Chapter 173: Interview

Jadis had never conducted an interview before. She’d been on the interviewee side of things several times in her life back on Earth, but doing the actual interviewing was a new experience. If she were honest with herself, the thought of being in a position where she’d need to assess potential candidates for hire into a company she owned had never occurred to her. The fact that it was a mercenary company and the people she had to interview were basically trained killers was even further outside the realm of her expectations. Thus, she had no idea what she was supposed to ask in such an outlandish situation.

“Is that a lamp?”

“It’s a flail.”

“It looks like a lamp.”

“Yeah, it’s, uh, made to look like a lantern. But it’s a flail.”

“Huh,” Dys ran her fingers through her hair as she leaned back. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use a… flail, in battle around here. How’s it been working out for you?”

“It’s effective. I don’t have much, but I’ve got a little Arcane magic and I can channel it into the flail. Adds some flare to my attacks. The fire kind, not the flashy kind. Well I guess it does flash, particularly at night… ah fuck—it adds magic damage to my attacks.”

Fortunately, Addy’s sister seemed to be feeling just about as awkward as Jadis was.

Bridget looked like a smaller, less broad version of her sister. However, that didn’t mean she was a small woman. She was still a few inches over six feet and was obviously well-muscled. She just wasn’t quite as tall or thick as her older sister. Still, she was a powerfully built orc lady and since she’d shown up that morning wearing her full set of armor, she cut an impressive figure.

Her equipment consisted of a sallet helmet and rounded steel armor with mitt-like gauntlets. The various pieces looked like they’d been scavenged from other sets of armor, their styles and colors not quite meshing in the way a custom-made full set would, but rather than looking ramshackle the mix just made Bridget look like more of an experienced mercenary. There were also various small metal icons she’d tied to pieces of her armor with bits of rope or twine. Nothing dangled loosely, but the little copper and iron symbols she’d clearly added onto her set gave her a more tribalistic look, despite wearing armor that was closer to full plate than anything else.

The strangest part of her equipment though was her weapon. The “flail” was a more than seven-foot-long wooden polearm with steel reinforcement. At the top was a steel ring to which was attached a swinging head. Except, rather than being a metal ball with spike or something similar like Jadis would have expected based on every movie she’d ever seen featuring someone using a flail, this weapon had what looked like a lantern hanging from it.

No, not just looked like, it absolutely was a lantern. Made of steel and with four open-faced sides, the device was definitely a lantern. Except, it didn’t have any glass on the open faces. Plus, the overall construction of the lantern was far thicker and heavier than anything normally seen on the typical lamps carried by people or found hanging from posts along the street. Bridget’s weaponized lantern looked sturdy enough to hit a rock without bending or breaking, not easily at least.

“That’s pretty cool,” Dys complimented. Seeing the confusion on Bridget’s face, she quickly amended, “Pretty impressive. You don’t see many melee fighters who do magic damage too, at least not without enchantments. How’d you end up going down that path?”

“Um,” Bridget leaned her head side to side as she considered her words. “I was offered a strange class and I took it? Shit, that makes me sound—it wasn’t just because it was strange, alright? But when you’re offered a couple of really basic combat classes and then the gods toss one you’ve never heard of before at your feet, you’ve got to take it, right? I mean, it’s a risk, but we’re fighters, yeah? Everything is a risk.”

The look on Bridget’s face as she explained her choice was nervous and almost apologetic. After Jadis had invited the orc woman in to sit down and have a talk she’d removed her helmet, which did make it a lot easier for her to read the woman’s expressions. She was a good-looking woman, with a strong jaw and thick, slanted eyebrows that gave her resting face an intense look. Her black hair was pulled back and tied in a heavy braid that had been pinned up in a few loose coils. A sharp scar ran across her right cheek and onto her nose, adding to her overall look of a warrior. Her eyes were dark, almost black, but had flecks of orange and red in them that made them stand out. Altogether, Bridget looked like the kind of woman who should be brimming with confidence and swagger, not anxiously biting her lip with a short fang.

 “I completely understand,” Dys said after a moment with a wry smile tugging up a corner of her mouth. “My sisters and I have weird classes too, but we make it work for us. What’s yours? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, just curious.”

Bridget still looked nervous, but Jadis’ admission that she also had a couple of unusual classes seemed to put the orc a little more at ease. With a little hesitation, she shrugged.

“It’s called Lantern Light Landsknecht.”

“…for real?”

“Yes, I’m serious,” Bridget sighed as her shoulders drooped. “I thought it sounded interesting at the time, plus the gods clearly offered it to me because of the only noteworthy thing I ever did before unlocking my primary class slot.”

“What could you have possibly done to get offered a class with that kind of name?” Dys asked with incredulous interest.

“I killed three bandits with a lantern.”

“Okay, now you’re messing with me,” Dys accused with half a laugh. “Did you really?”

“Really!” Bridget insisted. “Back in the village I grew up in we grew fields of sun berries. Nightdaws like to eat them, so the farmers would pay the kids to patrol the fields at night with, uh, well, lanterns on poles. Kind of like this one. But, you know, more normal. Anyway, I was walking the fields one night when I stumbled across a trio of men eating the berries and stuffing their pockets. I yelled at them to bugger off but they came at me with knives. That’s, uh, where I got this.”

Bridget paused her story to tap the scar on her face.

“Sort of got into a real scrum of a fight with them. Even set one on fire when I bashed the lantern into his head. But, yeah. Sort of my call to fame, back home.”

“That’s impressive,” Dys said, meaning it. “How old were you when it happened?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fuck,” Dys shook her head slowly. “You must have had some great training to take on three men alone.”

