Guardian Angel Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Okay so I actually finished the chapter and the editing is minimal got plans in like five minutes but here it is hope you like it no promises for next week but maybe who knows okay bye!

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Ana woke to a sharp knocking on the door. An unfamiliar voice, a teenaged boy, she thought, was calling for her. "Miss Cole? We're serving dinner and Tor… that is, uh, Mister Barden, he said that you'd want to be told."

"Mmm? Right. Yeah. Thanks," she called back, sitting up on the bed. She felt decidedly better, and utterly ravenous.

She looked at her feet, then her discarded wraps. She didn't want to stand out more than necessary, but she hadn't noticed anyone looking at her feet, specifically. And she'd be taking her purse, anyway, which would draw some looks. Probably.

She briefly considered just going all out and putting on her heels. The mental image of the oversized men's clothes she was wearing together with her party heels made her snort briefly. Not happening. Nor was she going barefoot, so she wrapped her feet back up in the filthy cloth strips, put her gun back in her purse, and headed out. The door locked with a satisfying clack.

"'scuse," something rumbled, and Ana looked to her side just in time to see a giant of a man with incongruously soft steps somehow squeeze by her in the narrow hallway and head down the stairs as she looked after him. She'd barely noticed him coming! He'd been polite and careful not to bump her, but it still made her uncomfortable to know that she'd missed someone like him, especially in a fairly confined space like the hallway. He probably had some attribute or ability, or he just had a background as a ballet dancer. This magic stuff was going to take some getting used to.

She swallowed her frustration, and followed the large man down to the common room. Where it had been almost empty when she arrived, now it was half full of people talking, laughing, and above all else, eating. She scanned the crowd and saw only humans, with a variety of levels and classes. Some she barely reacted to, like Fighter, Rogue, or Archer. A few were obviously magical. She saw a Summoner in the crowd, but since no one else reacted to the woman Ana guessed that she'd just run across a bad one.

Other classes she had no frame of reference for. Like, what the hell was a Kineticist?

Dinner was some kind of stew. It was thick and had lumps of various colours in it, but it smelled good and got Ana's stomach rumbling. A kid, possibly the same one who'd woken her, ran in and out of the kitchen with wide bowls of the stuff that he simply put on the bar.

"Evenin', Miss," the kid said when he spotted her. "Want ale with your stew? Only two coppers!"

"Uh, sure." Ana remembered something about how people used to drink beer and wine because it was safer than the water. She'd taken her chances in the forest, but she wasn't going to get dysentery or something if she could help it. Besides, one beer couldn't hurt.

She fished out two copper coins and handed them to the kid. "I'll bring it in a moment, Miss. Here," he handed over a huge chunk of bread. "Grab a bowl and sit anywhere, I'll find ya."

"Thanks." The bowls were smooth carved wood. So were the spoons stuck into the stew. Ana dropped her bread into one of the bowls and looked and looked around, finding an unoccupied table and sitting down.

She lifted a spoonful of the stew and looked at it sceptically. It was mostly brown, but there were some green and yellow bits in there, and something that was almost towards more of a blue. It was hard to tell with how the sauce, thick as chowder, clung to everything. Smelled good, though. She popped the spoon in her mouth and it was… stew. Nothing spectacular, but it was rich and savoury and she happily kept on eating, trying to take it slow like she'd learned instead of shovelling it down as fast as she could, the way she'd once had to.

"Your ale, Miss." The voice was accompanied by a large mug – flagon? Stein? – of foamy liquid thwacking onto the table. Ana couldn't say anything about the colour because the mug was, like the bowls, made of wood.

"Thanks, kid," Ana said after swallowing the big bite of bread she'd been working on.

"Do you want seconds? You get another bowl if you want it, but if you want more after that it's three coppers."

Ana looked at her bowl and only then realised that she'd finished the whole thing and was wiping up the remaining sauce with her bread.

"Yeah, thanks. Do I just…?"

"I can get it for you, Miss," the kid said quickly, taking her bowl and bustling off.

Ana had barely tasted her drink, which was not very strong but otherwise most like a red ale than anything else, when a bowl and a mug clattered onto the table across from her, accompanied by the scrape of a chair and a woman practically throwing herself into it.

"Looks like Mikkel's sweet on you, new girl!" Ana's uninvited guest announced cheerfully in a high voice. She had her head shaved and had a wide jaw with a narrow chin, but beyond that everything about her appearance was slightly off. Her eyes were too wide, the irises too yellow. Her ears were slightly too sharp, though not like Touanne's, and her mouth, Ana couldn't help but notice, smiled just too wide and showed too many, too sharp teeth. All in all she gave Ana an uncanny valley effect.

Themion Evoker (12), read her label. Ana had no idea what either of those things were, but she wasn’t human.

Ana put her mug down and put on her best expression of polite disinterest, saying, "Can I help you?" She didn’t want company, but she didn’t want to leave, either, and she’d prefer to avoid a scene.

