A Soldier's Life

Chapter 138: Elven Assessment

Konstantin and Maveith continued playing checkers on the desk, preventing me from lying down. Konstantin noted the spheres in his hand, “They appear to be ingots for making rings.” I continued holding out my hand for the balls. Konstantin regretfully dropped them into my hand, and I sent them to my storage for safekeeping. I took my canteen and sat on the bench by the fire. The fire felt warmer and more invigorating than normal, and I scooted the bench closer.

“Platinum is very valuable, Eryk,” Maveith intoned as he cornered Konstantin’s last piece. “Much more so than gold. It carries runic enchantments much better than most metals and never tarnishes.”

Konstantin nodded in agreement, frustration on his face for losing the game. He appraised me, “How are you feeling?” There was only a mild note of concern in his tone, though more than I expected after our earlier interaction.

I held my hands closer to the fire, deciding what to admit. I didn’t want to appear weak, but Konstantin would push me harder if I admitted I could manage it. I tossed a board on the fire, “I managed today. The Scholar found the dungeon location today.” By their lack of reaction, they already knew.

Konstantin nodded somberly, “Yes. We are going to search for more runic weapons tomorrow. You are going to have to be able to do thrice what you did today with the kettle of souls. Sixty at a minimum each day if we are going to reach the dungeon before we all die of starvation.”

“Castile told me it would get easier the more I used it. Maybe not sixty tomorrow, but I will get there,” I sounded confident, but my body shook at the memory of using the bronze artifact. I hid my body’s unease by stirring the coals.

Mateo suddenly stood and rushed out of the room, having to take a ‘squirt.’ He left the door open in his rush, and we cursed him for letting the heat out. “Felix, close the door!” Konstantin ordered as they started another game of checkers. “Last one, Maveith, Eryk needs his rest,” Konstantin winked at me like he was doing me a favor, giving me my bed.

The next morning, I had to force myself to eat; my appetite was gone. Konstantin gave me twice as much rice and beans as everyone else had received. He then went to talk with the Scholar. As breakfast ended and men started on their daily tasks, Castile made an appearance, Delmar, and Adrian at her back. She looked pale and thin, but her eyes were bright, telling me her mind was sharp.

She looked across the room slowly, making eye contact with everyone, “We will be getting out of this. You are the strongest company in the Lion! I could promise you rewards beyond measure from the plunder of the city, but instead, I want to affirm to each of you that your lives are more important. The undead will not break you! The cold will not break you! And the unseen summoner will not break you!”

Castile’s passion was met with some nods, but a few still remained indifferent. I could see Adrian noting who in his mind. Delmar wrapped his knuckles on the shelf loudly, “We are moving to the underground tomorrow. We learned everything we needed to here.” That got whispers. Scholar Favian looked around longingly at all the books he had not had a chance to study. Delmar continued, “It will be warmer down there, and we will save time advancing through the city. We will be dressing back in full armor kit starting today. Get to your daily tasks, men.”

With that said, Adrian walked toward me and handed me the kettle. “Konstantin and I will be at your front today—just Blaze at your back. Let us know when you need a rest. Gear up, legionnaire!” He said with a pat on my shoulder.

Putting on my armor again was almost surreal. It was like the set had been made for a giant. I had trouble getting everything to fit tightly. I walked out into the communal area and noticed my elven dagger on Firth’s belt. I approached the veteran, demanding my dagger back, “Firth, you have a runic sword now. Give me back my dagger.”

Firth looked me over and drew the dagger, “This is too pretty a weapon for you, Eryk.” He balanced the blade on his index finger and spun it, the blade and handle whirling. “I have never handled such a perfectly weighted sticker. How much do you want for it?”

“I am not selling it,” I held out my hand. Firth considered me again and nodded slowly. He tossed, snatched, and sheathed the blade and handed it to me. It took me some time to feed the sheath on my belt, but soon I was ready. A few men nodded in appreciation at my reclamation of the runic dagger.

Our armor clattered as we descended the stairs together. Normally, it had a rhythm to it, but not any longer with it being so loose. Blaze asked, “Why the armor now?”

Konstantin answered him while playing with his straps, “In case we run into a wight wielding a weapon.”

