Heroes of Veritas: Crafting Bonus (Book 1)

Chapter Four: The Misty Mermaid

On Elise’s return to the inn she woke up at, the innkeeper stopped cold in the middle of his boastful tale to stare at her. The adventurers he had been telling his tall tale to turned to see what the innkeeper was looking at, and frowned at the bedraggled sight of the red ranger, from whom a foul aroma was wafting.

“Er…Miss Smellise- I mean, Elise! Miss Elise!” the innkeeper sputtered, coming back to himself as she set her bag and Lucky’s antlers down on one of the tables. Elise glared at the innkeeper; she normally appreciated a good pun, but after her long walk back through the city and the number of blatant stares and muttered insults she heard from the townsfolk she passed, she was in no mood for it.

“You look exhausted, Miss. Perhaps a bath would do you some good? There is a bathhouse quite near here, you know…The Misty Mermaid…” the innkeeper’s voice trailed off as he rubbed at his shiny bald pate. Elise wasn’t sure if he was suggesting this for her sake, or to prevent the bed linens from getting stained, but it wasn’t a bad suggestion.

“I’ll just…put your things in your room?” the innkeeper called after her as she turned away.

“Yeah, thanks. ‘Preciate it.” Elise mumbled grudgingly as she trudged back out of the inn.

Elise hadn’t had the best map knowledge for Veritasia City in her previous life, but she had the vague recollection that the bath house was located in the Pleasure Ward, so she headed that direction. It was only two wards over from her home ward, so not a long walk – and now that she’d dropped off her loot she was feeling much lighter. Perhaps she was moving so slowly earlier because she was overburdened. She did have a habit of picking up everything she could get hard hands on, regardless of its actual worth.

Mercenades had always made fun of her for her loot hoarding habits, but that was then – when inefficient gaming habits could be cutely quirky instead of dangerously inefficient. What if she had been further away from the city, unaware that she was overburdened, and something attacked her? Elise shook herself, trying to keep the gravity of her situation from settling onto her shoulders and weighing her down again.  Being aware of her situation, and staying focused on her objectives, didn’t have to mean letting herself become depressed.

Elise looked up, and realized she had reached her destination. To her left was the Misty Mermaid – a large wooden building with a wrap-around balcony, surrounded by flowering trees. The balcony had high slatted wooden railings that partially obscured a series of steaming outdoor baths. Above the baths hung an array of blue glass lanterns that shimmered in the fading evening light. She smiled at this welcoming sight, and made her way up the paving stone path edged by neatly trimmed hedges. To either side of the path a pond rippled faintly with the blossom scented breeze. She crossed a small curved bridge, through which koi swam between the two sides of the pond.

Elise looked up as she approached the sliding double doors of the Misty Mermaid, noting the proud mermaid sign that hung above them. It was intricately carved, the mermaid rising from silver leafed waves, and reminded Elise of a ship’s figurehead. She slid the door to the bath house open, and was greeted by a billowing cloud of steam.

Once her vision cleared, Elise could make out an elderly woman who sat on a tall stool behind the reception counter. The bathhouse proprietress was thin, with damp, deeply wrinkled skin, and dark brown eyes that were beginning to film over with gray. She grinned at the sight of the weary red ranger in her doorway, clicking her tongue against the prominent gap in her two front teeth, producing a tsking sound.

“Tsk, tsk. Young lady, you look like you spent altogether too much time adventuring today. Come, come. Let’s get you cleaned up,” the proprietress said, hopping off her tall stool, which wobbled a bit at her sudden departure. The older woman was spry for her age, and Elise had to scramble to keep up with her as she teetered unevenly down the hallway.

“What’s your name, lass?” the proprietress asked as she paused at an open linen closet, taking several towels, a robe, and a few bottles into her arms before piling the lot into Elise’s arms as she came up behind her.

“Elise, Ma’m. But, you can call me Ellie if you like.” Elise replied, tucking one of the bottles under her chin to keep it from toppling off the top of her stack.

“That’s a good name, if ever I heard. Elise for the fine folk, and Ellie for the plain. Well, come along then Ellie. You can call me Amy,” the older woman said, waving Elise after her as she continued down the hall. “Will you be wanting an indoor or outdoor bath? We got a few private ones available, but the public baths are cheaper. 1 gold for private, 50 silver for public.”

