CHAPTER 10
“Wow, did he really just pull that off? Did he really just pick that lock?”
“I find that question odd, seeing as we’ve seen him beat a forest rat to death with his bare hands, climb from a two-story window like a ninja, and, oh yeah, raise a skeleton from the dead.”
“You know what I mean, dude. That other stuff is video game crap. This is the first thing he’s done that took some real-life skill, some actual training.”
“Well, we *did* upload the ability into his brain, so I’d have been disappointed if he had failed. It was ranked as an “easy” lock in the code, so he almost would have tried to fail in order to.”
“You have no sense of amazement, do you? We just saw a guy pick a lock, a real-world skill, using a set of instruments he had never even seen before, under circumstances where he knows if he gets caught, he most likely would be killed or put in jail. That doesn’t impress you?”
“I think you have your priorities screwed up. We have also seen that same guy reach into a portal to another dimension, bring forth magical energies, and cause a rat’s skeleton to claw its way out from its own skin. That’s not more impressive than picking a lock?”
“You’re a dick.”
I ease the door shut behind me, and glance around the room I find myself in. It’s a decent sized room, rectangular, maybe thirty feet long, half that wide. The single desk candle illuminates the decorations, including mounted heads of what look like a deer and a boar, a thick rug covering most of the floor, and a painting of the prick that owns this house standing next to a woman. He’s wearing that same gaudy-ass jacket with the ridiculous gold epaulet things, and his arm is draped across her thin shoulders. She is smiling, but there’s something around her eyes. The artist did a great job of catching it, whatever it is, but I’m not quite sure why he did. It makes her pretty face seem sad. Probably his wife or mistress or something, I chuckle to myself. If I had to spend every day with that prick, I’d probably smile like I was dying, too.
There is a desk along the left wall, a simple plank staircase up to the second level on the far wall, and on just about every other wall, books. I don’t just mean a bookshelf on every wall, I mean floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, packed full of the things. Some as thin as a comic book, others that would give Tolstoy heartburn. Gilded, filigree lettering glimmers from most of them, reflecting the light of the lone candle burning on the desk. Several potted plants reside in various places around the room. There’s one over in the corner at the foot of the stairs and another one covering the alcove under the stairway.
I consider blowing out the candle, but then I remember the light shining through the various stained glass windows out front. I’d hate to advertise someone has been here until it’s too late, I reason. When he finds all his money gone, I’ll be so far out of here they’ll forget I even existed. Just another traveler through town on such an unlucky night for good ol’ Norm. I add out loud with more than a touch of bitterness, “Plus, who gives a shit about NPC’s. They only exist when I’m interacting with them.”
An image of Leena with her head on Norm’s shoulder forces its way into my mind’s eye, and my resolve hardens. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t make them pay for humiliating me. This is my game, my world, and I play by my rules. And rule number one is, ‘What’s mine is mine.’” I look around and spot a small leather coin purse sitting on the desk next to a lockbox of some sort, maybe a little smaller than a shoebox. “And rule number two is, ‘What’s yours is mine.’”
I glance over my shoulder at the windows before moving towards the desk. I take care not to come between the candle light and the frame, broadcasting my silhouette to the world. I even kneel down and crawl under the windowsill to prevent it. Do have have to do that? Probably not, but it makes me feel like a real thief, so I do it anyways.
I scuttle over to the desk and peek over the edge, my eyes searching for the brown leather pouch that I assume contains coins. Because that’s what NPC’s do, right? They leave their shit out to be stolen. And I’m dead on accurate. As soon as my hand touches the pouch, a notification pops up in the corner of my vision, right above the one I got during the game of hide-and-seek with the guard. I click on the most recent one first, confirming that the pouch does, in fact, contain a decent amount of wealth.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You have found a pouch containing coins!
2 GOLD
56 SILVER
19 COPPER
CONFIRM
I almost whoop in excitement when I see the amount. GOLD? I do a brief bit of calculations in my head before giving up. I have no idea how much this might be really worth, as I have nothing to compare it to. The closest thing I have is that one night of food and lodging at the Bladewater Tavern is 3 copper, but at the same time, a rat’s tail is worth 2 and the damn teeth are worth 3. So you’re telling me that a tooth from a rat is worth a night’s sleep on a relatively comfortable bed? Either the room is way underpriced, or those teeth have other properties that make them valuable. And the “common crystal” from those parts? I could probably stay at the inn for a year just by flashing that stone!
But now? Now I had a friggin’ gold piece! I’m not in the exact right place or predicament to be doing math, but in a heartbeat, a rather strong, excited heartbeat, I crunch the numbers. If 100 coppers made 1 silver, and 100 silvers made a gold, I had just found over 25,000 coppers! I had just gotten what seems to be a relative fortune from one picked lock and a 10-second crawl across the floor.
