NOVEL NEXT Chapter Fourteen: Rag-Tag Band of Misfits
Rag-Tag Band of Misfits
The Guild had grown immensely in the time that I had been out. As I left the classroom where I'd first saw the guild banner, I saw that people had taken over the adjacent open classrooms and hallways. Between the rooms and the hallway there were probably over a hundred people here. I felt that this must be what a refugee camp would have felt like- people seeking comfort, some injured, some sleeping on the floor, but most doing their best to achieve some level of normalcy. Thankfully there weren't any kids there, at least nobody under eighteen, whether by coincidence or design. I still didn't know how I had got here, nor who were the people around me. I had come from a fairly large city, I didn't know anywhere near enough people to recognize random people I might have met on the street. I hadn't really even asked. Brad and Clara had been from my neighborhood, so I had initially assumed that everyone was from nearby, but judging from people's circadian rhythms it might very well be that people from different time-zones were here.
Or maybe they just couldn't sleep. Many were reading books, and I saw that they looked like the ones I'd found in the library. With no Internet access and no technology, people who didn't have any immediate tasks to perform seemed to have gone back to reading to pass the time quickly. I thought it was good. Having knowledge from the library could be a great boon, and I didn't have the time to read all the books myself. It was around sixteen hours since I had first come to this Tower, and intended to make the next thirty-six particularly productive. So I passed by the hugging, crying, laughing, drinking, card-playing mass of people to a room farther to the "north" where I expected to meet Artemis and this party of adventurers that I was to meet, and entered.
This place was less packed, there was only Artemis and four other people in here. They all looked tired and afraid, but there was a confidence in how they carried their weapons and themselves. The first of them to speak up, I realized, I had already met. It was the young woman from the soccer team that had come to speak to Artemis when I first found the Guild. She was an athletic woman, hair back in a tight pony-tail and still wearing mostly her soccer outfit, but for a silvery gray cloak that went all the way to her knees and was held together with a bronze broach with a green gemstone in it. There was a short sword on her side too.
"Oh, wizard hat guy. Didn't know you were Alex," she said.
"That's me, Alex. You've been busy," I said.
"I'm Hannah, these are Bella, Jaquis and Siegfried," Hannah said.
All of the people in the room had the same sort of casual modern outfit with an adventurer accent or two, except for Siegfried who was standing there in full plate armor. He didn't have any visible weapons on him, but carried a messenger's bag on his shoulder, and had long brown hair in a man-bun and a beard. If not for the armor he'd look like the prototype all hipsters were copied off of, but with the armor he looked like a video game character. He gave me a big smile and a 'Hallo!' and waved at me with a clanking sound from the armor.
Bella was a short woman with short pixie cut hair in a tracksuit with a zweihander greatsword in a scabbard on her back. She looked me over like a boxer in a pre-match weigh in and nodded.
Jaquis was a fit dude with short hair in blue jeans and black t-shirt with another cloak on his back, but he also had a hood that he could pull over his head, and he had a pair of knives on him. These didn't look like the kitchen knife I had on me, but serious weapons.
All in all the group looked a lot better suited for the Tower than this nerd in a wizard hat, but they wanted me, and I could cast some spells, so they would get me. I needed experience, and what's more I would grant them more experience by being in a group with them, so it was just a win-win all around.
"Honestly, I've been asleep for the past eight hours. I'm pretty sure I'd just drag you down," I said.
"You have the spells?" Siegfried said.
"Which spells?" I said.
"Bruh, any spells. I don't think we've met anyone who can do any magic. That wizard hat just for show?" Bella said.
"I have a couple. I can make some shields and barriers and summon icicles. It's not anything crazy," I said.
"That opens up a whole bunch of potential tactics," Hannah said.
"Look, I'm here, you don't have to convince me. Just saying, I'm not a master of the arcane or anything, I just have five spells and an imp," I said. Chum chose that moment to jump out from around the corner and say "Blah!"
"Scheisse!" Siegfried shouted.
"He's actually really useful," I said, "A lot of knowledge, and at least until I reach my next level he'll help us in a fight."
"I will, but, boss, these folks look like they can handle themselves. I don't think you're gonna need me," Chum said.
"The contract," I said.
"I know the fucking contract, boss," Chum said.
"Alright, now that the meet-cute is over, let's talk about why I gathered you here," Artemis said.
The map of the Tower was now laid out on a dozen sheets of paper on top of four desks. There were repeating patterns in the hallways and, was it…
"Artemis, are the hallways converging towards the 'east'?" I said.
"We cannot be sure, but from what we've seen they do appear to flow together and grow fewer in number with a higher density of special rooms that way. It could be a coincidence," Artemis said.
"Or it could be that we should be going that way as we get stronger," Bella said.