Adrian contradicted Konstantin, “No, we are to secure the wine room this trip. I know we talked about looking for more runic weapons last night, but Castile thought the men needed to see us making progress toward a goal,” Adrian replied evenly.

Konstantin looked ready to object but nodded and continued to lead the way. It was more of a slow walk today, and we didn’t see any specters for a few minutes. Blaze asked, “Where do all the doors go?”

“Some are more storerooms. Others lead up into other buildings in the city,” Konstantin paused at a door, “This faded writing here says where the door leads.” I took out my own glowstone to examine the faded elven script on the stone.

“Some type of restaurant,” I translated with my poor Elvish.

“Do you think they are open?” Blaze asked seriously. “I know it is early in the morning and all.” He started to smile at his joke.

We all started laughing, and Adrian chuckled, “Well, if they are open, breakfast is on me.”

When things simmered down, Konstantin gave a reality check, “We only took one stairway up to the city. The building had collapsed on the stairs, but that didn’t stop three specters from coming through the rubble to greet us. We want to avoid triggering a rush from the city. If we stirred the city, it could have hundreds of specters after us.” That sobered things up pretty quickly so we continued on in silence. We encountered just two specters on the way to the wine room.

Inside the wine room, Adrian ordered Konstantin, “I want you to go through every bottle and dump the toxic ones. Castile doesn’t want anyone drinking them by mistake.” That was how we spent our next four hours. Dumping the wine bottles down the drain after Konstantin pulled them off the racks. After that, we searched a handful of nearby storerooms for specters before returning to the tower. I only harvested nine specters all day and was greatly relieved at the lower number of times activating the kettle.

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As we climbed the stairs, the most divine smell in the world assaulted our noses. We rushed into the small library to find a bird spinning on an improvised spit. Men were talking energetically and keeping their eyes on it.

I guessed what the bird was. “Baby eagle?” It was the size of a turkey, so it was definitely not one of the monstrous adults.

Felix answered excitedly, “Flavius got an owl that entered the main library! My stomach can’t wait to make its acquaintance.”

“It was most likely a scout controlled by the summoner,” Delmar said from across the room. “It saw us packing up from the window and wanted to know where we were planning to go.”

“Delmar is correct. The summoner sent it, and I am certain it is not poisoned. He just made a slight error in his impatience. He has remained a few miles away, tired of waiting us out,” Castile said neutrally and sounded in control. “The good news is he is too busy maintaining his hold of the storm elementals to summon anything else. Once we disappear into the undercity, we may lose his focus.” For some reason, I doubted Castile’s optimism. Still, her counter to Delmar’s pessimism brightened the mood.

There was a lot less meat than it originally looked like. Everyone got an equal share, and no one complained. The feathers were stuffed into a small bag, and then the bones were boiled, along with the feet, for breakfast broth the next day. The fresh meat, although somewhat acidic tasting, cheered everyone up.

I made sure to lay out on my desk before Maveith could start his nightly checkers tournament with Konstantin. I needed to sleep myself, and after a few minutes of twisting and turning, I snuck myself an oblivion pill in the absence of the amulet.

Konstantin took pleasure in waking me from my deep sleep in the morning. “Eryk.” He whispered next to my ear while snapping his fingers in my face, “If I was a goblin, I would have stabbed you five times already.” I slapped away his hand and sat up. Just as I had guessed, the non-magical oblivion pills did not seem to give me restful sleep in the city.

A thought crossed my mind. “Are goblins edible?” I asked, remembering I had one of the creatures in my dimensional storage.

Maveith answered from the floor where he was packing, “They probably taste worse than the owl from last night, but I do not think they are poisonous.” I nodded, thinking that tiny creature had to be at least forty pounds. Maybe I could release it and pretend it wandered into the city.

With everyone moving out of the tower, it meant Castile could handle the kettle duties today. I hesitated in the room, being the last to leave the small library. I looked longingly at the large black desk. Not only was it a piece of artwork, but it was a good bed. I checked outside the door and then stored the large desk. The top was three by seven feet, and the height was about two feet tall, and it might serve as a good obstruction or workbench for me.

