-??-
The world was fresh with such cold and breezing air, carried by the fury of night’s winds. Yet besides the tingle, nothing was felt. It was all hollow; consumed by shadow and left colorless.
Yet she was out. At long last, after a time uncountable, the foreigner had made it out. Quite frankly, she had no idea how or what; her mind had blanked completely… She did not remember most of what she had done or how she had got out; neither the journey nor the process. Yet her limbs and muscles…felt strained; her insides still throbbed and hurt… Her dress attire seemed more dirty and stain with residual goop and blood, never mind ripped and torn. Her ammunition satchel was completely empty.
She must have done quite the fighting and killing… Ultimately, she did not know nor care to know. She was out. However… She felt disoriented for some reason…as if the ground was loose as if cloudy, time flowing so…strangely.
Where even…was she again? Oh… right, of course… Where else would she be? She was somewhere someplace, and she needed to… Right, rendezvous with the wagoneer’s wagon and… Right, she would have figure out how to…drive it herself.
Though… The area around, the rocky hills and trees… They seemed unfamiliar… She must have exited from a different point. Given enough time, she will find her way to it, however.
With limping steps, the foreigner thus departed away from the rocky and hilly area from which she had exited that sunny-cavern… Sharp pain persisted though numbed, her body repairing yet…it was seemingly doing so slowly, for whatever reason.
Either way, time flowed and familiarities came into view, the path and route converging to what she had memorized. Eventually, at some point after quite the time yet experienced as no time at all, she found herself at that reclusive little spot wherein the wagoneer had so hidden his wagon.
Yet…
Ah… Frozen in place, she just stared, processing it all…
The horse was dead and the wagon was half-empty… The wagoneer’s own belongings were largely intact minus a few things. The stuffed sacks, however, of their collected glow crystals from this very day…
They were missing. Gone.
Interesting. Fascinating, even.
Rendered pointless, so much had been.
She thus began to inspect, using the crescent moon’s bright atmospheric light to identify whatever clues and forensics she could. She identified, or inferred the existence of rather, footprints… Not old but not fresh… And combine these with the few linger vestigials scattered about… Hm… Two, three… Maybe four potential persons?
Who knew. Not her forte. She usually relied on her toys and gizmos for such forensics… So useless, indeed, she felt without such…
Regardless, she inspected the equine. It was dead, obviously. She felt it… Squishy and still somewhat warm, fresh. Its throat seemed gashed and its insides were… Well, kind of absent. The prints surrounding the equine were…inhuman… This was likely done by some kind of local wildlife or one of those ‘monsters’.
Who knew.
Hm. She stepped back and evaluated the scene in its totality… Ah. Truly, so this was why the wagoneer had been adamant to not leave his wagon and its possessions alone for so long; why he had been initially hesitant to accompany her within that sunny-cave. Predation of his equine and ‘theft’ of all his belongings…
Though, of course, most of his belongings were untouched, besides having been flung about due to the attack on the equine—which likely happened well after these…however many whoevers confiscated their sacks of collected glow crystals… It was obvious that her quest-items had been the principal target; they had to have been adventurers, thus.
Now she had to get new sacks and…venture all the way back into that sunny-cave, which quite frankly she now really did not want ever return to; she did not want to ever enter that cave again. But now she had to, and she was going to. Even though she would likely be slower because the wagoneer was gone. Even though…his final contributions, his help this day, were reduced to nothing.
Interesting, this tactic was. The foreigner made note of it for future reference.
Even though this act of ‘thievery’ was considered ‘wrong’, prohibited even by the Guild’s own laws, as she recalled… In a sense, it was pragmatic and utilitarian… To just simply go out and find all those things and items…painstakingly collected by others…at great…great cost and confiscate it when left unattended, reducing all the prices paid into vain nothingness…
Indeed, noted.
With nothing worth salvaging, she simply walk off, leaving the emptied wagon and all the wagoneer’s belongings to whatever fate time, relentless it was, had in store.
Step by painful limping step, she began to make the journey all the way…back to Coastfield, empty-handed… Despite…everything that had happened; despite the losses of this day… Well, she had no idea if it was even the same day anymore. Either way, nothing to claim; nothing achieved; nothing gained or fulfilled.
