Nothingness and darkness aren't the same. Ace learned the difference the instant he was thrust back into his body. In darkness, Ace had his senses; they were dulled—likely due to prolonged asphyxiation—but they were enough to remind Ace that he was dying.
Wait, what am I supposed to do?
As Ace struggled to think, something populated the darkness. Not a sight, but a sound. Voices. An overwhelming cacophony bombarded Ace’s mind. There was only one word he could make out amongst the cries.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
[ The restless spirits seek retribution. ]
[ Would you like to form a pact? ]
Ace tried to speak, forgetting the rope around his neck. When that failed, he could only try to convey his intention through thought.
Yes.
[ The spirits request a vessel to enact their vengeance. ]
[ Do you accept this request? ]
A vessel? What could work as a … wait. I accept.
[ What is your request? ]
That you get me off this fucking tree!
[ The spirits have accepted your request. ]
[ Due to the large number of spirits multiple pacts will be used. ]
[ Not enough available pacts. ]
[ Reducing pact strength to compensate for the lack of available pacts. ]
[ Pact Formed! ]
[ Active Pacts: 2/2. ]
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“Are any of them gone?” Galland asked Nina.
Nina pointed to Ace. “He’s no longer here.”
Galland signaled to a pair of knights. “Take that one down.”
“But we’re meant to leave them on,” one of the knights said.
“They'll be down in days. Why create extra work?” Galland asked.
“Their belongings are still burning,” the other knight said.
“The smoke ain’t gonna kill ya, otherwise we wouldn’t need to hang them,” Darren said.
Galland and Nina slowly turned their heads toward Darren.
“Too far? Too far,” Darren said.
Galland exhaled deeply. “Just get him off.”
“Wait!” Nina shouted. “He’s back.”
“Look’s the same to me,” Darren said.
Suddenly, the floor rumbled like the stomach of a starving beast. Several onlookers, including some knights, lost their balance, fumbling to the floor. The cobblestone streets sundered giving way to the tree’s roots that erupted from the earth. The gallows exploded into a storm of splinters.
The roots twisted into four gnarled masses. A booming thud echoed throughout Kaimen as two of the hunks of root slammed into the ground; the other two slithered up the bark forming halfway up the tree at its sides. With tremendous force, the tree pushed off the ground and stood atop its newly formed appendages.
As the tree uprooted itself, Ace felt himself pulled upward. For a brief moment, he could no longer feel the noose around his neck as he was yanked into the air. Ace took a horrid-sounding gasp of air, but before he could exhale, his rapid ascent came to a sudden stop. The rope slammed into his windpipe, and the branch it was tied to snapped, sending Ace into free fall.
Ace crashed down into the wreckage of the wooden crate that had been burning underneath him as he hanged. Fortunately, when the tree had stood, the water caught on its leaves fell and extinguished the flames. Even still, the impact nearly knocked Ace unconscious and left him flat on his back.
The cloth around his head had slipped somewhat, but because of how wet it was it clung to his face. His hands were still bound, and he was still gagged.
Ace tried to break free of his restraints using sheer strength. Summoning all his might, Ace tried to tear apart the rope around his wrists. Suddenly, his bindings came apart with ease. Ace’s surprise was quickly followed by distress as he felt something pull at the cloth around his head; it clung to his face, before it was wrestled off Ace’s head.
Ace ripped the gag out of his mouth and gazed up to see a girl roughly the same age as him—21—with unnaturally pale-white skin, and short, wavy light blonde hair. She wore dark cloth armor and a verdant green cloak. In her hand was a dagger, dark as obsidian with runes carved along the blade that glowed a dull red.
The girl extended her hand out to Ace which he quickly accepted. As the girl leaned down the cloak around her neck slipped down slightly allowing Ace to catch a glimpse of a golden chain tattoo around the girl’s neck.
“Not sure about you, but I’m running,” the girl said.
“Then I’m following you.” Ace grabbed her hand, and pulled himself to his feet.
The girl dashed toward a nearby alleyway. “Smart. This way!”
