The Tipsy Mule wasn’t the kind of establishment Jadis would ever have considered entering in her previous life back on Earth. The poorly lit interior was just as rough and grimy as the mercenaries patronizing it were. The smell of sour beer pervaded the large open room, with undertones of mud and blood occasionally coming through. The tables and chairs looked like they’d been broken and mended and broken again over the course of years, a similarity they shared with the mutton-chopped barkeeper’s nose.
Jadis ducked in through the doorway with the bold confidence her experiences on Oros had given her. She wasn’t a scrawny college student anymore. She was a three-bodied giant with the strength to lift boulders like basketballs. A few rough-looking men drinking in a dank bar in the middle of the day weren’t the kind of potential threats she had to be concerned about anymore. She faced literal demons on a daily basis.
All that being said, one thing Aila had pointed out to her was that there was no way to know an individual’s class level without an item made with the detect enchantment or a skill that did the same thing. Any of the gruff men could be hugely higher in level than her or Aila and thus a bigger threat than they looked. Then again, she could be any level to them, too, unless they had a way to check her. That was one reason level anonymity was generally encouraged in the Empire. Less fights were started when people couldn’t know for sure just how strong the person they were squaring up against was.
The patrons of the Tipsy Mule stared at Jadis as she entered the building, all conversations cut off. They continued to stare, even after Aila entered and the four of them approached the bar. The quiet intensity was starting to creep her out a little, but at least the barkeeper looked relatively unfazed. He still had a mug in hand, cleaning it with a wet rag. The stereotypical action of the barman was strangely amusing, but Jadis supposed it made sense. Stereotypes existed for a reason and bars needed clean mugs, after all.
Jadis ran her eyes over the crowd as they crossed the room. While there were about a dozen different men in the bar that all looked like the typical mercenary type, some of them even wearing armor and sporting weapons strapped to belts, none of them were either therions or female. Kerr was disappointingly not around.
Greeting the barkeeper with a nod, Dys opened up with a question.
“Have you seen a therion woman around here? About this tall, big horns? Goes by the name Kerr?” Dys held her hand up against Aila, demonstrating Kerr’s height and drawing a bemused glance from the redhead.
The barkeeper grunted and turned his head to the side, looking down the bar to where it terminated in a ninety-degree angle a few feet before hitting the wall. At first, Jadis didn’t see what the silent man was staring at, but then Aila let out a cough of a laugh and motioned Jadis’ eyes lower.
A pair of boots were sticking out from behind the side of the bar. The boots had a certain familiarity to them, too.
Glancing at the barkeeper for confirmation, he simply nodded once, hands still occupied with the mug and rag. Looking at Aila, she gave no indication one way or the other about what Jadis should do next. So, Dys stepped closer and looked down to see the shaggy-haired therion sleeping on the floor, a barstool wrapped in her arms like a body pillow.
Once more glancing around and seeing no other options, Dys leaned on the bar with one hand and quietly called out to the sleeping mercenary.
“Hey, Kerr. You alive down there?”
No response came. Nor did any response come when she tried a few more times, getting a little louder with each attempt.
Getting nowhere fast, Jadis decided on a more direct approach. Pulling out a small silver acorn coin, Syd put it on the counter and wordlessly pointed at the barkeeper’s wet, stained cleaning rag. The man paused, shrugged, then tossed her the rag before taking the coin. A second later, he had a new dirty rag in hand, pulled from somewhere Jadis hadn’t been quick enough to catch, cleaning the same mug again.
Pinched between two fingers, Syd passed her purchase to Dys who then promptly dropped the damp cloth directly on top of the passed out therion’s face with a wet splat.
Letting out a rather unladylike snort, Kerr sat up, barstool still clutched to her chest as she tossed the rag off with her other hand. A growl that only passed the lips of the severely hungover emanated from her as she looked blearily around.
“What’s the big fucking idea?” she grumbled with an obviously dry throat.
Dys waved one hand, catching her attention, an act she didn’t think she’d ever need to do ever since she realized just how eye-catching she was to the average imperial citizen.
“Hey. Bad time for that drink?”
The scowl on Kerr’s face lessened, then disappeared completely as the fact of who was talking to her pierced the fog of sleep and any alcohol still in her system.
“Well hey there big stuff,” she smiled wolfishly. “I was kind of hoping you’d find me for the party last night, but I’m good for a morning round.”
“It’s noon,” Dys corrected.
“Whatever,” Kerr dismissed.
Using the stool to leverage herself back to her feet, she held the object for a moment longer, looking a little confused, then shrugged and passed it to the barkeeper who took it without hesitation. Still wearing her armor but sans bow and quiver, the groggy archer brushed past Dys and made her way to the largest table in the bar that was set off to one side. Unfortunately, it was already occupied by three men.
