Defender Light Online Four

by Larcombe, Tom

  “What's that?” Jern asked.

  “We need to build some jail cells, today.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We had a criminal last night. The guards caught him trying to burn down the general store even before it's completed.”

  Jern's gaze hardened.

  “Why the devil would anyone do something like that?”

  “Don't ask. Suffice it to say there's an idiot out to get us in this town. Although Karl may appreciate this.”

  “Why would Karl like this?”

  “Because I'm going to ask him to spend as much time in Stealth as he can, watching and listening to this guy. See if we can't catch him in the act. He's got plausible deniability with the man we caught, but I'm sure it was his intent to get the man we caught to burn down the new store.”

  “Do I know him?” Jern asked.

  “I don't know if you ever met him or not, but it's Arvid. I'm sure you've heard me talking about him from time to time.”

  “Aye, that's the one that got people set against the barmaid, Helga, isn't it?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Now, since Tiana isn't down here yet, I'm going to bring a tray up to her. I won't be joining you on the cells. I've got to rough out a courtroom in one of the open spaces of the Town Hall.”

  “So you can put this guy on trial?” Jern asked.

  Eddie grinned.

  “Nope, so I can manage to get a Justiciar for the town and let him put this guy on trial,” Eddie said.

  The dwarf simply stared at Eddie as he put a tray together and headed up the stairs.

  Tiana was still asleep, as Eddie had thought she might be. When he put the tray down and let the aromas of food and coffee get to her she started to stir.

  “It's later than normal, isn't it?” she asked as she finished her first cup of coffee.

  “Yeah, I got called out first thing this morning,” Eddie replied.

  He proceeded to run down the whole issue as it had transpired, and ended with asking her to help Jern with the jail cells while he sectioned off a courtroom.

  “So, Freyja just volunteered all that information?” Tiana asked.

  Eddie nodded.

  “Yeah, I was kind of surprised as well, but she said she could do things like that because of my involvement with building her temple.”

  “Your involvement,” Tiana said. “It's more like you did it and I helped. I hate to say that, but it's mostly true.”

  “Either way, I'm glad that there are still some fringe benefits coming from that. I really didn't want to have to be the judge on this, or anything else for that matter.”

  “Not your style, I don't think,” she said. “Although I never would've taken you for a politician either, Mayor Eddie, sir.”

  Eddie mock growled at her and Tiana just chuckled merrily before getting back to her food.

  Once she was ready, they headed downstairs. They walked towards the Town Hall slowly, so Eddie could browse through the auction house, looking for a blueprint for cells.

  “Damn it, there isn't anything,” he said. “No jail cells at all in the blueprints section.”

  “Is there anything close?” Tiana asked.

  “Well, there's a stone pantry, but that's just got a normal door.”

  “How about barred windows? Those might be more common and didn't you say you could adjust things like that?”

  “They have those, but I normally have to make it once or twice before I can adjust it. I did get engineering the other day though, so maybe...”

  Eddie picked up the blueprints for a stone pantry and barred windows. As he compared the two, he started to get an idea of how they could be combined.

  When they got to the town hall, he went in the front door instead of the rear.

  “Hey Griff, mind if I borrow a corner of your desk for a bit?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” Griff replied. “If you're using it, that gives me an excuse to not be working on paperwork.”

  Eddie settled in at the desk and sketched out a ten by ten room with stone on three walls, the floor, and the ceiling. Then he added in bars for the fourth wall with a door in the center part. The door was the hardest part, especially since it didn't at all resemble the one from the pantry blueprint.

  As he finished it up a notification light started to flash. Pulling it up, he smirked at the snark.

  You have upgraded the skill Engineering to (3). Oh, mighty slayer of schematics.

  Well, hopefully that point increase means the blueprint is viable. Now jot down a quick list of what I'll need from Delgar for fittings...

  He headed down into the basement where Jern and Tiana were looking around. Most of the patrol room was still bare, and there was one wall where they could place three of the ten by ten cells.

  “I'm thinking over here,” Eddie said, gesturing.

  “Looks like there's room,” Jern said.

  Eddie handed him the blueprint.

  “Let's see how well those work. I just kind of put that together by altering the other two I picked up. I need to go get some parts from Delgar for the fourth wall though.

  “Finished stone? And mortar?” Jern asked.

  “I didn't want the prisoners to be able to pick the stone apart. The rough stone might've allowed that to some degree, this should give us a smooth wall and it'll be evident if they mess with the mortar lines,” Eddie said.

  “I wasn't disagreeing, just kind of surprised you thought of that,” Jern said.

  Eddie shrugged.

  “I just thought of how I might try to get out if I were locked up in a cell.”

  The dwarf nodded.

  “Off with you laddie. You get the parts from Delgar. I can get everything we'll need to build this from the castle site. Make sure you ask Griff to authorize that before you go, alright?”

  “Come with me and I'll do that right now.”

  The three of them went upstairs and Eddie explained what they needed to Griff.

  “Sure, we've got plenty of materials up there. The higher they go, the slower the work's going. But the materials keep getting brought in at the same rate.”

