Monroe

Chapter Five. Holmstead.

Two fucking days climbing up and down the fucking mountains.

"Motherfucker!" Bob exclaimed as he tripped on a rock, yet again.

Bob hadn't done a lot of hiking, and certainly not in terrain this challenging, and for abso-fucking-lutelysure not in a pair of loafers.

Harv and Elli were clearly taking pity on him, and keeping their pace to something they likely imagined to be reasonable.

They took frequent breaks, where he was offered a canteen, despite them having no need of one.

And through it, the language lesson continued. At this point, both Harv and Elli had succumbed to a real curiosity about who Bob was and how he had ended up in the Dungeon.

Bob just wanted to know where he was, and how to get home. He couldn't help but worry. There had definitely been an explosion. Depending on how large it was, it might take a day or so to realize who was missing.

Given the disdain he'd experienced from everyone there, he doubted anyone would be in a hurry to report him missing.

That meant that a clock was ticking. He didn't know any of his neighbors, and they were unlikely to care anyway. And Monroe was stuck in his apartment.

His heart sank and his chest ached every time he thought about it. Monroe had an endless supply of water, thanks to a fancy circulating fountain he'd bought for his birthday last year. But his food...

He had food for the day. And if got hungry enough, Bob knew from experience that Monroe was more than capable of opening the cupboard and getting into his bag of crunch.

He'd just bought a new bag the day before, so assuming his normal dietary habits, Monroe had about three weeks of food.

Bob knew the litter box wouldn't meet Monroe's stringent sanitary requirements if it wasn't scooped daily, and he would shit in the shower at that point.

That didn't really worry him.

What did worry him was how he was going to get home and how long it was going to take.

That and the fucking gaggle of worthless fucking cunts that had taken his work, mangled it, and blown him clear into what seemed to be another fucking dimension.

Deep breaths. Focus.

Stupid tree roots.

He kept doggedly following Harv and Elli, his deep breathing often a necessity as he climbed up steep inclines, often without anything resembling a trail to ease his passage.

'They've got fucking Magic,' he thought to himself grimly. 'There has to a spell or a ritual or something that can send me back home.'

Harv and Elli were stopped up ahead, apparently, at the top of the small mountain they were trekking up.

Bob stumbled to a stop between them breathing hard.

"Water?" asked Elli.

This was one of the first words Bob had learned.

He nodded yes, and Elli handed him a canteen.

Bob fucking knew that canteen was magic, because he'd yet to see Elli fill it from any of the numerous streams they had crossed (and didn't his loafers just fucking love that), and it held more water than was possible.

He'd tried to ask questions about it, but the language barrier was too high.

After taking several healthy swallows, he capped it and passed it back. Elli took it and then pointed forward, saying "Holmstead"

Bob followed his gesture and saw that they had crested the final mountain. A series of slight hills descended down into a valley, strewn with a patchwork of fields, and just to the left, was a town or a city - how did you judge that anyway? Never mind, Focus Bob!

He could see a river running through the town, and given that the town was probably four miles away, that had to be one hell of a river.

"Homestead?" He tried.

"Holmstead," Harv corrected, going with the tried and true loud and slow tactic.

"Holmstead," Bob tried again and received an approving nod from Elli and a thumbs-up from Harv. He had taught them that gesture and Harv had really taken to it.

Both Elli and Harv set down their packs and started rummaging inside them.

Bob also had his suspicions about those backpacks.

Being thrust into this world had jogged loose a few memories from his late teens and early twenties. He'd played a few video games on the computers in the library at his high school. And in college, he'd tried to join a D&D group, but after a few sessions, he'd run into some scheduling issues as work and classes ramped up.

Still, Bob had a great memory, and he was pretty damned certain those were bags of holding.

Elli and Harv both pulled out, what for lack of a better description Bob was going to call medallions. They were large rectangular metal plates. The front and back were identical, bearing the image of a crossed sword and staff over a shield. There were words printed above and below, but the script was unfamiliar, sort of Cyrillic, but not.

Bob sighed. One more thing to figure out. Hopefully, he could charade his way back home, because learning a new language might take more time than Monroe had.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Five hours later, it was early afternoon as Bob followed Elli and Harv up to the gates of Holmstead.

