Adv Log Session 33: The Capture of Zorion Clemens
General Summary
Spiritsday, Leafturn 6, 879 AFE
Eykit, Taid, Almë, and Ruby entered the courtyard of the six story U-shaped apartment building. It was a well-kept space, with six stone planters in two rows of three, each with a tree, some shrubberies, and some colorful flowers. The edges of the planters doubled as bench seating. Doors to individual apartments opened up onto the courtyard, and there was a main lobby door at the base of the U.
They headed that way. Elitheris was in there somewhere.
Zorion was three flights up, on the fourth floor. Elitheris, standing on the mezzanine level, contemplated just watching him to see which floor he got off on, but that wouldn’t tell her which apartment he was going to. She had to follow, and running up the several flights of stairs would not only be loud and noticeable, but she’d likely be too slow to see him.
She stepped into the meter-wide space between the flights of stairs. She kept an eye on the person she thought was Zorion. He disappeared on the fifth floor.
She leaped up, grabbed the railing, and pulled herself up, crouching like a frog on a branch, her boots sliding a little on the sloped railing. She leaped up again, twisting, and grabbing onto the railing on the other side of the stairwell. She didn’t pause, didn’t lose momentum, it was just leap and turn, leap and turn, and it was only a matter of a few more seconds when Elitheris was able to peek through the railing to see Zorion walking down the hallway. He then went into the apartment four doors down, facing the back of the building.
She climbed up the rest of the way, and casually walked down the hallway. There were numbers on the doors; his said “520”. She kept walking, turned the corner of the hallway, and then stopped, waiting for a few moments. Then she went back to the stairwell. If he noticed her somehow, it would at least look like she had gone to some other apartment, then came back.
Elitheris needed to regroup with her companions, to figure out what to do next. She’d found where he lived, or at least where he was currently. The group would have to plan the next steps.
She dropped down through the stairwell, tic tacking down the railings. She got down much faster than she went up, gravity working in her favor. She reached the mezzanine, and saw that there was a uniformed man in the lobby. Not a military uniform, although it was cut in the same fashion. He paced around the room, and when he turned in the direction of the stairway, she could see that he was an Orc.
Eykit said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a group of strangers to just walk in there.”
“We should stay together,” Almë said. “But you’re right. We need to wait for Elitheris.”
“Assuming she got inside and found him,” Taid said. “We don’t know that she did.”
“I have faith in her,” Eykit said. “I think she found him. I just hope he didn’t find her.” He climbed up onto one of the planters, and sat down to wait.
Elitheris could see them through the windows in the lobby. They weren’t coming in, so she strode confidently down the stairs, to the door, and out, before the Orc doorman could get much more than a “Hey, who are—“.
She didn’t look back as she went to her friends, but she kept her attention on any sounds from that direction, and she didn’t see any looks of consternation on the faces of her friends. From that, she was able to determine that the doorman wasn’t following her.
He was probably more concerned with people entering, rather than people leaving. She had gotten lucky; the doorman had been out of the lobby when she entered, so she wasn’t stopped by him. If she had been, she would have lost Zorion for sure, and they would have had a whole building to search. There were only something like twenty four apartments on each floor….
“He went into apartment 520,” Elitheris told Ruby. “What do we do now, now that we know where he is currently? It may not be where he is staying. I could certainly go on watch and just start keeping an eye on him. What do you want me to do?”
“I want to try to get him when he is asleep,” Ruby replied. “When he is sleeping.” That would be the best chance for her magecuffs and her necklace to work on him. She wouldn’t get a second chance. If it failed to teleport him back to Central, they would have to escort him all the way back to Adayn. It would be a nightmare. Not only would there be plenty of time for him to try to escape, but he certainly had friends who would likely try to rescue him. And it wasn’t like they could keep him a secret; he was the guildmaster of the guild whose primary function was figuring out secrets. As soon as he disappeared they would hunt for him, and they had the assets to find him within twenty four hours or less.
“And do what?” Elitheris asked.
“Then I would catch him. You can watch him until he falls asleep, and looking to see if he’s alone or if there is someone else in the apartment.” Ruby’s northerner accent and speech patterns still sounded odd to Elitheris.
“I’m thinking what I can do is try to find a place to squat where I can see. I need to go search to see if there’s a building behind this one where I can perch and maybe be able to see into the building. But I’ll need to do a bit of reconnaissance to see if I can find a good spot.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
“But I think the question I have is, what are your intentions with this guy? Are you going to interrogate him? Kill him? What do you want to do?”
“No, no,” Ruby said placatingly. “I don’t want to kill him. I will try to catch him asleep, if it’s possible, then I will, uh, teleport him. To a prison where—“
“You can do that? Teleport people?” Taid asked, surprise and shock in his voice.
“This guy. I can teleport this guy.”
Eykit blinked, a bit confused. “Just this guy?”
Ruby nodded. “Just this guy.”
“I…okay, fine.”
“I was going to be mad if we were climbing around through bathroom windows and stuff, and teleport was a possibility,” Taid said.
“No, no,” Ruby repeated. “Just this guy. Besides, gate magic, which teleportation is a part of, is rare and generally restricted. And yeah, I really need to try to catch him when he’s asleep.”
Ruby went on, “I have a spell of Sleeping. I’m thinking that I can make doubly sure he’s asleep. Or perhaps use a spell that weakens his willpower and make him more compliant?”
“I have a spell of Drunkenness!” Almë offered. “Useful when you’re at a party and don’t want to go through all the trouble of drinking.”
“Where’s the fun in that?!” Taid exclaimed, sounding as if Almë had just said something insulting to his religion. Eykit nodded, seconding Taid’s opinion. “The whole point of it is the drinking. Drunkenness is just what you’re stuck with later! It’s not the goal.”
Ruby, on the other hand, said, “Uh, okay. That would be great.”
Almë continued on, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “If he wakes up, he’s already drunk as fuck.”
In addition to the ability to teleport Zorion Clemens, Central had also given Ruby a pair of magecuffs, enchanted with the spell of Foolishness. Putting them on Zorion would make his mind fuzzy, more of a simpleton, and less able to resist whatever spells she wanted to cast on him. The tricky part was getting them on him. While it was certainly possible to overwhelm him and put the cuffs on him, that might cause him damage. Or cause her companions damage, which would also be a bad outcome. While the success of her mission was paramount, she would only sacrifice her new friends if she had to.
She reached into a pocket, and pulled out a pair of slender bands connected by a short chain. They were steel, and Taid, Almë, and Elitheris could tell immediately that they were enchanted. Those with magical talent could just tell, more often than not. “These are called ‘Shackles of the Dimwit’. We’ll need to put these on Clemens.”
“Ah,” Almë said. “So we have multiple options, right? Option one is that you give the shackles to Eykit and he tries to put the shackles on him while he sleeps. Because even if he then wakes up, he’s hampered by whatever those shackles do to him.”
They nodded, following the logic, and provisionally agreeing with that plan.
“Obviously,” he said, “if that fails and we try to cast spells upon him, he’ll be able to fight back because then he’ll be awake and pissed off. That would be extremely bad, given that under most circumstances, if you are a mage guildmaster you have to have some skills. And he’ll probably have the spell of Turn My Foes Into Newts, and we’ll all be having a very bad day.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “And the second option would be that we cast a spell on him while he’s sleeping. I can cast the spell of Drunkenness on him. Then he’d be drunk, which, if successful, would also give us an advantage. It would make him, well, drunk. Cognitive impairments in addition to physical ones. So if he did wake up, he’d wake up shitfaced.”
He turned to Ruby. “How long do you need in order to do your thing to him?”
Ruby frowned in thought, running options and contingencies in her head. “Most likely several seconds, call it ten seconds or so.”
Almë nodded. Any spell they wanted to do to this guy would last a lot longer than that. “We could also use the neighboring rooms, and cast through the wall. Problem is we wouldn’t know where he was, so the casting would be risky. But it would work…if Elitheris gets a good scouting position and can look into the apartment and see where everything is.”
Elitheris looked up at the building. Each apartment had several windows. They were actually glass, diamond-paned windows. From a distance, she wouldn’t see very much. But each apartment had a narrow balcony. Just a meter wide, it was enough to get out and stand on it, and maybe have some potted plants or a stool to sit on and enjoy the air.
“I’m going to have to get close if I want to see anything,” she said. “Those windows aren’ t very good for seeing through. Better than oiled paper, though.” After a pause, she said, “First things first, I need to scout the building.”
Eykit grinned. “And we will just wait here and try to look like any other normal group of a Hobbit, a Goblin, a Dwarf, and a huge-ass Elf.”
“Maybe you should just go get a drink at a tavern or something.”
That got Ruby’s attention. “And we will bring you some food!” she said.
“I she doesn’t eat it on the way,” Eykit mumbled.
“What was that?” Ruby asked.
“Just clearing my throat. I like the idea of dinner, though.”
“Oh, thank you,” Elitheris said. “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll see what I can see.” And she headed around the building. The others went to the tavern to wait for a while.
It was a bit after sunset, about the 14th bell, and the day shift workers were making their way home for the evening. The foot traffic in the street had dropped in volume about twenty percent or so, and it looked like it would be easier to make her way through the crowds if she had to. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to.
On either side of the six story apartment building were four story apartment buildings. Behind it was a row of shops, facing the street on the other side of the block. They varied in height, but most were three stories.
Elitheris turned to look up at the large building. She could see balconies at each apartment, marching up the wall in rows. There were plenty of handholds for someone with her scaling abilities. She grinned. She counted over four balconies from the center, and sighted what she assumed was the correct balcony.
She started up the building, mainly using the balconies and railings as hand and footholds. She got to Zorion’s balcony, gripping it with her gloved hands. She pulled herself up until her eyes rose past the balcony’s edge. She saw two windows and a door with a small glass window in it. Between the balconies was another window. Judging from the architecture she could see, each flat had three windows looking out the rear side of the building, plus the smaller window in the door itself.
On the narrow balcony were two small chairs and a table. Besides the almost miniature furniture, there was very little room. She pulled herself up and slid over the railing as quietly as possible. She crouched in the corner by one of the windows, able to see into the apartment.
She saw a large room with the kitchen in one corner, with the rest of the space given over to a table and four chairs, and some upholstered chairs and a settee. She could see three doors to the left, and none to the right. There appeared to only be four rooms total. The door in the center was closed; the other two were partially open, although she couldn’t see much of the rooms beyond. Across the space, on the opposite side of the room, was the front door.
She did not see Zorion.
Somehow, she expected the living place of a mage guildmaster to be a bit more resplendent. But while she could see that the furniture was very nice, and there was some paintings on the walls, it didn’t look much like a wealthy person’s estate. It was actually quite humble. He didn’t show any ostentatious wealth.
But then, he did travel a lot, so maybe he had dozens of places like this one. Maybe, even with all his wealth, he couldn’t afford to have them all be richly appointed. Maybe this was one of his “poorer” houses.
Elitheris wanted to see into the third window. She leaped off of the balcony, and grabbed the window sill, hanging from it for a moment, then pulled herself up in order to peek into the room. It appeared to be an office. And it was currently empty.
It could have been a bedroom; it was large enough for two double beds. But just had a desk, a chair, a side table, and an armoire. Judging from the position of the wall, and assuming that the first room was another room like this one, the room between them was narrow. It was probably a privy. Must be nice, she thought, not having to go down the hall or outside to use the outhouse. And much more comfortable than a chamber pot.
She swung her legs like a pendulum, building momentum to swing and flip and grab the railing. But she didn’t quite time it right, and she flipped, but gravity pulled her down too far. Her hands scrabbled at the railing, but couldn’t quite reach; she managed to get some fingertips onto the balcony floor, but wasn’t quick enough to get a good grip.
She fell, the next balcony rising quickly past her, and the third time was the charm. Her hands gripped the balcony railing, her body swinging down and slamming into the balcony itself. The breath went out of her, and she hung there for a long moment.
She climbed back up to Zorion’s balcony, and again peered into the window. The glass of the diamond panes were wavy and inconsistent, but she could see well enough despite the distortion. Zorion walked out of the first bedroom, wearing different clothes than when he had come in. These looked more comfortable than is more formal work attire. They were only a small step above peasant clothing in cut and style, although likely of much higher quality fabrics.
Zorion went into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and pulled out some bread, cheese, and fruit. He also got a glass and filled it from a small cistern sitting on the counter.
The guildmaster sat down at the table, and ate. Once done, he walked into the office. She couldn’t see him from where she was, but she knew he was in there.
Elitheris got comfortable. It seemed as if she would be there a while. The room was lit with oil lamps, and it was dark outside. She doubted that she would be visible to anyone inside the apartment.
A half hour later, something slammed into her side, just under the ribs. Her side erupted in pain. Holy shit! she thought, shocked, That’s an arrow!
Looking down, she saw an arrow a finger thick sticking out of her side, likely fired from…where? She didn’t see anyone on the roofs; whoever had shot her had ducked down to not be seen. Her side was feeling very warm and wet, and her vision was swimming.
It took a second, but then her brain registered something else about the arrow. It had a message tied to it.
Her head kept feeling fuzzy. She fumbled for a potion. She hoped that she had a potion of healing in her small collection. It took a moment to grab the correct one, but she found it, popped the cork off, and downed it. It tasted like a strange combination of acrid, bitter, and sour. But then, if medicine tasted good, people would be drinking it all the time. Almost immediately, much of the pain disappeared, and the fuzziness in her head faded away.
It still hurt every time she moved, or breathed, but at least she was stabilized and not in danger of falling unconscious. Now she could read the note. She untied it carefully, trying not to tug on the arrow shaft too much, or accidentally let go of the paper, only to watch it slowly fall five stories to the ground.
The unrolled the paper. It was in Quenya, written in a flowing script. “I have finally found you. You will pay for what you did. Enno onna enno enne.” It was signed “An old friend”. Enno onna enno enne meant “a person’s child is a person’s purpose.”
The arrow could have been meant for the guild master’s door. After all, Ruby had been looking for him for months; it was very possible that someone else had had the same idea. Which meant that Elitheris had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But if it had been aimed at the door, her position in the corner of the balcony wouldn’t have put her between the door and the direction the arrow seemed to come from.
Another thought struck her. Ruby had some really nice silmasamin, Elven silversilk armor, given to her by a grateful Elf somewhere. However, she was a Hobbit, and Elves rarely gave such nice gifts to non-Elves. Could there be some rival? Someone who thought that they should have the silversilk, and not Ruby? Did Ruby have an enemy, that wanted her to fail in her mission, whatever it was? If so, then taking out whoever Ruby had assigned to watch Zorion Clemens might be part of their plan. Although, if they wanted her dead, they could have easily done so with a second arrow, or better placement of the first one.
Unless they got distracted somehow? Perhaps Ruby and the rest of her friends had intercepted this assassin before they could finish the job? But if that was the case, wouldn’t Ruby have given them all a heads up on that? Given that, it was unlikely that her friends could have known that the assassin was there.
Which implied that the arrow had been meant for her. If so, it was possible that is was someone still upset about the accident in Celumarauca. Elitheris hadn’t meant to burn the village down; she hadn’t even fumbled her spell casting. It had just been bad timing that the destruction of the smaller of Velyri’s two moons coincided with her attempt to light a cook fire. The mana pulse that emanated from the destruction of the moon Jypra had amplified her fire creation to untold levels, the wall of superheated plasma sweeping through the village and igniting the forest on fire in the process. Hundreds of her townsfolk had died.
It was the reason she had self-exiled herself, living as an itinerant hermit for almost eighty years. She had worked very hard to put it all behind her, having minimal success so far.
And if the arrow was any indication, and had something to do with Celumarauca’s destruction, then someone else was having a hard time putting the incident in the past. She didn’t recognize the writing, but the fact that it was in Quenya and not in Imperial also implied that the message was for her.
