One of the weird things that Josh had noticed about Dendral was the way it glorified the young. He’d expected it to be more old-fashioned, a society that placed more emphasis on respect for age and power, but instead it had what he thought was a very modern focus on youth and beauty.

Lord Silbury was one of the few nobles Josh had seen who left his hair white, but the custom amongst the rest of his age group was to wear a coloured wig or to dye it. The richer folk also commonly painted their faces, even some of the men, and paraded about in clothing that was more suited to people with body parts less affected by gravity, with inevitable results.

It wasn’t just the nobles. The main avenue in the city park was lined with stone statues depicting fit and healthy young people in athletic poses, and the daily weapons training invariably started with fitness sessions that were oddly focused on muscle tone and slenderness, as much as physical endurance or strength.

It was all weirdly familiar to someone with a twenty-first century Earth upbringing.

In flagrant defiance of this philosophy, the statues flanking the gates of the Order of the Unyielding were fully dressed in plate armour, and although their visors were closed, they nevertheless gave the impression that, under their helmets, they were frowning grimly.

The Order of the Unyielding occupied a square, blocky mansion, built by someone who must have wanted a castle, but had presumably been thwarted by city building codes, and had settled for something that looked as much like a fortress as possible. It had thick, solid walls around it that were twelve feet high, and the mansion itself had towers in all four corners. The top of each tower was screened, so Josh couldn’t see if they held guards or not. He thought they probably did.

For the entire time he had been sitting outside the tea shop no-one had gone in or out of the complex. The big front gates had remained firmly closed and bolted.

Okay, granted, Josh hadn’t been there that long. It had probably been less than an hour, but he hadn’t realised just how boring it would be to sit drinking tea and watching a building out of the corner of his eye. He’d walked all around it earlier and not seen a single trade entrance, which meant sneaking in by hiding in a vegetable cart was probably out.

Maybe a lifetime of playing video games wasn’t good preparation for an infiltration mission. He’d done okay at the library in Brackstone, but it had been terrifying and he’d been one step from disaster the whole time.

He saw an elderly man arrive and take a nearby table. He must have been a regular customer, because he was greeted with familiarity by the waiter, and the words, “Your usual, sir?”

An old man who came here every day might know something useful about the Order. Josh wondered how to introduce himself, but that proved unnecessary. The old man must have seen his curious glance and hailed Josh before his drink was even served.

He turned out to be one of those people who were constitutionally incapable of sharing a public space with someone and not striking up a conversation. Josh had met his sort before. You usually got at least one on every suburban street—they had some kind of preternatural sense for anything happening in their neighbourhood, to the point you could hardly get in and out of your car without them appearing for a chin wag, and they could talk the hind leg off a donkey.

Josh set himself to finding out as much as he could. He didn’t want to make it obvious he was after information about the Order of the Unyielding, so he let the old man ramble on, and tried to ask leading questions about some of the other things he was interested in, like Celespire, and the Seven—or Eight—Heroes.

He was therefore inwardly disappointed to discover that the old man had been born, raised and lived all his life in Dendral, and as far as he was concerned the events in Celespire might as well have happened across the other side of the world. Instead, Josh was treated to a blow-by-blow account of the old man's eldest granddaughter’s recent wedding.

Josh waited patiently, pretending interest, and then slipped in a question about the Seven Heroes, to which the old man sighed and shook his head.

“Heroes ain’t what they used to be, that’s for sure,” he said. “Them immortal ones might of been good folks once upon a time, but the thatchgallows what used to follow them around, they was another matter. Used to hang out at Crosskeys, and a rowdy lot they was too.”

Josh had no idea what Crosskeys was, but had no opportunity to ask—the old man didn’t pause for breath as he swept on.

“I wouldn’t of let my daughters anywhere near that place, no sir. Drinking and carousing at all hours of the day when they should of been hunting them demons down south.”

“Demons?” Josh asked. He was assuming the old man meant the scourge.

“Aye,” the old man said, pausing to take a shaky sip of his tea. Josh had ordered a second pot for him, since the story of the wedding had taken up the entire first pot. “Or maybe I’m getting muddled. No, it weren’t demons, that were afore Celespire fell. Storm furies, that were it, raising hell all along the border, about ten years back.”

Josh let himself be sidetracked into a story about storm furies. They sounded like elementals which, the old man said, had been sent by the Storm King to harass the southern forts.