"Nah, probably not!" the woman said and tucked into her stew, speaking between swallows and gesturing at Ana with her spoon. "But I can help you!"

"I don’t think that I’m interested."

That didn't dissuade the woman in the slightest. "No way for you to know that until you hear me out, is there?"

"I barely have money for room and board, so…"

"Yeah, Tor told me. Don't worry about it." The woman stopped eating for a moment and looked up. "Ah, right, yeah. Should've led with that, eh? Tor told me he'd brought a new girl into town, asked me to make ya welcome! Oh, and to show you how to use a crossbow! But maybe not tonight, I’ve had a couple, you know? You’re Anastasia, right?" She shoved a hand across the table.

Ana took the woman by the wrist after a moment's consideration. "Torden asked you to talk to me?"

"Yeah. Name's Kaira! And the lump behind ya's Omda."

Ana looked over her shoulder and nearly pulled Kaira across the table when she saw the large man from upstairs looming over her. She'd been going for her gun, but Kaira's grip on her right wrist delayed her enough to recover her wits.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Ana exclaimed angrily, her polite facade dropping while the startled Kaira released her. "What's wrong with you, sneaking up on someone like that?"

Omda took a step back and held his palms out to her. "Shit, sorry, Miss! Only I got a new ability and… sorry."

The people around them had stopped whatever they were doing to watch, but lost interest when it became apparent that there wasn't a fight breaking out or anything. Ana considered leaving, but if she was stuck here in a small community she really didn't need a reputation for being standoffish or rude. "Just sit down," she said, forcing her breathing back under control and taking a gulp of her ale as she eyed Omda. He was a Human Ranger (10). "Did Torden sick you at me, too?"

"He asked me to say hi, yeah," Omda said sheepishly. He had a predictably deep voice, but a quick, jerky way of speaking. "We're a party, the three of us."

"Meaning?"

"We go out together. Delving "

"I thought he was a guard."

"Nah," said Kaira, who'd gone back to her stew. "He's on rotation. One week in six."

"Like a volunteer?" Ana asked.

The kid, Mikkel, brought her a near overflowing bowl of stew. "Thanks," she told him as he put it down, and he smiled shyly before running back to the bar.

"Definitely sweet on you," Kaira commented. "The guard thing is kind of volunteer, I guess. Lots of people do that, or something else, for the guild. We get paid for our time, though. Me, I do run-alongs with casual groups, so I don't need to do piss boring stuff like guarding."

“What’s a run-along?” Ana asked, starting on her new bowl.

“Casual groups are people like you, right? Tailors and apprentices and whatever. Well, the Guild can’t stop you all from making groups and going out, but if you want official support they’ll send a run-along with you. An experienced combattant, in case shit gets twisted. We don’t join the party, so we don’t get any experience or anything, but we get paid no matter what so, hey! Better than guarding for some extra dosh.” Kaira gave Ana a feral grin. “And it’s a hell of a lot of fun when I do have to step in. Civvies always get so impressed when I cut loose.”

“How does that look? When an Evoker cuts loose, I mean,” Ana asked. Kaira was more than happy to carry the conversation, so Ana would let her and maybe learn something in the process. She still had plenty of stew to finish.

“Shit fries and dies!” Kaira shouted happily, loud enough for people to turn and look at her.

“Kaira’s our mage. She's focused on heat and lightning,” Omda said. It was almost a sigh, the first sound out of him since he’d sat down. He’d been so quiet that Ana had almost forgotten that he was there.

“Of course I am! They are objectively best! I’d show you, Ana, but Petra would kick my teeth in! Maybe tomorrow? You got plans tomorrow?”

“No,” Ana said slowly. “I’d been hoping to make some after talking to Torden tonight.”

“Great! He’ll be here whenever, and we can all have a couple of drinks and figure out how to get you settled in. HEY, MIKKEL!” Kaira waved her now empty mug in the air, and the kid nodded at her from the bar.

“Should he be slinging drinks?” Ana asked. “How old is he? Fifteen?”

Omda shrugged. “Thereabouts. Why? Respectable trade, running an inn.”

“Yeah, but… you know, forget I said anything,” Ana said and took a drink. They’d probably never heard of a liquor licence or child labour laws here. And what was the kid supposed to do instead? Go to school? Did they have schools? No here, in this ‘splinter,’ that was for sure. Mikkel was probably one of the youngest people here.

“Hey!” Kaira exclaimed. “There’s Tor! TOR! Over here, meat shield!” She semaphored her arms vigorously until Tor, who’d just stepped in, saw her and headed over, stopping briefly by the bar to collect Kaira’s ale from Mikkel, along with a mug for himself.

"Good evening, Anastasia," he said, snatching an empty chair from a nearby table. He ruffled Kaira's non-existent hair and sat down between Ana and Kaira, across from Omda. "I see you've met my friends."

"Yeah, your ambush worked perfectly," Ana answered, a little more sourly than she'd intended. "I thought I was buying the beer?"