But if I start calculating my wealth in terms of pennies, I’m a poor man indeed. I could walk out that door right now, steal off into the night, and have a huge head start on my career, I realized. If money was this easy to come by, I was going to be running my own thieves’ guild in a matter of weeks, if not days. I am the Chosen One, after all, I reason. That’s how these games went. There’s always something special, different, or otherworldly about the main character. Royal bloodline, soul of a dragon, ancient and long-forgotten magic running through your veins. I’m sure I’m going to come across some prophecy or legend that says, “A stranger comes around, tall and handsome, wooing all the ladies. He steals all the virginity in town, then wins all the tournament fights in the big city and gets given a quest to enter the Forbidden Castle of Doooooooooom. There, after he defeats the dark wizard Cinderstrike, he finds the map to the Almighty Sword of Ass Smiting +20, and proceeds to smite ass all over the continent!”
Stealing from a drunk asshole seems to be an inauspicious start to my global dominance, but hey, every journey starts with a single step, right?
I reach over to the lockbox on the desk, and my heart drops into my stomach.
Outside, a drunken voice slurs out a call or farewell to someone, and the rattle of loud, iron keys fills the room.
Keys that fits perfectly into the lock I just picked less than a minute ago.
Thank the trickster gods my mark is drunk off his keister, because while he fumbles with his keys, I am able to get up and silently run to the far end of the room. Without disturbing a frond on the weird-looking plant, I slide behind it, into the alcove under the stairs. And freeze.
I hear the keys drop and hit the floor. Then another rattle, and another drop. I roll my eyes after the third drop, until finally, after an inordinate amount of time, I hear the keys enter the lock. He turns the key, but he’s too drunk to notice there is no clicking of the lock. The door is pushed open, and he turns and mimics a two-armed “winning!” gesture to someone out of sight and is rewarded with an exaggerated cheer and laughter.
So someone walked him home? Friend from the bar, or a guard?
He shuffles into the room and turns haltingly to shut the door behind him. He leans back against the door and sighs heavily into the “empty” room. He glances over at the painting hanging above the fireplace, and smiles sadly. Glancing up at the ceiling he softly calls out in a decidedly non-drunk voice, “Honey, I’m home.”
Oh shit.
He pushes off the door with his shoulders, steady as a rock, and walks across the room to his desk. He pauses for a moment before tossing his keys down and muttering, “Could have sworn I left it there.” He pats his belt and jacket down as if searching for something, then shrugs and turns towards the stairs.
I fight the urge to slip further back into the shadows now that I see he is by no means inebriated, scared that he might see the movement from the corner of his eye. When he rounds the bottom of the stairs I tense even more when I realize that if he looks straight ahead while climbing, he will look me dead in the eyes through the slats of the stairs. Thankfully, his eyes go to the top of the stairs and the eyecon of my Stealth skill remains firmly closed and in the white. My stamina bar stops dropping once he’s up the stairs and out of view, and the green bar begins to refill slowly.
Which reminds me…
I mentally click on the one remaining flashing icon in the lower right corner of my vision and am rewarded with the expected notification.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
CONGRATULATIONS!
You have improved your STEALTH skill to Level 4! By evading the notice of potential threats, you have learned the value of staying unseen! Stay quiet, stay hidden, stay safe!
+2 to all STEALTH rolls
(+8 total)
CONFIRM
I still have no idea what those numbers mean, but as long as they’re going up, I don’t really give a shit. As I close out the window, I hear Norman’s voice muttering something upstairs. It sounds like he’s talking to someone, which confirms my fear. There’s someone else in the house.
In my mind, I scroll back through my actions since I’ve entered the house, trying to remember if I’ve made any sounds louder than a whisper, potentially giving away my presence, when suddenly Norman’s voice raises into a shout.
“Myranda? MYRANDA?” The sound that follows is one of the most heart-wrenching sounds I’ve ever heard in my life. And this is coming from a guy who’s witnessed a broken, drunken man sob himself to sleep on a recliner surrounded by empty beer cans.
It starts low, quavering and uncertain, before raising in both volume and pitch. It is the sound of denial and grief personified, as if the emotions were given form and have torn through the fabric of our reality. The sound rises to a scream, panic beginning to edge in as his voice breaks. “No...no...no, No, No, No, NO NO NOOOO!”
I don't know why, but the old man's grief, the suffering in his cry, affects me primally. I have to get away, I have to make the sound stop, I have to stop hearing that sound, because I have heard that scream in my own dreams as I watch my mother drive away, walk away, get on a plan and fly away, turn into mist and fade away as her hand pushes mine away as she vanishes forever. My vision actually begins to swim a bit, some strange form of vertigo clawing at my brain. I clamp my hands over my ears and slam my eyes shut, a child hiding from the raised voices of his past.
