Volume 1, Chapter 51: Criminally Underrated (Patreon)

“Shut your face, giant, before the wind blows sand into it—you’re talking like a tempesting lunatic again,” Hurrin replied, planting one foot forward, leaning back, and folding his arms across his chest.

The orc stared at him, wrinkling his nose and drawing in a deep breath through it. He looked almost like an animal catching the scent of prey. His brows pulled together, and the left side of his mouth lifted enough to expose several sharp teeth around one tusk.

The guards backed away while he took several steps toward us, narrowing his eyes and constantly working his nose.

“You smell like lizards and death. Suits you—that kind of wind. You should think about wearing it all the time. Maybe then your lovers will learn to keep their secrets behind their teeth, huh?” His voice rolled like thunder, and every step kicked dust and small stones into the air.

“Davin, I was hoping that for once I wouldn’t have to listen to your reptodonshit. Is your boss home?” my guide asked the orc. Apparently, what I had read as hostility and aggression was actually just familiarity between them.

“Davin sounds better. You know I hate Viperdile. And yeah, he’s home. What does that racist superior of yours want this time?”

“I’m afraid that’s for his ears only.”

“Then stop being afraid. When Davin’s with you, fear runs off somewhere the wind don’t reach,” the orc laughed, giving him a military greeting by raising a clenched fist on a bent arm. Hurrin returned the gesture, despite his limb being a good five times smaller than the orc’s. “Want to go somewhere we can talk in peace?”

“We can, but first the Dark Tower. It’s important. Plasario wants to open a passage to Frogflower and needs support from your boss. Both sides stand to make drachmas from it. You know what’s under the temple?” He had stopped using official honorifics and titles altogether, but he was also clearly trying to get something out of the orc. I just wasn’t sure what yet. I was surprised by the mention of the mines.

The orc answered by narrowing his eyes and sighing.

“Might be important. Might even be important as big bag of fucking dicks. But right now, Mr. Tower is gettin’ on my nerves, so I’m passin’. Got a few errands to run. When I’m done, you’ll find me at my bar. Show up, or I’m gonna assume you went soft in the head and started fuckin’ snails, and next time we ain’t talkin’ this nice.” He placed one huge hand on Hurrin’s shoulder. Then his face turned toward me. “You can bring your new hole with you too. I promise he’ll walk out with all his fingers.”

“Mr. Arthur Nilrem is a mage from beyond the desert and is currently looking for work. We are not closely acquainted,” Hurrin replied.

I stayed quiet and watched the two men instead of speaking.

Despite the significant difference in their builds, the soldier showed no less confidence than the orc, suggesting a familiarity that had nothing to do with physical strength. I had no doubt that the larger humanoid could crush both of us with his bare hands if he wanted to.

“There’s plenty of work in the city for everyone. If you’re lookin’ for somethin’ official, talk to the Dark Tower,” the orc replied, looking down at his hand and flexing his fingers as though checking that each one was ready to work. Once he was done, he looked at me through them, turned his palm, and began scraping the other claws with the nail of his thumb. “What can you do?” he asked.

“I command fire that obeys my wishes. I also have experience solving problems,” I replied, unsure what exactly he expected from me.

I didn’t want to brag, but I also didn’t want to reveal too much.

I had a strong suspicion that whatever kind of work he might offer me would belong more to the underworld side of life—the kind I was much more familiar with—while what I actually needed was to worm my way into the good graces of the investigative authorities.

“In that case, like I said, y’all should get goin’,” he replied, exhaling through his nose, closing his eyes, and tilting his head slightly to one side. “I don’t got no problems need solvin’. I make sure they don’t get the chance to exist. Ain’t got no use for you.” He took several steps toward the arch, then turned and shouted toward the guards. “Let ’em in!”

“Thank you, Davin!” Hurrin shouted after him.

“One more thing,” the orc called, forcing us to turn back toward him even though we had already managed to get past the guards.

He only turned his head to the right without bothering to rotate the rest of his body.

“You two smell fucking awful,” he said, sniffing the air. “Especially the mage, with whatever dead necromancer shit he’s carrying around in that bag of his. I’d recommend a long visit to the laundry and the baths.” And with that, he finally left us.

Hurrin glanced only once at the bag hanging over my shoulder against my back, sighed, and waved for me to follow.

We crossed the threshold and entered the residence. Inside, cream-colored walls and polished white-stone floors were illuminated by numerous gas lamps. The furniture was made from polished wood and decorated with elaborate carvings—curling patterns shaped like nautilus shells, ocean waves, or perhaps the wind everyone here seemed so fond of invoking. Everything had been impeccably painted white.

The entrance hall rose through two floors, with a broad staircase splitting halfway up and curving toward galleries running along either side of the building. White columns supported those upper walkways, their capitals carved into spiraling shells from which stone ribbons descended like streams of water frozen in place.

It was elegant without being particularly welcoming.

Benches stood against the walls beneath enormous paintings depicting ships entering Salirion's harbor, merchants unloading cargo, and important-looking men—mostly humans, but there was one dwarf, an elf and surprisingly an orc among them. Between them hung framed maps of coastlines and trade routes, covered in colored lines that converged upon the city.

