The muted purpose of the Commander's wing gave way to the open bustle of the Mirathrian morning as Cal stepped out of the North Fort. He paused at the top of the stronghold's broad steps to tuck Cardea's letter into his belt pouch, careful not to damage the wax seal. He descended the steps and angled back toward the plaza's north gate. The legionaries on duty had changed shifts, but the new ones gave him the same disinterested once-over before waving him on.
The plaza opened before him again, just as staggering the second time. He decided to take it slow. Something this magnificent deserved to be appreciated.
White stone underfoot was clean enough to eat off and polished by centuries of foot traffic and what he suspected was regularly scouring by maintenance teams. The rune gate dominated the air ahead of him as an arch formed of pure absence framing a hole in reality, and through it a view of Kar'angor clung to the Mor'gorum Range.
As he drew nearer to the gate proper, the activity around it resolved into distinct currents. Dwarves ran the sending side.
A queue of caravans and individual travelers waited to enter the gate in a series of marked-off lanes, and at each lane stood a squad of dwarven legionaries in the heavier plate of the Kar'angor garrison. They wore the standard Dominion black, but the armor's construction was different. The plates overlapped lower, designed for stockier builds. They checked through cargo and papers stoically, while opening crates, sniffing barrels, and running stubby fingers along the seams of merchant packs.
Ah, jurisdictional synergy. Put the dwarves on the gate leading to the dwarven side. Someone in a stuffy office probably got a promotion for that flash of brilliance.
The receiving side was, unsurprisingly, the mirror opposite. A mixed contingent of mostly humans and elves in the lighter Mirathrian kit processed arrivals from the mountains, checking writs of purpose and waving the legitimate through with speed.
He continued on as he turned his attention to the inner walls of the plaza. A market hugged them in a ring of permanent stalls and high-end pavilions. The moment Cal stepped into its informal lanes, the noise level jumped.
Unlike the cobblestone-rough markets where Jakob's distant competition peddled questionable goods, the plaza market catered to a dual clientele actively in transit. It was a living model of cross-gate economics, with commerce flowing from two sides. Stalls catering to arrivals from Kar'angor stood flush with dwarven exports, where merchants displayed jewelry set with deep-vein gems next to cases of precisely tooled… well, tools. Across the way, vendors sold the surface world back to those heading into the mountain, pitching the virtues of hardy travel leathers and bundles of various heartwoods, prized for their use in weapon shafts and handles.
The hawkers established here were also polished. They'd had the corners knocked off them by years of selling to merchants and minor nobility and knew how to pitch.
"Sir? Sir, a moment of your time."
A woman stepped smoothly into his path. She couldn't have been more than thirty, with bright blond hair pinned up in a practical knot and a smile that suggested she already considered the conversation won before it began. Behind her, pouches and small canisters stood in an artful spread.
"You have the look of a man trying to make a long journey a little easier, and I have just the cure for that."
Cal stopped because to keep walking would be rude, and because somewhere in the back of his mind a voice was musing about his pushy merchant friend.
"Thanks, but I'm just passing through."
"Through is where my products live! I have here a batch of vigor lozenges, just made this morning. Two will keep a body fresh through eighteen hours of hard travel, and they're better than tea! There's no jitters or crash to speak of. A silver apiece, or six for five, while supplies last. You look like a man who values his focus, yes? Let me fill a bag for you."
The woman turned and started scooping the small hard candies into a tiny sack, but Cal wouldn't be swayed.
"I do value my focus, I really do. Unfortunately, I also value my coin, and I'm already overstimulated enough on life as it is."
She stopped her attempts and turned back, laughing off his response.
"A traveler with humor is rare, friend. Come back when you need something to perk you up."
"Sure. You'll be my first stop."
He kept moving, sidestepping two more pitches with a disarming smile and a polite shake of the head, thinking, geez, Jakob's got some real competition out here. He'd weep with admiration.
The market thinned as Cal approached the southern end of the plaza, and the legionaries there waved him through without question. The avenue beyond the southern gate seemed like a different city entirely.
Buildings rose high on either side, each one a small fortress of institutional ambition. The first he passed bore a stylized cauldron, three-legged and wreathed in stone-carved steam, set above a brass-bound door that had to weigh half a ton. The Alchemist's Guild, then. Across the avenue stood a structure whose facade was an enormous bas-relief of a winged scroll caught mid-unfurl, and Cal didn't need the signage to guess that one either. The Courier's Guild.
Further down the wide avenue a magic academy occupied an entire block on his left, its grounds visible through wrought-iron gates worked with sigils he didn't recognize but felt faintly through his passive senses. A weapons school across from it advertised itself with crossed sabres carved above its entrance and the steady ring of training blades drifting from an inner courtyard.
