Five bouncy balls on the wall, five bouncy balls. You take one down and pass it around, four bouncy balls on the wall.

I don’t know if it was delirium or a mental break, but the song played in my head as I worked my way through the lockpicking minigame. I’ll tell you one thing though; it helped a shit ton. I didn’t falter once when my brain wasn’t overthinking it. That’s something I would have to remember on my future lockpicking adventures.

With a loud click the shackles holding me in place snapped open. My shoulders screamed when I lowered my arms, the muscles there unhappy with being stuck in a raised position for so damn long.

I rubbed at the sore spots as I trotted across the darkened room toward where I thought Miranda was. My foot caught something on the floor sending me crashing to the ground. A sad reflection of my still lacking dexterity. Remind me later to put a few more points into my agility stat.

Whatever I had tripped over was lodged painfully on my bare foot. I reached down, yanking on the oddly smooth thing. I rubbed my thumbs over it yelping when I realized what it was. The eye sockets and rows of teeth gave it away. A skull. I’d had my big ass foot in some dead guy’s mouth. Gross.

“Are you alright? What happening?” Miranda asked in quick succession.

“I’m fine. Keep talking. I need to know where you are.”

I pushed off the ground and almost fell flat on my face when my hand slid on something. I picked it up, grateful it wasn’t another bone. It was a book. I didn’t have any pockets to shove the thing into so instead I just held it as I searched for Miranda.

“Ouch, Joe, what the fuck…”

“Oops, sorry.”

I grimaced, mentally kicking my blundering ass for just practically smacking her in the face. I reached up and focused on the icon as it appeared playing the bouncy ball game all over again. I sang my dumb song in my head while I listened to the dressing down Miranda was spitting at me. She was like a house cat. Gentle and innocent until it's mad and then here come the claws.

She dropped a lot more gracefully when the shackles came loose. Or at least, She didn’t stumble so badly that I had to catch her. A very good thing since I probably would have just smacked her again as I tried to move around in the pitch-blackness.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said.

I took her hand and fumbled toward what I hoped was the door.

“Let go, Joe. I’ve got this.”

I dropped her hand. Pink fire flared and I watched as the skeleton I’d just assaulted started stacking itself back into shape. The mostly whole body reached down to grab the skull, dusting off the open mouth with a bony finger before slamming it onto his vertebrae. The skeleton's fiery eyes turned to glare at me. Something it shouldn’t have been able to do without any flesh.

I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck and for whatever reason words slipped out of my mouth without my permission. “Sorry about the… ahh… the whole foot in a mouth thing.”

The skeleton man folded his bony arms, still looking at me. I suddenly missed the darkness. There had been no judgment there. At least none that wasn’t in my own head.

Now that there was some light, I looked at the book I still held in my hand. The thing was a green leather-bound manual of some kind. It didn’t have a title, but it did have a golden imprint on the cover of what looked like a silhouette of a garden gnome.

I flicked open the book and read through the scrawled and uneven words within. I’d barely gotten past the first sentence when it flared and disappeared. A notification flashed up in front of my face.

New Skill Unlocked: Gnome tongue

You have learned an intermediate level of the guttural language the gnomes speak. You can now communicate effectively enough to ask for directions to the library with a dusting of swear words thrown in.

I don’t know how often the new skill would help me considering I’d not met a single gnome that could speak but hey, a skill is a skill, I guess. I ran my fingers through my hair, muttering when they hit a snag and pulled on the strands. I really needed a haircut. I shook my head and turned away, changing course as I had absolutely not been heading in the right direction.

“Come on, we have to find Stella and get out of this blasted place.”

“Does that mean we completed your special quest?” Miranda asked.

I frowned and paused as I opened my quest menu. I don’t know what I was expecting to see. I think it safe to say I failed given I’d not planted the evidence and had been caught and thrown in jail. This seemed like an archaic place. I half expected to be sentenced to death even though I was the whole reason the king had been crowned.

What I found instead was an updated quest.

Quest Updated: Ill-gotten Crown of Reverence

Description: King Eric of Castle Condamine has returned to his thrown and with his return comes the smuggler's freedom to operate. The King's power remains damaged however as the High Priest of the Fellowship of Fayum refuses to bless the crown and restore its power. Gift the King with the evidence of the deceased Count’s wrongdoing to help him persuade the High Priest.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I guess I should be happy the quest was still active. Kendrick had mentioned how important this one was to the Shadow Walkers. Happy was not the emotion I was feeling though. More like frustration bordering on just plain anger.

I picked the lock on the door and rushed out of our cage.

“Looks like it's still active. We’ll have to finish it while we find Stella,” I said.

“I think I have an idea about that. Before the guards cast their deafening spell on me, I heard them say she’d make the perfect guard dog. I bet she’s with the King.”

