The city of Heroesport was filled with immortals. Rotten with them, like a grinning child hopping with lice.

Valince entered the city at night, through a side gate covered in ivy that took a hefty bribe to guards who kept careful eye on the sorts of people who passed through under their watch. People, real people, came through that gate, mostly; or the kinds of immortals that wanted not to be seen. From what she understood, they paid double. Immortals never bartered. They just paid. It was one of the many little ways to tell them apart from real people.

She’d come cloaked against the weather, having spent the last few months in the rough, sleeping in dirt or on straw as she traveled, and keeping her face hidden away the way a goose kept its eggs: with much hissing and spitting.

Heroesport was something of an upgrade for her, an announcement of the next step in her ascension from bandit to… something else. She wasn’t sure what the something was but it was someone with a Skill. And Skill meant value. She, then, was valuable… or would be.

Through the ivy gate, she was let out into a section of the city where the eyes of the poor were either empty or avaricious. She passed old women scurrying and young women flaunting, ducked by the watchful strut of gangs of street toughs and bypassed the occasional passed out drunk, their coin purse conspicuously in plain sight.

Old Micha had told her that city rogues were different from bandits, were a harder kind of vicious that knew nothing of community, but the tension, to Valince, was all the same as the bandit camps. She held herself the same way as they did: watchful, performatively at ease while she white-knuckle gripped the two daggers hidden beneath her cloak. She’d repeated the directions to her destination in a memory-sing-song, left-of-gate and pace through two, alleys way and spin towards center, look for Magic Beast of Blue and Knock Thrice-once-and-Thrice to enter, as she wound her way through the slums.

The walk took longer that she would have liked. She could feel gazes follow her as she went. A bandit always had her people at her back but Valince wasn’t a bandit anymore. She was alone. And city rogues sniffed out lone wolves like Griffins on the hunt.

As she was closing on what looked to be her destination, matching the description she’d had-- worn down, unkept but with a well-built door that could take a bull’s rush… and there, at the knocker, the face of a snake whose tongue hung and split into two smaller snakes. A Hydra. Magical beast.

Just beneath the door, blocking the way, was a little… man, she’d guess, but small enough to be a child if it weren’t for the peak of scraggly black beard from beneath his hood… seemingly passed out drunk. Ah, yet another trap for the unwary.

Valince approached the door and coughed. The little man swayed a moment, his head back but his eyes unseen as he took her in from beneath his hood then let his head droop once more.

“Move, beggar.”

The little man belched.

Valince sighed, casting a glance over her shoulder to watch for a trap; there were three men across the way, watching, leaned up against a wall but none of them approached.

“I’m not stepping over you. Move or be moved,” Valince said. Then, as if she were talking to a stray, she made shooing motions with her dagger hilts. Receiving no response, she slipped her hands back into the cloak, motioned away one of her daggers and the reached for him with a free hand.

The little man abruptly rose, staggered into her at near waist-height and ran off into the night.

Valince sighed, shaking her head and watched him go.

Then she knocked on the door as instructed with the end of her dagger while weighing the little man’s coin purse in her free hand.

The door opened slowly, spilling out dim light. Valince tied the purse to a hidden neck sash, motioned back her dagger and sheathed the both before entering.

The tavern, called Cindy’s, had a sparse scattering of tables mostly held by lone men staring alternatively into their clay mugs or up at the new comer. The door closed itself behind her. Valince tried not to look impressed.

The man at the tap at the far end of the tavern was large, pot-bellied and goblin-ugly. He was mostly bald but where he did have hair it was shockingly orange. Approaching, she could see much of his hair came from his ears or out his nostrils.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The man grunted in greeting.

He did not look like a Cindy.

He put his meaty hands on the wooden bar top and leaned over. She could smell his breath.

“Dark Ale, Hard wine or if you’ve got the coin the blackest of brown liquors.”

Valince steadied herself with a breath, lifted her chin and shook her head.

“No. I want the veal.”

“I don’t serve veal. I don’t serve food. I aint serving you.”

“Veal with a side of your finest wine and just a dash of spit.”

The man sucked a tooth and looked Valince over.

“Uh huh. On whose tab?”

“Micha, the old man of the Virtuous Bastards.”

“Micha?” the man said, nodding. “Good man. Good bandit. Alright,” he drawled, turning towards a small door around the other side of the bar top, “come round to the dining room and-“

Just as the bar keep was finishing his sentence, a rhythmic thumping sounded out the door and, before the door could quite open, in swept two men and a woman, clean-faced and wearing all manner of ridiculously ornate and colorful garb. One of the men was short but burly, wearing full plate armor. The second was skinnier and dressed like a court minstrel. The last, the woman, was clearly a mage of some sort: her long, sky blue gown glowed with a subtle glittering light. She looked like a ditch fairy glamouring a blue jay for its eggs.