This is where potential power lives. Not the nobility back north with their bloodlines and their generational wealth. This. The guilds, the academies and schools. Something that was actually accessible to me as a nobody.
He thought of Deadfall's modest Adventurer's Hall, of Jakob's humble storefront and the small forge where Yorrin worked his careful magic. The comparison dizzied him. A city this size didn't accumulate guildhalls like this by accident. It took decades of careful accumulation. Centuries. The kind of patience that built civilizations.
Then he heard the roar.
It rolled down the avenue from somewhere ahead and to his right, the unmistakable sound of a crowd losing its mind over something. The synchronized surge of an audience enthralled.
He picked up his pace until a coliseum came into view as the avenue curved. It was big. Massive, even. A grand structure with seven tiers of arched stone openings ringing its exterior, each archway hanging with banners showing gladiators in mid-strike, with axes raised and spears thrown. Hands wreathed in conjured flame and ice. A line of patrons snaked from the main entrance and disappeared around the corner of the circular building.
Cal slowed as he looked at the sight, a bit thrown for a second until something clicked.
Ohh wow, so the tavern talk was real.
He remembered some of the delvers and merchants who'd propped up the Hearthsong's bar grumbling about Deadfall's dead nights. Not having decent fights to watch and wager on. The village's annual Reaping Tournament was the closest thing to a spectacle they ever got, if they managed to be in town at the right time. He hadn't thought much of it in a long while. Now he must have been looking at what those travelers had actually been missing.
Just what day is it, anyway? The trip here kind of blurred everything.
Some quick mental muscling got him there. It was Saturday, or at least that's how he thought of it. In the common tongue it was something like "first rest." The Veraxian work week didn't have Fridays and, instead, rotated four cycles on, two cycles off, with a "cycle" being twenty-eight hours. So, a workweek that ran the length of an Earthen one but compressed differently, with longer shifts and longer rests. Today was a rest cycle for a good chunk of the city's working population.
Midday entertainment with the bread and a circus, scheduled for maximum attendance.
He stood at the edge of the avenue and watched the line get processed. The roar came again, and he felt a tremor vibrate up through the soles of his boots from the stone. Whatever was happening inside that coliseum had just shifted, and thousands of voices registered it as one. Something in him stirred.
Cal hadn't expected it. Hadn't even considered it, really. But he remembered the sound of his own name being shouted by complete strangers that had never heard of him a few days before, and the thought of experiencing it again… well. It wasn't unpleasant.
Oof, I better be careful or I'm going to turn into a battle maniac like Vane.
The pull was real. He stood there on the avenue with the Healer's Guild somewhere ahead. A part of him just wanted to step into the line, buy a seat in the cheap tiers, and let himself sink into someone else's fight for an hour. Just to hear that sound again. Just to feel that energy.
He closed his eyes for two seconds and took a deep breath.
Mira, man. Mira first.
Turning his head, he deliberately forced himself to look away from the coliseum. The Adventurer's Guild headquarters stood just beyond the arena, with a partition running between the two that joined them at the shoulder. That gave him pause. None of the grumbling at the Hearthsong had ever said the arena was guild business. They'd talked about the fights and betting, sure, but who ran the ticket booth had never come up. That shared wall indicated some sort of connection.
Directly across the avenue from the coliseum sat a building of white marble. It was lower than its neighbors at only two stories, but it sprawled across most of a block. The facade was an unbroken line of stone with broad steps, and above the entrance was a carved symbol of a sprig of some flowering herb wrapped around a stylized staff. Or was it a wand? Either way, he'd found the Healer's Guild.
Cal crossed the avenue, the noise of the coliseum receding behind him with every step. When he walked inside, the lobby was cool and quiet, blessedly not smelling like a hospital. Certainly, a gentler smell than the ICU where he had spent three days after his appendix had decided to misbehave.
People in pristine white robes bustled along the edges of the lobby, their feet making the smallest shuffling sounds on the polished floor. A reception desk of bleached wood sat against the far wall, with two attendants in robes a shade off-white working behind it. Cal joined the short queue.
There were perhaps six people ahead of him. A well-dressed woman with a young boy whose left arm hung at a wrong angle. An older man leaning heavily on a cane, his breathing audibly labored. A pair of merchants speaking in anxious tones about someone's father. And one figure who immediately caught Cal's attention.
