Shattered Lands: A LitRPG Series
Page 10
“Greeeeat,” Daniel muttered.
“Well – off you go. Have fun – bring me back lots of gold!”
Merridack moved off along the ramparts, while Daniel and Eric started climbing the stone steps to the ground.
“Douchebag,” Eric hissed over his shoulder at the now-departed thief.
“You and your smart mouth got us into this,” Daniel griped.
“Whatever. We don’t need that asshole.”
“You’re just planning to go back to the temple and be a mage,” Daniel snapped. “I’m the one who wanted to be a thief.”
“Yeah, well, for somebody who wants to be a thief, you sure don’t seem to want to steal anything.”
“I want to learn how first.”
“You already know how. You go in, you take something, you leave. Simple.”
“Yeah? The ‘leaving’ part might be a little difficult.”
“Eh…” Eric said with a shrug.
“I don’t want to die, but I REALLY don’t want to get tortured to death.”
“Then don’t get caught.”
“Ohhhhhh – why didn’t I think of that?” Daniel said sarcastically.
Eric waved his hand. “Merridack’s full of crap. They’re not going to torture us in a mainstream video game.”
“What if he’s not full of crap, though? What if he’s right?”
“Well then,” Eric said, “if worse comes to worse, I promise to spare you the agony and kill you myself.”
“Thanks, BUDDY,” Daniel snarled as they reached the bottom of the wall and set off into the darkness.
“It won’t come to that,” Eric insisted.
“Why – have you got some fantastic plan?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
“And what’s that?”
“A diversion worked great last time. Why reinvent the wheel?”
“What are you gonna do, light yourself on fire again?” Daniel snapped.
“No… but I might just light something else on fire,” Eric grinned.
18
They started by stealing every untended lantern they could find along the way to the aristocrat’s house. There were actually very few, but that was okay – they could only carry so many.
They found one outside a residence, left burning on a hook beside the door. Another outside a pub that someone had left on a bench. By the time they had reached their destination, they carried two in each hand.
The odd thing was, Eric blew out every single one except the very first.
“What are you planning on doing?” Daniel asked.
“You’ll see.”
Once they got to the lord’s property, they stashed the lanterns and snuck around the edge of the property, making sure they could get away easily if spotted.
The house was a mansion made of marble and slate. It sat in the middle of several acres, with a beautiful landscaped garden of flowers on all sides. Everything was highly symmetrical, with one half of the property a mirror image of the other.
Next to the house stood a couple of beautiful trees, one on each side – massive oaks with outspread branches.
“That’s it,” Eric said, pointing to the nearest tree. “That’s the one.”
“Are we climbing it?”
“Not exactly.”
Eric wouldn’t tell him any more than that. Instead, they found a good vantage point behind a giant shrub on the periphery of the grounds and just watched.
Over the course of the next half hour, they got a sense of the rhythm of the night watch as guards came and went. The men were dressed in the same blue capes as the ones guarding the market – but these men were sleepy, sluggish.
A guard emerged from the right wing of the building and made his rounds through the gardens. Over the next ten minutes he traversed the property, then re-entered the house on the opposite side of the mansion, through the left wing.
Within a minute or so, a new guard emerged again from the right wing and started the whole process all over again. The guards always followed the same route, never deviating.
So there was a precious two- to three-minute window when the guard was farthest from the mansion.
“Let’s go get our stash,” Eric whispered.
They went back and carried all the lanterns to their hiding spot in the bushes. Eric took off his burnt cloak and covered the lit lantern, hiding its light.
Then, when the guard exited the right wing and got to the farthest point of the gardens, Eric hissed, “Let’s go!”
They ran as quickly as they could over to the giant tree.
“Stack seven of the lanterns like a house of cards, with the lit one on top – but keep the cloak on top of it,” Eric ordered.
While Daniel did that, Eric opened the eighth, unlit lantern and threw the oil on the tree and the side of the house.
Once they were finished, Eric led the way back to the bushes.
Like clockwork, a new guard emerged from the right wing and began his sleepy circuit of the property. He never noticed the tower of lanterns stacked precariously next to the oak tree.
“You want to set the house on fire?!” Daniel hissed once the guard had passed. “What about the people inside?!”
“It’s a stone house – it’s not going to burn down,” Eric whispered. “Besides, the only alternative is to kill a bunch of guards. Which do you want to do?”
Daniel didn’t answer. All he knew was he didn’t like this plan one bit.
“Go around to the other side of the building and wait for the commotion,” Eric ordered. “Then slip inside, grab something, and get the hell out.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll get in there, too, but I’ve got to set the place on fire first.”
“And how are you going to do that from way over here?”
Eric produced a throwing knife and grinned.
“…okay… not bad,” Daniel had to admit.
“Go on – I’ll see you soon.”
Daniel nodded and took off.
