After dropping off the old drunkard, the group reconvened further down the street, away from the rowdy brothel. A quick stop at a few of the vendors that lined the streets scored them a veritable feast of food with which they bribed the frail child. With eyes as big as dinner plates, he scarfed down the food so fast Jasper doubted he had even taken the time to chew.
Ihra waited patiently until the boy reached the point he couldn’t shove any more into his stomach. He cast a worried look at the plates, more than half of which were still full. “Can I take the rest for my ma?”
Ihra wrinkled her brow. She’d assumed the boy was an orphan of one of the brothel’s workers, but clearly she’d been wrong. “Yes, if you’ve eaten your fill.” She hesitated, her eyes narrowingly sharply. “So your mother is still alive? Where is she? A young child like you shouldn’t be wandering around at such a place.”
The boy’s back stiffened. “She can’t help it,” he shouted back, defiantly. “Ever since those men hurt her, Ma can’t walk no more.”
“Woah, woah, calm down, little fella,” Jasper cut in. “You can take the food to your mom. Maybe,” he shot a meaningful glance at Ihra, “we can even see if we can help her. My friend here knows a little healing magic.”
“Really?” The boy brightened up, mollified.
“Really,” he promised. “But first, we just have a few questions to ask you.”
The boy turned his eyes back to Ihra, clearly more comfortable talking to the woman. “What do you want to know? The best dancers? Which women are the most popular?”
“Uh, no, nothing like that,” Ihra said, uncomfortably. “Have you seen a group of soldiers around the tavern recently?” She pointed at Jasper and Ihra. “They were probably wearing armor a bit like that.”
The boy shrunk back immediately, suspicion brewing in his eyes. “Why are you asking about them?”
“So you have seen them. Can you tell me what happened to the soldiers?”
The child shook his head adamantly, wiping his nose with the hem of his sleeve. “I don’t want no trouble with the guards.”
Suffocating her sigh, Ihra drew another gold coin from her bag of holding and waved it in front of the boy's face. “We won’t tell the guards what you told us. We just need to know what happened to them. That's all.”
“And you’ll help my ma?” He demanded, indecision flickering in his eyes.
Ihra sighed. “I’ll look at her. Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t, but I’ll do my best. That's all I can promise.”
He hesitated a moment longer, then bobbed his head. “Alright,” he conceded. “The soldiers hit the tavern about two weeks ago…”
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Erin could not have been more excited for his first mission. The first few months since coming to this world had been a pretty dark time for him. Barely out of high school, he had never gotten around to playing the original game. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have ever bothered to play the sequel either, if his best friend hadn’t browbeaten him into getting it. “It’s more fun with friends! I’ll even buy the game for you if just agree to play with me.” And so, reluctantly, Erin had given in. Scifi was more his speed, but Tony had worn him down.
So when the Summoning happened, at first he didn’t realize anything had gone wrong. The game had a weird glitch, something about “resonance,” and then he’d found himself talking to a very pretty goddess. A very pretty goddess whose starlight-infused robes were practically sheer. He’d decided right then and there that he liked this game very much after all.
But he didn’t hold that opinion for very long. It had been hard to wrap his head around what she’d told him. She claimed that a group of gods had set up the game in order to recruit warriors to help some Empire fight off its enemies. That he had been chosen because he was descended from Djinn somehow.
Blah. Blah. Blah.
Thinking it was all just part of a very elaborate set-up for the game’s plot which he really wasn’t that interested in, Erin hadn’t paid very close attention to what she’d said. His friend could fill him in later if there was anything truly important.
Then once her spiel was finished, the goddess granted him a quest to join the “royal guard” and plopped him down in the middle of S̆addānu. He’d spent the first few days just messing around, trying and failing to get in contact with his friend. Of course, online support was generally not great on opening day, so he had been worried at first. It was just another glitch.
It was until after a couple of days had passed in the game without him being able to get in contact with anyone or leave the game, that Erin had come to realize that the goddess’ speech hadn’t been part of some narrative, that he was really, truly stuck here. This wasn’t a game and he wasn’t on Earth.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
That was when the darkness had taken over.
Erin had spent weeks wallowing in despair, barely making it on the streets of the capital city until the goddess had, once again, taken pity on him. Coming to him in the middle of the night, she reminded him of the quest she had given him, the quest that he had completely blown off - joining the guard.
The next few months had been an exercise in agony. The guards had very rigorous expectations of physical fitness, expectations based on a lifetime of training for the position. He had a few years of track.
The few times they had taken him out hunting, he'd earned levels that had helped. Immensely. But while the levels could make him stronger than the most dedicated bodybuilder on earth, learning how to use that strength was a more challenging prospect. Sadly, Erin quickly discovered this was not the Matrix; there were no fighting programs he could use to hack his progress.
