Author's Note: Holy crap! I got three reviews for CotN in only five hours! That's gotta be a record for me.
Chapter Three: The Offer
Hilda continued to glare at Sigurd well into the morning. The fact that the trip was overnight didn't help her mood. Why the hell did he have to follow her? She couldn't stand rural types; they were always so damn stupid! Of course she got stuck with a hick who didn't know a thing about the world beyond his own farm. This was what she got for accepting the help of others. Those days as a little girl, out in the wilderness all alone, she survived on her own without anyone's help, and she could continue relying only on herself for the rest of her life.
Never would she have imagined her freedom could have been jeopardized by some idiot farm boy.
At least a farm boy knew how to shut up throughout a trip, something she was very grateful for. It took a long time, way too long, for the airship to descend, and the familiar bump and rock of docking. Wordlessly, she got up and walked to the storage dock. As soon as the wooden plank door started lifting, she stepped next to it, bent over, and peeped through under the door. There were two men in uniforms, both with clipboards in hand.
"Damn it!" She hissed. "I was hoping to get out before the uniforms showed up."
Sigurd took a quick peek like she did, and quickly started ruffling his hair, pulled a couple strands out of his ponytail, and rubbed his eyes hard. When he was done, the unkempt hair and red eyes made him look like an overworked laborer. When the door was all the way open, he walked out, with a heavy footed saunter. He even moved like he was tired and overworked.
Idiot, she thought, what are you trying to pull? She followed him, fully expecting him to dig himself into a rut by trying to convince these port authority bureaucrats he was a part of the crew.
When they caught sight of him, the guy smiled politely. A new guy. Hilda figured.
"Welcome to the Port of Jericho, sir. I'll need your name and-"
"Where's the nearest watering hole." Sigurd snapped out so suddenly, not only did the official jump, but Hilda nearly did as well.
The poor official, heavily taken aback by the sudden demand, stammered trying to answer, "Uh, well, it's uh, we, we have the, there's the Ahriman & Coeurl Tavern, d-down the street out the m-main entrance, forth, no, fifth on the l-left." At that point, Sigurd passed him without looking at him.
Okay, maybe he's not such an idiot. She thought. As soon as the two surprised officials turned their eyes to her, she gave them her strongest don't-you-dare-bother-me glare. It worked like a charm, and they moved clear out of her way.
Okay, so maybe not everything that could have gone bad did.
"You think they're looking for an Inn together?" One of the officials asked the other, which she barely overheard and nearly tripped because of it.
The two humes continued through the catwalks into the interior of the airship dock. This particular dock was on the water, with the upper levels dedicated to those who couldn't land on water or on land. As soon as they left the front entrance, they got a look at the city itself. The city spanned a few miles each way, with buildings that rarely rose higher than fifty feet of sand-gold and white colors that reflected the sun all too well for most eyes.
There weren't many people in this part of the city, so the two of them were almost entirely alone. "So what now?" Sigurd asked.
"What now?" She snapped back. "Now, the two of us part ways, and hopefully, for both of our sakes, never see each other again." She turned and marched away from him. Let the farm hick fend for himself. She thought angrily. Like hell she was going to help him after he nearly got her arrested.
"Hey, you can't just leave me here to fend for myself!" He shouted back.
"Watch me." She replied without turning her head to say it.
"Don't you have a heart?"
"Get bent!" Give me a reason. Just give me a reason.
She heard his footsteps stop shortly before he said, "This is all your fault!"
That was the last straw. She turned, pointed a pistol and fired. Almost instantly, his sword flew out of its sheath and deflected the bullet. She fired twice more, this time at his legs, and he barely managed to deflect them. "You think you can keep that up?" She taunted, cocking her gun.
He just held his sword in a guard stance, looking at her with a glare that, if she weren't so angry right then, she would have been proud of. Nearly a full minute passed by with neither of them moving. She didn't know what he was thinking, but she was mulling over what he said. She had done a lot of things as a Wanderer to survive, some of which she wasn't proud of, but one thing she didn't want to think of herself as was heartless.