Bob was a little impressed. He didn't know how much was magic, or even if that was less impressive than with manpower alone, but Holmstead was surrounded by a wall of stone that stood thirty feet high and twenty feet thick. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be made out of five-foot by five-foot by five-foot cubes of stone.

And the city (he had mentally decided that it was a city on his way down the hills) was not small. His very rough guess was a solid two miles in diameter, the city being a rough circle. Or maybe a perfect circle. Bob couldn't really tell. That would make the area r, so assuming it was two miles that would be easy, given a radius of 5280 feet, you could ballpark it at 87 million...

Focus Bob! He shook his head. Strange city. Strange Dimension. Fucking Magic.

Elli and Harv approached the two men guarding the gate that led into the city. Well, short tunnel really. Both men were dressed in some sort of leather armor, and each of them had a spear leaning against the wall and a crossbow in their hands. Harv and Elli had a short conversation with one of them, of which Bob really only understood the words Elli, Harv, and Bob.

The guard gestured through the gates, and Harv turned to make the familiar follow me motion. Bob gave the guard what he hoped came across as a friendly smile and followed Harv and Elli into the city.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob's first impression of Holmstead was that it wasn't as bad as Los Angeles. Sure there was an underlying scent of shit, piss, and smoke, but there didn't appear to be any actual shit in the streets, or drifts of used needles, or legions of homeless people.

His second impression was that it was a busy place. There seemed to be one or two shops on the ground floor of each building, and people were hurrying from place to place, some grocery shopping, some carrying bundles of wood or leather. Everyone seemed to be moving with a purpose.

His third impression was that the town guard appeared to be well represented. As he followed Elli and Harv down the street, he saw at each intersection a pair of guards, dressed similarly to the men at the gate. They seemed friendly enough, exchanging greetings with people hurrying by.

Bob walked through the city, following Ellie and Harv. He did his best to take it all in.

All the buildings he saw were made of stone, and three or four stories tall. The stories above the first had balconies jutting out over the street, on all sides of the building. It didn't impact the broad street he was walking down, but he could see that some of the side streets, little more than alleys, were likely places that saw only sporadic sunlight as a result. Interestingly enough many of these balconies were enclosed in glass, and from what he could see, were used as greenhouses.

The people he saw seemed to be mostly human. He saw a man who seemed to have a scale-like pattern to his skin, and he could have sworn he saw a classic anime style cat-girl, with fluffy ears and a tail. But overall, humans. All shapes and sizes, skin tones from ebony to nearly albino.

Bob did his best not to stare as he took in the city, and soon enough they reached the end of the road. Apparently, the city was designed like a pie or maybe more like a wheel. Roads quartered the city and came together in a large plaza at the center, a few hundred feet across.

In the center was a forty-foot stone wall, with a single entrance, guarded by two men.

Across from that entrance was a large four-story stone building, with broad double doors, above which was the same Sword and Staff over Sheild emblem that Harv and Elli had on their jerseys.

Elli moved to walk behind Bob, and Harv led the way into the building.

Bob blinked as he entered. He kept moving behind Harv, his legs on autopilot as he took in the massive room that had to have represented half the ground floor.

It looked like every illustration of an adventurers tavern he had ever seen. Sturdy tables and chairs, men and women kitted out in armor and weaponry, talking either loudly and drunkenly, or hunched over the table speaking furtively.

He shook his head in wonder as Harv walked through the room, adroitly dodging the men and women who were carrying drink and food to the tables.

Soon they reached an elaborately carved door at the back of the room. The left side had a tall, thin staff embossed on the door frame, while the right side had the image of a sword.

Harv, followed by Bob, followed by Elli, walked in the door and up the set of stairs that was the only thing on the other side.

The stairs opened into what could be best described as a waiting room. There was a desk, with a pretty young woman scribbling something in a book and a door behind her.

She looked up as Harv entered, and accepted the piece of paper he pulled out of a pouch.

Harv gestured to Bob, and exchanged a few sentences with her, of which Bob only understood Bob, rat, and wolf.

