Bjorn took Meira’s words and left to go seek out Alaric, Tayla, and Rickie. Oddly out of everyone in their party Bjorn was the least wounded, Rickie being a close second, even if he wasn’t a part of the party.
The field hospital was surprisingly confusing to navigate. There wasn’t any easily discernible rhythm or reason behind the different areas. There were patients with the now all too familiar noodle arms of spider bites, right next to a now dead body of someone who had their head mostly cut off. There were 5 distinct sections to the hospital though. 4 roughly built buildings and the one large tent he and Meira had been dedicated to. The entire complex was way over capacity with the dead, dying, and the injured.
Bjorn was mostly wandering around listlessly trying to find either Alaric or Tayla, he doubted Rickie was brought here with his not too serious injuries, if he had been brought to the hospital he would have been led to where Meira and Bjorn had been. Bjorn had wandered through one of the buildings as healers, alchemists and mages bustled about trying to save who they could. No one even batted an eye at Bjorn or told him to leave.
As he left the first building and started making his way towards the second one a young woman in white healer's robes approached Bjorn. “Can I help you? You seem to be lost and or looking for someone.”
“Hi yes, you can. I am actually looking for two people. One is a tiefling woman about yay high. She had a nasty case of split eye, her name is Tayla. The other one I am looking for is a dwarf with a large salt and pepper beard. He had rather serious injuries, so much so that those who rescued us were going to leave him behind and let him die, they didn’t think he would survive.”
“Hmmm. I don’t know about a dwarf, his story is fairly similar to many who have come back from the fight today. As for the tiefling that I can kind of halfway help you. She kind of stood out as we don’t see many tieflings around here. She was quickly saw to and was healed, I am not sure where she ended up after she was cleared to leave. We can go to our storage area and see if anyone has seen her lately.”
“That would be great, thank you.”
Together they walked to one of the 4 buildings, it was the smallest of the 4. The interior of the supply building was pretty bare. There wasn’t really anything that covered the walls, and the floorplan was large and open. The entire floor plan looked oddly like a Costco. There were tables upon tables laden high with various tools needed to care for the wounded. There were extra shirts, linens, bandages, bottles filled with unknown liquids, jars filled with salves, to name a few.
Because of the woman standing right next to him Bjorn barely got so much as a glance from many of the workers before they returned to their tasks. The woman quickly began to ask those who were nearby if they had seen the tiefling. It didn’t take long, the 3rd person she asked told them exactly where to find Tayla. Once they had a destination they walked into the largest of the ramshackle buildings, it was actually the only one that had a second floor. They quickly mounted the stairs and turned a corner entering a large room lined with beds.
Sitting by the foot of one of the beds halfway down the long room sat Tayla. Bjorn turned back to the healer. “Thank you for your help.” Her only response was a slight bow before she backed away and went back to work. Bjorn walked down the long room passing bed after bed with people covered in bandages. He walked up right behind Tayla and spoke. “Man Alaric you look like shit.”
For his part Alaric was sitting half way up in his bed. His normal tan complexion was barely any paler. In all honesty Alaric looked like he was mostly healed if not fully healed. Alaric gave Bjorn a grumpy look. “These damn pansies won’t let me leave yet. They have done all that they can and I actually feel right as rain. When I was brought into this room I guess I was a sight for sore eyes because they brought one of their fancy life mages over to heal me. And guess who it was.”
“I don’t know. Who was it?” Bjorn humored Alaric.
“It was that rat bastard who taught Meira life magic without her permission. That damn midget took one look at me and scowled. I am guessing he recognized me, after all I did knock his lights out when he was being a bit of a dickwad. I do have to say though, he sure knows his stuff. He kept casting healing spell after healing spell and the next thing I know I was actually at full hp again. The only thing that hasn’t recovered yet is my stamina, I have a rather nasty debuff though. My stamina regeneration rate is 1/10th of what it normally is. The sissy told me it was because of how intense of a healing session I had to go through, he told me that if I don’t do anything all of tomorrow I should be mostly fine. So now I am stuck in this bed and they won’t let me leave.”
“Hey at least you are fully healed, you had me worried there for a bit. Some of the guards were actually going to leave you behind and let you die.”
Alaric’s expression sored. “Yeah, I vaguely remember something about that. I'm glad that Meira took offense to that and sent some healing my way. “
Bjorn gave a puzzled look. “How do you know that Meira cast some healing on you? By the time she did that you must have been out by then.”
