Vicky and Mark grew up in Westbury a small town where they had only one Baker one butcher that type of small town but as they were growing up they actually lost some friends to monsters and other animals so they were more of the Wilderness shoot and kill them hunt them type of people so realize that these are people that then for themselves to get their own Meats they they do a lot of stuff themselves so every home's like that it's a very small community
Vicky and Mark grew up together fell in love and even at a young age the town just knew the two of them were a couple and as they got older their parents help build them a small little house just around the side of the Hill from their own house so they can always be close
Vicky and Mark had a little bit of a secret that not too many people in town knew about their parents of course knew and the mayor knew and by mayor I mean the chief so what happened was after they got married the two of them took a little bit of a honeymoon they told everybody what they really did is they went to the Big Town they signed up to be adventures and they started doing adventuring and what is adventuring in this world well it's basically creatures that might appear here and there they don't really know what they are and if those things attack a village people will call for help that's an adventurers do they all so explore the world making maps and finding things that have been lost because there's been so many wars and so many great fires that have just decimated entire areas that they don't have great records so the two of them went to the major city of Sylvan and after doing some adventuring they came home they brought a lot of money back with them so they're pretty much retired in their home at the moment and they just have to leave every once in awhile to go do some adventuring and make some cash
the chief / mayor found out about this when Mark's dad got drunk one night and let it slip so the mayor now holds that over them cuz they look at the adventures as lower people but not realizing that these two kids are already retired so it's just a point of mind but he then throws them quests all around town and he has been for the last 10-15 years
the cool thing that they never tell anybody about was the road houses that was a secret that only people that found them or the adventuring Guild talked about
what are the roadhouses well they say about 20 odd years maybe 25 years ago little buildings would a pop up along the roads and they were a really simple little bar sometimes it would have stuff inside of it sometimes it wouldn't but it was a copy of the same building every time they found it now everyone smile they'd be going down a trail and then off to the side it would be perfectly clear cut like a path and if you follow that path you would find another one of these Road houses and that's it everybody started calling them because they were always found on the road and they were a place where you could crash for the night and there was a couple of weird things about these Road houses
above the door on every single one said Roadhouse in two languages one language that everybody could read and another language no one could understand
inside the roadhouse there was an open air bar and I mean it was a saloon it looked just like a saloon you go upstairs and there was bedrooms down on the main floor there's a fireplace so if you Needed to do some cooking you could
It wasn't until this last year when they had taken a trip into Sylvan to update their Guild membership and pay their dues that they had come across one of the other people they had met and they are all started talking about the road houses when their friend Bob who had never been a member of the adventuring Guild before this was literally his first week being shown around by Marvin the one they were talking to so Bob's there being super quiet no one's even noticing he's really there he's been introduced and all that but they start talking about the road houses and Bob's never seen her doesn't know what they're talking about these Road houses
Marvin looks over and explains to Bob that but 20 maybe 25 years ago a whole lot of buildings appeared and no one knows who built them but they're almost identical and I mean people have been checking and this brought up the point where Vicky and Mark started chiming in with their information and after a while of talking the three of them realized that one piece of information was always different now on the main floor off into a corner there is like a little area that was like a private table and chair four chairs
Everybody that went there looked around but it wasn't until you sat at that table and you looked at what people had carved in it that you realize that there was a couple of lines carved in it there was no anything special but that was the only thing that would change so Vicky being smart one of the group and paper was an expensive thing but they had been making enough money adventuring for the last couple years that she kept a little bit of a notebook with her she had started writing down what she found on the different tables in each of the Road houses because each Roadhouse this one table had different writing on it so they pull out their little notebook and Vicky starts showing what they've got but it was Bob that actually figured it out
he asked Vicky if he could steal two pieces of paper from her from the back of her book she was reluctant but agreed and then taking a charcoal pen is what they use nowadays to draw on he ripped up the two pieces of paper into four smaller pieces of paper of equal size and then copied the lines onto the little pieces of paper
they only had the images from four different Road houses but if you took the lines from one it matched another one and it made an L shape so one above one below one below one to the right and Bob lined it all up and you could see that when you put it like that it showed a mountain and this mountain had one line always going towards this one point up the mountain from each one of the drawings but that one line alone would never have given you a direction or anything there was only two big mountains in the area and they had actually taken three of the sketchings from three Road houses along the side of a mountain so Bob now very curious asked Marvin when they were going out and when the next time he could go to one of these Road houses
Marvin apologized and said that he was going to be in town for the next two months on a contract but looked over at Vicky and Mark and asked where they were going next and if they needed an extra newbie to show the ropes?
Vicky and Mark just looked at each other smiled and said sure we're going to go over to West Palm to deliver the mail then come back through here and then go back to Westbury on the way back to Westbury they were going to go and visit one of the Road houses and see if they could find any more little pieces of information hidden
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Bob thanked them and the conversation kept on going but the next conversation was a question tomorrow about anything that he had found inside behind the bar
Marv didn't understand why they were asking so Vicky explained that out of every single one of the Roadhouse is they've gone to they always find something behind the bar now they don't know if they leave it or someone else does but if they take something they make a rule of trying to leave something so this was Bob and Mars first time hearing this Rule and they agreed to it and there's some other people in the bar that knew of what that was going on and no offense it was allowed place so people were ease dropping and you even had one guy that was just a foot away from the group just goes up and interrupt their Conversation and then go back to his own conversation
later on that day Bob thanked Mar for all the help and let the guild know what was going on and got put on to Vicky and Mark's team properly.
