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Edge of apocalypse 97
🕑 Added 2023-07-27 15:53:52 +0000 UTC97 – Kainen
Albert returned to the city, wasting no time and teleporting directly to the guild. He actually did take a small detour and stopped once to meditate on top of a tree because, frankly, he needed to clear his head. His encounter and fight with the elves had not been without consequence for his mental landscape.
Then, with 653 XP in his status, feeling a bit better than before but still quite shaken and pissed off, he made his way towards the adventurer’s guild.
Tom was at his usual non-place of having to juggle between the front desk and the bar of the understaffed guild building, depending on where the queue was longest. Albert finally decided to appraise the man, and Tom seemed to notice, giving him a playful wink.
[Thomas Undetarian Quintimus. Level 43 Human. Retired adventurer.]
“Like what you see?” He asked, pulling Albert close.
“You’re strong.” Albert managed to say, overcoming his loss of words due to the unexpected result of the appraisal.
Tom shrugged. “I did my part, back in the day. Nothing much, to be honest… I’m retired now. Anyway, where have you been all day? I was worried about you!”
Albert smiled. The genuine goodness of this human being was heartwarming. Albert could even go so far as to say that seeing Tom almost made him forget the reason he was so pissed off. Almost.
“I’ve been out, scouting the forest. I need to find a way to return home.”
“Oh…” Tom paused. “You went out alone? With those crazy hunters going after mages? Please, tell me you were careful!”
“I was…” Albert paused.
Tom studied him, his inquisitive eyes warm and caring, Albert did not manage to hide himself from them.
“Say what.” Tom said sweetly. “You wait ten minutes until I’m on break, and I buy you a beer and tell you some stories.”
“Thank you, I would really like that.”
“And then you tell me why you’re all tensed up. Okay?”
The wait was shorter than the ten minutes Tom asked for. He quickly excused himself, instructed some other worker on what needed to be done around the guild, changed into more comfortable clothes and joined Albert at a small table in a cozy corner of the guild, carrying food and ale.
There, they spoke. Albert did not mention his encounter, but he did open up to Tom about how much he missed home. Tears flowed freely as he told his tale, finally feeling like a great weight had been lifted off his chest. He talked about his family far away, about how he was searching for a way home in a world he did not know. He talked about how he had been stuck in a hostile place for days. How he had to almost die to escape.
Tom listened. Sometimes, when Albert was silent, he told his own story. It was a tale of battle and conquest, of struggle and sacrifice for a better life for him and for his family. It was also a tale of tragedy.
In the end all Albert wanted to do was hug this gentle bear of a man. All his struggles felt so small and insignificant compared to Tom’s losses. His whole family. His home. But he was here now, “doing my best, lad. Doing my best.”
“Thank you for sharing all this.” Albert said in the end.
“Thank you for listening. Now it’s time for me to go back to work.” He got up. “What will you do?”
Albert hummed. “I might need to speak to the guild master. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Yeah.” Tom replied quickly, not without eyeing Albert from top to bottom, his gaze lingering on the torn clothes. Albert had not bothered changing when he came to the guild, and for all his dissimulation Tom still knew well that the topic of today had been glossed over. “He does happen to be in his office right now. You can go see him.”
“Thank you!” Albert said.
Tom shook his head, muttering something under his breath that not even Albert’s enhanced senses managed to pick up.
The master’s office was at the end of a short hallway leading to the back of the building, hidden behind a thick steel door. The door itself was not enchanted, but the metal bore residual magic from its extraction place long ago.
“Come in.” A voice responded to his knock.
Albert pushed the door open with surprising ease, and closed it behind him. He took a moment to scan the room, eyes drawn to the multitude of weapons and tools on display on the walls or in small cases. None of them conveyed the barbaric nature of their being weapons, instead having been framed, decorated, and presented in a way that elevated their elegance. Even the most brutal of weapons was like a work of art.
Then, at the center of all of this, was a small desk full of papers. Behind the papers was the hulking figure of the guild master, a mountain of muscles almost comically larger than the chair he was sitting in.
The guild master studied him as soon as he crossed the threshold to his room. He motioned with his hands to close the door, and Albert obliged, dragging the heavy steel door behind him until it was closed shut.
The whole situation made him feel on edge.
“It’s you. The new boy in town. Welcome to the guild, to what do I owe the pleasure?” The guild master said. “I’m Kainen, by the way. What’s your name?”
Even though the man’s tone of voice was unthreatening, there was a weight to the air that made it hard for Albert to focus. What it was from was hard to tell. Perhaps it was the man’s aura, if such a thing existed. Perhaps it was all inside Albert’s mind.
“Hi, yeah, I’m uh… Albert. I have some information you might want to know.” His answer was informal and quite uncertain, and his eyes struggled to remain focused on Kainen and instead fluttered around the room.
“Well,” the master chuckled. “What might this information be?”
Albert knew that Kainen was aware that he was on edge.
How big was the gap in power between them, he wondered? But he could not use appraisal, not after he learned that people could feel him appraise them.
“I was attacked earlier, in the forest. By two elves. I killed them.” Albert said, as if reading from a script. There was no emotion in Albert’s voice.
Kainen’s eyes pierced through him.
“I learned the reason why they hunt mages.” Albert continued. “Do you want to know?”
Albert felt the pressure increase.
“What do you want in return?” The master asked, probing him. “You surely aren’t telling me out of the goodness of your heart. What’s in it for you?”
Albert paused, and thought about why he was even doing this. Eventually, he spoke, but there was no conviction in his words.
“Just telling you is good enough for me, I guess.”
The guild master frowned. He must have thought it was a lie.
“Oh, wait. It must be quite strange for me to say that, actually.” Albert said, blundering his words.
His emotions were all over the place, and now his feeling of impotence before the guild master made him want to lash out with violence just like he did with the elves. It would feel great to do it, a part of his mind told him.
“Fuck it, whatever. Yeah, if you can help me locate a portal or a Kirkesis core, whichever is easier, it would be nice.”
“The information will have to be verified first, of course.” Kainen said, adjusting his seat on the chair. He did so quite slowly, never letting the smirk that had crept up on his face fade. He watched the boy’s facial muscles twitch as Albert considered his next decision.
“Of course.” Albert said.
“Although, a spineless brat like you killing two elven mage hunters sounds like quite the faketale.” Kainen said, his tone of voice, body language and whole presence completely transformed in the span of a moment.
Albert inhaled loudly, then paused. He had come prepared, although the sudden rudeness was rubbing him the wrong way. The master was surely baiting him into being irrational.
“Thought you might say that. Here.”
A bow, a dagger and a staff appeared out of thin air. Elven made.
Kainen did not even spare them a glance. “I will have them verified. Then we can talk.”
Albert inhaled. In his mind words were being repeated in a loop. He is the guild master. He is strong. Don’t act stupid.
But man, did he want to just flip him off and leave. But no. He would leave civilly and just never return.
“It’s only fair.” Albert said with a fake smile. “I will leave you to it, then.”
Tension had been building up, however. Like pressure inside a sealed container, the intrusive thoughts fueled by a cocktail of emotions manifested in the form of the impulse to actually appraise the guild master, caution be damned.
Albert could just teleport away as soon as he did it, after all. There was an inherent risk, but there were ways to mitigate it. Psionic ways, if needed. The master kind of deserved the psionic treatment for being so insufferable, after all.
Not stopping to think about his actions, instead taken over by anger and frustration after a long, long day, Albert acted. He activated Bullet Time to the max, readied a teleportation target so he could disappear as soon as he was done, then he appraised the guild master.
He did not teleport away.