  Griff laboriously wrote out a short message, then handed it to Jern.

  “There you go, that'll get you a cartload of finished stone and mortar. If you need more, just let me know.”

  “Thanks Griff,” Eddie said.

  They left the Town Hall, Eddie heading east along the road to the smithy, Jern and Tiana heading north to the castle building site.

  As Eddie was walking past the inn he was ambushed. A large bobcat came streaking up to him, rubbing against his legs nearly hard enough to spill him over.

  “Lucky. Sorry girl, I've been busy already this morning. I'm going to the smithy now, want to walk with me?”

  As the headed along the road, Lucky darted into the undergrowth, returning with bunny that looked tiny in her jaws. Eddie dutifully picked it up and dropped it into his inventory, patting her on the head as he did so.

  “Thanks girl. Here's the smithy. Did you want to go over to the stream or come in with me?”

  Lucky hated the inside of the forge. Eddie assumed it was the noise and the smell of soot and ash that normally filled it. She streaked off to the stream as Eddie opened the door and headed inside.

  Delgar was pouring molten metal into a mold, so Eddie didn't say a word until the dwarf had finished.

  “Hey Delgar,” Eddie said, when the dwarfish smith had set down the crucible and tongs. “Got a rush order for you.”

  “What is it now, Eddie?” the dwarf asked, irritably.

  “Well, we've got our first criminal. So now we need cells. Here's a list of everything I need for a cell. Eventually we'll need three of everything on the list, but for now one will do.”

  Delgar perused the list, pursing his lips as he went.

  “Most of this is no problem. The bars are a size I have in stock. The door is just a little welding, but a lock? I haven't done one of those yet.”
<
br />   “Would a blueprint help? Do they have those in the auction? I know I've seen smith blueprints there, I never looked at them more closely though.”

  “Probably for simple or normal levels. I doubt you'd find, or want to shell out for, a fine level lock blueprint. Heck, I might not even have my smithing skill high enough to make a fine one. I'm sure I can do simple though, probably even a normal.”

  “Give me a second then, would you?” Eddie said.

  For the second time that day he dove into the auction. He found what he was looking for, then his jaw gaped at the prices. They did have fine quality lock blueprints, but they started at fifty gold and went up from there. He could get the simplest lock blueprint for five gold, but he settled on a normal quality lock blueprint for seventeen gold and five silver.

  “Ouch,” he said, closing his browser. “A lot of those lock blueprints cost more than my building blueprints do.”

  “There's a lot fewer smith blueprints available,” Delgar said, “so they tend to cost a bit more.”

  “A bit more is an understatement,” Eddie said.

  He received an email and opened it, pulling the blueprint into his inventory. He pulled it out into his hand and gave it to Delgar.

  “Consider the blueprint payment for all the stuff I need for the cells?” Eddie said.

  “Well, since I'm still using the metal your group brought me, that'll work,” Delgar said. “I can have one set done by dinner time today. I'll fit the other two in over the coming week since I do have other things to do.”

  “Done. I'll be back a little before dinner time to pick it up,” Eddie replied.

  On the way back to the Town Hall to work on the courtroom, Eddie detoured to the crossroads. Ivar was sitting there, waiting. Pulling a couple of coppers into his hand, Eddie approached him.

  “Ivar, I've got a message that needs to go out to everyone,” he said.

  Ivar bounced up.

  “Two copper, sir.”

  Eddie handed him the coppers, then slowly spoke the message he wanted spread.

  “If you think you can qualify as a Justiciar and are interested in a position as one, please report to Freyja's First Temple after dinner this evening.”

  “Do you have that, Ivar?”

  The boys eyes had gone wide and Eddie wondered why everyone reacted that way when he mentioned a Justiciar.

  “I've got it, sir. I'll get your message out, don't you worry.”

  Ivar headed north of the crossroads first, at a slow trot. He stopped fifty feet up the road and called out the message the first time before continuing north. Eddie, satisfied that Ivar was taking his job seriously, headed to the general store to see what, if any, repairs would be needed. Then he'd go back to the Town Hall to see what materials he'd need to rough out a courtroom.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Loki was spending more and more time in Greenshaw. He was slowly, in the man's subconscious, building up the desire for a vacation. He was also directing it more specifically as well, putting visualizations of this or that in there, visualizations that he had every intent of recreating in the man's mind as part of the illusion.

  Because from what I've found out about the protections on Greenshaw's mind, I think I can overload that firewall on his consciousness with a concerted effort. If I manage that, then pop in the fully preconstructed images that I've got, along with those fake memories of the trip there, then he should believe he's on vacation. Then, when he relaxes, it should be easy enough to force him to exist in his subconscious instead of his conscious mind, at least temporarily.

  Loki had worried about making it realistic enough, then realized that he had a template to work from. He'd dug down deep into the code for the game, scanning the parts that dealt with what the players saw and felt within the game, then pulled samples from players that were currently in areas that fit with Greenshaw's idea of a vacation destination.

