Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II

by Joshua W. Nelson

  Sally led me into a room with a three-story vaulted ceiling. A blank stone wall led from the floor to the top. I could see numerous handholds all over the wall and thought this would be an excellent place to start leveling Climbing. Sally let me know why that wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Neither Dhalean nor Waseem likely explained the nature of your Shadows to you in the correct way, mostly because Waseem is a moron and Dhalean teaches to accomplish, not to explain. So let me be the first to give you some insight.

  “The Shadows are a manifestation of magic. We shouldn’t be able to use magic, since we haven’t studied any of the arcane arts, and yet… Here we are manipulating the shadows for our own benefit. The reason is tied to the gods.

  “For instance, those who are clerics get their magic from their god. Because they heal, most think their god is good and benevolent. Really, all gods are petty dicks. It’s only the ‘dark’ gods that actually get that moniker.

  “Most commoners know the god of rogues as “The Trickster.” That is not the given name for our god, but we let the rest of the world think it is. The true name is Patience. As you have seen, our lives are far more encompassed with the acts of waiting for the right moment and sneaking than they are about tricking folks.

  “A rogue who follows the Path will receive the ability to access the small amount of magic Patience has at hand—the Shadows. And the whole point to my explanation is that ‘Shadows,’ as we call them, are pure magic. So take your Shadows and make yourself a pair of goggles with them, and then look at the wall.”

  I did as Sally said and was shocked to see a blaringly Red wall staring back at me. There were no traps there just moments before, so I was more than a little confused.

  Sally nodded her head my way, noting my confusion, and provided an explanation. “When you saw the tower that scared Waseem, the one with all the wards, you were seeing through the guise of your shadows, as you were already wearing your Blacksuit. Those wards are placed in such a way that even the smallest amount of Magic will make them shine to even the simplest novice. What you are seeing here are an accumulation of magical wards—or Traps, if it makes it easier—that you can now see with the simplest of effort using your shadows. And before you ask, yes you could have seen some of them before with just the Shadows, but increasing your Skill for Detect Traps ensures you 100-percent success at seeing all of them.”

  I walked over to the wall but stopped a foot or so away from the wards themselves. “So is this a new Skill? Detecting Wards or something?”

  “No. The wards register as a Trap, so you see them as such, and I imagine the clarity of the stone behind the ward is clear?”

  “Yes, it is,” I told my teacher. “But I don’t believe I can disable any of these wards. Not with what I know, anyhow.”

  “Indeed. And we don’t disable a ward. We disassemble them. Wards are layers of magic. You will untwine the ward and peel away the layers from each other.

  “There are those who make a living off of the dissipation of wards. This totally removes the ward from existence, and anyone can see the area has been tampered with. Like with all things Rogue, we rely on the subtle to mask our presence, and the disassembling of a ward doesn’t remove it, only makes the current one inert.”

  I turned toward Sally, and for the first time in a while, I had a genuine smile on my face. “And my shadows are the blades?”

  Sally smiled in turn. “Now you got it,” she said, then she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. Trial and error seemed to be the teaching method for this one.

  *

  There were no darts, no explosions, no fire, no ice, and no knives. I failed plenty of times, but none of the wards I worked on had damage modifiers associated with them.

  However, I now knew why the door to the room stayed closed and no one ever came in. More so, I don’t think I will be hearing right for a very long time. You see, every one of the wards that I failed on was linked directly to a siren that would go off in my ear. At least, it felt like it was connected directly to my ear. As you can imagine, I failed a lot on that first day.

  But repetition and focus built skill. I knew I would fail miserably on my first attempt, so I decided to very much use my shadow like a knife and stab directly into the ward. I wanted to see if, with my new vision, I could see what the “layers” of magic looked like. To my surprise, I actually could. This made the next series of attempts easier, and I found an increase in my Skill after only a short time. The notification that I had learned Disassemble Wards, and was at Level 1, was most welcomed.

  Over the course of that day and the next, I systematically disassembled all the wards on the wall. I obviously had to climb up the wall to get to some of them, but that wasn’t a challenge with my Climbing and Scaling Skills. The only time I found myself in need of a healer was at the very top of the three-story wall.

  These were the most difficult of the wards that I had seen. To say the magic here was intertwined would be an understatement of grand proportions. It looked as if some of the magical threads were not only wrapped in a DNA-type helix, but that some of the strands had distinct connections between them, like in gene pairing within those same DNA strands. Removing one from the other through surgery met with failure. That failure met with the first non-siren ward.

  I ran my blade through the ward and immediately felt myself pushed away from the wall. As I learned later, this ward had an “explosive repel” associated with it, and a failure meant I would be blasted away from the ward’s location. This type was quite commonly placed at the third floor and above, as they would likely ensure a painful outcome for the would-be scoundrel. Not to mention, it would give the authorities time to find the culprit as they crawled away. If they lived.

