The Pinnacle Warrior

Astrid stepped forward to speak, but was cut off by Tristan. “There’s a whole lot that I need to talk to you about, and none of it can be said in front of the rest of the members of the Guild. We’re going to your office now.”

The normally good humored man’s voice dripped with derision and anger as he pointed with an accusing finger into Klara’s face. Klara was forced to look up into Tristan’s face, and he didn’t do anything but glare down at her. Astrid wanted to say something, to attempt to back the Guild representative up, but Ursula walked up behind her and pinched Astrid’s elbow. It seemed to be effortless for the Cursificer, but when Astrid tried to twist her arm out of the smaller woman’s grip, she couldn’t move, and try as she might, it was to no avail.

“Don’t talk.” She spoke with her usual congeniality, but her tone was firm, even as her eyes creased closed from her wide smile. Once she seemed to be assured of Astrid‘]’s continued silence, she let go and stepped away. In front of them, the altercation between Tristan and Klara continued.

“Then we can go in to talk in just a moment.” Klara nodded once as she turned her attention from the accusing Pugilist to the drake corpse on the ground. She noted appreciatively once or twice before looking at Astrid. “Considering you’re the ones who dragged this all the way here, I suppose you killed it?”

“Yes.” Asher grinned wide as she said as much. “We were helping Christophe get out of the Dungeon proper and it was dragged along with him when we pulled him into the branch.”

“And he was unable to take care of himself. Interesting.” Contrary to Astrid‘s expectations, Klara‘s face soured in displeasure when she said that. She looked at Tristan, who held his arms out to his sides in an expression of whatever he was feeling. Astrid watched the exchange, more and more confused by the moment as the Steels talked in circles around something she didn’t know and couldn’t see. “So you’ve been busy. We’ll have to talk more about this later. I’ll take this for now, I’ll pay you in a little bit. Sorry, I’m the only representative around right now, so you’ll have to wait.”

Klara didn’t say anything more as she turned and swiped a hand over the drake corpse. It disappeared into some spatial containment equipment she had, and then she whipped to stalk back into the inn. The Silver Wind followed after her without any further conversation. All of the Steel tiers strode through the front doors with purpose and swiftly disappeared from Astrid’s view.

With that unceremonious dismissal of sorts, Astrid looked at her party, shrugged, and walked into the inn herself. With how late it was, she was unsurprised by the total absence of other people but that wasn’t a problem. She didn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of questions right now anyways. Instead, she groaned as she slipped into a chair, looking at the bar in hopes that Tomas would be there. No such luck. When she continued to look, hoping someone would come to tend bar as they heard the noises of the night, but still, nobody appeared. 

Despite everything she’d been through without issue, Astrid felt a slight hitch in her breath at the thought of not getting the warm meal she’d been looking forward to back in town. It made sense that there wasn’t all night long service, but she’d hoped nonetheless. It was stupid, and she cursed herself for her softness as a couple tears threatened to fall. Why would she cry about this? Regardless of how she tried to rationalize it, it wasn’t long before she had to force her eyes closed while mentally commanding herself not to cry. It was unbecoming, and beyond that, it was just embarrassing. A grown woman, nearly 19, and crying because she didn’t get some warm soup.

She forced herself to take several deep breaths and tried to recover. To her surprise, gentle notes filled the air. St some point Benedict had pulled out his flute, and began playing his Song of Healing. When she forced herself to raise her head and squint her eyes at the Bard, he apologized, saying, “I didn’t realize how tired you were, I’m sorry. I should’ve been helping out a little bit more.”

The absurdity of the sentence pulled Astrid from her spiraling mood. She chuckled a couple times while covering her eyes with her thumb and middle finger. Once she finished doing her best to cover the remnants of her emotion, she shook her head before standing up and looking at Benedict.

“You’re right. I’m just tired. I need to go back to my room, get some sleep. You all should do that too, because I don’t know if we’re gonna take tomorrow off, but we’ll be back in the Dungeon before long.”

“You promised! We’re not going into the Dungeon tomorrow, we’re getting me new armor! Especially since my damn bracers are destroyed.“ Felix jumped in, and the heavy pall of disappointment that’d settled over Astrid faded away. She nodded a couple times then made her way towards the hallways, her party falling in step behind her as she did so. 

