The Maid Is Not Dead

Before evening bell, I found myself seated in Public Corner, the very same alehouse owned by Mr Selleck, where Corporal Samuel's hat had been filled with silver, I was clumsily courted by a prophesied hero of humanity, and my image of wizards was ruined for perpetuity. It was actually my own recommendation that we come here.

Being a level below the ground, the bar floor was not as hot as elsewhere in town. The heavy wheel chandelier hung low overhead and more hindered visibility than aided it, but it was an early weekday night, not half as rowdy as the last I'd seen the place, not as filled with pipe fumes, allowing me a clear view of the face of the man seated across the table.

"Oh, the name's Matthias, B-rank," the adventurer spoke, as if only now remembering he'd made no word of introduction so far, though it was the male's charge to deliver first. It seemed to me human interaction in general had become distant to him and seldom used, as he now made a contrived effort to recall the basics. "How should I call you?"

"My name is Mary," I said. "D-rank."

"All right then, Mary."

The man accepted the lie at face value and inspected his newly delivered tankard, maybe to see if there was anything liquid under all the foam.

I'd asked for a light cider, the glass pleasantly cool in my hand. But before having a taste, I thought to clarify the conditions.

"So your request is only that I listen to you? Did I understand that right?"

Mr Matthias nodded. "Yes, that's the deal. Ideally, I'd like you to also remembered some of what I've told you, but that's not really something you can force on another. No, this isn't such a serious occasion. Just treat it as a random folk tale to kill time, and relax."

"As you wish. Then, you may proceed at your own pace."

"Let's see." The adventurer gathered his thoughts. "I was born in Normund and became an adventurer about eighteen years ago, give or take. Just to give some background to the tale. Most in this line of business turn to it because they have no choice in the matter, but that was not the case for me. My father was a merchant of decent standing, and I could have had it stable with the family business if only I chose to. We weren't nobles or anything, but reasonably well off, all in all."

A loud cheer from a table nearer to the entrance interrupted him then. It appeared something good had happened to a customer there, or something bad to another who was not so good, and tankards were raised and struck together. Mr Matthias absentmindedly took a sip of his tankard, as if to partake in the joy.

"Am I boring you?" he asked. "Should I move on faster?"

"It's fine," I said. "Establishing key actors is the base prerequisite to any narrative, I believe."

"I see. Yes. Establishing actors. You may have the right of it." It seemed he liked the phrase. "Where was I? Oh, yes, my family. I wasn't slated for greatness, really; my older brother was set to take over after my old man. But I think he could've spared a spot for me somewhere. It was a company of decent size and never seemed to have enough hands. You may know what it's like."

"Indeed, I believe I do," I said. "So, you had affluent parents, as well as a reliable older brother. And though your future looked so promising, you chose to become an adventurer?"

"So it was," said Mr Matthias. "And the reason for that was a friend of mine. Or no, that would be putting the blame in the wrong place. The real reason was, of course, only me. Instead of appreciating what I had and striving to do better, I shunned responsibility and wasted my money on women, drinking, and gambling. Who would ever let such a punk take charge? I sure wouldn't. Would you?"

"No, I wouldn't."

"Oh, I'm a bit stumped how quickly you answered. But I can't deny it was my fault. My old man eventually gave me the ultimatum: either I pull my act together, or he would disavow me. And that was when this friend of mine entered the picture. Let's call him Larson. We first met at school, which he quit halfway through, and we'd known each other a good ten years by that point. Larson was the archetypal adventurer in the making: mother dead, no siblings. A deadbeat father. So he eventually figured that instead of dodging his old man's drunken fist, he might as well dodge monster fangs and make money while at it. When I heard him tell it, it painted such a thrilling image in my head, I thought, 'Oh Hel, I'll be an adventurer too', and took the Guild course together with him. My family strictly opposed, of course, as anyone in their right mind would. So I ran away from home where I had everything, anything you could ever need, and became a full-on loser. Is that the daftest story you have ever heard?"

"Hardly," I said. "Rather than stupid, you were simply not informed enough to make the enlightened choice. Most adventurers aren't."

"Hm. Would you not say that an ignorant person is stupid then?"

"No. In my opinion, an ignorant person makes poor decisions because he doesn't have all the details, but would choose otherwise if he were sufficiently educated. Meanwhile, a genuinely stupid person will always make bad choices regardless of all the knowledge or firsthand experience he may have. He is simply incapable of learning."

