REPEAT: The Aldonn Chronicles 1x00 and 1x01 "The Terror of Beyond" "This Budding Romance" Presented by 99geek.ca

  I won't be able to make my self imposed valentines day deadline, unfortunately. I only just finished my prep for the chapter and my weekend is done. By the time my next weekend comes it will be Valentine's day, so there's no hope. But in penance of that, I will be catching you up on Aldonn Chronicles for all the people who like my writing enough to read huge text blocks like this, but not enough to pay me a simple dollar and get these in easy to read complete PDFs readable on phones, tablets, and computers. Maybe even weird Kindle things with paper white screens. Those things are kinda cool looking.

And I apologize the formatting is so bad here. I copy and paste from Word, and it removes all the spacing between paragraphs. Not my fault, and not worth the time it takes to fix everytime. But hey, it's free. And for just a dollar, it can be far more readable than this.

 Anyway, without further ado, the first chapter was released on Halloween in 2016...

1x00 “The Terror of Beyond”

Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on October 25 2016 for Halloween

“I’ll only do story time if you’ve brushed your teeth,” Sister Christine assured one of her kids. She was both out of breath and completely dishevelled, clearly tired from a day of running after the charges left in her care. “We all know the routine now, boys and girls. Wash up first, put away all your toys, and get into bed.” There was a dispute at the far end of the room. “Johnny give Anne back her crayons. And for the sake of the gods, Andrew, put on some pants.”

Sister Christine must have been in her sixties now and, though her skin was beginning to show signs of age and her hair had turned from fiery red to silver gray, there was no less fire in her than when she was twenty years younger. She ran an orphanage for children in the dense metropolitan capitol city of Capsin, almost entirely on her own. She’d been doing so for nearly her entire life, and nothing mattered more to her than her kids. She was their nurse mother, and their guardian, and all-seeing watcher over them.

Yet she was completely oblivious of Frankie, silent and still in the shadows just outside the window, perched on the second story ledge. No one could see her short messy brown hair in the darkness, or her curious brown eyes, or the tight dark brown leather trenchcoat she wore with hide straps and secret compartments full of tools and weapons. Frankie was a trained thief after all. Not that she was there to rob from Sister Christine.

The nurse mother had raised her from childhood, as she had spent many years in Sister Christine’s orphanage during her youth. Though Frankie had moved on to less greener pastures, and the Sister had no clue she ever came by, she would actually do so quite often. Especially around bedtime. Sister Christine’s stories were famous amongst the orphans of Capsin for being the best in Memroxia. They often calmed her nerves before a tough job. Or after. Or sometimes both.

The orphanage Sister Christine ran was a large building in one of the poorer districts of Capsin, made mostly of wood as many the buildings in Capsin were. The upstairs bedroom, where all the kids were getting in their PJs and sliding into their beds, was warmly lit by a fire in the fireplace. Frankie could still remember how comfortable the orphanage had been, especially when compared to her months living on the street.

Of course she still, technically, didn’t have a home. At least, now, she had a guild headquarters that she could sleep at if she so chose, and a locker there within which to keep her things. She could always find a place to sleep now, even stealing away a few days in a rich aristocrat’s home while they were away on vacation or business. She was more resourceful now than she was as a kid. She’d learned from the tough times and the rough times how to survive.

Sister Christine went to each bed in turn, tucking in all her children one at a time and giving them each a moment of her undivided attention. “Sister Christine,” a young boy called from his bed. “Can we have a scary story this time?” A few other voices chimed in.

“I want a scary story!” another kid yelled and they all agreed.

“Not until you say your prayers Johnny,” Sister Christine scolded him. “To both the gods for creating us and everything around us, as well as the archangels for protecting us from harm in this world of both good and evil.”

A young girl complained from across the room, “Johnny says that archangels aren’t real.”

“Does he,” Christine said in mock horror. She crossed her arms and looked down on his bed. “Why would you say that?”

Johnny seemed like the rebel of the group, the loud mouthed troublemaker. The class clown. There was always one, and once upon a time it had been Frankie. “They never answer my prayers,” he complained to the nurse mother angrily. “I’ve asked repeatedly for new clothes. For a bed large enough that my feet don’t hang off. Cake for breakfast.”

“You’ve been asking for all those things?” Sister Christine mused, and Frankie could see the smirk on her face even from outside the window.

“Every night,” A little girl said quietly from her bed, “I pray to them that they bring me back my father.” The room went quiet after that, other than the nearly imperceptible sniff from the girl’s bed. Frankie was pretty sure she had been Anne.

Sister Christine’s features softened in the candlelight, and she sat down on the end of Johnny’s bed. “Oh kids,” she said with compassion. “Do you really want a scary story tonight?”

“Yes!” one boy yelled and others agreed with him.

“I won’t be scared,” Johnny promised and Sister Christine ruffled his hair.

“Of course you won’t” she said affectionately, looking then to the young girl who had spoken up about her father. “What about you?”

The girl, Anne, was sitting up on her pillow, her covers held to her chin. She nodded. “I wanna hear da story,” she said. “I’ll be brave.”

“You’re all very brave,” she told them. “But this story isn’t like other stories I’ve told in the past. For one thing, this story is true.” There was an audible gasp from a few of the kids, and Frankie settled back for a fun one this night.

“The story begins a hundred and fifty years ago, in a free city beyond the King’s protection. A city once named Beyond. A city that no longer exists today.”

*     *     *

The first time Fred set his eyes on the city of Beyond, he wondered to himself why it was called a city at all. It didn’t look much like a city. He would find it a stretch to even classify the city as a town. It was smaller, and poorer, like a shanty town. The sign by the road at the limits of the city should have read “Beyond: The free shanty town beyond the King’s “protection”.”

He had spent many years there, now, building a life for himself as a trader. He had once been one of the most successful traders in all of Memroxia. From Capsin all the way down to Tessauren, he held a monopoly on all cracker related goods and the transport there-of. That was until a rival company swooped in from nowhere and not only ran him out of business, but out of town as well on fake charges of corruption.

It took many years before he felt comfortable showing his face in the King’s land again, and even then he kept to trading with outlying outposts, and being a liaison between the city of Beyond and the rest of civilization. The people of Beyond were all people with troubled pasts just like Fred, and they’d all gathered there looking for the same thing. A new beginning.

It took a long time for his smelly shack in that god forsaken swampland to feel like a home, but as much as he hated to admit it, he was looking forward to getting back there. He had been on the road for over a week doing his usual rounds, and his cart was full of supplies. The first thing he thought, this time as his eyes laid sight on his dank home city, wasn’t a question as to why it was called a city. Instead he questioned why the town was so dark.

It was nearing midnight and the moon would have been high in the sky, were the sky not weeping tears and rumbling with thunder. Even in a heavy storm like this, from the ridge his cart was sitting on he should have been able to see the warm fires from within people’s homes. It was a sight he’d seen many times before, but this specific occasion everything was pitch black. Spurring his horse, he cautiously made his way down the pass. Maybe there was a town meeting or something. He couldn’t see the center of town from the outskirts, obscured as it was by buildings.

But in the back of his mind he knew there was no such gathering. Something was wrong, it was a feeling in the very depth of his stomach he didn’t want to acknowledge. It was a stench in the air, an unsettling quiet relieved only infrequently by the storm. Even his horse was restless, he could tell. It pulled against the reigns, and tried repeatedly to pull the whole cart around. He got as far as the town sign before his horse would go no farther.

And then a flash of lightning told him why. It illuminated, if but for a brief moment, the corpse of a man impaled onto the same post the sign stood. His belly was cut open and grotesque viscera, what looked long and stringy like they might be his intestines, were strewn across the town sign obscuring its message. A bloody smear stained the ground, making a path that led forebodingly towards the center of town.

His horse yanked so hard on the reigns that the entire cart could no longer hold it back. The cart tipped over and Fred’s horse broke free to run into the safety of the dark swamp. Fred was thrown free from the cart and landed in a deep slough of mud. He let his horse go, no motivation to chase after it. Perhaps it was being smarter than him. He should have turned then, himself, and never returned to that city of Beyond.

Instead he unhooked his club from his belt, and took an unsteady step forward. His trusty club had been with him for years, his weapon of choice ever since he’d managed to fight off a lone bandit with it once. Tightening his grip on it gave him confidence enough to take the next step, and the one after that. His legs were strengthening, only to then buckle again as lightning flashed in the sky once more and Fred could see the blood smeared on the walls of the buildings around him, many doorways laid open with trails of blood stretching out to all lead towards the center of town.

