Dialysis Book: Chapter 30: An unexpected detour

“Quatax and Forenth don’t count, they were both unconscious when Shade pulled them away,” I said unhappily as we reached the buggy.

“But I only moved back a little,” moaned Zorg, horribly over encumbered Zorg.

Hurkle grunted.

“At least the ranger can take it like an elf,” I said, grumpily as we finally got back into the clearing around the fortress.  Zorg continued to whine and Forenth groaned piteously.  Forenth was gently sat down, with Hurkle taking great care to keep the poor elf’s foot safe.

Quatax landed with a thud.  I’d have called Zorg out, but he used himself as a mat for heavily armored Quatax to land on.

“Ouch,” hissed Zorg, who had hopefully learned his lesson.

“Why didn’t we recover in the forest,” asked Quatax.

Hurkle grunted.

“Yes, we both scouted and there were many goblin tracks in the area.  Max decided it was best to come back here away from them.”

Quatax looked at Shade, Hurkle, then me and nodded.  “That was a good call.”

“I don’t like getting ambushed by goblins,” I said waving my hand over my face.

Quatax nodded, “I didn’t realize it happened like that.  I knew you were polymorphed but yuck.  You have to be careful around goblins, they will capture you, collar you and then keep you as a slave till the day you die.”

“That’s a bigger concern for elves, on the account of our lifespans,” began Zorg and I looked down on him with cold, uncaring eyes.  To his credit, the elf actually thought about it.  “No wait, that would suck for everyone.  Good call, Max.”

“Where is my sword,” moaned Quatax as he came to and I heard a clatter.

“I stored it for you in my butt,” said Shade happily.

“What,” asked Quatax looking at his family sword, scandalized.

“He’s a poop ninja, they do that,” I said, examining the injured elf laying on top of the other groaning elf.  Quatax’s armor was dented, and his helmet had literally popped when he slammed into the tree, but he was alive with all of his feet, and that’s what counted.

Unlike Forenth.

“Shut up, I am using my essence to expand the boot,” groaned the elf.

Harple grunted.

“Fine, I’ll check my spellbook when I get a moment,” said Zorg.  Quatax groaned and accepted my hand to stand up leaving the wizard smashed to the ground.

Zorg looked exhausted, like he’d carried an unconscious elf wearing metal armor through the woods with absolutely no help from me.  He also looked wiser, which I thought was a good thing.

I waved several times at the elves who were guarding the fortress until one of them finally waved back.  Several of the army elves spent entirely too long looking at us with their bows drawn for my liking, and my oblivious companions were just sitting here talking about shoes.

“It's too small,” said Forenth.

“I could try to cut it off,” I offered, anything to hurry us up.

“The foot or the boot,” said Zorg uncomfortably.

Forenth’s boot looked bad when I glanced at it, when you got real close and examined it carefully it was much worse.  The beboar’s rear foot had put all of the creature’s impressive weight down on a very small point.  That point was right over the arch of Forenth’s right foot, and while that alone was enough to break the bone it had also crushed the boot into the mangled flesh.

He couldn’t heal it because there was literally metal in the way, and the boot was well enough constructed that just tearing it off was impossible.

I grabbed my spear and concentrated, causing the light thrust skill to manifest.  The laser’s edge of the blade was sharp enough to cut through just about anything if I could reach it at the right angle.

Forenth batted my spear away with his hand then stopped.

“That’s not hot,” he said.

“Laser’s aren’t,” I said, an obvious lie on Earth but here not so much.  I started with the easy part, going along the edge of the boot I separated the soul from the rest of the footwear. That didn’t help much, but it was something.  Forenth turned away and the other elves were not looking at me working on the immortal foot of their companion.

Focusing I shrunk my spear down until it was barely a foot long, though the spearhead was the same size as it always was.  The cutting edge on it had grown sharper than before.

“Your Laser Thrust skill is ranked 3 now,” said Spivy, clearing her throat.  “Laser Trust, Rank 3 augmented with a quickness aspect.  Affected abilities include improve essence manipulation of your spear, and the laser head of  your weapon.  You should now be able to extend or shrink the head for a variety of purposes.”

