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A Job for Heroes
“Seas and skies, you are so adorable.”
Jago a grandmaster of the Falling Carp school of swordsmanship, the slayer of the nine demons of Looe, possessor of a level 10 license, and the probationary director of the Gold Dragon Adventurer’s Guild childcare services program sat on the breakroom table, giving Merryn an unheeded warning glare as she teased.
“Maybe we should have you take over for Daveth? I bet the wobblers would love you.”
An unfamiliar heat rose in his chest as Merryn chattered cheerfully from her seat just across from him. It was possible it was embarrassment. It was far more likely that it was his annoyance working to manifest as a blazing fire within what was probably his flame sack.
Merryn smiled as she rested her chin on crossed arms. “Being mad just makes you cuter, you know, boss.”
Growling, Jago’s hackles rose as he stood and padded to the edge of the table, putting him nose to snout with his activities manager. “You’re pushing it, Merryn.”
She practically squealed with delight. “Can we keep you this way? You can be our mascot.”
The door to the breakroom open as Daveth hurried in – sparing Merryn from a much deserved gout of flame to the face. A string of dried noodles was clutched in one – thickly – gloved hand and his nervous smile reminded Jago of the time he’d accidentally let one of the toddlers get hold of a Rod of Domination. “Uh… hey Jago. Hey Merryn. So, good news, bad news.”
Jago turned, unfamiliar tail only half-accidentally smacking Merryn across her smug face. “Well, spit it out already.”
The mage glanced at Merryn. “Uh?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t learn to speak dragon-fox in the last hour. But those angry little yips are so cute, aren’t they?”
Jago twisted his neck around to glare at her again, the fur along his scaled spine rising as the heat in his chest swelled. But rather than a satisfying gout of flame, he simply gagged, hacked, and sputtered a few wispy flame as something went wrong with the new and distressingly complex of system of organs and tubes inside him, leaving a feeling that could best be described as sneezing backwards.
“Nice try, boss,” she said, patting him on the back with a hand only a little smaller than his head as he continued to gag. “I think he wants the good news, though.”
Daveth dropped the dried noodle necklace on the table beside him. “So, I definitely know what happened at least.”
It had been earlier that day.
Jago had been sitting in with the kinder group ever since an unfortunate incident involving some idiot adventurer misplacing a vorpal blade and it somehow making its way down to the classroom.
In the end, all relevant limbs had been reattached, the adventurer responsible had had their level reduced, and it was ultimately ruled no harm, no foul, but still. As the probationary director he had been quite curious how exactly a seven year old had managed to go unattended long enough to wreck that much havoc.
The answer, it turned out, was that he had underestimated the children of professional adventurers. They seemed to come in exactly two varieties: those who were swathed so deep in protective spells and equipment that they could be used as catapult ammunition safely and those whose parents wanted to insure their independence by letting them learn, experiment, and try things out without concern for consequences.
Still. Handful as they could be, they were fun when one wasn’t busy cleaning up accidents or trying to disarm them.
“Mister Jago?” a young girl asked, breaking him out of his reverie of watching a pair of children build a fort from immovable blocks, while another threatened to lay siege to them.
He blinked as he refocused on her and smiled, riffling through his memory. It’d been slow going, but he almost had every child in their care mentally catalogued at this point. “How can I help you, Eseld?”
She shuffled her feet as she looked at the ground, her face practically hidden amongst the mane of frizzy brown hair she had – and something definitely hidden behind her back. “Um…”
Jago continued to smile. She was one of the latter kind, the daughter of two lifelong guildies. An artificer and a mechanist who both wanted to approach the world with the same kind of suicidal curiosity that they did.
Still, she was a good kid with a big heart. Plus her messes at least tended to stem from her trying something new instead of— “Merryn, those immovable blocks are active,” he called over, wanting to avert the inevitable disaster .
“On it, boss!”
“Um…” Eseld whispered.
“Sorry, Eseld. That was very rude of me.” He leaned down closer to her. “How can I help you?”
“Um… I made you this. Because you showed me that lizard-frog,” she said, thrusting her arms from behind her back and revealing a little necklace made of red thread and dried noodles.
“Well, isn’t that lovely,” he said, trying to quickly assess it. The last few gifts she’d brought had featured items from her parents workshop’s, including a Hades crystal, a Soul Eater stone, and a complex mechanical device known as the gnasher. Dangerous items in the best hands. Positively lethal with a child. But this…
The quiver had already started at her lips when she pushed her hands just a bit closer to him.
“Thank you very much!” he said, taking it from her. As near as he could tell, it was indeed macaroni and thread. Not too likely to be lethal. “That was very kind of you to make that for me.” Not even waiting for the obvious request, he slipped the necklace up over his head, let it fall and—
Daveth cleared his throat. “The thread is Cyrcee’s thread. You know, the ancient sorceress who supposedly transformed the lost city of Falmouth to beasts?” He waited expectantly.
Nodding, Jago offered an affirmative yip. Not that he had actually heard of the place. It was just that if Daveth got started on magical history he would never stop, even if the explanation seemed rather self-explanatory.
Merryn’s eyes glittered impishly as turned to face the mage. “Well, I have no idea what—”
Baring his teeth, Jago lunged forward and snapped at her hand.
“Whoah!” she shouted, nearly tipping out of her chair in an effort to avoid the bite. “Okay! Okay! I get the point, boss. Geeze.” Resettling into her seat, she shook out her hand. “I could’ve lost a finger there. Do you have any idea how sharp your teeth are?”
Jago sat back on his haunches and sniffed, giving her one more warning glare. She was getting a definite demerit the moment he could pick up a quill again.
“Uh…” Daveth started, looking between the two of them. “Am I… missing something?”
“No, you aren’t,” Merryn sighed. “Boss just wants to know what you figured out. Preferably without the padding.”
“Well. Uh. Yes. Cyrcee’s thread. Anyone who wears it is transformed into a beast of sorts. Most of it was thought to have been destroyed.” He smiled, interlocking his fingers as he bounced from foot to foot. “It is really a fascinating—”
“Get on with it,” Jago barked, not liking the way the mage cringed.
Daveth looked at Merryn. “Uh…?”
“Pretty sure he wants you to get on with it,” she said. “I don’t suppose the bad news is that it is so easy to fix that this has really been a huge waste of everyone’s time?”
Jago’s stomach sank as he watched the mage bite his lip.
“Not exactly?” he said, taking a step backwards towards the door.
“Just spit it out,” Merryn said. “It’s not like he’s going to bite.” She paused. “Again.” Another pause, this time punctuated by Jago giving her as much of the evil eye as his current form could manage. “Probably.”
Daveth cleared his throat. “It’s more that Cyrcee’s Threads haven’t been seen in at least two-hundred years and use an old type of magic that no one in the guild is really familiar with? So it might be a bit before the curse-breakers can figure anything out?”
Flopping over on his side, Jago let out a hot breath. The curse-breakers took forever at the best of times. Knowing his luck, he’d be spending the next couple months on all fours. About the only plus about this situation was that the guild insurance definitely covered curses sustained on the job.
Merryn patted him on the side. “Sorry, boss.”
“So, uh… you want me to go put the necklace in storage so the curse-breakers can start studying it when they have a—” Daveth started before he bowled over by the door behind him being flung up with enough force to cause to the wood to bend.
The stench of nervous sweat filled Jago’s nostrils before he even had a chance to recognize the heavyset man in the doorway.
“Did you guys send Eseld home?” Margh panted as he leaned against the doorframe, chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. “Oh. Sorry Daveth.”
Jago’s ears pricked as he rolled over and sat up. “No.”
“No,” Merry said, sitting up as well. “Her parents are on a job right now. She’s in our care all week.”
Margh bounced his head on the doorway. “Oh, no, no, no, no…”
“What happened?” Jago snapped, the pit in his stomach opening deeper, praying to whichever god in the heavenly palace might at that moment be listening that the answer was anything else.
“What happened?” Merryn echoed in more intelligible human.
“We just did a headcount after our little impromptu recess and she wasn’t there…” he moaned, banging his head on the wall again. “Lord of Pleasure and Pain, forgive me for this…”
Merryn’s chair skittered across the floor as she was on him in an instant, both hands grabbing the lapels of his vestments. Her tattoos were already growing as her geomantic power swelled. “Was she there before the recess?”
“I… I don’t know. We didn’t do a count then.”
The stone floor of the room started to quiver. “What do you mean you didn’t do a count?”
Leaping across the tables, Jago skidded to a stop at the closest one the door, his fur bristling. “We set the counts to happen after any disturbance for a reason!” he growled.
The big man tried to flinch back from both of them. “Everything was just in such disarray and we weren’t sure what had caused Jago’s transformation! We just wanted to make sure we cleared out so we didn’t do the count! I’m sorry!”
Jago’s claws dug into the tabletop. If they hadn’t done the count before, that meant she’d had nearly two hours to disappear. And two hours in a building full of cursed items and sealed demons and cantankerous people with building levelling power was a lot of time for a seven year-old.
“Where is Pasco?” Merryn asked, the ground trembling with each word.
Margh squealed. “He’s watching the rest of the kids!”
Letting go of his clothes, the woman shoved him out the door. “Then go help him and make sure you haven’t lost anyone else. I’ll find Eseld!”
