“We could tell Anfalen to sail away. That would at least ensure that he’d be safe,” Krug said.
“That’s the only way I can see to keep him and his ship safe,” Tatarna said.
“That would keep him safe, now that just leaves us with the mess going on in town. We don’t even know what’s causing the ships to sink,” Tarka said.
Cleave stroked his angular chin. What was causing the ships to sink? Nafim said there was no magical or acidic residue. So what was it? What could have been in that little vial that could have caused such massive damage to wood in such a short period of time. He came up with a few ideas but none of them seemed plausible.
Cleave remembered one summer a few years ago, his uncle had a termite infestation. It got so bad that his uncle had to stay in a motel for a few days while exterminators took care of the problem.
Termites were small and you could fit a lot of them in a vial, but they couldn’t destroy entire portions of a ship in a short period of time. Unless, you used magic on them.
The elf slammed his fists down on the table and his friends jerked their heads toward him. “Termites,” Cleave said.
Krug cocked an eyebrow. “What about them?”
“The thing that was in that vial that destroyed the ship. I think it was termites.”
The rest of the party laughed at him.
“Termites? You’re not serious, right?” Tarka said.
“It would take billions of termites to do the kind of damage done to that ship, and I doubt they could do it in a day,” Tatarna said.
“Under normal circumstances, I agree, but I don’t think these were regular termites. I think magic was used on them, magic used from wands created from dryad essence.”
Tarka tapped a claw on the table. “Hmm, an interesting theory. But how did they put the termites in the vial without them tearing each other apart? That magic makes animals go nuts and attack anything in sight.”
“They might have used some kind of partitions to keep the termites apart. If you separated the termites by glass they wouldn’t be able to harm each other,” Krug said.
“It would take a great deal of effort to create a vial like that,” Vera said.
“If you wanted to do something bad enough, you’d put the time in to do it. The problem I see with your theory is that it would still take billions of termites to cause that much damage in one day. Also I think the guards would notice weird looking termites on the remains of the hull,” Tatarna said.
“We don’t know everything about the magic from the dryad essence. Maybe it gives the termites an insatiable hunger. Perhaps they even used another spell to do so. As far as the guards inspecting the remains of the ship, they wouldn’t think twice about seeing a few weird looking bugs. This is a fantasy world after all. They’d just brush them aside and continue with their investigation without a second thought,” Cleave said.
“It doesn’t sound too implausible, weird, but not implausible. It would make sense they didn’t find any magical residue on the wood, because it wouldn’t be there, it’d be on the bugs,” Krug said.
“So following that line of logic, maybe whoever is responsible for all of this is sneaking these termites on board the ships,” Tarka said.
“They could be bribing dock workers to do it. I couldn’t think of any of any other way. We haven’t seen any cloaked figures skulking around the docks throwing vials onto ships,” Vera said.
Tatarna rubbed her temples. “I can’t say I subscribe to this line of thinking, but since we don’t have any other, I’ll go with it. How would you suggest we proceed from here?”
“The course of action to keep Anfalen and his ship safe would be to tell him to leave the harbor. However, if we could convince him to help us, maybe we could keep him safe and get the evidence we need to get the guard to turn against the mayor and focus the rebellion on the true evil,” Cleave said.
THIRTY FOUR
Clint thought about stopping the the ship attacks and the rest of the problems in Clearwater when he woke up in the morning. As he was on the road, he contemplated how his plan was going to work out, if it even could at all. He was making a lot of assumptions, and the nagging fact that he might be wrong lingered in the back of his mind.
Everything was riding on essentially a roll of the dice. Being a man of numbers, he never really liked to buck the odds. But like his last run in with the Crimson Kingdom, he really didn’t have a choice.
He played out various scenarios in his mind, trying to find the best solution. The answers were the same; in fact, there was only really one course of action. He just kept focusing on it to drown out the queasy dread that curled in his stomach.
Clint came in a little earlier than usual to find the office building completely empty. He entered the area where his workspace was.
It was still glowing blue, pulsating from the gentle glow of what seemed like a million different help requests. The illumination was a little bit brighter. The company wide wiki wasn’t fully functional yet, so he still received many help requests.
The undulating, swirling illumination was so bright, he imagined himself walking through the pearly gates. Instead of hearing angels sing however, there was demonic laughter.
He put on his shades and fired up his computer. Over two thousand emails. Over the past two weeks there’d been a massive influx of reports and presentations he had to do. Amazingly, he got most of these things completed on time, including Angela’s important project. However, some deadlines passed him by, and none of the help requests had been taken care of.
Some employees had started using the company wide document, and those that did had success. Many refused, sending him emails that they “didn’t trust” the new document and would prefer to rely on him for support. Made sense. His boss and everyone else was shoving their work on him, might as well keep up the trend.
He found a group of files he was working on yesterday and began crunching away on the numbers. His brain was numb. He’d looked at so many numbers over the past two weeks they started to run together. Clint was tired. His brain was threatening to shut down.
