Metropolis -  Capsule Bay 28 - Unit 10

Sunday, May 10th, 2089 | 9:53am

[Status: In-Game]

Stashing yet another contract away, Aya looked at the list she’d pinned on her task bar. A player named PetiD wanted a custom Contract with Serin, another player. It concerned their partnership for an extended quest and the distribution of goods gained therein. She went over the specifications they fit into a Standard Contract. The player had asked for an Advanced Contract but she saw no reason why it was necessary. All Contracts, no matter the grade, were binding. The only difference was, the higher the grade, the more Contracts could be customized to fit as many caveats as you wanted. In some cases, it was necessary and in some, it just wasn’t. In this one, it wasn’t.

Aya got to work, begrudging the fact she hadn’t been able to convince the librarians to share the recipe of an Advanced Contract just yet. If she had, she wouldn’t have hesitated in giving the player an Advanced Contract; they were worth a LOT more. But seeing as it wasn’t an option, yet, she decided to use the situation to promote her business. Honesty, but most importantly money-saving honesty would go a long way in getting more players to consider her services. If the value of a house depended on location, location, location, then the success of a business depended on publicity, publicity publicity.

After getting through the custom bits of the Contract, Aya let her eyes wander across the town square. The Serving Time stand was active. Every now and again, there would be a commotion of some kind. Aya wondered how she hadn’t noticed it all the times she’d gone through the square before. Sometimes, it was a customer screaming at whoever was on rotation behind the stand, but more often than not, it happened to be a quarrel between the guild members themselves. Going by the fact that no player stayed for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, Aya doubted manning the stand was a favored pastime.

Each quarrel she witnessed gave her hope and convinced her that things would go according to plan. That is, if Donovan agreed and if he managed to pull it off and if, and if, and if. Aya shook her head, trying to shake the off doubts. She’d gone through so much already; she wasn’t going to give up at the finish line. With her eyes once more focused on the task in front of her, she went over the events that had led her to where she was, trying to see if she’d missed anything.

After she’d found out about the debt, buried a man, gone through his things and read his most private thoughts, she had found herself in his abandoned and dilapidated home. The diary had explained everything, including the state of the house. Thankfully, Nelson didn’t believe in “Dear Diary”s or daily observations about the weather. In fact, his entries were few and far between. But even so, after reading about over three decades of his life, Aya felt like she’d gotten to know the man pretty well, considering he was already dead.

Her timer chimed, reminding her to use her Scribe skill. She hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the diary, effectively wasting the last six quick paychecks. Vowing not to let it happen again, even if she did happen to read another dead man’s tear-jerking love story, she got back on task and knocked out another Basic Contract in record time.

Aya had barely been able to contain herself when she discovered the reason behind the mysterious profit surge. It was all because of his wife, but more importantly, her Scribe skill. Never in a million years would Aya have ever even guess at the possibility of what she’d read.

Anya, the wife, had inscribed LayHen eggs with Contracts. And seeing as the LayHens were somehow mysteriously tied to the Forgotten Realm, their eggs, combined with a Contract, had the temporary ability to boost stats. One day, that’s how long the boost lasted. From what she read, the stats were boosted by a certain percentage thatd epended on the LayHen. Some were better ‘bred’ than others. The percentages ranged anywhere from 1-15%, or at least that’s how far Nelson and Anya had gotten in terms of LayHen breeding.

Nelson described a Contract for each stat, ranging from Agility to Strength and beyond. Aya hadn’t actually seen a single Contract in the diary, which made sense since Nelson himself wasn’t a scribe. Readying herself for another search, Aya took out all of the contents of all of the desk drawers and dumped them on top. His wife was a scribe; she must have left a copy of the Contracts she used somewhere. Aya eyed the foot-high mound of jumbled pages, documents, notebooks and ledgers in front of her. Surely, she must have.

An hour later, Aya’s optimism had taken a dive into nonexistence. She sat back in the chair, staring at the now-organized pile of papers in front of her. While she’d encountered many interesting documents detailing the care that went into all things LayHen, she hadn’t found a single Contract. Looking down at the empty drawers, hoping a Contract would manifest itself out of thin air, her eyes were caught by the golden key.

