Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 11

Peering from the plaza into the open entrance of the Adventurer Guild, the building appeared to be unoccupied – save for the fact that it was brightly lit. Upon entering, Ludmila walked by the stairs and turned past the request board to find the two receptionists, Wina and Ishpen, standing at the counter with two different expressions of boredom. Seeing her approach, Ishpen smiled slightly.

“I hear you’ve made a name for yourself,” she said lightly.

“Ergh…don’t remind me,” Ludmila grimaced. “Did I get the wrong message, or am I early?”

Ishpen wrinkled her nose slightly and leaned back as Ludmila approached. Her gambeson had been hung out in the sun when she had returned to the manor, but the two hours it had spent airing out was nowhere near enough to get the odor out from the layers of fabric.

“There’s still a few minutes left,” Ishpen glanced towards the empty area behind her, “…is everyone else going to smell like a burnt field when they come in?”

“Probably,” Ludmila replied. “It’s only been two hours since we got back, so I doubt anyone has been able to air out their equipment properly.”

“Ugh, you had better stop them before they get near the counter. It’s bad enough just being bored.”

Ludmila waved casually to the receptionists as she turned back to the open hall. The conversation they had was not one that might have been expected between a guild receptionist and a Copper-rank Adventurer. Before the changes to the Adventurer Guild, Copper-ranks were – to put it bluntly – a pool of cheap labour with little to no expectations attached to them. The Guild generally did not invest any resources into Copper plates: preferring to instead wait for the few that survived to crawl out of the pile and advance to higher ranks.

The changes still treated the lower ranks as a filter, however; it could be fairly said that the bar had actually been raised since the bare minimum to qualify for the new work of the Guild was now Gold rank. The Sorcerous Kingdom had no use for Adventurers as transient security contractors, so those who failed to achieve the new standard were simply mustered out.

The reason for their amiable relationship – Ludmila considered Ishpen the closest thing to a friend in the Guild – stemmed from their first encounter. Ludmila appreciated her expertise and attention to detail when it came to matters revolving around the Adventurer Guild and she now relied heavily on the receptionist for her knowledge and interpretations on various things. Ishpen was more than happy to accommodate her, so it appeared that they got along very well.

As she went back past the stairs leading to the second floor, she saw several Adventurers enter through the doorway.

“Oh, looks like the sixth was Lady Bagworm.”

A tall, blonde man at the front of the group called out as he entered at the head of the group. His broad shoulders blocked Ludmila’s view of the others who filed in behind him.

“Henrich!” A woman’s voice hissed from the door.

Another man and three women followed, each sporting a Copper tag fastened around their necks. As the newly-mandated Adventurer Guild had not yet organized themselves to the point where basic equipment was standardized. Each of the Adventurers still wore a mix of equipment that fell along the lines of what a Copper plate traditionally wore: which was simply what they were able to afford. Roughly speaking, it was the same sort of equipment that Ludmila wore, save for one who looked to be a mage.

“Hmm…looks like you’re all here,” an Elf woman with ruddy red hair looked down from the top of the stairs nearby.

The Adventurers below straightened at the sight of the Orichalcum plate which glinted in the light as she casually descended.

“Hum, hum, yup, yup,” she nodded to herself. “Let’s go.”

“H-hold up,” someone said as the Elf turned to leave, “what are we even doing? We just got here with no explanation or anything.”

“Whaddya mean?” The Elf answered with a sidelong look, “The Guild only does one thing now.”

That was true, in the broadest sense. The Guild was now an organization revolving around the fielding of its expeditions: everything they did was for the eventual goal of exploration and discovery. Seeing that her response appeared to be unsatisfactory, the Elf turned back around and placed a hand on her hip.

“I guess if ya want details,” she said, “we’re going to the training area: we need to start toughening you newbies up. Those Ogres were swatting you left and right earlier today, and they were barely trying.”

“O-ogres?” The mage – a young woman in plain, brown robes – said worriedly, “What happened?”

“Ah yeah,” the Elf said after looking over the woman for a moment, “I guess you weren’t there. Can’t have casters going into things half-empty, after all. Long and short of it is that the contingent doing exercises this afternoon was sent packing by a handful of Ogres and Goblins. We couldn’t even get to where we wanted to go in the first place.”

“Oh no, that’s terrible!” The mage replied with a distraught look, “Was anyone hurt? Did anyone die?”

“Hell yeah!” The Elf’s emerald eyes sparkled as she grinned, “There were casualties all over the field. One of the Ogres died – he got back up after we were done, though. Can’t wait to do it again.”

A look of disturbed confusion painted the mage’s face. The rest of the Copper-rank Adventurers, who had been present that afternoon, carried grim expressions as they recalled their one-sidedly poor performance, which did not help at all.

“We’re, uh, not doing something like that with just us now, are we?” Henrich asked.

“Nah, it’ll be more tame stuff,” the Elf answered. “You’ll be going through the upper floors of the training area. Dungeon Crawling, I think they called it. This group is the first one through, so we’ll be seeing how things square up at the same time.”

The Orichalcum Adventurer continued to speak as she walked past them towards the door.

“Anyways, it’ll take you an hour to get out there, so you had better get a move on. Same place as earlier today, by the way. Make sure everyone in your party knows what they’re supposed to be doing before you arrive.”

The Elf left without waiting for a response, and the group had little choice but to leave the city and head towards their destination. Past the gate, beyond the noise and activity of the city, someone finally spoke over the rustle of the wind through the grass.

“I still don’t understand,” it was the mage. “What happened this afternoon?”