“But that’s how it is in them parts,” he said, disapprovingly, as if an infestation of storm furies lowered the respectability of an area. “None o’ that nonsense up here, o’ course. We don’t hold with those kinds of goings on.”

Since Josh wasn’t getting anything useful—except maybe the bit about Crosskeys—he decided to focus on what he really needed right now.

“What’s that big building over there?” he asked, nodded at the headquarters of the Order of the Unyielding.

“That?” said the old man. “That? Hah! Defenders of the realm, so they say, but I don’t see them doing a mite o’ good stuck behind them walls seven days a week.”

“Here, now, grandfather, that’s no way to talk,” the waiter said, coming to clear the empty pot of tea. He said to Josh, “They look ever so fine when they ride out. They got them big white horses and their armour’s shinier than silver, and there’s coloured banners rippling out behind them. It’s a grand sight to behold!”

“When they ride out, which ain’t often,” the old man said. “And never show their faces, do they? Suspicious I call that!” He leaned closer to Josh, and confided, “They say they’re vampires underneath that armour. That’s they can’t take off their helmets in daylight.”

“Grandfather,” the waiter scolded indulgently. “Don’t go spreading stories like that!”

“Ain’t no story,” the old man said, with dignity. “Ask anyone!”

As far as Josh knew there weren’t any vampires or vampire-equivalents in Six Spires, which was one thing to be thankful for, because much as he enjoyed vampire movies, he didn’t want to encounter them in reality.

It was interesting that there were legends of vampires, though.

In any case, the more Josh looked at the job he’d been given, the tougher it seemed. The Order was well fortified, and the knights themselves left only very rarely. Were they completely self-sufficient? If so, what did they eat? Surely there wasn’t enough space for them to be able to grow all their own food. Supplies had to go in sometime.

How long was Josh going to have to hang around in the plaza watching the gates and waiting for something to happen?

The answer was, in fact, several days.

He spent the time migrating from tea shop to tavern—happily the entire plaza was lined with them—stopping to chat with locals, asking the sorts of questions a curious visitor might, but he learned little of use.

Ramina was no help either. As soon as she caught up with him—usually in the afternoons, because she wasn’t an early riser—heads started to turn in her direction, and people started to whisper in each other’s ears.

“Can you please stop following me?” Josh said, in an undertone. “You’re far too noticeable!”

She ignored this.

“Why you going round askin’ so many questions? Gods, old people are boring! If I hear another story about some granny’s aching hip, I swear...!”

“I’m doing recon,” Josh muttered, making sure no-one was in earshot.

“Pfff! Just get some rope already, and hop over the wall at midnight. Easy peasy!”

Josh rolled his eyes.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What an amazingly well thought out plan. Why didn’t that occur to me?”

“Good thing you got me then, innit?”

“How about I give you some rope, and tonight you can show me how it’s done?” Josh raised his eyebrows at her.

She glared at him.

“No really,” he pressed. “I’m clearly in the presence of a master. Please teach me, O Wise One.”

She snatched a crust from his plate—they were sitting outside a tavern where he had just eaten lunch—and flicked it at him. He was quite pleased to find he’d automatically dodged it just by moving his head. All the combat training and practice with the staff was paying off.

“I suppose I’ll just go back and tell grandpa he’s hired the wrong guy,” Ramina announced.

“Be my guest.” Josh folded his arms. “I didn’t ask to be dragged into this in the first place.”

Joking aside, Ramina was right, at least in some respects. Josh was beginning to think the Marquis of Silbury had chosen the wrong guy for the job. His only idea so far was to don the cloak of invisibility and climbed the wall at a snail’s pace, but there were so many things that could go wrong. What if they had dogs? Or other counters against invisibility? And once he did get in, he had no idea of the layout of the place, or even where the key fragment was held.

By the time Ramina had got bored enough to leave Josh to it, it was later in the evening, and he was tired and frustrated enough that he was also ready to give in. Still, he had something else he wanted to follow up on.

Instead of going home, he asked one of the lantern men for directions to Crosskeys.

This turned out to be a tavern on the dock front. Not in the nice part to the west, which consisted of stately stone buildings fronting a wide promenade shaded by trees, but on the shabbier eastern side, which was a jumble of weathered wooden jetties, overloaded barges wallowing in the water, and uneven cobbles scattered with straw .