Without a second thought, her fingers wrapped around the cold metal and pulled it out of its lock. She considered it for the first time after having read Nelson’s diary. It didn’t make sense, when she thought about it. Sure, the ledgers and the diary had given her a lot of information, but she didn’t see them as items the man would value so much he would keep them locked up at all times.

Aya twirled the key in her fingers. Maybe he kept it because of its value, it must be worth quite a bit, especially if it really was made entirely out of gold. With its weight, Aya suspected it was. She leaned forward, propping her right elbow on the desk. Her right hand held her head as her left tapped the wooden surface with the gold key. Eyes zoning out, she tried to think of where else to look. It could be in the shelves somewhere, between all the books, but if it was… it could take her all year to find and she still wasn’t guaranteed anything.

Plus, it was far too valuable to just be lying around… wasn’t it? If it were her, she’d put it somewhere safe, somewhere others wouldn’t even know to look, somewhere only she knew about and somewhere only she could get to. Preferably even under lock and key… her hand stilled.

Her left hand turned, palm side up and she opened it slowly, revealing the golden key. Could it be that… It would make sense… wouldn’t it? But hadn’t she already double-and triple-checked? The drawer was empty. Unsatisfied with the answer reason gave her, Aya got on her knees and examined the drawer more closely. Sure enough, it was empty, just as she had thought. She would have given up then, if not for the diary. It simply didn’t make sense for Nelson to cling to the key for a ledger and a diary. There had to be something she was missing… surely.

She sat there, giving the drawer the stink-eye, until her timer chimed again. Resigned, she got to her feet and activated the Scribe skill to knock out another Basic Contract. Then, she looked down at the empty drawer and realized something. It was too shallow for… Fake Bottom!

Sinking back down to her knees, she tried every trick she could think of, tipping one side of the bottom, trying to find a place to pull up on, but the more she tried and failed, the more she thought she was mistaken. Her timer chimed again.

Getting back to the drawer, she seriously considered breaking it to see if there was something inside, but then she thought of her mother. She used to tell Chris that each coin had three sides every time Chris got in an argument, hoping her daughter would learn to consider the situation from a different perspective. Coins had nothing to do with the drawer, but it was time that she consider it from a different perspective.

Aya pulled the drawer out as far as it would go and then yanked it even further. It took some leverage, but eventually she managed to remove the damned thing. Panting, but successful, she turned the drawer upside down.

“Yes!” she screamed, not even trying to contain herself. “I knew it!”

Before her, on the bottom of the drawer, was an indentation. It had the shape of a key on one side and the shape of a feather on the other. Aya was practically beaming, grinning from ear to ear, heart thumping in her chest as she fit the key into the spot. If she was right, and the contracts were there, she could dig herself out of the mess she was in. If she wasn’t… Aya bit her lip, discarding the thought.

As the key took its place in the wood, a circular section rose around it. Figuring it was probably like any other lock-and-key system, Aya turned it and was rewarded with a satisfying click. It was followed by multiple clanking sounds until the whole bottom of the drawer dropped by a fraction of an inch. Using the elevated circular section as a handhold, Aya grabbed the bottom and lifted it off the drawer. She felt like a kid on Christmas morning, opening her gift, not knowing what she would find.

“JACKPOT!” Aya wanted to scream, but didn’t. She didn’t want to jinx it, not before she was sure she was right. Things looked promising, though. As soon as the lid was off, she saw an ornately carved wooden box on one side, a little portrait of a pretty little woman in the middle and a stack of important-looking scrolls on the other.

She took the scrolls out first, hoping they had sample Egg-Stat-Contracts, or whatever they were called, on them. They didn’t. One was a void Contract between Nelson and a bank in Durrenheim. She could tell it was void by the missing mana. When a Contract was signed, both parties infused it with a little of their mana, where it stayed until the Contract was completed or made void by death. The other, she was surprised to find, was the Contract she had agreed to with Nelson. Effectively, it was his will and it was valid through death. Aya sighed, both because the scrolls hadn’t contained the Egg-Contracts and because she’d been reminded of her mountainous debt.

