All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG

Book 5: New dragon riders?

Cressida and Horatio arrived in the early evening, having received the map Arthur sent to show them the rooms, just as the Purple Commons finished the stew.

The little dragons were almost pathetically grateful for the meal. Though none of them were overly skinny, it was obvious they were used to the short end of the stick.

They flew off, and Arthur turned to welcome his friends home... only to find them both so tired they were practically wavering on their feet where they stood.

"Are you okay?" His first thought was of the blood price. What if paying it had been a condition of them joining the wing?

But Cressida graced him with a wan smile. "Our wing captain wouldn't let us come back until it was full on night and all the yellow dragons were sapped of mana."

"He'd still have us out there if me or Sams had any light left to give," Horatio grumbled. "Say a lot about Blood Moon--and I have--but the man really hates scourglings. It's a little inspiring."

Arthur hesitated. They needed to know about what he had discovered today, but by the way they looked... they might fall asleep while he was explaining the blood price.

"Fine. Get to bed. There are two more caves just down this hallway, but first--" he pulled out a few Uncommon shards "take these and keep them with you."

"Arthur, you don't need to pay me. I'm already your friend," Horatio said.

Something in his grim expression must have told Horatio he wasn't joking. But it was a mark of how tired he was that he didn't pursue the question. He just nodded, tucked the shards in a pocket, and stumbled to the hallway which led to the next cave only.

Cressida gave him a wan smile. "We're supposed to attend training first thing in the morning."

"You can use my bed if you want," he said. She honestly looked like she was ready to fall over and he didn't want to walk down the hallway later and find her asleep propped up against the wall.

"With that cooking?" She wrinkled her nose at the boiling broth just outside for tomorrow’s breakfast -- Arthur had added a bit of organ meat at the end and it was pungent. Then she softened her joke by coming over to kiss him on the cheek before she, too, stumbled off to find her own rooms.

Despite the day he'd had, Arthur found he was grinning.

****

The first thing Arthur did the next morning was to make more food for the purples. He added the blood from the butchered animals as well as a good deal of oats he had in store from his Personal Space to the ever-boiling pot. Soon, it was thickening up nicely... though the smell was rather revolting to human sensibilities.

Curious Purples, including a few more Commons he had not seen last night, came to buzz around his ledge. They chirped and dived at one another for space and watched Arthur's every move.

This was good. He wanted to encourage them to drop by, and, more importantly, wanted to ensure they were well fed and fit for duty. The only issue was that they made quite the mess. Last night, most had plucked out cooked meat from the stew pot, leaving the broth behind. Today, he had banked the fire and as soon as the oat-blood-broth slurry was cool enough, they dipped claws in and ate by the handful.

There wasn't enough room at the rim of the giant stew pot for all of them, and that resulted in much shoving, angrily chittering, and crazy acrobatics as dragons who could buzz, hover in place, and fly vertically up, down, and backwards, all dipped and jostled for a handful of slurry before being pushed away by their neighbors.

"We need bowls," Arthur said with a sigh. "Lots and lots of bowls."

He turned to Brixaby, who, of course, had eaten first before he let anybody approach the stew pot.

"Why bother with bowls?" Brixaby asked, squinting at him. He'd obviously heard Arthur mumbling to himself. "Wouldn't it be much more prudent to search out my card?"

Arthur gave him a knowing look. "Tell me you haven't used Call of the Heart on it today."

His dragon grumbled and looked away.

"What did it tell you?" Arthur pressed.

"It shows a different location each time," Brixaby replied, annoyed. "It does not make any sense."

"I looked this morning, too," Arthur said. “And I got two cards as well. Something is very odd here."

"Truly, this card must be very powerful," Brixaby said. "All the more reason we should hunt it down."

"How?" Arthur asked bluntly. "You know I want you to have that card. I’ll give extra edge against whatever Chester is doing here, but I don't have a good idea of how to locate it. Brix, it's like it's giving us intentionally false leads."

"I don't see how," Brixaby snarled, his claws scraping the ledge of the stone ledge in frustration. "Call of the Heart is a Legendary-rank seeker card. This should not be possible."

"And we're searching it out with a card of equal rank," Arthur said. "Plus, it's another card in your set. Maybe Call of the Heart has met its match." He sighed and started to run a hand through his hair. Then he made a face as he realized there was a little bit of blood and some oats stuck to his fingers. Hastily, he rubbed his hands on the thigh of his pants.

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"Look, if we were searching out a Rare card, I don't think we'd have this problem."

