Published at 22nd of October 2023 9:41 am

Book 2: Chapter 12

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

Where are these items coming from?

As Ryn pushed his wheelchair down the street, back toward the inn, Garrett’s mind was entirely occupied by the window that popped up when he had first noticed the simple brown leather notebook. What had drawn his attention to it was the ghostly figure that hovered over it, with a quill that dripped crimson ink. When he looked over, the ghost was dipping his quill into the head of the exorcist who held the book, extracting something to fill the ink pot that floated by his side, giving the whole scene a gruesome feeling. Yet, no sooner had he seen the figure than the ghost had let out a silent shout and hurried to bow, knocking over the ink pot in the process.

You have observed the Informant’s Ledger, a dream artifact of uncommon value. You have gained 3 EXP.

EXP: 90/160

Dismissing the window, Garrett realized that someone was talking to him and looked over, catching Ryn mid-sentence.

“—because, if I were them, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.”

“That’s true,” Obe replied with a shrug, “but sometimes we don’t have a choice. That is how it was when the gang originally got started. We were forced into the sewers to survive, not because we wanted to go. But good came of it. In the middle of that danger, we discovered the passages that led to the inn. After that, it was just a matter of acquiring the inn from the old owner. That’s how Ghoul’s Tooth was born.”

“But weren’t you scared of going down into the crypts? What if you ran across undead?”

Glancing at Ryn, Obe suppressed the shudder her question caused.

“Believe me, I’ll take undead over a lot of the other things that have popped up over the years. Did you ever hear the stories about the Skeletal Hand cult? A bunch of madmen who believed there is some sort of deity buried in the royal crypts. They tried to sacrifice an entire district to bring him back to life. They were terrifying, because they recruited people forcefully, carving evil symbols into their hands to force them to serve their skeleton god.”

“Skeletal Hand?” Garrett asked, twisting around his chair to stare at Obe. “When was this?”

“Oh, nearly twenty years ago. They messed up the city pretty badly, and it was after that the exorcists became their own group. If they’re back, things are not going to be pretty.”

“Back?” Asher piped up. “They’ve never left. Ask anyone who lives in the graveyard district. They’re still lurking around the crypts, and every year or two one of their nests will be uncovered and the exorcists and city guard will descend like a hive, killing anyone who is close by. They call them undead purges, but it’s really a move against the remnants of the Skeletal Hand. They’re like a plague, but no matter how much you try and wipe them out, they just pop back up.”

Listening quietly as the other awakened started to talk about what they knew of the city’s cults, Garrett’s mind spun. He was familiar with the Skeletal Hand of Lesrak from the notification windows that he had gotten, but hearing that the mysterious Great Ruler’s influence extended to the real world was a wake up call. Given that he could spin his influence in the dream into real world impact, it made complete sense that the other Great Rulers could do the same thing, and he felt foolish that he hadn’t considered it. It also meant that he needed to shore up his influence as fast as possible.

The silver lining, of course, was that he knew what to look for. Undead were hard to hide, and from the bit that he remembered from his classes in the palace, necromancy was even harder to hide. Rather than operating as the spells that he remembered from earth, necromantic magic was more of a pact with an evil spirit, causing it to act on the necromancer’s behalf. After they had arrived back at the inn, Garrett called Asher to his office and asked him a bit more regarding the Skeletal Hand cult, pretending that he was just worried about the warning that Chief Exorcist Fellix had issued.

“There isn’t much known about them,” Asher said, shrugging. “But I can tell you what to look out for. All the cults operate in roughly the same way. In order to gain the power of a pact, you have to make a sacrifice. That sacrifice allows you to open the gate to the underworld, where the spirits roam. The more powerful the spirit, the greater the sacrifice needed.”

Taking notes, Garrett paused and looked up.

“Something like that happened here before. The old gang leader seemed bewitched, and he killed three people. One was the cook, and the others were the maids. He must have been sacrificing them to a spirit to gain power. It ended up driving him mad and mutating his body.”

