As it turns out, the man and his mother live on the outskirts of Inktown, and despite my offer to hire a carriage or some other mode of transportation, they insist on walking. And the man, I learn, is not exactly a man at all. He’s an Umbrasil, and the closest thing I can think of from Earth would be an elf. I read Tolkien back in high school, though I’ve been through a lot since then, and the memories are hazy. As he explained, his people, the Umbrasils, typically live in caves or underground as their complexion is far too pale to comfortably spend an entire life under the burning heat of the suns. Vyre—a cool name, I have to admit—was orphaned as an infant, and his mother found him burning in the sunlight and took him in. He’s lived on the outskirts of Inktown ever since.

Like his mother and Ingrid, Vyre has the merchant class. His mother grows vegetables on her small farm, and he floats them down the river to Inktown for sale, then paddles back. It is a meager life, but it strikes me as peaceful. Generally speaking, the two have very little need for anything or anyone else, and I get the impression that asking the wizards guild for charity has struck a serious blow to their pride.

The farmstead, when we finally reach it, is quaint. It looks like a cottage from a fairytale picture book, complete with a terracotta chimney and plenty of ornamental plants accenting the front entrance. Vyre offers me some fresh vegetable soup before we head out on our quest, and I gladly accept. While I eat, I watch him gather up what he refers to as his ‘adventuring’ gear which consists of an old sword, an even older leather shirt with patches of mail at the shoulders, and a somehow older metal helmet that is clearly several sizes too big for his head. It takes some convincing, but I get him to leave the metal bucket helm on the table as I can only imagine it would cause more harm than good. And if it comes to a fight, which it absolutely should not, I don’t want Vyre anywhere near the action.

Vyre leads me upstream along the riverbank, chattering away at how nice I am for agreeing to help his mom. She was reluctant to visit the guild in the first place, and it took much convincing on Vyre’s part just to get her to leave the house. The older woman reminds me of my own parents back in the day. No matter how bad things got, they hated accepting charity. The old fashioned sense of pride was both a blessing and a curse.

We reach a bend in the river surrounded by tall trees and some old, broken down docks, and Vyre tells me that the thieves shouldn’t be far away. We creep through the trees, keeping our heads down, until another cottage comes into view nestled up against the water. It looks a bit newer than the one we left, featuring a pair of small glass windows and a heavy wooden door banded with iron. On the water’s edge, a group of five is eagerly… dismantling what appears to be Vrye’s boat.

“What are they doing?” I whisper.

Vrye just shakes his head. His expression tells me he’s as surprised as I am.

One of the thieves, a tall man with a swarthy complexion and a sword hanging at his side, uses a pry bar to wrench up a series of blanks at the rear end of the boat.

“Smugglers…” I mutter, thinking the group is modifying the boat to transport illicit goods. At a checkpoint outside Al Hasakah—before it was completely destroyed in the war—I once discovered about four hundred kilos of poorly packaged high explosives stashed under the false bottom of a truck bed. The whole checkpoint ran for the hills, and someone radioed the find to the guard tower a few hundred meters away. As soon as we were clear, a sniper hit the target, turning the truck and its unfortunate occupants into nothing more than a black smear and a crater. There had been an investigation by the UN after the incident, but the real bombs started dropping before any reports were filed or hearings were held, and the truck was quickly forgotten. The entire town and its population of half a million probably didn’t even appear on any maps now…

“Hey… hey!” Vyre nudges me in the side, and I snap out of the memory.

One of the thieves has something, a crate of some sort. “What’s happened?” I ask, the last thirty seconds completely gone from my memory.

He points at the package. “They pulled something from the boat. It… It doesn’t make sense. It was empty when they stole it.”

It doesn’t take long to put the pieces together. “I think your mother is a smuggler. Either these guys are rivals who stole her stash, or it was intended for them all along and she just didn’t want you to know. Stage a robbery, next group gets the stash, you’re in the dark.”

He shakes his head in obvious disbelief. “She’s an old lady! She would never!”

“All the evidence points the other way, man.” Something is leaking from the box. Something red. “Ah… that looks like blood. What kind of shit is your mom into?”

Vyre swallows hard and doesn’t respond.

The thief holding the box wipes his hands on his light brown shirt, and the smear of blood he leaves behind is unmistakable. I shift my rifle from my shoulder and double check to make sure I have one in the chamber. “There’s a lot more going on here than a stolen boat. You should stay here. It might not be safe.”

The thieves, having found what they were after, start filing into the cottage. “What are you going to do?” Vyre finally asks once he’s regained some semblance of composure.

“I may not be very high level, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve,” I answer with a smile. “Whatever is in that box, it used to be alive. Or part of something alive. I’m going to see what it is.” The last of the group enters the house and shuts the door behind him.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

He grabs my arm. “I’m coming with you. I… I can’t really fight, but if my mother is involved in… some kind of…” A shudder runs the length of his body. “If she’s involved in all this, I need to know. I’m coming with you.”

“Fine. Stay behind me. And it’ll probably get loud. You might want to cover your ears.”

He nods, his eyes wide.

I wait another minute or two before sneaking out of the trees. The windows are small, and they’re not exactly clear, so I have no idea if someone is keeping a lookout or not. All I can do is hope they’re not expecting company. I slide up to the building and crouch next to the door. Much to my surprise, Vyre isn’t completely out of his element as he follows. He keeps his head low, quiets his footfalls, and slides in directly to my left while barely making a sound.