In a near suicidal act, he looked to Jago for approval.
“Go!” he barked.
“Going!”
The tremble in the room sharpened for just a moment, then Merryn collapsed into a chair, the glow of her tattoos fading. “Seas and skies, I’m an idiot.” Clutching her head in her hands, she continued. “I should have run the count myself. Dammit, dammit, dammit! Do you remember seeing her before we left, boss?”
Looking up towards the ceiling, Jago tried to recall who he’d seen on his way out. The problem was, having your entire identity upended wrecked havoc on your short-term memory. That, and there’d been the whole thing with spitting up a few fireballs while he’d been trying to come to terms with what happened that caused no small bit of extra chaos.
Eseld had been there when he’d put the necklace on and then… He shook his head.
“Dammit! Then we don’t even know how long she’s been gone.” She pulled at her hair as she swore again. “Sorry boss, I screwed up bad. I should’ve been the one to do the count. Remind me to apologize to Margh later.”
Leaping across another set of tables, he put his paws up on her shoulder. The slight earth scent she normally followed her was nearly overwhelming in this body. “Yeah. You and Margh both did. But it isn’t like I helped. I’ll write us all up when I have hands again. But for now, let’s concentrate on finding her, right?”
“Thanks, boss,” Merryn said, her smile creeping back onto her face as she patted the side of his muzzle. “You do know I have no idea what you’re saying though, right?”
“Yes.”
She slapped herself on the face with both hands. “Okay. Self-pity time over. We need to find her. Any ideas?”
“Uh…” Daveth said, causing them both to jump, his lackluster presence forgotten. “I can see if anyone over in the mage quarters knows a tracking spell?”
“Better than nothing, I guess,” Merryn grumbled.
Jago blinked. Tracking. He sniffed the air. The soil-scent of Merryn was certainly dominant, but once he started thinking about, there was a medley of other scents in the air. Scents he knew he’d never smelled as man.
Pushing off Merryn, he quickly made his way across to the spot where Daveth had dropped the necklace and pressed his nose against it, sniffing. He could smell himself, the stale macaroni, and the indescribable tang of the magic thread, and a strong tang of peppermint like the soap Eseld’s parents had sent with her.
“Is something wrong with Jago?” Daveth asked. “I didn’t think the spell had any mental—”
Merryn popped up from her chair, cutting him off. “Boss, you’re a genius!” She swooped over and picked up the necklace. “You think you can scent her out?”
”Maybe?” Tracking had never been a specialty of his, but it was worth a shot. If he was going to be stuck like this for the moment, then he might as well try to get some benefit out of it.
“I’m taking that as a yes!” She turned back towards Daveth. “We’re borrowing this! I’m safe as long as I don’t put it on, right?”
Daveth stammered, trying to keep up with the changing speed of the conversation. “Uh… probably?”
“Great!” She spun the necklace a few times so it wrapped around her hand. “Let’s go boss!”
Scenting proved a bit more difficult than expected for Jago, what with never having done it before or had a sense of smell even a fraction of this good before, but the mark of a high-level adventurer was the ability to improvise and conquer unexpected tasks.
So it was with a few false starts, a lot of scampering, and no small number of looks from loitering guildies that he led the two of them to a door deep in the basement.
“Oh no,” Merryn breathed.
Jago’s ears folded against his head. One of the training rooms. The one for level nines. Her scent definitely went in there, though. And he could hear the whirrs of mechanisms inside.
“It’s on, isn’t it?” she asked.
Jago nodded.
“I can get the door out of the frame, but…”
All the training rooms were treacherous in their own right, but most of them at least had a number of safeties. For people at Jago’s level though, the only real way to train was with real risk. A child’s chances in the level nine room were… Why would she have come in here?
He blinked. No. He remembered her chattering about it. Her parents had been involved in the most recent revamps of the rooms. They’d even let her explore them. The odds weren’t great, but… “She might be okay.”
“Boss,” she said. “It really isn’t schtick. I can’t understand you. At all.”
He rolled his eyes and jerked his head towards the door.
“You think she’s still alive?”
He was going to have to talk to her about listening to the kids a bit more. But for now, he nodded.
She grimaced, her tattoos starting to glow. “You don’t think there’s time to find someone with the right license level? No offense, but I think being stuck like that takes you down a few. And I’m definitely not nine.”
He shook his head. There weren’t that many people at eight or higher to begin with.
Taking a deep breath, Merryn planted herself firmly, clenched her hands, then pulled. There was a thunderous crash as the stone around the door was ripped out, leaving the metal portal to collapse to the ground with a near deafening ring. “Then I guess we’ll have to hope we average out. You take the lead, I guess? At the least you should be able to help warn me about any surprises, right?”
He nodded.
The entry tunnel to the training area was a long and narrow corridor that did not take an expert to realize would have at least three traps through its length, including one fake designed to get you to step into the real one. He turned and looked at Merryn.
“Traps?”
He nodded, staring at the broad stones that made up the floor before he dashed forward. Worth testing if he was heavy enough to set off floor panels.
“Boss?”
As he crossed the floor in swift lopes, he felt a few stones shift under his paws, but like he guessed, none of them were actually calibrated to activate at his current weight. Skidding to a stop in front of the door – almost definitely trapped – he bounded back to Merryn. “Got it.”
She frowned as she stared, then nodded. “Ah. I’ve got it. The floor?”
He nodded.
“Follow you?”
Another nod. He took a little more care this time to make sure he was sure about safe steps, with the only tough spot being a cleverly designed little set of stones that looked like they were single, secure stones, but were actually pressure sensitive on specific edges.
“And now the door,” Merryn said.
The design was a rather ostentatious giant eye looking back down the hall with no obvious hinges or locks or openings. Stepping up against it with front paws, he stretched up to try and get a look.
“Hang on, boss,” she said, nudging him with a foot. “I think I can deal with this one.”
He looked at her and tilted his head.
“Same trick as before. The construction is a lot tighter here, but I should be able to do it still.” She stomped a foot and listened. “Yeah. The door is just a metal slab wedged in the stone. No idea about the correct way to do this but…” she braced herself and took a deep breath, her tattoos glowing scorching white as she pushed outward and the entire hall jerked.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the eye door tilted backwards, scraping against the stone as it slowly fell. After a moment, the eye started to glow red and then a beam of force gouged a hole in the ceiling.
Merryn cringed, waving her arms. “Okay. Maybe not that again. The stone is tight in here. I think I pulled something.”
He patted her leg with a paw and glanced back towards the entrance. This was already above her level. If she wanted to go back…
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her arms out one more time. “Besides, you need the help if we’re going to get her out, right?”
The next “room” was a labyrinth, but that was easily dealt with thanks to Eseld’s scent. Which just left the slow going to keep an eye out for traps set along the proper path… and being sure that Eseld herself didn’t get lost. But it seemed she had quite the memory as they made their way past split after split.
Behind him, there was a soft click as a stone depressed under Merryn’s foot.
Her tattoos lit up as she prepared to try and pull stone from the ground to defend herself from whatever direction the attack came from, but Jago was already moving, leaping against the nearby wall and using that to propel himself further up and over her.
A quick twist and one more kick off the ceiling sent him rocketing down, jaws clamping down on the first bolt before it struck her square in the back.
He slammed hard into the ground, rolling painfully as even as she threw herself to the ground and let the next five bolts soar over her and embed themselves in the stone wall where her body had been.
She laughed nervously. “That was close.”
“Yeah,” Jago agreed, spitting out the bolt as he forced himself up, ignoring the twinge in his neck.
The next room was a large, cavernous affair… with Eseld sitting hunched down on the opposite side.
“Eseld!” Merryn shouted, causing the other girl to look up.
Jago started forward without thinking, just relieved that the girl was still unharmed – an action he regretted almost instantly as a heavy metal door slammed shut behind them.
“Oh no,” the little girl wailed, tucking even tighter into her ball.
“Boss room?” Merryn asked.
Jago barely had time to nod before a panel on the wall opened up, a hulking humanoid figure made of stone and carrying a sharp blade stepping out.
“Well, I believe I can handle this one,” she said, flexing her hands. “You go make sure she’s okay?”
She didn’t have to ask. No matter how powerful a stone golem might be, it wasn’t going to be stopping Merryn. He didn’t even offer the creature a second glance as he sprinted across the floor, skidding to a stop right in front of the crying girl.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, daddy showed me how to turn them off but it didn’t work…” she sobbed. “So I couldn’t go anywhere without them going and I just wanted to go be by myself and I’m so sorry because I didn’t mean for that to happen to you. I just wanted to give you a present and mommy had this pretty string… and… and…”
Jago gently nudged her leg with his head and sat down. She was going to get a real talking to once he had the ability to speak again, but accidents happened with adventurer’s kids. Especially if their parents left lost magical artifacts laying around.
Behind him, there was a deafening crash as the first golem was shattered and felled, followed by another door sliding open. Merryn was panting and her tattoos were flickering, but it was another stone golem so she’d probably be fine.
“I’m so sorry!” she wailed again.
“As long as you’re sorry, it’s fine,” Jago said, for all that it didn’t matter. But maybe the tone on his yips had been right, because she sniffled and looked at him and held her arms out for a hug that he allowed.