Next, she took out the portrait and set it aside. Anya really had been a pretty woman, too bad she couldn’t be more forthcoming about the Egg-Contracts. Finally, she turned to the carved wooden box. Lifting it out of the drawer’s secret compartment, she was surprised by how heavy it was. Being only slightly longer than the palm of her hand, she’d expected the wooden thing to weigh less. Aya took a deep breath and didn’t even notice holding it in as she lifted the lid to the little box.

Her breath came out in a triumphant and relieved whoosh at the sight of its contents. Dozens of little wooden squares, each engraved with the Egg-Contract for a particular stat. Looking through them, she recognized most of, but not all, the runes. She definitely wouldn’t have been able to guess at them, even if she was starting to make out the basic patterns used to create Contracts.

Aya put the portrait back in the drawer before putting the lid back on and sliding the drawer back into place. ifting through the piles of papers on the desk, she made a small stack of documents and pages she thought might prove useful with LayHen… rearing; the rest she returned to the desk drawers. Stashing the small armful of pages into her pack, she made sure there was enough space for the two Contracts and the wooden box. Then, she stood up and dusted off her knees. She was done rummaging through dust, at least for the time being.

Out in the sun once more, Aya raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare,  a sure sign that she’d been in the house for too long; the damned game was turning her into a book-worm. Opening the window with Nelson’s Contract, she looked up the location of his LayHen pen and made her way over, shaking her head at the ridiculous term. Her decision to leave the wagon behind unattended came easily. If the house had survived undisturbed for that long, Xavier’s wagon would, too.

Seeing as he was charging her by the hour, she needed to go back to town sooner rather than later. But first, she needed to check out the situation with the LayHens. It took her ten minutes to reach their pen, if you could call it that. If the house had been dilapidated, the pen was totally wrecked. She almost didn’t dare stepping foot inside, the structure looked so close to just collapsing in on itself, but Henry just strutted ahead of her into the pile of planks held together by who-knew-what.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness inside. She wasn’t surprised to find it empty. She’d seen the LayHens roaming the region and doubted any of them even came back to the pen. With no food or water to be found in the old shack, they had nothing waiting for them there. Emotional attachment wasn’t going to be a big motivator for them. She looked at Henry; he was looking back up at her, craning his neck and squawking, if the rest of his breed was anything like him, she doubted they were even capable of emotion.

The bird flapped his wings at her, still craning his neck. Okay, maybe they were able of feeling some things - like animosity. Aya’s shoulders drooped slightly along with her hope of resurrecting Nelson’s LayHen egg empire. Berating herself for getting carried away with the idea, she initially didn’t notice the shuffling sounds above her, but then Henry stilled and she heard it clearly. Her eyes went up, her head tilted back and she saw dozens of eyes staring right back at her from the shadows. She flinched before realizing she’d found the LayHens.

The birds were hanging from wooden rods that had quite obviously been placed there for that reason. They spanned the length of the pen and were placed just far enough apart to give each row of birds enough space. Aya swallowed, mouth dry. The LayHen’s were hanging by their tails, their leathery wings wrapping them up in a cocoon, their heads sticking out at the bottom.

Aya’s legs and arms tensed, she took a small step back and her hands came up an inch. She was preparing for an attack of some sort, waiting from them to all drop as a horde upon her, only… it didn’t happen. Henry squawked, but other than that, the pen remained silent. A moment later, the birds retracted their heads back into their cocoons. Aya counted thirty-three LayHens, and wondered if there were any unaccounted for.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

By Nelson’s last count, there had been over two hundred of them, but that count had been taken years ago. Tearing her eyes away from the birds, she perused the shadows. She was expecting nest boxes of some kind but instead, she found little hammocks hanging from protruding pegs. Many were missing, many were damaged, some were empty but a few had what she’d really come looking for: eggs.

Her breath skittered out of her in relief. She hadn’t exactly expected the birds to forget how to lay eggs, but a part of her found it hard to believe that it would be as easy as coming back to a perfectly functioning system. She could feel the excitement building in her stomach, but she pressed it down. She still needed to make sure the Contracts worked.

Taking an egg at random while keeping an eye on the birds, she quickly made her way back outside. She found a spot under the shade of a tree, cleared a wide area so as not to set a forest fire and went about making a campfire as Donovan had taught her. While the flames grew, she laid a couple stones around in fire and took the wooden box out of her pack. Aya flipped through the wooden squares inside until she found the Egg-Contract for strength.

