Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

"Papers," a mustached guard demanded, holding out his hand with a bored expression.

"...what?" Julia asked in confusion.

"Your papers—give 'em," the guard said, still not even looking at her.

"I don't have any papers," Julia responded.

That got the guard's attention. His eyes narrowed, his shiny steel armor clinked as he straightened.

"No papers, huh? You new here?" he asked in a gruff tone.

"Yeah," she replied curtly.

The guard looked over her group, and Julia thought she could see something she didn't like in his eyes as he scanned them, but she was also on edge, so it might have been nothing.

"All of you together? What's your business here?" he asked, beginning to speak louder and draw attention.

Julia's group stood in one of three lines that were entering the city, the gates being so massive that three individual lines of foot traffic could enter at once, while still leaving plenty of room for carriages and people exiting the city.

Each line proceeded at a reasonable pace, the guards mostly allowing entry without fuss. Carriages were stopped and inspected, but foot traffic was unharassed—until now, that was.

"Yeah, we're a party heading for the Guild," Julia said, remembering the incident in the village and maintaining her cool. This guy was just doing his job.

"You're with the Guild and ain't got papers? Got an ID or something?" he asked, sighing in frustration.

"Uh…I got—hang on—I got this," Julia said, pretending to fish the coin Sith had given her from under her armor. She had decided to wear the armor, as entire walls made of Adamantine would make her armor look like a standard affair, she figured. She tossed the coin to the guard, who caught it and held it up to inspect, one eye closed.

"The fuck is this?" he asked, turning it over and over.

"Soldier! Why in the Utter Dark is your line not moving?!" a voice called from a door inside the gate.

The guard in front of Julia straightened noticeably, slamming his hands down to his sides before responding loudly.

"Sir! Newcomers—adventurers—without identification save for this coin!"

He held the coin out in a rigidly straight hand, presenting it to his superior.

This man, clad in the same shining silver armor, though with a short red plume running the length of his helmet, took the coin and inspected it much the same as his subordinate.

"I got no fuckin' idea what this is. We'll have to get someone from the Guild down here to look at it. Step them over to the side so your line can keep moving. I shouldn't have to tell you this; it's standard procedure when dealing with unique situations," he lectured.

"Sir, what about…you know, the—" he started, attempting to gesture subtly with his eyes to the elves.

"Do your job, soldier. We have protocols so that you don't have to do all this thinking and slow my damn lines down.

"Besides, Guild business ain't ours," he finished, motioning Julia and company over to the side of the wall.

"I'll send a runner to fetch someone from the Guild. Mind if I send this coin with them? You can hold onto it if you want, but it'll probably save us a few steps," he explained.

"Sure, that's fine. Thanks for your help," Julia said, genuinely grateful to this man for speeding things along—even if it was largely out of self-interest.

The man nodded, heading back through the door inside the gatehouse. The group hung around for a while, most eventually deciding to sit in the grass. Fortunately, it was a nice day, and the cool evening breeze rendered the direct sunlight mostly blunted, despite there being no shade.

After probably around an hour, a commotion at the gate grabbed their attention. The outgoing line, which was thin for this late in the evening, was rapidly moving to the side of the road. The people were clearing a path for a group of…well, it was a diverse group of rough-and-tumble people that was approaching.

They were all burly, rough, and in various states of armament and armor. The person leading the group was a tall man with long brown hair that draped messily down his back. He wore a leather vest that had nothing underneath, with a necklace of what looked like bone hanging about his neck.

All the people approaching had serious looks on their faces, and Julia felt a bad atmosphere rolling off them like an approaching thundercloud.

The group of ten to fifteen stopped a couple strides from Julia's, who were all on their feet by this point, the tension palpable.

"Which one of you is Julia?" the leading man asked with a surprisingly neutral tone.

"That's me," Julia said, stepping forward slightly.

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"You brought this?" the man questioned, holding up Julia's coin.

"Yup," she confirmed tersely.

"Come with me," he said, turning around and beginning to walk away without waiting for a reply.

"Why?" Julia asked loudly, not moving from her spot.

The man stopped and turned around with mild surprise—Julia noted that he likely wasn't used to being questioned, which might indicate a position of authority.

"Why what?" he asked, sounding genuinely confused.

"Why would we go with you?" Julia replied, unfazed by his confusion.

"...you mentioned to the guards that you were here for the Guild, yes? That's us. I was going to take you there," he explained.

"Oh, thanks, then. You might've led with that," Julia said, walking forward to stand next to him.

The groups moved together through the gate, the guards not stopping them now that they had an escort.

"Were you not expecting us? You asked the guards for an escort, yes?" the man asked, still confused, apparently.

"We knew that the guards sent a runner to the Guild to clear our entry, but that was it. We've not had the…friendliest reception in these parts, so when you all approached like a thundercloud and didn't announce or introduce yourselves, it got me a little defensive," Julia explained.