Another crash behind him, and a whoop from Merryn. “I want you to put in for me getting a level up after this, Jago!” He turned to watch her wipe the sweat from her brow as she stood among the rubble that had been the two golems. “You hear me?”
He started to nod… until three doors on the opposite side of the room opened up, this time revealing three more hulking constructs. This time one made of fire, one made of ice, and another from metal.
“Oh come on,” Merryn said.
Eseld shook as she clung to Jago, her fingers digging into his fur and tears coating his scales. “I don’t know when they stop. Daddy made it so there’d be a bunch of them!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve still got this,” she growled, even as all three charged with far more speed than the stone constructs had moved. Not that it mattered, she was already worn out, the globe she pulled up around the flame golem barely enough to hold it back for a moment as she danced back from the freezing grip of the ice golem. She clenched a fist to try and launch a counter-attack…
“The metal golem!” Jago barked desperately, realizing he was too far away to help.
“Boss, I don’t—”
The metallic golem’s bladed arm cut clean through her extended arm, a loss she barely had time to register before the ice golem’s fist caught her in the gut, lifting her into the air launching her back towards them where she slammed in the wall and then ground.
Eseld’s grip went slack as she burst into a fresh round of tears.
Merryn groaned as she tried to push herself off the ground. “Sorry,” she wheezed, clutching at her new stump. “I think I’m out.”
The three golems were slowly advancing this time. Probably being sporting, to give them a chance to get their breath back. After all, this room was only level nine. It wasn’t trying that hard to kill them.
Getting her knees under her, Merryn managed to push herself up just a little. “They might not go for you, boss. In which case,” she hacked, spitting out a bit of blood, “you might want to go fetch the necklace so the curse-breakers can work with it if you survive.” She slumped again. “Shouldn’t have kept it with my good hand.”
The heat rose in Jago’s chest. If he were himself, these golems would be no issue. But like this… “You need to just hang on. I’ll figure something out here.”
Despite everything, she forced a smile. “Nope. Near death experience is not unlocking the ability to talk with animals. Too bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eseld wailed again.
Well. Do or die. That was what being an adventurer was all about.
Dashing back out onto the floor, he positioned himself between the golems and the other two, his fur brustling as he growled, the heat inside him continuing to rise. There was a small pause as the constructs assessed him, then the steel one lunged forward, blade-arm cutting into the ground where he’d stood.
Inhaling deeply, he stopped thinking about how the body worked and just let it do its thing, white hot flames pouring out from between his teeth and catching the ice golem right in its chest, melting a deep gouge that did absolutely nothing to stop it from trying to stomp on him.
He stumbled as his legs and feet tangled themselves from the desperate hast, forcing a clumsy roll to avoid bisection from the iron golem.
The earthen shell holding the fire golem in place was starting to crack.
They were getting too close to Merryn and Eseld, so he kept rolling further, darting just behind them to keep their attention focused on him. The only he could do anything about like this was the ice golem, and he was still too small to do any real damage.
Or not. Looking at the top heavy build, there was a possibility. He inhaled deeply again, willing the fires in his chest to grow and hoping that this wasn’t something dragon-foxes ran out of too easily. Doding another heavy cut from the metal golem, he dodged between the legs of the ice golem, leaping onto a leg and unleashing everything he had inside him at the joint.
Ice crackled and cracked and shattered as it melted, sending the thing pitching to the side, forcing him to dig his claws in and scramble up it to avoid being crushed. His throat burned, but he didn’t really have time to deal with that as he dove aside, the metal golem’s blade cutting through the ice golem where he’d been stranding, shattering the creature and sending shards flying.
To his surprise, the next attack from the golem wasn’t from its blade, but a foot catching him under his body and lifting him painfully into the air, only to come crashing down among the razor sharp shards that made up the remains of the ice golem. He was pretty sure he felt a couple cut along his scaled spine, making him briefly glad for the thick plates.
Hands would have been nice, but in a pinch anything will do. Clamping his jaws on one of the shards, he jerked himself over, the light touch of his impromptu blade creating a new path for the bladed-arm. The ice was already melting in his mouth, so he wasted no time, claws scraping as he used the broad metal blade on the metal golem as a ramp.
Releasing the ice blade from his mouth, he caught it facing the opposite direction and plunged it towards the joint that connected the head to torso — and hopefully where the core resided. The blade went in without much trouble and the golem jerked, its left side going limp, but the right caught him on the flat of the blade, bouncing his tiny body off the floor and sending him tumbling to a stop where Merryn’s discarded arm and the lost necklace was.
His head rang as he tried to get far too many feet under himself.
Beside him, the flame golem’s encasement broke, the air filling with promise of a heat that even he was sure would be too much for him.
As his vision swam and the arm and necklaces in front of him multiplied, the flame golem screamed like a kettle, the sound burning at his ears. Instincts honed over years of being a successful – living – adventurer kicked in, his teeth sinking into Merryn’s arm as he dove away, a hellish blaze blackening the ground where he’d been standing and reducing the macaroni necklace to ash.
Tossing the arm far from himself and potential incineration – you couldn’t reattach what didn’t exist anymore – he bit into another ice shard.
The fiery creature stomped after him, flame tipped fingers clawing at stone to get at him, barreling through the remains of its fallen companion and even, once properly led, through its half-functional companion. Which just left one.
He sighed, clenching his teeth around the ice, feeling the edges cut at his gums even as the combined heat from his mouth and the flame golem making it slick with water. One chance. But as a grandmaster of the Falling Carp, being stuck with a mouth as his only means of wielding a sword should be no obstacle.
The construct screamed.
The void blade. The ultimate technique of his school. He twisted his head and cut, the air itself splitting, the expelled inferno guttering out around him as it had no air to burn. Unfortunately, the blade also melted, becoming nothing more than water filling his mouth, and leaving him nothing to defend himself with as it lunged forward.
It’d been close. Not bad for being stuck as a dragon-fox.
There was a sharp crack above as a boulder tore itself free and slammed down into the ground, crushing the fire creature.
The door that had sealed the room slid open.
He blinked and turned to see Merryn supporting herself on her stump, Eseld supporting her just a bit. The woman was grinning like she wasn’t on death’s door, her tattoo’s barely lighting up with an anemic corpse mushroom glow.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, boss.”
Jago sat on his desk, doing his best to not be too annoyed with Eseld’s parents as they thanked him and Merryn profusely for what they did and swore up and down again that they would never leave powerful magical relics out where she could find them again.
Merryn cradled her still bandaged – but comfortably well attached arm – in a sling. “You don’t have any more of the thread though?”
Lia shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. We found that little bit on a job. If we find anymore we’ll of course bring it to the guild. Straight away. Not even any time to study it ourselves. We promise.”
Jago held back his sigh and nodded. Without that, there’d be no telling how long it would take the curse-breakers to help him. If they even could. Old magic could be tricky sometimes.
Pushing her daughter forward, the artificer’s tone sharpened. “Tell them both how sorry you are!”
To Eseld’s credit, the contrition continued to seem to be earnest. “I’m so sorry I went to the training rooms and got both of you hurt so much. And I’m sorry I accidentally cursed you. I promise I won’t do either one ever again. Ever.”
Wagging his tail, Jago pushed his head forward so she could pat it. It worked well enough as an acceptance of the apology.
“Um… I brought you something else!” she said nervously, reaching into her dress pocket.
To Jago’s credit, he didn’t flinch.
The object she produced was a thick leather strap with a golden buckle and a dangling little charm that said, “Best Teacher” in a thick, blotchy attempt at calligraphy. “It’s… um… a collar. For you. So everyone knows who you are still.”
Behind him, Merryn choked back a giggle. “It’s lovely, and I’m sure b— Master Jago loves it very much.”
Behind Eseld, her mother offered a sheepish smile. “She made most of it, but I did put a number of protection spells on it. My own spells. They’re really good, I promise. My way of saying sorry.” She cleared her throat. “And my husband is hard at work right now creating a little blade while you are… in this condition.”
Jago eyed her for a long moment before he laid down at the edge of the table so the little girl could actually reach him, Jago let her fasten the collar, only coughing a little bit as she struggled to avoid choking him while tightening and fastening it. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!” Eseld chimed. “I hope you come back to class soon. I miss you.”
“Um…” came Daveth’s voice from the doorway, “Sorry to bother you guys, but Margh needed me to let you know that somebody left a demon summoning scroll in with the wobblers? The easy to use kind.” He hesitated as he noticed the guests in the room. “Oh. Um… hello. Sorry but I just figured….”
Merryn sighed as she pushed herself up out of her chair. “Shall we, boss?”
Jago nodded. In the end, some things would never change.
Jago a grandmaster of the Falling Carp school of swordsmanship, the slayer of the nine demons of Looe, possessor of a level 10 license, and the probationary director of the Gold Dragon Adventurer’s Guild childcare services program sat on the breakroom table, giving Merryn an unheeded warning glare as she teased.
“Maybe we should have you take over for Daveth? I bet the wobblers would love you.”
An unfamiliar heat rose in his chest as Merryn chattered cheerfully from her seat just across from him. It was possible it was embarrassment. It was far more likely that it was his annoyance working to manifest as a blazing fire within what was probably his flame sack.
Merryn smiled as she rested her chin on crossed arms. “Being mad just makes you cuter, you know, boss.”