  Thomash explained all of this to me as he healed me for the first time since I started on the ward wall. I asked Thomash if he had any advice, not truly expecting any. To my surprise, Thomash’s response was not only the simplest answer, but also the simplest solution.

  “If someone shoots an arrow at you, you don’t try to counter the arrow. You just get out of the way.”

  I looked up at the wall and nodded at Thomash, asking him to stick around for a moment, as I wanted to try something. Thomash nodded back and sat down against the door where he entered, and I quickly went back up the wall.

  I located the ward I wanted and then moved to the side a bit. I anchored my left hand and the shadows from that hand into the hold I had. With my right hand, I made the slice I wanted, purposefully setting off the ward. As Thomash advised, staying to the side of the ward was a suitable solution for this problem. The repel did push my arm back and forced me to rely solely on my left-hand grip for a moment, but it wasn’t enough to cause me to fall.

  I quickly descended from the top and clasped forearms with Thomash and thanked him for the expert assistance.

  “My friend, if you consider that expert counsel, you really have been getting knocked against the head too many times,” Thomash said as he laughingly left the room and I headed back to the wall.

  An hour after having my conversation with Tomash, I had finished the wall, and my Skill for Disassemble Wards sat at 90. Sally walked in with Waseem in tow just before I finished the last ward. I heard them both clapping when the last of the wards had fallen apart.

  I descended quickly and walked over to Sally and Waseem. Both had smiles on their faces and, to my shock, they both looked genuine. Sally was the first to offer me congratulations, and then she handed me over to Waseem.

  “Looks like you’ve been hard at work, Alex. You’ve still got a little progress to make on those wards and your Scaling, but all of that will be accomplished out in town. Meet up with me tomorrow, and we can get you fully up to speed. By the end of the night, you will be as good as you can get!”

  I thanked Waseem then eyed Sally warily as she approached me. Despite the fact that she enjoyed seeing the pain of others to such a high degree, she had trained me and I had to
be thankful for that.

  “Thank you for your instruction, Sally. Without you, I wouldn’t know these Skills. I hope my use of them will honor all that you have taught me.”

  “Fancy words you got there, Alex. And I noticed you didn’t say anything about feeling any obligation toward me for all the hard work I did.”

  “Not on your life, lady,” I said, but with a small smile.

  Sally smiled in kind and turned toward Waseem saying, “See, I taught him more than just traps and wards.” She then looked at me. “Feel free to come back anytime you like, Alex. You are always welcome to visit me.”

  “Sure thing, Sally,” I said while shaking my head ‘no.’ “First time I have someone I really don’t like, I will stop on by and introduce you to them.”

  “You do know how to please this old lady.”

  “Enough jabber,” Waseem said to the both of us and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s head out to the neighborhood where I’m going to have you start your training. Like I said, end of tomorrow night, you will be good to go.”

  I threw Thomash a salute as I left and nodded at the others in Sally’s employ. I wouldn’t be returning to the Hall of Torturous Wonder if I had things my way. Sadly, I know that things going my way happens far too infrequently in this game.

  *

  Waseem was leaning against an archway when I arrived at the neighborhood. He had seen me off the night before, and I had spent a few hours working on both my Scaling and Disassembling. I had made progress in both, and I had little doubt that I would reach my goal this evening. Waseem, however, hadn’t mentioned anything about meeting me tonight. With Waseem, the unexpected meant trouble for yours truly.

  “No.”

  “Come on, Alex. I haven’t even said anything yet.”

  “I know, Waseem. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever scheme you have, the answer is going to be ‘No.’ So let it go, and let me get finished with my training.”

  “Could be a big payout in it for ya.”

  “If Dhalean caught me even talking about this with you, he would string both of us up by our entrails.”

  “You are a big boy now, Alex. You can make your own decisions.”

  The idea of going on a thieving run with Waseem was very appealing, despite the bluster I was outwardly showing. Everything to this point had been training, training, and more training. The Blacksuit was the only skill I had used with any regularity. But Waseem would only be asking me if he knew he couldn’t do it solo—or he wanted a scapegoat if he got caught. It should come as no surprise that I was leaning toward the latter for his motivations.

  I showed a great deal of hesitancy, but I finally asked, “Ok. What do you want?”

  Waseem looked around in a very conspiratorial fashion before saying, “I’ll deny this to the end of my days if you ever tell anyone, but I am awful at Disassembling wards. There is a house up the hill from here, and the wards on it are no joke, like some of those crazy ones you dealt with at the top of the wall at Sally’s. I couldn’t see how you got around those, but I’ve never been able to. I need your help to get through those wards on the fifth-floor window so we can get into the room beyond.”

  “Why not go through the interior door? I am assuming the only way in isn’t the window.”

  “Sarcasm is not becoming on you. Yes, there is an interior door, but my sources say that way is even more heavily warded.”

  “Wait. If you have someone on the inside, why don’t you just have them let you in, leave you a key, and Blacksuit your way in?”

  “I didn’t say I had someone on the inside, I said I had a source on the wards.”

