“What do you mean leased by your family?”
“My family owns a few apartments in New York,” he explained. “They’re all warded and are mostly used as safe houses or when we get visitors that value their privacy. I am sure my father wouldn’t have a problem leasing one to you. And if you also stop trading in the DEM, you should be fine.”
“Should be?”
“Well, I mean, no offense… but if you stop messing with their market, you won’t be worth the money they’d need to spend in order to find you.”
“So I guess Louie told you everything?” I asked. I certainly hadn’t mentioned I was messing with their market.
“Pretty much. It was quite a clever thing to do. Very few people source materials from the Cosmos because of the import fees, and also because most of them don’t know enough about this world.”
“They don’t know enough about the Cosmos? About this whole world?” I said surprised.
“Well, look at it this way. Do you know about the country of Burundi?”
“I mean… I’ve heard of it. It’s in Africa, right?”
“It is. It’s a small country next to Congo, and most Americans don’t know much about it at all. It’s the same thing with the Cosmos.”
“You mean this world is Burundi in the Apocosmos?”
“Close, but not exactly. This world is much, much, much smaller. A better comparison would be one house in Burundi compared to the whole planet,” Leo explained. “But you should have let me know what you were doing. I might have been able to give you a few pointers.”
“Have you traded as well?”
“Hells no. Too much stress. And as a family, we’re quite fortunate financially. I meant pointers about how to proceed, how to protect yourself, and that sort of thing.”
“Well, it’s too fucking late now, isn’t it?” I said and looked at Louie who was leaving his mark on the wheel of a rusty-looking pickup truck.
“So you’re not thinking of taking over?” Leo asked after a couple of seconds of awkward silence.
“Taking over? You mean retaliating?”
“Yes. They failed to take you down. I know it probably sounds cruel to you, but that’s how this world works. Such an error is usually fatal in the Apocosmos. You have the upper hand now. I can help you with locating them.”
“Are you crazy? We almost got killed, Leo. All because of my avarice.” I realized I was almost shouting so I lowered the tone of my voice to what sounded like a stage whisper. “I put Louie in danger.”
“It was about time we had a change,” Louie said once he’d made sure nobody else was around us.
“Not this kind of change,” I snapped at him. “We can have a change in a new country. Somewhere where we won’t have to constantly look over our shoulder.”
“Look,” Leo interjected. “Just give it some time before you make any final decisions.”
“Oh, I’ve had quite some time to think about it in my new apartment, alright,” I reassured him. “I lost our home, man. Nothing’s keeping me in this city.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I took in a sharp breath as if I’d be able to pull them back.
I didn’t mean to say that. He knows that, right?
“All I’m saying is…” he continued, seemingly not having taken offense to what I’d just said. “Today, after work, come to my place and I can show you the options. What kind of protections you can have here, how safe you’d be in Europe, the costs. All those things. Then you’ll be able to make an educated decision. Perhaps you’d fancy one of our apartments in Firenze.”
“Come on, Alex,” Louie said, and he pushed my shin with his nose. “It’s the least we can do.”
“Okay, sure,” I said reluctantly, though I was still worried about one aspect of getting to Leo’s. “Is it safe for us to go downtown though?”
“I’ll send a car to pick you up,” Leo said, putting my mind at ease. “Once you’re in the car, you’ll be completely safe from prying eyes. Both physical and magical.”
“In that case, what time should we be ready?” I said as we reached the end of our little walk.
“The car will be downstairs around seven. Sound good?”
“Sounds great,” Louie confirmed before I had the chance to say anything, so I simply nodded.
“Alright then. See you both tonight.”
“See you,” I said. Louie barked twice instead, since a passerby was too close for him to speak.
The evening at Leo’s place was interesting to say the least—from the moment the blacked-out SUV picked me up until the moment it dropped me back at Rory’s place. Leo showed me ways I could ward my residence, or rather employ others to do it for me, without burning all of my savings. It wasn’t a cheap service at all since only spellcasters who had upgraded their class twice had access to these spells, but since his family had worked extensively with some of them, he’d be able to recommend me as a client.
The most exciting part of our night, however, was browsing through the real-estate holdings of the DiFiore family in Europe. Not only did they own apartments and even houses in most European capitals, but they also owned whole acres of land in prime tourist hotspots like Mykonos, Ibiza, Calabria, and Nice. I wasn’t interested in any of the party islands of course, but the idea of living in a beach house in Greece had been part of my plan all along. These weren’t villas, and I’d still have to find a job to sustain us, but having the option couldn’t hurt. And Louie, who loved nothing more than sunbathing and bacon, would be so happy there.
For all the fascinating information I gained at Leo’s apartment that evening, nothing would come close to the revelation I had later that night when I returned to Rory’s place. The light was on as always and I could hear the dwarf singing even before I put the key on the door. His voice was loud and low and even though I couldn’t understand the words, it sounded like a very sad song.
“Is he celebrating with his apprentice?” Louie asked as we reached the entrance.
“Doesn’t sound like celebrating,” I replied and turned the key.
