Explorer of Edregon

Vin, Lumel, and Quill all stared at the goblin in various ranges of surprise. For her part, Yughe looked incredibly confident for someone who was only three feet tall and currently bound from the neck-down so tightly she could barely move.

“What?” Vin asked, deciding that was the most obvious starting point. “Why in the world would you think my people would want to hire you to do anything?”

“Advantageous Opportunity,” she answered, still grinning at them with her pointed goblin teeth. “My level 30 Capstone. I’m an Opportunistic Artificer, and I’ve got a nose like you wouldn’t believe. I can quite literally smell opportunities from a mile away.”

“She’s not wrong about that one,” Quill admitted. “She’s the reason we’re here in the first place. Her nose definitely gets us into trouble, but we’ve never once gone anywhere without finding something to show for it.”

“An Artificer,” Vin muttered, peering more closely at the small goblin. The one and only Artificer Vin had ever ‘met’ thus far on Edregon had been a man working with the Red Dawn who had temporarily stolen their magical items when Curash took them all prisoner. Of course, that same Artificer had then been brutally mauled to death by Blossom when he’d tried to activate the staff without Shia’s permission, and that had been the end of that.

He had been the original owner of Vin’s enchanted boots in fact.

“And a damn good one!” Yughe said, nodding eagerly. “I might not know the details, but now that we’re chatting, I can tell that your town is a gem mine of opportunities. The three of us have been wandering around Edregon for months now, picking up odd jobs here and there and chasing the rumor mill. But I like what I’m feeling from your town, and we want in!”

“Yeah!” Noctis said, slamming his hammer down into the earth as he nodded. “Let us in!”

“I’m starting to get real sick and tired of how you decide everything we do entirely on your own!” Quill snapped. “Did you ever stop to consider that maybe I don’t want to follow these guys back to their town? That other people beyond you exist?”

“Sometimes when I’m bored, but not often,” Yughe admitted, twisting herself around until she was facing the angry avisul. “Come on, Quill, trust me like you always have! Weren’t you just talking about wanting a more stable source of work? Also, the name Quill suits you a lot more than Netil. I have to say I approve!”

“You were actually listening?” Quill asked, his anger vanishing as he blinked in surprise.

“Just because I have a tendency to ignore you, doesn’t mean I’m not listening,” Yughe laughed. “I do what’s best for the crew, even if you don’t see that. Now trust me when I say this is what’s best for us.”

While Quill and Yughe began arguing in earnest, Vin scratched his chin, his mind racing as he contemplated what to do. While bringing an Artificer back to town would no doubt be a massive boon, it was obvious that Yughe couldn’t be trusted. For one thing, she’d quite literally just stated that she only did what was best for her crew, which meant they wouldn’t be able to rely on her when the going got tough. On the other hand, it wasn’t as though Terra had stockpiles of gold or treasures that she could try to steal and run away with, which meant the opportunities she was sensing had to be of a different source.

“What do you think?” Lumel whispered, warily eying up the trio as they fought. “My father’s kingdom had experience dealing with mercenaries, but this is new ground for Terra. They can be quite useful, but they are only loyal to themselves.”

“To be fair, this wouldn’t be the first time we bring in people like that,” Vin admitted, an image of Golrim and his sly smile flashing through his mind. “So long as their interests align with Terra’s, we can still use them. I mean, imagine what Myers would be able to cook up with an Artificer working alongside her. Or the intel we might be able to gather with an actual flier on our side. Something’s wrong with Quill’s wings, but if Shia studies avisul biology, she should be able to help with that in time.”

Vin hadn’t missed how Quill kept his membranes folded almost at all times, or the scars that had covered them the brief moment he’d descended from the rooftop. The avisul had even shouted about Telin not being able to give him wings back, which was all the evidence Vin needed to understand something terrible had happened that stripped the once-fastest flier in the sky fragment of his ability.

“Listen up!” Vin called out, halting the trio’s argument as they turned to focus on him. “I’ve decided. We’ll bring the three of you back to Terra, our town. But I can’t make any promises as to what working together will look like. You’ll probably have to go through a truth-gem screening before you’re trusted with anything, so if that’s going to be a problem, let me know now.”

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Yughe grinned.

“Same here,” Noctis nodded.

“I never said I was going to join this stupid town!” Quill argued, clearly flustered as he stomped a foot. “I left my people because I was sick of settlements and their rules that don’t give an actual damn about the individual! Why should I change my mind now?!”

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“We have powerful healers that might be able to restore your wings given enough time,” Vin said gently, watching as Quill’s face went from anger to blank astonishment in an instant. “I can’t promise you anything, but one of them is even capable of casting Regeneration. If you give us some time, I’m confident we can help.”

“No… I don’t believe you!” Quill shouted after a moment, his eyes narrowing as he pointed at Vin’s golem arm. “If your town has magic like that, then why do you have a prosthetic limb?!”

