Seeker of Secrets

  Chapter One

  “You’re really going, aren’t you?”

  Joshua was standing by the door and re-checking his provisions for the twentieth time when his father asked the question. There were six leather sacks on the floor, each filled with things he’d need for the hundreds of miles of travel that lay ahead. Or the things he’d guessed he’d need, anyway. He’d never gone beyond twenty miles away from his village, so he was sure that there’d be something that he had forgotten.

  The other six bags full of things, the ones they’d need not for the journey but for everything that came after it, were in a house across the village, where his friend Benjen was probably getting the same questions from his parents.

  “It’s dangerous in the east,” said his father. “Some of the creatures out there…”

  “People die in the village, too,” said Joshua. “Hunters don’t always come back, do they?”

  “But they aren’t my sons.”

  Joshua felt pity well up in him then, and he did what he hadn’t done for years; he walked over to his father and he pulled him into a hug. His father gripped him back, and they separated a moment later.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll send letters back all the time, and you can come visit if you ever take a break from work.”

  “I will, if business brings me that way. I have something for you, Joshua.”

  His father walked went into his bedroom, and he emerged a minute later with two things; an ornamental wooden box, and a leather pouch. The pouch bulged with what Joshua knew were coins.

  “What’s this? I thought-”

  “I know I said I don’t approve of your expedition, and that it’s dangerous and you’re throwing away your future. I know I said I wouldn’t help fund it. But the fact is, if your mother was here then she would have approved, and she’d have been furious if I’d sent you away with nothing. Here.”

  Joshua took the coin pouch from his father, and a tiny, tiny flicker of homesickness hit him. Or, more accurately, it was like he’d skipped ahead a few days and he was feeling the future homesickness that was to come.

  This might have been his dream, and he sure as hell wouldn’t miss his job or the village when he left, but he’d miss his father.

  “It’s mostly bronze coins,” said his father, “So don’t think that I’ve given you a fortune. You’ll have to use all the accountancy skills that I’ve taught you and make shrewd deals, or you’ll be destitute before you know it. But there’s also this.”

  He handed the ornamental box to Joshua. Inside it there was a small triangle object made from a bone-like material, with an ‘S’ scratched into it. He knew that his father had no interest in decorative jewelry, so there was something deeper to this.

  “It’s a binding,” said his father.

  He hadn’t expected that.

  “You’re joking? A binding? How?”

  Unlike classes and skills, which had to first be earned through hard work and then upgraded and evolved through even more hard work, bindings were different. Most of them came with a ready-made skill magically locked inside, and as such, they were expensive.

  This was because anything magic-related came at a premium. While thousands of classes and skills could be learned by anyone willing to put in the effort, not everyone had that inert potential inside them that would let them learn magic. Mages knew this, and they thus charged a fortune for using their powers to perform all kinds of services, or enchanting items and weapons.

  “This was your mother’s, given to her by your grandma, God rest her soul. I was saving it for when you qualified as an accountant but since that isn’t going to happen…”

  He felt curiosity well inside him now. He’d always been that way; he always had to know more, to learn things, and the less he was supposed to know about certain things, the more he wanted to.

  “What kind of binding is it?”

  “Put it on and find out.”

  Joshua eyed his father warily. Bindings, once you attached them, were incredibly hard to remove. They attached themselves to the skin and they dug deeper into the flesh, and only someone with the binder class could remove them.

  More unscrupulous people, like assassins, used bindings to kill victims, switching real bindings for ones that looked the same, but were poisoned. Worse, it was said that warlocks in the south west used bindings to turn people and creatures into slaves.

  “Come on, wipe that look off your face. I’m hardly going to give you a dangerous binding, am I?” said his father.

  Joshua knew that, but as he reached his twentieth birthday, he found his view of the world was becoming wryer and more suspicious by the day.

  He pulled up his shirt and he placed the binding on his waist, so that it would stay where nobody would see it. There was no use doing what some rich fools did and attaching the binding to his neck as a symbol of wealth; it’d just make him a target.

  He pushed the bone material against his skin. As he did, he saw wispy words gather in the air in front of him, just like they did when you learned a skill or class. He knew that only he would see the words, since it was a change to just his body.

  Binding of the Seeker Received

  [The seeker searches for knowledge, filling their mind with the lands and creatures and secrets of Fortuna. When knowledge is learned, gifts are given.]

  Seeker Knowledge Level 0: [0/25]

  “This is amazing. So, everything new I learn or see will help me level it up?”

  “To a point,” said his father. “You can’t trick a binding. Every tree you see outside of the village will be new to you, but it won’t boost the binding. Only significant findings will do it; new places, new people…secrets. There’s a lot to be learned outside of the village, Joshua, and if you have to go, then you may as well start discovering some of the world.”

  ~

  Across the village, Joshua’s best friend Benjen was getting a sending off of his own. Like with Joshua, one parent was absent, though for different reasons.

  “Father isn’t going to say goodbye?” asked Benjen.

  His mother put her hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t approve. You know that.”

