Chapter 18: Meeting Strangers

Unsurprisingly, it’d been Tobias that’d managed to piss off the Dungeoneer and their party. Though Astrid wanted to learn more about what was about to happen and why, she needed to step forward between Tobias and his impending death or dismemberment.

“I apologize for this Healer’s idiocy.” She bowed before the other delvers, looking specifically at the man who was cursing at Tobias. “He is, unfortunately, incurably arrogant, and has brought no small amount of trouble on those around him. Even so, he will be needed to reduce casualties as much as possible, come this surge. Can I beg you to forgive him his offenses while someone takes him from your presence? I’m sure that can be enough to quash your rage?”

Although she presented the statements as if they were reasonable and normal, Astrid felt herself stiffen as she hoped for mercy even while a small part of her wanted to see him flattened into paste on the ground.

“You don’t need to worry.” The angry man swiped his hand through the air dismissively. “The idiot right here can just apologize and then he doesn’t even need to leave.”

Tobias’s face flushed purple more than crimson. The other man knew what he was doing and pretended a benevolent face. Now that she was close to him, Astrid could actually see what he looked like. Thick dark hair with a faint wave, and broad shoulders. He wasn’t wearing armor, but his peacoat bore the faint light of enchantments of some sort. Either a finisher with an Alacrity focus or some sort of a mage, she’d guess. Probably something similar to a Spellblade, given his build.

“You can pry an apology from—”

Stark’s appearance took everyone by surprise as he clapped a firm hand over Tobias’s mouth. Where had he come from—his Class. Rogue? Assassin? Ranger? Any number of Classes that allowed for Stealth.

“I will ensure you receive a personal apology from Tobias tonight.” Stark bowed. “I guarantee it.”

“If the Guild’s representative says so, then it shall be so.” A woman beside the angry man answered. “Now, we shall return to our meal.”

“And for that, I’ll thank you. If there are any additional dishes that you desire, please let me know. I’ll be happy to provide it for you.”

“No need to give us special accommodations.” The woman answered. “We are merely another party of delvers in the area, and we’ll do what we were called here to do.”

“As you wish.”

As Stark walked away, he hauled a writhing Tobias along with him. Going off the looks on all the other local delvers’ faces, Astrid was far from the only one amazed by what she’d seen. She turned to go to the washroom, ready to clean herself, but her attention was called back by the calmer woman.

“What’s your name? Mine is Eleah Drrrruid.” The woman rolled the ‘r’ in her Class as she mentioned it while she smiled broadly and extended her hand to shake.

“I’m Astrid Warrior.” she replied as she took the offered hand. “I’m going to wash up, but I’ll be happy to talk to you more in depth after I’ve gotten clean.”

“No need to go out of your way!” Eleah answered as she stood. The woman wore a thick coat with large brass buttons. It was more of a uniform than anything else, but the fabric was, just like the man whose name Astrid didn’t know, glittering with the faint but obvious presence of enchantments. She was plain, in an ordinary way. Straight hair, unremarkable features, small mouth. The strangest thing about Eleah, though, were her feet. She wore no shoes, no stockings or socks, and her toenails were nearly black with the dirt they carried underneath them.

“I’ll join you!”

“... If you insist, I suppose.” Astrid nodded as she turned towards the stairs beside the washroom. “I’ll remove my armor first and meet you down by the baths.”

“No need! I’ll help you!” Eleah’s insistence didn’t seem to have any inkling of the meaning of the word shame. With how she’d shown mercy to Tobias, Astrid felt like she couldn’t turn her down, but sought for an excuse anyways.

“Have you ever helped someone take off their armor before?”

“Yup!”

“Ok.”

“I’m glad to have someone to guide me,” Eleah jabbered while a female member of her party stood to follow, “because I get lost pretty easy. No good soil to guide me, you know?”

“That’s why you don’t have shoes?” Astrid asked as they walked up the stairs and she unlocked her room. “And why is your party member following us?”

“Oh, I just get lost in nature sometimes, that’s why Kiera’s here.” Eleah explained as she skipped to her party member. “I’m inside, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Have you ever spoken with a tree?”

Astrid cocked an eyebrow at the other woman. Kiera sighed as she shrugged. “I can stay out here if you’d prefer.”

Looking between the two for a moment, Astrid sighed as well. “No, it’s fine. I don’t feel embarrassed about my body or anyone else’s. Come in.”

She didn’t spend much time in her room, and it was obvious. With two helpers, though, Astrid had some measure of hope that she’d be ready to get into the baths soon. As she pulled her armor rack into the center of the room, she put her helmet on the single wardrobe in the room.

