The Crafter's Dungeon -- Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Sandra cursed her fumbling fingers as she caught the small jewel-encrusted knife – by the handle, fortunately – before it could hit the ground, though she stumbled a bit and had to collapse to her knees to keep from ending up with a face-full of dirt. Sighing in relief, she ignored the sting of a cut in her left knee; the last thing she needed was to damage some of their merchandise before the day even started.

“Are you ok?” her father asked, looking over his shoulder in concern at his daughter.

“Yes, I’m fine – I just stumbled a little,” she replied, picking herself up – while favoring her left leg – and gently placing the ornate (though still deadly) weapon on the nearby display table.

Ardling put down what he was working on and stooped by her side; without asking, he pulled up her skirt and looked at her scraped knee.

Sandra yanked her skirt out of his hands, a blush creeping up her face. Luckily, the pair in the merchant’s booth had been blocked from anyone outside seeing her bare legs, but she was still mortified. “Stop that! I’m fine – it’s just a little scrape, is all. I’m not eight years-old anymore, father.”

He stood up straight after making sure she was indeed fine, but he still looked worried. “I know that, Sandy, but you can’t be too careful. Even a small scratch can grow much worse if not treated…” Ardling trailed off, his vision now looking through her as he obviously remembered something.

Or someone. 

Her mother had passed away when she was a small girl of four from something as innocuous as a small scratch from a normally harmless rat. Never one to complain, the wound on her mother’s leg had festered over the course of a couple of days; Sandra and her family had been traveling on the road – in between towns – when the fever started. Although her father had rushed to the next town on his fastest mount, he was too late to save her.

Sandra barely even remembered her face; in fact, she didn’t even remember her name because her father refused to talk about her, as if he wanted to forget she ever existed. It wasn’t out of malice, however – it was just the opposite. Ardling had loved her mother so much that it was obviously painful to think about what he had lost.

And Sandra knew that because her father once told her that she was a splitting image of his late wife. She couldn’t imagine what kind of suffering he had to go through everyday just by looking at her, though she could see the haunted look in his eyes whenever he glanced in her direction. It was this reason, and this reason alone, that she tolerated his overprotectiveness – but she had to draw the line somewhere.

“I’ll take care of it right now, father, so please don’t worry about it,” she told him. “Go on and keep setting up and I’ll be right back.”

She went to one of the closest wagons behind the merchant’s stall and pulled out a small box of medical supplies. It didn’t matter which wagon it was, as Ardling made sure that every one of their transport vehicles had more than adequate supplies to help with any type of accident. There was even an ultra-expensive high-quality Health Potion in each box, which would heal and fix almost any non-fatal injury. Her father’s paranoia about wounds did come in handy sometimes.

Though, “handy”, wasn’t quite the word either of them would normally use.

Born with a defect in both of her hands that made them practically deformed, Sandra had difficulty gripping, squeezing, and holding anything heavier than the knife she had fumbled earlier and moving her fingers in any complicated motions was next to impossible. In fact, they were shaped more like monster claws than normal hands and had an almost permanent curl to them. However, after twenty-six years of living with it, she could manage most common things with a little effort. 

After spreading a little low-grade healing ointment on her scrape from an easy-to-open jar, she wound a small clean bandage around it and secured it into place with a simple tie. Sandra thought it would stay on okay unless she started doing something strenuous like running but securing it any other way would require help from her father. He had enough on his plate that she didn’t want or need to add to it.

Ardling had set up their stall so many times over the years that he was practically finished by the time she returned. Specialty swords, knives, armor pieces, and rare items were their bread-and-butter and her father had been successful enough to make their family fairly well-off. Not enough yet to retire, she knew, but she was hoping that would change after another year of traveling across the far reaches of the land. Her father had been buying and selling merchandise in every village, town, and city they came across for more than forty years, and he deserved a break. And, although she hadn’t technically been at it as long, she needed a break as well.

Being on the road was what Sandra knew; buying and selling merchandise to multitudes of both Heroes that culled nearby dungeons and regular people over the years had made the business second-nature to her. Unlike her father, though – and from the little bit she remembered of her mother – the merchant life wasn’t for her.  No, her passion was something else entirely.

She was so excited that they had finally visited the small mountain village of Shardenvale, because it was where her hard-earned information led her.  According to her contacts, the source of the Vampiric Siphon technique was located nearby. In all actuality, the one who had discovered it might be standing only a short distance away and she wouldn’t know it. Because all she had was a name: Dramien.

That was it: Dramien in the village of Shardenvale.

Sandra had had less to go on when tracking down her targets, but she thought this one might be tricky. There was no description of the source whatsoever and it was only vague mutterings that had been heard through her father’s merchant contacts that led her to this place. She wasn’t dissuaded, though, because this was one of the last techniques that she had yet to learn.

