It took me a while to realise what had actually woken me up, and it only really got cemented in my head once a few more heavy knocks on the door rocked the cabin.
“Kylia?” Griegs called disinterestedly through the door, “Kylia, if you don’t come open this door I’m gonna have to break it down, and I really don’t wanna have to break it down.”
Gerald was somehow managing to sleep through all of that, but for some reason me gently lifting his arm was enough to make him jolt back into the land of the living.
“I’m just getting the door,” I said sweetly as I got out of the bed and he rubbed his eyes and got ready to follow me, “go back to sleep.”
I expected a protest of some kind, maybe even just a full sentence, but what I got in response was a drunken smile and Gerald collapsing back onto his pillow face first.
Mostly confident that he wasn’t going to suffocate himself, I walked over to the door and managed to open it before Griegs could start knocking again, “Morning.” I said with a tired yawn.
“Mornin’.” the armoured Griegs replied, “Looks like you’ve been enjoying your stay ‘ere at the Chateau Lockdown.”
“Yeah, just a bit, you wanna come in?” I asked as I pulled the door open more and stepped out of the way.
Griegs nodded and walked in, an older man in a blue jumpsuit coming in behind him with a ladder and a toolbox, “Cheers, finally managed to get someone out to fix the mould problem.”
“Oh, good… To be honest I’d kind of forgotten about that.”
Griegs gave me a concerned look then smiled, “Yeah, that’s probably not a good sign. Gerald! Get up!”
As upset that it made me to have Griegs shout at my boyfriend, it sure was funny watching him shoot up out of the bed like it’d been turned into spiders.
“What? What? What?” Gerald repeated in a panic as he frantically looked around for whatever it was that he thought was going to start attacking him.
“We’re goin’ for a walk.” Griegs replied as if he hadn’t just yelled at a volume most saved for ‘She’s gonna blow!’ moments.
“What?” Gerald moaned as he flopped back onto the mattress, “Why?”
I admired that about Gerald, when he was irritated by something he tripled the syllables of most any word.
“Because Kev over there is about to get rid of that mould, and I reckon the last thing you need right now is to have a lungful of spores. If you wanna stay though…”
“Ugh, fine… Just let me put on some shoes.”
I went ahead and followed Gerald’s example and found a pair of boots, “How’d you sleep?” I asked as I tightened the laces and Griegs looked around the cabin.
“Pretty good,” Gerald replied before standing up and arching his feet in his joggers a few times, “how about you?”
“Really good. Did you carry me to bed?”
He nodded, “Mmhm, and it didn’t even hurt my back at all.”
I smiled at his obvious lie and joined him and standing, “Sure.”
“Ready to go you two?” Griegs asked, interrupting Gerald and I’s lovely moment, “I’m sure Kev doesn’t wanna hang out here all day.”
I decided not to poke fun at the fact that Griegs was being a bit of a tool and simply followed after him out of the cabin with Gerald close behind me.
Something seemed off about him, normally he’d have something funny to say or he’d at least have let Gerald and I take our time in getting ready. He was all military on that day though, and as we walked past the utility truck that Kev had brought along with him I wished that I could know what had him on edge.
“What’s up your arse?” Gerald asked, making both Griegs and I jump.
Well, that was one way to find out.
As if to accentuate Gerald’s point, I noticed that the MPs hand had gotten awfully close to his sidearm when the slightest change in sound had occurred.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Griegs lied, his brow furrowed and his top lip slightly snarled, “Where have you been spending your time?”
“Don’t change the subject.” Gerald pressed with more aggression than one should when talking to an armed soldier, “Is there something happening back home that we should know about?”
And therein lied the source of Gerald’s bravery, concern. Hell, if I’d have thought for a second that Griegs would know about what was going on back home I’d have jumped on the question train a whole lot sooner.
Why didn’t I think he knew? I don’t know. For some reason I’d just assumed when he was done with us he’d go sit at a barracks or something until we needed him again.
“No.” Griegs finally said after a good long while of silence, “Nothing at all.”
“Bullshit,” I said, Gerald having given me the courage I needed to press, “if nothing were happening you wouldn’t be so damn twitchy. So come on, spill.”
Griegs fell silent for a while again, looking around at the mountains and between Gerald and I, before letting a defeated sigh, “It’s been busy in London.”
“Define ‘busy’.”
Griegs clearly didn’t appreciate being talked to like that, but at the same time he appeared to understand where I was coming from with bold commands, “The UBR, they’re becoming more problematic than we could’ve expected.”
“How so?”
“Look, you two ain’t my bosses, alright? My job isn’t to update you on every little thing that happens.”
And that’s all he needed to say for me to know something really bad had happened, “What did they do?” I asked with no small amount of dread.
“What did I jus…” he trailed off once he saw the concern on my face, “They made a pass for the Tower of London, nearly hit it too.”
“With what?”
“Suicide bomber.” Griegs replied flatly, “Guards were smart enough to realise there was somethin’ off about him and denied him entry through the main gate. Didn’t stop him from flippin’ his switch though… Killed thirty people, injured a dozen more.”