“Where do I begin?” asked Eleah, and Astrid knew then that she’d been lied to. Kiera spoke up.

“With the greaves or the shirt. It doesn’t matter which. Just start unbuckling.”

That wasn’t strictly true, but Astrid just wanted to get the intruders out. She questioned why she’d said yes, but she pushed that thought out of her head and let one pair of practiced hands and one pair of curious but clumsy ones. Astrid evaluated which Class she thought Kiera was, since she was fairly sure that Eleah was lying, and had a pretty fair guess who she was. Thus, Kiera would be a Class that could guard the comparatively weaker Eleah.

Kiera didn’t have any armor on, but she was wearing casual clothing. Her fingers picked at the buckles on Astrid’s armor without any difficulty, but also without familiarity. Not one to wear heavy armor, then. No calluses on her fingertips, but the palms were rough. A sword, spear or club? There were mirrored calluses on the other hand, and Astrid figured she was an Alacrity based dual-wielding fighter. The little things her mother had taught her made AStrid laugh in the strange situation.

“Tell me!” Eleah demanded as Astrid chuckled.

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Exhausted and unwilling to answer, Astrid just replied, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh.” Eleah’s face fell. “I just wanted to laugh.”

“Why…” Astrid changed what she was going to say. “What do you want to see while you’re here in Schteld?”

“The Dungeon, of course!” Eleah answered. “It’s always so different, no matter where you go! THe mana…” She trailed off.

“I already figured you were the Dungeoneer.” Astrid sighed. “It wasn’t hard to guess.”

“Oh.” Eleah slumped. “I thought I was doing a good job.”

“If I didn’t think there would be a Dungeoneer in town, I probably wouldn’t have guessed it, but you haven’t been nearly as discrete as you seem to think you have been.”

“Ok.” Eleah’s hands fell away from Astrid’s armor, but after thinking about it for a minute, she went back to picking at the buckles and asked, “How can I do it better next time? I want to trick everyone!”

“Am I actually allowed to answer that question?” Astrid asked Kiera.

“If you want.” Kiera sighed. “I would imagine that she’ll continue to learn either way.”

“If that’s the case…” Astrid sighed. “Just… interact with more people. You don’t act like someone who has a whole lot of interactions with other people. You act childlike, and it doesn’t seem like you have much experience with other delvers specifically. If you did, then you wouldn’t have pushed your way into my room, much less have volunteered to help me with my armor when you have no idea of what you’re doing. So, if you’re wanting to seem like a delver, you need to act a whole lot more like a delver. Does that make sense?”

“Totally got it.” Eleah nodded.

Astrid could tell, just looking at her, that she did not, in fact, got it. She didn’t care to correct her, and, as soon as she was able, she stripped her gambeson and set it to the side. The sweat of the day had soaked through it, so she’d need to give it a good wash. Then, pulling another shirt on, Astrid went to walk out of the room. The other women followed, and she was left unsure of what she should do or say. Dungeoneers were rare, extremely valuable Classes. Being able to peer into what the Dungeon was going to do was beyond a blessing from the Great One.

As such, even without considering Eleah’s obviously much higher level, Astrid needed to be giving her appropriate respect. But, she’d concealed her Class until Astrid had called her out for her deceit, so was she supposed to treat her like a fellow delver?

After she puzzled over it for a time, Astrid just decided to just get herself cleaned off. From there, she could decide what to do about the surprise visitor. There was no telling what exactly Astrid was supposed to do, but something her Papa had always said was that ‘it isn’t often that a man makes a fool of himself by keeping his mouth closed. As such, she’d keep her mouth closed, and hopefully, not piss off the Dungeoneer.

“So, what Skills do you have? I know that Warriors usually have good active Skills for killing things, but it seems like you don’t really have any of those. Why is that?”

“What do you mean that I don’t seem to have any active Skills?” Astrid went on her guard.

“No, you have an active Skill.” Eleah said without second thought. “It just has nothing to do with killing things.”

“I’m so sorry, Astrid.” Kiera sighed. “Eleah has refused to learn this lesson.”

“The Skills speak to me.” Eleah added with a shrug. “They can be pretty loud. Yours aren’t too bad, though.”

“What makes a Skill loud to you?” Astrid asked, unable to hold back the curiosity as they strode into the washroom. Before she allowed herself to relax, she needed to clean her gambeson or it would get to be truly disgusting.

