The Good Guys Chronicles Box Set

by Eric Ugland

  You have completed a quest:

  Justice for a Duchess

  The Duchess MacDermott and her kin were killed by devils unleashed by a foolish wizard and she seeks vengeance on that which slaughtered her family.

  Reward for success: 3000 XP and access to the royal treasury.

  The ethereal figure of Duchess MacDermott appeared. She put her glowing fingers around the man’s heart, and pulled it from his body. His own ghostly body formed, healed once again. He seemed to be saying something, but the Duchess ignored him.

  More and more spirits appeared around the wizard’s ghost. They all put their hands on him. For a moment, I could barely see because the glowing was so bright. The wizard’s head went back, and his mouth opened up. It was all the more horrible to see in absolute silence, but it was very clear the wizard screamed.

  They tore the wizard’s essence apart in a violent explosion. Then, the spirits disappeared, and only the duchess was left.

  She pointed to me, then beckoned for me to follow. We went back up the stairs, into the keep, and to a tapestry. She indicated I should pull it down, so I did.

  A door.

  I opened it, and revealed a set of stairs.

  I wasn’t particularly keen on following any more stairs in this castle, but, well, loot.

  We went down maybe three flights, and came to small room with a single door on the far wall. The door was made of metal and looked extremely solid. Its only feature was a singular keyhole smack dab in the middle.

  The apparition put her finger through my pouch, prompting me to pull out the key I’d found in the hidey-hole. She pointed to the key, then the door, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Obviously it went to the door.

  The key fit perfectly, and the door opened with not a single squeak. Inside was a smaller room lined with a variety of items on shelves.

  Duchess MacDermott bowed her head to me, then vanished. Wisps of her ethereal glow remained behind for a heartbeat before dissipating.

  She’d paid her reward.

  I stepped inside the vault and looked at her riches. Now my riches. Sacks of gold. Ingots of metals. A chest of cut gems. Jewelry. A stack of scrolls. Three books.

  “Salivate later,” Nikolai said. “We are short on time.”

  I nodded, knowing the man was right, and motioned to Ragnar. He held out the bag, and we swept everything from the shelves into it.

  “Impressive bag,” Nikolai said.

  “Sorry for keeping it a secret. It’s just—”

  “I understand. Just know that you need not keep secrets from me if you intend for me to be a valuable mentor.”

  “Good point. So, I’ve got a bag of holding.”

  He rolled his eyes, and started up the stairs.

  Chapter 70

  The rain had started. I stood in the downpour, thanking the Gods for the chance to wash off the demon blood. The Forsaken’s corpses were deteriorating faster than I expected, already putrid and black and collapsing in on themselves. The four of us half-ran down the hill to the boathouse.

  Inside, Teela and Lee were eating, using two crates as chairs and a few more stacked strategically to make a table.

  Cleeve, upright for once, was going over the boat carefully.

  He looked up when we stepped out of the storm.

  “Success?” he asked.

  “The island is safe for now,” Nikolai replied.

  Huzzah! You have completed a quest:

  Safe Is Secret I

  You have explored the island and made it safe for Cleeve and his party.

  Reward for success: 1000 XP and increased regard with Nikolai and [Unknown].

  I had a number of Unknown rewards I figured should come due in the near future. Or, I realized as I stood there and watched the rain fall, they already had come due and I just hadn’t realized it.

  Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 11! You receive 6 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours or you lose them. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t.

  Nice, I thought. I had more points, up a level, seemed like things were—

  “We need to move,” Nikolai said, breaking me out of my reverie. “We do not have time to remain here.”

  “Agreed,” Cleeve said. “Yet I fear that this boat will sink if we use it in this weather.”

  Nikolai sighed, angry, impatient. Still, he realized the boss was right.

  Lee polished off his last bite, and then joined Cleeve at the boat, doing some minor repairs and sealing, trying to get the craft seaworthy once again.

  “One of you got a dagger?” I asked Skeld and Ragnar.

  Ragnar made a show of looking for one while Skeld just pulled one off his belt and handed it to me.

  I used the knife to pry open one of the crates. Inside was metal. Stacks of ingots. I pulled one out and held it up.

  “Anyone know what this is?” I asked.

  “Metal,” Ragnar offered.

  “Helpful as always. Anyone have something more specific?”

  Lee came over and took the ingot. He turned it over, scratched it with his nail, hammered it on the stone floor.

  “Heavy,” he said. “I would have guessed steel, but no rust. Perhaps a bit too heavy. Tungsten?”

  “Stainless steel?”

  “Not shiny enough and too heavy. Stainless steel has a keen luster to it. If I had to guess, it’s an alloy of something. Or a native metal I don’t know.”

  He dropped it back in the crate, and went back to the boat.

  I looked at it, then at all the other crates in the boathouse. There were hundreds of them.

  “Ragnar,” I said.

  “Bag?”

  I nodded. He held the bag open, and I started grabbing crates, opening them, and dumping the contents into the bag. I was going to find the limit to the bag’s ability to hold. Or die trying. Probably die trying when the bag finally exploded.