“You dunce it…” Alaric started to speak before he was cut off by Tayla.
“It’s because of his combat log. It is some fairly simple deduction really.” Alaric deflated a little at having his rant cut short.
“What do you mean combat log? What is that?”
“Well you should have figured this out by now.” Tayla said. “When you get into a fight those prompts go to a separate area in your HUD. It would be rather distracting to have them show up all of the time. I think by default your combat log is not on. So you end up getting all of the notifications all at once.”
“When I woke up the first thing I did was check my combat log.” Alaric cut in. “I saw that I got wounded by a spider, the next one was Meira casting her weak slow heal on me. Then to top it off the last thing I saw was getting healed by that little cock gobbler.”
“I was wondering as to why I wasn’t getting those anymore. I must have turned on my combat log by accident. How do I change that? And how do I access it?”
They walked Bjorn through the many many menus that he had access to in his HUD. Many of which Bjorn had never even seen before. Eventually they were able to navigate him to the area that had his combat log. Opening that window he noticed a box that was checked that was labeled ‘Enable combat log.’ right underneath it was another box labeled ‘Combat log quick access.’ which was unchecked. Mentally he checked that box and a new icon appeared on the right side of his vision. Mentally he clicked on it and a window popped up.
You have hit level 9 snatcher spider for 37 bludgeoning damage.
Level 12 snatcher spider hits you a glancing blow, you take 13 points of slashing damage.
You have slain level 17 snatcher spider you are awarded: 3,750 xp (2500 base)
…
The list continued to scroll on and on. Hundreds of damage notifications sparsely broken up with kill notifications and experience notifications.
“Well that will be handy to know in the future.” Bjorn said. Still there was one issue with having access to it. When he opened the combat log it was a huge list that took up his entire field of view. With a few mental commands he shrunk the combat log down so it appeared in the upper left hand of his vision and then he made it show it showed only the last 5 entries into the combat log.
Bjorn had zoned out the conversation as he worked, his name brought him back to reality though. “Bjorn, hello? Anyone in there?” Tayla said.
“Uh, yeah, I am here. I promise I wasn’t just ignoring both of you.”
“Sure you weren’t.” Alaric said clearly unconvinced. “Anyways, are you going to answer my question?”
“What question?”
“Where is Meira?”
“She is down at the medical tent.” Without seeing recognition on either of their faces Bjorn continued. “It's the tent where they sent less serious injuries to, to be healed. As it turns out they only dedicate their magical healers, or Biomancers as I have heard someone say today, to the most serious cases. Minor cuts and breaks are left to heal through either natural means or they are cared for until one of the Biomancers is free to go and help. That is where they directed us to go.”
“Ah, so why didn’t she come with you?” Tayla asked.
“Well after she woke up she helped me with caring for the injured. She ended up taxing herself a little too much and she is sleeping to recover. We were able to empty out the tent before she decided to take a nap.”
There was a lull in conversation as everyone's minds went down different tracks. “Have you seen Rickie?” Alaric asked, breaking the silence.
The question was not surprising as over the last week and a half since they have been thrust into this situation everyone who got drafted had grown close. And now of the original 10 that had been sent down only half were left.
“I haven’t.” Bjorn said. “I actually was thinking about him earlier. You do know that Chase died in the attack right?”
Tayla just nodded her head, but Alaric’s face grew stiff. “No, I didn't know that. I never saw what happened to him. But I figured something like that happened when I wasn’t able to spot him during the retreat. How did he die?”
“He got caught in the webbing and burned to death.” Tayla said.
“He didn’t deserve to go that way. He was a good man, at least she should have gone down fighting, not caught in a trap.”
Bjorn shifted to his other foot before replying. “None of us will disagree with that. I was thinking it through. With Chase gone, Rickie doesn’t really have anyone else that we know of. I was thinking we could invite him to join us if neither of you are against that.”
“That's fine.”
“That's a good Idea.” Tayla replied.
“Sounds good, I’ll go and see if I can find him.”
During the entire conversation Tayla had kept her face hidden from Bjorn, her eyes downcast. When he said the last part, Tayla finally peeked her head up to make eye contact with Bjorn. Her one eye that had been dangling out of her eye socket was now repaired and back in place. But it wasn’t fully repaired by the look of it. Her usual red irises and black sclera was now a milky white. Even further there was a clear line where the eye had been cut.