Before she could even wonder about how she was going to inscribe an egg, she saw a white, needle-like object attached to the lid of the box. Carefully, she grasped it and proceeded to inscribe the black egg with the runes on the wooden square. It took her a while because she didn’t want to mess up.

Ten minutes later, with the finished product in her hand, she couldn’t help being proud of her neat work. According to the things she’d read in Nelson’s office, all she had to do now was eat it. Since she wasn’t about to eat a raw egg, she carefully placed the hot stones into one of her more durable water skins along with the egg. She’d seen Donovan do the same to make a broth, though he had used a leather bag made specifically for the purpose.

Aya spent the next fifteen minutes cycling through hot stones, filling the rest of her time with the creation of Basic Contracts. It dawned on her that she needed to add Senior Aizan to the list of people she had to go see. A plan had started forming in her head, but for it to work, she would need as much starting capital as she could get her hands on. And although she’d be creating a lot of Basic Contracts herself, she would need to step up her game for them to be worth her time.

When she deemed the egg cooked, she took it out, careful not to burn herself, and cracked it open. Despite the black shell, she expected the egg white to be, well, white, but it was black. She thought it might be rotten but it smelled fine so she took a deep breath and ate it before she could second-guess herself. If she could get through nutri-packs, black eggs weren’t going to be an issue. Surprisingly it didn’t taste bad at all.

Finished with her ‘meal’, she waited for something to happen. Other than her satiety level going up, nothing happened. Deflated, she went through the list of things that could have gone wrong. The runes? Maybe the fact that she’d boiled the egg? Was it supposed to be eaten raw? Had she missed something? Had the egg gone bad? Was it too old?

“Too old,” she muttered, thinking back to the things she read.

The Egg Contract was a Contract with the LayHen that was somehow tied to the Forgotten realm, but it also had a time constraint on it. And that’s when a light bulb lit up in her head and she understood the real meaning behind it. Only the eggs laid that day would have any effect. It made sense, because otherwise there could be a dozen or more people trying to Contract the same LayHen. But it was also annoying because Aya had no way of knowing which egg was laid when. In the future, when she could take the eggs away on a daily basis, it wouldn’t be a problem, but right then and there, it put a serious dent in her plans.

Going back to the pen, she found the nest with the fewest eggs, eight, and took them all, hoping that LayHens were like chickens, always laying in the same nest. She went through the same process she’d gone through with the first egg. It went a bit faster the second time around. The third went even faster, soon followed by the fourth. By the time she swallowed the fifth, she was starting to doubt herself. She had no way of knowing that one of the eight eggs had been laid in the last day and she had no way of knowing if the Egg-Contract was going to work.

But it did; with the sixth egg she got the result she’d been hoping for.

A Contract lends you Strength from the Forgotten Realm!

Strength Stat boost of 2%.

Duration: 120 hours (effective on & off-line)

At least part of it. Two percent wasn’t even close to the maximum breeding results Nelson and Anya had achieved. hen again, he had abandoned the birds to the wild for two decades and beggars couldn’t be choosers. Squaring her shoulders, she decided it didn’t matter. Even a percentage was valuable in a world where people like Donovan fought tooth and nail for that one stat point. It would work, she’d be able to set it up, especially if she could breed them back to what they used to be. Plans and ideas for the future of the LayHens started unfurling in her head. She wanted to get started immediately, but she couldn’t.

All her plans had one Achilles heel, the same one in fact: gold. She needed gold in order to do anything. How was she going to feed and water the chickens? Henry had been living off of blood for the last two days but unless she wanted to turn the entire flock into blood-sucking creatures and spend all her time roaming the woods to bleed creatures dry, she would need to come up with an alternative solution, a more orthodox solution.

According to the records, LayHens were omnivores but Nelson had found a mix of dried berries and nuts worked best. They were varieties that were easy and cheap to find in the region… when it wasn’t going through a major drought. Aya would either need to come with another solution, which would involve a lot of money, or she would have to make it rain. Being a realist, she decided she’d have to pay the bank in Durrenheim a visit.