"Not ready," Jaquis said. His voice was low and raspy, like he didn't use it much.
"So where are we going?" I said.
"Teacher's Lounge #371. This one here," Artemis said and pointed at a room with a ruler, "The guy that first entered it saw walking dead in there and ran back to the guild. He got bit, and we really hope it's not zombie movie zombies, but we have tied him down and someone with a big axe is watching over him."
"Shit," I said.
"No, it's good. Zombies have teeth, fingernails for weapons. Would just go clang against armor. You can kill them from behind," Siegfried said.
"Whatever is there is dangerous and the walking dead was just the first monsters we know of. You're the best people we have- if you cannot get through there safely, retreat and come back to us with information. No need for heroics," Artemis said.
"That's me, a big goddamned hero," I said. Nobody laughed. I continued: "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Safety first, of course."
"Damn right. I guess we can talk tactics on the way, this looks like it'll be a half an hour from here," Bella said.
"Everyone still in?" Artemis said.
"I'm in," Siegfried said right away. Everyone echoed him, until it got to me and I said:
"Let's get going then."
I found the group pleasant to be around as we walked down the hallway to the Teacher's Lounge. They were all tired, but it was that sort of second wind tired where you got a bit sarcastic and even more determined. Hannah was clearly leading the group and came up with several tactics we could use with my spells. Bella and Jaquis didn't initiate conversations much, but joined in with a sarcastic quip here and there. Siegfried was a funny guy, leaning into the whole stranger in a strange land bit. He'd been on vacation in New York when he got teleported, which was closer than his homeland of Germany, but still several states away from where I had been. He worked in some sort of automotive engineering related field that sounded really technical and I didn't really get. The rest of the party was from my home state, but not the city, and so I didn't know what to think. There was some relation of distance on Earth and distance between the rooms here, but it clearly wasn't one to one, and it didn't even seem likely that it was proportional.
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Nobody had seen my tabletop group anywhere either. There was no way for me to know whether that meant that they had gone a different direction in the very beginning, whether they didn't get transported at all, or whether they were all dead. They are all dead, the stupid fucking voice in my head said, but I took a deep breath and pushed it down. I'll need so much therapy after this is all over, I thought, but the wise-cracking, tactics-planning company didn't give me a lot of time to wallow in my own bad brain juices.
"So how does magic work? Is there some trick to it?" Hannah said eventually.
"Kind of. The 'basic casting procedure' that the scrolls refer to means that you need to visualize the sigil- the picture under the spell description- and say the incantation at the same time. Here, try-" there was a pause as I pulled out my spell-book and flipped it to the icicle spell, thinking it'd be the most obvious to tell whether she succeeded or not, "-this."
I cast the spell to demonstrate it and everyone in the party exclaimed a sound of shock or an expletive. "Well, alright," Hannah said, and she tried doing the same.
Nothing happened.
"It's not working," she said.
"Weird. There really isn't anything more to it," I said.
"It's the attributes, boss," Chum said, "None of you Earth humans have any points in Arcana when you get here. Not without advancement or equipment."
"That makes sense. The Tower sort of made fun of my hat, but it gives me a point of Arcana, so I keep wearing it," I said.
"I put a point in Arcana," Jaquis said.
"You did?" Hannah said.
"I want to do magic. So what?" Jaquis said.
"Let's test it then," I said and gave Jaquis the book. When he tried to cast the spell, he did it right away.
"Wow. Fuck. Holy shit," Jaquis said.
"Language, asshole," Bella said.
"I cast a spell, dude! This is going to be so fucking sweet," Jaquis said.
"Yeah, you can copy what I have after we're finished with this quest. The book helps, but you don't need it if you have the sigil and the incantation right," I said.
"Uh, guys? Did the vibes suddenly get really fucked up for anyone else?" Siegfried said.
"What are you talking about, Sig? Wait, shit, the vibes did just get fucked up," Bella said.
The lights had grown dimmer. There was a sticky sheen to the walls and doors. I could have sworn that the light was tinted a little bit green, though that was kind of hard to tell.
"Anyone seen anything like it before?" I said. If not, that kind of implied that this could be even stronger than the spike gremlin. I broke out in cold sweat at the thought.
"Nothing like this," Hannah said, "alright, we go quiet now. Alex, if we encounter multiple enemies, try separating them with that wall. Everyone else, standard formation."
They had clearly practiced this. Jaquis sort of half-crouched to lower his profile and moved ahead of the group by some twenty feet. It looked sort of like a gamers idea of what stealth looked like, but it's not like I knew that this wouldn't work. Siegfried and Bella walked next to each other after Jaquis, and Hannah took up the rear, clearly leaving me in the best defended position. What I would call a classic adventuring party marching order in a tabletop rpg. Someone mobile and sneaky to scout ahead, most of the tough folk in front and someone defending the rear with the squishy- me- in the middle. Personally I didn't like the formation. It left the scout too exposed for my liking, and rear-guard was usually less needed than an extra fighter in front, but that was games, this was real life. I decided to trust them. I did send Chum up ahead to help Jaquis scout.
