Drip-Fed – Fists and Fortune 21 – The Adventurer’s Assembly (Patreon)

Apexus was familiar with many faces he saw that day. Various teachers whom he had encountered when he had done his sweep of all the Classes were in attendance. Adventurers of all ages streamed into the temple, influential members of the community, notable upstarts, and weak administrators all had followed the summon from the Teacher’s Isles oldest member.

The buzzing of voices was constant, filling the room with an excitement that bothered Apexus. This sacred hall was not to be filled with ceaseless chatter. It was a chamber of quiet contemplation, of mastering skills and of pondering the past and future. A large gathering like this spoke with too many voices, had too many opinions meddled, and they all overlapped and competed. The volume rose with each additional participant.

Chairs had been brought in for the guests. Maltos, his assistant, Apexus and Aclysia all instead knelt directly on the floor. Reysha was with them too, but the way she sat, one knee serving as an armrest, the other foot tucked under her, radiated carelessness. Korith hid behind Apexus’ back from all the attention.

“You should sit properly,” he chided them.

“There’s so many people,” Korith whispered into his ear. “At least five thousand.”

“I reckon the actual number is closer to fifty,” Aclysia analysed.

“That’s not how I see it…” Korith gulped. Hesitatingly, she detached from the Monk’s back and sat down next to him. That only left Reysha as not fitting in with the formation in front of the metal lotus flower.

“I don’t wanna,” the tiger girl proclaimed, playfully childish.

“Rogues are rarely known for their sociability,” one of the assistant teachers chimed in. He had given Apexus too many valuable lessons in proper movements and thinking for the slime to get mad at his, very reasonable, comment.

“So I get a pass?” Reysha asked.

The experienced Monk just sighed, which was just as good an answer as a confirmation.

“Bitchin’.”

“Your language, I will not tolerate,” Maltos warned her. “Pay reverence to this gathering. It is to your benefit.” The old Monk gave the tiger girl a single prolonged glance. Like a kitten getting picked up by her mother, she stopped the proverbial struggle, knelt properly in place, and swallowed her obscenities.

“Alright, fine, but only because ya nice.”

“You are nice,” Apexus corrected her.

“I know what I like to swallow,” Reysha giggled and gave her man a wink. Excited for any kind of reaction, she looked at each of the Monk’s in turn. None of them had anything to offer her. Korith was a bit red, but it was so easy to make her blush that it barely even counted. Aclysia pinched the bridge of her nose. Now that was the intense reaction Reysha had been hoping for. ‘Hellroots, I love this woman,’ the redhead thought and kissed the metal fairy on the cheek.

“I- what?” Aclysia failed to get a better reaction to the sudden show of affection. It took her a full five seconds to formulate a proper response, easily overwhelmed as she was. “I strongly request that you do not repeat that, this is a serious situation.”

“I won’t, but not because it’s a serious situation,” Reysha promised.

Apexus smiled at the exchange between his women. His hands found Korith’s and Aclysia’s. Aclysia reached out to Reysha in turn. They held onto one another tightly, as Maltos rose to his feet. The hall immediately turned quiet, only a few coughs breaking the silence that descended on it all. People sat respectfully in their chairs and tracked Maltos walking to the centre of the room, deliberately kept clear.

“I thank you all for your attendance,” the old Monk began. “I…”

Suddenly, the old man started coughing. A deep, intense cough, the kind only the old and the sick could muster. Worried murmurs went through the crowd. The proud pillar of their community was rendered incapable of speech. It was not the first time any of them had seen this, and they all feared for the time it would be the last.

One of the assistant teachers swiftly brought a cup of tea to Maltos. Despite the shaking of his body, the old Monk did not spill a single drop as he carefully drank the liquid. A couple of suppressed coughs and clearings of his throat later, he was back in control of himself.

“Old age catches up to everyone,” Maltos said in a tranquil tone and took another gulp of tea. “I apologize for the delay.” He handed the cup back and the assistant walked away, leaving Maltos to continue the address. “The matter I wish to discuss with you today, pillars of the Teacher’s Isle, I have informed all of you before in private over the last two months. A Deathhound is coming, chasing after my star pupil and his party.”

Apexus went rigid. Not because the entirety of the room suddenly stared at him. None of them had the predator’s gaze that he knew to register as dangerous. Instead, it was the two simple words that Maltos had chosen to describe him. Pulling his shoulders back, Apexus took the compliment with all the pride he could without letting it poison his mind.

That Maltos had shared their particular happenstance with more and more people over the weeks, the party had known about. They had agreed to his strategy and there was no executing it without letting people prepare. Every last person around being aware of the state of affairs, that was more than they had anticipated. With careful preparation and individual care, the old Monk had eliminated the greatest source of shock that could have paralysed this meeting.

“This meeting is to unify our measures and what all of you know. I believe you have the right to know all about what you are getting endangered for – and who. Apexus, Aclysia, Reysha, please step forward.”

The trio rose up slowly – as did Korith. Apexus looked down to the kobold and the defiant way she held onto him. “I won’t let you go without me… this is my fight too, now,” she whispered, quaking with nervousness. Closing his hand back around hers, the humanoid chimera took the first step. Their line only broke when they took the centre stage. All attention was now well and truly on them.

