Dreamer's Throne 2: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure, page 30
A faintly murderous look appeared on the captain’s face as he listened to Garrett’s words, and he slowly leaned in close to Garrett.
“The city’s jails are a terrifying place for regular people, let alone a cripple like you. Accidents are very common there, and the warden is a friend of mine, so you might want to think twice before you threaten me.”
Chuckling, Garrett just shook his head, as if he felt sorry for the captain.
“I’m sure you have your reason to be confident, but believe me when I say that if something happens to me, you will not make it through unscathed. Besides, you’re not the only one with backing. Come, if you are going to take us to jail, do it. Otherwise leave us alone.”
From the way his hands were twitching, it looked like the captain was holding himself back from striking Garrett across the face, but he managed to keep control and gestured for the guards to grab Garrett and Carraway, dragging them outside. It took two men to carry Garrett since his feet didn’t work at all, and they pulled him by the arms, throwing him unceremoniously into a large wagon with an iron cage on top. Gripping the side of the cage, Garrett pulled himself up in the corner as Carraway was pushed in through the small doorway. Stumbling toward Garrett, the merchant managed to stop himself from stepping on Garrett’s legs as he crouched down, his eyes trembling. Licking his dry lips, he kept glancing toward the second floor of the building.
“Search the building! I don’t want to see a single hiding place overlooked,” the captain said, staring at Garrett and Carraway through the bars, a mean look in his eyes.
By this point they were past threats, so Garrett just shut his eyes. Obe, Ryn, and all the men who had come with them had been pushed out of the office and the soldiers set about their search, going through everything. When they didn’t find anything in the drawers of the desk, they began to smash it apart, throwing it out in the streets. The cabinets, bookshelves, and everything else followed suit. Tearing through the office like a storm, they trashed everything, even ripping the couches and chairs to shreds. The entire time, Garrett and Carraway sat silently in the metal cage. An ever larger crowd of people was gathering, staring at them and whispering as the soldiers emptied out the office.
Once they had finished, one of the soldiers came up to the captain, shaking his head. Sneering, the captain just pointed to the apartment above the office and the soldiers went to town again, breaking through the door and driving the servants out with shouts and blows. The first thing to exit the apartment was a statue, leaving through one of the windows with a crash before shattering to pieces on the cobblestones below. Seeing Carraway wince, Garrett patted his shoulder.
“Was it expensive?”
“Huh? The statue? Oh, no, it was fake. Most everything in there is fake. Money is best used, not turned into decorations.”
Almost choking on his spit, Garrett stared at Carraway, who just looked at him, his expression innocent.
“What?”
“Nothing. That’s just a lot more, uh, pragmatic, than I was expecting.”
It took longer for the apartment to be emptied, and by the time they were done, it was late in the afternoon. The last thing to come down was the safe, which took four soldiers to get down the stairs, and even then it nearly crushed one of them. Seeing the sick look on Carraway’s face, the captain’s mean smile widened, and he gestured to it, his other hand resting on his sword.
“Open it.”
Knowing he didn’t have another choice, Carraway crawled out of the cage and began to turn the dial. When the safe clicked, the captain pushed Carraway away and two soldiers grabbed him, holding him in place. Captain Fernek’s smile was wide enough to cover his face by this point, and he stared straight at Garrett as he opened the safe for everyone to see. There was a gasp, and then a bit of laughter, and Garrett smiled back at Captain Fernek, looking amused. Sensing something was wrong, the captain turned to look in the safe and stopped in shock when he realized it was empty. Even the false bottom was hanging open, nothing inside of it.
“Where is everything!” the captain snarled, spinning around and grabbing the front of Carraway’s shirt.
The merchant was clearly just as lost as he was and only managed to stammer something unintelligible, so Captain Fernek shoved him away and turned to face Garrett, whose smile was gone. It had been replaced by a cold stare that sent a shiver down the captain’s back. It was one thing to catch someone red-handed, and entirely another to subject a powerful merchant and a nobleman to a humiliating search in front of the public but ultimately come up short. Before he could gather his thoughts, Garrett spoke loudly, his voice silencing the murmuring crowd.
“Don’t worry, Captain, you can just pick up some of those papers you threw on the ground and pretend they’re damning evidence to save face. That way no one will know you’re perverting justice for personal gain.”
Seeing that Garrett was pointing, the crowd followed his finger and spotted a soldier holding a handful of papers that had clearly been hastily shoved into one of the many folders that were scattered on the ground. The laughter was uproarious as the crowd saw the embarrassed soldier drop the papers, letting them fall back to the ground. By this time, Carraway had gotten over his shock and his expression was starting to darken. The soldiers around him had begun to look away, hoping he wouldn’t remember their faces, and the two holding onto him quickly let go.
Captain Fernek was caught between a rock and a hard place, as he stared at the absolute destruction spread across the street. He had been sure he would find the evidence he needed in the safe, but now that he hadn’t, all of the assurance he had felt began to evaporate like dew on a hot summer day. It didn’t help that Carraway was staring at all the papers on the ground quietly. The captain would have much rather heard the merchant blowing up, as that meant there could be some negotiation.