Ace didn’t have time to take in the chaos around him, but out of the corner of his eye, amongst the wreckage, he spotted his satchel—the only thing he had taken with him from home other than the light brown trench coat he always wore. Quickly snatching his charred satchel off the ground, Ace followed the girl.
“Paladin! They’re getting away,” one of the knights shouted.
“Ignore them, our priority is—” Galland cut himself off as a massive shadow was cast over him. The tree raised one of its gnarled root arms above Galland, threatening to flatten him.
“[Bind]!” Nina yelled. The ball of chains around her neck unfurled and enlarged, then shot out from around her neck and wrapped themselves around the tree’s arm, stopping it just before it smashed Galland.
“[Flash Step] X [Multiply]!” Darren clapped his hands together. A white light enveloped everybody underneath the arm’s shadow till only their outline could be seen. Then, the group vanished from their current position, reappearing a few meters back from where they previously stood, outside the tree’s reach.
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The tree overpowered the chains, shattering them, and slamming its arm into the street. A hail of stones rained down upon the nearby townsfolk, as they screamed in terror, tripping over themselves in an attempt to flee.
The husks atop the tree cried out to the people below.
“WHY? WHY? WHY?”
With each word their necrotic vocal cords turned to dust. Still their collective voice haunted the streets.
“WHY? WHY? WHY?”
“Good save.” Galland turned away from Nina and Darren to face the rest of the knights. “Our top priority is the civilians' safety. All of you, focus on evacuating them. I’ll handle the creature.”
“Yes paladin!”
“Darren and Nina, with me!” Galland pulled the blade bound to his back with chains..
“Got it,” the two replied.
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Ace looked over his shoulder. He was relieved to see nobody chasing him.
“This way,” the girl said, dipping into another alley.
Ace turned into the alley. The girl Ace had been following pried open a sewer grate using her dagger.
“In,” she commanded.
Without any other options, Ace obliged, descending into the sewers below. A loud splash echoed throughout the tunnels as Ace’s bare feet sunk into a stream of sewage. A smell like overcooked rotten flesh assaulted Ace’s nostrils.
Ace heard a second splash and turned to see the girl drop down behind him. As she put the sewer grate back on, the only light source disappeared, casting the two into darkness.
“Hang on,” Ace said, rummaging through his bag. He pulled out a torch, but quickly realized he had nothing to light it.
“[Ignite].” The girl snapped her fingers. The torch caught fire and illuminated the space.
“Can you hold this?” Ace handed the girl the torch. He retrieved a set of shoes from his bag, and swiftly put them on. “Not walking through this place barefoot.”
“Good call.”
“Thanks for the save, uh … I just realized I don’t know your name,” Ace said.
The girl chuckled. “Riven. And you’re welcome.”
“Ace. So, where to next?” Ace asked.
“You don’t have anywhere else to be?”
“Kinda just been wandering aimlessly. I only toured the city once, and that was with a cloth over my head, so I wouldn’t have any idea where to go.”
“Alright, follow me. Let’s walk and talk.” Riven began to trudge through the sewage with Ace following shortly behind her.
“So, how long have you been in Kaimen?” Ace asked.
“Little under two weeks,” Riven answered. “What about you?”
“Including today? A day.”
“Damn, that’s rough. How’d they get you in a day?”
“Well, when I wanted to come to Kaimen, I didn’t have any money to pay for a ship.”
“Yeah, I can see how that could be a problem.”
“It was, but I got lucky, or at least I thought I did,” Ace said. “Some sailors offered me free passage. In hindsight, I probably knew there was some catch, I just didn’t care much at the time.”
“At the time? What changed?” Riven asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Anyway, when I got here, it turns out the sailors imported hybrid parts. Dragon scales, basilisk eyes, vampire fangs, a whole bunch of stuff. Think some of them were even endangered. When they got caught, they pinned it all on me. I took the fall.”
“Just because they’re hybrids, people get away with the equivalent of organ trafficking,” Riven said, sickened. “It’s only the monstrous ones too. Never hear stories about people getting away with selling elf ears or dwarf livers.”