Growling, Jago’s hackles rose as he stood and padded to the edge of the table, putting him nose to snout with his activities manager. “You’re pushing it, Merryn.”
She practically squealed with delight. “Can we keep you this way? You can be our mascot.”
The door to the breakroom open as Daveth hurried in – sparing Merryn from a much deserved gout of flame to the face. A string of dried noodles was clutched in one – thickly – gloved hand and his nervous smile reminded Jago of the time he’d accidentally let one of the toddlers get hold of a Rod of Domination. “Uh… hey Jago. Hey Merryn. So, good news, bad news.”
Jago turned, unfamiliar tail only half-accidentally smacking Merryn across her smug face. “Well, spit it out already.”
The mage glanced at Merryn. “Uh?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t learn to speak dragon-fox in the last hour. But those angry little yips are so cute, aren’t they?”
Jago twisted his neck around to glare at her again, the fur along his scaled spine rising as the heat in his chest swelled. But rather than a satisfying gout of flame, he simply gagged, hacked, and sputtered a few wispy flame as something went wrong with the new and distressingly complex of system of organs and tubes inside him, leaving a feeling that could best be described as sneezing backwards.
“Nice try, boss,” she said, patting him on the back with a hand only a little smaller than his head as he continued to gag. “I think he wants the good news, though.”
Daveth dropped the dried noodle necklace on the table beside him. “So, I definitely know what happened at least.”
It had been earlier that day.
Jago had been sitting in with the kinder group ever since an unfortunate incident involving some idiot adventurer misplacing a vorpal blade and it somehow making its way down to the classroom.
In the end, all relevant limbs had been reattached, the adventurer responsible had had their level reduced, and it was ultimately ruled no harm, no foul, but still. As the probationary director he had been quite curious how exactly a seven year old had managed to go unattended long enough to wreck that much havoc.
The answer, it turned out, was that he had underestimated the children of professional adventurers. They seemed to come in exactly two varieties: those who were swathed so deep in protective spells and equipment that they could be used as catapult ammunition safely and those whose parents wanted to insure their independence by letting them learn, experiment, and try things out without concern for consequences.
Still. Handful as they could be, they were fun when one wasn’t busy cleaning up accidents or trying to disarm them.
“Mister Jago?” a young girl asked, breaking him out of his reverie of watching a pair of children build a fort from immovable blocks, while another threatened to lay siege to them.
He blinked as he refocused on her and smiled, riffling through his memory. It’d been slow going, but he almost had every child in their care mentally catalogued at this point. “How can I help you, Eseld?”
She shuffled her feet as she looked at the ground, her face practically hidden amongst the mane of frizzy brown hair she had – and something definitely hidden behind her back. “Um…”
Jago continued to smile. She was one of the latter kind, the daughter of two lifelong guildies. An artificer and a mechanist who both wanted to approach the world with the same kind of suicidal curiosity that they did.
Still, she was a good kid with a big heart. Plus her messes at least tended to stem from her trying something new instead of— “Merryn, those immovable blocks are active,” he called over, wanting to avert the inevitable disaster .
“On it, boss!”
“Um…” Eseld whispered.
“Sorry, Eseld. That was very rude of me.” He leaned down closer to her. “How can I help you?”
“Um… I made you this. Because you showed me that lizard-frog,” she said, thrusting her arms from behind her back and revealing a little necklace made of red thread and dried noodles.
“Well, isn’t that lovely,” he said, trying to quickly assess it. The last few gifts she’d brought had featured items from her parents workshop’s, including a Hades crystal, a Soul Eater stone, and a complex mechanical device known as the gnasher. Dangerous items in the best hands. Positively lethal with a child. But this…
The quiver had already started at her lips when she pushed her hands just a bit closer to him.
“Thank you very much!” he said, taking it from her. As near as he could tell, it was indeed macaroni and thread. Not too likely to be lethal. “That was very kind of you to make that for me.” Not even waiting for the obvious request, he slipped the necklace up over his head, let it fall and—
Daveth cleared his throat. “The thread is Cyrcee’s thread. You know, the ancient sorceress who supposedly transformed the lost city of Falmouth to beasts?” He waited expectantly.
Nodding, Jago offered an affirmative yip. Not that he had actually heard of the place. It was just that if Daveth got started on magical history he would never stop, even if the explanation seemed rather self-explanatory.
Merryn’s eyes glittered impishly as turned to face the mage. “Well, I have no idea what—”
Baring his teeth, Jago lunged forward and snapped at her hand.
“Whoah!” she shouted, nearly tipping out of her chair in an effort to avoid the bite. “Okay! Okay! I get the point, boss. Geeze.” Resettling into her seat, she shook out her hand. “I could’ve lost a finger there. Do you have any idea how sharp your teeth are?”
Jago sat back on his haunches and sniffed, giving her one more warning glare. She was getting a definite demerit the moment he could pick up a quill again.
“Uh…” Daveth started, looking between the two of them. “Am I… missing something?”
“No, you aren’t,” Merryn sighed. “Boss just wants to know what you figured out. Preferably without the padding.”
“Well. Uh. Yes. Cyrcee’s thread. Anyone who wears it is transformed into a beast of sorts. Most of it was thought to have been destroyed.” He smiled, interlocking his fingers as he bounced from foot to foot. “It is really a fascinating—”
“Get on with it,” Jago barked, not liking the way the mage cringed.
Daveth looked at Merryn. “Uh…?”
“Pretty sure he wants you to get on with it,” she said. “I don’t suppose the bad news is that it is so easy to fix that this has really been a huge waste of everyone’s time?”
Jago’s stomach sank as he watched the mage bite his lip.
“Not exactly?” he said, taking a step backwards towards the door.
“Just spit it out,” Merryn said. “It’s not like he’s going to bite.” She paused. “Again.” Another pause, this time punctuated by Jago giving her as much of the evil eye as his current form could manage. “Probably.”
Daveth cleared his throat. “It’s more that Cyrcee’s Threads haven’t been seen in at least two-hundred years and use an old type of magic that no one in the guild is really familiar with? So it might be a bit before the curse-breakers can figure anything out?”
Flopping over on his side, Jago let out a hot breath. The curse-breakers took forever at the best of times. Knowing his luck, he’d be spending the next couple months on all fours. About the only plus about this situation was that the guild insurance definitely covered curses sustained on the job.
Merryn patted him on the side. “Sorry, boss.”
“So, uh… you want me to go put the necklace in storage so the curse-breakers can start studying it when they have a—” Daveth started before he bowled over by the door behind him being flung up with enough force to cause to the wood to bend.
The stench of nervous sweat filled Jago’s nostrils before he even had a chance to recognize the heavyset man in the doorway.
“Did you guys send Eseld home?” Margh panted as he leaned against the doorframe, chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. “Oh. Sorry Daveth.”
Jago’s ears pricked as he rolled over and sat up. “No.”
“No,” Merry said, sitting up as well. “Her parents are on a job right now. She’s in our care all week.”
Margh bounced his head on the doorway. “Oh, no, no, no, no…”
“What happened?” Jago snapped, the pit in his stomach opening deeper, praying to whichever god in the heavenly palace might at that moment be listening that the answer was anything else.
“What happened?” Merryn echoed in more intelligible human.
“We just did a headcount after our little impromptu recess and she wasn’t there…” he moaned, banging his head on the wall again. “Lord of Pleasure and Pain, forgive me for this…”
Merryn’s chair skittered across the floor as she was on him in an instant, both hands grabbing the lapels of his vestments. Her tattoos were already growing as her geomantic power swelled. “Was she there before the recess?”
“I… I don’t know. We didn’t do a count then.”
The stone floor of the room started to quiver. “What do you mean you didn’t do a count?”
Leaping across the tables, Jago skidded to a stop at the closest one the door, his fur bristling. “We set the counts to happen after any disturbance for a reason!” he growled.
The big man tried to flinch back from both of them. “Everything was just in such disarray and we weren’t sure what had caused Jago’s transformation! We just wanted to make sure we cleared out so we didn’t do the count! I’m sorry!”
Jago’s claws dug into the tabletop. If they hadn’t done the count before, that meant she’d had nearly two hours to disappear. And two hours in a building full of cursed items and sealed demons and cantankerous people with building levelling power was a lot of time for a seven year-old.
“Where is Pasco?” Merryn asked, the ground trembling with each word.
Margh squealed. “He’s watching the rest of the kids!”
Letting go of his clothes, the woman shoved him out the door. “Then go help him and make sure you haven’t lost anyone else. I’ll find Eseld!”
In a near suicidal act, he looked to Jago for approval.
“Go!” he barked.
“Going!”
The tremble in the room sharpened for just a moment, then Merryn collapsed into a chair, the glow of her tattoos fading. “Seas and skies, I’m an idiot.” Clutching her head in her hands, she continued. “I should have run the count myself. Dammit, dammit, dammit! Do you remember seeing her before we left, boss?”
Looking up towards the ceiling, Jago tried to recall who he’d seen on his way out. The problem was, having your entire identity upended wrecked havoc on your short-term memory. That, and there’d been the whole thing with spitting up a few fireballs while he’d been trying to come to terms with what happened that caused no small bit of extra chaos.
Eseld had been there when he’d put the necklace on and then… He shook his head.
