With Rank Assessments right around the corner, things began to change rapidly as training began in earnest for Alice.
At sunrise every morning Dahlia dragged her out of her bunk in their shared room. They dressed and joined all the others preparing for Assessment in the training yard.
The Branch Captain and several other high ranking veteran adventurers had them run drills and do exercises for hours.
They weren’t dismissed for breakfast until the clock towers around town chimed eleven. Several dozens of Adventurers, drenched in sweat and caked in dirt, would pile into the main hall to eat. By mid-week, the high hopeful energy of the trainees dulled and a placid hush fell over mealtimes as Lineah worked them to the brink of exhaustion.
Each morning, Evalyn and Alice exchanged pleasantries as their paths crossed. Before one went to learn the ways of an Adventurer and the other made sure that the Adventurer’s lives ran smoothly.
Dahlia finished her meal in as few bites as possible in order to get in a quick nap. She pushed her plates away to lay her head on her arms, and within minutes a gentle snore rose from her seat.
“That’s impressive,” Alice said. She emptied her mug of the ice cold water inside and poured herself another glass.
“She’s an expert at falling asleep anywhere,” Felix said.
Orbahn nodded.
“We learned early on to give her the first watch,” he chuckled.
The stew they ate for breakfast warmed and energized their bodies. The water slaked their thirst. The coffee refreshed their minds.
As they talked, something flat tapped Alice on the head and grabbed her attention. She tilted her head to see Evalyn standing over her shoulder. She held a little leather bound booklet in her hand.
Evalyn nodded to the table.
“Good morning everyone,” she said.
“Mornin’ Eve,” Orbahn replied with a smile. Felix nodded his head in response. Dahlia snored.
Evalyn looked down at Alice. Well… not exactly “looked down” so much as slightly tilted her head down just a fraction as they were nearly face to face when Alice was seated.
“How are you holding up? Tired?”
“I’m fine,” Alice smiled. “Not tired at all.”
“Is that so?”
“Alice’s stamina is insane,” Felix said. He pointed at her with the hand holding his coffee. “Must be that giant blood.”
Alice chuckled. Evalyn seemed to relax a little hearing that. She set the booklet in front of Alice.
“Here. It’s your Guild License,” she said.
Alice picked up the leather bound booklet and opened it up. Inside on the left side was the license itself, stamped with the seal of the Adventurer’s Guild and signed by Alice’s hand. On the right side was a removable notebook, and a pencil.
Her lips moved as she silently sounded out the words on the license. Pride swelled in Evalyn’s chest, but she kept her face under control.
“Why is the line for Gift empty?” Alice asked.
Every night, after a hard day training her body, Alice joined Evalyn in her room after the Guild closed to learn to read. Part of that process included learning words she was most likely to come across as a Guild Member.
No one, outside of the few Evalyn trusted, knew Alice couldn’t read. So their first goal was to teach her enough to keep up the lie.
“Ah, that.” Evalyn crossed her arms. “I’m pretty sure strength isn’t all there is to your gift. We’ll leave it empty until we know more.”
“What makes you think that?” Orbahn asked.
“If you have a Gift it’s just something you can feel,” Felix shrugged. Evalyn nodded.
There was more to it of course.
Thanks to that totem, Evalyn also had a connection to whatever divine being Gifted Alice. That connection let her feel the power directly, and it was simply more than just strength. She couldn’t explain more than that though. Nor did she want to.
Alice made a face and tucked the booklet away. The frustration in her expression was plain as day.
“I don’t know if there’s more to it,” she grumbled. “It feels like there’s more there but I can’t reach it for some reason.”
“To be fair, you don’t really need more with that kind of strength,” Felix mused. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Orbahn nodded.
“I just feel like I need to do everything I can since I agreed to rush in like this,” Alice mumbled under her breath, barely loud enough for anyone to hear.
Evalyn’s hand grabbed Alice’s shoulder and squeezed.
“I hear you’re doing well,” Evalyn said. “I worried about your lack of experience but the Captain says you learn fast.”
“Kinda like Patty and Daryl,” Orbahn said.
At this, Evalyn frowned.
Patty had been butting her way into morning training recently so as to not fall behind Daryl. Despite Evalyn repeatedly mentioning that Patty was too young, Lineah seemed unbothered so there was little the Secretary could say.
Other than-
“I know she’s in a rush to grow up, but the Guild has rules…” she muttered under her breath and shook her head. She and Alice locked eyes and Alice smiled and shrugged.
“Keep working hard, and the Assessment is sure to go well,” Evalyn said. She squeezed Alice’s shoulder once more and turned to leave.
When Alice turned back to her party members she caught a glimpse of Dahlia’s eye peeking out from her folded arms.
____
The next morning, as Patty and Evalyn cleaned up the main hall after breakfast, the Hunt board behind Lineah’s desk lit up erratically once more. Patty bounded over to the board and lifted the tape, reading the code of the punched holes.
“Holy- Hey, Eve!”
Evalyn set aside her rag and wiped her hands on her trousers as she stepped behind Lineah’s desk. Her eyes scanned the tape in Patty’s hands and she frowned.
The flood of monster reports continued.