“Your eye.” Bjorn said as his hand drifted up to cup her face. “Can you see out of it?”
She shook her head. “No, they managed to save the flesh of the eye but they weren’t able to repair it. So now I am blind in one eye. It’s not the worst, but it won’t be fun trying to relearn all of my fine motor skills. My depth perception is way off.”
“Well at least you weren’t left with an empty eye socket and have to wear an eye patch everywhere you go to hide its unsightly nature.” Alaric piped up from where he lay in a halfway upright position. His comment earned him a hefty backhand smack to his arm.
All three of the friends chuckled. “Alright, I am off to try and find Rickie. We will come back for you tomorrow Alaric, that way you aren’t totally lost.” Bjorn turned and started back towards the hallway.
“You should go with him.” Alaric said.
“Will you be fine?” Tayla asked.
“Go, I can’t do anything anyways. If I want to be discharged I will have to stay here until tomorrow anyways.”
Tayla took off after Bjorn and caught up to him in short order. Together they made their way down out of the temporary building and headed towards the tent Meira was napping in. It was weird, the rest of the field hospital was packed full of people moving every which way, and then the tent was barren, almost devoid of life. They found Meira tucked up in a bed against a wall. Shrugging they set off heading away from the field hospital to try and find Rickie.
The large cavern that they found themselves in was filled with tents, temporary buildings, and people. The field hospital took up roughly 25% of the total area. With 75% of the remaining complex left to search they just kind of wandered around looking for Rickie. As they searched they found many different points of interest in camp. They found a large temporary building that had several high leveled and elaborately dressed soldiers; they quite accurately determined that it was the command center. They also found the mess that wasn’t the one designated for just the field hospital. It was a sprawling complex filled with tables and tons of cook fires and even a few ovens. The area that was filled with the clang of steel on steel ended up being the armorers area. Last but not least they found an area that was dedicated to alchemists.
While at the armorers area they found out that if they dropped off any of their gear the armorers will repair it free of charge. So they stripped out of their damaged armor and left it behind for them to do whatever they could with it. Bjorn also left behind Alaric’s heavy metal armor, which he grabbed off a table as they were leaving the field hospital.
After all their searching they still hadn’t found Rickie. So if he wasn’t throughout the center of the forward operating base they decided to check the outside. They next moved to the cavern walls and started to walk around the entire perimeter of the camp. And there he was, he was sitting with his back against the wall in a nondescript section of camp. He was surrounded by a sea of tents. As they approached he didn’t look up, he had his head drooped into his hands as he sat there silently. They both took a seat on either side of the man. They didn’t say anything, they just sat there silently giving their support.
“Chase didn’t want to come here. He wanted to head over to Vanta, but there was a good job being protection for a trader. So we took that job. He had a sister in Vanta that he wanted to see, but we were short on cash. We figured that the protection job would have been easy to accomplish before we made our way to Vanta.” The big man stopped and took a deep sigh. “Now he will never get to see her again. I shouldn’t have pushed him into coming here.”
“Hey, that isn’t fair to you.” Bjorn started.
“I don’t care about fair. My one and only friend in this world is now dead, because of me. If I had been stronger I could have saved him. If we hadn’t taken that job we wouldn’t have been in Blackrock Bay. If he hadn’t been in Blackrock Bay we wouldn’t have been drafted. I don’t care what you say or what kind words you use. I killed Chase and that is the cold hard truth.”
“That isn’t true.” Tayla said. “He was the one who decided to come with you. You are not the one who killed him, it was the spiders. If you want to blame someone for Chase’s death, blame those in charge. They are the ones who wouldn’t let us leave and forced us down here to fight.”
“Trust me, I do blame them. But I still have the lion's share of the blame. While I was busy killing spiders I ignored my friend who was stuck and held upright, slowly burning to death.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but you are actually the reason we all are alive right now.” Bjorn said.
Rickie let out a small chuckle. “What’s the point of living if we can’t protect those who matter the most to us?”
“I for one am glad that you stepped up and saved us. If it wasn’t for you those who matter the most to me would be dead right now. And I am grateful for your capabilities and how you were able to save all of us.” Bjorn said.
“I haven’t spent anywhere as much time with the group as Alaric Meira and Bjorn, but during that time I have grown to love each and every one of them. So thank you. Thank you for saving those that I love Rickie. You are hurting because you weren’t able to save the one who mattered to you. But your actions weren’t for nothing. You managed to save those who matter the most to me.”
