[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 25 – When the Beet Drops II

“I’m worried about them, Royl,” Sel said, propping her chin up on her palm. She rocked back and forth on her stool, waiting for something to do. The life of an attendant wasn’t very glamorous, but it had a decent track to higher Grades and better pay without being in the line of duty.

Royl leaned against the counter and looked up at the various posters plastered on the wall behind the desk. “Why?”

“It’s already been a day, he should have been back.”

“So? You know greenies, they get lost at every turn. It’s a wonder we ever get enough to make it to F-Grade. Besides, they’re just monsters.”

Sel focused her gaze on him. He straightened up and warded her evil eye away with a sign. “Hey, don’t give me that look! It’s true. I’m not saying I want to see them come to harm, but you have to admit it’s weird, Sel.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t odd. The Guild… well, I don’t think it has ever accepted a monster before, no matter what Shrubley calls himself. But he’s more than that, and I think we should respect that. We’re all adventurers first and everything else second.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that, Sel.”

Sel’s shoulders sagged. “I know that. But it should. The Guild comes before race, nation, and creed. That’s our guiding light, Royl. We put the good of the realm above our own petty desires, above even racial divides that have been raging for generations. The Adventurers Guild must stay neutral.”

“And yet,” Royl said, “people who aren’t from the best families or inherit the best essences tend to come out to the branches like this one where they’ll be able to while away the years and possibly be forgotten back home in the Inner Ring.”

“Or punished for mouthing off,” Sel added. She tilted her chin. “Speak of the devil.”

A man in polished plate mail just walked into the Guild.

“A Steel Ranker out here?” Royal scoffed. “He must be going mad with boredom. Still, I hear he comes from a low-born house. Barely even nobility. Says he treats the commoners better than the nobs, if you believe such things.”

“Look at the way he treated Shrubley,” Sel countered. “He was the first to attack him when he thought he was a monster, but as soon as the Guild accepted him? Well… he didn’t treat him like a brother-in-arms, but he defended him. And no matter what their difference in strength is, Lurl the Barbarian is no featherweight.”

“Yeah, okay, you’ve made your point Sel.”

Jerric came up to the counter and placed his palms on the polished surface. “Could I trouble you for a moment?”

Sel looked up at his polished [Adventurers Badge], then at his handsome face. She smiled at him and motioned for him to make his request.

“Those… new adventurers, where did they go?”

“You know I can’t tell you that, Sir Jerric.” Sel frowned at the way Jerric’s lips twisted at the word. What was this about? He had never shown any outward interest until now, so why?

Jerric drummed his fingers on the countertop thoughtfully. “I see you’re a stickler for the rules then.”

“Without rules, we are no better than beasts,” Royl said with his finger raised, mockingly quoting Sel.

She shot him another dagger-filled look. “Mockery aside, Royl is correct. Rules are there for a reason. I will not bend nor break them unless the Guild gives me leave to do so. Do you have a writ?”

Jerric shook his head.

“Then we are at an impasse. You know as well as I do that there are people out there that would very much love to know precisely where Shrubley and his bony friend went, and they don’t want to invite them to their clan.”

“I suppose I couldn’t convince you that I am worried about the little guy?”

Sel leaned back and folded her arms. “Not likely.”

It looked like Jerric was fighting an inner-war with himself. Finally he threw up his hands and stalked out of the guildhall without another word.

Royl watched him go. “What do you think that was about?”

Sel allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. “I think we’ve got a front-row seat to the winds of change.”

Royl rolled his eyes and walked over to the stack of contracts waiting to be put up and hauled himself over to the contract board. “Elves,” he muttered to himself.

***

Oily, trunk-thick vines, barred Shrubley and his group’s way into the Lightless realm’s Adventurers Guild. The strange vines had a menacing, tough look about them that gave him pause.

“Ah, will we need to cut them down?” Cal asked, stepping back from the barricaded double doors.

“I can take care of that,” Shrubley declared eagerly. “Just you watch.”

“With that?” Slyrox gave Shrubley’s wooden sword a sidelong look, though it was difficult for anyone else to tell due to her smoky lens set in her koblin mask.

“Don’t think I’ll be needing it,” Shrubley admitted, sheathing it between two twiggy branches on his side. One day, he supposed he would like to have a proper sheath, but for now, his own leafy body would do.

He reached out, harnessing a mixture of his Nature essence and [Garden Cultivation]. Together, surely that essence and ability would impart control over these plants to push them out of the way.