"You can get the next one." Tor took a deep drink, then gestured to his friends. "I figured it was better to get it over with. Kaira would find you sooner or later."

"You make me sound like a predator!" Kaira said with mock outrage, swatting at Tor's shoulder.

"You are a predator!" Tor shot back. "Or are all those teeth just for show?"

"Come on, I'm not that bad!"

"Is there a single civvie woman in this outpost that you haven't tried to recruit to your group?"

"'course not. I'm not a slacker, am I?"

"Besides," Tor turned to me, "she's the friend I told you about who might show you around a crossbow."

"Already offered," Kaira said. "How about it?"

Ana shrugged. "Sure, I guess," she said, then, "Sorry. Yes, thank you. I'd appreciate it."

Kaira slapped both her palms on the table hard enough to make everything rattle. "Great! Got to love a good crossbow! A lot of the casuals want to be at the front, or they prefer regular bows, don't ask me why. I'll make you a sharpshooter in two weeks, three tops!"

"Back up," Ana said. "What do you mean by Kaira's group? I thought the people at the Administration made the groups."

"Well, yeah, but not really?" Kaira answered. "If you ask for it they'll put you with me, though. It's a pretty relaxed setup."

"And more people asking for Kaira gets Kaira more run-alongs," Omda said.

"Yep!" Kaira raised her mug happily. "So ask for me! Everyone wins!"

"What's in it for me?" Ana asked.

"Well, my groups are mostly women, so you don't need to worry about some asshole trying anything. And you'll have me along!"

"More in hand, Irry's groups usually do well for loot and experience," Tor said. "Probably because she can't sit still for more than five minutes and won't let anyone else do it, either."

"I'm sitting still now!"

"Barely. And only because you have a drink and something shiny in front of you. No offence intended, Anastasia."

"She's not as bad as that," Omda said. "She's driven. And deep into the fire and lightning side of Evocation, so…"

"Right." Ana said, eyeing the group at her table. She was going to need that primer on magic from Touanne for sure. "So, say I do want to go out with–"

"I knew it!" Kaira cheered, almost spilling her drink as she swung around to slap Tor on the shoulder

"If," Ana repeated more loudly, "I want to go out, what's the system? How long does it take, what do I need and, most importantly, who are you fighting out there?"

"'Who?' Something's gone all the way to shit if we're fighting a who," Kaira said.

"Demons," Omda added.

"Demons." Ana kept her voice carefully flat. She didn't want to assume that they were messing with her. People had called all kinds of things 'demons,' historically.

"Little ones," Omda elaborated.

"They get into unstable splinters and make them even more unstable," Tor explained. "They feed off of mana, but they're greedy little bastards so the ambient mana isn't enough for them. Especially in a low ambient splinter like ours."

Kaira picked up. "So they get into animals and eat their mana and take them over. And when something dies all their mana gets released, so they start killing animals around them and eating their mana, and then the weakest demons can get into the corpses and yada yada.

"What about people?"

"Oh, yeah! They'd love to kill a person, the higher level the better! Smarter creatures have more mana, see? And so do higher level ones. A high level adventurer is irresistible to the fuckers."

"What about… getting into them? Taking over?" Ana couldn't quite believe that she was taking this seriously, but with all the other weird shit she'd been exposed to lately…

"Bodies? Sure. They'll get into dead bodies and even pretty whole skeletons just fine."

"What about live people?"

The mood around the table instantly turned sombre.

"If you think someone has been possessed, you run," Omda said. "You run, and you pray. And you tell the Captains, so they can decide if we need to evacuate the splinter."

"That bad?"

"If we're dealing with a demon strong enough to possess a living person, yes. It's that bad," Tor said. Then he quickly changed the subject, his mood turning artificially cheerful. "As for what you need! You have armour, though you should get it fitted or trade it for a suit that fits you better. Same with you clothes. And boots, of course."

"Boots are top of my list."

"Good! Reliable boots are some of your most important gear. If you go out with an organised casual group like Kaira's then the Guild will loan you camping gear against a deposit, so don't worry about that. And for weapons… you already have daggers, swords, and a crossbow, right? So I'd say start with that. I'll let you try out some shields, too, see if that's something you'd like."

The conversation drifted from there into some tentative planning. At some point Ana was talked into having another beer, or ale – she'd never bothered to learn the difference – and two turned into three, then four. When the others moved on due to Kaira's demand to go somewhere with some music, Ana finally managed to separate herself and return to her room. She couldn't avoid a fierce if unsteady hug from Kaira, but after the initial surprise she felt pretty okay about it. Some human – or themion – contact might be what she needed.

She was in bed by the time she realised that she'd never paid for anything. Every time she'd tried to order a round someone else was quicker, and when she was the only one who hadn't stood one Kaira insisted they go.

Ana suspected that she was being handled.

Fuck it. If they wanted to be generous she wasn't too proud to accept. She'd stand her round next time.

Next time. When had she decided that there should be a next time?