Chapter 22

Water splashes in my face and I immediately sit up, frantically gasping for air. My forehead collides into something and pain blossoms instantly, forcing me to hold my head with both hands. “Godsfuckingdamnit Isaac! Why the fuck did you sit up like that!?” Opening my eyes, I see Wraine sitting down in front of me, holding his nose. Ahh, I see. Quickly looking around, I don’t see anyone else around us and it’s close to sunset.

“Why were you standing that close to me? Fuck, my mouth hurts, fuck, my jaw hurts, fuck, my ribs. What happened?”

“Well, do you remember punching the blond guy in the face?”

“Yeah, then I remember the rich kid with the gold sword beat the shit out of me.”

“Alright, at least you didn’t lose your memories, your head should be fine then. After you got knocked out, the blond guy just walked away laughing and the rest of them left too, taking all our stuff with them. I waited for a few minutes to make sure they were gone before I tried waking you. You wouldn’t wake up so I splashed some river water in your face. I didn’t expect you to jump up like that though. Is my nose bleeding?” Wraine takes his hands away from his nose and twists his head around a few times, showing me different perspectives of his nose.

“You’re fine. Fuck. I don’t know what came over me. When he started describing what he did in that village… I don’t know. I stopped thinking or something and I didn’t even realize I hit him until after I did it. Sorry.”

“Why are you saying sorry? Those guys were fucking monsters pretending to be human. We both saw what they did this morning and if you didn’t hit him first, I would’ve done it myself.” Wraine looks at me with a smile on his face.

“I’m sorry for not thinking about it first before I hit him. We know what they’re capable of and we could’ve easily died because of me.”

“Shut the fuck up. I already told you, if you didn’t do it first, I would’ve.”

“Alright, fine.” Sighing heavily, I tenderly touch my cheek and the pain makes me recoil my hand. The whole left side of my face is swollen and my jaw hurts terribly. I hope it's not broken. We can’t afford to get it treated especially now. “Wait, you still have that coin in your boot?”

Wraine nods and uses his finger to knock against his left boot twice before saying, “Yep, thank the gods they didn’t try to search our clothes. But after you got knocked out, the blond one seemed to lose interest in us and just left. He was a weird one right? It can’t just be me thinking this.”

“Same. For some reason he really wanted to see how we’d react when he told us about Weistrell. Sick fuck took pleasure in remembering his own wickedness and I guess he wanted us to share in it or something? I don’t fucking know. Oh, fuck. I think I actually do. Fuck. I gave him exactly what he wanted.” Groaning, I close my eyes and softly caress my injuries.

“What do you mean?”

“The bastard wanted to relive whatever heinous shit he did in that village, that’s why he asked us about it in the first place. The fucker was practically bragging about it and wanted to hear about it from our mouths. When I pretended not to know what he was talking about, he immediately knew I was lying and pressed further, describing the vile shit he did there to bait out a reaction from us. When I got sick of it and hit him, I basically told him right there not only did we see what he did in that village, but it disgusted and infuriated me. That punch told him everything I didn’t want to say. That’s probably why he let us go and didn’t kill us. He already got what he wanted and then some. Sick fuck.”

“Fuck, man. Is this what Midriver is about? Is the city full of psychotic fucks like that guy? I don’t know, Isaac. Is this a good idea? We can still back out now, go to another village and live there. There’s no way they’ll find us if we live in a no name village far away from here.” Wraine looks worried, and I don’t blame him. Our first day here, our first fucking day, and we run into a complete psychopath. I’m not sure either but…

“Remember, we’re not just deserters anymore. We’re murderers. They might give up or at least be understanding since so much crazy shit happened on the peninsula. But a murder? Not only that, but it was the murder of a boy younger than us. They’ll hang us. What are we supposed to do? Live out the rest of our lives constantly in fear that one day we’ll step out of our house and we’ll already be surrounded by a whole troop of guards? I can’t do that. I can’t live that life. At least in Midriver, we won’t have to worry about that murder. We’ll have a whole new slew of things to be worried about like insane murderer rapists, but we can learn how to deal with them or perhaps avoid them. But that murder will hang over our heads for the rest of our lives since we have no idea if or when the body will be discovered.” Wraine sighs heavily and looks at the ground, lost in his thoughts. I feel horrible but I don’t tell him Midriver is also where I can fulfill my dreams. This city is a city filled with criminals but it’s also a place where power can belong to anyone as long as they’re strong enough, smart enough, and ambitious enough. I won’t be able to become a king here, but I can at least take the first step. I’d never be able to do that in a small, no name village. I’m sorry Wraine.

When I feel good enough to stand up and walk, we finally cross the bridge and head closer towards Midriver. I’d say the sun will set in another hour or two and we need to get into the city before then. I don’t know what the city will be like after dark but I’m unwilling to find out on our first night. We need to get to an inn quickly. From the outskirts of the city, it looks like the city has four gatehouses facing four different directions. The city has a square shape and the walls still look pristine, no visible cracks or anything. The gatehouse we’re headed towards is enormous, much bigger than the gate back in Mountain’s Toil, and it’s brightly lit with standing torches on the bridge in front of us and hanging torches on the gatehouse itself. The bridge in front of us is elevated and it looks like there's a bit of a drop under the bridge. If someone fell from here…let’s not think about falling from here. The bridge itself is quite wide and it could let four or five wagons travel side by side at the same time. Unlike the city walls that look flawless, the bridge has numerous tiny cracks from heavy use and the stone itself looks pretty worn. This city isn’t newly built but the bridge leading to the city is well worn while the city walls look newly constructed. I wonder why that is.

