Published at 22nd of October 2023 9:41 am

Book 2: Chapter 6

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Garrett’s eyes remained closed as he sat on the Dreamer’s Throne, mentally reviewing everything that had happened that night. He had known that the dream flowers would begin attracting the nearby nightmares, and had factored that into the plan. As the dreamers planted more flowers, drawing out more lesser nightmares, he had watched them expend their energy and fade from the dream one by one until only Viper and Pax were left. Viper had been able to last because he was nearly a shaper himself, and had the strongest connection to Garrett, allowing him to borrow a bit of Garrett’s mental energy.

Pax, on the other hand, just had a greater degree of mental strength than most. As each of the others faded, their mental energy spent, Garrett felt the energy that their masks had gathered from the planting of the dream flowers and the slaying of nightmares flowing into him and his experience points began to tick back up. Though he only got a total of eight experience points, Garrett wasn’t worried. The masks took two experience to make, which meant that he would likely regain all of his spent experience by the following day.

The real goal was to get the team of dreamers to the point that they could head out without his supervision, creating a simple experience farming system that would run, even without his direct guidance. If it worked the way that he was hoping, Garrett would expand the number of dreamers, simultaneously building his forces in the dream while ensuring his own steady growth. Still, he didn’t get too excited. His time in this world had shown him that the dream was nothing if not unpredictable and he wasn’t about to relax his guard, even for a second.

When morning came, it brought with it one of those unpredictable surprises, and not a good one. Garrett was just finishing his breakfast when Ryn slipped into the great room, her expression troubled. The lack of a banging door was worrying enough, but when Garrett felt Ryn’s trembling spirit he knew that it was bad. Ryn flopped down into a chair at Garrett’s table, grabbing one of the buns from the basket in the table and shoving half of it into her mouth, chewing angrily. Instead of asking her what was wrong, Garrett calmly finished his food and put his fork and knife down on his plate, giving her space. He had known Ryn long enough to know that she would speak up if she wanted to, so there was no need for him to try to dig into what was wrong.

“I think I messed up, Garrett.”

Gently raising his eyebrows, Garrett cocked his head to the side.

“Oh?”

Biting her lip, Ryn looked around at the half filled great room and then sat up.

“Can I talk to you in your office?”

“Sure.”

Pushing himself back from the table, Garrett began to manhandle his way into the hall and felt Ryn take hold of the back of his wheelchair. Once they were alone in the office, Garrett wheeled himself behind the desk and gestured for Ryn to sit down, which she did nervously, her back completely straight.

“What’s bothering you?” Garrett asked, keeping his voice calm.

“I… I messed up,” Ryn said, repeating her statement from the great room, this time with more conviction. “And I think I’ve brought trouble to the Family.”

Not changing his expression, Garrett waited in silence for Ryn to keep speaking, giving her space as she tried to find the right words.

“Do… do you remember when we went to talk to Carraway? After our disastrous first encounter with him, I… I went back that night. To his office. You were meeting your contacts, so I thought I would do something helpful as well.”

Agitated, Ryn stood up and began to pace as she spoke.

“That night, I reentered Carraway’s office and I opened his safe. I was the one who got those documents from him.”

Falling silent, she continued to pace, prompting Garrett to frown, unsure what she was trying to say. He was about to encourage her to continue when she began to roll up her sleeve, revealing a small tattoo on the inside of her forearm. It was a simple sketch of a raven with its wings spread out wide, with a keyhole in its back. Garrett had no idea what he was looking at, but when he looked up, Ryn had her eyes closed.

“The Black Raven guild. I… I’m a member.”

Once again, silence filled the room, but when it stretched on to a minute, Ryn’s eyes peeked open and she saw Garrett staring blankly at her.

“And?”

Taken aback by the complete lack of reaction from Garrett, Ryn wondered if he hadn’t heard her.

“I said, I’m a member of—”

“The Black Raven guild. Right, I heard you. But what significance does that have? And what does that have to do with you messing up? I’m sorry, maybe I’m really dense, but I am not following this conversation at all.”

“You… you don’t know about the Black Raven guild?”

