Val woke up late the next morning. The soft beds in the inn Katya had chosen put the hard tack mattresses, and they could only be called that generously, he'd been sleeping on since arriving in Al'Lachia to shame, and he'd taken to sleeping later and later in the day.
He pulled on his pants and boots from the night before, and a fresh shirt, and headed down to the first floor for breakfast.
The inn's bottom level was open to the public, and already busy. Val took a small table in the back and demolished a double order of sausage, eggs, some sort of wiry green vegetable fried in oil and three pieces of thick cut, heavily seeded bread. To his deep chagrin, they had not ever cultivated coffee in this world, but he was able to accompany his breakfast with a steaming mug of a dark, black herbal tisane that had a similarly stimulating effect.
The conversation with Katya the night before had left him exhausted, but it had helped him start to crawl out from under the feeling of helplessness that had plagued him since they'd returned from the labyrinth. Hearing that Katya was feeling similarly lost and aimless had, rather than compounding his own misery, given him the shock needed to shake him from his state of ennui.
They were in a tight spot, but it wasn't in Val's nature to do nothing, and he had languished in inactivity for too long. For now, he needed Katya's help to secure access to a guild, any guild really, and if that meant he had to put in some legwork to uncover the machinations of his skill then that was fine. Once he was done with his breakfast, he'd walk upstairs, wake Katya, and they'd work out what to do next.
The innkeeper, a burly man with thick, hairy forearms, walked up to his table and started collecting his plates into a noisy stack. Before he took them away, he reached into his stained apron's front pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, then placed it on the table in front of Val.
"What's this?" Val asked.
"Message," the innkeeper replied, his voice thickly accented to the point where it came out more like "myissij", but Val got the meaning.
"Thanks."
The innkeeper grunted and stomped away with the plates in hand.
Val unfolded the paper. The note was brief, bordering on curt.
'Parish district,
Across the road from the Coptic cathedral.
- K'
Val reread the note once more, not that it took very long. Al'Lachia didn't have a postal service, instead utilising personal couriers, so they didn't do addresses in the way he was used to.
Luckily, he knew the parish district well. A throwback to the days when the summoned were fêted and celebrated more aggressively by the royal family, and the populace in general. Block after block of churches, cathedrals, synagogues and temples built for, or in testament to, the old gods of the various Earth expatriates who had been brought to Al'Lachia over the centuries. While the religions themselves hadn't exactly captured the local populace, citizens often participated in the rituals, honouring the often well known adventurers who introduced them by proxy, unaware of their occasionally bizarre nature as half-remembered analogs of real ceremonies.
The buildings, some of them now centuries old, were in a constant state of ongoing repair, paid for by the patronage of guilds or funds set up by their long dead founders. Val had worked a number of refurbishment jobs in the district during his time in construction, and, despite not being a religious man himself, had taken some small comfort in the familiar architecture and religious pageantry of his own world.
He stood up, tossed a few coins on the table, and walked out into the city.
—
It only took Val about forty-five minutes to make it to the location he'd been given, even though he had to cut around a loud, raucous baptism that had spilled onto the streets outside one of the large Anglican churches, ducking under waves of water being sprayed on the crowd by a mage in a long, blue robe.
Apparently, the meaning of the ceremony had been long since lost to time, but they were often held as a coming-of-age event for children of members of the Summer Squall guild, whose current leadership were partly descended from the summonees who introduced the ritual. Val had only attended a few baptisms and christenings in his own world and, if he was honest, he preferred the slightly confused but over the top celebrations that the Al'Lachians had turned the solemn occasions into.
The Coptic cathedral towered over the buildings on either side of it, tall and narrow with long, arched windows mirroring the structure of the building itself. Cyrillic text, inlaid in gold, surrounded the wide wooden door, a remnant of the Russian Orthodox summonees who had founded the building. While the church itself was silent today, the building was well-maintained, and Val admired the quality of the craftsmanship that went into building it.
He turned around, seeking the location he'd been given. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he figured it wouldn't take long to track down whatever restaurant, armourer or vendor Katya had summoned him to. However, there was only one building to be seen.
The other side of the street, almost the entire block, was dominated by an enormous, three story compound of stained stuccoed brick and wide, boarded-over windows. An enormous door of steel-reinforced wood sat directly across from him, but, unlike the cathedral behind him, this building had clearly been locked up and abandoned years, perhaps decades, earlier, without any thought given to ongoing care and maintenance.
Val pulled the note from his pocket and double-checked it, but he was in the right place. Curious, he walked toward the large, heavy doors, noting that one of them was slightly ajar.
As he reached for the handle, an enormous clamour from within the building stayed his hand.
"Get back here!" he heard Katya yell from inside, followed by further crashing, clanging and sprinting footsteps.