During the day it was normally a bustling area, with workers shouting while loading and unloading bales and crates, but Josh found that it was just as loud now that the sun had gone down. Light and music spilled out of the taverns, along several groups of drinkers, busy with earnest discussions. It wasn’t rowdy, though—the punters looked more like working men on a regular drinking night.

Crosskeys was identifiable by its sign, which depicted a pair of keys crossed like swords. When Josh ducked into the doorway, he found himself in a low-ceilinged tavern with a bar at the far end. The air was stuffy and reeked of beer and sweat. A fiddler had set himself in a corner, and was playing sprightly folk tunes but ignoring his audience completely, all of whom were returning the favour.

It looked like the patrons all knew each other. They sat in groups, but occasionally shouted cheerful insults at the other side of the room. Most of them looked as if they were on the wrong side of fifty, which was a hopeful sign.

Josh made his way to the bar, and ordered an ale.

He had just taken his first sip and started to scan the room for someone he could start a conversation with, when someone landed against the bar next to him, jostling his arm and causing him to slosh some of his ale over his sleeve.

He edged back from the person, realising it was a very drunk middle-aged woman. She was grey-haired and dishevelled, wearing a shirt, britches and a waistcoat which had seen better days. She might have been pretty once, but hard-living and alcohol had worn that away, until all that was left were pouchy eyes and wrinkles.

“Hello lover,” she said, with a grin, which was accompanied by a gust of stale breath laden with alcohol fumes.

It was all Josh could do not to recoil. He settled for edging away.

“Hi,” he said, completely forgetting to use the local form of greeting.

It wasn’t the first time a drunken, middle-aged woman had tried to flirt with him. The Josh effect was in operation once again. There were times when he found it useful. This was the inevitable downside.

“Buy me a drink, sugar-plum,” she said, swaying towards him.

She was drunk enough to be slurring her words, and Josh knew that there wasn’t much he could say that would dissuade her. In his experience, the only thing to do was to disengage and walk away. At that level of insobriety her attention span was short enough that it wouldn’t take her long to forget about him.

Except Josh was boxed in by a table full of drinkers to his left and the bar to his right. Behind him was the wall, and the drunk woman was blocking the way in front of him.

“You’ve had enough already,” he said firmly, despite knowing that it wouldn’t do any good.

“Oh…” she said, her finger coming out and poking at his chest. “You think I can’t handle my booze? Eh? I’ll show you…” She blinked and lost her train of thought, then focused on him again, and tried a grin that was probably supposed to be sexy. “Hey, lover. I’ll show you a good time. Buy me a drink!”

Some of the punters nearby had noticed what was going on and were laughing as if it was funny, but Josh wasn’t seeing the humour.

He abandoned his ale and stepped back rapidly as she tried to fall onto his chest. He glanced at the bar top next to him. Could he jump onto that, run around her, and make his escape?

“Grella, you drunken sot!”

A large shape loomed up behind the woman. The newcomer was in his late thirties or early forties, with a thick brown beard and noticeable beer belly. Despite his bulk, Josh hadn’t seen or heard him approach. He put a massive paw on Grella’s head, peeled her away from Josh, and pushed her head down onto the bar, where he held her fast.

She screeched, and clawed ineffectually at his hand.

“Let go of me you brainless bastard!”

The bearded man ignored her.

“Locky, get your bloody woman out of here,” he roared. He had a deep, compelling voice full of a bear-like rumble.

A thin man with a pockmarked face—presumably the unfortunate Locky—swore and stumped up to the bar. The bearded man let Grella go, and Locky draped her arm over his shoulder, then towed her away while she shouted obscenities at the bearded man and then at Locky.

Josh started as a huge hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“Sorry about that, man,” the bearded giant said.

“Er. It’s no problem.”

“Let me buy you a drink anyway.” The man nodded at the barman. “One for my buddy here.”

Josh still had most of his first pint of ale left, but he appreciated the gesture. Although the encounter had been unpleasant, at least it was now giving him an opportunity to introduce himself to one of the locals.

He studied the bearded man, and realised that he was one of the youngest people in the room, apart from Josh. He might not know any of the things Josh was interested in hearing about, but perhaps his friends would.

“And get one for me too while you’re at it,” the bearded man added. He turned back to Josh. “Not seen you here before, kid.”

At that point Josh’s brain caught up with his ears. This guy had an American accent. He was using American slang.

He was an outlander.

“Josh de Haven,” he said, by way of introduction.

“Doug Cameron.” The bearded guy held out a beefy paw, and Josh shook it while all the pieces tumbled into place.