She packed her things, doused the fire, dusted off her tunic and was on her way. Stopping at Nelson’s house, she paid her respects, dropped the picks off in one of the house’s more hidden broom closets and headed toward the Rockyno field. They were nowhere to be found, which was good, and they’d left all she wanted from them behind. The Rockyno dung glittered in the sunlight, lighting up the entire field. Aya was lucky no one had come by and picked up her 100% pure metal.

Moving the wagon around by section, she picked the entire field clean of shit. By the time she was done, almost two hours later, she’d gone through the rest of her water, was covered in muck and stunk to high heavens. But she didn’t care, in the back of the wagon was a big stack of pure metal she was about to make a killing on. Henry had the gall to get on the wagon as she huffed and puffed her way back back to Durrenheim but she was too tired to bother with him.

Thoughts kept swimming around in her head, trying to unravel all the strings of possibilities. She sensed there was a way to bring it all together, the picks, the LayHens, the ore, the Contracts, Senior Aizan, the blacksmiths, the banker and even ServingTime. It was all right there, staring her in the face, but she couldn’t figure it out. She passed through the city gates, oblivious to the dirty looks the guards gave her. Her reputation preceded her but she was too caught up with her thoughts to notice or care.

She reached Xavier’s smithy soon thereafter, but she was no closer to finding a solution. Xavier was nowhere to be found, so she unloaded the pile of pure metal into a smelting basin, taking advantage of the low, smoldering fire Xavier had left behind. With the low size of the fire, it would take quite a while for the metal to melt completely but chances were, it would be done by the time she returned from her visit to the banker.

Aya made her way to the bank, using Nelson’s void Contract as a map. She went right through the plaza, once more taking note of the Serving Time stand. All of the customers looked pissed off, but thankfully, she didn’t recognize anyone there. Only when she reached the other end of the plaza did she see someone she knew, Xavier. He had far more customers than Serving Time but even here, the customers were wearing frowns. The only difference between the two stands was that here even the vendor, Xavier, looked like he’d just eaten a lemon. Aya pursed her lips and exited the square, not failing to take note of the position Xavier had chosen, as far from Serving Time as possible.

Following the map, Aya snaked her way through the streets until she finally reached her destination, Durrenheim City Bank. It was a large, three-story brick building with large windows and in great shape compared to the others on the street. Unlike the others, which were crumbling under the heat of the sun, the bank didn’t look like the city it belonged to was going through a crisis so big its population was fleeing.

Aya stood there a moment, looking up at the large, golden letters of the bank’s name, then lower, at the entrance. The doorway was framed by two bulky guards, one on each side. She was taking in their stance when she felt cold drops of water hit her skin. She looked up, expecting to see a cloud. Rain? But no, there was only blue sky as far as the eye could see. Of course it wasn’t going to rain, she thought, feeling foolish for ever considering the possibility. She convinced herself she had imagined the moisture, but as she, stepped toward the bank, she was once again struck by a droplet of water.

This time, she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. But if it wasn’t rain, what was… And that’s when she saw him. A boy of no more than fifteen, an NPC, carefully ladling water onto the bricks. What the? And that’s when it clicked, the reason why the building didn’t look so bad. Aya’s legs carried her inside as she considered the significance of the watered bricks. As a bank, it made sense for them to value their image, but going as far as spending what must be hundreds of gold a day, just to keep the bricks from bleaching under the sun? Image was most important when the reality was not doing so great, which meant things really must not be doing so great.

She pursed her lips, lost in thought, until she felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, she came face-to-face with a barrel-like man not much taller than herself, an impressive feat, considering.

“How can I help you, er…” he said, eyeing her up and down, trying to come to a conclusion. “Miss?”

Aya ignored the doubt in his tone.“I’m here to talk to you about Nelson O’Halary,” she said, watching as his mouth flattened into a thin, tight, line.

“What about…him?” the banker asked, nearly choking on the words through his gritted teeth.

“He’s uhh…” Aya said, not sure how to finished the sentence. ‘Dead’ seemed like a very harsh word, all of a sudden. “He was very sick and uhh… didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

Aya wasn’t sure the man would even care, but the moment he heard the words, his face drained completely. Without another word, he turned and walked toward an open office door she supposed he’d come out of. The foyer was empty with the exception of the two of them, and not knowing what was expected, she followed quietly behind him.