“Should I?”

“Yes? I thought everyone knew about the Black Raven guild,” Ryn said, her forehead furrowing. “They are the largest guild of thieves and killers in the world.”

“And?”

“And I’ve been hiding from them!” Ryn said, her worried expression vanishing under the incredulity she felt. “How do you not know about Black Raven? They are a super secretive group that spans multiple cities! I fled here to hide from them, but they have chased me down! I saw one of their killers in the market and he was holding a bar of our soap, asking other people about it. I got out of there as fast as possible, but it’s only a matter of time before they hunt me down.”

Closing his eyes, Garrett let himself sink into his memories, holding up his hand for Ryn to wait as he delved through the hidden places in his mind. Her words had sparked something in him and he wanted to discover what it was before he lost it. After a minute he opened his eyes and looked at Ryn.

“These killers, do they wear black and purple? And mask their faces.”

“Yes! They also have feathered wing cloaks.”

“They are part of the group that attacked the royal family,” Garrett said, his expression growing cold. “And you are saying that you saw one of them?”

The blood drained from Ryn’s face as she heard his words, but she nodded.

“I… I did.”

“Then he is likely one of the group that assassinated the royal family. Take a seat and tell me about them. You once belonged to this organization?”

Wiping her hands on her shirt, Ryn nodded and sat down, looking like a student who had been caught doing something she shouldn’t have. She took a deep breath to stabilize her emotions and began to speak, her words coming in a rush at first, but then slowing as she continued to speak.

“I didn’t grow up in Insomnium, but rather in a city called Port Reverie. It is on the other side of the swamp, and is Insomnium’s closest neighbor, as the crow flies. My early days were… difficult, and I ended up being sold to Black Raven when I was seven years old. There I was trained to be a thief. A cat burglar, specifically. It was during that time that I scarred myself. When I was fifteen, I got the opportunity to leave the city, and stowed away on a boat that was coming here to Insomnium, and for the last few years, I’ve been living here, doing what I need to in order to get by. I got myself out of the slums, and then I found you, thinking you’d be my ticket into one of the nicer parts of town.”

“But why would they be hunting for you?” Garrett asked, curious about how Ryn’s story connected with her earlier discomfort.

As soon as she heard the question, Ryn’s expression grew fearful again, and her hand unconsciously drifted to the tattoo on her arm. Wetting her lips, she gave Garrett an uneasy smile.

“I was a good thief. The best. And in part it’s thanks to this mark. Unfortunately, this mark is also the key to entering the Black Raven’s tomb, which is the burial place of the original leader of the guild. Only the person with this mark can enter the tomb, but the leader didn’t want me to enter, since I might inherit the will of the original leader. I overheard one of the guild’s officers plotting to kill me so I fled, coming here.”

“Why not just enter the tomb?” Garrett asked, curious.

“And inherit the mantle of the original leader? No way,” Ryn said, shaking her head. “That guy was an awful man. He was a mass murderer. There is no way that I’m going to just walk into his tomb, treasure or not. I never wanted to be a thief, and I definitely don’t want to be a killer, so I’ve been hiding from the Black Raven guild.”

“Except that you agreed to use your face on the advertisements for the soap,” Garrett said, his eyebrows slowly rising.

A deep blush spread across Ryn’s face and she buried her head in her hands with a groan.

“I know. I’m a complete fool. I thought that since the city was locked down, there wouldn’t be a problem, but clearly I was wrong.”

Getting a clean piece of paper out, Garrett picked up his quill and dipped it into the ink pot on his desk. Looking across the desk at Ryn, he smiled slightly.

“It would appear that we have the same enemies. Tell me everything that you can about the Black Raven guild, and the man that you saw today.”

For the next two hours, Garrett listened and wrote as Ryn spilled everything she knew about the guild. As Garrett took notes, he began to get a picture of a truly dangerous organization. The Black Raven guild was, as Ryn had mentioned, a gang of thieves and killers, but it was also more than that. According to what Ryn said, they dealt in both information and physical goods, sending out teams to complete commissions for their clients. These commissions were typically the illegal acquisition of a particular object, or the elimination of a person.

