Pocket Dungeon, page 6
But then my daydreams came to a screeching halt as Georgia paused instead of depositing everything into my account.
“So, for deposits over ten thousand dollars, we have quite a lot of paperwork to do,” she informed me. “A Currency Transaction Report needs to be filed with the government in an effort to ensure any money laundering is–”
“Hold up,” I swiftly cut in. “Uh… can’t I just deposit ten thousand instead of the whole amount?”
Georgia narrowed her eyes slightly. “Of course… if you prefer to do that, you can.”
“Yep.” I nodded. “Just a ten thousand dollar deposit today.”
The woman pursed her lips and counted out the remainder for me before tucking it into an envelope and sliding it my way. She was decidedly less friendly as she finished up our transaction, but I didn’t really notice.
I was busy wondering how the hell I would avoid having the government on my ass with deposits like this in my future.
In the meantime, I had a decent wad of spending cash on me, which literally never happened. Ever.
So that was a perk.
As I stepped outside and onto the street again, I was met with another chilly blast of air. The lakeshore effect was real and actively biting through the leather of my jacket in the fall air.
Another glance at my watch told me I was going to be late to work if I didn’t get a move on. The exchange at the bank had taken far longer than I had expected, and I only had about fifteen minutes to spare.
I hesitated before I could start to walk, however. Was it really worth it to clock into work today? At Page Turner, I made just barely above minimum wage. But I’d made so much money in the dungeon the night before that if I was a less reasonable person, I’d have said I didn’t need to work again for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, though, I tended to prefer playing it safe with a back-up plan.
Despite that, I had just put more in my account than this shift would even bring me.
It was that rationale that sealed the decision for me. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sent a quick message to my boss, Sandra, to let her know I wasn’t going to be in today.
I didn’t elaborate why, but I was a good employee. I couldn’t remember a time in the last year when I’d so much as taken any time off.
Sure enough, Sandra quickly replied with a thumbs up emoji and nothing more.
A grin split my face as I turned and started back toward my apartment building instead of the bookshop. My mind was a whirl with a thousand different thoughts as I briskly walked back home. I had some gold to package up and send off, plus I was eager to try the crystal again. My anticipation was electric, and I nearly ran up the steps of my shitty apartment building when it came into view.
It looked like any other apartment building in the area, so a little run-down and definitely overpriced for the limited square feet I was getting, but it was better than nothing.
At least the power was back on this morning. When I’d gone to sleep the night before, the random outage had still been going on. There must have been some sort of accident or something with the meter that only knocked out the power in my building.
According to all of the bitching and moaning that had been going on in the building chat, none of the other buildings on the block had lost power. It was weird, but it wasn’t that weird. Shit like that happened all the time in the city.
Once one of the subways had a random issue, and the entire block had been down for like a week in the height of the summer. That had been a nightmare.
Despite the fact that the power was back on now, I still didn’t trust the elevator in the building. To be fair, I barely trusted the elevator on a good day. I only lived on the sixth floor, so taking the stairs wasn’t usually too bad, even if it was annoying. But after the night I’d had, the muscles in my legs screamed out in protest with each flight I went up.
By the time I made it to my own door, I felt like I was going to pass out. I really needed to start going to the gym more.
I stepped into my apartment and latched the door closed behind me with a click. The clock on my stove and microwave blinked in a syncopated rhythm, and both showed that the time was twelve in the morning. It decidedly wasn’t, but I hadn’t bothered to fix them yet.
They could wait a little longer.
I first stashed my wad of spending cash in my closet, counted up the gold that I had left from my earlier selling attempts, and found that I was left with seventy-two coins. I quickly pulled up a gold-selling website on my phone and began to fill out the form with all of the information needed, and within a few minutes, the janky printer shoved into the corner of my kitchen like it was some sort of appliance spat out a label for a FedEx package. It was faster to send it that way than it was to use the post office.
I managed to find an old Amazon box shoved in my tiny closet, and after getting rid of the old labels and barcodes on the box, I packed up the seventy-two pieces of gold. I’d made sure to pay for the extra insurance in case something happened to the coins, but I still felt like I was seeing my child go off to college for the first time. I taped up the box and affixed the label to the front before setting it aside. I would bring it to the nearest FedEx location later, but for now, I had something else I wanted to deal with.
I turned all of my attention back to the crystal where I had left it the night before.
The stone looked just as intriguing and fascinating in the mid-afternoon light as it had the night before. The strange green streaks through the quartz-like stone caught the light in a way I’d never seen any sort of natural stone do. It was almost as if it was glowing from the inside out.
I felt a swell of excitement and sucked in a deep breath.
All I had done last night to step into the dungeon was bring the crystal up to my eye and look through the center indentation. Easy enough.
I braced myself, and slowly, I raised the crystal up to my eye.
