Warrior of the Void Book 1, Chapter 43

Chapter 43:

“Well, you two seem to be havin’ a day,” Marching around a number of tables filled with rowdy miners and merchants, a comely lass brought the adventuring pair their meals.

“Don’t you know it,” Kofle grumbled as she accepted the bowl of carrot soup she’d ordered. As it turned out, it was more of a vegetable broth, thickened with stale bread, that had large carrot chucks swimming in it, “Our last job tried to underpay us, and I almost fell for it too.”

“Ah, ain’t that the worst,” Muur’s own plate of food softly clattered against the wood table as the waitress served her, “If it’ll make you feel better, I’m more than willin’ to hear you rant about it. Twelves know I do it all the time for the regulars of the Coffer.”

“I don’t see why not,” Picking a chunk out of her bowl, the miqo'te turned to her girlfriend, “What do you think? Wanna tell the tale, or me, or not?”

“Go for it, my throat’s still sore from all the arguing.” Muur grumbled softly.

“You did lay into the man… Right, so it went something like this–”

-[||]-

After their fight with the vile poultry creatures, the rest of the trip to Horizon had been a breeze. Not a monster, bandit, or broken axle in sight. That escort ended quietly, coins changed hands, goodbye were said, and everyone went their separate way. Overall, a peaceful and pleasant, if boring, job. The next escort? Not so much.

First though, now that they were in Horizon, the two of them had about half a bell to kill before their next job. Enough to take care of quick business, but not to faff about some. With that in mind, they bought skewers of mystery meat and attuned themselves to the Aetherite as they munched on them. Something that took them barely ten minutes, but rather than try and find a way to waste twenty more, they figured that meeting with their employer might be just as well.

The shouting match, the first of many, was their clue that the job would be far more… interesting than their previous one.

Simply put, they walked in on the leader of their caravan trying to tear into a miner? Mine manager? Point was, the man was supposed to procure ore for the caravan to transport. Something along the lines of a good third of the value was apparently tied into those unprocessed ores.

But as talented as their employer was at shouting, the man he was screaming at was just as talented. “I don’t know what’s going on you lout!” “The mine’s silent and not even the Stone Torches that were sent there are back!” “I’ve got no ores, even if I wanted to give some to you!” “You leave my mother’s profession out of your mouth, you piece of Garlean bread! She’s a saint that paid for my education that way!” And so on.

Wisely neither woman got involved in that particular mess. Unfortunately, the screams eventually ended, leaving them to deal with their employer… He was actually rather pleasant at the start, apologising that they'd had to see this. Then he tried to argue that he wouldn’t be able to pay them the full amount of gil– without his ore, he just couldn’t afford it you see!

Kofle, bless her heart, saw the logic in that, and almost got swayed by his words.

Which is, of course, when Muur kicked the doors down, dropped her fat tail on his desk and told him to suck on an unpeeled cactus pear.

Unsurprisingly, this led to a second shouting match. This time, between adventurers and the caravan master. Many things were said. Some rather colourful, and plenty of them quite racist. But in the end, the word of the Adventurer’s Guild reigned supreme in the form of a clerk who had quite enough of all of this, thank you very much browbeating both parties into honouring their gods-damned commitments, or Twelves, Primals and barbarous deities help them, they would.

The trip from Horizon to Black Brush could only be charitably called ‘frigid’. Caravan hands, the poor sods, knew nothing save that the adventurers meant to protect them were filthy whores, vultures and suckers of Garlean knobs – Kofle had never looked more ready to tear a man’s head off when that particular insult flew their way –, meanwhile neither adventurers appreciated being treated like this.

No one died, but yes, it did lead to more angry shouting.

-[||]-

“Thank the Twelves Back Brush’s not that far from Horizon. Or I might have actually broken someone’s nose,” Kofle sighed between sips of her broth, “We got paid– I made sure to count every single gil –and decided to just go home. I’m a gladiator, so I’m gonna try and see if I can’t bully some poor sod into being my training dummy. No idea what Muur’ll do.”

“Either hit one of the spellfire ranges at the Ossuary or go into meditation and see what demon volunteers to be my chewtoy.” Muur muttered, well beyond caring about discretion about her visions. It had been a day.

“Hell of a day, huh,” The woman said before sighing, “Can’t say I can fully blame the man for tryin’ to get a discount. Or you for tellin’ him no, everyone’s doin’ their best to make gil out o’ sand out there. Still… been hearin’ rumours about Copperbell mines all month now, the usual miners’ tall tales. But with them gettin’ closed without explanation? Makes you wonder.”

“My money’s on them having breached into a cave system they really shouldn’t have.” The Au’Ra grunted. Tale as old as time, that one.

“Wouldn’t be the first time miners broke into ruins they weren’t meant to, aye. Last they did, it was a Sil’dhan tomb. Previous owners weren’t too happy, I heard,” The lass nodded sagely at Muur’s words, before snapping her fingers, “Oh, right. That reminds me, you’ll be headin’ back to Ul’dah aye? Think you could handle a small odd job on the way? Won’t pay for much, but I’ll cover your food and drinks I reckon.”