Rory’s apprentice was nowhere to be seen, which made the singing to himself all the weirder. The dwarf was sitting on the one chair, holding a half-empty glass in his hand. Another glass, filled to the brim, was on the table next to a bottle of whiskey.
“Hey, Rory,” I said and Louie rushed over to him.
“Evening, half-Celt,” he said and brought his free hand low to pet Louie. “Who’s a good boy, huh?”
“Is this glass for me?” I asked, moving my hand toward the filled glass of whiskey. Gods knew how much I needed a drink right now.
With an agility I had not seen before from him, he swung the hand he was petting Louie with and slapped my outstretched fingers away from the glass.
“Don’t touch it!” he growled.
He was clearly drunk, but I had never expected him to be violent. Perhaps I needed to reconsider.
“It’s not for ye to drink,” he said, in a calmer tone now. “It isn’t for anyone to drink. Get another glass if ye want some.”
There were no other glasses in the apartment, or anything else at all really, as Rory knew well, but in any case I had suddenly lost my appetite for alcohol. Not just because he had slapped my hand away from it, but because this didn’t seem like the dwarf I knew at all.
“I’m good,” I said and sat on the couch. “What’s the occasion then? Are you celebrating something?”
“Aye.”
“Well, what are you celebrating?”
“Birthday,” he said and took another large sip.
“Oh, I didn’t know. Happy birthday.”
“Happy birthday,” Louie added while Rory refilled his glass with the dark brown liquid.
“How old are you then, old man?”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“Then whose birthday are you celebrating?”
The dwarf paused as if to consider the question for a moment. “Someone I loved.”
Well, fuck. This couldn’t be good. Using past tense. I knew that feeling. I used to celebrate those birthdays too.
“How old would your loved one be today?”
“Nine.”
14
Eyes of the beast
“I was born just over a century ago in the realm of Domhain,” Rory said, his eyes distant. “In the greatest hall of the whole realm. The Adamant Hall under the Battleforge banner.”
“You had your own hall?” asked Louie.
“Aye, little one,” he said and a smile formed on his lips. “I was… I am the seventy-fifth king of the Adamant Hall, Lord of the Battleforge clan, and a member of the great dwarven council.”
This guy is a king?
Sure, he looked grand and powerful, but that was because he was ridiculously muscular and covered with scars. He didn’t look majestic at all.
“I was crowned when I was still in me forties and devoted meself to our clan for more than half a century, as is the duty of new kings. Until I met Mariel. The most beautiful woman I had ever laid me eyes upon, and the strongest puncher too. She could send yer teeth flying, I tell ye that, half-Celt.”
I smiled at his description but kept my mouth shut. He might have been drunk, but he was opening his heart. I wouldn’t make him regret it.
“We fought. We fell in love. Then we fought some more and we married,” he said and held one of his cleanest beard braids between his fingers. “This is me marital braid. The rings holding it together were crafted by her.”
Both Louie and I leaned forward to inspect the carvings on the metal rings. The geometrical shapes on them were thick but carried a certain elegance.
“They’re beautiful, Rory,” I said and Louie barked in agreement.
“Aye, she’s a great smith,” he said and stroked his braid lovingly. “In the fifth year of our marriage, she gave me the greatest gift a person can get. Owen. Such a sturdy little bastard. He almost had a beard when he was born.”
“Your son,” I whispered, finally confirming what I was afraid he was getting at.
“Aye, me firstborn and only son,” he continued. “First to pick up a hammer among the boys his age. Little slower on speaking but who cares. The boy was strong. Until that gods-damned day when the nightmare fell upon us.”
With the corner of my eyes, I noticed Louie pulling back his ears in anticipation of the negative turn Rory’s story was surely about to take.
“It was a day of celebration. The king’s son was turning five years old. Exactly four years ago today. There was dancing, and drinking, and great brawls. It was a happy day. Until the bells started tolling… We were under attack by the only enemy that could surprise us. An army ye can see coming, but a dragon fucking surprises you.”
A dragon attacked his hall? This sounded a lot like a couple of fantasy novels I’d read but, looking at his face as he recounted the events, I could tell he was reliving a nightmare worse than any book.
“Maelcrux the Cruel,” he continued and bared his teeth as he spoke the name. “That was the name of the gigantic silver dragon that fell upon us like a meteor. We fought with everything we had, but our arrows wouldn’t pierce his scales and our axes could not reach him as he flew through the halls of our ancestral home. He froze us alive. He buried us under tons of stone. He devoured us.”
The dwarf paused for a second and took another large sip from his whiskey. Then he produced his pipe from a pocket, lit it, and breathed in the magical smoke.
“The dragon eventually found his way to the throne room. We fought tooth and nail, but he was an indomitable force. He was clawing away my best warriors as if they were made of water. I had a duty as a father to protect me family and as a king to protect me people. I failed at both with one breath of the dragon’s fire.”
His hand was now trembling and he almost spilled the whiskey on the table as he refilled his glass.