Truly, time, that horrible thing… It tormented her with its rhymes and repeats; it taunted her as much as those glaring stars above. Yet she followed with its ceaseless flow.
And, by the end she will have completed her quest… Even if, right now, the idea of doing it again left her feeling sick and exhausted… Though, she had no idea what she even feeling at all… Was she even feeling?
Who knew.
Either way, she had not the choice but do this again; to reenter that cave; and do all things she had never wanted to do… For, in the end, there was no such thing as a ‘choice’ for the likes of her; such having never been afforded.
Though, for now, all she did perhaps want to do…was return to that bed and sleep—that pointless activity, so-called ‘sleep’… Yet, at the very least, sleep would cease her existence for a time, fading away into that nothingness of night… For, how truly, so tiresome an existence hers seemed to be; devoid of sound, smell, feeling, and color.
-???-
“Oh, hello you! Nilia!” so cheerfully greeted that same receptionist as always, smiling with that charming enthusiasm; “It’s been a few days longer than I expected… Had trouble this time? Or did you decide to take it slow for once?”
The foreigner stumbled in at that same early morning hour as usual, dragging along with her being quite the filled and heavy sack of glowing turquoise and magenta. “I greet you.” she thus greeted, before dragging that sack all the over to the main counter, lifting it before tossing it right over onto the other side. “First of the sacks. I have more.”
“Ah, I see. Alrightly…” The receptionist looked at that…stuffed sack that appeared stuffed with thirty turquois glow-crystals and twenty-nine magenta glow-crystals, plus that large wild-glowing one… “Wow…you really are stronger than you look…” she yet again so remarked… “Uhm… Multi-item, single turn-in? It is preferred that you do not mix the targets, but—” The receptionist was returning her eyes to the foreigner, yet then went quiet, seeing...
The Guild hall’s door came tumbling closed. The foreigner had just…walked off and left while she was…
“Huh?” The receptionist was rather perplexed… “Rude…” Indeed, that was…awfully rude. The foreigner had never…done anything like that before, she did not recall…
Time passed, quite longer than the receptionist was expecting, before those same doors came swinging open once again as if having been kicked. The foreigner came stumbling back in, dragging yet another fully stuffed sack. “I come back.” she just announced.
“Uhm… Welcome back?” The receptionist thus…greeted, a bit confused. She watched as the foreigner dragged the sack all the way straight to that main counter again, tossing it over right next to the other stuff sack… Sixty turquoise glow-stones and a single wild, the receptionist did not even need to count.
“One more.” The foreigner immediately turned and walked off…
“Huh?” The receptionist shifted her eyes; “Hey, wait, Nili—” Yet the foreigner was already gone, that door closing… “What is up with her?” She could only wonder, for indeed… Something was clearly different this day.
Time once again passed, more than a full hour having gone by in total since the foreigner first walked in. “…is she walking all the way back home?” the receptionist quietly mused, waiting…
Not longer later, however, that door came tumbling open again, and stumbling in with an even heavier sack stuffed… “Back.” the foreigner plainly announced, pretending as if each individual cell in her snow-wisping arms were not complaining with angst. Once again, she dragged this sack to the main counter and tossed it over, right next the others…
Fifty-eight magenta and one wild… The receptionist did not even need to look to know; it was obvious from the weight.
“Done.” The foreigner just said, placing the two quest sheets onto the main-counter, unprompted. “Both for these and also another, when I accept it. These extras will count, no?”
“I mean…” The receptionist looked at the sacks before relooking back at the foreigner… “That is not necessarily how…that works, but—”
“You make it work, then. Because it would be with the redundancy to not so.” the foreigner simply interjected.
“Sure, but…in that case, it would have been better to…keep them…divide them, you know, so—” the receptionist was saying, yet…
“Then do the dividing, then.” the foreigner, again, interrupted. “It is easy.”
The receptionist…slowly nodded… “Uhuh…” She continued to be perplexed; something was…definitely off with the foreigner this day… And it was not just her behavior and…attitude that was different. She was dirty and her dress was…clearing becoming worn… “You have not changed out of that once, have you? You look messy… When was the last time you—”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“I do the messy things. What is the expectation of you?” Yet the foreigner, again, so interjected.