Once in her room, she stripped off her armor and hung it up, taking care of each part as best as she could. There were dozens of places that needed significant repairs, and that was another reason why she really shouldn’t be back in the Dungeon the next day ,or the armor would last for as long as it needed to. In an effort to fill her stomach and beat back the overwhelming flood of inconvenient emotion, Astrid snacked on the jerky and biscuits she had in her backpack as she cleaned her equipment, stripped her gambeson, and took it to where it would be washed in the washroom. Then, with painful efficiency, she washed and scrubbed her whole body, the bath entirely neglected as she dumped bucket after bucket over her head, each dousing of chilly water only to be separated by scraping herself with a brush and soap. Finally, after liters of water doused her body and ran rusty while they swept crusted blood and caked dirt from every part of her body, she was done. The soft towel was a blessing as she dried her hair and her body as she changed into her sleepwear. When at last she was done, dressed and ready to rest, her stomach was mostly full, and she laid down in her bed. Not more than a minute later, the oblivion of sleep found her.

***

Tristan

“This is ridiculous. What do you mean that was all you could do? Frankly, it’s an embarrassment that we have a bunch of children who were fighting for their lives against an Assassin as well as your assistant who was an unknown Class in the fourth floor of the Dungeon branch! Again, this was somebody that you trusted and vouched for!”

“I never vouched for him.“ Klara insisted as she scoffed. “He was already an insufferable arse in the best of times, and the fact that he’s also a representative of our enemy noble in the shadows doesn’t surprise me. I couldn’t report that I thought he was culpable to the Guild because I wasn’t positive and, insufferable and asinine he may be, if innocent, he didn’t deserve to have that witch hunt after him.”

“Then send for more back up first!” Tristan didn’t try to hold back the sparks of light that danced off of him in his fury. It had been a miracle that he’d managed to hold his tongue this long, and he wasn’t about to slow his fury now. “You thought a single Iron tier party was the best thing you could do? You know that they’ve spent most of their time in the Dungeon proper ever since they got here, right? What little we’ve seen of the fools is them nearly getting themselves killed every damned day. Are you stupid?”

“No. I’m a highly recommended and respected Guild representative.” Klara‘s voice was deadly soft.

“Then why haven’t we seen you act that way a single time?” Tristan didn’t back down, instead bellowing as he threw his arms up in disgust. “Yeah, you’re powerful, nobody’s gonna fight you on that. I’m willing to bet you were a damn fine delver when you were active, and I’m willing to bet you could have killed those two any time you wanted! I don’t know what upgrade to Mithril you selected that’s kept you from being able to evolve for these years, but it’s going to be impressive if you ever get there. The problem is that you’re not thinking! Maybe if you’d put a second of thought into just protecting those under your jurisdiction instead of trying to bring back more information in some perverse idea of making sacrifices for information, then you wouldn’t have lost four delvers! You think you’re some schemer, but instead, you’re incompetent!”

“There was no way for me to know that was going to happen.“ Klara scoffed.

“But you knew they were here! You knew they were making steps. And, with that knowledge, what did you do? You just did the bare minimum in the hopes of not tipping him off? Give him more room to maneuver and make trouble? You had suspicions, and did the bare minimum that allowed him to get desperate, while still having all the power to continue his plots, whatever they were. This is a misstep so great that I can’t begin to understand how we got here. If this wasn’t deliberate, then I’d say it’s a sign of absolute incompetence. So, Klara, are you incompetent, or are you working with some other malcontent?”

Tristan knew he’d overstepped, and Klara‘s entire body was suffused with light as her rage made itself manifest. The Pugilist, even though he was in the same tier as the Lightmage, had to close his eyes to keep from being blinded. The brothers would be fine, given their Fortitude, but most of their party would be blinded by this. When Tristan felt the searing light fade from his face, he hesitantly opened one eye. There, behind her desk, sat Klara. Her hair still danced with sparkles of light, but she seemed to have mostly regained mastery over her emotions as she breathed heavily.

“In this case,” Klara grated out, “I was incompetent.”

Tristan felt more than he saw as Christophe started to say something stupid, and he turned and made eye contact with barely contained anger and threat. Thankfully, the proud and headstrong Ranger didn’t say something that might have pushed the barely controlled woman into exploding more violently.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” Tristan said, meeting Christophe’s eyes again, “there’s some other news about things that are happening in the Dungeon itself. Christophe saw a couple things you should tell the Guild about immediately.”

