Crisis at Clearwater - A LitRPG Virtual Fantasy Adventure (Book 2 Unexplored Cycle)

by Alara Branwen

  “You can expect a report from me about this to go to directly to Mr. Whitaker.”

  “I understand. Thank you for your time. I need to get to work on this document. If any of you wish to help, it would be greatly appreciated.”

  A few of Clint’s coworkers mumbled to each other about attitude and laziness. They soon dispersed, leaving Cooper, Clint, and the pulsating shaft of blue light his cubicle had become.

  Clint felt a rush of exhilaration. He couldn’t believe he just did that! He’d never spoken so bluntly to someone like that before. He should stand up for himself more often.

  Clint turned to Cooper and told him he wanted to start working on the document as soon as possible. His coworker pulled out a pad of paper and they got to work.

  Several more communications came through that day, but like the others, Clint ignored them. He worked with Roger for the next five hours going over notes, adding and taking away pieces of the document, and when it was done, coding it into a wiki. By five-thirty they had a wiki up.

  Clint spent two more hours doing the accounting and reports he’d missed, reading the instructions that came with him but not the vitriol about his tardiness in getting them done. Once they were completed, he got up and left vibrant blue light behind him.

  THIRTY ONE

  Cleave appeared in the cellar where he’d logged out yesterday. He opened his character screen and he said he was at 99% health. Tarka, Tatarna, Vera, and Krug sat around the halfling-sized work table. The first three sat in chairs while Krug was on the floor.

  “Krug, how did you get through the trap door?” Cleave said.

  “Vera had some grease stored down here, it took a lot of work but I managed to make it down.”

  Cleave laughed but the others looked somber. The elf joined his comrades at the table and had a seat. “What is it?”

  “There was a report today that a ship was sunk in the harbor,” Tarka said.

  “I was out doing a little scouting when I heard a few halfling sailors talking about it. They said their captain was baffled. After a little investigation I learned it was the same ship that was attacked by Padwin,” Tatanra said.

  “Whatever was in that glass vial did a lot of damage. Some divers went down and found large, irregular holes in the ship’s hull,” Vera said.

  “Must have been some weird magic acid or something,” Cleave said.

  “Might be, I don’t know. The only alchemy expert I know of is Fonwilsia, and she’s somewhere else right now,” Tatarna said.

  “There were also attacks on two more farms last night. Both were successful. The livestock charged out of their pens and slaughtered each other,” Vera said. “The attackers then went into the farm cottages and slew the families that lived there.”

  “Did anyone see anything that happened? Was the family that we helped attacked?” Clint said.

  “The family that we helped is fine, but it’s only a matter of time before they’re attacked,” Tatarna said. “There was one survivor from the farm attacks last night. He described cloaked figures using ‘weird green rays’ to turn the animals crazy.”

  “The animals had those weird crystals on their bodies, too,” Tarka said.

  “At least there was a witness. We could use that to connect all this to the Crimson Kingdom.”

  “Vera and the one survivor went to the constable with the evidence we gave her but the constable wouldn’t speak to them. The page she gave the info to said they needed more solid evidence,” Krug said.

  “We did talk to the merchant guild though and they believed us. There are a lot of people, halfling and otherwise, that are disaffected with the mayor and everything else. They didn’t say what they were gonna do, but one merchant whose store closed down said he ‘was gonna gather his friends together to talk,’” Tarka said.

  “Almost all of the shops in the outer reaches of the city are shut down. Guard activity there has been really rampant. There have even been a few raids on the shops on the main street as well. I’ve shut down my store in case the guard decide they want to take my things,” Vera said.

  “I’m sorry,” Cleave said.

  “I’m not. I want to focus my time on this anyway. If we don’t stop this, there won’t be a city to have a shop in.”

  “There’s been a lot of fighting going on out in the streets. Some halflings are randomly attacking people from the other races,” Krug said.

  “Some halflings are even attacking each other,” Tatarna said. “If this keeps up, the whole situation is going to evolve into a shitstorm.”

  “Then we need to hurry up and concentrate our efforts. Is there any place where we can be more helpful other than the docks?” Cleave said.

  “The situation with the town merchants is a mess beyond our control, and I think the farmers are all gathering together to take care of their issues,” Tatarna said.

  “We just need to make sure they focus their anger on the real enemy. Most farmers think the elves are causing their problems, and some of the guards that aren’t up the mayor’s ass still aren’t convinced there is a problem,” Vera said.

  “Then we’ll have to focus our attention on the docks. Vera, can you get any of the contacts you have in the guard to watch the docks as well?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “We’ll need every available person we can get on our side to watch the ships.” Tatarna eyed the people gathered around shrewdly. “I bet if we can get eyes on all the ships in the docks, we’ll stop our enemy dead in their tracks.”

  THIRTY TWO

  He thought they would stop them dead in their tracks, anyway. Ten days passed and there was no activity from the docks. No cloaked figures sneaking up and throwing glass vials full of ship sinking venom, no wizards coming to toss fireballs at a ship, or arsonists to plant explosives. There wasn’t even a theft. It was just business as usual on the wharf.

