"Gerde! Where do you think you're going?" Gerde smiled with the thrill of the hunt before answering me.
"There's a frost troll over there! I'm gonna kill it first before mama can!" She then dashed off into the foliage on the side of the road beyond where the sentries patrolled.
"Oh no you don't! Don't go hogging all the good fights to yourself, Gerde." Bekhi took off after her, and less than ten minutes later, they returned to the line. Gerde had a super proud look on her face, like a kid who managed to beat their parents at checkers, while Bekhi's face was equally proud and chagrined. Proud that her daughter was turning into such a good fighter, and yet chagrined that she didn't get to enjoy the fight solo.
"Well? How did the fight go?" I asked them after directing the materials recovery crew to the carcass of the troll to collect its pelt. Gerde bounced up to me with a happy smile on her face.
"It was really fun, papa. The troll went 'roar!' and tried to grab me, but I cut its legs where mama told me to, then, when it fell over, I cut its throat. It was really messy, and didn't even really put up too much of a fight. Do you think there are any tougher monsters out there?"
"That's my girl." Bekhi patted Gerde on the head, setting her tail wagging as she leaned into the patting hand. "That troll looked to be on the younger side, so that's probably why it was so weak. I'm sure the next one will be stronger."
"I wouldn't count on it." Gammith, a dwarven adventurer who had walked in a position just behind us the whole trip, commented with a distant look in his eyes. "We're already past the borders of Vermogen, and since the dragons and wyverns don't dare to pass the infamous Vermogen hill forts, that troll is probably the last thing you'll get to kill for the next week or two unless we run into a suicidal bandit party. Soon we'll all be rich beyond our wildest dreams and on our way home."
I chuckled at the dreamy look in Gammith's face. "What are you going to use your pay for when you return to Tochka?"
"Well, at first I was planning on buying a share in my uncle's coal mine with the quest rewards from the Adventurer's Guild. But with all the money I'll have earned from my bets on Gerde, I'll have enough to buy my own mine! Maybe I'll even find a wife and start raising a family."
"Best of luck to you, Gammith." I tactfully ignored Bekhi's grumbling about people gambling over Gerde, and gave him a thumbs up. "May the ancestors grant you solid tunnels and rich veins of ore."
"Thanks, Kvalinn. I'd give you the traditional response but I can't seem to remember it. So instead, I'll leave you with a standing offer of a good meal if you're ever in my area of Tochka. I'm sure my family would love to meet you and your family, especially Gerde. They'll probably think I'm crazy when I tell them how a beastkin girl barely past her second winter killed a dragon."
Later that night, when Bekhi and I were watching over the sleeping Gerde, Bekhi asked about our own plans for when we reached Vermogen. "What do you think, Kvalinn? Do you think we'll be able to find a good place for you to open up a shop once we're paid?"
"Definitely." I said. "From what I've heard from other adventurers, Vermogen is relatively rich in mineral resources, and with its devotion to trade, I'll be able to sell my work to customers all over the world. Also, their nobility is restrained by the guildmasters of the nation, who don't want them interrupting trade with petty quarrels and power grabs. Even the Prince of the country has to cut deals with the guilds to so much as blow his nose."
"Well, before you send your weapons off all over the world. You need to make new ones for me." Bekhi leaned in closer to me, resting her head against my shoulder in a rare show of closeness.
"What happened to all the weapons I made for you at the Winter Hall?" I asked as I put my arm around her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure I made at least a half dozen weapons, and that's in addition to what my father made for us."
"Some of them broke or ran out of magic when I was fighting that big dragon in the sky, and the rest had to be thrown at wyverns who tried to charge me while I was distracted." Bekhi gave a small chuckle as she thought of something. "Hopefully the dead wyverns didn't land on anyone's fields. I couldn't tell through the clouds, but I'm pretty sure that dragon flew the entire length of Tochka trying to get me off its back."
We both chuckled at the mental image of someone opening their door to work on the farm only to find a dead wyvern and a valuable magic weapon embedded in it. I then promised Bekhi that I'd make her new and better weapons once we reached Vermogen.
"Papa, can I have new weapons too?" Gerde momentarily woke from her sleep and looked at me with sleepy puppy eyes.
"We'll see. But you're still in trouble for taking that ax out of my bag without permission. Don't think I've forgotten about that, young lady." My attempts at being firm were met with suppressed giggles from Bekhi. She knew that despite my fake anger, I'd end up making new weapons for Gerde whether she asked for them or not. Fortunately for me, Gerde took me seriously.
