Dialysis Book: Chapter 24: Aftermath

Shade popped up after a few minutes.  His essence had been massively disrupted by the bugbear, but when it recovered he was his usual chipper self.

“I still think you should carry me,” said Shade as he sniffed the dead doat.  The creature’s body glowed blue for a moment and then Shade was off to the next one while I looked around and burned essence until I felt ready to fall over.

Despite my burn since Spivy passed out, the radiant essence hadn’t done anything.  She was still unconscious though if I poked her now she grunted.  That was an improvement over the total lack of reaction she had before.

Shade walked over and sat next to me before dumping out all of the interesting bits from the goblins.  There was not much.  He got another spear core, which was common but could be sold at the adventurer’s guild.  None of the goblins had anything else of value.

The doats were a bit more interesting.  One of them had a doat core that we’d have to give to Spivy.  It was a mortal tier core, so it wasn’t a tremendous find, but it might have an aspect Spivy could knap off for us.

I held that core for a second, concentrating on keeping my essence away from it.  That was actually tricker than you’d think because of how essence flowed around my body.  I had to really concentrate to keep it out of my fingertips but when I did the core stopped being painful to hold.

“Figured it out,” groaned Spivy.

“I think so,” I said, holding up the core before showing it to her.  My hand trembled slightly.  I had a host of minor wounds and I needed to take my armor to a repair guy to fix all the damaged bits that were grinding into my skin.  I was holding a healing potion and debating taking it to deal with all of the bruises I had, but didn’t want to waste the resource unnecessarily.

All in all, I looked pretty heroic if I did say so myself.

“So do you still want to be an adventurer,” said Spivy, watching me carefully.

I’d nearly died.  Shade had nearly died.  Getting shot with magic was painful.  Breaking my ankle was incredibly painful.  We’d been surrounded by monsters who were actively trying to eat me.  The forest was a massive creature, and I was in the most danger I’d ever been in.

Still, I felt alive for the first time in years.

“Yeah, this was… fun,” I said, surprised that I actually meant that.  Shade watched me inscrutable for a moment.

“I am having fun too,” said Shade finally.  “We are on the longest walk ever and I get to eat from the table.”

“And talk,” I said.

“I do not see how that is as beneficial as eating from the table,” said Shade.  “I have had steak three days in a row now and unlimited treats.”

“That’s because you are working all the time,” I said.

“Work?  I am playing with my chum,” said Shade.  “Plus I get to bite evil green squirrels.”

“Playing violently,” I said.

“Not with you, playing violently with others,” said Shade who snorted.  “Besides, they are bad.  I am good.  I am helping people, even the weird children who act silly.”

“The halflings,” I asked.

“Yes, they are very short like children, but smell like adults,” said Shade shaking his head.  “This place is very confusing, but fun.”

I nodded and turned to Spivy.  “Yeah, we are both still in.”

Spivy nodded, “I had you pegged as the right mindset for the job.”

“Anything useful here?” I asked, holding up the core.

“Probably, I’ll have to talk to Shade about what he wants to develop,” said Spivy consideringly.  “Doats are more mobile than he is so there is a movement aspect I could remove, or I could use this to augment his biting power but that would probably cause his teeth to mutate.”

“He can mutate,” I asked.

“Shade is an animal, if you start pushing a bunch of cores and aspects into them, they will change physically,” said Spivy.  “He’ll still be recognizable, but if I load him up on doat aspects he’s going to start looking like that.”

“Does that happen to humans,” I asked.

“No,” said Spivy.

“That is unfair,” said Shade.  “I do not wish to look like a doat.  I wish to look like a dog.”

“Mutant doat,” I corrected.

“Yes, that,” said Shade.

“I hate you both,” replied Spivy.  “Well, if Shade gets his essence under control the effects will be minimal at most.  So let's get your shadow bolt spell developed and then we can work on your next steps.”

“Okay, coach,” said Shade.

Spivy looked at me, “I’m pretty sure he means that as a compliment so I’m going to let it slide.”

“Good idea, coach,” I replied.