She sighed, and reluctantly put her gun away. "Alright, I'll help you find a way back to Twin Peaks, but that's it!" She crossed her arms and looked at the city. "First thing we need is money, so I guess poaching is our best bet. We'll have to go to the Office of Commerce to find out what sells good around…why are you looking at me like that?" He quickly wiped the smirk off his face and turned his face to look at the city with horribly fake nonchalance.
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Half an hour later, the two teenagers found the Office of Commerce, at the farthest point in the city away from where they started no less, and were looking at the various lists of parts from the local flora and fauna poachers could collect, and quickly found themselves shocked at what they saw. Nearly everything in the lists sold in the single digits. Hilda explained to Sigurd how supply and demand changed prices almost constantly, which Sigurd barely understood. She said she had gotten through tough prices like that before, but he could tell she was also annoyed. It would take them at least an hour of productive poaching just to pay for a night at the Inn for each of them.
While there, she showed him a map of the continent they were on, and showed their location, the southern part of the Verniccio Providence. Sigurd hung his head as he saw they were nearly on the far side of the continent from Lauseria. North of them were the Candage and Moscroix providences, west of them was the Jorjin Providence, with the Grand Gash clearly shown taking up most of the space, and Beluosus, the oldest nation on Terra, to the northwest.
She did, however, manage to get nearly a thousand gil off of the liver she kept from the trip to the Cardinal Road. Afterwards, the two made their way to the gate leading out of the city. Sigurd had to work to keep the smirk off his face as Hilda explained various things about surviving out in the steppes. He couldn't help but feel giddy that he was doing what Wanderers did, an admittedly silly childhood dream his. He told himself over and over, sometimes at the expense of not paying attention to Hilda's lecture, that he was just doing this to get back home, but he couldn't stop a few daydreams of exploring old ruins or taking down a rare mark or something else that Wanderers were famous for in the tales.
He was violently drawn out of his own inner world when a pistol fired into the air only a few inches from his ear. "Oww, damn it!" He yelled, holding his throbbing and ringing ear.
"Ready to listen now?" She asked, sarcastic and annoyed. "Good! Now how much gil do you have?"
He reached into his satchel and pulled out his coin purse. After counting the different coins, he answered, "Two hundred and thirteen."
She sighed, holding the bridge of her nose. "Fine, I'll pay for the rest."
"Rest of what?" Sigurd asked.
"Your armor. I'm no good in the heavy stuff, but this," she indicated her thick yellow and black stripped jacket, "has some Kevlar in it, so it can work as light armor. Going without armor like we did on the trip to the Wind Shrine was best done with light armor or without any, but for short range excursions, like the kind we just might eventually go on if you'll listen to me, going with heavier stuff is safer." Without saying anything else, she grabbed his arm and dragged him to a nearby armory.
Twenty minutes later, Sigurd walked out with thin chain mail over his linen shirt and under his white jerkin, had some overlapping plates strapped to the outside of his thighs, and an overlapping steel plate gauntlet running from his left hand all the way to his shoulder. He was shocked at how much it had cost, but Hilda assured him it was worth every penny, as he couldn't pay her back if he died on her. He made some joke about her caring for him, to which he got a glare from her that made his blood turn cold. Soon after, the two of them left the confines of the city walls to hunt for wolf pelts and treant bark.
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Four hours later, the two of them walked back into the city, managing to only make a few hundred gil worth of spoils in that time. As they sold the stuff off to the collections shop, Sigurd asked, tired from being held down by the armor, "Hilda, you think this city has a telecom crystal?"
"I can't see a city this size not having at least a couple of public ones." She then looked at him in mild concern. Her dark chocolate bangs were slightly matted to her forehead from sweat, though he was much worse off. "You want to send a message to your uncle, don't you?" He nodded. "Okay, let's do that before we check in for the night." She said, somewhat reluctantly. The hunting of monsters was bad enough, but lecturing him on the ins and outs of surviving monsters and killing them so as to not tarnish whatever spoils they had was exhausting in its own right.
The telecom crystal tower was easy enough to find, they were almost universal in design: rising a minimum of a hundred feet above the tallest nearby building, a long, thin viridian shaft rising from a teardrop shaped building. A golden orange magicite crystal lay atop its peak, occasionally sending short-lived beams out in various directions. Inside, the duo waited an excruciating hour before they got their turn to talk to the operator, who, while looking horribly overworked with dark bags under her twenty-something eyes, connected them to one of the operators at the Wind Shrine.
