“I won’t tell if you won’t,” is what Luke thought he’d heard. He wondered if he’d misheard at the least or bumped his head a bit too hard to the point of seeing and hearing things. As he stared a question at the old lady, she threw him a suggestive grin that seemed misplaced on her face, before topping it off with a wink. This further confused him, but the absurdity of the moment had managed to forestall any panic that had been rising due to his sudden appearance in the lady’s room. As if on cue to his relaxing state, the lady brought her knees to her face, making more room for Luke on the bed.

“Sorry for the intrusion ma’am,” he said, bowing his head in apology, to which she replied, “Don’t be silly, call me Gertie, I’m not that old yet; and do be comfortable in my humble prison cell, there’s enough space for both of us in here.”

He wanted to exit the room as soon as possible but he thought better of it, seeing as he didn’t know where the door spilled into, and who he might bump into upon exiting the room. It was bad enough he didn’t know how he’d gotten here, but it would get much worse should his captors get wind of his sudden disappearance from his room.

He didn’t have to worry much about that though, given that the jig was already up. He could hear multiple footsteps all around, rushing towards one direction, the right; and while he hoped it was just a coincidence that they’d started a few minutes after his sudden… departure, he’d best be suited by exhibiting a healthy dose of caution to temper such hopes.

The steps all seemed to be heading for higher floors, which suggested this room was some number of floors beneath his room’s, and he suspected 2 or more since he couldn’t hear them stopping on the floor directly above.

◆◆◆

The commotion eventually settled on one of the upper floors, plunging the lower floors into silence. The footsteps of patrolling people could occasionally be heard, but it was nothing for Luke to be worried about, for now. He rested his back to the wall and had a short conversation with the old lady, Gertrude, who told him of her situation and how she’d found herself prisoner here as well. Though the official premises of their stays here couldn’t be any more different than they already were, the motivations behind their captors were pretty much the same.

Gertrude’s family had prematurely declared her dotage, thus landing the reigns of her farm to her oldest son and his family. Though she remained the owner, her confinement in the old people’s section of the clinic meant she didn’t have visibility on the operations, or a say in how they were conducted. They’d kept her in here long enough to actually reach her dotage, justifying her continued stay in there.

Although her prison now took the form of the room she occupied today, it hadn’t always been so. It had taken a smaller, albeit more unlikely form in the earlier days of her stay here, that being her own body. To justify confinement of an able-bodied individual in the ward, one would either need a lot of money for the bribes, or a means of faking her feeble state. The mayor, who’d been the mayor’s son at the time; had had a vested interest in the farm and thus assisted Gertie’s son Albert with the plan for the takeover.

Instead of faking feebleness, he’d settled on inducing it through medication, and he’d hired an apothecary to that end. The first concoction she’d received had landed her in for a day, with one of the nurses suggesting they keep her for overnight observation. She’d received her daily dose of a different concoction that had her presenting with forgetfulness and other worrying symptoms that prolonged her stay in there. Days had turned into weeks, and all that eventually culminated in the 25 years she’d been in there.

She’d eventually suspected foul play when there was no longer a need to dose her. Her food had begun tasting better all of a sudden, which she’d initially associated with her own recovery, but a hint had come to her, re-awakening the doubts she held. It had come in the form of an oddly familiar aroma wafting from an old man’s plate in the common area a few months after. She’d kept an eye on the man from then, and his fate had been suspiciously close to her own, being prematurely confined to their ward before his actual dotage.

The gossip of who he was, and how his son and the mayor’s had taken over their smithing business is what confirmed things for her, also shedding light on how she’d been able to identify an aroma she’d mostly only been able to taste before. The old smith’s body was likely more resistant to whatever mixtures were used to keep them feeble, thus eliciting a dose high enough for her to smell.

She’d tried her best to warn the smith, and to her benefit, it had worked, since he’d avoided taking the food for long enough to recover. He’d left the clinic in the middle of the night, only to return 3 days later with an independent healer, as well as the town guard and mayor from a town over. An inquisition had led to the exposition of the plot against the smith, and though it wasn’t explicitly stated, a few of the smarter citizens had their suspicions on whether this had been an isolated case, or a series of cases over the years.

The smith had publicly thanked Gertie for her involvement in exposing the situation, bringing question to her own circumstances in the minds of the general populace. Things seemed to be looking up, and for a moment she thought justice might be served, but this wasn’t to be. She’d received her first visit from her eldest son in the last 20 years, and though she was happy to see his face for the first time in ages, the venom in his sneer had been enough to tell her he wasn’t there for a reunion. He’d exchanged words with her she wasn’t willing to repeat before leaving her shocked at the table. He’d left with her lucidity that day, which she only managed to get back a fortnight later.

Upon waking up, again, she’d been regaled with word of events that had transpired during her latest spell, and things weren’t good. Robert, Rammztonn’s mayor, had taken the blame for all of his son’s machinations, giving up his position as penance whilst asking his son to take a deputy role to whoever would be named the new mayor. This way, his son Richard would learn responsibility from the next mayor while serving the community he had wronged.