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Rickie didn’t reply. Bjorn gave the man a sidelong glance to see tears streaming down his face. “How did you and Chase meet?”
Rickie sniffled and cleared his throat. “We have known each other since we were kids. We both grew up in Little Grove, a small village that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Why doesn’t Little Grove exist anymore?” Tayla asked.
“The war with Cronkrum. We were a small farming village right on the border in between Cronkrum and Escar. Our village was one of the incidents that sparked the war. We officially belonged to Escar, so when goblins raided our town it pushed Escar to defend. We were mostly a peaceful village. No one had so much as held a weapon, all we did was farm. When the goblins attacked we were caught by surprise. Chase and I were 12 at the time.”
Rickie paused to let out a little sob. “When the attack happened we were playing in a field. As we had done many different times, but things were different this day. We normally played on the north side of town, but that morning Gisabella told us about a den of foxes in a field south of town. So together the three of us went south that day to see the foxes. It was around midday that we realized something was off.”
“From the direction of town we could see a peel of smoke slowly drifting up. That in itself wasn’t something that was cause for concern, many homes burned wood and their smoke often could be seen drifting up over town. On that day the smoke that was normally white was actually black. As soon as we saw the black smoke we started to make our way back to town as quickly as we could. That was when we started to hear the screams. Our fast pace turned into a rapid sprint.”
“As we neared town we got intercepted by Gisabella’s dad. He was covered in blood and not all of it was red. He was missing his right arm below the elbow. I will never forget the way the blood spurted from his body. When he saw us he sprinted over to us and told us to run. The rhythmic spurt of blood grew fainter and fainter as he collapsed to the ground before he was able to make it to us. He died right in front of us. Gisabella watched her father die, she was 10. She was old enough to understand that he was dead, but she was too young to understand the implications. We grabbed her and ran, we had to drag her away from her fathers corpse.”
“That night we stumbled on a few survivors of town, that was how we got the story and found out that Goblins attacked and killed almost everyone. We all were on the run, but our horrors weren’t finished yet. We all had spent the entire day running away from the goblins. We were refugees and we didn’t know it yet. When we stopped it was close to early morning. We needed to rest.”
At this point Tayla had tears on her face matching Rickie. “We had to stop even though we should have kept going. Gisabella had been quiet all day after she saw her dad die. To be fair we all were quiet, it hadn’t fully set in what had transpired that day. In the early morning the goblins caught up to us. Throughout the day we came across others who were fleeing and we had grouped together. We were fools, separately we probably had a chance. But us traveling together made it easier to track us. There were 15 of us left. They caught us again and attacked us again. We fled and this time only 7 of us were left. We had only got a few hours of rest before we had to flee again.”
“We entered into a day of them performing hit and run tactics on us. Throughout the day and our attempts to flee they slowly picked us off. It was obvious they reveled in our fear as each time they attacked they could have easily killed off more than one of us, but each time they only picked one. They let us run, and the entire time their laughter could be heard echoing after our fleeing bodies. I think they enjoyed the screams, each time we ran the screams of pain and fear chased after our fleeing backs. Their screams sometimes lasted for minutes, sometimes only a few seconds before they were cut short.”
“They must have thought that the kids were easy pickings because we were the ones that they left for last. By this point we were all exhausted and couldn’t move much. So we stopped and resigned ourselves to our fates. When the goblins next caught up to us they must have hated us giving us as they grabbed Chase and I by our hair and drug us a few feet away and left us with our backs up against a tree. There were 8 of the monsters. They all went back to where Gisabella lay in the dirt not moving or doing anything to protect herself. They ripped her clothes off and started to rape her. They raped a 10 year old right in front of both Chase and myself. They left us in a place where we could see everything that was happening. It was the 5th goblin that was having its way with her when he finally killed her. It pulled out its dagger and sank it into her throat. As she lay there sputtering trying to catch her last breath it just kept going. When she died it didn’t stop the goblin or the one after it, or the one after that one.”
Rickie’s voice had grown hoarse as he recounted his tale. “The worst part of it was that we were too tired to do anything about it. There was nothing we could do but sit there and watch it all happen. So that is what we did, we sat there and watched the goblins use her corpse as they wished. As we were filled with the knowledge that we would be next and there was nothing we could do to stop it. But obviously that wasn’t to be our fate. As the last goblin was finishing up with Gisabella we were found by a patrol from Escar. The knights fell upon the goblins and I watched those soldiers kill the goblins in the most gruesome way they could. They tortured the goblins and took their time killing them. We just sat there and watched them do it. Although it sickened me at the time I took glee in watching the goblins suffer the same fate they just put us through for the last day.”
