It started by lanternlight, the kind that washes over grassy hills in cool accompaniment with the breeze. The surrounding area was bathed in a rich white-blue moonlight. Most of the hills were populated only with the chirps of crickets, light of fireflies and various scattered signs of nocturnal life, save of course for the one hill upon which the lanterns shone.
At the top of that hill, where it met an adjacent twin, a modest fort stood, its stones weather-worn but otherwise unbothered by nature. It had been grander in a forgotten era, and it now barely maintained the kind of lucky integrity that allowed people to inhabit it this particular evening.
These people bore spears, unadorned by banners or signifiers of any kind. They walked through the dilapidated halls with a confident usurpation of safety and security. They were guests in this place, yet all the same as rightful lords, they would have seen fit to remove anyone they saw as unwelcome.
This certainly would have included the other individual present here tonight, had they known he was there. He was alone, but had arrived with great intent. He had entered half an hour prior through one of the many breaches left by time in the walls. He traversed the interior by rafter, traveled slow by standing still in the dark waiting for the chance to shift, and he watched in silence for them pass under his feet. He listened to the reverberation of their voices echoing up and down the corridors. Each step was a necessarily decisive action in favor of staying hidden and elevated; he was testing his patience as it was, but favored patience to the hassle of being found in a hallway. It would have taken too much time and effort to hide his assailants after the fact, even if all went well for him in the encounter. And it most certainly would not go well, he felt as he mused about the recent turns his life had taken to lead him here.
To that effect, he elected to wait in silent indignity each time he heard them coming. Even thinking his most impatient thoughts as though it could accelerate the time he needed to take between movements, the waiting still placed him three hours further into the night, all to traverse a corridor, ascend a staircase, and climb out a window undetected. From here, he had desperately hoped to now be a little hastier, and the prospect at this stage had piqued his waning excitement. Feeling like was making tangible progress and enjoying the breeze outside, he retrieved a length of rope and cast it confidently, immediately missing the first throw. So after resolving that he was finished feeling excited again, the second throw also promptly missed. He paused before the third throw to internally apologize to whatever external force must still be prodding at his life, and asked very nicely if he could throw the rope and get on with the rest of his night.
The third throw found merciful purchase and he made a point to rescind his apology at once out of spite. He was so eager to climb that he had almost neglected to weave his feet into the rope for climbing, forgetting he was no longer in a thirty-year old’s body. This reminder was a result of feeling the weight of his body threatening to dislocate his shoulders for a moment, until he corrected his mistake and winced at the sharp soreness the sudden exertion had left on his arms. He reasoned with himself as he corrected his hold and stretched the soreness from his arms one at a time, slightly embarrassed by how this night was going. The amateurish nature of his work thus far had not been sitting very well, knowing how much faster and more effective he could have been once. Unfortunately, it had been years since he had needed to go to this much personal trouble over a target. He figured he was likely just off of his game as a result of those years spent willfully ignoring his personal training. The more affirmations like that he gave himself, the more patronizing they sounded in his head. He did not enjoy especially the way each hardship confronted him with his own negligence.
He just climbed the rope at that point.
Reaching the top, to his credit and relief, was a brisk action, as nobody would have been paying any mind to an interior wall this high up. Where he vaulted over the wall was a place the walls met into a corner tower, overlooking on one side the courtyard and inner keep two stories below. On the far side was the long fall down the exterior wall into the damp gully between the two hills where water often collected after heavy rain.
It was the place with the best leverage to attack the keep, and naturally the most physically miserable and exposed. At least, more exposed before a small patch of trees had grown into it, likely nurtured by the same water in the ground. The reason this caught his attention was because he had been near the premises earlier while planning his entry, and he had considered climbing one of those trees and using a grapple as a tightrope, but it would have been a lethal place to be exposed should he be spotted halfway across. It would have also needed him to stay down there all day waiting in the mud until nightfall to come out undetected. The time would have been immaterial in the face of success, which itself was not a guarantee. But more so, he was already having a difficult week without laundering his good thieving clothes again. He found it best not to carry around odors or tarnish in a profession where stealth is paramount in the rural and urban alike. It was unprofessional.
