Chapter Sixteen

Jay returned to the inn at a mad dash. If he planned to leave tonight, there were a few problems he still needed to take care of. Vaulting over the back wall, Jay quickly informed Bane and Kara. They would leave the city first and meet him outside, taking his bag of necessities with them. Reaching his room, Jay produced his full ensemble of equipment, donning the armor and concealing all of his various weapons as he strapped the black longsword to his waist.

He finally grabbed the large, modified bag, thrusting what few clothes he had within, leaving the fanciful dress clothes he had worn behind. Taking one last look, Jay went to the cellar, packing away several days’ worth of rations before leaving the inn, passing the bag to Bane and striding across the city to Walter’s home, where Jay placed the signed over deed to the inn on the guard captain’s pillow.

Jay measured the night, giving himself four more hours before sunrise as he stole his way back into the governor’s mansion, the night masking his presence. The ball had ended an hour or two prior, therefore many of the guests had long returned to their own beds to sleep off the effects of the night’s revelry. There were two things Jay needed to attend to before the night departed. Donning a black mask, Jay strode through the mansion with complete confidence. If it wasn’t for the fact that not a sound could be heard as he moved through the hallways, it might not have appeared Jay was practicing stealth at all.

He was nearly to Ray’s study when Jay melted into the shadows of the hall. A servant left the study, passing by completely oblivious to his lurking presence. As she rounded the corner, Jay moved once more, peering through the crack in the door. The ever vigilant governor sat at his desk, nursing a glass of brandy as he went through a few official documents.

Seeing he was alone, Jay boldly strode in, pulled out a rolled, sealed parchment and passed it to his employer, master and friend. The two shared a deep look, neither saying a word as Jay turned and departed without a sound.

Ray placed his glass of brandy down on his polished mahogany desk, deeply sighing as he broke the wax seal and began to read the last message he would ever receive from his student.

Thank you for everything. I have one request, please take care of Talli while I am away. The inn is Walter’s. I’m sorry, I am making things difficult for you. Burn this immediately.

Ray stared at the note and couldn’t help but think, ‘So he found another way.’ Ray stared at that fourth sentence. ‘Taking care of his girlfriend isn’t difficult. Damnit, this little shit is going to do something drastic. Son of a bitch!’ Ray hastily lit the note on fire, ensuring it was completely burned to ash before draining his glass of brandy, quickly pouring another one and draining it as well. It was a few short hours later when Ray, still awake, heard the scream of a servant coming from the guest wing.

In the coming weeks, the entire country would be in an uproar as the prince was found in his bed, throat slit with his manhood still inside a drugged nobleman’s daughter. The word ‘rapist’ was painted repeatedly on the walls and floor of the room in the prince’s own blood. It was later attributed to divine retribution from the goddess of justice, which was also the deciding factor on how the event spread, despite the royal family’s attempts to suppress it. Even evil royalty was unable to escape the gods, or so it was said. The news of the assassination would cause a brief religious resurgence in Drenna among commoners and nobles alike.

Jay would never know the exact extent of the results of his actions, as after he assassinated the prince, he had immediately left the city heading west. He removed any future problems from the roots and passed on any other potential responsibilities. Only a single thread of fate kept him connected to the city of Shren. Naturally, there were a few who suspected his involvement in the death of the prince, but other than Governor Jering, no one else had any conclusive evidence, other than his sudden, unexplained disappearance.

When Jay met his companions several miles from the city walls, the sky was just beginning to lighten as the sun began crawling over the horizon. A small grove by the side of the road served as cover from prying eyes as Jay slipped between the trees, moving towards the center where he was set to meet Kara and Bane. Sliding out of the underbrush, Jay came to a sudden stop, as he found an additional human sitting with his Drenz companions.

“Damnit Kara!” was all he said through a sigh as he pulled off his mask, placing it in the bag on the ground.

“Oh, don’t be like that Jay. Do you really think she would have left me behind? And even if she did, I definitely would have found out and followed you anyway.” Katie simply stated, as if her presence was only natural. All of this said while cleaning her nails with a dagger as she leaned against the big cat’s side. Kara continuously avoided eye contact as if none of it had anything to do with her.

Jay grumbled and muttered under his breath a bit more, before pulling a map from one of the myriad of inner pockets sewn within his sack. “What did you bring with you?” Jay gestured to the girl’s slightly smaller bag of goods.

“A few sets of travel clothes, the leather armor I’m wearing, a few daggers, a short sword, a few canteens, several days’ worth of dried food and a little spending money.” Katie rattled off while slowly counting the items on her fingers.