“And UBR claimed that they did it?”
Griegs shook his head, “Didn’t have to, footage linked him to a block of flats that had four known UBR members. Only good thing to come out of the whole mess is that we’ve been given the all clear to start roundin’ the bastards up, which has been pretty easy on account of the fact that they ain’t exactly camera shy.”
There was something in his voice, some tone of concern that he was doing his best to suppress as we turned off the road and started walking down a hill.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Gerald asked before I could, a slight shakiness in his voice indicating that he wasn’t handling the news of the attack all that well.
“Yes.” Griegs replied as if it were an acceptable answer before changing his mind, “They’re looking for you two. We found photos, maps, communique, all linking back to you, Kylia, and more than a few references to them knowing that you’d been moved. So far they’re looking in all the wrong places, but if their leadership stays alive and kicking we might end up having a problem.”
It was all a bit much to process, the attack, the knowledge that UBR was growing, the fact that they were actively looking for me, all of it.
But then Griegs said something that threw me off guard, “Oh, and Will is comin’ to visit in the next few days. He’s not convinced that you’re actually safe and wants to make sure for himself.”
“Where does he think we are?” I asked with a little chuckle.
“They.” Griegs clarified, “And they, being a whole lot of people in your life, are convinced that we kidnapped you and locked you up in some facility.”
“Well… you have a bit, haven’t you?” Gerald joked.
“Ha, you call that a facility?” Griegs replied, pointing his armoured finger at the cabin that we’d somehow rounded back toward, “At best that’s minimum security prison.”
“I dunno…” I trailed off with mock apprehension, “It could be a CIA black site as far as
anyone else is concerned.”
“If you tell Will that we’ve taken you to a CIA black site he’ll kill us all before he has the chance to remember that there’s laws preventing them from being in the UK.” Griegs laughed.
It was good to have some humour injected back into the group, mostly because if I spent another second thinking about what happened at the Tower of London I’d probably have a panic attack and start crying, and nobody needs to see that.
“I take it that mould removal isn’t a five minute process?” Gerald asked in the way that people do when they assume they’re right but aren’t quite a hundred percent sure.
“No, he’ll probably need another few minutes. You two haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
Gerald and I both shook our heads, “Normally something gets given to us shortly after we wake up.”
“Ah, I suppose we should go check on the progress of that then, eh?”
A grumble from my stomach answered for me, and before long we were all sitting next to the cabin eating a hearty breakfast of sausages, eggs, and bacon.
Occasionally a pang of guilt would hit me, but then Griegs would make a joke and I’d forget what I was thinking about and get on with eating.
It was another hour or two of light conversation before Kev finally came out of the cabin and told us he’d finished up, which, sadly, was Griegs’ cue to leave.
“I’ll be back in a couple of days to check up on you guys, alright?” he said as he and Kev drove away in the truck.
“Sounds good,” Gerald and I replied in unison as we wove them off, “have a good one!”
“You too!”
Gerald and I waited there waving for the appropriate amount of time before going back into the cabin, the damp smell having all but vanished, and the mould in the corner having been pretty much completely removed.
I surveyed the cabin a while, the sense that the last thing that needed to be fixed had been done making me feel like I could finally settle down into the space and enjoy our time.
With a calm smile, I turned to face Gerald, who was clearly as happy as I was, “Wanna play som-”
“God yes.”
Armelia: Chapter 13
Returning to Tarthirious was like waking up after a night of partying. My clothes were destroyed, the sun was blindingly bright, and I wasn’t quite sure exactly where I was or what had happened.
“We were heading back to Glenburrow, yeah?” Gerald asked from where he sat behind me on Shadow-Stal.
“That’s right, and I needed to level up, right? I’ll do that after I’ve cleaned up.”
“Good idea.”
After that I rode hard toward the village, the idea of wandering around doing menial tasks for any longer than we had to seeming like an absolute waste of time.
I know, I know, I could’ve simply cast Reficere and been done with it, but the truth was that I wanted to spend a few minutes having a look at some new junk, and not to mention the fact I’d amassed a fair bit of useless bits and bobs thanks to Gerry who’d made a show of giving me all the stuff he’d found on the highwaymen during our ride back to Glenburrow, and was pretty desperate to unload them on some hapless fool who thought he could sell them.
We arrived in the village shortly before sundown, giving us just enough time to find a little shop on the edge of town that proudly stated on their blown glass window that they could repair anything.
“Customers!” a man by the name of Lur dressed in a vibrant blue tunic shouted excitedly as we stepped into his store, “How can I help you on this fine day?”
“Some repairs are all we’ll be needing,” I said kindly as I approached him, not quite taking in the space that surrounded me, “and would you be interested in… fourteen daggers? Really, Gerry, fourteen daggers?”
“Seemed only fair to split the loot evenly.” Gerry replied with a disinterested shrug, “Weird thing is that they came from six guys.”
“Well…” Lur said, ignoring Gerry and I’s conversation, “I’m sure I could find some use for them.”
“Thank you,” I said, a little smile still lingering on my face after Gerry’s interesting way of splitting the loot, “and would you mind if I looked through your wares?”