The door which stood to his side was simple enough, but the lock gave him pause. The mechanism was as dilapidated as the rest of the tower, and the scuffs on the floor confirmed what he’d feared during his preparation and been unable to confirm until now: the door tended to jam when unlocked and it may not even unlock properly. The guards had a tendency not to keep any sort of regular schedule or rotation, instead being distracted by idle conversation or taking shortcuts. There was no telling who would be nearby to hear the door opening, much less how long he even had to work.
Without another means of entry at this level, he resolved to continue and accept the challenge of time. Thankfully, there were barrels of lantern oil adjacent which might conceal him further. His lockpicks were intended for newer greater locks than this one. The mechanism was actually quite trivial to disengage once he had kneeled and inserted the requisite rod and pick. There was resistance; less like an intended obstacle and more like the metal inside was deformed and getting in its own way.
He did not know how much time he had, so even when he confirmed the bolt was ever-so-slightly not clear of the bracket, there was no other choice in his mind. With resignation and increasing adrenaline without the luxury of patience, he took a pace back and rushed forward, bashing the door. It flung open after a moment’s resistance. Not only did the wood on stone make an uncomfortably loud scrape, but the metal bolt and bracket emitted a truly horrible screech against one another. Nevertheless, he was inside the room. He didn’t even bother closing the door, there would have been no point making the noise a second time if anyone came investigating the first one. And it was unlit save for a far arrow slit window and now the light coming through the door. But none of that needed to matter; all he needed in order to leave was to simply pocket the target he’d been told about, which he knew had been smuggled into this very chamber. He looked around and found nothing remarkable at all. The room contained unused furniture, but had no containers which would logically house his prize.
It could not have moved, as nobody had been in here since the men had entered and left the first time, carrying a large assortment of objects under covers. As a matter of fact he saw none of those objects now, but did see something else.
At the far side of the room, under a much larger cover, stood something he had first mistaken as part of the wall. He moved and pulled the cover free, and to his horror, discovered his target. He had been told he was looking for a suit of armor. His employer had neglected to mention what type of creature the armor was intended to protect.
To be particular, it was very clearly meant to fit some manner of half-giant.
It was ridiculous in height, standing above his own stature twice over. It was broader from shoulder to shoulder than his reach with both arms fully extended outwards. He could not even imagine the weight. Clearly it had only been movable for these men because they had brought it in disassembled. Perhaps it was a matter of taking it apart piece by piece.
Except that he saw no buckles or straps by which to disassemble the armor. Each plate seemed to be locked in place with no way of disengaging from each other. His disbelief at this point all but doubled. As he had walked around it, he realized that before, he was only asking himself why they would bring this here and why he had not been told of its size. Clearly these questions were stupid. The actual questions he should apparently be asking is if this was so cumbersome and seemingly impossible to dismantle, why they would have assembled it without anyone inside of it.
He might have reasoned something or some way of getting his prize out the door, if only that same door had been quieter a minute prior. He realized that he was observing the armor under lanternlight, but the room had been unlit. He turned his head and saw a score of three guards in the doorway, frozen, eyes locked on him. The one in the middle had a lit lantern and a spear while the other two were holding theirs, unlit. They were not even armed.
His objective for the night changed at once. He did not have to grapple with that change. And once he had accepted it in less time than the blink of an eye, he dove for the middle man, tackling him to the ground. Wrenching the muscle memory out of his body despite its objections, he used acrobatics to spring off of his hands and the guard he’d tackled to then land on his feet, now traversed through the doorway and now standing upright on his opponents’ other side.
