I can hardly believe it. Twenty years in the business and I’m getting the Spiel.

-

I was admitted to urgent care that night, burned, cut up, broken. They had to clear the aisles for me as they wheeled me in, and once they’d found an operating table that was unoccupied they got right down to business. I had eaten too many Agarics already, so they refused me painkillers. That meant I could feel the razor go in, the bones being set. Altogether it was a nasty scene: ugly fractures in my right leg and my ribs were caved in, just inches from jutting into my internal organs. My body was all singed from the bomb going off, some parts burned black. I split my head open when I fell from the tree, too. If I hadn’t driven myself crazy already that was sure to have done it. This is to say nothing about the deep cuts in my side and in my arm, of course. The axe severed a tendon when it went in, meaning I’d need months of physical therapy before I could properly move my hand again. (Just my luck it wasn’t the one I use to write.)

The cut the Moor Cat gave me was bad news. The doctors had to cauterize it, sticking a red hot poker right into the wound, right up to the bone. The infection got in anyhow, the new cream they used was worthless! The doctors mumbled to each other that if it was on a limb they’d have considered amputation.

I lived in a sort of haze at that time, each sensation was dulled, my vision spotty. Time and people and sounds all flowed by in a fast-moving channel. The shouts and moans of other patients became my Chorus of Unbound Slaves. They turned into a rakish folk tune sung by a long-lashed odalisque. The stained and peeling hospital walls became a Faroff landscape with a mighty, dark blue river coursing through a verdant oasis of palms, desert grass and delicate blossoms. Presiding over it all was the conductor, the specter at my bedside. The phantom of paradise.

-

The doctor-barber guild has been around a long time. They’re probably just as old as the Demon King, and twice as wicked. You see, they have this fancy oath in the Ancient tongue which basically says “turn no one away”. And that’s true. You could have a claymore sticking out of your backside, a 20th-level curse or a flesh-eating disease, and you’ll be schlepped right into the ER without a moment of hesitation. They’ll do everything in their power to make sure you make it out alive, even if it takes blood transfusions, stitches, and a whole garden of Agarics, nothing is too good for their beloved patients.

The thing is, though, that once you’re back on your feet, you realize that every painkiller, stitch, and pint of blood comes with a cost. It's one that they expect to be paid in full. Doesn’t matter if you haven't got two coppers to rub together, they’ll expect their paycheck all the same. Can’t pay it all at once? That’s alright, if you’ll just step into my office there’s a range of payment plans tailor made for low liquidity customers just like yourself… It shouldn’t surprise you that many adventurers forego medical care entirely in some cases. They wake up from unconscious states, bleeding to death, asking their savior please, don’t take me to the doctor-barbers, I’ll be fine, really, just gotta walk it off..

-

You have to wonder where all the money must be going, since it certainly doesn’t seem to do much for their hospitals. Every cot is filled, it’s triage 24/7 with nurses rushing from bed to bed. They don’t know to separate the demented from the sick. If you go in for a simple suture you run the risk of sharing a ward with a demonomaniac who’s ready to chew your face off. The floors are cluttered with scrap, old rotting bandages, medical waste, empty syringes. The rooms are crowded with the moribund and afflicted, yowling and moaning right up until they’re too weak to make a sound. The air is toxic, filled with evil smells. Sharp scents of antiseptic, combined with the sweet perfume of rot. They keep the windows open at all times, all seasons. Doesn’t matter if snow is pouring into the ward if it means a bit of respite from the awful stench.

The nurses are all maleducated, unctuous, with grubby hands that they don’t bother to wash between handling patients. They’re useless at phlebotomies and have to apply the needles over and over. They either give you enough medicine to kill a Camelopard or give you nothing and tell you to suck it up. They believe in that old canard, the four humors. I’ve known adventurers subjected to bloodletting and injections of phlegm in order to “balance the body”. They are completely ignorant to the medical techniques of the Ancients: still resorting to cautery and mummy powder with most patients. The room echoes with the yells of the burned, then it's filled by the smell of burning flesh. They say it decreases risk of infection, but that’s simply not true. And the mummy powder? Worse than useless. How’d they ever get it in their heads that ground up corpses would provide an efficacious disinfectant? Modern medicine is all old wives’ tales, not much better than the laying on hands the Monotheists perform in their tents.