But figuring out that puzzle would have to wait. She had an almost meter long stick with a sharp chunk of metal stuck inside of her that she needed to deal with. Every time she moved or breathed that arrowhead cut something inside. And having that heavy shaft pulling on it constantly wasn’t helping the situation.
She pulled out her rondel dagger. It wasn’t the best blade to use to cut through a finger-thick arrow shaft, but it was what she had. She gripped the shaft right where it disappeared into her. A part of her brain registered that the arrow weight was consistent with a warbow of at least her draw weight. Likely better. It could have been shot at very long range.
She applied knife edge to the wooden shaft, and started sawing at it. It hurt, the shaft vibrating despite the enchantment on the blade. It didn’t take too long to cut it off. She pulled out a roll of bandage, and did what she could to stabilize the arrow in the wound, both to minimize its movement and staunch the bleeding.
It was time to get off of the balcony. She really didn’t want to be there any more. She went over the edge of the balcony, then did a series of drop and grabs as she fell past the balconies. She was careful to not twist her body in such a way as to risk having the severed arrow shaft clip the balconies as she went down.
She checked the roofline again, just in case she saw the assassin. She didn’t see anyone. She checked the back door, the one that would lead to the lobby. She really wanted to use that short cut, instead of walking all around the building. But the door was locked.
Sighing, she started hoofing it back to the courtyard on the other side of the building.
Taid, Eykit, Almë, and Ruby watched the apartment building from the tavern across the street. No reason to make the residents nervous because some strangers were just hanging out in their courtyard. They saw Elitheris come out of the alley, moving with what seemed to be a limp. She was holding her side. They exited the tavern and made their way across the street, making their way quickly through the groups of people going about their business.
“Elitheris! How are you doing?” Taid asked. Even in the dim lamplight, he could see that there was a dark stain at her side.
“Great,” Elitheris said sarcastically. “Doing just great.” She looked at her companions. “Someone else is going to have to take over. He’s still in his apartment, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.” She thought a moment. “Or Ruby does.”
She quickly gave an overview of what had happened. She indicated the broken arrow, which she had stuffed through her belt.
“Do you recognize the arrow?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah,” Eykit said, “is there anything special about the fletching?”
There was a bit more light in the courtyard. She pulled the arrow shaft out of her belt, and peered at it. From what she could tell, it was a finely made arrow. Of the quality she liked to use. The feathers of the fletching were colorful, likely a jungle bird, but that wasn’t anything special. Most of the the local fletchers used locally sourced feathers.
Elitheris was still bleeding, and someone still needed to watch Zorion Clemens.
“Eykit,” Almë said. “You’re up.”
Eykit looked at the building. It was tall. He could climb, but he lacked the acrobatics and such that Elitheris had. But he was more of a talker anyway. “Maybe if I dress like a deliveryman I can talk my way in. Go in through the front door. Like a civilized person.”
“That makes sense,” Almë said.
Ruby turned to Elitheris, who was still holding onto the arrow that was in her side. “Did Zorion hear anything?”
Elitheris shook her head, saying, “I don’t think so. I kept pretty quiet despite the little surprise here.” She gestured towards the wood buried in her side. She winced as she felt the arrowhead shift again.
“Okay, so the apartment isn’t that big. There is a large main room, with three doors down one side. From the front door, they will be on the right. The first door is apparently his bedroom. The second door is either a closet, or the privy. I’m guessing privy. The third door is his office, which has a window.” She frowned, thinking. “You know, his bedroom has no windows. It’s on the inside of the building, surrounded by interior spaces.”
“But you’d be able to tell when he went to sleep, right?” Almë asked.
“Not really. I could see when he went into the bedroom, but I couldn’t see what he did in there. Who knows when he actually goes to sleep.”
“I mean, you’d be able to see if he had a light on, right?”
“Probably. Unless he closed the door. But, nonetheless, at this point, are we planning on having Eykit climb up the balconies, or walk in through the front door so he can pick the lock?” She put her hand to her head. “He could also pick the lock on the balcony door. I didn’t even check to see if it was open!”
“We could also just gamble and just wait for midnight or something reasonable when people go to sleep and then just enter his apartment.” Almë said. “That’s also possible.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ruby. “I would say maybe Eykit could just watch the front door, to see if he is coming out or not.”
“Gahh!” Elitheris cried out.
Taid had grabbed the arrow, then yanked it out, casting a spell of Stop Bleeding, followed by a spell of Major Healing. Elitheris’ legs went a bit weak with the sudden pain, but it didn’t last as Taid’s spells took effect. What was left was barely a scar. Taid grinned, and dropped the piece of arrow into Elitheris’ hand.
She looked at the bloody arrow in her hand. “I should be able to figure out who this is. I don’t have that many friends.”
“Assuming that it’s about you,” Taid said. “It might be Ruby’s enemy, and they assumed you were involved.” He went on, “They have real knowledge of what we're doing and they know that you're part of the team and that you're doing something on behalf of Ruby. There's a whole bunch of assumptions if it’s Ruby’s enemy. If it’s your enemy, they are just shooting you. Although why they waited until you were on a balcony….” He trailed off.
“Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it could be any number of things. I have no idea.”
Elitheris pulled the message out from the pocket she had shoved it into. She read it again, out loud in Quenya, to her companions. “I have finally found you. You will pay for what you did. Enno onna enno enne. Signed, An old friend.” She then translated it for them.
“A person’s child is a person’s purpose?” Eykit asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A parent who lost their child?” Elitheris asked.
Taid asked, “So, who were your friends before the fire?”
She shrugged. She had known everyone in town, and they her. She’d lived with them for over 200 years.
Ruby looked confused. “Did you guys kill a kid or something? Murder a child?”
“Uh,” Elitheris started, faltering a bit. She didn’t like talking about That Day. “Well, I don’t know.” She thought back, the pain of the memories bringing tears to her eyes. She’d tried so hard to not think about that day. She remembered the twins, Almáriel and Ancalimë, whom she had babysat for several times. They had been sweet girls, and had loved dancing and singing.
“What fire?” Ruby asked. She didn’t know the story. “Was it an accident, or did you do it on purpose?”
Elitheris looked stricken. “Yeah. Yes, technically it was an accident.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I was doing a magic spell. And it went awry. I was not intentionally trying to burn the town down. I was doing that spell when Calanorië blew up and scattered the Shards all over. When the moon, you call it Jypra, blew up, it sent out a huge mana pulse while I was in the middle of casting a spell of Create Fire in order to light a cooking fire in the center of town. Instead, the fire blew away half the town, and a bunch of the surrounding forest. There was a forest fire, which I think got the rest of town.
“And then you ran away?”
“Well, I left. The survivors would have let me stay, but I…just…couldn’t.”
“So,” Taid said, “you babysat for these two kids? That’s the theory? You know the parents?”
“Yeah. Élheren and Naralta. I don’t know if they also died. I didn’t see them during the time the refugees were determining my fate.”
Ruby wasn’t done questioning Elitheris. “How many people died in this fire?”
Again, Elitheris shrugged. “I don’t know. About half the town, maybe. Maybe more. There were some people that made it to the camp that had suffered horrible burns. They might have died. We didn’t have any mages in town, and any alchemy anyone had likely burned up in the fire.” Silent tears wet her face.
“By the Gods, Elitheris!” Almë said.
“I told you,” Elitheris replied, her voice thick. “This is why I’ve been living alone!” She turned away from them then, her shoulders shuddering as sobs wracked her body.
“And when you left,” Ruby asked, “do you remember if anyone was especially mad at you?”
“Just the whole town!” came the Elven woman’s answer.
“I mean, if it was a mistake, then yeah, you can get angry. But maybe someone is especially angry.”
A thought occurred to Almë. “I’ve never asked. Were you allowed to cast a spell, or were you learning this in secret?”
“They don’t have kids very often,” Eykit said. “They have long gestation periods and aren’t fertile for very long. So killing a child can be really traumatic.”
“We value children very highly because they are rare and precious,” Almë said. “Especially since if you have such a long life, you need to fill it with something, and family is a good purpose, right? So family is highly valued, and children even more so. This gives your long life a lot of purpose.”
“Yeah,” Elitheris agreed, sniffling. “You guys go in. Take care of Zorion. I’ll just stand guard at the entrance.”
Ruby looked into the lobby through the window. There was a man inside, wearing some sort of uniform. It wasn’t a military uniform, but it was cut in a similar fashion. He seemed to be keeping watch over the lobby.
Every now and again residents would come down the mezzanine stairs, nod, wave, or say a few words to the uniformed man, and then walk out the front door or walk down the other wing of the building. They could see what appeared to be Humans, Orcs, and Goblins. The more they watched, the more they were convinced that the uniformed man was an Orc, and that he seemed to be some sort of doorman or guard.
All of the residents that they saw wore nice clothes. The people living here weren’t peasants. The apartments must be rather expensive, and only the wealthy could afford them.
“I’m going in,” Taid said. And he walked into the lobby.
The Orc held up a hand, eyeing the Dwarf with the eight foot long halberd. “This is private property,” he said. “State your business.”
“Oh, I just wanted to know where the nearest good barber was,” Taid replied.
“Across the street,” the doorman said, flicking a finger in that general direction.
“And he’s—or she, I suppose—is a good barber?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Because this,” Taid said, lifting his luxurious beard, “deserves only the best. And look,” his fingers trailed through the hair until they got to the ends, “it’s getting scruffy at the edges.” He let his beard drop back to his chest. “So, as you can plainly see, my poor beard needs a trim and a shaping.”
“Like I said, ser, across the street.”
“Does he also have proper beard liniments and conditioning ointments?”
The Orc’s eyes rolled skyward. “I’m sure he does. He’s that way.” He pointed out the door. Like a good doorman, he was also paying some attention to the group milling around outside. He wasn’t sure what they were up to, but he was starting to get suspicious.
Taid made a show of looking around the lobby. “So, what can you tell me about this place? What’s its history?”
The Orc cocked his head, trying to figure out why this heavily armed Dwarf was asking him these questions. The Dwarf hadn’t made any threatening moves with his polearm….
“It was built eighteen years ago, but it’s been renovated a couple times in that time. It was built by Bertram Damla, who had bought all of the land this building is built on from the original owners. Then he razed all of those old buildings, and built this.”
“You’ve been here all that time? You must have seen all kinds of shit!”
“No, I’ve only been here about five years.” He grinned, his tusks gleaming. “But I’ve seen my fair share of shit.”
“Pretty good tenure.”
“Yeah. So far. No major scandals. Well, except for Mrs. Holmes.”
Ruby watched Taid engage the doorman in conversation. She ran through some possible approaches. She saw a pair of residents coming down the mezzanine stairs. She waited, and watched as the residents walked out of the lobby, nodding as they passed.
Ruby went inside.
“Excuse me, Taid,” the doorman said as Ruby entered the lobby. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Good evening, ser,” Ruby said. “I’m looking for a barber.”
The Orc raised an eyebrow. “The barber is across the street.” He looked at the two of them. “You two are together, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.
“Well, yes,” Ruby replied, “we are. This here is my friend, and he has to go to a barber, and he really doesn’t want to.”
“Well, he seemed pretty keen on going to properly shape his beard.”
“Yeah, you noticed how he is here talking, and not here going to the barber? He’s procrastinating.” She made some small gestures behind Taid’s back, out of view of the Orc. She was casting a spell of Daze, which would make the doorman basically ignore them for a while. That hand also held a powerstone that Almë had lent to her, which she tapped to power the spell.
The spell went off, and Ruby could sense the invisible magenta cloud of power as it rushed to the Orc’s head.
He blinked, and he frowned, his hand going to his dagger. “What the hell was that?” He could tell that magic had just happened, but he didn’t know which one of them had cast the spell. It looked like neither of them. He looked around, trying to find the mage that cast the spell while the two people in front of him distracted him.
The spell of Daze didn’t affect him. He took a step back, trying to figure out what was going on.
Ruby looked surprised. “What’s going on? What’s happening? What’s wrong?” She looked around, looking for a threat. She started to look panicked.
Taid looked confused as well. He looked between the Orc and Ruby.
Ruby tried something different. She cast a spell of False Memories. Again, Ruby asked, “What’s wrong? What’s going on? Who is there? Why are you freaking out?”
The doorman didn’t answer her question, but got a hard look on his face and said, “I think you should leave now. You aren’t residents, and they like their privacy. You can go.”
The spell took a few seconds to cast. She implanted the memory that they were all residents of the building. The Orc shook his head, and said, “That was weird.” Then he turned to Taid and Ruby and said, “So, what are you guys up to this evening? Coming in or going out?”
“Oh we’re just coming back in and waiting for our friends there.” Ruby waved a hand at Almë and Eykit. They came forward at her gesture, and walked into the lobby. “Come on, guys, let’s go upstairs.”
And with that, they went up the mezzanine stairs to the flight of stairs that went up through all the floors. Eykit looked up through the stairwell, all the way to the sixth floor. “He’s way up there, isn’t he?” At Almë’s nod, he muttered, “Gods damn it,” and started going up the flights.
They got off on the fifth floor. They occasionally saw a resident walking down a hallway, but other than that, they didn’t see anything dangerous or suspicious. They went to apartment 520. There weren’t any guards at the door, or residents in the halls.
They went up another flight of stairs. Eykit sat on the stairs where he could see down the hallway to Zorion’s door. Everyone else went up to the landing. They needed to wait for Zorion to go to sleep, and being at the top floor would minimize traffic.
After a very long wait of about three hours or so, they quietly moved back down to the fifth floor, and to apartment 520.
Ruby looked at the door. “Anyone know any spells that can detect whether there are spells on the door?”
Taid and Almë shook their heads. As far as they could tell, the door wasn’t enchanted, but they had no way of detecting whether or not a transient spell, such as a Magelock, was cast on the door.
Almë ran his hands along the wall, trying to determine what they were made of. They weren’t made of stone; instead, it felt more like plaster. The plasterers were good, and left the surface smooth, with no trowel marks.
From what Elitheris’ description told them, Zorion’s bedroom was just on the other side of the wall.
Ruby was thinking that a spell of Mass Sleep would be useful.They didn’t know where Zorion’s bed was located. But being a spell designed to cover a large area, it could encompass the entire room, so no matter where he was, it would affect him.
“Do we need to cast a spell, or do we have any of those sleep pastilles?” Taid whispered.
“Yeah,” Almë said. “They worked fine the last time we tried that, right?”
“Right. How’s that hole in your chest?”
“Hole? What hole?” Ruby asked.
“Oh, Almë attacked a retired war mage. The guy sent an icicle through Almë’s ribcage.”
“That’s cold, Taid,” Almë griped.
Taid just grinned. "Being an icicle, I'm sure it was."
“You can give me the details later,” Ruby told them.
“Mass Sleep may not be our best tactic,” Almë said. “If he’s got a Watchdog spell going, as soon as we cross the perimeter of the area it will wake him up.”
“Good point,” Ruby said. Mass Daze, on the other hand, would make him unaware of what was going on around him. They would be able to walk in and cuff him, without him knowing what was happening. “New plan. I’ll cast a spell of Mass Daze, covering a fair chunk of that apartment. Eykit, I’d like you to be ready to pick that lock.”
Eykit nodded, and crouched by the door. He listened, trying to hear any movement. He couldn’t hear anything. “Are we sure this isn’t going to explode? Because I don’t like exploding.”
“You don’t?” Taid asked.
“No, I do not. Not my favorite.”
Ruby cast the spell of Mass Daze so that the area of effect it covered was on the room on the other side of the wall. Then she nodded to Eykit, who began picking the lock on Zorion Clemens’ door.
Almë stood beside Eykit, his staff ready.
“Just to make sure,” Ruby said, “before we go inside, we don’t kill this guy. Since we want the money back, like I told you, he owes a lot of people money. We don’t want to kill him. That’s not the way we work on this mission, right?” She glanced at Taid, Eykit, and Almë, making sure they heard and understood her. It would be tragic to be so close and have some clumsy oaf kill him.