The man stood apart, by choice or by everyone else's. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and lean, with the kind of face that had spent too many years in the sun. He wore practical leathers stained with use and one bracer that didn't match the other, hastily strapped on. His right arm was covered from wrist to elbow in bandages that glowed. White light leaked from the wrappings and runes Cal didn't recognize, stitched along the bands. He let his [Spiritual Perception] drift toward the man. Just a soft brush of attention. Nothing that could be interpreted as a probe.
The aura around the wound was wrong.
The man's own signature was a healthy D-tier red, an adventurer or delver of solid experience. But the arm read as something else entirely. A second, dissonant signature lay tucked inside the bandage, black and putrid yellow, with a frequency that beat against the man's aura like two musicians playing in different keys. Cal could taste the corruption even through the glyphs, a flavor like rotting iron and bile.
A wisp of black smoke seeped from the edge of one wrapping, curling upward for perhaps an inch before dissolving into the air.
What the heck is that crap? Whatever got him is still very active in there, and it's trying to spread.
Without hesitation Cal fired up an [Air Orb] and began directing a stream of wind towards the man, ruffling his hair. The man glanced over and scowled at Cal, to which Cal could only offer a shrug and look away. He wasn't going to risk any contact with that black smoke.
When Cal reached the desk, the attendant on the left took him. She was perhaps forty, with sleek dark hair pulled back into a severe braid and the kind of professional brusqueness that suggested she'd worked this desk for years.
"Welcome to the Healer's Guild. Are you a new patient or existing client?"
"Hi. I'm here on behalf of a new patient. A friend, actually. She's a paraplegic from a spinal injury that the healers in Deadfall Village couldn't repair, and I'm hoping to engage a Master Healer for her."
The woman had already begun shaking her head before he finished.
"Master Healer consultations are booked out well in advance. New patient intake for spinal trauma cases is currently scheduled at..." She glanced down at a ledger and ran her finger down a column. "Three months, fourteen days. The next available appointment with a junior healer is in eight days, if you'd like to begin with an initial assessment."
Yikes, three and a half months? You really did need to know somebody to get anything done here. Good ol' healthcare systems. I can't wait until I'm skilled enough with magic to never need this particular brand of bureaucracy ever again.
"I… see," Cal stated. "Before we go that route, maybe this will help."
He drew Cardea's letter from his pouch and smoothed it out, laying it on the counter with the wax seal facing up. The receptionist glanced down at the seal and immediately straightened in her chair.
"Ah. One moment, please."
She picked up the letter carefully, broke the seal with a thin silver knife, and read. Her eyes moved twice through the short text, then she set it down and turned to the ledger again. This time her fingers moved faster.
"Master Healer Innes has a cancellation in seven days, at fifth hour. Spinal trauma is within her specialty. I can offer you that slot now, contingent on your friend being present and able to travel."
"Yes, she'll be here! We'll take it!"
"Very well. Then I will provisionally hold the slot under your name."
Cal exhaled slowly. He'd figured it was only a matter of time before he'd have to share some of his secrets. Traveling back and forth between Mirathra and Deadfall the old-fashioned way was a waste, and while he could obfuscate it somewhat by waiting out the trip time between visits there were still certain people that would be more of a hindrance to keep in the dark. People he believed he could trust.
But that was a problem for future Cal.
"My name is Cal Valorn, and the patient's name is Mira Jain."
The receptionist wrote it down in a careful script, then handed him a small token of wood stamped with the guild's symbol and a number.
"Present this on arrival. Master Innes does not wait for late patients. If you are delayed, send word ahead. Your appointment will not be rescheduled and your request will go to the back of the queue. The forewarning, however, will help keep you in good standing."
"That makes sense. Thanks! We'll definitely be here!"
"Thank Commander Cardea. The Healer's Guild always honors her patronage. Now, there is one more matter to deal with. Master Innes typically charges between one thousand and three thousand gold for cases of this nature, depending on the severity of the injury. Once terms are agreed upon, the guild expects payment in advance of treatment."
Cal nodded along as if the figure meant little, while inside, relief washed over him. He had that much… if he could talk her down a bit. He was confident he could.
"That won't be a problem at all."
"Excellent. Good day to you, then."
"Ah, if I may? A question?"
The receptionist leaned over in her chair and pointedly eyed the line waiting behind Cal.
"It will be quick, I promise!" he continued. "I was just wondering why there were so many people in here with injuries that seem like they'd be… rather straightforward to heal. Like with a potion, or something."
"'Like with a potion,' he says," the woman muttered. "Young Master Valorn, I assure you, for many that come requesting our services just a potion can be quite the financial burden. The fact you have the attention of the Commander of the entire city begs the question about how humble your background is. Believe it when I say that healing common injuries and illnesses is above the means of many, and the Healer's Guild is always willing to subsidize patients that allow our novice and junior healers practice. It is a mutually beneficial relationship for all involved."