The fairy flew around in a figure eight before stopping right in front of me, “Okay, let's see what the bugbear had.”

I pointed at the only medium sized pile.  The bugbear had been wearing an odd robe that was made with skin pretending to be leather.  There was chain armor underneath the skin, kind of melted together.

“I’m not wearing that,” I said.

“Gross,” said Spivy, poking the armor with a stick.  “She skinned her fellow goblins to make this.  The joints aren’t bad though, you see when they castrate a hobgoblin…”

“I don’t want to know,” I said.

“Is it magical,” asked Shade, who had fewer convictions about wearing goblin scrotum armor.  .

“No, the chain is of higher quality than what Max has, but not significantly so and there isn’t as much of it,” said Spivy.  The underlying chain was thicker in the chest region, but it was also short sleeved and the protection for the groin was substandard.  Against a frontal strike to the chest it was great, but in most other circumstances the armor would have been ineffective.

“Shade was doing a number on her,” I said.

“Yes, she was a hero and normally the ratio for them in a fair fight is five to one,” said Spivy.

“Five mortal adventurers to a single hero, that sounds difficult,” I said unsure if that was good or bad.

“Five mortal adventurers attacking all at once with a plan,” said Spivy.

“So we got really lucky,” I stared over at the bugbear’s corpse.  “How did we manage this?”

“She was forced to evolve before she was ready.  Your class started out as a mortal core but if I started adding heroic aspects to it you’d evolve into a heroic class quickly enough,” said Spivy.  “That’s a solid power boost, but it limits your development somewhat and developing heroic aspects is more challenging than mortal ones.”

“So she had more power, but didn’t know how to use it,” I said.

Spivy nodded and looked over to the bugbear’s class core.  “Wizard core, well magical user’s core.  She looks like she was solidly aspected towards debuffing aspects like I said.”

“She had these,” I said, holding out several shards.

Spivy snorted, “Wow, didn’t even learn her own spells so they sharded them.”

“Could I learn them,” I asked.

“Yes and no,” replied Spivy holding up a shard, “This one causes sickness.  Requires corrupted life mana.”

“And I can only use light mana,” I said.

“Yes, and you can’t shard that.  I could aspect that into your class but corrupted life is a strong aspect.  Your class would turn into a corrupted diseased laser dragoon,” said Spivy.

“That’s a mouthful,” I replied.

“The adventurer’s guild doesn’t usually let in corrupted classes,” said Spivy, setting the shards aside.  “None of these shards can use light mana.  I could get a corrupted life aspect from her core.”

“Don’t do that,” I said.  “I’m on vacation, I’m not really interested in becoming corrupted.”

“That’s smart,” replied Spivy who looked puzzled.

“What’s up,” I asked, surveying the field.  Obviously I missed something, but I wasn’t sure what I was even looking for.  Now that my essence was on balance again, my depression was gone and Shade was resting peacefully, but was alert for anything.  Everything seemed alright.

“I don’t know why she was here,” said Spivy.

“She was with the doats, they were with the goblins,” I asked.

“No, goblins are like vermin.  They tend to show up everywhere so a small group of feral goblins in the forest isn’t anything impressive,” said Spivy.

“The forest doesn’t convert them,” I asked.

“No, the forest tends to dispose of creatures like goblins,” said Spivy.  “And a bugbear doesn’t care if goblins are hanging around her.”

“She did seem put out that they stole some of her stuff,” I said, glancing at the large pile of her stuff, including the small pile of vials in the center.  “That might be important.”

Spivy shook her head, “Maybe.  But for that bugbear to be evolved like she was means she came from one a goblin warren.  The fact that she stayed back and tried to let her doats do the fighting…”

I picked up the bugbear’s class core while Spivy was examining her gloves.  The core felt strange, not quite painful but there was something there that should be.  I recognized the sensation.

“This still has controls on it,” I said.

“Goblins are monsters, their class cores will always develop to being controlled,” said Spivy, causing the gloves to shrink down so much that they’d fit her hands.  She put them on and waved her arms around briefly.