When Norman takes breath to begin anew, I can’t stand it any longer. I bolt up from my crouching position under the stairs and turn to run out of the house. Whether its my newfound size or my frenzy, I forget where I am and neglect to duck my head enough to clear the side beam of the descending staircase. My legs, however, are still moving forward at quite a rapid pace when my forehead hits the beam with a crack. As my head snaps back, my knees knock over the terracotta pot I was hiding behind.
Between the resounding thunk of my skull on the solid wood and the brazen shattering of the three-foot tall ceramic vase, it’s no wonder that the Stealth eyecon in the center of my vision pops open and turns a violent shade of red.
There’s an infinitely long pause before I hear, “WHO IS THERE? WHO IS IN MY HOUSE?” His voice calls out, grief and fear and rage twisting his words into more of an animalistic snarl than a question.
In my dazed state, rolling around on the floor watching fuzzy fireworks flash in my vision, I hear distant, muffled footfalls running to the top of the stairwell. I get up and extricate myself from the fragments of the pot and begin staggering towards the door.
And that’s when the shit REALLY hits the fan.
He has made it halfway down the stairs when he spots me, stumbling across his living room towards the door. “What did you do?” he screeches, “What have you done, you son of a bitch? Get out of my house!”
Something breaks inside of me, and an anger that I don’t even begin to comprehend bubbles out from somewhere behind my navel. It travels up my spine and explodes in my brain like fireworks.
I turn and run at him, grabbing him by the lapels of his ridiculous jacket, I pull him up with a jerk, nearly yanking him out of his shiny boots. I intended to silence him with either a punch or a chokehold, but instead I begin screaming right back into his face. “Your house? Your house?? Get out of my HEAD! This is MY world, you bastard! I own you! I OWN YOU!” Spittle flies from my lips and flecks across his face as I rant like a lunatic, my reddened face mere inches from his own.
Approximately seventeen emotions flood over the man’s face in less than a second, from anger and grief to confusion, incredulity, and finally on through confusion again to settle on fear.
I’ve shut him up for a second, but if my intent was to silence him and make a quick getaway, I’m a day late and two screams short.
There is the long, braying sound of a horn being blown just outside, and the door behind me smashes open. My head whips around to look behind me, and who should come running in but the well pisser himself.
More voices and stomping, booted feet come from outside, a testament that I am well and truly fucked. I violently spin the man around so his back is pressed against my chest and turn, facing the door. Before I’m even aware of what I’m doing, my left hand is around his torso, pinning his arms and supporting the much shorter man almost to the point of lifting him off the ground. But more importantly, my dagger seems to have involuntarily appeared in my right hand, slid out of its sheath with the sound of a viper’s hiss. My arm snakes around his neck, blade’s tip to his carotid artery.
“She’s dead!” the old fart screams. “My Myranda is dead, and when I came running out to get the apothecary, I see him trying to sneak out of my house!”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” I protest, “I was just looking around!”
“Liar! You killed Myranda! You stole the pouch off my desk and you killed my wife, you bastard!” I can feel his frail body shaking in rage and grief. His head is tilted back out of sheer instinct to stay away from the foot of steel at his throat, but all that does is give me a great view of the veins popping out on his reddening face and neck.
By this time, the rest of the booted feet are clumping through the door. Several more guards come running in, including Kyle and Bryant to my dismay. They both recognize me instantly. The two of them bullrush their way to the front line of my little own hostage standoff, stopping less than ten feet from me. Their pikes are leveled at my chest, the pointy spikes just above the axehead on their weapons rock-steady
Wellpisser says frantically, “I just got done with my rounds on this level when I saw Norman coming home from the Bladewater. I made sure he got in, then not thirty seconds later I heard him screaming something, so I sounded the alarm and came running!”
I don’t know which bothered me more, the fact that I got caught, that I was being accused of a crime I didn’t commit while engaged in another crime I *did* commit, or the look of distinct disappointment I see on Kyle and Bryant’s faces.
“He’s that new guy, just come into town before dark. We gave him directions to the inn,” Kyle stammers.
“So what, I ran into him at Larian’s and the bastard almost knocked me through the wall when he shoved past me!” There’s a half-second pause before he continues, “And now...now he’s killed my wife!” This time, sobs wrack his body, and all the fight goes out of him. His weight slumps forward, forcing me to angle the knife slightly away from him so he doesn’t impale himself on the tip.
Kyle looks me up and down before hesitantly saying, “Norm, he...he doesn’t have any blood on him. Was Myranda stabbed?”
Norm hesitates before shaking his head, tears streaming down his blotchy, red face. “But I bet if you look in those pouches you’ll find some poison or another that he used, as well as my coin purse, the wretched thief!”