He ran around the periphery, out in the darkness where no guard could see him. He got to the other side of the mansion huffing and puffing, and waited in the bushes on the other side of the property.
There was the guard. In three minutes he reached the far end of the gardens, furthest from the house –
CRASH!
Glass shattered.
An orange fireball of orange leapt up the tree on the other side of the house, and a liquid wave of flames spread out across the stone.
The guard in the flower gardens turned around in surprise – and then started screaming, “FIRE! FIRE!”
Guards came boiling out of the right wing of the mansion, all of them yelling, “FIRE! FIRE!” and running around, trying to figure out what the hell to do.
Nobody was watching the left wing where Daniel was.
Okay, that was actually kind of genius, he thought as he raced inside the open doorway, the empty satchel Merridack had given him flapping at his side.
The mansion was lit by a few candles in every room. If Daniel hadn’t been scared to death of being caught, he would have said it was absolutely gorgeous. Massive paintings of lords and ladies hung on the walls. They seemed to watch him with disapproving eyes as he ran from room to cavernous room, looking for something valuable to steal.
He had just entered a dining room, a sort of great hall with forty-foot-tall ceilings, when something caught his eye. It was a weapon hanging on the wall – a gleaming broadsword next to a jeweled scabbard. The jewels on the hilt glittered and gleamed in the candlelight, and the steel of the blade glimmered as though it were alive.
Text popped up next to the sword:
Dwarvish Sword
Quality: Epic
Durability: 10,000/10,000
Damage – Slice: 100 limb / 200 torso / 500 neck / 500+ head
Stab: 100 limb / 500 torso / 500 neck / 500+ to head and heart
Flat edge strike: 10-100 points depending on speed
Daniel dragged a chair over from the table, climbed up, and removed the sword and scabbard from the hooks on the wall. As soon as he touched them, he felt an almost mystical sense of power flow into his body.
The scabbard was heavy, the way that he would expect gold and emeralds to feel. But the sword was relatively light for its size – heavy enough that it felt solid in his hand, but not so heavy that he struggled to lift it into the air.
He could imagine himself on horseback at the head of an army, sword lifted in the air, spurring on the thousands of foot soldiers behind him –
“What are you doing?!” a voice thundered.
Daniel turned around in panic.
An old man stood there in a long dressing gown. Despite his white hair and beard, he still looked powerful for his age – not bent over and stooped, but strong and tall. And he was staring at Daniel with unbridled hatred.
“That’s not yours – you’re not worthy of even touching it! THIEF!” the old man yelled at the top of his lungs. “THIEF – ”
Suddenly a dark shape jumped out of the shadows, knocking the old man to the ground and cutting short his cries.
As soon as he thudded to the marble floor, Daniel saw why:
There was a knife buried in his neck.
Just like the bard in the woods.
Blood oozed out in a puddle across the marble.
The figure in black looked up from atop the fallen body.
Eric.
“Run!” he hissed.
The last thing Daniel saw before he turned tail was the old man lying on the floor, one hand extended feebly, his lips barely moving as he whispered, “…thief…”
Daniel raced through the empty rooms and burst outside – straight into the path of a guard.
The man looked at him in shock – and then bellowed and swung his sword.
Out of panic, Daniel flung the broadsword up into the air as protection –
CLANG!
The two blades clashed, with the guard’s sword bouncing off harmlessly.
Suddenly Eric was there, rushing out of the doorway, his arm swinging outwards –
Thock!
The guard screamed as a knife pierced his eye, then dropped his sword as he staggered backwards.
More footsteps and shouts came from the direction of the fire.
“RUN!” Eric shouted as he hit the ground and never stopped.
Daniel took one last horrified look at the guard writhing on the ground, clutching at the knife buried in his face – then ran into the darkness after Eric.
19
The chase was long and brutal. By the time it was over, at least a dozen guards were following them – both from the mansion they had robbed, plus soldiers from the city night watch who joined the pursuit.
In the end, they got away solely because of all the training they had done on Merridack’s obstacle course.
They were close to getting caught when they came upon some wooden scaffolding around a crumbling building. After quickly scaling the framework, they made it to the roof and leapt from one building to the next, never stopping, until the soldiers lost track of them.
They hunkered down on the roof of another building, listening to the shouts and footsteps receding in the distance.
Daniel’s lungs were burning, his legs throbbing. He’d used up nearly all his Endurance points getting away, and now he stood there hunched over, panting like an asthmatic dog, while his stats slowly regenerated.
Eric wasn’t much better off. He was huffing and puffing, and sweat was rolling down his face – but at least he was smiling.
“Did you – see that?! We – did it! We – made it out!” he managed to get out between gasps.
When Daniel didn’t answer, Eric scowled in exasperation. “What now?”
“You killed that old guy,” Daniel said quietly.
Eric groaned. “Seriously?! That again?! It’s an NPC, dude – it’s not a real person. It’s part of the game.”
