BT - Book 1 - Chapter 32 (Patreon)

“Come on Micah,” Trevor dragged him by his arm as Micah struggled weakly.  “No one really cares that you’re sixteen.  As long as you have attunement to spend and I vouch for you, I’ll be able to get you into the Lancer’s guild bar.”

“But,” Micah began, his eyes flicking back to Drekt, Jo, Sarah, and Will bemusedly following Trevor.

“Nonsense,” Trevor continued, ignoring Micah’s distress.  “You can be a solo if you want, but I’m not letting my brother become an absolute loner and a shut in.  My new team are good people and they’re around your age.  Mom and Esther worry about you.”

“Esther?” Micah asked, turning his head to Trevor in confusion.

“She might be young,” Trevor smiled wryly, “but she notices a lot.  She keeps asking where you are and saying that you look lonely.  Whenever I tell her that you’re training or going on adventures she points out that I didn’t work anywhere near as hard when I joined the Lancers.  She’s right you know.”

“I have my reasons for working hard,” Micah demurred evasively.  “Can’t it just be enough that I want to raise my levels and skills as high as possible before I join a guild?”

“Don’t worry about it too much,” Trevor winked at him as he pulled Micah through the familiar front door to the Lancer guild.  “Dad and I have always known that you’re the studious one in the family.  Ever since you started your apprenticeship at the library you’ve kept long hours.  None of us wanted to make a big deal out of it but we saw the bags under your eyes and we knew how hard you were working.”

“Still,” Trevor chuckled, “you don’t have to be that mysterious about it.  You haven’t even told any of us what your blessing is.”

“It’s more than common,” Micah smiled, trying to keep his thoughts from straying to the previous timeline.  As much as he might want to talk about his gifts with his family, Trevor was a drunk and his Mother and Sister were notorious gossips.  Anything he said would find its way to those in power fairly quickly, and he had enough on his plate without some noble deciding that his refusal to join a guild with his level of blessing marked him as a malcontent or a threat.

He smiled to himself as he sat at a table in the small Lancer bar.  Everything from the odd scents and distressing sticky spots to the initials carved in the wood of the benches was exactly the same as he’d remembered.  Maybe Trevor was onto something.  He’d spent most of the last couple days talking to a magical deer that probably understood him.  He needed some normalcy to ground his life or he’d go insane.

Laughing at a joke from Drekt, Sarah and Jo sat down at the table with Micah.  A moment later they were followed by a confused Will.

“I still don’t get what’s funny guys,” Will’s whining lilt immediately brought Micah back.  Quickly he raised his hand to scratch a cheek, concealing a smile.  “I don’t understand why the Duchess would be so upset about her chambermaid cheating on her in that story.  She should’ve been mad at the Duke when he admitted that he slept with the chambermaid instead.  It just doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s a joke Will,” Micah put his hand back on the table and leaned back, finally relaxing slightly as the gentle murmur of the tavern lulled him into letting down his guard.  “The point of it was that the Duchess doesn’t give a crap about the Duke.  She’s only actually upset with the chambermaid for ‘cheating’ on her by sleeping with the Duke.”

“But they’re both girls?” Will asked, looking at Micah with an expression that resembled a duckling separated from its mother.  “Two girls can’t date.  They don’t have the right parts.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Jo cackled, positively shaking in her seat, “we have our ways.  Ways that are often not nearly as quick, disappointing and messy as other options.”

“I don’t understand?” Will turned back to Drekt, his face a rippling mass of confusion and furrows.  “Why would two women date each other.  They can’t have babies and the Church of Luxos says that babies are the only reason for two people to date each other.”

Just at that moment Trevor returned to the table with a wooden plate covered with small metal cups.  The unmistakable scent of juushk wafted toward Micah, causing him to pale.  His yes could barely make out the shit eating grin on Trevor’s face through the bar’s murky lighting as he began to set a cup in front of everyone at the table.

“I got us the good stuff since we’re meeting up with my kid brother,” Trevor smiled as he pulled up the last remaining stool in their vicinity.  “What’d I miss?”

“Drekt was about to explain the birds and the bees to Will,” Jo giggled as she grabbed the mug of hard liquor.  “Well, more specifically the birds and the birds and the bees and the bees.”

“Drekt,” Trevor’s eyebrows shot up.  “I didn’t know that you were…”

The big man grabbed his mug and downed it in one quaff with a grimace and a satisfied sigh.  Almost gently he put the metal receptacle down on the table.

“When you look as Durghish as me,” he shrugged, a flicker of distaste on his massive face.  “It hardly matters if you’re a deviant in one way or two.  The same people would hate me for either.  I do not advertise what I am, but I will not deny it.”

“Wait,” Jo put her cup back down, “we were just joking around with Will, I didn’t realize that you were gay Drekt.”

“Not gay,” Drekt looked wistfully into his empty cup while Trevor’s eyes fixed themselves upon him appraisingly.  “Simply more free with who I am.  I’m attracted to powerful personalities and the gender of that person doesn’t seem very relevant to me.”

“Why are you so surprised Jo?” Micah asked, glancing dubiously at his own cup before sliding it to Drekt.  “Didn’t you just say that you liked women?”