  There was a great deal of activity in the city, however. More fights were breaking out and the remainder of the shops that were on the outskirts of town were closed. Citizens and visitors alike were starting to be harassed as well, especially elves. A few elves that came to live in the city were removed from their homes or chased out by the guard. Entire sections of the city looked like a ghost town. Somber paranoia gripped the city. People eyed each other warily as they went down the street, each seeming to fear the other would place a knife in their backs.

  Cleave watched all of this from the boarded up window on Vera’s shop. His friends told him it was worse in other places. On the main boulevard, it was suicidal to walk alone, even in broad daylight. Only the bravest went into inns and taverns, as bloody fights constantly broke out.

  Things were going poorly on the farms as well. Those families that were still safe had food to eat, but the loss of their livestock meant that many of their sources of revenue were gone. If they all didn’t have a bumper crop, they probably wouldn’t have the money for the other things they needed.

  Cleave expected there to be a revolt soon. Tarka told him there were rumors that some of the officials had left town in disguise. He didn’t blame them.

  Cleave hoped to find something, anything, out of the ordinary when inspecting the docks. He risked getting seen several times, but other than an increase in the number of guards, everything seemed normal.

  In fact, over there it seemed a lot safer. Crewman aboard ships chose to load their ships during the night, rather than the day. Ships were not spared in the increased raiding activity, but captains must have thought the loss of some merchandise was worth the added protection.

  Many ship captains had even set up storefronts on the wharf and sold the cargo they couldn’t unload on the town merchants.

  The entire situation baffled Cleave. Surely the Crimson Kingdom and their allies would have struck again by now. What was taking so long? The elf watched from a safe vantage point a couple hundred feet away from the dock, until dark purples and oranges invaded the eastern sky. Another night of no activit
y.

  The elf left his post and snuck back toward Vera’s shop. On the way, he put on the fake beard Vera and Tatarna had given him to sneak into the city, as well as a couple of rounded, flesh colored rounded clay tips to hide the points on his ears. He’d been stopped by the guard a couple of times and asked to lower his hood. His impersonation of a crotchety old man was enough to get the guard to quickly send him back on his business.

  This dawn he was lucky, no guard stopped him. In fact, if he didn’t know better he saw a guard that stopped him before hightail it. He guessed the young halfling didn’t want another earful from a grouchy old human.

  He wrapped on the door to Vera’s shop three times. A yellow eye looked through an opening in the boarded up window and opened the door. Tarka and Tatarna stood inside. Darkness bore down on the flickering wisps of flame at the end of two candles lighting the room.

  “Nothing?” Tarka said as Cleave eyed the darkness.

  Cleave shook his head.

  “I didn’t see anything either. Just a couple more ships pulling up to the harbor and more people working on the wharf.”

  “Were they new ships?”

  “No, they were ships that’ve been here before,” Tatarna said pulling out a piece of parchment. “The Minnow and the Gallant Fox, both ships owned by Halfling merchants, so I don’t expect anything to happen to them.” She looked down a list of ship names that came into and left the dock, then shook her head. “No, nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Other than the inspections and confiscations, is anything out of the ordinary happening?” Cleave said.

  “Not to my knowledge. It’s just business as usual at the wharf,” Tatarna said.

  “I’ve started to notice a few ships that I’ve heard had elven captains using halflings to run their little storefronts. They tend not to get raided as much,” Tarka said.

  “That’s not surprising. I’d probably do the same thing. Have the others found out anything?”

  “Well, Krug really can’t. If he went out he’d probably be arrested, so he’s just hanging out in the cellar,” Tarka said.

  “Vera hasn’t reported anything new either,” Tatarna said. “She’s been keeping in touch with her friends in the guard but they haven’t noticed anything special.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Speaking of Vera. You two, hide. She might have a guard with her.”

  Tarka and Cleave scurried down the trapdoor and found Krug at the base of the stairs. The elf presumed that his friend was listening in. Since he’d been trapped in the cellar for the past few days, he’d been doing everything he could to keep up with all of the events going on. He wanted to go out and help them, but wisdom kept him in place.

  The trio heard the door to the shop above close and there were two laughing voices, one belonged to Vera while the other was the jovial bouncing laugh of a halfling that’d been in the shop before.

  It belonged to one of the guard, Nafim, a halfling Vera brought to the shop a couple of times before. He was the guard Vera knew that worked on the docks. At her insistence, he had managed to get a couple of her other contacts in the guard assigned to the docks as well.

  They laughed and talked about a few drunks they’d seen at the pub getting into a fight. Apparently the guard, the real guard, had to step in and take care of the situation. It must have been pretty rough, because the incident resulted in several lost teeth and a couple of torn ears.

  Vera, Tatarna and the guard chatted for a few minutes. Vera laughed and joked with the guard while the tiger girl asked him a few well placed questions. That was their dynamic and it seemed to work well. In the ten days that Cleave, Tarka, and Krug spent huddled in the cellar while the leatherworker brought over guests, they’d learned some interesting information. Sadly, none of it was useful in solving their current predicament.