The receptionist sighed… Well, everyone had these sort of days once and awhile… Though, there was something she had taken note of… “Uhm…”—her eyes drifted to the sacks—“You turned all of these in by yourself this time…”—her eyes drifted back to the foreigner— “What happened to your helper? That wagoneer?”
The foreigner stood there, motionless and silent, before…her mask-obscured eyes drifted down and astray, as if contemplating… “Gone.” She looked at the receptionist. “He is no longer here.” she spoke matter-of-factly.
“Oh?? Really now?” the receptionist replied as if surprised to hear… “He seemed pleasantly eager to help you with these quests, and you were paying him handsomely… So, why… What…” She was struggling to ask… “Sorry, I am just confused…”
The foreigner remained silent, contemplating and cogitating. “We had the…disagreement. I put him…in the bad danger, and I…kept doing that, and so… He went to the better place than here.” she thus explained, almost matter-of-factly yet…also evasively; “Or, at least, that is what he told to me before…leaving me.”
“…” The receptionist stared rather blankly… “Huh?” She was bewildered by this news… “So, wait… Because of some disagreement and endangerment…while helping you, an adventurer, with a well-known danger-filled profession… He ditched you?” While her voice conveyed surprise and shock, there was an element within it that seemed unconvinced.
Yet the foreigner simply nodded, “Yes.” There was no ambiguity in her voice. “I was…left to walk back to here…myself. And I had to do the quest…things again, also.”
“Huh…” The receptionist so sighed… “Wow… That’s…” She was at loss of words… “And here I thought he was actually a pleasant and courteous man… And he just abandoned you…at the sunny-cave? Pfft…” There was a grimace in her face, “I guess men really are like that sometimes… Always up about themselves without any regard for the struggles of a lady…” she remarked, perhaps somewhat…projectingly so, frankly.
The foreigner remained silent; she stood there shameless, her legs slightly jittery. “Well, you do coin thing. I go and look at board, if that is allowed.”
“Huh?” The receptionist snapped out of her thoughts… “Oh, I mean, I suppose that…” She saw as the foreigner did not even wait for approval before walking off to it… “is fine…” That one was never easy to read, but something really was not right at all with her… “Hm…” The receptionist could not help but remain suspicious…
Regardless, though, she prioritized her tasks. She quickly stamped the two quest sheets for completion, recording similarly so within that fat and girthy registrar book, before promptly beginning the reward dispensing process. As if a natural wheel who had become one with the administration, she decisively prepared 1,586 silvers—split between 15 golds and 86 silvers respectfully…
“Wait, you didn’t…” The receptionist, her stacked columns all prepared, realized however that… The foreigner had not provided her coin-pouch… Sighing, she simply used one of the Guild’s own pouches; she placed coins within it before tying it. Normally, such would come with a charge, but…she was not going to bother.
The foreigner returned shortly after, in her hands being…
“Heh…?” The receptionist stared as the foreigner slid…not two, not three, not even four… Seven quests onto the main counter, all of which seemingly were… “Same duplicate quests, as always…” she mumbled in almost mutter.
“This is all of what is left.” the foreigner remarked. “There is no point for me to do them few at a time, since the plan for me is to complete all of them.”
“Sure… But… There is a limit to how many quests a Copper-rank can—” the receptionist was explaining…
“And these quests reduce the truth of the dangers of that ‘sunny-cave’ and the need to fight those glow-spiders.” The foreigner interjected, coldly. “The ‘Copper’ is the weakest, and I have seen many bodies of the stronger. It is better, no, if these quests are not in the board? I can do them.” she thus stated.
The receptionist…sighed… “Yeah, I suppose I can’t argue there… These quests are mis-ranked…”
“And I have already done one. As I said. So, not six. Five left.” the foreigner added.
“Again, that is not how that works, but…” she sighed again… “Fine, I didn’t count the extras to your reward, so… I’ll spit it and mark one of these as…” The receptionist, however, paused in her words as her brain finally processed… “Wait, five left… But you have seven…” She immediately looked at the foreigner’s selected quests, realizing… “Wait… Wait, wait, wait! One of these…is different!”
“Yes.” the foreigner nodded; “It is different.”
