New World, Old Problems 10 – Conundrum

Apexus heard that something was different this night. Even on the worst days, he could barely hear Reysha approach, the tiger girl keeping her steps light and measured. Today, she was as loud as they came, stomping over grass and snapping small branches and dried leaves under her every step. It was unmistakably her though, he recognized her voice in the exhausted sighs and groans. Worried, the slime rolled off the bed and walked to the door.

He opened it just in time to spare Reysha the trouble. The Rogue had both of her hands occupied, carrying a person on her back. Dried blood and swollen bruises made them almost unidentifiable, all Apexus was sure of was that it was a male specimen of whatever humanoid species he belonged to.

“W-we have to help him!” Reysha stammered, equally certain that it was the right thing to do and unsure why she felt that.

Behind Apexus, Aclysia shot out of the bedsheets, grabbing her dress and slipping it over her underwear as quickly as she could. Simultaneously, she asked, “Who is that?!” Her voice was more aggressive than usual, the suddenness of the situation not helping with her paranoia. “What are you doing bringing people here?!”

“I don’t know, I had to!” the redhead blurted out as she made her way past Apexus. Just like Reysha earlier, the slime was unsure what to immediately make of the situation. He didn’t come to a conclusion quick enough to either encourage or stop her from placing the man on the bed, staining the linen with the dirt of the shoes and, to a lesser degree, the mostly dried blood. All he could do, for now, was throw on his own robe and mask.

“You don’t know who…” Aclysia started to berate the Ragressian, while closing in on the man and inspecting him closely. A task that overpowered her wish to lecture. He was unconscious and even more badly beaten than the bruises on the face first indicated. Raising his shirt for closer inspections, the metal fairy found numerous large spots, many dark enough to indicate a broken rib or three. While it all looked bad and was no doubt painful, the guy would survive. Those that had roughed him up knew how far to push things. “By my father,” she mumbled, “what was the reason for this violence?”

“He owes money to the mob or something, I don’t know,” Reysha collapsed onto one of the tree stumps around the stone slab they used as chairs and table. It wasn’t exactly the exhaustion that got to her, she had a strong body, but the situation at large was still bouncing around inside her mind with little answers to the multiple ‘Why’ questions that her actions posed.

“Again, you don’t know?!” Aclysia’s voice rose into an erratic pitch. “We’ve been here for too long already and now you bring someone to our HOUSE that’s being watched by THE MOB?”

“WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE?” Reysha shouted back, almost in tears. “I didn’t ask for this situation! One moment I’m having fun, the next I stumble upon two guys beating this sod up and suddenly I’m wracked by guilt and carrying him home, because he clearly needs help!” She clawed at her hair and threw her head back. “Are you telling me that I should have just left him lying bleeding in the street? Is that how I can atone for the shit I did? Ignoring the suffering of people?!”

Aclysia had no answer to that, her mouth opening and closing as paranoia and altruism fought inside her. This ugly and cynical new side of her held a lot of sway over her mind and paralyzed her thoughts and actions. The old and somewhat naïve wish of hers to help, however, was as strong as ever.

Calmly, Apexus closed the door. “Heal him,” the slime decided. “Reysha is right, she couldn’t have not helped. That would be like wanting to eat fish and searching in a forest.” While he said that, the now robed and masked evolving chimera grabbed one of the few strips of cloth they owned for cleaning of weapons or other tools and handed it to Reysha. “Blindfold him. We should help, but we shouldn’t let him see us. After Aclysia has healed him, if he wakes up and we decide not to… aid?” He stopped for a moment, then nodded, sure he had the right word, “not to aid him further, then I’ll take him somewhere and leave him there.”

As long as Apexus flew away before the blindfold was off, their identities would be as secure as they could be in this situation. Like Aclysia, he wasn’t happy about the risk taken but the damage was already done and Reysha was right in her perspective. All of the potential risks aside, it was something that the tiger girl had decided to do of her own volition and Apexus felt it would be detrimental to the progress made if they now decided to punish her for it. Something had to change to break their current stagnancy and this could have been it.

Aclysia let out a sigh of relief, at having a third party making the call for her. Ultimately, she knew which side of her would and should have won, but it was all easier if she wasn’t alone in the decision. Especially when what she wanted was at odds with what recent events told her was logical. “Alright,” she conceded.

Taking the strip of cloth, Reysha was just as relieved. After bursting out like that, she felt a bit clearer all around, but she still hadn’t expected things to go this well. “Yeah, let’s do it like that,” she agreed and blindfolded the man while Aclysia positioned herself next to the bed. He groaned in his sleep, while Reysha made sure that the cloth sat tight. This whole thing would be useless if he could just spy over the edges.

Aclysia double-checked, after Reysha backed-off, nodded and then conjured her healing powers. A warm, golden glow radiated from her hands and flowed into the man. It was the slow kind of healing, easier on her mana. Focusing on the more grievous wounds on the man’s chest first, she soon had the pained breaths of the beat-up male reduced to discomforted groans.

