The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set 2

by Eric Ugland

  “Me?” I asked. “I just stopped a child killer from—”

  “Be as that may, she is a very influential person in the city. Her gold goes a long way in keeping the city guard in their cups.”

  “So I’m the asshole here?”

  “The truth, when it spreads, will quell their, uh, distaste of you.”

  “Didn’t you say the whole city wants to kill me. Distaste might be a bit weak to describe things.”

  “There is some truth to that.”

  “What about the woman who—”

  “Rebecca and her husband are being escorted from the city as well. I cannot say for sure that anyone knew it was her who reported Lady Von Boek, but I also cannot say their identity is not known—”

  “They’re coming with me?”

  “There is little recourse for me.”

  “I thought you were the voice of the Emperor—”

  “The Legion is outnumbered by the city guard three to one, and though I would be willing to bet those odds are still in favor of the Legion, they cannot be everywhere at once.”

  “Are you about to tell me that Valamir is a friend of Von Boek’s?”

  “I doubt that. Valamir is fervent in his belief of the superiority of the nobles. Especially the Imperial Line. He finds few true friends outside the aristocracy.”

  “You should watch out though, the wizard guy—”

  “Cade Colten?”

  “That one, yeah, he keeps talking about his master, and how I would rue tangling with him.”

  “Is that so,” Léon mused.

  “And Von Boek claimed this master guy was her lover.”

  “Sounds like you have another powerful enemy.”

  “Great.”

  “It is a sign of greatness, in a fashion.”

  “I’m not looking for greatness. I’m looking for a peaceful life.”

  “If you find where that is possible here, let me know.”

  “You’re first on my list.”

  We got to the gate and I was ushered outside, the Legion interposing themselves between the City Guards and me. Most of the guards ignored me, but I could see a few glaring my way.

  “I will do my utmost to signal you when it is safe for you to return to the city,” Léon said. “Provided, of course, I am not recalled from Osterstadt.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You are most welcome,” he replied. “I applaud what you have done, though perhaps, next time, we could work together to do things with a little more subtlety.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and then shooed me away. Rebecca and Isaac were waiting for me on the other side of the bridge, with a few others. They turned out to be the Rebecca’s extended family and a few of Isaac’s close friends. A motley group to be sure, but they all seemed nice, at least as far as I could tell.

  I had a few notifications to sort through as we walked from the city walls to the camp.

  GG! You’ve killed a Zombie Thrall (lvl 11 Undead).

  You’ve earned 300 xp! What a mighty hero you are.

  I had quite a few of those to go though, I’d taken down plenty of the zombies, and I got a some xp.

  Congratulations! You’ve completed a QUEST!

  The Good. The Bad. And the Bloody

  Stop Lady Von Boeks. Kill her. Arrest her. Put her evil actions to an end.

  Reward for success: Unknown

  I was over unknown rewards. But, at least I’d completed a quest, and that had to count for something. Plus, one of Rebecca’s brothers was a guard, so there was one more person around that could fight. Or at least stand guard.

  Once we got to camp, I introduced everyone around, again, and the minutiae of the camp was put together.

  Everything was really nice until I saw Emeline walking over with a smile on her face.

  “MOTHERFUCKER!” I shouted.

  Chapter 31

  After the evening meal, which was a rather tense affair of everyone eating as quickly and quietly as possible in order to facilitate not talking to any strangers, I had a quick meeting with Lee, then a short meeting with Emeline. With Lee, it was mostly about logistics and finding out what we were missing. Which was now money. With Emeline, I asked her to point out the cemetery I needed to get to on the map.

  I asked the hirð to take the watch for the night, dividing it up however they felt like. I said I was very tired, and after the series of days I’d had, I needed a little extra rest.

  I didn’t go to sleep though. I laid on my brand new bedroll for a minute staring up at the tree branches above me. Then, I got up, ignored everyone else, and meandered to a spot well away from camp, hoping Fritz would show up.

  While I waited, my mind wandered and I spent the time drawing in the dirt, thinking about the city I was supposed to be building. Or the holding. Calling it a city this early seemed a little presumptuous. I hadn’t even gotten to the spot where I’d be building whatever it was I wanted to call it. Things felt weird on that night because I couldn’t stem the growing feeling that I was busy making someone else’s dream come to fruition and not following at all what it was I wanted to be doing. Granted, what I had said I wanted to do was a rather selfish and pointless task, at least as it related to the world at large. Fishing on a lake and avoiding everyone wasn’t going to make a difference to anyone. Except maybe I’d kill fewer assholes, monsters, and devils. But this holding, this dukedom, this city, whatever, that was the dream of Cleeve. And, I suppose, to some extent, of Nikolai. They’d bought into it, they’d made it possible, and now I was the one who had to make it happen.

  As the moons were disappearing behind the mountains, I felt something watching me. I turned to see Fritz sitting right behind me.

  “Evening,” I said.

  He nodded his massive head at me.

  “Good hunt?” I asked.

  He smiled, and I could see blood at the edges of his mouth.

  “No humanoids, right?”

  “Deer.”

  “Tasty.”