Surprised in absolute, the receptionist immediately inspected this…actually different quest… “This is a…glow-golem bounty?” Her eyes widened. “Wait, this a Steel-ranked quest, are you serious?? Nilia…” She looked at her… “I understand you must have been having a thrilling time with those glow-spiders, but these crystalish golems are completely different—”
“And?” yet the foreigner just said, indifferent; “I can handle it, most likely. It is, as you say, with the ‘overlap’… It is in the same cave. So, it makes more of the efficiency.”
The receptionist stared… “Nilia, you are tough. A lot tougher than…you look… But you are still Copper, so I can’t…” Her voice paused…as she began to think; her fingers tapped as she gritted her teeth, tension flaring within over…a decision to make. Fingers tapping and tapping, before… “Ugh, alrightly… Fine. Fine…” she sighed, stamping that quest before stamping the rest. “I trust you to…come back safe and alive… But, please… Next time, do not test me like this… Quests are ranked for good reason…” she thus said as she reopened that girthy registrar, completing the process.
“I give the thanks.” The foreigner just thanked, taking all but one of the quest sheets, which she left on the counter. “Also. One is already done. Remember.”
“Oh, I know…” The receptionist glanced at the leftover quest… “Nothing is tallied on it though, since…”
“Does it matter?” the foreigner plainly asked.
“Not really…” The receptionists sighed for the nth time this encounter… She thus proceeded to stamp that…already recently stamped quest…for completion before listing as such within that registrar.
“Now the coin.” The foreigner thus stated.
“Getting it to, missy…” Goodness, this interaction was becoming exhausting… And the foreigner was never exhausting to deal with… Nevertheless, the receptionist’s hand asked for something. “This time can give it to me?”
“Oh.” The foreigner remembered, right. “I give the sorry.” At least she apologized. She handed the receptionist her actual coin-pouch, into which the receptionist proceeded to dispense her reward of 7 golds and 93 silvers before handing it back, all neatly tied.
“There is another pouch for you.” The receptionist pointed to it.
“Oh.” The foreigner had not even realized… “I give the thanks.” She took that Guild-provided pouch, affixing it to her belt alongside her proper pouch. “I take leave then. Back when done I will be” Without much else, she turned around and began to walk off… Six quest sheets now stuffed within her backpack.
“Huh?” The receptionist just looked, now with…definitely worried eyes… “Nilia, wait!” she swiftly called out, reaching her arm; “Hold!”
The foreigner paused and turned around, staring. “Hm?”
A tension stressing within as the receptionist words deliberated; there was worried concern in her breaths… “N… Nilia…” She took a deep breath. “Nilia, are you…doing alright?” she finally asked.
“Uh?” the foreigner stared blankly and confused, her head tilting…
“I mean… I do not mean to overstep proper boundaries,” the receptionist continued, “but… I mean, you have always kind of…came off as distant, but…never this distant and cold…” Her voice slowed, eyes looking down with contemplation… “Look, Nilia, we all have our…bad lowly days… And, especially in this profession, things…go wrong; things go terrible, even… You’re clearly not your usual self…” she thus remarked, mellowly… “So, just… Tell me, what is with you today? If anything happened, you can… It is fine to tell me…” She was concerned, indeed.
The foreigner, however, remained completely confused by this…suddenty. “I am finely fine?” Indeed, she was no different than her ‘usual’…
Yet, abruptly, it then so finally struck her…
“Oh…” Right… She had not donned her charming smile, she realized… She had not smiled once this entire time. And, in fact… She had forgotten to don any masquerading affect whatsoever. No charm. No cordiality. No…anything. This entire time her voice had been hollow; her gestures flat and empty… There was nothing filling her words and expressions to contextualize them.
Odd. It had not even occurred to her that…
She thought that she had…
Regardless, having realized, she made an immediate correction. Taking a deep breath, she filled her lungs before exhaling out as if readying her mind; she lightly shook her head and somewhat gently patted her cheeks as if relaxing the muscles…
“Oh, do not worry about me!” the foreigner so replied with a pleasantry and charm. “I am finely fine, as I said… I am well. It is just that… I am tired; I did not sleep goodly.” she thus reassured; “And I will return alive, as I do. I know…” Her voice…delayed a little… “I…know what it is that I am doing. Trust in me… And do not be with the fear or the worry for me.” She smiled with warmth in her voice… Yet her mask hid those the baggy eyes that stared frigid and vacuous.