Then…
Nothing happened.
Chapter 4
I frowned and lowered the crystal from my eye.
Had I done something wrong? Had I missed some extra step I’d taken the night before without being aware?
I closed my eyes and replayed everything that had happened the night before in my mind. I remembered picking up the crystal, bringing it up to my eye, and staring through the center circular indentation.
No matter how many times I played the scene over and over again in my mind, I couldn’t think of anything else I had done.
Had I somehow managed to break the crystal? Was there only one dungeon? I racked my mind for some sort of explanation. I felt despair clawing at my chest as I tried for a third time to get the crystal to work.
I raised the stone up to my eye and practically dug it into my face as I stared as hard as I could muster into the crystal until I saw stars.
This time, however, something different did happen. There was a small flash of light from behind my eyes, and I staggered back.
“What the fuck,” I gasped. Seconds later, I heard a voice in my head.
“Only one dungeon may be accessed per twenty-four hours,” the voice said. I recognized it as the same smoothly modulated voice that had spoken with me in the dungeon the night before.
I frowned and lowered the crystal from my eye as I regained my footing. Well, it was good to know I hadn’t broken the crystal, but how much longer did I have to go before I could hop in again?
I glanced down at the watch on my wrist and fought a groan as I realized I had about six or so hours to go before I could try another dungeon.
Great.
How was I supposed to kill six hours? I had just called off work, and now the entire day stretched in front of me, but all I could think about was the crystal and the secrets it held.
I set the crystal back down on the end table as I filtered through my thoughts. The woman at the crystal shop hadn’t told me anything about the crystal when I’d purchased it, but she had included a card in the little bag she’d packaged it in for me.
Maybe she would know more about the stone?
I pulled the lid off of my trashcan and glanced down at the contents of the dark garbage bag. I was suddenly very glad that I had just changed the bag yesterday morning, because the only thing sitting in it was the bag from the crystal shop.
I really needed to start eating more now that I had a fresh ten grand in the bank.
I pulled the bag out, and sure enough, tucked in between the paper bag and the tissue paper that had wrapped the crystal, was a small business card. It was a pale off-white color with barely legible blue font. It had the store hours, location, and the name of the owner:
Clarissa le Fay.
I would bet anything it wasn’t the woman’s real name, but it was a good enough place to start my research. I tucked the card into the pocket of my jacket, and after a second of deliberation, I grabbed the crystal and tucked it into the inner pocket of the leather coat, next to my heart. I also grabbed the FedEx box. I could drop that off while I was out, too.
My motorcycle helmet rested on the arm of the couch, and I snagged it before I made my way out of my apartment and down to the parking garage attached to my building. It was really the only reason I bothered paying the exorbitant rent prices for an admittedly shitty apartment.
It was damn near impossible to find any sort of parking in Chicago, much less in a garage for less than twenty bucks an hour. I was sure that somewhere along the line, my overpriced rent and included parking space would even out.
Sitting in my assigned parking space was my pride and joy. It was the only thing I had ever splurged on after I’d graduated from my Master’s program. That had been back when I was certain I’d get a well-paying Big Boy job as soon as I walked off that stage with my diploma.
Oh, the folly of youth.
The motorcycle was a sleek-looking scrambler bike. I had done most of the work on it myself with my own personal specs and modifications. I’d spent what probably equated to a small fortune building the bike, but I knew I’d spent far less doing it myself than I would have if I’d bought something new.
I supposed the engineering degree had been good for something. Besides, it meant I not only got to customize the bike to my preferences, but it also looked very impressive on my dating profiles on the dating app du jour.
At the moment, that was Bumble, but it usually only took a few weeks before I would switch thanks to the prior app sucking out my will to live. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I adjusted my helmet on my head, made sure my jacket was zipped up to my throat, and then straddled the bike. I used the heel of my boot to knock the kickstand up, and seconds later, I was roaring out of the parking garage and onto the ever busy streets of Chicago.
I made a quick stop at the nearest FedEx store before continuing on my way to the hippie shop. I managed to leave my bike parked just outside the store for the few seconds I needed to run in, drop off the box, and then bolt back out. I felt lighter now that I knew my gold was safely on the way to be appraised, and if I accepted the offer, I would have a deposit into my PayPal within a couple of days.
With that taken care of, I was back on my way to the shop where I’d purchased the crystal.
The way to the hippie shop wasn’t hard to remember, and after bobbing and weaving through truly disgusting traffic, I pulled up outside the shop located just off the Mag Mile in downtown Chicago. It was right next to the always-packed and touristy brunch place I had taken Carrie to the day before, so I was shocked to find just enough space to parallel park alongside the shop front.
Maybe my luck really was turning around.
I turned off the bike and made sure I was out of the way of getting hit before clambering off. If I was in a less theft-prone area, I might have left my helmet with my bike, but I’d been around the block a few times, and good helmets were expensive.