The lock was a good one, and it took Eykit almost a minute until he heard the telltale clicks of an opened lock. He stood up, and gestured for Taid to be the first in.
Taid gave Eykit a look. “What, I’m the body shield now?”
“I am weak and puny,” Eykit replied, a smile curling his lips.
“There is probably some trap on the door or something.”
Taid gripped the doorknob, and started gibbering and convulsing, his whole body shaking. A moment later, the convulsions stopped, and he grinned at them. “Just kidding,” he said.
Eykit slapped him on the arm. “Bastard.”
“Good one, Taid,” Almë said.
Ruby chuckled, and said, “Let’s go. We don’t have time for this.” The Daze spell only lasted for so long.
Taid turned the doorknob. At least, he tried to. The doorknob did not turn, despite being supposedly unlocked. He looked to Eykit. “I thought you unlocked this?”
“I did! I felt the tumblers release. It should open.”
“Well, it’s not being a good, obedient doorknob. There must be a locking spell on it, then.”
Taid stepped back, lowered a shoulder, and slammed into the door. The doorjamb split, the hardware securing the door blowing out of the wood in a hail of splinters, and the door pivoted on its hinges and banged against what must have been a shelving unit.
“Okaaaay,” Eykit said, entering the room behind Taid. It was dark. No lights were lit. Some light came in through the two windows at the rear of the apartment, enough for everyone but Ruby to navigate by.
Almë and Ruby followed, Almë closing the door behind them. It wouldn’t stay; there was no hardware left that would secure it. He grabbed one of the dining chairs, and set that in front of the door to keep it from opening.
The door to Zorion’s bedroom was closed. Taid went to the bedroom door, but that door was locked. At least this time, the doorknob moved a bit, unlike the front door. “Eykit, another lock for you.”
This lock only took Eykit about ten seconds to unlock.
“Can you open the door, please,” Ruby asked.
“Nope,” Eykit replied, and stepped back. There was a mage guildmaster in there. He wanted nothing to do with being the first target.
“Taid, can you open the door, please?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” Taid said, gripping the doorknob and turning.
The door opened. As expected, it opened into a bedroom. Someone was sitting up on the bed, a confused expression on his face. It was Guildmaster Zorion Clemens.
Ruby scurried past Taid, who had leveled Maggie at Zorion. He didn’t seem to notice, and mumbled something about being woken up by something. She had her mage cuffs out. They were equipment that Central had given to her for this use. They were enchanted with a Foolishness spell, so that anyone who had the shackles put on them would be rendered dimwitted. Hopefully, the effect would be enough to weaken his resistance against what she really wanted to do to him.
Zorion didn’t resist the cuffs; he hardly even registered that they were on him. Ruby pulled out the necklace. It still glowed brightly with the spell Taid had put on it days ago, and it lit up the entire room bright as day. She made sure the man was, indeed, Zorion Clemens. As far as she could tell, it was him.
Then she crushed the glowing stone, casting the spell that had been contained within it, and Zorion, and the light, vanished with a soft popping noise.
When the room had been lit, Ruby had noticed a candle on the nightstand. She fumbled around in the dark until she found it, then lit it using a spell of Ignite Fire. Now she had enough light to see by, and she started going through the dresser drawers and the drawer of the nightstand. She didn’t find anything incriminating or interesting to her.
Eykit, meanwhile, had gone into the office. If there was anything of value, it would be there.
His office had a desk, some chairs, and some cabinets. He rifled through them all, finding ledgers, letters, and various other kinds of paperwork. He stacked them on the desk in a quickly growing pile. Ruby came in, and started flipping through the pile.
The Goblin found a small purse, which disappeared into a pocket. Judging from the weight, it held a respectable, although not large, amount of coins. But he figured that Ruby would be more interested in the paperwork, guild records, accounting ledgers, and whatever else was here.
Ruby located a folder full of letters, which she tucked under her arm. She also searched for a seal, and found wax for sealing missives, but didn’t locate a separate seal. If he had a signet ring with a seal on it, he was wearing it when he got teleported back to Central.
She put as many ledgers in her pack as she could fit. “Taid, can you please carry some of these ledgers in your pack?”
He nodded, and stuffed a couple of the ledgers into his pack.
Ruby’s stomach growled. It had been several hours since she had eaten, and her Hobbit metabolism was making itself felt. She went to the kitchen. Elitheris had mentioned that Zorion had pulled food out of an icebox. Maybe there was still some in there.
The icebox did indeed hold some food. There was a bottle of milk, some fruit, several eggs, and some cheese, plus what looked like the leftovers from a roasted chicken. There were also two Preservation boxes, each capable of holding 5 kg of food. Any food placed in the box would remain fresh. There was a lot of meat in one box, and a bunch of fresh vegetables in the other.
She made herself a pile of bread, cheese, and vegetables, and started eating. “Anyone want any of this?” she asked. No one wanted to eat any of the food, they all just wanted to get out of the apartment. But they waited, if impatiently, for Ruby to stuff her face.
Taid and Almë each took one of the preservation boxes. They were keeping those.
Ruby finished her pile of food, her hunger blunted. They exited the apartment. It was late, and there were few residents up and about. They occasionally saw someone down one of the hallways, but none were close.
They came down to the mezzanine, then came down the last flight to the lobby. The Orc doorman was still down there, and he glanced up when he heard them on the stairs.
Taid, Almë, Eykit, and Ruby simply walked out, Almë giving a half-hearted “Evening” to him as he walked by. The Orc almost said something, but they were all leaving, so he kept quiet.
They met Elitheris outside in the courtyard. “What’s in the boxes,” she asked.
“Food,” Taid said. “Preservation boxes. Judging from the maker’s marks, made by Brockhouse Containers, and enchanted by PKAC. One’s got meats, the other vegetables. Mostly full, except for what Ruby ate.”
They made their way back to Sairina Tarwar Manor, arriving there shortly before dawn. They put the boxes in the cellar, then they all went to bed. It had been a long day.
That night, while everyone slept, Almë arose near the beginning of the Hour of Final Dancing. It was still several hours before dawn. He dressed, then walked into the small patch of jungle behind the house. He wended his way between the trunks of trees and around the dense undergrowth. It was dark, but he could see just enough to navigate. The air was warm, and still, the only sounds that of the insects chirping and buzzing.
He walked until he got to the spot where they had buried Boots the zombie cat. He knelt down, meditated, contemplating his actions. He cast the spell of Shape Earth, watching as the loose earth slithered out of the hole, forming piles around it. The hole was a pit of blackness, and even his Elven night vision wasn’t good enough. He took flint and tinder to a candle, and soon it was lit. He held it over the hole.
He didn’t see the cat. He moved some more earth; he had been certain he’d dug it down far enough. More dirt shifted up and out of the hole, making the piles a little larger. He checked the hole again, and this time saw red, meat-like flesh. He used a plug of dirt underneath the cat to raise it up out of the hole. Setting the cat thing aside, he shoved the dirt back into the hole.
He looked around, and saw what he wanted: a small boulder about two feet in diameter with a slightly concave top. He picked up what was left of Boots, and carried it over to the rock, where he laid it down. He sat there for a little while, letting his mana regenerate.
Then he used the spell of Earth Shaping again, this time on the rock. Rock was harder to manipulate than soft earth, and it was more taxing to his body. But Almë shaped the stone around the distorted cat form, encasing it completely, except at the back of the neck, where Almë’s clumsy attempt at extraction surgery had left a ragged gaping wound where the Shard had once lain.
He took out the pouch of Shards he carried. In it was the pair that affected dreams somehow, plus four single Shards. One of the Shards still had residue of flesh and blood still stuck to it, although the others all had smears of gunk on them now as well.
Almë took the Shard with the most residue, and reinserted it into the hole he had dug it out of. Then he took out a needle and some thread, and did his best to sew the wound shut over the Shard.
Then he waited. He was trying to see if the cat would reanimate now that the Shard was back in place. The cat didn’t move. But then, it couldn’t anyway, since it was entirely encased in stone. But there was no evidence that he could see that reinserting the Shard would make it move around again.
After a while, he shrugged, picked up the oddly-proportioned and lumpy cat statue, and returned to the estate. He put the statue in one corner of the garden bed farthest from the manor house.
The sky was lightening; it was almost dawn. He went back inside, and back to bed, managing to get there before even the early-rising Elitheris awakened.
Skysday, Leafturn 7, 879 AFE
It was afternoon before anyone woke, and later than that when Ruby stirred. With the exception of Ruby, they were all seated around the table just off the kitchen. Otha was in the kitchen, cleaning up after preparing a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and cheese.
“So, Elitheris,” Almë said, “do you want to do anything about your old friend?”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Everyone already knew that I had done it; that was never a secret. And everyone is someone’s child. A lot of people died that day, so it could be anyone. The youngest people in town were the twins, Almáriel and Ancalimë, and myself. I ended up being something like their big sister. Élheren and Naralta often had me watch them when they were young, to try to keep them out of trouble.”
She shook her head. There wasn’t anything she could do about it at the moment. She just didn’t have enough information. “I’m going to have to ponder on this, and I’m going to have to keep my eyes peeled. I don’t even know how to begin researching something like this.”
“It’s not like it’s something you can ask around about,” Eykit said.
“All I can really do it keep looking over my shoulder to see if anybody is stalking me. Because obviously somebody is stalking me.” She got a hard look on her face. “And the fact that I didn’t notice bothers me. Which means somebody else with my kinds of skill.”
“Or better,” Taid said.
She nodded. “Or better.” She realized she was being a bit hard on herself; she’d had no reason to think anyone was stalking her, so she had no reason to look anywhere but into Zorion’s apartment. There had been no reason for her to keep scanning the surrounding areas. Her target had been in his office, no more than four or five meters away. “I’m definitely dealing with an Elf, though. Or, I suppose, someone who knows Quenya and can write it very well.”
A thought occurred to her. “Could I have been mistaken for Almë? Could it be that mage guild he’s after?”
Almë shook his head. “We don’t really look very much alike. I’m much taller, and our bodies have different proportions. Not to mention gender.” He chuckled. “It’s probably Kallia!”
Elitheris turned to Taid. “I’d like you to be casting Watchdog when we go to bed at night, just in case. Wouldn’t do to have someone sneaking in and have them surprise all of us. This person definitely wanted to make sure I knew who it was. So I feel like they might attempt contact or something.”
She took a deep breath. “So at this point, the attack on me is a mystery that we can put on the back burner, because until the person does something, there isn’t anything we can really do.”
“I find it kind of interesting,” Eykit mused, “that they seem more intent on intimidation than actual harm.”
“Well, unless they want to cause me psychological damage, or torture me before I die.”
“That’s what I meant about the intimidation part. They want you to suffer. Emotionally. Like they have probably emotionally suffered.”
“And that is assuming that we’re talking about somebody from my village. And if that is what this is, then I am going to have to wait until they come to me again. I don’t really know how I can go find them. I don’t have any information, and I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Almë said, “Maybe I’m out of line again with my suggestion, but we could go back to your village and burn the rest down.”
Elitheris shook her head. “There is nothing left of the village. They all left eighty years ago when it and the forest around it burned to ash. Any structures left have been reclaimed by the Eternal. Although there might be some evidence of the village that could be found there. Maybe. So we should go on with whatever we’re going to do. Go after whats-her-name…Kallia or whatever.”
Ruby came into the kitchen carrying the folder of letters. Otha saw her, and asked if she wanted some lunch, now that she was up. Otha, since she had to take care of her newborn, naturally fell into basically the same jobs that she had when she used to live in the farmhouse near Rhades: domestic chores and kitchen duty. Fortunately, she was a pretty good cook. Nothing extraordinary, but good, wholesome, filling food that was at least pleasant to the tongue. She did like spicy food, though, although she tried to scale it back if someone couldn’t handle the spice.
“Actually, I’d like breakfast, second breakfast, and probably elevenses,” she replied.
“No bacon, right?”
“Right.”
“Eggs, and sautéed vegetables?”
“That will be fine.”
Otha got to work in the kitchen, and Ruby sat down at the table, putting the folder of letters down in front of her. She yawned. She started looking through the letters while she waited for her food to be prepared.
The letters were fairly mundane, mostly business correspondence. Nothing overtly incriminating. However, she did notice that not all of the names were of a kind used in the Empire. Some were from foreign lands. She didn’t recognize any of the names, but that wasn’t surprising, and she didn’t expect to. She did recognize names commonly used in the Essamine Monarchy, and in the Small Kingdoms, as well as the Dwarven Kingdom of Darach.
She didn’t see anything in the letters that caught her eye. But it was entirely possible that she didn’t have all of the context she needed to see the use of the letters. Central might know more, and might be able to use the letters to gain better intelligence on whatever Zorion Clemens was up to. After all, she was just an acting field agent, put on the project because she was the only person who had the skill set to have a chance at success.
She put the letters away, and stashed them in the room she was using as a bedroom. She’d have to get the letters back to Central. Shipping them to Adayn would take some time, but they had Zorion now, and the urgency was at least lessened.
She looked in the ledgers, but all she really saw were columns of names, places, and numbers. Some seemed to track monetary flows, but she lacked the accounting education to be able to get any information out of them. Some of them seemed to be related to project management, for various projects. She didn’t know what the projects were; their code names were not related to whatever it was that they were about. Unless “Pink Unicorn”, and “Starlight Exodus” involved oddly colored unicorns or the winking out of stars.
She’d send those to Central as well. Someone there would be able to make heads or tails out of it.
She came back to the kitchen, and found that the conversation had changed to that of hiring staff. The Manor needed a seneschal, some guards, domestic staff, and a bunch of farm hands.
“We’ve got some money from my guild now,” Eykit said, “so we can afford to hire some people.”
“Yeah, we’d better make this shit work,” Elitheris said, “or they’re going to come after him.”
“And Jakkit also told me that there are several enforcers who would be willing to come out here and be our guards. We’d be able to trust them. They might need some extra instruction, but they’d be loyal.”
They went on to discuss guards, the seneschal, levels of pay, and what they could expect from the different employees. They didn’t have unlimited funds, so they might need to pay low rates. The problem with that was that low pay rates weren’t enough to keep qualified people. Competent people moved to where they were paid according to their worth. Almë hoped that even if this season’s pay scale was low, the future would involve raises for the workers.
One thing they agreed on was that the seneschal, the overseer for the Manor, needed to be competent. After all, once he was hired, almost all of the day to day operations of the Manor house, grounds, and fields would be under his control.
Taid, silent through most of these deliberations, said, “Also remember, we have to hold a commendation ceremony with our people. Not as elaborate as the one we went through, but a smaller, less formal one. They need to swear fealty to us, and us to them. They owe us their labor, we owe them protection, job security, and a decent life.”
Almë nodded. “Yes, we do.”
“And hopefully we can gain their loyalty in the process.” But he knew, that took time, and effort, and care. “We don’t want them leaving, or getting poached by our neighbors. And we certainly don’ t want them so upset they actively sabotage us.”
“Fortunately, we have a handful of loyal employees because we saved them from the Breathstealer. So we have a few of them already.”
“Hopefully,” Taid said. “At least in the short term. We’ll see what happens in the long term. People can be fickle.”
The afternoon would be spent starting the staffing process.
Almë, Eykit, and Ruby went out to hire some people.
“My guild might have an angle on an overseer,” Eykit said. “We’ll go there first.” The other two nodded. After all, the money to hire their staff came from the New Square Skulls.
It took a couple of hours and several rounds of questioning enforcers, pickpockets, innkeepers, and sex workers to find out where Jakkit was. In the course of questioning, they had traipsed all over the guild territory, going from place to place, following Jakkit’s path, but always seemingly several steps behind.
