When Aiden made his way into the Seared Tusk, Eustus was behind the bar, passing out drinks with his usual casual control of the room. The other customers were scattered around with mugs and plates, some talking, some laughing, and some already working hard to make poor decisions before noon.
With a quick glance, Aiden spotted Engar and Xenovia sitting together with drinks in hand. Peridot was asleep at the bar with a half-filled mug beside her, which, honestly, was probably the most predictable thing he had seen all day. Larz and Qos sat at a table with a few other guards.
What worried Aiden most was Kinwal sitting with Selene and Liora.
And talking.
That was rarely safe.
Aiden headed over, already concerned about what kind of stories Kinwal was telling them.
"Don't even get me started on his make-believe adventures when he was twelve," Kinwal said. "He started calling himself Potion Man and—oh, hey, Aiden."
Aiden stopped walking.
Liora turned toward him with a smug look that immediately made him want to leave.
"So," she said, "did you get our plates and money, Potioneer the Bold?"
Just hearing that stupid title sent a shiver up Aiden's spine.
Memories struck him like a thrown brick. Twelve-year-old Aiden running around the woods, pretending Liquid Crystal Consolidation was some grand finisher spell while spraying nearby trees with sparkling liquid crystal.
The embarrassment was palpable.
"Welp," Kinwal said, standing up. "Your whole gang is here, so I better head out. Stop by if there is any information you need for your next quest."
He patted Aiden on the shoulder and walked out with the satisfaction of a man who had set a house on fire and left before anyone found the matches.
Aiden sat down as Kaelen and Jax took seats beside him. Jax placed two bags on the table. One held the gold. The other held their five new plates.
As everyone started to reach for the bags, Aiden held up a hand.
"Now hold on," he said. "The reward can be split into one hundred gold each, but that is not fully fair."
Jax immediately narrowed his eyes.
"Now, Aiden, as party leader, I believe it is completely fair. We all pulled our part in this quest, and I say five-way split."
The others started nodding.
Aiden pulled out his notebook, opened it to a prepared page, and slid it across the table.
"The average room and board cost in Hopestone, combined with meals for the day, would run each of you around five gold. Jax has been staying at my house for a month, and the rest of you have been there for three days. Minus this meal, that is at least ten gold each I have saved you. For Jax, it is much more."
The others stared at him.
Their expressions shifted from our pal Aiden to the kind of look a person gave a loan shark right before wondering if they could reach the door in time.
Aiden held up his hand before anyone could bolt.
"I am willing to ignore all of that and split the reward evenly on one condition."
Jax's ears flattened.
"You all buy cleaning equipment and help me clean my house."
The others relaxed with almost insulting speed, as if they had expected him to demand a finger or something. Jax, however, still seemed to be calculating the best escape route.
"Welp," Jax said, starting to slide backward, "those of you with opposable thumbs enjoy that. I will be happy to—"
Kaelen and Liora grabbed him at the same time, each wrapping an arm around him while wearing matching evil grins.
"You're the one getting the most out of this, buddy," Kaelen said. "If anything, you should be doing the most."
"Exactly," Liora added. "As leader, you should lead by example."
Jax audibly gulped.
The reward was divided. The plates were passed out. Cleaning plans were made.
And then, far too soon for Jax's liking, they were back at Aiden's house.
"Ack, the ash is getting in my fur!" Jax complained.
They had finished lunch and were using what daylight remained to make the cabin livable enough that they would not all wake up looking like chimney sweeps.
"Ash is everywhere, Jax," Kaelen said, waving a hand in front of his face as a plume of soot rose from the blanket he was beating outside. "Would you rather wash it out when we are done or sleep in it?"
Jax seemed to consider that question more seriously than Aiden liked.
They continued working in silence for a while before Selene spoke.
Since Selene rarely spoke above a mumble unless it was important, everyone turned toward her.
"G-growing up," Selene said, "I was always taught that listening to a story makes work go faster. S-so what if we took turns saying why we wanted to become adventurers? That way work goes faster, and it is like a team bonding exercise."
Selene had been working on being louder, and while she tended to have a small stutter at the start of when she began to speak, otherwise they could hear her and she was getting better.
Everyone paused and looked at each other.
Jax, never one to miss an opportunity to stop cleaning, hopped up onto a chair they had dragged outside.
"Well, as glorious leader, I volunteer to go first."
Aiden leaned on his broom.
"Of course you do."
Jax ignored him.
"It all started when I was a small little pup."
Jax began his story with dramatic flair, but Aiden found himself spacing out as he looked at his house.
His clean, quiet, predictable house.
