(Second Book Complete!) Runeblade: A Delving & Skill Merging LitRPG

Desperation had a stench, and it reeked of pisswater, stale sweat, and charleaf smoke.

Ro leaned back on the tavern wall, half expecting the poorly maintained wood to splinter under her weight. Arms crossed over her chest, she watched jittery lowlives swing their eyes across the pub — looking for their next mark, a good lay, or both.

No one saw her — she could have slapped them in the face and they’d still not pierce her concealment. Not here, and not people this weak. Gods, she hated the slagheap. A slum by a worse name, it was an affront to her senses. Literally, with her stats being in this section of Deadacre felt like she’d shoved her head in some alchemist’s reject vat.

It hadn’t always been so bad, but the influx of refugees had pushed the place over a tipping point. There was always scum in every city, but the organised elements had taken to the new circumstances with disgusting ease.

Still, the kids had been taken — stolen — she was sure of it. It had been too many weeks, and when she’d taken the time to investigate the bonefields, she’d quickly stumbled onto the remnants of a battle.

So she did what she must. Quiet and focused, she tuned into the buzz around her, hoping she would finally find something useful. Weeks of snatching known criminal elements from dark alleys had gotten her almost nowhere — only serving to fill the governor’s crowded dungeons even further. It had taken a bit of badgering, but she’d gotten Rieker to twist Hanrick’s arm. Those she grabbed, stayed — rumours of a ghost snatching men from the street was better than a dozen scumbags screaming that the guild was hunting for someone the second they got free.

Even if her initial probes hadn’t found much, they had led to her hearing about this place. An impromptu clubhouse for the unscrupulous and unusually driven of the slagheap’s denizens. Now all she would have to do was wait — someone would let something slip, they always did.

Ro just hoped it wouldn’t take too long. She’d seen pigpens that smelled better than this.

“Have you heard?”

She turned to the whispers, staring intently at three men clustered around a candle lit table in the tavern’s far corner.

“‘Bout the big party that’s happenin’ on South Row? Ye bet yer sweet ass I have.” A man in a ratty oil skin coat grinned, revealing missing teeth and half a dozen almost there.

His companion nodded. “Shulta was saying he heard a merchant bragging to some fop that he got an invite — him and his whole family. Old boot’s gettin’ a crew together to hit the shop while its empty. Some place called the Crystal Bottle — fancy fop wines and shit.”

Frowning, Ro turned her attention away from the burgeoning conspiracy. A break-in was of little interest to her — she wouldn’t even tip off the guards. Too much risk of giving her self away — enough heat had already been building, and she wasn’t going to get the rats of the city all nervous for every minor infraction. If someone wasn’t bleeding, she didn’t care.

Another voice filtered through the crowd, hushed whispers from a man in aged leathers hunkered by the bar piqued her interest.

“Hey! I’m looking for someone.”

Ro snapped her full attention to the man, something he didn’t receive from his nigh-catatonic neighbour.

“Whozzat?”

“Rosey — got a little extra coin for her.”

The drunk chuckled, taking another swig of pisswater from his tankard. Ro could smell it from across the room, all mouldy rye and sour bite.

“Hah! Gonbe waitin’ some time, she’s already with a john.”

Ro scowled, resisting the urge to spit on the floor as she ignored the rest of the incessant prattle. Her last captive had been insistent that this was where half of the slagheap rats came to wheel and deal, but so far all she’d seen was pathetic failures and small time scum — nothing useful.

Coming here had been a mistake.

She straightened, ready to slip out to the only-marginally fresher streets outside. A man walked in, stopping her fast. Back straight, with focused eyes, he prowled like he owned the place — wrapped in a brown wool cloak that lacked even a single hole.

Like it did whenever somebody came in, the bar grew quiet; dozens of leers landed on the newcomer. Every other time she’d seen them stare until the patron found a seat. This time brows widened in recognition, and the boozehounds slipped back into their drinks with their tails between their legs. Ro smiled, leaning back against the wall.

This was different. Maybe her lead had been good.

Stopping at the bar, the newcomer waved, and the tavernkeep gave him a wide grin.

“Good ta see ya, mate — here for the usual?”

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“Nah.” The newcomer’s voice was surprisingly smooth — a cool baritone out of place in the rat’s nest. “No fun fer me t’night; Raul’s looking fer some info — need to go visit Whisper.”

The tavernkeep nodded, filling a tankard with pisswater before he slid the drink to a patron waving for his attention.

“No worries — he’s at Coal House tonight. Ya been to that one before?”

The newcomer nodded, hand dropping to his waste before Ro saw him flick a silver to the barkeep. He snatched the coin, giving the newcomer a wide smile.

