Book 2, Chapter 3

Finishing the plate and contemplating licking it before deciding to many eyes. Maybe some desert would be nice.

Susie looked up. “That is so cool. I'm going to have to practice. It's awesome.”

“And now this,” he said, handing over the memory stone of leatherworking. “I promise not to start my story till you have finished.”

Susie touched the stone. She jolted, her eyes going wide and her mouth opening slackly. The stone glowing brightly in her hands.

“So,” Jules said with only a slightly curious glance at her mum. They had all after all seen people consuming knowledge before. “tell us in your own words.”

Adrian with a shake of his head nodded towards Susie.

Jules just grinned at that. “Come on, you can tell I promise you we won't blab,” Everyone at the table was laughing.

“Yeah,” Kozzie chimed in, “tell us all about the Bird fight.”

Susie looked like she was in a stupor and would be for a while. He took a sip of his flask to buy time. “Dessert first,” he declared, handing his plate to Kozzie and nodding towards the dessert table. Kozzie looked confused. “A bit of everything, please.”

“I am not your servant,” he grumbled but went as instructed, much to everyone else's amusement.

“What is that?” Jules asked, nodding towards her Mum.

“Leatherworking, Susie and I figured we would need to keep our armour functioning.”

“And the first?”

“Magic traps. Something we can use when we have to fight stuff.” They discussed the details, but there was not much to say. It was not like he knew what the scrolls would give them. Kozzie returned with two plates covered in desserts. He looked at the two of them before dumping the smaller one in front of Adrian.

“How did your day go?” Adrian asked them while choosing to first sample what looked like chocolate mousse.

“We went out hunting,” Jules started.

“Jules went full on berserker,” Kozzie buttered in. “We disturbed a nest of rats of all things in one of the abandoned houses. They were the size of a cat, all teeth and scaly tails.”

“So fun,” Jules said miming with her hands swinging her club “wack, wack, wack”

“She was terrifying,'' Kozzie said with a grin while nudging Jules. “They were biting her all over and she was whacking them. But she was healing as fast as they bit her and grinning like a madwoman.”

“Grinning like a Berserker,” Jules corrected. “Kozzie was throwing his knives. We credited him with six kills and five partial I got credited with thirty-two.”

“All the squished ones,” Kozzie said.

“Nothing beats out a Manly Club,” Jules continued with a wicked grin, producing the said club from under the table.

“How about the bats?” Kozzie interrupted, “Crazy one here was swinging that club almost braining her teammates and couldn’t hit any of the actual bats. My sissy knives took out all five of them,” Everyone else laughed at the byplay. Despite the argument, they were both leaning into each other to maintain shoulder contact.

Cute

Eventually Susie stirred, interrupting the table. Graham had been telling about a raid three days ago when he had tanked an ox. It kept charging him and knocking him over. He would get up to stop it attacking the squishy people, only to get knocked off his feet again.

“You bastard,” Susie said passionately, looking at Adrian. “That was too much. It feels like I just had three years of university dumped into my head.”

“The advice I got was better for you to do it when you are drunk, less likely to have unexpected consequences that way.”

Susie looked at him and then very pointedly down at his armour. “Good god,” her lips pulled back in distaste. “First thing I'm going to do is get your wearing respectable armour.”

With a thought, he shifted into his new ambusher set. He could not have set up the moment better if he had tried.

“What the?”

“Oh, my god.”

“Magic,” Jules clapped her hands in excitement.

“You need to..”

Winking at them, they quietened, waiting for an explanation. Hiding a smile, he took another sip of the divine drink. “This stuff is so good.” His changed armour still transfixed everyone. Susie even reached out to touch it lightly. Another sip, the flask was disappointingly empty. Everyone was watching, holding the bottle upside down to let the last drops drip down. The alcohol was almost oil like in its viscosity within the bottle, but nothing like that when it hit the throat.

“Give me a look,” Graham ordered, holding out the hand for the bottle. “I will go buy some more.”

As he went to grab the offered bottle, Steve was behind Graham, holding him down with one hand on the shoulder. His other arm gripped multiple flasks of the special brew. Graham looked up before seeing the bottles and relaxing. Steve still without talking handed them out. It was as if an unspoken agreement spread through the room as everyone's attention switched onto him.

Damn

Everything felt so mellow. Despite the attention, it was floating. Whatever he had been drinking was way more than just alcohol. Sally pulled up a seat beside Susie, with Dave and Tamara joining next to her. Lucas and Rupa were behind Steve, and several other men and women he recognised from the Bird expeditions were in the next row. Everyone seemed to get up and getting closer; some brought chairs, others sat on nearby tables and over a dozen were happy to stand.