I concentrated and the laser head got thinner and longer, then I shrunk it down to a broader headed spear.  I couldn’t expand the shaft quickly, but I could do it faster than before.  It made my weapon quite a bit more versatile than it had been.  Focusing, I settled on a concentrated edge that was as sharp as I could hold and felt my essence start to burn.  I needed to hurry up.

Holding Forenth’s foot in position, I traced the cutting edge against the seam in the metal.  The elf’s problem was that he had fully armored boots rather than just a metal plate over the top of a sturdy boot, like Quatax or me.

Basically there were three levels of foot protection in the adventuring world.  There was the heavy boot, which served its purpose of protecting the bottom of your foot, like Zorg.  If you needed more protection you could buy leg armor that basically sat on top of that adding an additional layer of protection, like I did.  If you really wanted to protect your feet, you could buy a fully armored boot that was just armor for your feet with a tread on the bottom to make walking easier.

As a cleric of the goddess, Namiestay, Forenth had gone with option three and the goddess was not pleased with him at the moment.  There was no real way to take it off easily, though there were some seams that someone with a sharp enough tool could work with.  It helped that most of the seams on the boot were at least partially broken open, of course they were filled with elven foot meat so it wasn’t much of an improvement.

I found one seam where only a few connections held it in place and started slicing.  The laser head on my spear was thinner now than when I’d started, and it was much sharper.  I still couldn’t cut through a solid metal plate, but I could cut the struts holding two of them together if they were exposed.

The front half of the boot clattered to the ground, followed by a wet splat as the pooled blood followed it.

“Oh, that’s so gross,” I said.

“How bad is it,” asked Forenth.

“I can see bone, in places there shouldn’t be bone,” I offered looking at the wound.  His foot was about an inch thinner than it should have been, in both directions.

Quatax swallowed loudly, then grabbed the boot and placed his thumbs on either edge.  I felt him work his essence and the elven warrior pulled causing the metal to groan.  In a feat of superhuman strength he managed to spread out the metal far enough to give the mangled appendage some air.  Blood started pouring from the half boot.

“We can pull it off now,” said Quatax, looking at me meaningfully.

“Shade, steal his boot,” I said.

“I can’t,” replied Shade mournfully.

“Why not,” I asked, a hint more desperately.  If I held that, it was going to be ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ level blood geyser.

“He is watching me,” replied Shade.

I reached up and put my hand over Forenth’s eyes, then glared at Quatax until he looked away.  I sensed more than felt Shade get close.  .

“Praise be to the goddess,” muttered Forenth as Shade, nearly a dozen feet away, spit away the half destroyed boot.  And to be clear, I meant it was half a boot that was destroyed, not a boot that was half way through it's destruction.  Precision matters.

Forenth touched his hands to his own foot and muttered a prayer.  The bones cracked back into place and the flesh reformed like nothing ever happened.  I didn’t see that second part though, I was busy throwing up in a bush.

Harple grunted.

“Shade looted the corpse, I didn’t really check on it,” I said looking over.

“I got a token, four hundred and seven gold coins and several items,” said Shade happily.  He spit out the token which Quatax picked up gingerly.

“Is this also from his butt,” asked Quatax.

I nodded.

“Great,” said the elf.

“How are the items divided,” I asked.

“Need for favors, or sold for cash,” said Zorg.  “If it is an item you can use, you can just take it.  One of the reasons to get people with different gear requirements is so if you find something you don’t have to share.”

“But if they take it, isn’t that unfair,” I asked.

“Hence the favors,” replied Quatax.  “If you take an item, you owe everyone a favor and they will have to come out with you next time.”

“That’s not too useful for me,” I said.

Harple grunted.

“You don’t care that I’m not an elf,” I said.

The scout nodded.

Forenth laughed, “I don’t care what you are, you helped me when I needed it.  I’ll come to your side whenever you call Max.”