“That’s a bit of a tricky one,” Vin sighed, holding up his arm and smiling at it. “I sort of lost the concept of my arm while fighting against an epic monster that was capable of eating things in multiple dimensions at a time. Not to mention my new arm can do stuff like this.”

Picking up a chunk of brick that had hit the ground from Noctis smashing into the nearby building, Vin’s hand glowed blue, and the dense stone was pulverized into dust within his grip. As he opened his hand and let the dust and debris sprinkle out, Yughe laughed.

“Any chance I can get one of those? I’ll happily trade my arm for one!”

“This is one of a kind,” Vin admitted, noting how Quill looked like he was once again back to warring with himself. “Look, I’m not trying to get you to sign your soul away. I genuinely think we can help one another. If you decide you don’t like Terra and want to leave, you’ll be more than welcome to do so. And we’re not just a settlement of humans, either, we’ve got plenty of different races all living under the same roof.”

“I’m a pulmon,” Lumel added helpfully, pulling her hood down and smiling at the avisul as she revealed her lavender skin. “Though Terra also has beastkin, elves, dwarves, orcs, and even infernals at this point. And a sentient golem. And a petian. And a merider…” she said, ticking people off her fingers. “Wow, Terra’s gotten really colorful these last few months, hasn’t it?

“What, no goblins?” Yughe asked, managing to somehow look offended despite still being wrapped up on the ground.

“I’ve actually met a society of goblins, but they don’t like leaving their walled-in community,” Vin admitted. “They have a strange obsession with building the best golem, and seem a lot like you to be honest.”

From his Common Ally title, Vin was able to get the sense that one trait goblins in general shared was a burning curiosity about how things worked and how to improve them. Despite Yughe being from a different fragment, she clearly had the same intense desire eating away at her.

“Interesting… I might want to pay them a visit down the line!” she admitted.

Quill was clearly still on the fence, but seeing his two companions agree so eagerly, he eventually sighed and slouched forward a bit. Looking up at Vin, he spoke, his words coming out quietly.

“…You can really fix my wings?”

“I promise you we can try,” Vin said. “Personally, I think we can, but seeing as I’m not the one with the actual healing magic, I don’t want to give you any guarantees.”

“It’s better than thinking they’re lost to me forever,” Quill muttered, clenching his fists as he sucked in a deep breath. “Fine. I’m in. Bring us back to this town of yours.”

“Though maybe first you could untie me?” Yughe suggested, still wriggling on the ground like a large worm. “I’m supposed to be the only one who can get these off, but I never thought I’d be the one trapped within them. This might be bad.”

“Let me take a look,” Vin said, pausing as he recalled the floating bolt in the air before him. “Uh… what will happen if that hits the ground?”

“A loud bang of sound and a blast of force powerful enough to knock one off their feet,” Yughe shrugged. “Should only be lethal against those with low vigor and bad luck. Just walk away and let it fall.”

Doing just that, Vin and Lumel walked over to the bound goblin, and Lumel let Dimensional Lockdown come to an end. Sure enough, the moment the bolt touched the ground a powerful boom of noise blasted out of it, and the front of the building they’d been in collapsed as the walls were blown out.

“Huh. Stronger than I remember making it,” Yughe said, offering Vin a wide grin.

Rolling his eyes, Vin took a look at the magical bindings. Just like with the bolt, the runic engravings were a little tricky to make out, but he could read the runes for Entangle easily enough. He thought there were runes that affected the strength of the cords as well, but those didn’t matter too much. With a blue-glowing finger, Vin carefully etched through some of the Entangle runes, and the light glow emanating from the bindings faded without fanfare. Runic objects were far less dangerous to mess with than actual spells or artifacts, but even so, he let out a small sigh of relief as the cords went slack and Yughe was able to free herself.

“Most impressive,” she muttered, peering at the runes he’d altered slightly before looking up at him with those darkened goggles that hid her eyes even from this distance. “I see you are quite knowledgeable in the runic arts.”

“I dabble,” Vin admitted. “Though I don’t really know much about runic objects. I’m more of a spell and artifact kind of guy.”

“My people don't really put many attribute points in magic, so we don't tend to have large pools of mana,” Yughe explained as she wound up the cords and did her best to shove them back into the cube they’d come out of before slipping the whole thing into one of her many pockets. “The runic arts are how we get around such limitations. Anyway, enough about me. Let us go check out this town of yours that reeks of opportunity! I am eager to see just what we have in store for us!”

“Let’s go!” Noctis agreed, the clear yes-man to Yughe’s antics banging his hammer on the ground once more.

Oh man, Vin thought, watching the trio as they brushed themselves off and looked at him with eager faces. Yughe excited for these mysterious opportunities she was sensing. Noctis eager to follow the leader and make her happy. And Quill with his burning, almost desperate desire to have his wings restored to him, whatever the cost.

These three feel like trouble if I’ve ever seen it…