I caught up with everyone and walked next to Castile who handed me the kettle of souls so she could practice her aether shaping of the nightmare spell. So much for a break for myself. She was not much of a conversationalist today, fully concentrating on learning the spell as quickly as possible. We only encountered a single specter on the way to the wine vault, and I used the kettle to deal with it.

When the doors opened, everyone who had not seen it yet gasped and gawked while walking stupidly among the racks. Delmar issued his proclamation, “No one drinks without permission. I will assign you all sleeping locations. We piss in the drain and shit in the storeroom across the hall in pairs. That is right.” His voice rose to a command, “No one shits alone!”

It took a few hours to settle in as Delmar was in charge of camp setup. It helped him direct some of his increasingly aggressive nature productively. Adrian assigned the guard duties, of which I had none. Konstantin pulled on my armor, “Come on, Eryk, no one shits alone.”

Maveith stood, “I haven’t shit in three days. I think I might have to.”

“Fine, you can come too! Could use a brute.” Konstantin said, irritated. I could already tell we were not going for a shit. In the hallway, Konstantin went left and walked rapidly while we followed.

“I don’t have the kettle of souls,” I warned him. He looked to be on the hunt for more specters, or maybe his blade was driving him to hunt.

“It is fine. It is just a few doors down.” He explained, as he continued walking. He paused at a door, studied it, and opened it. We followed him inside, and on the other side of the room were heavy bunk beds. Thick dust from deteriorated mattresses covered them, but this could be a game changer. “Too heavy to haul up into the tower but forty feet down the hall? I think that is manageable.”

Maveith and I wrestled the first one out the door while Konstantin watched for specters. My fatigued and emaciated muscles could not match Maveith’s, so we made quite a racket to get the first one into the wine room. There were eight bunks for sixteen beds in total, and soon, the whole company was helping. It was the most animated I had seen Delmar in a long time.

We moved wine bottles and took down racks to make room. Delmar thought the wine room was more defensible than the small room from which we took the beds. The next small room with bunks was too far away to haul back, but we could sleep in shifts. Everyone was covered in filth when we were done, but the sense of accomplishment was high in the company. Some of the soldiers were actually smiling and making jokes to one another. The only unhappy person was Scholar Favian, due to the fact that he was only able to carry ten of his priceless books from the tower.

We were allotted a little more wine than we probably should have had that evening. I noted that Adrian and Delmar didn’t drink and remained on watch with Castile using the amulet. We were in a new phase of our exploration of the ruins, but the clock was still running on us. We had already too many days in Caelora, sustaining ourselves on extraordinarily very little. Living off calories from wine was not going to be very pleasant. The move had abated some of the depression, but it would soon return.

For the next three days, Adrian, Brutus, Konstantin, Mateo, and Blaze guarded me as we started to explore the hearth tree and thin the specters in preparation for finding the dungeon. Blaze got knocked out when a poltergeist threw a heavy ceramic bowl at his head from behind, but we did well other than that one injury. I was up to between forty and forty-five specters in the morning and another twenty-five or so in the afternoon as we slowly explored new areas.

We were also searching rooms Konstantin had not searched previously. One interesting room had a familiar device—an assessment tablet—but it was a modest table, similar to the one I used in the capital at the Adventurer’s Guild in the capital. It was also much fancier, with finer wood and decorative carvings, and the language was clearly Elvish after I cleared the dust off.

“Leave it. It is useless anyway, as it is based on the elven race,” Konstantin advised, leaving the room without giving it another thought. However, it had all the attributes and twenty-one magic affinities on the table. Even if it gave skewed results, it was probably worth something. Konstantin called from the corridor, “We should head back anyway. This corridor is heading away from the hearth tree.” I did not know how he knew that, but I was sure he would explain it in excruciating detail later if I didn’t ask.

I made sure I was the last one out of the room and sent the entire assessment tablet table into my dimensional storage. It was only about three by five feet, and the height was similar to the black desk I had stored a week earlier, and I had a lot of space if I got creative. We got even better news when we returned to the wine vault. Castile had successfully learned the nightmare spell! I was thrilled as it meant that hopefully, I would get my amulet back soon. As this place was beginning to affect me like the others.

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