“Not at all! Go right ahead and I’ll get started on repairing your equipment.”
Lur didn’t have much to offer, mostly just low-end armour and some fancy dress gear for those who liked to show off, but there was something that caught my eye.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing at a set of red glowing blacksmith’s gloves.
“Oh, those old things?” Lur responded in mock disinterest, “Just something that the local blacksmith sold to me before he left for… you know, he never did say where he went off to. Would you like them?”
I noted the lack of a price and started to become more concerned than curious, “I don’t know…”
“If you take them, in exchange for the items you wish to sell me, everything will be free of charge.”
“You’d give me something and repair all my gear for free in exchange for a few daggers and boots?”
“Why of course! I’ll be able to sell those to the town guard for a large sum, those gloves though? Let’s just say that we haven’t had many blacksmiths come through in quite some time.”
He was lying to me, a deaf blind man could see that, but as I looked over the price of repairing all my gear and my stingier side came into play I couldn’t help but say “Sure, why not. You have a deal.”
Now, I’m not going to say Lur’s sly smile tipped me off that something bad was definitely going to happen when I put those gloves on, but Lur’s sly smile totally tipped me off that something bad was going to happen when I put those gloves on.
14x Iron Dagger removed.
20x Leather Boot removed.
10x Likbrog Gang Cuirass removed.
Lur has repaired all of your items.
Received Mysterious Blacksmith Gloves: Weight: 5(-5), Durability: ???, Enchantment: ???.
“Thank you for your patronage,” Lur said as I looked over the gloves and put them in my knapsack, “do me a favour though, refrain from putting those gloves on while you’re in town. We wouldn’t want anyone to get jealous.”
“Of course,” I replied with a polite nod as Gerry and I left the store, “good day.”
“And to you as well.”
Gerry eyed me off for a few seconds as I climbed up onto Shadow-Stal, “You’re not gonna put those things on, are you?”
“Gods no!” I laughed, “But I reckon it’ll be hilarious to stick ‘em on some unsuspecting guard or something.”
“Well then,” Gerry replied as he joined me on the saddle, his concern having been removed, “I imagine that’ll be fun. Where to now?”
“The forest I reckon, it should be clear now that we’ve handled the highwaymen, right?”
“Yeah, should be.”
Fun fact, ‘should be’ doesn’t mean ‘will be’. That seems obvious now, but I was always pretty bad at picking up on foreshadowing.
Armelia: Chapter 14
The sun was high in the sky as we rode down the path, Shadow-Stal’s large hooves flattening down what few corpses were left on the road after Gerry was done with them.
“I’m still kind of upset that I missed out on all this fun.” I jokingly moaned as I looked over the bodies, “Did they put up a fight?”
“Not really, you didn’t miss much. After you good blasted off they came at me from all sides and I… well let’s just say that it’s probably for the best that you weren’t in the blast radius. Weird how quickly the forest goes back to normal though, huh?”
“I dunno,” I replied with a shrug as we got past the point we’d been stopped at last time, “I reckon it’s because it’d be too easy for players to bury the road and ruin the fun for everyone else. You find an abandoned and damaged fort, no big deal, you avoid it like the plague, but a popular road? If that’s gone it’d cut people off from the rest of the world.�
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“Eh, I guess I’m a bit too into the idea of survival of the fittest to care about whether or not a couple of noobs get stuck out here.”
“You were a noob once upon a time, can you imagine what it would’ve been like if some max level twit decided to trap you like a spider in a jar every five minutes?”
“Yeah, but it’s different, innit? These days noobs are all ‘Imma fuck your mum’ instead of how we were back in the day.”
“What, you mean rage quitters?”
“Hel yes I mean rage quitters. Doesn’t affect anybody but you if you decide to proclaim you’ll never play X game again and destroy your keyboard. Nowadays these kids will straight up dox you.”
Gerry had a point, but at the same time I couldn’t help but wonder if we were being nicer to ourselves in our memories because we didn’t want to be the dreaded young’uns of the new age.
“Help…” someone just off the road groaned, the low volume of his pained speech making it hard to pinpoint him in the mess of trees that surrounded us, “Somebody help…”
Gerry and I shared a conflicted look.
“We really ought to be getting to Aldok, shouldn’t we?” Gerry asked.
“Yeah, but…” I trailed off uncertainly, “Well, we can’t just leave someone alone to die, now can we?”
Gerry let the question linger a while before nodding and dismounting, “When you’re right, you’re right, just please tell me we’re not gonna get stuck in this forest for the rest of our lives.”
I smiled as I got off Shadow-Stal and shook my head, “I’m afraid I can promise no such thing.”
“Help…” the voice in the forest repeated, “Please… somebody…”
It didn’t take much time to find the source of the groaning, a young wood elf man clutching his bleeding stomach as he sat propped up against a tree, his white hair matted down over his brown skin by blood and water.
The name ‘Reila’ popped up beside his head as he turned to face us, his eyes blinking confusedly as the crushed part of his skull became visible.
Legends of Tarthirious: The Complete Collection Page 47
