Blood Shaper

Book 3: Chapter 21

Kay and the remaining members of the expedition, to check out Darkport and scout out the pirate threat to the northwest, limped back into Avalon with little fanfare. In fact, there was no fanfare at all, just people running to and fro as medics and healers started grabbing people and dragging them off somewhere on stretchers. Kay was about to grab one of the people rushing up towards the expedition when Eleniah suddenly blurred into view next to him and slammed into him in a rough hug.

"Kay!"

"Ow ow ow fuck!" He pushed her back with his other hand. "You slammed your head right into my bad shoulder!"

"Sorry!" She quickly stepped back and waved one of the rushing healers over.

"No!" Kay gestured them away with a scowl, "I'm one of the least injured at this point; help one of the others."

The healer rushed off without complaint.

"Where did all these healers come from?" Kay asked as he watched the undertaking of transporting the wounded.

"The Adventurer's Guild came through with that recruitment favor you asked for. The first people they managed to find were two healers who both want to stay. They've already started training people that want to be healers."

"Where are they?"

"At the hospital." She nodded when he gave her a questioning look, "We had one built while you were gone since we had people to use it."

Kay started stalking off, deeper into town. "Where's the new hospital?"

"It's near where you decided to put the central square. A little bit south of there, to be exact."

Kay adjusted his direction a little, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. "Lauren!"

Lauren's head appeared over the small crowd of people. "Sir?" She shouted back.

He gestured with his hand for her to come closer. "You're with me; let's go!"

She jogged over and opened her mouth to say something. Kay just turned and started walking. She looked at Eleniah with wide eyes, who responded with a small frown as she watched Kay.

"That's not the expression of someone headed to a hospital to get treated," Eleniah said after a few minutes.

"What? I'm not going to get treated; they should focus on the people who are actually hurt."

Eleniah nodded slowly, "Okay, then why are we going to the hospital?"

"I want to talk to these healers the Adventurer's Guild found."

Kay staggered as Eleniah reached out and grabbed his hand on his uninjured arm, gently but unyieldingly forcing him to stop. "Why are you going to talk to the new healers that we want to keep around with that kind of pissed-off expression? Are you mad at them?"

"What? No, I was going to ask them about Tyuah and Mark." Kay scowled and tried to pull his hand away.

"Oh," Lauren let out a small sigh, "Kay, you can't keep blaming yourself for that."

"What's happening?" Eleniah glanced between the two of them.

"Tyuah and Mark both lost limbs during the trip back. Tyuah lost a leg when the tier seven Ancients attacked, and one of her arms in the Dungeon we used to escape, and Mark lost an arm in the Dungeon as well." She turned back to Kay, "Shit happens, especially in Dungeons. No one that came with us thought we were going on some peaceful walk around a park or something."

"I don't blame myself, but they got hurt in my service. I'm the big bad leader of Avalon; I can't just walk away from people that got injured working for me. Just like I have to make sure the families of the people that died are taken care of."

"There were tier seven Ancients?" Eleniah demanded in a quiet screech.

Kay glanced over at her with a frown. "Yeah? Did you not get the report? We did send a group ahead of the rest of us."

"All I heard was that you were almost back and that there were casualties. I grabbed the healers that could be immediately spared and ran out to meet you."

"Ah. Well, yeah, we got attacked on the way back by some giant fucking pterosaurs that beat the shit out of us. We ran found some old ruined building that had a Dungeon entrance in it. We didn't really have another way out, so we tried the Dungeon, which thankfully had another entrance or exit or whatever. Exited it far enough away that we escaped the pterosaurs and made it back home."

Eleniah stared at him with wide eyes.

Lauren leaned over and whispered to her, "Pterosaurs are what he's been calling Ancient fliers."

She blinked a few times, then shook her head. "Okay, that's insane. I'll deal with that in a minute, though. Why are you storming off to question the new healers?"

"About fixing their limbs!" Kay shouted, "Or growing them new ones or something! We have fucking magic!"

"Oh." Eleniah gave him a sad look, "Kay, the items needed for the ritual to regrow limbs are incredibly rare and expensive. I don't think the entire treasury we stile from the Nelamians would pay for one of them."

"What?" His mouth gaped. "I- What? How is that possible? There are people who can do things like restructure entire economies without disrupting the price of regular goods so that normal civilians don't starve, but there's only one ritual for regrowing limbs, and it costs that much?"

Eleniah shrugged, still holding on to Kay's wrist. "Wars, plagues, famine, natural disasters. Things get lost, families and groups get wiped out to the last member, or they can't find good successors to pass knowledge to. Just for healing Skills and Classes, the Necromancer Wars wiped out huge swaths of people and groups devoted to the healing arts."

"The Necromancer Wars…? Wait, that thing with the Sapphire Crusader?"

Eleniah nodded, "Right. Some historians say that that was part of one of the wars; others think that started it the first one. Basically, a bunch of Necromancers rose up all over the continents and started attacking people. Some of the more horrific ones targeted healers so that there would be more dead for them to use. It's what's driven a lot of the hatred for the Necromancer Class Line to this day." She transferred her hand from his wrist to his shoulder. "I wouldn't let you bother them right now anyway. They're performing a surgery right now, or they'd be down with your injured already."

"… Alright." Kay scrubbed at his face with his hand. "Then… Where're the Adventurer's Guild people?"

"… Near the water." She pointed towards the lakeside. "They said that there's a good chance of more and more monsters coming back into the area, including water monsters, so they picked a location to make at least one thing easier for them." She shrugged and started leading him, "At least, that's what they said."

"Halloway said something similar, about how the Eldritch Being was driving off anything that would normally live here."