Evalyn picked up the leyline phone and dialed the Guild Headquarters at the West Lord’s Seat. A chipper voice answered like usual.
“It’s not just me who thinks these look coordinated, right?” She said.
“Good morning to you too, Vee!” The voice on the other end replied with a smile. “And it’s not just you.”
Coordinated monster attacks, sweeping into the West March…
“Is the rumor true then? Do the Godwins have a member who controls monsters?” Her pulse began to pound harder as dread swelled in her chest. Patty grew tense beside her as she leaned in to hear better.
“It seems that way,” the voice on the other end said. “However, it remains unconfirmed because no one has seen a human leading the monsters. The pattern is similar to a few years ago though, when the rumors first started.”
When they hung up the phone at the end of the conversation, Evalyn leaned against the desk. Her head spun. Beside her, Patty’s hands had clenched into white knuckled fists.
“Eve. Please let me enlist as an Adventurer.”
“Forget it,” Evalyn shook her head. “You can join a party after you turn eighteen. I’m not budging on this and neither will Lineah. It’s the Guild code.”
“If the monster raids are happening again, and it’s because of the Godwins then I DESERVE to get involved,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height. She rose only a few inches higher than Evalyn. Their eyes met.
“For my father.”
“You. Are. Too. Young. Everyone here has a grievance with the Godwins. I can’t keep giving in and bending the rules for you all just because you get stubborn and yell at me.”
“Lineah already lets me train with the Adventurers! You’ve seen me hold my own. It’s not fair that I have to wait another year when I can kick Daryl’s ass right now and he can join but I can’t.”
“Then quit the Guild and become a Merc,” Evalyn snapped. “We’re not forcing you to stay.”
Patty stepped back, as if she’d been slapped in the face.
“But-!”
“If you want to be an Adventurer then you have to follow the Guild’s laws,” Evalyn said. “End of discussion. The best thing you can do right now is learn from Lineah and myself how best to support Daryl. Then when you’re eighteen you can join him out there.”
Pain and anger warred on Patty’s face. Eventually she broke her gaze and ripped the tape from the machine. She retrieved blank tokens from inside Lineah’s desk and placed them on the table. Fae language escaped from her lips with a clumsy accent, but the tape in her hands burned all the same as the magic transferred to the tokens.
Once the tokens ceased rattling, Patty gathered them up and dumped them in Evalyn’s hands. They exchanged looks, then Patty shook her head.
“Maybe you’re fine playing support, but I’m not,” she said and stormed out of the Guild.
The slam of the door shook the window panes.
____
“What do you mean, Patty walked out?” Daryl asked that night at dinner.
The room hummed with a dull chatter as the Adventurers who returned from the day’s commissions exchanged gossip with the ones preparing for Assessment.
“We just… got into an argument and she stormed out,” Evalyn said. She explained the phone call with the head branch and their assumptions about the up-tick in monster attacks.
“Ah.” Was all Daryl had to say.
“I’m just trying to protect her AND follow the Guild by-laws,” Evalyn pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why does that make me the bad guy?”
“Probably because a certain Branch Captain is a little too lax,” Orbahn said as he sipped his wine.
“I just don’t see the harm in letting her train in order to keep her skills sharp,” Lineah said. “I’ve never gone directly against the by-laws.”
Alice sat quietly, listening, absorbing everything around her. She swirled the wine in her glass, watching the lights overhead reflect in the amber water.
She feels like she’s being abandoned. I get it.
The front door opened while they were talking and Patty walked in. When she locked eyes with Evalyn she stiffened and looked away.
“Captain, I’m taking the rest of the week off,” she said as she approached the table.
“Why?” Lineah’s eyebrows raised.
“Personal reasons,” Patty mumbled and kept walking.
Once she rounded the corner that led to the rooms upstairs, Daryl jumped to his feet and followed her.
Evalyn glanced at the clock on the wall and pushed away her barely touched dinner.
“I will be retiring for the night,” she said as she rose. “Please excuse me. Alice, come to my room when you’re ready.”
“I can come now,” Alice said. She finished her wine in a final gulp and hurried after Evalyn.
_____
They jumped right into Alice’s lessons once they were alone. In the privacy of her own room Eve’s usual stony expression cracked and Alice could see something was bothering the Secretary.
“You know, I noticed you and Patty fight a lot,” she said.
“This has nothing to do with your lesson,” Eve said and Alice felt a wall go up between them. Alice looked down at her vocabulary sheet and copied the words, practicing the brush strokes and sounding out the words. Commission. Currency. Payment.
The vocabulary seemed to be related to Guild contracts.
“Do you dislike her or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Eve muttered. “If I disliked her I wouldn’t care that she wanted to throw herself into danger.”
“Danger…” Alice wrote the words for ‘danger’ and ‘dangerous’ on a flashcard and slid it to Eve. Surprise flashed in her eyes and she looked up at Alice.
“Does this have to do with this ‘certain noble’ family I keep hearing about?” She asked.
“The…Godwins? Everyone who mentions them says they’re dangerous.”
“You’ve been listening to everything around you, huh?” Eve leaned back and sighed.
“I’m going to talk in your language now. In English. Okay?”
Alice nodded.