THE MOMENT
"What's going on?" Chelsea had enough awareness to whisper the question once she found the senior employees gathered by the door and staring out at the counter. They'd all been tending to things somewhere else up until moments ago when she noticed most of the staff seemed to vanish. She investigated and found the group hiding, with long faces.
"We're watching Nancy...," one of them replied, also in a whisper. Chelsea was new enough that she hadn't completed an entire week yet, and she still hadn't matched all their names to their voices. She needed to check the nametag and saw that Lorraine answered her. They hadn't worked a shift together yet, but she'd heard good things about Lorraine's personality.
"What's going on with Nancy?" Chelsea kept her voice low as she stood on tiptoes and peeked out over their heads. Nancy had been nice and showed Chelsea the ropes the first couple of days. The middle-aged woman was looking up at a Ninja in white and red, and she was visibly trembling. He was a hulking figure and his face was obscured by the ninja hood, but he had eight glowing red eyes staring down at the seated guild clerk.
“You don't know who that is?” Lorraine asked and Chelsea shook her head.
“No? Should I?” she asked. The assembled employees all nodded even as most of them kept their focus on the front desk.
“If you ever need to serve him, just know we're all here with you.” Lorraine said.
“Yeah. We won't help, but you won't die alone…,” Osten said. He was one of two men working the guild desk and Chelsea did manage to get to know him well enough. He was friendly and tended to be a jokester, but somehow no one laughed at his comment.
“What's the big deal?” She had to ask. “He looks pretty normal except for having too many eyes,” she shrugged. “Monster flesh is mutagenic, most people know that. Many adventurers even bare traits taken from prestigious kills. He probably killed a giant spider or something, those are super common.”
“Yeah, we all know that,” Lorraine nodded. “And yet, we're all standing here while Nancy is shivering in terror. Trust me, that little factoid is doing nothing to ease her fears. He's a veteran adventurer, so he has a reputation, and it has nothing to do with eating monster flesh.”
“Wait,”Chelsea had her preconceived notions getting in the way of understanding what was happening. “Is she really in danger? I thought the guild had rules to protect us.”
“That's the problem,” Lorraine nodded. “Rules only apply to people they can be enforced upon. Spider doesn't have to play by our rules, we're just lucky he does sometimes.”
“Can't the guild master ban him?” Chelsea asked. Everyone shook their heads while still watching outside.
“Spider does what he wants, no one can control him. The first and only time a guild master tried, Spider eliminated the entire guild then and there. He slaughtered the members and every villager within a half mile of the guild before setting fire to the town.”
“He gets to just walk free?? Why hasn't the King stopped him?”
“The combined armies of every Kingdom combined aren't enough to stop Spider. They've tried.”
“What?” Chelsea asked with a shake of denial. “That sounds like something I would’ve heard of…” She thought back to history lessons to make a case that it wasn’t covered in school, and she had a brief flash of recognition. “...wait. The war of spiders from two centuries ago?” she asked.
“He’s a very veteran adventurer,” Lorraine nodded. “The history books call it the war of spiders to save the kingdoms some face. They say they had to fight back an invasive species, but Spider was the true opponent. All the giant spiders they fought were his minions. And he leaves them roaming the countryside as a reminder.” Chelsea wasn’t sure what to make of that information, but Osten spoke up.
“Here she comes!” he said as he gestured at the group to make room. As soon as Chelsea turned her attention to the door, Nancy rushed in and fell into Osten’s arms, sobbing loudly. Everyone gathered around to comfort her. “You did great,” Osten said as he held her.
“How do you know?” Chelsea asked. She pulled Lorraine aside to finish the conversation without trying to upstage Nancy’s crying. “It happened two hundred years ago…,” Lorraine nodded and pulled Chelsea even further from the group into a far corner of the break room.
“Nancy hasn’t been here that long either,” she nodded. “Up until he stopped in today, she hadn’t met him yet. She thought a lot like you’re thinking now. She was confident she’d be able to handle him… and you saw her trembling. That wasn’t fear of his reputation; it was just blatant terror. He does that to people, probably without even trying. Now, I can’t say for sure that he is the same person behind the war of spiders as we said. But I can say that no one in this office is going to try to tell him otherwise.