"I still wish to try," Brixaby said stubbornly.

"That's not a problem. Just get me down to the quartermaster for those bowls, and if I have any time afterward, I'll search with you."

Brixaby was agreeable to this—or at least, he could not think of a better solution.

For once, there wasn't a specific skill that could help them out. Arthur suspected they would have to come at this problem another way. Though, he had no idea what that was. He couldn't blame Brixaby for wanting to try brute forcing the solution first. If it worked, then he would be that much closer to completing his set.

Arthur glanced out toward the crater bowl and beyond that, the surrounding town.

The night before, the sounds of drinking and gallivanting from the shops had been so loud that it had echoed faintly all the way up to their room, twenty levels up.

With the amount of jolly making going on, Arthur expected that the hive complex would be quiet in the morning as people slept off their partying. He was wrong.

When Brixaby flew him down, he saw people were swarming all over the goods that had been evacuated from the eruption. In the light of the new day, the goods were piled up in mounds that looked like unstable mountains. Arthur didn't see a rhyme or reason to it. Even the rescued animals had been placed in the same loose round pen. Chickens, goats, and sheep stood among horses. There were even a couple of bewildered looking oxen.

The Purples were responsible for most of the gathered goods, and it seemed no one had instructed them on how to organize.

After he dismounted and Brixaby flew off, Arthur walked up to the workers who were busy sorting through the goods. None were riders. Arthur stretched his senses using his Master of Cards and got the vague impression of several Common and Uncommon cards. Not a Rare among them.

Then his attention was caught by raised voices, and he glanced over to see two men arguing. One was dressed in fancy clothing. The other seemed to be a hive worker.

"These are my supplies," said the fancier dressed man. He looked rather young, in his mid-20s, but was unfortunately already losing his hair, leaving a brown ring around his crown. The exposed skin on the top of his head was flushed red with anger.

The man facing him, holding a clipboard, scoffed and then looked deliberately over his shoulder at a sloppy pile of goods. "I don't see your name on any of it."

"I’m a traveling merchant and these were supplies from my caravan—"

"A caravan which, by the sound of it, was foolish enough to be around during an active eruption."

"It happened too fast, there was no warning—"

“And you were lucky to be rescued by our dragons," the man with clipboard said with finality. Then he continued in a falsely reasonable tone that sent Arthur's teeth on edge. "Now, it's clear that some of these are new goods—and perhaps I could see them once belonging to a merchant—but as you can see, in the haste and emergency, it was all mixed up with the rest of the evacuated supplies. Not that it matters. By crown law all of these items now belong to the hive."

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"But—but—" the merchant sputtered.

The clipboard man held up a hand. "You are able to buy it back. I’ll even make it at a reasonable price."

"But this is my life savings!" the man protested, though there was a thread of desperation in his voice. He must have realized that by law, he had no leg to stand on.

This was too much. Arthur walked up to them. "I couldn't help but overhear," he said, throwing a smile in apology to the man with the clipboard. "I'm curious. How much to purchase it all back?"

"Back? We can't even confirm that this man was the owner in the first place."

The merchant started to swell up in indignation, but Arthur cut across him. "I misspoke." He gestured to the pile of goods. Now that he was closer, he saw much of it was new clothing mixed up with pieces of furniture—whole and broken—along with farm equipment in various states of repair. There were other odds and ends like leather goods, twine, and what looked like dirty horse harnessing. It really was a mess. He would have to speak to his Purples about that later. "How much to pick through this pile for the new items?"

The man threw a lazy look over his shoulder. "Three Uncommons."

"Uncommon cards?" the merchant choked out.

"Of course, cards. Blood price is now one Uncommon shard per day. That adds up quick."

"But these are my goods," the merchant insisted. "My life savings—my entire family's business going back generations—"

"And you can be thankful that your family's line didn't stop here. You ought to be praising the hive, not whining about trinkets that you would have never been able to take with you if you had died."

It seemed that they had completely forgotten about Arthur. He cleared his throat and looked at the clipboard man. "Are you in charge here?"

"Yeah. I'm the quartermaster." He eyed Arthur with a hint of disfavor. "And you are?"

Arthur nodded once, brisk and slightly remote. "I'm Ernest of Wing Purple."

That certainly got the man's attention. He immediately straightened. Word must have gotten around about Arthur.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

Arthur was wondering that himself. He felt sorry for the merchant, but at the same time, he recognized he could not buy back the man's goods for him. Well, technically he could, but he didn't want to flash his wealth around. Plus, he had to make sure that his friends and wing members weren't sucked dry by the blood price.