“Do you have any idea what the controls are,” I asked.

Spivy flexed her hands, “No.  I’m not nearly that skilled of a shardsmith, you’d need someone of legendary rank and smiths with that level of skill are exceedingly rare.”

“Have you ever met one,” I asked.

“Once, a long time ago,” said Spivy, shaking her head.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Alright, what were the gloves,” I asked.

“They are healer’s gloves,” said Spivy.  “They will allow me to channel mana more effectively when healing you.  Hopefully I’ll pass out less.”

“That would be an improvement,” I said, bringing up my light shield.  “Check this out.”

I concentrated, splitting the disk in two.  The shield had been getting larger, but both halves were slightly smaller than my first shield.

“Your power evolved, probably as a result of it getting shattered constantly,” said Spivy.

I swung the disks around to either side of me, “Yeah, the disks feel weaker but I can do more with two of them,” I replied.

“Shadow bolt,” yelled Shade, blasting me with one of his bolts.  Both shields flashed between me and the attack, and the first shield disintegrated but the second one held.  Shade blasted me again and the second shield vanished.

“Wait for it,” I said, focusing and the shield came back up.

“You got faster at that,” said Spivy, “Good work.”

“I couldn’t let Shade get all the advancements,” I said.

“I am a poop ninja worlick,” said Shade.

“Warlock,” corrected Spivy, who then looked disgusted at herself for some unknown reason.

I looked over at the final pile, “Which leaves the elephant in the room.”

“Monster in the room,” aske Spivy, looking around.

“Elephant, it's a saying.  In this case I mean the big pile of alchemist fire,” I said pointing at the dozen vials of the stuff.  I picked it up and examined it.  I lacked any useful skills here, so I was just grabbing at a bottle but from the smell I could tell it was holding something combustible.

I poured a single drop onto a flat stone.  It sat there for a long moment, then it hissed.

“That does not seem all that dangerous,” said Shade as the liquid began to go semi solid.

“It's getting tacky,” said Spivy as the chemical hardened.  “That's a fast setting even for alchemist fire.”

“Maybe we need to light it?” I said, pulling out a twig and lighting it into a small flame.  I touched the twig to the more liquid parts of the alchemist fire and nothing happened.  I poked the liquid several more times, to no effect.  Finally frustrated I shoved the twig into the semi-solid still trying portion, breaking the flaming bit off.

When the tiny flame touched the nearly set part the flame kicked up like a jet engine, shooting a streak of blue fire nearly a dozen feet into the air.

“That was three meters,” said Spivy, who suddenly looked confused  “What's a meter?”

“I do not know, what is the ‘meter’ with you,” said Shade.  Spivy groaned.

“It's a euro yard,” I said looking down at the stone, which shattered from the heat.  “Holy crap, I don’t know if I want to carry this stuff.”

“That’s enough to burn down an elven skyscraper,” said Spivy.  “Alchemist fire is a controlled substance in the city, but as an adventurer you are authorized to have it.  ”

“Why is it so hard to burn,” said Shade.

“Because in real life if you want to control detonations, you make your explosive stable except in specific controllable circumstances,” I said looking down at the shattered rock where parts of the alchemist fire had set instead of burning.  “I’d bet there is a chemical that causes the alchemist fire to reliquify into that super burnable state.  This is probably how you apply it.”

Spivy nodded, “You could smear it around like this, just where you wanted it and then when you needed to use a hypothetical second chemical to prepare it for burning.”

“This is weapons grade stuff here, we should be disposing of it,” I said.

“We could probably sell it to an alchemist,” said Spivy consideringly.  “It is probably worth a lot of gold.”

“Well, vacations are expensive,” I said looking at the valuable vials more seriously.  Each was the size of a canteen and I had on good authority that they contained many drops.

“Why did she have so much,” asked Shade.

Spivy considered that.  “I’m not sure, it is not like you are going to burn down the Gnarly woods.  There are a number of smaller towns located inside the forest, so they might be trying to pull something there.  Goblins are all over and the one thing they want to do is burn everything down.”