They finally found him checking in on an untaxed gambling establishment. Ostensibly, it was just a hole in the wall tavern, but they had a back room behind the back room, where unlicensed card games were held.
Jakkit was finishing up with Sammis, the tavernkeeper. “…But other than the brawl last night, no other issues?”
Sammis shook his head. “Nah, Even that wasn’t that big of a deal. No one died. To be honest, I think the patrons showed remarkable restraint. Even the two Orcs. Although I’m not sure if they were annoyed at the fight, or were having fun with it.”
“As long as their tempers didn’t lead to murder, it’s fine.” He turned to Eykit. “Oh hey, how have you been?”
“Good.”
“Excellent. What do you need from me today?” Jakkit was almost always direct and to the point.
“Advice.”
“Okay. I have some of that. Won’t even charge you for it.”
“Great. Thank you. I really appreciate that.” Eykit got to the point too. “We need to hire an overseer, and we’re wondering if you know someone who would be good for the job that you trust?”
Jakkit frowned, lost in thought for a moment. “Give me an hour or so. I might be able to find someone. Where will you be?”
Eykit hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the main room of the tavern. “That room right over there, having a beer.”
“All right then.”
Eykit and Almë sat down for a drink, but Ruby had the package of documents that she wanted to ship to her guild, so she went off to take care of that.
They were on their second beers when Jakkit walked back into the tavern, followed by a Human male of about thirty years of age.
“Ozzie” Osbjorn Burkhart
“I’d like you to meet Osbjorn Burkhart. He seems to be pretty good at the tasks you need to have done.”
Ruby entered, her pack seeming much lighter without the mass of letters and ledgers. She saw Almë and Eykit, along with the Goblin operations manager and some other guy.
“Hello,” she said, sitting down. “Who’s this?”
The young man smiled. “Ozzie Burkhart. I guess this is a job interview for the position of Manor Overseer.”
“Glad you were able to get here,” Almë said to the Hobbit. “You probably know enough to be able to vet him.”
Eykit shrugged. “I’m biased. Anyone Jakkit brings to me will be competent.”
“Best guy ever?” Almë asked him.
“Yeah. Pretty much. But go ahead, Ruby.”
Ruby knew quite a bit about administration. While she had never run a manor before, she had been administration-adjacent for most of her adult life. She’d been a cog in the wheels of governing for a long time.
She asked the first question, asking about his background.
“May I sit with you?” Ozzie asked, indicating an empty space on the bench.
“Absolutely,” Eykit replied.
Ozzie sat down, flagged a passing barmaid, and ordered the light ale.
Jakkit said, “So, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know how it all turns out.” With that, he left, off to his next task for the day.
She asked Ozzie questions about finances, resources, both capital and labor, and personnel interactions.
Ozzie, for his part, answered her questions without too much trouble. His basic background was that he hadn’t done rural manor management before. But he was very familiar with rural trading practices because most of his job experience was in warehousing and the logistics of foodstuffs, farming supplies, and farm equipment. He did have connections with the Port Karn Agricultural Council, as would anyone dealing with farms and farmers. He had also done a lot of business administration on the more commercial side of things.
He’d done a lot of work in the agricultural trade and industry, but not on the manor side of things. But he’d done all the work that existed on the periphery; the larger picture part of it. He’d just never had the chance to be a seneschal of a specific manor, although he worked with several on a daily basis. And he’d been quite successful at it.
He knows how it all works, Eykit thought. He knows the processes and how it works, and because he’s worked on the business end and the receiving end, he would be very good at negotiating that part. Which is what we need. He knows other people, and has a network of potential buyers.
Then he was questioned on his personal background. He didn’t have a wife, or any kids. He had a long term girlfriend for a while, but that changed a while ago, and he just hasn’t found anyone since. He’d been employed by several companies in New Square district, and a couple in neighboring ones as well.
“Why did you change companies?” Ruby asked. “Why didn’t you stay? We are looking for someone who will stay with us for the long haul.”
Ozzie shrugged. “I move when there are better opportunities. Sometimes I moved because I didn’t like the people. But Jakkit came in and said that there was an opportunity to run a Manor, and figured it was a good upgrade from what I have been doing. Technically, I’m still employed at Hashiida Trading. I haven’t left yet, not having a new job yet.” He grinned.
“How much do you want as salary?”
“Sixteen hundred a month.” Ruby didn’t know the local economic situation yet, so she glanced over at Eykit. He nodded, adding a slight shrug. It seemed, then, that 1600 marks per month was a more or less standard amount for the position.
“Another question. We are a diverse group, and sometimes we have some trouble.”
“Hey,” Eykit said, “that’s through no fault of our own. Trouble just seems to follow us around! Like an arrow flying out of nowhere!”
“I just want to know how he will deal with that kind of thing.”
Osbjorn got an odd look on his face. This interview was…interesting. “So, you guys cause some trouble and you are asking me how I will react to the trouble you caused?”
“We do not cause trouble,” Eykit asserted.
“We do not cause trouble,” Ruby agreed. “We are trying to start a business, and sometimes we, uh, need your loyalty to be able to stay with us.”
“Well,” Osbjorn said deliberately, “You guys would be my employers, and I’d be living under your roof.”
Almë had kept uncharacteristically silent. “I mean, he’s also working for, sorry, in contact with Eykit’s gang. So he’s probably loyal.”
“We’re not a gang,” Eykit said sharply. “Do not use the word ‘gang’.”
“Company. Eykit’s company.”
Eykit preferred guild, but company at least implied some kind of respect. So he rolled with it.
There were a few more minor questions, and soon the interview wrapped up.
Almë jumped up, grabbing Osbjorn’s hand and shaking it vigorously, before Ruby could ask him any more questions. “Welcome aboard!” he said.
“Okay, then,” Ozzie replied. “When would you like me to start?”
“Today!” Almë said. It was that odd Elven sense of time. The work day was basically over already, and sunset was approaching.
“Today?” Ozzie asked, incredulously.
Almë realized what time it actually was. “Tomorrow, tomorrow will be fine.”
“Tomorrow,” Eykit reiterated. “That’d be great.”
“Okay, so, I’m the overseer and seneschal. Who else do you guys have as your staff?”
“We’d actually like you to assist in building and developing that staff,” Eykit said. “We are doing pretty well on security staff, and agriculture staff to manage the fields—“
“No we don’t!” Almë said. “We have enough to handle the kitchen garden, and that’s about it.”
“Well, then, apparently we have security covered.”
“We’ve got a few farmers so far, and Otha seems to have filled the cooking and cleaning slot, but that won’t last once they have their house built. So we’ll need a cook and some maids. We’ll need another 14 farmers or so for the two fields we’ll put into use this season.”
“I’d be happy to help put together a good set of employees,” Ozzie said. “Do you have any special requests for any of the house staff? Race, gender, anything like that?”
“No,” Almë said, and there were nods of agreement from the others.
“Great. Then I will just find the best people I can. What’s my budget?”
They gave him a rundown on what they had as far as capital. He looked a little worried, but nodded, saying “I can work with that. Good idea, by the way, of starting off their pay at the lower end, and then letting them know that it will likely increase in a season. That will help get some people, once they know they aren’t locked into a low-paying job.”
“Great,” Almë said. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Congratulations on your new job.”
Osbjorn Burkhart smiled, stood, shook all of their hands, and left.
“We need a map,” Almë said.
“A map?” Eykit asked.
“To plan how to get to Kallia, and figure out our route, and stuff.”
They spent some time looking for a map shop that was open late. They did find a couple of shops that likely sold maps, but they were closed for the evening. Almë would have to wait until morning.
Kynetsday, Leafturn 8, 879 AFE
Taid woke up from a dream. Not the usual, vague, ambiguous dream that everyone got on a regular basis, but a dream that was more…focused somehow. He also remembered it fairly well, also unlike most dreams.
Taid had been walking along a street in a surface town. There were buildings on both sides of the street, built shoulder to shoulder, with little or no room between them. The street was straight, and at the end was a large stone structure, ambiguous in the distance.
The sun was shining, there were puffy clouds in the sky, and the sound of birdsong could be heard. There were people, but Taid could only see them out of the corner of his eye; when he turned to look, the area was empty. When he tried to get a glimpse of the people, he failed at first. After several tries, he eventually got the impression that they were faceless, and more like impressions of people rather than actual people. Sometimes he would swear that they had more than two arms. Or maybe he was seeing the same arms in two places at once? It was rather disconcerting, as the town felt full, and it sounded inhabited, but when he looked, there was no one there.
He walked to a temple and entered. It was large, echoey, and utterly empty. No one was in it, there were no doorways to other parts of the temple; it was just one large space. Columns of stone in the style of classical architecture marched down the room towards a larger than life statue of a Dwarf. The statue was shirtless, with a strongly muscled chest and an expansive beard that curled like flames. He was bald, and held a disc in one hand, and a flaming sword in the other.
Taid walked towards the statue. Its head followed Taid’s progress, the eyes lighting up like fire, but Taid noticed that they looked sad. The statue said nothing. A single tear of fire fell from the statue’s eye, falling to the stone floor and fading away.
Taid awoke at that point, the dream fading as his conscious mind regained control. He laid in his bed for a while, thinking about whether he should tell anyone or not. He didn’t understand it, and if it had a message it wasn’t one he could figure out. If he had another dream like it, may then he would discuss it with the others. Until then, it was just another dream.
He shrugged mentally, and got up to start his day.
Ruby went into town, traveling with Almë until they got to the map shop. He went in, and she went onward deeper into Port Karn. She needed access to her money. She was able to withdraw some at the Port Karn branch of the bank she used. That would work in the short run. But she also wanted to know where other branches of the bank were.
“And where are you going?” the branch officer asked.
“Not sure, really,” Ruby replied. “I think we will be going through Lytan’s Mill, Fleetmilk, and Sheepshear. Any branches anywhere near there?”
The branch officer opened a desk drawer, pulling out a ledger book. He flipped it open and turned some pages, running his finger down the page. “Ah. Here we go. We have a branch in Fleetmilk.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
Almë went into the cartographer’s guild house, to get some maps of the southern portion of the Empire. Since the origin of Empire was a nation called Araterre, located not too far to the east of Port Karn, there were many to choose from, and most were of quite high quality and accuracy.
He came back, whistling some ancient Elven tune. He gathered everyone at the banquet table, where he spread out the maps. Ruby had already gotten back from her own errand.
“All right,” he began. “We know about Nathan, he lives on Isleton, and he’s a good guy. I don’t think we need to worry about him. He wasn’t doing what everyone else was anyway. Then we know about Lennerd Fountainsmith, but he escaped us, and we don’t know where he is. You know, if I were him, I’d go to one of the others and try to hide there.”
Ruby hadn’t been around when they had tangled with Lennerd. “What did he do?” she asked. “Why are we looking for him?”
“He was—is—a necromancer. He’s using Shards and doing experiments on people. Kidnapping them, killing them, and/or casting zombie spells on them to make these weird Shard zombies.”
“Is one of these guys the guy who lived in the manor house, or someone else?”
“No, the guy who lived here in the manor house is gone. Lennerd lived in Donnington. Ah, you’re not a local. Donnington is sort of situated at a crossroads, so a lot of farm traffic goes through there. He worked as a warehouse manager as a cover. Anyway, he dug up corpses and whatever, and raised them up as zombies. But he escaped, but we know about two others.”
“But what is our goal here? To kill him, to ask him questions, or….”
“Both. First asking questions, then kill him.”
“Okay. Got it.”
“So, we don’t know where Lennerd Fountainsmith is. If I were him, I would hide out with one of the others. We didn’t run into him when we met Nathan, and I don’t doubt that Nathan would hide him or give him shelter or something.”
He indicated a point on the map, pretty far away. “Then we know about Nigel. He’s living in Lake Keep, which is pretty far away.” He moved and pointed to the Zirinibar Mountain range, some 500 kilometers from Port Karn. “Kallia lives somewhere in this mountain range. We think. We know that there’s a “Mountain Stream Inn” somewhere close by, like in a village that is close by. So if we can find out where the Mountain Stream Inn is, we know the rough area where she is. So she is closer than Nigel.”
Kallia seemed the better choice. They started planning routes. Traveling by river was their best bet, likely through the town of Lytan’s Mill.
“Maybe that’s not the best option,” Ruby said. She didn’t fare well on boats, or coaches, or wagons. Nausea was her traveling companion. She preferred Nori. For whatever reason, he didn’t cause her to get motion sickness.
Almë suffered from motion sickness as well, as they found out on their trips into the river to Isleton and back. Even discussing river travel made Almë look a bit green. But it was either that, or take a lot longer going through the jungle on foot.
“So,” Almë said, “option one is traveling on the river. Probably take two or three eightdays to cover that distance. Which means it likely at least five times as long on foot.” He glanced at Elitheris, who had loads of experience traveling the jungle on foot.
She nodded; the estimate was about right. Even the so-called “Imperial Roads” that connected the towns and cities in this area of the Empire were often little more than narrow tracks through the ever-growing jungle. The jungle always seemed hungry to cover up the works of civilization.
“Ugh,” Taid said. “Road clearing. The only thing worse than trying to keep the jungle from destroying and covering the roads is building them in the first place. I swear, most of my military experience is wielding a shovel and pick rather than a real weapon. It was always digging. I’m a Dwarf! And even I got tired of digging!”
“The way Dwarves always dig,” Eykit said, “I would have thought you’d have badger paws instead of hands!”
“To be honest, that’s already a long time,” Almë said. “So we’ll likely have to take a boat. And that’s not a great thing for me. Bleh.” He mimed puking over the rail.
Ruby nodded and said, “For me, either.”
They discussed the merits of hiring a boat, or getting passage on one, and the differences between a fishing boat and a cargo barge. If they wanted to take Wilbur, they would need to take a cargo ship. He wouldn’t fit on a small fishing boat. The cargo boats were a bit more stable, being wider and flatter. Cargo boats would also be stopping along the way at the various hamlets and villages that dotted the river’s length.
“This is going to be a long trip,” Almë said. “A few eightdays out, a few eightdays back, plus an eightday or two looking for and dealing with Kallia. It’s not really a quick in and out mission.”
“A month and a half,” Elitheris said.
“Will Sairina Tarwar be alright during that time? Or should I stay here? Taking care of the manor and starting to build the housing and whatever?”
“Just stay at home,” Ruby said.
“He might be useful,” Elitheris said.
“Or the opposite of useful,” Eykit quipped.
“Right, right,” Ruby said. “Just stay at home. Just grow some nice flowers and buildings and stuff.”
“We’ll be heading into the jungle,” Elitheris said. “He’s a plant mage. Do the math.”
“Well of course Almë should go!” Eykit said, as if it was the most logical, common sense thing ever.
“Then we should prepare for a long trip,” Almë said. His sense of morality made him want to go. Or, perhaps, his vindictiveness against the necromancers who were twisting the Eternal. Necromancy broke the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. While it wasn’t unnatural, per se, it was not Nature. A fine distinction, but that’s how belief and ideology worked.
They planned to take their two “new” preservation boxes, filled with food. They also collected the three healing potions Ekain the Alchemist had made for them, as partial payment for the use of the lab. He was currently brewing some pastilles of Foolishness and some stealth pastilles. He had also brewed up some Fetching and Carrying potions, which made it feel as if a carried load was lighter, and some Fire Resistance potions, primarily for the fire brigades.
Elitheris also made a trip to the enchanter at PKAC, in order to pick up some magical arrows. She picked up a couple of arrows of Drunkenness. She also picked up an arrow of Sickness, just in case she met Lennerd Fountainsmith again. He had cast some kind of Sickness spell on her, and she ended up puking her guts out, unable to do anything else. She’d like to return the favor. Preferably with extreme prejudice.