I tucked it under my arm and turned to make my way up the steep steps into the crystal shop.
The door swung open with a soft musical jangle thanks to the set of crystalline windchimes hanging over the door. The smell of incense and sage overwhelmed me as soon as I stepped inside, and I fought the urge to start coughing.
Just like the pawnshop, the store was tightly packed with knickknacks and trinkets as far as the eye could see. I kept my helmet tucked tightly under my arm so I didn’t smack anything and knock it to the ground. The sign on the wall to my left advertised a “you break it, you buy it” policy that I was far from keen to try out, even with my newly replenished bank account.
“Hello?” I called out.
The store was eerily quiet, and I wondered if I had somehow misread the times on the business card tucked into my jacket pocket. I didn’t see another single soul inside the store.
Without Carrie by my side to drag me kicking and screaming, something about the store felt decidedly weird. The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise to attention, and I slowly turned in the direction of the back of the store.
“Oh,” a woman remarked. “You’re back in my shop so soon.”
The woman was not the one I had seen the day before with Carrie. The first woman had sported a set of multi-colored dreads that hadn’t done anything for her pallid, milk-colored skin. I had assumed she was Clarissa le Fay, but now I realized I was wrong.
The woman in front of me today was clearly the one who the business card had belonged to.
Her long black hair was streaked with threads of white and pulled back from her face with a paisley silk scarf. Her pale skin was thin and pulled taut over her high cheekbones. It gave her an air of mystery, and she could have been anywhere from twenty-five to seventy-five.
Her body was obscured by a massive pile of skirts and scarves that she wore with a strange sort of grace. I couldn’t tell if the getup was part of the whole “mystic” schtick, or if she just really liked looking like a fabric store threw up on her.
“You saw me?” I felt like I would have remembered seeing the woman in the store the day before.
“Yes,” le Fay remarked and easily maneuvered the store as she made her way toward me. “You bought the crystal.”
I shifted my weight. “I did. But I feel like you probably have quite a few people coming in here to buy crystals.”
“Not crystals like that,” she said. There was a sort of twinkle in her eye that told me she not only knew something I didn’t, but that she was enjoying the upper hand it gave her in the conversation.
The woman turned away from me and began to breeze through the aisleways toward the cluttered checkout counter.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed her.
Clarissa le Fay seemed utterly at home in all of the chaos while I just felt like I really needed to sneeze.
“Do you know anything about it?” I asked as I came to stand on the other side of the counter. I didn’t want to reveal what I knew about the crystal yet. That felt like showing my hand a little too early.
“Ah.” A small smile curled at her lips. “So you gazed into it?”
That felt like a complete understatement for what I did, but she wasn’t exactly wrong.
Immediately the alarm bells in my head started ringing. This woman clearly knew what the crystal did, but for some reason, she’d given it away. Why?
I asked as much. “Why did you sell it?”
“A complicated question,” she said. “In my line of work, you know when things are meant for you and when they are not. That crystal was not for me. I would not have been able to gain anything from it.”
“You mean you wouldn’t have been able to go into the dungeon?” I cut all pretenses as I stared at the cryptic woman.
“That is not what I said,” she corrected.
I wanted to pull my hair out. “Okay, maybe you should just… say whatever it is that you want to say, then, because I think I’m a little confused. Why did you sell the crystal?”
The shop owner fiddled aimlessly with a few of the small trinkets on the countertop in front of her. It looked like she was arranging them in some specific pattern that I personally couldn’t see.
“It is not the only one of its kind,” she began. “The crystal. I do not know if there is a specific name for what they are, but they are very special, these crystals. They are hard to come by. They could sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet, one fell into my hands.”
“So why did you sell it to me for a couple of bucks?” I asked. I was getting more and more confused as the conversation went on. Maybe I really would have been better off searching Google.
“You were the first person who seemed to understand the draw of the stone,” she said simply. “I am more than just a store owner. I can read auras.”
“Right.” Even I could hear the flatness in my own tone. I had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound particularly helpful. “What does that mean?”
“All people have an aura, a faint wash of color that surrounds and wraps them in its embrace,” she said. “It is not the sort of thing that is visible to most people. But everyone has one. You can tell a lot about a person from their aura. When you came into the shop the other day, I read your aura.”
That felt vaguely personal, but I didn’t push.
To be honest, I didn’t quite believe in this shit, but then again, I had just been sucked into a dungeon trapped inside of a crystal, so I didn’t think I was in any sort of position to throw stones.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Your aura is pale silver, nearly white,” she said. “Unblemished. It’s the aura of a good person. Noble. Chivalric. It’s the sort of person I would trust to take the stone.”
“What if my aura had been bad?” I asked. “What would you have done then? Would you have stopped me from buying it?”