“They tried to take us away so that we didn’t have to watch but we wouldn’t let them. We both wanted to see what they did to the goblins. When they finished with the goblins the majority of the soldiers continued on their patrol heading for our now ruined home. 4 of the soldiers got sent back to Fort Breg to report on what they saw. We got taken along with the messengers. From that day forward we were inseparable.”
The tears of sadness had turned to tears of anger. “I am sorry you had to go through that Rickie, no one should have to put up with that. That shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
For his part Bjorn didn’t say anything, he didn’t think he would be able to say anything past the lump in his throat. So instead he just sat there in silence.
“It is what it is. It happened, we had to deal with it. From that day forward we vowed to never rest until we killed every single goblin. We kept that promise. We ended up adopted by two different families in Fort Breg and they took care of us. When we were 16 we left home and started to take our revenge. For years we roamed the now ravaged war torn land hunting down as many goblins as we could possibly find. We never were a part of the Escar army, but we worked with them often. Eventually we decided we needed a break.”
“You said that Chase had a sister, how did she have one when everyone died?”
“She wasn’t truly his sister. It was the daughter of the family that took him in. They weren’t overly close, but they still spent over 4 years living together. She ended up marrying one of the soldiers who got sent to the frontlines between Cronkrum and Escar. When he was discharged she went to Vanta with him and they set up a life together. He hadn’t seen her since he and I left to go kill goblins.”
Rickie paused and wiped the tears away from his face. “We took a break because we had no money and as it turns out there isn’t any riches in killing goblins, not for Escar in the no man's land that has grown between the two countries. It was getting hard to get food so we left the front to make some coins so we could go back to killing goblins. We survived hundreds of battles, I never would have guessed that here, not on the frontlines, is where he would lose his life.”
“What are your plans from here?” Bjorn asked past the lump in his throat.
“I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do. The only thing that I know I need to do is go to Vanta and inform Chase’s sister of his untimely death.”
“Have you thought about coming with us?” Tayla asked.
Rickie was quiet for a long moment. “I think I will. I will join you in whatever you do. I do have one condition though.”
“Anything.” Bjorn replied without hesitation. “You are our friend, friends do anything for each other.”
A small half smile briefly appeared on his lips. “Thank you. I want to go to Vanta and tell Chase’s sister his fate. As long as we accomplish that I have nothing else that I need or want to accomplish in this life.”
“Of course we could do that. I myself kind of want to go back to Vanta, I have some unfinished business to do there.” Tayla said.
“That’s settled then. We should go collect Meira and then report to the quartermaster and see where they want to assign us next.”
“Works for me.”
“Same here.”
The three companions got up from where they sat against the wall and started making their way through the tent city, heading back to the field hospital. What they hadn’t noticed while Rickie had his back to the wall was his leg wound. As well as the hundred or so small cuts that covered his skin. There was a large chuck of meat missing from his left thigh muscle, it was roughly 5 inches across and a foot and a half long and two inches deep. The trooper barely walked any different even with the massive gash that covered his leg. If anything he had just the slightest of limps in his left leg as he walked.
“Are you okay? Do you need me to help support you?” Bjorn asked.
“I’ll be fine, I have had worse injuries. It might take me a while to recover but I will in the end. And no offence Bjorn, but I have seen you fight. You would be barely strong enough to hold me upright. So no, I don’t need help.”
“Still we can have Meira cast some healing magic on you to see if it will help.” Tayla said.
“Fine, fine. If it will get the two of you to stop treating me like a child I will let her try and heal me.”
It took them a while to make it back to the field hospital, being unfamiliar with the layout of the tents. It was honestly kind of telling of this army's capabilities, the entire tent city was laid out so haphazardly that it was difficult to navigate. Just like this army which was thrown together out of anyone and everyone who could potentially fight, this tent city too matched that aesthetic perfectly.
When they made it back to the field hospital they found Meira still asleep in her cot laying against one of the outer edges of the mostly open air tent. When they woke her up she took one look at Rickie’s state and made him sit down and she began to cast her healing magic on him as fast as she could. The large man’s skin began to slowly knit itself back together as each of the small cuts he had gained began to crawl and the scabs that had formed over the cuts fell away revealing the same unblemished chocolate skin it was before the fight.
