“I told you we shouldn’t have left the mountains,” one of the men said. By the comparatively short length of his beard, Devon guessed him to be one of the younger members of the group.
A woman—beardless, thank goodness— responded. “And what would we do, get poorer and poorer until we starved? With all the starborn coming to Eltera and taking up mining, our old trading partners don’t need the iron and weapons we used to provide.”
Devon perked up. Weapons? That could be awesome for the village, but it could be very bad if these dwarves had sharp steel and reason to be angry. One of them, a dwarf wearing dark chain mail, detached from the crowd and started stomping her way. Devon shrank back, hoping he’d turn aside, but he continued straight for her. Crap. She looked around for better cover but saw nothing. On instinct, she glanced down at her feet and the faint shadow drawn by the moon. Casting Shadow Puppet, she drew the darkness up around her.
You have learned a new spell: Fade – Tier 1.
You seem to melt into the shadows, gaining +20 to your Hide skill (scales up with Cunning).
Your surroundings must make sense for this spell to succeed. (If you turn into a shadow on a bare, sunbaked landscape, you’re going to be pretty obvious)
Cost: 20 mana
The man kept coming, but he didn’t seem to notice her. He stopped with his belt buckle just a couple feet away from her face.
The dwarf started to unbutton his fly. Seriously? The NPCs in this game took leaks?
Enough with the stealth. Devon jumped away to avoid a shower she had no desire to experience. The dwarf yelped and stumbled back, going down in a clatter of armor and weaponry. A nice looking warhammer clanged against a rock. Near the wagon, weapons hissed as the dwarves drew their steel.
Devon raised her hands. “Wait! Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I mean you no harm. I heard your shouts and hoped I could help you with…”
She gestured toward the wagon as she backed away from the sprawled dwarf. Her spine went rigid as she heard the unmistakable click of a crossbow being readied.
“Just give the word, Dorden,” a female said. She raised the bow and pointed the bolt straight at Devon’s forehead.
***
Rocks clattered as Devon’s followers spilled from the cave. She cringed. She’d hoped to avoid getting them wrapped up in this mess.
Pasting on her most winning smile, she hoped her 25 Charisma was good for more than growing her mana pool. “We’re just explorers, much like you seem to be.”
The dwarf on the ground growled and rose to his feet, warhammer clutched in his fist. “By the stones, I think this lass is a filthy starborn.”
“I—yes, but I overheard you speaking. I’m not like those…” She wrinkled her face in disgust, remembering that most dwarves had decent darkvision and could probably see her expression. “…those foul Eltera City starborn. I’m not interested in moving in on people’s livelihoods. I only want to make my way out here. My friends and I are working to establish a settlement.” She gestured toward the huddle of NPCs outside the cave.
“Friends, huh?” one of the torch-wielding dwarves spat. He started toward Devon’s followers, weapon still drawn. “Anyone who befriends the starborn deserves to share their fate.”
“Halt!” Devon shouted. “We’ve done nothing to harm you, and I don’t want this to come to blows. But these people are my tribe, and yes, my friends. I won’t hesitate to defend them. So I urge you to stop. Right. There.”
She summoned her fearsome Glowing Orb.
The dwarf with the warhammer took a step back. He probably thought she was preparing to hurl a lightning bolt. She gave him a menacing stare to reinforce the idea.
The torch-bearing dwarf stopped in his tracks.
“Now, could we please start over? Let’s at least discuss things before we start a fight that none of us wants.”
The dwarves near the wagon shifted, none seeming ready to speak. After a moment, the close dwarf lowered his warhammer. “Convince me why we shouldn’t just dispatch with you and take whatever items you might have. It’s been a hard journey, and this terrain is ferocious, but we’ve got no choice but to keep going if our clan wants to survive.”
Devon drew a deep breath and extinguished her orb. She lowered her arms and showed her palms in a conciliatory gesture. After a moment, she smiled again. That’s how politicians did it, right? Smile no matter what?