  “Yuh. Tast-y.”

  “See all these people camping here?”

  “Yuh. Tast-y.”

  “No. Not tasty. These are our family, hoss. As my companion, you protect them as you would me.”

  He looked over the wagons and the sleeping forms, and he sighed.

  “Fam-i-ly,” he said finally.

  “And that includes you. You, too, are family.”

  He chuffed at me, which I couldn't really figure out how to take. Was he happy about it? Was he angry?

  “You think you could carry me while you flew?” I asked.

  Wrapping his front paws around me and pulling me to his chest, he leapt up into the air.

  I heard his wings snap as they caught the air.

  Flapping his wings, we rose higher into the air. It was glorious. Seeing Osterstadt from the sky was really cool. I hadn’t flown a ton when I’d been back in Earth, and, obviously, I hadn’t done any flying while I’d been living in Vuldranni, so it was a new experience. Also, flying on something with wings was a wholly new experience. There was some noise, but not much, and there was a distinct up-and-down feeling as Fritz’s wings beat. But then he’d catch an updraft and just glide. It was remarkable.

  Of course, then he banked and cut a very tight spiral down to the ground, landing with a bit of a thud.

  He let me go, and I stumbled down to my feet.

  “Eas-y,” he said.

  I got to my feet and brushed the dirt off my butt.

  “Okay,” I said, “that was unexpected, but I did have a reason for asking you besides shits and giggles.”

  “Rea-son.”

  “I need to get back into the city—”

  “Big ar-rows.”

  “Sure, but you’re a nimble guy, you can avoid them.”

  “May-be. May-be you shield.”

  “Either way, can you get me into the city?”

  I pulled out the map, navigated it over to
where I needed to go, and held it up to Fritz.

  “Specifically here,” I said, pointing to the spot Emeline had shown me.

  He squinted at it, tilted his head a little, then made a few quick glances from the city back to the map and then to the city again.

  With a grunt, he leapt up and flew into the night.

  “Hey!” I said as loudly as I dared, trying not to wake anyone. “You’re taking me—”

  There was a whooshing, and Fritz came in hot, scooping me up with a rather hard hit, but he didn’t slow down. Instead, he flew up very high, heading up into the mountains.

  It was cold as balls, and I was in some real pain as the wind cut through the last of my shitty too-tight shirts. Up and up we went, until the lights of the city were mere pinpricks. Then we were going along a mountain top, and I could see creatures moving below us. Goats of some kind. Herd animals, whatever they were.

  He cut hard and dove, going almost straight down. I had to shut my eyes — it felt like the wind rushing past was going to rip them out.

  At the last second, he flared his wings and let go.

  I opened my eyes as I fell to watch the manticore flap off through the night. He had dropped me into the city, and I was falling and I was about to —

  THUD.

  I slammed against a roof.

  It hurt. Quite a bit. And I lay there for a moment, whimpering as my nerves fired off in a million ways to let me know how pissed off my whole body was. But then the magic of the world kicked in. My bones came back together, and the pain dissipated. Sadly, the memory of the pain remained. I sat up slowly and looked around.

  I was on a tall building. It looked as if it was a church, and I was sitting on the bell tower, a solid hundred plus feet above the main roof.

  “Motherfucker,” I said, hating this stupid quest. Stupid books. Stupid Emeline stealing stupid books. Stupid wizards needing stupid books. Stupid wizards calling themselves Mancers. But mainly stupid Montana for agreeing to all this shit.

  “I’m supposed to be fishing!” I shouted into the night.

  Thunder cracked back at me, as if the gods were telling me to shut up already.

  Climbing down the tower felt a whole lot like climbing up the tower in the dungeon, except with fewer handholds and more death-inspiring drops. But, each time I dropped, my hands managed to find a spot to grab and keep myself from crashing to the ground. Thirty sweaty minutes later, and I was on the roof of the church. Or, at least, the building that seemed a very church-like sort of structure. I wondered what god or goddess it might be dedicated to, because while there was quite a bit of symbolism and decoration about the place, and I’d gotten up close and personal to most of the sculptures on the soaring tower, none of it meant anything to me.

  I rested on the roof a moment, my back to the tower, looking at the city around me. I was in a part of Osterstadt that was new to me, and I had the distinct pleasure of watching a few revelers here puke. I sighed, and wondered why this quest was so hard. Why had I forgotten it twice now? I felt like I was falling into the same trap I fell into when playing games instead of living them. I took on every single damn quest I could, and by the time I gave up playing the game, I’d accumulated a massive quest log and finished almost none of them. I supposed that I answered that question. I was falling into this trap partially because I always fell into this trap, and also because I was feeling like I needed to do more good in the world to offset all the killing I’d done. Still, I needed to be better about the whole quest business. Frankly, I needed to get better about all the notifications in this new game of life.

  I crawled to the edge of the roof, and swore. There was an impressive overhang, and getting to the wall was going to be a challenge. If it was even possible. The roof beneath me was made of clay tiles, and I felt reasonably sure I could punch my way through. But that seemed like it would be both unfairly destructive and highly attention grabbing. I needed to get into the graveyard, snag the books, and sneak out of the city. Ideally without killing anyone along the way. I know, I always have to do things the easy way.

