Part IX: To Reach A Golden Hand
In the days that followed, we decided to split the team in two. Corminar and Lore would go after the depth-raider with the witchfinder’s clasp in their possession, while Val, Arzak and I would begin investigating this Player.
It hadn’t taken us long to realise that we needed to act on Aiwin’s information. The presence of a Player set off alarm bells at the best of times, but to know that one was involved with such dangerous schemes as the witchfinder experiments meant that they were definitely not up to anything good. Our solution to this problem of not having any more information than that was to find more information, naturally. Without any other semblance of a lead, we decided to head to Auricia, the capital of the Goldmarch. After all, where else would someone with enough coin to bankroll the witchfinders in such a way be from? All wealth of that description had to, surely, come from Auricia in some capacity.
We said our goodbyes to Lore and Corminar, watched them walk away, then turn and mutter to one another before Lore jogged back over to us. ‘Forgot the clasp,’ he explained, then hurried off once more.
‘Lore?’ I called after him.
The barbarian turned. ‘Yeah?’
‘Sword.’
He patted his back, where his sword should be, then realised it was still on the floor in the camp that Val, Arzak and I were sitting around. He hurried back again. ‘Whoops!’ After that, Lore finally had everything, and the three of us were left to our own devices.
We’d continued along the merchant road for many days, until the taverns grew more frequent, and the dirt more well-trodden. Soon, we were passing through Auricia’s peripheral towns, and not long after that, we caught our first sight of the capital itself.
I had thought some of the peripheral towns were big, so it hadn’t really prepared me for the sheer size of Auricia. Huge stone towers seemed to pierce the heavens themselves. The walls of the city, themselves as high as any building I’d ever seen before, seemed to stretch for miles in either direction, and still the buildings sprawled out of the gates. A giant spiralling brass dome in the centre of the capital announced the presence of the seat of the goldmarch, Queen Amira’s Golden Palace.
‘Why’s it brass, though?’ I asked, nodding to the spiralling dome.
‘Even queen not have that much gold,’ Arzak responded.
Fair enough; it was a bloody big dome, after all.
We walked into town through the—apparently “poor”, though it seemed pretty much in line with the Tundras—outer town, then had to queue at the gates to get inside the city proper. Certain citizens, armed with specific paperwork, were waved right through by the guards, but for the rest of us, we had to brave interrogated by the soldiers in mustard surcoats.
When finally we were allowed through, it was early afternoon, and the people of Auricia seemed out in their masses. I put to Val and Arzak that it must be some kind of festival, but both of them replied that they thought this was just what Auricia was like. Neither of them seemed entirely sure, though.
‘OK,’ Arzak said as we strolled up one of the capital’s main roads towards the centre. ‘Straight to tax office. Find out about Player.’
As she was saying that, though, the lovingly illustrated sign of a nearby shop caught my eye. I came to an abrupt halt, and it took Arzak and Val a moment to realise I wasn’t walking alongside them.
‘What this?’ the orc asked.
I nodded towards the shop—Needle & Felt.
‘You want do shopping?’ Arzak said.
‘You can get your sewing stuff later, Styk,’ Val added. ‘We’ve got stuff to do.’
I shrugged. ‘Lore and Corminar are going to be a few days, aren’t they? I think we can spare ten minutes. Especially if it means I can start levelling up my Needlework.’
‘You’re really that into sewing?’
‘I’m into getting Dexterity and Charisma points every time I level, if that’s what you mean. And if I get some decent armour out of it…’
Val glanced to Arzak, who shrugged.
‘We wait outside,’ Arzak said.
When I left the shop once more fifteen—not ten, admittedly—minutes later, I carried a fresh batch of thread, as well as some thick dark green cloth that the shopkeeper had said I could layer into a very basic armour. It wouldn’t be something that would fend off a blade, but would keep me from the odd graze here and there, and that was a good start. My rucksack hung heavy on my back, and I was starting to regret picking Warped Shield over Cloth Storage II purely because I didn’t want to have to carry all this stuff, though I did know, really, that Warped Shield was still the better pick.
I was distracted, anyway, by both Arzak and Val being missing.
I spun around, searching the milling crowds, the striding workers and the ambling tourists, and spotted them a minute or two later inside a women’s clothing store. With a sigh, I adjusted the straps of my rucksack, and followed them inside.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked Val, craning over her shoulder as she held a dress up to her body, studying it in the mirror.
The witch blinked back at me. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘It looks like you’re—’
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
‘What do you think of this? Would it suit me? Blue has always been more of my colour.’
‘I thought—’
‘Yes or no? Pretty?’ Val prompted me.
‘As pretty in red as in blue,’ I replied. ‘Where’s Arzak?’
Val didn’t reply for a moment, instead tilting her head as she studied the dress in the mirror. ‘Changing.’
‘Changing what?’
Finally, the witch scoffed and put the dress back on a nearby rack. ‘Clothes? Gods, you really are dim sometimes.’
Before I could reply, a nearby curtain swung open, revealing Arzak in a ballgown, one clearly made for the orcish frame.
‘So me getting a few pieces of cloth was wasting time, but you two—’ I started, but was drowned out by cooing from Val and the two women analysing the dress and its fit in minute detail.