More reports and the figures for the day’s accounting tasks came in, and the dread in his stomach grew. More work. He felt himself suffocating under the weight of it all. He was drowning. Clint saw his hand reaching up from the sea of data, begging to be rescued. Roger and his other bosses sat on lawn chairs by the pool, taking bets on when he would finally succumb and fall over dead.
An email entered his inbox “COME SEE ME” all in red letters. It was an email from Roger marked urgent. This was the moment he was dreading. It was his boss’s first day back from his vacation.
Roger told him he was going to be meeting with him when he got back, seven times in fact. He knew what he was going to say. He’d been practicing what he’d tell his boss in the mirror for a week, but that didn’t stop the experience from being frightening.
Clint rose from his chair and trudged out of his work area, down a hallway until he reached a door with a brass plaque that bore his boss’s name. He reached out, his hand levitated a few inches from the door handle.
Mary had told him not to worry about confronting his boss. Roger had given him way too much work to complete and he knew it. The circumstances weren’t fair, and come what may, he was in the right to tell Roger how wrong he was for subjecting him to the work conditions he’d been under.
Clint wholeheartedly agreed, but that was three days ago when his boss was still on a cruise. Now he was here, ready to ream him for not being able to handle the impossible workload he was given.
Clint’s hand shook as he gripped the handle and turned the knob.
Roger sat behind the desk. Arms crossed, his grey suit jacket perfectly pressed and his thinning brown hair combed over. Apparently his boss had a great time on the cruise, because he looked a few pounds heavier.
“Clint, have a seat,” Roiger stabbed a sausage finger at the hard backed chairs in front of his polished pin
e wood desk.
Clint’s body sank after his butt hit the hard seat. He looked up, bleary eyes barely focusing on the hefty, red-faced figure snarling at him.
“Clint, I’ve been nothing less than appalled at your attitude these past few weeks. Starting a project that would normally need approval, continuously being tardy on your work, not to mention the dozens of complaints I’ve gotten from your coworkers about your refusal to take their help requests. I’m going to keep this short because my patience is thin already. Why shouldn’t I fire you right now?”
Clint reeled internally. He wasn’t expecting to hit this part of the conversation so soon. He thought his boss would lay out more accusations, then threaten to fire him. Roger enjoyed hearing his own voice, especially when he was talking to underlings. He must have really pissed his boss off to have him skip his usual self-aggrandizing.
There were many sarcastic retorts he wanted to come back with, but that’s not how he wanted to walk away from this conversation. He considered telling his boss something that would placate him or promise that he’d do better, but no. He’d come this far, he was not going to back away now. Clint analyzed his response in his mind and spoke very carefully.
“You shouldn’t fire me because I took the best course of action I could to take care of the much larger than normal workload you gave me.”
The red on Roger’s cheek deepened. “I gave you a small number of very simple tasks that needed to be handled. I knew you had it in you to complete them on top of your already simple workload, and you blew them off, turning them in late or not at all. There are no words to express how disappointed I am in you.”
“The reports and the accounting work you gave me takes entire teams to do. I felt it was too much to ask one person to do that kind of work alongside my other daily tasks.”
Roger’s lips trembled. Half words came out of his mouth and his hands resting in the crooks of his arms clenched.
“So now you’re flat out saying you didn’t want to do the work.”
There was a flash of red in Clint’s vision. The dread that formed in his stomach melted away into a boiling pool.
“Those were not my words, sir. I said the workload was too high for one person to handle.”
“I heard from several coworkers that you left at around seven or eight at night and you still had work to do. Why didn’t you stay and complete your job?”
“Because if I did, I’d stay all night and wouldn’t be able to get any sleep. If I want to complete my job function, I need to have my rest.”
“A miserable excuse. Do you know how many times I’ve had to come in on no sleep? Also why didn’t you work over the weekend to get caught up?”
“Quite a few times, I’m sure sir. But did you have to do so continuously, day in and day out? I did work some on the weekend, but even with forty-eight hours of constant effort I still wouldn’t have gotten done.”
“I don’t know what to think right now, Clint. My disappointment knows no bounds.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.”
“I am going to give you an official reprimand for intentionally neglecting your work, another for your poor attitude, and a final one for breaking company protocol. Cooper will be receiving one as well for colluding with you on the document, which looks extremely unprofessional.”
“The goal of the document was to solve problems sir, not look professional. We can clean it up with more time.”
“I don’t want you to spend more time on it, I want you to get back to your job. I should take it down, but I’ll go ahead and leave it up in the hopes that it can solve some of the help requests from your coworkers that you intentionally ignored.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, please leave my office. I have a great deal of work to do.”
Clint’s blood was boiling. He wanted to scream at how unfair this all was, but he stayed silent as he walked out.
The rest of that day passed as it normally did. He received a pile of work he had no hope of completing. Cooper sent him an email telling him that the wiki was fully functional and people were accessing it. Normally he’d be happy about creating something like that, but he felt apathetic toward it all.
He did as much work as he could until seven p.m. rolled around. Clint still had an inhumane amount of work to do, but he didn’t care. An extra hour or two wouldn’t put much of a dent in it.