When we approach the gatehouse, I spot around eight or nine guards on duty. All of them are lazily scattered about, none of them seem to be taking their guard duty seriously. Most of them even seem drunk as a few of them stumble around clumsily and when I take a closer look around, I see several leather waterskins on the ground as well as a dozen empty wooden mugs. I wonder if we can sneak a few of those waterskins away, we did lose our only one earlier. Well, I guess we won’t need them anymore once we’re in the city. One of the drunk guards finally stumbles over to us after cursing loudly. It seems the guards were deciding which one of them was going to deal with us by playing a game and the one coming over now is the one who lost. Between the guard’s incoherent babbling and his slurred words, we can’t understand a thing he’s saying but we try to go along with it as best we can. When we hear something resembling “identities,” we tell him our adventurers’ guild licenses were robbed by someone working under Alira. When he hears the name Alira, his eyes go wide and he stops trying to question us and instead signals to another guard standing on top of the gatehouse. The gate promptly opens and we’re let into the city. That doesn’t seem ominous at all. If just mentioning that person’s name is enough to scare the shit out of that city guard, I shouldn’t be throwing this name out there carelessly like that.

When we walk past the gate, we’re greeted with a lively city. Dirty, but lively nonetheless. Unlike Mountain’s Toil, it looks like Midriver only has stone pavement covering its main road. It’s similar to Vilnau in that most of its roads are made from dirt aside from its main street. All the other side roads look uneven and they’re littered with holes. At least the citizens seem normal enough as we can see people busily going about their business like buying food, moving wooden crates, and chasing after runaway pigs. A large, burly bald man wearing an apron covered in blood is chasing after a large pig in the street and when he catches up to it, he instantly slits its throat before hauling it back to his shop, leaving a long trail of blood in his wake. Alright, normal might be pushing it a bit. At least the children have a new game now as they jump back and forth over the blood trail. Unlike Vilnau, Midriver’s buildings are made from stone like Mountain’s Toil but unlike that gorgeous town, Midriver’s buildings look somewhat decrepit. Each building has small cracks on its corners and some of those cracks have vines growing from them. As we’re walking further into the city, the smell in the air gets worse and looking at the sides of this dirt road, there’s numerous dark puddles next to each shop. I’m about to take another step forward when Wraine grabs my shoulder and pulls me back forcefully. I’m about to ask him what he’s doing when I hear a splash in front of me and when I look back, I see a new dark puddle on the ground that absolutely reeks right where I was walking. Looking up and to my right, I see a plump middle aged woman with a scowl on her face holding a copper pot in her hands leaning out of a window. She shakes the pot in her hands a few times and dark droplets of what I can only assume to be shit fall to the ground. Alright, I think I hate this place.

Wraine and I keep walking down the main road, looking at the wooden signs and searching for the image of a mug of ale. When we find one, we go inside and ask the innkeep if they know of a “Thorpe” living in Midriver. Thorpe is Wraine’s uncle’s name and we thought since innkeeps see lots of people every day, one of them might know him. Unfortunately, the scruffy looking innkeep in front of us doesn’t know Wraine’s uncle and when we ask him how much a bed for the night costs, he tells us it’s 1 silver for the night. 1 silver! Astonished, we leave the inn and when we reach the door, we can hear the innkeep laughing behind us. Is he fucking with us? We go to another inn and ask about Wraine’s uncle again. The second innkeep, a large woman with a piercing glare, tells us she hasn’t heard of him either. When we ask how much a bed for the night is, she grins before saying it’ll cost us 2 silver for the night. 2 silver! What the fuck is happening? Why are we being targeted? We leave the second inn and visit every single inn on the maid road and the lowest price we come across is 80 copper for one bed for one night. And we’ll even need to share that bed with another patron for the night. How? We’re nearly at our wits end when I spot another wooden mug of ale on our right a few streets down. This path veers away from the main road but what else can we do? We only have 1 silver coin left.

When we enter the inn this time, we notice this inn is vastly different from the ones we just saw. For one, this inn’s patrons aren’t loud and drunk. Instead, when we first entered, every single one of them looked at us to see who we were. A bit unnerving to say the least. The innkeep this time is cleaning a mug behind a wooden counter and he’s kept his eye on us from the moment we stepped in here. He’s a middle aged man with a pretty robust build and his muscular arms create an interesting contrast when you see him cleaning a tiny wooden mug in his enormous hands that could easily crush my head. He has black hair that’s combed back and a matching full beard that looks well trimmed. His deep blue eyes watch us calmly as we walk up to him. Seeing him continue to wipe the mug in his hands, I greet him, “Evening there sir. Have you ever heard of a man named Thorpe? Tallish guy with brown hair and he comes from Misanth.”

“Nope, never heard of him. What else can I get for you boys tonight?” His deep voice sounds soothing but when I hear another innkeep who has never heard of Thorpe, I’m slightly discouraged.

Sighing lightly, I ask once again, fully ready to hear another ridiculous price, “How much for a bed for the night? Not a bed in a private room, just a bed in the dormitory.”

“Bed’s 12 copper a night. Just the bed, doesn’t include food or drink. But you’re free to help yourself to the well in the back.” Hearing him say such a beautiful, cheap number immediately brightens my mood.

“We’ll take it.” Wraine takes off his boot and hands over the silver coin. The innkeep chuckles when he sees this and hands us back a bunch of copper coins in a small pile. Wraine puts most of them into his pockets and I put the remainder in mine. “We’ve been searching for an inn this whole time but every one of them wanted to charge us insane prices for a bed. Is it just because those inns are on the main road or what?”

The innkeep looks us over, from top to bottom and says, “If you don’t understand, might I suggest you leave Midriver as soon as you can, even better if you leave by tonight. If you stay here any longer than that, well, you’ll be dead before you know it and you won’t even know why.”