Elise shuffled the second bottle under one of her arms as she continued after the proprietress, and considered her options. She had little more than one gold in her purse, though she hadn’t yet gone to sell the extra antlers she got from the jackalopes. She’d intended on using the hides and meat to level her crafting once she had it unlocked, though now that she was thinking about it…would they stay good long enough for her to use them? She also realized that she hadn’t paid the innkeeper, and wasn’t sure if she had to; in her past life, her character only paid to rest in a bed outside of the ward, and she only did that if she was desperate to recharge her crafting labor pool – which slowly refilled over time.

“Ah, private, please, Mistress Amy.” Elise finally decided, thinking that no one else should have to endure the smell of boiling cabbage she imagined she would give off after entering the hot bath. She could always earn more money, and maybe she could find a way to bargain with the NPCs…now that they were real people instead of pre-programmed digital entities with limited dialogue options.

 “Mistress,” the older woman chuckled. “Why don’t we go with Aunty Amy instead, hmmm? Mistress sounds like a snooty noble woman, and I’m a pirate’s wench, lass.”

Aunty Amy came to a small door, and slid it open before stepping back to let Elise pass her. “In you go, lass. Try the eucalyptus if your muscles ache, and the lavender if you need some help sleeping – though I don’t recommend mixing the two.”

“Thank you, Aunty. I’ll keep that in mind,” Elise said as she scooted past the bathhouse proprietress and into the steaming stone-paved bathing room beyond.

Elise set her robe, towels and bottles down on the long slatted wooden bench beside the door. She slid the door shut, then turned to have an actual look at the bath. It was square, with wooden slats on the floor around it that covered the drains into which overflow water would sweep away. The rest of the floor was paved with small round river rocks in varying shades of brown.

Elise sat on the long bench, unlaced her boots and pulled them off. Once the boots were off, she felt deeply relieved. It was like pulling off a bra at the end of a long day – which she hoped she would never have to do again. She wiggled her toes for a few minutes, sighing as blood coursed through them, making them tingle. Then, off came her socks, bracers, jacket, vest, shirt, and – with some considerable struggle now that they were damp with bathhouse condensation – the tight leather pants. She shed her generic linen undergarments last of all, but she couldn’t get into the bath yet.

She knelt at the edge of the steaming pool and filled a bucket with water. After another twenty minutes of scrubbing herself and her clothes, aside from the velvet jacket – which she carefully patted down with a damp towel – she wrung and hung the various across several towel racks. They wouldn’t dry in the damp confines of the bathing room, but that was a problem for future Elise.

Present Elise was ready for a bath. She dumped another bucket of hot water over herself, sloshed half the bottle of eucalyptus essence into the bath, and then slid into the water. Luckily, the eucalyptus fragrance masked the smell of boiling cabbage – or maybe she just couldn’t smell it because she’d been smelling it all day already.

She sighed, then breathed in deeply the fragrant smell, muscles seeming to relax all at once. There was a knock on the door, but Elise barely noticed.

“Lass, you want me to take your clothes to dry?” Aunty Amy asked, sliding the door open even before Elise could respond. It wouldn’t have mattered, since Elise’s response was just a grunt of assent, followed by gurgling as she sank deeper into the water, blowing bubbles as her head went under.

When Elise popped back up, throwing her head back so that her hair arced behind her like a mermaid’s, Aunty Amy had already gathered up her clothes and left. Elise floated on her back, the bath big enough for her to stretch her arms and toes and not find its edges. The recovery effect from the eucalyptus essence had been nearly instantaneous, and Elise didn’t think she needed to stay in the bath now that she was feeling better, but the bathhouse was quiet and relaxing – a good place to think.

So far, her plan was to follow her class quest until she could gain access to crafting, then use crafting to quick boost her reputation so that she could more easily complete her remaining class quests. But, she also needed to gather crafting materials, and for that she would have to do zone quests. She also needed to start her personal story quest; a lot of the personal story quest line would overlap with zone quests, so it would be better to start them together.

While she could do her class and personal story quests on her own for the most part, the zone quests would go infinitely faster with a party. It was early enough on that adventurers like herself were unlikely to have formed static parties; she bet the guilds were only just getting on their feet with recruiting. She could have her pick of any guild, even get in with one of the major guilds. But...

But, in her heart she knew she couldn’t just ditch her friends. Even though she had only spent one day without their company, she felt a tug of loneliness – this world was magical, full of beauty and wonder, but it would so much better if she could share it with her friends. She had no idea where they were, or if they were here at all - though from the way that the training grounds were crowded with adventurers in starter gear this morning she felt that they could be. She wanted desperately for them to exist here, though she hoped they didn’t have to die to get here, like she had.