He gestured to the mound of supplies. "I was wondering how much of this was brought in by my Purples."

The man was no fool and guessed what Arthur was getting at immediately. "I can assure you, wing captain, your dragons were fairly compensated."

"Oh, really?" Arthur drawled. "At the same rate as dragons and their riders are from other wings?"

The man's eyes shifted slightly, a very small tell that Arthur's Acting skill picked up on. He was being deceptive. "Yes, of course."

"Then you won't mind me taking a look at your records," Arthur said, with a knife-edged smile. "You do keep track of such things, I'm sure, being the quartermaster." Arthur looked down at the man's clipboard meaningfully.

The quartermaster stuttered, "W-well, most of the time they don't report in. They just drop and go back out again. You know how Purples are. They're stupid—" He stopped as Arthur gave him a warning look, swallowed, and immediately changed tactics. "Uh, they're mostly riderless, which means they don't have to pay the blood price, do they? No offense meant, sir, but the Purples are barely an organized wing at all."

"I intend to change that," Arthur said briskly. "And it sounds like yesterday, my dragons were not fairly compensated. That will change immediately as well."

The man spluttered, "Sir! You can't just—I can't—just look at all this!" He gestured to the large pile behind him. One of several.

Arthur cut him off with a gesture. "I'm not unreasonable, quartermaster. I understand you can't unscramble this egg."

The man sighed in relief. And Arthur wasn't entirely lying. He did understand both the quartermaster's predicament and also why the smarter Purples, like Candy Floss, had figured out the trick of going after other dragon's kills right before they were harvested instead of bringing supplies in.

Living riderless, on the edge of hive society, while being looked down on and not cared for, they were likely underpaid... or not paid at all.

Arthur suspected that many snacked on doomed farm animals during eruptions and who knew what else to survive. They were dragons.

Now those dragons were under his care. He was already making sure they had plenty of eat, and now they would be properly paid for their work.

Arthur glanced at the merchant who had wisely stood back a few paces to watch this drama play out. Catching his eye, Arthur winked and then nodded his chin slightly back at the quartermaster.

"I will overlook the infractions and the deliberate shorting of my wing if this merchant is repaid his goods."

"Sir, the man has no receipts—” he protested, but now his voice was weak as if he already knew he had lost the argument.

“I think it will be obvious what is new and what has come from a farm," Arthur said.

The merchant nodded. "I will run everything by you, dragon rider."

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin leather bag that was covered in runes. Arthur recognized some of those runes from the net that Laird had used to take him to Mesa Free Hive. "Is that an enchanted storage space?"

"It is, sir," the merchant said briskly and walked past the quartermaster to boldly pluck out a shirt that was folded and sitting on a wooden crate. From the crisp folds, it was clear it had been stored until very recently. He placed it in the bag, and it disappeared.

Then he picked out a roll of bright blue thread, so new that the end was tucked in on itself. It was obvious it was not used before. Arthur watched him carefully. He had no way of telling if the man was taking things that were truly his own, but he didn't catch him trying to slip past objects that obviously had been well used or were out of the ordinary.

Finally, the man sighed and stepped back. The pile was massive, but most of it was junk.

"That's all I see."

It wasn't as much as Arthur had feared. The quartermaster seemed grimly pleased, too, but made no bones about professionally shooing them away so he could get on with his sorting.

As they walked off, the merchant looked at Arthur and said a short, "Thank you."

"Well, I was just setting things right," Arthur said, "and making sure that my own people were not cheated again."

The man sighed. "Yes, and I don't want to seem ungrateful..." He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

"What is it?" Arthur asked.

Again, he sighed, and this time, he looked defeated. "You've just done me a great favor, but at the end of the day, my horses are gone. No, they weren't brought here. I checked," he added before Arthur could ask. "And the cart I used to transport my goods across the kingdom was destroyed. It was in my family for three generations, built by my grandfather's hands. I'm the last of my line. These supplies," he patted the bag, which, to the eye, still looked empty, "may keep me from starving for now, but it will be years until I recover, if I do at all."

Arthur was sympathetic, but there wasn't much further he could do. They fell silent for a few moments, and then the merchant shook his head.

"Ernest, was it? My name is Thackeray, and I do really appreciate your help back there."

"It’s okay, I understand your position," Arthur said, "Unfortunately, everyone is made to recover what they can after an eruption," Arthur said. "Assuming they survive. It's not fair."