They walked for a while, taking a series of paved roads that crossed between stone buildings that were starting to rise up, dotting the landscape inside the inner walls. Almost all of Avalon's buildings were being made of stone since they both had the resource readily available and had a good number of Earth Mages and Manipulators, thanks to Darten teaching them. The societal standard to hoard knowledge and let it out sparingly prevented the spread of a lot of Classes and Skills, which meant Avalon actually had more people capable of magical construction than most large cities.

Kay mentally paused, holding onto that thought. Lost knowledge, hoarded knowledge, wars that ended families and organizations… He mentally tucked aside those thoughts as they continued to walk, making a note to talk to Ahthia about it later. Probably Eleniah too. It seemed like Torotia was in something of a dark age…

The Adventurer's Guild's building was sitting right at the edge of the lake, which, like most of the other landmarks in the area, still needed a name. It was a decent distance off to the side from the area that had been dedicated to constructing more docks. It was a solid two-story build made out of the same stone as the rest of the construction in Avalon that stretched wide across a portion of the lake. It was a large rectangular building with a curve that followed the waterline, with its own stone dock protruding from a connected building right at the edge of the lake. There was a covered walkway connecting the two buildings.

Kay walked up to the large double doors and pulled them open. They were of the exact same design as the doors on the Adventurer's Guild hall back in Tumbling Rapids, with the only difference being their material.

It must be one of their calling cards. Kay thought to himself as he stepped through with Lauren and Eleniah on his heels.

There were a number of desks and kiosks set up across the wide-open room, but only one of them was manned. The figure sitting there glanced up from reading something and straightened themselves up. It looked like they'd been slacking off since no one was coming in.

"Hello!" The man smiled as he quickly pulled his reading material out of sight. "Welcome to the Avalon branch of the Adventurer's Guild! How can I help you?"

"Mayor Kay to see the Guildmaster."

"Oh!" The man perked up immediately. "Of course! I'll be right back." He stood up quickly and ran off.

Kay turned to Eleniah as they waited. "I just thought of something."

"What's up?"

"You keep going on about how I'm going to be a big shot since, you know." He glanced at Lauren, "Oh yeah, we should probably tell you about that before the announcement."

Lauren cocked her head to one side, "Huh?"

"Never mind, it's not really the time for that; we'll get to it later. Anyway, I was thinking, since that guy just called this the Avalon Branch, what happens when we get nation-sized?"

Eleniah frowned at him. "What about it?"

"Well, is Avalon this village which becomes a town and then a city, or is it the country? And what do we call the other one when we get to that point?"

"Oh. Well, a lot of places just call them both the same thing. Sometimes they differentiate by adding 'City' to the end. Other places just decide when they get to that point."

"Like New York." Kay nodded.

"Sure?"

"Well-"

The man rushed back to them, "If you'd follow me, please?"

They headed up the stairs to a back room that was completely unfurnished.

"This will be the Guildmaster's waiting room, eventually." The man opened the door at the back of the room and bowed them through.

Gemglass was sitting behind a wide desk in front of a bank of windows. The view of the lake and the mountain looming over them was gorgeous.

"Damn, that's a hell of a view," Kay murmured as they walked in and took seats.

"Isn't it?" Gemglass grinned and looked over her shoulder for a moment, "I'm pretty happy with the location we got."

They all looked at it for a moment more, then Gemglass turned back, her face taking on an inquisitive expression.

"Welcome back from your trip, by the way. But what happened that this is your first stop?" She asked.

"I would have made another stop somewhere else, but apparently, that wouldn't have been useful." He glanced at Eleniah, who gave him a small smile and a tiny shrug. He sighed before making direct eye contact with Guildmaster Gemglass. "How much would it cost me to hire some strong Adventurers to hunt down two tier seven equivalent Ancient fliers and their tier five kid?"

Gemglass choked and started coughing. She had to slam her fist into her chest a couple of times in order to stop. "What?"

"Two tier seven Ancient flier and their tier five equivalent kid decided our group looked tasty. I need them hunted down."

She stared at him in shock, literally goggling at him. Eventually, she recovered. "I… While hunting them down might make you feel better about your losses, revenge against monsters doesn't actually get you anywhere. I'd recommend just avoiding the area if they're that strong."

Kay closed his eyes for a moment, internalizing the losses they'd faced once more. He probably wouldn't be able to remember the faces and names of every person he lost, not if his life was going to be as long as Eleniah thought it would be, but he'd remember as many as he could. "It's not really about revenge, although I'm sure part of me desperately wants that. It's more about the Dungeon. Or Dungeons, I'm not really sure."

"What?" Gemglass slumped in her chair. "Dungeons?"

"We got trapped in a ruin that the Ancients couldn't get into, and we managed to escape using a Dungeon that ended up being next to two other Dungeons in some big hall that looked like it got built a long time ago. Or maybe it's all one Dungeon with different parts? I don't really get what was going on; it was really weird. There weren't any rewards the whole time, and the team that Lauren and I were on ended up going through a total of three times."

Gemglass held up her arms and started waving them in front of her. "Whoa! Stop, stop!" She reached under her desk and obviously pushed some kind of button or switch. "I just called Forn, and I'll send for my Dungeon expert as well. Start from the beginning and tell me everything."

Kay raised an eyebrow at her. "You're that interested? I thought I was just going to post a job to take out the Ancients, and then maybe you'd send a team to check out the Dungeon."

"Are you kidding? We're totally going to check it out, and more information is better for that." Her grin became almost malicious, "I might have given you some doubts telling you about some of the truth behind the Guild, but it doesn't change what the Guild wants to do. Changing the world is an expensive goal and weird Dungeons that ancient people might have used? That sounds profitable."

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