As the light of the lightning faded, another light did not. Some sort of warm glow was emanating from the town square, it seemed, though it didn’t seem much like firelight to Fred. The light felt unnatural, giving him shivers and goosebumps on his skin where it touched him. By the time he was able to steel himself again, he was once more lying in the mud. He felt weighted now, as he got up and crept forward. His clothes were soaked and weighed thirty pounds. Each footstep sunk deep into the mud nearly up to his knee. He was cold, the rain was punishing and unrelenting.

Still he pressed forward, avoiding the main road and creeping in from the shadows. For all the blood he could see, Fred was surprised as to the lack of bodies besides the one he saw at the limits. There was enough blood here for a hundred men, and yet where were they? Was this some kind of animal attack? Had everyone he’d ever known just been eaten in the night?  Mrs. Buckers from the pharmacy ripped apart limb from limb?

But then what was that glow?

As he got closer to the center of town he could feel his hairs all standing up, and there was a cackling in the air around him. Even sparks, it seemed, were flying from a nearby fence. Had lightning struck nearby? He came out of the final alley and immediately crouched behind the nearest merchant’s cart. What he saw over that cart, and through the dead fish that hung from it, was like nothing anyone in Memroxia had ever seen before.

There was a man standing on a podium beside the well in the center of town. He was old and had a wrinkly face that could have belonged to a man in his nineties. But he wasn’t standing with the posture of an old man. His back was straight and the way he wielded the black curved dagger in his hand didn’t show the slightest sign of feebleness. Not while he brandished it about chanting, and not while he slipped it slowly into another man’s chest. The man’s scream was so agonizing and shrill that Fred had to cover his ears. The smell was so terrible he wanted to cover his nose as well, but he only had two hands.

Fred recognized the man just murdered as the mayor’s husband. Both men were illuminated by a large fiery ring in front of the well, and the old extravagantly robed man pushed the other man off the podium into the fire. The heat blazed up, and Fred could see the old man was soaked with blood that the rain could do little to wash off. The man cackled something fierce, and Fred was glad to be still covering his ears from the last horrific sound.

That was when Fred realized what was fueling the ring of fire. It was bodies, piles and piles of bodies seemingly of every person in the town. Even the women and the children. Even the orphan children.  There were so many bodies in the town square that they were strewn just about everywhere, but a large majority were placed deliberately in a circle, or was it a circle?

Fred tried to peer higher over the cart, and get a better sense of the pattern set aflame in the center of his once pleasant city. The circle had lines going through it, almost looking like a star. Or, he mused as he fell back behind the cart, a pentagram. Had the old man seen him? Another look over the cart seemed to suggest not. He was far too busy enjoying himself.

“By the blood in my body,” the old man roared loudly into the night, “and that which I’ve spilt.” His voice seemed to echo around the town square unnaturally, in a low guttural tone.

“By the soils so bloody where once civilization built,” he continued, the building storm only accentuating his insanity.

“I cast my voice up higher and higher.”

“To bring down an angelic being of which I aspire!” Lightning flashed as he said his last words, one large immensely powerful bolt striking with force unknown to the center of the pentagram. The bolt was blindingly white, and thick enough around to fit a man. Energy from the bolt seemed to snuff out the fire around the pentagram, only to trace its own glow against the bodies of the dead.

And though Fred didn’t think he had much surprise left, to his surprise a golden greaved boot stepped from the white energy of the lightning onto the blood stained mud. The light dissipated back into the sky but darkness did not envelop in its wake. The light had left behind a figure, massive and glorious with gleaming gold armour that matched his long locks of blonde hair flowing down to his midriff and, sprouting out his back, beautiful blindingly bright wings of light.

The old man laughed from the podium, his cackling laughter sickening Fred to his stomach. “It worked!” the old man chided, seeming very proud of himself.

“Speak, angelic one!” the old man roared at the being before him. “Tell me your name, for I am Radivar High Mage of the Council, Lord of Souls, and fueled by death itself.”

The angelic being he was speaking to took a long time before finally it spoke back. “That is a lot of titles, human,” it said, voice booming and echoing around the city like the old man’s had, but this voice was even deeper and silky smooth. It seemed to shake Fred to his very core and stop his heart if but even for a moment. He had never known such terror as he had known that night. He was not going to make it through the night with a clean pair of undergarments.

“I am Aldonn Ardner Archangel of the High Heavens,” the painfully bright being continued, “and I am not a lesser demon that you can summon at your whim, Necromancer.”

Radivar crossed his arms, not seeming nearly as shook as Fred who was frozen in fear. “And yet,” he said loud and guttural, “I have you, sir, trapped on this plane and under my power.”

Because it was the night where horrors never ceased, the bodies that lay at the archangel’s feet began to stir and animate. They exploded open with blood and viscera. The bones of every fallen man woman and child tore themselves free of their bodies to rise, as glowing red eyed skeletons adorned with hanging slabs of meat and torn pieces of garment. They surrounded the heavenly being.

“You will bend to my will,” Radivar roared at Archangel Aldonn, “and lead my armies on a great crusade transforming this world into one of my visage!”

Radivar pointed his dagger at his captured higher power, the blade glowing but faintly against Aldonn’s illuminance. “What say you, Aldonn of the High Heavens?”

The archangel looked around the square, and at all the horrible loss of life. At the horrible creatures Radivar had summoned around him. It was not fear that Fred saw on Aldonn’s face, and it certainly wasn’t respect. Fred saw only disgust, and for a moment Fred could have sworn Aldonn had looked directly at the fish cart. That the archangel’s gaze had lingered on HIS chosen hiding spot. But the archangel’s attention then turned to the dangerous man in front of him.

“You did indeed snatch me from the heavens,” the archangel Aldonn told Radivar in his booming voice. “But I am not…” he continued. And then he stepped beyond the once flaming pentagon of now exploded bodies. “…as you would assume, mortal, under your power.”

The dead around him all made a loud screech, and those farthest away began to run at break neck speed towards the archangel. The rest quickly began to follow suit.  The glowing behemoth that was Aldonn watched with nary a gleam of concern, brandishing what looked like the hilt of a sword in his hand and nothing more.

The dead were almost upon him and it seemed for a moment that he would be completely overrun by them, but suddenly the sword hilt in his hand seemed to alight in flame and the archangel traced the hilt through the air. It was as if he literally drew himself a sword in midair built of fire itself.

By this point one skeleton was so close as to lunge into the air for the archangel’s head, but without looking it was as if Aldonn knew it was there, and he enveloped the skeletal creature in the fire of his sword. As the blade swung through the air, only dust remained of the creature. But there were many more in its stead.

Brandishing his mighty blade, he disintegrated a skeleton to his left. Swinging it around in a flourishing swoop, he expertly carved a large swath through the skeletal armies descending on him from the right. “You are a revolting creature,” he said, giving a moment to throw his intimidating gaze towards the necromancer Radivar. “I will find peace in burning your abominations to ash and wiping your stain off the face of this realm.”

He was swinging with wild abandon now, cleaving away at the seemingly endless horde. In fact, there seemed to be more dead clamouring in from the swamp, and coming out of the very ground at their feet. Fred was distracted, then, from the apocalyptic battle as skeletons swarmed in from the alley behind his cart and one took notice of him. With a screech it was upon him, clawing at him. Screaming, he crawled through the cart and fell to the floor on the other side.

Through the fish the skeleton reached out after him, and Fred’s hand found the hilt of his club. His trusty club; it seemed little more than a sharpened stick now. Would it be as effective against a skeleton as it was against that bandit? A scream made Fred almost drop his club as the skeleton got its ribs tangled with the hanging fish on the cart.

Brandishing the club like a bat, he swung it with all the strength he could muster into his arms. His weapon tore through the skeleton, bashing the skull into pieces, and then shattering the ribcage like it was nothing. That had been easier than he’d been expecting.

“Kill him!” Fred heard Radivar yell from the podium in the center of town. “Kill! Kill the archangel!”

The town center was overrun with dead now, and Aldonn swung his mighty sword over his head, the fiery blade flicking around him more like a whip than a sword. He swung it again and again in a circle, and enveloped himself in fire that radiated out to disintegrate every single skeleton in the square, and even the ones crawling on the rooftops above. Somehow it was as if the archangel was able to avoid licking Fred with his flames leaving just the trader untouched. Even the buildings around him were beginning to engulf in fire.

The fire had disintegrated every skeleton in sight, but hopes that that would be the end of the entire ordeal were quickly dashed as more skeletal soldiers came into view. They really were unrelenting, and Fred couldn’t help but wonder from how far away they might be running. The next town over? Did the necromancer’s will reach all the way to the dead bodies in Capsin?

The mighty archangel Aldonn stopped swinging his flaming whip around, and watched the replenishing horde approach. Fred wondered what was going through the mind of the blonde haired being as the archangel saw the inevitability of his plight. Again it seemed like the heavenly being Aldonn had looked right at him. This time Fred was consumed in his stomach with the sudden compulsive urge to hide, and he followed his gut. He was running on instinct at this point, and couldn’t really have accomplished much else.