“I had some, yeah,” Bridget smiled bashfully while rubbing the back of her head. “But mostly I got lucky. The bandits were on the run from the law, had been for weeks, so they were weak with hunger. And they were low in level to begin with. And one was a goblin, so, you know,” she shrugged. “But yeah. When I unlocked my primary class and saw that the gods had offered me a class that called back to my one big moment, I just had to take it.”

As Bridget told her story to Dys, Jay relayed the information to the rest of her companions who were all gathered together in their room upstairs. Jadis wasn’t about to make the decision of who to hire into their close-knit team without consulting the rest of them, even if she was the leader of sorts. Originally, she’d wanted the whole team to be present to interview Bridget, but Aila had insisted that having eight people questioning the lone orc was too intimidating. Instead, it was just Dys talking to the woman alone while everyone basically eavesdropped via Jadis’ ability to be in two places at once.

“I bet she’s weaker than she should be,” Kerr commented from where she was sitting on the edge of the bed.

“She doesn’t look weak to me,” Syd retorted. “Plus she’s definitely got some kind of training going on if she took out three grown men when she was a kid.”

“Fifteen is practically full grown with orcs,” Kerr shot back. “Those green-assed lunks grow fast as weeds. Besides, I’m talking about her stat distribution.”

“She’s probably right,” Aila added with a sigh. “Most melee combatants who also use magic are at least level twenty. That’s for a good reason, Jadis. If you want to be effective at melee, that means you need to focus on physical attributes, and quite a lot of them, too. Strength, Agility, Vitality, Fortitude, Endurance; all are important for melee fighters. If you add magic into your kit, like Arcane, that means you also need Focus and Will. That’s eight different attributes you now need to split your attribute points across, rather than just five. Which means—”

“Which means her stats overall are probably weaker than someone who focused just on physical or just on magic,” Syd chimed in. “I get it. I’m guessing dual magic and melee fighters are usually level twenty because the secondary class focuses on magic while the primary class concentrates on physical?”

At Aila’s affirmative nod, Syd hummed in consideration.

“That doesn’t mean she’s necessarily weak,” she speculated. “She might have started with a good spread of stats. Or she’s gotten the right passive skills to support the build.”

“Possible,” Aila admitted. “But not likely. Big buffs to multiple attributes aren’t all that common. And if she focuses on those then she won’t have many actual combat skills or spells.”

That statement brought her up short. Aila’s analysis of Bridget’s possible build echoed strongly of Jadis’ own class choices. Concentrating primarily on stats had worked out well for Jadis, mostly because of how huge her stats were for her level, plus the few skills she had were powerful and applicable to most situations. Was the same true for Bridget?

Probably not, Jadis had to admit. Her situation was unique and far outside the norm. It was unlikely that the orc lass would have the same incredible boosts and benefits that Jadis had started out with. But speaking of boosts…

“Um, if she j—joins us, then c—couldn’t she increase one of her, ah, attributes with Jadis’ help?”

Thea made the point a second before Jadis brought it up. Having tossed the idea out there, the other women considered it carefully.

“I don’t see the problem,” Kerr said before anyone else. “Big Stuff has plenty to go around. Pump the lamp lady up with your special sauce every few days and she’s good to go. Side bonus for joining the company. Should probably put a clause in the contract about it.”

“I don’t know if Jadis having sex with every member who joins the guild is necessarily tenable,” Eir said with a small frown. “Especially since it would preclude anyone joining who wasn’t interested in that kind of interaction. Besides which, I’m taken to believe that Jadis has no interest in men. Does that mean we’ll be excluding all male candidates from joining the company because Jadis would not want to have ritual sex with them?”

“Yeah, no, that’s a whole different discussion,” Syd shook her head. “Right now Dys is still talking to Bridget downstairs, so one problem at a time. Do we have a consensus on how we’ll be proceeding with her?”

There were various shrugs and nods and other shared looks among the women, but Aila was the first to speak.

“Attributes and skills and rituals aside, what do you think of her as a person?”

A good question.

Thinking about their continued interaction, Jadis had to admit that she liked the woman. Bridget had warmed up as they talked and now that she was more comfortable, Jadis could tell that she was a friendly and decent sort of person. Not as unabashedly forward as her sister Addy, but still frank and well-meaning. Regardless of fighting ability, she seemed like she’d be a good addition to the team.

“I think she’s worth a shot,” Syd told them with a tilt of her head. “How about we take her for a run out into the hills and see how she does?”

“I agree, we should see how she does in the field before we make a final decision,” Aila said as the others voiced their own agreement.

Down below, as Bridget continued to chat about her experiences being a solo mercenary, Dys interrupted the lantern user with a grin.

“Well, I’ve heard enough,” she said. “I’m going to tell my sisters and the rest of the team that we should give you a test run. Do you have the time to go fight some demons today?”

“Absolutely!” Bridget exclaimed cheerily. “I was just faffing around lately anyway. I mean, not that I didn’t have plans overall, but I was waiting to hear back from some of the other mercenary companies and so I was just, uh—bloody baskets I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I get what you meant,” Dys assured the floundering orc. “Just give me a minute to go let everyone know you’ll be joining us and we can get moving. We’ll need to go pick up our smith since she’s no doubt buried headfirst in her forge, but then we can head out into the Broken Hills.”

“Great! I’m ready to go! Got my weapon, my kit, my emergency supplies—smith? Like, a blacksmith? We’re bringing a smith with us?”

“Yup,” Dys grinned lopsidedly at Bridget. “Assuming you end up joining us, you two will probably spend a lot of time together. You both have some leveling to do to catch up with the rest of us. You’ll see.”

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