Author notes: Changed everything. Sorry for the trouble. Huge chapter with new CONTENT. You can skip it to the third part.
Episode 15: New Faces
Arthur’s POV
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“Well, this time they have us in a bind, haven’t they?” said Yama, as we peered out of the bushes. The soldiers were unloading boxes on the beach I used to run.
“They are too close. We need to move from that darn cave.” I said. The situation seemed worse than I thought.
Yama moved back, slinging his bow back on his shoulder. “Way ahead of you, boy. I have a friend, up north. Usually likes to stay alone, but I think he can be persuaded to share.”
“Good enough for me.”
We were walking through the foliage when we suddenly stumbled upon three soldiers. We all froze.
It was Yama who moved first. With a vicious ferocity, he slammed his hands against the faces of the two guards. The third guard, finally back to his senses, ran off yelling towards the camp. Shit.
“Get him!”
I didn’t stay to listen further. The soldier had a head start, but I knew the terrain. I tackled him before long, and we both went tumbling on the ground. After seconds of rolling, I emerged on the top.
“You can’t kill me! Please, I got a-”
He cut off mid sentence, swinging a rock, hoping to catch me by surprise. That didn’t happen. I stepped hard on his arm, yanked free the rock. Then I stomped my foot on his damn mouth and wrenched his arm. I could hear the crack as his bones broke and his teeth shattered. I punched him again for good measure, but he was already out.
When I walk back to the spot, I see Yama already having a small rucksack slung over his shoulders.
“Too slow. I already took care of the necessities. Let’s go!”
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“Well here we are.”
After a few hours of hiking through the forest, we seemed to have finally arrived.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look up.”
There. Just to my right, there was a small plane jammed between two trees. It seemed to have crashed a long time ago.
The cockpit seemed to be covered with moss, and the left wing was missing. This plane wasn’t going to fly anywhere.
“Well come on, let’s go. He stays up there, hanging in that rust pile.” said Yama, and we began climbing the tree. One of the branches that we reached was twisted, and a wooden plank attached to it led straight to the door. The inside was clean compared to the outside. A stove, a few bags, some bottles lying about was all I could see. A hammock lay on the side. No sight of the man himself.
“Well, looks like it’s completely empty. Your friend is-”
*THUD*
A man leapt down from a hole above. Before I could react, his hand reached out and grabbed my face. And my mind went blank as he slammed my head on the walls.
“You’re going to regret meeting me, boy!”
I tried to wrest free of his grasp. No use. Think!
The Praying Crane.
My left back heel connects evenly with his knees. His handhold loosens as he stumbles back from the loss of balance.
But that’s all I needed. I kicked off the wall and gave him a straight kick to the guts. His hand releases me as he stumbles back a few steps.
“Now you have gone ahead and done it, you stupid piece of shit!”
I ready myself.
The man was tall, ridiculously so. And even weirder were his arms. They reached till his knees. He appeared slightly old, with his black hair completely sticking out on the sides.
The brown eyes were completely wild. Those eyes wouldn’t look out of place in a horror movie. And the way his mouth curved up in a maniac smile gave me chills.
“Mer- stop fighting. Arthur is with me.” said Yama, stepping out of the shadows of the cockpit.
The mad guy is his friend? No wonder he kept it a secret.
“Oh. You should have said it earlier.” It was a complete reverse turn. He relaxed, and all the tension in the air seemed to dissipate immediately. He gave a dazzling smile, and he mad man in front of me disappeared, to be replaced by this creepy looking, but good natured fellow.
“Well, I can’t be blamed for living cautiously, can I? Eh?”
“Merlyn.” He offered me his hand, and I gingerly shook it.
“Arthur.”
“Well, now that the introductions are over, why you’re here, Yama? This isn’t simply a social visit, I can tell.”
“Soldiers buzzing about on the beach. Too crowded there, so we decided to relocate. For a short time anyway.”
“Yeah...nope, I don’t buy that. You could have gone anywhere. The number of holes you have on the island are crazy. So why come to me?” He gave me a pointed look, and turned to Yama again. “You want me to train Arthur.”
“Your words, not mine.”
Merlyn sighs and turns to me. “Well, I guess I got time to spare. Your skills need improvement, I need to practice. Mutual benefits. Yama… this isn’t such a bad idea. Let’s do it.”
He walked over to one of the bags, and threw me a sleek wooden baton. Did he mean to start right now?
“Come on, let’s get started!”
And as he turns and smiles, a shiver runs through my body.
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Arthur’s POV
I approached the warehouse sneakily as I could. Getting seen before I actually entered would further derail the plan.
From afar the warehouse had seemed normal. Only a second glance revealed the missed signs: the boarded windows, the suspiciously obscured numbers on the door. They were here, hiding.
