The pain was the first thing that woke Orlond up. In the smelly darkness of sewers, he saw a candle on the table with several familiar-looking papers and a short hooded fellow with a dagger in his hand. On his right and left were two large hooded men.
“Orlond, I am very disappointed in you.” Said a cold snarling voice.
Orlond tried to speak, but his mouth had been gagged. While furiously trying to lift himself from the chair, another man hit his swollen face again.
“UUMPH!”
“Quiet, you bag of shit. Now look, you are going to write us a paper, and then you are going to sign this document. Easy eh?
Orlond was shaking his head, but then one man lifted his leg on a tree trunk, and the other man started sharpening a rusty-looking old axe.
“Do you understand that you might lose your entire leg with this axe? Hey, dip that into the sewer.” Said the hooded figure with a hollow voice. The men did what was asked, and the smelly, dirty, stained axe was lifted.
“Care of writing now what we ask. Ah, I see. Well now, I hope you will remember after that. It was your call.”
After a loud thud and almost blacking out Orlond saw his half-cut mangled leg and tried to scream, but the voice didn’t come out. His face was full of tears and snot from his nose while he attempted to gasp air while feeling all the pain.
“Sorry boss, my hand slipped a bit, better luck next time” laughed the axe man with a not convincing voice.
“You see, my suggestion is very simple. Either you are repeatedly hit and healed until you write, or you think your options more clearly and write down what I say.”
Orlond was having none of it. He would not bend to the will of these men, and he stared with a deadly gaze towards the hooded man while huffing and crying.
“Okay, this is not going anywhere, cut his face open and break his teeth.” Said the hollow voice echoing a bit in the sewers.
The axe man took his head in between his arms suddenly. While Orlond tried to shake his head without succeeding, the other man on his right side slowly took a dull, rusty knife and started roughly to cut a hole on Orlond’s face. Orlond screamed through his opened cheek, and he felt splintering pain on his face while something foreign entered into his mouth in wrong angle and wrong place.
Suddenly Orlond woke up again, this time howling in pain because dirty sewer water had been thrown on his face and wounds. To his horror, he felt his teeth were shattered while trying to couch dirty sewer water from his mouth.
“Are you done?” Said the cold voice sharply.
Orlond squirmed in pain and kept nodding vigorously.
“Good, bring him here. Now Orlond, write the following clearly. Note to everybody.. ‘Hey, write it more clearly, or you lose your third leg.’ Note to everybody. I will be going to the Sarus village to make a business deal. Do the duties in planned order.’ Nice, now sign it here aaand signature here. Wonderful, it was agreeable to do business with you.”
“Kill him,” Orlond heard and started screaming and crying while his bowel released itself. After a loud thud, everything went black.
Darius lifted his hood, snatched two potions, and downed their content on the body.
“Hey kick his head here, thank you. We will melt this fucker. He burned our home and stole my land lot.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Two guards next to him shivered at Darius's ferocity despite having been busy on their own moments before. They would not dare to think what their master would do when he took things more personally. But then again, Elvira had told them that her master was reasonable compared to many others, but now they weren’t sure what to think about it.
Darius watched happily while the body disappeared completely, and all that was left was yellow glimmering sludge that would wash away into the sewer gutters. It was for Orlond fitting place to go. *One obstacle less.*
“Okey, we still have time before sunrise. We are on the clock. Let's see how the registry coffers are.” Darius smirked at bewildered knights. Trewan was a bit hesitant, but Jurid even laughed.
They parked the carriage block away from the registry building and waited for guards to stroll away before entering. Entering was easy because the keys even had name tags. *Luckily Orlond seemed to have poor memory,* Darius laughed for himself. While they unlocked the door, one scared guard yelled at them in the entrance hall, but Jurid threw the club on the guard’s face and went down relatively silently. Next, Jurid ran and stabbed the guard’s throat while Darius killed two more guards that had appeared in the entrance hall. After six guards and six melted bodies, everything quieted down.
Darius nodded, and they continued inside. While passing the customer section, Darius ordered Jurid and Trewan to sweep each room without letting anybody leave. Meanwhile, Darius was busy at Orlond’s office. After cleaning the obvious places out of money and leaving the letter on the office desk, he checked the locked drawers and saw a scattering of money purses and official documents. These seemed to be for the city since the accounting book was among the items. Darius looked at the registry cabinet under the street of his building and replaced one document with a newly signed contract stating that Darius owned the land lot.
Next, Darius turned his attention to the large wall safe. It was equally easy to open with a larger steel key. The safe had considerably more money and several gold bars. Darius left the coppers and silvers and took the gold bars, coins, and platinum coins from the safe. He also saw and collected three large keys chained with weirdly long silver key chain.
Darius continued looking around and found one small safe inside the cabinet next to the trash bin. Separate safe with corrupted officials meant only one thing. Darius smiled and put the smaller key into the lock. He saw even more gold bars and money in the safe, and he took everything. Then he saw a pile of papers that seemed to be land lot ownership papers. Darius looked at a few of them and noticed that these papers gave ownership rights to the contract holder. Then he started leafing through the specific corner of the papers where plot addresses were written. The land lots were all situated in the merchant district and at the main road section nearby his building. Darius took the whole pile of papers with him and checked the next pile. These seemed to be land lease contracts similarly arranged. After seeing two papers of this sort, he took the whole pile again into the bag.
He also took an accounting book that seemed to be unofficial. By taking it, he could hide what Orlond had done to ensure that his own dealings were not found out. While he was snatching the items and papers into his bag on the floor to avoid messing with the desk papers, he heard footsteps coming closer. After a short panic, he saw Trewan poking his face through the entrance.
“Damn Trewan, you almost got me a heart attack,” laughed Darius silently.
“Master, we have found a large vault in the cellar. It has three large keyholes on it.”
“You might be looking for these,” Darius dangled the newly acquired keychain with odd keys.
Trewan smiled and took the key chain while Darius finished packing the items.
“My bag is full now. Luckily we have the carriage lets go see the vault.”
Trewan led Darius downstairs, and though the unlocked door and several melted corpses later, they went underground through the circular stone stairs. Jurid was waiting with the oil lamp next to the massive door. The door was made of iron, with steel reinforcements and three keyholes in the middle. After a bit of struggle, they got the order of the keys correctly, and Jurid swung the door open. Albeit the sturdy door, the vault was very minimal, with floor to fit ten people. The walls were covered with wooden boxes and chests.
“Check them out properly. We still have time.”
They started opening the chests, and after a while, Darius asked his guards to carry money and other valuables to the entrance hall. There were only ten boxes worth taking. Everything else was just registry papers, account books and copies of licenses. Darius left everything else as it was and went to return the keys to the office. He left all the other keys but kept the official safe key. In all likelihood, they would have more keys for it, and in good luck, he could come again for decent cash.
Darius heard the horse carriage nearing and ran back to the entrance. His guards were already lifting boxes and sacks into the carriage. In less than a minute, they were heading to the slums. The streets were empty, and only occasional guards or other people strolled at night. Nobody seemed interested in this shabby-looking carriage. Jurid had made an excellent choice of carriage.