Chapter 186 — What the Water Left Behind

Chapter 186: Chapter 186 — What the Water Left Behind

Arlen woke on his third morning back to sunlight slanting warm across the floor, and lay there a while simply enjoying the strange luxury of having nowhere he needed to be.

He’d spent the previous day doing exactly nothing of consequence — a long, unhurried walk through the guild district that had nothing to do with quests, a second full night’s sleep that left him waking later than he had in weeks. Vitalflow Endurance had already finished whatever quiet repair work his body still needed; he could feel it in the easy way he swung his legs off the bed, no lingering ache anywhere that mattered.

It was reaching for his sword, more out of habit than purpose, that reminded him what still needed doing.

The blade’s edge had dulled more than a month underwater should reasonably explain, a faint unevenness along the length he could feel with his thumb before he could properly see it. The armor was worse — the hide had gone stiff in places where salt had dried into it, the stitching along one shoulder strap swollen and soft in a way that made him wince just looking at it.

Kellan, then. Before I forget I’m supposed to actually take care of things I paid good gold for.

He found Pella downstairs already, wiping down the counter with the particular energy of someone who’d been awake far longer than the hour suggested.

"You’re up," she said. "And dressed like a man with somewhere to be, which is new, since yesterday you dressed like a man who’d forgotten clothes had a purpose beyond staying warm."

"Smith’s District. My gear’s in a state."

"Good. Tell Kellan I said he still owes me for that thing with the door hinge." She didn’t elaborate, and Arlen decided, wisely, not to ask.

The walk to Kellan’s shop took him through streets considerably busier than the ones he remembered from a month ago, though he suspected that was simply his own perception catching up — everything felt louder and more crowded after weeks spent underground, where the loudest thing most days had been his own breathing.

He found Kellan exactly where he always found him, hunched over the forge with the same unhurried, exacting focus, and the dwarf glanced up at the sound of the door without pausing his hammer.

"Back already," Kellan said. "Thought that armor had more fight left in it than a month."

"So did I." Arlen set the bundled gear on the counter, and Kellan set down his tools properly this time, wiping his hands before he picked up the sword.

He turned it over slowly, testing the edge with his thumb the same way Arlen had, and made a small, disapproving sound in the back of his throat.

"Salt water," Kellan said. "Ruins an edge faster than almost anything else I could name. You were down in the flooded region, I’m guessing."

"Region Three. Longer than I planned to be."

"Explains the state of it." He set the sword aside and picked up the armor next, running his fingers along the swollen stitching with a craftsman’s careful disapproval. "This shoulder strap’s a season from failing outright, if you’d kept wearing it without looking. Good thing you actually came in instead of just soldiering on."

"I don’t soldier on. Not with gear, anyway."

"Wish more people who walked through that door could say the same." Kellan set the armor down and studied him properly for the first time since he’d walked in — not unkindly, just the same appraising look he’d given Arlen the very first day they’d met. "You’ve put this kit through more than most adventurers manage in a year, and it’s held up regardless. That’s not nothing."

"Feels like it should be falling apart faster than it is."

"It would, if I’d built it cheap." Kellan almost smiled at that, gruff and brief. "Give me two days. New edge on the sword, proper re-stitching on the strap, and I’ll treat the hide again so the salt doesn’t keep working at it while you’re topside."

"How much?"

"Sword’s a silver-forty, given the edge work. Armor’s another silver-eighty, mostly labor on that strap." Kellan considered a moment longer. "Call it three gold, even, and I’ll throw in a proper oiling on the boots while they’re here too. No charge on that part. Consider it professional pride."

Arlen counted it out, the coin settling into Kellan’s palm without either of them making much ceremony of it. "Appreciated."

"Don’t thank me. Just don’t wait a full month next time before you bring it in." Kellan was already turning the sword over again, studying the edge with fresh, professional interest, the conversation apparently concluded in his own mind even as Arlen still stood there. "Two days. Come by in the evening, not the morning — I like to finish an edge properly rather than rush it because someone’s standing over my shoulder."

"I wasn’t planning to stand over your shoulder."

"Everyone plans that. Nobody manages it." Kellan waved him toward the door without looking up, already reaching for a whetstone. "Go on. Go be someone else’s problem for two days."

Arlen left the shop with his coin purse lighter and his shoulders somehow easier for it, the particular satisfaction of a small, necessary thing properly handled settling into him the way it always did. He walked back through the Smith’s District slower than he’d walked in, in no particular hurry now that the errand was done, and found himself thinking, without quite meaning to, about everything else still waiting on the other side of two empty days.

Mana training, for one. He hadn’t been to see Neris since before the trip, and he suspected — with a certainty he couldn’t entirely explain — that something in him had shifted there too, the same way it had shifted after Region Three’s long, varied demands on everything else he carried. He wanted to find out if he was right.

He passed a bakery stall on the way back, the smell of something warm and yeasty catching him mid-stride, and bought two of whatever the vendor was calling out that morning without much thought beyond that smells better than a month of dried rations.

He ate one on the walk, and carried the second back toward the Foxglove, already turning over, with the same patient, unhurried curiosity that had carried him through every deliberate stage of this life so far, exactly what the next two days of doing nothing urgent might actually be good for.