Quatax nodded as well, “Yes, I realize I was foolish.  You saved me from the beboar at great personal risk.  I behaved poorly.”

Everyone else in my party nodded as well.  Zorg looked particularly embarrassed at his behavior.  It got so quiet it was uncomfortable.

“So what are the items,” I asked.

“There is a shard,” said Shade.  “It was one of power.”

“A heroic Shard, interesting,” said Quatax examining it.  “We’ll have to take it to a shardsmith.”

“It's a shard of beboar ferocity,” said Spivy quietly.  “Not really useful for you or Shade, and only worth about 250 gold.”

“I take it I can’t claim it and sell it,” I whispered to Spivy.

“It's poor etiquette,” she replied.

“There is a quiver,” said Shade, causing Harple’s eyes to light up.  He took it and started to examine it.

“That is a beboar skin quiver, holding larger than usual arrows.  If he doesn’t want it, you might try for it so you can hold more javelins, but it might not be worth the favors,” said Spivy.

Harple grunted, and started removing the existing quiver on his hip.

“Fine by me, you deserve it,” I said as the other elves nodded.  “And I’ll hold you to that promise.”

“If Harple didn’t live up to his favor he’d never hear the end of it,” chuckled Zorg.

“And the final item is this, a rug,” said Shade, dropping out a pile of fur.  Quatax lifted it up and examined it with Forenth.

“Bearskin armor, interesting, but none of you are druids.  Unfortunately,  it is the best item you’ve found and not greatly suited for anyone here,” said Spivy.

“How much,” I asked.

“A few hundred gold, perhaps,” said the fairy.

“I guess I’ll take it,” said Forenth, lifting the armor.  HIs boot was destroyed and some of the other armored plates were heavily damaged so he immediately switched over to the bearskin armor.

I sniffed several times, “Woof, you are welcome to it.”

Forenth looked uncomfortable, and nauseous, “Cost of doing business I suppose.”

With that we went back onto the buggy, with me in my place of honor on the back.  The bridge was clear now so traffic resumed its normal pattern.  I checked my money pouch in my inventory and noticed I was up over one hundred gold pieces just from the money Shade had dispersed so far.

Shade walked back while the elves talked to the driver.

“Shit, I forgot to leave the brass bell,” I said remembering that I’d brought it with me to lose in the forest.  Spivy had been quite adamant about it, but I checked my hood and she was asleep.

Shade shrugged, glazing over at the sleeping fairy.  “I could go lose it now.”

I looked up at the elven archers, and the party.  I was about to suggest he run it off to get rid of the item when I remembered the goblins.  It wasn’t worth anything after tonight, and it didn’t seem necessary to risk Shade over nothing.

“No worries, what she doesn’t know,” I replied.

“Okay,” said Shade happily, I reached down and scratched him on top of the head.  I wasn’t entirely sure, but he felt larger than I remembered him.  Maybe that was just all the working out, but as I stood I knew he only came up to mid thigh and he might have been just a bit taller than that.

Spivy yawned, and I quickly changed the subject.

“You figure out where we are going next?”

“Niethel, it is a large coastal port on the edge of the mountains.  They are having a festival in a few days,” said Spivy sleepily.

“I heard of that place” I replied trying to remember where.  I’d heard so many new places that I couldn’t recall where.  “Not that I mind a festival, but why there?”

“It is on the coast, we might take water transport to Arden from there,” said the fairy.  “First class accommodations on a boat typically include as much wine as you can drink.”

“That sounds perfect,” I replied.  This small part of the vacation had been rough, but again I’d killed a monster that was attacking people and saved lives.  It felt important, and I felt like I accomplished something.

I could get used to adventuring.

Quatax walked up to me, steeling himself.  “The driver will not let you in the cabin.  I will accompany you on the rack.”

I tried not to laugh, but he looked so serious.  “Don’t worry about it.  I need you to watch over Shade.”