“That sounds about right. You have to be insane to think that messing with an evil spirit is a good idea. Besides, the result is never what you want, but a perversion of it. That is the ironclad law of necromancy. You sacrifice to the spirit, and you lose your mind and your soul.”

“How do people learn these symbols anyway?” Garrett asked, dipping his quill into the ink pot. “They don’t have books, do they?”

“There are some books,” Asher said, looking slightly uncomfortable all of a sudden. “But mostly, it happens in… in dreams.”

Realizing that he was starting to tread on dangerous ground, Garrett nodded and redirected the topic.

“That would explain why it's so hard to eliminate. So, tell me about yourself. It sounds like you have some real world experience with this cult. Are you from the crypt district?”

Nodding, Asher was quiet for a moment before he rolled up his sleeve, revealing a crisscross of scars on his right forearm. Under the deep knife marks, Garret could faintly make out a strange, unsettling pattern that seemed to press against his mind, causing a whisper at the edge of his hearing. It was too weak to get through Garrett’s mental defenses, but if it had not been ruined by the knife cuts, it would have been a danger, even to someone of Garrett’s strength. Drawing in a deep breath, Garrett tried to decipher the original symbol, only to hear the whisper starting to grow louder. Shaking his head, he turned his attention away, his gaze meeting Asher’s.

“That…”

A grim smile played across Asher’s lips as he nodded.

“One of the marks of a sacrifice. To say I know about the cult is an understatement. If not for a group of exorcists a dozen years ago, I would have been one of those sacrificed to the Tomb of Lesrak.”

Hearing another familiar word, Garrett sat up, his expression focused.

“Tomb of Lesrak? What is that?”

“It's one of the main structures in the royal tombs. Have you ever been to the royal crypts?”

Seeing Garrett shake his head, Asher scooted forward and drew a square on the desk with his finger.

“The royal crypts are made up of twenty buildings, all arranged in a large square. It’s where the royals are buried after they die. Well, the big structure in the middle with no entrance or exit is the Tomb of Lesrak. Official word is that it's the original royal tomb and is full inside, but the Skeletal Hand cult believe that it's actually a prison. A prison for their deity. Twelve years ago, they grabbed a bunch of kids off the street and carved these symbols into our skin, intending to use us as a sacrifice to open it up and release their trapped god. I wasn’t about to let that happen, so I took a knife to it, and a short while later the cultists were killed and we were released.”

Raising his eyebrows as Asher told his story, Garrett couldn’t help but be impressed. Asher looked to be in his mid-twenties, so it was entirely possible that he had not even been a teenager when he had scarred himself so badly. Such mental fortitude was exceptionally rare, and even rarer was the ability to maintain a level head in the face of a corrosive symbol that would eat away at the sanity of anyone who even glanced at it.

“That sounds like a terrifying experience,” Garrett said, putting down his quill and putting his filled out sheet to the side. “Is there anything you can tell me that might help us keep an eye out for them? We do some work in the lower crypts, and I’d love to know what to look out for.”

“Undead are a good sign, but also people going mad unexpectedly, or other strange events. Hauntings, things like that. The reason it's so hard to hide necromancy is that the rituals and sacrifices tend to create areas of influence where things begin to corrupt. Just keep an ear out for anything that sounds strange.”

“Thank you,” Garrett said, nodding. “That’s helpful. I really appreciate you sharing your story with me, and while I’m out of time today, I would love to continue this conversation later.”

Standing up, Asher bowed his head slightly and was about to respond when the door banged open.

“Garrett! Oh, oh, sorry Asher. Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“What do you need, Ryn?”

“That butcher is back. Gavon? He brought a bunch of people and they are waiting in the great room.”

“How punctual. Please inform him that I am expecting him and escort him to my office. I’ll see him here. Oh, and Asher, on your way out, would you inform Francis that we would like some wine?”

After Asher and Ryn both left, Garrett got out a small stack of paper from the desk and began to check over it, carefully going over all the wording. A few minutes later, Gavon entered the room, two hard looking men behind him, their hands resting on the cleavers on their hips. Striding right up to the desk, Gavon threw down a paper in front of Garrett and leaned over the desk, his large face looking like it had been set in stone.