This would have been an amazing position for him to take back control of the evening and perhaps salvage his mission, if only there hadn’t been another eight men standing in front of him with spears much more ready than the ones behind him. Now with eight in front and three behind him, the sinking feeling of risk came about him, but so too did the ideas that desperation inspires. Living was the priority, which for his profession often meant taking a gamble on that life when it is already in the greatest jeopardy. And indeed, the same barrels of pitch he had observed earlier were on his left. Evidently the guards who had actually discovered him had apparently come only to refill their lanterns and likely had been out of earshot. The only one who had even done so before noticing the door was the one he’d tackled. The other eight had probably been in the tower’s lower level and made the long journey up through the walls to the top.
The reason this mattered was because none of the eights were holding their lanterns. The man he’d tackled, however, had notably been holding his. It now lay, still lit on the ground.
He had less than a second, maybe two at most, to act.
He kicked the bottom barrel hard such that the one above it would topple over and spill. And it did, all over the area, the men, and himself. Then it reached the fallen lantern. Everyone saw it, and everyone, himself included, made the same action, which was to dive away for cover. For the guards that was back into the room or further away from the door. For the poor thief, however it would mean diving not behind him into guards and death, forwards into guards and death, or to his left into fire and death, that left his right which had a plummet and probable death.
He shoved his fear down and dove over the side of the wall, feeling his clothes catch on fire at a burst of flames abruptly consumed the entire scene. His vision was a rotation of sky and ground with the proximities of both being hard to visually discern but easy to mentally understand.
There was a moment where he thought he was dead, until he realized he was tasting wet earth and his body stung on one side. He had fallen two stories shoulder-first into the same gully full of mud he had observed earlier, its wetness making the earth soft enough to embrace his landing which had evidently executed into a roll. That roll had done the work of sparing him a lethal impact and extinguishing his now smoldering clothes which were now covered in mud, and therefore providing him with an effective camouflage. It was also cold and it stank. He looked up at the place he’d jumped from and saw orange light overtaking the tower. Reasoning that he was alive and not actively dying, he looked for the guards. There was shouting but nobody had seen what became of him. Relief dared creep back into his mind. Perhaps there was a way he could come back from this and somehow finish the job another night.
Then a mote of bright blue light shot up from the courtyard within. It hovered in the air far above the fortress, before it expanded, forming a dome that was rapidly growing and descending towards him. It would have hit him had he not seen the oncoming threat of bisection and rolled free. He now lay outside of it. He had a dreadful feeling he knew what he was seeing and picked up a nearby stone, casting it at the dome only to watch it bounce off. The dome showed no sign of wavering or diminishing over time. He stared at it a moment before the sound of guard activity returned to him muffled underneath the dome’s gentle hum.
Dejected, he dragged himself to his feet and he ran, footsteps squishing sadly back at him.
…
…
…
There was a roadside inn a few miles from the hills. The sensory experience here was usually one of merriment, warmth, and comfort. That experience had died down over a few hours after the flashes of an explosion and the appearance of a very large blue dome had overtaken part of the horizon through the forward windows. The otherwise eventful evening rush was now all but void in new patronage.
The only newcomer at this point was a very exhausted, haggard, limping man in tarnished muddy clothes, who made no signs or social indications of any kind before making for the nearest table and slumping hard into a chair. His head fell back over his chair and his hood went fell down with it. It didn’t matter to him at this point.
Something landed in his lap, jarring him upright. It was a washcloth. A figure adjacent had cast it over to him. He looked over at this individual and his shoulders released tension quick enough to punch a sigh out of his lungs.
The man in front of him was someone who stood a full head above him, with a much broader frame. He had neatly done greying-chestnut hair and a beard. He was dressed in a simple white tunic and dark slacks. The thickness of his arms and torso threatened the integrity of his shirt as he proceeded to sit across from the unfortunate thief.
The washcloth had been an invitation which was promptly taken, as the thief made to wipe of his face first. While he did so, the man in white spoke.