“Move, porca puttana. I want this table,” she said to the man sitting closest to her.
The big, bearded, heavily muscled human man looked like he’d fit right in with just about any biker gang back on Earth in Jadis’ estimation. His bare arms were covered in tattoos and the thick scar running across his brow spoke to a life of violence. He got up and revealed that he stood just as tall as the shaggy therion, minus the horns, but outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds, probably more. As he turned to look the feral-eyed archer in the face, going toe-to-toe with her, Jadis was briefly worried that she was about to witness an honest-to-goodness barfight.
“All yours, ma’am,” the man rumbled out subserviently with a small bow of his head.
With raised eyebrows, Jadis watched the big man and his two fellow roughnecks meekly leave their table and take up seats at one as far away in the open room as they could.
Kerr flopped gracelessly into one of the chairs, letting out a small huff. She motioned for the three watching giants to take seats with a lazy wave of her hand, then flashed a hand signal Jadis didn’t recognize to the silent barkeeper who nodded once, then started pouring mugs of ale from a tap. As she relaxed, the rest of the bar relaxed as well, the other patrons finally relenting in their constant vigilance as they turned back to their own quiet conversations.
The chairs were, like everywhere else, unsuitable for Jadis’ use so she simply moved them aside as her three selves took seats on the floor around the table, drawing an amused snort from the lounging therion. Aila took her own seat at the table, prompting a furrowed glance from Kerr as she acknowledged the human for the first time.
“And who in Samleos’ ballsack are you?”
“Charming. My name is Aila,” she replied with a studiously deadpan expression.
“We’re partners,” Jay added clarification, putting her hand on the floor as she leaned back, then immediately regretting the move. The stone floor of the tavern wasn’t cleaned as frequently as her own cozy inn.
The information drew no more comment from Kerr, though she did toss the redhead another appraising look.
“Impressive how you got those guys to just fuck off like that with no trouble,” Dys spoke up. “They friends of yours?”
“Nope,” Kerr immediately denied. “Don’t know ‘em, don’t care. They’re just regular enough here to know to get out of my way.”
“What, win a lot of fights in here?” Syd asked with a grin.
“Yeah, but that’s not why. They know I own this place, so I’d toss them out on their flat ears if they talked back.”
The revelation surprised Jadis. She hadn’t expected the brusque, cavalier woman to be any kind of business owner.
“You run a bar? Really?” Dys asked incredulously.
“What are you trying to say? You don’t think I could run a bar?” Kerr raised her lip in a half-snarl, bearing sharp teeth at Dys.
“You don’t look the type, no,” Dys answered honestly. “Can’t imagine you waiting on a customer with that attitude.”
Kerr laughed, her snarl turning into a lazy smile as she relaxed back in her chair. A moment later the barkeep came out from behind the counter and placed filled wooden mugs down in front of the five women. Kerr took up her ale and motioned towards the retreating man.
“You’re right. I’d suck at that. S’why I said I own the place, not that I run it. Hans over there does all the hard work, I’m just the mostly absent investor.” She took a pull of the amber liquid and let out a sigh of satisfaction. “Take some advice from an experienced mercenary. Invest your coin. Can’t kill monsters and demons forever and its good to have a fallback plan if and when bounties dry up.”
Kerr made fair points. Jadis hadn’t thought that far ahead, not from a financial standpoint. So far, she’d been spending all the money she made as quickly as she got it, constantly upgrading her equipment and inventory. Setting some coin aside for investments that could be used for future downtime and maybe even retirement was an obvious move that she just hadn’t even considered.
“Thanks for the advice,” Jadis said with all three voices at once, causing Kerr to startle and cough up some ale.
“Cazzo! Don’t fucking do that, assholes!” she exclaimed, wiping some of the spilled alcohol from her lips and chin. “Which one of you is the one I was talking to yesterday? And which one pulled the bramble off with her bare hands like a fucking beast?”
Dys raised her hand at the first question while Syd raised her hand at the second. Realizing that she hadn’t actually introduced her selves to Kerr, she rectified the situation and named her three personas while taking sips of her own mugs of ale. To her surprise, the quality of the foamy alcohol was actually quite good, prompting her to take deeper gulps that drained the undersized-for-her mugs quickly.
“Huh. Alright, well, no way I’m keeping those names straight. You three are way too identical. Therion littermates are usually pretty close in looks, but damn you three are eerily alike in looks and movement,” Kerr commented over the lip of her own mug. “You three have got to be doing that on purpose.”
“You have no idea,” Aila murmured under her breath as she took her own sip.
“So, are you an independent mercenary too?” Jay asked, steering the conversation away from the peculiarities of her apparent triplet nature before Kerr could think too hard about it.
