Today is Day 18 of NaNoWriMo! My total for day 17 of NaNoWriMo was 2,016 words. I didn't want to stop writing, but I was starting to trudge, so I figured I would stop and start again the following day (today)
All passages were in order from yesterday's post, so here's what I wrote:
Rinneth electrified the young Dragon again and he howled in pain but refused to back down. This treatment continued until the Dragon did what I was afraid he’d do. He retaliated with a lightning strike of his own. My muscles flexed with instinct to protect her, but Ramos grabbed me by the shirt and held me back.
“Don’t interfere,” he warned.
“How can you just sit there and—” I sighed when I noticed how tense his muscles were. He didn’t like the situation on more than me, but we could only wait it out or she could turn on us.
My eyes went wide when Rinneth pulled a metal rod out of her jacket and made a full body sweeping motion. The lightning, drawn to the metal, followed her motion and then shot back at the Dragon when her full circle sweep was complete.
“How’d she do that?” Rial asked.
“She be an elementalist, lad,” Thuldren said. “They do some mysterious things.”
I grabbed my chin with thought. “I’m a bit surprised she used that rod though.”
“Lightning is a tough element to master,” Ramos explained. “Or, so says the shaman that trains Rinneth. Unlike other elements, taking control of the element when produced by another source is difficult, and sometimes impossible for some elementalists. Rinenth has learned to use that special rod to attract the electrical charge and then convert it with her own abilities. She hopes to wean herself off from it soon and be able do the conversion without it.”
“Is there anything she can’t do?” Vamir asked.
“Fly, which she’s pretty bummed about,” Ramos said with a sly smirk.
Boya roared in pain when Rinneth attacked him again and then lowered his head submissively. “I yield. You rank higher. I am sorry.”
“I’m pressed,” Ramos mumbled. “Maybe he is learning.”
“Safe to assume this type of confrontation lasts longer?” Rial said.
“But wait, you said no one could jump in to help,” Vamir said. “How can Marka?”
I chuckled. “You’ve never seen our kind’s parenting techniques. If he’s anything like father, he would tear into his whelp right in front of everyone. Literally.”
Ramos nodded. “Exactly. There’s no way Rinneth would mistake Marka’s punishment as defending his son. Of course, she generally gives him a shock or two to indicate her annoyance with him getting in the way of her punishment.”
“Listen to me, Boya,” Rinneth said. “You are to learn your place. I rank higher than you. You listen to me when I tell you to do something. Do you understand?”
Boya kept his head low. “Yes.”
“Good. Now go play with your brother away from the house where you won’t break it again.”
She spun on her heels and headed back towards us. Ramos hauled a rope ladder over the balcony and then headed inside. “Computer, Rinneth will need an energy drink. Does she have any left?”
“I have a name, Ramos,” the kitchen replied.
“I know. Answer my question.”
He didn’t get a reply and my team and I snickered.
“Computer?”
“Ralia,” I said. “Does Rinneth have any energy drinks?”
“Yes, Vesser, she has one left. I have pushed it to the front of the fridge and added it to her shopping list to pick up more. And thank you, for acknowledging me by name.”
“How do you know mine?” I asked.
“Rinneth has told me about you, and the rest of her team,” Ralia said. “My higher intelligence programming has allowed me to analyze your voices and load it into my recognition software. While all of you have spoken, I have learned how each of you speak and been capable of identifying you.”
“Amazing,” Rial praised. “Anything else you can do?”
“I can organize my knowledge of individuals by favorites,” she said. “I have placed Vesser higher on my list because he acknowledged my existence by my assigned name.”
Ramos snorted and I smiled. “Do you like your name?”
“Of course. Rinneth put a lot of hard work into coming up with this name after Mrs. Saria failed to come up with names I liked.”
“Is there anything else you got to choose?” Rial asked.
“My voice pack,” she replied. “I liked Mrs. Saria’s voice, so they allowed me to have it. After Mrs. Saria’s passing, I made sure my voice stayed the same and I took over the role of preparing meals for Rinneth when she didn’t want to do it herself, like her mother had. I believed that would ease her pain a little bit.”
“That was kind of you,” Vamir complimented.
“Thank you. I am thankful Rinneth and Saria created me. I try to repay that by being as helpful as I can. I look forward to being expanded on in the future so I can help more.”
“I really like this advanced intelligence,” Rial said.
“And I like you,” Ralia said. “I have bumped you up on my list.”
“Yes!”
The room echoed with laughter.
“Ralia, are you getting their hopes up?”
We all turned to see Rinneth pulling herself over the railing. Ramos disappeared into the kitchen to fetch the energy drink he had inquired about.
“I am just updating my favorites list, Rinneth,” Ralia said.
Rinneth chuckled. “Very well.”
Ramos exited the kitchen with a black can with blue lightning graphics on it and tossed it to her. “It’s your last one.”
“I have already added it to your shopping list,” Ralia added.
“Thank you, both of you,” Rinneth said before cracking the can open.