We walked like this for ten long minutes, long enough that everyone was now getting tired of being tense, and just as I saw Bella stretch and stand up and get ready to say something Chum nudged Jaquis and Jaquis shouted: "Shit, incoming!" and ran back to the party. He was followed by six rotting corpses. I wouldn't call these 'the walking dead', because they were dead sprinting, as fast as I had ever seen a living human run outside the Olympics. Jaquis was just a little faster, and Chum had disappeared to somewhere. I started chanting the lengthy barrier spell as soon as I saw them, and I held the last syllable for a few seconds. I released it and the spell snapped into place, as only four of the six undead creatures kept dashing after Jaquis while two slammed into the barrier.
In the second following I experienced several thoughts, feelings and emotions in this order: first, I thought: Hell yeah, near 50/50 split, which had been what I was going for. Then, I got dizzy and felt a wetness on my upper lip from my nose. Then, it felt like I was slammed by two down-feather body pillows as the dead impacted the shield.
As we had discussed before, I started loudly counting down the duration of my spell:
"Nine! Eight!" I said.
Jaquis slid on his knees between Bella and Siegfried, and the first of the dead on his trail got decapitated by a mighty slash from Bella with her two-handed sword, while Siegfried somehow managed to get two of the others in headlocks under each of his heavily armored shoulders.
"Seven! Six!" I said.
The last free undead started clawing at Siegfried's face, as the armored man dodged away, leaning back to keep his head away from the zombie. Bella cut one of the ones under Siegfried's left shoulder in half just under the chest and he dropped in to the floor.
"Five! Four!" I said.
Now Hannah was there, interposing herself between Siegfried and the last monster, holding it back, as Siegfried and Bella finished the restrained one.
"Three! Two! One! Zero!" I said, and as the barrier dropped a second later, the three adventurers easily took care of the last undead in front of them.
Jaquis had leaned to the wall near the barrier waiting for it to go down, and the dead hadn't noticed him. As they dashed towards the bigger group, he stepped out, and plunged his two daggers in the back of the zombie's head. And the final monster was hacked apart by the party so quickly that there wasn't even time to properly register what had happened.
"Nice job, everybody. Jaquis, if you have to fall back, I'd like to see some distraction," Hannah said.
"Just keeping safe," Jaquis said.
"We handled it," Siegfried said.
"Wow, I'm impressed, like a real damn adventuring party," I said.
"I'm impressed," Hannah said, "That wall was a total game-changer. Numbers count for a lot."
"It was pretty neat. Hey, I got extra experience," Bella said.
"Oh, right, my title. Should be a bit extra on top," I said and checked the journal. I'd gained 33 experience, so 30 without the bonus 10%, therefore, 5 per zombie.
"Hey, Chum, you said this was a harder demiplane of heroism than most? And we're getting way less than 10 experience per kill most of the time," I said.
"Sorry boss, can't say much more than that. I'll just say you'll have a hard time," Chum said.
"Well, whatever. With us five we can really get the ball rolling, no?" Siegfried said.
"The vibes are still off," Jaquis said.
He was right. Whatever penumbra covered the hallway around us, it hadn't dissipated from killing the monsters.
"Is it a spell or something?" I asked Chum.
"Hard to tell exactly. There are spells specifically used to align an area more with a particular school of magic, and sometimes using a lot of particular magic can sort of tilt the area around you. You better hope it's the former- it takes a lot of juice to naturally align an area to an arcane sphere," Chum said. His speech kept shifting back and forth from being just a weird little guy and Professor Exposition seamlessly. I wasn't complaining, it was just kind of strange.
As we continued down the haunted halls the atmosphere got even more dense and foreboding. This area of the tower was clearly infused with necromantic energy, even if I didn't really get what that meant. Chums words and the walking dead that we'd encountered offered few alternative explanations. The party had fallen more or less silent, even after the very successful and casualty-free encounter we'd had earlier. Indeed, we encountered a few more bands of undead- a handful of zombies, and a swarm of literal severed hands that leaped down from the ceiling and went to our throats to strangle. We dispatched all these monsters with only a few scrapes and bruises. And yet, the feeling didn't lift. It was hard to tell whether this was some sort of a mental effect of magic, or if it was simply the gloomy environs.
When we reached the door of the teacher's lounge, I was in a cold sweat. It was just a half-opened door, but it radiated with a menacing aura.
"Menacing," Jaquis said, and peeled off the party to investigate the immediate area inside. He waved at us with the gesture that meant 'seems clear, follow me,' and we did.