Eden's Gate: The Sparrow: A LitRPG Adventure

by Edward Brody

  I looked at Adeelee with a look of confusion, trying my best to ask her, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ with just my facial expression, but she just looked back at me with a smile. I wasn’t sure if she was some sort of Pig wizard—which seemed impossible since the game was pretty much solely based on chance—but I didn’t see how the game was going to bring us any closer to our goal.

  There was a dice roll to see who rolled first, and Adeelee got the higher number and chose to go second.

  The man in the tricorne started the game and rolled five times to reach a total of 20. “What do you think?” he asked, looking over to his friend.

  “Up to you, my friend,” he said. “Five rolls and no ones have hit yet. I think it’s a pretty good hand.”

  The man looked down at the die for a moment and licked his lips before saying. “Alright, I’ll hold.”

  Adeelee huffed and held her palm out to play our turn.

  “No,” the man without a hat said. “This guy rolls.” He looked over to me.

  “Why?” I asked. “What does it matter?”

  “I don’t trust elves,” the man said. “You. Roll. The. Dice.” His voice was cold as ice, and for a moment, I almost couldn’t hear the music playing in the background.

  “No matter,” Adeelee said. “Gunnar, you roll.”

  I looked over the table nervously. I had no idea what was going on. “Alright,” I said with a sigh. I held out my hand, and the man dropped the die in my palm.

  I shook the die in my hands, remembering the rules of the game from when I watched Aaron play it in Thorpes. Since their hand was a 20, I needed to roll at least a 21 in order for us to win, and if I rolled a 1 at any time, we would lose.

  My first few rolls were a 3, a 2, and a 4, putting me at a 9. I was getting closer to their mark, but I knew that the more times I rolled, the more likely I was to land a 1.

  “Come on now,” the tricorned man urged as I shook the die again.

  I dropped the die and it rolled across the table, causing the gold to rattled as it stopped on top of a coin. It landed on a 6.

  “That’s fifteen,” Adeelee said.

  “We can see it,” one of the men barked.

  “A 6 to win or a 5 to tie,” Adeelee added.

  The man with the tricorn raised his chin and swallowed. The odds weren’t particularly bad for them at that point, but they weren’t particularly great either. “Let’s get going then.”

  I picked up the die and shook it again, briefly closing my eyes, making a silent wish that it would hit a 6. I had seen the soldier in Thorpes roll a 6 several times, so why not me?

  I threw the die a little too hard, and it caught a groove in the table and ricocheted sideways, bouncing off the mug of one of the men, then back towards the center of the table and landing on the pile of gold. I ended up rolling a 5.

  “Twenty,” Adeelee hissed.

  I could see the red starting to rise in the men’s faces as the odds were now stacked against them. The only chance they had at that point to win was if I happened to roll a one on the next try.

  The man with the tricorne picked up the die and handed it to me in a rush. “Make this quick. A 1 has got to hit this time,” he snarled.

  I involuntarily smiled. I still didn’t understand what the point of playing Pig was with the men, but at least we had a pretty damn good chance of winning five hundred gold. Maybe Adeelee thought that playing with them would somehow build rapport? Was the game the start of something bigger?

  I shook the die in my hands a couple times and prepared to drop it for the final time.

  “Wait,” Adeelee said, holding her hand out over the table.

  The two men looked at her. “What is it, now?”

  Adeelee lifted her shoulders straight and looked back and forth between the men. “Right now, we’re tied at twenty, so if my friend here rolls anything but a 1, then we win the game. Since dice have six sides, that means you have a one-in-six chance of winning, while we have a five-in-six chance of winning. What do those odds sound like to you?”

  “They sound like fuck-all,” the man without a hat said.

  Adeelee nodded. “So you’re probably going to lose your five hundred gold, and that’s a lot of gold to lose on a single game of Pig, right?”

  “What the hell are you getting on to?” the man with the tricorne asked.