I entered swiftly, an arrow nocked and ready. There was no one in sight. The room was completely empty. I walk around, taking in the surroundings. A few chairs a table with cards scattered out. A few mattresses lay in the corners. On another side, there was a large chest, completely open and empty. Bits of coins and gems lay about, carelessly left behind by whoever had taken them.
They left in a hurry. But not because of me. They couldn’t possibly know I was coming. No, it was something else. Who? And where did they go?
*Doctor, where’s the shirt now?*
*What? Didn’t I just tell you?*
*They’re gone. No, run the search algorithm again. I need to know- wait.*
Horses were neighing outside. And a lot of them.
*Doctor, inform me when you get the location.*
I creep near the door and peek outside. Lots of horses and men. They were wearing proper uniforms with red and gold designs on their armor. One of them even carried a standard with an eagle on it. The Imperial Legion.
How pompous. No sane thief could ever be caught if they paraded themselves like this.
The soldiers assembled themselves rather quickly though. Archers and mages remained behind, while the spearmen and swordsman advanced in front. I could see about 30 people, perhaps more.
*Doctor, you better hurry up. I will contact you in a minute, alright?*
The Legion outside going would be inside by then. And they would probably arrest me, wasting valuable time in the process. But I couldn’t give up the chase and escape. How inconvenient.
For them.
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Vice-Captain Kylen’s POV
“All ready, boys? There are children inside there, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle for you. But in case they give any trouble, you are free to retaliate. Just smack them in the head, alright?”
A few murmurs of yes and understood sirs. They weren’t particularly excited on getting this type of work. A full cohort for arresting children? What a joke.
“Alright, let’s get this done!”
I kick the door open, and there’s someone just behind the door. A man completely covered by the darkness. A bow in his hand, but no arrows. I could barely see him.
“Drop your weapons. You’re facing the Imperial Legion here.”
He slowly walks forward, as if taking a stroll.
“Why don’t you drop your weapons, soldier? After all, you’re facing me here.”
“You think we are afraid you?”
The barest hint of a face, hidden under a hood.
http%3a%2f%2fi.imgur.com%2fXj9DmYZ.jpg [http://i.imgur.com/Xj9DmYZ.jpg]
“You really should.”
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Kent’s POV
Borrowing the horse from the officer took a little bit of hassle. He wouldn’t believe that I was above him now. Fortunately Commander had left the signed order and my new stripes, so it all worked out.
I rode the horse as fast it could go. Kyler was a good man, but he couldn’t improvise properly. And if something changed unexpectedly, he wouldn’t be able to deal with it.
The warehouses loomed ahead of me. A right turn here and…
No.
I dismounted the horse and ran towards the impossible scene in front of me.
Runkar’s face was a bloody mess, his left arm twisted unnaturally behind him.
Faruk’s entire right leg was wrenched out, the bare bone jutting out of his legs.
Rynar nose was completely broken, the blood slowly dripping to form a small puddle on the ground.
Everyone I looked, shattered limbs, bloodied faces and broken teeth greeted me. The carnage here… the senseless violence numbed me for a moment. Only for a moment.
Then, I could feel my anger rising.
This man had ripped through my men like a hot knife through butter. And by the looks of it, he had left them all alive. Not because he couldn’t kill them, but he didn’t think them important enough.
This man was going to pay.
“Ugh……” I looked to see the source of the voice. Kylen!
He seemed to be the one most beat up, but miraculously, he was conscious.
“Kylen, you don’t need to say anything… alright?” I cradled his head in my arms. “You just rest. The healers… I am going to bring them now. It’s going to be fine…. Everything’s going to be fine.”
He gives the slightest hint of a nod.
“I am going to find the man who did this and make him pay for what he did.”
“No…..no…”
Was he worrying about me?
“Not…. a…. man….”
He grasps my hand firmly, and looks straight into my eyes. They’re swollen and bleeding, and barely open.
Even so, I could make out the fear in his eyes.
“Demon…”
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Arthur’s POV
There are times in the world when one must do what’s necessary. Even if it’s distasteful. No one’s fault, but it still ends up this way.
*Doctor, I hope you have some info of the location.*
*That’s the problem. It seems you’re there.*
*There’s no one here, Doctor.*
*The data isn’t wrong, kid. It’s there. You and them, both are there.*
That simply wasn’t possible. There wasn’t anyone here. Either they had tricked me, or they…
The chest.
I walk over to the chest. The way the coins are scattered, as if they had…
I push the chest out of the way. It’s heavy, but slides easily. There’s a dark hole underneath, leading below. So that’s where they went. One level lower.
*You don’t plan on jumping in, do you? You don’t even know what could be down there.*
*This is no time for caution, Doctor.*
And I went down, making sure to slide the chest over me as I did. Instant darkness covered everything.