“Sure, I’m listening.” Muur replied agreeably, bobbing her head. Sounded like it’d just be a simple messenger or courier job, so it probably wouldn’t be any trouble.

“You’ll have to ask the boss if it’s been taken care of,” The waitress hurriedly told them– a new pack of rowdy men had just wandered in, shouting for ‘their usual’, “But I think he needed some food and drinks delivered.”

“Doesn’t sound like too much trouble,” Kofle mumbled around her last carrot chunk, “We doing it?”

“Might as well, ought to be a more pleasant finishing note to today’s outing.” Muur agreed, stretching languidly. She’d already polished off the last of her food and drink.

_________________________________________________________________________

“Okay, that’s just getting weird now,” As it turned out, the order was still up for grabs and the pair had gone ahead with picking it, “One, sure. Two? That's the crown trying to do good… Probably. But that's the sixth of them we’ve delivered pretzels and ice water to!”

“Hey, at least there’s few people more thankful than someone out in the sun getting cold water.” Muur replied with an easy shrug. They had gotten everything from groans of relief to profuse thanks.

“Yeah, but Sultansworns? Something’s not right,” Kofle hissed as they neared the Ul’dahn dispatch yard.

“The more important question is if we’re going to end up in the splash zone or not.” Muur grunted, not quite sure if she wanted to be so she had an excuse to blast a few more things with her new staff or to avoid the trouble altogether and flop down in bed.

“Gods, I hope not,” The cat mumbled with a groan as the pair walked closer to their final destination with every step, “This was meant to be relaxing. Not an excuse for the divines to heap more on our plate– Shit. Change of plan. Look over there, I can see wasps.”

Said destination was the Ul’dahn Dispatch Yards. A bonafide train station that apparently connected Ul’dah with part of its dominion. Or used to at least, due to the calamity, much of the railroads had been left to rot. Fixing the city and solving the immediate issues the City-State faced had come first. Only reason she knew any of that was that Black Brush station was one of the few train stations still in working order, and that the magitek train had been right there, unloading ores and other unrefined resources.

But while Black Brush was more or less a mixture between a pitstop and ore refinery sitting in the middle of nowhere, the Dispatch Yard was not just built right outside of Ul’dah’s walls. But also close enough to the slums that you could see the unsightly urban crawl from the yard.

With that in mind, the pair of adventurers decided to pass by the wasp-infested watering hole they’d be clearing out tomorrow. That way, they’d have some modicum of information when heading out to deal with that particular issue.

“Damn, they’re really going at it.” Muur grunted, watching a few hive-structures starting to jut out of the ground, “Hopefully there will be good ventilation down there, else I probably won’t be able to use fire without choking us out. Although I may be able to help smoke out the worst of the wasps, get them into a prepared killzone.”

“Yeah. As it stands, I think I’m gonna have Momodi put in an emergency recruit flyer– No one else has joined up for the quest yet,” Moving away from the buzzing nightmare that was the wasp infested watering hole, she sighed, “I’m starting to think that my genius plan to make sure you could double dip wasn’t all that smart.”

“I’m going to be earning every single gods-damned gil from that double dip.” Muur grunted sourly, before jerking her horned head to the side, silently motioning for them to get a move on. She didn’t want to be in the sightlines of the wasps for longer than strictly necessary.

The rest of their trip to the Dispatch Yard was, thankfully, free of any trouble and ended when they approached what had been described to her as ‘Something that would one day become one of Ul’dah’s arteries of trade’. As usual with that kind of grand proclamation, it fell flatter than a salt field.

There were only four spots for a train to dock itself for processing. All four branched out from a singular set of rails, and merged back into one on another set that disappeared under the wall. Which really didn’t help the city beat the Dwarven Hold allegations.

The closer they got, the more people Muur was able to see. Hyurs, Roegadyns, lalafel– even a Bangaa and Hrothgar over there, the place clearly didn’t care about your race so long as you could do the work. What that work was, she couldn’t quite tell.

Plenty of workers were swarming a parked train, but they didn’t seem to be loading, or unloading, it. Maintenance, probably.

But just as she could see them, they could see her, and eventually someone noticed the pair. Evidently, it didn’t take particularly long for the fact that two armed individuals were coming closer to be spread around and a group of six guards formed up in their path. Interestingly, none of them wore Brass Blade colours, or any that Muur recognised for that matter. Nor were they moving to intercept them beyond body-blocking the yard’s entrance.

“Pretzel delivery?” Kofle hazarded, holding up the large backpack filled with the rest of the baked goods that they’d been asked to deliver. Sixty or so in hers and the same in Muur’s.

“...Ye really shouldn’t have said tha–” “BOYS THE GRUB’S HEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!” Before the guard could even finish his sentence, someone behind him had screamed the advent of break-time at the top of their dust-filled lungs.

“I regret everything.” Kofle deadpanned in the moment where time seemed to stand still as the information made its way through the sun-baked gray matter of the whole of the yard’s worker population.

“Just smile and brace for impact.” Muur muttered mutinously.