Mr Matthias rubbed his chin in thought. "I see. I never thought of it that way. Anyway, I appreciate I'm not a complete imbecile in your eyes yet. After all, our story has only begun, and it's not about to get any better."

"You say that, yet here you are, hale and whole, and a Rank B. Many would say you have found great success in your career."

"None of those things is worth a damn, my rank or my life," he replied and waved his hand dimissively. "Anyway, at first it was only me and Larson. Two fools who barely managed to earn their steel tags. I was no good with any weapon known to man, but Larson had a knack for spearwork. We'd eke out a living of sorts by guarding merchants or carving up goblins. And that's probably how we would've stayed too, and eventually died, if we hadn't met those twins. The Townsends, Helen and Noel. We had a dull job chopping up treants somewhere west of Somme, and they were on the run from a band of boars, and that's where our paths crossed. That, you could say, was the real beginning."

"My apologies." I raised a hand to interrupt. "But did you say Townsend was their name?"

"I did, though. Why?"

"Were these twins, by chance, hauflins?"

"They were, too. How did you guess that? Have you met them yourself?"

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"No, can't say I have. The name just has that sort of ring to it."

Of course, my first thought was that the characters in Mr Matthias's story were in some way related to our own Master Vivian. But thinking further, the timeline didn't match. Vivian was too old to be either Townsend's daughter, if they were traveling without family only fifteen years ago. Maybe a younger sister, or a cousin, or maybe a stranger altogether.

Simply having the same name didn't yet prove a relation. It was a fairly common family name in the country, after all.

"Never mind. Please carry on."

"Right." Mr Matthias resumed. "The brother was an odd duck. A self-proclaimed inventor, ever tinkering with metals and chemicals. His experiments were of the— unconventional kind, I should say. They earned him a bit of a reputation and got the two chased out of their homestead. As a matter of fact, people would treat the pair like lepers everywhere they went, which kept them ever on the move. But despite all his flaws, I could tell Noel Townsend was a prodigy a hundred years ahead of his time. No getting around that. He couldn't help but make up things all the time, like the ideas were simply spilling out of his head, and he'd burst if he stopped, and nobody else could hope to keep up with his trail of thought. It was like he was possessed by a demon—or a god. He designed the hunk of metal I carry as my partner, recognizing at a glance that I didn't have the chops for up close and personal."

Mr Matthias patted the arbalest that leaned on the table together with us, like a silent third person.

It was certainly worlds apart from the antique contraption we'd used to fell the direwolf.

"And then there was the sister," he continued. "Let's just say that we didn't hate each other, Helen and I. She was her brother's guardian more than a sister, an archer, a genius with a bow and she taught me everything about—well, everything, really. But marksmanship and hunting in particular. After getting to know each other better, we struck up a partnership and were all the better for it."

Mr Matthias paused to drink, briefly smiling at the recollection, and then carried on.

"For a while, it was good. Noel's concoctions and tactics; Larson's spear; Helen's bow and knife, and me. Our party was like a well-oiled trap switch in a draugr grave. Our reputation shot up after we took down a red-bearded manticore in Boleria. Before we knew it, we were a C-rank party known far and wide, and no longer needed to pay for our drinks; folks tripped over each other to treat us and hear our stories. Everybody was dying to join us and we could just reap the cream of the crop. We picked up a few good people along the way too: Harkin, a veteran wizard from the free cities of Paarth; Cephen, a mercenary from the strait of Koeln; and Bozy, a big fat bastard and the toughest shielder on this side of the Ursus. We thought ourselves unbeatable, on the cusp of B-rank, and then Harkin went and died on us. That marked the end of our brief golden days, though we didn't know it then."

"I am sorry for your loss," I said. "It must have been a grievous battle that brought the end of the wizard you recognized."

Mr Matthias shook his head.

"No, it was a liver disease. Harkin was something of an alcoholic and often complained about his side hurting. We thought nothing of it at first. It became a running joke, if his aching gut would last till the end of a trip. Until one day, it didn't, and we found the man dead in his bed. We suspected an assassin got to him, until the coroner gave us the hard facts. The man had a chronic liver inflammation, had had it for who knows how long, and simply used the Power to suppress the symptoms, until it got the better of him."

"..."

"A right pity," Mr Matthias said and drank. "If only the man weren't so afraid of doctors."