"Ok, papa. I'll be good and never use your weapons without asking again…zzz." She then fell back asleep with a happy smile and started mumbling about cookies.
The next day, Richard and Kat stopped by our section of the line. Normally they were positioned a few dozen wagons ahead of us, but now that we were in Vermogen and almost at the finish line, the commanders were a lot more lax about guard positions and people were always going up and down the line to walk alongside friends.
"Uncle Richard!" Gerde bounced forward and gave him a bone crushing hug. His head was bandaged and his arm was in a sling, so he tried hiding behind Kat at first, but when that failed, he was soon yelling "Uncle!" until she let him go to give Kat a hug.
"Ulrich's undies. Did you get stronger? One of these days you're gonna end up killing a dragon with your hugs." After catching the breath that had been squeezed out of him, he waved to me and Bekhi. "Mornin', Kvalinn. Bekhi. I see you got through the dragon fight without a scratch. Unlike me."
"What happened to you, Richard?" I asked in concern.
"Eh, a snow wolf latched onto my arm, and then a blow from a frost troll grazed me. Oh right, Kvalinn, I need more of those arrowheads. That last attack used up the last of them. The material recovery parties returned what they could but the ones I got back were out of magic."
"Need a new sword." Kat said simply. "Mine broke on a wyvern. Using a spare from the wagons."
"Alright, I'll get to work as soon as I find a forge." I grinned at Richard. "By the way, which runes were too dangerous to use again? I'm guessing you want more of those arrows with the rune of lightning?"
Richard then launched into several slightly exaggerated tales about how he had gotten several commendations for the effectiveness of his arrows. The explosive arrowheads had brought down a couple wyverns, and the other arrowheads had taken down numerous monsters before they even got close to the defense lines, however, sometimes it was in a fashion that had nearby adventurers losing their lunch. "General Nurathuri himself came to see me after the big dragon attack and thanked me for my good work on the trip. He even said that he wants me on the next Vermogen run. Although twenty years from now I'll be in my fifties and hopefully be retired."
"Hmph, you'll still be broke." Kat commented with a smirk. "I'll drink in your memory when you pass by Zaihan to do another run."
"Hey, I won't be broke!" Richard protested. "With Gerde killing every type of monster available, I've won every single one of my bets, so I might even have enough money to buy a title from the Empire. Viscount Richard has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
"What about you, Kat?" Bekhi ignored Richard's grandstanding and chatted with Kat. "What will you do with your quest reward money?"
"Buy a weapon from your man. Then relax with my boyfriend for a few months before going out adventuring again." Kat didn't seem to want to talk any more, so we left it at that.
"So, Kvalinn." Richard picked up the conversation. "I heard up the line that Gerde killed a dragon, is that true?"
"Yes, and she nearly died doing so." I then explained that Gerde had forced all of her magic into a runed weapon she had taken from my bag and overloaded it, killing the dragon and nearly dying herself in the process.
"It was a big scary dragon." Gerde elaborated. "She said she'd hurt mama and papa. So I had to make sure she couldn't hurt anyone else."
"Well it sounds like you did a good job, Gerde. When we get to Vermogen, I'll buy you the best food in the capital."
"Will there be sweet rolls?" Gerde asked with her wolf ears perked up.
"All the sweet rolls you can eat!"
"Yay! Thank you, Uncle Richard!" Gerde dived in to give him another hug, prompting a yelp of pain from Richard when she accidentally bounced against the arm that was in a sling.
From there, the conversation drifted from the food and cuisine of Vermogen, to their culture and history. According to Richard and the surrounding adventurers, Vermogen owed its unique shape, which was similar to the American state of Oregan with a big hole punched in one corner, to a fight between the gods that had created a giant crater in the ground. After a few millennia, the ocean had filled in the crater, creating a massive sheltered port that had made it the busiest trade country in the world.
In terms of culture, it was rather similar to the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. It had been given relative freedom by the continent spanning empire thousands of years ago, before it started enslaving non-humans, and so Vermogen had no practice of slavery or discrimination. Of course, that wasn't to say they had laws on the books banning slavery or discrimination, far from it, a profitable trade of exporting serfs from Tochka was one of their lines of profit, but they found it easier to work with free men rather than slaves so slavery was only a practice the wealthy or lazy used.
After hearing about the country, and seeing for myself a few towns we passed by, I added a big green check mark to Vermogen on my mental map. Finally, I could start making weapons again full time, and use the profits to create gadgets to bring me, and the world, closer to the 21st century. With a country that focused on trade, I could probably sell them on the idea of adding a steam engine to their boats, and then I could move from there to industrialize factories and farms.