The ruckus was moving towards him and he listened intently. A small scuttering sound at his feet grabbed his attention as a giant beetle, nearly a foot long with a glossy black shell and long, spindly legs, shot out through the gap in the open door and between his legs.
Val was fine with bugs, even the giant ones that occasionally popped up in this world, so he watched dispassionately as the bug skittered off down the street. He turned back just as Katya threw both doors open and came flying out, her giant greatsword raised high. Upon seeing Val in the doorway, she paused mid-strike.
"Oh, hey Val," she said, as if she hadn't just come from what sounded like a fairly serious battle, "Where'd it go?"
"Took off that way," Val replied, gesturing to one side.
"Well, good, as long as it's out," she concluded, "DId you find the place okay?"
Val didn't immediately answer. He had never known Katya to participate in small talk before, and considering how little context he had of why he'd been called to an abandoned… Fort? He was especially confused as to why she had chosen to start now.
"Okay," she said, not waiting for a response, "Come on in."
She walked back into the dim building, and he followed her.
—
From Val's estimation, nobody had walked these long hallways for decades, at the least. Thick, dirt-crusted cobwebs filled every corner, the scattered furniture was reduced to scraps of moth-eaten cloth hanging from rotted out timber frames, and everything was coated in a thick layer of black mildew and grey dust that spat up into the air with each echoing footstep he took.
He stuck close to Katya, who at least seemed to be moving with a destination in mind, cutting left and right through interconnected halls and transoms. The building was huge, and the pair passed at least a dozen doors, of which almost all were rotting off their hinges.
"Katya," Val asked, as they ducked through what could have been a sitting room, but was now just storage for enormous piles of weevil infested books, "What are we doing here?"
"Hang on," she replied, pulling a door from its frame and leaning it against the wall.
Sunlight spilled inside through the portal, illuminating the airborne particles in the air, and Val inwardly cringed at the ongoing OSHA violation he was participating in by being in here without a respirator.
"Ah," Katya exclaimed, "Here we are."
Again, Katya vanished through the door, and this time Val wasted no time following her.
The door opened into a large courtyard, easily big enough to house three tennis courts at Val's estimation, surrounded on all sides by windows into the myriad rooms of the building. The surface was dirt, pressed flat by thousands of footsteps, so compressed that even years of disrepair had not led to a single blade of grass breaking through the hard packed earth.
Katya leant her sword against the inner wall and stepped out into the sunshine, looking up at the huge swathe of open sky above. It was quiet in the courtyard, the sounds of the city muted and distant. She slowed to a halt, taking in deep breaths of fresh air.
Val watched her from just past the doorway. He wanted to know what this place was, why they were there, but something about the way she was standing, silent and still, stopped him from asking.
"The money for the horns came through," she said, still looking at the sky.
"Yeah?" he asked, "How'd we do?"
"Good, really good," she replied, "At least according to Locke. Apparently nobody's managed to get the horns to drop the last few times the bull's been taken down, so the blacksmiths of the city had a full-blown bidding war. That's why it took so long to sell."
"Huh," Val grunted, "Lucky for us."
She nodded, then turned around to face him.
"And I've picked a guild," she told him.
"Which one?"
She smiled, but there was a hint of something underneath it that Val didn't quite recognise.
"Well," she said, "Last night, after we talked, I thought about all the guilds that I'd met with, and which one might work for me. Which of the guilds can make a genuine attempt at reaching the thousandth floor, which of the guilds isn't going to butt in on every little decision, which of the guilds has a meister that I'm not going to clash with constantly, that isn't totally obsessed with filling the guild accounts with gold, to the exclusion of all else and, of course, which of them can find a spot for you."
"Uh huh," Val responded, sure he was missing something, "So, which guild is that?"
"You're standing in it," she replied.
Val furrowed his brow, casting his eyes around at the derelict building.
"I don't mean to be a jerk," he said, "But I think we can do better."
Katya made a frustrated face.
"This is the former hall of the Patricians guild," she declared, "A guild founded and once overseen by Ebid of the Ten Thousand Blades, and, as a descendant of the founder, I am legally allowed to re-incorporate and claim the guild, including full rights and responsibilities as meister."
Val raised his eyebrows.
"Just like that?" he asked.
"Well," Katya demurred, "Not 'just like that'. There's a fee, kind of a big fee actually, and some bylaws that have to be met for council membership, but… Kind of, yeah."
Val rocked back on his feet, examining the abandoned training ground and guild-hall with fresh eyes. The structural elements looked sound, but the building was enormous. He wasn't sure how much money they'd made off their failed expedition, but they'd need a fortune to make this place habitable again.
"So what do you think?"
He looked back at Katya, waiting expectantly for him to say something, and realised the extent of the gamble she'd made here.
Val scratched at his beard.
"I think we're going to need a decent contractor."