by Drew Hayes
Going Rogue
Spells, Swords, and Stealth: Book 3
By Drew Hayes
Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Hayes
All Rights Reserved.
Edited by Erin Cooley ([email protected])
Edited by Kisa Whipkey (http://kisawhipkey.com)
Cover by A.M. Ruggs
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
This book goes out to Rocky, my first GM, whose patient guidance and fun campaigns are what helped kindle my love of tabletop games.
Special thanks to my awesome beta readers, who always come through in making these books better. Thanks Bill Hammond, Priscilla Yuen, E Ramos E, and TheSFReader.
Prologue
Dented armor. Dull swords. Bobbles and trinkets set within poorly-crafted gold. This was what passed for tribute in the kingdom nowadays. It was hardly worth the effort of stealing; perhaps he would allow the young ones to divide such paltry gains amongst themselves. It would lead to fighting, of course, but that was good. Better they quarrel among each other and learn to use their claws and teeth so that they would never be caught unprepared by lesser creatures.
He was about to turn away when a new scent caught his attention. It was faint, easy to miss, yet it carried with it the unmistakable whiff of the potent and exotic. Looking through the torn-apart wagon once more, he ran a massive claw through a pile that had seemed to be only rags. From the road, one of the fleshy creatures began to protest, which only made the mystery all the more tantalizing.
A glimmer of light sparkled in the evening’s fading light as he parted the small mound of cloth. He leaned in closer and took a long sniff with his giant snout. This was the source of the scent, no doubt about it. He was too large to take hold of the curiosity; a small matter that was easily rectified. The air crackled with power, and suddenly he was within the cart. His majesty was hidden, replaced by the form of a lesser creature in metal armor that poorly replicated the natural defense of his people. Much as he loathed wearing this body, sometimes it was necessary. The small could wriggle around where the mighty would never fit.
This close to the object, he could feel its power. The sensation was a strange one. Not magic, not as he knew it. No, this was something different. Yet even as his hand drew closer, he knew it was not lesser. If anything, he suspected magic may be a pale imitation of the force contained within this strange crystal object. His hand wrapped around the glowing surface—only now could he see that the light it shone was its own and had nothing to do with the sun—and lifted it from the heap of rags that had hidden its splendor.
All around him, the world seemed to twist and shift. Yes, this was new indeed: new, strong, and rippling with possibility. He emerged from the cart, looking over to the young ones who were still pinning down the cart’s original owners. The plan had been to release them once their wares were plundered; this was all about sending a message, and that was hard to do without witnesses. Now, however, the plan had changed. He needed to know as much as possible about this strange artifact, and these creatures would part with every last scrap of their information. They would be forced to, using whatever means were needed. He already knew that the object was incomplete, though he had only just taken it into his possession. This was a single piece of something far greater.
And he would have the whole, even if he had to burn down all of Alcatham to possess it.
Chapter 1
Russell brushed past two elves and what he was pretty sure was a dryad before nearly tumbling over the fifteenth person in red-and-black screaming about chimichangas. If not for Cheri shoving through the crowd with the impunity that only royalty and narcissists could manage, he’d have been dragged back by the wave of bodies washing over him and lost in the sea of nerddom. Fortunately, this was far from his big sister’s first convention, and she’d long ago shed any extraneous levels of empathy that might impede her making her way around.
Double Con, named because it had once been two cons that were eventually forced to merge for fiscal reasons, was far from the nation’s largest gathering of fantasy and comic-book fans. In fact, it probably wasn’t even on the top ten of mid-range conventions. Russell kept internally insisting that was why it was forgivable that he’d never thought to investigate it for signs of Broken Bridge Publishing. He and Cheri had been scouring the internet for any signs of the small company that put out those curious, limited edition modules for Spells, Swords, and Stealth, a game that had once occupied far less of Russell’s mind and sanity.
That, of course, had all been before the first module he played, when situations seemed to change despite what he recalled reading, and his friend Tim’s dice had blazed with light before disintegrating. It had been an experience strange enough to split the old gaming group apart, and though he’d forged a new one since, the second module had proven to be strange as well. Aside from trying to track changes only to have the pages mysteriously smudge, there was the issue of his party getting a chest that was impossible to open. Who put that sort of item in a module without providing a solution? Broken Bridge Publishing did, that’s who. They seemed to feel free to break all sorts of unspoken rules, especially regarding company promotion in the days of the internet. No website or listed address. Not even a social media account. If one didn’t scour the fine print of those modules, they wouldn’t even know the company existed.
Or at least, that had been Russell’s take on it, right until Cheri all but knocked down his door last night, shoving her phone under his nose until he finally looked at the screen. Sure enough, there it was, right on Double Con’s homepage: a booth number for Broken Bridge Publishing in their vendor section.