If Kerr noticed or cared about the obvious topic change, she made no sign.
“Yeah, of course. Wouldn’t catch me dead in one of those trumped-up pseudo militaries. Way too restrictive,” she said while making a face. “Who wants some stuck-up yagovo telling you what to do, what to eat, where to shit, and everything else for fucking years. Better to be your own boss. Set your own rules, your own hours, be your own woman, am I right?”
Kerr punctuated the question with her drink raised in a mock toast. Playing along, Jadis reached all three of her arms across the table to clunk her wooden cups against the therion’s.
“Fuck yeah,” Jadis said in unison again, purposefully goading Kerr, a fact that the therion noticed and grinned wickedly in response.
Aila didn’t join in the toast, but a small, amused smile played across her lips as she watched. With careful words, she added her own commentary.
“There are actual benefits to signing up to work in a mercenary company, you know. Stability, training, equipment and other resources to name a few reasons. It’s not just endless orders, either.”
Kerr made a farting noise with her lips at Aila in response.
“No surprises there. I pegged you as one of those types from the start,” she said, leaning towards Aila and shaking her horned head. “I bet you’re a mage, too, aren’t you? Got a wizard’s staff stuck up your butt, I bet. Keeping your back straight.”
Aila’s posture stiffened even more at the accusation, forcing Jadis to stifle her laughter.
“No sticks up there, I assure you,” Syd defended her friend. “I’d know, checked last night.”
The questionable defense drew a sly grin from Kerr and a blush from Aila.
“Oh really?” Kerr purred, her catlike eyes roving over Aila indecently. “How exactly did you—”
“No, that’s quite enough of that,” Aila immediately cut the conversation short as she gave Syd a glare that promised punishment at a later date.
Jadis took the silent rebuke without complaint. She liked to tease her companion, but she wouldn’t cross any lines she wasn’t comfortable with. Kerr looked like she was going to press the issue, though, so Jadis grabbed the therion’s attention by asking for info about the caravan and how it had come to be ambushed by demons.
The horned and possibly horny mercenary took the subject change with some reluctance, but after a little prompting, she got into the spirit of storytelling and soon enough was spilling all the details.
The caravan had come from a large settlement to the northeast of Felsen called Brightstone. It was one of the few populated towns in Weigrun that had an operational mine. Shipments of eleria were still a regular export from the town so caravans went to and from Brightstone regularly. As an independent mercenary, Kerr frequently signed up as a guard for the caravans that needed extra muscle.
“I’m CLR fifty-four,” she confided as she told her story. “So I can charge a little extra than the standard guards, but I’m not as expensive as mercs sixty and up.”
“Not too far away from your tertiary class, though,” Aila acknowledged. “You’ll be able to charge a premium soon enough.”
“Damn right,” Kerr grinned wolfishly.
Jadis didn’t ask for clarification, not seeing any reason to bring attention to her own ignorance if it wasn’t necessary. She was confident in the answer based off of context clues anyway. It seemed the question as to what unlocked a person’s tertiary class was a combined level rating of sixty.
She didn’t think level sixty was all that huge of an accomplishment considering how fast she had gone from a CLR of one to thirty-seven, but then again, she had to admit her experience was wildly different from what the average person on Oros had. Level sixty probably took years, if not decades for some people to reach, especially if they weren’t fighting demons that provided bonus experience on a near daily basis like she was.
The line of thought did make her wonder how most other people got their levels when they weren’t fighting. Clearly, they had to get experience from doing work that was related to their class. That was how Sabina was getting her experience, from what Jadis understood. Did that mean Jadis was getting experience whenever she was performing her perverted rituals? Could she, theoretically, fuck her way to a higher level?
The thought of how she could potentially level via sustained lewdness was so distracting that Jadis nearly missed it when Kerr and Aila’s conversation, which had continued as she was lost in thought, turned back her way.
“So, what do you think?” Kerr asked, eyeing Syd expectantly.
Blinking, she looked at Aila who was also looking at her patiently, one eyebrow raised in question.
“Sorry, run that by me again? I got distracted thinking about sex.”
Kerr burst out in a fit of laughter while Aila managed to look both resigned and embarrassed. Jay and Dys added to the show by giving their “sister” disappointed looks and tutting as though they weren’t also as equally clueless to the question.
“Fucking donkey cocks,” Kerr snorted out a unique explicative. She got control of her laughter a few moments later and gave Syd a lascivious look. “We can talk about whatever you were fantasizing later. How do you three,” and with that word she motioned towards Jay and Dys as well, “feel about teaming up for a job? Could use some major brawn paired with at least some brains for this. I know you’ve got the brawn and the redhead here qualifies for the brains part, so if you four are a packaged deal, I’m making you an offer.”
520