"Thank you for choosing Terran Transcontinental Communications, how can TTC help you today?" Unlike the operator on their end, this one was cheerful and crisp.
"I'd like to send a message to Siegfried Rhine in the Dark Tempest Lodge." Sigurd explained.
The young woman on the screen looked away briefly to register the information on her computer. "That's at the southern base of the Shrine, sir. You understand there will be an additional charge for a non-local delivery?"
"Non-local? Its only twenty minutes more on foot!" Hilda shouted. She was, after all, paying for this.
The operator winced. "I'm sorry, I'm just doing my job. A message of less than a hundred words will cost six hundred and seventy five gil. Any message over a hundred words will be charged an extra three gil per word."
Hilda gritted her teeth as she shelled out over half the gil she made on that liver to the operator on their end. "You owe me big time for this, farm boy." She hissed.
As soon as confirmation of the transaction reached her, the energetic pixie of an operator continued, "Thank you again for using TTC for your long distance communication needs. Just type in the message you want and we'll discreetly deliver it while protecting your privacy."
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Dear Uncle Siegfried,
I'm not at the Wind Shrine, I'm somewhere else on accident, but I can't reveal much more than that, I'm sorry. I'll try and get back home as soon as I can, so don't try to look for me, I can make it back on my own. Don't worry, I'll be fine.
Sincerely, Sigurd.
It was a short and pithy message, but he figured it would have to do. If he tried to include anything else, he might go over the hundred word count and invoke Hilda's wrath.
He laid on his bed at the Inn, staring at the ceiling, thinking about all that had happened. Just a few days earlier, he was staring at the chocobo feather thatched ceiling of his small house, on a chocobo down mattress and pillow. He had lit a candle instead of using the lamp, as Hilda was sleeping on the bed next to his and he didn't want to put her in any worse a mood than she was when she went to sleep. The candle's dancing flame lit a dazzling chorus across the ceiling, slowly lulling him to sleep.
He was sore, tired, and a little bruised, but he was excited. Farming was so boring, so tedious, and the few time he got to ride a chocobo as a wrangler didn't make up for the noise, smell, and messes they left behind. Out here, it was survive by any means or die trying. He had no idea what they were going to do the tomorrow, but he couldn't wait to find out. It felt like Winter Tide's Eve, the night before the days started getting longer again and winter faded, when he would get excited about the parties, the dancing, the bonfires, the gift exchanging.
By the time he started to succumb to sleep, he wondered just how much he really wanted to return home.
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Balder lifted the tankard to his lips, and took a quick swig. Where was he? He knew all too well the effects of extenuating circumstances, but he expected more out of his subordinates, especially informants. He didn't want to spend the money to stay at the Inn longer than he needed to be. The Azure Loft was one of the most expensive hostels in Jericho, but he didn't want to be around casual Wanderers too much.
His keen ears picked up the sound of the Inn door opening, and out of the corner of his eye, saw the man he was waiting for walk in. Punctual or not, the man was good. Even Balder's trained eye didn't detect anything out of the ordinary as the man did a casual scan of the room, and didn't even seem to see his superior in the room.
A few minutes went by as the man got a pint of mead, and eventually, casually sat at Balder's table. "Wait long?" He asked.
"No, thanks entirely to the beer." He answered, his indication that the informant was late.
"Sorry, but the misses had a few words for me." The informant, Hasheck, explained.
Balder nodded. He remembered, now, that the man was indeed married and living in the city. He felt it was one of the better decisions on his part to let agents keep their families close. "So, did you find him?"
"He's in Kaigoumon." Hasheck answered before taking a swig of his mead. "At least that's what I heard. I can't be certain he's still there. I'm told he was looking for a cheap hostel."