The thieves worked in groups of three, while the assassins moved in teams of five, which matched with Garrett’s own encounter with them. There had been three teams of five assassins who had attacked him and the prince on that fateful day, and it had been one of the purple cloaked assassins who stabbed him in the spine and took his arm before kicking him from the bridge. Garrett had always believed that it had been the Royal Duke’s men who had led the attack, but after Ryn described the raven mask that the assassins of the Black Raven wore, he realized that they had been the main force behind the assassination of the royal family.

According to Ryn, all of the assassins under the Black Raven were awakened and the leader of the guild was even a shaper, which is why the guild had not been eliminated by Port Reverie’s ruler. But now, with the guild alerted to her presence in the city, it was only a matter of time before the awakened killers zeroed in on Ryn and the Klein Family. By this point in the conversation, Ryn had mostly calmed down, but from the way that her fingers picked at the fringe of her vest, Garrett could tell that she was still nervous. Putting his quill down, Garrett flexed his fingers to get the stiffness out of them as he smiled at Ryn.

“A dozen or so awakened assassins is nothing to sneeze at, but also manageable. The key is going to be finding them before they find us. Thankfully, you’re familiar with their methods, so we should be able to figure out where they are and even set up a friendly greeting. We might need to lay some groundwork, however.”

For all the relief that she felt that Garrett wasn’t going to drive her out of the gang, the smile on Garrett’s face sent a shiver down Ryn’s spine, and visions of a crimson masked swordsman and the silent flower ghouls that accompanied him flashed through her mind. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that the gang she belonged to was just like the quiet young man in front of her. It was entirely unassuming on the surface, but underneath, there was a strong root system and a hidden danger that could silently swallow threats without apparent effort.

“Will you be okay if I ask you to work with me to find these assassins?” Garrett asked, noting Ryn’s silence.

“Yes. I can do it.”

“Good. Then we won’t waste time. Lets get descriptions of them circulating, and as soon as we have a hit, we’ll move in. In the meantime, stay out of sight as much as possible.”

“Okay, I will.”

About to say something else, Garrett paused, his head turning toward the great room, as if he could see through the wall.

“It looks like we have a guest. Keep me posted if you see any of the Black Raven assassins, and on your way out, please tell Obe to bring our friend to the office.”

By this time, Ryn was used to Garrett’s bizarre insight, so it didn’t bother her that he seemed to know what was happening in a different room. Instead, she just nodded and stood up, only to stop at the door when Garrett spoke again.

“Ryn, out of curiosity, if I had a way to guarantee that you awakened, would you want to do it?”

His question rattled through her brain and echoed in her soul, causing her breathing to quicken. Slowly she turned to look at Garrett, her eyes searching his. She had suspected for some time that there was something strange about Garrett, from his abnormal calm to his impossibly precise plans, and it had crossed her mind more than once that he might be awakened, but hearing him imply that he could cause her to awaken completely threw her mind for a loop.

The only people able to do that were people who had already passed through the lighting stage and reached the shaping stage, or so the rumors went. It was as if thunder went off in Ryn’s head, shaking her to the core and causing her face to light up with a fanatical look. Slowly walking back toward the desk, she stared at Garrett, searching for any sign that he was just joking. All she saw was the same calm certainty that she always saw. Catching herself before she just blindly agreed, she saw a glimmer of amusement in his gaze.

“What is the cost?”

“I have no idea,” Garrett replied, shrugging. “It could be incredibly dangerous, and I don’t know if it will actually work or not. I don’t need an answer now, either. Think about it and let me know. If it fails, you could be crippled, or worse. But if it works, you’d become an awakened.”

Licking her suddenly dry lips, she silently stared at the young man behind the desk, a strange feeling coming over her. She had once experienced something similar to this, and the result had been the raven tattoo on her arm and years of suffering. Unsure whether she should gamble again, Ryn felt as if she could see a massive figure looming behind Garrett, extending a hand to her. Though, whether it was a devil or an angel, she couldn’t tell.

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