Or, what had been his clean, quiet, predictable house before five adventurers dragged a mountain's worth of ash into it.
For the first time, he truly thought about what adventuring meant.
Leaving home.
Not for a day.
Not for a trip into town.
Actually leaving.
That thought sat strangely in his chest until Jax's voice pulled him back.
"So my brother was the biggest and baddest guy around. Everyone loved him, and he was amazing at what he did. I dreamed of becoming an adventurer because of him."
Jax sat with a self-satisfied smile before jumping down from the chair and pointing at Selene.
"You recommended this, so you get the next break."
Selene walked over to the chair and sat down.
At first, she looked nervous. She cleared her throat, opened her mouth, closed it again, then seemed to freeze under everyone's attention.
The silence stretched.
Then Aiden's foot caught on the edge of the door.
He tripped.
He landed directly in the layer of ash that had been gathering outside as they carried things out of the house.
Everyone turned toward him.
Aiden tried to jump up in as dignified a way as a person could while covered in soot, dirt, and ash.
That way did not exist.
But the distraction helped.
With everyone's eyes off her for a moment, Selene started mumbling. As she continued, her voice grew loud enough for everyone to hear while they returned to work.
"W-well, my father was a knight who fought monsters on the front lines of Tessegog, from the city of Arkney."
At the mention of Tessegog, the group went quiet.
Kaelen glanced toward Selene's arm.
Selene quickly shook her head.
"T-the arm wasn't from the mist. It was from a family curse, apparently. But combined with my AES, it did not help people at home see me as anything other than a monster."
The others looked between each other.
Aiden realized what they were silently asking.
"AES is Aetheric Expulsion Syndrome," he explained. "It means she has a hard time processing aether. They also struggle to store it once processed"
Jax looked up, thought for a moment, then asked, "So do you just have trouble storing Mana, or do you use Aura?"
"W-well," Selene said, "I actually use an energy called Mutation for my abilities."
Liora, who was sweeping ash out the door, propped her chin on the end of her broom.
"I never really understood the difference. Are there just a bunch of different little things in the air, or does the system artificially give us this energy?"
Aiden perked up.
That was a question he actually knew something about.
"Actually, Aether is the raw form of the various energies," Aiden said, remembering a book he had read in the library a year or two ago. "Think of it like a special mixture of gases in the air around us at all times. Depending on your class, your body can only use certain portions of the Aether around you, so it naturally filters them into the core four energies."
"T-those are Aura, Spirit, Mana, and Faith, right?" Selene asked.
"That's right. They are generally considered the core four."
"Then what about specialized things like Ki or Mutation?" Jax asked as he dragged a chair out by standing under it and balancing it awkwardly on his back.
"Well, that is further refinement. Mutation is new to me, but I'm pretty sure Ki is a refinement of Aura. That refinement is also why people get less energy from Aether potions. Only a portion is actually usable compared to a potion made for a specific energy type."
Aiden paused, then waved a hand.
"Look, we are getting off topic. Selene, you were saying?"
"Y-yes. Well, my dad ended up traveling to do more against the monster waves, and I left home when I was fifteen to learn better control over my arm."
She quietly returned to cleaning.
Everyone nodded along before Liora stepped up.
"Keep your pants on and your belts tight, because my backstory has a hell of a dramatic twist!"
Everyone blankly stared at her.
Liora began with sound effects.
"I grew up in the soaring clifftops of Cliefop, born to a great mage seeking children who held his talent. I was raised by a fullblood couple who taught me everything I know."
As Liora continued, Aiden went inside to grab the last of the blankets. Misty floated over to him.
She had not wanted to be at the fight with the ash spirits or the Blood Trent. Aiden assumed that had something to do with the fact that she was a tiny water spirit, and the idea of confronting several fully grown ash spirits and a Blood Trent was, by any reasonable standard, horrifying.
Misty nodded at him before quickly slipping into his necklace.
Aiden carried the blankets outside just in time to hear Liora reaching what seemed to be the dramatic part.
"So I was trapped in my father's magic and told that if I wanted to live, I had to decode the spell. Otherwise, I would be killed and ripped apart. In desperation, I modified the runes and ended up changing the magic to teleport me to the bay in Ivyport, where a passing fishing boat caught me in their nets."
Liora struck a grand pose, one foot propped on a freshly cleaned chair like a ship captain pointing into a storm.
"I vowed to get revenge. So adventuring is how I grow strong enough to get back at my birth father."
Jax stared at her.
"You expect us to believe that you are both the child of the royal mage of Cliefop and managed to mess with a magic circle so it teleported you to a bay on almost the other side of the world?"
