A break was needed. The next day, Roy took them on a tour of the city, a quiet trip on the elevated tram with just Eryndra, Warrex, Lutrian, and the three kids. Above them, Orden could be seen gleefully riding on the glass roof of the train car.
As the city slid by, Roy hunched forward and looked at the three kids. "So, let's hear it. How did you guys end up here?"
Andri spoke first. "I come from a family of mages. Every few generations, someone is born with the Womb Tomb ability. It's seen as a curse. They… they escort you from the family lands and you are never to return." Her voice was quiet but steady. "Lady Zhanna found me. Challenged me to a fight. I was confused and… terrified, but it was the best thing that ever happened. I got to let out all the anger I'd built up. I couldn't even scratch her, but I felt… better."
"I don't know my past," Rava said, looking at his hands. "One day I just… woke up. I was a ten-year-old slave on a transport ship. When monsters attacked the outpost I worked in, I used my linking skill like it was second nature. I called out 'Administrator to the Three Hats' and linked to the slavers, splitting the attributes we have between us. It made them weaker, made me stronger enough to break my chains and run." He shrugged. "I don't know how I knew what to do. I just… did. Lady Zhanna was traveling back to Seranovia, she'd already found Andri by then, and she stumbled on me stealing from a town's food storage. She caught me, paid the town for everything, and took me along with her… kicking and screaming the whole way."
"Did your stat-linking ability fail with her?" Roy inquired.
Rava clarified, "It worked. I gained her incredible strength. Yet, no matter how hard I struck or how fast I ran, I couldn't escape, even though she never once retaliated."
Andri picked up the story. "She tried her best to help us, but her Guildmaster duties kept her busy. It was about three months later that Rava and I were in the market. That's when we saw him." She nodded toward Orin. "He was trying to buy a single loincloth from a vendor for one hundred gold coins. We stepped in and yelled at the store owner. Then we brought him back with us."
Orin's face lit up with the memory. "She was amazing! When I walked in, I was blown away by how nice Lady Zhanna was. The second kindest and second tallest person I've ever met!" he declared proudly. "Her office had pictures all over the walls of the adventurers she mentored over the years. Two pictures for each one. One as a kid, and another as an adult. Some of the frames were really old and weathered, you could tell she'd been doing it for a long, long time."
Roy felt a pang of curiosity. "What were you doing before Zhanna found you? And how did you have so much gold?"
Orin turned to face the window, a long silence stretching out. "I… was a baby when my dad found me. He was known as the world's greatest assassin, the Silent Giant. Sile L. Serruk."
"No way," Warrex breathed, his usual gruffness gone. "Back when I was still in the business, I unknowingly took the same job as him once."
Orin's face lit up with pride. "I bet you were surprised, huh!? Tallest of them all, my dad w… my…" His voice faltered, the light in his eyes dimming.
Warrex caught the shift and immediately picked up the thread. "When I completed the mission, I turned to leave the valley, and there he stood thirty feet from me. Taller than the Nightshatter is long. I've trained my whole life in silent skills, and my hearing is second to none. But I couldn't hear him, couldn't even feel him approach, even from that short distance away. Luckily, all he did was congratulate me and leave."
"That's my dad for sure! No one ever caught him sneaking up on them" Orin said, his pride returning. He turned back to the window, his gaze fixed on the distant outer wall of Otherrealm.
"Does he know you're out here?" Roy asked gently, despite knowing the answer he would receive. Lutrian covertly flicked him hard on the ear.
Orin merely shook his head. Another long silence stretched between them before he finally spoke. "No. He didn't return from the other continent. All that was brought back to me, by my older sister, the third tallest I know, who was on mission with him… was the tip of his dagger. Which is now my sword." His voice trailed off, a hollow laugh catching in his throat. "If I… I… I… WOW THAT IS ONE TALL SNAKE!"
The sight of Viperael was a shock that reset the entire conversation. Orin's finger was still pointed at the horizon, his grief momentarily forgotten in the face of sheer, primal awe. The Worldcoiler moved with an unnerving, liquid elegance, its neon-purple and obsidian coils flowing from the massive archway built into the city's outer wall. It dwarfed the surrounding forest, each tree a mere toothpick by comparison.
"We have to see it up close!" Orin yelled, his excitement infectious.
Roy hesitated for a second, then shrugged. A detour was probably a good idea. The tram car slowed and descended at the next station, a small, elevated platform near the edge of the city's developed sectors. From there, they walked, a small, quiet group moving toward the vast, open fields that bordered the forest and the colossal serpent's domain.
The closer they got, the more unreal Viperael became. Its scales, each the size of the train car they rode in on, shimmered with an inner light. Its colossal head, larger than any building they had seen in the city, rested placidly on the ground, its golden, slitted eyes tracking their approach with an intelligence that was both ancient and deeply familiar to Roy.
A cyclops, easily forty feet tall, blundered out of the forest, its single eye wide with stupid confusion as it found itself in the open. Before it could even register the serpent, Viperael's head snapped forward with a speed that defied its size. Its jaws opened wide, and it swallowed the giant in one, clean, gulping motion. A faint, contented hiss, like the rush of a thousand waterfalls, drifted across the field.
Orin, Rava, and Andri just stood there, their mouths agape at the spectacle of a monster that could eat other monsters for a light snack.
You tell them, Viperael's voice echoed in Roy's mind, a simple, proprietary statement. My snack. Not sharing. Mine.
"Yeah, yeah, I doubt they want a bite anyway," Roy muttered under his breath.
After a long, silent moment of just staring, Roy clapped his hands "So, who is ready to eat?"
Roy led them back to the tram and into the slightly rural, slightly suburban, heart of Sector Four, in a district known for its diverse restaurants run mostly by the Freed and elves. He chose a small, unassuming noodle shop, its windows steamy and its air thick with the rich, savory scent of broth and spice.
Inside, they squeezed into a booth. The owner, a cheerful dwarven woman who had been part of the first group Roy had liberated from the Umbral Consortium, recognized him immediately and sent over a massive, complimentary platter of fried dumplings.
For the next hour, they just ate. The tension of the training, the weight of their pasts, it all seemed to dissolve in the face of steaming bowls of perfectly springy noodles and a broth so deep and flavorful it felt like it was healing them from the inside out. They taught Orin how to use chopsticks…and a fork…and a spoon, a chaotic and messy process that resulted in more broth on the table than in his mouth, but he laughed through the entire ordeal. Rava, for the first time, spoke without being prompted, shyly asking Warrex about his time as an assassin. Andri, her guard finally down, found herself in a quiet, intense conversation with Lutrian about the finer points of polearm combat.
"That's enough for today. Let's head home," Roy said after the sun started to set, a genuine warmth in his voice. "Get some rest. We continue training in the morning."