Was this Sir Doug, one of the Seven Heroes? He couldn’t be. He was too young.

A few minutes later, Josh was sitting at Doug’s table, surrounded by Doug’s companions. He had his two ales in front of him, and resolved to drink them slowly. He couldn’t afford to get drunk and start blabbing secrets, or singing songs that would out him as originating from Earth. This was particularly important, because the party he was with were all heavy drinkers and it would be easy to lose track. They were nowhere near as sloshed as Grella had been, but they were still packing it away.

He tuned into what they were saying, but the conversation had nothing to do with heroic deeds or history.

Instead, they started out by arguing over whether a type of dessert that Josh had never heard of counted as a cake or a pudding. After that, they moved on to an intense discussion about how long it was going to take the Office of Public Works to get the drain in Ditchmore Street unclogged for the third time. From there, they somehow meandered into a debate about whether spiders counted as insects or not.

“They’re arachnids,” Josh said. Everyone stopped and stared at him.

“How do you know?” Doug boomed.

It was the sort of thing Josh thought everyone knew. Mind you, at the age of ten he’d gone through an intense and short-lived obsession with spiders, to the extent that he’d demanded a pet tarantula for his birthday. Given that his interest had waned a month or two after that it had probably been just as well that his parents had put their foot down and refused to allow one in the house.

“I had a book about spiders when I was younger,” he said, in answer to Doug.

“What kind of nutcase writes a book about spiders?” a woman exclaimed in disgust. She had been introduced as Nyala.

Josh was preoccupied by another thought, however.

“Would a wormspider count as a mammal or an arachnid?” he asked. “Or something else completely? It doesn’t have an exoskeleton, so…”

He came to a stop. They were all goggling at him. Did they even have Linnean classifications here? Had he revealed himself as an outlander?

“Wormspiders!” One of the others exclaimed. Josh thought his name was Peak. “They make me barf.” He shuddered theatrically.

Nyala groaned. “Gods, yes, do you remember that ruined desert temple? That place was crawling with them. I had nightmares for months afterwards.”

That prompted a cascade of reminiscing. Josh sank back and let it wash over him. Doug’s friends were all adventurers who had accompanied him wherever he went. Most of the events they mentioned—the ones Josh was familiar with at least—had all taken place in the last twenty to thirty years. On three separate occasions someone mentioned the name of an old friend or acquaintance who had died, and the group would all be sad for a minute or two before the conversation perked up and moved on.

“He was with me from the beginning,” Doug said morosely, of one of the deceased. “Back before … everything. Christ, he must have been the third person I spoke to after I first arrived, y’know?”

Peak clapped Doug on the shoulder.

“I never knew him,” he said, “Before my time. But I hear he was a good man in a fight, and I would have been proud to call him a brother-in-arms.”

Everyone solemnly raised their tankards. Then someone asked a question, and they were off again.

It was late into the night by the time Josh finished his second beer, refused repeated calls for him to stay and have a third, and walked home, full of thought.

From the things the group had let drop, Doug was, in fact, Sir Doug of the Seven Heroes.

It was interesting that there was no option for Josh to view Doug’s character sheet. The Seven Heroes must have a power that allowed them to resurrect, and it had to be something tangible, because Tylas had stolen it from Gwynifer. But was it a player core, or a different mechanism? Did it not include characters sheets, or was it simply that Doug had the ability to hide his information?

Doug had clearly been kicking around Six Spires for fifty years, even though he looked younger. Assuming he had arrived in Six Spires as an adult, he must be at least seventy years old, if not more.

Josh thought of the quest he had received in Spiralia Online, right at the end.

Do You Want to be Immortal?

The immortality didn’t just mean being able to resurrect. It meant staying youthful forever. Which sounded great until someone came along and cut it out of you so they could take it for themselves.

Josh shivered. He had to find a way to contact Earth.

In the meantime, he was determined to go back and listen to more of Doug’s stories. For the first time he would be able to talk face to face with someone who had been there for all the pivotal events of the last fifty years. And maybe Josh could direct the conversation towars all the things he had been wondering about, without revealing himself.

Josh climbed the stairs to his room at the lodging house feeling that he was a big step forward. In fact, he thought, as he opened the door to his room, meeting Doug had given him some ideas … his musings were interrupted by the dark flutter of hundreds of wings swirling around his room.

He leaped back in alarm and slammed the door shut.

The book moths had escaped.