Quatax looked like he was going to protest, but I shooed him into the buggy.  The driver looked back at me dismissively, so I just smiled at him.  His expression faltered as he saw my damaged armor, and looked hesitant for a moment.

But the real trick was that Forenth’s new armor stank, bad.  I was quite comfortable riding on the back of the buggy if I didn’t have to breathe that in.

We started to pick up speed even before we got off the bridge and even managed to avoid the lights for a bit as we went back to the guild.  Spivy sat patiently on my shoulder for a while as I listened to the elves regale themselves with tales of their epic battle.  I was mentioned, frequently, doing things to save everyone that I clearly hadn’t.

I wasn’t going to correct them though.

Shade was the hero of everyone’s story though, because he was a good boy.  He’d also done what Red Rush should have done and just played defense for the party.  Every time someone was in danger, he got them out so they could fight again making us almost invincible.

I really needed to read that comic.

By now I knew the trick to keep the birds and deers away from me so just flickering on my lights was enough to protect me.  Strange that everything else was attracted to my lights, but the traffic was trained to stay clear.

We stopped at a light and Spivy hopped up, “I gotta check with someone about a thing.”

I waved her away, I was going to go eat dinner and pass out.  If either girl offered to play a game, I was going to refuse.  Though, if they brought enough wine I might have agreed…

Suddenly the buggy made a sharp turn, nearly dashing a birdie and we cut into an overpass I hadn’t been over before.

“What’s going on,” I yelled into the buggy.

“This armor stinks, Forenth doesn’t want it,” said Quatax.

“Didn’t we already agree on giving it to him,” I replied, unsure of the process.

“Yeah, or we could go sell it at the auction house and take a cut of the gold,” said Zorg.  “If we do, he's promised to put it back in his storage.”

“Please, Chum,” begged a desperate Shade.

If it stinks so bad Shade can’t stand it…

I glanced back and all four elves and Shade were looking at me from inside the cabin with puppy eyes.  It was vaguely disturbing, minus the vaguely part.  I shrugged, “More gold is good gold.”

The overpass took us to a toll road, and Harple tossed a coin out of our moving carriage into a small basket as we got up to highway speed.  I was no longer okay with this, but the view was spectacular.

The toll road was literally a highway, taking us up and over most of the buildings in the city.  As large as I thought the city was, I realized I’d underestimated the elven city.  Dominion was easily the size of Manhattan, if not a bit larger though I doubted the population density was quite as high.

The many levels I’d seen earlier in the garden plazas made more sense now too.  The city was not flat.  There was a healthy sized hill on this side of the river that sloped down to the river.  The skyscraper trees were all pretty much the same height, it was just that some of them started much higher than others giving you the impression the high elven parts of the town towered over everyone.

Instead, it was just that they started with an advantage.

I also saw the palace for the first time, and it was splendorous like something out of a fantasy novel.  A giant castle on top of a massive tree with waterfalls emerging for several sides.  There was a glowing magical tower in the middle that seemed to shine with power.  It made the guild look like a hovel by comparison.  You didn’t see it from street level because you really couldn’t see the sky unless it was directly above you, but up here it was immaculate.

“Shade,” I said gesturing but I noticed he was looking the other direction.

That was something that didn’t belong there.  The castle was simply a castle on top of a hill.  I was looking at the most obvious wizard’s tower I’d ever seen in my life.  The tower hovered in the air, laughing at gravity.  It looked like all the best kinds of elven architecture, but wrong somehow and I couldn’t quite put my thumb on it.

It looked a bit like the magical tower in the palace, but if someone had decided to build it without a care for costs.

“Is that the System Lord’s palace,” I whispered.

“Yup,” said Quatax looking down, like he was unworthy of even looking at the thing.  As long as there is someone lower on the totem pole, the elves were willing to buy into a system that was inherently racist against even themselves.

I looked at both structures for another moment then shook my head.  I was on vacation.  We found an offramp right under the nose of the palace and rolled into the highborn district.