“They did try to firebomb Qualus,” I said.

“Did they, Hektor said that was a goblin, and she said it was stolen,” said Spivy.  “There might be another warren someplace nearby she was transporting the goods to.”

“Good thing we found that map then,” I said.  “Do you think that goblin scout was with her?”  The goblin that was watching the field I’d killed was the only one I’d seen that seemed to be paying attention to what he was doing.

That was the difference between the feral goblins and the warren goblins.  The goblins from a warren seemed to know what they were about, while the feral ones were just here to sow chaos.  That didn’t mean that the warren goblins didn’t want to destroy the world, they just thought about the best way to do that first.

“Possibly,  if there is a warren he might have just been scouting the local area, I’ll know more when I get his map decoded,” said Spivy.

By then I’d finished placing all the alchemist fire into my inventory, only to find quite a few bottles left when I’d filled my dimensional space.  “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Looks like your storage is full,” said Spivy.

“I’m not carrying around those bombs normally.  What am I supposed to do?” I said, sensing my inventory.  I could sense that it was full, but not what was in it specifically.

“Sort your inventory,” said Shade.  “I keep my butt very organized.”

“He does, his inventory is really well kept,” said Spivy, sadly.

“I take pride in my butt,” said Shade.

“We all do,” I said, looking at my dog and scratching him on his hindquarters.  “So how do I do that?”

“Well, I find that it is best to put all the stuff that fits together together,” said Shade sagely.

I concentrated on my inventory, meditating like Spivy showed me.  With my heightened essence control I found that I actually had a grid, eight by two, that could hold items.  Certain items took up whole slots by themselves, like my spear, but my javalins all were locked into the same spot.

As I focused, I realized all of my bottles of alchemist fire were taking up their own slots and with great effort I was able to double up all of the potions.  This gave me more room and I was able to absorb even more of the alchemist fire.

Unfortunately, even with that trick there was still more alchemist fire because I was keeping a number of items in my inventory.  Some of it was of dubious quality.  I pulled out my first suit of badly mangled armor.

“You should have sold that in town,” said Spivy examining the gear.  “Shade.”

Shade touched the old suit with his nose, and it vanished but not into his inventory.  There was a small pile of coins where it sat.

“Shade can convert any trash item into coins, you should give him all your trash,’ said Spivy.  I ejected several pieces of goblin gear and a rock.

“A rock,” said Spivy.

“Seriously, chum,” said Shade shaking his head before touching everything but the rock with his nose.  A number of coins replaced the items.

I gathered up all the coins, “We’d have gotten more in town.”

“Yes, but you’d have to carry it,” said Spivy.  “Like a caveman.”

“This is a vacation,” said Shade.

“Point, and none of the trash was worth very much,” I said, gathering up the remaining bottles.  My old armor was only worth 2 silver coins from Shade, I’d certainly have gotten more in town but then I’d have to give up one of the alchemical fires and those were probably worth a few gold each.  They had pretty much filled up my inventory again even after I cleared it out.  I wasn’t going to have enough room to remove my armor until we got back to the city.  I waddled forward.

“You still have too much stuff, chum” said Shade.

“I thought inventory was weightless,” I asked, weighed down.  I felt like both arms were covered in grocery bags and I could barely walk.

“The items are converted into essence while you are carrying them and you aren’t holding onto them particularly efficiently,” said Spivy.  “That’s going to make your essence very dense.  Would you like me to help you with this issue?”

I could see how much Spivy hated it when she turned into a helper fairy, but I also needed answers.  “Yes.”

She handed me a bag from the Bugbear, who managed to carry all this stuff with her without issue.  I examined the bag for a moment, and could sense a small amount of essence feedback from it.  I tossed it over my shoulder and then empowered the item.

Suddenly I gained four slots in my inventory, which didn’t help much because I was still carrying 13 slots worth of heavy alchemy potions.  Still, I pushed one potion into the new slot and felt my essence lighten slightly.  I pushed another potion, and then another.

