Chương 114: A Disparity of Scale

The portal spat them out onto the delver's trace, just outside Deadfall. Behind him, the Spell collapsed. Ido stood a few paces ahead, staring at the distant glow of Deadfall's gate lights. The commanding persona he'd adopted through every corridor and cavern of the delve slipped for a fraction of a second as he turned to look at Cal's lady mentor.

"It was good to see you again, Selara," he said softly. He cleared his throat for a brisk follow up.

"And you, Aurelian. Good to see you both." Selara nodded coolly in return, and Aurelian responded with something that might have been an acknowledgment… or a sinus condition. He was already swapping from his battle robes and armor back to his usual attire, his gaze fixed on the village. Replacing her gear shortly after, his sister followed suit. The hooded figure stepped forward and raised one hand. Reality split again. This portal was different from Angelika's.

Where hers had been a disc that distorted the air and eventually carved open, this was a clean vertical rectangle. The doorway revealed itself as if the hole had always been there, and a curtain was slowly being drawn up from the ground to expose it. Through the gateway, Cal caught a glimpse of a completely different corner of the world: sun-drenched white marble, the rich gold of Aurum's full light spilling across a pristine courtyard lined with sculpted hedgerows and polished stone benches.

The air drifting through was warm and dry, carrying the sweet scent of cultivated flowers and something spiced, like cloves. Cal thought it looked… rather inviting. Certainly a nice change of pace from the damp and cold, as well as the impending dark. Filip scoffed, rolling his shoulders as he strode toward the portal.

"Finally. Back to civilization." He stepped through and was gone, followed closely by his sister, her lithe form slipping into the sunlit marble without a backward glance. Zamir ducked through with a polite nod, and Hope appeared from… somewhere, offered a lazy wave, and vanished to the other side. Ido paused at the edge of the portal. He looked back at Selara one more time, and for a moment there was something unfinished and aching in his eyes. Then the commander returned and he dipped his chin once.

"Until next time." He passed through. The hooded figure was last, and the tear in reality sealed shut behind him, leaving only the still forest and the waning daylight. Cal stared at the empty space where the portal had been and finally released the breath he'd held, watching it curl into the chill air. He'd done it. No one suspected that he'd just managed to steal what had to be an incredibly valuable Spell; not even the scary person who could apparently internally cast something similar.

"Hey Selara… who was that creepy hooded fella?" Cal asked, turning to look at her.

"What was he even doing with them?" Selara flashed a humorless smile and rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger.

"One of the key differences between walking the Sovereign Path and being a student at the Academy…" She dropped her hand and met his eyes, resigned.

"… is that Sovereign Aspirants by tradition must learn to survive on their own. The students… they travel with chaperones. That one is at least C-tier. And knowing the pedigree of the ones in that group… possibly higher." Cal shook his head. He couldn't even comprehend the power of C-tier, let alone B, and they had them as a babysitter?

Escorting a party of D-tier students running a dungeon they could have cleared blindfolded, and yet couldn't be bothered to share more than a pittance of the treasure they never would have found without him. It still made him grind his teeth… but if he could get the portal Spell to work? Well worth it. The walk back took only a few minutes, the three of them heading through the darkening forest in comfortable silence.

When they'd entered the timber walls of Deadfall, Cal turned to Aurelian, unwilling to let the moment pass despite his exhaustion. The alchemist was already half a step ahead; his attention was fixed on a point deeper in the village like a man who could hear his cauldron calling.

"Aurelian." He paused and looked at Cal, impatience plain on his face.

"Thank you for trusting my instincts on that wall," Cal said sincerely.

"For having my back down there. And I'm… honestly amazed. I didn't realize you were versed in so many different schools of magic. The alchemy Spells, the easy use of fire magic, and the way you analyzed the stone... That must have been some sort of earth cantrip, right? It's remarkable." Aurelian stiffened. His gaze slid away, suddenly interested in a spot somewhere over Cal's left shoulder. Selara enjoyed her brother's discomfort for a beat, then nudged his arm with a teasing smile.

"Aurelian… the boy is thanking you."

"Yes, well." The man wrinkled his nose, then adjusted his cuffs with an aggressive tug.

"You handled yourself with aplomb in there, too." The words came out stiff and slightly too loud. The alchemist turned and stalked toward the shop without another word, his silver-blond hair catching the last of Cinder's light. Selara sighed fondly.

"He's right, you know. You did well." Cal met her eyes.

"Thank you, Selara. For everything." He hesitated, searching for the right words, only to find them clumsy and insufficient.

"For taking me into the dungeon. For protecting me in there with Ido… but more than that, just giving me a chance when I walked in off the street in the first place." He gestured vaguely in a broad circle.

"For the trust. For all of it. I don't take it for granted. I know how lucky I've been." Selara blushed faintly, visible in the village's rune-lit streets. She gave him a small smile, the weariness lifting briefly from her features.