It had never occurred to me the Power as it was could be used to manipulate your body without Sigils. Authentic wizards really were a different breed.

"We then set out to find a replacement mage," Mr Matthias said. "They're pretty handy to have around and only get better over time. Like fine wine. In our hubris, we let firepower be the deciding factor over personal chemistry, and picked up a lad named Marcellus. He could control metal and anything made of such as if it were part of his own body. He got along especially well with Noel, and helped him with the inventions. Well, you seem like a sharp young lady, so you can probably already see why this became a problem down the line."

"I can only speculate," I replied, "but a man with power of his own trying to ingratiate himself with your leader certainly sounds foreboding. In groups where a newcomer gains any advantage over his peers, he often stops seeing them as his peers soon enough."

You met the same unpleasant phenomenon among house servants too.

"You got that dead right," Mr Matthias replied grimly. "If only we had known that then. Marc, as we called him, proved a bigger help than we dared to hope. But in the process, before we knew it, he had lost respect for the rest of us, viewing himself as the de facto co-leader of the party. We had saved the bastard from starving in the streets and taught him the tricks of the trade, and were now only baggage in his eyes, he the one graciously carrying us. The only one Marc considered his equal was Noel—though I couldn't tell if he actually liked the hauflin, or if he only viewed him as the key to managing the rest of us. Day by day, Marc's disdain for us—for me, especially—grew more apparent. He had his eye on Helen, who by then had become my fiancée, and she was the sole reason I didn't go and strangle that wretch in his sleep."

He heaved a heavy sigh and ran his hand through his hair.

"Oh, tell me, Mary, what would you have done if you were in my shoes then?"

Not walk easily, I reckoned.

But I gave it a bit of serious thought.

"Personally, I would have voted to have Marcellus dismissed from the party. And, if this failed, left myself. But I imagine you couldn't do this, since your fiancée was the leader's sister and probably unwilling to leave him, and you couldn't well abandon her either."

Mr Matthias blinked at me.

"It's as though you were there to see it! That's how it was. Our party was not a democracy. Many times, we'd try to talk about Marc's attitude, but the snake-tongue that he was, he'd argue the rest of us to oblivion, until we couldn't tell left from right, and Noel failed to see an issue. Several times, I'd ask Helen to run away with me and retire from adventuring altogether. We'd buy ourselves a nice house on the shores of the Midian sea. Or travel to Middleton in the south, where her parents and relations dwelt, and where I'd be that funny old human buffoon among the people who seem to never age. Many were the dreams I conjured to convince her—but never could. Noel was no good with people and Helen his sole bridge to civilized society. She felt it was now more than ever that her brother needed friends he could trust by his side, so that his talent wouldn't be turned to evil by minds more nefarious. And she was right. What was I to do then? I knew nothing good would come of it, yet I could only walk that bitter road to its end. For my love."

He found his tankard empty and stared at the bottom of it for a time, seeing something else in his eyes, then set it down and called for another.

"The snake of a wizard in our party was going to be the doom of us all," he morosely resumed then, "yet we lacked the guts to excise ourselves. When no talk could move the man, our only remaining choice to be rid of the bastard was to bump him off. But we weren't manslayers and he had power. Marcellus had yet to do anything deserving of the death sentence either, though we knew in our hearts it was only a matter of time. Knew, but didn't want to believe. And thanks to our indecisiveness, it was the villain who got the drop on us. It wasn't camaraderie that ever bound him to our gang; he simply had not secured a contingency plan yet. But once he had his schemes worked out, he never hesitated."

"He didn't challenge you directly, did he?" I asked. "Though you say he was powerful, even a mage couldn't underestimate a group of seasoned hunters, including ranged experts."

"You'd be correct again there, Mary," Mr Matthias replied. "The wizard's abilities were dreadful, but his true strength lay in his being a cowardly worm and not giving an opening. He wouldn't make a move until he could be sure of victory. For that, he had to divide us first. He convinced us we were ready to go for A-rank and beyond that—we could be the first party since the Reavers to reach S and become living legends. And he claimed he had discovered a way to achieve this with ease."

I furrowed my brow. A way to easily reach S-rank, the so far unattained dream of living adventurers around the world.

"How could he ever convince you that was possible?"

Mr Matthias leaned his elbows against the table with narrowed eyes, and lowered his tone in answer,

"The Machina City."