The damage from the fight the previous night had already mostly been cleaned up.  Talimor’s restaurant was damaged, but not so badly that it needed to be rebuilt again.  Rebuilt from scraps at least, as we passed it I realized the place was not up to code.

“Woof,” I said as I examined the damage.

“Woof indeed,” replied Shade, but he was looking at the meat stick stand, which was dented and closed.

The elves vastly preferred walking so we had barely entered the highborn district before there was no place for the buggy to go and we all hopped off.  Quatax payed, grinning as he did so.

“Only got charged for three,” he said.

“So me and Shade don’t count,” I said.

Forenth snorted, “I’m part of the clergy, I’m always free.  I don’t think they noticed Harple.

Harple grunted.

I barked out a laugh, “I’ve seen the inside of that buggy, how did you manage that?”

Harple grunted again, pointing at Forenth.

Zorg frowned, “You can’t hide behind stink.”

“Apparently he can,” I replied.

The scout beamed as we started walking towards the auction house.  It was a massive structure, nearly the size of the palace but located in the middle of the highborn district at ground level.

“Surprised the guards haven’t started to question me,” I grumbled as we walked towards the entrance.

“Not around the auction house, even… non-elves with money are welcome here,” said Quatax, carefully monitoring his own speech.  I appreciated the gesture.

“Everyone is busy with repairs,” said Forenth, wearing a priestly robe of the goddess.  I snorted and then noticed everyone else had changed too.  I scanned my inventory and selected my walking around clothes and unhappily changed in public.

No one could see me change, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Strange outfit, I like the hat,” said Quatax examining me.  I’d left the cowboy hat on in my inventory, but the rest of my clothes were my normal walking around outfit from Darven.  I looked rustic, and not in a good way.

“Maybe I’ll pick up some clothes from an actual human shop,” I said.

Quatax nodded, “That’d be a good idea.  You are an adventurer, you should look the part.”

I marched up the stairs with them to the front entrance of the grand building.  It was crafted of white marble with vines covering every part that they didn’t want exposed.  The archway leading into the building was large enough to drive a semi through but before I’d made a single step, Quatax cleared his throat.

“Am I not allowed inside,” I asked.

“Well, not right now,” said Quatax and I felt my blood boil.  Quatax hurried on.  “Not right now because there isn’t an auction at the moment so it is closed.  We were planning on going around back to sell our goods and maybe pick up a roster of items being sold.  Occasionally you find good things there.”

“Everyone’s going around back,” I said.

“Of all ear lengths,” said Quatax, gesturing to a path on the side, where the other elves were already walking. I followed until we got to a much less ornate door on the backside of the building.  It was next to a well disguised loading dock, like you’d see at any other commercial building.

Quatax held open the door and gestured to me to enter first.  Shade beat me to it, dashing through the door.  The elves shrugged and followed him leaving me and Quatax to walk in last.

“Don’t expect much,” said Quatax.

Strangely, the back room of the auction house fit my expectations quite well.  It was a receiving office with only the least bit of elven frippery.  There were a few more plants than you’d see on Earth in a similar room, and the floor was a touch cleaner but that was about it.

There was even a burly elf at the desk that was dressed in overalls who looked annoyed to be there.

Harpled grunted.

The burly elf looked up and grinned widely.  “Harple you mad fool, survived another quest?”

“How does he do that?” I asked as the large elf patted Harple on the back more firmly than I would have thought possible.

“No idea, Harple knows just about everyone though,” said Quatax as he started pulling items from inventory.  He had quite a few more items than he got on our quest.  Quatax cleared his throat and gestured towards another table.

Getting his point, I checked my inventory and started pulling out my own stuff.  I had the hobgoblin token, those potions, and a few shards I couldn’t use.  Spivy wasn’t here, so I wasn’t sure about the corrupted stuff.

Just then Harple walked over dragging the burly elf behind him.

“So you are Max, the laser dragoon, I’m Jo’seph, the garbage inspector.”

“Garbage inspector,” I repeated, tasting the words.  That wasn’t a precise translation, it was something more akin to searching for items from adventurers that might be valuable or might be garbage.  However, since I didn’t have a word to translate it to, garbage inspector it was.”