Chagrined, Cal could only agree. "Aye. That makes sense. Thanks again for your help."
Beating a quick retreat, the avenue outside felt brighter after the cool marble of the Healer's lobby. Cal paused at the top of the guild steps and let himself just rest there for a minute.
With that, my primary tasks for coming to the city are complete and I've got a week to burn. What oh what should I do with all my free time? Mahina's mysterious letter and token?
He thought of the quiet dwarven teamster and her garrons, and of the angular script and dense lines of the letter she'd handed him. Dwarven, certainly, and unreadable to him.
If the flavor text is to be believed, [Savant of the Mind] should chew through a foreign language like a woodchipper if I had the materials to feed it. Stuff like grammar rules, dictionaries, and parallel texts. Anything bilingual with the common tongue.
Cal needed a bookshop. A city this size should have at least one, if not dozens scattered about or an entire section dedicated to them. He started down the steps, then slowed to a stop as something else registered.
The coliseum had calmed down.
He turned his head. The profile of the great structure across the avenue still pulled at him, even without the shouts and cheers. Whatever event had been drawing the midday crowd was either between bouts or done for the day. The headquarters of the Adventurer's Guild stood beside it. Just… standing there.
A little peek won't hurt. I've got an entire week, after all.
The bookshop quest wasn't going anywhere, and the coliseum and Adventurer's Guild involvement was an itch he needed to scratch. He drew a breath, squared his shoulders, and crossed the avenue. The Adventurer's Guild headquarters didn't announce itself with banners or recruiting posts like the coliseum beside it. The front was three stories of stone, with a brass plaque beside the main door bearing an etched line of script reading Mirathra Central.
Huh. Central would imply that this is a hub location. Perhaps there are other satellite chapters throughout the city?
Two attendants in matched grey livery flanked the entrance, neither of them armed in any way Cal could see, and both of them watching the foot traffic alertly. One of them noticed his approach and smiled.
"Good afternoon, sir. Business with the guild?"
Cal slowed at the foot of the steps and fished around in his pack, digging out his badge and looping it over his head. He climbed the steps and met the attendant's smile with one of his own.
"Information, mostly. I'm new in the city."
The man smiled more genuinely as he glanced at Cal's badge, then back up to his face.
"Hail, Proven. Welcome to Mirathra Central."
The brass-bound doors swung open at a touch, and Cal stepped inside.
Happy Monday folks, I hope everyone still has all of their fingers. Have a great week, and thanks for reading.
Jon
REVISION
I'm revising the Adventurer's Guild metal ranks, so that Iron is F-tier and Bronze is E-tier. It had been flipped before and, well, I like this better. Also Cal should have had his badge upgraded after he ascended, because I think that makes sense. Sooooo, retcon below!
Chapter 137, Cal gets his badge upgraded in metal rank to match his new tier after he turns in Kamari's team's gear, and gets Amina's bow
Felicity closed the ledger and studied him a bit longer. "Your aura's shifted since I saw you last. When did you break through?"
"Uh, about a week and a half ago."
"Well, then some congratulations are in order." She stood and pulled a runic slate Cal recognized from a shelf, along with a blank bronze disk. "Give me your badge, please."
Cal unpinned the iron and set it on the table.
She placed both the old badge and the bronze blank on the slate, then pressed a rune at its edge. The runes along the surface briefly glowed purple. When the light faded, the iron had gone dull and inert, and the bronze bore the shrouded spruce with the outline of mist at its base.
Felicity slid the new badge across to him. "Bronze for E-tier, and still a Proven of the guild. Try not to trip over your own feet at the new rank."
"Ha, no promises." Cal pinned it to his shoulder where the iron had been, then he slung Amina's bow across his back and attached the quiver to his belt as Felicity put her things away. They exited the room and hallway together, Cal adjusting the bow on his shoulder as he rounded the counter to the client side.
He caught movement in his peripheral vision. A man at the nearest table, his chair angled toward Cal. Scarred hands wrapped around a clay mug. A weathered face was framed by close-cropped grey hair, and his bronze guild badge was pinned to the breast of a battered leather jerkin. Cal noted the badge's emblem was shrouded in silver mist that enveloped the trunk and crept into the lower branches. The man was Veteran rank, same as Kamari. One step below Honored.
The adventurer had been watching the hallway door. When he and Cal met eyes, he took in the new bronze badge on Cal's coat, then glanced meaningfully at the door Cal had just exited and then back to Cal, dipping his head in a slow nod. Cal returned it and the man went back to his drink.