“There is no way Stella would side with some stranger. She is more likely down here somewhere.”

“Do you think they shackled a dog to the wall? You know Stella is a warrior, it would take more than a metal chain to keep her caged,” she said.

“Just make you skele-man follow me for a bit, I want to check the other cages.”

“Can we not waste time? I want to get the hell out of this place.”

“Why are you fighting me on this? It’ll take two seconds,” I snapped.

“Fine.”

The skeleton followed me as I jogged down the thin pathway, my head whipping one way and then another as I looked into the countless empty cages.

“Stella!” I shouted, hoping she would make a noise.

“Can you two shut up? It’s bad enough down here without the pair of you bellowing like cows.”

I skidded to a halt outside a cage and stared inside at the mountain of a man chained to a wall. He looked very different without his steel armor and tower shield. His body was covered in long slashing scars and his long dirty auburn hair brushed his shoulders. His piercing eyes blinked through the brightness of the glowing skeleton standing behind me as he scowled.

“Joe.”

“Theo, good to see you again.”

The man laughed. “I bet it brings you a lot of pleasure seeing me like this.”

“Well… pleasure is a strong word but it’s definitely along that line somewhere.”

“Go on, get out of here. Your dogs in the King’s office. I saw her there before they threw me in here.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

The man shrugged which was an awkward movement with his arms shackled to the wall. “Why not?”

I ground my teeth a little at that. The man had a way of getting right up under my skin. “Where’s Nora?”

“She and Gabrielle were tossed out of the castle. Lucky Gabby has a way of soothing Nora or the whole damn village might have been flattened under her axe.”

“Yeah, she’s a force to be reckoned with,” I admitted.

“That she is. Now go. I’m sick of looking at your face.”

I rolled my eyes before focusing on the icon of the cage door. It didn’t take me long to free the giant man.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Why are you helping me?” Theo asked as he rubbed at the rings of angry red skin around his wrists.

I faked a deeper voice as I said, “why not?”

“Fair enough, let’s find my gear.”

The four of us rushed down the hall and up the curving stairs on the other side. I opened a locked iron door at the top of it. Two guards were sitting on the other side of the door playing poker and deep in their cups. Miranda’s skeleton friend took out one of them and Theo the other. Having a tank player in the group was handy even if he was a douchebag.

We found a locked chest not far from the guard's station. I picked the lock and found Miranda’s gear. She looted the chest and took a moment to re-equip herself. Two chests later and two more flights of stairs and we were all properly equipped and on the ground floor of the castle. Theo took the lead with Miranda giving directions. She, in rat form, had explored more of the castle than Theo or I had.

We stuck to the thankfully almost empty servant's stairway as we climbed toward the King’s office. We only had to silence three servants. As I stepped over the unconscious form of the last one, I whispered a small apology. I couldn’t help but feel bad even though they were clearly NPCs.

When we reached the floor that housed the office, I pointed across the hall at the spiral stairs heading up to the next floor. “Miranda, take Theo to the portal. Get out of this place as fast as you can. I’ll meet you both out there.”

Theo turned with a frown. “What are you going to do?”

“I have some business to finish,” I said.

“What kind of business.”

“The kind of business that is none of your business,” I snapped pushing past the man.

“Joe…”

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Theo. Now follow Miranda and get the hell out of here before we’re all caught.”

Theo reached out and grabbed my shoulder. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to do it alone.”

I looked back at him, frustrated by his gallantry. “Oh, but I do.”

I Shadow Rushed across the hall to the office door and slipped inside, rushing again to hide behind a wide sofa by the window. The King looked up, frowning at the door that was still creaking open like a phantom hand was pushing it.

“This damn castle is full of ghosts,” the man snarled climbing to his feet and slamming the door.

Behind him, Stella started barking. She was locked in a cage. The thick metal bars glowed red with some sort of magic.

“Be quiet,” King Eric snarled. “It’s hard to think with your constant noise.”

Stella only barked harder even when the man kicked the cage. Anger bubbled up from deep inside me at seeing my girl being disrespected that way. I took a deep breath to calm myself before fishing the note from my bum bag. I’d thought it had disappeared when it flared the first time I read it but apparently, quest items didn’t disappear, they just violently relocated themselves to my inventory.

I folded the note into a fancy paper airplane and waited for the King to be distracted enough to through the thing without being caught. It soared across the room, skimming across the desk before falling on the floor.

The King leaped to his feet and drew out his jeweled dagger as his eyes swept the room. I cowered in my shadows as his footsteps rounded the desk.

“Who’s there?” he snarled.

Damn, I’d thought the airplane trick had been a brilliant idea. Evidently, it had not been. The sofa I was hiding behind went flying, breaking apart as it hit the wall.

I looked up at the King from my place on the floor and smiled, giving him a little wave. “Hi, your Majesty.”