“Pretty much what Merry – that Orichalcum Ranger – said,” replied Henrich. “We got our asses handed to us before we even got started. Thirty Adventurers against something like one-third our number in Ogres and Goblins, and we lost all but one party’s worth.”

“And the casualties? She made it sound like a disaster.”

“It was,” said another Adventurer. “But it was just that: an exercise. The Sorcerous Kingdom is really pulling out all the stops with this new Guild. When I first heard about it I thought maybe they’d give us pointers, or maybe have classes or something, but it’s pretty much live combat. Everything is real – even death is real, if you bite it – and after we’re done they just send someone out to pick us back up again.”

“Pretty much,” agreed someone else. “We should sort ourselves out before we reach that tomb again – I don’t feel like getting sent back like a whipped dog for a second time.”

They followed the trail that had been left in the grass that afternoon for several minutes before someone broke the silence.

“I’m Henrich, a Fighter.”

“Kyla, Fighter.”

“Themis, Cleric.”

“Howe, Rogue.”

“Penn, Sorcerer.”

“Ludmila, Ranger.”

“Wait – Lady Bagworm is a Ranger?” Laughed Henrich, “I thought wilderness survival is a Ranger’s shtick: how did you get poisoned by a plant?”

“I thought it looked dangerous, so I went to take a closer look,” Ludmila replied. “They don’t usually jump out and bite you like that.”

“Eh, enough of that already,” Howe said. “How do we even arrange this? What was it – the usual four, plus a scout and something?”

“Sounds about right,” Henrich’s voice turned a bit more serious. “But we have a Ranger and a Rogue – who is the scout?”

“It should be Howe,” Penn reasoned. “They said each team has a diplomat or negotiator, so that would be the noble, right? Rangers can run centre guard as well, which frees me up for magical support.”

Several moments passed over the party in silence, perhaps as they waited for someone to point out any flaws, or just take initiative with further planning. Given the fiasco she started earlier in the day, Ludmila felt that it would be out of place for her to speak.

“I gotta say though,” Henrich remarked, “these teams of six really do feel sturdier.”

“In some ways, maybe.” Themis said, “But there are more people to look out for now, and fewer spells to go around.”

“I heard that the decision was handed down from the Sorcerous Kingdom,” said Kyla. “The size of the expeditions was decided by them as well. Maybe it’s just the way they do things, wherever they came from.”

“You warrior types have it easy the way it is,” Penn complained. “The way it was explained to me, team members are interchangeable to keep expeditions flowing smoothly. Especially with training, us casters use up our mana and we’re just swapped out for other casters and told to go rest and study. Warriors can just get healed up in the city and jump right back into training if they’re needed to fill a spot.”

“Maybe they have ways to restore mana as well?” Henrich mused.

“Yeah, right.” Themis rolled her steel-grey eyes, “Even if they could, why would a powerful caster give their mana to a weak one? They have better things to do with their mana. I doubt they’ll be flinging non-casters into training non-stop anyways. When we’re out doing real work, we’ll need to manage our own resources – including mana. They’ll want us learning that as a part of this training as well, yes?”

“At least Healers will see a lot of love,” Penn said, “It was hard enough to find one before all this, but now it’s ridiculous. A lot of the old members have left, and the Temple of the Four won’t even give the Sorcerous Kingdom the time of day. Say…how is it The Six still have their people running around?”

Themis appeared to collect herself upon hearing the question, and the words that followed had half the air of a proselytizer. The other half sounded like she had memorized a script.

“Followers of The Six need not fear what comes after,” the young Cleric told them. “Surshana will grant a peaceful rest to the souls of His faithful. It’s everyone else that seems to be running around worrying about being turned into a field worker for the rest of eternity.”

“A golden opportunity for the old faith,” Kyla snorted.

“That’s–!” Themis started angrily, but she reigned in her voice, “Of course, we will always welcome those who wish to return to the fold, but that is besides the point. We will always be here for our fellow Humans, whether they be regular citizens, Adventurers or otherwise.”

“We’re getting way off track again,” Howe’s annoyed voice came from the front. “I can already see the ruins from here; do we have some sort of plan?”

“Should be self-explanatory, shouldn’t it?” Henrich said, “Since they said it was a ‘tomb’, maybe it’s something like an old catacomb? We got two Fighters for the frontline and we can just make our way through carefully. Since it’s training, they should be including something for everyone to do…so Howe should be scouting ahead, checking for hazards as we clear the way. That sound about right?”

The tall warrior had a frivolous manner but, between the Copper-ranked Adventurers, there seemed to be little else to add to his summary. They reached the ruins to the northwest of the city as the sun began to sink behind the forested hills which marked the border to Baron Ardoin’s demesne to the west. The field had been left mostly as it had been following the afternoon skirmish: portions of it lay trampled from the fighting, while the areas to the west and north were scorched to the ground by the fires that the Adventurer contingent had set.

The grove and the ruins that stood within awaited silently, casting shadows across the waving tufts of grass that remained. There was no sign that anything awaited them – no enemies, nor any of their seniors from the Guild to provide guidance. The group came in single-file, snaking well around any suspicious-looking stones that might have surprisingly hostile vines, and soon they stood in a semicircle in front of the unassuming limestone structure that contained the entrance to the tomb.

As the area around the city had long been frequented by humans, there was little chance that the building was a genuine ruin. Whoever had built it took great pains to make it look old and weathered, however, so it certainly gave off the atmosphere of one. There was no light inside, and the stairs spiraled down so they could not even see what lay further beyond.

“O-oh, you’re here...”

A voice from an unknown source greeted them as they stood around wondering what to do. Ludmila immediately recognized the soft voice of Lord Mare.

“Welcome,” he said. “Um…don’t die please. That would be bad.”

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