“Dammit! Then we don’t even know how long she’s been gone.” She pulled at her hair as she swore again. “Sorry boss, I screwed up bad. I should’ve been the one to do the count. Remind me to apologize to Margh later.”
Leaping across another set of tables, he put his paws up on her shoulder. The slight earth scent she normally followed her was nearly overwhelming in this body. “Yeah. You and Margh both did. But it isn’t like I helped. I’ll write us all up when I have hands again. But for now, let’s concentrate on finding her, right?”
“Thanks, boss,” Merryn said, her smile creeping back onto her face as she patted the side of his muzzle. “You do know I have no idea what you’re saying though, right?”
“Yes.”
She slapped herself on the face with both hands. “Okay. Self-pity time over. We need to find her. Any ideas?”
“Uh…” Daveth said, causing them both to jump, his lackluster presence forgotten. “I can see if anyone over in the mage quarters knows a tracking spell?”
“Better than nothing, I guess,” Merryn grumbled.
Jago blinked. Tracking. He sniffed the air. The soil-scent of Merryn was certainly dominant, but once he started thinking about, there was a medley of other scents in the air. Scents he knew he’d never smelled as man.
Pushing off Merryn, he quickly made his way across to the spot where Daveth had dropped the necklace and pressed his nose against it, sniffing. He could smell himself, the stale macaroni, and the indescribable tang of the magic thread, and a strong tang of peppermint like the soap Eseld’s parents had sent with her.
“Is something wrong with Jago?” Daveth asked. “I didn’t think the spell had any mental—”
Merryn popped up from her chair, cutting him off. “Boss, you’re a genius!” She swooped over and picked up the necklace. “You think you can scent her out?”
”Maybe?” Tracking had never been a specialty of his, but it was worth a shot. If he was going to be stuck like this for the moment, then he might as well try to get some benefit out of it.
“I’m taking that as a yes!” She turned back towards Daveth. “We’re borrowing this! I’m safe as long as I don’t put it on, right?”
Daveth stammered, trying to keep up with the changing speed of the conversation. “Uh… probably?”
“Great!” She spun the necklace a few times so it wrapped around her hand. “Let’s go boss!”
Scenting proved a bit more difficult than expected for Jago, what with never having done it before or had a sense of smell even a fraction of this good before, but the mark of a high-level adventurer was the ability to improvise and conquer unexpected tasks.
So it was with a few false starts, a lot of scampering, and no small number of looks from loitering guildies that he led the two of them to a door deep in the basement.
“Oh no,” Merryn breathed.
Jago’s ears folded against his head. One of the training rooms. The one for level nines. Her scent definitely went in there, though. And he could hear the whirrs of mechanisms inside.
“It’s on, isn’t it?” she asked.
Jago nodded.
“I can get the door out of the frame, but…”
All the training rooms were treacherous in their own right, but most of them at least had a number of safeties. For people at Jago’s level though, the only real way to train was with real risk. A child’s chances in the level nine room were… Why would she have come in here?
He blinked. No. He remembered her chattering about it. Her parents had been involved in the most recent revamps of the rooms. They’d even let her explore them. The odds weren’t great, but… “She might be okay.”
“Boss,” she said. “It really isn’t schtick. I can’t understand you. At all.”
He rolled his eyes and jerked his head towards the door.
“You think she’s still alive?”
He was going to have to talk to her about listening to the kids a bit more. But for now, he nodded.
She grimaced, her tattoos starting to glow. “You don’t think there’s time to find someone with the right license level? No offense, but I think being stuck like that takes you down a few. And I’m definitely not nine.”
He shook his head. There weren’t that many people at eight or higher to begin with.
Taking a deep breath, Merryn planted herself firmly, clenched her hands, then pulled. There was a thunderous crash as the stone around the door was ripped out, leaving the metal portal to collapse to the ground with a near deafening ring. “Then I guess we’ll have to hope we average out. You take the lead, I guess? At the least you should be able to help warn me about any surprises, right?”
He nodded.
The entry tunnel to the training area was a long and narrow corridor that did not take an expert to realize would have at least three traps through its length, including one fake designed to get you to step into the real one. He turned and looked at Merryn.
“Traps?”
He nodded, staring at the broad stones that made up the floor before he dashed forward. Worth testing if he was heavy enough to set off floor panels.
“Boss?”
As he crossed the floor in swift lopes, he felt a few stones shift under his paws, but like he guessed, none of them were actually calibrated to activate at his current weight. Skidding to a stop in front of the door – almost definitely trapped – he bounded back to Merryn. “Got it.”
She frowned as she stared, then nodded. “Ah. I’ve got it. The floor?”
He nodded.
“Follow you?”
Another nod. He took a little more care this time to make sure he was sure about safe steps, with the only tough spot being a cleverly designed little set of stones that looked like they were single, secure stones, but were actually pressure sensitive on specific edges.
“And now the door,” Merryn said.
The design was a rather ostentatious giant eye looking back down the hall with no obvious hinges or locks or openings. Stepping up against it with front paws, he stretched up to try and get a look.
“Hang on, boss,” she said, nudging him with a foot. “I think I can deal with this one.”
He looked at her and tilted his head.
“Same trick as before. The construction is a lot tighter here, but I should be able to do it still.” She stomped a foot and listened. “Yeah. The door is just a metal slab wedged in the stone. No idea about the correct way to do this but…” she braced herself and took a deep breath, her tattoos glowing scorching white as she pushed outward and the entire hall jerked.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the eye door tilted backwards, scraping against the stone as it slowly fell. After a moment, the eye started to glow red and then a beam of force gouged a hole in the ceiling.
Merryn cringed, waving her arms. “Okay. Maybe not that again. The stone is tight in here. I think I pulled something.”
He patted her leg with a paw and glanced back towards the entrance. This was already above her level. If she wanted to go back…
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her arms out one more time. “Besides, you need the help if we’re going to get her out, right?”
The next “room” was a labyrinth, but that was easily dealt with thanks to Eseld’s scent. Which just left the slow going to keep an eye out for traps set along the proper path… and being sure that Eseld herself didn’t get lost. But it seemed she had quite the memory as they made their way past split after split.
Behind him, there was a soft click as a stone depressed under Merryn’s foot.
Her tattoos lit up as she prepared to try and pull stone from the ground to defend herself from whatever direction the attack came from, but Jago was already moving, leaping against the nearby wall and using that to propel himself further up and over her.
A quick twist and one more kick off the ceiling sent him rocketing down, jaws clamping down on the first bolt before it struck her square in the back.
He slammed hard into the ground, rolling painfully as even as she threw herself to the ground and let the next five bolts soar over her and embed themselves in the stone wall where her body had been.
She laughed nervously. “That was close.”
“Yeah,” Jago agreed, spitting out the bolt as he forced himself up, ignoring the twinge in his neck.
The next room was a large, cavernous affair… with Eseld sitting hunched down on the opposite side.
“Eseld!” Merryn shouted, causing the other girl to look up.
Jago started forward without thinking, just relieved that the girl was still unharmed – an action he regretted almost instantly as a heavy metal door slammed shut behind them.
“Oh no,” the little girl wailed, tucking even tighter into her ball.
“Boss room?” Merryn asked.
Jago barely had time to nod before a panel on the wall opened up, a hulking humanoid figure made of stone and carrying a sharp blade stepping out.
“Well, I believe I can handle this one,” she said, flexing her hands. “You go make sure she’s okay?”
She didn’t have to ask. No matter how powerful a stone golem might be, it wasn’t going to be stopping Merryn. He didn’t even offer the creature a second glance as he sprinted across the floor, skidding to a stop right in front of the crying girl.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, daddy showed me how to turn them off but it didn’t work…” she sobbed. “So I couldn’t go anywhere without them going and I just wanted to go be by myself and I’m so sorry because I didn’t mean for that to happen to you. I just wanted to give you a present and mommy had this pretty string… and… and…”
Jago gently nudged her leg with his head and sat down. She was going to get a real talking to once he had the ability to speak again, but accidents happened with adventurer’s kids. Especially if their parents left lost magical artifacts laying around.
Behind him, there was a deafening crash as the first golem was shattered and felled, followed by another door sliding open. Merryn was panting and her tattoos were flickering, but it was another stone golem so she’d probably be fine.
“I’m so sorry!” she wailed again.
“As long as you’re sorry, it’s fine,” Jago said, for all that it didn’t matter. But maybe the tone on his yips had been right, because she sniffled and looked at him and held her arms out for a hug that he allowed.
Another crash behind him, and a whoop from Merryn. “I want you to put in for me getting a level up after this, Jago!” He turned to watch her wipe the sweat from her brow as she stood among the rubble that had been the two golems. “You hear me?”
He started to nod… until three doors on the opposite side of the room opened up, this time revealing three more hulking constructs. This time one made of fire, one made of ice, and another from metal.
“Oh come on,” Merryn said.
Eseld shook as she clung to Jago, her fingers digging into his fur and tears coating his scales. “I don’t know when they stop. Daddy made it so there’d be a bunch of them!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve still got this,” she growled, even as all three charged with far more speed than the stone constructs had moved. Not that it mattered, she was already worn out, the globe she pulled up around the flame golem barely enough to hold it back for a moment as she danced back from the freezing grip of the ice golem. She clenched a fist to try and launch a counter-attack…
“The metal golem!” Jago barked desperately, realizing he was too far away to help.