  Adeelee gave a slight tilt of her head. “Well, what do you say we call this game a tie in exchange for something a little less valuable. You keep your gold, we keep our gold, and you give us a little bit of information.”

  The two men looked at each other and sat up straight in their chairs. “What do you want to know?” the man in the tricorne asked.

  “Alexander Campbell,” Adeelee said pointedly. “Do you know where he is?”

  The man without a hat looked at Adeelee with piercing eyes. “Gossiping about Sparrows can get you killed in these parts.”

  “Just a location is all,” Adeelee said. “Nothing more, nothing less.” She looked down at the pile of gold. “Or we can finish this game.”

  The man without a hat swallowed hard and look over to his companion. The man in the tricorne gave a slight nod.

  “Okay,” the man said. “We call it a tie, and we give you the details.”

  Adeelee smiled and nodded. “Done.”

  Damn, she was good!

  The hatless man looked around the inn before speaking low. “There’s a house ‘round the block from here where a nice-dandy whore lives—Building 36-B, I believe. Saw Alexander walking in there less than thirty minutes ago. I’m sure he’s still having a go.”

  “That’s all we needed,” Adeelee said, scooping up her five hundred gold from the table. She placed it all in her bag and stood. “Let’s go,” she said to me.

  As I turned to leave, the man with the tricorne grabbed at my wrist. “Wait a minute, now.”

  “What?” I asked. “We’re finished here.”

  Adeelee pulled up beside me. “We had a deal.”

  “Roll the dice one more time for the fun of it. I’m curious to see what the outcome would have been if we’d played the game through.”

  I shook my head. “That’s pointless…”

  “Do it,” the other guy hissed.

  I turned to Adeelee who just shook her head and shrugged. It looked like we weren’t going to be able to leave unless I played into their game.

  “Fine,” I said.

  I lifted the die off the table and shook it in my hands a bit before dropping it back down on the wood. It rolled a few times, spun, and the settled on a 1.

  The hatless man glanced out his friend and they both pinched their lips together in anger, In a split second, they were both standing up from the table drawing their swords.

  The sound of steel piercing flesh caught my ears, and the man with the tricorne spit up a huge mouthful of blood. A blade was jutting out of his stomach, and behind him, Adeelee was pulling her sword back out—she had been the faster blade.

  The other man swung his blade at me, but I ducked and reached my palm out, casting Arcane Missile at his face. His head rocked back and it seemed to daze him for a bit—long enough that Adeelee was able to dive her sword into his gut as well.

  Blood poured out of the man’s mouth and onto Adeelee’s shroud, and when she pulled her sword back out, he fell to the ground with a thud.

  You have gained 700 XP!

  “Grab the gold,” the princess spat.

  I turned around to the guys playing cards and they looked on but seemed completely uninterested—same with the guys sitting in the dark corner drinking beer. I reached for the gold and slid it all off the table and into my bag.

  You’ve received: 500 Gold Pieces

  Adeelee swiped her sword across the leather of one the men’s armor and then grabbed onto my shroud, tugging me towards the door. “Let’s get out of here!”

  The innkeeper was rubbing down a mug with a towel as we started to pass, his eyes locked on
us the whole time. “If you make a mess, you clean it up.”

  Adeelee stopped, reached in her bag, and turned around slamming a handful of coins on the counter. “Sorry for the mess. This should cover the trouble.”

  The innkeeper didn’t say anything else as we hurried out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  01/13/0001

  “We can’t waste any time,” Adeelee said. “Who knows who the other guys in there were.” We continued around the block, looking at the signs hanging above the alleyways.

  “How did you know we wouldn’t lose the Pig game?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Then what if I had rolled a one?!”

  Adeelee shook her head. “A fifty percent chance of winning is better than whatever chance we had otherwise. If we had lost, we’d have figured something out.” Adeelee pointed up to one of the signs that had ‘36’ etched in its wood. “This way.”