“To start, I’d like to offer our help in getting your wagon out of that quagmire,” she said. “Though I’d venture it would be easier in the morning. These rocks have plenty of caverns. What do you say we join forces at sunup?”
The dwarf, apparently the leader, glanced back at his clan. A woman who had the softer figure of advancing age shrugged. “I don’t see the harm, Dorden. We won’t get free of the mud tonight, in any case.”
“How do I know this isn’t some ploy for ye to ambush us in our sleep?” Dorden asked.
“The truth is, I don’t like my odds regardless of whether half of you are asleep,” Devon said. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to show weakness, but this group would soon see that her three followers weren’t combat trained. No matter how good a player she was, she wouldn’t fare well against eight armed and armored dwarves.
Dorden stroked his beard and then grunted. “Fair.”
“And perhaps…” Devon said as more ideas crowded into her head, “perhaps we could talk about other ways we might work together for mutual benefit.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
DEVON KEPT WATCH the rest of the night. Her fatigue bar had been newly refreshed by the sleep she did get, and she wanted to be able to protect her tribe members if things turned south.
The dwarves seemed similarly cautious. After a while, it got a little awkward when she kept accidentally making eye contact with the sentry outside their cave.
To distract herself, she stared into the darkness in hopes her Darkvision skill would improve. But it seemed she’d advanced too far to gain skill on a moonlit night. Probably needed to get underground to keep gaining skill.
By the time a watery dawn broke over the jungle, her knees ached from crouching. She stood eagerly and shook the stiffness from her legs. The dwarves had left a guard on the wagon, and as the rest of her party emptied from the cavern, the young woman crossed the rubble to join them. Devon glanced back into the cave and decided not to wake her followers. It had been a long march to reach the limestone outcrops, and she had a full day planned. Now that they’d confirmed the quarry location, they could start searching in earnest for a new settlement location. Stone was the heaviest resource to transport, so they’d want to build nearby.
She smoothed her hair—might as well keep working the charisma angle—and walked toward the dwarves, hands in her pockets.
Many of them did a poor job disguising their surprise at seeing her tattered clothing and simple machete. No doubt they were a little embarrassed for considering her such a threat the night before.
Well, she might be a relative newb still, but it wasn’t her wagon stuck in the middle of the jungle. Now that it was day, she got a better look at the trail they’d hacked through the forest. It wove between towering trees and curved away toward the mountains.
She stopped about ten paces away from their group. “My offer still stands. We’ll help you get unstuck, no strings attached.”
Dorden lowered his brow and looked at her in confusion. “Are ye saying we won’t need strings to pull her free?”
Devon sighed. “Sorry, just a starborn saying. I mean, we’ll help you without needing something in return. It would be best, I think, to unload the cargo until the wheel is free.”
The dwarves bristled at this and muttered among themselves. Devon overheard the words “cutpurse” and “thief.”
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes. It was sort of stupid to get annoyed with NPC’s, even if they didn’t seem like computer-controlled characters. Regardles
s, she needed to stay on their good side if she hoped to make allies of them.
She put on what she hoped was a trustworthy expression and stepped closer to the group. None reached for their weapons, which was some progress. As she drew within a couple paces, one of the women muttered to a male beside her. “She’s got herself a fancy vest. Looks right nice.”
At least the Charisma stat seemed to function. That was the only explanation Devon had for compliments on the garment.
“We’re honest people, I swear it,” she said. “Of course, I hope we’ll benefit from lending you a hand, but we won’t do it by stealing.”
Dorden met her gaze, tugging on his voluminous beard. “Fair enough,” he said. “You’re right about the unloading. We’re only hesitating because what’s in that wagon is all we have left.”
“Where are you heading, if I might ask?” Devon asked. The sun crested the treetops and shone into her eyes. She squinted and shaded them as she looked at the wagon.