“But people just call you Joe,” I said, sticking out my hand.

“Jo?” he replied.  I could tell he’d dropped the e.  “No, but that’s not a bad idea.”

“Ok, GI Jo, how do we do this?”

“Right to the point, I love it,” said Jo.  “Go to the booth over there and set out anything you want me to review.  I’ll give you suggestions for starting prices.  There are certain items we can buy outright if the prices are consistent enough.  You can check the wall for those.”

He pointed to a wall which was covered in prices then walked away to talk to Quatax, who was already ready for him.

“Do you have anything you want to clean out,” I asked.

Shade materialized several non-magical weapons, a few shards, and several monster tokens.

“I don’t know if squirbit tokens are worth much,” I said, glancing down at his pile.  If he didn’t have a looting power that let him turn low value items into actual gold, I’d have been sad.  As it was, this was just extra money.

I delved into my inventory, pulling out the corrupted shards, a whole squirbit core, the bugbear token as well as the brass bell, which was still fully wrapped up in wire and now also covered in squirbit fur.

“Not much of a haul,” said Jo as he walked back over.  “Still a few valuable things.  The shards have a going rate, so I’ll just pay for those outright, even the corrupted ones.  I don’t want the weapons, there are several local merchants that will buy them for the metal but those are goblin trash.  Tokens have a going rate as well.”

Jo was busily writing up numbers on a slate board, he stopped as he looked at the brass bell.

“We found that in a goblin warren, it was well protected,” I said.

“Okay, might be worth a few gold, that’s the only item you have that can go up for auction here,” he said, poking it once with his stylus.

“How’s that work?” I asked.

“You pay a fee, and we sell it,” replied Jo.  “Not very complicated, but you might want to sell it anonymously.  If they recognize the seller’s name as human, they pay less.”

“Easy enough then,” I said as he spun the slate around and I paid the extra silver to have the item sold anonymously.

“And the name or description,” he gestured to the slate.

I wrote down ‘brass bell’ and finished the paperwork.  Jo took everything and put it on a tray before handing me a token and 126 gold.  I did the math based on the board and got 140, but then spotted the large sign written in elven, human, dwarven and several other languages.

The Auction House Gets 10%

“That settles that,” I said, pocketing the gold.

“Just bring this back tomorrow after the auction, and you’ll either get your item back or however much it sold for,” said Jo.

“Any idea how much that will be,” I asked, taking the token, it had the image of the brass bell, covered in golden wire and squirbit fur.

“Goblin warren treasures are in vogue right now, you might even get a hundred gold out of it if you are lucky,” said Jo.  “Just remember, the auction house gets 10%.”

“I can read,” I replied and walked over to the party

Quatax dropped twenty seven gold coins into my hand.  The power shard was worth 150, and after the 10% and splitting it five ways that was my share.

“What about the coat,” I asked and Forenth held up 5 tokens.

“I listed it as a party good with all of us even shares,” said the cleric.  “Costs of the split will be deducted from the sale of course, plus the 10%.  Jo thinks it might go for around 250 gold if there is demand.”

I took my token and noticed Quatax frowning, “He always overestimates, we’ll be lucky to get a hundred.”

“Well, there isn’t much demand at the moment according to Jo,” said Zorg.

“Know any druids we could point this way,” I asked the scout.

Harple grunted.

“See it is about who you know,” said Forenth.  “We’ll go visiting and see if we can drop some hints about the skin.  If we are lucky we might get an agent to sniff around.  They have lost a lot of gear recently with the quarrels.”

Using the word quarrel to describe full on fighting in the city by high powered elves was new.  Culturally they didn’t want to admit that the king and system lord were fighting, so they used pretty words instead of actually describing what was happening.

“So what’s the plan for tonight,” I asked.

“Obviously, go get drunk while mentioning the auction and get home before dark so we can watch the show,” said Quatax as we left the auction house.  “Best bar is this way, you coming?”