Underneath the rubble of the fish cart Fred dove, covering himself in the soot so as to blend in. From his hiding spot he watched as Aldonn was again overrun by skeletons but this time he took to the air, lifting off into the sky though it didn’t seem as though his wings were moving much at all. The entire village was aflame, and skeletons were jumping on top of each other for a chance to nip at Aldonn’s heels.

Aldonn’s sight was set on Radivar and nothing seemed likely to hold him back. Radivar, too, seemed fueled by an unbreakable focus, and his hands were cackling with energy. “You would challenge me?” he roared up at the archangel from his podium. “With the power of twenty thousand dead flowing through my veins?” His hands were glowing now, a bloody red, and he made fists with them, bringing his fists together to release a large beam of red energy.

The red energy beam seemed unstable, curving and wavering, surging through the air at Aldonn. The archangel held his flame sword away from the beam, raising his other hand to glow a brilliant white. The light formed a sort of glowing orb shield that flowed out from his golden glove in waves to block the attacking beam. When the two forces connected, the boom was deafening. Tendrils of energy shot in all directions, one tendril exploding the wall of a building it struck and adding to the already spreading fire.

From where Fred was lying, it looked to him as if he were viewing the ultimate clash between light and darkness, like he’d just stumbled upon it on his way home. The climatic final battle between good and evil, all the powers of good focused into a shield of light repelling all the darkness from across the world focused into one concentrated beam.

More explosions rocked the town as tendrils of energy ricocheted away from the archangel. Finally Radivar gave up, relinquishing the beam and lowering his hands. It was too late however, the town already so devastated there was no hope of saving it. Perhaps there never was.

Radivar’s hands came together and blood seemed to bubble up from his palms. Holding the blood aloft in midair with magicks Fred could not possibly conceive, Radivar shaped the blood into the likeness of a sword and took hold of it. Just like that the old man was holding a sword of his own, dripping perhaps a little more than Aldonn’s mighty blade of fire.

“I AM A GOD!” Fred heard Radivar yell at the top of his scratchy old lungs. The old man charged the archangel with blood sword brandished high. One swing was all Aldonn needed, the flaming blade shattering Radivar’s sword like glass. With a backhand Aldonn swatted Radivar, much like a bug, across the town square and through the wall of a burning building.

“Power is an intoxicating thing,” Aldonn said softly, his voice still booming across the remains of Beyond. “It’s deceptive, can never be trusted.” He lifted into the air and followed in the direction he’d thrown Radivar. Few dead remained to challenge him. Fred didn’t know where the courage came from for him to follow after the archangel, but that he did. A surviving skeleton made for him with a screech, but the trader easily battered the dead creature to pieces with his club. Three for three.

By the time Fred made it to the edge of the burning hut, Radivar was already at Aldonn’s feet, cowering away from the bright glory of the heavenly being.

“Know this, mortal,” the archangel Aldonn said to the old man. Radivar seemed almost pathetic now, to Fred. Pathetic and weak; not at all the scary imposing figure that had destroyed everything and everyone Fred had ever known. “I have dined with gods,” Aldonn said taking a step towards Radivar.

Radivar scurried away, pressing his back against a burning wall.

“You are no god.” Aldonn finished his thought.

Finally Radivar spoke, but it was a laboured effort that belayed his pain. “The mage council grows in strength every day,” he struggled to spit his words at Aldonn. He was trying to laugh but his laugh was haggard and broken. “We’re experimenting with darker and stronger magicks. It’s only a matter of time before we challenge even your power.”

“Not you,” Aldonn corrected the necromancer, raising his fiery blade above the old man’s head.

“One day,” Radivar roared with everything he had left, “a mage will be strong enough to make this planet BOW!”

The archangel Aldonn stabbed his sword directly into Radivar’s chest. “And on that day,” Aldonn’s voice rung out as the mage disintegrated in flame.

The archangel turned then to Fred standing in the mouth of the wall. “I’ll be there to stop them.” Aldonn said, and he seemed to give Fred a reassuring nod before disappearing in a beam of light. Fred was now all alone, in the ruins of the once not so great “Free city” of Beyond.

*     *     *

The kids in the orphanage were silent as Sister Christine finished her story. The breeze around Frankie had picked up, and she hugged herself in the cold night air. Sister Christine had glanced at the window. Did she know Frankie was there, like the archangel and Fred?

“So you see,” she told Johnny, “archangels are far too busy protecting the world to fuss themselves with our petty concerns and prayers.”

Johnny stirred in his bed. “He wouldn’t think my concerns so petty if he’d tasted your oatmeal,” the kid said sleepily. He yawned and closed his eyes against his pillow.

“I wanna be an archangel when I grow up,” said the little girl, Anne, who had complained about her father earlier.

“Dummy,” another kid said, though he had been pretending to sleep. “You have to be born an archangel.”

“Are there little archangel babies in heaven?” a different kid asked the nurse mother.

“Yes,” Sister Christine said sarcastically, getting up from Johnny’s bed. “With little archangel baby wings sprouting from their backs. Now go to sleep kids.” She tucked in one kid, but the others were all happy it seemed to roll over and close their eyes. The story had taken a lot out of them, and despite their promise Frankie was certain a few of them had gotten scared.

Sister Christine approached the window as if to close it, but she peered out instead, looking at exactly the spot Frankie had been hiding. The sister didn’t see her, however, as she had already climbed to the roof and peered down on her then from above.

“Good night Sister Christine,” Frankie spoke down at her, shrinking into the shadows as the Sister peered up at the sky.

“Good night stranger,” the nurse mother said quietly, her expression belying that though she might not have known it was Frankie, she wasn’t afraid. Frankie had never seen her show fear the entire time she’d known her. The Sister closed the shutters of the window as Frankie took off across the rooftop and jumped over the alley onto the roof beside.

She had somewhere else to be. The leader of her guild, so Frankie had been told, had picked her specifically for a most important theft. She wasn’t told exactly what she needed to take, just given an address and told it was imperative the place be sacked by morning. Some jobs were about stealing something, and then leaving the place as if it hadn’t been disturbed. That took a particular set of skills and was effective at keeping heat off the theft for as long a time as possible.

But other jobs were more concerned at the act of stealing, instead of what was to be stolen. Those jobs were more about sending a message, and they weren’t Frankie’s specialty. But she could enjoy herself a little, she supposed. Dropping to street level after crossing the city by rooftop, Frankie stopped at a streetlight and surveyed the building she’d been led to by the address scribbled on a scraggly piece of paper.

“Seems this is the place,” she said to herself, opening the lantern hanging from the street light and setting her scraggly note aflame. “Guess it’s time to stop talking to myself and put on my big boy face.” She talked to herself a lot, when others weren’t around. But when she pulled the black scarf over her mouth, and the hood over her head, she became more than just a foolish loud mouth. She became a master thief, perhaps even the best thief in Capsin.

She disappeared into the shadows behind her. A young bohemian couple in flourishing garb were trundling up the cobblestone street despite the late hour, and Frankie waited until they were looking away before she bolted like a blur across the road to the target building. She effortlessly climbed the side of the building to the window she’d decided would be her entry point, and with the easiest of motions she snaked a wire beneath the frame of the window to unfasten the latch.

With an equally smooth and silent motion, Frankie had the window open and she was inside as if she’d always been there. Though the place was dark, Frankie could make out the lavish red curtains and solid gold upholstering. Frankie was going to be dining fine tonight. “This will be easier than I thought,” Frankie whispered to herself, surprised at the lack of security or traps. She started for a diamond necklace hung on the wall first, when a voice froze her in place.

“Maybe not so easy,” a sharp accented voice spoke from the darkness. A match was lit from the chair in the center of the room, and a man in armour put the match to a candle on the little table beside him. He shook the match out, and smiled to Frankie. “You’ve been set up thief.”

Frankie recognized the man in the chair as Christopherson, the head of the King’s guard. The feather in his helmet all but said exactly such. He was flanked by two lesser guards, both with far less extravagant armour than their boss, and he raised a cup of tea to sip the hot beverage with what must have been cool satisfaction.

“Don’t run,” Christopherson told Frankie, but it was too late. The thief had already dived out the window. “After her!” Frankie could hear the head of the guard yelling to his men. Frankie aimed for a wagon of hay parked against the wall, but missed by just a smidge and smacked the cobblestones hard.

The pain was blunt and especially bad on her back. Groaning, it took her more than a moment to get to her feet. In that time Christopherson poked his head out of the window. “Units one and two are a go,” he yelled loudly down the street.