Harv gestured for Bob to take a seat, and he and Elli were escorted through the door by the young woman, who delivered a perfunctory smile to Bob as she resumed her seat and her paperwork.

Bob sighed and settled down. At least he was off his feet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What exactly do you mean when you say you 'retrieved' the anomaly?" rumbled Thidwell Orstang, Curator of Holmstead.

Elli and Harv exchanged a glance, and Harv responded "Well, as we said, we found the Dungeon right where it was supposed to be, and when we entered it, we found the anomaly, and then we brought him back."

Elli nodded and picked up the narrative, "He was beating rats to death with his bare hands, and there were drifts of level one rat crystals on the floor. I think he'd been there since the mana spike happened."

"How could there be drifts of crystals?" Thidwell demanded in his gruff voice, "up until five, fifty will do, then through ten a hundred will see you through," he finished, the last said in a sing-song voice as if repeating a rhyme.

Elli and Harv gave each other another look.

"Well?" Thidwell asked.

"Sir," Elli said carefully, "We reckon it's like this. We think he's got A Child's Protection on him. We don't think he is level one yet."

Harv hastened to add in, "When we were jumped by the wolves he took some fearsome bites, even had a chunk ripped out of him. It slowly healed over through no interaction of ours." "And!" he continued excitedly, "He had to have been fighting those rats barehanded for days, he was covered with blood and brains and bones, but he had nary a scratch on him!"

Thidwell rubbed his temples. He looked at Harv and said, "And what does he have to say?"

Elli quickly answered, "That's just it sir, he didn't speak a word of Thaylan, not until we taught him a couple."

Thidwell grimaced. "Well isn't that just lovely," he muttered.

He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a piece of parchment. He wrote a few quick sentences on it, then reached across the desk and handed it to Harv.

"Give that to Alli, and then bring the anomaly in," he ordered.

"Bob," said Harv hesitantly.

"Excuse me?" Thidwell asked.

"Bob," Harv repeated, "The, uh, anomaly, his name is Bob."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Bob was playing with his inventory. It turned out he could take his shoes off and put them back on with it.

Elli and Harv came out of the door, Harv handed a slip of paper to the woman behind the desk, and Elli motioned for him to follow them back through the door.

Bob stood up and did as he was asked.

The room was an office, clearly for an important man. The desk that stood in the center was elaborately carved, and the tapestries? was that the right word? wall hangings anyway, were exquisitely well done, and showcased either a brilliant imagination or were a terrifying representation that dragons were a thing in this dimension.

The man standing behind the desk was intimidating. He looked human. Just... bigger. Over seven feet. His shoulders had to be close to four feet across. He had his black hair shaved on the sides and slicked back on the top, his face clean-shaven. His eyes were a brilliant piercing green. He was by far the most intimidating person Bob had ever seen.

There were four chairs arranged in front of the desk, and the giant gestured to them, clearly indicating they were supposed to sit.

Bob took a seat between Elli and Harv, and the giant took one behind the desk.

Bob glanced around the office, taking a deeper impression. Magic lights of some sort illuminated the room from the corners and the center. The wall behind him held a few bookcases and more wall hangings.

He inspected the ceiling, noting that the stone must have been cut in some fashion to be load-bearing as a room this size would normally require bracing or buttressing of some sort-

The door banged open and a man rushed, looking for all the world like he'd been pulled out of bed. He was wearing pants, but no shoes and his shirt had several buttons that didn't line up and was tucked in on only one side.

The man quickly scanned the room and his eyes focused on Bob.

Bob locked eyes with him, not feeling nearly as intimidated as when he was looking at the giant.

Short, maybe five feet and a few inches. 'Although' Bob thought, that might be normal here, he didn't really have a large sample size to use as a baseline. Brown hair, brown eyes. Stubble. Scar over his left eye.

The man turned, without taking his eyes off Bob, and addressed the giant at the desk "Seems human to me, may I engage him with telepathy?"

The giant growled out "Yes," which is another one of the words that Bob knew.

System User Kelli Armel has attempted to contact you via Telepathy. To consent either Mentally project or Verbally articulate, "I accept" or to resist, Mentally project or Verbally articulate "No"

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