“Explain to the people who you are, where you came from, and why you came here,” Maltos requested, before returning to his own seat.

Aclysia took the extra step forwards. Even if Apexus was the leader, the metal fairy remained their best speaker, provided she was given time to prepare. With her good memory, she was also the best to recount the events that had led up to them being there. “My darling… Apexus, he is not part of the common order of creation,” she started, “and that was the issue that cascaded into the tale of how we ended up here.”

The crowd listened to the tale, some stunned, some understanding, some dismayed. There was understanding, from all parties, for Apexus. There was also understanding for Mehily and the adventurers that had hunted them. The slime’s existence was so far outside the frame of reference they all shared, none would have stopped to question the validity of a bounty, had they simply been offered the contract. Seeing what they saw in Apexus, hearing what they heard in the tale, they did understand that he was as sapient as the rest of them.

When Aclysia’s recollection came to an end, there was silence in the room for a few moments. Then, one of the teachers raised his hand. “A question, that I must have answered to know how I will proceed,” he said and got up once he had everyone’s attention. “Be assured that I will support dealing with the Deathhound no matter what. I owe Maltos a great deal and wickedness must be stamped out wherever given the opportunity. There will be no better chance to take out this demon than when it is isolated in this hunt. What I want to know, exactly, is what motivated you to keep going? What gave you the right to spread your trail of destruction to so many Leaves?”

Aclysia tried to put her argument together. A cause that she was struggling with, because she still did not know if she believed in why they did it. In the silence, Reysha groaned and rolled her eyes.

“I’m so tired of justifying that I don’t want to die,” the tiger girl let all of them know. She did not care how that made her sound, it was just the truth. Challengingly, she let her blue eyes wander over the crowd, their colour standing out intensely against her black sclera and the strips that surrounded her eyes like warpaint. “Maybe, if there had been any chance at all, that we could have murdered that… thing on our own, maybe then I would concede to you that we did anything wrong. But there wasn’t and there isn’t. There was just us dying and the Deathhound fucking… going back to its Master to slaughter another Leaf on his behest or us running and it killing people on the way. I don’t need any right to pick the better out of two terrible choices.”

“We wanted to live,” Apexus supported, “and we wanted to see it vanquished.”

The teacher that had spoken slowly nodded. “I won’t fault you for that. I have no further questions.”

“Will you fight with us?” another person asked.

“What a fucking stupid ass question is that?!” Vulk thundered from a different corner of the room. “Can you clean the dust and paper out of your brain you book-sniffing reta-?!”

“Vulk,” the quiet reprimand from Maltos brought the goliath’s tirade to an abrupt end.

“Sorry, just slipped out,” the Warrior teacher grumbled.

“We will lend all the aid we can,” Aclysia answered in the opening provided. “We have trained as much as we could to be of help in whatever limited way we can.”

To Aclysia’s, and most other people’s surprise, Pronthin cleared his throat and stepped forward. Standing taller than usual, almost pushing back the lethargy that marked the cynic's usual behaviour, the Priest teacher raised his voice. “I can attest to the diligence of Aclysia’s training and so can the other teachers. They only took the breaks we allowed them to have and kept to the schedules demanded… faithfully.”

“I second this statement,” Mai said, without getting up. Legs and arms crossed, the rogue teacher sat in her chair, her appearance that of a brown-haired elf in her middle-ages. “I put Reysha through the wringer. That being said, she’ll be practically useless in this fight. Even most of us teachers would be incapable of putting more than a cut in the hide of a Deathhound before it rips our guts out.”

“So, this is a suicide mission?” one of the weaker attendees, an organizer more than a former adventurer, asked out loud.

“It’s a dangerous mission,” Maltos said and all the attention went back to him. As he spoke, he returned to the centre of the room. “We have the backing of the Church. It is by their grace that we know about the time of the attack, so I trust the Lord of the Compass will guide them back to aid us when we need them. I will not conscript anyone into this by force… but know that I put upon all of you a moral duty.”

The old man took a deep breath, stood tall and broad, stared at each of the younger people around and gave them room to challenge him or to prepare for the weight of his words. The words of a man who had given years of good will, time, and patience, and been there many times when they needed help.

“We are adventurers. Some entered the field for profit and profit alone, but most of us ventured out because of a higher calling than what we found in our homes. We wished to change the worlds we visit for the better. Now, we are teachers, we are fathers, mothers, and we have settled. What do we live for if not to give the next generation a chance to succeed in their struggle as we have? To hide away to save our own lives, when there are young, vibrant minds that can be saved is cowardice. Yes, it will be dangerous, but I will stand first in line and lay down all I have to fulfill the duty to those that follow me, just like those that came before me have done for me. Will you let this old man stand alone in this noble aspiration?”

A wave of denial washed through the room, swiftly transforming into people banging their heels on the floor. A drumming like a preparation for war, even louder in the tranquil temple than their many voices had been. Yet, in that unison of purpose, in that joining of voices and motion, they accomplished with many minds the same clarity they needed to befit this quiet house of reason.