As Frankie got up she spotted a couple kids walking their dog, and they had clearly seen the whole fall. “Shh,” she told them, putting her finger to her lips. She pulled herself to her feet shakily, still smarting from her tumble. Thankfully it had only been from the second story.

“This is why you don’t jump from windows,” Frankie said to the kids in warning, crossing the street once Christopherson had disappeared back through the window. “Even if it seems safe,” She told them as they laughed at her, “you can’t trust people to always line up their piles of hay for the convenience of types like us.” She gave them a wink, and then got immediately distracted. There was a noise from down the street, and it seemed Christopherson had brought back-up.

“Gotta go,” she told the kids, as a squadron of guards, six or more, turned the corner with large square shields and spears. Frankie booked it down the street, turning a corner of her own into another street only to find more squadrons of guards waiting. They were led by another important man in the King’s guard. Bill Natter was in charge of maintaining the watch over the city wall. He was Christopherson’s right hand man.

“Freeze thief,” Natter yelled at Frankie. Frankie dropped her arm to her waist and twisted her wrist slightly so that a throwing knife dropped from her sleeve into her hand. She did that two more times so that she was holding three daggers, one between each finger. Did she forget to mention she was also a master knife thrower?

She threw her three blades at Natter, who cowered behind his raised shield and blocked all three. They thunked into the wood of his shield, and Frankie could hear him mutter, “I hate thieves.” By the time Natter lowered his shield, Frankie had already disappeared into an alley.

“Stop her,” Frankie heard Natter yell and she didn’t have to look to know they were right behind her. She knew she didn’t have much time and made straight for the manhole cover. The sewers, after all, were a thief’s friend. It was to her complete and utter surprise, then, when the manhole cover didn’t budge an inch.

“Locked?” Frankie said aloud in her continuing surprise. A slit on the manhole cover opened and she could see eyes. There was someone on the other end, and they didn’t immediately speak. “I’m an agent of the Thieves Guild.” Frankie told them. “This month’s password is TRUST. Starting to seem a little ironic.”

“I’m sorry Frankie,” the voice said at last. Frankie didn’t think she recognized it. “Just followin’ orders.”

It was then that a hand grabbed Frankie by the scruff of her neck and pulled her away from the cover. “We’ve got you now,” Natter said as the guards surrounded Frankie with spears aimed dangerously close to her jugular.

“Wait wait wait,” Frankie yelled to the crowd around her. “Before this gets all unpleasant, just answer me one question.” All the guards around her looked down with anticipation. “Who in the hells set me up?”

The only answer Frankie got was a sharp pain to the back of her head, and then the pleasant black of oblivion.

*     *     *

Frankie woke up in a dungeon to the sounds of a woman screaming somewhere in another room. It sounded like she was getting tortured, or maybe it was a man getting very tortured. Either way it was a sound that didn’t suit Frankie much at all.

There was hay on the floor where her head was now resting, but it smelled wrong and Frankie was pretty sure this cell hadn’t been cleaned out in a long time. What had happened? Where had they taken her? This wasn’t the city jails. She’d seen the inside of those many times before.

And she wasn’t alone in her cell either. There was another man there with her, but this man was tied to the wall by his wrists and looked far more uncomfortable even than Frankie.

“You okay there?” Frankie asked the man, trying to see the man better in the darkness. He was handsome, and had flowing long blonde hair down to his midriff that seemed to glow even in the near darkness of their cage.

“Didn’t realize they were gonna be coed rooms,” she muttered to herself. “I would have booked at a different hotel.”

1x01 “This Budding Romance”

Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on February 2017

King George was tired of pretending to sleep.

He was sure, by now, that all his advisors had passed on into their dreams. The king also knew, from his experience sneaking around in his youth, that the castle was almost empty in the middle of the night. All the guards were positioned on the outside to ensure that no one came in. That meant as long as the younger George was able to sneak past the guard outside his door, he’d have no problem getting to the kitchen and stealing chocolate.

His time for stealing chocolate was over now; he was a much older man. If he wanted chocolate he could just take it. It was his kingly prerogative. If anyone caught him doing it, they would probably compliment him on his figure, and tell him to take another.

But there were some things he couldn’t be caught doing. Even as a king, or even THE king, there were things that could only be done in the middle of the night with nothing but the moon and a candle to light his way. Sneaking silently from his bedside, the king pulled on a book in the shelf beside the fireplace and the entire fireplace moved aside.

It was a secret entrance built long ago into the King’s chamber. Great for escapes, or secret night rendezvous. King George took the steps slowly, his fingers brushing against the dusty stone. There was no railing, and the stairs were steep. At the bottom, the door opened up behind a suit of armour that George could push aside. It was on wheels. The castle had many such secret passageways, and as far as George was aware, he was the only person who knew them all.

There was still one more guard he’d have to get past. Every entrance to the main hall was covered by a guard, and King George had no way of sneaking in without at least one knowing. His head of the guard, a hard man known as Christopherson, had pulled many of his guards for a raid. Something about an anonymous tip. But the perimeter guards were always essential personnel. And half the entries into the castle were through the main hall.

And yet, missing was the guard at the side door that King George approached.  How many men had Christopherson needed on his raid? George would have to inquire on that entire situation later. For now he had a job to do.

He’d received a letter that morning, waiting for him in his left slipper as he woke up. How it got there, George could only assume it had been magic. It had told him to light a fire in the center of the main hall, any time after the sun set. The only other thing it said was to prepare for a private meeting.

He had sent scouts to the Mage Tower that shared with Capsin Keep the capitol city as a home. Little was known by anyone about what happened within the walls of that tower, only that it was the headquarters of the Mage Council, a highest order of the most powerful mages in the world. Few people were ever seen coming and going from that tower, but still there always seemed to be activity if one watched the windows long enough.

The scouts George had sent to the tower were supposed to request the assistance of the mages, but they all just came back with their entire memories erased. Not just of their mission, but of their families and childhood. Some of the early scouts even forgot how to speak.

If any mage had even gotten the message, George had no way to know, at least not until he’d received the note that morning. Someone must have received something. His advisors had told him not to bother, that the mages were dangerous and manipulative. But George was a King of the greatest human nation in the world. Capsin was the capitol city of the country of Memroxia the largest nation on the continent of Raashti, the only large landmass in the known world. Memroxia took up easily 90% of Raashti, with only the druid nation of Ysune to the south, and the mysterious unexplored Mystic region to the far east making up the rest of the continent.

It wasn’t easy running a large sprawling nation. George had inherited the country from his father, and it had never been more in disarray. Cities were begging to leave, and the druidic nation to the south was getting more hostile than ever. On top of that, the coffers were at an all-time low and the greatest nation Raashti had ever known had never been closer to bankruptcy and collapse. It was a lot to deal with, and as the biggest country on the continent everyone wanted something from them, and offered little in return.

King George was low on allies, and completely void of friends. He had no one to lean on for support, and he had hoped the Mage Council would share his want to see his country flourish.

The Main Hall was empty, as George had expected. It was a large hallway, with a ceiling that stretched many stories high. The hallway walls were adorned with beautiful art, and powerful historical objects almost like a museum to greet visitors to the keep. The hallway led from the main entrance of the keep all the way down to a grand staircase that winded up to a balcony on the second floor overlooking the hall, with doors both on the first and second floor leading deeper into the keep.

He didn’t want to go deeper into the keep however. He needed to stay right where he was and light a candle. He supposed the note meant a different one to the one he was holding. It didn’t specify a specific candle, however. He grabbed one from a tall candlestick near the wall, and placed the wax candle on the floor in the center of a red rug that stretched the length of the hall. He lit it with the candle in his hand, and stepped back.

For more than a moment nothing happened, and King George started to wonder how silly he must look. The most powerful man in the world was standing in his own dark main hall alone, staring at a small burning candle.

He looked around, wondering if anyone could see him. He didn’t see exactly what happened to the candle, but when he looked back the fire was flaring up in his face and he had to take even more steps back. The fire was taller than him, as was the man that walked through it, in brilliant robes of red and a sweeping black cloak. He was carrying with him a brilliantly tall wooden staff.

“Your majesty,” the mage said over the roar of the flames. “I am Grand Mage Salem High mage of the Council, and Lord over the Mage Tower.” His voice was raspy but powerful.

“That was quite the entrance,” King George commented, understating how impressed he was. “I’m surprised your cloak doesn’t catch alight.”

“It’s immune to fire,” Grand Mage Salem told him in a way that didn’t sound like bragging.

“That must be useful in the kitchen,” George considered how many cooks he’d lost to burns. “Not that guys like us ever spend much time cooking in the kitchen.”

“I don’t eat,” Salem corrected the king in a slow tone. “I haven’t needed to for decades. My body sustains itself on the very magicks coursing through my veins.”