"You've earned it, Cal." She held his eyes for a moment longer, then gave a final nod and moved to follow her brother. Cal watched her go until she rounded a corner into the dark. Then he angled toward his house and walked home to pass out. Sunlight streamed through his windows, dousing the floor with light. Cal woke clear-headed and filled with new energy, the fatigue from the dungeon scoured away by a dreamless night of sleep. He had business to attend to.

His first stop, Jakob's Magnificent Market, was unexpectedly silent. Cal stood on the cobblestones outside the shuttered storefront, frowning. In the bright morning air, the usually vibrant blue facade looked dull, its gaudy lettering reduced to a cheerless scrawl. A hastily written sign hung from the door handle: "CLOSED." The hush where Jakob's frenzied energy should have been felt wrong, a pocket of unnatural quiet in a village already coming alive with the bustle of early foot traffic.

His primary plan for offloading the D-tier stone thwarted, Cal adjusted course and headed for the Adventurer's Guild instead. The common room was packed, the usual chaos of low tier ambition in full swing as warriors planned the day's activities. Arguments over contract terms competed with boisterous laughter and the scrape of chairs on the wooden floor.

A group of leather-clad adventurers in one corner were conducting a spirited debate about the best method for skinning a fernback stag, complete with enthusiastic hand gestures that threatened the drinks of everyone within arm's reach. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Cal immediately spotted some friendly faces. Corinne, Leo, Mira, and Gavin were clustered near the bounty board, their heads bent together in discussion over a handful of contracts.

Corinne's chestnut ponytail bounced as she jabbed a finger at one of the postings, making a point with her whole body. She turned and lit up with a megawatt smile when she saw him across the room.

"There you are!" She crossed the distance in quick strides, grabbing his arm.

"We were just about to take a contract without you! We stopped by your house yesterday but you weren't there. Where have you been?"

"Working," Cal said with a grin.

"And then sleeping. It was a long night. What've you got?" Corinne dragged him to the board, where Leo offered a wave and Gavin gave him a stoic nod. Mira watched him with calm, observant blue eyes, amusement on her face. The group had already narrowed their options to a simple beast-culling job: a pack of hemlock prowlers terrorizing a farmer's fields two miles north of the village. The pay was modest, the danger manageable; it was the kind of bread-and-butter contract that kept F-tier adventurers fed.

"Perfect timing," Corinne declared.

"We were hoping to head out this afternoon and make quick work of this. Sound good?" Cal opened his mouth to answer, but a body collided with his shoulder. Hard. He stumbled sideways, catching himself on the edge of the bounty board. Finn shoved past, his scrawny frame sliding through the gap he'd created. He glanced toward the contract Corinne held, a sneer twisting his sallow green features.

"Prowlers? For that much?" A high-pitched, derisive laugh.

"Good luck buying a meal splitting those coppers." He disappeared into the crowd before anyone could respond, his greasy black hair vanishing between the shoulders of larger adventurers. Cal barely registered the slight, more interested in the fact that Finn had progressed to low E-tier. He still had a ways to go after the tournament, and it's been what? A few weeks? I didn't get the sense he came from the same affluence Narbok did. I wonder what the story is there?

Cal returned his focus to his friends where Corinne shook her head at the interruption.

"Rude," she said, then looking at Cal asked, "You in for this afternoon?"

"I'll be there," he confirmed. Then he lowered his voice.

"But about last night..." She frowned, picking up on his serious tone.

"You said you were working. Where? You look... different." Cal hesitated, but only for a moment. She was heading down the path of adventure and danger, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wasn't fully on board yet… but he was trying to be. This wasn't Earth, after all.

"I was up all night… because Selara took me to observe a delve into the Deadfall dungeon." Corinne gaped. A full three seconds of stunned silence as her brain stuttered to a stop, her eyes widening to a diameter Cal wouldn't have thought physically possible. Then the dam broke.

"The dungeon?" Her voice jumped an octave.

"The actual dungeon? The D-tier dungeon? You went inside? What was it like? Were there monsters? Of course there were monsters, it's a dungeon, but what kind? How deep did you go? Did you fight anything? Did Selara fight? Did you see the core? What does a core look like? Was it—""Corinne."

"—dangerous? Obviously it was dangerous, but like, how dangerous, like 'oh that's a bit scary' dangerous or 'Ah, I nearly died' dangerous, because knowing you, you nearly—"" Corinne." She stopped, breath hyperventilating, having seized his arm tight enough to leave marks. Cal carefully unclamped her fingers and then reached into his belt pouch, withdrawing his bittersweet prize. The D-tier essence stone caught the lamplight and threw it back in a red glow.

Its aura was undeniably different from anything else Cal felt in the Hall, as most everyone in the village was well below D. The F-tier spirit stones changing hands further down the Guild counter felt thin by comparison. A few heads turned. Conversations within a ten-yard radius died mid-sentence. An adventurer at the nearest table set down his mug and fixed his eyes hungrily on the stone before glancing surreptitiously at Cal.