“The coast. Figure maybe we can find trading partners with access to shipping routes. The Western Reaches…” Beneath the overhang of his mustache, it almost looked as if his lip was trembling. Devon had never seen a dwarf cry, but it seemed she might today. After a moment, he swallowed and continued. “The Western Reaches aren’t friendly to our kind anymore. We should have prepared, established better networks with the human settlements so that when the starborn came with their thirst for resources and their willingness to sell hard-earned ore… I can’t stop thinking that if we’d just tried a little harder, we wouldn’t be in this position.”
Devon pulled up her map, but she couldn’t see the coastline. Judging by the scale, that meant the ocean was at least thirty or forty miles away. “You won’t miss the mountains?”
Dorden snorted, or maybe he was sniffing back tears. “Of course. The mines and the crags are our home. By the time we reach the shore, we won’t even be able to see the peaks. But it was leave or starve. My clan has to eat.”
Yeah. Devon understood their plight. Since leaving her mother’s home at sixteen, she’d moved to plenty of shitty apartments because they were close to jobs she hated. Like the dwarf said, she had to eat.
She scanned the group, noting the armor and well-crafted weaponry. “Looks to me like you’d be able to hunt for food.”
Dorden patted his warhammer. “Oh, we can fight, all right. That’s one thing about the mountains. Plenty of attacks by goblins and the occasional cave troll to keep your combat reflexes sharp. Problem is, we lack… finesse, you might say. Tend to smash our adversaries just a bit too flat to harvest usable steaks.”
This was her opening. “My group can supply food and medicine.” As she spoke the words, she wondered if they were actually true. Grey had been keeping up with the tribe’s needs more or less, but add the appetites of seven dwarves… Well, if nothing else, Devon could help with the hunting in the short term.
“I’m listening,” Dorden said.
“We’ll trade for iron, or even better, finished weapons. Plus anything else you have in surplus.”
Dorden narrowed his eyes and looked over her shoulder. Devon’s followers had stepped from the cave and now stood blinking in the morning sunlight. “You and these three? No offense intended, but ye hardly seem to be thriving out here.”
“There are more of us. My tribe’s camp is a couple hours walk from here.”
“I see. So why are ye out here?”
“We’re searching for a new site for a village. We have plans to expand and build a fine community in the area.”
Devon hadn’t missed noting that the dwarves’ number would put the tribe’s population at 21. One more than what they needed to level up the settlement. She didn’t want to push the issue though. This seemed like a bad time to get hasty.
Dorden grunted and continued to tug at his beard.
“We have plans to be here for a long time,” she continued. “With no intention of discriminating against non-starborn when it comes to trade deals. As it happens, I’m the only starborn in the tribe.”
Behind their leader, the other dwarves were looking at the surroundings with a mixture of skepticism and hope. A few eyes lingered on the distant crags beyond the ruins of Ishildar.
She gestured at her friends. “My tribe and your clan could be allies in a changing world. By cooperating, I think we’d be stronger than either of our groups is alone.”
The dwarf patriarch grunted, arms folded over his chest. He nodded slowly. “Where we settle next is not a decision to be made hastily. I admit, putting down roots here would let us keep contact with those who—foolishly, in my opinion—remained in the mountains. But we aren’t cut out for jungle living.”
Devon shook her head. “No, me neither. But for now, it’s the choice I’ve been given.”
“Well, in any case, we’ll accept your help with the wagon. Getting her free will give us some time to think.”
“I’ll talk to my people,” Devon said. “We’ll be over there in a minute to help you unload.”
***
Devon’s followers looked up at her expectantly as she approached. And strangely, the men started blinking with their jaws slightly agape. Devon looked over her shoulder to see if she’d missed something. Behind her, the group of dwarves were grumbling as they started unfastening the tarp that covered the wagon’s cargo. Nothing surprising there. Devon smoothed her clothes and ran a hand through her hair. Did she have a hunk of it sticking up or something?
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Your Gloriousness,” Hazel said. “Do you put anything on your skin at night?”