King George considered his guest, a tall wiry fellow, wrists and long boney fingers jutting out from his baggy robes like the skeletal hands of the grim reaper. “Are you sure that’s working out for you?”

“I’ve never stepped foot in the Main Hall of Capsin Keep before,” Salem told the king, ignoring his last question.

The king nodded his agreement. “I’ve never stepped foot in the Mage Tower before,” he told Salem, trying to relate to the man.

“And if you’re very lucky,” Salem said offhand in his raspy voice, “you never will.” He approached one of the displays, the tip of his staff giving off a subtle glow. “I have of course read about every artifact you have in the castle. This…” He stopped at an ugly sword and his voice trailed off as King George assumed he was lost in some thought or another.

“It was a gift to my grandfather from the druidic nation to the south,” the king told Salem. He got the distinct impression none of it was new information as the mage only nodded. “I was going to take it down,” King George admitted to the mage, “eye sore that it is.”

Salem frowned at the king. “Looks can be deceiving.” The light from his staff cast sinister shadows upon Salem’s face and for a moment George felt a shiver go down his spine. Then Salem kept moving.

“I notice there are few guards on duty tonight.”

“You had said y-you wanted to meet in private,” the king stuttered as he followed along after Salem. “I sent a lot of my guards out with Sir Christopherson on a mission. There are still men outside this room. If I scream at least s-six guards will answer.”

Salem stopped at a painting on the wall of an ancient battle between men and orcs. Once a common enemy of man, they had been wiped out long ago, and their territories had been absorbed into Memroxia. Their cities razed to the ground and replaced with human cities.

“Your entire army would not be able to stop me,” Salem told the King and he wasn’t sure if that was a threat.

“But I don’t have to fear you,” King George said slowly trying to at least pretend to be brave. “I mean we share something in common. Capsin is our home, and we both want it to prosper.”

“I know why you wanted to talk to me,” Salem told King George, interrupting his well-rehearsed speech. The mage was almost seeming to dismiss his words. Salem continued down the hallway, crossing it to view an amulet hanging on the wall opposite.

“Everyone is afraid of you,” George told Salem, continuing to talk anyway. “I’ve mentioned doing this in the past to my advisors and they’ve all advised against it. They all told me the Mage Council was mysterious and dangerous. They called your people a threat inside our city walls lying dormant so long as we don’t poke them.”

Still George continued. “But I think you’re all human like the rest of us. And you want what’s best for this sovereign nation.”

“Do you know why I asked we meet in private?” Salem asked the king.

“Sure,” King George said with a stroke of his beard. “You didn’t want people to talk. They’d say the king was taking orders from the council. Spread rumours that you were manipulating me and I was just your puppet.”

“A rumour that wouldn’t be helpful for either of us, in either of our positions,” Salem told the king.

“But I’m not convinced a joining of forces would be so disastrous between you and me,” King George insisted to the Grand Mage. “Mix my sovereign power with your council’s wisdom and knowledge of the magical arts -- we could rule this country more successfully than any king before me.” George grabbed at Salem’s arm lightly.

“Do you know the story of this amulet?” the mage asked as if he hadn’t paid any attention. What he was looking at was more like half an amulet, a half circular sigil of some ancient icon.

George struggled to remember his old history lessons. “Two brothers were given the amulet by the heavens,” he said, it coming back to him in pieces. “As long as they held it together they were all powerful. But a feud broke out between them and the amulet split in half.”

The king released a big sigh, wondering what this had to do with anything. But with Salem’s silence he continued, “It’s said one brother stayed on as king of Capsin, and the other brother disappeared underground. To be honest I’ve never cared much for history. I figure the past is the past, what’s important is what is happening in the present.”

“A fool who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it in the future,” Salem said quietly. Even in a whisper his voice was powerful and confident in his old age.  “This amulet is a constant reminder of humanity’s inability to share power.”

King George went quiet, unsure what to say next. “Coincidentally,” Salem said after a moment, “this is not the real amulet.”

“What?” King George said in surprise, that very much being news to him. “Then where is the real one?”

The grand mage raised his staff in the air and uttered the word “Illuminatus” and the light on the tip of his staff intensified. The Main Hall was flooded with white light, the staff seeming to highlight a particular shadow on the wall. A man shaped shadow. A shadow with eyes.

“This man has come here to switch the real amulet with an expertly crafted knock off,” Salem explained to the King who had not expected this meeting to head quite in this direction. “He was then ordered to kill you.”

The shadow stepped forward from the wall, his black veil fading into the visage of a man. He was clutching the amulet in one hand and a dagger in the other.

“Is this true?” King George asked the man, his mind still not yet caught up with everything that was transpiring.

The answer to his question came in the form of three sharp knives aimed straight for his face neck and chest. They never made it there, however, stopping seemingly in mid air, thunking against an invisible wall of light between the king and the thief. A wall of light that emanated from the grand mage. The three daggers floated before King George’s face for a few moments, as if stuck in a piece of wood, before suddenly dropping to the floor.

“I was sent by the council to stop that from happening,” Salem said, raising his other hand and launching lightning from his fingers to knock the thief across the room into the wall with a crackle.

King George approached the thief. He wasn’t dead, but he was out cold. “How’d he get in here?” the king asked. All the exits were covered, except for the one he’d entered through. The king had chosen that door for a reason. Ed was a good man. A handsome but innocent young boy who the king had been willing to trust had he not been missing for duty.

Had the thief gotten in because Ed hadn’t reported for his shift? Where was he anyway?

*

 Edward could feel himself reaching climax again.

At his count that was the third time that night. The princess had a stamina Ed had never known before, taking him to her room and having a night with him that he would remember for the rest of his life.

They had often flirted, as she’d passed by. He had known her for a couple years. She’d been coming and going past him through the train wreck that was her life, and he’d give her a smile, or offer her some general support. She was beautiful, with flowing brown locks and pale skin. Her eyes were grey, just like her dad’s, and the way she looked at him… he knew she loved him.

Their bodies pressed close to one another, and he could feel the beads of sweat rolling off her skin. His lips pressed against hers, her tongue explored every crevice of his mouth. He could feel her spasm, and clench, her body giving a shudder, before she slid off of him and wrapped herself in his embrace.

“I love you,” he uttered before he could stop himself. He couldn’t help it, she was like no woman he’d ever known. She was strong, passionate, caring, tender, powerful yet vulnerable. She was his very fantasies come to life, and the best part was that she loved him back.

“That was pretty amazing,” he said, noticing despite himself that she hadn’t said anything. She certainly hadn’t said she loved him back, but she’d chosen to sleep with him. That meant they were a thing now, right?

She moaned unconvincingly, and slipped from the bed. Still completely naked, she leaned against the window of her chambers. Opening a jewelry box sitting on a dresser beside her, she pulled out what looked like a freshly rolled cigarette of tobacco, and she put it to her lips, lighting it with a candle.

“I didn’t know you smoke,” Ed said, sure it was a shortcoming of hers he could learn to live with.

“Who are you?” she asked rhetorically, taking a deep puff and exhaling it out her window into the cold night air. “My dad? Maybe I like to enjoy a good smoke while I watch the sun rise.”

“The sun rise?” Edward asked, gears in his head clicking into place. “Shit, I work the night shift.”

“Well your shift is kinda over,” Princess Penelope told Edward as he forced his legs into his uncooperative pants. She didn’t understand.

“If I’m caught not at my post they’ll fire me,” he told her. She’d never worked a real job in her life, how could she understand? He slipped his armoured breastplate over his neatly trimmed black haired head. Fastening the straps in place he got up and made for the door.

“My only hope,” he told Penelope as he turned the handle, “Is that no one has noticed yet that I’m gone.” He opened the door wide and, standing in the doorway about to knock that very second, was King George of Capsin.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Ed said quickly, wanting to dissuade any sudden notions that might jump immediately to the king’s mind.

“Oh we absolutely had sex,” Penelope chimed in from the window, grabbing her bedspread to cover her naked form. She wasn’t helping his situation at all.

“It’s not like that,” Edward insisted as he saw the king’s eyes widen. “I love her,” he said, using the L word for the second time that night. It didn’t look like it would serve him any better that time than it did the first.

“I was almost killed tonight,” the king said, looking livid.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Edward told his liege. “Might I ask what happened?”

The king waved his concern away with one hand. “…and then I come here to find you have deflowered my princess!!!” he said, continuing where he left off.

“Okay,” Edward said, buttoning his fly. “I know that’s bad. But is there any chance we can focus on you for just one second?”

“Wow,” Penelope said to Ed. “You’re good.” Her attention turned to her father. “Come on, Daddy. You didn’t really think I was a virgin, did you?”