The building was busy. Clerks moved between doors carrying bundles of documents tied with string, while messengers hurried up and down the stairs. Unlike the streets outside, the air smelled pleasantly dry. Paper-like thing they had in here, ink, polished wood, lamp gas, and something vaguely citrus-like competed with the less pleasant contribution Davin had just accused us of providing.

I sniffed myself when a woman walking by picked her nose with two fingers, and unfortunately, I had to admit she might have had a point.

Hurrin, apparently possessing either less shame or a weaker nose, marched straight through the middle of the hall.

I followed while studying the doors, staircases, windows, guards, and every corridor branching away from us. There were three obvious exits from the ground floor. Four, if the tall windows behind the reception desks opened.

“I’ve never seen an orc that big in my life,” I began, hoping he might volunteer something more about Davin, but Hurrin only grunted in response, passed the reception desk, and headed toward the stairs. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen anyone that tall who looked even remotely human,” I tried again. “He didn’t seem all that unpleasant.”

“Davin, called Viperdile, is that large because he is a clever orc. They never stop growing as long as they live and eat well—and to survive for that many years in a body like theirs, one has to be clever. I suggest you do not cross him. Better yet, avoid dealing with him altogether, because as he said himself, he does not allow anything—or anyone—to become a problem.”

“I understand,” I replied, following him up to the second floor. His stride was quick and springy. “Did you work together?”

That question finally made Hurrin stop. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and slammed me against the wall. The bag on my back only partly softened the impact.

“Arthur, unlike Master Plasario, I possess neither the patience nor the manners required to answer every question you ask—wind be my witness. Out of gratitude and obligation to him, I looked after you and Mr. Peter, and I extended that gratitude to bringing you here because I did not think this meeting could go any worse than what I already expect.” He took a breath, released me, and stepped back, brushing off his hands. “Please do not take this personally, but you ask too many questions. Especially in a place where every piece of information is kept between a lizard’s jaws.”

“I’ll keep my tongue behind my teeth,” I replied, changing my approach. It had become clear that I had stepped into a world I knew well enough—one where most people had skeletons hidden in closets and several different faces to wear. The naïve mage from some distant land would have to give way to someone more accustomed to moving among people like this if I wanted to learn anything useful.

The problem was that I was already wearing his name and his face, which meant I had to keep playing the persona I had built for myself—just with a little more restraint.

“I didn’t realize I’d be stepping into a nest of vipers with a question like that,” I added anyway, sensing that I could still turn the man’s irritation into something useful. If that weren’t true, he wouldn’t have warned me. He would have simply left me to deal with the consequences.

“Davin…” Hurrin sighed, turning his face away. “He has helped my family since I was a small boy, back when he was perhaps eight feet tall. My father used to work for him when we had trouble making ends meet.” He looked back at me. “That is all I have to say on the matter, Master Arthur. Please—truly, please—be careful who you ask and what you ask them about. If someone in this city, and especially here in the Pit, does not open up to you willingly, then the only thing likely to open them is a knife in the stomach.”

“I’ll try to keep my inquisitive nature on a tighter leash. Thank you again for the warning,” I said, giving him a slight bow before starting up the stairs on my own.

I stopped at the top and looked back when I realized he hadn’t moved.

When he noticed me watching, he finally stepped forward, gave me an uncertain smile, and passed me into a spacious but strangely empty corridor. Most of the activity in the building seemed concentrated on the ground floor and the one above it.

His behavior, the story he had told me about himself, and everything I had experienced since arriving on this planet had started giving me something to think about.

I seemed to remember Molbob saying that this world had been created specifically for our Gauntlet, but if that was actually true, whoever had made it had given the place so much history, folklore, and character that whether it was artificial or not had begun to matter less and less.

For someone like Hurrin, his life was real. So was his family’s history. The persecution he had faced because of his sexuality. The way it had eventually driven him into the army. Even this strange land, where mushrooms and blue grass grew beneath the earth—things I had never encountered back on my Earth—everything about it felt increasingly real to me.

That, and the fact that those who failed to complete their objective would remain here to continue living out their lives, made this entire game we had been forced into fill me with more and more resentment and disgust toward whoever had organized it.

Whether this planet had been real before we arrived or not, it was supposed to remain after we left. And all of us were meant to play no small part in whatever happened to it over the course of this year, only to disappear from its surface afterward.

I decided then that I was going to win this whole thing, whatever the hell that meant. I would cheat, destroy, kill, build, heal, help, sabotage—whatever they asked of me—as long as it let me keep moving forward and forward until I finally stood face-to-face with the creators of this incomprehensible mess. Just so I could spit in their faces, if I didn’t have enough strength left to do anything more.

“Master Arthur?” Hurrin called.

His hand was curled into a fist in front of a door, ready to knock. This time, I was the one who had stopped several steps behind him, lost in thought.

“I’m coming,” I replied and in my head, I already knew I would keep going. And going. And I wouldn’t stop.