Shrubley didn’t have much practice with using his abilities in such a way. Even though he had been a plant all his life, certain things about himself were new. He wasn’t that old, and even though his life was the longest thing he’d experienced thus far, Shrubley was still finding new ways of doing… well, everything.

Possessing an affinity towards Nature mana from [Solar Synthesis] wasn’t the same as having the power of Nature essence within oneself.

Shrubley would have felt more like himself than ever before, if not for the unsettling malaise cast over this mirror realm.

He could feel the depths of the plant’s strength. Their bark was once as strong as mana-rich iron but had since rusted. There was a distant memory of these things. A sense of tarnished glory. Somehow, the plant had lost its way a long time ago.

When, Shrubley couldn’t tell whatsoever. Not an inkling.

Shrubley wasn’t sure what to make of it all, other than a gleaned, crystalline fragment of knowledge. Maybe even of power. Something like a fusion of iron and wood lurked in the back of his mind, like a brewing idea.

With a surge of Willpower, Shrubley guided the knotted and interwoven vines aside, freeing the doors to the false Adventurers Guild.

It left him unusually drained.

“Wow!” Slyrox bounced in place, quite surprised at the feat.

Shrubley did a little bow and tried very hard not to fall over. What is wrong with me? That should not have taken so much out of me!

Cal wrenched at the doors until they creaked and groaned open. Inside, the guildhall was oppressively muggy and silent.

In the center of the large room where you could always find an adventurer or three eating and sharing tales of their most recent exploits was a set of bones and old, rusted armor.

Whoever it had been, they’d been here for a long while. Vines and roots grew all over them, almost protectively, as if claiming them.

Slyrox, being a koblin, immediately picked up the sack near the bodies and picked her way carefully through the vines and roots that glistened wetly like slugs laying across the floor.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Cal said.

Shrubley took out his sword and battered shield. “Nothing about this place seems right, but we need to find our way. I had….” He shook his head–which is to say, he shook his whole leafy round body. “No. There is no use hoping to find help here. We are on our own and the sooner we deal with that, the better we will be.”

“You’re learning,” Cal said approvingly. “Still, it was a good idea.” He edged into the dank building and looked around at the walls. “Looks like nobody’s been home for a very long time, though. If ever.”

Shrubley had to agree. This place felt rotten and filled with death. He did not like it one bit.

The koblin was either very good at ignoring the feeling, or she didn’t care, because she was ransacking the dead adventurers’ belongings with a breezy ease that suggested she had done this all her life.

Shrubley forced himself to move to the long-dead brothers-in-arms. He said a little prayer for them that he had picked up from the Druid and then looked at Slyrox who was staring at him. Or as near as he could tell.

“You is kindly one,” she said, giving him a mittened thumbs up. “Havior would like you, I think.”

“I would like to meet him one day.”

Slyrox leaned down and motioned Shrubley to look at the crumbling leather satchel that she was emptying. Once they were close, she spoke softly, “Slyrox eye-peek many slither-scales watching us. No looksies!” she added in a sharp hiss when Shrubley instinctively lifted his yellow gaze. “Methinks we fight outside. Too many places to be surrounded in here.”

Shrubley nodded sagely and, just to sell the lie more, poked and prodded at the detritus Slyrox hadn’t already purloined at the bottom of the sack. “Very well,” he said loudly. “Let’s show this to Cal.”

Taking the sack between themselves, they walked steadily over to the skeletal mage and, much more importantly, the front door where he was hovering.

As soon as they were together, Shrubley pushed the doors open all the way and together all four of them made a break for it.

Neither of them were in good enough shape to be fighting so soon after losing their last bout and there was no telling how many snake people there were here.

They even warned us!Shrubley thought to himself. They told us that their family would welcome us. Why didn’t I leave?

Vowing to do better next time, Shrubley turned and put his hands on the slick vines and roots, forcing them through sheer Willpower to bind back together.

No sooner had the vines closed back over the door did something large and heavy ram into the doors from the inside. The vines creaked and cracked, but they held. For now.

Shrubley turned and followed his friends down the steps and, thankfully, downhill toward the edge of town.

They made it all the way to the where Dipappio’s Antiques was located back in the real Taamra before the doors back at the guildhall burst open. A hissing cry rolled through the town’s streets as countless snake creatures flowed out of the Adventurers Guild like a beehive emptying itself.

They flooded the nightmarish version of Taamra in a tide of black slithering flesh. There were snake people, who were little more than very large snakes. Then there were those who seemed half snake half person, or as it were, half person and half snake, depending on which part you were looking at first.

Countless creatures, hundreds upon hundreds, were screaming for blood. Their blood.