Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe spent a few hours wandering through the city, taking in the beauty of it all. Wooden statues erected in the streets, depicting what seemed to Zoe to be normal people sitting in chairs doing mundane tasks. Whittling away at a piece of wood left raw from the carved statues, or playing some soccer looking sport with a small ball.

The buildings were all gorgeous, wherever Zoe walked. Works of art, a display of the carpenter’s mastery of their craft. Everybody she walked past seemed friendly and welcoming, with only the faintest hint of anxiety resting below their serenity.

Zoe wandered down south towards the gate she first approached the city by and found The Chipped Stool that Horn had mentioned the previous night. Hanging outside was a wooden sign in the shape of a stool with one leg missing a chunk, splinters almost seeming to fall out of the sign itself.

Inside was a well lit restaurant. Half a dozen tables, each with four wooden stools with a missing leg that seemed to balance just fine on three. A long bar with a door leading to the kitchen behind, and a young woman behind it chatting with several of the patrons who sat at the bar.

To her left was a set of stairs that led upstairs, and on the wall to her right was a job board. Zoe smiled as she saw it, remembering when she made her living doing odd jobs around Flester. She walked up to the board and looked through some of the jobs.

Many were similar to what she had remembered from before — manual labour for an event somebody was having, some minor pest control. The system used was different to Flester, though. Rather than blue and red pins, all of the papers were hung using pins with dark, glossy wooden pins and the jobs themselves just stated directly if they were one time or repeat jobs. They still used the same system of coloured shapes for payment, however.

One job stood out to Zoe, an escort for somebody’s child to go exploring outside Darpi’s walls. It didn’t pay very well — marked as a bronze square, but Zoe thought it might be fun to meet them and wander around the forest for a bit. She ripped the paper off the wall and brought it up to the bar.

“Hello, can I help you?" The young woman asked.

“Yeah, how much for a room here?” Zoe asked.

“We have two different options. Forty copper a night for a basic room, or one silver star a week for the premium room. Which would you like?” The woman asked.

“I guess I’ll take the premium room then. You only do week by week though? I’m not sure how long I’ll be around, honestly.” Zoe asked.

“Yes, I’m sorry we only do increments of one week for the premium room.” The woman answered.

Zoe summoned a silver star and handed it to the woman. “I’ll take the premium room then. Thanks.”

The woman took Zoe’s coin and pocketed it, pulling out a fist sized key carved from a block of wood from below the counter. “Here you are, you get room two on the third floor. The room comes with one meal a day, either here or delivered to your room.”

Zoe took the key and stuffed it in her pocket. Her storage item was far too full of loot from the Kliggig dungeon to fit another key. “Thanks.” She pushed the job she grabbed from the board across the bar. “Do you know where this is? I’ve never been here so I have no idea where Jiggis is.”

The woman looked at the sheet of paper before she handed it back to Zoe. “This should be just a few streets away. Take a right when you leave, then after you pass The Warped Plank take a left down the alley. Should take you right to Jiggis, but I don’t know where this person is sorry. You’ll have to ask around down there.”

Zoe nodded and took the job back. “Alright, thanks a bunch. Do you know if there’s a time limit on this job?"

“There shouldn’t be, but if you don’t plan to finish it today please put it back so somebody else can take it if they want to.” The woman answered.

“Right. That makes sense. Okay, thanks a bunch.” Zoe said and made her way to the stairs which took her up to the second floor. The hallway turned right and continued across the edge of the inn with windows looking out at the building next door. At the end of the hallway were more stairs that led up to the third floor which was an immediate tone shift.

The dark wood that made up the building was replaced with a light wood, the hallway looked bright and open. Most of the windows were replaced with artwork showing bright green forests, with little animals frolicking through the grass. Zoe walked up to the second door with a big ‘2’ embossed on the front of it in gold and pressed the key into the large hole in the wall next to the door.

A sharp clicking sound rang out from the wall and the door released, swinging away from the doorway just a little. Zoe pushed it open and walked in. The room was beautiful, carved wooden pillars holding up the ceiling that itself had a peaceful carving of a wolf. The walls were covered in soft coloured murals. Trees that almost seemed to flow in the breeze as Zoe walked by them and a large wolf resting in the forest that seemed to breath as its body rose and fell.

The bed was fancy, with wooden posts on the corners holding up a white fabric that draped over the sides. It was comfortable and soft, though nothing like Oaniga’s beds. Zoe clicked her tongue, the luxury of Oaniga had ruined her. Every time she found herself in a new place, it reared its beautiful, comfortable head as a standard to be compared against.

And that wasn’t fair. Darpi wasn’t Korna, The Chipped Stool wasn’t Oaniga. They weren’t trying to be, either. They fit in a different niche, and that was okay. To one wall was a dresser made of some deep red, knotted wood next to a door that lead to a simple bathroom with a toilet and a wooden bathtub.

Zoe sat down on the bed and brought up her stat sheet. Up to one forty five, with another hundred twenty five stat points that she pushed into Endurance to get it to a nice clean three hundred. She pushed the system to give her some class options, and a swarm of system messages appeared in her vision.

She smiled and dismissed them. Her skills were still pitifully low, not even reaching what their max would be if she didn’t have Patient Decider. Zoe wondered how Patient Decider’s limit break worked with class options. She’d never seen any classes that required her to have all of her skills in a specific class maxed, but was that because no class required such an achievement, or because her skills never reached their maximum?

Zoe thought back to every book she’d read, and couldn’t remember reading about any classes that required it off the top of her head. But did that mean that none ever would, or that she’d never stumbled onto one? And if she did, would she still be able to get it?