“He froze me boy and then he shattered him into a thousand pieces. I tried to protect him but I wasn’t enough,” he said. He showed the scars and frost burns on his body. “There was nothing to bury, half-Celt.” A tear ran down his cheek and he wiped it awkwardly as he raised his hand to drink again. “I lost it. I charged at the dragon. All it took was a swipe of the beast’s tail and I was thrown against a pillar, me helmet destroyed and me skull fractured. Me wife and me men carried me to a spellcaster who healed me. But not before we were pretty far down the road leading away from our home. Hundreds of us, including me son, were killed on that day and the rest of us, the ‘lucky’ ones, were driven into exile.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said quietly.
“It didn’t happen to me, Alex. I let it happen. I, the King of Adamant Hall, was not prepared for it. That’s why it happened.” He chugged another big gulp of his drink. “I’m not a complete man anymore.” This time he raised his beard and close to the throat, there was a braid missing with scar tissue from a burn in the place the hairs would have grown from. “This was the braid of me son. I can never grow that back. But this one…” This time he ran his fingers over where his mustache would be. “This I can gain back. A king without a hall is a king not worthy of hair on his upper lip. For the honor of the Battleforge clan, and for the memory of me son, I will slay the beast that attacked us and reclaim the hall of me ancestors.”
“So that’s what was taken from you and what you want to get back,” Louie said, and the dwarf nodded but something else had just clicked into place for me.
“All those negative reviews from years ago. Those were from your people, right?”
“Aye,” the dwarf said, falling back to his usual short answers.
“But they couldn’t have blamed you for what happened with the dragon?” I asked, and got nothing but an intense stare from him. “No. Nobody would. They didn’t like that you abandoned them.”
“What the fuck was I supposed to do?” he said and slammed his glass down on the table, spilling whiskey everywhere. “Ye don’t know the heavy burden that falls on the shoulders of a king. The first thing I started doing once we’d found a place to set up camp was to scan the ranks and levels of me warriors. I didn’t even stop to shed a tear for me dead son. I wanted to kill that thing. But then the reports of the dead and the missing started coming in. One after the other. Brothers, cousins, nephews. People who knew me since I was born and people who had just been born. It was too much, half-Celt.”
“I understand,” I whispered, though I couldn’t be any further away from understanding. I could relate to the pain of losing somebody you loved and being the one to blame for it. But not this kind of responsibility.
“I couldn’t put them through it again. So I left. I exiled meself even further away and I vowed not to return to me people until Maelcrux was slain and the Adamant Hall was in dwarven hands again. For this, I need sellswords and equipment specialized for fighting dragons. I’m not there yet. But I’m getting closer. Or at least I was getting closer before we stopped selling arrows.”
“I’m sorry, Rory,” I said and this time I really meant it. I also wished I could have continued with the business we had. Perhaps knowing what I knew now, I might have continued our business even after I hit my original goal. Just to help him fund this crusade of his. But there was nothing that would make me risk it all again.
“It’s fine,” he said and waved his hand drunkenly. “Businesses like yers rarely last long and at least I chopped off a couple of years from me original plan. I started this knowing it would be decades before I was ready.”
“Decades?” I gasped. “Rory, how long has it been since you last saw your wife?”
“The day I said goodbye to her was almost four years ago.”
“What the fuck, Rory?” I said. Suddenly, I was pissed off at how ungrateful and selfish he was. “Your wife stayed behind to deal with the consequences and you left?”
“This is how I dealt with it,” he said plainly.
“She’s alive,” I practically shouted
at him, “and you’re away from her just because you can’t face what’s befallen—”
“I am weaker than she is!” he shouted and launched himself up, bringing his face in front of mine. “And what do ye know about facing consequences? What do ye know about loss?”
What do I know? He wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone they loved. Just as I was about to hit him with the hard truths he deserved, Louie stepped between us and started barking. I broke eye contact with him and we both fell on our knees and started petting the upset corgi who knew exactly what to do to deescalate the situation.
“In any case,” the dwarf said as he stood up and backtracked to his chair again, “yer reviews raised me average score and I’ve been getting a few more jobs now.”
“Anything interesting?” I asked, trying to follow his change of subject.
“Not really. Some mid-grade crafting materials, a few weapons, and armor here and there. The usual.”
“Well, at least business is coming in again.” Louie jumped into the conversation.
“Aye,” Rory said and sighed. “What about ye? Why did ye want the money, Alex?”
“Well, at first, when I was pulled in the Apocosmos, I was left with a large hospital bill that would have ruined me.”
“That bad, eh?”
“Yeah. I’m still paying it in installments so as not to alert anyone in the Cosmos, but I’ve already earned the amount I needed. Then, once I saw how easy it was, I thought I might as well make more money so that I can repay what other debts I had. But once I scaled up production with you, I got greedy. I wanted an early retirement. A villa by the sea, so Louie and I could live alone and away.”
“Ye really love the fluffer?” he said, with the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Of course he does!” Louie said and barked.
“I do,” I said and rubbed him behind his ears.
Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) Page 22