And all of it would have been so much easier if he could just figure out how to access his magic. But no matter how hard he, or the guard, or the priests, had tried, he had yet to successfully cast even a single spell. If the usual Summoned was the equivalent of a stealth jet, he’d turned out to be a paper airplane.
In the end, he’d failed the goddess' quest. Without the ability to use his magic, and lacking any rare class that would make up the difference, Erin just hadn’t been able to cut it with the guards. The king wanted only the best, after all.
It was a blow to his pride, but it wasn’t as much of a disaster as he initially feared. His instructor, impressed by how hard Erin had worked, arranged for him to be transferred to the scouts and, as it turned out, Erin loved the scouts.
Far more easy-going than the guards, once he joined the scouts, Erin finally got to see a bit of the world he had found himself trapped in. His first posting had taken on him a trip around their lake - though inland sea would be a better name. Jaw-dropping beauty was around every corner; natural wonders, ruins so old they made the Pyramids look new, and creatures unlike any he had seen before. He'd still go back to Earth in a heartbeat, but he started to realize that this place wasn’t so bad.
And thus, when he’d received his first real mission - his first mission with the possibility of combat, that is - he’d been over the moon. And it had been exciting, too, with a few rousing fights against bandits and low-level monsters that really got the blood pumping. It had been fun right up until they’d been dispatched to Dūr-Ēkal.
The commander at Tabīnat had asked them to investigate complaints against some clan of the mountain Djinn called the Qatpū. Villagers near Tabīnat had accused the clan of cursing their fields. Ridiculous, right? Erin had thought it was all just a silly superstition until he saw how seriously the scouts took the villagers' claims. And thus, they'd set off for the mountains.
From a distance, the fortress city was one of the coolest places he’d ever seen, but up close, it was kind of depressing. It didn’t help that they were met with hostile stares from the moment they stepped foot on the bridge. Erin only had a hazy understanding of the political situation, but it was clear that the royal troops were tolerated, but definitely not welcome.
After some asking around, they had finally been directed to a tavern that members of the clan supposedly patronized on a regular basis, and that was where it had all gone wrong.
They’d found the “tavern” easily enough. The place made the rave he and his friends had snuck out to one time look like a meeting of a book club in comparison. Splitting up, the group had fanned out through the bustling brothel in search of the Qatpū. The crowd outside was hard enough to search through, but the “tavern” was even worse; more than a hundred small rooms were set aside for those with more…private desires. But Erin had found their targets.
It was all his fault really.
He’d stumbled into the room and found two of the Qatpū straddled over a prostitute. Her eyes were already swelling with bruises, her lip was cracked and bloodied, and she was clearly on something. Maybe the choices she had made had her down the path; he didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t the life the wide-eyed little kid in the corner of the room had chosen.
Erin didn’t consider himself a particularly good person, a back-sliding Catholic who’d been more interested in watching Hail Marys on a football field than saying them. But he couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.
He’d thrown himself on the tribesman, and gotten in two good hits. Just two. He’d been in the world a few months; they'd been there a lifetime. The patrons of the tavern had just stood by and watched as he and his squad were gathered up and beaten into a bloody pulp. The dogs had even taken it out on the woman, forcing him to watch as they broke her back. And then the Djinn had carried them off, out of the city and away to whatever hellhole they had thrown them in, while the city guard just looked the other way.
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“Ma hasn’t been able to walk since,” the boy concluded. “Dūrīli said the healers might be able to fix her up, but he couldn’t afford to pay for it. He said we had to leave our room, too, but he’s been letting me hang around the tavern and do odd jobs, as long as I don’t bother the guests.”
“Dūrilī? Is that the tavern’s owner?” Ihra frowned, a murderous expression on her face. There had been sketchy establishments in Hargish, but this was far worse than she’d expected. Allowing guests to seriously harm the women? To kidnap other guests? “Why did no one stop them?”
The boy shot her an odd expression. “Don’t you know? Dūrilī is the son of the captain of the guard. He can do whatever he wants.”
Ihra shot to her feet, startling the child. Plastering a smile on her face, she offered the boy her hand. “Why don’t you take me to your mother? And then, perhaps, I’ll have a little chat with this Dūrilī.”
“No,” a soft hand tugged on her from behind. “Look at yourself.”
Ihra glanced down, not understanding Tsia’s objection. “You’re wearing the armor of the royal house, just like Jasper, just like Annatta.”
“I don’t care,” Ihra snapped. “Someone needs to deal with him.”
Tsia continued on, seemingly unperturbed by the interruption. “But I’m not. Go, see if your runes can heal the mother. Nēs̆u and I will stop by the tavern.”
Ihra hesitated for only a moment, her doubts disappearing as she saw the cold steel in the usually bubbly girl’s gaze. “Alright,” she agreed. “Just don’t get yourself caught.”