“Drake Marco, as I live and breathe. You just can’t make anything easy for yourself, can you?”
the thief, Drake, looked down at himself assuming this was what his new companion had been observing.
“The rain yesterday made a hard landing soft.”
“Have a hard night with that hard landing?”
Drake scowled at him knowingly.
“Come now, I was planning on being polite: implying you didn’t just obviously fail whatever it is you were doing, between the soil and downtrodden demeanor. But then you did choose to leave the retirement you had so eagerly boasted to me in our last conversation.”
It was not shame exactly that stretched over Drake’s face, but rather the discomfort of having been incorrect in a way that had apparently been clear to others but not himself. The man in white continued speaking.
“So, that begs the question, how dire are things for you right now if you’ve stooped so low as to work contracts again, at your age?”
Drake’s internal defenses had been pierced enough by the earlier statement and now he felt the roil of response bubbling up inside him. He didn’t have to answer the given question but he did need to say something.
“I’m sorry, you glossed over what exactly you’re doing here.”
This was a pointed accusation meant mainly to insinuate the man in white had also fared poorly since they last met. The man in white was unbothered and wrinkled his brow, imitating confusion.
“Can I not travel and eat where I like?”
Drake was giving him a stare that didn’t let up. He knew he was being overly curt but he was less inclined to practice empathy after this evening’s events. The man in white saw this and relented.
“All right, as it happens, I was actually already in town. I was looking for some clients myself tonight, and I was really close to negotiating a fair deal,” he then gestured out the nearest window “when this giant bright dome on the horizon ruined the amiable mood I’d worked so hard to set this evening. Needless to say the other party felt suddenly aware and defensive, and has since left. And I am still without work.”
Drake took a break from wiping his face so sit upright and shrug.
“So what does that have to do with me? Do you want me to mourn for your lost business?”
“Actually, I figured one way or another than it could serve me to wait near to that,” he said pointing out the window again without breaking his eyeline with Drake. “Because whoever I saw next would likely be one or more of the parties involved and – tell me where I’ve been wrong so far – there may be opportunity yet born from conflict. The way I saw it I was owed by someone for my troubles tonight. But it has now become an unexpected surprise, because who do I find here instead of some blundering fool or desperate victim? Why, the unluckiest man in all of Periculus.”
Drake huffed, resigned.
“Is that what you want from me, Ferreldus, money?”
“Money’s as good a cause as any, you’d agree? Clearly money was enough to make you go to this length tonight.” The man in white, Ferreldus, said this with a nod towards Drake’s clothes. “Which, for that matter, brings me back to my original question. What could possibly make you try and loot something from that fortress, at a time when every road and town has more through-traffic and watchful eyes than ever for the festival season?”
Drake finally dignified the question with a real answer.
“…Back pain.”
“Back pain,” Ferreldus repeated back to him. “I know a physician. He does backs, and there’s not even mud involved.”
Drake came back sharply at the mockery again.
“Does he do free room and board too? Can he do that for the next few decades?”
Drake was making a point which Ferreldus immediately understood. His following question had a more considerate tone.
“What are you working with?”
“Right now? Whatever’s in my pocket.”
“You don’t even have a cheap inn room waiting for you? No job for when your body can’t do this any more?”
Drake at this point was responding much better to Ferreldus’ new tone, because it gave him a chance to voice things that had been following him all night.
“My body already can’t do it, but thievery is what I’m good at. At least, it’s what I thought I was good at. I can’t just go straight. I have skills but I’d be starting from scratch. At least like this I thought I’d have a chance for one more great score to set me up.”
“The mode of thievery you prefer just isn’t going to work like it used to. You have gotten older and the world is becoming too wary of a place. I know you don’t like when we talk about this, but I urge you to find another way.”
