B1 Chapter 12 - Investigation

“Alexis!” someone shouted. I opened my eyes slowly. The one day I wanted to sleep in.

“What?” I said, half asleep.

“Tilly is missing!” Nancy shouted.

“What!” I said, trying to sound concerned. I jumped out of bed to follow her to Tilly’s bed.

She pointed to a broken bar on the window. This was a prison after all, so the windows weren’t meant to let people out. Was a bitch ripping it out of the wall.

“You think she climbed out the window?” I asked.

“That window wasn’t broken last night,” she said. “An iron bar in stone. Not something a child could break.”

“You think someone stole her?” I asked. “But why?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense,” Nancy said. “But please report this to Zach.”

“Not the guards?” I asked. Frankly, I would rather this go through proper channels. Since I was the culprit. Zach would be way more interested in the weirdness of the situation.

“They won’t have a clue. Tell Zach I wanna see him,” Nancy said. “I know losing a few girls to hunger, sickness, and even slavers, I can’t stop. But their children? No. I refuse.”

Damn. Did I make a mistake? Well, Tilly was with her mother, and both were happier for it. I didn’t wanna think that was wrong. But I definitely needed to be more careful in the future. Any careless mistake now and everything would be over in a flash. And I couldn’t risk that. Not for anything.

“I’ll go right away then,” I said. I grabbed my boards with the notes of the girls I wrote down the other day and made my way to the guild.

It was technically before opening, so just Felicity was at the front counter. “You’re early, is-”

“Nancy wants me to see the guild master about something,” I said.

“Oh, that’s not good. Come on, let's go,” she said.

I wondered if this was a perk of working here. I bet normally she’d ask me to wait while she checked with the guild master. But I kind of liked the benefit.

When the door opened, the guild master was sanding a bracelet made of crystal. “Hmm?” he said with a raised eyebrow.

“Nancy wants to see you,” I said.

He let out a sigh. “Let me guess, something to do with a kid?”

I nodded. “Tilly, Tabitha’s daughter, went missing last night. The bars to her window were broken as well. ”

“Huh,” he said.

I used the moment to set some boards down. “Notes I took the other day as well. They are incomplete, but it felt like the right time.”

“Thanks, you start work with Felicity. I’ll go see what is going on with Nancy,” he said as he stood up. “Neither of you leave. If it is an emergency, use the call.”

“Yes sir,” Felicity said.

Once he left, I looked at her. “The call?”

“I’ll show you,” she said, walking to the backroom where we stored the cores. She bent down and pulled out a green tube. “The call. It is a magic item that launches a fireball. It doesn’t do much damage, but it has an extremely wide area. Essentially, anyone in town would see it. If we launch it, both the guild master and the guards will be here quickly.”

In all my life, I had never seen something like that be fired. I guess you could count me lucky on that front. “So how does it work?”

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She titled it. “You pull this rope and hold it steady above your head.”

I nodded. “So what should we do while the guild master is away?”

“The plan was for you to be on desk duty, but since we haven’t opened yet. Wanna finish those digger rat cores you boiled the other day?”

“Sure,” I said.

She led me to where they were stored, and they had been moved to a different basket. The main change to them was the color. Each one was now vibrant with unique patterns. She pulled one out that had a big crack on the side. “This one is no good, so we toss them over here,” she said, pointing to a bucket with tons of slime cores.

“What happens to the bad ones?” I asked.

“We grind them to magic dust. That is mostly for slime cores, though. We rarely get a slime core worth processing into something.”

I flinched. The idea of killing something when we didn’t even do anything useful or interesting to it. “Why kill them then?” I asked.

“Well, the slime is useful for a few things. And occasionally, we get a good slime core. But they are our biggest source of magic dust. So I wouldn’t say they are useless.”

Magic dust. I knew the term but didn’t know what it was for. The only thing I occasionally heard is that it was our biggest export, next to wheat. We in Rumora were a landlocked nation, but we had lots of mines and fields. Slimes were pretty common as well. We weren’t a hub for sacred warriors or super advanced technology or anything like that. We just had a large population, land no one wanted to mess with, and enough products to sell to other nations. Or that is how I understood it.

“So what is magic dust for anyhow?” I asked.

“No clue. That is a bit beyond me,” Felicity said. “You paying attention? Here is what we do with the good digger rat cores.”

“Yeah,” I said, watching her. She placed the core inside a box with little teeth on all sides, then began turning the box in each direction. I could hear a grinding noise that started to fade.

“It is hard at first, but gets easier as it gets smoother,” she said, taking the core out. It was a perfect sphere now. “Next, we rub it with this special cloth.”

I touched the cloth, and it was super abrasive. After a few minutes, she handed me the core. It was a lot nicer to the touch now. “Anything else?”

She nodded. “Last step, dunk it in here.” She pointed to a cream-colored fluid in a jar. “We can fix about six in the same jar. Leave them overnight and done!”

She grabbed another jar, placed a lid with holes over it, and tipped it into another empty jar, filtering out the unused gel. “This is what it looks like when done.”

Wow. It felt like a glass bead. Perfically smooth, and a perfect sphere. Not only that, but the red and yellow streaks looked like it had captured fire inside its little prison. “So what are these things for?” I asked.

“We sell them to noble kids for a game. Veronica bought a set once, and we play occasionally when it gets snowed in. You should try it with us.”

I chuckled. “How many beads to a set?” I asked.

“About thirteen,” she said, handing me a box and a core.

I began the grinding process with her while thinking about it. All this work. Thirteen dead digger rats, for a rich child’s game. I should have figured.

“So, who is working today?” I asked.

“Lilly, Dawn, Cecilia, and us,” she said.

I hadn’t met Lilly. I wonder what she was like. “How many girls work here?” I asked.

“Sixteen with you and Cecilia, we were a bit short-staffed before, so I am glad for the help,” she said.

“Dang, so many? I never see more than two or three,” I said.

“Well, the guild is always open in case of emergency. So some of the girls mainly work the night shift. Like Veronica, for example. So it makes sense you wouldn’t see her. Especially when you don’t live here.”

“Can we even house that many women here?” I asked.

She nodded. “The guild serves as a luxury inn for adventurers too. We have three wings for guests. One for us, one for adventurers and people in need. Like sick people, for example. The last are our premium rooms for nobles and rank nine adventurers.”

A rank nine adventurer? Scary. “Do we get a lot of adventurers of that rank?” I asked.

“Nah, not really. I mean, never for actually hunting here. But we get a few that rest here on their way somewhere else. The aura coming off them is intimidating,” she said.

I removed my digger rat core and rubbed it with the abrasive cloth. “I bet,” I said. It was good knowing they never hunted here. I mean it made sense, but one never knows. For all I knew, there was a dragon nest a few miles out, and we were the nearest guild to it. Confirming details like this was the very reason I wanted to become a guild receptionist in the first place.

“I’ll move in eventually. I wanna save up money for my little sister first,” I said.

“What’s your little sister like?” she asked.

“She is… cute. She loves pink but is kind of quiet. Honestly, I don’t know much more than that. I am excited to finally get the chance to live with her,” I said.

“We can totally throw a party when you get here, then!” she said.

“I bet we would both like that,” I said.