“There’s a new player name color. Red. The color of a murderer.”— Halzy to Wisteria Leothalis
The wilds beyond Araedi. Day 02.
“That’ll be enough!” A man’s gravelly voice shouted.
A greenish blue shield slammed into the ground between Sentinel and Berserker and a ghostly green wall of bricks erupted from the ground, splitting the two men apart.
Sinnamon turned in the direction of the voice and saw a man in green plate armor walking towards them. He took off his helmet, revealing a long grey beard and snow white hair tied up in a top knot. His status page named him Halzy, a level one hundred Sentinel-Spellsword.
Weaver pounded on the barrier until Berserker’s Last Stand wore off, then dropped to his knees.
“There’s still an archer out there!” Sinnamon shouted at the new arrival.
“I know. She’s been dealt with.” Halzy pointed past Weaver to where a masked man in dark violet armor was dragging a limp woman towards them. Though he wasn’t a player, but an NPC.
Name: Rhoda
Age: 78
Race: Serethi Elf
Class: Adventurer, Level 40
Subclass: Rogue, Level 50
Profession: Assassin, Level 50
Specialty: Stealth and Small Blades, Level 50
Health Points: 4,200/4,200
Mana Points: 6,140/7,950
The woman being dragged was a level seventy-four Ranger named Sixx. Sinnamon briefly wondered how Rhoda had dispatched someone nearly twice his level.
Rhoda tossed Halzy a small black vial, answering Sinnamon’s question. He pulled the cork and poured some of its contents on his sword.
Looking at Chunky, Halzy said, “I could put my poison to work on you and leave you down until my party gets here, I’ve got plenty for everyone here. Or, you can leave me Krait and you and your friend can both get lost.”
Chunky looked from Krait to Sixx. He moved over to the Ranger, picked her up, and began heading south.
“I wouldn’t go to Araedi. You’ll find no safe harbor there. My party already has your names and the guards will know you before you get there,” Halzy shouted after them.
He walked over to Krait and pulled the rapiers from his hands and arm. When Krait fell to the ground, limp, Sinnamon realized he was unconscious. When had Halzy poisoned him?
Sinnamon ran over to Halzy. “You’re just letting those two go? They murdered the three people at the top of the hill!”
“I’m not and I know,” Halzy answered. “My poison won’t be as effective against Chunky due to his high constitution, fortunately he didn’t seem to realize that. I figure Krait and their ranger will be out of it for about a half hour. Maybe a little less. That’ll hopefully be enough time for the rest of my party to pick this one up.”
Weaver walked over to them. “How did you know what they’d done? We only just found out and there’s no one else here.”
“One of the victims of their attack survived. Two girls, daughters of the survivor, came to Pella. They told Rhoda and I overheard.” Halzy fished around in his bag as he spoke. He pulled a length of chain from it and wrapped it tightly around Krait’s wrists before locking them.
“What are you going to do with him?” Sinnamon asked. It wasn’t like that chain could hold him forever. He could always teleport away with his Caer Fragment when he woke up.
“We’re… working on that,” Halzy answered. “My friend has been working with the Serethi since we got here. She thinks they might have a more permanent solution to holding people like him. Murdering NPCs…” Halzy grunted in disgust.
“Are you saying you knew they were going to kill those people?” Weaver asked. The air suddenly grew tense as Weaver’s gauntlets appeared over his fists in the heavy implication of a threat.
Halzy shook his head. “Them specifically? No. But they held a meeting at the guildhall attracting anyone who would listen under the guise that they were going to find a way home. This one—” Halzy gestured at Krait. “—was the lead instigator. He convinced a number of people that the fastest way to get home was to force Sonnet to send us home.”
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The frown on Halzy’s face and the bodies at the top of the cliff told Sinnamon what Krait had obviously meant by that.
Sinnamon turned to Weaver. “That must have been that meeting the guy you bumped into last night was talking about.”
“Yeah.” Weaver made his gauntlets disappear. “I’m sorry for threatening you, Halzy. It’s just… that was a lot to see up there.”
“No apologies needed. You kept them busy long enough for us to arrive.”
“Thank you. All of you,” Rhoda said in a surprisingly feminine voice. She pulled down her face mask and Sinnamon could see that she was, in fact, a girl. Sinnamon had missed it because her hair was shaved close to her head. “But we should get going. The army should be arriving soon.”
“Army?” Sinnamon asked.
“Yes. Pella is Islyvania’s chief training ground for officers. They do a fair bit to keep the village and her surrounding farmland safe with the help of the adventurers from Araedi,” Rhoda answered.
At the top of the hill, nearly three dozen men in plate armor were moving around the site of the attack. The bodies of the three slain soldiers and service dog were already in caskets that were being loaded onto a horse-drawn cart.
