by Eric Ugland
I pushed my way into the tavern and scored a spot at the bar with equal measures luck and glares, sitting down on an unpleasantly still warm stool. Titus gave me a wave, and his wife Penelope shot a smile toward me. Still, it took time before either one of them was able to get down to me and take an order.
Which was still a short interaction.
“Big meal or small,” Titus asked.
“Big,” I said.
“Ale?”
“Sure.”
And that was it. A moment later, Titus's daughter, Neela, came out of the kitchen and put a hunk of meat and a pile of potatoes in front of me, while Penelope set an overflowing mug next to me.
The people on either side of me eyed my food and drink, and perhaps me, but I stopped paying attention. Instead, I tucked into the food. And it was delicious. But not overly so. I mean, I wasn’t blown away by the fare. It was just good. And the ale was ale. Nothing at all unusual about it. Ale was commonplace in Glaton, and it seemed to be the beverage of choice for most meals, breakfast included. It was nowhere near the alcoholic level of beer back home, but I had the feeling nearly everyone operated on a measured buzz throughout the day. I preferred water for the day. Or when I was working. I just wasn’t that big a fan of booze, you know, after seeing what it did to my dad. And my family in general.
As I finished up, my plate disappeared, and my mug was refilled without me saying a thing. I felt a sense of satisfaction. Things were going okay. And in my life, okay was a step up. I wondered, though, what was going on with the bar. Why was it so popular? What had changed? Had it changed? The first time I’d seen it, the place had been, well, slow would have been hyperbole. Titus was reading books and ignoring patrons. And I could see his books, a collection of leather-bound tomes up above the pricey bottles of liquor, and I could see the strip of ribbon he used as a bookmark, one that hadn’t moved in days. Every time I passed the tavern, it was either closed or busy. What was the difference? And was it essential I figure it out?
“I apologize for the delay in meeting you,” came a smooth voice uncomfortably close to me.
I turned my face a little faster than I’d meant and got a close-up view of a perfect looking man, blonde hair, blue eyes, aquiline nose, resting smile. He had a hat on his head, a full brimmed sort of a thing with a feather out the top. Yellow. Matching his jacket and trousers. A dandy. A fop. A rich dude, who held two fingers up and a gold coin between them.
Penelope came directly.
“Another for him,” my new drinking buddy said, “and a whiskey for me. And you can keep the change.” He dropped the coin into her hand, and Penelope smiled.
“Thank you, sir,” she said and managed to return to us in record-breaking time, a second mug for me and a wooden tumbler of whiskey for the fop.
The fop picked up his tumbler and held it up.
“To forgiveness of fools,” the fop said.
“Sounds good to me,” I replied, and clunked my mug against his tumbler.
We each drank.
“I must ask,” I said, “are you here seeking my forgiveness?”
“Indeed,” the fop said. “One of my, well, he’s less an associate but more than an underling, but I believe he came to speak with you and instead threatened you.”
“Ah,” I said, picking up what he was putting down, “Iron Silents.”
“You remember him then,” the fop said.
“I do. Not the nicest chap.”
“No, he lacks a certain social charm. All charm, really, but then again, that’s not why he’s working with us.”
“He makes a good threat,” I lied. The fop was pleasant, I saw no reason to be impolite to him.
“That he does. But I don’t want you to think we’re here to threaten you. Rather, I see promise in what you have done, what you are doing. And I’m curious, are you new here?”
“I am.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I appreciate you coming to ask for my forgiveness, but I fear telling you my home town is not in my best interest.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“You seem the types who might, well, go to greater lengths to, uh—”
“You can say that we resort to violence when all other means fail. That’s been true in the past.”
“Then, you understand. If I tell you my hometown, little remains to stop you from heading there and threatening members of my family to force me to do what I won’t.”
“Now now, you think we would stoop to that?”
“I don’t know you, I don’t know what constitutes stooping.”
He took another sip of his whiskey and smiled as it burned down his throat.
“Are you from elven homelands?” he asked.
“No,” I replied with a slight shake of my head, doing my utmost to recall what I’d read about the Elves of the Sun and the Moon, my chosen people. I was pretty sure we didn’t have homelands. “I am born of the Empire.”
“Interesting. I, myself, come from a land far away.”
“Are you now an Imperial citizen?”
He got a look on his face like he was contemplating a concept he’d never thought of, “I suppose I am.”
“If I might ask a question, and since I neglected to answer yours, feel free to ignore mine, but why do you want this building so badly?”
“Do you know what we do?”
“By we, you mean—”
“The Iron Silents.”
“I do not.”
“We have our fingers in several pies, and the greater the number of pies, the better we can survive and focus on having our organization thrive. This neighborhood, Old Town, has been resistant to us, and this building has a good location. Near enough the gate for quick travel about the city, but also, it would give us an excellent outpost here. Especially if something were to befall the city, it would be safer here.”
“Is there something coming?”
“Oh, there are always things coming, whether they arrive is the real question, isn’t it?”
“Do you know something?”