Once all of Rickie’s small cuts and blemishes were fully healed she started to focus her ministrations on his leg. It was more resistant to the healing magic than the rest of his cuts. After several castings of her weak slow heal the wound was still mostly fresh, even though the amount of blood it was leaking was considerably less than it was at the start of her care. In a Hail Mary attempt Bjorn took out one of his weaker healing potions he brewed and poured the contents onto Rickie’s wound.
The healing potion used in conjunction with the healing magic did the trick, the wound fully closed up, but the meat underneath wasn’t fully recovered. His thigh had a small dent the right shape and in the right place for the wound. Rickie assured them it was good enough and his body would still recover in a few days, and not to worry about it. They decided to take him for his word.
Once everything was taken care of they made their way to where Alaric lay, he was just as disgruntled as he was before, and there had been no change in his release date. So with nothing else really important that needed to be done they took off and tried to find the quartermaster's office. They made their way to the main administration building and were just about to head inside when Rickie noticed something. Along one side of the building small stalls had been built, they wandered over to investigate.
As it turned out the stalls on the side of the building was where the quartermasters had set up a registration area of sorts. They did so to make it less of an issue when anyone who needed anything had to slog through the already too full building. The open air and multiple booth arrangement helped the administration flow better.
When they approached the administrator that sat behind the desk had his head bent down and was scratching on a piece of paper with a quill. “What is your name and position?”
Not sure who should answer as all 4 of them walked up at the same time. Instead of answering they stood there looking at each other awkwardly.
The break in the normal flow annoyed the administrator so he looked up with a scowl on his face. Which quickly faded upon realizing he was dealing with a group instead of an individual. “Who are all of you? And what do you need?”
Bjorn was the one who stepped forward. “This is Rickie, Meira, Tayla, and I am Bjorn. We were stationed at one of the defensive tunnels. We had orders to meet up with the main army and through our tunnel there was a trap and most of our squad was killed.”
“Ah yes, you must be some of the survivors under Corporal Jenkins. Well, used to be corporal.”
“Uh yeah that one. When we came to camp we were directed directly to the field hospital as all of us had a wound of some sort. We were just cleared and need to be assigned a place for us to rest. There is a 5th of our group.”
As soon as Bjorn got to the meat and potatoes of why they came to the quartermasters the clerks head dropped back down and his quill started to scratch at the paper once again. “Very well,” the clerk said as soon as Bjorn finished his sentence. He said it so soon after Bjorn finished his sentence it almost felt like he cut him off, trying to head off Bjorn saying anything else. “I noticed that you are 2 of each sex, would you like 1 or 2 tents. Our options are 2, 4, and 6 person tents. Luckily for you with our number of losses we have spares in each size.”
“One should do nicely.” Meira said.
“Alright.” He scribbled a few more lines on his page and set it aside. He then stood and walked to a table that had been set up behind all of the little booths and returned shortly with a stack of papers. Leafing through it he grabbed a single page and set the rest aside. From how he was holding the page it was hard to see what exactly the paper said, but at the top Bjorn could easily see vacant. The administrator put his hand over the paper and it briefly glowed, and the vacant changed to filled +1.
The man then set the page to the side. “You shall be assigned tent 3-147b on the north side of camp. That will be your space, there will be 6 beds in the tent. If for some reason we have need of it we will assign someone else to that bed. You may go there and set your stuff.”
The way the man said that last part, it was clearly a dismissal, but Bjorn wasn’t finished yet. “Could you tell us where Corporal Jenkins is, we need to report to him to find out our orders.”
The man’s response was one of clear annoyance. “Corporal Jenkins has been demoted back to a private and his command has been disbanded. This course of action stemmed from his choice to retract his scout leading to the death of almost 80% of the men under his control, including but not limited to Corporal Gulnag. So you are currently without orders. Go to your tent and wait for your orders. Sometime within the next day or two you will be reassigned to where your skills will be best suited.”
“Got it.” Bjorn said, barely able to keep a smile off of his face at hearing about Jenkin’s fate. She was a cruel mistress at times but sometimes she gets something right.
“Oh, and if you have anything that needs to be repaired, drop it at the blacksmith and they will fix it to the best of their abilities. Now unless you have something else you would like to ask about or add you are dismissed.”
As they started to walk away the clerk called after them. “Wait, what is the name of your last member so that we can get all 5 of you properly assigned?”