The receptionist…looked at her… She sighed deeply; “If you insist, Nilia… And, yes. Please do…come back alive, seriously… Do not become so up your head, alrightly?” Her voice normalized, becoming cordial… Even so, she remained no less uneased. In fact, that sudden shift in the foreigner from that cold flatness to…such apparent charming pleasantry… Indeed, it was rather uncanny to be frank.
The foreigner smiled again as she did a gracious bow; “Well, if that is everything… Then I will take the leave.” She thus took her leave, opening the Guild hall’s door as she stepped back out into the city beyond… And as soon as that door shut behind…
Her smile faded instantly, her affect flattening. For whatever reason, that smile was so much harder to pull off… She hated it, that ‘warm smile’, and she did not even know why. Something about it made her feel sick…
The receptionist, meanwhile, sighed for the double nth time this day alone as the foreigner departed off. “Sometimes sweet could be sour on the inside… Or maybe sweet can become sour… I do not know…” she mumbled to herself aloud, reflecting… “Something bad clearly happened…” Indeed, she knew the signs, and it was no coincidence that the wagoneer’s ‘departure’ was coinciding with this…shift.
Suddenly, however, a door behind her so popped open, causing a momentary fright. She so flung her eyes and glared, seeing that…a certain supervising peer of hers had finally returned from…whatever it was she had even been doing.
“Well, someone’s mopey.” the peer, staring blankly as that same door closed, so perceptively observed. “What was all that about?”
“Huh?” The receptionist’s head jerked a little. “…wait…” She realized immediately, “were you… Were you behind that door this entire time?”
The peer, however, just shrugged. “Dunno… Kinda took a big and nice snap in the quest department’s comfy chairs—why are they so comfy?”
“…” The receptionist stared… “Snap?”
“Nap. Tongue twirled wrongly…” the peer corrected; “Anyway, I wasn’t there for long… But I did hear you call out like you were reaching out to someone… So, what was all that about?”
“Oh… Uhm…” The receptionist blushed a little, slightly embarrassed; “Nothing, it is just… Nilia was here, and…she seemed a bit off, so I was perturbed…”
“Uhuh.” The peer just glared. “And, even after everything I—your most delightful and attractive of friends—told you—”
“Friend is stretching it. You are my boss, boss.” the receptionist corrected, sarcastic.
“Yes… And your friend—as ordered by me, your boss.” the peer so replied; “But you didn’t bother to fetch me? Hmm? Even though I wanted to see that strapping wagon-man again, hmm?” she teasingly interrogated, before sighing… “Guess I’ll have to wait until the next time your missy shows up. Because…” She looked at the receptionist with quite the misfit smile… “Lemme tell you, Lav: you’ll be busy in the back… Mhm. I’ll make sure of that. Mhm.” She nodded her head over and over.
Yet the receptionist tensed and went silent, not reacting as she usually would… Her eyes awkwardly glanced at the peer before…evading, only to glance again…yet only to evade again, timidly.
“…” The peer immediately noticed this peculiar behavior… “Wha… What? What is this? Why are you doing…that?” Her eyes were unamused.
The receptionist straightened into a frozen still, nervous and anxious—odd for someone usually calm like her… She swiftly ahemed; “So, uhm… About that man… Yes, uhm… So…” She ahemed again, officializing her voice… “I regret to inform you that—”
“She got him killed. That’s why she’s mopey.” The peer, however, immediately said.
The receptionist’s breaths raised with an agape stare, eyes widened… Before her posture relaxed, as her eyes came down… “I would not say that, but…”
The peer sighed, dropping her pretenses and persona; “I’ve been around slobbery adventurers way too long… It’s obvious when a job went way wrong… And that wagon-man isn’t the type to leave a girl hanging…”
The receptionist was silent, before her eyes abruptly glared with a squint… “So you were eavesdropping?”
In the end, the peer did not seem terribly affected by such news and implications, not overtly at least. Such was merely life, especially in this profession. People come; people leave; some never come back.