Eykit, Taid, Almë, and Ruby entered the courtyard of the six story U-shaped apartment building. It was a well-kept space, with six stone planters in two rows of three, each with a tree, some shrubberies, and some colorful flowers. The edges of the planters doubled as bench seating. Doors to individual apartments opened up onto the courtyard, and there was a main lobby door at the base of the U.
Zorion was three flights up, on the fourth floor. Elitheris, standing on the mezzanine level, contemplated just watching him to see which floor he got off on, but that wouldn’t tell her which apartment he was going to. She had to follow, and running up the several flights of stairs would not only be loud and noticeable, but she’d likely be too slow to see him.
She stepped into the meter-wide space between the flights of stairs. She kept an eye on the person she thought was Zorion. He disappeared on the fifth floor.
She leaped up, grabbed the railing, and pulled herself up, crouching like a frog on a branch, her boots sliding a little on the sloped railing. She leaped up again, twisting, and grabbing onto the railing on the other side of the stairwell. She didn’t pause, didn’t lose momentum, it was just leap and turn, leap and turn, and it was only a matter of a few more seconds when Elitheris was able to peek through the railing to see Zorion walking down the hallway. He then went into the apartment four doors down, facing the back of the building.
She climbed up the rest of the way, and casually walked down the hallway. There were numbers on the doors; his said “520”. She kept walking, turned the corner of the hallway, and then stopped, waiting for a few moments. Then she went back to the stairwell. If he noticed her somehow, it would at least look like she had gone to some other apartment, then came back.
Elitheris needed to regroup with her companions, to figure out what to do next. She’d found where he lived, or at least where he was currently. The group would have to plan the next steps.
She dropped down through the stairwell, tic tacking down the railings. She got down much faster than she went up, gravity working in her favor. She reached the mezzanine, and saw that there was a uniformed man in the lobby. Not a military uniform, although it was cut in the same fashion. He paced around the room, and when he turned in the direction of the stairway, she could see that he was an Orc.
Eykit said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a group of strangers to just walk in there.”
“We should stay together,” Almë said. “But you’re right. We need to wait for Elitheris.”
“Assuming she got inside and found him,” Taid said. “We don’t know that she did.”
“I have faith in her,” Eykit said. “I think she found him. I just hope he didn’t find her.” He climbed up onto one of the planters, and sat down to wait.
Elitheris could see them through the windows in the lobby. They weren’t coming in, so she strode confidently down the stairs, to the door, and out, before the Orc doorman could get much more than a “Hey, who are—“.
She didn’t look back as she went to her friends, but she kept her attention on any sounds from that direction, and she didn’t see any looks of consternation on the faces of her friends. From that, she was able to determine that the doorman wasn’t following her.
He was probably more concerned with people entering, rather than people leaving. She had gotten lucky; the doorman had been out of the lobby when she entered, so she wasn’t stopped by him. If she had been, she would have lost Zorion for sure, and they would have had a whole building to search. There were only something like twenty four apartments on each floor….
“He went into apartment 520,” Elitheris told Ruby. “What do we do now, now that we know where he is currently? It may not be where he is staying. I could certainly go on watch and just start keeping an eye on him. What do you want me to do?”
“I want to try to get him when he is asleep,” Ruby replied. “When he is sleeping.” That would be the best chance for her magecuffs and her necklace to work on him. She wouldn’t get a second chance. If it failed to teleport him back to Central, they would have to escort him all the way back to Adayn. It would be a nightmare. Not only would there be plenty of time for him to try to escape, but he certainly had friends who would likely try to rescue him. And it wasn’t like they could keep him a secret; he was the guildmaster of the guild whose primary function was figuring out secrets. As soon as he disappeared they would hunt for him, and they had the assets to find him within twenty four hours or less.
“And do what?” Elitheris asked.
“Then I would catch him. You can watch him until he falls asleep, and looking to see if he’s alone or if there is someone else in the apartment.” Ruby’s northerner accent and speech patterns still sounded odd to Elitheris.
“I’m thinking what I can do is try to find a place to squat where I can see. I need to go search to see if there’s a building behind this one where I can perch and maybe be able to see into the building. But I’ll need to do a bit of reconnaissance to see if I can find a good spot.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
“But I think the question I have is, what are your intentions with this guy? Are you going to interrogate him? Kill him? What do you want to do?”
“No, no,” Ruby said placatingly. “I don’t want to kill him. I will try to catch him asleep, if it’s possible, then I will, uh, teleport him. To a prison where—“
“You can do that? Teleport people?” Taid asked, surprise and shock in his voice.
“This guy. I can teleport this guy.”
Eykit blinked, a bit confused. “Just this guy?”
Ruby nodded. “Just this guy.”
“I…okay, fine.”
“I was going to be mad if we were climbing around through bathroom windows and stuff, and teleport was a possibility,” Taid said.
“No, no,” Ruby repeated. “Just this guy. Besides, gate magic, which teleportation is a part of, is rare and generally restricted. And yeah, I really need to try to catch him when he’s asleep.”
Ruby went on, “I have a spell of Sleeping. I’m thinking that I can make doubly sure he’s asleep. Or perhaps use a spell that weakens his willpower and make him more compliant?”
“I have a spell of Drunkenness!” Almë offered. “Useful when you’re at a party and don’t want to go through all the trouble of drinking.”
“Where’s the fun in that?!” Taid exclaimed, sounding as if Almë had just said something insulting to his religion. Eykit nodded, seconding Taid’s opinion. “The whole point of it is the drinking. Drunkenness is just what you’re stuck with later! It’s not the goal.”
Ruby, on the other hand, said, “Uh, okay. That would be great.”
Almë continued on, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “If he wakes up, he’s already drunk as fuck.”
In addition to the ability to teleport Zorion Clemens, Central had also given Ruby a pair of magecuffs, enchanted with the spell of Foolishness. Putting them on Zorion would make his mind fuzzy, more of a simpleton, and less able to resist whatever spells she wanted to cast on him. The tricky part was getting them on him. While it was certainly possible to overwhelm him and put the cuffs on him, that might cause him damage. Or cause her companions damage, which would also be a bad outcome. While the success of her mission was paramount, she would only sacrifice her new friends if she had to.
She reached into a pocket, and pulled out a pair of slender bands connected by a short chain. They were steel, and Taid, Almë, and Elitheris could tell immediately that they were enchanted. Those with magical talent could just tell, more often than not. “These are called ‘Shackles of the Dimwit’. We’ll need to put these on Clemens.”
“Ah,” Almë said. “So we have multiple options, right? Option one is that you give the shackles to Eykit and he tries to put the shackles on him while he sleeps. Because even if he then wakes up, he’s hampered by whatever those shackles do to him.”
They nodded, following the logic, and provisionally agreeing with that plan.
“Obviously,” he said, “if that fails and we try to cast spells upon him, he’ll be able to fight back because then he’ll be awake and pissed off. That would be extremely bad, given that under most circumstances, if you are a mage guildmaster you have to have some skills. And he’ll probably have the spell of Turn My Foes Into Newts, and we’ll all be having a very bad day.”
He ran his fingers through his hair. “And the second option would be that we cast a spell on him while he’s sleeping. I can cast the spell of Drunkenness on him. Then he’d be drunk, which, if successful, would also give us an advantage. It would make him, well, drunk. Cognitive impairments in addition to physical ones. So if he did wake up, he’d wake up shitfaced.”
He turned to Ruby. “How long do you need in order to do your thing to him?”
Ruby frowned in thought, running options and contingencies in her head. “Most likely several seconds, call it ten seconds or so.”
Almë nodded. Any spell they wanted to do to this guy would last a lot longer than that. “We could also use the neighboring rooms, and cast through the wall. Problem is we wouldn’t know where he was, so the casting would be risky. But it would work…if Elitheris gets a good scouting position and can look into the apartment and see where everything is.”
Elitheris looked up at the building. Each apartment had several windows. They were actually glass, diamond-paned windows. From a distance, she wouldn’t see very much. But each apartment had a narrow balcony. Just a meter wide, it was enough to get out and stand on it, and maybe have some potted plants or a stool to sit on and enjoy the air.
“I’m going to have to get close if I want to see anything,” she said. “Those windows aren’ t very good for seeing through. Better than oiled paper, though.” After a pause, she said, “First things first, I need to scout the building.”
Eykit grinned. “And we will just wait here and try to look like any other normal group of a Hobbit, a Goblin, a Dwarf, and a huge-ass Elf.”
“Maybe you should just go get a drink at a tavern or something.”
That got Ruby’s attention. “And we will bring you some food!” she said.
“I she doesn’t eat it on the way,” Eykit mumbled.
“What was that?” Ruby asked.
“Just clearing my throat. I like the idea of dinner, though.”
“Oh, thank you,” Elitheris said. “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll see what I can see.” And she headed around the building. The others went to the tavern to wait for a while.
It was a bit after sunset, about the 14th bell, and the day shift workers were making their way home for the evening. The foot traffic in the street had dropped in volume about twenty percent or so, and it looked like it would be easier to make her way through the crowds if she had to. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to.
On either side of the six story apartment building were four story apartment buildings. Behind it was a row of shops, facing the street on the other side of the block. They varied in height, but most were three stories.
Elitheris turned to look up at the large building. She could see balconies at each apartment, marching up the wall in rows. There were plenty of handholds for someone with her scaling abilities. She grinned. She counted over four balconies from the center, and sighted what she assumed was the correct balcony.
She started up the building, mainly using the balconies and railings as hand and footholds. She got to Zorion’s balcony, gripping it with her gloved hands. She pulled herself up until her eyes rose past the balcony’s edge. She saw two windows and a door with a small glass window in it. Between the balconies was another window. Judging from the architecture she could see, each flat had three windows looking out the rear side of the building, plus the smaller window in the door itself.
On the narrow balcony were two small chairs and a table. Besides the almost miniature furniture, there was very little room. She pulled herself up and slid over the railing as quietly as possible. She crouched in the corner by one of the windows, able to see into the apartment.
She saw a large room with the kitchen in one corner, with the rest of the space given over to a table and four chairs, and some upholstered chairs and a settee. She could see three doors to the left, and none to the right. There appeared to only be four rooms total. The door in the center was closed; the other two were partially open, although she couldn’t see much of the rooms beyond. Across the space, on the opposite side of the room, was the front door.
She did not see Zorion.
Somehow, she expected the living place of a mage guildmaster to be a bit more resplendent. But while she could see that the furniture was very nice, and there was some paintings on the walls, it didn’t look much like a wealthy person’s estate. It was actually quite humble. He didn’t show any ostentatious wealth.
But then, he did travel a lot, so maybe he had dozens of places like this one. Maybe, even with all his wealth, he couldn’t afford to have them all be richly appointed. Maybe this was one of his “poorer” houses.
Elitheris wanted to see into the third window. She leaped off of the balcony, and grabbed the window sill, hanging from it for a moment, then pulled herself up in order to peek into the room. It appeared to be an office. And it was currently empty.
It could have been a bedroom; it was large enough for two double beds. But just had a desk, a chair, a side table, and an armoire. Judging from the position of the wall, and assuming that the first room was another room like this one, the room between them was narrow. It was probably a privy. Must be nice, she thought, not having to go down the hall or outside to use the outhouse. And much more comfortable than a chamber pot.
She swung her legs like a pendulum, building momentum to swing and flip and grab the railing. But she didn’t quite time it right, and she flipped, but gravity pulled her down too far. Her hands scrabbled at the railing, but couldn’t quite reach; she managed to get some fingertips onto the balcony floor, but wasn’t quick enough to get a good grip.
She fell, the next balcony rising quickly past her, and the third time was the charm. Her hands gripped the balcony railing, her body swinging down and slamming into the balcony itself. The breath went out of her, and she hung there for a long moment.
She climbed back up to Zorion’s balcony, and again peered into the window. The glass of the diamond panes were wavy and inconsistent, but she could see well enough despite the distortion. Zorion walked out of the first bedroom, wearing different clothes than when he had come in. These looked more comfortable than is more formal work attire. They were only a small step above peasant clothing in cut and style, although likely of much higher quality fabrics.
Zorion went into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and pulled out some bread, cheese, and fruit. He also got a glass and filled it from a small cistern sitting on the counter.
The guildmaster sat down at the table, and ate. Once done, he walked into the office. She couldn’t see him from where she was, but she knew he was in there.
Elitheris got comfortable. It seemed as if she would be there a while. The room was lit with oil lamps, and it was dark outside. She doubted that she would be visible to anyone inside the apartment.
A half hour later, something slammed into her side, just under the ribs. Her side erupted in pain. Holy shit! she thought, shocked, That’s an arrow!
Looking down, she saw an arrow a finger thick sticking out of her side, likely fired from…where? She didn’t see anyone on the roofs; whoever had shot her had ducked down to not be seen. Her side was feeling very warm and wet, and her vision was swimming.
It took a second, but then her brain registered something else about the arrow. It had a message tied to it.
Her head kept feeling fuzzy. She fumbled for a potion. She hoped that she had a potion of healing in her small collection. It took a moment to grab the correct one, but she found it, popped the cork off, and downed it. It tasted like a strange combination of acrid, bitter, and sour. But then, if medicine tasted good, people would be drinking it all the time. Almost immediately, much of the pain disappeared, and the fuzziness in her head faded away.
It still hurt every time she moved, or breathed, but at least she was stabilized and not in danger of falling unconscious. Now she could read the note. She untied it carefully, trying not to tug on the arrow shaft too much, or accidentally let go of the paper, only to watch it slowly fall five stories to the ground.
The unrolled the paper. It was in Quenya, written in a flowing script. “I have finally found you. You will pay for what you did. Enno onna enno enne.” It was signed “An old friend”. Enno onna enno enne meant “a person’s child is a person’s purpose.”
The arrow could have been meant for the guild master’s door. After all, Ruby had been looking for him for months; it was very possible that someone else had had the same idea. Which meant that Elitheris had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But if it had been aimed at the door, her position in the corner of the balcony wouldn’t have put her between the door and the direction the arrow seemed to come from.
Another thought struck her. Ruby had some really nice silmasamin, Elven silversilk armor, given to her by a grateful Elf somewhere. However, she was a Hobbit, and Elves rarely gave such nice gifts to non-Elves. Could there be some rival? Someone who thought that they should have the silversilk, and not Ruby? Did Ruby have an enemy, that wanted her to fail in her mission, whatever it was? If so, then taking out whoever Ruby had assigned to watch Zorion Clemens might be part of their plan. Although, if they wanted her dead, they could have easily done so with a second arrow, or better placement of the first one.
Unless they got distracted somehow? Perhaps Ruby and the rest of her friends had intercepted this assassin before they could finish the job? But if that was the case, wouldn’t Ruby have given them all a heads up on that? Given that, it was unlikely that her friends could have known that the assassin was there.
Which implied that the arrow had been meant for her. If so, it was possible that is was someone still upset about the accident in Celumarauca. Elitheris hadn’t meant to burn the village down; she hadn’t even fumbled her spell casting. It had just been bad timing that the destruction of the smaller of Velyri’s two moons coincided with her attempt to light a cook fire. The mana pulse that emanated from the destruction of the moon Jypra had amplified her fire creation to untold levels, the wall of superheated plasma sweeping through the village and igniting the forest on fire in the process. Hundreds of her townsfolk had died.
It was the reason she had self-exiled herself, living as an itinerant hermit for almost eighty years. She had worked very hard to put it all behind her, having minimal success so far.
And if the arrow was any indication, and had something to do with Celumarauca’s destruction, then someone else was having a hard time putting the incident in the past. She didn’t recognize the writing, but the fact that it was in Quenya and not in Imperial also implied that the message was for her.
But figuring out that puzzle would have to wait. She had an almost meter long stick with a sharp chunk of metal stuck inside of her that she needed to deal with. Every time she moved or breathed that arrowhead cut something inside. And having that heavy shaft pulling on it constantly wasn’t helping the situation.