Behind me, an older, dapper gentleman coughed pointedly, then gestured me towards a small stood. ‘The boyfriend seat, darling,’ he said, then strode confidently across the floor to join Val in encouraging Arzak to buy the dress.
Many, many moons later, Arzak made the purchase, and the older gentleman wrapped it in a box and far too many ribbons. As we walked out, I couldn’t help but voice a question I knew, really, that I shouldn’t. ‘And just when are you gonna wear that? It’s not like we go to many balls, is it?’
Val punched me on the shoulder, and didn’t follow it up with the usual cheeky grin. ‘You’re not funny.’
‘Are you joking?’ I replied, finding myself more offended than I’d expected. ‘I’m the funniest of the lot of us.’
‘Am I joking? Are you joking?’ Val responded. ‘It’s clearly me or Lore who is the funniest. Though I don’t know how often Lore intends to be funny, and how often—’
‘It me,’ Arzak said confidently.
Val and I turned to her, faces blank.
‘With orcs,’ Arzak clarified. ‘They say I hilarious.’
Val and I remained silent, not sure whether or not this was an example of her humour. ‘Right…’ Val finally said, and at that point we dropped the whole conversation, instead focusing once more on tracking down the information we’d come for.
* * *
Auricia’s tax office was an incredibly large building not too far from the centre of town and the Golden Palace, and was manned by hundreds, if not thousands of people with ancestry from all parts of the world. This was a very serious affair, I realised, and that made sense: the Goldmarch was built on customs and import taxes. Without buildings such as this, the treasury—and kingdom itself, I guessed—could crumble.
Val eloquently lied to a man behind a desk on the ground floor, telling them we were here to retrieve public tax records. A little palm-greasing to merchant in the travellers’ inn had given us some information: those people and business who had contracts with the monarchy had to publish their records publicly—a matter of keeping these wealthy people under control, we suspected. So it’s those records we claimed we were after, and not those of a private individual who had nothing to do with Queen Amira, and everything to do with punching holes in reality.
We next were lead up to the third floor, where we were given a ticket number and were forced to wait—for literally hours—on uncomfortable wooden benches. I had to suspect they’d made these benches as uncomfortable as they had to convince people to give up waiting, and make the lives of these civil servants an ounce less painful. But we had a job to do, and it was the three most stubborn members of the Slayers who were here to do it.
When our number was finally called, we were lead to a booth manned by an orc. A good few paces away, Arzak paused, and turned to us. ‘Let me handle this,’ she said.
‘Err, don’t you think—’
‘I handle this,’ Arzak said, her tone making this sound more like an instruction than a suggestion, this time around.
Before either Val or I could argue this point—both of us surely itching to point out that we needed to be smooth and charming here if we were going to get the documents we were after—Arzak turned away.
I watched Arzak go. ‘Is this a good idea?’
‘Probably not,’ Val replied, then after a moment shrugged her shoulders and took a seat on a nearby bench. I joined her.
It was a minute later, when I heard the orc behind the counter laughed his head off, that Val and I turned, eyebrows raised, to look over at Arzak.
‘And then said… that not my sheep!’ our friend said.
The orc behind the counter laughed again, this time violently, and had to wipe away tears from his eyes.
I looked at Val, who looked back at me blankly. ‘I don’t—’
‘No,’ Val agreed.
Eventually, Arzak returned to us with not only the information that we required but also the offer of a date the next evening. When we asked whether she was going to follow up on the latter, she only shrugged and said ‘if have time’. We turned our attention next to the information on the witchfinder experiments, only for Arzak to tell us something that made our hearts sink: the people funding these experiments were from the palace itself.
If we were going to find out more, we’d need to break inside the palace vaults.
Val raised her hands in a cheer. ‘Bank heist!’ she cried.
"Styk"
Level 12 Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 28
Intelligence — 124
Dexterity — 51
Strength — 54
Wisdom — 32
Charisma — 21
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 30
Knifework — Level 23
Identification — Level 10
Stealth — Level 9
Needlework — Level 9
Abilities:
Slice — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].
Stab II — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR], increased by an additional 20%.
Execution II — Attack a target while undetected for +200% damage.
Closed Reach — Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches. Uses mana.
Mana-Fuelled — Passive. Optionally, use mana in place of stamina to activate Knifework abilities.
Execution II — Attack a target while undetected for +200% damage.
Local Portal II — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a ten yard radius. Uses mana/second.
Portal Slice — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects that are not reinforced by magic.
Tamed Portals — Passive. Increased efficiency of portal magicks means that your portal glow is reduced by 50%, making them less likely to be detected by enemies.
Ash Husk — Convert your flesh to ash, strengthening it against flame for ten minutes. Gain 50% resistance to fire attacks.
Shrill Perimeter — Create a perimeter wall of 20 foot radius, invisible to all but those adept in magicks. If an enemy crosses this perimeter, this spell releases the shriek of a banshee.
Warped Shield — Passive. If an enemy strikes you with a low-level melee weapon, Warp Shield automatically activates to open a portal that deflects this attack. You must not have any portals currently active. Uses mana on activation.
Stealth Attack — Passive. 50% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.
Stitch — Create a basic stitch in common fabrics. Ability scales on [CHA].
Basic Cloth Armour — Craft basic cloth armour, quality dependent on materials, time and skill level.
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +900%