Selene finished tying a rug wand to Jax's tail. He started wagging it, beating dust and ash out of the rugs hanging from the makeshift clothesline.
Liora raised her chin.
"I do not expect you to fully grasp the awesomeness of finding the daughter of a royal mage to serve as your magic specialist. I only expect free beer."
"You are so full of it," Kaelen said.
Everyone laughed.
Kaelen stepped up next. He dusted off his robes as if preparing to deliver a formal speech to a church full of attentive listeners.
"Well," he began, "I was born to a wealthy family and was known for my looks."
Everyone blinked at him.
Kaelen was by far the best looking of the group, but he was not exactly spread-the-word handsome.
Seeing their confusion, Kaelen reached up and removed his necklace.
It was almost as if his face had been stretched, softened, and recolored in places before. The change rippled over him, and suddenly Aiden understood.
Kaelen was beautiful.
Not handsome. Not pretty. Both. Neither. Something annoyingly beyond either word.
Depending on the clothing, he could have passed as either a breathtaking man or a breathtaking woman, and either way, people would probably walk into walls.
Aiden only realized his mouth was hanging open when Kaelen put the necklace back on. His appearance shifted back to the familiar, slightly less dangerous version of his face, and Aiden snapped out of whatever trance he had fallen into.
The others looked just as affected, if not worse.
"As you all just saw," Kaelen said, "I use a necklace to hide my appearance with a less striking one. When I was one hundred, I left home because my family tried to marry me off. I managed to escape and wandered the woods for two weeks before passing out from exhaustion."
His voice softened.
"For the first time in my life, I prayed to the gods. I woke to Father Zyzack, who nursed me back to health. While I recovered, I learned the teachings of Freyungen and became her worshipper. I want to be an adventurer to grow my faith and spread it to those who, like me, are in need of guidance."
Kaelen stepped away from the chair.
Then the group turned toward Aiden.
Aiden blinked.
Then he realized it was his turn.
Great.
Jax wanted to prove himself to his tribe and make his brother proud. Selene wanted to control her Soul Skill and get treatment for her condition. Liora was apparently related to a famous mage and wanted revenge. Kaelen had a noble religious journey in mind.
How in the hells was Aiden supposed to tell them he wanted to be an adventurer because it looked cool and working in a shop was boring?
He took his time walking to the chair. Everyone kept cleaning, but their attention remained on him.
Aiden wiped his glasses.
For a moment, he considered spinning some grand story.
Then he dropped the idea.
Lying had never been his strong suit anyway.
"Well," Aiden said, "when I was young, I was taken in by my grandfather after my parents left for the city to sell their invention. He taught me potion making and things like that, and I always wanted to be an adventurer because I thought it looked cool."
His words sped up near the end as embarrassment hit him.
He looked down, expecting laughter.
Instead, Jax asked, "Judging from the guard lady's comments, he's not dead, right? Is your grandfather on a trip?"
Aiden was a bit surprised by the question.
"Well, Mom and Dad didn't send letters or anything, so he went to see what happened to them. He hasn't returned since."
The others nodded quietly.
Liora leaned against her broom.
"Well, it looks like we all have our goals set."
Everyone put down what they were working on and gathered around the chair.
One by one, they spoke.
"I want to prove to my tribe that I am strong and make my brother proud," Jax said.
"I-I want to learn to better control my Soul Skill and find a cure for my AES," Selene said.
"I want to return to Cliefop as an accomplished mage and punch my father," Liora said.
"I want to spread the love of Freyungen and guide those who are lost," Kaelen said.
Then Jax pointed a paw at Aiden, poking him in the chest.
"And as a party member, you help us with that. In return, we will help you find out about your parents and learn more about alchemy."
A strange rush of heat reached Aiden's face.
Excitement jolted up his spine.
It was real.
He was an adventurer.
He had a plate.
He had a party.
He had people who wanted to help him.
"Ssssssoooooo," Liora said slowly, "now that the cleaning is out of the way, the boys will be gentlemen and let the girls use the bath first, right?"
She and Selene were already inching toward the bath setup on the other side of the house.
Kaelen and Jax looked at each other.
Then, as if someone had fired a starting pistol, all four of them broke into a sprint.
"Y-you could be a gentleman here, Jax!" Selene yelled.
"Girl, have you tried getting matted ash out of a full body of fur without thumbs? No thanks!"
"Come on Kaelen, have some decorum as a priest!" Liora barked.
"You can clean the ash with wind, My hair is longer than yours, you should appreciate how hard it is to get ash out of that!" Kaelen retorted.
As they rounded the corner, Aiden found that he could not help but laugh.