“Bullshit, I didn’t kill anybody! I hadn’t even gone up the damn stairs yet!” As a reminder of who’s in charge here, I give a hearty jerk on the near-limp form of Norman in my arms. “And if any of you so much as take a step near me, I’ll open him up, I swear to God!”
Bryant stops moving forward, still leveling the pointy end of his polearm at me steadily. His eyes, however, portay a mixture of confusion and what almost looks like betrayal. He licks his lips, unsure of what to do before he says, “Ok, we believe you, but what the bloody hells are you doing in the man’s house?” His eyes move to the foot-long piece of death I have pressed against Norman’s soft neck, and he continues, easier this time, “Just...just put the blade down and we’ll talk about it.” His own grip, however, doesn’t loosen the slightest bit on the polearm in his hands. “No one else has to die tonight.”
Without taking his eyes off me, Bryant turns his head slightly over his shoulder to Wellpisser and says, “Valpis, what in the nine hells is going on here?”
“I already told you, I watched Norman go in, and just a few seconds later he’s screaming about Myranda. I started running this way when I heard him yell out something about, ‘Who are you? Why did you kill my wife?’ then I hear this lout start screamin’, ‘I’ll kill you next, all of you!’”
“What?” I holler, “That is such bullshit!” My eyes shift from Bryant’s gaze to stare at Valpis and I snarl at him, “But I imagine it would have been hard to hear anything over the sound of your own piss hitting the bottom of the well, you sick little fuck!”
The greasy little sonuvabitch swallows hard now, eyes moving back and forth between me and the other guards’ heads. “Wh...you...I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he sputters impotently.
Kyle’s stance relaxes somewhat and he looks over his shoulder at Valpis incredulously. “Again?”
Every eye in the house goes to Valpis, and his eyes dart about in panic. In the shocked silence that follows, Norman makes his move. With his arms pinned at his side, he only has one real weapon left.
Or should I say thirty two real weapons left.
He moves his head away from the tip of my dagger for just a second before sinking his teeth into the meaty part of my thumb and wrist. “OW!” I holler, and on insticint, I do what any other human would do when bitten.
I yank my hand away from his mouth with a violent tug.
The worst part about it is that it doesn’t even hurt that much because of my leather gloves. There’s just a bit of pressure...well, ok a lot of pressure, and a muffled scream of desperation as he bites down.
Ok, maybe that is the second worst part about it. The worst part is probably the spray of arterial blood that fountains from his throat as the blade in my grip accidentally opens him from ear to ear as I yank my hand away.
In a Tarentino-esque moment, Kyle and Bryant’s faces are spattered with a crimson mist, apparently just at the outer edge of the spray.
Nobody moves for what seems like, oh, about an hour. I even see a single drop of blood slowly drip off the end of Kyle’s nose as he blinks slowly.
“Oh shit,” I say quietly.
The world explodes into motion around me.
Several of the guards scream in dismay as the shock and sudden brutality of the moment wears off, and with a, “BASTARD!” Bryant lunges forward with his pike, gleaming tip aimed right at my chest. Norman's body has gone limp, and I am still inexplicably holding his soon-to-be corpse at an awkward angle. Without thinking, I bring up his body to intercept the attack, and the tip of the blade enters his chest just below the collarbone. Several more men exclaim in horror again as it impales the now certainly dead man, and I feel the tip of the blade punch clean through the body just beneath his shoulder blade and high into my own leather chestplate. Thankfully my armor, worn and cheap as it is, stops the spike from actually piercing my skin, as well. Sure as hell doesn’t feel good, though.
Before my head can wrap itself around what I’ve done, I throw the dead weight to the left, twisting and pulling Bryant’s spear out of his grasp. Stepping to my right, I try and bulldoze my way past Kyle and out into the night, but my motion is met by a gleaming wall of more pikes and swords. I can sense more than see the press of even more bodies just outside, and I know that my attempt will be pointless. I jump back again, searching for another way out as Kyle closes in and Bryant frantically tries to kick the body of the old man off the tip of his weapon.
My eyes dart back and forth as my mind desperately tries to work out what my brain has already concluded.
Yep, I’m fucked.
With a primal scream, I open my mouth and let loose with the first thing I can think of:
“LEEEEEEEEEE-ROOOOOOOY JENNNK-hurk”
The other guards can only wonder whatever the hell I was going to say next as Kyle drives the needle-pointed end of his pike into my chest, stealing the air from my lungs. I can feel him withdraw the blade, and I look up at him as he draws back for another strike. I realize that I’m on my knees, not remembering how I got there. The other guards charge in almost as one, and I can feel my body being knocked about this way and that as they take turns hacking into me, avenging their beloved friend. Distantly, however, I notice Kyle stands back after the initial strike and drops his pike, tears streaming down his shocked face.
This time, the end comes swiftly.