Even hopping in the car first thing that morning, they were cutting it close. It was late in the final day of Double Con, and Russell could already see vendors packing up their wares, giving up on making any more sales. That didn’t deter Cheri, who, if anything, had been even more gung-ho than Russell. Flaky as his sister could sometimes be, when she caught the scent of adventure, it was damned near impossible to knock her off course—as a poor man in foam armor learned firsthand when he took an elbow to his gut as he tried to cut Cheri off.
Russell didn’t hesitate, sliding along in the gaps Cheri created. They were so close. He couldn’t afford to fall behind. It had been several months since they started the hunt for Broken Bridge, and this was the first real lead they’d gotten. To be able to talk to an employee, to see a mundane face that would assure him all the strangeness was in his head, would be worth getting a few dirty looks as they plowed across the crowded hall.
Finally, as they sidestepped a cluster of people dressed like ninja-trained turtles in post-pubescence, it came into sight. The sign wasn’t particularly grandiose; in fact, if he hadn’t known exactly where it would be and scanned for it, Russell suspected his eyes would have slipped right past the marker. But there was no denying it was there: a plain black-and-white banner with the words “Broken Bridge Publishing” printed across it. For the first time since they’d left the car, Russell surged ahead of his sister, adrenaline and desperation carrying him faster than he would have normally dared travel. Pushing his way past the last of the crowd, he finally broke through and set his sights on th
e booth they’d driven hours to reach.
Russell’s heart sank so fast it may have knocked a few ribs out of place on the journey. Before him was a barren, empty booth. They were too late. So much speeding, so much hurrying, and it hadn’t been enough. They’d taken too long, and now their shot at answers had slipped away. When or if they would get another was anyone’s guess.
Slowly, Russell began to turn, but a bright streak of color caught his eye. A woman with multi-colored hair was rising up from beneath the booth, cracking open a cold soda as she did. Russell’s feet carried him closer, his attention caught by the heavy makeup and nose ring the woman wore before he noted the edge of a cooler that could be seen just behind the booth. She’d been hunched down getting a drink. Russell’s heart leapt back up twice as quickly as it had fallen, overshooting his chest entirely and lodging in his throat. This was it. He was finally standing on the precipice of answers, and the moment was overwhelming him.
Cheri didn’t seem to suffer from such grandiose inclinations, as she sauntered past him and hunched down over the booth’s counter. “Hey, you work for Broken Bridge? Because we’ve got some questions for you all about the weird stuff you’ve been churning out.”
“Name?” If the woman was fazed by Cheri, she didn’t show it, merely sipping her soda and making the demand in a neutral—even bored—voice.
“Excuse me?” Cheri seemed more annoyed by the detached response than she would have been by being ignored, and Russell knew his sister well enough to see where that would lead. The last thing they needed was to get tossed out when they were so close to finally getting answers, so he pushed his sense of foreboding aside and stepped up to the counter.
“My name is Russell. Russell Novak. And this is my sister, Cheri.”
Unlike Cheri’s demands, this got a reaction from the woman. She raised both eyebrows and set down her soda. Holding up her now-empty hand, her fingers beckoned. “You got the name right, now let’s see some identification.”
Confusion seemed to have displaced Cheri’s annoyance as she watched her brother dig into his pocket and produce a driver’s license, barely used. The woman examined it thoroughly, like a bouncer searching for a reason to keep someone out of a club. She turned it over several times, ran it under an oddly colored flashlight, and even tested the flexibility. Eventually, she was satisfied and handed it back to Russell.
“I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure you were going to show,” the woman said. Rather than reaching for her drink, she rummaged in the booth’s contents just out of sight from what Russell and Cheri could see. “The first ones were here on day one, and since then, it’s been nothing but killing time and dealing with people asking questions I can’t answer. Wish you’d made it here a little sooner. My job ends with the last pickup or the convention’s closing. I could have been paid for a whole weekend and only worked a few hours if you were more prompt.”
“The hell are you talking about?” Cheri leaned over and tried to get a peek at whatever was happening under the booth.
“I’m talking about the book.” The woman raised her head quickly, nearly clipping Cheri as she did, and turned to Russell. “You’re here for the last one, I assume. I mean, it was your name on the list.”
From below the counter, she produced a shrink-wrapped book bearing the Spells, Swords, and Stealth logo across the top. Gingerly, Russell reached out to accept the package, staring in mute awe at what he already knew was the next step in his party’s journey. They’d been doing smaller quests since the last module ended, leveling up and gaining some new gear. At the time, Russell had believed he was laying groundwork to something grander. It was only as his hands closed around the book that he realized everything they’d done was nothing more than killing time, waiting for exactly this moment.
“Hold on a damn minute, how did you know we were coming?” Cheri demanded, not nearly so easily placated.
“I didn’t know shit,” the woman replied. “I applied for a temp job a month back and got hired. All I had to do was receive a shipment of books, come to Double Con, and give them out when the people with the right names showed up. Everything else—the booth, the cooler, all of it—was here when I showed up. I assumed you all did some sort of special pre-order or something, though why they wouldn’t just mail the freaking things is beyond me.”