She pulled out her rondel dagger. It wasn’t the best blade to use to cut through a finger-thick arrow shaft, but it was what she had. She gripped the shaft right where it disappeared into her. A part of her brain registered that the arrow weight was consistent with a warbow of at least her draw weight. Likely better. It could have been shot at very long range.
She applied knife edge to the wooden shaft, and started sawing at it. It hurt, the shaft vibrating despite the enchantment on the blade. It didn’t take too long to cut it off. She pulled out a roll of bandage, and did what she could to stabilize the arrow in the wound, both to minimize its movement and staunch the bleeding.
It was time to get off of the balcony. She really didn’t want to be there any more. She went over the edge of the balcony, then did a series of drop and grabs as she fell past the balconies. She was careful to not twist her body in such a way as to risk having the severed arrow shaft clip the balconies as she went down.
She checked the roofline again, just in case she saw the assassin. She didn’t see anyone. She checked the back door, the one that would lead to the lobby. She really wanted to use that short cut, instead of walking all around the building. But the door was locked.
Sighing, she started hoofing it back to the courtyard on the other side of the building.
Taid, Eykit, Almë, and Ruby watched the apartment building from the tavern across the street. No reason to make the residents nervous because some strangers were just hanging out in their courtyard. They saw Elitheris come out of the alley, moving with what seemed to be a limp. She was holding her side. They exited the tavern and made their way across the street, making their way quickly through the groups of people going about their business.
“Elitheris! How are you doing?” Taid asked. Even in the dim lamplight, he could see that there was a dark stain at her side.
“Great,” Elitheris said sarcastically. “Doing just great.” She looked at her companions. “Someone else is going to have to take over. He’s still in his apartment, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.” She thought a moment. “Or Ruby does.”
She quickly gave an overview of what had happened. She indicated the broken arrow, which she had stuffed through her belt.
“Do you recognize the arrow?” Ruby asked.
“Yeah,” Eykit said, “is there anything special about the fletching?”
There was a bit more light in the courtyard. She pulled the arrow shaft out of her belt, and peered at it. From what she could tell, it was a finely made arrow. Of the quality she liked to use. The feathers of the fletching were colorful, likely a jungle bird, but that wasn’t anything special. Most of the the local fletchers used locally sourced feathers.
Elitheris was still bleeding, and someone still needed to watch Zorion Clemens.
“Eykit,” Almë said. “You’re up.”
Eykit looked at the building. It was tall. He could climb, but he lacked the acrobatics and such that Elitheris had. But he was more of a talker anyway. “Maybe if I dress like a deliveryman I can talk my way in. Go in through the front door. Like a civilized person.”
“That makes sense,” Almë said.
Ruby turned to Elitheris, who was still holding onto the arrow that was in her side. “Did Zorion hear anything?”
Elitheris shook her head, saying, “I don’t think so. I kept pretty quiet despite the little surprise here.” She gestured towards the wood buried in her side. She winced as she felt the arrowhead shift again.
“Okay, so the apartment isn’t that big. There is a large main room, with three doors down one side. From the front door, they will be on the right. The first door is apparently his bedroom. The second door is either a closet, or the privy. I’m guessing privy. The third door is his office, which has a window.” She frowned, thinking. “You know, his bedroom has no windows. It’s on the inside of the building, surrounded by interior spaces.”
“But you’d be able to tell when he went to sleep, right?” Almë asked.
“Not really. I could see when he went into the bedroom, but I couldn’t see what he did in there. Who knows when he actually goes to sleep.”
“I mean, you’d be able to see if he had a light on, right?”
“Probably. Unless he closed the door. But, nonetheless, at this point, are we planning on having Eykit climb up the balconies, or walk in through the front door so he can pick the lock?” She put her hand to her head. “He could also pick the lock on the balcony door. I didn’t even check to see if it was open!”
“We could also just gamble and just wait for midnight or something reasonable when people go to sleep and then just enter his apartment.” Almë said. “That’s also possible.”
“Yeah,” agreed Ruby. “I would say maybe Eykit could just watch the front door, to see if he is coming out or not.”
“Gahh!” Elitheris cried out.
Taid had grabbed the arrow, then yanked it out, casting a spell of Stop Bleeding, followed by a spell of Major Healing. Elitheris’ legs went a bit weak with the sudden pain, but it didn’t last as Taid’s spells took effect. What was left was barely a scar. Taid grinned, and dropped the piece of arrow into Elitheris’ hand.
She looked at the bloody arrow in her hand. “I should be able to figure out who this is. I don’t have that many friends.”
“Assuming that it’s about you,” Taid said. “It might be Ruby’s enemy, and they assumed you were involved.” He went on, “They have real knowledge of what we're doing and they know that you're part of the team and that you're doing something on behalf of Ruby. There's a whole bunch of assumptions if it’s Ruby’s enemy. If it’s your enemy, they are just shooting you. Although why they waited until you were on a balcony….” He trailed off.
“Yeah, you’re right. I mean, it could be any number of things. I have no idea.”
Elitheris pulled the message out from the pocket she had shoved it into. She read it again, out loud in Quenya, to her companions. “I have finally found you. You will pay for what you did. Enno onna enno enne. Signed, An old friend.” She then translated it for them.
“A person’s child is a person’s purpose?” Eykit asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A parent who lost their child?” Elitheris asked.
Taid asked, “So, who were your friends before the fire?”
She shrugged. She had known everyone in town, and they her. She’d lived with them for over 200 years.
Ruby looked confused. “Did you guys kill a kid or something? Murder a child?”
“Uh,” Elitheris started, faltering a bit. She didn’t like talking about That Day. “Well, I don’t know.” She thought back, the pain of the memories bringing tears to her eyes. She’d tried so hard to not think about that day. She remembered the twins, Almáriel and Ancalimë, whom she had babysat for several times. They had been sweet girls, and had loved dancing and singing.
“What fire?” Ruby asked. She didn’t know the story. “Was it an accident, or did you do it on purpose?”
Elitheris looked stricken. “Yeah. Yes, technically it was an accident.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I was doing a magic spell. And it went awry. I was not intentionally trying to burn the town down. I was doing that spell when Calanorië blew up and scattered the Shards all over. When the moon, you call it Jypra, blew up, it sent out a huge mana pulse while I was in the middle of casting a spell of Create Fire in order to light a cooking fire in the center of town. Instead, the fire blew away half the town, and a bunch of the surrounding forest. There was a forest fire, which I think got the rest of town.
“And then you ran away?”
“Well, I left. The survivors would have let me stay, but I…just…couldn’t.”
“So,” Taid said, “you babysat for these two kids? That’s the theory? You know the parents?”
“Yeah. Élheren and Naralta. I don’t know if they also died. I didn’t see them during the time the refugees were determining my fate.”
Ruby wasn’t done questioning Elitheris. “How many people died in this fire?”
Again, Elitheris shrugged. “I don’t know. About half the town, maybe. Maybe more. There were some people that made it to the camp that had suffered horrible burns. They might have died. We didn’t have any mages in town, and any alchemy anyone had likely burned up in the fire.” Silent tears wet her face.
“By the Gods, Elitheris!” Almë said.
“I told you,” Elitheris replied, her voice thick. “This is why I’ve been living alone!” She turned away from them then, her shoulders shuddering as sobs wracked her body.
“And when you left,” Ruby asked, “do you remember if anyone was especially mad at you?”
“Just the whole town!” came the Elven woman’s answer.
“I mean, if it was a mistake, then yeah, you can get angry. But maybe someone is especially angry.”
A thought occurred to Almë. “I’ve never asked. Were you allowed to cast a spell, or were you learning this in secret?”
“They don’t have kids very often,” Eykit said. “They have long gestation periods and aren’t fertile for very long. So killing a child can be really traumatic.”
“We value children very highly because they are rare and precious,” Almë said. “Especially since if you have such a long life, you need to fill it with something, and family is a good purpose, right? So family is highly valued, and children even more so. This gives your long life a lot of purpose.”
“Yeah,” Elitheris agreed, sniffling. “You guys go in. Take care of Zorion. I’ll just stand guard at the entrance.”
Ruby looked into the lobby through the window. There was a man inside, wearing some sort of uniform. It wasn’t a military uniform, but it was cut in a similar fashion. He seemed to be keeping watch over the lobby.
Every now and again residents would come down the mezzanine stairs, nod, wave, or say a few words to the uniformed man, and then walk out the front door or walk down the other wing of the building. They could see what appeared to be Humans, Orcs, and Goblins. The more they watched, the more they were convinced that the uniformed man was an Orc, and that he seemed to be some sort of doorman or guard.
All of the residents that they saw wore nice clothes. The people living here weren’t peasants. The apartments must be rather expensive, and only the wealthy could afford them.
“I’m going in,” Taid said. And he walked into the lobby.
The Orc held up a hand, eyeing the Dwarf with the eight foot long halberd. “This is private property,” he said. “State your business.”
“Oh, I just wanted to know where the nearest good barber was,” Taid replied.
“Across the street,” the doorman said, flicking a finger in that general direction.
“And he’s—or she, I suppose—is a good barber?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Because this,” Taid said, lifting his luxurious beard, “deserves only the best. And look,” his fingers trailed through the hair until they got to the ends, “it’s getting scruffy at the edges.” He let his beard drop back to his chest. “So, as you can plainly see, my poor beard needs a trim and a shaping.”
“Like I said, ser, across the street.”
“Does he also have proper beard liniments and conditioning ointments?”
The Orc’s eyes rolled skyward. “I’m sure he does. He’s that way.” He pointed out the door. Like a good doorman, he was also paying some attention to the group milling around outside. He wasn’t sure what they were up to, but he was starting to get suspicious.
Taid made a show of looking around the lobby. “So, what can you tell me about this place? What’s its history?”
The Orc cocked his head, trying to figure out why this heavily armed Dwarf was asking him these questions. The Dwarf hadn’t made any threatening moves with his polearm….
“It was built eighteen years ago, but it’s been renovated a couple times in that time. It was built by Bertram Damla, who had bought all of the land this building is built on from the original owners. Then he razed all of those old buildings, and built this.”
“You’ve been here all that time? You must have seen all kinds of shit!”
“No, I’ve only been here about five years.” He grinned, his tusks gleaming. “But I’ve seen my fair share of shit.”
“Pretty good tenure.”
“Yeah. So far. No major scandals. Well, except for Mrs. Holmes.”
Ruby watched Taid engage the doorman in conversation. She ran through some possible approaches. She saw a pair of residents coming down the mezzanine stairs. She waited, and watched as the residents walked out of the lobby, nodding as they passed.
Ruby went inside.
“Excuse me, Taid,” the doorman said as Ruby entered the lobby. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Good evening, ser,” Ruby said. “I’m looking for a barber.”
The Orc raised an eyebrow. “The barber is across the street.” He looked at the two of them. “You two are together, aren’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.
“Well, yes,” Ruby replied, “we are. This here is my friend, and he has to go to a barber, and he really doesn’t want to.”
“Well, he seemed pretty keen on going to properly shape his beard.”
“Yeah, you noticed how he is here talking, and not here going to the barber? He’s procrastinating.” She made some small gestures behind Taid’s back, out of view of the Orc. She was casting a spell of Daze, which would make the doorman basically ignore them for a while. That hand also held a powerstone that Almë had lent to her, which she tapped to power the spell.
The spell went off, and Ruby could sense the invisible magenta cloud of power as it rushed to the Orc’s head.
He blinked, and he frowned, his hand going to his dagger. “What the hell was that?” He could tell that magic had just happened, but he didn’t know which one of them had cast the spell. It looked like neither of them. He looked around, trying to find the mage that cast the spell while the two people in front of him distracted him.
The spell of Daze didn’t affect him. He took a step back, trying to figure out what was going on.
Ruby looked surprised. “What’s going on? What’s happening? What’s wrong?” She looked around, looking for a threat. She started to look panicked.
Taid looked confused as well. He looked between the Orc and Ruby.
Ruby tried something different. She cast a spell of False Memories. Again, Ruby asked, “What’s wrong? What’s going on? Who is there? Why are you freaking out?”
The doorman didn’t answer her question, but got a hard look on his face and said, “I think you should leave now. You aren’t residents, and they like their privacy. You can go.”
The spell took a few seconds to cast. She implanted the memory that they were all residents of the building. The Orc shook his head, and said, “That was weird.” Then he turned to Taid and Ruby and said, “So, what are you guys up to this evening? Coming in or going out?”
“Oh we’re just coming back in and waiting for our friends there.” Ruby waved a hand at Almë and Eykit. They came forward at her gesture, and walked into the lobby. “Come on, guys, let’s go upstairs.”
And with that, they went up the mezzanine stairs to the flight of stairs that went up through all the floors. Eykit looked up through the stairwell, all the way to the sixth floor. “He’s way up there, isn’t he?” At Almë’s nod, he muttered, “Gods damn it,” and started going up the flights.
They got off on the fifth floor. They occasionally saw a resident walking down a hallway, but other than that, they didn’t see anything dangerous or suspicious. They went to apartment 520. There weren’t any guards at the door, or residents in the halls.
They went up another flight of stairs. Eykit sat on the stairs where he could see down the hallway to Zorion’s door. Everyone else went up to the landing. They needed to wait for Zorion to go to sleep, and being at the top floor would minimize traffic.
After a very long wait of about three hours or so, they quietly moved back down to the fifth floor, and to apartment 520.
Ruby looked at the door. “Anyone know any spells that can detect whether there are spells on the door?”
Taid and Almë shook their heads. As far as they could tell, the door wasn’t enchanted, but they had no way of detecting whether or not a transient spell, such as a Magelock, was cast on the door.
Almë ran his hands along the wall, trying to determine what they were made of. They weren’t made of stone; instead, it felt more like plaster. The plasterers were good, and left the surface smooth, with no trowel marks.
From what Elitheris’ description told them, Zorion’s bedroom was just on the other side of the wall.
Ruby was thinking that a spell of Mass Sleep would be useful.They didn’t know where Zorion’s bed was located. But being a spell designed to cover a large area, it could encompass the entire room, so no matter where he was, it would affect him.
“Do we need to cast a spell, or do we have any of those sleep pastilles?” Taid whispered.
“Yeah,” Almë said. “They worked fine the last time we tried that, right?”
“Right. How’s that hole in your chest?”
“Hole? What hole?” Ruby asked.
“Oh, Almë attacked a retired war mage. The guy sent an icicle through Almë’s ribcage.”
“That’s cold, Taid,” Almë griped.
Taid just grinned. "Being an icicle, I'm sure it was."
“You can give me the details later,” Ruby told them.
“Mass Sleep may not be our best tactic,” Almë said. “If he’s got a Watchdog spell going, as soon as we cross the perimeter of the area it will wake him up.”
“Good point,” Ruby said. Mass Daze, on the other hand, would make him unaware of what was going on around him. They would be able to walk in and cuff him, without him knowing what was happening. “New plan. I’ll cast a spell of Mass Daze, covering a fair chunk of that apartment. Eykit, I’d like you to be ready to pick that lock.”
Eykit nodded, and crouched by the door. He listened, trying to hear any movement. He couldn’t hear anything. “Are we sure this isn’t going to explode? Because I don’t like exploding.”
“You don’t?” Taid asked.
“No, I do not. Not my favorite.”
Ruby cast the spell of Mass Daze so that the area of effect it covered was on the room on the other side of the wall. Then she nodded to Eykit, who began picking the lock on Zorion Clemens’ door.
Almë stood beside Eykit, his staff ready.
“Just to make sure,” Ruby said, “before we go inside, we don’t kill this guy. Since we want the money back, like I told you, he owes a lot of people money. We don’t want to kill him. That’s not the way we work on this mission, right?” She glanced at Taid, Eykit, and Almë, making sure they heard and understood her. It would be tragic to be so close and have some clumsy oaf kill him.