“Let me do the talking, when he wakes up,” Apexus asserted, following a sudden realization. Shifting the position of the speaking plates a little bit. By utilizing different parts of them, he switched his usually deep voice into the all-over-the-place cracking of a boy in puberty. The plates didn’t exactly allow for copying of other people, but this was good for anonymizing, if nothing else. “Minimize getting spotted by hunters and all that.”

“I like it when you take charge like that,” Reysha purred and breathed in his pheromones with delight. Only after a few seconds she noticed that she was almost too calm now. The second she did so, the nervousness came back down and she plopped down on her chair, jumping her leg. For a moment there, she had felt like she used to, able to make decisions on the fly and able to push off bothersome worries without issue. Self-awareness had swiftly destroyed it, but it definitely was there.

Apexus had also noticed it, but chose not to comment. Instead, he looked at the recovering man on the bed.

He was small. Granted, Apexus’ sense of height was a bit skewed. Himself, he had chosen to be at the taller end of humanoids, approaching 2 metres. Aclysia and Reysha were both around 1,80 metres, with Reysha a tad shorter than the white-haired angel. All of them were tall for most humanoid species. The man in the bed was about one and a half heads shorter than Reysha.

More than that, he was lithe. With his shirt off (a simple brown piece of low quality, just like his pants) his body and much of the outline of his bones were plain to see. He wasn’t malnourished, not quite yet, but he was definitely thin and lacked any sort of real muscles. All around, he was plain, from his build, to his shape, to the face that became visible under the retreating swells. His brown hair was of middling length and seemed in dire need of a cut or some extended attention with a comb. The man had clearly fallen on hard times even before he had gotten beat up.

With one more groan, the man began to wake up. His first instinct was to try and remember what had happened. Given that there were no aches anywhere, he was convinced he must have dreamt of his beating. Then he felt the cloth on his face and tried to remove it only to feel his arm being grabbed. He froze, as the cracking voice of Apexus screeched in his ears. Under other circumstances, it may have been comical, but feeling the cold hand of the bloodless slime gripping him, he was in no mood to laugh.

“Do not remove the blindfold,” Apexus ordered. He didn’t have an ‘or’ to offer, since they wouldn’t kill him unless he attacked them with lethal force. A threat wasn’t necessary though, the man was intimidated enough and started to quiver like a bunny that had been driven in a corner.

“W-where a-a-a-am I?” he stammered, completely confused as to what happened.

“I can’t tell you,” the slime responded and let go off the man’s arm. Very slowly, Apexus explained the situation, having to think about the formulation of each sentence. “You… were found in the streets, after you were beaten up. It was decided you would be healed.” He tried to avoid using words like ‘we’ or anything that could have given away how many they were. ‘Should have just said ‘I’, if that is my goal,’ the humanoid blob realized too late.

“I see…?” the man sounded confused still. The beating he had just assumed to be a dream was now back in reality. “So, they did find me… and you decided to h-help me? Why… how… I mean… why the blindfold, sorry, I don’t really understand what’s going on….”

“I have my own reasons to veil my identify,” Apexus continued, now only speaking of himself. Either the initial sentences wouldn’t be inspected enough to catch the inconsistency or it would just confuse the man further, so the slime’s hope.

“…Identity?”

“Pardon?” Apexus asked.

“Y-you said identify, do you mean identity?”

“Oh,” the slime blinked in a slightly ashamed manner. Aclysia amusedly shook her head, while Reysha grinned widely. “Uhm, yes, my identity. That word.”

Although the whole situation was still intimidating, the man relaxed quite a bit. Not because the reasoning was particularly good, but because he noticed that his captor/helper was friendly. If they wanted to hurt or rob him, they most certainly could have done so already. For anything else that was malicious, such as kidnapping or extortion, he was simply the wrong guy.

“W-“ Apexus stopped, wanted to slap himself for almost saying ‘we’ and then continued with some other word that started similarly. “Why did they beat you up?”

“I owe a considerable sum,” the man admitted. “It… it’s the debt we took to buy our equipment.” His voice carried a note of sorrow, the sting of recalling something that was still painful but dulled with the passing of time. “Me and my party, we… were cocky. We had been making alright money hunting wild animals, honing our skills and all that. We had been doing that since we were little. All of us were from the same area. Once we made the call to become proper adventurers, we decided that we could push straight into Myrlight, if we got the right equipment, but the Adventurer’s Guild insisted we sharpen our teeth on Summer Rest first. They were right, but we didn’t listen and went elsewhere for money…”

“And the rest of your party died?” Apexus asked, feeling where this was going. A simple nod was his answer. “My condolences.”

“Thanks…”

“You decided to run from your debtors afterwards, yes?” It felt a bit callous to just continue in the questioning, but Apexus needed to know as much as possible to make his decision.

“I couldn’t stand being around all those places I used to be with my friends…” the man answered, letting his head hang. “…and I had no way to get the money. I thought going to Summer Rest would be far enough. If I had known they would chase me here, I would have taken the risk and tried to leave this world entirely.”