  We rushed down the alley, passing homes with letters on their doors—F, E, D, C, and finally reached B. Like all buildings in Knuckle Bay, the building was a dark brown wood, and the door was matching color with a black-latched handle.

  “You didn’t bring lockpicks with you, did you?”

  I shook my head no.

  Adeelee snapped her lips and grunted. Behind the door, I could hear the slight sound of wood banging against wood. “Knock on the door and pretend you’re a customer.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it, Gunnar. If we try to break down the door, we’ll draw a lot of attention.”

  I nodded and took a deep breath before walking up to the door and knocking sternly three times. We waited a few seconds, and when there was no answer, I knocked again.

  The banging noise stopped. “I’m busy!” a female’s voice rang out from behind the door, and then the banging started up again.

  I looked at Adeelee. “What do I say?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Say something.”

  “I need a fix!” I yelled again. “I’ll make it quick!”

  “I said I’m busy!” the voice yelled again, this time screaming even louder and over the banging sound.

  I knocked again, this time even harder. “It’s an emergency! I’m…” I coughed and cleared my throat. “I’m really fucking horny!”

  Adeelee’s jaw dropped, and she looked with wide eyes and a shocked face. “That’s an emergency?” she whispered.

  It might have sounded silly, but the banging stopped.

  “I’ll deal with this bullshit!” a man’s voice said from inside. There was a rustling sound, and then strong pounding footsteps making their way towards the door.

  Adeelee nodded to me and we both pulled out our swords. It was only then that I realized how cool my sword was outside of town, but how obnoxious it was when we were in town trying to do a mission without attracting a lot of attention. I would definitely need to get a new, non-flashy sword, and save swords with wild attributes like ‘engulfing flames’ for dungeon crawls.

  The door swung open, and as expected, Alexander Campbell appeared in his boxer shorts, sword in one of his hands. The mole and ponytail gave him away immediately. Adeelee and I both lunged the tips of our swords at him at the same time, close enough to scare him, but not actually making contact. He seemed particularly scared of the flames rising from my blade.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked as he backed away and we closed the door behind us. He dropped his sword and put his hands in the air.

  On the bed was a nude woman with both her hands shackled to the bedpost. Clothes were scattered about the floor. “Help!” she yelled.

  I turned my sword to her. “Quiet!” I snapped. “No one is going to hurt you. This is all about him.”

  “What do you want with me?” Alexander asked.

  “You have a bounty on your head in Thorpes,” I replied.

  “Fuck!” he spat. “So you’re here to collect then?”

  “And to collect some information,” Adeelee replied.

  “Information?”

  “Information about the Sparrows,” she replied. “Or more specifically, someone who may have recently joined the Sparrows.”

  “You trying to get me killed?” he asked.

  Adeelee shoved her sword forward until the tip touched the skin of Alexander’s lower throat. “You can worry about the Sparrows killing you later. For now, you should worry about us.”

  The Sparrow looked back towards the woman lying on the bed and then back to us. “Fuck,” he sighed. “What do you want to know?”

  “A hunter named Jax Horn,” she said. “Do you know someone by that name?”

  Alexander grabbed at his boxer shorts and twirled his tongue in his mouth. “As a matter of fact, yeah.”

  Adeelee looked at me then back to the guy. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know much about him, but he’s new. I think he’s meeting with the Dark Hand today to go over some things.”

  “Meeting with the Dark Hand?” Adeelee asked. “Where?”

  The guy shook his head. “Look, I can’t say anymore than—”

  Adeelee shoved her sword harder into the skin of the Sparrow and a little trickle of blood seeped out.

  “Damnit,” he spat. “Ease up!”

  “Tell us where he is,” I ordered.

  “Behind the winery is a cellar that leads to the Sparrow’s hideout. He should be down there unless he’s left already. You go down there and you’re fucked.”

  Adeelee looked at the man deep in the eyes then turned to me. “Get the girl out of here,” she said.