Balder nodded. That meant he was either short on money or looking to stay a while. Knowing him, it was likely the latter. "Thanks." As Hasheck started to leave, Balder started pondering his next move. Kaigoumon wasn't far distance wise, but the Stellar Jay Road took a circuitous route around Mount Assarn and the Vernicchi Steppe. Though the city was merely an hour away by airship, it wasn't worth it. Even though Jericho's airship services were the most expensive in the Verniccio Providence, due to the city's commerce being almost exclusively sea trade and travel, the danger of being recognized was far greater than the cost. He and the other higher-ups avoided airships and other official means of travel as much as possible.
Ergo, he would have to travel to Kaigoumon on foot, through the Steppe. The monsters of the region weren't especially dangerous, but it would be best if he had assistance. Maybe he could convince some Wanderers to escort him.
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Sigurd quietly cursed. He had torn the rat's pelt again! He started muttering how the rat was a direct descendent of the root of all evil, how it was the great rival of the Malboros as the worst smelling creature and how the vermin's stool repopulated the Flan lineage. He then heard Hilda snickering. "What's so funny?" He demanded, turning his head to look at her.
"You can be awfully creative when you're angry." She answered, trying to hide her smirk.
The silver haired Lauserian sighed as he went back to skinning the little bastard. Hilda did it so quickly, and he hated being so far behind her when it was his turn to poach their quarry. At least they weren't out in the Steppe anymore. He wasn't sure how much more of that scalding humidity he could take. Despite the fact that they were shin-deep in waste water in the Jericho sewers, exterminating monsters and vermin for the City Council, the cool, damp air was refreshing; even the smell was worth it.
It was hard to tell from the surface with all the buildings, but the city was on a hill lowering to the ocean, and as such the waterways of the sewer system in the northern region were quite large, with thirty foot wide tunnels, hundred foot wide sluice chambers, and a strong lighting system that kept all but the deepest nooks and crannies illuminated. The walls were made of ruddy bricks, and the floor was stone brick.
Bagging the tattered remains of the rat's hide, Sigurd flung the bag over his shoulder, and continued down the half-pipe tunnel, and the two ended up in a large chamber, the water under their feet ending in a fifty foot waterfall next to a large platform. There were several other platforms in the massive room, all at different heights, all connected by narrow stairways.
Walking over to the railing, Sigurd could see the sewage water being drained and redirected in the pools below. He couldn't see any monsters, though. "I don't see anything in here. I think we should move on."
"What's this?" He heard Hilda ask. He turned and saw her kneeling near a white glob on the floor. When he knelt next to her and looked closely, the stuff was covered in tiny bubbles.
After a few seconds, the two of them recognized it: slobber.
Without thinking, the two of them looked up, and they saw it. A fat, ten foot long lizard, with a fifteen foot tail, covered in green scales, holding onto the ceiling with long fingered claws, two thick gnarled horns coming out of the back of its head, staring at them through two red eyes.
The two humes jumped back as the lizard let go of the ceiling, glaring and snarling at them, showing rows of jagged, razor sharp teeth in its massive maw. They hadn't been told about anything this big living in the sewers.
"I hope you have some good Geomancy spells available." Sigurd said, holding his sword in front of him, ready to stab at any advancing attack.
"If we were near the water, I could use Whirlpool, or maybe even Rot, but not up here." She answered, pulling her pistols out of their holsters.
Muttering a curse, Sigurd leapt forward, trying to slash the monster's face. The lizard proved its agility by spinning on its back legs so its face was out of the way of the strike while hitting the silver haired Paladin in the face with its thick tail an instant later.
The counter attack left Sigurd stumbling to his side, blocking Hilda's aim. Groaning, Hilda was about to jump to one side so she would have a clear shot when suddenly the monster jumped over Sigurd, rebounding off his shoulders to propel itself more toward the brunette. A moment of panic passed over her, and she was only able to get a few shots off before the large monster tackled her under its massive bulk.
By some luck, Hilda ended up with her face against the monster's chest, just out of range of its maw. Controlling her panic, she fired both pistols into its body. With her panic under control, she was able to move herself with the monster when it tried to rear back so she wouldn't get within range of its mouth. Finally, after a couple dozen shots, the monster had enough and jumped off of her and to the side.
Hilda was about to move away when suddenly the lizard started bashing her with its tail over and over, each strike feeling like a war hammer. She tried moving away, but the strikes kept beating her back into place, until she could do nothing but curl into a ball with her knees in front of her chest and her arms protecting her face.