He smiled. “Ah, that is one of the products we specialize in, information. I sadly can’t go about passing that around for free. Were you to join us, then that would be a different matter.”
“Are you asking me to join?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. High though I am in the organization, I’m not able to just magic you in.”
He sipped more of his whiskey.
“But,” he continued, as if he’d just had this thought, “were you to express interest, I could push your name to the top of the list of applicants and ensure you receive fair consideration.”
“Are there benefits to joining the Iron Silents?”
“Naturally. We are one of the most powerful groups in the city, and we protect our own. We nurture our own. You will grow in levels, skills, and power if you join us. And there are riches on the horizon, and the earlier you get in, the better your payout when we strike true wealth.”
“Pretty tempting.”
“I’d like to think so, but obviously, no pressure. I am here to ask forgiveness for our slights, not pressure you into joining or anything. We would still be interested in chatting about the sale of this building, not now, but in the future. At a rate that would be fair. Market and all. Don’t want you to feel you’ve been slighted, would we?”
“We would not.”
He set another gold on the counter, “I’m afraid I must run, but please, drink on me tonight.”
The fop patted my shoulder and slipped away through the crowd before I could even muster a goodbye. I looked at the gold coin on the counter, and something seemed off about it. I didn’t touch it. I just stared at it, and even though I couldn’t be sure, I swore I saw the slightest purple tinge to it.
I had a long night ahead of me, so I left the bar. And the coin. As I went, I saw a young man exclaim his luck. He’d found a gold coin, and he ran out of the place like he pants were on fire, yelli
ng that he was finally heading somewhere, but I couldn’t catch the name.
“Where’s he headed so fast?” I asked the man standing next to me.
The burly man had arms nearly as big as my legs, but stood wobbly on his own giant trunks, squinted as he tried to bring me into focus.
“The Gilded Garden,” he slurred, so he might have equally said Golden Guardian. Or Goalies God Win. “Got a Kitsune Girl there, they do.”
He burped in my face then and threw up just a little in his mouth.
“‘Scuse me.”
And with that, he stumbled outside.
I waited a moment longer, hoping the stench cloud of his burp would dissipate before I had to walk through it, but it didn’t. And I went back up to my apartment, and I laid down. As soon as my eyes closed, though, something happened.
IT IS TIME. YOU MUST CHOOSE:
For reaching level five, you are offered one Choice. You must make a Choice. This prompt may not be minimized nor ignored.
First Choice
1) Rogue - Rogues are the generalist of the underworld. They do a little burgling, a touch of thuggery, a pinch of purse-cutting, and the occasional murder. Rogues gain bonuses to progression in thievery skills. A good place to start.
2) Second Story Man - Slip into buildings in silence, pilfer goods, sneak out. Second Story Men gain bonuses to progression in thievery skills, bonuses to progression in stealth skills, penalties to progression in martial skills
3) PitMan — Work in the pits. Bonuses to disease resistance, bonuses to harvesting, bonuses to moving in difficult terrain. Penalties to social interactions.
You have one minute to decide.
I didn’t exactly like any of my options. So I just stuck with Rogue. And then, blessedly, I was allowed to sleep.
33
Two hours, and I was up. The apartment was unchanged. I pulled on the oilskin coveralls, wishing a dryer was a thing here. Or would work on oilskin. Then, I sat down in a closet on the third-floor parkour apartment and did the meditation thing. I wanted to be out of sight, as hidden and safe as I could be while I was totally vulnerable. I cycled the magic around my body, and I noticed that my mana totals were higher. I cut my arm a few times and healed it back up. It was pretty cool that there wasn’t even a scar. I mean, I wasn’t digging the blade deep through my arm, mainly surface cuts, but the skin was coming back together just as clean as can be.
Then I prepared to do something a bit foolish. Use shadow step.
I had no idea how to use it. Well, that’s not exactly true. I knew the spell; therefore, I had an innate knowledge of what I was supposed to do, as well as a vague sense of what was going to happen. But as I was finding out, the reality of magic and the expectation of magic are rarely on the same page. The spell indicated that I’d have a second to move through the shadow zone. Didn’t let me know what the shadow zone was. Or what happened if I didn’t leave the shadow realm.
I stood, got the mana ready, and I cast the spell.
Everything went weird, dark. And cold. There were wavy lines throughout the whole world, and all the color disappeared. It was a world in greyscale like everything had been built out of smoke. I couldn’t see through anything, but there was the sense that the concept of solid had been abolished. And yet, I was standing on the floor. It was still there, still solid. I was a little afraid to move, so I didn’t. After what seemed like way more than a second, I felt like I was forced back into the real world. Everything was in color and normal once more. And it was much warmer back in reality.
For a minute, I waited. Then I did some stretching, and then a short cycle of free-running through the obstacle course.
I worked out until I got a little sweat going, and then I stopped and I did a quick meditation cycle.
A quick cast of the spell and I was ready; I moved. Just a little. I stamped my foot on the floor and put my hand against the wall. I couldn’t move through stuff as it wasn’t there. But I got a sense of something on the other side like I could feel the glowstone at the other end of the room through the obstacle in front of it.