-

The doctor-barber sat me down somewhere private and began with an appeasing tone, like he was soothing a large animal. He put on a diminutive pince-nez and buried his nose in a sheet of paper.

“Well, sir, looking at these figures… Sutures, bone-setting, blood transfusions… All tallied up that comes to… Carry the one...” He adjusted his eyewear and cleared his throat. “Well, that all comes to an account receivable of well… Thirty seven gold, ten silver, and eighty-six copper.”

I shuddered involuntarily and made to speak, but he stopped me.

“Now, you may be familiar with certain payment programs the guild offers for adventurers in your position…”

Here it comes. The Spiel. Any adventurer can tell you about it. When you make a bad bet, get a little too roughed up in a dungeon, and have to leave without claiming a chest. When you’re a fuck-up rookie who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag. When you’re no good, down-and-out, and your mistakes outweigh your successes. When you’re just like every other two-bit hack who thinks they can make it in the adventuring industry before falling flat on their face. You get the Spiel.

“... With monthly installments of thirty silver, with an APR of so-and-so… that brings it up to a total cost of such-and-such… Treasure accrued is yours to keep, unless it is of course made of Ancient material, then it will be ... ”

I’ve never been much for numbers. All the figures whizzed past my head in dizzying arrays. The figures climbed, got higher and higher, that’s all I could take away from the conversation. By the time the accountant was done I was all empty, like a mummy, with my organs taken out and placed in different jars. This had happened to me just once before, never at this amount. This is what happens to the lowest echelons of adventurers, village boys who set off with a cooking pot for a helmet and their woodcutting axe, who get sliced up by their first Tunneling Squid and don’t have a copper to their name. And here I am, made a slave of the doctor-barber’s at thirty-four. It’ll take at least another 20 years to pay off. If I miss just one installment I risk getting thrown in debtors prison. Assuming that the wound in my side doesn’t have any complications, I’ll have a long life ahead of me of giving away that first pyx amulet before I can even start thinking of myself. Every single meal, cup of ale, item or repair will have this debt hanging over it. It’s no way to live.

-

I hobbled out of the ward, a crutch under each arm. Night had fallen and the sky was lit up with stars - some were shining, definite points while others were a milky haze, unable to be singled out by the naked eye. I tried to identify the different constellations, stopping after only finding the Wagon. My head was swimming. It was a chore just to crane my neck upwards. I headed towards the tavern.

The place was packed, typical for a Friday night. Tendrils of smoke draped themselves lazily across the sparsely lit venue. Aside from the faerie lights onstage the room was totally dark. The performers were a burly, dour looking orc at the harpsichord, accompanied by a solo trumpeter in the form of a dapper little halfling. A willowy elf in a gossamer garment sang in a husky voice, so intimate it's as if she’s sang just for you.. Whenever she finished a stanza of her after hours hit the trumpet picked up and played a muted solo, all underscored by the understated, yet fully present harpsichord.

Well I went down to the old guild ward

See if they can make me new

Fine gold, fine diamonds, fine jewelry

I paid them, boy, just what they’re due

The doctor laughs at me says well son

Just what are you trying to pull

There ain’t a thing I can do you know

You’re all busted up, mad and old

Get on, get on, take a hike out of here

Don’t you know your tale is told?

There’s not a person here who can treat you boy

Not if you had Lord Elsewhere’s gold

I settled in on a stool and the bartender came over. He looked me up and down, at all the bandages and made a wry face.

“Adventuring, huh? You should know it doesn’t pay for old-timers like you.”