Suddenly, with a yell, Sigurd slashed his sword into the monster's tail, cutting nearly halfway to the bone. With a yell of pain, the monster jumped at him, head butting him onto his back. Mouth wide open, it lunged down upon him, its jaws powerful enough to crush cement.
Suddenly the monster's head jerked back, and Sigurd took the brief moment to roll and jump away. With a little distance between them, he was able to see it was not Hilda holding the monster back, but a newcomer. He was tall and thin, with several pieces of thin, minimal covering armor in black and blue, wearing a helmet in the shape of a dragon's head. Light was coming from his hand, where a blue ethereal serpentine head came out and was latched onto the lizard's horn, pulling its head back away from Sigurd.
The monster started resisting more violently, and the serpent dragon disappeared. The lizard turned around, and jumped at the intruder. The newcomer pulled a long, heavy bladed spear off a sling on his back, and jumped sideways, out of the way of the monster, and as soon as his feet touched the ground, he jumped back, slamming into the side of the lizard, driving his spear into its flank.
The monster roared, and bucked to the side, flinging the spearman and his spear through the railing and over the edge of the platform. Suddenly, another long necked dragon head came out of his hand, grabbed onto the ceiling, and pulled him back like a bungee cord. The tall man landed on the lizard's head, then jumped at the ceiling forty feet overhead. Clearing the distance in the blink of an eye, he flipped and jumped off the ceiling, driving his spear right into the monster's muzzle, pinning it to the ground.
He then jumped off and away from the monster. He lifted his hand, pointing his open palm at the lizard, and several small fires lit around the monster. They traveled across the ground, leaving glowing lines behind them until they formed the image of a dragon's head. Suddenly, a giant, ethereal dragon head game out of the ground, and grabbed the lizard in its massive jaws, and crushed it, sending gallons of blood across the floor of the platform.
A second later, the dragon disappeared, and the monster was dead. The newcomer then clicked his spear back onto the sling on his back, and offered a hand to Hilda, which she refused and got up on her own. Sigurd showed a little more gratitude.
"Thanks." He said, offering his hand. "It looked like we were in trouble there." The man took Sigurd's hand in a solid grip. He estimated the man to be around his mid-twenties, with a high cheeked, sharp eyed visage, and he couldn't see any traces of facial hair. Taking off the helmet, Sigurd could see he had bright blond hair, swept back in messy locks.
"There's no need for thanks, friend." He said, his voice soft, but stern, yet slightly melodious. "I was hoping to ask you two for a favor, and my timing turned out to be most fortuitous."
Even Sigurd was able to see that wasn't a promising sign, even if he hadn't caught the signal from Hilda. He quickly kept himself at alert and was cautious with his words. "Who are you?"
"My name is Balder. I wish to hire you for a job." He explained, not even batting an eyelash as Hilda kept to his blind spot.
"What kind of job?" Sigurd asked sharply.
"An escort job. I wish for escort to Kaigoumon, northwest of here. The Road will take too long, and I don't have the money to take the Airship." His tone was even throughout his explanation, regardless of the fact that he couldn't see Hilda behind him and Sigurd still hadn't sheathed his sword.
The silver haired Lauserian mulled it over in his head for a few seconds before Hilda spoke up, "Sorry, but no. We're just here to get enough for a couple of Airship tickets."
"And how long until you have enough?" Balder asked, not turning his head to look at Hilda. A few seconds without an answer passed before he continued, "Were you aware that Kaigoumon's Airship services cost less than half that of Jericho's? A half-day's trip, and we both win."
A few seconds later, Hilda asked, "How much?"
Balder closed his eyes and smirked slightly. "True Wanderers indeed. It's not enough that I help give you a discount on your flight." He turned around then to face Hilda. "How about this then: I don't have much money on me, but I have a cache in the bank in Kaigoumon. You help get me there safely, and I'll pay for your Airship tickets. Do we have an accord?"
After a few seconds, Sigurd was about to declare 'deal' when Hilda spoke up, making him shut up. "We'll think about it."