The mayor’s assistant, Steven, had taken up that mantle and welcomed Richard into his station as the deputy. As for the blacksmith, he’d wrested back control from his scion and the mayor’s son as a consequence of the inquisition. Unfortunately, he hadn’t lived long enough to enjoy the victory, having fallen to bandits from the Fyre nation during a raid on the town outskirts. As if the news hadn’t been tragic enough, her son had paid her a second visit, and though he didn’t outright say it, she could see the gloating in his eyes. She’d made to help the blacksmith but ultimately her interference had not only just prolonged the takeover of his smithy, but also led to his death, for he might well still be alive today had he been confined to the clinic at the time of the attack.

That was how the story of her hopefulness had ended, with Richard eventually ascending to the mayorship of Rammztonn again, and Gertie still stuck in a ward she’d been entered into prematurely. She had long given up on any prospects of getting justice, but she hoped she could get to eventually die on her own terms, and pass on her last personal possession in the process. This was the wish she conveyed to Luke, with her last remaining item of worth as the price, should he manage to assist her in doing so.

◆◆◆

+--------------+

|Personal Alert|

+--------------+--------+

|“Two souls, one escape”|

+-----------------------+--+

|Class: Quest Notification |

+--------------------------+

|Time Limit: T-11h 59m 59s |

+--------------------------+

|Other Limitations: None - |

+--------------------------+------+

|- "Escape the town and bring a - |

|- - - passenger with you.” - - - |

+-------+-------------------------+

|Rewards|

+-------+-------------------------+

|Escape Sequences, Batch I | 25XP |

+---------------------------------+

|Soul Gem x 1 - - - - - - -| 50XP |

+---------------------------------+

“If you accept my request, this will be your reward,” Gertie said, interrupting Luke’s concentration on the quest notification. He focused on the proffered item, immediately appraising it before nodding his acceptance.

: A seemingly worthless necklace housing a matte gem in its socket. Socketed gem can house a soul indefinitely, as long as the soul is willing.

This seemed to be part of the rewards his notification had listed, and Luke wondered how it had had prior knowledge to consider it before Gertie had presented it officially to him. He doubted the explanation would be something as powerful as predetermination but whatever it was, he hoped he could learn enough of it to help guide future choices on worthwhile quests and endeavors.

“I’m not long for this world, and my only wish is that you come to collect this stone after midnight and take it with you when you leave. Hold it out to the moon when the skies are clear, and the ownership will be transferred to you.”

There was much he could ask about the request, but he chose to accept it without voicing any of his questions. If he could, he’d offer to take the lady with him, and even now that he couldn’t, he was still tempted to do so if only to dissuade her from self-deletion. As if reading his mind, she shook her head with her smile before firming her visage to portray her resolution. She would do this regardless of what he’d say.

Seeing that she wouldn’t be swayed, he accepted the request with a nod and promised to come to collect before making to leave the room. The commotion on the outside seemed to have died down, but he still wouldn’t risk being spotted on the way out. With this in mind, he turned to his hoodie’s abilities, looking for inspiration on how to exit the room. Closing his eyes had allowed him to fall through the floor, but he wondered if the hint was just that, a hint; and not the end-all-be-all of the surfaces he could blink through.

If he could phase through walls, he could take advantage of the fixed arrangement of furniture in all the rooms, popping into the wardrobe of every adjacent room until he’d reached the spacious corner room of the current floor. If he was lucky, it would be a storage or dirt room, but if he was unlucky, it could be a common area, which would make it all-too likely to be spotted popping out of nowhere. With this in mind, he asked Gertie about the lay of the floor, confirming he’d find a storage room 3 rooms to the left from hers.

He stood at the opposite end of the room, counted paces to the target wall and noted the time it took to get there. With this information in hand, he calculated how long of a blink he would need to traverse 3 rooms, all the while hoping speed and time were consistent inside and outside of a blink.

◆◆◆

Luke could hear footsteps in the corridors now. They started out faint and at one end of the floor but as they got closer, he could hear the door-to-door knocks that accompanied them. It seemed the search had extended to the rooms, and it would only be a matter of time before they arrived at Gertie’s door. Intending to be gone by the time she admitted them, he timed his phasing to just when they were leaving the room next door, promptly closing his eyes to execute his maneuver.

Focusing on the wall in front, he took a step forward and began his count, only to be interrupted by the smack of the wall in front of him. “Ow!” he shouted instinctively, registering the mistake a split-second too late to do anything about it. He now knew the cloak would only allow phasing in a vertical direction, and he’d alerted the inspectors in learning so.

He could hear the hurried steps of the people he’d alerted heading for the room, and with little time to try out anything else, he chose to go with what he knew, taking a long blink downwards whilst hoping he’d land safely wherever he opened his eyes to.