Chapter 23

“Hey, did you hear? King Rhys’s current wife died while bathing a week ago. They say the servants went to check in on her and found her floating in the royal baths floating face down.”

“Yea? How many are we at now? I know there was a party a few years back when the 100th wife died. This has to be at least the 120th right?”

“Close, this is the 124th. I heard King Rhys already has the next one lined up and will marry her the same day he buries this last one. I wonder what this new one’ll look like. This most recent one was a beauty from what I hear, from the common folk too. But they also said she has goblin blood in her, some poor woman in her line got caught by goblins one day and then rescued the next. Too bad she was already with child. King Rhys will take any bride though, so at least the late queen got to live like a queen for a while.”

“My bet’s on a mermaid this time. The last mermaid queen of his didn’t last a week before having a shingle fall on her head. A week has to be the shortest one right?”

“Nah, the shortest one died on the wedding night. Mysterious one too. King Rhys and her walk into the bedroom together and not a minute passes when King Rhys bursts out through the door calling for help. The servants go into the room and find the queen dying of old age. Can you believe that? I think she was the 85th, maybe the 86th queen and she just reached marriageable age. Think she had some sort of elf blood in her too ‘cause I remember hearing about her sharp ears. That same young, elf blooded queen dying of old age on the wedding night, how creepy is that?”

“Fuck! You’re right, I forgot about that one. Lost a bet on that one too, thought she would last at least a few months and put down 2 silver. Fuck! Still makes me angry to this day.”

Wraine and I are listening in on two strangers’ conversation as we’re slowly nursing our mugs of ale. We bought them from the innkeep for 3 copper coins each and sat down at one of the tables in the dining hall. Unlike the hall in Ingwulf’s inn back at Mountain’s Toil, this inn has 12 separate round tables instead of two huge tables that could sit everyone. Instead of the inn being lit by fire pits in the center of the hall, this inn has a scant few candles spread around the tables and the main source of light is the fireplace on the leftmost wall. When we sat down and started thinking about the innkeeper's advice, wondering what set us apart from every other patron here, we overheard a conversation from the next table over. They were talking about a king named Rhys who had many wives but none of them survived for longer than a year. It’s hard for me to imagine how many people 124 wives are but Wraine tells me this hall can probably hold up to 100 people and that’s a surprising amount of people. 124 women, 124 wives, 124 queens, enough to fill up this huge hall and then some. I wonder how they all died? Apparently, the 85th or the 86th queen died mysteriously from old age when she was still young. I wonder how that happened. I don’t even know who King Rhys is or even what kingdom he rules over but having 124 or your wives die must be awful regardless of who you are.

The other tables around us are more or less doing the same thing as those guys talking about King Rhys, gossiping about the things happening in the city and the world or how the war’s going between the Ribier Kingdom and the Nasaar Kingdom. Apparently the Ribier Kingdom was able to overwhelm Nasaaran forces at a frontier city called Vansgrieri and pushed them all the way back to another place called Larsath’s Dwelling. I don’t fully understand what Larsath’s Dwelling is because from what we’ve been able to eavesdrop, it’s not a town or a city but rather a sorcerer’s abode. I’m not able to hear anything else because the people who were talking noticed us listening in on them and stopped speaking. If I remember correctly, Vansgrieri was where we were headed when we were still a part of Aldore’s troop. I guess even if we weren’t ambushed on the peninsula, we still weren’t fated for a good ending in Vansgrieri.

When we’re finished with our ale, Wraine and I turn in for the night. I’m still not quite sure what the innkeep meant when he told us if we didn’t understand then it’d be for the best if we left Midriver. It has to do with how we look right? The innkeeps on the main road saw two kids walk in with nothing on them and one of them looked like he was beaten to hell. If I were them, I’d think I could take advantage of us as well. Actually, I’d take it a step further and think those boys wouldn’t last here long and they’d either leave the city soon or they’d end up dead. Either way, they wouldn’t miss their coins. Alright, I think I understand now.

...

I dreamt tonight, but I didn’t dream of the city. Ever since the incident in the cave, I’ve found that I sometimes dream about the boy who died there. Well, the boy I killed. Describing him as the boy who died there sounds odd for some reason, as if his death has nothing to do with me. But his death is something I need to learn to live with especially now that I have nightmares about him. Whenever I dream about him, it’s as if I was him living out his final moments. The nightmare always starts in a dark cave, dimly lit by a small fire in the center of the cavern. There’s goblins all around the fire either walking around, eating, sleeping, or fighting with each other. Each one of their frantic movements and gestures is accompanied by manic shadows dancing in tune with their goblin counterparts. Some of the goblins even seem like they’re communicating with each other with their own unique, guttural language. My amazement at the goblins speaking to each other is smothered by the overpowering fear that pierces straight through to my core. I’m sitting on the ground next to a pile of bones, holding my knees, trying to minimize my existence as much as possible. I watched these very same goblins rip my father apart days ago, piece by piece, slowly savoring each part. I know I’m next when they’re finished with my father but I’m too terrified to even attempt to escape. Whenever the goblins grow bored, they throw stones near my feet to amuse themselves and my pain and fear has become their greatest entertainment. I can’t even imagine what they’ll do to me if I try to run away but I know I’ll suffer horribly. Every single moment I’m praying for someone, anyone, to come save me. When I dream at night, I dream of a knight clad in shining steel armor riding his steed, bursting into this cave and beheading every single goblin here just like in the stories my father used to tell me before bedtime. Then I wake up and I’m once again forced to realize the utter hell I’m living in.