"That's fair enough." Balder stated. "I'll be in the Flan Ale Tavern for dinner at sundown. If I don't get an answer by then, I'll start looking for someone else." He nodded his head slightly, as if giving a minor bow, to both Hilda and Sigurd, and then walked to the stairway leading to another platform. A few minutes later, the man walked into one of the tunnels, and the two of them were alone once again.
"I say we go for it." Sigurd stated, out of the blue.
"You would." She retorted, giving him one of her lesser glares that still brought about a little cold sweat. "Did you notice that he was all too happy to keep some important details to himself, like why he wants to make this trip, what he's doing here in Jericho in the first place, or the fact that he didn't even offer his last name?"
"I thought it was a great show of faith that he let you get behind him like that. If he's willing to trust us like that, I think we can trust him."
Hilda shook her head. "How naïve can you get?"
"Then look at it this way," Sigurd changed tactics, "at the very least, we end up somewhere that has cheaper airship tickets, and if he was lying about that, then there has got to be better jobs there than here. Besides, there's nothing out there we haven't already faced, so we're not really in any danger from the fauna. Either way, we still benefit."
Hilda shook her head again and looked away. She didn't want to admit it, but his last argument actually had logic. "Okay, let me think about it for a while."
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Balder sipped his cider while staring at the wall in the commons of the Inn. He would never show it, but he was anxious to find out what those two Wanderer's he met would do with his offer. He and his group would need all the help they could get. He had already gone through dozens of plans on how to find out their views on the world, and determine if they would agree with Tempest's ideals. At least they had enough money to recruit 'him' in Kaigoumon.
Another reason he was anxious was because he wanted to get this assignment done and over with. As the leader of Tempest, he couldn't be away for too long, things would fall apart. Someone would start questioning his leadership ability, or the worth of their cause. In truth, there was enough sentiment around that they were aiming for the impossible, and he knew, though no one told him, that many blamed him for their lack of progress. He hated the fact that he was the only thing holding the group together. Besides all that, he was worried about Sarah.
He never told anyone this, but one of the reasons he traveled so much on his own was to hopefully find rumors or news about the Warriors of Light. He knew that if they were resurrected this generation, it would be to help Tempest achieve their ultimate goals.
He started digging back into his hash when he heard the door to the Inn open, and he saw the two Wanderers from before walk in. The brown haired woman had the look of fury fuming off of her like steam from a boiling pot. One man made a suggestive comment to her, and the glare she gave him made him fall out of his chair trying to move away from her.
Balder put down his fork and nodded to the duo. "So, have you come to a decision?"
The silver haired boy nodded. "When do you want to leave?"
The dragoon smirked inwardly and said, "Tomorrow morning, meet me at sunrise by the north gate."
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Hasheck pulled off his glove and wiped the sweat from his middle-aged face as he approached his house in the early evening after work. Master Balder left him with a few instructions that morning before he took off for Kaigoumon. He gave a sigh of relief knowing that he wasn't going to be asked to do anything dangerous. He dreaded every meeting he ever had with the Tempest leader. At least now he knew he would be able to spend at least some more time with his wife. That was what he feared most about the group, that they would order him to leave her.
When he opened the door and saw someone besides his wife sitting at the table of their small house, his senses went into high alert. The man was dressed in the black and silver robes of the Aquta Priesthood, and was conversing with his wife over some tea. When his wife saw him, she smiled and signaled him to come over to her.
"Honey, why didn't you tell me the distillery gave you a bonus?" She asked in an excited voice.
"I'm sorry?"
"Oh, Brother-Canon Iroquois here says he wanted to thank you personally for donating your entire bonus to the Aquta Priesthood." His wife explained.
The man stood up to his full height, and gave a joyful smile, his hands humbly crossed in front of him. This man's good. Hasheck thought. He's acting the part of the priesthood down to a T.
The man bowed and said, "On behalf of all my Brothers and Sisters, Fathers and Mothers of the Canon, we would like to thank you for your most generous donation. It is when humble folks like you give out the fruits of your labor so willingly that I see the kindness of Zoroaster live on."
