“Hello there, sir,” Zach called toward Jace, stepping away from a dwarf who was complaining about the quality of the stone coming in. The man was middle-aged with a goatee and intelligent eyes. He didn’t look like a fighter, and Jace couldn’t see any weapons. Instead, he had a few scroll cases hanging from his belt and had one parchment out to read. Jace was tall enough to see they were plans for an arena. Looking to his left, the shaman spotted a football field-sized area leveled off for the proposed stadium.
“Is there something you need? You look like a man with a purpose.”
Jace looked at the dwarf eying up Snowy and grinned as the two were roughly the same height. He was about to answer independently when he saw the verbal prompts toward the bottom of his vision. He hated being scripted but understood the necessity of completing this mission successfully. “I’m looking for a man named Henry Tornsend. He was a big guy with a black beard. I believe he should have been around here about three days ago.”
“No,” Zach started. “I don’t think I know-”
“Yeah, I saw him,” the dwarf piped in. “The man could really move a sledge. By my hammer, we could do with a man like that today.”
Zach frowned at the dwarf but turned a grin back toward Jace. “Maybe he was around; I don’t know. I haven’t seen someone like that, but I’m not around every day.”
It looked like the dwarf wanted to argue that statement too, but Zach gave him another look. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, sir. But I know many workers head over to the Gilded Swan after a hard day. The drink there is the best in the city, and the view isn’t bad either. I’m friends with the owner,” he added and reached into his pocket. He produced a coin and flipped it at Jace. “First drink is on me.”
Jace thanked him and then turned to leave. “Do I need any more info than that?” Jace asked when he was far enough away not to draw attention to himself.
{That should be enough,} Gracie answered.
Jace pulled up his map again and found the Gilded Swan sitting along the coast, much further north than the docks had been. Over the next few minutes, as he moved through the city, he noticed the buildings increasing in size and complexity. This was far different from the tiny homes and rundown buildings near the dock. When Jace came upon his destination, he was impressed.
The Gilded Swan would have been an elaborate building in any 21st-century city. Its outer walls were built from polished marble, with framed windows and decorative curved doors. Tables were set up outside in front of the building, with maids bringing customers drinks and food. Jace glanced around back and saw tiered wooden decks looking out over the ocean. It was late in the day, and the sunset over the water would be an enchanting sight for those that could afford this establishment.
Jace knew he had to get it over with and approached the front door.
“Excuse me, sir,” he was stopped by an elderly man in a suit before he could enter. “I’m sorry, sir, but no animals are allowed inside.”
Jace was so distracted by the scenery that he had almost forgotten Snowy trailing close behind him. He noticed the wolf now as she growled at the inhospitable man.
“I’m afraid we cannot make exceptions.”
“I understand, sir.” Jace turned from the guard and knelt before his familiar. “It’s okay, girl. I’ll be in there for only a little while. I’ll be fine.” Something in her eyes told Jace another story. Almost as if she could sense the danger and wanted to protect her master. Could she possibly know what this building was? Was this one female predator sensing the presence of others like her? Jace scratched her hard behind the ears and trusted that she would be fine. This was his private module. No other players would be coming around, and none of the NPCs were advanced enough to care about the huge wolf sitting outside the brothel, waiting for her master to come out.
Jace smiled at that last thought and turned to enter the building. From everything Gracie had told him, he expected a strip club or possibly an American-style breastaurant filled with scantily clad women. This wasn’t it. It looked like a fine dining establishment with an island resort theme. Wooden tables and chairs sat in an organized pattern with ferns and accordion partitions separating them. Male and female servers moved about the room, modestly dressed, with white aprons and colored shirts. A mix of elves, dwarves, and half-breeds filled the room, though most were human.
Jace was shown to a table, and a young woman brought him a glass of water. His eyes searched his surroundings, looking for some thread he could pull that would unravel this idyllic setting into the soul-sucking nightmare it was supposed to be, but nothing caught his attention. Eventually, his eyes focused on a balcony along the western wall. The stairs to the raised walkway were hidden, but his eyes latched onto a woman leaning against the polished brass railing.
She was mesmerizing. Her heritage was some mix of Hawaiian or South Pacific, with tanned skin and long, slender limbs. Instead of the expected black hair, hers was a deep red that reminded Jace of an apple bursting with flavor. She wore a dazzling silver gown over her slim figure that looked like a thousand tiny fish scales tightly woven around her. The dress was held up by nearly invisible straps over her shoulders and fell just past her knees.