“Is that one of those special elemental drinks I’ve been hearing about?” Vamir asked.
Rinneth nodded. “They’re still being tested, but these lightning ones really do me wonders so far.”
“Hey, lass, what is all this?” Thuldren asked suddenly. He had wandered away and was looking up at a map that was made from smaller map pieces.
Rinneth went to respond when her bedroom doors burst open and several resident Dragons rushed in. "I'm fine everyone."
"You sur--"
"Yes, I'm fine," she said. "Go back to doing whatever it was you were doing."
"Alright. But if you need us, say something."
"Yeah, Yeah."
All but one Dragon left. The remaining one was a Green Dragon with a small orange and yellow parrot on his shoulder. "Rinneth, do you still want me to take care of your pet?"
"Yes, please, Rehgor," Rinneth said. "I'll be going into Evenstar soon." The Green Dragon nodded and left allowing Rinneth to focus on Thuldren. "It's a map for a long PvE questline Ramos and I are working on. The questline requires us to create a map and find a hidden raid with special items. This is a printed form of the maps we've collected."
"Was it a map piece Erin gave you?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yep. There's a lot of searching to do, especially since there are a limited number of map pieces scattered through Evenstar."
"Could we help you sometime?" Vamir asked.
Rinneth shrugged. "I don't see why not." She began looking around. "Now, what box did my gaming helmets get shoved into?"
"There's a big box in front of your….couch? Is this huge cushion thing really a couch?" Rial asked.
Rinneth laughed and went over to the box he had pointed out. "Yep, this is really a couch. And this is the box I was looking for. Come grab one guys."
I accepted a helmet from her and sat down on the enormous couch. "What do we want to do first?"
"First?" Rinneth questioned.
"Well we have the new guild we have to work on sprucing up," Vamir said.
"And arena matches to do," Rial put in.
"Aye, and ye said we could help ye with that PvE stuff," Thuldren said.
Rinneth plopped down on the couch and one of her dogs jumped up to lay his head on her lap. "Well, the guild won't be done for a few more hours, and I didn't think you wanted to try out PvE so soon. I would have through we'd want to do a few arena matches to see how our team functioned since the one we were going to do yesterday didn't really happen, and I still need sanctioned gear for the tournament."
Vamir sat down near me. "Then why don't we do some matches until the guild is set up and then we can work on that before you give us a tour of the hard work that comes with PvE."
"I like that idea," Rinneth agreed as she turned on her messenger. "I'll let Erin know we're meeting up when the guild is done."
While she did that, the rest of us placed the gaming helmets on our head and entered the game.
Chapter 9
(Vesser)
We stood in front of our stone and wood guild hall. I had been excited to see it, until now. Now I was a bit disappointed. The long trek up here didn't feel worth it.
Rinneth accepted the building's completion, allowing us to enter, but only she, Ramos, and Erin sent to enter. She looked back in question. "What's wrong?"
"Shouldn't a guild hall be more glorious than this?" I asked.
"And I would have thought all that gold we gave would get us something worth a bit more," Rial said.
Rinneth shook her head. "You guys really are clueless. The money went mostly to the vast land we have around this building, and you don't get good-looking guild halls without putting work into it."
"The lass is right," Thuldren said. "Let's check this hall out and determine what we need to do to get it in the shape we're expectin'."
Rial shrugged since he couldn't argue and followed Thuldren into the building, leaving Vamir to catch up. The inside was far smaller than it looked on the outside, but that may have had something to do with all of Rinneth's pets lying on the floor of the only large room in the building. The Dragona and Calacours lifted their heads in acknowledgement but made no attempt to move.
"First thing we do, is get a stable built," Rinneth said. "I forgot about this little problem."
"Makes you look like an animal hoarder," Erin teased.
All of us laughed. Rinneth stepped over her pets over to a crafting table in the center of the room and looked over the plans available. When she found two plans she wanted, she took out the gold needed and then called for the NPC builder. He appeared behind us and she tossed him the bag of gold with the building plans tied to it.
"We need a pet stable built," Rinneth said. "Medium size for now. We also need a mount stable--extra large for that one. I've marked where each should be built and the design type."
"Of course, Guild Master," The NPC said. "This will be completed in four hours. Anything else we can build?"
"Not at this time, thank you."
The NPC left and went about building her stables.
"Should we be concerned about that extra large mount stable?" Rial asked.
Rinneth smiled. "I've got a mount collecting problem. That's why I footed the bill for the stable. We might need an even bigger one if you guys have a lot of mounts or get more in the future."
I shook my head. "We've pretty much stuck with the starter mounts and a few PvP mounts."
"Well once you see all of Rinneth's mount, you may ended up reconsidering," Erin said. "I farm quite a few dungeons and old raids for the mounts she has."
"I'm already interested in what she has," Vamir said.
"Same here," Rial added.
It didn't surprise me in the least those two were interested. Out of the four of us, they had the most mounts, and Vamir had even collected a few non-combative pets.