Jeff produced a fifth of the special bottle and handed it directly to Adrian.

“That one,” Sally proclaimed, “Is advanced payment for your story.” Lots of people laughed. Even some servers who had been flitting around all night keeping things going had now stopped to listen.

Taking a deep breath. Public speaking never phased him, but he hated the thought of being a hero. Public adulation petrified him, and not just because of Jamie and Eloise, but mostly because of them and his weakness. If people knew. Cold logic implied they would probably forgive and forget, but the internal story was another matter. His cowardice, his failure. There was nothing he could do, and he had tried, but they had died screaming.

A hundred pairs of eyes stared at him. No one was saying anything, yet. Waiting for him to say something.

“I got lucky.” he simply told them. “Very Very luck,” he continued into the silence. “For this,” he hefted the bottle “I will give you a blow by blow account but first I have something more important to talk about.” Deliberately he paused to take a slow sip of the liquor, even going as far to close his eyes to appreciate it. Then he went to take another sip. Slowly.

“Enough,” Sally ordered, laughing. “Quit your stalling.”

Everyone laughed. “I checked out the Bird's nest,” he told them.

“Do you have eggs?” Graham asked.

“A chick,” Jules exclaimed, clapping her hands.

Shaking his head. “Nothing like that, but there is more from the aliens than just Traders and Interfaces.” he told them. “More aids to help us survive. At the Bird's nest I found a magic chest.” The silence deepened. “If you defeat a boss monster, there's a good chance that at their lair there will be a magic chest. It gets better,” he continued. The magic chest contains weapons and armour tailor made for humans. If the chest is powerful enough, it will change its contents to match who finds it.”

His armour disappeared and then reappeared. “This armour supercharges my shadow step ability. It is the perfect armour for me.” He pulled his new bow out of his bag of holding. “The chest had this and a scroll of Advanced Archery. This is a legendary bow that when you hit it causes confusion or does mind damage. It is all soul bound, so I cannot give this stuff away or sell it.”

“What's with the armour appearing and disappearing,” Graham asked into the silence.

“One of its properties enables it to integrate with my bag of holding. Let's me put it on and off with a thought.”

“Wow,” Graham said.

“There was also a one-off you scroll to get rid of the bird shit.”

“What? Why?” Jules.

“Well, the bird was eating lots of animals and when I got up to the nest, there were piles of bird shit and I'm talking epic piles like larger than Graham. And when I looked at them, they were filled with magic items. I figured partially digested monster cores. So when I first spotted them I got excited and then I thought about just how smelly and horrible it was going to be to dig into the piles of shit.” There was laughter, most of the people here were members of raid groups, they would all have been elbow deep in corpses to extract loot and understood where he was coming from. “I was thinking about it when I found the chest, and so the chest gave me a spell to get rid of it. It was a one use spell and then no more bird shit. I could just pick up the loot and the useful bits of the remains with no issues. It even left the nest with a nice lemonary scent,” he finished and everyone laughed.

“So there are Loot chests.” Kozzie summarised. “So if you kill a big monster, you need to crawl into the cave to see if there is a chest.”

“Exactly.”

“So the Bird,” Sally said impatiently, “tell us about it.”

Adrian told them every glory detail, the multiple times he thought he was about to die, the multiple times he shadow stepped just in time and then in desperation shadow stepping and ending up falling down the mine shaft. The Bird was so angry with him it came down the mine to get him. Only surviving because the eye on the right side was still ruined. The opportunity presented, and he went for it, even though he thought it would never work. That perfect moment when the potions poured out of his bag. The bird reflectively swallowed when the bottles hit its throat. Realising that while he might not survive that he could take the Bird with him and then using his last points of mana to create the spark.

Silence followed his story. “And I could not do that fight again.” Adrian lowered his head, remembering the beak that was larger than he was. Another shaky sip of his flask. He was buzzed, but that was not what was making his hands shake.

“I am no better than a lucky fool.” He trailed off, thinking about that family.

“You are a hero,” Rupa said into the silence, “By actions and results. But you are not the only hero here,” she glanced around pointedly. “Almost everyone in this room has put their lives on the line for others. We owe you there is no doubt, but I also owe Graham, Lucas, Steve, John without their actions I would be dead. The Bird is dead. We have hope. You were the hero today, but tomorrow it will be someone else.” She too trailed off into silence.

Adrian thought about her words, and he was not the only one. Her words resonated with him and others. The world had changed. Death was everywhere, and Heroes saved lives every day. When it was your turn you went and then tomorrow it would be someone else's turn and they would become the hero.

“To hope,” Sally toasted, and they all drank.