“What?” The king exclaimed in shock.

“You lied to me?” Edward asked his girlfriend, disappointed by the truth. Of course it was true though. No one knew their way in bed like that without practice.

“Don’t talk to my daughter like that,” the king ordered him, and Ed tried to oblige.

The king turned his attention on his daughter and asked, “You lied to me?”

“So,” Edward said, clapping his hands together. “Can we all just agree that at least I’m not at fault?” The king looked to a man that was with him, a man Edward hadn’t even noticed, wearing extravagant robes. He’d so far chosen to stay in the hall.

“At least your daughter was safe from attack,” the man said, making a point Edward had to agree with. Edward didn’t like it, agreeing with a man he was pretty sure was a mage. Edward hated magic, for many very legitimate reasons that he didn’t like to think about much these days.

“There are forces working to destabilize Memroxia and I can’t even rely on my own guards,” the king ranted and raved, seeming almost a little delirious. Edward wanted to complain, but he didn’t think the king was talking to him anymore.

“I need the wisdom of your council,” the King said as he turned his back on Edward. “More importantly I need their protection.”

“You’re overreacting a little,” Penelope told her father.

“You will have it,” the mage said to the king, the two men acting like they were the only people in the room. “I’ll have a man assigned immediately.”

“No,” the king said, denying the offer. “I want it to be you.”

The man chuckled. “I’m far too important for so menial a task,” he said, and for a moment the king seemed as insulted as Ed was feeling right about then. “The appropriate person will be chosen for the job. And he’ll report everything of value back to the council. Understand that we will always be watching.”

“What about me?” Ed asked, and Penelope immediately started shaking her head and warning Edward away from behind her father’s shoulder.

“You?” the king said. “You’re fired.” Penelope threw her hands up in surrender, turning towards her bed, and falling defeated onto her mattress.

 Though the sun was only just rising, Edward was fairly certain no one was having a worse day so far than him.

*     *     *

“There’s that scream again,” Frankie said, someone in the distance yelling at the top of their lungs. It sounded wet. Whoever was doing the screaming, Frankie didn’t think they’d be screaming much longer. “How far away do you think that is from here?” She wondered also who they would be getting to work on next. “You know what. Don’t answer that.”

She was talking to her cellmate, who she could only just make out in the darkness. The man was chained up by his wrists from the ceiling. Why the man was chained up, and Frankie was not, was quite unknown to her. “They do any of that screaming-business stuff to you?” she asked her new mate. The man was shirtless, but didn’t seem to have even a scar on him. And his long blonde hair didn’t show any signs of grease or mud.

The man looked at Frankie with piercing blue eyes and shook his head.

“How long was I unconscious?” she asked the man.

The man’s voice was raspy, perhaps from dehydration, but deep and strong. “An hour maybe?”

“How long have you been hanging out over there?” Frankie asked. She was still exploring their cell. There was no window that she could see, nor any kind of draft from the far wall. It was cold, and damp. If she had to guess, they were underground.

“I’ve been here as long as I can remember,” the blonde man said, and Frankie found the response a little lacking. “Please,” the man said, pointing with his chiseled chin at something in the hay. “I’m hungry. Can you feed me that bread?”

Frankie followed the man’s gaze to what looked like it used to be bread. “You mean that loaf of mold?” She sneered. “I’ve got a better idea. How about we get out of here and I introduce you to pizza.” She peeled flesh coloured tape off the palm of her hand, hidden underneath was a lockpick.

She hesitated. “But why do they keep you like that?” Was the man some kind of danger to her? “Are you some kind of danger to me?” Frankie had a tendency to speak her mind.

“I don’t know,” the blonde man said. “I woke up like this. Whatever happened to me before this… I don’t remember anything.”

Amnesia. That was quite the coincidence.

“I don’t think I’m a threat to you,” the man told Frankie.

Frankie considered the man in front of her for a second. The man couldn’t have been in there for that long, the way he looked. Was this some kind of trap?

There was something in the man’s eyes though, those blue piercing eyes. He just seemed so genuine. And honest. And a little naïve. Also, if he was some kind of crazed killer, maybe Frankie would get lucky and he’d kill the guards first.

“That does look really uncomfortable,” Frankie said, sidling up to the shirtless man, and picking away at his metal cuffs. “How’s about this,” she said. “I’m gonna do you a solid, and you can write the check to The Thieves Guild circa 1233 Gale st. Capsin, Memroxia R8G25.”

“I don’t know what half those words mean,” the man said as Frankie released one of the cuffs, and got to work on the other. The man flexed his hand, a smile growing on his face.

“Well, some of them were numbers,” Frankie said under her breath, finishing with the other cuff. “You okay?” The man had an expression on his face Frankie didn’t quite recognize.

“I’ve never had my hands free before,” the man said, noticing the loaf of mold on the floor, and reaching down to pick it up.

Frankie swatted it out of his hand, and then kicked it away into another cell. “Trust me, we can do better than that,” she told her new friend. “Nobody would ever eat that crap.”

There was a voice from the cell beside them. “Hey thanks!”

“Ignore him,” Frankie said, waving her hands to keep her new mate’s focus on her. She searched the cell and found a bucket of water. Sniffing it, she passed it to her friend. “Here. This water doesn’t seem like it’s too much piss.”  The man started chugging it down. “So how have you fed yourself up till now?”

The man lowered the bucket and made a face.

“What?” Frankie asked. “Too much piss?”

The man offered Frankie some.

“No thanks,” Frankie said, shaking her head at the blonde man who put the bucket down.

“The previous inmates they put in here would feed me stuff,” Frankie’s new blonde friend told her.

“What happened to the last inmate that was in here?”

There was another blood curdling scream, and the blonde man sharing Frankie’s cell pointed in the direction of the sound. As Frankie predicted, the last scream trickled out faster than before. Then there was silence.

Frankie swallowed more loudly than she’d intended. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but I don’t particularly like pain.” She went to the door of their cell and examined it. “Lucky for you, as I was saying, I’m a member of the Thieves Guild. Surely you’ve heard of us.”

The cell was made of cast iron bars, too close together for her to fit through, but she could get her arm through just far enough to reach the mechanical lock on the metal door.

Frankie’s cellmate shook his head. “Can’t say I have.”

“This amnesia thing is going to get quite annoying if I have to keep explaining everything to you,” Frankie said, probing the lock with her pick, and pressing her ear close to the metal to listen for a click. “That’s not true actually. I love talking. All you really need to know about thieves is that we pride ourselves on being good escape artists.”

“Don’t you also generally steal things?” The blonde man asked, watching Frankie closely.

Frankie looked up at her cellmate. “Not from friends,” Frankie said defensively. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Are we friends?” the man asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

“It’s Frankie,” she told the man. “Do you even remember yours?” There was a click. Good. That was one of four pins.

Frankie’s cellmate seemed to be straining to remember, but not with any luck.

“Well did it begin with an A?” Frankie asked, fully intending to go through the alphabet. At least until she got the lock open.

Her friend nodded. “Maybe. I think it could have?”

“Okay,” Frankie said, impressed she got it in one. There was a click, and she was two pins down. “Give me a couple more seconds with the lock and we’ll be sipping sangria from the underwear of prostitutes before you know it. So what was it? Alex? Andrew? Abigail? You’ve got the hair.”

“Frankie…” her cellmate repeated her name in what sounded like a warning.

“Andy, Andre, Alexei – what? You want me to stop guessing?” Frankie asked. She heard the third pin click.

“Yes,” her new blonde friend admitted, “it’s very annoying. But Frankie…”

“Just another second,” She just about had it.

There was a tapping on the bars. She looked up to find a guard watching her from the other side, tapping a club against his armoured forearm. The guard was wearing a type of chainmail hood that went right over his head. It didn’t, however, seem to protect his face which was a mess of scars.

Frankie tried to give the guard her best charming smile. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in learning how to pick a lock.”

The guard reached out his hand, and Frankie dropped the pick into it. “You’re next,” the guard told Frankie, noticing her cellmate for the first time. “Oi. Looks like you let ol’ blondie free. Maybe we’ll put both of you on the wheel.”

“Is there--“ Frankie started to say and then swallowed a lump in her throat. “Is there room for two on the wheel?” She wasn’t sure she knew exactly what the wheel was.

“We can make it work,” the guard said, striking the bars with his club again before stepping back.

“I’m both curious, and really don’t wanna find out at the same time,” Frankie told her new friend.

“I’ve only been your friend for about a couple minutes and I’m already starting to regret it,” the blond man admitted.

“I’ve been told that before,” Frankie said honestly. She was starting to panic, a little. “I know I said I don’t like pain, but I mean seriously. I can’t stand getting stabbed, I hate even stubbing my toe. Prolonged torture is pretty much right out.”