Inside his office, he walked to a sideboard and poured himself some water, mumbling to himself.

“Dead, just like that, dead,” he was saying, barely audible from where Aya was standing. She inched closer to hear him add, “And I told them, I told them it was a bad idea to extend his credit. The man was—” he cut himself off with a sigh and downed the entire cup of water in one go.

He poured himself another one.

“But do they care about that? No, of course not, he’s related to the Mayor…” he said, taking another sip of water. “But is he gonna pay off his debt? Didn’t think so—” another cup of water gone.

He started pouring himself a third cup, but remembered he wasn’t alone.

“Anyway… Miss…” he said. “How can I be of assistance?”

Aya considered him, surprised at the way he was treating her. She had expected to be treated with contempt if not for her horrible reputation with the city, then at least for her childlike or pauper appearance. Bankers were notoriously rude to those that didn’t bring them profit, but then again… Perhaps he was desperate enough to look for profit wherever he could. Instinctively, her eyes fell to his shoes.

The suit he was wearing had pinstripes on it, perhaps a failed attempt to elongate his squat, barrel-like figure. Aya wasn’t worried about that; what got to her was the discrepancy between the shoes and the suit. The shoes were ragged. People always replaced their shoes last, thinking it was the last place people checked.

“Well…” Aya said, considering the situation. “I’d like to make an… account with you.”

The banker nodded, eyes starting to glaze over as he sat down, motioned for her to do the same and started to answer.

“Of course,” he said. “Many Outworlders like yourself like to create accounts with us. I will need your name and some other basic information…”

“Aya,” she said, wondering if he would recognize her name. Surely he would know who had taken over Nelson’s Contract by now.

“All right Aya, and what kind of account would you like?” he inquired politely.

The man shuffled some papers on his desk, hands moving with practiced ease. Aya almost gaped at his lack of reaction to her name. He didn’t know. She nodded slowly, as if considering his words.

“We are currently offering some very advantageous rates for long-term investments.”

“Oh?” she asked, feigning interest.

“Yes, there is a lumber mill…” the banker said, going off on detailed descriptions of possible investments. Aya sat calmly, trying to pay as much attention to the conversation as she could. Eventually, he ran out of words, but she forced herself to take another contemplative pause before asking the question that had been burning on her lips.

“What about Nelson’s business?”

“Nel— But that’s…”

The banker’s eyebrows rose and Aya could almost read the thoughts zipping through his head. It took him a moment, but eventually he composed himself enough. His tone was careful and veiled when he spoke again.

“Nelson, as you yourself have informed me, is dead…” he said, hands clasped in front of him. “Most of his assets have already been appropriated by the bank…”

Aya hid her surprise, but immediately brought up a window of her Contract with Nelson, she had a physical copy but she wasn’t about to shove proof of her subterfuge in his face. She paid special attention to the words used documenting his assets. Squelching a grimace, she moved the window aside. Not only had he saddled her with 700,000 gold in debt, he also didn’t own a single thing. Unless he paid it all back… with interest. The assets weren’t collateral for his debt, they had already been seized.

“He has been defunct on his debt for quite some time. The bank will not be taking over operations, so unless you are willing to purchase his assets directly and take over the day-to-day management…”

Aya could see the glimmer of hope in his eyes, she hid a smile of her own. Apparently, this man was not aware of her Contract with Nelson. He didn’t know she was the one who owed them 700,000 gold now, but she wasn’t about to let him find out.

“I am,” she stated simply, taking advantage of the banker’s ignorance. In fact, she was going to sign a new Contract with him, one that would supersede the last. After all, Contracts were unbreakable other than by death, unless both parties agreed on a new Contract that replaced the last. Aya hoped her childish appearance would keep her innocent charade going.

The banker almost managed to conceal his surprise at her words, but a twitch of the eyebrows gave it away. He was definitely pleased with the prospect of a new customer getting the bad debt off of his ledger, but before his relief turned to smugness, she added,

“If the price is right.”

His brow twitched again, giving him away.

Aya hid a smug smile of her own.