The bar keep jerked his chin towards Valince and she turned away, pulling up her hood and abruptly sitting at a table with another patron who didn’t bother to acknowledge her.

“Alright, secret Tavern! Awesome!” The squat man in the plate armor said, removing and motioning away his helmet.

“Welcome to Cindy’s,” the bar keep growled as the man approached.

“You have ale? Damn shame I can’t get drunk. Age restriction.”

“Stuff tastes like shit anyway,” the minstrel said. “Trees are healthier.”

The woman didn’t bother with the bar; she immediately found a table where a man stared into mug attentively as she started bombarding him with questions.

“Do you have a quest? Need something found? Lost your wife or daughter or something? Why are you drinking, are you depressed? Cursed? No?” She gave up and went to the next table, immediately falling into the same line of questioning. When she reached the third table, the man there just kept repeating “Go away, I’m drinking” until she gave up.

“Ho, Bar Keep. Are you Cindy?”

“Aye,” said the bar keep. “On account of the hair. Do you want ale?”

“No, but I heard you had food. I’d like a meal.”

“And where did you hear that from?”

“A forum,” the minstrel said, lazily leaning on the counter. “We’d like the veal and some wine.”

“I don’t serve food, sir. Sorry, you heard wrong.”

“I said,” the minstrel repeated slowly, “I would like the veal and some wine, please.”

“And I said,” Cindy ground out between gritted teeth. “I don’t serve food here. Ale or nothing.”

The squat man in the armor blinked, glanced at the minstrel, then leaned in as well. “Veal and white wine? Veal and sparkling wine?”

“No wine. No veal. Just ale.”

“Fuck,” the minstrel snapped. “I knew it was bullshit. This place is a dump.”

“Ah damn, Cindy. Don’t you even have a quest or something? Do you need something done?”

Cindy grinned. “Well, the floors could use a good mopping. And the tables need wiping.”

The squat man stared at Cindy a moment before turning and throwing an arm around the minstrel, whispering together. Valince could faintly overhear them and glanced over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Cindy breaking into a forehead sweat.

“Think it leads to something? Clean the place and maybe he knows something bigger?”

“Nah, Realms doesn’t seem to work like that. They’re all advanced as fuck. Multi-step fetch quests are 2D as fuck.”

“Trash the place and kill everyone, then? I’m bored.”

“I could go for a trolling, sure….”

The woman broke the two men apart with a slap to the back of their heads.

“Don’t be dumb, we’re still in a safe zone. Magic Guards, OP as fuck and we will NOT be getting our gear back if we die that way.”

“Fuck, you’re right,” the squat man said.

“Screw it,” the minstrel said, throwing up his hands. “Let’s head out, pop by a shop for a mana crystal or two…”

“We can afford exactly one,” the woman said.

“One crystal and a camp stone, then… let’s go grind some gobbies.”

“The cave? Again?” the woman moaned.

“Nah,” the squat man broke in, “there’s a better spot I heard, if you follow the stream up north into that lake valley. It’s new! The fucking things migrate!”

“God, this place is so smart,” the woman said, heading towards the door. “It’s amazing!”

When all three had left, all the tension seemed to leave the room. Even as unfriendly as the patrons had been before the immortals had shown up, the man across from Valince smiled and nodded at her as she rose to head back to the bar.

“Fuck those immortal monsters,” Valince said, approaching Cindy.

The barkeep shrugged and gestured to the little door behind him. “Like rats, fleas and fairies, pests are part of life. Dining room is that way.”

“Thanks,” she said, heading around the bar top and past him.

She was tall for a woman but the door would have made almost anyone duck to go through so Valince was caught surprised when she entered a fairly large and more boisterous dining room, with tables that sat and held five people. She was even more surprised to see a man twice her size standing directly to the side of the door, guarding in such a way he could have killed her before she would have glanced his direction.

The giant man, muscled with long and dirty looking hair but a clean-shaved chin, did not acknowledge her as she went further into the room while the door closed itself behind her.

There was a thin man in fine dress tuning a lute at a table of his own; a table covered in papers held down by a heavy cross-bow. Valince approached his table and the man looked up.

His face was long, with a sharp chin that held a well-kept and oiled beard. He had a long but thin mustache that pointed like spikes at the end. His eyes were oddly… warm… as he looked her over and smiled.

“Ho there, bandit. Looking for city work, are you?”

Valince shook her head.

“I’m not a bandit. My name is Valince. I’m here to kill Immortals.”