  “Hey, wait…” Alexander protested. “You’re not letting me go? I told you what I know.”

  “Shhh…” Adeelee hissed.

  I walked over to the naked lady who was looking up at me with terror in her eyes and sheathed my sword. The shackles had a flip mechanism attached to each one that could be unlocked without keys, but required two hands to undo, thus she had no hope of unlocking them without Alexander’s assistance. I flipped the shackles opened and then picked her clothes off the floor.

  “Get dressed and get out of here,” I said.

  “This is my home,” she said. “And I work here.”

  “Come back tomorrow,” Adeelee said. “We’ll leave everything the way it is and a bit of gold to cover you for the troubles.”

  The girl zipped up her dress and ran out the door.

  “On the bed,” Adeelee said

  “What?” Alexander said.

  “On the bed,” she repeated.

  I immediately got the gist of what Adeelee was trying to do and grabbed Alexander by the arm and started dragging him to the bed. As soon as he was on there, I grabbed one of the shackles and locked it around his wrist, then forced his other wrist to the other shackle to lock him down.

  You have completed all requirements for the bounty quest: Alexander Campbell! Return Alexander to Mayor Bryson in Thorpes to collect your reward.

  “This is bullshit,” Alexander said. “I told you everything.”

  Adeelee sheathed her sword. “And thank you for that,” she said. “But you’re still wanted in Thorpes. If we let you go now, it will only cause us more trouble, I’m sure.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, I swear!” he promised.

  Adeelee looked to me. “What do you think?”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I said. I looked to Alexander and shrugged. “Sorry, man.”

  Adeelee tied a sheet around Alexander’s mouth and we headed for the door. “We’ll be back for you later.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  01/13/0001

  It was late night by the time we reached the winery, and I had cast Divine Sight on Adeelee and I.

  We circled the building, and just as Alexander described, there was a large, unlocked cellar door behind it.

  Adeelee drew her sword from her back. “There won’t be any negotiation once we go down there,” she said. “Stick to your magic and leave your sword
sheathed until we enter battle. They’ll see and hear the flames coming from it if you pull it out now.”

  “Yeah, I kinda figured.”

  Adeelee tucked her sword under her shroud. “Try not to act too aggressive. With our shrouds, there’s a chance they might assume we’re Sparrows if they see us first.”

  I nodded, and Adeelee lifted up the cellar door.

  There was a wooden ladder that led down into the cellar, and we both climbed down until we reached the base. It was obvious that it wasn’t a normal cellar right away, as there was no musty smell, and within a few feet of the entrance, there were lanterns hanging on the wall, lighting the way forward, and the flooring was paved with some sort of pristine, hard stone.

  There was a sharp turn about a hundred meters from the entrance, and both Adeelee and I entered sneak mode as we approached it. A pair of men could be heard chatting amongst each other.

  “The boss is getting too lenient. I had to work for months to get on board, and here he is letting all these new guys in without proper vetting.”

  “You know the deal though. We’ll need soldiers if we’re going to have any chance at facing an army—even an occupied one.”

  “Oh, fuck that. You’re talking about a worst-case scenario type thing.”

  Adeelee peeked around the corner and then reared her head back. She slid her sword quietly in her sheath and then pointed towards my bow as she began to unfasten hers.

  “There’s two of them,” she whispered. “Level 12s. We might be able to Snipe Shot them at the same time.”

  I nodded and reached for my bow and an arrow from my quiver.

  Adeelee was still crouched down, peering around the corner, and she peeked her nocked arrow around the corner, aiming for the men. I stood up and straddled her with my legs, glancing around the corner from a higher viewpoint. The two men were standing in a hallway on either side with their backs leaned against the wall. If they hadn’t been lost in conversation or a little more perceptive, they might have noticed us spying on them from around the corner. Further in was a brightly lit room, and who knows what was inside there. We’d have to be prepared if our Snipe Shots didn’t land or caused too much noise on impact.