Jay grunted in confirmation. “At least you remembered some of the things I taught you beyond how to stick a dagger between someone’s ribs.” Said dagger was immediately sent flying towards Jay’s face as he studied the map spread on the ground which he promptly snatched out of the air before returning it at twice the speed, cutting a small lock of hair from Katie’s head before embedding into a tree behind her. Kara huffed, giving Jay an offended look as some of her black fur cascaded down alongside Katie’s long black hair. Jay’s eyes never left the map.

“We’ll keep heading west along this road. In three days we should run into a little town called Vissily, where we can purchase horses and restock anything we need. They have a minor guild branch where we can register for a few jobs and use those as a proper excuse to continue into the Western Reaches.” Jay tossed Katie an extra mask and light cloak he had prepared as she pulled the knife from the tree. “Keep that on. You’re too pretty and it’ll bring a lot of trouble if others see your face.”

From the time he had come into this world until now, Jay had encountered an overabundance of danger outside of any established civilization, despite the supposed peaceful and well-maintained illusions of safety. The mask he gave her was a personal invention that Jay had tinkered with over the years. It obscured the entire face other than the eyes, but breathed incredibly well, making it seem more like a second skin, masking a person’s features in comfort. Sweating into a mask was rather frustrating after all.

The season itself was just moving out of summer into cooler fall weather, so heat was less of a concern at the moment, but it was still a nice feature for a mask. The changing of the weather served as a reminder in Jay’s mind. They would need to purchase some winter clothes, as neither thought of them as immediately necessary. A shopping list started forming in Jay’s mind as he rolled up the map, stuffed it back in its respective pocket and began walking back to the road, Katie, Kara and Bane trailing him.

The following days were completely uneventful as the group travelled down the road. Katie and Jay often passed others travelling to and from Shren but kept to themselves. Bane and Kara spent the vast majority of the time out hunting in the far reaches of the fields and woods, only returning to camp at night as their presence was much too notable in much of the area surrounding Shren. Drenz Rest was a rather famous rest stop due primarily to their presence, and there was only one possible human that would be in the company of two Drenz.

It was noon of the third day and upon reaching Vissily, Jay first purchased a pair of well-bred horses, leading them to one of the middle class inns where they were promptly stabled. Dinner and a night’s rest were purchased ahead of time before the pair left to the town market. There were few items that were direly needed, and all were fairly common and found quickly; primarily herbs, medicines and additional travel rations accompanied by a few sets of additional clothing and a pair of saddlebags.

The last important duty for the day was registering as a mercenary at the local branch of the “Adventurer’s Guild”. Jay rolled his eyes every time he saw their signboard. If he didn’t have to register to cash in on the bounties and missions available, he would have avoided the entire process. No paper trail is much more preferable to any kind of record, even if they were allowed to have aliases. Jay slipped into an alley, donning his black mask before walking into the two story building.

It was rather well-kept, despite the rough crowd that frequented the establishment. The lower floor functioned as both a bar and work area, providing a rather laidback atmosphere despite the rowdiness of the occupants. The many bounties and jobs could be seen posted all along the right wall organized by difficulty and size of the reward. Jay scanned the work orders, drawing correlations between his current estimated skills and the requests’ approximate requirements.

Jay was amused by the common ranking system utilized. The English equivalent of each letter rank would list the lowest rank at E, climbing up to S rank in a standard alphabetic progression, E, D, C, B, A, S. There was nothing beyond S for member rankings, however, missions existed beyond S that could only be offered to a group by the guild, not simply accepted like the lower rank missions.

Judging by the difficulty level of the displayed missions, Jay estimated his current abilities resided somewhere in the upper C, or lower B rank area, primarily due to his lack of combat experience. He had the skills, but a small amount of actual combat utilization. Drawing these conclusions, Jay stepped away from the wall and walked to one of the few employee windows lining the left side of the establishment.

Jay gestured to Katie at his side as he spoke to the attendant scrawling away on a parchment, “We would like to register.” The attendant looked up, blinking twice to clear his eyes as he inspected the two newbies before passing them two scrolls.

The thin man’s voice was rather nasally as he instructed, “Fill out your basic information. Name, age, gender and your primary fighting style. If you can’t write, we have aides on hand to assist you for a silver. Return them to me and you can either accept the starting E rank badges, or attempt the skills test to try and skip a level.” The man immediately went back to writing on one of the myriad of scrolls piled around him.

