I sat in a cold room surrounded by dozens of various officials, the duke, the captain of the guard, and a bunch of people I presumed were important. I tried to swallow, but my throat was too dry.
A man and a woman both in flamboyant silver and blue sat across from me wearing the royal seal of the King, the three headed hydra. These were the royal justicars of the empire. The law, the fist of the King himself, his undisputed will made action through the flesh of these elite. And here I sat, lowly me across from 2 of the most powerful individuals in the world.
I tried to shrink back into my chair, but there was nowhere to go.
“I'm sorry you had to wait over a month in jail.” The woman said in a low raspy voice. “But it is imperative that we get the full story from you directly.”
I nodded slightly in acknowledgement of the statement. They hadn’t treated me poorly the time that I had been here, and allowed Jerry to visit as often as he wanted.
“Now if you will start from the beginning of the day in question, and tell us everything that took place.” The man said in a growl.
Why is he so angry
I coughed to try and clear my throat, and began telling about the day in question, for the 20th time in the last month.
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The morning started the same as any other because Big Early made sure everyone got up on time.
I did my normal routine of making my bed, making breakfast, cleaning up the house and leaving for work with enough time to pick up supplies for prospective customers, especially since Shan had eaten all of the extras that I had prepared.
I was shocked when I rounded the corner to work to see the same 3 faces waiting for me, except there was a notable difference this time. They weren’t wearing casual clothes, they were wearing leather armor, swords, axes, bows and quivers. They were prepared to go fight someone or something. Upon recognizing them I began to turn to go to the managers house directly and explain the crazy situation.
“Hey Tom! Long time no see,” Shan boomed while waving frantically at me. The other two just stood there with arms crossed in direct contrast to their companion.
Dangit, I’ve been spotted
Once again I turned on that extroverted version of myself and mustered my largest grin and waved back as I walked towards them.
“Hey everyone, long time no see indeed!” as I got closer i continued, “What are you all doing here this morning, not purchasing another tour I should think?” I laughed nervously but no one corrected me, “Are you?”
Vi’s long hair was pulled back into a ponytail allowing me to see the entirety of her face for the first time. She was dazzling to say the least. I felt my jaw begin to drop but began biting my tongue to force myself to remain expressionless.
“We have a proposition for you, one that you will find quite profitable.” Vi continued, “You're going to leave a note to your boss that you are taking us to the entrance of the dungeon, which is technically true. But what we are actually going to do is go find the lost statue of the third sister, which is where the secret entrance to the dungeon is.”
I waited for the punchline, but it never came. “You're joking right? A secret dungeon, the lost statue..” she cut me off by pulling out two gold coins.
“Are you in or should we find someone else?” Her matter-of-fact expression told me that she already knew what my answer was going to be.
“Let me get our vouchers and pack some supplies and I’ll be ready in 15 minutes!” I replied reaching for the coins.
She pocketed them quickly and added, “After we get there.”
“Of course of course.”
I guess that makes sense
As instructed I led them back to the statue of the second sister on the outskirts of town before they told me anything else.
Vi pulled out a newly purchased map and folded it out for all of us to see. It must have been a fairly expensive map, because the entire area was detailed including the proportions of the lake, river, mountains and their distances from each other. She pulled out a charcoal pencil and handed it to me. “Make an ‘X’ exactly where each of the first two statues are and where the known dungeon entrance is.”
I did as instructed.
Charles pulled out a small notebook out read outloud, “Where the twins intersect with the mouth of the beast there you will find a …something I couldn't make out in the last part it was faded.” He slipped the notebook back into his pocket deftly.
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Vi took the pencil back and made a triangle out of the three points on the map, then drew lines across the points to the other side to reveal that they intersected at one point…
They looked at me expectantly and I instinctively fidgeted from the attention.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, what’s located there?” Vi asked narrow eyed and expectant.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing, there has to be something.”
“I mean there's farms out there, so crops and livestock most likely.”
The three of them looked at each other with squinted faces. This didn’t seem to be what they were expecting. After some deliberation on their part we headed for the spot on the map. After 2 hours walking on the road and on the outskirts of a couple other farms we came to the general area that the map had located.
The farm in question belonged to a Mr. Arnold Hamptoms. He was a grower of various vegetables as well as some livestock. I didn’t know him personally, but I knew of him generally.
“Well,” I said, gesturing to the sweeping nondescript land before us, “We’re here.”