  “But still, I thought he’d be here.”

  “He’ll come around, eventually. Perhaps we’ll visit once you get there. There was something I wanted to give you, Benjen.”

  His mother opened a wooden crate that was set against the wall in their living room. She pulled out a leather breastplate. It was stained a dark brown color, and there was a circle carved into it, in the middle of which was an eagle. The chest plate looked at least five times too big for him.

  She gave it to him. “I don’t want you to get yourself killed out there,” she said.

  “Thanks, but I don’t think it’s my size…”

  “Put it on.”

  Benjen fixed the breastplate over his shirt, and sure enough, it was too big. But when he fastened the straps, something happened. The breast plate shrank around him until it fit perfectly.

  Breastplate of Absorbed Damage received

  [Wrought by the hands of a utilarian mage, this breastplate adapts to the damage it receives. Each time it takes certain kinds of damage, its resistance grows stronger.]

  Current Resistances:

  Ice Damage: 3/50

  Arrowheads: 6/50

  Blunt force: 9/50

  Wow. Benjen had no idea that they had anything even slightly magical in their house, let alone something like this. It must have been worth a fortune, and the Gods knew that they’d need as much gold as they could get if he and Joshua were to be successful in their dream.

  All the same, he knew that he wouldn’t sell it. A breastplate like this was invaluable; given time, who knew what resistances it cou
ld build up?

  “Thanks, mother. You don’t know what this means to me. I know that you don’t want me to go, but…”

  “But you will, anyway, and I’ll feel better knowing that you are protected. Take care of your friend, too. He might be brave, but he isn’t strong.”

  “Joshua knows what he’s doing.”

  “He thinks he does. And so do you. But you’ve never left the village, Benjen, and I think you’re in for more surprises. Just, for the love of all the Gods in Fortuna, don’t put yourself in too much danger. It would kill me to get a letter about you, to hear that…”

  “I’ll be fine, mother. Especially with this. Hmm…the breastplate builds resistances to damage, the more it gets. What if I take it off and then slash it a few hundred times with my sword?”

  “You can’t cheat magic, son. It’ll only work its magic while you wear it. That’s why I don’t suggest you go and seek danger just to build up its powers. It is more for my reassurance than yours. You better go now, Benjen, if I really can’t persuade you to stay. You’ll want to be close to the next town before it gets dark.”

  Chapter Two

  It would be the hardest journey of their young lives. Forty days of grueling travel on horses laden with leather sacks full of dried food and waterskins that they’d replenish whenever they found a stream that wasn’t poisoned. The horses weren’t the best in the village but the stable master hadn’t approved of their journey, just like everyone else. The elders, the blacksmith, the fishermen, the fletcher - they used different words, but what they said amounted to the same thing.

  What the hell do you want to go east for?

  A couple of lads like you, the goblins will have ya before you’re ten miles away.

  You’ll be back here before you know it, begging for us to take you back.

  Benjen and Joshua, best friends since they were six and now pushing on twenty years old - an age where they should really have grown out of childhood dreams and accepted the reality of steady work, wives, and a family – let the words pass over their heads like arrows from a goblin’s bow.

  Why did they want to go east, to the places of Fortuna where survival hinged on the swing of a sword? For the glory.

  Would the goblins have them before they got 10 miles away from the village? Well, yes. In a way, the goblins would cause them trouble.

  Would they be back in their childhood village before they knew it, begging to be taken back? Never.

  The goblins had struck, in a peculiar fashion, precisely eight miles away from the village. The two lads had been stuck fast in a conversation of dreams. Benjen salivated over the guildhouse armory he’d fill with legendary swords, axes, and daggers.

  Joshua in turn described his plans for the guildhall – what each room would be, how he’d refurbish them, and how their guildhouse would make all the other guilds in Fortuna jealous. How, even if it took a decade, every hero worthy of the title would make a pilgrimage to their little guild and beg to be added to their hero roster.

  It was the same conversation they’d had since they were ten years old, when Joshua’s father had taken them to Gossang City, the City of a Thousand Deaths, as people called it.

  He was an accountant, or coin counter as the people in the village sarcastically named him given its lack of physicality and danger as a profession, and he’d taken a commission to handle the accounts of the Gossang fighter tourney.

  While he sat in a dusty room keeping books in order, Benjen and Joshua watched the heroes - and some villains - battle in an oval arena strewn with dust and blood, while crowds of hundreds watched. The excitement was intoxicating; the smell of the beer and wine, the clangs of swords as they struck shields, the skillful dodges of the rogues, the dazzling pirouettes of the blade dancers.

  At first, they’d wanted to become heroes themselves. Joshua’s father pointed out a snag in that – heroes tended to die painful deaths.

  Their dreams evolved over the years but they always wanted to be part of that world, a world that was just four hundred miles away from their village but may as well have been a million. A world of good, a world of heroes, a world of battle and virtue.

  But…they didn’t want to get caught up in the whole death side of things. And so, their dream changed until it became something realistic, if incredibly tough. One that would bring them to the steps of glory but make sure they didn’t die in seeking it.