“Risk? Would you have tried to go through the Infestation?”

The man let out a panicked wheeze. “I’m an idiot, not suicidal. I would have gone to Ctania and tried my luck there.” It was good for him that he didn’t. Only a few weeks after his arrival, he would have ended up fodder for Apotho’s requiem. Getting chased by the mob was considerably more pleasant than dying in such a manner. “No, they have their base in the city by the Stem and I’m just a Scribe. I would need more luck than mind to get past them.”

“I thought Scribes didn’t go into dungeons?” Apexus wondered.

Again, the man laughed, this time dry and resigned. “You and most others. Truth be told, I know my occupation doesn’t bring much to the table in terms of combat. At the moment, all I can really do is draw some accurate maps, create level sheets and provide some basic utility. Eventually that would have changed. Scribes are like Scouts, even if we don’t fight, we can provide other essential things. I was trying to learn the trade of an Inkmaster. Like the hero in the book I liked so much…” he shook his head. “…Funny how a few days with reality can shatter all of those dreams.”

Apexus swayed his head left and right quizzingly while thinking about all of that. “If you were given the opportunity, would you try to be an adventurer again?”

“No,” the answer was firm. “No. That’s what I came here to do originally. I would try to find another party, gather the money and eventually return to the mob and pay them with interest. A few others gave me a chance but… they aren’t my old friends and I realized that I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to be an adventurer anymore. I would be happy taking up a normal job and just living.”

Reysha first tensed at those words, looking down at her hands. ‘But I still want to be an adventurer,’ she realized, upon hearing the defeat in the man’s voice. Regardless of all her defeats and how screwed she was in the head, the Rogue was certain that she still had worlds to explore and fantastical places to see. That difference was reassuring to have. ‘I’m still myself.’ “Let’s solve this for him,” she spoke up.

“Reysha…” Apexus grumbled, annoyed that she had just spoken up, only to realize that he had just said her name out loud.

“N-not to step on any toes,” the man nervously tried to crack a joke, “but I think you need more practice in this interrogation-style business.”

“Yes,” the slime just agreed, his voice plates resuming their usual position. Now in his proper baritone, he continued, “We might be willing to help you, but you have to promise that you will never ever mention us to anyone.”

“Of course!”

“Swear it.”

“I promise that I will never ever mention to anyone.”

Apexus heard that, tried to be satisfied with it, but simply wasn’t. Stepping forwards, he ripped the blindfold off the man and bowed forwards until mere centimetres separated them.

The Scribe was face to face with a wooden mask, bowing over him like a living voodoo doll. In the holes for the eyes sat two sky blue orbs that stared at him with inquisitive curiosity and need for certainty. On its own, the stare was intense, but the translucent, dark blue slime, which the man mistook for skin, and the slight bit of visible bone sent shivers down his spine. “Swear it,” Apexus demanded a second time.

“I-I swear that nobody will ever know that I met you! I won’t talk about it, I’ll never write it down and I won’t ever do anything else to let anyone know!”

“And by ‘you’, you mean…?” Apexus asked, tilting his head. It was meant to be a quizzing gesture, the slime was genuinely not sure if he meant the singular ‘you’ for just the slime himself or the plural ‘you’ for all three of them. He overdid it on the twist, however, appearing more like an owl wearing a human’s skin and causing the man to crawl back a bit.

“The three of you!” he shouted. “I’ll never tell anyone about the three of you!” Cowering on the bed, staring at that expressionless, smooth mask and those inquisitive eyes, the man felt like he was about to lose control over his bladder. Once Apexus started to twist his head from one side to the other, the stress made him almost fall unconscious.

‘Do I believe him or do I not?’ the slime thought, genuinely not sure. ‘He sure looks like cornered prey. He knows I can eat him… well, he knows I can kill him. Doesn’t seem like he feels in control.’ After his experiences with Apotho, that was the main thing that the slime looked out on for liars. Whether the person he was talking to still looked like they had complete control over everything that happened. ‘He’s looking at me like the mouse does at the snake. If I was the mouse, I would need to be concerned… I think he’s earnest.’

“You’re definitely not suited to be an adventurer,” Reysha remarked from the sideline. “You don’t have the nerves for it.”

The man gulped and almost sunk together when Apexus backed off. “D-do you b-b-be-l-l-l-I,” he tried to get out, but the stutter got the best of him.

“I want to help you,” Apexus said. “If it’s just money, we can probably solve the issue with some time. What do you say?” he looked at the other two. Reysha shrugged with a smile, her opinion was already clear. Aclysia held the upper arm of her left with the hand of her right and struck a concerned pose, but ultimately nodded.

“I would have been happier if we left the blindfold on and just gave him the money,” she told everyone. “As it is, as it should be, we can help pay your debts off.”

“Thank you!” he exclaimed. “Thank you so much, I didn’t… tonight is just… a tumble…”

“Tumble?” Apexus found that word a bit odd, but decided not to pursue it. “Aside from how much money, I would also like to know… what’s your name?”

“Nudru, my name is Nudru.”