"Do you think I'll be able to open a shop in Vermogen?" I asked an adventurer from there named Jochem. "When we passed through Handel, I was told that it would require a significant sum to purchase a citizenship and a license to do trade."
"It will take a good amount of money to set up shop." Jochem replied in an accent that sounded very Dutch. "But with the quest reward money, and the expedition leaders all clamoring for your weapons, I'd say the guild leaders in Fontarono will expedite the paperwork and give you a discount on your citizenship. So if you decide to settle here, then you will likely be churning out weapons before harvest season."
Since it was now early to mid summer, Jochem was saying that I'd be up and running within a couple months. In an era similar to the dark ages, where everything paperwork related took months, if not years, to accomplish, this was astonishingly fast.
I began whistling a merry tune at the prospect of owning my own home and weapons shop where I could work without restrictions or restraint. My mood didn't dip at all until we reached the capital city of Vermogen, Fontarono.
The city of Fontarono was on the larger side, with prosperous harbor facilities that sent ships to every port in the world. But like every other city in the dark ages, it was utterly filthy. I could only imagine the diseases festering in every puddle in the street. If I did settle down here, it would only be outside the city walls where I could jury rig a septic tank to keep everything sanitary.
Once we arrived at the city, the Assembled Armies set up camp in a bunch of fields that had been reserved for that purpose. Since we were such a large army, the city leaders didn't want us inside the walls, plus, there wouldn't have been enough room for everyone at the inns.
Just as the lines for the evening meal were forming, Ulyanna marched up to us. "Kvalinn. Bekhi. Gerde. The General wants to see you. The adventurer's guild here is kicking up a fuss about the amount of bets on Gerde and are skeptical that she even is a beastkin. So he wants the three of you to move your butts and get to the guild right now." Before we could ask where the guild building was, she gestured for us to follow her with her staff and marched back towards the city.
Inside the guild building, we found several of the army commanders, including General Norathuri, all looking irritably at the guild employees, who were quaking behind their counter as they were glared at by a dozen angry dwarven warriors.
"There you are, Kvalinn!" General Norathuri barked out. "Show these rock chewing, pebble brained, block headed, clod fisted dolts, that Gerde is real and that the only reason they are not already in my book of grudges for doubting my word is because I still need them to pay the money I'm owed for betting on her."
The dwarven employees behind the counter paled when they heard the general's shouting, and after they translated his words for their companions, the other guild employees gulped nervously. A gray haired human with neatly trimmed facial hair stepped forward and tensely spoke to me from behind the counter.
"Good evening, young dwarf. I apologize for bringing you here so late, but due to the extremely large amounts at stake we cannot simply take anyone's word that Gerde is a beastkin and that she survived the Vermogen run. Not to mention her alleged fights with monsters will need to be verified. Is that the child behind you?"
I prompted Gerde to step forward and introduce herself. She held out her hammer and said in overly confident voice perfect dwarven. "Greetings, I am Gerde Dragonslayer!" I cut her off there before she ended up over-elaborating on the story like any child would.
"Yes, this is Gerde. The beastkin girl that Bekhi and I have been raising as our daughter. What do you need to know?"
The gray haired man then introduced himself as Mercer, Guildmaster of the Adventurer's Guild in this city. He escorted both Gerde and Bekhi into a back room for a thorough medical examination to verify that she was actually a beastkin. Several other guild employees, a few medical scholars, and what looked to be a city official, also went into the back room. The dwarven commanders spent the time making additional bets among themselves, and talking over the beasts that their sections had slain on the trip.
After about an hour, everyone exited the room. Some were shaking their heads in amazement, while others were paying loose change in bets lost. Gerde rushed over to me with tears in her eyes and nearly bowled me over in a hug.
"What happened in there!?" I asked Bekhi as I tried to comfort Gerde. Bekhi gripped her hammer while glaring daggers at the city official.
"They kept pinching her tail and ears to see if they were part of her, and that *&^% tried to rip them off at one point to prove that they were fake. He also kept accusing her of lying about killing the dragon, treating her worse than a criminal and yelling at her to tell the truth. I had to be held back by several of those rock chewing guild employees to keep from crushing his skull."