“Boss, I don’t—”
The metallic golem’s bladed arm cut clean through her extended arm, a loss she barely had time to register before the ice golem’s fist caught her in the gut, lifting her into the air launching her back towards them where she slammed in the wall and then ground.
Eseld’s grip went slack as she burst into a fresh round of tears.
Merryn groaned as she tried to push herself off the ground. “Sorry,” she wheezed, clutching at her new stump. “I think I’m out.”
The three golems were slowly advancing this time. Probably being sporting, to give them a chance to get their breath back. After all, this room was only level nine. It wasn’t trying that hard to kill them.
Getting her knees under her, Merryn managed to push herself up just a little. “They might not go for you, boss. In which case,” she hacked, spitting out a bit of blood, “you might want to go fetch the necklace so the curse-breakers can work with it if you survive.” She slumped again. “Shouldn’t have kept it with my good hand.”
The heat rose in Jago’s chest. If he were himself, these golems would be no issue. But like this… “You need to just hang on. I’ll figure something out here.”
Despite everything, she forced a smile. “Nope. Near death experience is not unlocking the ability to talk with animals. Too bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eseld wailed again.
Well. Do or die. That was what being an adventurer was all about.
Dashing back out onto the floor, he positioned himself between the golems and the other two, his fur brustling as he growled, the heat inside him continuing to rise. There was a small pause as the constructs assessed him, then the steel one lunged forward, blade-arm cutting into the ground where he’d stood.
Inhaling deeply, he stopped thinking about how the body worked and just let it do its thing, white hot flames pouring out from between his teeth and catching the ice golem right in its chest, melting a deep gouge that did absolutely nothing to stop it from trying to stomp on him.
He stumbled as his legs and feet tangled themselves from the desperate hast, forcing a clumsy roll to avoid bisection from the iron golem.
The earthen shell holding the fire golem in place was starting to crack.
They were getting too close to Merryn and Eseld, so he kept rolling further, darting just behind them to keep their attention focused on him. The only he could do anything about like this was the ice golem, and he was still too small to do any real damage.
Or not. Looking at the top heavy build, there was a possibility. He inhaled deeply again, willing the fires in his chest to grow and hoping that this wasn’t something dragon-foxes ran out of too easily. Doding another heavy cut from the metal golem, he dodged between the legs of the ice golem, leaping onto a leg and unleashing everything he had inside him at the joint.
Ice crackled and cracked and shattered as it melted, sending the thing pitching to the side, forcing him to dig his claws in and scramble up it to avoid being crushed. His throat burned, but he didn’t really have time to deal with that as he dove aside, the metal golem’s blade cutting through the ice golem where he’d been stranding, shattering the creature and sending shards flying.
To his surprise, the next attack from the golem wasn’t from its blade, but a foot catching him under his body and lifting him painfully into the air, only to come crashing down among the razor sharp shards that made up the remains of the ice golem. He was pretty sure he felt a couple cut along his scaled spine, making him briefly glad for the thick plates.
Hands would have been nice, but in a pinch anything will do. Clamping his jaws on one of the shards, he jerked himself over, the light touch of his impromptu blade creating a new path for the bladed-arm. The ice was already melting in his mouth, so he wasted no time, claws scraping as he used the broad metal blade on the metal golem as a ramp.
Releasing the ice blade from his mouth, he caught it facing the opposite direction and plunged it towards the joint that connected the head to torso — and hopefully where the core resided. The blade went in without much trouble and the golem jerked, its left side going limp, but the right caught him on the flat of the blade, bouncing his tiny body off the floor and sending him tumbling to a stop where Merryn’s discarded arm and the lost necklace was.
His head rang as he tried to get far too many feet under himself.
Beside him, the flame golem’s encasement broke, the air filling with promise of a heat that even he was sure would be too much for him.
As his vision swam and the arm and necklaces in front of him multiplied, the flame golem screamed like a kettle, the sound burning at his ears. Instincts honed over years of being a successful – living – adventurer kicked in, his teeth sinking into Merryn’s arm as he dove away, a hellish blaze blackening the ground where he’d been standing and reducing the macaroni necklace to ash.
Tossing the arm far from himself and potential incineration – you couldn’t reattach what didn’t exist anymore – he bit into another ice shard.
The fiery creature stomped after him, flame tipped fingers clawing at stone to get at him, barreling through the remains of its fallen companion and even, once properly led, through its half-functional companion. Which just left one.
He sighed, clenching his teeth around the ice, feeling the edges cut at his gums even as the combined heat from his mouth and the flame golem making it slick with water. One chance. But as a grandmaster of the Falling Carp, being stuck with a mouth as his only means of wielding a sword should be no obstacle.
The construct screamed.
The void blade. The ultimate technique of his school. He twisted his head and cut, the air itself splitting, the expelled inferno guttering out around him as it had no air to burn. Unfortunately, the blade also melted, becoming nothing more than water filling his mouth, and leaving him nothing to defend himself with as it lunged forward.
It’d been close. Not bad for being stuck as a dragon-fox.
There was a sharp crack above as a boulder tore itself free and slammed down into the ground, crushing the fire creature.
The door that had sealed the room slid open.
He blinked and turned to see Merryn supporting herself on her stump, Eseld supporting her just a bit. The woman was grinning like she wasn’t on death’s door, her tattoo’s barely lighting up with an anemic corpse mushroom glow.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, boss.”
Jago sat on his desk, doing his best to not be too annoyed with Eseld’s parents as they thanked him and Merryn profusely for what they did and swore up and down again that they would never leave powerful magical relics out where she could find them again.
Merryn cradled her still bandaged – but comfortably well attached arm – in a sling. “You don’t have any more of the thread though?”
Lia shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. We found that little bit on a job. If we find anymore we’ll of course bring it to the guild. Straight away. Not even any time to study it ourselves. We promise.”
Jago held back his sigh and nodded. Without that, there’d be no telling how long it would take the curse-breakers to help him. If they even could. Old magic could be tricky sometimes.
Pushing her daughter forward, the artificer’s tone sharpened. “Tell them both how sorry you are!”
To Eseld’s credit, the contrition continued to seem to be earnest. “I’m so sorry I went to the training rooms and got both of you hurt so much. And I’m sorry I accidentally cursed you. I promise I won’t do either one ever again. Ever.”
Wagging his tail, Jago pushed his head forward so she could pat it. It worked well enough as an acceptance of the apology.
“Um… I brought you something else!” she said nervously, reaching into her dress pocket.
To Jago’s credit, he didn’t flinch.
The object she produced was a thick leather strap with a golden buckle and a dangling little charm that said, “Best Teacher” in a thick, blotchy attempt at calligraphy. “It’s… um… a collar. For you. So everyone knows who you are still.”
Behind him, Merryn choked back a giggle. “It’s lovely, and I’m sure b— Master Jago loves it very much.”
Behind Eseld, her mother offered a sheepish smile. “She made most of it, but I did put a number of protection spells on it. My own spells. They’re really good, I promise. My way of saying sorry.” She cleared her throat. “And my husband is hard at work right now creating a little blade while you are… in this condition.”
Jago eyed her for a long moment before he laid down at the edge of the table so the little girl could actually reach him, Jago let her fasten the collar, only coughing a little bit as she struggled to avoid choking him while tightening and fastening it. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!” Eseld chimed. “I hope you come back to class soon. I miss you.”
“Um…” came Daveth’s voice from the doorway, “Sorry to bother you guys, but Margh needed me to let you know that somebody left a demon summoning scroll in with the wobblers? The easy to use kind.” He hesitated as he noticed the guests in the room. “Oh. Um… hello. Sorry but I just figured….”
Merryn sighed as she pushed herself up out of her chair. “Shall we, boss?”
Jago nodded. In the end, some things would never change.
Pics
I never thought I'd want to see more about Adventurer daycare but oh boy do I want to see more.
I loved this. Just a lot of fun, start to finish. Merryn was awesome, Eseld was adorable, and Jago our lovably snarky protaganist. What more could you want?
I loved this. Just a lot of fun, start to finish. Merryn was awesome, Eseld was adorable, and Jago our lovably snarky protaganist. What more could you want?
A lot of fun, yes:
But I found the beginning very confusing--I wasn't sure which of the two named characters was "he" and which was "she" for several paragraphs, for instance. Giving Merryn an action tag after that first line of dialogue would've helped a lot and maybe would've given you a chance to describe her a little. Is she tall? Chunky? Sporting blonde pigtails? Give me clues to start visualizing the characters as quickly as you can.
Also, the fight scene seemed long, long, long to me. It would probably work really well on screen or in a comic book or some other sort of visual medium, but my experience has always been that, when you've got nothing but words to work with, fights are hard to make interesting. The only advice I've got is: focus on a few pertinent details, keep things as short as possible, and change every "was" or "were" into a punchier verb.
Like I said, though, a lot of fun.
Mike
But I found the beginning very confusing--I wasn't sure which of the two named characters was "he" and which was "she" for several paragraphs, for instance. Giving Merryn an action tag after that first line of dialogue would've helped a lot and maybe would've given you a chance to describe her a little. Is she tall? Chunky? Sporting blonde pigtails? Give me clues to start visualizing the characters as quickly as you can.