Pulling their cloak tighter around them, the man turned and prowled his way back to the tavern’s entrance.

Ro straightened with a smile, falling in behind the cloaked man as she slipped around stumbling drunks. An infobroker, eh? She could work with that — perhaps she should ask the keep guards to give her source an extra helping of slop tomorrow morning.

Or not — she had caught the bastard selling sleepseed, after all.

…

Keeping his expression schooled, Old Yon felt the building pressure of his grinding jaw as the low and steady illumination of his men’s wardlights lit the dripping stone work of the tunnels. They ran deep under the city — beneath even its sewers — a rat’s nest of forgotten serviceways, catacombs, and old warbunkers.

The bones of the old town, a bastion and haven that he’d mapped out with a considerable funneling of manpower after discovering one of its hidden entrances — and a resource he had complete control over. They stretched far beyond the modern walls, and deep beneath the ground, right up to the edge of the cursed earth that surrounded Deadacre. That was a little tidbit that only he and his men knew, though his lessers in the city knew he had some way to get around the walls.

They were going underground — his safe houses in the slagheap and the worker’s district had grown far too hot to risk. A lesser man might have delayed the move — preferring creature comforts than to listen to his gut.

He knew better. Someone was picking off men — not all his, but enough. There was a hound on the hunt, and he wasn’t going to be the skinned fox stuffed on a nobles mantle.

Poison and ash, what had he done to deserve this? He’d moved in on Deadacre because it was quiet, for the gods’ scorn — that, and it provided him a premium position to skim off middleman profits from every smuggling venture between Mystral and the rest of Vaastivar.

Now, after a decade of work, it was all boiling away.

First the phase shift had worsened supply transit, and now with the sudden migration of beasts no merchant with any sense was taking the risk to trade between cities and villages. That meant there was nothing for his own shipments to blend into — an incoming caravan would bring far too much attention, and his dead drops would be found immediately.

Worse, he’d still heard nothing from Conte. Selling the knowledge that that team must have would earn him a king’s ransom on the black market — more valuable was the favours it would bring. He’d have been able to bargain for sponsorship in Wight’s End, and for a feeding team to bring him power.

More and more he realised that was what it came down to — simple, brutish power. He could never have enough of it!

Yet he knew nothing about the outcome of his job — no communication at all from his men at his most precious safe house. All he knew was that every beast around had been spotted moving in that direction a month ago, and no word had come from the settlements that lay that way since.

Old Yon clenched his fist, red fury demanding he snap the employee lighting the way in front of him. Squashing the impulse flat, he let out a slow — if forced — breath.

“Everything alright, sir?”

The heat in his belly flared again, and the tips of Old Yon’s nails cut into his palm. The sting was grounding — as was the wet stickiness of his blood filling his palm. It helped him hold himself back from turning around to throttle the imbecile who’d asked such an asinine question where he stood.

“Yes.”

His fingers relaxed, his flesh healing in moments as his nails withdrew.

Calm eluded him. All he could think about was the ghost that had started hitting the slagheap. Whoever they were, they were good. Not as good as his hunter, Torin, but good enough that the witless rutting pigs of the slums hadn’t found even the slightest hint of their identity, let alone who they worked for.

No calling cards, no witnesses, no screams — just men who failed to turn up to their next job. He’d respect the professionalism, might even find it charming — if it hadn’t been directed at his holdings.

They’d even managed to get their claws on Whisper of all people. He knew that that little minnow was almost as paranoid as he was. Snatched the man just last night — allegedly when one of his guards had turned his back for less than a minute. In a locked room on the fourth floor. Far too capable. Far too dangerous. He’d heard what his men had taken to calling them — Spectre.

As bitter as it was to aggrandise an enemy, he knew it was an accurate title.

No, far better he moved his whole operation underground. He could wait this out — he had the time, funds, and safehouses scattered through the underworks of the city. Someone had kicked a hornet’s nest — most likely one of the gangs he graciously kept independent to serve as patsies. Whoever it had been, they’d pissed off someone of power and influence, and he had no interest in getting in their way.

A pulse of magic washed over him, coming from his inner coat pocket. Old Yon froze in confusion, just for a moment, before panic took over.

He ripped out the pendant he kept on his person at every moment, praying that he was wrong. A disk of white crystal surrounded by gold stared back at him — white enchanted light pulsed softly against one rim of the artefact, taunting him.

No! It was impossible!

“Sir? Are we halting?”

The words slipped past his ears, forgotten as soft flashes of light cut him deeper than any blade. It cared little for his shaking hands, his crushing grip. Light simply blinked on the south-eastern rim of the compass. Irrefutable evidence that someone had tripped his tracking curse-ward.

Someone had broken into his vault.