After a quick visit to the G-Hall for their rewards and updated signets, Logan and Marcus took a sauntering walk back to the guild house. Teleportation wasn’t always necessary, and it paid not to have a headache brew while clearing out the dungeons. The outside walk did prove to have another benefit, it allowed the pair to spy a new visitor.

  Standing atop the pole that held up the guild sign was an ooran. The usual bird used for ferrying messages and parcels, a combination of mailman and messenger bird. As a mix of sparrow, raven, and hawk, the 4’ creatures had jet-black plumage and dirty-gold beaks. Piercing red eyes scanned the road as the bird seemingly was awaiting its target.

  Logan approached the ooran and clicked his fingers, the bird adjusting its head to look at the man. “Do you have a delivery for someone in VIP?”

  The ooran cawed and stretched its wings in approval.

  “Is it for Logan, the guildmaster?”

  The ooran then cawed louder, jumping from its perch and landing on the cobbled floor in front of Logan. Pecking at the straps of the satchel that was worn across its chest, the ooran opened up a pocket, picked out an envelope with its beak, and presented it to Logan with a few flaps of its wings.

  Logan softly took the envelope, causing the ooran to move into a comfortable stance as it awaited the Spellthief’s reading of the delivery. Opening the envelope, the pair looked over the writing.

  “Dear Logan,

  It has been many months since we last met, I pray your journey as an adventurer is proceeding as well as rumours would have me believe. I hear that Tinte has had a few further dealings with you, though I always seem to miss you.

  I give thanks for your gift of coin, my services did not warrant such an overpayment. I fear my further request is asking too much with how much I now owe.

  While I will not feign knowledge of the rankings of the guilds or classed beings, I know you must have some good contacts by now. My village of Noma has come under attack recently, and severally, by a large carapaced worm monstrosity. This monster has also harassed nearby settlements, not yet Tinte, and is causing issues for farming and income.

  Aside from immediate damage, this worm has spread plague and curses amongst the cropland and those who try to tend to them. Tinte’s healers cannot remove the pestilence, but I hope the capital houses those who can.

  If possible, I ask that you gather adventurers to deal with this threat, either those you know or putting forward a bounty at the capital’s adventuring hall. Previous requests have seemingly not had any result, though I pray your words are stronger than my writings.

  Whatever comes from letter I know you tried your best.

  Regards, Jrizan.”

  Logan gripped onto the edges of the parchment a bit too harshly, tearing it slightly before realising it. “I accept the letter. We will go to the sender directly”, he explained to the ooran.

  The bird nodded its head, the creature being intelligent enough to understand most words but lacking the faculties to reply in turn. The ooran hopped around to look for nearby people before it spread its wings and took flight.

  “We’re to leave right now then?” Marcus asked.

  “Let’s let the others know.”

  The pair, now a trio with Amalia in tow, didn’t waste too much time in preparing and teleporting to the faraway village of Noma.

  Logan hadn’t seen the place before, but he was sure it didn’t look like this before the worm came. Farmlands gave off a haze of black and purple, while many huts had broken thatch roofing with nearby destroyed carts and stone structures. It reminded Logan of Moella, the village attacked by the silversteines so long ago.

  “Hello?” Logan called out, not too loud if the worm was still present but enough for anyone in the nearby huts to hear.

  A wooden door creaked open to reveal a man draped in rough cloth and strewn leather patches, a cobbled-together club of wood and rock in one hand and a wooden plank shield in the other.

  Running out of the hut with an excited face and dishevelled brunette hair, the man spoke, “Thank the ones above you came! We sent out three different oorans, our hopes were faltering about if anyone was going to get here in time!”

  “Who are you and what is the current situation?” Logan asked while Marcus and Amalia looked around.

  “I am Alois, I am what remains of our guard. You’re here for the worm, yes? It hasn’t attacked in two days, but we’re on the defensive just in case. The crops still let out a foul stench, so all the farmers are kept inside too.”

  “What of casualties?” Marcus chimed in.

  Alois turned to look at the Devout who was dressed uniquely for a healer, “A few broken bones, lost limbs, and destroyed hopes. Three of the guards are dead, but no casualties amongst the villagers.”

  “Are they housed somewhere?”

  “We moved all the injured into the town hall, it’s our strongest building and was lucky enough to not get hit”, Alois answered as he pointed at the only building made of wood and stone, tufts of smoke billowing from the chimney that many other houses lacked here.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  Marcus left the conversation to tend to the wounded, Alois turning to look at Logan.

  “We’ll be taking on this quest. I am Logan, that was Marcus, and she is Amalia. We’re the leaders of the VIP guild.”

  “Vip? I haven’t heard it, sir”, Alois began before getting flustered, “I am sure you’re more than enough for this”, he corrected.

  “Can you take me to Jrizan? He’s the one whose message I read.”

  “Of course, he’s housing a few of the farmers at his place”, Alois informed as he took Logan to a hut in better repair.

  “I’ll look around the village”, Amalia said as she waved off Logan.

  Entering the hut, Logan saw four farming families huddled around a small fire, the smoke seeping through holes in the thatch to the side, with sticks carrying pieces of meat. Jrizan saw Logan and stood up quickly, froze for a second as he checked over the man at a distance before approaching properly.

  “L-Logan? That really you?”

  “Jrizan. It’s been a while.”

