Like a Roc

John emerged into the mundane world onto the same patch of overgrown gravel from which he’d left. The sound of distant traffic was a welcome comfort. The sun, near its zenith when he had entered the dungeon barrier, hung far lower in the sky. Retrieving his phone from his inventory, John watched as it reconnected to the cell network and time jumped forward four hours.

“Mom’s going to kill me,” he muttered.

“John, you’re back!” Daryl shouted. John turned around to find the man walking towards him, his arms outstretched and face painted with an infuriating grin. “Oh, thank Gaia! You were in there so long, I thought something bad might have happened. Then the barrier collapsed, and I was thinkin’, ‘Oh shit, I just got this kid killed.’” His arms dropped and grin faded as John's face deepened to a scowl. “Oh, you look ma—“

“Where the hell were you?” John barked more aggressively than he’d intended. “What happened to, ‘I’ll take control of the barrier and kick us out if it looks too dangerous?’”

“Well, you see, I –”

“You got me trapped alone and unarmed with a bunch of blood sucking dinosaurs and a giant, armored pinocchio that shot lasers from its face!”

“We tried to–”

“Forget it. I don’t have time for this. It’s a miracle that my mom isn’t blowing up my phone already. But it’s coming any second now, and I still have a two hour bike ride ahead of me. So, screw you. I’m going home.”

As John stormed off towards the back gate, a ripple of color passed over the world around them, and those comforting sounds fell silent again.

Entering Illusion Barrier - The barrier’s controller prevents your escape.

“Really?” he shouted as he whipped back around. “This again!”

“Look, I’m not trying to be a dick, but you can’t just leave.”

“Sure I can. Just drop the barrier, and I'll be on my way.”

“Dude, you’re a mess! Your clothes are torn. You’ve got blood smeared all over you, and I can’t see a single injury anywhere on you. A cop’s going to see you and think you just got done killing a guy. How far do you think you’ll make it before you attract attention you really don’t want?”

It wasn’t as if John hadn’t noticed the state of his appearance. Afterall, he had been smart enough to change out of his armor before exiting the Dungeon Barrier. Without clean water or mending materials, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

“Yeah, well, there’s a creek half a mile up the road. I’ll just wash up there.”

“Just be reasonable for a minute. Look, my boss wants to talk to you. If you just wait a bit for him to come out, we’ll get you cleaned up. I'll even give you a ride home. Ok?”

“Doesn't sound like I have much of a choice.” John walked over to an old engine block and sat down looking away from his two time captor.

Daryl pulled a walkie-talkie from his pocket and radio, ”Hey, boss, he’s back, and we’re hanging out in a barrier by the moto-shed.”

The response came distorted by static. ”Do I need to bring anything?”

”A shower ticket would be great”

”No first aid?”

Daryl called over to John, “Do you need any—”

”I’m fine,” John interrupted in dull monotone.

“He’s fine.”

”Right, I’ll be down in a minute.”

“For what it’s worth,” Daryl started, “my boss and I both tried to come in after you, but your barrier kept rejecting us. We even had a local Fateweaver come out to take a look.”

”I don’t know what that is.”

”Oh yeah, Fateweavers are barrier specialists. They know how to bend a lot of their rules. We were hoping he could sneak in or pull you out, but it wouldn’t budge.”

”Ah,” John grunted his general understanding. A long awkward silence stretched between the two of them as they waited.

“So, uh… how’d it go in there? You look alright, grime excluded, but I can’t imagine you’d be this worked up if it had been a walk in the park.”

“I don’t know.” Exhaustion crept back into John’s voice. “I nearly died twice, but I can't say surviving was a bad outcome. So, I guess it went fine.”

“That’s pretty rough. You sure you don’t need any medical attention? I can radio the boss right back. It won’t be a problem.”

“No, I’m fine, really. Gamer’s Body, one of my skills, kinda works as a pool of instantish healing. When I killed the boss, I leveled up and that refreshed the pool. I’m literally as healthy as could possibly be.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said your powers work on video game logic.”

John chuckled weakly. “Nope, I’ve even got a UI and floating panels for it. Those seem to be invisible for everyone but me though.”

“Yeah, I didn’t see anything when–”

“So, you must be the late bloomer that’s been causing so much fuss. John, is it?” called a new gravelly voice.

An old man, maybe in his mid sixties or early seventies judging by his thin frame and the advanced retreat of his silver hair, now stood between them. Slightly hunched, the man may have been just over five feet tall if standing straight. Dressed in khaki shorts and a blue Hawaiian shirt decorated with the reds, oranges, and pinks of tropical flowers, he would have looked ready for a beach vacation had it not been for his steel-toed boots, but even as he grinned at them, his deep set eyes gave him a stern look.

“Uh, yeah.” John cast Observe.