She reached under the counter, scooping up a backpack and grabbing her unfinished soda. “Anyway, I’m out of here. You two already cut it close enough, I’m not getting stuck in end-of-con traffic for you people. Have fun with your book.”
“Wait!” Russell finally managed to look away from the gift in his hands, turning his eyes to the only person who’d actually managed to make contact with the mysterious company. “Did they tell you anything else? Do you have any contact information for them, even an email?”
“Nothing contact-wise,” she replied. “The email was all through the temp agency, and I remember thinking it was weird that there was no return address on the package. But there was one thing here when I showed up. Just a note on the counter. Hang on.” Flipping the backpack around, she opened a few pockets before yanking out a small piece of crumpled white paper and handing it over to Russell. “Didn’t mean jack shit to me; it sounds like something out of a cheap fortune cookie.”
Russell carefully unfolded the paper and smoothed it out against the book still clutched in his hand. Slowly, he read each word aloud, being careful not to skip so much as a single syllable.
“Only those who seek treasure will find it.”
“See? Fortune cookie shit. That really is the last thing, though, so have fun. I’m gone.” With that, the woman threw her backpack over her shoulder and set off into the crowd. It wasn’t until she’d completely vanished from sight that Russell realized they hadn’t even gotten her name.
“Okay, all cards on the table: up until right now, I’ve been thinking this was mostly in your head.” Cheri sidled up next to him, looking down at the note. “Sure, I had your back, and I was hoping to be wrong, but it sure seemed like this was just you dealing with stress or repressed fears or something. That, however, was fucking weird as shit. How in the hell did these people know we were going to show up at a con half a day’s drive away from our town?”
“Maybe they didn’t,” Russell said, still processing the words on the note. “Who would have come to this place? Who would have known about it, except the people who were actively hunting for Broken Bridge Publishing? I think the note means we have to work for the books from here on out, if we want to keep the journey going.”
“Yeah, I put that together myself, thanks,” Cheri told him. “The main issue I was bringing up was how did they know you would be among the group? I mean, she had your name and everything.”
“I was trying hard not to think about that.” Russell refolded the note and tucked it carefully away in his pocket, never for a moment releasing his grip on the module.
“You know, whatever this is, whatever’s happening, I think it gets deeper if we play that thing.” Cheri’s voice was uncharacteristically concerned, a trait she’d all but buried in herself since her final years of high school. “But if you get rid of it, toss it in one of those trash cans by the door, it will probably all come to an end. We can just keep playing regular games, ones where the dice don’t fall apart and strangers aren’t waiting for us several states away. You don’t have to keep pushing.”
“I know.” Russell turned the book over, looking at the description on the back. This one, like the last, was set in the kingdom of Alcatham. Rather than working the rural and outlying areas, however, it seemed to center on the massive capital, Camnarael, and the complex arrangement of lands surrounding it. Already he could picture the possibilities, all manner of quest threads for his party to follow. As a GM, he considered himself to be at least decent in crafting campaigns, but nothing he’d ever come up with was quite as intricate, balanced, or compelling as the adventures Broken Bridge produced. If he walked away now, that w
ould be the end of it. For him and for his players.
“Be honest with me,” Russell said. “If I were willing to toss it in the trash, to walk away from everything weird we’ve grappled with, would you really want me to? Answer as a player, not as my sister.”
“Well, your sister is still pretty damn worried about what all of this is,” Cheri replied. “But as a player, the mystery only makes it more interesting. Honestly, I think we all want to see what comes next. You’re the GM, though. You’re the captain; you decide where to steer us. Back to safe waters, or into the storm and toward the adventure.”
“Let’s head back to the car.” Russell tucked the book carefully under his arm and tried to recall which way they’d come in. “That woman was probably right about the traffic, and we’re going to want to get some rest. Tomorrow, the party starts a new campaign in the capital of Alcatham.”
Chapter 2
A soft whistle was the only warning before the wolf felt cold steel dig into its right flank. The pain was sharp, but not too deep. Hunters had gotten in deep with their arrows before; this was wider than anything from a bow, though. A few sounds, foreign yet familiar, filled the air, and suddenly the pressure in the wolf’s flank was gone, hot blood spurting out of a now-open wound.
It jerked its head around frantically, trying to uncover the source of the attack. The woods smelled of lesser creatures—soft skin, no natural claws to protect themselves. Their flesh was what the wolf had been hunting, though it seemed they too were hungry. Or perhaps scared. The lesser creatures often killed more than they needed to feed, which was just one of the many reasons they were inferior to wolves.
The wolf’s sight fell on a new form shifting into view, the scene before it drawing its attention away from the symphony of scents. The new form gleamed in the late day’s light, its whole body covered in the hard silver that broke even strong wolves’ fangs. A long blade was at the creature’s side, no doubt sharp enough to carve through even hardy wolf flesh. This shining man was cutting off the wolf’s easiest escape route, trying to pin it in. Luckily, this wolf was old and wise; it knew the woods well.