"Ah, my apologies. That makes sense. I am Wilfred, the Vice Master of the Vazreth branch of the Guild. The Guild Master himself was unfortunately indisposed, so I came to escort you in his place," the man said, his tone more amenable now.

Julia was confused why the second-in-command would come to escort her personally, and why he brought a posse of adventurers with him, but she was beginning to suspect that the coin wasn't just one of Sith's jokes.

"Escort is necessary due to the…travel restrictions that have been enacted. Residents of the city require documentation to come and go, while travelers require a 'valid reason' for their entry," Wilfred explained.

"Huh…what exactly qualifies as a valid reason, then?" Julia asked, though she suspected where it was going.

"That is the question, isn't it—or rather, who decides what reasons are valid?" Wilfred replied with a tight smile. "Regardless, where in the world did you get this?"

As he asked, Wilfred withdrew the coin from what must have been a pocket on the inside of his vest. Before he could so much as hold it out, it quickly zipped out of his hand and into Julia's, where she promptly stored it away, unconcerned about the Vice Master being aware of her dimensional storage.

"My dad gave it to me—or, well…actually, my aunt did. I'm pretty sure it's my dad's, though," she explained.

"Your dad is acquainted with the Founder?" Wilfred asked, turning his head to look at Julia in astonishment. "I must confess, I assumed you had found it somewhere—perhaps stolen it."

"I didn't steal it, no. My aunt gave it to me when we parted ways a few days ago. She said to present that to the Guild when I register," Julia said. "What exactly is it to you? I know what the markings on it mean, but nothing about the coin itself."

"That's a Founder Coin. The Guild's Founder left them before he vanished from the world, though we don't know how many he actually left—or to whom.

"What's more, yours is active. It contains instructions from the Founder himself," Wilfred said with what Julia was guessing was a mixture of awe and admiration.

"I…see. I guess that makes my dad the Founder. I don't know why I'm even surprised anymore. He gave me a lecture once on what principals the Guild was founded on, but I assumed he meant from like…ancient texts left by the original founders. Guess he was speaking from personal experience," Julia mused, more thinking out loud than anything.

She didn't realize she'd made a huge mistake until she glanced over at Wilfred, noticing his sudden silence. He stood stock-still, having completely stopped walking, and stared at Julia with wide eyes.

"You alright? Good to keep walking?" Julia asked.

"I—uh—yes, thank you," he replied, hurriedly collecting himself and leading the way again. "If you find the time later, I would very much like to hear what your father said regarding the Guild's purpose."

"...sure. Let's just get there first, yeah?"

The group walked through the city in awkward silence—Julia thought it was awkward, anyway. Wilfred seemed to be attempting to reestablish his professionalism, but Julia was quickly swept away by the city sights.

It had a peculiar mix of architecture. Each building seemed crafted of different materials, some had foundations of the same gray stone as the road with timber frames, others were entirely built from a reddish clay, and still others were created from combinations of exotic stones with strange colors and both recognizable and unrecognizable woods.

The implications were hard to grasp—Julia didn't know a whole lot about architecture or city planning—but she inferred that this huge diversity of materials indicated a prosperous trade city. She couldn't think of any other way that so many disparate materials could be sourced so abundantly.

Curiously, she noticed a sort of creeping uniformity of style in some of the heavier-trafficked areas, where the diverse range of colors and styles began to flatten out into a more traditional style of building—the sort that she might see in Striton. Gray stone bases with timber frames and sloped roofs.

It wasn't a bad style or anything, but Julia felt it sucked some of the life and vibrancy from the city. The amalgam of styles and colors had a certain charm that these more standardized buildings lacked.

The atmosphere in the city was…well, 'subdued' would be the most appropriate descriptor. It wasn't dour, necessarily, but just her brief walk from the gate gave her the feeling that people in this city had places to be, and they were not interested in anything happening between point A and point B.

She did notice several sour looks directed at the elves. It wasn't many, though she suspected that was largely due to the burly adventurers surrounding the group and blocking the elves from sight. They might not even notice the looks they were receiving, truthfully. Julia just happened to be particularly sensitive to such things due to her upbringing.

They approached a large, circular plaza with an enormous fountain in the center that spewed water higher into the air than any she'd ever seen. There were a few trees and patches of grass scattered about the space, apparently serving as a sort of park. There were stone benches around the fountain, and tables and benches spaced evenly around.

At one end of the plaza stood a huge building with a strange shape. It was made of a smooth white stone, and it had the shape that she would describe as a half-cylinder. The entryway was strange, as it seemed a square that had been cut in half, creating a triangle whose highest point was the left side of the entryway.

That bothered Julia, though she didn't know why. She felt the triangle should have peaked at the center.

Wilfred suddenly turned toward Julia with a serious look on his face.

"Welcome, Miss Julia and companions, to the Vazreth Adventurer's Guild."