The lock was a good one, and it took Eykit almost a minute until he heard the telltale clicks of an opened lock. He stood up, and gestured for Taid to be the first in.
Taid gave Eykit a look. “What, I’m the body shield now?”
“I am weak and puny,” Eykit replied, a smile curling his lips.
“There is probably some trap on the door or something.”
Taid gripped the doorknob, and started gibbering and convulsing, his whole body shaking. A moment later, the convulsions stopped, and he grinned at them. “Just kidding,” he said.
Eykit slapped him on the arm. “Bastard.”
“Good one, Taid,” Almë said.
Ruby chuckled, and said, “Let’s go. We don’t have time for this.” The Daze spell only lasted for so long.
Taid turned the doorknob. At least, he tried to. The doorknob did not turn, despite being supposedly unlocked. He looked to Eykit. “I thought you unlocked this?”
“I did! I felt the tumblers release. It should open.”
“Well, it’s not being a good, obedient doorknob. There must be a locking spell on it, then.”
Taid stepped back, lowered a shoulder, and slammed into the door. The doorjamb split, the hardware securing the door blowing out of the wood in a hail of splinters, and the door pivoted on its hinges and banged against what must have been a shelving unit.
“Okaaaay,” Eykit said, entering the room behind Taid. It was dark. No lights were lit. Some light came in through the two windows at the rear of the apartment, enough for everyone but Ruby to navigate by.
Almë and Ruby followed, Almë closing the door behind them. It wouldn’t stay; there was no hardware left that would secure it. He grabbed one of the dining chairs, and set that in front of the door to keep it from opening.
The door to Zorion’s bedroom was closed. Taid went to the bedroom door, but that door was locked. At least this time, the doorknob moved a bit, unlike the front door. “Eykit, another lock for you.”
This lock only took Eykit about ten seconds to unlock.
“Can you open the door, please,” Ruby asked.
“Nope,” Eykit replied, and stepped back. There was a mage guildmaster in there. He wanted nothing to do with being the first target.
“Taid, can you open the door, please?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” Taid said, gripping the doorknob and turning.
The door opened. As expected, it opened into a bedroom. Someone was sitting up on the bed, a confused expression on his face. It was Guildmaster Zorion Clemens.
Ruby scurried past Taid, who had leveled Maggie at Zorion. He didn’t seem to notice, and mumbled something about being woken up by something. She had her mage cuffs out. They were equipment that Central had given to her for this use. They were enchanted with a Foolishness spell, so that anyone who had the shackles put on them would be rendered dimwitted. Hopefully, the effect would be enough to weaken his resistance against what she really wanted to do to him.
Zorion didn’t resist the cuffs; he hardly even registered that they were on him. Ruby pulled out the necklace. It still glowed brightly with the spell Taid had put on it days ago, and it lit up the entire room bright as day. She made sure the man was, indeed, Zorion Clemens. As far as she could tell, it was him.
Then she crushed the glowing stone, casting the spell that had been contained within it, and Zorion, and the light, vanished with a soft popping noise.
When the room had been lit, Ruby had noticed a candle on the nightstand. She fumbled around in the dark until she found it, then lit it using a spell of Ignite Fire. Now she had enough light to see by, and she started going through the dresser drawers and the drawer of the nightstand. She didn’t find anything incriminating or interesting to her.
Eykit, meanwhile, had gone into the office. If there was anything of value, it would be there.
His office had a desk, some chairs, and some cabinets. He rifled through them all, finding ledgers, letters, and various other kinds of paperwork. He stacked them on the desk in a quickly growing pile. Ruby came in, and started flipping through the pile.
The Goblin found a small purse, which disappeared into a pocket. Judging from the weight, it held a respectable, although not large, amount of coins. But he figured that Ruby would be more interested in the paperwork, guild records, accounting ledgers, and whatever else was here.
Ruby located a folder full of letters, which she tucked under her arm. She also searched for a seal, and found wax for sealing missives, but didn’t locate a separate seal. If he had a signet ring with a seal on it, he was wearing it when he got teleported back to Central.
She put as many ledgers in her pack as she could fit. “Taid, can you please carry some of these ledgers in your pack?”
He nodded, and stuffed a couple of the ledgers into his pack.
Ruby’s stomach growled. It had been several hours since she had eaten, and her Hobbit metabolism was making itself felt. She went to the kitchen. Elitheris had mentioned that Zorion had pulled food out of an icebox. Maybe there was still some in there.
The icebox did indeed hold some food. There was a bottle of milk, some fruit, several eggs, and some cheese, plus what looked like the leftovers from a roasted chicken. There were also two Preservation boxes, each capable of holding 5 kg of food. Any food placed in the box would remain fresh. There was a lot of meat in one box, and a bunch of fresh vegetables in the other.
She made herself a pile of bread, cheese, and vegetables, and started eating. “Anyone want any of this?” she asked. No one wanted to eat any of the food, they all just wanted to get out of the apartment. But they waited, if impatiently, for Ruby to stuff her face.
Taid and Almë each took one of the preservation boxes. They were keeping those.
Ruby finished her pile of food, her hunger blunted. They exited the apartment. It was late, and there were few residents up and about. They occasionally saw someone down one of the hallways, but none were close.
They came down to the mezzanine, then came down the last flight to the lobby. The Orc doorman was still down there, and he glanced up when he heard them on the stairs.
Taid, Almë, Eykit, and Ruby simply walked out, Almë giving a half-hearted “Evening” to him as he walked by. The Orc almost said something, but they were all leaving, so he kept quiet.
They met Elitheris outside in the courtyard. “What’s in the boxes,” she asked.
“Food,” Taid said. “Preservation boxes. Judging from the maker’s marks, made by Brockhouse Containers, and enchanted by PKAC. One’s got meats, the other vegetables. Mostly full, except for what Ruby ate.”
They made their way back to Sairina Tarwar Manor, arriving there shortly before dawn. They put the boxes in the cellar, then they all went to bed. It had been a long day.
That night, while everyone slept, Almë arose near the beginning of the Hour of Final Dancing. It was still several hours before dawn. He dressed, then walked into the small patch of jungle behind the house. He wended his way between the trunks of trees and around the dense undergrowth. It was dark, but he could see just enough to navigate. The air was warm, and still, the only sounds that of the insects chirping and buzzing.
He walked until he got to the spot where they had buried Boots the zombie cat. He knelt down, meditated, contemplating his actions. He cast the spell of Shape Earth, watching as the loose earth slithered out of the hole, forming piles around it. The hole was a pit of blackness, and even his Elven night vision wasn’t good enough. He took flint and tinder to a candle, and soon it was lit. He held it over the hole.
He didn’t see the cat. He moved some more earth; he had been certain he’d dug it down far enough. More dirt shifted up and out of the hole, making the piles a little larger. He checked the hole again, and this time saw red, meat-like flesh. He used a plug of dirt underneath the cat to raise it up out of the hole. Setting the cat thing aside, he shoved the dirt back into the hole.
He looked around, and saw what he wanted: a small boulder about two feet in diameter with a slightly concave top. He picked up what was left of Boots, and carried it over to the rock, where he laid it down. He sat there for a little while, letting his mana regenerate.
Then he used the spell of Earth Shaping again, this time on the rock. Rock was harder to manipulate than soft earth, and it was more taxing to his body. But Almë shaped the stone around the distorted cat form, encasing it completely, except at the back of the neck, where Almë’s clumsy attempt at extraction surgery had left a ragged gaping wound where the Shard had once lain.
He took out the pouch of Shards he carried. In it was the pair that affected dreams somehow, plus four single Shards. One of the Shards still had residue of flesh and blood still stuck to it, although the others all had smears of gunk on them now as well.
Almë took the Shard with the most residue, and reinserted it into the hole he had dug it out of. Then he took out a needle and some thread, and did his best to sew the wound shut over the Shard.
Then he waited. He was trying to see if the cat would reanimate now that the Shard was back in place. The cat didn’t move. But then, it couldn’t anyway, since it was entirely encased in stone. But there was no evidence that he could see that reinserting the Shard would make it move around again.
After a while, he shrugged, picked up the oddly-proportioned and lumpy cat statue, and returned to the estate. He put the statue in one corner of the garden bed farthest from the manor house.
The sky was lightening; it was almost dawn. He went back inside, and back to bed, managing to get there before even the early-rising Elitheris awakened.
Skysday, Leafturn 7, 879 AFE
It was afternoon before anyone woke, and later than that when Ruby stirred. With the exception of Ruby, they were all seated around the table just off the kitchen. Otha was in the kitchen, cleaning up after preparing a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and cheese.
“So, Elitheris,” Almë said, “do you want to do anything about your old friend?”
“I don’t know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Everyone already knew that I had done it; that was never a secret. And everyone is someone’s child. A lot of people died that day, so it could be anyone. The youngest people in town were the twins, Almáriel and Ancalimë, and myself. I ended up being something like their big sister. Élheren and Naralta often had me watch them when they were young, to try to keep them out of trouble.”
She shook her head. There wasn’t anything she could do about it at the moment. She just didn’t have enough information. “I’m going to have to ponder on this, and I’m going to have to keep my eyes peeled. I don’t even know how to begin researching something like this.”
“It’s not like it’s something you can ask around about,” Eykit said.
“All I can really do it keep looking over my shoulder to see if anybody is stalking me. Because obviously somebody is stalking me.” She got a hard look on her face. “And the fact that I didn’t notice bothers me. Which means somebody else with my kinds of skill.”
“Or better,” Taid said.
She nodded. “Or better.” She realized she was being a bit hard on herself; she’d had no reason to think anyone was stalking her, so she had no reason to look anywhere but into Zorion’s apartment. There had been no reason for her to keep scanning the surrounding areas. Her target had been in his office, no more than four or five meters away. “I’m definitely dealing with an Elf, though. Or, I suppose, someone who knows Quenya and can write it very well.”
A thought occurred to her. “Could I have been mistaken for Almë? Could it be that mage guild he’s after?”
Almë shook his head. “We don’t really look very much alike. I’m much taller, and our bodies have different proportions. Not to mention gender.” He chuckled. “It’s probably Kallia!”
Elitheris turned to Taid. “I’d like you to be casting Watchdog when we go to bed at night, just in case. Wouldn’t do to have someone sneaking in and have them surprise all of us. This person definitely wanted to make sure I knew who it was. So I feel like they might attempt contact or something.”
She took a deep breath. “So at this point, the attack on me is a mystery that we can put on the back burner, because until the person does something, there isn’t anything we can really do.”
“I find it kind of interesting,” Eykit mused, “that they seem more intent on intimidation than actual harm.”
“Well, unless they want to cause me psychological damage, or torture me before I die.”
“That’s what I meant about the intimidation part. They want you to suffer. Emotionally. Like they have probably emotionally suffered.”
“And that is assuming that we’re talking about somebody from my village. And if that is what this is, then I am going to have to wait until they come to me again. I don’t really know how I can go find them. I don’t have any information, and I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Almë said, “Maybe I’m out of line again with my suggestion, but we could go back to your village and burn the rest down.”
Elitheris shook her head. “There is nothing left of the village. They all left eighty years ago when it and the forest around it burned to ash. Any structures left have been reclaimed by the Eternal. Although there might be some evidence of the village that could be found there. Maybe. So we should go on with whatever we’re going to do. Go after whats-her-name…Kallia or whatever.”
Ruby came into the kitchen carrying the folder of letters. Otha saw her, and asked if she wanted some lunch, now that she was up. Otha, since she had to take care of her newborn, naturally fell into basically the same jobs that she had when she used to live in the farmhouse near Rhades: domestic chores and kitchen duty. Fortunately, she was a pretty good cook. Nothing extraordinary, but good, wholesome, filling food that was at least pleasant to the tongue. She did like spicy food, though, although she tried to scale it back if someone couldn’t handle the spice.
“Actually, I’d like breakfast, second breakfast, and probably elevenses,” she replied.
“No bacon, right?”
“Right.”
“Eggs, and sautéed vegetables?”
“That will be fine.”
Otha got to work in the kitchen, and Ruby sat down at the table, putting the folder of letters down in front of her. She yawned. She started looking through the letters while she waited for her food to be prepared.
The letters were fairly mundane, mostly business correspondence. Nothing overtly incriminating. However, she did notice that not all of the names were of a kind used in the Empire. Some were from foreign lands. She didn’t recognize any of the names, but that wasn’t surprising, and she didn’t expect to. She did recognize names commonly used in the Essamine Monarchy, and in the Small Kingdoms, as well as the Dwarven Kingdom of Darach.
She didn’t see anything in the letters that caught her eye. But it was entirely possible that she didn’t have all of the context she needed to see the use of the letters. Central might know more, and might be able to use the letters to gain better intelligence on whatever Zorion Clemens was up to. After all, she was just an acting field agent, put on the project because she was the only person who had the skill set to have a chance at success.
She put the letters away, and stashed them in the room she was using as a bedroom. She’d have to get the letters back to Central. Shipping them to Adayn would take some time, but they had Zorion now, and the urgency was at least lessened.
She looked in the ledgers, but all she really saw were columns of names, places, and numbers. Some seemed to track monetary flows, but she lacked the accounting education to be able to get any information out of them. Some of them seemed to be related to project management, for various projects. She didn’t know what the projects were; their code names were not related to whatever it was that they were about. Unless “Pink Unicorn”, and “Starlight Exodus” involved oddly colored unicorns or the winking out of stars.
She’d send those to Central as well. Someone there would be able to make heads or tails out of it.
She came back to the kitchen, and found that the conversation had changed to that of hiring staff. The Manor needed a seneschal, some guards, domestic staff, and a bunch of farm hands.
“We’ve got some money from my guild now,” Eykit said, “so we can afford to hire some people.”
“Yeah, we’d better make this shit work,” Elitheris said, “or they’re going to come after him.”
“And Jakkit also told me that there are several enforcers who would be willing to come out here and be our guards. We’d be able to trust them. They might need some extra instruction, but they’d be loyal.”
They went on to discuss guards, the seneschal, levels of pay, and what they could expect from the different employees. They didn’t have unlimited funds, so they might need to pay low rates. The problem with that was that low pay rates weren’t enough to keep qualified people. Competent people moved to where they were paid according to their worth. Almë hoped that even if this season’s pay scale was low, the future would involve raises for the workers.
One thing they agreed on was that the seneschal, the overseer for the Manor, needed to be competent. After all, once he was hired, almost all of the day to day operations of the Manor house, grounds, and fields would be under his control.
Taid, silent through most of these deliberations, said, “Also remember, we have to hold a commendation ceremony with our people. Not as elaborate as the one we went through, but a smaller, less formal one. They need to swear fealty to us, and us to them. They owe us their labor, we owe them protection, job security, and a decent life.”
Almë nodded. “Yes, we do.”
“And hopefully we can gain their loyalty in the process.” But he knew, that took time, and effort, and care. “We don’t want them leaving, or getting poached by our neighbors. And we certainly don’ t want them so upset they actively sabotage us.”
“Fortunately, we have a handful of loyal employees because we saved them from the Breathstealer. So we have a few of them already.”
“Hopefully,” Taid said. “At least in the short term. We’ll see what happens in the long term. People can be fickle.”
The afternoon would be spent starting the staffing process.
Almë, Eykit, and Ruby went out to hire some people.
“My guild might have an angle on an overseer,” Eykit said. “We’ll go there first.” The other two nodded. After all, the money to hire their staff came from the New Square Skulls.
It took a couple of hours and several rounds of questioning enforcers, pickpockets, innkeepers, and sex workers to find out where Jakkit was. In the course of questioning, they had traipsed all over the guild territory, going from place to place, following Jakkit’s path, but always seemingly several steps behind.
They finally found him checking in on an untaxed gambling establishment. Ostensibly, it was just a hole in the wall tavern, but they had a back room behind the back room, where unlicensed card games were held.