Jace must have been staring at her longer than he realized, for her eyes found him, and she smiled back. He hadn’t noticed the other woman approaching from behind, but a second beauty soon stood over her shoulder. She looked Middle Eastern, almost a perfect, grown-up version of Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin. She wore a light brown leather halter that showed off her tight muscled midriff and a narrow ankle-length blue skirt. Her arms looked as strong as some of the men he saw back at the work site, only adorned with bracelets at her wrists and biceps, connected with thin gold chains. More gold hung about her neck and ears, contrasting delightfully with her dark skin and pale green eyes. She had a ruby studded choker that didn’t match the rest of her attire, but Jace didn’t have a chance to analyze it further as she stepped behind the first woman and whispered in her ear. They laughed about something and were soon both looking at Jace.
He wondered momentarily if his orc appearance was betraying him, but his thoughts were interrupted by a young man who arrived to take his order. “Can I get you something, sir?”
Jace didn’t bother with the prompts that suggested he ask about the missing husband or what relationship Zachery had with the owner. Instead, he pulled the coin Zach had given him and placed it on the table. His inventory labeled it as a Drink Voucher for the Gilded Swan. “What does this get me?”
The young man changed his demeanor instantly. “I’m sorry, sir. I did not realize you were an honored guest. Please, excuse me. I will have one of the hostesses attend to you immediately.” He left the coin on the table and scampered away. Jace looked back to the balcony, but the two women were gone. In less than a minute, another alluring female arrived at his table, bringing a foaming mug of honey ale. Even with his Elements turned down and this not being designed for VR, he could smell the rich aroma of the drink, and he didn’t realize how thirsty it was.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
{It’s poisoned.}
Jace had almost forgotten Gracie was there.
{It will lower your resistance to the spells they will cast on you.}
Jace pretended there wasn’t a voice in his head and smiled at the hostess. She was larger than either of the women from the balcony but still beautiful with voluptuous curves and a pleasing face. Jace was willing to bet she was at least a quarter dwarf. They might not be treating him like an orc, but they picked a woman for him that could at least approach his size and strength.
“Drink up, me dear,” she said, a slight dwarven accent showing through. “Me name’s Annie. Ye shall need that drink for what I have planned.”
Jace kept his eyes on her as he lifted the mug to his mouth and pretended to take a long sip. The thick head on the ale masked the level of the liquid, and the woman was adequately fooled. She sat across from him, leaning over as she did and displaying a large percentage of her wares beneath the scoop neck of the barmaid’s outfit.
“Just keep your eyes on me, deary, and you won’t be having any more problems.”
Jace sensed the images in his mind again but was ready for them this time. Most of them were of the maid across from him, some of her smiling face, and others imagined what the rest of her body looked like. He saw the numbers associated with these pictures, which were all below ten. Numbers one and two made him blush deeply.
But then his eyes left the woman across the table, and he focused on his mission. He imagined Conor with a shot leg. He pictured Gracie gagging down bitter coffee and a stale donut. And finally, he rested on a picture of himself as an orc, banging his bare chest with his fists and screaming from the edge of a rocky cliff.
Then the pictures were gone. He was back at the table, barely a moment passing, and he was able to return the look of his hostess with a smile. “Nice ale. Where do you get it?”
Annie looked puzzled for a moment and sat up straight. “A big man like yerself might need a second glass, wouldn’t ya?”
“Aye, that sounds pleasant.”
She looked away from him, and Jace hastily reached his mug back to a potted plant beside his table, dumped the contents, and then brought it back to his lips before she turned back around. He smacked his tongue appreciatively and licked the foam from his upper lip, somehow not cutting himself on his own teeth. He felt her spell again but was ready for it. He focused this time on the support pillar in the center of the room, appreciating the intricate work of fitting the irregular-shaped stones, one on top of the other, bracing them together as the mortar dried between them. No other images even entered his head.
“Then I’ll be getting ye another one.” She stood and quickly moved to the back corner of the room, disappearing behind several plants and a false wall.
Jace stood from the table, brushed off the insistent serving boy, and followed after his hostess. There was little space for him to hide in the corner of the room, but he found an empty table and sat down with his back to the walkway. Annie came back a few moments later, and as she hurried past him, Jace sprang from his chair and retraced her steps to the corner.
{Full marks on that impressive dice rolling back there,} Gracie said. {You got an 18 and then a 20. I assume that that wasn’t an accident, but what are you doing now?}
“Finding another way,” he answered. An unlocked door stood at the end of a short hall, and behind it, stairs led down. The orc was not stealthy, but no one was around to hear him. Also, the stone steps leading into the basement were sturdy and did not creak. The lower level was a storeroom filled with crates, dried foods, and drink barrels.
Jace saw light ahead and heard the sound of a female voice chanting. On a hunch, he pulled up his spell screen, picked the Stone Armor Token, and dropped it next to a pile of supplies. Unlike the wooden floor above, the basement had fully stone-block construction, and the totem rose quickly. He then pulled up his Damage Sink Totem, but it was grayed out.
“I thought I only couldn’t cast the same totem twice in ten rounds. I know I cast two different ones in the last module.”
