I was woken up by the sound of, not quite shouting, but very much a forceful discussion.
"Not in the house."
"Come on, I'm pretty sure I've almost got it down, I think watching that firebreath was just what I needed!"
"Not in the house."
"I'm not actually going to cast Burning Hands inside, it's just more of a proof-of-concept, it'll be a quick flash of heat and then it's gone."
"Sabs, please, don't cast fire spells in the house. You remember what happened last time?"
"They were minor scorch marks, they scrubbed out. Fine, alright, I'll stick to theoretical at the moment." Grumbling sounds came from the area around the table, as I sat up, shucking the cloak I'd had on over me.
The adventurers were all sat around the table. Sabrina had obviously been writing in the book I assumed was her spellbook, but was just sitting back down after having her vigorous conversation with Julie. Zahri was plugging away at the suits of armour, attaching straps with some kind of tool thing, and Lidda had gone from fiddling with a thick cloth shirt to staring at me.
Weirdly, though, she was staring at my chest rather than anything else. I looked down, and my soaked in sweat shirt (as despite the fact that I was under the cloak as I slept, at a comfortable temperature, my bad habit of sweating whenever I slept in a shirt continued to happen), which was sticking to me clammily. A quick cast from the ring cleaned that up, along with alerting the others that I was awake.
"Good morning, sleepyhead." Julie was far too cheerful for someone who'd drank so much last night. "It's an hour or so past dawn. How are you feeling?"
I grumbled out something vaguely resembling words, as I fished around in my cloak for the magical flask. Hopefully the sweet tea that it produced was caffeinated, and I'd actually be able to feel awake sometime soon. I didn't have a hangover, well, not the headache part at least, but I still felt groggy. I drained half of the liquid in one go, thankful that while the tea was hot, it wasn't scalding, although at this point I probably would have just downed it anyway. Stowing the flask back in the its magical little pocket, I grabbed the cloak and pushed myself to my feet.
This proved to be a bad move on my part, as I'd forgotten the state that my knee was in. It had stiffened up during the night, and my attempt to put weight on it caused it to buckle underneath me. A panicked swing of my right hand catching the underneath of the stairs pushed me into the wall to my left rather than collapsing on my face, and I used it to brace myself and stand up properly.
Both Julie and, to my surprise, Lidda were halfway out of their seats at my stumble, and slowly sat back down as I limped over and collapsed into a chair. I wasn't sure why Lidda was a surprise and Julie wasn't, but that kind of introspection was probably best left for when I was actually awake and functional.
"Mornin'." I yawned out. "'m a'right. How're y'all?" I pronounced most of the syllables there, it was good enough for me.
Amused looks were my response. "You had quite a lot to drink last night." Julie said. "You held it well, I don't think any of us noticed until we came down and cleaned up in the morning." Given that she'd had more than me, I was pretty sure that was damning with faint praise, although to be fair, I also wasn't in particularly great shape. Or was this a matriarchal thing? Damnit, I was going to have to double check my assumptions about everything, wasn't I? Still, as a trade off for being able to breathe fire, having to think in social situations was worth it. I felt a certain degree of envy for full dragons. The knowledge that at any point in a social situation, you could turn into an enormous fuck-off lizard, breathe death, and then flap out of there never to be seen again was a powerful confidence boost.
Shaking my head to break out of the weird train of thought I'd gone down, I focused back on the conversation. "Thanks?" I was pretty sure it was meant as a compliment. I had some more tea, in a vain attempt to feel more human. Stashing the flask away again, I found myself facing Lidda's inquisitive stare.
"How many of those things do you have?"
What? "Sorry?"
"The flasks. They're hefty things, and I've never seen you refill them." Did I never get around to explaining the cloak?
"'s magic. Same with the food." I pulled out a handful of nuts from a pocket to demonstrate, and started chewing on them. "'s a person's worth a day, for travel and shite."
Significant looks were traded again. Fucks sake, I have got to stop doing that. Eh, I had to explain it sooner or later. Hopefully it was just because it was a magical item, and not because people were in the middle of a famine or something. Might be worth nipping that in the bud, though. Not that I didn't kinda trust them, but still.
"It only works for me though. Makes them easier and cheaper to make, apparently." That should discourage someone stealing it, at least.
"You had a magical item custom made for you?" Well fuck, that wasn't quite what I was aiming for out of that. I hope they don't start thinking I was rich before I landed here. Ok, being honest, that ship has probably sailed. Let's hope at least they don't expect me to act a certain way based on that, because I probably won't and it'll get very confusing for them. Now, is there any way to answer Lidda's incredulous question that won't make me sound weird and offputting? Probably not, let's just try and style it out.
"Yeah." Nailed it.
Thankfully the conversation was interrupted by James while Lidda was trying to come up with a response to that.
"Ah, I thought I heard that you were awake. I've saved you some breakfast, although it might be a little cold now." He wandered in from the kitchen, carefully carrying a bowl, which he placed in front of me. I looked down at the contents, and up at his sincere, smiling, earnest face.
"It looks lovely, thank you." My magically enhanced deception skills received quite the workout as I (seemingly successfully) lied directly to his face, and then proceeded to tuck into my breakfast. Ah, the only thing better than turnip soup. Cold turnip soup.
James had vanished while I was slowly forcing myself to eat the bowl of mildly congealing boiled vegetable, the rest of them slowly returning to the tasks they were working on before I interrupted, consisting of the heavy armour wearers replacing their new armours tattered straps (a quick question revealing that Zahri had ended up with the half-plate, much to her quiet delight), Lidda converting a gambeson to fit her properly under her chain shirt, and Sabrina attempting to decipher the fundamental underpinnings of the primordial element of fire. By the looks of things, the armour repairers were having more success.