“I’ll be back, father. I’m just going to look around for a little bit – this place it so enchanting, isn’t it,” Sandra told Ardling when he was finished putting the last item out. It was the same ornate knife that she had almost dropped earlier, but now it was placed precisely next to another one just like it on the short wooden counter he had placed at the front of the stall.

“Ok, but don’t take too long because I need your help to close whatever sales come our way. I don’t know why I let you convince me to come to this backwater…” he mumbled in reply.

Normally, they would’ve bypassed the small village in the mountains, as it didn’t really support the population for making great sales, but Sandra had convinced him to come so that she could do her investigations. There was very little that he would deny her – and she knew that – so she rarely asked for anything.  Since they were still going to sell their merchandise, she didn’t think it was that much of a hardship to journey there.

As for closing the sale, Sandra was more than aware that she was considered attractive – as long as she didn’t display her hands. Some men liked long black hair, or blemish-free skin, or thin, athletic bodies with a bit of perkiness to it…but it was rare to find someone that could look past her deformed hands and not be turned off from them. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it), she had gotten fairly used to the looks over the years and it didn’t bother her…much.

Regardless, she told her father that she wouldn’t be too long and left the relatively small marketplace quickly, heading for the one place she knew she could gather some information: the local tavern.

The village was comprised of no more than 30 buildings – half of which were small houses – so it didn’t take long to find the tavern. A sign above the doorway read, “The Stinking Goathoof”, which didn’t sound appetizing – but she wasn’t exactly there to eat. As soon as she walked through the door, however, she was surprised to see that the inside appeared entirely different from what she had expected a “Stinking Goathoof” to look like.

A long, well-kept bar ran across the entire right-side of the room, with sturdy-looking stools lined up neatly in front. Equally hefty-appearing tables and chairs filled the rest of the room, and a small stage at left-side corner (opposite of the entrance) hinted that the small village apparently got more business than she thought if they had a place for entertainment. The wood-plank floors were clean and virtually spotless, which was definitely not the norm; she had been in a lot of taverns, inns, and common rooms in her life and it was a rare sight indeed.

It was still early in the morning and there weren’t very many people in the tavern, which made sense – most of their business usually came later in the day and when the sun went down. The only ones who frequented the tavern that early were travelers like her, Heroes, or drunks. From the smell as she walked by, the two men she saw in sitting/sleeping at a corner table were most likely the latter.

“What can I do for you this morning, lass?” the bartender asked as Sandra walked up and comfortably sat at the bar. While she didn’t drink (her father said it was just expensive poison and wouldn’t let her touch it), she had been in enough seedy places looking for information that the current, well-tended place she was now it was almost paradise in comparison.

She surreptitiously slid a gold piece out of her pocket and placed it on the bar, deliberately only covering up half of it with her hand. She looked around at the sleeping drunks behind her at the far table, before she said in a low voice, “I was looking for a little information.”

The bartender smiled at her, which faded just a little as he took in her crippled hand, but he maintained his demeanor quite convincingly. “I’ll do what I can, but there’s not much that happens around here. I doubt that I’d know anything you don’t, since I can see from your appearance that you’re a little more worldly than I am.  Either way, I’m at your disposal – especially as it seems you’re my only customer,” he said, before glancing at his drunk patrons in the corner. “Well, my only paying customer,” he amended. “The name’s Marth – now what can I help you with?”

Well, here goes nothing… “It’s nice to meet you, Marth. It’s actually a fairly simple question, actually. I was wondering if you could tell me if you’ve ever heard of man named Dramien?” she asked, hoping that she was in the right place and her information was correct. She pushed the gold piece over to him and took her hand away.

Marth’s smile instantly dropped away at the mention of Dramien’s name, and he pushed the gold piece back across to her. “Keep your money. I don’t want anything to do with that man up in the hills. And a pretty little thing like you shouldn’t either; now, please leave – you’re taking up valuable space.”

At least he was lying politely about it. Rather than argue, Sandra got up and left; she knew from experience that she wasn’t going to get any information out of the bartender, no matter how much she asked or offered. As she exited, she was too preoccupied to notice that one of the “drunks” in the corner got up and followed her out.

Sandra walked aimlessly through the few streets of the village, though calling them streets was a misnomer – they were more like random pathways between buildings. Well, I know he’s around here at least, but how do I find—?

A scuff behind her caused Sandra to pause in confusion, which turned out not to be a great idea. A sharp blow to the back of her head caused her to fall to her knees as her vision swam before her eyes; a rock dug into the bandage she had placed there earlier, which elicited an equally sharp yelp of pain. Before she could do anything else, a second blow smacked her in the head again – and she fell into a deep pool of unconsciousness.