Victor was already halfway into the body bag when he realized the alarm had gone silent.
The last thing he remembered before entering his own soul and bonding with the book — the Focus — had been the vault alarm resounding throughout the stone chambers. But the whole complex had been eerily silent since he had awakened…
Come to think of it, he had initially collapsed down to the blood stained floor, but he had woken up on one of the cots. He suspected Deva was to blame.
Just why was she helping him? She had initially been frigid towards him, and Lord Harvey hadn’t mentioned her during any of the planning…
As the ruby haired woman was about to seal him completely within the black, waterproof bag, Victor stuck out his hand and pulled back the flaps to peer into her emerald eyes. “Why are you helping me?” He whispered loudly.
Instead of answering, she simply glared at him. “Shut up.”
And with that, she stuffed him back down into the bag, and then Victor knew nothing but hot, humid darkness.
It was admittedly a bit difficult not to panic. Victor wouldn’t ordinarily consider himself claustrophobic, but being bound in such a small, stuffy space that he could hardly move his own arms instinctively raised the primitive parts of his brain into primal alarm.
It became even worse when Deva hefted him up with what seemed like great ease, carrying him over to where Victor knew the cart with the other neatly packaged corpses was waiting.
She dropped him without warning, and the impact drove the little wind he had straight out of his lungs. Victor couldn’t help it. He groaned.
As punishment for his involuntary outburst, a sharp elbow jabbed him in the side, followed by a muffled command. “Not a muscle.”
Remaining as still as he was able, Victor took slow, measured breaths. He hoped it wouldn’t be too long, as the bag seemed pretty airtight. Forcing himself to relax, he closed his eyes, focusing on remaining limp as the cart began to move.
Several miserable minutes passed — though it was hard to judge exactly how long. At one point, Victor was pretty sure they entered a lift. About half a minute after that, he caught faint snatches of muffled conversation — the only word he could catch was ‘Benjamin.’
And then he was falling.
It took every bit of self control to restrain himself from screaming wildly. If he thought the first impact had been rough, he had been sorely mistaken, as it felt like he had been sucker punched in the gut.
This time, he couldn’t stop himself from reacting. He choked.
And then a colossal weight smacked into him from above, followed by a rapidly increasing pressure. Fuck, am I going to die like this?
As Victor began struggling in vain to free himself, he felt the weight began to shift, and then he could suddenly breathe properly again.
Early evening light streamed in through a narrow gap, and Victor took huge, refreshing lungfuls of the open air.
A pair of emerald eyes peered down at him. “Stop staring and get the fuck out.”
Victor glared back. “I can’t move.”
Rolling her eyes, Deva reached over and pushed some of the extra weight off of his body, before tearing open the rest of the bag. After stretching his newly freed arms, Victor finally clambered out of his stuffy prison — and immediately slipped on something slimy and slid down a slope of decaying garbage, splattering head first into a several hours old carcass.
As a butcher in training, he was fortunately accustomed to getting intimate with gore, but it was still a rather unpleasant way to rejoin the land of the living. At least this one wasn’t human — regardless of whatever it actually was, he could at least tell that much.
Now soaked in sweat and hours old blood, Victor shakily rose to his feet, looking up to fix Deva with a dark glare.
The mysterious woman was sitting perched on the rim of the dumpster Victor now found himself at the bottom of. For the first time since they met, she gave him what appeared to be a genuine — but cruel — smile.
Crossing his arms, Victor continued to frown. “Right then.” He sniffed, then immediately regretted it. “Are you finally going to tell me why you helped me?”
Deva’s smile fell, and she adjusted her position on the dumpster rim. “I owed Harvey a significant debt. Now, I consider my debt paid. That’s all you need to know.”
“And you realized that if I were caught, it would put Lord Harvey in significant danger.”
Her face remained stoic and impassive. “Something like that.”
“Right.” Cautiously searching for decent handholds and footholds, Victor began slowly making his way up the mountain of gore and assorted organic detritus. “Well you have my gratitude, Miss Deva.”
Reaching the top, Victor glanced over to her just in time to catch the ruby haired woman’s frown. “But not your debt?”
Wiping his forehead — rather uselessly, as all it managed was to smear the dirt and sweat and blood around — Victor grinned. “Nope. You only helped me to pay off your own debt to Lord Harvey, remember? And on behalf of my employer, I consider your obligations paid.”
Deva rolled her eyes. “Touche.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As Victor climbed up the rim of the dumpster himself, he took stock of his surroundings. They appeared to be in a wide brick alleyway. The area was deserted, and Victor didn’t quite recognize it… but judging by the other buildings he could see at either end of the alleyway, they were in the trashy part of the mercantile district.
How had they gotten here so quickly from the casino vault?
Turning back to his strange savior, Victor met her gaze for several long seconds. Neither spoke.
With a sigh, he clambered over the rim of the stained, rusted dumpster and hopped down to the pavement below, splashing up a shallow puddle in the process.
“Hey!” Victor looked back up to where Deva was now looming over him. God, it was unfair how clean she had managed to remain. “Don’t ever come back.”
Victor nodded and gave her a little salute. “Not if I can help it.” He paused. “Well, goodbye, I suppose.”
Turning around, Victor began stumbling off to the nearer exit of the alleyway when Deva spoke again, causing him to stop in his tracks.
“Goodbye, Victor.”
He didn’t look back, but he did frown. How had she known his name?
----------------------------------------
Victor didn’t get many stares as he made his way back to his apartment, which wasn’t really all that surprising.
If he had still been in the upscale side of the district, he certainly would have, and could even expect to be stopped by the city guard. But here? Here, he was just another miserable second class citizen suffering in resigned silence.