Drake had heard similar things before, in a time when Ferreldus had tried with greater idealism to convince him to turn to different work. Since then idealism had turned to pragmatism and Ferreldus was doing work which sat, in Drake’s mind, not morally far above what he did. It’d have been useless to reiterate that he just couldn’t bring himself to quit. For all his complaining, and the tremendous difficulty, the truth was that Drake put himself through this because it was what he knew and he had never stopped enjoying the uncertain thrills of the work. As such, there was no real response he could give, and a part of him resented the idea that Ferreldus didn’t already know that.
“You’re a very supportive friend.”
Ferreldus paused in that moment. He saw Drake, looked out the window at the scene on the horizon, and then considered what lay before him. He thought about the turns of his own life and what he still wanted from himself now. He looked back at this man, covered in mud and betrayed by his fortunes and tendencies, and felt something that wasn’t pity. Rather, he saw his friend ailing, and a part of him he had shoved down years ago made a pensive sound at him. It was enough to motivate him, and he made a decision.
“You know what? Maybe I am. What’s your target worth?”
Drake looked at him incredulously.
“Ferreldus I don’t know what you’re thinking but I’m not making you do my kind of work again. I know you hate it.”
“Just bear with me for a moment. How much?”
Drake leaned back, glancing up as though lamenting frustratedly for a moment about what could have been.
“It’d have been a king’s fortune, Ferreldus. My client was a dwarven noble, pretending he didn’t belong to one of their major houses. He wasn’t good at being subtle. I knew he had the money and that’s what he was promising: a lot of it. Every instinct I had told me he was the type that’d actually pay out for what the target’s worth to him. A big part of that offer was me getting the work done before the end of the festival, about five weeks from now. It took me three of those just to work up to the attempt I made tonight between spy work, gathering information, and making a plan of entry. Now I’m not even sure it’s possible without including the giant dome in the way. The logistics are too complicated. It’s just- too much job. There’s too much to do and too many unknowns and not enough time. Plus I’m pretty sure the dome is elven, and that’s gonna be smarter magic than anything the magicians we know can throw at it.”
Ferreldus didn’t seem dissuaded in the slightest.
“But if I can get you through that dome, would you be willing to split the commission?”
Drake wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but he had no reason to lie to Ferreldus. “I wouldn’t need half of what I was being offered to get myself a boat and live off the ocean unbothered somewhere. I wasn’t sure what’d I’d even do with the rest. I didn’t really have a way to keep it on me if I live offshore.”
“Oh, well that’s perfect actually; I wasn’t suggesting we go half and half.”
“Come again?”
“I was thinking, thirds?”
“So… who exactly did you have in mind?”
“As it happens, the Grey Ghost is in town as well.”
It took Drake a moment to parse what Ferreldus was suggesting and what he could have meant.
“Cyruss? What I’ve heard about him is disturbing to say the least. Are you sure? I don’t know what you think he’s going to do that makes you want to include him.”
“Well, what I’ve heard is enough to make me think he has the wits to break the dome. And if he can’t, then no harm is done. You and I will still be out of work like we are now. At least this way there’s a chance.”
“A chance of getting left behind, maybe. I don’t trust a man who’s that obsessed with loose ends.”
“Then trust me, Drake. If this reward is as good as you’re saying, Cyruss might have stock in making sure the job is completed.”
“Well… I can at least say there’s no way he’s moving the target on his own. So we at least clear the keep before worrying about him double-crossing us.”
Ferreldus grinned and sat straight, tapping the table with his open palms
“Then it’s settled. We get a planner to start the job fresh. We get through this being careful. Then, we split a king’s fortune three ways. Finally, you and I can go about our retirements.”
“Alright. Hey if we’re gonna go meet him, that’s not what you’re wearing is it?”
Drake pointed at Ferreldus’ spotless simple white shirt. Both of them then looked at Drake’s clothes. The two chuckled for a moment and then shook hands. Ferreldus stood up from his seat with a smile.
“Don’t worry. I’ll dress to impress.”