‘How old is this guy?’

”A word of advice, son, It ain’t wise to cast scrying spells on someone so blatantly, especially not when they’re close enough to do something about it.”

“You- you can see my panels?”

“No, whatever your spell conjured up is invisible to me. Though, I could see your eyes shifting as you were reading. It’s common enough for slaver guilds to employ such magics that your average abyssal, being a paranoid sort, might employ some form of countermeasure, some means of obscuring themself or manipulating the spell.”

The old man reached into his shirt and retrieved a copper medallion on a chain. The medallion depicted an eagle with outstretched wings, clutching an upturned tortoise in its talons.

He continued, “This piece, for example, will alert its wearer by vibrating when they become the target of such magic. A little advanced warning is sometimes enough to avoid an ambush.”

Rooster returned the pendent and pulled a slip of paper from his pocket. “Here, tear this in half. It’ll clean you up.”

“Uh, ok.” John did as instructed. Warm, moist air washed over him, whisking away the sweat, blood, and grime that clung to his skin.

“Now, do I need to introduce myself, or did your spell already serve that purpose?”

“No, I think I got the gist.”

“Good. Now, I'm sure you’re eager to get home after the day you’ve had. So, I’ll just get to the point. You nearly got yourself killed today, and—”

“I almost got myself killed?” John thrust an accusatory finger at Daryl. “I told him that I didn’t have any way to defend myself. I only opened the barrier because he said he would handle it.”

“I’m not talking about the barrier.” The elder Abyssal’s voice dropped to a sterner tone. “You wandered into potentially hostile Abyssal territory, broke a ward getting in, tripped a half dozen others, risked a divine smiting by casting magic where mundane folk could stumble upon you, and got pulled into an illusion barrier by someone whose intent you did not know. Any one of those had the potential to kill you, and the Lady only knows how many times you narrowly avoided some grizzly fate today.”

“I didn’t know–”

“Ignorance ain’t a shield, and the Abyss ain’t forgiving. Late bloomers have a lot of potential, but if you want to survive long enough to do something with it, you need to learn the ways of the Abyss and learn ‘em fast.”

“Which is why,” Daryl interjected, “we’d like you to join our guild.”

“Excuse me?”

Rooster continued, “Daryl’s already informed me that you’ve come out here to hone your skills as an artificer using whatever scrap you could reap. If that’s still your aim, then I believe we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

John’s tone was incredulous. “Right, the benefit to you would be staking claim to a potentially rule breaking late bloomer. The benefit to me would be?”

“Guidance as well as guild resources, workspace, and material stock.”

“See, I just got five grand for completing that dungeon. So, I don’t know if ‘guild resources’ would be that big a benefit for me.”

“Son, that’s chump change in the Abyss. Any inherently magical material will run you tens of thousands of dollars an ounce at least. Heck, that shower ticket runs near ten grand. You really want to throw yourself into a den of monsters a couple dozen times just to order basic stock?”

Dungeon runs would be a lot safer if he could create better equipment first. With the guild’s help he’d be able to develop his artifice skill and his equipment would be better by virtue of their material’s inherent magic. He could get similar materials from his dungeons. The boss had already dropped some interesting new metals, but what he got would likely be random. He’d be in their debt.

“Just so we’re clear, I would have free reign to use whatever I want, free of charge.”

“Think of it more like a loan. You won’t be charged up front, but it will need to be paid for eventually.”

“There it is. Let me guess, I won’t be able to leave the guild until I pay off my debt. So, using guild resources would just be digging a deeper hole to climb out of.”

Rooster guffawed. “Ha! Now you're starting to think right. Tell you what, should you want to leave the guild, I’ll just hold Daryl responsible for any outstanding debt—”

“Deal!” John shot back.

“Whoa! Don’t I get a say in this?” Daryl protested.

“Both of you hush! I ain’t done yet!” The elder abyssal scoured the two young men with a steely gaze. “Didn’t your mothers teach you any manners?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, boss.”

“As I was saying, I’ll hold Daryl responsible for any outstanding debt, but to keep it honest, he’ll have final say on what you can use. On top of that, anything you want to buy or sell goes through the guild with any profits going to pay off what you owe. If that’s paid up, the guild takes a twenty percent cut of net revenue.”

“He could just deny me access to any materials.”

“He could. I don’t imagine you’d stick around very long if he did.” Rooster extended an open hand. “So what do you say, we have a deal?”

”What happens if I refuse?”

“We go our separate ways.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, we could point you in the direction of a few other hospitable guilds, and we wouldn’t tolerate any further trespassing in case you were thinking about lifting some more scrap in the future. Other than that, that’s it.”

‘So, I either trust them or bumble blindly through the Abyss.’

John sighed and took the elder Abyssal’s hand. “Deal.”