{You can have more than one active at a time, but not within 50 feet of each other. When you cast more than one before, you always placed them far apart and fought between them.}
Jace grunted at the new rule he had discovered. And, of course, he had placed this totem near the middle of the room. The basement wasn’t big enough for him to find another valid spot. Some protection was better than none, and he crept forward. The light and noise came from the northeast corner of the building, away from the coastal side. As he got closer, Jace could hear tell-tale kitchen noises and soon peered into a cooking room with a caldron over a stiff fire. He hid behind a pile of grain and dried fruits. A witch stood over the bubbling ale, casting spells and mumbling to herself.
At least, she looked like a witch. She actually bore a striking resemblance to the two women he had seen on the balcony . . . from the neck down. Her brown and green dress was cinched tight under her chest and around her waist, with a generous slit up one hip that revealed a shapely, muscular leg. Her dirty blonde hair fell past her long neck and caressed her bare skin as the top of her off-the-shoulder dress exposed plenty of her generous figure.
But her face was very different. She wore a simple, thin-rimmed brown hat with a veil flipped up, so she could look unhindered into her brew. Her nose was too long for her face, and her eyes too wide set. Her chin came to a sharp point beneath her thin lips. And a massive wart sat on her cheekbone. She had the classic visage of a fairy-tale witch.
This was too easy, Jace thought. He didn’t have to muck about with all the prostitutes upstairs; he only had to kill the witch right here.
{That’s not the fen witch,} Gracie said, bursting his bubble. {She is Leah, one of the lieutenants.}
As Jace got ready to pull his sword, Annie showed up with the second mug of ale she had procured earlier. “He’s left,” she said. The maid set it on the table just as Leah dipped a mugful from the caldron and magically chilled it.
The witch snarled in response. “She won’t be happy. Did you get a good look at him? Could you track him?”
“Aye, I did. In fact . . .” she then sniffed the air and looked directly at Jace’s hiding spot through the back door of the kitchen.
{Smelly orc,} Gracie chided.
The witch didn’t wait for Jace to make a move, turning and casting a spell in one motion. Jace enacted his Dodge skill, but it was pathetic, and the fire bolt hit him solidly.
{I forgot to mention,} Gracie said, {but because a winter wolf is your familiar, you do take an additional 50% damage from fire attacks.}
Jace also stupidly dodged into the kitchen and rose on the cauldron's other side. The two women stared at him less than six feet away, unsure what to do. They didn’t stay uncertain for long and raised their arms for magic attacks.
“Leah! Annie! Halt!”
The voice carried such weight that even Jace stopped drawing his weapon to regard this new presence entering the room. The two women stepped aside, and the witch flipped her veil down in respect as the most breathtaking female Jace had ever seen walked toward him. She was taller than the other women and moved with grace and fluidity, making it look like she was dancing toward him. Her skin was porcelain smooth, and Jace’s eyes traced the lines of her shoulders down the slope of her chest like ice on a hot skillet, his very soul melting inside him. Her black scoop-neck dress clung to her like a second skin, all lace and ribbon with fleeting glimpses of what lay beneath as the woven layers flowed like ebony silk over her perfect form. The skirt hung in loose gossamer panels, each fully transparent yet overlapping to mask the tops of her long legs.
“Is that how we treat our guests?” her voice came again, soothing and rich, yet still with a hint of the power she had demonstrated earlier. “Please, we don’t need weapons here.”
Without thinking, Jace pulled his sword and tossed it aside.
{So much for figuring out how to manufacture good magic saving throws,} Gracie’s voice filled his head. {She got so many critical successes on that charm spell that you might as well hand her the Level 50 Crystal, and we can call it a day.}
Jace wanted to bite back with a sarcastic remark but found he couldn’t talk. He couldn’t even move, at least not unless his mistress bade him. The enchantress in black closed in on him while the other two women retreated from the room to let her work. She lifted one of her arms, her pale hand extended from the long sleeves, and her red fingernails reached out to Jace’s chest and scratched him lightly on the skin. “So much ferocity. So much power. You need a calming touch. You need a woman’s touch.”
Jace could do nothing but look in her eyes. They were such a dark blue that they appeared black and bottomless, pits he could fall into and never get out – never wanting to get out. Shrouded by her long, raven black hair, her face was the sandy white beach of a desert island on a dark stormy night, her ruby red lips a ripe fruit to satisfy his hunger. It was safety. It was calm. It was inviting.
{Wow!!!} Gracie screamed in his head. {She just dumped a &^%$-ton of mana on you. Nice saving throws too. What happened to the 18s and 20s? I guess all it takes to knock the great Jason Hawthorne off his game is a pretty face. Well, meet Esther, the most fantasized-about woman in all the Realms of Infamy.}