Unfortunately, the party rarely discussed their time before joining the Dire Beavers. She knew that most of them had started on other servers, and all at different times, with Elise joining the game well after the others. Now she was here before they were, and she could use her foreknowledge to help them when they arrived. But, the only place she knew to find them was the Dire Beavers guild.

She sighed, pulling herself to the edge of the bath where the steps were. As she climbed out and dried herself off, she figured she would just have to go at it on her own until she saw a Dire Beavers recruitment message. Maybe she could join before Moltar and make a name for herself before he became an officer and developed a god complex. But where would she see such messages anyway? She had seen some post boards by the town criers; those used to carry mission postings, but maybe they would carry a variety of messages now. She would have to check in the morning.

Elise wrapped herself in the warm fluffy robe that the bathhouse provided, then made her way to the front desk, where Aunty Amy was once again sitting on her tall stool. The old woman gave her another toothy grin, then withdrew a wax paper wrapped parcel from under the counter and slid it across to her.

“Here you are lass, clean and dry. Changing room over that way,” Aunty Amy said, thumbing at a curtain draped door to her right.

Elise went into the changing room, found an unoccupied stall, and returned to the reception desk a few minutes later. She slid a gold across the counter to Aunty Amy, but before she picked her hand up from the coin, she said “If there is ever anything I can do to earn credit with the bathhouse, please let me know. I’d be happy to help.”

Elise released the coin, and Aunty Amy eyed her a moment, before taking it. “Give me a few days to think it over, lass. I was just thinking I could use a little help around here, as I’m nay getting younger. I’m sure we could come to an arrangement.”

Elise smiled, and Amy grinned at her a third time – which Elise took to be a charm. Then, she nodded, turned, and left the bathhouse.

Clean and relaxed, Elise made her way back to the Ragland Ward. As she approached, she finally took a moment to appreciate the sign suspended above the inn door, which swung gently from its chains with a faint squeak. Roughly carved from now splintering, weather beaten wood, it depicted a cheerful shaven-headed monk with flagon in hand, and bore the whimsical name - The Drunk Monk.

Once inside and settled onto a stool at the bar, it came to Elise that the innkeeper himself was the monk from the sign - if you squinted anyway. His hair was shorn tight on the sides, but clean on top - and he wore plain brown robes tied with a rope belt. Standing dusty in the back corner behind the bar was a big stick; purportedly used to shove off rowdy drunks, but she could see it had once been a staff - and had a series of glyphs burned into it.

She watched the monk as he set about filling a flagon of cider for her; the longer she watched the more the details of the relationship they had prior to her rebirth came to her. This was Jorgen, a former member of her mother’s adventuring party. After the death of her father during the First Desolation, Elise’s mother moved up the ranks of the ranger corps from base adventurer to sergeant major - the highest rank a commoner could achieve. After a disagreement with another sergeant - one of noble birth - Elise’s mother was forcibly transferred to Fort Dirge in the Western Wastes. This assignment wasn’t one that she could bring her young daughter on, so she asked Jorgen to take her daughter under his wing.

Elise didn’t have to pay for her room or board because her mother sent money to cover it, and because Jorgen believed part of his monkly duties included ministering to the less fortunate of his ward. It helped that Elise had been an easy child, always willing to help out around the inn. Now that she was an adult, and following in her mother’s footsteps - having decided to enlist in the ranger corps - both could sense that their quiet life together would soon be coming to a close.

“Thank you Uncle Jorgen,” Elise said, gratefully accepting the bowl of steaming potato soup that Jorgen handed to her. She stirred the fatty bacon and green onions he’d sprinked on top into the thick starchy mush, then happily sated her grumbling stomach by slurping it down in a series of long gulps; she didn’t even bother with the pewter spoon he’d set beside her.

Jorgen pulled a face at her un-ladylike display. “Young miss, I thought girls were supposed to have stopped growing after they reached their twenties?”

“I might not be getting any taller, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be getting any wider,” Elise quipped, wiping the remains of her meal from her mouth. “Especially with the way you feed me.”

Elise hopped off her stool, and came around to behind the bar to help Jorgen clean up. It had been a slow night, with only a few of the regular patrons stopping by for a few flagons of ale. The two of them worked in companionable silence, washing dishes, scouring pans, cleaning bottles and tables, and finally turning the chairs up over the tables before locking up.

For Elise, the quiet act of closing up felt a little like saying goodbye. She knew that in the coming months, this place would most likely get destroyed in the Second Desolation - along with much of the lower district. She just hoped that she could convince Jorgen to escape with her when the time came.