“Aren’t all hybrid parts illegal?” Ace asked.
“Did they take the parts away, when they took you?”
Ace only recalled the guards dragging him from the docks. “No. You’re saying they let them keep the parts?”
“Not exactly. But if I had to guess, when somebody came back to pick up the parts, they would’ve conveniently already been taken. Hybrid parts bring lots of gold. Kaimen is a port city, but more than that it’s a trade city. Trade cities are about profit.”
“Whole world is about profit and power,” Ace didn’t know what upset him more: that he hadn’t realized what Riven had just told him sooner, and at how unsurprised he was by it. “What about you? How’d they get you?”
“Well, when I got to Kaimen I heard about a caravan that’d be passing by in a few weeks. My plan was to hop aboard, which meant I had time to kill. One day, Mayor Raymond’s ring went missing. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently the ring was both infused and a family heirloom.”
“How’d this get traced back to you?”
“The mayor, Ronan, was convinced The Scrap King had taken his ring. Even had his guards check the sewers to search for it. Now, since I didn’t have any money, I was staying in the sewers, so while they didn’t find the ring, they did find me.
“Ronan became convinced I was an agent of The Scrap King and had stolen his ring. Despite searching me, and coming up empty-handed he insisted I was hiding it. Eventually, they put me to the gallows after I failed to give up the location of a ring I didn’t steal.”
“Potentially dumb question, who's The Scrap King?” Ace asked. “I know there was a lot in that story, but you were saying the name like I was supposed to know who that was, and I really don’t.”
“Your parents never told you about The Scrap King?”
“I lived outside the chapters.”
“Country kid. Well, The Scrap King is an urban legend. He has his minions scuttling around the sewers of every city. Each night, they emerge from underneath to steal anything not bolted to the ground and bring their findings back to him. The story is mainly for parents to explain to their kids why their things go missing.”
“So they hanged you because of some urban legend?”
“In their defense, The Scrap King is real, though they probably didn’t know that. Most people don’t.”
“So how do you know he’s real?”
“He’s a family friend.”
The combination of both what Riven said, and how she frankly said it made Ace take a moment to process it one more time. “So, he would just, like, come over to hang out on the weekends?”
Riven chuckled. “No, most of the interactions were long-distance. Occasionally my dad would go to the capital to visit him, but that’s about it. I’m trying to find him right now actually. I was planning on heading to Journey myself, but then, well, you know the rest.”
“Parents must be pretty interesting to have a friend like The Scrap King,” Ace remarked.
“They were,” Riven said with a smile.
“Oh. If it makes you feel any better, my parents aren’t here anymore either.”
“Look at us, two little bundles of trauma,” Riven joked. “Unless we wanna meet our parents prematurely, we better get moving.”
“Why’s that?” Ace asked.
“Because, so long as we got these things around our necks we’re only slightly more free than we were on that tree,” Riven gestured to the marking of a golden chain wrapped around her neck.
“Our?”
Riven held up her dagger toward Ace. Ace saw his reflection in the blade. Around his neck was a golden chain marking, identical to the one around Riven’s.
“Our only options to get this removed are with the Armistice Order and with the mayor,” Riven explained.
Ace barely heard Riven. All his attention was focused on the dagger. The dagger felt like it was calling out to Ace—not unlike the spirits from the tree. His hand unconsciously moved to touch the dagger.
Suddenly, the entire sewer rumbled. Sewage sloshed around splashing both Riven and Ace.
“What was that?” Ace asked.
“Why we’re going for the mayor, and not the order,” Riven said.
[ Vessel has been destroyed. ]
[ Pact has ended. ]
[ Active Pacts: 0/2. ]
[ Would you like to view the spirit’s final moments? ]
“Can you see this?” Ace asked.
“Are you referring to your out-of-it expression?”
“Never mind.”
Yes, Ace answered.
Without warning, Ace went catatonic. Riven reacted quickly, catching him before he dredged his whole body in sewage. Riven looked at Ace dumbfounded.
“What the fuck just happend?!”