“I know that,” Daniel said, and he did – in his head. But his heart and his gut felt differently. “It’s just… I came here to kill dragons, not old men.”
“Well then you don’t have to worry about it, since I killed him, not you,” Eric snapped.
“Why couldn’t you have just knocked him out?” Daniel complained.
“Because he was about to bring every damn guard in the place down on our heads! And I don’t know if you were paying attention, but we didn’t exactly train how to gently knock people out!”
Daniel pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “I don’t want to do this anymore…”
“What, the game?” Eric asked, shocked.
“I don’t want to work for Merridack anymore… I don’t want to rob people, I don’t want to feel shitty about everything I do here…”
“Then you probably shouldn’t have become a thief.”
“I don’t want to be a thief anymore,” Daniel snapped.
“I think you picked the wrong employer to go changing careers now.”
“At the beginning of the game they said there’s always time to change the road you’re on… right?” Daniel said, looking in desperation at his friend.
As Eric’s anger faded, his concern finally came out. “You’re really messed up by all this, aren’t you?”
Daniel looked at him with haunted eyes. “It’s just… it’s too real.”
“But it’s not real at all.”
“Yeah, but it feels real.”
Eric sighed. “That guy would’ve gladly turned you over to be tortured to death, man. He wasn’t some nice old dude – you know that, right? He’s a bunch of 0’s and 1’s that was running a program that was going to end with you getting your skin ripped off.”
“I thought you said they wouldn’t have done that in a mainstream video game.”
“I was just saying that to make you feel better.”
“Well, are you saying all this crap now to make me feel better, too?”
Eric sat there and looked at his friend for a long moment before he spoke. “I could tell Merridack they killed you… that you didn’t make it. That way you don’t have to go back.”
Daniel stared at him. “You’d do that?”
“Yeah, of course.” Eric managed a half-smile. “You’re an idiot, but you’re still my best friend.”
“But what about you? You hate Merridack, right?”
“I don’t know if I hate him. I wouldn’t mind if he died sometime soon, though, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t you want to become a mage anyways? Why would you go back to him?”
“Because if Merridack thinks we ran out on him, he’ll just hunt us down and kill us.”
“Then how are you going to get out?”
Eric threw Daniel his leather satchel. It jingled as it hit the roof. “Take that and start looking around for a crew to go on quests. Get some armor, horses, food, whatever we need.”
Daniel frowned as he opened the purse. “Is this enough to – ”
He was going to say buy all that?, but the words caught in his throat.
There were over fifty gold pieces in the satchel, as well as a couple dozen rubies, emeralds, and diamonds.
“Yeah, I think there’s enough,” Eric grinned. “I’ll bet you that’s more money than that sewage rat poser ever made, and I don’t want him getting his hands on any of it. Not after we risked our lives for it.”
“What if Merridack kills you?”
Eric shrugged. “I haven’t respawned yet, but it can’t be any worse than hanging out with that asshole. Once you get a crew together and you’re ready to leave the city, I’ll go with you.”
“What about becoming a mage?”
“We’ll go to some other city where I can find somebody to teach me. Blackstone isn’t the only place with mages.”
“How will we know where to meet? And when?”
“You mean,
besides the real world?” Eric said with good-natured sarcasm.
“Oh yeah…”
“We’ll talk about it more when we log out the next time.”
“Should we log out now?”
“Naw,” Eric said, standing up and dusting himself off. “We’ve only been back a couple of hours… might as well go get this over with now.”
“Be careful,” Daniel said.
“I’m not the one with a stolen sword, a bunch of jewels, and an entire city looking for him.”
“No, you’re just going to go see a murderous thief who likes sending us off on suicide missions.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.” Eric grinned, then grew serious. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
“See you back in the real world.”
“Alright.”
With that, Eric climbed over the edge of the roof and was gone.
Daniel couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the last time he would ever see his friend again.
He knew that was stupid, but the feeling still nagged at him as he huddled there in the darkness and waited for morning.
20
Eric
Eric winced as he reeled backwards, his face smarting from the Merridack’s slap.
“YOU BROUGHT BACK NOTHING?!” Merridack raged.
Eric wanted nothing more than to pull out his knives and kill the bastard – but he knew that he didn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat with the master thief. Even if he did manage to somehow kill Merridack, the rest of his men would gut him before he took two steps.
Might be worth it, though…
Eric turned back to his assailant. “Maybe you missed the part where Daniel died?” he shouted, trying to sound as angry as possible. It wasn’t hard, considering how much he hated Merridack right now. “I thought you might care about that more than a couple of pieces of gold.”
“Then you’d be wrong,” Merridack sneered. “He died because he was a shitty thief and a worthless piece of trash. It’s called ‘thinning the herd.’”
Eric really wanted to kill Merridack for that. It took an almost superhuman act of restraint not to try.