Frankie’s cellmate grabbed her shoulder with a strong muscular grip. “I won’t let them take you without a fight,” he said to Frankie.

“You could have stopped at I won’t let them take you,” Frankie pointed out. “Also do you have a shirt?” The man was very close to her. At least a foot taller than Frankie, the man was all muscle. “Your pecks are like right in my face.” Frankie reached out and touched one. It wasn’t nearly as sweaty as it looked.

There was a squeak nearby, and some rustling under the hay. They had another cellmate. This one was a rat.

 “So I’ve got nothing here, do you have any ideas?” Frankie asked, realizing her situation was actually quite dire if she was relying now on the plans of a man suffering from amnesia.

“I do have a few,” the man admitted, “but none of them are perfect.”

“Well I’m not feeling particularly fussy today so how about you just pick one and we’ll see how it goes,” Frankie told her friend with gritted teeth.

The man seemed to study Frankie with his piercing blue eyes. They were bright even in the near dark of their cell. “Are you really my friend?” The blond man asked Frankie, offering his hand.

Frankie didn’t know what kind of test this was, but she took the man’s hand and shook it. “Yeah I am,” she told her cellmate. “I really am.”

“Then I’m sorry about this,” her cellmate said, punching her hard in the gut with his other hand. Frankie keeled over onto her knees, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She tried to inhale but she couldn’t get any air. “Guard!” The man yelled past the bars. “Help! My cellmate is convulsing!”

The same guard from earlier approached the bars.

“Please,” Frankie’s friend begged the guard. “You have to help her.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

Frankie tried to beg her friend for help. “Can’t breathe,” she told her friend, hoping her cellmate knew CPR.

“She’s having a hard time breathing,” her muscular partner said to the guard, ignoring Frankie’s pain and pushing her to the floor.

“Let her die,” the guard said as Frankie’s friend approached the bars. “I could really care less.”

Frankie’s cellmate grabbed the guard’s chainmail neck through the bars, and pulled with what seemed like all his might. The guard slammed his head hard into one of the iron bars and the man was immediately rocked unconscious.

“That guard was rude,” Frankie’s friend said.

Frankie couldn’t really muster a reply yet. “Still can’t breathe.”

Her friend frowned down at her. “I told you the plan wasn’t perfect.” He reached down and helped Frankie to her feet.

“No,” Frankie insisted as air finally began to return to her lungs. “It was great. It felt – great.”

Reaching through the bars, Frankie grabbed the keys from the guard’s belt. The guard made a groan. “I feel your pain,” Frankie whispered to him, getting to her feet again and placing the key in the lock. It was the wrong key.

“Okay,” Frankie said, trying again. No luck. “I got this.” There were a lot of keys on the ring. But only a few were made out of the same cast iron. Finally the lock clicked and gave way.

“Who’s your daddy now,” Frankie mocked the door as it opened with a rusty creak. “Come on,” she said to her cellmate as she creeped into the hallway. Down the hall, a guard was looking right at her, and the two froze like predators, waiting for the other to make the first move. Suddenly the guard broke into a run for a draw string that was probably attached to some kind of alarm.

“Hey!” Frankie yelled after the guard. Her cellmate broke into a run after the armed soldier, but Frankie knew he wouldn’t make it. The guard reached out to pull the rope that probably attached to a large belltower. With only the bundle of keys in her hand, Frankie threw the key ring with all her might. “Don’t!” Frankie yelled.

The keys struck the guard in the hand and he flinched away, looking back at Frankie in surprise. He then reached out with his other hand and pulled on the chord. Somewhere far away bells tolled.

Frankie’s cellmate managed to catch up with the guard and slammed his face into the dirt wall of the prison. The way the guard’s body slumped to the floor made it obvious he was unconscious.

Frankie’s cellmate looked at his hands. “This fighting thing comes easy to me,” he told Frankie. “What if I AM a murderer?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Frankie told her friend, capable of imagining worse things. “You haven’t exactly killed anyone yet.”

A voice from the cell beside theirs rang out. “Sorry to interrupt this budding romance,” the voice that had thanked Frankie earlier said. “But can you get the rest of us out of here? I’ve seen how deep this prison goes. I’ve seen their interrogation room. There’s more cells, all the way down. Like fifty of us.” The man reached a hand through the bars. “Let us out please!”

“I don’t know you, dude.” Frankie gave the man a look.

“Oh but you know that guy?” the man asked, pointing across to Frankie’s new friend. Frankie still couldn’t make out this stranger’s face.

“Yeah,” Frankie said, non-challantly. “We’re cool.” She beaconed to her blonde haired ally. “Come on,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of soldiers waiting for us outside the entrance, and I think their armoury is this way.” She led the way down the same hallway the guard her friend had just knocked out must have been coming from.

“With any luck,” Frankie said to her partner, “We’ll find my jacket there. It’s magically enchanted to produce infinite knives.”

Though Frankie was moving fast down the dirt hall, her friend didn’t need to struggle in the slightest to keep up. Each stride of his seemed to cover twice the distance. “Sounds valuable,” Frankie’s friend said. “How’d you manage to get something like that?”

“It’s a long story,” Frankie admitted. “You really don’t want me to get into it right now.” The hallway led exactly where she’d hoped it would, to some kind of breakroom where the two guards seemed like they’d been playing cards.

“My things!” Frankie exclaimed, noticing her boots. She pulled out the duffel bag and looked through her things. “Dammit. They must have sold the jacket or something.” Her friend seemed to have noticed something else.  It was a chalkboard with a blueprint design of the prison.

“Hey look. That’s me. Frankie.” There were stick figures beside each name, like designators for every prisoner in the prison. “They put a knife through me.” She pulled out the knife. “I’m keeping that.” Her friend looked at the stick figure beside Frankie’s.

“Aldonn,” Her friend said the name aloud.

“I’m glad I didn’t keep guessing,” Frankie admitted. “Does Aldonn seem right to you?”

“I think so,” her friend responded. “My name is Aldonn.” He said it as if he was testing it out. “Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s as good a name as any.”

“Eh,” Frankie said honestly. “It’s pretty unique, I’ll give it that. Look I know you’ve got this whole amnesia self-discovery thing going on but if you need a moment it’s going to have to wait.” All she had was the knife, and she didn’t think that was going to be enough for what was waiting outside. Oh, she’d found one other thing.

“This might fit you,” Frankie said, raising a shirt she’d found in one of the soldier’s lockers. “I think it’s your size.” It seemed too big to belong to either of the two guards Aldonn had knocked unconscious.  That meant there was probably a third. It was likely the one who did all the torturing, now cleaning up after his most recent kill.

“You’re just gonna wanna slip that on,” Frankie told Aldonn, and the muscular blond perfection of a man slipped the beige tunic over his head.

“What in the hells?” came the voice of the third guard on duty at that prison. Aldonn grabbed a club from the table and smacked the guard hard across the head.

“Was this his tunic?” Aldonn asked. “Because stealing is wrong.”

“Oh,” Frankie said. “So you can’t remember your name, but you still know the ten commandments?” She was referring to a long dead monotheistic religion that had cropped up thousands of years ago spreading word that magic came from the devil. “Trust me, after the day these men have had, I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Besides,” Frankie said, frowning as she remembered their biggest problem. “Did you forget about the army of soldiers waiting for us above? Maybe if you could prioritize…”

“I think I have an idea,” Aldonn said, and Frankie didn’t find that at all comforting.

“If it’s anything like your last idea,” Frankie complained, “I think I’ll sit this one out.”

“You’re not going to like it,” Aldonn told Frankie. “But it doesn’t involve me punching you in the stomach.”

“You know,” Frankie said, considering her new friend for a second. “I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

*     *

“Marco!” Polo yelled his brother’s name, stumbling through the cornfield with a blindfold on. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew their farmland like the back of his hand.

“Polo!” he heard his brother yell his name. They had a game they would play together, it was sort of like tag.

“Marco!” He yelled his brother’s name again, stepping deeper into the field.

“Polo!” came the reply. Polo was fairly certain his brother was cheating, and had ran outside the field again. Polo wasn’t going to be made a fool again. He stumbled after his brother, stepping out of the field and impacting against his brother’s body.

“I got you,” Polo said, taking off his blindfold. Only it wasn’t his brother he’d stumbled into. It was a soldier from the city.

“I’m sorry,” Polo mumbled, and the soldier raised a finger to his lips. Polo’s mother had warned them if they were to ever come across a soldier, they were to run the other way.

“Stay in formation,” their leader yelled from the front of the line. Polo assumed the soldier yelling was the leader as he had more extravagant red armour than the rest of the squad. There were maybe ten soldiers in total. Polo wondered if their sudden appearance had anything to do with the distant tolling bells.