Before I could take a step to crush the city officials head with my own hammer, Mercer held up his hands for everyone to be silent and stood up on a stool. "Thank you all for your patience. I, Mercer, Guildmaster of the Adventurer's Guild. Do hereby certify by my authority as Guildmaster, that Gerde is indeed a beastkin. We have also verified that she is not a golem, illusion, advanced puppet, or even one of the undead. Also, based on a thorough cross examination with several witnesses and translators, we have verified she has killed a snow wolf, a yeti, a frost troll, and was instrumental in killing a dragon. Furthermore, dragonology experts were able to determine that the remains of the dragon presented to us were indeed those of Noldroth, legendary dragon mother of the second demon lord. So we will be paying out the bets accordingly. If anyone has any dispute with these facts, then they may consult with the guild records."
A few loud cheers came from the dwarven commanders, General Norathuri being the loudest one, and several grumbles came from his peers. The city official quickly made his escape when he caught sight of me furiously glaring at him, and the medical scholars soon followed while excitedly discussing the papers they were going to write about the first beastkin to be seen in a thousand years.
"Drinks are on me tonight!" General Norathuri bellowed out. "Gerde! You get as many sweet rolls as you can eat! Kvalinn and Bekhi! You trained Gerde to kill a dragon, so I'm treating you to the best food and beer Vermogen has to offer. Now let's go feast!"
"One moment please." Mercer stepped forward in between us and the general. "I need to speak with Kvalinn and his family for a few minutes, but I'll send them to your feast as soon as I can."
"Alright, but keep it quick." General Norathuri grumbled. He then instructed a Thane who acted as his lieutenant to wait here to guide us to the tavern they would be drinking at.
"Sweet rolls…" Gerde murmured to herself sadly as the General left.
"If you would come this way." Mercer took us to his private office, and after we were all sat down, he poured himself a small cup of gin and threw it back with a sigh. "By the gods. I should have retired last year when I had the chance. But I never expected the addition of formal gambling to our Guild services to be this troublesome."
Mercer then rang a bell, and a servant brought out beers for me and Bekhi, and a glass of milk for Gerde. After the servant left, Mercer bowed his head apologetically.
"I must offer my sincerest apologies for how Mijnheer Stobben acted towards your daughter earlier. He is a skeptic towards the gods, and having a beastkin appear out of nowhere has shaken his position that all myths and stories older than a hundred years are fictitious. I must ask for you not to hold a grudge against him though, his family is rather minor in the trade guilds but they are still influential. I must also apologize for how thoroughly we had to interrogate Gerde. So many bets were taken by our Khirndarim branch that I will likely have to work with the banking guilds for sufficient hard cash to pay them all. I will be placing a complaint to the guild headquarters about my colleagues' excesses when I get a chance."
He poured out another helping of gin for himself, and after drinking it in a single gulp he started on the reason he had asked to talk to us. Asking for us to tell our story from meeting Gerde to today. With Gerde potentially having killed the legendary dragon Noldroth, he wanted to make sure that the guild had ample records of her life so that they could record them for posterity. Mercer wrote down all the information himself, using several expensive pieces of paper in the process, and after adding a final period, he looked at Gerde's napping face in awe.
"Dyfnforoedd's (goddess of the ocean) waves, if she can kill a dragon at just two winters old, what will she become when she is fully grown?" There was a few minutes of silence as we all wondered what the future would bring. Mercer shook himself from his thoughts with a start. "My apologies, we appear to have taken longer than expected. General Norathuri is likely still feasting, and as a token of the guild's goodwill. I will pay to have the three of you accommodated at an inn built for dwarves." He let his voice drop in an attempt to not let Gerde hear. "Please do not leave the inn for a few days. It's possible that some of the people who lost money due to Gerde's survival may attempt to harm her or you in an attempt to get petty revenge, the Guild will of course pay any food and board costs until you leave."
"Thank you, Mercer." I said as we started to wake Gerde. "Before we leave, does the Adventurer's Guild here have a blacksmith's forge associated with it? I need to craft new weapons to replace those broken or lost on the Vermogen run."
Mercer promised to send a messenger to arrange space for me at a weapon smith's that they worked with. With that out of the way, we followed the Thane who was impatiently waiting for us to a tavern that served dwarven beer. There, we drank and feasted until late at night, and then went to the inn that Mercer had directed us to.
"Ah, a nice soft bed. This is going to be nice." I turned back the covers of the straw mattress with a contented and only slightly drunken smile, and was just about to pass out when I suddenly felt the presence of someone- no, something- else in the room.
With my hands tenser than a western gunslinger, and all sense of drunkenness gone, I slowly turned to see what was in my room. I hoped that whatever it was wasn't near my weapons and I could make a jump for them if it turned out to be hostile.