Then I was forced out again. It didn’t seem like I could stay in too long, which was a relief of sorts. Meant it would be impossible to get stuck in there.
The usefulness of the spell was escaping me. But I was determined to figure it out, so I cast it again, and this time, I tried running further, seeing if there was some sort of distance limit to it. I vaulted across a big beam of wood, and as I flew through the air, I saw a fly in the same general space as me. But it didn’t get out of the way; instead, I watched its wings flap. I’d never seen a fly’s wings flap before, it’d always been a buzz. I popped back into reality, sliding to a stop on the smooth wooden floor, and the fly zipped away from me. Wings a blur.
“Ohhhh,” I said, getting it. Shadowstep took a second, but time clearly moved differently in the Shadow Realm, so to someone from the outside, it’d look like teleportation. That would have some real uses. It took a heavy toll on my mana, I could only do it four times in a row before I was totally drained. What I could do with the spell, though, made me very excited.
I looked over at the clock above the mantle and saw it was time to go. I was going to have to run to get to the Pits.
34
It was a chilly night, a strong wind coming from the direction of the river. Clouds obscured the moons. Plural. Because there were four of them, and they were each a different color. The combination made moon shadows technicolor. At least when they were all full, which was apparently a rather rare sight. I was still getting used to the idea of the streets being basically empty at night. Back in the old world, some cities never really shut down. But here, there’d be an occasional horse or wagon, a guard patrol here or there. Sure, there’d be people in bars. But those bars would be very close to their homes. It seemed like the city functionally shut down a bit before midnight, then didn’t really come back to life until after the sun had come up. Except for fools like me.
The thing was, I still hadn’t really seen the reasoning behind it. There weren’t things out at night, at least that I’d seen. Nothing swooped down from above, stealing children. There weren’t creatures slinking around trying to suck my blood. So why, then, was everyone afraid of the night?
I would soon learn.
It was a few blocks from my building, heading east when I heard a bizarre noise. Something along the lines of a tremendous slurping noise. Like a giant eating really thick noodle soup with no table manners. Or someone mixing a colossal bowl of Mac and cheese. It was weird enough that it grabbed ahold of my curiosity and wouldn’t let go, I had to find out the source of the noise.
Whatever it was wasn’t concerned with being quiet, because it was loud as hell and pretty easy to follow. I went down the street, turned the corner, and came upon the noisemaker.
It was disgusting. A giant golden-yellow blob was latched onto the side of a building. Half the side of the building, the other half of the creature was on the sidewalk. I could see where the beast had come from, a sewer entrance directly across the street. It was a hole about a yard wide. There was a thick mucus trail from the sewer over to the building. And the blob was about twenty feet across, and I could mostly see through the yellow bastard into the home it was currently attempting to eat. Which was definitely weird, seeing blurry people screaming through a yellow filter. Also, the firelight dancing through the creature. And there were definitely a bunch of small skeletons, and other bits and bobs, floating through the ooze that seemed to make up the creature’s body. I looked at the mucus on the ground, then at the ooze eating through the building, and I wondered what, exactly, differentiated the two.
As far as an evening’s distraction, it was pretty cool to see a living ooze. I’d never seen one before. Honestly, seeing one is really enough. The fact that it was massive was just a bonus. It struck me as a fascinating coincidence that I’d just been lamenting the lack of crazy stuff in the night and the lack of gods, and now I had a big mon
ster as evidence in front of me. Probably Ted the God of Coincidence throwing down to prove both doubts to me.
Thanks, Ted.
I really needed to get going, a place to be, work to do that night, I couldn’t just hang around and play with the ooze. It just wasn’t really my business. Ooze attacks were probably just part of life. And the City Watch would probably be along any minute. The family on the other side of the ooze was probably totally safe. Right?
I really wanted to stroll away. I really did.
But then I saw a little boy screaming in his mother’s arms, and that just did a small thing to my heartstrings. I pulled the sword out, the bronze glinting in the little bit of glowstone light from the corner.
The ooze wasn’t paying the least bit of attention to me.
So I brought my sword in the biggest, fastest, craziest overhand chop I could muster.
The bronze blade sliced through the yellow slime ball ooze thing like it was barely there, going all the way through the ooze and hitting the cobblestones below it hard enough to spark.
I stood up, just a little perplexed. Why was this thing even dangerous?
Me and my big mouth.
The ooze lacked a face in a traditional sense, but there was definitely some sort of directionality to the creature, some sense of front and back. But it didn’t really need to turn around in the way that you or I did, as far as I could tell, it just had to shift its attention.
And shift it did. It turned its attention from the family huddling in their ruined shop to me and reached a blob of itself out, almost like an extended mouth, or a giant demented LEGO hand, it was the right color.
I had to dance back out of the way as the mass of yellow ooze went whooshing by, grabbing onto air just where I’d been. But unlike me, who had to reset and move my arms back to where I wanted to grab something, the big ooze just sent another pseudopod after me, shooting an ooze arm right at my face.