“If they try to escape through the secret entrance,” the head of the soldiers said to his squad. “We’ll catch them.” Polo wondered if by super secret entrance the soldier had meant that large boulder mom had told the kids was off limits. Sure enough, as Polo watched, the boulder shifted slightly in the dirt. No one else seemed to have noticed, but in Polo’s experience adults were really dumb.

“Get out of here,” the soldier Polo had bumped into hissed at him. The kid didn’t need to be told twice, but suddenly the leader’s voice rang out and it was much closer than before.

“What in the hells are you doing?” the leader asked his man. “You’re not supposed to have any interactions with the civilians in the area.”

“What do you want me to do?” the soldier asked his leader, placing a glove on Polo’s shoulder to hold him in place. “Kill him? He’s just a kid.” Polo’s heart froze, as he wished to the gods he had heeded his mother’s warnings more carefully.

“There will be no child murder today, gentlemen.” The voice came from under the large secret rock, and it moved aside to reveal a staircase that led underground. A large blond man stepped from the stairs with nothing but a club in his hands.

“What?” the leader said, laughing at his blond muscular opponent. “You thought you’d come up here and fight all of us on your own?”

“I’m not alone,” the man said, and there were multiple yells behind him. Countless men and women climbed out from the stairs, some armed with weapons and others just with their fists. Screaming they smashed against the shields of the soldiers in formation around the rock, but still Polo couldn’t get away. The leader took Polo from the other soldier’s grasp, and shoved the man forward to fight with his teammates.

*

Aldonn’s plan seemed to be working. He’d released all the prisoners, with Frankie’s reluctant help, and sure enough they were having an easy time overwhelming the soldiers waiting for them on the surface.

Aldonn took a moment, but just a moment, to notice the bright sun in the sky, and appreciate its warm glow on his skin. He’d have to appreciate it more later, but his first concern was that kid. He spotted the leader of the soldiers, at least the man with the reddest armour, and he was holding the kid in his grasp most aggressively.

Aldonn couldn’t get to him, the line of soldiers were still holding their own against the overwhelming odds. A couple prisoners were struggling against a soldier nearby, and the soldier was keeping them back with his shield. He stabbed at the prisoners with a sword, just nicking a girl. That was it. Aldonn grabbed the soldier’s shield, and pulled him in close, clocking him out with the club Aldonn had grabbed from downstairs.

Pushing through the line, he made straight for the leader, and the prisoners behind him used the hole he made to surround the soldiers and disarm them. Aldonn’s eyes were on one person.

“Stay back,” the leader said, putting his sword to the boy’s neck. “I swear to god I’ll kill the child. Tell all your men to get back in their cells or I’ll slit the boy’s throat.”

Aldonn didn’t stay back. He didn’t slow down and he didn’t stop. He walked right up to the leader, and grabbed the sword with his hand, pulling it away from the boys neck, and twisting it out of the man’s grasp.

“Your job is to protect civilians like these from people like us,” he told the leader, grabbing the leader’s arm and dropping him to the ground in one smooth motion. “Eat the dirt and taste shame.”

“By the gods,” Aldonn heard a woman’s yell from a nearby cornfield. A sweaty, worn out looking woman ran up to the boy he’d saved and embraced him. “Oh Polo. What have I told you about staying away from soldiers?” She looked up at Aldonn from where she was hugging her kid. “I saw what you did.”

“The soldier wasn’t being too courteous,” Aldonn told her.

Frankie joined them, as the rest of the former inmates were rallying up the soldiers and forcing them downstairs into the cells. “Excuse me,” Aldonn’s smaller and skinnier new friend said to the lady, overhearing what they had been saying. “You warned them about the soldiers? Did you know that prison was under your farm?”

The woman hung her head low. Her child shook her pant leg.

“What’s wrong mommy?” the child asked.

“It’s been hard on the farm without their dad,” she told the two of them.

“I’m sorry,” Aldonn said.

“Trying to look after two kids,” the mother continued. “And look after the farm? I could barely supply enough to feed ourselves, but when it came time to sell at market? Or pay taxes?” She trailed off for a moment. “Well a government man came to me, he said he could make all my money problems go away. I’d get a monthly salary and I wouldn’t even have to do a thing. Just let them build a prison under my land. They insisted I’d not even be affected and I never have until today.”

“The screams never wake you up in the middle of the night?” Frankie asked.

“Screams?” the mother repeated. “Were people being treated unfairly down there?”

“Unfairly?” Frankie repeated after her.

“I don’t blame you for anything that happened,” Aldonn assured her honestly.

“At least let me make it up to you,” the woman said, getting up. “I’ve got soup on the stove.”

“We like soup,” Frankie said.

Behind him, a number of former inmates were scattering in all different directions. Aldonn wondered how many of those inmates had been actual dangerous people. Had they just done a potentially bad thing just to save themselves? Worse, did they put the woman and her family in jeopardy? At risk now of being attacked by these prisoners at large?

“We would appreciate the soup,” Aldonn told the woman. “And maybe we can stay with you for a bit until we know that all the men we released are long gone.”

She breathed in relief. “I would most appreciate it.”

Before following after her, Aldonn stopped a former inmate from pulling the military leader into the cells in cuffs. “Wait a second,” Aldonn told the inmate.

“Who am I?” Aldonn asked the man in red armour.

“The hells?” The leader said and spit. “I don’t know anything about the people we kept down there.”

Aldonn grabbed the leader by the chin and squeezed so hard he heard a crack.

“My name’s Aldonn,” he told the man. “Think harder.”

“Agh,” the man coughed. “Wid da blond hair?” he said, and Aldonn let go of him. He wasn’t talking quite right anymore. “I heard stories. Boud a guy who jusd appeared down dere one day, suspended in one of the cells.” The leader rubbed his jaw with a cuffed hand.

“And so you just kept him there?” Frankie asked, not seeming too surprised.

“Whad else were we going do do?” the soldier asked rhetorically. “Led him oud?”

The inmate took the leader away down into the dungeon.

“I’ve heard stories,” Frankie told Aldonn, “of people going so crazy during torture that they lose their minds. Some suffer from amnesia for the rest of their life.”

“You think that could have happened to me?” Aldonn asked his new friend. “A trauma so horrible that I forgot my entire life?”

“Maybe,” Frankie said, as the two of them made back for where they’d met the woman. “Though I’ve seen a lot of what you’re hiding under there, and I didn’t see any scars.” Maybe it had been some kind of emotional trauma.

“Come on!” the boy yelled at them, waving for them to follow him. “Do you wanna see my toys?”

“I love toys!” Frankie told the kid, and the two ran to follow him.

“Just watch her with your toys,” Aldonn warned the boy. “She likes to steal things.”

Frankie mocked insult. “I don’t steal from my friends.”

Aldonn was happy to be making so many new friends, but more importantly he was excited to try some of the woman’s soup.

*     *     *

“They’re serving duck soup madam,” Roric, Penelope’s butler, told her from where he had entered her bedroom. She was dressed in dark tightly fit clothing, made of fabrics right for a commoner, and draped with a green cloak over her head and shoulders.

“In my opinion it is the best most tender of the meats,” he told Penelope, unphased by her wardrobe choice. He had walked in on her wearing it before.

“You’ll have to tell my father I can’t make lunch today, Roric.”

“He’ll be thrilled as always, I’m sure.” Roric told her sarcastically.

“Just tell him I’ll be taking my meal in my chambers,” Penelope suggested to her butler.

“And where exactly would you like me to actually take it?” Roric asked her.

She made sure her grappling hook was firmly in place on the window. “Why, you can have it, Roric.” She took position on the window sill. “After all, it’s your favourite.”

“Do I have to repeat how much I don’t approve of your little ‘adventures’ into the city,” Roric lectured her for the hundredth time. “Or detail once more all the danger you continue to put yourself in?”

“Oh but I love my little adventures,” Penelope told her butler. “Life isn’t worth living without a little adventure. Please don’t tell daddy.”

“I would never dream of it,” Roric said as Penelope dropped from the window and his voice began to fade. “Somehow I imagine the whole thing would just end up being my fault."

 To be continued

The next chapter will be out I dunno, sometime in the next few days. Or, if you wanna read more now, just subscribe for a dollar at patreon.com/99geek, download the PDF you want, and then unsubscribe and enjoy all 6 chapters for just a dollar. The 7th chapter will be out in a couple weeks, and I'll release it with updated PDFs of all my works, all the most recent edits in one place so that might be the best time to join. I'm also about to update my published works on Amazon with those same edits, so those wont suck so bad for anyone who finds my stuff there... of which no one has for years. SO anyway, stay tuned for more, Aldonn Chronicles Will Return. Frankie will return.