Jay glanced at Katie, who simply shrugged in response. Jay paid the two silver fee and instructed the assisting aide, “I’m Link, twenty-eight, male, front-line attack specialist. She’s Navi, twenty-one, female, dagger specialist.” Jay received a quizzical look from Katie at the odd names but his only response was an expression that said, ‘I’ll tell you later’, so she let it be. Upon completion, Jay returned the paperwork, requesting the skills exam for both of them.

It was a rather unremarkable test, simply an evaluation by a guild member of the rank the member wished to ascend to. It was a simple spar, and Jay thoroughly trounced the C rank proctor. Katie similarly passed the D rank exam with flying colors, and both acquired their new emblems, Jay a copper insignia with the guild logo imprinted within, Katie, an identical emblem made of steel. Both felt they could have passed a higher level exam, but Jay felt it was necessary to build up their combat foundations before taking a larger bite out of the mercenary pie.

Now that the initial exams were completed, promotions to higher levels could only be obtained from two sources, the first was completing a certain number of missions, followed by a promotion exam in which a person would perform a mission a rank above their current status. The second was to take a higher ranked person’s emblem, in which case the ranks were swapped, demoting the loser while promoting the victor. In this way, it kept the less experienced members from suddenly rising too quickly and dying, while more experienced members were able to progress even without wasting too much time on performing missions. It was meant to be constructed as a competitive system, and worked very well, keeping the top groups always gunning to be ranked higher than their peers while motivating the underdogs to work harder.

As they returned to the mission board, Jay was perusing the C rank missions when a burly, mountain of a man swaggered up, his identity as a B rank mercenary clearly displayed by the silver emblem pinned on his puffed out chest. Jay was already mentally sighing as he watched the man’s eyes roam over Katie’s body from the corner of his eye. This kind of thing actually occurred? What kind of cliché encounter was this!? She wasn’t even all that eye catching for gods’ sake! A mask and cloak kept almost everything concealed!

A deep rolling voice left the man’s chest as he propositioned her, “Hey little lady, I see you just joined up. If you’d like, you can ditch your little buddy and come join my group. We’ll be sure to help you out!” Jay was having an immensely hard time stifling his laughter, focusing intently on a few of the more rewarding C rank missions at the top of the board while attempting to ignore everything else. Katie was silently flicking her eyes back and forth between Jay and the meat mountain, equally irritated by the fact that Jay had made absolutely no move to protect her, and that this bucket head was coming on to her while she was trying so hard to stay unnoticed.

Jay reached up and grasped the third most difficult mission in the C rank section. A clan of ogres based out of the north-western hill region had recently been raiding towns and villages throughout the Western Reaches. It was a week or two worth of travel from Vissily and paid a rather handsome sum of one hundred gold for every ten ogre ears delivered. The ogres of this world were big, fat monstrosities, typically around eight to ten feet tall. The intelligence reports stated the raiding clan had several hundred members, with raiding parties ranging from ten to fifty ogres per group.

Jay returned to a different window to apply for the mission, leaving Katie and the rather confused meat standing by the wall. Every other time he’d pulled this stunt, the men would always fly into a rage and then he would beat them up as a form of induction hazing, most of the time taking their women to play with later as an added bonus. Katie heaved a sigh, shaking her head in resignation. The message was obvious – ‘not my problem’.

“I’m sorry, my HUSBAND and I have already made plans, and so I can’t accompany you and your friends.” Katie practically shouted, emphasizing the word ‘husband’ while causing all the surrounding onlookers to suddenly shift their focus to the masked man at the counter. Katie practically skipped away, latching onto Jay’s arm as she loudly “whispered” into his ear while glancing toward the flesh mountain.

“Darling, I know you told me earlier how much you hate musclebound idiots, so we should probably leave.” Jay just stood there, returning Katie’s innocent expression, with an irritated glare. He turned and addressed the beef who was now angrily striding over.

“You want to take my wife out on a few missions, correct? Please take good care of her. Darling, make sure to get a lot of experience from these kind gentlemen. I’ll be leaving now.” The cow man suddenly halted, even more confusion splashed across his face as Jay suddenly vanished from Katie’s grasp, his shadow barely glimpsed as the door swung shut behind him. Katie stomped her foot, furious at Jay’s complete disregard for the entire situation. He could have at least left her a single avenue of escape! Now she had to either run away, or beat this idiot unconscious. Katie stomped a few more times in frustration, glaring at the door before stomping out after him, leaving a confused beef man and a crowd of delighted onlookers behind.

A/N:

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