  Chapter 71

  The rain finally eased up as the sun set, sending a glorious array of colors all across the sky.

  Nikolai rallied the group, and we pulled the boat from the boathouse. With all the crates packed away, there was plenty of room to maneuver, and we got the boat in the water without much trouble. Then it was just a matter of getting our gear, our selves, and some borrowed oars into the boat.

  We set sail. Or, you know, set row, heading into the sunset.

  Naturally, I got volunteered for the rowing. I was a little salty about it at first, but a girl likes to be asked, you know? I also appreciated getting the exercise. After a hundred yards or so, my shoulders and back felt nice and loose, and I really started to pull on the oars, enough so I really felt like I was working. I won’t say that I got whitewater going, but we definitely had enough of a wake so you’d be able to flip some pretty good tricks. We were making good time.

  Both Lutra looked over the edge of the boat into the water, and occasionally shot worried glances towards me or each other. Whatever was in the depths below didn’t seem keen to interrupt us, though I’m totally confident we were being shadowed by more than one beastie. I’d like to believe we were left alone because of my badass rowing, but it’s also possible we were left alone because all the lake monsters were busy that night. Shampooing their hair or something.

  Everyone but Skeld slept at some point, while I rowed into the night. Skeld stood on the seat right behind me, keeping an eye on the water, making sure we didn’t run into anything. I used the time to peek at my attributes.

  Attributes

  Strength: 55

  Agility: 30

  Dexterity: 29

  Constitution: 52

  Wisdom: 23

  Intelligence: 18

  Charisma: 20

  Luck: 27

  Unassigned points: 6

  I was getting up in the attributes, and I had to wonder, if 20 was an amazing athlete, and 13 was average, what the fuck was I? And where to put the points. Intelligence seemed like a good spo
t to slip them, just because that was my lowest stat. And yet… I hadn’t seen any measurable difference increasing my intelligence. It’d probably be very difficult for me to boost strength through working out or anything else, maybe I should get my strength up higher. But was there a point of diminishing returns? Would a strength of 60 give me anything 55 wouldn’t? This would be an ideal time to talk to someone about it, ask someone else to help me make the decision. And yet, the only person to ask was the taciturn Skeld who was busying himself with the actual work of keeping us alive and on path.

  I dropped two points into Intelligence. Up to thirty. Mensa, here I come.

  Three points into luck, up to thirty, a nice round number, and then a single point into Dexterity to bring that up to 30.

  I didn’t feel smarter. Oh well.

  Attributes

  Strength: 55

  Agility: 30

  Dexterity: 30

  Constitution: 53

  Wisdom: 23

  Intelligence: 30

  Charisma: 20

  Luck: 30

  Unassigned points: 0

  “Your world,” Ragnar said, his voice quiet, “was it quite different from this?”

  I looked around at the boat. Skeld was standing at the bow, keeping watch. Ragnar was stretched across my pack in front of me, keeping low so as to stay out of the wind.

  “Yes,” I said,“very much so.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “That’s a harder question to answer,” I replied, stalling.

  I laid into the oars, and tried to come up with an answer. I’d been working hard not to think about home. It was too linked to thinking about the girl. And thinking about the girl just made me hurt with how much I wanted to be wherever she was. How much I wanted to know what had happened. Why she had died. All I knew was that, for once, I hadn’t been involved in the mess. It wasn’t me. Sure, I’d been blamed and I’d paid most of the price, but I wasn’t the cause.

  I wasn’t ready to go into it.

  “Do you miss your home?” I asked Ragnar.

  “Only been gone a day,” the Lutra replied. “And I have been waiting to leave my whole life. Why did you come here?”

  “Why did you?”

  “Life in Saumiers has been hard for my kind. With most of us as slaves to the agachnern, it became difficult to survive. We were mostly young pups and a few of the older generation. I was one of the lucky ones, Skeld as well — our families were intact. Even still, we were lacking good hunters and fishers. Winters were harsh, meals were few and far between, and the community of Saumiers had not been welcoming to us for a number of years. I trained for war in the day and I cleaned a tavern at night. And I heard stories from travelers. The wide wonders of the Empire. The lands beyond. I wanted to see more than Saumiers and the WarWaters. I wanted to see some of the actual world.”

  “And he wanted adventure,” Skeld piped up. “He would spin the yarns he overheard. All day as we trained, I would hear of the shifting sands of the Great Erg. I would hear of dungeons full of danger and treasure. All day. Every day. Treasure and wonder. Wonder and treasure. All the world awaits us.”

  “So you’re here for treasure?” I asked.

  “I’m here to keep Ragnar alive.”

  “But you also had to, like, join the hirð, so, uh, doesn’t that—”

  “We volunteered,” Ragnar said. “It was an honor to join you.”

  Skeld looked over his shoulder at me and nodded. “Whatever other reasons we had to leave Saumiers, we joined you because you are a man of honor. We are proud to be part of you.”

  I blinked a few times, because I had no idea how to answer that. I’d never been on the receiving end of a genuine display of, well, respect.

  “Thank you,” I said softly.