Also, the fight scene seemed long, long, long to me. It would probably work really well on screen or in a comic book or some other sort of visual medium, but my experience has always been that, when you've got nothing but words to work with, fights are hard to make interesting. The only advice I've got is: focus on a few pertinent details, keep things as short as possible, and change every "was" or "were" into a punchier verb.
Like I said, though, a lot of fun.
Mike
A generally fun and entertaining fantasy ride that really puts me in mind of early Discworld.
Of course, I'm a bit more of a fan of later Discworld. :o
Whoah. Deja vu. Joke's aside, this and Necromance are kinda different stories despite both being goofy sword and sorcery jank. And both have their own strengths (though, ironically, I think the tone of the endings for both would have better swapped - Necromance gets a bit too much heart for the preceding story, Job gets not enough!)
It came up in chat, but the stakes raise in the climax kinda falls flat because there isn't actually a raising of stakes with no real danger to Merryn being presented. She takes the arm loss like a champ. And so it doesn't matter, ultimately. If you want to jar the reader, you need to -actually- make it look like it matters. As is, it might as well be a scratch. And that doesn't mean you can't have the clean ending - people can have some degree of blaseness about danger and means to patch it up well with the in the moment danger being real to the reader.
Otherwise, pacing is a bit rushy and imagery is pretty non-existant. You've got solid character voices down, but otherwise it is a lot of blank slates and white rooms. Which is a bit of a problem when a key part of your story is also the main being a random fantasy creature without easy mental parallels.
Of course, I'm a bit more of a fan of later Discworld. :o
Whoah. Deja vu. Joke's aside, this and Necromance are kinda different stories despite both being goofy sword and sorcery jank. And both have their own strengths (though, ironically, I think the tone of the endings for both would have better swapped - Necromance gets a bit too much heart for the preceding story, Job gets not enough!)
It came up in chat, but the stakes raise in the climax kinda falls flat because there isn't actually a raising of stakes with no real danger to Merryn being presented. She takes the arm loss like a champ. And so it doesn't matter, ultimately. If you want to jar the reader, you need to -actually- make it look like it matters. As is, it might as well be a scratch. And that doesn't mean you can't have the clean ending - people can have some degree of blaseness about danger and means to patch it up well with the in the moment danger being real to the reader.
Otherwise, pacing is a bit rushy and imagery is pretty non-existant. You've got solid character voices down, but otherwise it is a lot of blank slates and white rooms. Which is a bit of a problem when a key part of your story is also the main being a random fantasy creature without easy mental parallels.
So it's 3:46AM, I'm starting this review, and it'll probably be at least 4:30AM by the time I finish, so I'll likely be very incoherent by the end of this, but bear with me.
I could simply repost my "preemptive" review I gave AndrewRogue in the Discord, and it would pretty much perfectly apply to this story, but I'll go for a different approach this time around. I'll try and spew out some pretentious platitude or something that will make my opinion seem more important or wise than it actually is.
"What's gained in polish is lost in personality."
This is a good sister story to Necromance because they basically suffer from the exact opposite problems, aside from a similarity in that their opening needs a bit of a rework (I'll get to that in a second). Whereas Necromance radiated personality and humor, but was rushed, unpolished, and inconsistent, this story is an accomplishment in technical consistency and competence, but somewhat sterile, long-winded, and understated.
But first, the opening. Much like >>Baal Bunny, I was confused as to a lot of the finer details of the characters, what was going on in the scene, and what sort of creature Jago was. Part of this is in the unnecessary in media res style, of which I am not a fan. Part of this is opening on dialogue, which I am also generally not a fan (although I do make exceptions). But what it really boils down to is that the reader is not given enough information to ascertain what the hell is going on in the scene itself, and with fantasy gobblegook getting all in my eyes, it makes discerning what is being implied all the more Herculean a task. Like, I enjoy subtlety and all, but at the start of the story in a completely unfamiliar fantasy setting, it is a good idea to give me some grounding so I can catch my bearings, and I don't have to reread the opening three times to figure out what exactly is going on.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what Jago was. AndrewRogue told me he was a fox dragon, which I believe because he wrote this story but outside of the general description of a "beast" and some physical descriptions, it's not really directly stated until way, way later into the story. But on a re-read, I did manage to snag the fact that Merryn's comment that she "didn't speak dragon-fox" in the first scene was actually meant to inform me that Jago was a dragon fox. I should boop you on the nose with a newspaper like a real fox for that ploy.
So back to the comparison with Necromance. Whereas Necromancer hyper-accelerated the pacing towards the conclusion, this story really slowed down. As >>Baal Bunny points out, the action set pieces really, really dampen the progression of the story itself. I also agree with his assessment that the sort of description you're trying to pull probably isn't well-suited for the medium and likely has to be highly truncated in order to function.
Despite the fact there are a number of limbs being lost, I equate the tone of this piece to be cute and inoffensive. Something you'd give to your child to read. This is not so much to disparage the piece as a whole, but merely to state that it doesn't claim to have a deeper or emotional gravitas beyond what is presented onscreen itself. With that in mind, I think that the story could afford to be a degree more bombastic and for lack of a better word "fantastical", which I mean in the sense that the story itself could stand to step away from being so thoroughly grounded.
I don't mean this in the sense that it should be a comedy, but more to the effect that it could perhaps diverge a bit from the more clinical version of reality that it presents and be more fantastical. I understand that this is a story written by an adult with a child about an adult coping with the difficulties of occupation childrearing, and this begets some grounding that is reflective of reality, but it does not need to be framed so squarely in the mundanities of real life. If the story is meant to be cute and for all audiences, embrace the fantastical elements of the setting. If the story is supposed to be a more grounded story about an adult dealing with adult problems, inject some more mature themes and pathos. Being turned into a dragon fox presents a lot of difficulties for a handsome Grandmaster. When you lose an arm, you lose an arm, and it fucking hurts and there's blood everywhere. Currently you're lodged in the middle point between the two.
All in all, a pretty solid piece. As I've always said, you pretty much have the chops to get you where you need to go. Where you really need to improve is to make yourself stand out in terms of the personality of your writing. Right now, you're sort of relying on the cleanliness of your draft and presentation to make yourself stand out from the other entries, which is a good move. It's like being dressed in a suit and tie at a jeanshirt convention. Certainly gets attention and everyone knows you're the sharpest dresser there, but it leaves one wanting more.
Okay it's 4:30AM, I'm cutting this review and metaphor off. Have a good one.
I could simply repost my "preemptive" review I gave AndrewRogue in the Discord, and it would pretty much perfectly apply to this story, but I'll go for a different approach this time around. I'll try and spew out some pretentious platitude or something that will make my opinion seem more important or wise than it actually is.
"What's gained in polish is lost in personality."
This is a good sister story to Necromance because they basically suffer from the exact opposite problems, aside from a similarity in that their opening needs a bit of a rework (I'll get to that in a second). Whereas Necromance radiated personality and humor, but was rushed, unpolished, and inconsistent, this story is an accomplishment in technical consistency and competence, but somewhat sterile, long-winded, and understated.
But first, the opening. Much like >>Baal Bunny, I was confused as to a lot of the finer details of the characters, what was going on in the scene, and what sort of creature Jago was. Part of this is in the unnecessary in media res style, of which I am not a fan. Part of this is opening on dialogue, which I am also generally not a fan (although I do make exceptions). But what it really boils down to is that the reader is not given enough information to ascertain what the hell is going on in the scene itself, and with fantasy gobblegook getting all in my eyes, it makes discerning what is being implied all the more Herculean a task. Like, I enjoy subtlety and all, but at the start of the story in a completely unfamiliar fantasy setting, it is a good idea to give me some grounding so I can catch my bearings, and I don't have to reread the opening three times to figure out what exactly is going on.
I spent a long time trying to figure out what Jago was. AndrewRogue told me he was a fox dragon, which I believe because he wrote this story but outside of the general description of a "beast" and some physical descriptions, it's not really directly stated until way, way later into the story. But on a re-read, I did manage to snag the fact that Merryn's comment that she "didn't speak dragon-fox" in the first scene was actually meant to inform me that Jago was a dragon fox. I should boop you on the nose with a newspaper like a real fox for that ploy.
So back to the comparison with Necromance. Whereas Necromancer hyper-accelerated the pacing towards the conclusion, this story really slowed down. As >>Baal Bunny points out, the action set pieces really, really dampen the progression of the story itself. I also agree with his assessment that the sort of description you're trying to pull probably isn't well-suited for the medium and likely has to be highly truncated in order to function.
Despite the fact there are a number of limbs being lost, I equate the tone of this piece to be cute and inoffensive. Something you'd give to your child to read. This is not so much to disparage the piece as a whole, but merely to state that it doesn't claim to have a deeper or emotional gravitas beyond what is presented onscreen itself. With that in mind, I think that the story could afford to be a degree more bombastic and for lack of a better word "fantastical", which I mean in the sense that the story itself could stand to step away from being so thoroughly grounded.