The woman wanted skin care advice? What the hell? A heartbeat later, it dawned on her. She’d put four points into Charisma the day before, but her features had been hidden in the dimness beneath the canopy. Devon groaned inwardly. Was she going to have to deal with this kind of stuff indefinitely? A cloak with a hood to shadow her face was sounding nice. In any case, hopefully her followers would get used to her smoking hotness.
“Here’s the deal,” she said, waiting for the men to put themselves together enough to meet her eyes. “Deld, Bern and I are going to help the dwarves get the wagon unstuck. I’m hoping it will lead to an alliance, so be nice. Hazel, I’d like you to scout the area this morning. After lunchtime, be ready to show me potential sites for our new village—look for defendable terrain, fresh water, and resources. We’ll plan to head back to camp in the late afternoon with a solid start on our new empire.” She added a sarcastic twist to her words because of how far they’d have to go to make that sort of claim, but her followers were too awed by her charismatic presence to get the joke. They simply nodded and dashed to work. Devon shrugged and strolled over the stony rubble to help out with the wagon.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“AND, HEAVE!”
With a series of creaks and groans followed by a loud squelching sound, the wagon came free and lurched onto solid ground. The dwarves cheered. Devon released her grip on the wagon bed and took a seat on a small boulder.
The dwarves’ possessions were strewn about the area: bedrolls and canvas tents, casks of ale and barrels of food, and—most importantly to Devon’s eye—a glittering array of weaponry and armor laid out near a sizable row of iron ingots.
The sun hung high in the sky, and a glance at her real-world clock showed that it was getting late back home. Really late. But she needed to see this in-game day through.
Mopping her brow, she strolled over and admired the weapons. Dorden stepped up beside her. “Interested in anything in particular?”
“I only have a bit of coin with me, and anything we could barter is back at our camp.”
“Why don’t you tell me what most interests you, and we’ll see what we can do.”
A trade interface appeared in front of her face. Devon wasn’t sure how to move the items into the window, but quickly found that when she focused on a nearby battle axe, an icon appeared for it. She pu
shed that away with a mental gesture. The dwarves had plenty of greatswords and two-handed axes and massive warhammers, but neither Devon nor any of her followers had the strength or combat prowess to wield such heavy weapons yet. On the far edge of the line, though, a few smaller blades glinted blue-gray against the stone. She focused on a pair of items that appeared in the interface as:
Item: Fine Steel Dagger
Crafted by a skilled hand, this blade is among the best of its type.
7-10 Damage | 49/49 Durability
Item: Superior Steel Knife
As far as knives go, you can’t do much better.
5-9 Damage | 55/55 Durability
“How much for these?”
Dorden sucked his teeth. “High-quality steel there. I can’t take less than 4 gold, 50 silver.”
Devon shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t have that much. Best I could do is 2 gold, 90 silver.”
He sighed. “I like ye lass, but I’ve got a clan to care for. Can’t just give away our wares. Can you do 3 gold, 50?”
Devon had almost that much, but she didn’t want to spend it. Especially since the game had given her an intrinsic aptitude in bartering. That had to be worth something. “Then I’ll have to buy just one of the blades, I’m afraid. We haven’t had a lot of opportunity to earn coin out here.”
A low rumble came from Dorden’s throat. “Truly sorry I can’t accept your offer, lass, but I’m thinking… I would consider letting one of the blades go on credit, provided I had your word you’d compensate us fairly with food once we’re settled.”
Devon’s surprised jerk accidentally shut the trade window. “Are you saying you agree to the alliance?”
The dwarf nodded. “I’ve been talking with my clan. We’ve decided to give it a shot. We’ll stay here as long as you and I can work out a proper arrangement to trade our goods and labor for food and…” He shrugged almost as if embarrassed. “And a sense of community. We left a lot behind in the mountains and it’d be nice to know we had friends where we stopped. As you probably know, dwarves are fiercely loyal. We don’t feel right walking about with all this sharp steel and no allies to protect.”
Temple of Sorrow: A LitRPG and GameLit Adventure (Stonehaven League Book 1) Page 18