“Carraway, come on, this upstanding gentleman is taking us to jail.”
Garrett’s voice seemed to snap the merchant out of his daze, and without looking at Captain Fernek, Carraway pushed past the soldiers and climbed back into the metal-bound wagon. The crowd, seeing him calmly getting back into the wagon, seemed to sense the gravity of the situation and grew quiet. Resisting the urge to swear, the captain gestured for the soldiers to close up the wagon and turned to survey the street once more, hoping there was something they had missed.
“Bring them to the prison. I will follow in a moment. Second and third squads, I want you to go over all of this with a fine-toothed comb! Find the account books!”
With a rumble, the wagon got moving, a squad of soldiers running alongside it as it bumped through the streets. If Garrett hadn’t been Awakened, it would have been difficult for him to remain in a seated position, but he hooked his arm through the bars and held on. Next to him, Carraway sat in silence until they were turning onto the street that held the prison.
“All my life’s work, all of my contacts, all of the information I had gathered on prices, trends, all of it is gone. It was on those shelves, in those cabinets.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll build it back,” Garrett said, a small smile on his face. “Just think of it as a chance to start fresh. You’ve already changed considerably, even from half a year ago. Let this be your opportunity to completely cut ties with your past self. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.”
“Enough talking! Get out of the wagon!”
A loud voice interrupted them, and a wooden baton slammed into Garrett’s arm, causing stinging pain to shoot up it. Outside the cage a burly man in the uniform of a jailer glared at them, swinging his baton again before Garrett could get his hand inside, catching his knuckles. A nasty welt formed on Garrett’s hand as he looked at the jailer, who just shouted at them again.
“I said get off! If we have to come in there, you’ll get a beating you’ll never forget.”
Waving off Carraway, who was looking at him with concern, Garrett flexed his hand to make sure it wasn’t broken and then dragged himself to the door. The jailer met him at the door and grabbed Garrett’s shirt, nearly ripping it as he pulled Garrett out, dumping him on the ground with a heavy thud.
“You must be the cripple,” the jailer said, showing his yellowed teeth. “Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of you.”
39
The cell Garrett was dumped in was damp and cold, and smelled awful. A single solitary torch at the far end of the hall gave him just enough light that he could see his hands as he touched the bruises and welts on his face and neck. The jailer had taken every opportunity he could to abuse Garrett and Carraway as he dragged them into the prison, only throwing them into the cells when he got tired of beating them. This was not what Garrett had expected, but he bore it as well as he could, thankful for the strength and endurance his Shaper-level Awakening had brought him. He could feel his soul spark sending out traces of energy to heal his wounds already and had to consciously suppress it to keep it from closing up some of the more prominent cuts on his face.
Though there were a good number of people who knew he was an Awakened, he had no desire for his level to be outed by a couple of cuts that healed overnight, so he did his best to bear with the pain as he suppressed his soul spark. Dragging himself along the stone floor, Garrett angled himself to find a wall and then searched along it until he found some metal chains he could use to pull himself up. Not having use of his legs was manageable most days, but it was times like now when the stark reality of his situation made itself known. A low chuckle escaped his lips as Garrett contrasted his current situation with his accommodations a scant few days before.
“From a noble’s manor to a rat-infested jail cell. Quite the swing.”
Unfortunately, the chains didn’t reach quite far enough for him to wedge himself in the corner, so he remained where he was, his hand hooked into the chain as he closed his eyes and considered his situation. The jailer had searched him and taken everything he carried, delivering kicks that tenderized his ribs in between. Clearly, there had been no personal animosity in the man’s actions, just the casual cruelty of someone who liked to wield power like a club. It would be a lie to say that Garrett wasn’t angry, but he knew full well that now was not the time for hasty action.
It wouldn’t have been hard to plant a Dream Seed and turn the man into a slave, but Garrett was suspicious, too suspicious, to do something that blatant. Ever since he had run into the merchants from Port Reverie, a seed of doubt had been growing in his mind. They possessed artifacts that would likely warn them if any sort of mental energy was used around them, allowing them to identify when someone tried to pull something, and if they had that capability, why wouldn’t someone in Insomnium? Besides, Garrett had seen the sealing symbol the exorcists used, and he wasn’t discounting that other detection-based symbols existed as well.
If someone had spotted the strange spread of Dream Flowers, they would undoubtedly be trying to find the source of it, just as the exorcists were trying to do with the Ghost’s Mirror. Though Garrett knew he was sharp, he wasn’t so full of himself to believe that he could move unhindered through the world. There was a high likelihood he was just being paranoid, but better paranoid than dead. If this imaginary person found out he was the source of the Dream Flowers, he would end up just like one of those mysterious artifacts, sealed or destroyed.
Better that they thought he was just part of those affected. But to make that work, he needed to be more careful about how he planted them. And ultimately, that meant taking a beating without responding in kind. Feeling the cool wall on his back, Garrett concentrated its texture to take his mind off of the burning pain he felt in his face and torso. The sun was in the process of going down, and though Garrett couldn’t see it because his cell was underground, he could feel the creeping approach of the Dream starting to press in around him.