  Chapter 72

  As the sun rose, I found that I’d gotten into something of a fugue state. Row. Row. Row.

  Skeld tapped me, and I stopped rowing. I looked where he pointed. A cloud of mist rose into the sky, and only one thing could make that happen: an absolutely massive waterfall. I realized it was already pulling us along. I spotted a speck of shoreline before the falls, giving us a tiny target to hit that wasn’t a death sentence.

  Immediately I altered course, turning the boat almost completely around. I pulled, putting everything I had into it. The boat leapt into motion, shaking a few of my passengers awake and off their seats. It wasn’t enough; we were still headed the wrong way. I could only mildly alter our path. The mist rolled over us, blocking the sun. We were much too close to death.

  Nikolai stood at the bow with a rope in his hands, ready to jump to shore.

  Though we were still farther than I would have risked, given the strength of the currents, he leapt.

  Nikolai stumbled once, then got his bearings, and looped the rope around a massive stone, tying a knot quicker than a blink.

  Then it was easy — we just pulled the boat in and unloaded.

  I took a moment to walk along the shore and check out the falls. It was as if some great creature had ripped out a section of the cliff wall, and that’s where the water left the lake. I peered over the edge. I couldn’t really make out the bottom. It just seemed to go on forever, the water disappearing into a chasm. The river continued on in the chasm for an interminable distance, snaking around this way and that, cutting a massive gouge into the verdant land.

  It was impossible to talk where we’d stopped; the falls were just too loud. Since my secret magic bag was basically not a secret anymore, I decided to try to fit my pack of goods into it. But Nikolai grabbed my hand and shook his head, making it very clear my giant pack was not to go into the bag. So I got Skeld and Ragnar to help me get the trade pack onto my back, and made Ragnar carry the magic backpack.

  He promptly clambered up my back and sat on top of the trade pack. He pretended he couldn’t hear me yelling for him to get off.

  Then Skeld followed Ragnar.

  I tried to shake them off, but they had claws. I just looked like an idiot. It’s not like they weighed much — the difference was negligible. It was more the principle of the thing, a principle I quickly threw out as I grumbled to myself and started hiking behind Lee.

  The hike was strenuous, which meant I had to help Cleeve. A lot. Which meant he was pissed at me. I was totally having a ball. It wasn’t quite full-on climbing, but there were definitely spots where we had no choice but to use our hands. It was worth it though. Once we crested the cliff, I could see the world spread out before me.

  It was different than anything I’d seen before, at home or in the Empire. Large rocks and boulders were strewn about vast swaths of grasslands, with occasional massive trees that were sort of like baobabs. It looked like savannah, but just a bit more lush. Lots of springs fed small streams that cut through the landscape, joining each other to make up brooks until they dumped into the chasm slowly heading southwest of us. I figured it was running to the Emerald Sea.

  We continued on. Now it was a nice walk, slightly downhill. It was amazing not to be wearing the waders any longer. The grass smelled fresh, and everything was just so pleasant.We stopped every once in a while, and Teela would pass out something like trail mix for us to eat. Lee would complain a bit, and then we’d continue on.

  As the sun dropped below the horizon and the sky darkened, Nikolai found a cliff where we could build a small fire and stretch out some canvas to make shelter. Over our tiny fire, Teela heated up some water and soaked some dried meat, making a rather vile stew-like concoction.

  My hirðmen, having spent the day relaxing on my pack and likely snoozing, took the first two watches. I volunteered for the third. I missed my nighttime training sessions.

  Chapter 73

  Skeld woke me for my watch, and I crawled out of bed. The little guy immediately took the warm spot I’d left, and was snoring faster than I thought possible.

  The fire was little more than glowing coals.

  I found my bag, pulled out my axe, and l
eaned it against the cliff. A little walking about, and I managed to get some branches and small bits of burnable wood. I piled them up on the coals, and got the fire going a little more.

  It was very dark out, but with a little thought, I got it to light up. Actually just a tad too bright for comfort with my dark vision. It worked better in absolute dark. Still, I could see well enough to walk around. I decided to go back up to the top of the cliff, the camp almost directly below me.

  To the south, I saw animals moving, large herbivores eating the grass. Slightly to the west of them, I could see the grass moving as a predator stalked its breakfast.

  The air was crisp. Especially standing above our little camp, where I was fully exposed to the elements. I didn’t feel cold, per se, but the wind bit at me. The skies were mostly clear, and the stars were unbelievable. I took a moment to really feel and experience the place, to take in this world I’d found myself in. I ran my hands over the grass, picked a small flower, and listened to insects talking to each other.

  In my old life, I never actually stopped to look at nature. I was always on the hustle in some way or another. Always a million things that needed to get done: a person to find, a bone to break, money to collect. I smiled and shook my head. It was the first time I’d felt a real warmth and affection for my new life as Montana.

  I forced myself to return my attention to the world around me — gotta stay present, can’t dwell on the past. Coming up from the southeast, I caught sight of the slightest bit of light. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if I didn’t have dark-vision; it would have been lost in the distance. But when even starlight was a bit bright, the flash of a lantern looked like a fucking beacon.