one of the rules for the guild was that a new person wasn't allowed just to go out into the bush by themselves they would have to get another adventure to allow them to accompany them and then sign off that they were at least qualified to travel by themselves and if not they would be teamed up with another new recruit after their evaluation and some training so that I at least there would be two of them going out together Bob was doing that too with Marv so after this he was in the hopes this would begin his solo trip but for now he was going to go and see one of these roadhouses
the trip to deliver the mail and then head to the Roadhouse only took a day and a half and they literally just ran the horses grabbed a new horses and then ran them back and when they got back to town here they grabbed their horses that they had stable for the night
they did this every once in awhile just to make some extra coin and it was good coin delivering the mail for the government so everybody had done their job and they even threw Bob his proper percentage cuz it's a three-way cut so something like 17 silver which was awesome for Bob who it didn't have a lot of money it was super happy at this point
Bob then paid a silver to rent a horse for one night and gave them a second silver in case he had to drop the horse off a day late this was looked at as a sign of respect so the stable hand who also knew Bob was like thanks man keep it keep it safe and come back alive
with this the three of them took off to the Roadhouse
they trotted up to it it literally looked like an old school Saloon but kind of more modern there was a place to tie up your horse there's even a place to put water in a trough that was empty so Bob without even having to be told when around back looking for a water pump and he found it except that this water pump was foot powered and if you just stood on the chunk of stone the pipe would just dump out water and Bob had never seen this before this was something magical literally
there was no way to explain how this worked it was just a pipe coming out of the ground and if you put a bucket under the opening of the pipe it filled with water till you took the bucket off it was amazing
there was also two buckets beside the pipe so Bob took a bucket filled it up with water took it back and made sure the horses had something to drink and he told Vicky and Mark who had looked many times and it even seen that weird pipe but they didn't understand what it was so when Bob explained what he had found they were kind of Blown Away realizing that like they thought it was nothing there was always just a piece of metal coming out of the ground someone had put in not realizing it was a water pump
the horses got a lot of water because Vicky and Mark both went back there to try it out and use that make more water for the horses and they even brought some water in so they can get cleaned up after the long haul and this made themselves so much happier because they never at the couple times they've been here and never thought that that was water it kind of felt silly
but it wasn't until Bob walked in did all the weirdness happen
before Bob could even touch the door to open it it almost opened on its own and before he could close it it closed on its own it was very magical he couldn't explain it but things were moving and there was no wind it was creepy it was just odd and Bob knew it
now Bob had been introduced to Vicky and Mark as Bob that but that wasn't Bob's birth name it was Jebediah and for many years Jebediah didn't have a problem with his name until one night he had a dream about meeting an old man without a face sitting on the log in a vast nothingness with white floors and black Skies who talked about Dungeons and a man named Bob
From that day on Jebediah asked everybody just to call him Bob and to him that was his name
it wasn't until Mark yelled from the upstairs down to Bob hey Bob do you know what room you want?
that was like a magic word because the moment his name was said the ghost of the Roadhouse rolled in and the Roadhouse came to life all the shutters opened all the lights that were by candle turned on and lit the upstairs bathroom started filling tubs with perfectly hot but not scolding water
and a glass from behind the bar and a rag started floating behind the bar and the rag started polishing the glass like a bartender would do Bob just stood there watching this not knowing what the hell was going on and because he was so freaked out Mark who had been waiting for an answer look down and saw that the place had come to life and saw the floating glass and the cloth and the windows open and everything and just yelled for Vicky
when Vicky came down and saw what was going on she ran around looking she even tried touching the glass in the air
before she could touch it it moved out of her line of touch and kept on cleaning the glass
4 seconds later it put the glass down and the rag down and everything kind of just stopped the lights were still on but the magic had died down
Bob just looked at them and said what the hell is going on you never said anything about this what the hell
Vicky and Mark both were just Blitz they didn't know what the hell was going on and they openly said this is never happened before this is the first time
behind the bar was a mirror and no offense it was Dusty and old and all of sudden on the back mirror in the dust an invisible finger was writing out welcome Bob
and then like a ghost had blown it all the lights out all the lights went out together and only the Sun from outside lit up the place except for one candle just above for Bob was standing and then that after about 3 to 5 Seconds it went out to
well that spooked the three of them pretty much and for the next couple of hours they didn't know if they wanted to stay or leave so they actually left Bob decided he was going to stay so Vicky and Mark said okay they'd stay too
After that they went to do what they normally would do and one of the things was to take water and go have a cold shower / bath / sponge bath well when Vicky found two tubs full of hot water she screamed and everybody thought she was losing her s*** and something was wrong so Mark and Bob both ran to her only to find her stripping naked and Mark had to stop Bob from coming in after he said no no it's okay it's okay don't come in…
Bob just turned around and didn't worry about it and Mark just said what's going on and she says hot water and that's all she had to say
Mark yelled down the stairs to Bob Bob Vicky found hot water there's a bathtub up here for you after we're done we won't take too long we'll use one tub you get the other one okay man
Bob was like sure
so Vicky took her time but once she was done Mark called bob up and Mark and Bob both got into their own tubs and just soak there using the last of the hot water
the three of them threw some food on the fireplace and that night they talked about the Roadhouse and they looked at the special table with special markings and just before the sun went down they went out back and saw something they hadn't realized on the table with the markings it showed a path up into the Hills well there was actually a path but it was only a foot wide but it was a perfectly cut foot and if you weren't looking for it you wouldn't find it so they said tomorrow we're going to go for a walk in the bush and go see what we can find at the end of this path they all agreed and went to bed
that night bar had been keeping an eye on them while they were in The Roadhouse but knowing what they were going to do tomorrow bar picked one of his tunnels and rolled up into his Mountain and waited for his guests to arrive….