Cal's friends stood slack-jawed before he walked up and set it down in front of the quartermaster. Felicity looked up from her ledger as he approached, her professional smile replaced with something a bit more informal when she saw him. That expression shifted to raised eyebrows when she saw what he set on the counter, her brown eyes darting from the stone to his face to the gawking friends behind him, before returning to the stone.

"Running an errand for the Veils today? Selara usually prefers to handle her own exchanges."

"It's mine." Felicity tilted her head, appraising him.

"Cal… you're an F-tier. If you found this in the woods that's one thing, but I hope you're not getting involved in anything illicit."

"I will have you know I earned it fair and square, Miss Lynwood, and I'm mildly insulted at your insinuations. Selara and Aurelian took me on a delve with some old... acquaintances of theirs. I helped locate a natural treasure inside the dungeon and this was my finder's fee." Felicity studied him with a raised eyebrow for a long moment, apparently deciding not to press for further details. Which, if he was being honest, he was grateful for. She leaned closer, dropping her voice to a murmur.

"So, what are you trying to do here, Cal? Sell it for coin? I might advise you against carrying that much gold on your person."

"How much gold are we talking about?" Felicity considered him, her freckled half-elf features giving nothing away. She glanced again at the handful of people who were making a poor showing of not watching, then back at him.

"How about this," she whispered conspiratorially.

"One hundred gold in your hands now. And an eight-hundred-gold credit with the Guild, good for anywhere. We keep five percent as the management fee, and you get a promissory note cashable at any official Guild branch in the world." Cal momentarily forgot to breathe. Nine hundred and fifty gold! Behind him, Corinne squeaked involuntarily.

"Done," Cal said. There wasn't much to think about. She was right that having that much gold on him was only asking for trouble, and he didn't really know their true worth. Better to use the Guild as a bank and trust Felicity for now. Felicity retrieved a parchment form and a small metallic device etched with runes. She recorded the amount and the date, then held out her hand.

"Your badge, please." Cal unpinned the bronze medal from his chest and handed over the mist-shrouded spruce that marked him as a Proven. Taking the badge, Felicity slotted it into a circular depression on top of the device and placed it upon the document. She channeled a sliver of Mana into the tool, causing it to flare with sudden heat. The paper hissed, burning an exact copy of his badge image into the bottom corner of the note.

She removed the badge and slid both items back across the counter, along with a leather pouch that clinked with a hundred gold coins.

"Try it," she said, gesturing to the paper.

"Hold your badge over the seal." Cal picked it up and hovered the bronze directly above the scorched mark. The burned spruce outline immediately lit up with a silver glow. As he pulled the badge away, the light vanished, leaving only the charred, mist-shrouded tree in the parchment.

"Sealed to your spiritual signature in combination with your badge," Felicity said.

"It's useless scrap to a thief, which helps justify our exchange fee. Guard that note anyway and be careful who sees it." Tucking the note away and re-pinning the badge, he thanked Felicity and turned back to his friends. Leo, Mira, Gavin, and Corinne stood in a loose semicircle behind him, their faces running a spectrum from stunned to bewildered to something uncomfortably close to awe. An invisible barrier had replaced the easy camaraderie of five minutes ago…

a sort of awkwardness created by the sudden influx of wealth. Cal watched his friends struggle with it, each of them trying and failing to find the right words to bridge the gap. Corinne opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Leo spoke first, in his earnestly sincere way.

"Cal, that's amazing. Congratulations." Leave it to the baker to be his endearing self and break through the uncomfortable atmosphere. Crossing to him, Cal clapped a hand on his shoulder. With his other hand, he surreptitiously pressed a gold coin into the baker's palm, closing his fingers around it firmly. Leo looked down at his fist, then back up at Cal, disbelieving. Cal glanced meaningfully toward Mira, who was regarding them curiously next to Corinne. Then he looked back at Leo and winked.

A vivid blush spread from Leo's collar to his hairline. He worked his mouth to speak but only managed a small nod, his grip tightening on the coin.

"I'll tell you all the full story on the road," Cal said, addressing the group.

"All of it. The good, the bad, and the parts where I almost got dissolved by fungus. You deserve to know what's actually out there." Corinne narrowed her still-wide eyes at that last bit.

"You are telling me everything. Every last detail. Starting with—""On the road, Cor," he said, cutting her off gently.

"I've got a few things to sort before we head out. Meet back here in, say, two hours?" Corinne made a sound of extreme frustration that was nonetheless undercut by a grudging smile.

"Fine. Two hours. But you're talking the entire way."

"Deal." As he turned to leave, he noticed the contract still clutched in her hand. A simple beast-culling job. In his pack, a Guild promissory note for eight hundred gold sat beside a leather pouch holding a hundred more. I just banked nine hundred and fifty gold, and this afternoon I'm going to be chasing canines through a muddy field for a few silvers. The absurdity of it hit him sideways and he laughed, the real kind that escaped before you could stop it. Corinne gave him a suspicious look.

"What?"

"Nothing." He shook his head, still grinning.

"Just really looking forward to our team-building exercise. See you later."