Activating my mage sight, I descended down the small rungs on the wall. The whole thing was certifiably spooky, but I had seen worse. After some time of carefully placing my feet ever downwards, I finally touched ground.
Discovered a new location: The Imperial City Sewers
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Imperial City Sewers: Note added to codex.
Intelligence has risen slightly.
I activated my Mage sight and looked around. I was standing on a small ledge which continued on in both the directions. On the other side there was a similar one. But in the middle, there was a huge black river of dirty water was flowing through. The smell from it was overwhelmingly bad that I hold my nose to keep myself from vomiting up.
Pinching my nose, I made my way forwards. A side tunnel to my right suddenly stopped me in my tracks. There was a small light ahead, getting smaller by the second. I turn and run towards it, not wishing to lose them.
The deeper I go, the smell gradually fades and the pool dries away. Only crumbling smelly rocks, and sounds of rumbling water remind me that I am still inside a sewer.
The light, as I reach it reveals itself to be a torch, flickering uncertainly. The torch as I see, illuminates a staircase, leading even downwards. I sling my bow over my back and go downwards, my muscles tensed for the next confrontation.
Instead, I find a hallway leading to a door. There’s a man waiting outside.
“Uh, hello?”
“It’s gonna be 50 golds for newbies.”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“50 golds, or my fist ends up lodged in your teeth.”
I seriously doubt that.
“Very well. 50 golds, here it is.”
The man counts the money, and then steps away from the door.
“Get in.”
“One last question. Did Kiroh and his gang just pass through?”
The man shifts slightly, his hands casually resting against the hilt of his axe. Wrong question to ask.
“You want Kiroh?” He opens the door and walks inside. “Follow me.”
I expect it to be another grim dark dungeon like this one. But instead I walk into a large… night club?
It was definitely a night club. Multicolored lights hang from the ceiling, and there’s a bar at one corner. People roam about, dressed in dark leather armor and hoods, exactly like me, drinking, eating and mingling about tables. There’s a huge crowd on another corner. Chips pass hands and people are intently watching a few men playing poker. The gambling tables.
You have discovered the Thieves Guild.
More like the Party guild.
The man keeps walking, past the bar and into another door, guarded this time by two huge brutes. My guide whispers something at them, points towards me, and we are ushered inside. The sound of chatter outside cuts off suddenly as the door closes. A hallway full of doors on different sides. The Thieves Guild sure was organized.
My guide keeps walking, and we reach another staircase leading downwards. How deep does this one go?
There’s only a single door at the end of these stairs.
“Wait here.”
He turns the key in the lock and knocks on the door thrice. A muffled voice sounds from the other side, and I could hear another key being turned. Locked from both sides?
Finally, he motions for me to enter. I do, prepared to fight at a moment’s notice.
There’s a slight change in the air as I step into the room and the door clicks shut.
I however, am engrossed in the room. It’s a broadly spacious room, bigger than any mansion’s ground floor with a huge beautiful model of the Imperial City in the middle of it.
Sunlight streams from the windows, leaving me confused. Where the hell was I? I try the door, but it’s locked tight. From the windows I could see the trees and the streets outside. The windows are too shut, so I couldn’t determine if they were real or fake.
The walls were faded yellow, with plans and papers covering most of it. Various oddities line the shelf. Walking further, I could see a green house leading left. A table covered with flasks and bottles of liquids of various colors catches my eye when I turn right.
Everywhere I look, there’s something or the other. Mannequins with various armors on them, each of them extremely different from the others. Black, white, silver… all kinds.
“Interesting, aren’t they? The silver ones are taken from the Fangs of Men themselves. Werewolf hunters; went extinct 300 years ago. Extremely rich, but equally untalented. The werewolves tore them apart.”
A man had suddenly appeared behind me. He was well dressed in a purple dress that accentuated the gentleman vibe.
The first thing however, that caught my eye was the mask he wore. It was completely dull grey, with runes running from both the sides of his cheeks. The holes for his eyes and mouth gave off a sad impression.
He moved leisurely to his table, and sat down regally on his chair and pointed towards me to take a seat.
“You want to meet Kiroh.”
Straight down to business. I kind of liked this guy immediately.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what he is?” He leaned back in his chair, testing me.
“I know what he isn’t.”
The man stayed like that for a moment. I imagined that he was staring at me under the mask.
“I am the Gray Fox.”
“Nice name. And if we are doing the code name shit, you can call me… Dark Arrow. And now if the introductions are over, I would like to meet Kiroh.”
“He’s sleeping right now. And I can’t just let a stranger kill one of my subordinates, can I?”
“I am not here to kill him. He’s different in a way that neither you nor he can figure out. I have an idea why. But I need to meet him to…”
“You think us stupid? You think we can’t figure it out?”
