Primal Dawn

“I heal one primal and you steal everything…” Peter muttered to himself as he stomped towards Zilas’s group. He was sitting among a circle of tamers along with their primals, chatting and laughing.

One of the tamers next to Zilas noticed Peter approaching and whispered something to him. Zilas turned and watched Peter carefully.

“Give it back,” Peter growled. 

Zilas chuckled with a cocky grin. “You must be confused, sir.” Zilas held up his bowl. “This shitstew is mine.” A few of the men laughed.

“Where. Is. My. Tent.”

Zilas shrugged. “Wherever you set it up? How should I know?”.

Peter’s hands curled up into fists. “If…” Peter started. Some of the nearby primals began to slowly get up. A loud thump rang from behind, startling them in place, and Peter saw Kalista had planted her sword firmly into the ground, scowling at the group with her chin slightly turned upward. 

“If…?” Zilas said questioningly, still smiling.

Peter twitched. There was no doubt that they had his things. 

But he was absurdly outnumbered.

“If you find it, please let me know,” Peter said, struggling to sound calm. He quickly turned and left before he did something to make the situation worse, and immediately the tamers began to laugh behind him.

That night, Peter wanted to sleep alone. Kalista and Gaia didn’t deserve to sleep in the cold because of him. In a strange twist, they agreed, though their reasoning was that not being next to him was a punishment for them having lost track of their supplies too. It was all of their responsibility, not just Peter’s, they argued.

Faced with the perception that somehow his punishment became theirs, he didn’t desummon them, and so they all ended up huddled together near the wall. What remaining clothes he still had were used as a makeshift blanket to cover themselves with. Despite many thoughts running through his head, he still managed to fall asleep somehow.

In the morning, the pudgy man from yesterday clanged his ladle against his pan again and began handing out breakfast. It looked to be the same base as yesterday’s dinner, with one small addition; a chunk of mystery meat. After a little thought, it seemed there was not much mystery after all. Seeing the man checking his list and the licenses of tamers, Peter didn’t even bother getting into line. His stomach growled. 

He spotted Lore sitting with Bryan and approached the pair, since for now he had nothing better to do.

Lore explained that the large building was basically a kitchen combined with a tamers guild, except the tamers guild portion was defunct. There was an area designated for taming, a basic area to act as a medical center, and a receptionist office with a desk. Lore mentioned that Rand tried to be strict with enforcement of the rooms' usage, only allowing them to be used for their intended purposes.

When Peter went inside to inspect, he discovered that this meant that the office and medical center were dusty and empty, and only the room for taming had any usage.

To Peter's surprise, the room was not as disgusting as he predicted. It was still gross, and Peter was certain that if he were to use it he'd first give it a good clean over, but it was not so bad that one would be better off burning it down and rebuilding it from scratch.

When Peter stepped back outside a new commotion seemed to be brewing.

"Group One and Group Two on me!" Zilas shouted.

"Group Three for Dungeon Diving, over here!" the man who had been shouting “Dungeon Break” yesterday yelled.

Tamers from all over Shantee began to swarm the two figures.

It seemed Jack had joined the third group. Just as Peter was about to walk towards them, he saw Fira approaching them.

He hesitated, then frowned. Was he really going to try and avoid her that much? As he began to step toward them again, a voice shouted out from behind.

"Group Four! Group Four?" Outside Shantee behind the gate, Kaze shouted inside.

A few nearby tamers began to snicker. "Looks like someone forgot to let him in again," someone said.

"A wall can neither hold nor contain me! Eye of the Storm!" Kaze leaped upwards with a gust of wind and landed inside Shantee. Any tamers who had been paying attention to him had looked away by now.

"You there!" Kaze pointed at Peter. "My offer still stands." 

Should he go with him? Kalista and Gaia didn't seem to enjoy being around him, and he was alone. How would he defeat a dungeon by himself? Peter felt some sort of guilt, but he would have to decline.

"Sorry, I'm going with Group Three," Peter replied. 

Kaze’s gaze lingered before finally shrugging. “Suit yourself.” He leapt back over the wall and disappeared.

"I'm here for Group Three," Peter said as he approached the leader. The man nodded and asked for Peter’s license and quickly wrote something down on a sheet before handing it back.

"Since you're new here, you'll want to check out that map," the man said to Peter while pointing towards the guild. A map was posted on the outside wall. Whether that had always been there or only hung up during the morning, Peter wasn't certain.