I listen for a moment, and the sounds of voices inside are impossible to make out through the thick log walls. If it was modern drywall, I’d be able to hear them clear as day. After a minute, everything quiets. No one is talking.

Silently, I hold up a finger to my lips for the universal sign to be quiet and just hope the gesture is recognized in Inktown. Fortunately, it is. Vyre nods and mimics the gesture.

I test the door handle. It doesn’t feel locked. But… would a cottage in the woods like this one have a lock on the handle? Probably not. It would be a bar across the entire door. I silently scold myself for not thinking it through. Living in a medieval fantasy world is certainly going to take some getting used to.

Leaning into the door ever so slightly, I feel it hit something solid on the other side. It is locked. “Fuck,” I whisper. Going through a window won’t be possible. They’re too small for one, and breaking glass would certainly raise suspicion.

“Here, let me,” Vyre says under his breath. He takes a minute to locate a small enough stick to slide through the gap between the door and the frame, and then sets to work. Not long later, he smiles, the locking bar on the door’s other side held aloft on his stick. I’m thoroughly impressed, especially for someone with the merchant class, but then again… the house isn’t built very well. The gap between the door and frame is nearly large enough to slide a finger through. There’s no way he’d be able to pick a lock at Gnome Estate.

He balances the locking bar, and I ease the door open as slowly as I can. Despite my best efforts, the unoiled hinges squeal in protest, but no one comes rushing through from the other side to investigate. The door swings open, and I catch the locking bar before it can hit the ground. Upon further inspection, it seems the entire house wasn’t given a whole lot of attention to detail. It wasn’t slapped together in an afternoon, but maybe a week. Two at the most. And everything is old. The furniture—what little is present—is covered in dust. Nothing has been used in ages.

Vyre points to an open hatch in the corner. I nod. The thieves have all retreated to the root cellar, and their voices only barely drift up to us. The cellar must be large. I shoulder my rifle and flick the safety to the off position. I tap my right ear and nod to Vyre. If it gets loud, and it very likely will, I don’t want him going deaf. For my own ears… well, that ship sailed a long time ago when I was a few steps too close to a fragmentation grenade, and I don’t exactly have any alternative.

A set of rickety wooden stairs leads down to the basement. Part of it is obviously a root cellar, as I expected, but there’s a freshly dug tunnel leading out of my vision. I ease down onto the first step, then the second. I reach the bottom and signal for Vyre to follow behind. Crouching, I take up position against the wall opposite the tunnel and get ready to fire.

The tunnel isn’t very long. Maybe ten feet. The four thieves stand in a circle, illuminated from behind by smoking candles. Something in the middle of their group has all of their attention locked in on it. I’ve seen enough horror movies to recognize a nefarious ritual when I see one. These guys are up to no good.

Do I take the shot? Eliminate the enemy and ask questions later? They’ve done nothing to me. Killing them would be a war crime. A ghastly shudder runs down my spine. The hair on my arms stands at attention. I’ve seen war crimes. I’ve… been involved.

And I’m not that person any more.

I don’t take the shot. Being ninety-nine percent sure that someone is an enemy combatant in the thick of some evil plot is not the same as being one hundred percent sure. Keeping my rifle shouldered and the nearest thief in my sights, I decide—for the first time in a long time—to take the high road.

“Hey! What the hell is going on here?” I shout.

The group of thieves startles and scrambles like a flock of ducks who just heard a hunter’s shotgun.

“What are you—” Vyre is cut off as one of the thieves slings a bit of magic down the tunnel. The attack, whatever it is, hits me square in the chest. My belt flares, protecting me from harm, but more attacks are right behind the first.

Now it’s self-defense. Get fucked.

I don’t want to expend any more rounds than necessary, and four shots drops them all, though I can’t say for sure that every single one is going to be fatal. Another bit of magic answers my question, and I send a fifth round into one of the cultists to stop his writhing. Across the bottom of my vision, my authority stat ticks up one to ten. I probably would have earned a point or two in cunning if I had taken them all out before announcing my presence, but I decide that avoiding a court martial was the correct call.

“What just happened?” Vyre asks from behind me. He has his hands tightly clamped over his ears.

“Sorry about the noise. The ringing will fade in a few minutes.” I don’t really know how to explain my rifle to someone who hasn’t seen electricity yet, so I opt for an analogy. “Think of it as a really loud, really powerful fireball. Make sense?”

He shrugs and rubs his temples.

“Come on. Let’s see what they were up to.” The room at the end of the short tunnel is every bit the horror movie ritual circle. The cultists were standing on cryptic symbols drawn in the dirt, and the bloody box from the boat rests at the very center beneath a burning candle. The smoke from all the candles—with nowhere to escape—is starting to get oppressive.

I pull my shirt up to cover my mouth and then kick each corpse to make sure they’re dead. “Do we… Is it commonplace to loot the dead?” I ask my new companion.

He answers my question by rifling through the nearest thief’s pockets.

“Excellent. Let me know if you find anything good.” Then I remember that I don’t really know what a ‘good’ item would be. Oh well. I’m interested in the box. I snuff out the candle and toss it aside. The box isn’t locked, just tied up with a little bit of twine that I easily slide off to join the discarded candle.

Taking a deep breath through my shirt, I open the box.