Jakkit was finishing up with Sammis, the tavernkeeper. “…But other than the brawl last night, no other issues?”
Sammis shook his head. “Nah, Even that wasn’t that big of a deal. No one died. To be honest, I think the patrons showed remarkable restraint. Even the two Orcs. Although I’m not sure if they were annoyed at the fight, or were having fun with it.”
“As long as their tempers didn’t lead to murder, it’s fine.” He turned to Eykit. “Oh hey, how have you been?”
“Good.”
“Excellent. What do you need from me today?” Jakkit was almost always direct and to the point.
“Advice.”
“Okay. I have some of that. Won’t even charge you for it.”
“Great. Thank you. I really appreciate that.” Eykit got to the point too. “We need to hire an overseer, and we’re wondering if you know someone who would be good for the job that you trust?”
Jakkit frowned, lost in thought for a moment. “Give me an hour or so. I might be able to find someone. Where will you be?”
Eykit hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the main room of the tavern. “That room right over there, having a beer.”
“All right then.”
Eykit and Almë sat down for a drink, but Ruby had the package of documents that she wanted to ship to her guild, so she went off to take care of that.
They were on their second beers when Jakkit walked back into the tavern, followed by a Human male of about thirty years of age.
“I’d like you to meet Osbjorn Burkhart. He seems to be pretty good at the tasks you need to have done.”
Ruby entered, her pack seeming much lighter without the mass of letters and ledgers. She saw Almë and Eykit, along with the Goblin operations manager and some other guy.
“Hello,” she said, sitting down. “Who’s this?”
The young man smiled. “Ozzie Burkhart. I guess this is a job interview for the position of Manor Overseer.”
“Glad you were able to get here,” Almë said to the Hobbit. “You probably know enough to be able to vet him.”
Eykit shrugged. “I’m biased. Anyone Jakkit brings to me will be competent.”
“Best guy ever?” Almë asked him.
“Yeah. Pretty much. But go ahead, Ruby.”
Ruby knew quite a bit about administration. While she had never run a manor before, she had been administration-adjacent for most of her adult life. She’d been a cog in the wheels of governing for a long time.
She asked the first question, asking about his background.
“May I sit with you?” Ozzie asked, indicating an empty space on the bench.
“Absolutely,” Eykit replied.
Ozzie sat down, flagged a passing barmaid, and ordered the light ale.
Jakkit said, “So, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know how it all turns out.” With that, he left, off to his next task for the day.
She asked Ozzie questions about finances, resources, both capital and labor, and personnel interactions.
Ozzie, for his part, answered her questions without too much trouble. His basic background was that he hadn’t done rural manor management before. But he was very familiar with rural trading practices because most of his job experience was in warehousing and the logistics of foodstuffs, farming supplies, and farm equipment. He did have connections with the Port Karn Agricultural Council, as would anyone dealing with farms and farmers. He had also done a lot of business administration on the more commercial side of things.
He’d done a lot of work in the agricultural trade and industry, but not on the manor side of things. But he’d done all the work that existed on the periphery; the larger picture part of it. He’d just never had the chance to be a seneschal of a specific manor, although he worked with several on a daily basis. And he’d been quite successful at it.
He knows how it all works, Eykit thought. He knows the processes and how it works, and because he’s worked on the business end and the receiving end, he would be very good at negotiating that part. Which is what we need. He knows other people, and has a network of potential buyers.
Then he was questioned on his personal background. He didn’t have a wife, or any kids. He had a long term girlfriend for a while, but that changed a while ago, and he just hasn’t found anyone since. He’d been employed by several companies in New Square district, and a couple in neighboring ones as well.
“Why did you change companies?” Ruby asked. “Why didn’t you stay? We are looking for someone who will stay with us for the long haul.”
Ozzie shrugged. “I move when there are better opportunities. Sometimes I moved because I didn’t like the people. But Jakkit came in and said that there was an opportunity to run a Manor, and figured it was a good upgrade from what I have been doing. Technically, I’m still employed at Hashiida Trading. I haven’t left yet, not having a new job yet.” He grinned.
“How much do you want as salary?”
“Sixteen hundred a month.” Ruby didn’t know the local economic situation yet, so she glanced over at Eykit. He nodded, adding a slight shrug. It seemed, then, that 1600 marks per month was a more or less standard amount for the position.
“Another question. We are a diverse group, and sometimes we have some trouble.”
“Hey,” Eykit said, “that’s through no fault of our own. Trouble just seems to follow us around! Like an arrow flying out of nowhere!”
“I just want to know how he will deal with that kind of thing.”
Osbjorn got an odd look on his face. This interview was…interesting. “So, you guys cause some trouble and you are asking me how I will react to the trouble you caused?”
“We do not cause trouble,” Eykit asserted.
“We do not cause trouble,” Ruby agreed. “We are trying to start a business, and sometimes we, uh, need your loyalty to be able to stay with us.”
“Well,” Osbjorn said deliberately, “You guys would be my employers, and I’d be living under your roof.”
Almë had kept uncharacteristically silent. “I mean, he’s also working for, sorry, in contact with Eykit’s gang. So he’s probably loyal.”
“We’re not a gang,” Eykit said sharply. “Do not use the word ‘gang’.”
“Company. Eykit’s company.”
Eykit preferred guild, but company at least implied some kind of respect. So he rolled with it.
There were a few more minor questions, and soon the interview wrapped up.
Almë jumped up, grabbing Osbjorn’s hand and shaking it vigorously, before Ruby could ask him any more questions. “Welcome aboard!” he said.
“Okay, then,” Ozzie replied. “When would you like me to start?”
“Today!” Almë said. It was that odd Elven sense of time. The work day was basically over already, and sunset was approaching.
“Today?” Ozzie asked, incredulously.
Almë realized what time it actually was. “Tomorrow, tomorrow will be fine.”
“Tomorrow,” Eykit reiterated. “That’d be great.”
“Okay, so, I’m the overseer and seneschal. Who else do you guys have as your staff?”
“We’d actually like you to assist in building and developing that staff,” Eykit said. “We are doing pretty well on security staff, and agriculture staff to manage the fields—“
“No we don’t!” Almë said. “We have enough to handle the kitchen garden, and that’s about it.”
“Well, then, apparently we have security covered.”
“We’ve got a few farmers so far, and Otha seems to have filled the cooking and cleaning slot, but that won’t last once they have their house built. So we’ll need a cook and some maids. We’ll need another 14 farmers or so for the two fields we’ll put into use this season.”
“I’d be happy to help put together a good set of employees,” Ozzie said. “Do you have any special requests for any of the house staff? Race, gender, anything like that?”
“No,” Almë said, and there were nods of agreement from the others.
“Great. Then I will just find the best people I can. What’s my budget?”
They gave him a rundown on what they had as far as capital. He looked a little worried, but nodded, saying “I can work with that. Good idea, by the way, of starting off their pay at the lower end, and then letting them know that it will likely increase in a season. That will help get some people, once they know they aren’t locked into a low-paying job.”
“Great,” Almë said. “We’ll see you tomorrow. Congratulations on your new job.”
Osbjorn Burkhart smiled, stood, shook all of their hands, and left.
“We need a map,” Almë said.
“A map?” Eykit asked.
“To plan how to get to Kallia, and figure out our route, and stuff.”
They spent some time looking for a map shop that was open late. They did find a couple of shops that likely sold maps, but they were closed for the evening. Almë would have to wait until morning.
Kynetsday, Leafturn 8, 879 AFE
Taid woke up from a dream. Not the usual, vague, ambiguous dream that everyone got on a regular basis, but a dream that was more…focused somehow. He also remembered it fairly well, also unlike most dreams.
Taid had been walking along a street in a surface town. There were buildings on both sides of the street, built shoulder to shoulder, with little or no room between them. The street was straight, and at the end was a large stone structure, ambiguous in the distance.
The sun was shining, there were puffy clouds in the sky, and the sound of birdsong could be heard. There were people, but Taid could only see them out of the corner of his eye; when he turned to look, the area was empty. When he tried to get a glimpse of the people, he failed at first. After several tries, he eventually got the impression that they were faceless, and more like impressions of people rather than actual people. Sometimes he would swear that they had more than two arms. Or maybe he was seeing the same arms in two places at once? It was rather disconcerting, as the town felt full, and it sounded inhabited, but when he looked, there was no one there.
He walked to a temple and entered. It was large, echoey, and utterly empty. No one was in it, there were no doorways to other parts of the temple; it was just one large space. Columns of stone in the style of classical architecture marched down the room towards a larger than life statue of a Dwarf. The statue was shirtless, with a strongly muscled chest and an expansive beard that curled like flames. He was bald, and held a disc in one hand, and a flaming sword in the other.
Taid awoke at that point, the dream fading as his conscious mind regained control. He laid in his bed for a while, thinking about whether he should tell anyone or not. He didn’t understand it, and if it had a message it wasn’t one he could figure out. If he had another dream like it, may then he would discuss it with the others. Until then, it was just another dream.
He shrugged mentally, and got up to start his day.
Ruby went into town, traveling with Almë until they got to the map shop. He went in, and she went onward deeper into Port Karn. She needed access to her money. She was able to withdraw some at the Port Karn branch of the bank she used. That would work in the short run. But she also wanted to know where other branches of the bank were.
“And where are you going?” the branch officer asked.
“Not sure, really,” Ruby replied. “I think we will be going through Lytan’s Mill, Fleetmilk, and Sheepshear. Any branches anywhere near there?”
The branch officer opened a desk drawer, pulling out a ledger book. He flipped it open and turned some pages, running his finger down the page. “Ah. Here we go. We have a branch in Fleetmilk.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
Almë went into the cartographer’s guild house, to get some maps of the southern portion of the Empire. Since the origin of Empire was a nation called Araterre, located not too far to the east of Port Karn, there were many to choose from, and most were of quite high quality and accuracy.
He came back, whistling some ancient Elven tune. He gathered everyone at the banquet table, where he spread out the maps. Ruby had already gotten back from her own errand.
“All right,” he began. “We know about Nathan, he lives on Isleton, and he’s a good guy. I don’t think we need to worry about him. He wasn’t doing what everyone else was anyway. Then we know about Lennerd Fountainsmith, but he escaped us, and we don’t know where he is. You know, if I were him, I’d go to one of the others and try to hide there.”
Ruby hadn’t been around when they had tangled with Lennerd. “What did he do?” she asked. “Why are we looking for him?”
“He was—is—a necromancer. He’s using Shards and doing experiments on people. Kidnapping them, killing them, and/or casting zombie spells on them to make these weird Shard zombies.”
“Is one of these guys the guy who lived in the manor house, or someone else?”
“No, the guy who lived here in the manor house is gone. Lennerd lived in Donnington. Ah, you’re not a local. Donnington is sort of situated at a crossroads, so a lot of farm traffic goes through there. He worked as a warehouse manager as a cover. Anyway, he dug up corpses and whatever, and raised them up as zombies. But he escaped, but we know about two others.”
“But what is our goal here? To kill him, to ask him questions, or….”
“Both. First asking questions, then kill him.”
“Okay. Got it.”
“So, we don’t know where Lennerd Fountainsmith is. If I were him, I would hide out with one of the others. We didn’t run into him when we met Nathan, and I don’t doubt that Nathan would hide him or give him shelter or something.”
He indicated a point on the map, pretty far away. “Then we know about Nigel. He’s living in Lake Keep, which is pretty far away.” He moved and pointed to the Zirinibar Mountain range, some 500 kilometers from Port Karn. “Kallia lives somewhere in this mountain range. We think. We know that there’s a “Mountain Stream Inn” somewhere close by, like in a village that is close by. So if we can find out where the Mountain Stream Inn is, we know the rough area where she is. So she is closer than Nigel.”
Kallia seemed the better choice. They started planning routes. Traveling by river was their best bet, likely through the town of Lytan’s Mill.
“Maybe that’s not the best option,” Ruby said. She didn’t fare well on boats, or coaches, or wagons. Nausea was her traveling companion. She preferred Nori. For whatever reason, he didn’t cause her to get motion sickness.
Almë suffered from motion sickness as well, as they found out on their trips into the river to Isleton and back. Even discussing river travel made Almë look a bit green. But it was either that, or take a lot longer going through the jungle on foot.
“So,” Almë said, “option one is traveling on the river. Probably take two or three eightdays to cover that distance. Which means it likely at least five times as long on foot.” He glanced at Elitheris, who had loads of experience traveling the jungle on foot.
She nodded; the estimate was about right. Even the so-called “Imperial Roads” that connected the towns and cities in this area of the Empire were often little more than narrow tracks through the ever-growing jungle. The jungle always seemed hungry to cover up the works of civilization.
“Ugh,” Taid said. “Road clearing. The only thing worse than trying to keep the jungle from destroying and covering the roads is building them in the first place. I swear, most of my military experience is wielding a shovel and pick rather than a real weapon. It was always digging. I’m a Dwarf! And even I got tired of digging!”
“The way Dwarves always dig,” Eykit said, “I would have thought you’d have badger paws instead of hands!”
“To be honest, that’s already a long time,” Almë said. “So we’ll likely have to take a boat. And that’s not a great thing for me. Bleh.” He mimed puking over the rail.
Ruby nodded and said, “For me, either.”
They discussed the merits of hiring a boat, or getting passage on one, and the differences between a fishing boat and a cargo barge. If they wanted to take Wilbur, they would need to take a cargo ship. He wouldn’t fit on a small fishing boat. The cargo boats were a bit more stable, being wider and flatter. Cargo boats would also be stopping along the way at the various hamlets and villages that dotted the river’s length.
“This is going to be a long trip,” Almë said. “A few eightdays out, a few eightdays back, plus an eightday or two looking for and dealing with Kallia. It’s not really a quick in and out mission.”
“A month and a half,” Elitheris said.
“Will Sairina Tarwar be alright during that time? Or should I stay here? Taking care of the manor and starting to build the housing and whatever?”
“Just stay at home,” Ruby said.
“He might be useful,” Elitheris said.
“Or the opposite of useful,” Eykit quipped.
“Right, right,” Ruby said. “Just stay at home. Just grow some nice flowers and buildings and stuff.”
“We’ll be heading into the jungle,” Elitheris said. “He’s a plant mage. Do the math.”
“Well of course Almë should go!” Eykit said, as if it was the most logical, common sense thing ever.
“Then we should prepare for a long trip,” Almë said. His sense of morality made him want to go. Or, perhaps, his vindictiveness against the necromancers who were twisting the Eternal. Necromancy broke the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. While it wasn’t unnatural, per se, it was not Nature. A fine distinction, but that’s how belief and ideology worked.
They planned to take their two “new” preservation boxes, filled with food. They also collected the three healing potions Ekain the Alchemist had made for them, as partial payment for the use of the lab. He was currently brewing some pastilles of Foolishness and some stealth pastilles. He had also brewed up some Fetching and Carrying potions, which made it feel as if a carried load was lighter, and some Fire Resistance potions, primarily for the fire brigades.
Elitheris also made a trip to the enchanter at PKAC, in order to pick up some magical arrows. She picked up a couple of arrows of Drunkenness. She also picked up an arrow of Sickness, just in case she met Lennerd Fountainsmith again. He had cast some kind of Sickness spell on her, and she ended up puking her guts out, unable to do anything else. She’d like to return the favor. Preferably with extreme prejudice.
Rewards Granted
3 CP
3 Healing potions that Ekain the Alchemist had given them.
2 10lb (4.5 kg) capacity Preservation boxes
3 Healing potions that Ekain the Alchemist had given them.
2 10lb (4.5 kg) capacity Preservation boxes
Missions/Quests Completed
Ruby's mission of capturing Guildmaster Zorion Clemens
Character(s) interacted with
Zorion Clemens
Osbjorn "Ozzie" Burkhart
Osbjorn "Ozzie" Burkhart
Report Date
03 Sep 2023
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
Comments