Sinnamon felt a bit of relief at the sight. Sparrow had rejoined them and since the clearing was now cleaned of the worst of the massacre, she, JonJon, and AnnaLee were spared the gruesome sight she and Weaver had stumbled upon.
A stocky man a bit shorter than Sinnamon walked over to them as they approached. “I am General Neemo. I assume the man in chains is the one who killed three of my soldiers and wounded another.”
The general’s words had been phrased as a statement, yet Halzy still responded. “Yes, he is.”
“My only question is why? What did those soldiers do to earn his ire? Why kill them?”
“Senseless violence. No other reason.” Halzy shook his head.
“Are we at war, Guardian?” The abrupt frankness of the question caught everyone, including the general’s own soldiers, off guard.
“With you and your people, I certainly hope not. But we… if you haven’t figured it out yet, we Guardians aren’t from around here. Someone took a great many of us from our world and put us in these bodies. Our actions were tightly controlled prior to this… whatever happened. But that doesn’t seem to be the case now. The indiscriminate nature by which it was done means a lot of bad people from our world have been brought here. A lot of bad people have been given powers they shouldn’t have. And with those previous limitations removed, I fear that will mean a lot of casualties as a result.”
“Very well. Given I have neither the means to contain or kill the one who has killed my soldiers, we are done here.” General Neemo’s stoic expression revealed as little emotion as his words had. He clasped his hands behind his back and turned. “I want our dead taken to the barracks as quickly as possible. Have someone notify Merriweather. He’s got his work cut out for him.”
Halzy turned to Sinnamon. “I spoke with Leothalis while we were walking up here. The queen of the Serethi is coming from Delphianna tomorrow evening. Leo asked if you would come to tell your side of what happened here.”
“We’ll be there,” Sinnamon said and Weaver nodded his agreement.
A distant roar echoed from the south and Halzy turned in the call’s direction. “That’ll be my friends. We’ve got things here if you and yours want to head back.”
Sinnamon felt a wave of exhaustion flood over her. She was ready to end the day and crawl into that way too comfortable bed waiting at her guild tower.
Their party waved a final farewell to Halzy as they stepped through their portal.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to fight the rock monster,” Sinnamon said to the trio once inside the guild tower.
“Are you kidding? This was way better! We got revenge on the people who killed us! And I leveled up twice from killing the Sorcerer!” JonJon said.
Sparrow had leveled up once, though AnnaLee hadn’t leveled up at all. Sinnamon’s subclass was more than three quarters of the way to the next level and she still had an extra thirty-two levels in reserve. She hadn’t quite settled on a new profession yet.
Sinnamon waved her good nights to the three kids. They left to head into the city for dinner, leaving Sinnamon alone in the tower’s atrium. She looked up at the great dragon in the center, then scaled the steps to her room.
Weaver sat in a chair looking out the window. He didn’t move when Sinnamon entered.
“You alright, Andrew?” Sinnamon called after closing the door.
“No,” He answered flatly, “but I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Then we won’t.” Sinnamon didn’t want to press.
If he wanted to talk, then she knew he would when he was ready. She walked over to him and began rubbing his shoulders. He placed a hand on hers and let out a sigh.
They looked out the window together in silence, watching the tiny dots that were people going about their evening. A steady trickle had followed them into this section of the city, and building lights came on as the towers received their new owners.
A dimly lit red sign about two blocks down the street caught Sinnamon’s attention. There was a visible crowd growing outside. Sinnamon cast Euryphaessa’s Gaze on herself, read the sign, and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Look over there. See that building? You’ll never guess what they named it.”
Weaver looked out the window and strained, but it was clearly too far for him to read as well. He turned to her, his expression playfully curious.
Sinnamon laughed as she answered, “The Min/Max and Relax!”
Weaver chuckled. “You don’t think it’s a…”
“What else could it be? You knew it was only a matter of time. I’m just upset we might have picked the wrong part of the city to live in.” Sinnamon laughed. Of course the oldest profession on earth had followed them to this world.
Sinnamon stepped away from the window. “You’re not going to make me go to bed alone, are you?”
“No, I’m right behind you.” Weaver stood and stretched.
Sinnamon started to undo the lace on her outfit before remembering that she could just unequip it. As she mentally prepared to do so, she noticed a hole in the outfit, right where she’d taken the arrow earlier. “Oh no.”
“What’s up?”
“There’s a hole in my dress. Durability’s all gone. I really liked it.”
“Looks like your whole outfit took a beating. Are you wearing any actual armor under your masquerade outfit?”
“Just the starter robes.”
Weaver shook his head. “That won’t do. You’re level fifty-four, you should be wearing enchanted gear by now. Didn’t you say Orb left us extra money? Guess that means we’ll have to go clothes shopping tomorrow.”
Sinnamon smiled. “It’s a date.”