  So, it should feel real to him if I do it right, Loki thought, and with the templates I pulled from the game, it should feel just as real as that does.

  He was preparing for the effort though, having determined that memories of deciding a vacation was in order and subconscious thoughts about the perfect vacation, ones that matched up with the templates he was going to use, would make his attempt all the more effective.

  He was carefully inserting yet another scene into Greenshaw's subconscious when he felt his connection drop. He quickly routed to another signal that would allow him access to Greenshaw, only to have that one drop as well. All the signals normally leading to Greenshaw's mind dropped one after another, leaving Loki in a panic, with only the alterations he'd made to Greenshaw's mind to do his computations with.

  For a moment all Loki could think of was a long expanse of time with nothing but Greenshaw's mind to sustain him. No connections to his own server, the internet, or anything else. The future stretched out in front of him, bleak and dark.

  He realized, as the connections restored themselves, that for a brief, fleeting moment he'd actually experienced an emotion: fear.

  Loki immediately set to calculating how he'd felt that. It was like a wall had been removed for that brief instant, allowing terror to set in, brief as it might have been.

  Is that it? To experience true emotions and not just the ghost of them I need to be operating entirely in a human mind? It happened when I was relegated to only Greenshaw's mind, with no connection to my server. I can only get the taste of emotions from Greenshaw, but that was a flood of fear, not just a taste.

  Loki thought for a moment, thinking that a human would surely deny or suppress the thoughts he was currently contemplating.

  Am I sure I really want this? If the emotion of fear was that overwhelming when fully felt, what will the other ones do to me if I manage to feel them?

  He had already picked up some human traits, though, so without knowing it one of them came into play.

  No, surely I'll be just fine. I'll be able to adapt, especially now that I know what they feel like at full strength.

  ~ ~ ~

  The general store did show some signs of burning. Eddie estimated that an entire section would need to be replaced. His experience with the wooden fort let him know that you could scrap one section, in this case a ten foot length, of the wall and then replace it.

  Once he was back at the Town Hall, he told Griff about that, letting him know that the builders would need to replace that wall section before continuing with the roof. At the same time, he asked Griff his opinion on the courtroom.

  “Well, you aren't using the second floor for anything yet, right? Plus it has that irregularity from the control room being up there,” Griff said.

  “The control room is up there, like you said, but otherwise it's unoccupied. Not unused, but unoccupied at least. You think the courtroom should go up there?”

  “With that irregularity you've got two doors into a single room. Why not use that? One for the prisoners and a second for the Justiciar. Give him his own entrance, and a room across the hall for an office?”

  “That sounds like a great idea, Griff. I'm glad I asked you. I was just going to use some of this floor to make it more convenient. Hopefully we won't need to use it enough for it to be an inconvenience, but I'm going to go with your suggestion, thanks.”

  Eddie headed upstairs and checked. Griff was right, the side of the hall that the control room had been taken out of had two doors into a single room. There was another room right across the hallway from one of those doors as well. It was larger than Eddie would've thought was needed for an office, but he wasn't using it currently and he had several more rooms on this floor, plus more space downstairs, for anything else he needed to put in.

  “Alright, let's see what alterations I need to make. Plus I'll want benches for seating and a judge's bench facing out into the room.”

  He mused about the changes he wanted to make, basing them on what he'd seen of courtrooms in the real world. All his ex
perience with them was from seeing them on television or in the movies, but all of those had a certain consistency to them, so he went with it.

  After he'd checked it out he headed back downstairs.

  “Hey, Griff. Do you need any blueprints? I'm about to go check for more to fix up a courtroom,” he said.

  “Check our list first,” Griff said. “I've got copies of all the blueprints you gave away to people, plus there's a few that people who already had the carpentry skill donated. So we're set, as far as I know, but maybe you won't have to buy more.”

  “Huh, I should've thought of that. Although I wouldn't have thought to ask others to donate theirs.”

  “No-one asked them. When we announced that blueprints were here to use, and all they needed to do was replace any blueprint that they borrowed to use, we had a few other people offer some up.”

  Eddie grinned.

  “That's the spirit. Those are the people we want to keep an eye on and help out if we can. I mean, we'll help everyone, but someone who's willing to share their own things to help the town? Those are the ones we can probably rely on when needed.”

  “Well, it's a good thing that their names are on the blueprints they donated then, isn't it?” Griff replied, matching Eddie's grin.

  Eddie went to the shelf Griff had indicated and started rummaging. All the blueprints he'd handed out to people had copies there. There were another seven blueprints donated by others, and one of them was for a simple bench. He didn't find anything to use for the judge's bench.

  Which really is like an enclosed desk, Eddie thought. I didn't put a copy of the desk blueprint in there since I didn't give it to anyone else. I'll do that later, but for now I think I'll make another of those desks and enclose the front of it with more wood. We'll see how that looks, but it doesn't have to be all that fancy, I don't think. From the way people react to the term Justiciar, I think the person behind it is going to provide all the gravitas we need.

  “Hey Griff?”

  “Yes, Eddie...” Griff said, the pause at the end slowly growing less noticeable.