I don't mean this in the sense that it should be a comedy, but more to the effect that it could perhaps diverge a bit from the more clinical version of reality that it presents and be more fantastical. I understand that this is a story written by an adult with a child about an adult coping with the difficulties of occupation childrearing, and this begets some grounding that is reflective of reality, but it does not need to be framed so squarely in the mundanities of real life. If the story is meant to be cute and for all audiences, embrace the fantastical elements of the setting. If the story is supposed to be a more grounded story about an adult dealing with adult problems, inject some more mature themes and pathos. Being turned into a dragon fox presents a lot of difficulties for a handsome Grandmaster. When you lose an arm, you lose an arm, and it fucking hurts and there's blood everywhere. Currently you're lodged in the middle point between the two.
All in all, a pretty solid piece. As I've always said, you pretty much have the chops to get you where you need to go. Where you really need to improve is to make yourself stand out in terms of the personality of your writing. Right now, you're sort of relying on the cleanliness of your draft and presentation to make yourself stand out from the other entries, which is a good move. It's like being dressed in a suit and tie at a jeanshirt convention. Certainly gets attention and everyone knows you're the sharpest dresser there, but it leaves one wanting more.
Okay it's 4:30AM, I'm cutting this review and metaphor off. Have a good one.
When I finished this story and got to Baal's comment (and now Cass's), I breathed a sigh of relief, because thank God I'm not the only one.
Author, that intro took me four or five tries. It's a very unfamiliar setting and group of characters we're about to meet, and I felt adrift for too long. We don't know who said the first line, there's missing commas and a lot of jargon in the next paragraph, we don't know who Merryn is or who she's teasing, who says the next line… Another editing pass would have done a whole lot of good. Across the whole story, actually, there were a lot of sentences that read clunky to me, that I think you would have spotted with another read. Deadlines.
And I also agree with Baal that more info about what these characters looks like would have helped out a lot. Baal is so smart. We should all listen to him.
But! I am gonna disagree with him about the fight scene. I thought it was awesome, and the length didn't bother me at all. The language could have been tighter, sure, but only a little. It's tough to balance quick action with interesting choreography, and I think you pretty much nailed it.
Other than that, all I can say is that the actual storyline kept throwing me off. The information about how a child could gain access to this level nine area didn't seem to be there. I get that her parents had kept her around when they helped design it, (which, coupled with everything else Eseld has brought to school, makes me wonder if there's a CPS in this world) but are there really no security measures in place that would keep her out… outright? Something about level nine clearance, maybe? Speaking of which, the information about her being present for said renovations could have come earlier too.
Also, holy shit Merryn, you just lost your arm! Is this a thing in this universe? That losing your arm is not a big deal? Is there a special field in this room where pain is reduced? I'm all for snark in dire situations, but pain is different. We discussed this a lot in the writeoff chat, but in case you're not on ther (har har har), establishing the stakes of this impromptu amputation can really elevate this, because at the moment the stakes clash with the real world stakes. And maybe in this universe things or different, but I needed that info up front.
But still, all in all it was fun to read. So thank you for submitting, Author, and best of luck in the shakedown.
Author, that intro took me four or five tries. It's a very unfamiliar setting and group of characters we're about to meet, and I felt adrift for too long. We don't know who said the first line, there's missing commas and a lot of jargon in the next paragraph, we don't know who Merryn is or who she's teasing, who says the next line… Another editing pass would have done a whole lot of good. Across the whole story, actually, there were a lot of sentences that read clunky to me, that I think you would have spotted with another read. Deadlines.
And I also agree with Baal that more info about what these characters looks like would have helped out a lot. Baal is so smart. We should all listen to him.
But! I am gonna disagree with him about the fight scene. I thought it was awesome, and the length didn't bother me at all. The language could have been tighter, sure, but only a little. It's tough to balance quick action with interesting choreography, and I think you pretty much nailed it.
Other than that, all I can say is that the actual storyline kept throwing me off. The information about how a child could gain access to this level nine area didn't seem to be there. I get that her parents had kept her around when they helped design it, (which, coupled with everything else Eseld has brought to school, makes me wonder if there's a CPS in this world) but are there really no security measures in place that would keep her out… outright? Something about level nine clearance, maybe? Speaking of which, the information about her being present for said renovations could have come earlier too.
Also, holy shit Merryn, you just lost your arm! Is this a thing in this universe? That losing your arm is not a big deal? Is there a special field in this room where pain is reduced? I'm all for snark in dire situations, but pain is different. We discussed this a lot in the writeoff chat, but in case you're not on ther (har har har), establishing the stakes of this impromptu amputation can really elevate this, because at the moment the stakes clash with the real world stakes. And maybe in this universe things or different, but I needed that info up front.
But still, all in all it was fun to read. So thank you for submitting, Author, and best of luck in the shakedown.
I read this just because Cassius noted a possible name drop, and I was curious to see it. As it turns out, it's kind of a non sequitur, in that whoever Pasco is, he never gets mentioned before or after, so I have no idea what that was even about. I can't recall you doing that with other characters, so I'd encourage you to either flesh that out a bit, like you did with Margh, or just cut it.
I'm going to keep this short, because I'm at work and don't have much time.
Agree with a lot of what's said above, but of course it's going to affect different readers in different ways. I wasn't as put off by the beginning. Yes, it did take me a while to figure out what was actually going on and what Jago had turned into (and indeed, that he in fact had turned into anything, instead of this being his normal form), but I was able to compartmentalize my confusion for a couple reasons.
One, the in medias res opening does often drop the reader into a situation that doesn't immediately make sense, and that will get straightened out later. For my part, I don't mind an in medias res opening (provided, of course, that there is an art to getting it right), and I don't mind dialogue openings. So without Cassius saying why he doesn't like either of those things, I don't know that at this point you can do any more than assign that to personal preference. (I will add that dialogue is traditionally seen as one of the four main ways of starting a story.)
And two, the fantasy setting prepares me to have to soldier on through things that don't initially make sense. As an additional factor, the choice of limited narrator also puts me in the head of someone who is confused himself about what's happening (though not about the mechanics of the world at large).
The fight scene. I agree with both Baal and Miller. I'm with Miller in that I don't think it was done badly. I could visualize the actions taken, and it kept up a good pace. I think it was effective. But I'm with Baal in that it hurt the story's pacing, but for a different reason in my opinion. And that reason is that it took up such a big chunk of the story's word count to relate something that ultimately didn't matter that much, at least to the story's theme.
Then the ending. There's a soft resolution, that the girl is safe and her parents contrite, and maybe that's enough? Except that there's not something to really tie it up well. The last line just kind of fizzles out instead of having a lot of punch, and I might guess you were running up against the deadline.
Last thing I'll mention is the editing, which is going to get some leeway anyway, for such a time-limited event, and that also possibly points to not having much time to edit. Some of it was pretty obvious things, like extraneous words, but there were some more subtle things that you maybe can't blame on the time. Like there were persistent problems with participles being dangling modifiers or syncing up actions that don't make sense to be.
Still, this was a fun story, and reading it in isolation, I would expect something of this caliber to rank pretty high. It must have been a very strong round for this to finish in the middle. Though that did earn you a medal!
I'm going to keep this short, because I'm at work and don't have much time.
Agree with a lot of what's said above, but of course it's going to affect different readers in different ways. I wasn't as put off by the beginning. Yes, it did take me a while to figure out what was actually going on and what Jago had turned into (and indeed, that he in fact had turned into anything, instead of this being his normal form), but I was able to compartmentalize my confusion for a couple reasons.
One, the in medias res opening does often drop the reader into a situation that doesn't immediately make sense, and that will get straightened out later. For my part, I don't mind an in medias res opening (provided, of course, that there is an art to getting it right), and I don't mind dialogue openings. So without Cassius saying why he doesn't like either of those things, I don't know that at this point you can do any more than assign that to personal preference. (I will add that dialogue is traditionally seen as one of the four main ways of starting a story.)
And two, the fantasy setting prepares me to have to soldier on through things that don't initially make sense. As an additional factor, the choice of limited narrator also puts me in the head of someone who is confused himself about what's happening (though not about the mechanics of the world at large).
The fight scene. I agree with both Baal and Miller. I'm with Miller in that I don't think it was done badly. I could visualize the actions taken, and it kept up a good pace. I think it was effective. But I'm with Baal in that it hurt the story's pacing, but for a different reason in my opinion. And that reason is that it took up such a big chunk of the story's word count to relate something that ultimately didn't matter that much, at least to the story's theme.
Then the ending. There's a soft resolution, that the girl is safe and her parents contrite, and maybe that's enough? Except that there's not something to really tie it up well. The last line just kind of fizzles out instead of having a lot of punch, and I might guess you were running up against the deadline.
Last thing I'll mention is the editing, which is going to get some leeway anyway, for such a time-limited event, and that also possibly points to not having much time to edit. Some of it was pretty obvious things, like extraneous words, but there were some more subtle things that you maybe can't blame on the time. Like there were persistent problems with participles being dangling modifiers or syncing up actions that don't make sense to be.
Still, this was a fun story, and reading it in isolation, I would expect something of this caliber to rank pretty high. It must have been a very strong round for this to finish in the middle. Though that did earn you a medal!
>>Miller Minus
Not so much smart:
I'd argue, as rusty and crusty with experience that can resemble smartness in a dim light... :)
Mike
Not so much smart:
I'd argue, as rusty and crusty with experience that can resemble smartness in a dim light... :)
Mike