Clint left the bright blue illumination of his cube and passed a few stray help requests on his way out. He tried to focus on Unexplored and keeping the Wave Skipper safe, but thoughts had trouble percolating in the burning recesses of his mind.
THIRTY FIVE
Cleave wore a massive white wig and fake beard made of goat fur that went down to his knees. Rounded tips on his ears and a bulbous nose made of clay made him look like a strange looking old human.
The set of brown robes he had were tattered and looked like they belonged to a beggar, and the staff he leaned on was weatherworn.
Tarka was beside him. She wore tattered brown robes and a grey beard as well, but hers covered her entire face. She feared that her slight maw would give her away as a kobold, so Vera added extra layers to the fake beard to make sure none of her facial features showed.
The elf chuckled inwardly, as she looked like a rag mop with purple eyes. However he didn’t say anything, as he was certain he looked equally ridiculous.
Halflings gave them sideways glances as they walked by. Cleave didn’t want to walk around the city in broad daylight. He knew if his disguise slipped or a random halfling decided to attack him, he’d be dead.
He’d been lucky thus far. None stopped him and from the looks of it, no one really wanted to. Given he and his companion’s ridiculous presence, he didn’t blame them.
Cleave and Tarka were on their way to the docs to warn Anfalen about a possible attack. His party didn’t know exactly when the Crimson Kingdom or whoever was causing trouble for the ships, but they guessed the attack was going to happen at night and they needed to warn the captain as soon as possible.
People argued in the street. Some openly brandished weapons. There were a few guards around but they didn’t seem to keep on interceding on behalf of those that were in trouble. Many shops were boarded up and there were a large number of beggars on the street calling out for a few copper for their daily bread.
Tatarna was among them, disguised as an old beggar woman. Cleave tried to spot her among the disparaged but she couldn’t be seen. There were enough non-halflings in the street to hide her.
Vera was located close to her shop. If things got really hairy, she would retrieve Krug. Despite the danger of showing himself in public, Krug was willing to sacrifice himself again if it meant saving his friends.
Elf and kobold stepped on the sandy shore that led the way to the dock. The docks were busy as they had been the last time Cleave saw them. Sailors and soldiers walked the beach, taking orders from their captains. Several stalls were set up in front of the various ships. The makeshift shops were being inspected by soldiers to make sure they weren’t selling “unscrupulous items.”
Cleave and Tarka only made it a few steps on the docks before they were stopped by soldiers.
A group of four halflings approached them, hands on the hilts of their swords and maces.
“Good afternoon,” the lead halfling, a swarthy female with blond hair said, “what brings you to the docks today?”
“My friend and I heard the ships were selling merchandise directly to the public and we thought we’d come down to see if we could get a good deal,” Cleave said in his best “old man” voice.
“You two don’t look familiar. How long have you been in town?”
“We’ve been here for a couple of months now,” Tarka said, sounding surprisingly like an old man herself, “we don’t like to get out much, but when we heard about all the selling at the docks we had to check it out for ourselves.”
“Where have you been staying if you’ve been h
ere for that long?”
“We’re staying with our friend Vera, the leatherworker. She hosted us for a while, until she decided to close her establishment,” Cleave said. “We’ve been at a loose end since then. After we look at the sales in town we are planning to head back home.”
The guards looked to each other and the lead halfling spoke. “Very well. The guard will be watching you. Visit the merchant stalls but cause no trouble. See to it that you leave the city soon. Certain peoples have had difficulties here of late. We’ll send a guard to check out your story. If it doesn’t check out you will be immediately apprehended for questioning. Understood?”
Cleave and Tarka both nodded and they were left to go on their way.
The air seemed very thick around the wharf. Everyone, sailors and customers alike, were eyed with suspicion by the halfling guard.
They didn’t have to look to know they were being watched. Cleave and Tarka did their best to keep their gazes down, but they would occasionally catch the suspicious eye of a guard.
At the end of the wharf they found the ship they were looking for. The wave skipper stood in the dock proudly, dwarfing almost all of the ships in the harbor. A makeshift merchant stall was set up in front of it with many halflings and a few dwarves standing in front of it, haggling with three halfling sailors that served as merchants.
This isn’t what caught Cleave and Tarka’s eye however. Standing off to one side were six soldiers with eight muscled halflings dressed in ragged clothing. There was another person, tall in light grey robes with his hood drawn up, directing the dock workers as they sifted through several boxes around them.
A few sailors, all halfling, worked to lower a wooden plank onto a wooden dock near where this group stood.
Cleave and Tarka assumed that the dock workers would load the ship at night, as that was when they normally did. However, it looked like they were getting to it now.
The elf dashed toward the ship, tossing his staff to the side. His robes made it difficult for him to run at full stride, but his elven feet were light and able to make good distance. Tarka kept up as well as she could, but he left her far behind as he reached the ship.
Crisis at Clearwater - A LitRPG Virtual Fantasy Adventure (Book 2 Unexplored Cycle) Page 18