A faint clang intruded on his attention and his senses sharpened, straining to their limit as he listened for another sound. After what seemed like an eternity, he heard it again, the sound of a bolt being thrown back. The door to the passage he was at the end of was almost sixty feet away, and Garrett could hear the sound echoing down the stone hallway and into his cell. The shuffle of feet came next as someone entered the passage. There was no light save for that single torch, and whoever it was seemed happy enough to move in the darkness that they began to whistle a jaunty tune.
There was another clang, the sound of a cell door being opened, and then Garrett heard someone speak. Their voices were muffled but he could hear an upbeat question, a fearful answer, and then he heard a scream. It was not a long, drawn-out scream, but a panicked, staccato scream of someone who couldn’t escape. A scrape and thud cut the scream short, and then there was silence in the passage, broken only by the sound of something heavy being dragged across the floor. Halfway through, the whistling started again, and whoever it was left, locking the bolts once more after dragging their burden through the doorway.
Silence shrouded the hall and Garrett’s cell, though he could hear the patter of tiny feet as vermin scurried toward the place where the screaming had taken place. Still holding onto the chain, Garrett’s lips curled back in a smile, though if anyone had been there to witness it, they certainly wouldn’t have described it as such. Checking his time, he estimated there was about half an hour until the sun finished setting and the Dream became accessible. While he didn’t want to use his abilities if possible, he wouldn’t hesitate to do so if it helped him survive.
Before that, however, he had some ideas. When he had been thrown in here they had called it solitary confinement, so no one should be coming in. But he also suspected that whoever had arranged this did not intend for him to make it through the night. Steadying himself with his right hand, he reached up to count how many links there were on the chain attached to the wall. Counting twice to make sure he got it right, he found that he had twenty-five links, which was more than enough for what he wanted to do. Letting out a breath, he pushed himself up on his right arm and gripped the top of the chain where it connected to the wall.
Pulling himself up until his chest was tight against the wall and under the chain, he used his weight to press forward, leveraging both his waist and his right elbow, trying to force his right shoulder away from the wall. Rewarded with a creak as the bolt started to give way, he ignored the fierce pain in his chest and pulled again. The chains had been made to keep even the strongest man firmly in place, but the power that even the weakest Awakened possessed was more than the chains could bear, to say nothing of Garrett’s Shaper-level strength.
Despite being as thin as a stick, his bones and muscles had been supernaturally reinforced, and it was this that he used now, calling on his full strength for the first time since he had become a Shaper. With each tug, the bolt loosened until it suddenly popped free, dumping him painfully on his face. Feeling his nose starting to bleed again, he took a moment to suppress it with a stream of energy from his soul spark and then crawled to the wall. By this point his clothing was wet with the slime that grew on the floor and walls of the cell and his own blood, but he didn’t care one bit. There was only one thing on his mind right now. Surviving whatever was thrown at him.
Pushing himself up against the wall, he kept his position with his right arm and checked the chain with his left hand, pausing when he came to the bolt. The entire thing had been torn from the wall and was badly bent, but that would work even better. Taking a moment to catch his breath, he crawled along the wall to the corner of the room by the door and then laid down his chain carefully. Making sure he was in the position he wanted to be, Garrett closed his eyes, trying to let his mind and body relax. This was not the first time he had been in difficult circumstances, and he knew it wouldn’t be the last.
He had no idea how much time had passed before the sound of the bolt echoed again. It seemed that whoever was entering the hall was taking their time, drawing it out as long as possible, because even after the bolt was thrown, they didn’t enter the hall for almost a minute. Once again, Garrett’s lips curled up, an amused smile on his lips. He had to admit, there was a certain tension to what they were doing, but these sorts of psychological games were child’s play to someone who spent their nights walking in the Dream.
The slow shuffle of feet grew closer and closer as whoever it was approached Garrett’s cell, and the tension in the air seemed to build until Garrett gestured silently into the air, almost as if he were conducting. On beat, the whistling started, a jaunty tune that was at complete odds with the building tension. Louder and louder it grew until it seemed to fill Garrett’s cell. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself walking down a street, whistling the tune himself. Almost. The hard stone, his wet clothes, and the biting chill that the combination of them produced was too strong for him to imagine himself anywhere but in a dark cell.
The whistling stopped outside his cell and a key sounded in the door. Again, there was a long pause between actions, but Garrett didn’t care. He simply closed his eyes and focused his attention on what was about to happen. Garrett was laying on the ground, stretched out along the wall to the right of the door, which opened left. So when the cell door finally opened and the person stepped inside, he swung the chain as hard as he could, putting every ounce of his strength and anger behind it.
Tearing through the air, the chain slammed into the man’s shins, causing a sharp crack to echo in the room and down the hall as his left shin snapped in half. Both of the man’s feet were swept out from under him and he fell to the ground, screaming dreadfully, dropping something with a loud clang as he hit the stone floor. In the faint light, Garrett could see metal glimmering, but he didn’t care. He let go of the chain and grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him close. Too disoriented by the pain to know what was happening, the man’s screams were suddenly cut short as Garrett’s fingers closed around his throat like iron bands, choking the breath right out of him.