“His name is Alaric.” Rickie said. The clerk's head dropped once again as he started to scratch down something on the paper.
They left quickly sinking into the sea of white tents trying to find 3-147b. It took them a good hour and a half of searching before they stumbled across the tent they had been assigned. Each tent had a small plaque set out on the ground before the flap that had the tents number on it. You would think that there would be some rhythm or reason as to the numbering system, but that is a completely wrong assumption. If you were lucky there would be 4 or even 5 tents that had sequential numbers, but that was a rarity. When they found their tent their neighboring tents were labeled, A12, 1-B16, and simply Garry. It was basically sheer dumb luck that they were able to find their tent at all.
They found their tent in a little cul-de-sac of sorts. With the odd layout of tents they somehow neighbored 3 tents on both sides. Opening the flap to the large tent they found the interior to be surprisingly spacious, there was a few feet of open space in the front of the tent, then the 6 beds, they each had a small wooden trunk set beside it. Upon closer inspection they were all empty except for one, and its contents was a single copper coin. Which was quickly removed and tossed to Rickie. He deftly caught it and quickly pocketed the coin.
“Well now what?” Tayla asked.
“You heard the man, we are to stay here for at least a day, maybe even two before we get reassigned.” Meira replied.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I am not going to waste my down time. I came across the alchemist’s area, I want to either help out or explore it.” Bjorn said. “I do have a project that I want to work on.”
“The venom one?” Meira asked with a hint of disapproval in her voice. It was rather obvious she wasn't fully over her reaction the last time he asked for her help.
“Yeah that one.” Bjorn said. “I think I am on to something but I will need to figure that out. Besides, there might be some alchemists who would have some ideas that we could work on together.”
“Yeah fair, I think I will spend some time at the field hospital, it is good practice, and I will get to help people while I do so.”
“I don’t have much to do. Or really any idea what to do.” Rickie said.
“Same.” Tayla chimed in.
Meira flopped down on her new bed. “Besides, I have a decision to make. I might just sleep on it.”
“Oh? And what decision is that?” Tayla asked with curiosity thick in her voice.
“That is a secret, and you will have to wait until tomorrow to find out.”
Tayla stuck her tongue out at Meira. “Well that is just rude. Why get our hopes up and make us all curious for no reason really at all?”
“That is for me to decide and you to find out later.” Meira said as she yawned deeply, sleep heavy in her voice. “Anyways I will talk to you all in the morning.” She quickly and rather unceremoniously fell to sleep.
(You may skip to the next part if you don’t care about skill advancement.)
Congratulations you have gained the skill: Heavy armor. I am going to tell you a little story. One day a man was walking down the road and accidentally kicked a rock. “Ow, fuck that.” He thought so he made himself some light armor boots. The next day he was walking down the same road and accidentally kicked the same rock. “Fuck, again? Time to fix that.” The man thought to himself again. So he made himself some medium armor boots. On the third day he traveled down the same road again and accidentally kicked the rock for a third time. This time it didn’t hurt, but it still wasn’t pleasant. “Still not good enough.” He thought to himself a 3rd time. So he made himself some heavy armor boots. Then on the fourth day he was walking down the road and the rock was gone. It had been moved to the side of the road. What has this got to do with heavy armor? Who knows, but the moral of the story is, don’t be an idiot like this guy.
Wooty doo, you have gained a skill level in heavy armor. Not that I think you need to gain these levels if you just don’t get hit. Sounds like a skill issue to me. You have reached skill level: 2. The effectiveness of your heavy armor will be increased by 6%. Your 5% movement speed decrease per piece of heavy armor is still maintained.
You have advanced your skill level in small blades, reaching skill level 6. Your attacks with daggers and knives now deal 12% more damage over base value. Additionally critical strikes done with your small blades will deal 6% more damage.
You have advanced your skill level in swordsmanship, reaching skill level 9. Your attacks with swords now deal 27% more damage over base value.
You have advanced your skill level in Earth magic. reaching skill level 9. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You have advanced your skill level in Water magic. reaching skill level 8. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You have advanced your skill level in Dark magic. reaching skill level 4. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You are now level 18, you have 3 (base 4) attribute points to distribute.
(Again we still have 1 level to go before he actually gets new points to distribute.)
You have advanced your skill level in healing, reaching skill level 7. Wounds that you treat will heal 10.5% faster. (I don’t like decimals so I am going to give you a freebie.) 11% faster.