“The strong ones.” Eleah answered with wide eyes. “In Ginnastadt, there’s a lot of them. Mithril and Adamantium. Those ones… they’re scary. I was in the city when an Arcanite came through. I was knocked unconscious!”

“Is it… the mana?” Astrid asked, unable to contain her thoughts as she scrubbed the fabric part of her armor.

“Not really.” Eleah shrugged as she poured water over her head. “It’s the concentration and shifting of it. So, yeah, but no? It’s not something that I can really explain. Oh, how about this! It’s like, it’s not the light of the sun that hurts your eyes, it’s the energy of the light. Make sense?”

“No?” Astrid answered. “It’s the light that hurts.”

“Well, yeah. But… oh! It’s not the punch that hurts, it’s the force of the punch that does!”

“Sure.” Astrid agreed more to keep the Dungeoneer from coming up with any other comparison than anything else. After all, there was something fundamental here that Eleah understood that made no apparent sense to Astrid.

“Great!”

They cleaned for a while in near silence, and Astrid welcomed it. After a couple minutes, though, Eleah asked, “Do you think I’m weird?”

She thought about lying, but instead, Astrid responded, “Maybe a little. I think most people are weird until you get to know them better. Do you think I’m weird?”

“No.” Eleah shook her head. “Your Skills are—sorry. I’m not supposed to talk about those.”

Figuring there wasn’t a better time to ask than now, Astrid asked, “Have you always been as curious as you are now, or is it something your Skills give you?”

“I was always looking into things.” She smiled widely as she explained. “But I could focus on different things more easily before the Bestowal. But now, hearing the flow of mana, it’s really distracting. I just can’t help but listen to the tons of things that the world and the Great one want to say to me!”

Astrid nodded slowly. More and more, she felt that the Dungeoneer was a unique existence that she couldn’t hope to truly understand. As such, she just didn’t think about Eleah. Instead, she just settled into the bath once her gambeson was hung up to dry, and she just soaked. The water was still warm, and Astrid mumbled replies whenever Eleah asked her something. Before long, Kiera pulled Eleah from the bath and Astrid was left alone. The silence was blessed, and she welcomed it. Unconsciousness found her before she realized it.

With a start, Astrid woke. Her stomach growled in protest and her neck was groaning in pain from the position she’d drifted off in. The water had gone cool all around her, and she shivered as she stood. Her clothes were still nearby, and it looked like someone had hung her gambeson up to dry. The telltale drips from clothing air-drying were missing, so someone must have used a Skill to dry it. Probably Elliandra. She did much of the laundry here in town, and Astrid was immensely grateful for her. She dried the clothes so much faster than the usual ways, and the quilted gambeson took forever to dry by itself.

Astrid sighed as she dressed, relaxing again as she stepped out into the main room of the inn. There, she saw that most people had retired to their rooms. It wasn’t that late, and while they’d all been fighting hard in the Dungeon today, it didn’t merit the entire inn going silent.

“Tomorrow’s an early day.” Stark said as Astrid looked around. “Your new friend let everyone know that the surge begins tomorrow.”

Astrid let out a long breath. “That quick, huh?”

Stark nodded.

“Guess I’ll have to eat my fill as soon as possible, huh?”

“That might be a good choice.”

“Then I’ll have a double serving. Maybe another after that.”

Stark merely pulled a bowl out from below the bar and offered it. “I’ll get the other one prepped for you.”

“Thanks.” Astrid answered as she immediately tucked into the stew. It was much the same as she’d always eaten here, but she didn’t mind the repetition nor the food itself. After all, she was being fed well, and she was well aware that she was basically paying material price for it. When Stark returned with another steaming bowl in hand, Astrid nodded gratefully and, after she swallowed, asked, “So, you’re another Guild rep?”

“There’s always at least two of us.” Stark smiled as he leaned on the bar. “In our case, Grom and I were party members who both realized the dream of Steel was out of our grasp pretty early on after Iron. Decided to throw in with the Guild. The rest of the party scattered after that, so I can’t say where exactly they are.”

Astrid nodded as she asked, “So why’d you decide to stick together?”

“Old old friends.” Stark chuckled. “We met back when he was brought to my town in a Barbarian outbreak. You see…”

Astrid spent only long enough to eat her entire meal to listen to Stark’s war stories, a brief explanation of how Tobias would have to publicly apologize tomorrow, and then retired to her room. Even with the sleep she’d taken in the bath, it didn’t take more than a couple minutes for her to find the oblivion of dreamless sleep once again.