  Jrizan then heartily patted Logan’s arm, “You’ve changed a below of a lot, lad!”

  Logan couldn’t hold back his smirk, “It’s been over half a year, what’d you expect.”

  Jrizan’s expression went a bit more worried as he realised, “If you’re here, does that mean you aim to deal with the worm yourself?”

  Logan nodded.

  “Even with close to a year. Are you confident about taking on that beast? It was enormous as is, but nothing we did made a dent.”

  “We will assess it to start, if it’s beyond our abilities we will seek stronger aid. But, I am rank 28. It should be doable.”

  Jrizan shrugged, “That sounds high, but I have no way to ascertain the power of the monster. Please, follow me.”

  Jrizan led Logan out of the hut to the edge of the farmlands. What would have been acres of wheat and vegetables was instead a mess of dark-brown and grey debris across the floor. The farm had decayed so much it looked like a graveyard covered in moss or suffering from darker powers.

  “The worm erupted near the centre of that field, the farmers ran at first sight but many mentioned this disease spread only a few seconds after it appeared. It didn’t take long until it reached all the plots. When our guard tried to shoo the worm off, it dug back underground and went to the other plots to make sure all fell. That’s when we lost most of the guards.”

  “Its aim was the farms? But why… Maybe it hates wheat, a coeliac ally, or maybe it was commanded to do so.”

  “We saw no eye or beard of any other creature besides the worm. It took the three guard corpses with it when it left. It then returned and took some of our livestock, again and again until we had none left.”

  “How big was it?”

  “Hard to tell exactly, easily larger than our town hall. Over thirty feet long and a good six or so feet wide? I never saw the beast for long sadly.”

  “Then perhaps it was gathering up food for later. A monster of that size would need quite the meal to sustain itself, knowing trolls and the like only need water, maybe it subsists on a mostly carnivorous diet if it didn’t take the crops. Since you didn’t wound it, it didn’t need to use any form of regeneration but maybe others wounded it”, Logan thought aloud before looking at Jrizan, “Was there anything else in the fields?”

  “The farmers, scarebolds, a few dogs.”

  “I doubt the monster would care about straw defences against birds. Did the dogs make it out?”

  “I remember a few farmers saying they lost their dogs in some of the emerging ambushes.”

  As Jrizan and Logan talked, Marcus approached them from behind. “I’ve healed the injured, they should be good as new, barring any mental trauma.”

  Logan nodded, “Good work. I was just about to investigate the farm, do you mind checking it over with me?”

  Jrizan then blurted out, “You don’t mean to walk in there, do you?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll use magic to check on the effects before entering.”

  With combined uses of micks and the like, Logan and Marcus scanned the largest plot of farmland. Several warnings popped up, Logan tutting every so often as he looked over them.

  “The land is cursed. It won’t be able to sustain crops in this state. There’s also a disease that is eating the crops and living tissue”, Logan explained as he looked at Marcus, “normal people can’t survive for long in there. But we can.”

  “I gathered the same”, Marcus replied before looking at Jrizan, “make sure to keep everyone away from the blighted areas.”

  “I’ll keep doing so.”

  “Shall we?” Logan asked as he raised a leg over the broken wooden fences that kept the fields contained.

  A weak wave of power rolled over the two adventurers, like an army of ants crawling across them with millions of bites to eat away at their flesh. Their teeth, how metaphorical they were, couldn’t pierce either’s defences though.

  Walking through the field, the black and purple mist was parted by the two bodies, before finally the pair reached one of the emergence holes. A massive exit that went down deep and turned into the darkness. Logan kicked a rock inside as he heard a thud a second later.

  “Closer to ten feet thick, it also seems like mud and rock both didn’t stop it”, Logan explained as he crouched down.

  “The ground is also… covered or transmuted. This mud isn’t normal, and the flies…” Marcus thought aloud.

  The Devout was right, the mud was a strange black colouration. It could have been the curse placed on the land or something that was dug up and left behind by the worm. It was an alien sight.

  Logan stood up and hopped into the hole, landing rather quickly with a bounce to his body. The ground was still soft. “This far down I was expecting more stone.”

  Marcus followed shortly after, “Huh. You’re right.”

  “Light Ally”, Logan chanted, summoning up his sprite to fly down the cylindrical corridors to see better in both directions. “Most of that black dirt is around the places the worm came out of the ground, the rest has been ground down into rubble and mud, mixed together.”

  “There’s harder ground in both directions. So, does it weaken the ground to burst through it?”

  “I wouldn’t think it needed to. It might be a byproduct of something else, the curses maybe”, Logan replied as he summoned up his elementals, “check these corridors and report back in a half hour or if you find something that could have made this.”

  “You got it, boss!” Celsius exclaimed

  “It will be done”, Spark accepted.

  “Confirmed”, Fahrenheit replied.

  “The only trace left will be mine”, Servoir insisted.

  “Time or opponent, of course”, Umbra ended.

  The five elementals then darted in two directions, Logan and Marcus leaving the hole rather easily to check back on the village.

  “I couldn’t find any other tracks aside from game. Don’t think many monsters came with the worm if they did at all”, Amalia explained.

  “If the worm has a master, it’s a far one. Maybe it’s intelligent like Tille”, Logan calculated.

  “Or controlled in some other way”, Marcus submitted.

  “It can’t be simple. Not when I got a System quest to match this one.”

  --- *** ---

  JiiBee.