Hasheck knew he had to play along, at least until his wife was gone. "I'm just a simple man, trying to help others in need." He then sat at the table and turned to his wife. "Honey, why don't you go and see if we still have a bottle of vintage or two in the basement while I chat up our guest here?"
She nodded, and gave a warm smile to Brother-Canon Iroquois before walking off. After they heard a door close behind her, the guest said, "You're a lucky man to have such a generous woman as a wife."
"Whatever you're here for, don't involve her. It's me you want, isn't it?" Hasheck put as much a threatening edge to his voice as he could.
The man's entire demeanor changed then. He adopted a knowing smirk, with his body no longer holding the stiff perfect posture and now faced Hasheck in such a way that it almost reminded him of an animal ready to pounce. "All we want is some information."
"Who is this 'we' you speak of? You're not Aquta, are you?"
"Tempest doesn't pay you much, do they?" Iroquois asked, still in a calm voice. "They force you to take up a regular job on top of your orders just so you can survive." At the surprised look on Hasheck's face, he continued, "Oh yes, we've known about Tempest for quite some time. In truth, we expected Balder Kain to choose this path well before he took the first steps."
"K, Kain?" Hasheck sputtered. He had never been told what Master Balder's surname was.
Iroquois raised an eyebrow. "So, he never told you who he really was? He made such good use of you, and yet he never even told you who he really was, and who and what you were really fighting for, all just to protect himself while the rest of you risked you lives."
Hasheck stared at the table, the new information sinking in. He heard a loud 'clink' as the man impersonating an Aqutan Priest put a large bag on the table. Cautiously, Hasheck opened it to find a large stash of ten thousand gil coins.
"Five hundred thousand gil. A man your age should have plans for retirement, not working at a dead end job while your body wastes away. Your wife, certainly, deserves better."
After several moments of silence, Hasheck spoke, "He's heading for a dangerous man to recruit in Kaigoumon."
End of Chapter Three.
Author's Notes: before I forget again, I created the Roads because it doesn't make sense that normal people have to brave the dangerous wilderness or have to pay heavy fines for airship travel whenever they want to go to a different town or whatever. Don't worry, they're not just there for that, they have an important part to play in the story (or at least, their history does).
Also, I'm sorry I didn't update this along with Chronicles, like I said I would, and I'm sorry still to say this, but it might be a while before I update this story again. I've planned out most of what happens, especially the major events, but I haven't really planned out any kind of order to things, or how one thing leads into another. With any luck, I should be able to plan most of it out pretty quickly, because frankly, the way this story is progressing is kinda boring. I want things to start happening.
Anyways, here are the spells introduced and mentioned:
Whirlpool: Geomancy Spell. When around water, even shallow water, Hilda can create a stationary whirlpool that can drown slower or smaller monsters, or if the water is too shallow it can make it nearly impossible to get stable footing.
Rot: Geomancy Spell. When around decaying matter, Hilda can transfer that natural rot into a living creature, creating a poisoning effect. It's possible to pull this off in sewers because fecal matter is similar enough to decayed matter.
Jump: A Dragoon skill. I decided to make the Dragoon of this story have more than just one skill and be more like Freya, but this is the most basic of them. Using his long limbs, Balder is able to launch his light body in any direction at great speeds. I decided that, instead of jumping straight into the air (which is kinda ridiculous, as the enemy could just move a couple of feet to one side and he'll be fine), a dragoon can jump straight at the enemy at great speeds, or off the walls or the ceiling.
Dragon Crest: A Dragoon skill. Very similar to Freya's attack. Several small fires ignite on a flat surface, and move around, leaving glowing lines in the shape of a dragon's face, and an ethereal dragon comes out and crushes any nearby opponents. Though it can be created on nearly any surface, the head doesn't have much range, and it takes a few seconds for the crest to fully form. What it lacks in speed and accuracy, it makes up for with its powerful jaws, able to crush all but the most heavily armored of enemies.
Dragon Grasp: A Dragoon skill. Similar to Dragon Crest, and inspired somewhat by Orochimaru's Sen'ei Jashuu from Naruto. A small crest forms on Balder's hand, and instead of a thick dragon head, an ethereal serpentine head comes out on a long neck, and can either wrap around or latch onto an opponent or other object.