“What is this?”

Picking up the paper, which turned out to be the note that Garrett had written and sent that morning, he looked up at Gavon calmly.

“It's a note that I wrote to you earlier today.”

“Of course it is. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be breathing down your neck,” Gavon snapped. “I’m asking you why you are threatening us.”

“Threatening you? I must confess, I fail to see how this could be misconstrued as a threat,” Garrett replied, his forehead furrowing as he read the note. “A taste of our strength. That seems to be a straightforward proclamation. You said that if we could deal with Thomas Howler, and his goons, that you would consider joining us. We provided our answer in the form of action.”

“You are claiming that you are the ones that killed the awakened members of the Howler gang?” Gavon asked, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “What black magic is this?”

“I’m not claiming anything of the sort,” Garrett said, realization dawning on his face. “We, uh, claim responsibility for the other thing. I assume you heard what happened to all of the Howler gang’s, um, property? We are claiming that. I can see, however, that if you thought we were claiming the deaths of Mr. Howler and co., you might see my message as a threat. But I was talking about our liberation of his ill-gotten gains. In fact, we went over this morning to talk to him about what he would have to do to get his things back, only to find him dead and the whole place swarming with exorcists.

“Would you like some wine? Oh, here is Francis now. Please, take a seat and have a drink. Do you know what happened? I’m afraid we were only able to get a few rumors, though I did talk to Chief Exorcist Fellix, who mentioned that it was a possible necromancer? I’m sure that the Grave Walker gang doesn’t dabble in such terrible things, but it does strike me that it would be wise to beware any movement from around the crypts. One of our men was mentioning to me that the Skeletal Hand cult was never really eliminated, which is curious since the city guard have claimed they were defeated twenty years ago. But it makes sense that, if they do still exist, they would be north of here in the crypts.

“I’ve heard they hide among the graves and that there are entire tunnel systems under the crypts that they roam, which is a sort of terrifying prospect. But so is getting attacked by a monster. Well, not for you three. I’m sure that you see lots of blood in your line of work. It’s amazing to me how a completely bloodless thing like a spirit or a zombie can be so scary, but that’s just how it is. I’ve heard that the Grave Walker gang can actually control zombies, which is also a scary thing, but it's probably just a rumor, since the exorcists would be all over that.”

Gavon, who had been trying to squeeze in a word the whole time Garrett babbled, found himself sitting down across from Garrett with a glass of wine in his hand when the deluge of words eventually subsided. Staring at Garrett, shell shocked, it took him a moment to realize that Garrett was looking at him expectantly.

“Did… did you ask me a question?” Gavon asked, looking at his men in confusion.

“Ah, yes. Delver Butchery is a hot commodity, and your stock is only going to rise when the gates reopen. From the looks of it, the only two contenders are the Grave Walker gang, and the late Howler gang. When they both were around you could play them against each other, but now you’re down to a single threat. The biggest threat. I asked if you had thought about a strategy to ward off the Grave Walkers.”

Garrett’s faint smile caused a vein to throb in Gavon’s temple and he could feel a serious headache coming on. The young man in front of him looked frail and harmless, but Garrett’s earlier deflection had not slipped by unnoticed. In fact, it had only reinforced the implicit threat of the note. Not only was Gavon even more convinced that Garrett and the Klein Family had been behind Thomas Howler’s death, but they had done it in a way that dropped the blame far from their door, pointing the arrow in the direction of their greatest competition, the Grave Walker gang. Worse, Garrett’s analysis of the situation was entirely accurate.

The Grave Walkers and Howlers had been balancing each other out, but now that balance was gone, and unless Gavon found another group to join the competition, the scale would completely tip toward the Grave Walkers, practically guaranteeing that the processing plant would fall to them. Both Gavon and Garrett knew that, and also knew that the Delver Butchery had just gone from being in the frying pan to roasting in the fire because no gang in their right mind would challenge the Grave Walkers. No gang apart from one.

“I’ll take your silence as a no,” Garrett said, a gleam in his eyes. “Have you considered my earlier offer at all? We would be more than happy to have you join the Family.”

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