of different colored Arakssi that had been waiting on the edge of the milling crowd. “All we have done is fight creatures with our talons, which as useful as they are, are not ideal for all kinds of fighting.”
“Yo-oh!” I couldn’t help but gasp as five massive Arakssi suddenly surrounded me as they joined Helix and I in a circle. Craning my head upwards, I found myself staring upwards at the nearly seven-foot tall creatures, all of whom wore simple cloths tied around their waists and nothing more.
“Sspeak for yourself, Helix.” A heavily muscled, black scaled lizardman spoke, his bright green eyes sending a primal chill down my back. “I rather enjoy rending creatures with my claws.”
“Hussh, Cadmus. Not all of us have taken to the bloodlust as readily as you have.” A smooth, feminine voice admonished the eager Lizardman. Turning my head, I was surprised to see that the soft voice had come from a blue scaled Lizardwoman, her pale gray eyes twinkling as she spoke. “Don’t let our most gracious host regret letting us join his settlement.”
“He will regret nothing after sseeing me fight, Theia,” Cadmus replied confidently as he displayed his claws. “I am oof-”
“Lyrian, allow me to introduce you to my friends.” Helix interrupted, his large tail swatting Cadmus in the back. “We have Theia and Cadmuss, whom you have already met.”
“Next we have Zethus,” Helix continued indicating a Lizardman with similar emerald scales as himself, though Zethus proved to be a much smaller and lithe specimen than Helix.
“Nice to meet you,” Zethus greeted coolly waving a claw in my direction, his eyes the same blue as Helix. “Thanks for letting us join, it’s been a rough week out in the wild.”
“Then thiss beast here is Abaddon.” My eyes had to crane even higher as Helix introduced the largest Lizardman in the circle. Well over seven feet tall, I was confident that the crimson scaled Lizardman possibly had an inch or two in height over Drace.
“Hi.” Abaddon’s voice was calm and kind, his head bobbing as he looked down at me with bright yellow eyes. “Don’t lissten to Cadmus, our claws may be useful, but I am looking forward sswinging a sword or ax around instead! If nothing else, it will be cleaner.”
“It’s not like we have anything to get dirty, Abby,” the last and smallest member of the group quipped, as she elbowed the massive saurian in the ribs, then looked at me with crimson eyes. “I’m Myr.”
“Happy to meet you.” I smiled at the brown scaled lizardwoman, noting the contrast between her lithe and sleek form when compared against the other, more muscled Arakssi of the group. “Happy to meet all of you.”
Myr is the shortest one out of the group and she’s still three or four fingers taller than I am! I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortably small while being surrounded by the group of massive saurians.
“Hey everyone.” Freya joined our group, having finished signing the Charter. “How are you guys doing on materials? Do you need to go hunting still?”
“We are nearly there,” Theia answered quickly. “We have quite a bit of leather between usss, but we still need a little bit more before we all have enough to join the town.”
“Thank you for the food by the way.” Zethus motioned towards an impromptu cooking area where Ragna had started a fire and was busy handing out meals to the hungry Adventurers. “I had never thought spider meat to be so tasssty.”
“And I had never thought ssspiders had meat,” Cadmus said with a faint tone of revulsion in his voice.
“It was better than the Flitt-” Myr’s reply was cut off as someone began calling my name in the crowd.
“Lyrian! Where are you?!” I heard Constantine’s voice getting louder as he approached. He poked his head under Abaddon’s massive arm “Lyrian! There you are! Are you trying to hide in this pack of Thunder Lizards?”
“Thunder Lizards?!” Abaddon exclaimed, repeating the name. “That…”
“…is a wonderful name!” Myr laughed giddily. “That sshould be our group name!”
“Ha!” Cadmus’s voice boomed in laughter. “I like it!”
“Oh dear…” Theia’s voice sounded exasperated as she shook her head. “I keep forgetting that I am surrounded by children…”
“Here come the Thunder Lizardsss!” Zethus hissed with a toothy grin.
“What’s going on?” Thorne called from behind Freya. “God damn it, you snakes are too fucking tall! I can’t see anything.”
Constantine looked alarmed for a second as all of Helix’s group broke out laughing, but quickly motioned to me.
“I guess I’m needed elsewhere.” I joined in laughing as I pointed to Constantine.
“We’ll be back in a bit,” Freya said, stepping to the side to let Thorne into the group. “We’re going to help these… Thunder Lizards, get their buy-in materials!”