  I paused for a moment, and then it all sank in. I thought Waseem was there to meet with me when I finished my tasks at Sally’s. But he wasn’t.

  “And you trust Sally on this?” I asked him.

  I wish that I could put into words the look on Waseem’s face when I asked that question. The surprise and astonishment were just too good for me not to smirk at. Waseem was not amused.

  “Whomever my source is,” Waseem replied cagily, “the bottom line is I can’t get through the ward. So will you help?”

  “What’s in it for me? And the answer better be good.”

  “Opportunity to thank me for all the hard work I’ve put in training you not enough, I take it?”

  “That would get you a boost up to the first-floor window on my back. And barely that.”

  “I don’t like how you become with a little power. Reminds me too much of myself,” Waseem said with the briefest smirks.

  “‘Learned from the best’ is how the saying goes, right? So what will it be? I’m not saying no, but it’s got to be good.”

  Waseem thought about it some more, but in the end, I knew he would have to offer me something grand. I was the only one that could help him at this moment.

  “I have a contract to remove one thing from within that room. I have been led to believe that the room is filled with numerous other items of interest. I had planned to offer you a portion of the take, but I see even that may not be enough. So my offer is this: you have first choice of anything in that room other than the item I am contracted to remove. Deal?”

  “No.”

  “And?”

  “And… no, Waseem.”

  “Dammit! You don’t just say no! You follow up with something else. I know you are aware how this works.”

  I stared back at him for a good five to ten seconds before another large smile covered my face. “I’m having too much fun with this. I’d apologize, but it wouldn’t be sincere. Instead, I will make a counter offer just to keep you happy: I get first choice of anything in the room as stated before, that can stay. Second, though, is that if there is nothing in the room other than your contracted item, I get one third of your contract amount. If there are multiple items in the room and yet I still find none to my liking, I still get one third of your contract. Deal?”

  I was waiting for Waseem’s answer when I realized I was about to miss out on an amazing opportunity. “Or, there is another option.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “If there are other items up there to choose from, I take four, and don’t touch your contract amount or the rest of the loot. How does that sound?”

  Waseem looked suspicious. “Why four?”

  “One for me and each guy that I travel with.”

  Waseem was reluctant, and thought my wanting to benefit others a waste but agreed in the end. I ran off ahead of him and made my way to the home Waseem indicated. The fifth-floor window was at the top of a small tower, as one would expect. What Waseem didn’t tell me was that the rest of the tower wall had wards as well. I was definitely going to get some more practice in tonight!

  It took about an hour, but I was able to get through all of the wards below the fifth floor and had found myself nestled up next to the window. The ward here was complex. Even more, it wasn’t just one ward. There were three intertwined in a triangle over the square-shaped window.

  My first goal was to untangle the threads binding the wards together, and then I could go about disassembling each one. I was looking at another hour of work, minimum, and that was if I didn’t set one of them off.

  I needed a bit of a break, so I descended the wall and met up with Waseem just outside the manor’s walls.

  “Done already?”

  “No. The last one isn’t a simple one-part ward. There are three overlapping in a triangle over the window. I’m going to need to do a lot of fine-tuned applications, and I need to be fully rested before I do.”

  Waseem didn’t argue in the least bit and accepted my explanation. I had done the thieving thing in numerous other games, and any professional thief knows that exhaustion can be as detrimental to a job as noise can be.

  Once I felt fully refreshed, I raced back up the tower, not having to worry anymore about the wards. Like Sally explained, the wards were still there, and they would look like they were still functioning to even the
most trained. If you looked at it like a handgun, my work simply puts a small blocker between the firing pin and the primer on the end of the bullet. Both are still there, just no bang-bang.

  I was slightly off in my calculations, and it took me a little less than an hour to finish with the wards. The trick was to separate each of the wards from the other, without breaking their links to each of the corners. Once that was done, I was able to peel them apart and disassemble their structures. With that completed, I descended again and grabbed Waseem.

  I was shocked to find that the window was unlocked. Waseem explained that so few ever bothered to lock a window this high up, and even fewer bothered when there was such a powerful ward over the location.

  Waseem entered first, and I followed behind. At least, I believe I followed behind, since we both had our Blacksuits on and I couldn’t see through Waseem’s Invis. My assumptions were proven true when I got through the window and saw Waseem standing in the center of the small enclosure, Blacksuit removed.

  As Waseem walked over to a small desk to collect his contracted item, I started looking at the various items scattered throughout the room. There were numerous scrolls for spells, various weapons (although none that were daggers), and quite a few pieces of armor. I still hadn’t seen anything that I wanted, so I moved over to a jewelry box containing several rings and earrings.

  Waseem quickly located what he was looking for, placing what looked like a golden plate into one of his bags. As I continued to look, Waseem was separating various items that I had already looked through.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Some of this is trash. Some is good but not worth trying to transport out of here, and the rest is the loot. When you are done looking at those trinkets, I will add them to the pile. Trinkets always fit. Did you find something yet?”