Each slot from the bag held 6 potions, so the four slots held almost as much as my whole inventory did before and they didn’t count against my weight limit.  I had to commit essence to the bag to keep it working, but that was something my essence handled for me automatically.

“So she had the bag,” I said.

“Yup, everything is easy with the right tools,” said Spivy.  “Speaking of which, we need to get you a new spear.”

“Yes,” I replied, looking at my weapon.  “Why doesn’t the charge stay after I throw it?”

“Essence naturally dissipates quickly when it leaves your person,” said Spivy.  “But obviously that’s not something you want if you are attacking outside your personal field so smiths developed a trick that can hold essence centuries ago.”

“And it works on spears,” I asked.

“Yup, since you like to throw your weapon, we should look into getting you one designed for it,” said Spivy.

“But not the javelins,” I asked.

“You buy those at the stores you keep avoiding,” said Spivy.  “They are considerably more expensive than regular javelins, but regular javelins are really cheap.”

“Let's get back to Dominus then,” I said looking down at Shade.  “You wanna go shopping!”

“Yes,” yelled Shade.

“We have to go on the birdie again,” I said.

“YES!!!!” yelled Shade running around in a circle.

“First back to Qualus then,” I said as we left the ruined felt grass farm.  I didn’t understand local agriculture well enough to figure out how much repair work this field was going to take but I wagered it was going to be all of it.

The forest was much less oppressive when we were heading back.  That was probably because I wasn’t expected to die at any moment from a goblin attack, and the fact that we were traveling over a known path just made it dull.

The passages were just long stretches between the clearings, and the gnarly branches blocked out pretty much everything.  As we entered a clearing on the way back I spotted some unusual animals.

“More reindeer,” I asked.

“Yes, there are lots of different types of deer in this forest,” said Spivy.

“Are they dangerous,” I asked.

“Not particularly, those were probably located in the felt grass field.  They look domesticated,” said Spivy, realizing her mistake too late.  Shade was gone.  There was a shadowy pop and he was off racing towards the deer.  He appeared next to one, barking loudly.  The deer was predictably terrified and tore off in a random direction.

A large male deer lowered his horns, but by then Shade was hiding again.  I shook my head and continued back towards the village listening to Shade’s barks of laughter as I did so.  He was chasing the smaller deer while being chased by the larger deer.

Eventually the male deer realized he was just playing and decided that this wasn’t a great place to graze.  They started out of the clearing, leaving a panting Shade all by his lonesome.

He looked around, having lost track of me in his fun.  I held up my hand and caused a glowing blue light to appear in it.

“You’re getting better with colors,” said Spivy as Shade ran over.  He was panting heavily, a happy smile on his face.

“I almost got three of them,” said Shade.

We went down the final passage back to town, Shade explaining his epic adventure with the deer the whole time.

“And then, one of them zigged and I zagged and then they jumped and I jumped,” said Shade.

“Oh goody, we are here,” said Spivy as we walked through the tunnel into the large grove.

Qualus was happy to see us when we walked in just before dusk.  The local villagers knew that we were from the adventurer's guild and they were waving as we approached from the forest passage.  Several halfing children ran out to see us.

“Dude, did you kill the doats,” asked a scared little boy, who was very little.  Instead of a halfling, he was like a quarterling.

“I did,” I said.  “They won’t be bothering the village any more.”

“Yeah,” yelled the child.

“I got a bugbear too,” I said as we walked.

The kids all rolled their eyes at that, “Yeah, sure.”

I was about to defend my honor when he ran off to play with his friends.

“Was killing the bugbear that impressive,” said Shade.

“For your rank, yes,” replied Spivy.  “Plus the king should be handling goblins in his own territory.  That’s not really an adventurer’s job, at least not locally.  Technically, the translation of the word they are using for adventurers lacks the traditional meaning.  In the old Elvish, they are calling you those who fight with monsters.”

“Wow, that is a mouthful,” I said.  “Does that make me ‘he who fights with monsters’?”

“No, if there was someone like that he would be a lot more impressive than you are,” said Spivy.