“Well no, but…”
“I adopted Kiroh when he was a kid. I raised him. When he started to see his visions… it was me at his side. So when he did start to change, you think that I WON’T BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT?”
He had been getting progressively agitated as he continued on speaking… but it was unsettling to hear him scream under the mask. Without couldn’t see the face underneath, it was hard to gauge his emotions.
“I am sorry if I…”
“No. I went overboard. Kiroh is… I had always treated him like my own son. Can you imagine my pain when that turned out to be untrue? Can you imagine the pain when your son starts screaming for his father in the middle of the night? Can you imagine the pain when he doesn’t remember you?”
The man was a really good actor, or this was heartfelt emotion. The mask kept it hidden, but I think that he might have been crying.
“Kiroh’s a Traveller, like you, isn’t he?”
Poker face. Don’t give anything away. Face him neutrally.
“Probably.”
“But not completely like you. He was born here, like us. It was meddling on your part, wasn’t it?”
He had figured out a lot of things that I didn’t even expect.
“Not mine.”
“But you… the rest of you all that came today are different. You teleport here with complete knowledge of your identity. But he was born here with no idea of what he is. Why would do you do that? There’s only one answer… you wanted him to believe that he was a resident of Tamriel and not of… Yearth, is it?”
This guy was very, very close to being a self aware AI. And I couldn’t let that happen. But he continued on speaking.
“Which led me to think… am I resident of Yearth too? And you erased my memory and sent me here to be reborn? Is everybody on this planet DEAD ON ANOTHER WORLD? AND THAT’S WHY YOU’RE HERE, ISN’T IT? THAT’S THE REASON YOU ALL ARE HERE! TO MEET WITH THE DEAD, TO KNOW HOW THEY LIVE NOW? SO TELL ME AGAIN, HOW DO YOU KNOW
KIROH?”
Holy… this man had constructed a seriously messed up idea from a basic truth. And I could understand how he could have come to that conclusion. But the thinking behind this was… seriously painful. I needed to tell him the truth. As much as I humanely could.
“That’s not the case. I know, because, I was the one who… discovered the gate between our worlds.”
Close enough.
“But someone betrayed and killed me because of that. I survived the attack…somehow. But he is the one who controls the gate now. And he has made it in a way so that a lot of people on Earth can visit Tamriel. I sort of… snuck in through the gaps. The details aren’t important. What’s important is he’s still planning something. And that plan involves Kiroh.”
“Listen… when I created this gate.. I had no idea of…all the dangers, all the monsters that would be born because of this.”
But five years of hell changed all that.
“I know now better than anyone, about the thin line that exists between your world and mine. But the man who is doing all this, the man who killed my father, he doesn’t. And he will keep committing atrocities in both the worlds, to get what he wants. I need to bring him to justice. And right now, your son Kiroh is the only lead that I have.”
And that’s the truth.
Fox stares at me for what seems like an eternity.
“He killed your father?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re doing this for revenge.”
“Absolutely.”
He stares at me some more.
“I can feel that you’re telling the truth. But I don’t want revenge. I just want my son… to be happy.”
“Help me out, and I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to help Kiroh.”
“Very well.”
He gives me a look over. “So it’s a partnership.” And he offers me his hand; I shake it. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that I just made a powerful ally.
“Well, I’m offering you a position in my guild. It will help you out. I have eyes and ears everywhere in the city. You don’t get to order anyone, but no one will order you return. You’re free of all the hierarchy and guild tax. What do you think?”
“I’ll be in your care then, Fox.”
You have joined the Thieves Guild!
“You are not letting me meet Kiroh, are you?”
“No. Because I know the lead you’re talking about. There’s someone else out there looking for him. After listening to your story, it makes sense. He’s a traveler, like you. And he’s ordering the new commander of the city around, tearing my district apart just to get at Kiroh. I can deal with Hieronymus, but the traveler is another matter. Now that’s your job.”
“How am I supposed to go about doing that?”
He reaches into his desk, and throws a diary at me.
“Read that. It’s contains all the gibberish that Kiroh wrote. But I realized now that’s written your language, not mine. That should give you a clue. Otherwise, just bash the guy who murdered you and get him to talk. No matter what it takes, find a way.” His voice had changed into one of steely resolve and determination, that wasn't going to take No for a answer.
“Oh, and by the way, the door’s enchanted. Once you step out, you can’t come back here again. If you want to find me again, just give 27 silver coins to any beggar in the district. He’ll point the way.”
Wow. This guy must be pretty popular in the right circles for every beggar to know him.
He went back to poring over the model of the city, and I exited the room into a bright sunny day with a diary in hand.
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Lednacek - flashbacks are giving me a lot of trouble right now. They are interconnected, but we haven't reached that point yet. We will soon, promise. Sorry for all the trouble.