  They would become masters of a guildhouse. They would buy an abandoned guildhouse, fix it up, and then pay heroes to join them. The swordsmen and wizards and rogues and barbarians would do the fighting, and Benjen and Joshua would handle the other side of things. The stuff behind the scenes.

  This wasn’t just about money for them. The boys had ideals they agreed on. They’d accept any hero quest no matter how big or how small. Their salaried heroes would answer the call of any town in need, of any castle in crisis, of any fort in a fuss.

  Benjen was taken as a blacksmith apprentice when he was fourteen, and through this he started to earn gold. Not only that, but the smithy let him keep some of his early efforts at sword making.

  Benjen would rush to the Quarryman’s Inn after a sweat-filled day and he’d brandish his oddly-shaped and poorly constructed creations, and he’d smile and tell Joshua how they’d go well in the guild armory. Joshua was so wrapped up in it and so taken with his best friend’s enthusiasm that he didn’t point out the fact that Benjen’s swords would shatter against grass, let alone against a gnoll’s thick skull.

  Joshua’s father took Joshua as his own apprentice, and in this way, he learned how to count money, how to invest it, and more importantly, how to hide it.

  For six years the lads worked every hour they could, even taking on bar shifts at the Quarryman’s Inn. Joshua invested what little gold he could in a local mana mine, and when the mage diggers hit a gushing vein of blue and mana spurted out and caused a stink that hadn’t quite left the air of their village even now, he saw his investment tripled. He was quite aware, and very unhappy about, having to pay tax to the three kings of Fortuna on his bounty, but he did, and what was left was enough for them to buy a property.

  Then came the problem of finding somewhere. They had done their research. A good heroes’ guild needed to be near to a city, because cities were where they would find most of their quests. Not only that, though. A good heroes guild was also far enough away from the city that they could send their courageous heroes to other, more forlorn places. Abandoned mines and demon filled dungeons. Dragon towers and forgotten forts. Ghost-scourged graveyards and the lairs of mad mages. A good heroes’ guild needed to be slap, bang, in the middle of the most dangerous part of Fortuna.

  They had planned to take a summer to travel the wasteland of the east and look for a place they could buy and fix up. They knew it might take even longer than that to find somewhere suitable, and even though both lads were so impatient to begin their dream that they slept less and less each night, they were level-headed enough to accept it.

  And that was when a crooked-backed merchant entered the Quarryman’s Inn. He was a traveler from the east, a man who had seen every grass of blade and slogged through every marsh that Fortuna had to offer.

  Benjen and Joshua devoured every word of travelers like him, and they questioned him mercilessly, keeping his answers forthcoming by offering free pints of cold ale. Gundogan, the barkeep, wasn’t too happy about that but they didn’t care, because the merchant knew a place they could buy.

  It was an old building ripe for refurbishment, 10 miles away from the town of Ardglass, and so close to dungeons and mines and cursed graveyards that you could sniff their stink in the air. But not only that.

  This was much, much better than just any old abandoned building, because this one used to be a heroes’ guild. For reasons the merchant didn’t know, the old owner was selling it cheap. So cheap, in fact, that an apprentice blacksmith and rookie accountant could buy it.

  “Do we even need to discuss this?”
said Benjen.

  “Time to leave this place for good,” said Joshua.

  So began their journey away from their village, away from their families, and into unknown lands of Fortuna. It would be a heavy slog, one they’d be sure to find trouble in, but neither of them worried about it. Benjen had his oddly-shaped monstrosities of swords, and he vaguely knew how to use them. And Joshua, an accountant’s son though he might have been, had a wicked right hook.

  As the village elders had promised, though, the goblins found the lads less than ten miles away from the village and caught them in the middle of day-dreaming about their guild.

  The lads were heading east on Old Worn Road, a path often used by merchants and travelers. The boys were sitting on their horses, Benjen held the reins with one hand and sipped from a bottle of beer, while Joshua gripped the reins of his with both hands, cursing himself for not taking more riding lessons, and stewing on the idea that the horse was just going to bolt away, as if some madness would take hold of it and it’d just start galloping into the eternal distance.

  As they rode on, hail began to fall from the sky. Tiny chips of it at first, and then acorn-sized blocks that hurt when they hit his head. Joshua fastened his coat close against him and pulled his hood up.

  Benjen, on the other hand, unfastened his coat, and the chunks pelted against his leather breastplate.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hailstones level up my armor’s ice resistance. Might as well take every opportunity I get.”

  Ahead of them, they saw a little basket in the middle of the road. This cut short their conversation about the guildhouse. Joshua listened, and he leaned forward as far as he dared, and he heard crying.

  “There’s a baby in there,” said Benjen.

  “Who’d leave a baby on its own out here?”

  “The brigands. When they get an extra mouth they can’t feed, they leave it for the wolves.”

  “That’s a stereotype, and one that sounds like it came from your racist grandpa’s mouth. Plenty of brigands are perfectly well-adjusted members of society now.”