“Old-timer?”, I said bemused.

“Yeah, what are you, forty, forty-five?”

“Just give me a double, I’m not here to chat.” He walked away still grinning, then came back with a shot glass. He tips the decanter and fills the cup with an amber liquid. I didn’t wait. I took the shot and downed it, and when I looked back up I still saw him there.

“Another?”

“ Leave the bottle”, I say to him. I tell you, there’s nothing quite like falling off the wagon. I’d been clean for a decade. Ever since my last party broke up. Now the liquor enveloped me like a warm blanket, I felt it burn pleasantly in my stomach. I take another shot and start up with a sneezing fit. It’s a bad one, and pretty soon the patrons around turn their heads toward me. When it passed I raised my glass to them and took another drink. Shot after shot goes down and I was feeling good. I stared into the circular, wet marks my shot glass left on the counter. I read a book once about some old soak, who called them his “vicious little circles”. Well I didn’t see a single thing about them I could consider vicious. To me they looked happy, completely happy marking the polished wood with gleaming imbrications. I looked up at the band playing, the drow slowly swaying to the music, the halfling puffing out his cheeks. My mind wandered, I thought of all the good times I had at this bar. The empty seats were filled with phantom images. Percival was there, all healed up. Roy never went mad and Sheena is still carrying that elven bow of hers and she never had any crystals in her back. Suzy from the slums is there, too, looking just the same as the day I left her. They caroused and patted me on the back, we made toasts, and drank to our good health. But out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed him. The uninvited guest. The phantom of paradise. And when I looked into his face all my friends disappeared one by one, until it's just me, the old soak, sitting alone nursing my bottle. The high is gone. I drink now just because there’s nothing else to be done.

-

I looked up for a second at the crowd, then ducked my head back down. I’d been recognized. It’s the band of adventurers that rescued me from that situation back at the swamp. They were a group of four, an Elsewhere elf, a drow, a human and a halfling. Only the elves were there then, a priest and a warrior. The priest was decked out in flowing white robes, atop her head was a high mitre that rested precariously upon her long, flaxen locks. The drow was lean and muscular, possessing supercilious eyes that dressed you down with a glance. At his side he always carried a wicked-looking hooked blade.

“Hey! There you are! We were looking for you”, said the elf in a chirpy voice. I mumbled something incomprehensible back.

“Lookit ‘im, sitting at the end of the bar, drowning his sorrows. You better lay off that stuff old man. It’ll be the death of you”, the drow warrior advised haughtily.

“I’ll die on my own terms then. Better than letting the monsters get me.” I spat out. At this the drow cracked up, but the priestess was genuinely concerned.

“Come on”, he said. “Let’s leave him to his drink. I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Leave him? We can’t do that!”

“What d’ya think you’ll get outta him? He can hardly stand up straight, what’s he gonna do in a dungeon?”

“He has expertise. He knows everything about the Dark Woods, don’t you sir?” It was my turn to laugh.

“The Dark Woods? I’ve been through it more times than… than… I’ve been going to the Dark Woods since before you were a babe in your mother’s arms..”, I slurred.

“See, I told you.”, the elf said to her companion. Then she turned back to me, “Sir, would you be interested in accompanying our adventuring party tomorrow. It would be a great help for us. I’m sure your experience would come in handy, if you could point out to us where the monsters spawn, where we could find the best treasure. What do you say, will you take part in our venture? Join our dungeon crawler team, The Crimson Drakes?”

“I thought we agreed our team name would be The Beholder’s Eye”, said the drow.

“Why would you want to be named after a Beholder? They’re such dreadful creatures, while Drakes are so majestic-”

“Forget it!” I blurted out. “Don’t you see I’m out of the game? You kids should know better than to bother your elders. I’ve got no time to babysit.” The two looked at each other. The priestess spoke,

“But sir. I don’t think you understand. We’d pay you. We’d pay you quite handsomely. Really.”

Well that changes things, I thought.