“Sounds good!” I waved to the group as I ducked under Abaddon’s arm, spotting Constantine quickly backpedaling with a vaguely lion-like feline Adventurer following him nearby.
“Fuck, finally found you!” Constantine exclaimed. “Jenkins asked me to find you, he’s literally being swarmed by all the Adventurers who want to get their weapons sharpened.”
“Oh shit!” I rapped my knuckles on my forehead, having forgotten that I was due to help him out.
“Yeah, no kidding right?” Constantine shook his head at all the excited Adventurers around us. “I had no idea people would be this excited.”
“You have no idea how bad Coldscar was,” the feline Adventurer behind Constantine muttered waving a claw-tipped hand in dismissal. “Nor how much Graves’s fucking stunt screwed us.”
“What was bad with Coldscar?” I asked the Adventurer.
“Oh Lyr, this is Léandre. He’s a Tul’Shar �
�� Cat people, Catfolk, Cat… man?” Constantine frowned as he stumbled over the introduction trying to find the right word. “Anyway, I was taking him over to Ritt and Aldwin to sign the Charter.”
“Léandre?” I smiled looking at the lithe and slender Tul’Shar. A stark contrast to the Arakssi that I had just been hanging out around, I was happy to see that Léandre was of average height, not forcing me to crane my neck up high. “Lion-man?”
“Well, it fits.” The Adventurer smiled, revealing large canines as he indicated his tan colored fur and bright yellow cat eyes. “Happy someone got that reference!”
“What reference?” Constantine looked at us confused, before thinking better of it. “You know what, on second thought, never mind. There’s no time. Go find Jenkins before he starts hitting people. Last I saw he was pretty overwhelmed! You two can talk later.”
“Okay! Okay!” I held up my hands waving to the pair. “I’m going! I’ll catch you later Léandre!”
“In the meantime, welcome to Aldford!”
***
“Lyrian!” Jenkins sounded out of breath as he found me walking out of the Workshop, having just spent the last few hours crafting a few sets of armor and weapons after getting all of the Adventurer’s weapons sharpened out of town. “Lyrian!”
“Jenkins!” I saw the wild look in his eyes, immediately suspecting the worst. “What happened? What’s going on?”
“Lyrian…” The burly black man was wheezing as he spoke. “…I can’t keep up with them. Gods… those Adventurers are possessed!”
“Possessed?!” I gasped, my hand going to Razor’s hilt. “Hang on, you don’t mean possessed by ghosts do you?”
“What?! No!” Jenkins shook his head, sweat dripping everywhere. “They just won’t fucking stop! A handful of them asked me if they could start building a large log house within the city. After listening to that Cat’s plan, I allowed it.”
“Okay…” I said slowly. That cat?
“Then there were three other Adventurers talking about the workshop!” Jenkins looked distressed as he indicated the building behind us. “I heard them talking about building an addition to the workshop, so they had more room to work. Then that fucking Cat somehow hears them talking about it and the next thing I know, they want to knock the back wall of the workshop out to build an even larger addition in the back!”
“Jenkins, slow down!” I waved my hands in a calming motion at the distressed man. There had been a handful of Adventurers making their way in and out of the Workshop over the last few hours as they started to hone their craft, but I hadn’t noticed anyone talking about the workshop. “You have to tell me, what cat? I don’t understand.”
“What you do mean, what cat?!” Jenkins looked at me crossly. “I mean that fucking Léandre you just recruited! He’s been in this village for barely three hours and he already has a huge log house measured out, with nearly two dozen trees stacked to dry. Now he’s eying my workshop! I need you to reign him in!”
“Léandre?” I repeated the name with a bit of surprise. “Is there something wrong with the plans he’s giving you for the workshop?”
“No, not at all.” Jenkins shook his head. “The plans he gave me make sense, but…”
“What’s up, Jenkins?” I asked with a bit of impatience in my voice. As much as I wanted things to run smoothly in the village, I had an endless list of things to do, and this conversation wasn’t going anywhere fast.
“What he’s proposing for the workshop is insane!” Jenkins handed me a sheaf of papers with half a dozen sketches on it. “He’s talking about making it into two story factory that will stretch nearly-”
“Jenkins.” I interrupted the man while taking a cursory look at the designs. There were more ideas on these papers than just expanding the workshop. I saw sketches and notes on here that indicated quite a few more buildings within Aldford. “This is the opposite of a problem. These are some pretty good ideas here, but they aren’t going to sprout from the ground today. Especially since it looks like, it’s going to rain any minute now.”