Not long before I'd finished (by virtue of me using the distraction of his arrival to quickly magically 'clean' the bowl of any remaining soup, and pass it off as my normal cleaning up after myself), the old man came back in, but this time carrying a heavy wooden box in his hands, maybe half a meter wide, and half that in both height and depth. Space on the table was quickly cleared for it, and it went down with a solid 'thunk'.
"I wasn't sure how you might want to divide it," James began, "but it seemed unfair on you to leave it loose, so I split it evenly into five bags. I hope that's alright?" He opened the box, and five large bags, or possibly small sacks, were inside. "This can't really begin to repay you for what you've done for me, but it's the best I can do. Thank you so much. You've brought some peace back to an old man's heart." He looked on the edge of tears, and I suddenly felt slightly bad for just turning up and not really treating the whole thing seriously. Well, the whole leg shattering thing was serious, but I had rocked into it kind of cockily.
Julie responded with an impressive level of gravitas. "I'm glad that we were able to help. This is a fine reward, and you have been an excellent host." Lidda, on the other hand, had already helped herself to one of the bags, and was rifling through it, whispering numbers to herself as she counted various coins.
Shaking her head at her friends display, Julie parcelled the bags out to the other ladies, before turning to me. "Despite the fact that there wasn't a formal agreement, I don't think there'll be any arguments that you more than earned your fair share of the reward. The reward as a whole was two hundred gold, so your share would come out to an even forty." She handed the hefty bag over to me.
"That's more than fair enough, thank you. I guess we should sort it out properly next time, eh?" I was opening the bag when I realised how presumptuous that sounded, but when I looked up at Julie, she didn't seem displeased, so I probably got away with it.
The bag itself contained mainly silver coins, a number of different regal female faces wearing crowns on one side of them, and various depictions of horses on the other. The few scattered gold and copper coins were similar, save the horses being replaced with boars and rats, respectively. I hefted the bag, consideringly. I wasn't sure exactly what the various prices of things were around here, but even for a guy who owned one of the bigger houses in this village (in that it had more than one floor), I was pretty sure that two hundred gold was a lot of money for a place like this. Either that, or I needed to start developing some kind of magic item crafting skill to take advantage of all of the cash lying around.
I briefly considered trying to find a diplomatic way of phrasing the question, but fuck it, that kind of thing can wait until I don't have to put effort into remaining conscious. "Not to disparage you, but are you sure you can afford this?"
His smile took on a slightly grimmer tone, but his voice stayed jovial. "Well, a lot of that was what was left of my dear wife's retirement fund, after we moved here and built this place. I'd squirrelled some money away as well, and my daughters send home some of their pay from the army when they can, so I had enough."
A part of me latched on to that last word choice. "Had?" Given how he was talking about this being the best he could do...
James' smile had been replaced by a frown at that, but he seemed to pick up on my implied question. "Well, I may need to tighten my belt a little bit over the next few months, but there's always something to be done around here, whether it's darning some clothing or looking after a young one, so you don't need to worry about me." His sombre tone changed back to jovial at the end, but there was a certain level of forcedness to it.
I looked at the bag in my hand, and bounced it up and down a couple of times. Two hundred gold was basically his life savings, then, and he was, ok, given the house, not quite beggaring himself, but certainly making his next few months uncomfortable, and wiping out all of his life savings in order to be able to visit the grave of his wife again.
Forty gold was a sizeable chunk of money for living off of. It wasn't 'purchase adventuring gear' level of money, but it was roughly twice what I actually had stored in my coin pouch, and could probably last me anywhere between a week and a month, depending on if any innkeepers were going to be dicks and overcharge me for rooms. And it wasn't like I needed to purchase food, although I wasn't one hundred percent sure on the nutritional value of the trail rations from my cloak, so I should probably supplement them occasionally, but given that, the money could last me even longer. It might even be enough to get my feet under myself, in the (admittedly, probably unlikely) situation where I decided to not do any more adventurers. There were a whole host of ways that I could use this cash. Keeping it was sensible, pragmatic, and logical.
Occasionally there were days when I wished I was more of a selfish dick. "Hey, James?" I waited until I had his full attention before I continued. "I wanted to thank you for letting me stay here, and feeding me. You didn't have to, and I appreciate it." He started to protest, but I kept talking. "I don't know exactly how much you normally charge for rent, but here, this should be enough." With a gentle underarm toss (although I couldn't quite deny that it was gentle because the bag was pretty heavy) I threw the bag of coins to him, and in his shock he didn't grab it until after it had already hit his chest, causing him to let out a quiet 'oof' before bringing his arms up to catch it.
"I, what? No, this is far too much, you don't..." He seemed genuinely confused by my action, but I cut him off again before he could protest too much.
"I dunno, at how much that inn wanted to charge me, I think that's about right." I joked. "Think of it as gratuity, or karma. Your choice."
"Right. Right." The old man seemed almost in shock. "I, you've, you've all done so much for me. Thank you. Thank you so much."
I shrugged awkwardly. I wasn't amazing at praise, and if I kept adventuring, it wasn't like that was a lot of money. Hell, if we found somewhere we could sell the other couple of suits of armour we'd picked up from the crypt, and I got an even share from that, that might end up being worth more than the forty gold I'd just given back. It was nice to do something good though.
Lidda broke the silence. "I'm not giving up any of my share, just so we're clear."
I couldn't help but laugh.