In the corner of the room, standing over my hammer and the bag holding my few remaining weapons, was an extremely odd looking man. He was tall enough that his head nearly touched the ceiling, with powerful features that would have landed him an instant contract in Hollywood. What made him odd though was his hair. It was blazing red, and I don't mean figuratively, it was literally blazing as if it was on fire and constantly shifting in color from bright red to orange, and sparks occasionally lept from between the hairs on his long thick beard that reached to his stomach.
Upon seeing that I had noticed him, the man took out a hammer, which had three excessively powerful runes on it, and held it in front of him to give a dwarven greeting. "Greetings, I am Lasraichean, god of fire. May your ancestors find honor in our meeting."
What is the god of fire, one of the creators of the dwarven race, doing in my room!? I mentally panicked a little until he handed me my hammer and glared at me to return the greeting. "Greetings, I am Kvalinn Runecursed. May our meeting bring honor to the ancestors."
I was more than a little nervous about having one of the primal beings who had shaped this world less than a few feet away from me. The dwarven Elders had only ever spoken of the gods with a curse word attached from the five hundred years that Hjerouhrdinn had spent enslaved to them, and Elder Thrikrondromm had warned me that those who make sufficiently powerful runed weapons often have god's bargain for them or steal them. My weapons were powerful, but they weren't celestial level powerful! So what was one of the creators of the dwarven race doing here!?
"Hmm, it seems the dwarven language has degraded in the past few centuries or so. Hopefully his runes will get better in a couple centuries." Lasraichean said to himself in a serious tone. He then switched gears faster than a fire in a flickering breeze to a more relaxed attitude. "Anyway, I'm here to deliver a warning. I saw your kid kill Noldroth, and I've got to say. Nice job making that ax. Not many beings in this world could make a weapon that could not only pierce that lizard's scales, but also withstand the magic your kid was pouring in, not bad at all."
"Your praise brings me great honor, Lasraichean. But you mentioned a warning?" I was hesitant to add on a title to the celestial beings name, after all, Hjerouhrdinn had declared his independence from the gods and created the Halls of the Ancestors so that they would have no hold over his descendants. Lasraichean didn't seem to notice or care though, he just snapped his fingers as if I had reminded him why he had come down.
"Oh right. Well, Noldroth was sorta like a pet to my kid sisters, Heisiasoch, the goddess of ice, and Eira, the goddess of snow. That scaly lizard was the first to receive their blessings and move to the colder lands of Tochka, and when they find out it's dead, they are going to be really, really unhappy about it, and are gonna be on the warpath to find whoever killed their pet."
Having gods be unhappy about something I did is probably not good for my prolonged health. I thought to myself. Perhaps I should start finding a really deep mine to set up shop in. However, Lasraichean shook his head as if he could hear my thoughts.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, but my sisters are exponentially more powerful than that dragon was, and it had enough juice to grind your mountains into dust. You'd need to go deeper than any dwarf ever has to escape from them, and once you got down that deep you'd want to climb out faster than you went down. That is, if you survived the monsters that live down there. Also, you're a few centuries too young to be making weapons strong enough to fight them."
With plans A through D all shot down without me even voicing them, I had no choice but to ask for advice from a god. Lasraichean gave a smirk as I asked him for any ideas.
"Issanore. The island of the elves. That's the only place in this world where you and the beastkin girl will be safe from my sisters."
"I thought the island of the elves was called Dryadales?" I remembered it had been called that in numerous previous conversations between adventurers, but Lasraichean just shrugged dismissively.
"That's just what humans call it. They used to call it 'the island of the damned elves' but after a thousand years it got shortened to just Dryadales. Humans aren't that fond of elves, and you dwarves really don't like them, but right now they're the only ones with enough power to stop my sisters. I'll talk to an old friend of mine named Valntur who uses my magic a lot and get him to host you until my sisters have calmed down. Just make your decision soon, his boat leaves in less than two weeks."
With his warning delivered, Lasraichean vanished in a flash of flame. Leaving nothing behind except slightly warmer air.
"Ancestors beard." I muttered to myself. "How the hell am I going to explain this to Bekhi tomorrow. Maybe Mercer will have a better solution than going to the cursed island of the damned elves."
From what I had heard, the elves in this world were the most prideful, conceited, overbearing, high-handed, and egotistical beings to walk the world. Even their country name reflected their inflated sense of self, calling themselves The Perfection of Dryadales, although that may have been a rumor started by people living on the continent. Either way, the last thing I wanted to do was to go begging an elf for help against the gods. Perhaps there is a god killer rune I could use against them.
I went to bed resolved to find a rune that could fight against the gods and keep my family safe from their anger. Anything would be better than going to the elves for help.