  After a few questions from Tatarna that went nowhere and more laughing from Vera, the leatherworker asked her tiger girl friend to go into the cellar. Cleave, Tarka, and Krug backed out of sight while Tataran opened the cellar door and came down.

  She waved at the party and beckoned them forward. They joined her and, after a couple of minutes, they listened to the sounds of clothing being removed and giggling from the halfling woman. These were followed by grunts from the guards and little squeaks from Vera.

  Twenty minutes of impassioned thumping and grunting passed, followed by a drawn out moan from the halfling guard signalling his orgasm. There was a little shuffling and the two settled down.

  “So what was it you were telling me about earlier? That thing with the ships?” Vera said.

  “Huh?” The guard sounded like he was still in an orgasmic haze. “Oh, right, the ships. Is that tiger woman listening in?”

  Loud footsteps came toward the trapdoor. The group listening in backed out of sight. Vera looked in and winked at them, then closed it. The foursome retook up their post.

  “Tatarna’s not listening. She’s under there doing whatever she’s doing,” Vera said.

  “Good, because this shit can’t get out.”

  Vera giggled. “Nafim, relax. No one is listening.”

  The group beneath the trapdoor craned their ears upward.

  “A few of the guards and I were talking yesterday about Surf Titan, that merchant vessel that sank a few days ago.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, a few ships that left the harbor haven't come back.”

  “What ships?”

  “Smooth Skipper and a couple of other regulars from the elven lands up north. They usually head out and are back at the wharf in a couple of days. These haven’t shown up.”

  “Maybe they’re out on a long voyage?”

  “No, these ships don’t take long voyages. They always hit their waypoints and come back. These have been out longer than normal. The captain of the Smooth Skipper said he expected favorable winds and he would be back the next day, but there’s been no sign of him or his ship. An expedition went out to look for them, but there’s been no sign. We think they sank just like that first vessel.”

  Vera gasped. “That sounds awful. Does the guard have any clues as to what might have happened?”

  “No, and we’re still stumped about what sank the first ship. We had our mage advisor look at the evidence gathered from the first sinking, but he couldn’t find any trace of magic on those gargantuan holes in the hull. There weren’t any burns from acid, or anything else. We’re all stumped.”

  Cleave’s eyebrows furrowed. That was really odd. So what was in that vial that smashed against the ship wasn’t magical. What could it have been then? Surely something magical had to be involved to cause a hole that large.

  “What are you going to do?” Vera said.

  “The mayor has told us to keep patrolling as normal. All of the higher ups are acting as if nothing is wrong and so are a lot of the guard. They don’t think anything is going to happen, but me and a few other guards see how hot things are getting in town and on the farms, and I think there’s gonna be a revolt.”

  “If there is, I pity the mayor and his cronies.”

  “I don’t. The revolt is disorganized. I talked to some of the people who want to start an uprising. A few of them want to depose the mayor while others think going into the woods, finding the elves and wiping them out is the best solution.”

  “Surely they understand how stupid the second option is.”

  “A lot of people in the city have bought into the elf paranoia, and the animal rustlers on the farms have all been elves. So what other conclusion can they draw?”

  “I see your point. I wish there was some way we could unite everyone.”

  Nafim laughed. “You’ll have to do more than that. I wouldn’t doubt the citizens of the town would put up a fight, but a militia of peasants would fall before the guard. The way they’re talking, they’re going to attack soon. When they do, blood will be spilled, but I think it will be their own.”

  “Do you think there’s any way you o
r anyone else could turn the guard against the mayor?”

  “The city’s army isn’t going to bite the hand that feeds them. It would take something major to turn the guard against the mayor.”

  “Like the mayor working with an evil player’s guild?”

  “Or using some kind of game hack to stay in power. Either way, it’ll be difficult to convince the lot of them, or even just some of them, to turn against their lord.”

  Cleave drummed his fingers on his knee. He would need to find concrete evidence the Mayor was working with the Crimson Kingdom is some capacity. It sounded like it was the only way to end the problem.

  “I feel sorry for the Wave Skipper,” Nafim said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Their captain is an elf and he just pulled into port yesterday. He has a really big ship so I have a feeling his ship is going to be the next target. My friends at the dock and I are going to try to keep an eye on it, but as sneaky as the bastards sinking these ships are, I don’t know what we can do,” Nafim said.

  Vera and Nafim spoke for a few more minutes before the guard left. A few minutes later the trapdoor opened. The worried look on Vera’s face mirrored those of her friends. They had to do something about all this, and they had to do it now.

  THIRTY THREE

  The group of five sat around the work table in the shop’s cellar. Worry weighed down the edges of their lips. They stared at their folded hands, as if in prayer.

  “Vera, is there anything you can do to stop this?” Krug said.

  “I don’t think any amount of screwing is going to get the guard to watch the ship or turn against the mayor. I don’t really see a way out of this.” Vera said.

  “Well, I’m not giving up. There’s got to be a solution,” Cleave said.

  “If you have one, we’d like to hear it,” Tarka said.