Jo blushed and quickly took a sip of her juushk, coughing as the acrid liquid hit the back of her throat.

“I just said that to mess with Will, not that it worked,” she squinted, the flush from the alcohol already starting to hit her cheeks, “wait, what’s your name. I know you’re Trevor’s little brother but how do you know my name.  I don’t think I ever introduced myself to you.”

“He knew Will’s name too,” Sarah spoke up for the first time, cutting Micah off before he could think up an excuse.  “Has Trevor been talking about us?”

For a second, Micah was tempted to use Trevor as an easy out while Drekt distracted him.  Ultimately, it wouldn’t get him anywhere.  At some point Trevor would mention that Micah and him really hadn’t had a chance to talk in months and everything would become unraveled.  

He’d screwed up, it was time to make up a story and take his licks.

“I was uh,” he struggled for words.  Years of isolating himself in a cave reading books might help his level, but it really wasn’t the most efficient method of developing social skills.  “You guys were talking and telling jokes on the way to the bar.  I overheard you mentioning each others’ names.  Sorry about that if it was a little weird.”

Sarh squinted her eyes at him.  Micah could feel the room warming around him as he tried to avoid her gaze.  She didn’t believe him.  He could feel it.

“Give him a break Sarah,” Jo rolled her eyes as she took another sip of her juushk.  “It’s a little weird, but where else would have heard our names?  Nothing else actually makes sense.”

“I will shoot him if I catch him trying to drink my bathwater or go through my soiled laundry,” She leaned back on her chair, eyes still on Micah.  “I’ve had to deal with that type before and it isn’t a pleasant experience.”

Micah turned beet red as Jo snickered at him.  She still looked exactly as he remembered her, slim and pretty with a quirky smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.  Everything about her brought him back to their months together.  From the way she tilted her head to the clear chime of her laughter.  It all crashed into him at once.  

It might be the loneliness from more or less living in a hole with a magical buck, but he missed her.  It’d been years of Micah’s time since he’d seen her, but even after all of that time it didn’t dull how he felt around her.  His pulse still raced at her jokes and he had to make a conscious effort to not get lost in her smile.

In his first timeline, Micah might have convinced himself that he was okay with their breakup, but he wasn’t.  Intellectually, Jo was right, he wasn’t self assured enough to be in a relationship with her.  Emotionally?  Her dumping him had been devastating.  Her sacrifice during the Durgh incursion made everything worse.

Of course, she wasn’t the same Jo that he knew.  To her, this was their first time meeting and he was just the kid brother of her team leader.  He winced thinking about Sarah’s accusation and amended his thoughts.  The creepy and possibly stalker kid brother of her team leader.

A hand shook his arm.  Micah looked over at Trevor.  His brother rolled his eyes at him.

“Micah,” exasperation filled Trevor’s voice.  “You were dozing off there.  I’m pretty sure I asked you the same question about four times.”

“Sorry Trevor,” He replied, crossing his fingers under the table that no one had noticed his wistful bout of nostalgia.  “I’ve been working myself to the bone lately and I must be more exhausted than I thought I was.”

“Fair enough,” Trevor took another sip of the juushk.  “I was asking what your class, level, and blessing were.  We have a slot reserved next weekend for a level eleven dungeon.  Unfortunately, I think we’re a little rough around the edges right now.  We could probably take the dungeon on our own, but there might be casualties if we aren’t careful.  I know you’re a spellcaster of some sort, and that’s exactly what we’re missing.”

“Oh,” Micah replied, suddenly noticing that everyone at the table had stopped drinking.  He shifted in his seat, a bit uncomfortable with their attention.  With everyone else, he’d long ago shed any vestige of self consciousness, but with his former team.  Well, there was just something that brought him back to his first days as a weak and inexperienced neophyte trying to find his way in the scary world of adventurers. 

“I’m a Magi,” he improvised.  It was a rare enough class to get him attention, but not so rare as to be a danger to him.  No one needed to know he was a Thaumaturge.  That was just asking for the nobility to act.  “My affinities are mostly related to healing and summoning but I do have a few combat spells.  As for my blessing and level?  I don’t think you have to worry about me in a level eleven dungeon.  I’ll let you know if we’re near my limits.”

“A little cocky are we,” Sarah sniffed her juushk before pushing it away.  “Unless you’ve been in a dungeon you don’t know how quickly things can go bad down there.  One wrong matchup and suddenly even a foe weaker than you can leave you beaten and crippled.”

“I summon Daemons,” Micah smiled faintly as Drekt promptly snagged and drank Sarah’s mug.  “I don’t even know how to call up spirits or elementals.  Onkerts are slightly stronger than Trevor.”

For a second no one responded.  The only sound was Drekt’s cough as the juushk burned his already ravaged throat.

“Trust me,” Micah shrugged.  “I know how dungeons work.  Being solo doesn’t mean I can’t go delving.  It just means I don’t usually have a team with me.”

“Great!” Trevor slapped him on the back, while the rest of the team mulled over Micah’s words.  “Next weekend it is then.  Good to have you on board Micah!”