***

“So how much will it cost if we decide to create armor for all three from the drake?”

“Well, Astrid, it depends on a couple different things. The biggest issue is that I know you don’t have enough material to create as much armor as you want for three adults, so it’s not possible. Maybe if you just want three cuirasses? If that’s the case, we can figure something out. Then there’s the general cost, which would probably be another gold and a half even with you providing all the materials. That problem is that they’re not really prepared for working with, and we’ll need to treat the leather and mount the scales, all of that. So, that’s a pretty significant additional cost to add to it.” He spoke steadily, as if these were things that Astrid couldn’t really understand.

“No, Matthias, you’re not understanding. We’re not looking to negotiate, because we don’t need to. Tell us what the prices will be, we’ll pay them, and then we’ll pick up the armor when it’s ready. More pressing, though, is Felix getting a new set of bracers. He can’t do his job without them, so if you have a pair that he can use in the interim while we get a new set made, that’s what we’re needing most. I know he’d love some mana-blessed iron bracers, if you’re willing to make them.”

Astrid smiled as she looked at the master Smith that’d sold her her shield. He squinted, surprised at how different her approach was this time compared to the last time when they’d begged and scrimped and saved and still taken out a large loan for the shield. After a few seconds, he shrugged as he said, “All told, I’d call it 2 gold. If you end up returning the replacement bracers for your Bodyguard friend, then I’ll return to you 20 silver. How’s that?”

When Skandr opened his mouth to haggle, Astrid reached out and thumped him in the chest with her fist. He frowned up at her, not hurt but confused. Without explanation, she locked eyes with the Smith in front of her. “I know this was your starting price, and you were expecting to haggle. However, you gave us a better deal than we deserved with my shield. I’m happy to pay you the 2 gold, and I’m not going to complain. I just want to show you that I appreciate what you’ve done for me and my party. Next time, we’ll drive a hard bargain.”

The grizzled old man scratched his jaw for a moment, then chuckled for another. Finally, he said, “Well, if that’s the case, how about you pay 2 gold and 50 silver?”

“No, you gave me the price, now you’ve gotta deal with it. If you wanted to fleece us, you needed to do that earlier, but now you’re just out of luck.” Astrid laughed to herself as she pulled 2 gold pieces from her purse and flicked them over carelessly. Matthias chuckled as he snatched the coins from the air, pocketing them as he turned away from the Warrior who wasn’t replacing her armor.

“Then I’ll get going on that before the end of the day. For you, Felix, come take a look at the bracer options that I have for you and see which one you like best. We’ll have you try a couple different fits and designs out, need to figure out what you like best. Everything about it, I need you to let me know about what you think about the fit and design, because I’ll take that into account with…”

Matthias continued to go through the details of the options primarily to Felix, but also to Muti and Benedict as he explained different possibilities for design and function for the armor he was going to be making. Each of the three would benefit greatly from the equipment upgrade that drake material armor would provide to them, so they thought about what exactly they wanted while the Smith explained what he could and couldn’t do with the materials they were providing. Skandr stayed by Astrid‘s side, his eyes squinting accusatorily at her. She didn’t turn away, instead locking gaze with him and smiling.

“Do you have a problem with this?” Astrid kept a firm smile on her face as she asked.

“You didn’t haggle at all!”

“No, I didn’t. The next time we have to buy equipment or anything like this, I’m more than happy to let you haggle, but for this, I wanted to show my appreciation. You can’t convince me otherwise, because we wouldn’t have saved much money anyways.“ Astrid chuckled as she said as much. Skandr continued grumbling, but he didn’t voice any real complaints, instead just generally making noise. Instead of paying him any mind, Astrid watched as her companions talked with Matthias about what they wanted their armor to be like, and eventually, Muti backed off, deciding to leave the new armor to the other two while keeping her own. 

“Felix will be struck frequently, as that is his position. Benedict is soft, and does not have the Fortitude to survive like I. It is better that they both get good equipment than I get mediocre at their expense.”

She didn’t explain or engage further, though she’d stayed at Astrid’s side and occasionally stuck her hand in Astrid’s purse to attempt to engage in her little fighting games without actually starting a fight in the store. Astrid supposed that was the better option, and watched until the orders were complete and they could return to the inn, where they’d sleep off the rest of the day before returning to the 4th floor for another day. Then, they’d be ready to get to the 5th once the new armor was complete.