“I could be ‘dog who fights with monsters’,” said Shade.

“You are a mutant doat,” I corrected.

“Yes, of course,” said Shade, “We wouldn’t want to confuse anyone.”

“I hate you both,” muttered Spivy who hid in my hood.

While they hadn’t managed to clean up all the debris from the destroyed houses, they at least had the damage further contained.  Neither building was salvageable, but there were bits and bobs inside that were being repurposed.

A druid was out waving a staff that was causing the grass to grow back out around the damaged structures and the mayor spotted us as we approached.  He rushed over, all smiles.

“Dude, were you successful,” asked Grekor.

“Like totally, dude,” I replied.  I have polluted their language, I was going to have to own that.

“Gnarly,” replied Grekor.

“Is the place we are,” I replied, gesturing to Shade.

“We had to fight many goblins,” said Shade, dropping out multiple tokens.  Grekor picked up the tokens and nodded.

“You have a looting power, interesting,” said Grekor.

“Yes, I upgraded it so we did not have to bring back heads,” said Shade.

“Good idea.  Didn’t really expect you to run into that many goblins but the going rate is five gold pieces,” said Grekor as he thumbed through all the tokens.  He stopped at one, “There was a bugbear, I want to hear this story.”

“Dude,” I said.

“Dude?” he replied.

“Du-de,” I continued.

“Dude!” replied Grekor, shaking his head slightly.

“Dude,” I finished.

Grekor shook his head, “That’s amazing, it's like I was right there.”

“What just happened?” said Spivy.

“Dude,” I replied sagely.

“I hate you,” said Spivy.  “I hate you so much.”

“Well, bugbears are worth fifty gold pieces each, but I don’t have that much coin handy.  You can take it to the adventurer’s guild for a pay out.”

“Will do,” I replied clutching the remaining token in my hand to return it to inventory.  Grekor stepped away to get the money while I looked around.  Suddenly, Shade and I were alone as the rest of the halflings were busy doing halfling stuff.

Spivy broke the silence, “Tokens are substitutes for monster body parts that many people with looting can gather.  If brought to the appropriate person, they can be converted down to the parts they represent but are less smelly in the meantime.”

“That’s handy,” I said, a quick summation of the looting power.

I looked around, the village was safe.  People were happy.  We did a good thing.  I was feeling an actual sense of pride and accomplishment, and not the market speak kind.  I’d really helped people, and that wasn’t something I got from working in a cubicle.

That was a warm, fuzzy feeling I wasn’t used to.  I mean, of course I nearly died but I’d nearly died repeatedly just sitting in my recliner.  At least here I was doing something important, something that helped people.

I still had to go back to Earth, eventually.  I was on vacation.  In the meantime, I needed to get back to the guild.

“Here is your payment, minus the guild fees,” said Grekor, handing me 75 gold pieces.  Well, more correctly seventy five gold pieces worth of coins.  There were coins: some silver, some copper, some electrum, one that looked like it was made from rock, and I’m pretty sure that was a Kohl’s buck in there somewhere.  I was nearly positive that if I started counting, I was going to come up short, and as I looked at Grekor’s expression I was sure of it.

That was everything the town could gather up and then some.  It was good enough.  I was on vacation, and if I got most of what I was owed.  I was happy.

“Well, dude, time for me to go,” I said.

He nodded, “Dude, you are just leaving?”

“Sorry dude, I was going back to Dominus.”

“Like, your call man, but we have a feast,” said Grekor as I noticed several halfling women carrying trays of food, and the ripped halfling man carrying a whole keg on his shoulder.  Shade whimpered.

“Dude, I’m on vacation, let's eat,” I said.

“Cool, your birdie driver already decided to stay and eat,” said Grekor pointing out Gloria, who was clearly not prepared to leave just yet.

“Could have just led with that,” I replied as the mayor headed off to do more mayoring.  That seemed pointless. I scratched Shade behind the ears.  I was going to enjoy my spoils, drink somewhat responsibly and then get back to the guild in Dominus.

This was a great day.