"I'm not complaining," Thackeray said again, "If not for you, I wouldn't have anything. But... it is hard for the little people who are caught in the jaws of power."

Arthur opened his mouth to reply. Before he could, there was a nearby shout. "Sir! Sir, dragon rider!"

Arthur glanced over. To his surprise, he recognized Bad Luck Larry who he had spoken to in the evacuation tent. He and an older woman of early middle age jogged up to him. Their expressions were faintly anxious.

"Yes?" Arthur said, wondering if there was an emergency.

"I want to take you up on your offer," Larry said, point blank. "About being a dragon rider—if the offer’s still there, ‘course. I should have said so yesterday, but with all that had happened, I had to think about it."

"Me too," the woman said eagerly.

He glanced closer at her. "I don't remember speaking to you." He rarely forgot a face.

"My name is Amanda. I was likely off tending to my girls, but what you said has gotten around. I want a better life for them. And me too, when it comes to that," she said, lifting her chin. "Will that be a problem?"

"No, I suppose it won't be," Arthur said. Though he had to admit he didn't know many other dragon riders who had children. Then he caught the rest of what she said. "Wait, you said you had other offers?"

"Yeah," Larry scowled. "After the eruption was all said and done, other wing captains came up and demanded we join them. None were so polite as you. You just suggested, all nice like. Acted like we had a choice."

“We do have a choice, Larry,” Amanda said quietly. “And it’s better than the farm.”

That was interesting. Had Chester suggested the other wing captains do as he did, or was he just unaware that others recruited from evacuees? Arthur suspected it was the latter. The Legendary-ranked leaders were just unaware of what happened on the ground floor.

Thackeray broke in. "I'm surprised that the hive will allow normal folk to become dragon riders. Aren't dragons a valuable resource?"

"I happen to have some openings in my wing," Arthur said mildly. He was a little surprised that Thackeray was still hanging around. Was he interested as well? Looking for a new path now that his life as a merchant had been upended?

That was interesting, but Arthur had learned a few things since yesterday. He had to know anyone interested was making an informed decision. He glanced at Larry and Amanda. "Has anyone explained to you about the blood price?"

"Yes," Amanda said bluntly. “Quite the system you have going for you.”

Larry nodded. “It's kind of a tax where they take it out of your hide if you can't pay, right?"

"Something like that," Arthur said.

"Well, no offense to you, sir, but that's why a lot of other evacuees went to different wings. They want dragons who can kill scourgelings so they can easily pay their cost."

Arthur repressed a wince. That made sense, and he couldn’t really blame them. "It may not be that easy, even if you do have a dragon with combat potential." Tentatively, he reached out with his senses and found that Larry and Amanda had Common cards. So did Thackery.

Larry nodded. "It sounds like a grim life, you dragon riders lead. But," he glanced at Amanda, "being a farm worker in these times is even grimmer."

That struck a nerve within Arthur. "It's not supposed to be that way.”

"That's interesting," Thackeray tilted his head. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I grew up in another hive and I've seen how things are done there," Arthur said. "And yes, eruptions are dangerous, and there certainly are incentives for bringing back shards. But doing your job shouldn't be based out of fear. When you make extra, you should be giving yourself and your dragon a little extra luxury. If you go out, do your duty, and don't come back with any shards, you should still have basic services. The Purples act as rescuers and they get rewards. I'm not saying that Commons are treated just as well as Uncommons, but they still have dignity."

Again, Larry and Amanda exchanged a look.

Amanda sighed. "Yeah, I see what you mean. He's much nicer than the other ones."

Ernest just stepped in and helped me out," Thackeray said. "No questions asked, and no blood price, either. Yes, I've heard about the blood price here," he said, catching Arthur's eye.

Arthur thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Well, Larry, Amanda, if you're interested in joining my wing, why don't you follow me? You should know that it's not me who has to approve you. It's the dragons.”

Then he looked directly at Thackeray. There was a glimmer of an idea floating in the back of his mind, but a lot of things would have to fall into place first. He refused to get excited about it unless or until things fell into place.

"Do you want to come along?" he asked, diffidently.

"I think I would," Thackeray said. “If any dragon will have me.”

That, too, remained to be seen. He could easily imagine a Purple going for someone who had a card suited for manual labor. But what could a merchant offer?

One thing at a time, he told himself.

"Excellent,” Arthur said aloud, “But you still must earn a spot in my wing. Here's what I'd like you to do..."