“Uh, it…” Jenkins looked up to the sky, seeing the dark overcast clouds. “Okay, rain should slow them down. But what are we going to do about Léandre? He’s practically taken it upon himself to redesign the village!”
“Then give him the job and make it official,” I stated, looking at Jenkins as if it was the simplest answer in the world. “Oh, and pay him too.”
“Give him the job?!” Jenkins looked incredulously at me, before something in his head clicked. “Oh! If we do that, then he’ll have to submit everything for Aldwin to review, then I won’t have to deal with it! That’s brilliant, Lyrian!”
Without barely another world Jenkins spun on his heel towards the Town Hall in search of Aldwin, not even bothering to take the papers from my hand.
“Hey, wait you forgot your – and he’s gone,” I called after Jenkins, before realizing that he had already moved on. “I guess these are mine now.”
After folding the papers together and gently sticking them into my pack, I managed to make it all the way to the glowing oak tree in the heart of Aldford before Ritt practically ran me down.
“Lyrian! Fuck! I’m so happy I found you!” Ritt exclaimed with a panicked expression on his face. “I need some of your money.”
“Oh, hi Ritt, how’s your day going?” I answered back sarcastically while looking over the nervous merchant. “Nice day today isn’t it?”
“Cut the shit, Lyrian! I don’t have time!” Ritt looked around carefully, before whispering confidentially to me. “Remember that brokerage thing we set up? Well, I just ran out of the money you gave me.”
“What the fuck Ritt?! I gave you twenty gold!” I hissed back at the merchant with surprise. “That can’t be gone already!”
“Sure as shit it’s gone Lyrian! Else I wouldn’t be here!” Ritt waved his hands in the direction he just came from. “I have three Adventurers waiting for me because I didn’t have enough coins to make change for the stuff they were trying to sell.”
“Are you fucking serious?!”
“Like a heart attack.” Ritt made a snatching motion with his hand. “If you want me to keep buying, I need more money.”
“Fuck, just take the whole thing,” I told Ritt handing him my coin purse. “Only buy leather, ore, and wood from here on out. If anyone’s selling meat or herbs, that’s up to the village to buy it.”
“Thanks, Lyrian!” Ritt’s expression was filled with relief as he took my money. “Okay, I can do that. Aldwin told me replenishing our stock is a priority over anything else at the moment.”
Ritt turned to leave but stopped as he remembered something. “Oh, also. Practically all of the Adventurers have asked about buying armor or weapons…”
“I’ve already managed to craft a few sets of weapons and armor,” I told Ritt. “But they’re already spoken for, unfortunately. I’m looking to recruit and train a few people to hunt down Graves before he does something to fuck our day up.”
“Probably a good idea,” Ritt grunted, followed by a quick shrug. “I just wanted to let you know. You’re the best crafter here right now…”
“But others will catch up,” I finished with a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do Ritt. No promises, though.”
“Sounds good, catch you later, Lyrian.” Ritt waved goodbye to me as he ran off.
Watching Ritt run away, I couldn’t help but feel slightly overwhelmed at how quickly just a handful of Adventurers had begun affecting Aldford. New buildings were going up and long term plans were being made that would definitely impact the development of Aldford over the long term.
How will things look when we have sixty Adventurers running around through the village?
“Huh…” I heard Freya’s voice sound out from nearby. “Neat!”
“Are you kidding me?!” I heard Halcyon mutter in disbelief.
Turning around to face the glowing azure oak tree I caught sight of Freya, Thorne and the rest of
the Thunder Lizards gazing upwards as their eyes followed the tree into the sky.
“Hey! You all made it!” I called out to the group, ignoring Halcyon’s exasperation at everyone’s rather reserved response to the Ætherwarped oak tree.
“Nice, uh, tree.” Helix flicked his tail at the glowing oak. “Isss it safe to be standing sso close to it?”
“Halcyon told us about your run in with the Webwood Horror.” Freya waved at me while touching the side of the tree. “You guys have definitely had an interesting week…”
“Yeah, that’s one way of putting it,” I said with a sigh, as I shook my head at Helix. “Should be fine, standing close by. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
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