  I looked back at the tower, and I noticed there was a faint square of light coming through. I worked at it with my fingers, and I pulled open a door. A small door, mind you, something that had been left in place to facilitate workers having access to the roof in order to repair tiles and what not, but a door all the same. It seemed like I had to fold myself to fit in the door, and I very nearly got stuck, but I managed to get in the tower and found myself on a landing. The light was coming from below, and I could hear talking. Or chanting. Speaking? It was hard to understand, but something where humans were making noise was happening below.

  A staircase went up and down from the landing, it wasn’t sealed, and there were no railings — It was an OSHA inspector’s nightmare. I tried to keep quiet as I walked down the stairs, something made significantly easier without plate armor. But I still winced every time the wood creaked or groaned.

  Lower down, I got to where I could see the entire church below, and it was a pretty cool sight. There were tall stained glass windows that probably looked incredible with light coming through them. Stone pews in the hundreds took up the middle of the place, with a deep red carpet bisecting the rows perfectly. There was a large stone altar at the front, all the way at the other end of the place. That’s where I saw a group of figures in white robes gathered and speaking. I thought for a brief moment that they were praying or engaged in some serious conversation, but then one of them started laughing so hard they fell over. This caused the others to laugh, and I found that I couldn’t help but grin at their obvious joy.

  But quickly, I focused back on the things I needed to be doing. I was definitely in a part of the church where the public was not meant to go. There were cleaning supplies and rags and whatnot left around, as well as what seemed to be a very comfy chair and a few half-drunk bottles of wine. Or, alternatively a few half-full bottles of pee. Tough to tell, really. Moving quickly while the laughter echoed through the place, I walked from the tower staircase around the perimeter until I got to another staircase heading down. This one was circular, but got me to the ground floor in a moment’s time. I opened the door on the bottom, only to see one of the robed figures standing there, a beautiful smile on his serene face.

  “She wishes to speak with you,” he said.

  I looked at him, then peeked out and looked around. The figures at the altar were looking over at us.

  “Uh, who?” I asked.

  “The Lady.”

  “Lady Von Boeks?”

  He shook his head, but the smile remained.

  “Follow,” he said, and started walking towards the altar.

  I made a quick judgement of the distance to the front door, and was in the midst of calculating if I’d be able to sprint there when I felt a tap on my arm.

  “She means you no harm,” the man said. “This way.”

  He had little slippers on his feet, and moved with a real sense of chill. It was starting to rub off on me ever so much. So while I wasn’t exactly inclined to follow the man, and had zero interest in talking to this lady, whomever she may be, I moseyed along after the dude.

  It wasn’t a long walk. It was really just to the end of the church, up past the altar and through a small door. A small door which I had to duck through and which led to a very small room, one so small that the dude and I had to smush together a bit.

  “When I close this door,” he said, pointing to the door we’d come through, “another will open. Please go through.”

  “Through the other door.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know this sounds a bit nuts, right?”

  “No,” he replied, “it does not. It is the way one goes to visit the Lady.”

  He squished past me and exited the tiny room, shutting the door behind him.

  As he did so, that door vanished, and another took its place. It was an odd and somewhat surreal experience.

  I reached out, grabbed
the door handle, and pulled it towards me. But instead of a door opening, I felt like I was ripped out of the world.

  Chapter 32

  There was a brilliant light, and I dropped to a ready position, arms out and prepped for an attack.

  None came.

  What did come was a cool mist, settling down all around me, but not directly on me. It was like I was in some cheesy version of Heaven. Clouds moved around my feet so I couldn’t see the ground. Deep blue sky spread forever above me. This was a very surreal experience, but I had the feeling I was in the presence of a god. Only a deity would make a place like this.

  Sure enough, a soft choral melody arose, and the mists parted. An elegant and beautiful woman dressed in a flowing white gown came down a staircase of clouds that seemed to form beneath her feet before being whisked away by a gentle breeze. It was impressive in a 1950s movie musical sort of sense, but nothing that really knocked my socks off.

  She came to a gliding stop about three feet in front of me, and just sort of posed there. She had very long very blonde hair that framed her perfect face, well, perfectly. Her nose was pert, her lips were plump. Everything was textbook ‘good god.’ She was a bit shorter than me, and I noticed that she had very blue eyes when she looked up at me.

  “I am the Lady,” she said, “Zothys.”

  “I’m Montana,” I replied. “Duke of Coggeshall.”

  “I know who you are,” she replied. “It is I who called for you to come to me.”

  “Are you a god?” I asked.

  “You do not know of me?”

  “Can’t say as I do. Are you the god of, let’s see, Good?”

  She smiled at me, and gave the slightest bow of her head. “I am not the goddess of good, but I am a goddess of good. I am the goddess of Children. And of motherhood.”

  “It is nice to meet you,” I said.

  “You have helped one of my supplicants. I wanted to extend my thanks.”

  “Rebecca? Sure. I mean, it’s, I don’t know, what I had to do, so, no thanks necessary. But appreciated.”