“There’s nothing here,” Vi said in disbelief. She looked at me, eyes aflame.
“Like I told you earlier, there’s nothing.” I replied internally smug. She took a step towards me, the anger very present on her face. I held my hands between us to act as a barrier, not that those shortswords strapped to her waist would be stopped once they got going.
“Come with me,” I said to the group and led them to a cluster of trees a few hundred yards away. “Here,” I said, unpacking some supplies, “I’m sure you’re all hungry and a little tired..”
“For Voth sake, I’m not hungry, we need to be out there looking for whatever it is that is supposed to be there.” Vi had regained control of most of her anger, but some still spilled over in her words.
“Let’s just hop the fence and looked for ourselves.” Charles piped up.
“Yeah it’s not like they could stop us,” Shan grinned with her hand going to the giant 2 handed axe strapped to her back.
I finished unpacking their picnic feast and stood up dusting the dirt off of myself. “As much as I would love to see y’all looking through fields while waiting for the city guard to come find you, I have a better solution.”
“Which is?” Vi said pointedly.
“For the low cost of 1 silvery I can solve your problem.” I said smiling.
Deftly Charles stood up and reached for one of his bracers. Charles was usually the most straight face and detatched of the bunch, but his pupils seemed to have fully dilated while a chill ran down my spine.
I quickly said, “To bribe the farmer for information.” Backing up all the while with my hands up.
Was he about to hurt me?
He slowly returned to normal and sat down crosslegged as Vi fished out a silver coin from a generously sized purse of coins.
She quietly handed it to me and I took it and strode off in the same breath. “I'll be right back,” I promised. “Try not to get arrested while I’m gone!”
I wonder what it was that I said that set him off. Maybe he thought I was trying to exploit them for money? But even so, I feel like the response was still a bit much.
WIthin a couple minutes the group was far behind me as I strode up to the old wrap around porch of the farm. It was probably a beautiful place in its heyday, but now it seemed to be barely hanging together. The white paint had all but browned, there were more holes in the porch then there was wood, and it seemed that they had an infestation of cobwebs.
I knocked on the door loudly and waited for someone to answer. A little girl, not older than 6, opened the door. Red hair, pigtails and freckles made her the picture perfect postcard for country life.
“ Wh’cha want.” she let out with a southern draw in her voice.
Not necessarily something that I was proud of, I slipped into the southern accent that I had worked extremely hard to get rid of over the last few years, “How ya doin little lady? Your pa around these parts?”
“Naw he’s out in the field.”
“What about your Ma?
“Dead.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
She shrugged in response.
“Do you know when your Pa will be back?” I probed.
“Probably won’t be back till supper.” She looked away nonchalantly.
I gave her a quizzical look and pulled out a silver coin. Her eyes lit up like diamonds, “Wanna earn this here coin?”
She nodded feverishly.
“I’m looking for some information, but I doubt a young lady such as yourself would know such a
thing. So I’ll just come back later when your Pa is back.”
The expression of shock ran across her face like lightning. “I know plenty. Give me a chance I bet I can answer just as well as Pa can!”
I raised one of my eye brows giving her a disbelieving look, “Maybe so. I’m looking for something….special,” I paused, trying to figure out what exactly I was looking for, “It would have been in the middle of y’alls field for a long long time. Your Pa ever tell you about anything like that?”
Her face squinted hard as she tried to think. There was a long string of silence until the expression of realization that was the same on humans of all ages was plastered across her entire face. She ran off quickly into the house, I smiled and waited.
From the inside I could hear a chair scraping across the floor in tiny bursts, the thudding as something heavy hit the floor, and finally the panting of a little girl as she showed back up to the front door with a large leather bound book. She placed it on the ground breathing hard, “Ma told me a story once about this giant rock from a long time ago.” She flipped through pages past pictures of different crops and animals drawn by someone with a good eye and a steady hand.
She stopped dramatically and pointed to a picture. There was a picture of a tombstone. The journal entry next to it described how the tombstone was much larger than a normal one and had some gibberish engraved in it. The family was tearing it down to expand the zucchini beds, but decided to copy the text just in case.
“Here lies a memorial to our beloved sister. Her final resting place was in the mountains where her heart was. Directly from the bosom of the only two people that ever knew her and truly loved her.”
I pulled out a crumpled piece of scratch paper and wrote down everything precisely as it was written. I handed the beaming girl the coin and told her to have a good day. Giggles could still be heard when I was more than 20 ft away from the house.