It didn’t really matter, Patient Decider was well worth having even if it did come with such a minor downside. But it bothered her somewhat anyway. Maybe she could disable the feat and try one day? Zoe shook her head, unsure if she even could or what would happen if she did. Would she lose all of her stats that she gained from the feat? Would she lose all of the skill levels she had past her current cap? It wasn’t worth the risk, even if she could do it.

A pile of books appeared on the bed next to her as she removed a bag’s worth of her plunder from Kliggig dungeon to make space for her time in Darpi. Maybe before she left she’d try and find another storage item. Maybe the shield she got from clearing Moaning Point with Emma and Joe was a storage shield, Zoe thought as she chuckled to herself. One day she would see it appraised.

She got up and left the room, locking the door in place with the hefty key that slotted in to the wall next to her door and then put the key away in her storage bracelet. Zoe looked out the window and teleported to the bottom of the alleyway outside and walked out to the front of The Chipped Stool.

Zoe followed the directions down the street and through the narrow alley beside The Warped Plank — a lumber supply store from the look of the sign outside, and in a few minutes made it to what she thought should be Jiggis. The roads in Darpi weren’t enchanted like the ones in Korna and Flester were, and Zoe wasn’t sure how to tell which road was which. None of the intersections she’d seen so far had any road signs or other indicators Zoe noticed.

Maybe they used slightly different wood for the decorations, and the roads were named after different woods? Zoe had no idea, but somehow that didn’t seem too outlandish for what she’d seen from Darpi so far.

She looked at the page she was holding, but there didn’t seem to be much information about which building it would be. None that was useful to her, anyway. Igor on Jiggis didn’t mean much to Zoe when she didn’t know if that was a business name, person name or maybe an address?

Zoe walked into a nearby furniture store and wandered through the racks of chairs and cabinets until she found an older man sitting behind a counter.

“Hello, I’m looking for this person.” Zoe put the paper down on the counter. “Do you know where they are?”

The man took the paper and looked at it. “Igor.. Igor. Ah! Yes, he should be four doors down, on the other side.”

Zoe took the paper back and nodded. “Alright, thanks a bunch. Did you make all this furniture?"

He nodded his head. “Sure did. You interested?”

“Maybe, actually. Not right now but after I’m done this job I might come by again. How long are you open for?" Zoe asked.

“Mid afternoon? Can’t stay open as long as I used to with these old bones.” The man chortled.

“Oh okay, I might come by tomorrow then. Thanks a bunch.” Zoe said as she left and made her way down to Igor’s home.

The building was just as decorated as every other she’d seen. A two story wooden house with a light patio that had a small garden of herbs hanging from the railing just outside the front door. Zoe walked up to the patio and rapped the carved lion’s head knocker on the door a few times.

A man opened the door — dark green level fifty three worker to Zoe’s Identify. “Hello?" He asked.

“Are you Igor?” Zoe held up the job paper she had.

“Oh, excellent. I wasn’t expecting anybody so soon. We’re a bit busy right now, but if you would like to come in I can make you a coffee while you wait? Or you can come back later in the evening, if that’s better for you?” Igor asked.

“How long would I be waiting?" Zoe asked.

“Thirty minutes? Maybe forty. It’s Cass’ drawing time right now and she takes it very seriously.” Igor smiled.

“Cass is your daughter?" Zoe asked.

“Yes, she is. The knot of my trunk. One day she’s going to be a great artist, she says.” Igor laughed. “I believe her, too. She’s got a fire in her, you know?" Igor asked.

Zoe smiled. “Sure. I’ll come in for coffee then, I don’t mind waiting a bit.”

“Oh okay, lovely. Come in, come in.” Igor waved her in and led Zoe down the brief hallway to a lounge filled with wooden furniture and canvas paintings that piled up in the corners. “Just wait here, I’ll be right back with some coffee.”

Zoe sat down on a couch and watched Igor walk down the hallway to the kitchen in the neighbouring room. He boiled some water on a wood stove and slowly poured it over some coarse brown coffee grains that sat above another pot in a fine wooden mesh. The whole process took almost six minutes, and he poured the brown liquid into two white ceramic cups he pulled out of a cupboard then made his way back to Zoe.

“Here you are.” Igor handed Zoe one of the cups and sat down on a wooden rocking chair at the other end of a red woolen rug on the floor. “I don’t know if you like anything in your coffee, sorry.”

“This is fine, thank you though.” Zoe sipped on the coffee, and found it rather weak. She was never a big coffee drinker before anyway, but a nice cup of espresso was always her preference. This was more like coffee flavoured water, but it was drinkable.

“So have you done this before?” Igor asked.

“Escorted people through the forests like this?" Zoe asked.

Igor nodded.

Zoe smiled. “Not like this, no. I did escort people through Moaning Point for a few years though, but never something quite as simple as just a walk through the forest.”

“Moaning Point is ahhh… That’s a dungeon right? Near Flester’s ruins?" Igor asked.

Zoe nodded. “Yup. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit on that mountain.” She laughed.

“You look so young though. You start from a young age?” Igor asked.

“Something like that, yeah. So what’s the purpose of today? I’m just keeping you two safe while you’re out of town for a while?" Zoe asked.

“Yes please, Cass has been begging me for months to see the forest but I worry, and we don’t have the money to pay a guard the normal fee. I’d take her myself, but I’m not strong enough to keep her safe if something goes wrong.” Igor frowned.

Zoe nodded. “Alright, sounds like fun to me honestly. I haven’t just taken a walk through the forest for a while.”