On the day before the goblins finally finished devouring my father, I died. I don’t even know how it happened either. It began slowly, but something in the air changed and the smell of smoke spread throughout the cavern. The goblins were still acting normally and didn’t notice anything strange happening to them until the coughing started. One by one the goblins stopped talking and started coughing instead. When they finally figured out something was wrong, they immediately put out their own fire but this was the worst mistake they could make. I couldn’t see anything myself, but I heard the goblins frantically running around, trying to find the way out amid the coughing fits. I noticed this a few days ago but the goblins were pretty similar to me in that they couldn’t see very well in the dark either, that’s why they always kept the fire in the middle of the cavern lit. When they extinguished their own fire, they sealed their own fates and mine as well. I held out better than the goblins because I heard them stop coughing before I did but soon after I stopped coughing and could only gasp for air. I never really thought about how important air was before or how much I liked it but when I couldn’t breathe anymore, that’s when I learned how to miss it. All I could think about as I was on my back, gasping for air in a pitch black cavern, was how I never got to see that knight in shining armor.

...

When I finally die in my dream, I wake up in the bed we rented last night with Wraine next to me, still asleep. I don’t immediately get up and instead I take a few moments to stare at the inn’s ceiling. There’s tears in my eyes and I’m not sure if they’re from the painful death I just dreamt about or the guilt that’s been hidden away for the past few weeks. It might be the guilt because I’ve never dreamt about anything other than the city before but now that I’ve killed someone, the guilt regarding their death is causing me nightmares. Once I’ve had some time to calm down and suppress my feelings, I get out of bed and head over to the well behind the inn. It’s still early in the morning and the empty clearing behind the inn is devoid of people except for one sleeping drunk. The cold water feels amazing on my swollen face but it stings the cuts on the inside of my mouth. I don’t think I’m the type of person that holds grudges especially when the one I’m holding a grudge against is a legitimate psychopath, but if I ever have the opportunity to kick his teeth in, I might just do it. It’s one thing to kick the shit out of me but stealing all our belongings and basically fucking us over to that extent makes me livid whenever I picture that blond bandit in my mind. Heaving out a sigh, I head back into the inn.

When Wraine wakes up and gets himself washed up, we find the innkeep from last night and see him wiping down the tables. He ignores us and continues his cleaning. “It’s because of how we look, right? Two kids who don’t look like they’ll survive for long in the city show up to your inn and they probably won’t turn out to be regulars. Might as well try to squeeze as many coins out of them before they run away or die, right? Though I don’t know why you decided to give us a reasonable price last night, thank you.”

The innkeep sighs before he stops wiping down the table and straightens his back. I didn’t really pay attention to his height before but he towers over us quite considerably. There’s scars on his arms and most of them look like scars from swords. When he turns around to look at us, he looks us over before saying, “Don’t think too much of it, I run a fair inn here and if word gets out I’m scamming my customers, I’ll lose more than a few scant coins. If you understand then you should leave the city by tonight. Midriver isn’t a welcoming place by any definition and you’re only risking your lives by staying here. Forget about whoever you’re looking for and just leave, he’s not worth your lives.”

“We know we’re kids, we know we’re underprepared for this city, and we know we haven’t fully grasped what living in this city truly means yet but we don’t have anywhere else to go. Yesterday was our first day in this city and not only have we been robbed but as you can see, I got my shit kicked in. It’d probably be in our best interests to leave Midriver but we can’t. All we can do is pick ourselves back up and try to earn back what we’ve lost while we try to adapt to this city.”

The innkeep frowns at us and sighs heavily before he scratches the back of his head exasperatedly, “Fine, fine, suit yourself. You aren’t my problem, just thought I’d give some friendly advice. What plans do you even have now? You said you got robbed yesterday right? Staying here might be your best option but I’m not running a charity here, if you can’t afford a bed for the night, I won’t be taking pity on you.”

“We were planning on visiting the adventurers’ guild today. Our guild licenses got robbed yesterday but we were hoping to talk it out with the branch manager to see if they could give us a little leeway until we could earn enough to replace our licenses.”

The innkeep gives us an odd look before opening his mouth and then closing it a few times, “You do know that Midriver doesn’t have an adventurers’ guild right?”