After inspecting it and talking to some of the others, Peter understood why they had groups. There were multiple locations where dungeon entrances could possibly appear. Across the locations, if you drew straight lines through them you could create four groups which each covered a single line. The group would go across left to right through all the locations to check for any dungeons which appeared. Until they conquered the dungeon, or a Dungeon Break occurred, the entrance would remain there.

After a short while, the leader announced, "Alright, let's move out." Group Three left first, second actually, as Kaze had already gone. It seemed the other two groups would leave afterwards. Peter patted his traveling backpack, paranoid that anything else he has might get stolen. He could feel his clothes rummaging at the bottom. From now on, he’d be carrying everything closely with him.

After a few minutes of walking in the forest, one of the tamers said "So you decided to come back and leave with the rest of us, huh, Jack? Where are the others?"

"Dead," Jack stated bluntly. “We got ambushed by some weird ass ferals.” He turned around and pointed his thumb towards Peter. “He was guarding the caravan going by and rescued me.”

The group grew quiet for a while at the revelation.

“Is it true you’ll really heal for free?” A tamer near Peter asked, breaking the silence.

Peter frowned. “My Dryad isn’t an endless health potion. I’ll cooperate while we’re fighting and she’ll heal to the best of her abilities, but she can’t take care of every tamer and their primals here. There are simply too many of you. And she’s important to my team’s strength."

“Well said,” the leader said from the front. “We’ve had no dedicated healer up until now, what’s a little longer?"

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Why doesn’t anyone just tame a Dryad from the dungeon?”

“There aren’t any,” some tamer plainly replied.

“What?” Peter asked, confused. “I thought they had all sorts of primals?”

“They do, but for some reason primals that can heal others don’t show up there. At least, I haven't seen any."

“My theory is the dungeon thinks it's better off having more fighters than healers,” another tamer began to say. “They can just keep spawning more primals over time. Why bother with healers when you can just create more fighters?”

“That’s stupid, having a single healer behind a group of fighters is worth way more than having another fighter," Peter said. 

“Depends on the team. And even then, challenging the battle center has a lot of one on ones. Healers are practically useless in those.”

It still didn’t make sense to Peter. Suppose the dungeon didn’t have any Dryads or other primals capable of healing others. Did nobody here bring a Dryad to Shantee? Or find one in the nearby forest?

The group which ambushed him had contained a Dryad. But that had been six days away from them. Closer to Wildburry than Shantee. Perhaps this territory didn’t have Dryads native to it. Certainly different territories were known for different species. But that didn’t answer the question of why no tamers brought a Dryad.

Or perhaps…

If every tamer started out like Bryan, or even himself, they would likely not pick a Dryad since, like the tamer had said, in a one on one battle they normally have less offensive power than their opponents.

Peter immediately felt guilty just thinking that. After seeing her fight so many times, he was fairly certain that Gaia could stand toe to toe with many more primals than most here would think. 

But it is true he picked Kalista initially and disregarded a Dryad as an option due to his bias. Kean had picked a Dryad, but he started out knowing he would be teaming up with Deric during his journey.

…A sour memory.

It was about an hour's walk to the first location for their group from Shantee. When they arrived, it seemed the dungeon entrance wasn’t there. Peter wasn’t sure what he should be on the lookout for.

A cave? A floating door? He had read tales of old. Of adventurers going inside dungeons and conquering the monsters within. But they never seemed to describe the appearance of the entrance.

The second and third areas didn’t seem to have an entrance either. If the fourth turned out empty as well, they would go back and return to Shantee. They would still get their food allotment for dinner and breakfast the next day, but the day would end prematurely.

“Yup, it’s here,” the leader said. A few of the tamers let out sighs of relief, others almost seemed agitated, like they were hoping to end the day empty handed.

What Peter saw was amazing. What could only be described as a purple scar in the air stood ominously atop the ground. The surrounding area was coated in a purple hue, and it looked like the air around the scar bended towards it.

The leader stepped within the purple light, and vanished. One by one, the other tamers followed in his tracks. Peter's heart began to beat furiously as he grew closer and closer to it. What riches await inside? What dangers? When it was finally his turn, he felt nervous to take the step.

A hand gripped his left, another his right. They both squeezed lightly, and Peter squeezed back with a smile. He stepped inside the entrance, and disappeared from the forest.