Sure, the merchants who had actual indoor shops probably wouldn’t let him inside, but they wouldn’t raise so much as an eyebrow at his sorry condition either.
That was just part of life in the capital.
Soon, the street lamps flicked on all at once — another one of Lord Harvey’s philanthropic projects. The cheap alchemical devices had been installed in every part of the city with a claim that they would reduce crime and make the entire city safer, for rich and poor alike.
Of course, sometimes they sputtered out, requiring a technician to come out and diagnose the problem — and they also provided a convenient way for the crime boss to further exert control over the dynamics of the crime in the city.
Because he knew how to make them shut on and off on command, naturally.
Not that Victor could complain. Overall, they did make it more comfortable to walk alone at night — though that’s not to say it was actually safe, or that he shouldn’t keep his guard up.
But tonight? Tonight, Victor didn’t bother to stay alert. He simply let himself enjoy being alive, feeling the slight breeze on his exposed skin, the soft glow of the lamps reflecting off the puddles from the morning’s rain, and savoring the aroma of the nearby bakery.
As Victor rounded the block of his own apartment complex, he idly glanced up at the nearest island passing overhead. Racking his brain, he tried to recall the name. He often said he was going to memorize the cycle of the local cluster of islands that the Vistani Empire was part of, but he never had.
He knew the more common ones, of course — Gladis, Treeroot, and Ironfort — but the more distant, infrequently transiting islands often escaped him.
On this particular evening, the mists were exceptionally clear, and if he looked off into the distance, he could see another cluster of islands lazily circling impossibly far away.
Victor sighed. The thought of visiting another of the seemingly endless islands of creation was eternally enticing, but Victor knew all too well that it was nothing more than a fanciful dream. He had never even ventured outside of the capital, after all.
Returning his gaze back to his immediate surroundings, Victor unlatched the iron gate leading into the rickety, four story apartment complex which had been his home for the past six months.
There would be no enchanted lift to take him up to his room on the top floor — he would have to climb.
Several minutes later, Victor stumbled up to his own creaky wooden door. The climb usually wouldn’t wear him down so much, but the events of the day had been rather intense, to say the least.
Leaning against the peeling siding, Victor knocked six times in a specific, instantly recognizable pattern of long and short beats. Dull footsteps followed, and then the door swung inward.
“…You look like shit.”
With monumental effort, Victor straightened up and met Chloe’s concerned gaze. “I certainly feel like it,” he commented dryly.
Nodding to herself, she opened the door wider and beckoned for Victor to enter. He obliged, stepping straight into the kitchen.
The apartment wasn’t particularly spacious.
“The kiddos are all still out,” she explained, brushing a wavy blonde lock out of her eyes as he looked around the cluttered yet simultaneously barren space. All kinds of miscellaneous items adorned the cramped space — from pots and pans, to worn books and scrolls, to toys and games. But none of it really felt like it belonged.
“Did they say when they’ll be back?”
Chloe shrugged. “Nope. You know how it is with those three.”
Victor sighed. He did indeed. Not that he himself hadn’t been that way once — but it would still be nice if they could give him some idea of when to expect them to come home. It worried him, after all.
The five of them used to be siblings — not by birth, as they came from four different pairs of parents — but by all having been adopted by the same landlady, as if they were stray cats.
But now that Victor and Chloe were old enough to make a half decent living, they had transitioned to taking care of the other three, two of which were twelve and the youngest ten.
Soon enough, the twelve year old twins would begin real work themselves.
As he washed off his face and arms in the sink — Chloe approached him nervously. “How did it… did it go okay?”
Victor didn’t respond immediately, instead shutting off the water and drying himself off. In truth, at the moment he was simply thankful that their utilities were actually working. It seemed the dungeon core was being kind this week, as ordinarily, they would have had to ration rainwater.
But for the past few days, cool, clear, drinkable water had been steadily flowing up from some great reservoir dozens of levels below in the island’s dungeon.
Victor wouldn’t count on it lasting.
“It went to shit,” he finally said, and Chloe’s hopeful expression crumpled. “But here I am. And I suspect Lord Harvey made it out unscathed, as usual.”
Nodding, Chloe wrung her own ink stained hands. The young woman was studying to be an arcanist while simultaneously working as a copywriter, so with a little hope, once she got her Focus, she could take over providing for the family.
Shutting his eyes, Victor leaned back against the counter and sighed. “I think I need a little alone time, if that’s okay with you. I’ll let you know more tomorrow, but I just…”
Putting her hand on his shoulder, Chloe gave him a firm squeeze. “It’s fine. Go rest.”
Thanking her, Victor left the kitchen and unlatched the closet door. The tiny space had been converted into his personal bedroom, a concession which the other four had readily granted him, given that he had long been their primary source of income.
Flopping onto his pile of deflated pillows and old blankets, Victor stared blankly at the small, softly glowing mana crystal overhead.
It had been a long day indeed… but there was still more to do.
Calling upon an extension of his mind that was both new and familiar, Victor raised his hand and pulled.
With a small flash of black light, a thick, hard-covered tome materialized in his hand. Suddenly both nervous and re-energized, Victor sat up and ran his hand over the intricately engraved cover.
The colors of the engraving seemed to constantly shift when he moved the book or shifted his gaze, never settling onto a single clearly defined hue. The pattern as well was odd… at first, he thought it was purely abstract, but now, it seemed to suggest something, even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
Licking his lips, Victor decided there was no more reason to wait.
Opening to the first page, he stared at the blank, snow white paper. A moment later, midnight black letters scrawled across the very center in a flowing, alien script.
Hello Victor.