Rain in this part of the realm didn’t just fall; it lashed down with such malice it felt as if the heavens harbored a personal grudge against anyone who dared step outside.
The mud in the town square of Rotcreek had the consistency of watery gruel and reeked like an open sewer in the dead of summer.
For the crew known as Fate’s Outcasts, it was just another Tuesday.
They stood before a notice board that looked as though woodworms had hosted a tunnel-carving tournament across its surface.
Most of the bounties were waterlogged and illegible, bleeding out in dismal, inky streaks.
Only one had survived the deluge; a large parchment bearing a wax seal that still held a faint gleam.
Figlin stepped closer, wiping the grime and water from his face.
The downpour drummed a relentless rhythm against his tricorne hat and his brass ear trumpet.
“Seeking…
bold souls…” the dwarf read aloud, tracing the soggy parchment with a grubby finger.
“To investigate…
the Silent…
Balls?”
“Bliss, Figi.
Silent Bliss,” Lengos corrected, looming beside him like a waterlogged granite statue.
The rain cascaded off his heavy armor, but the fallen paladin didn’t even flinch.
“It’s a village.
And a fortified monastery down in the valley.”
“Balls, Bliss, same damn difference,” Figi waved it off.
“What matters is the bottom line.
See those zeros?
‘Reward: One Thousand Crowns.’ “At the mere mention of the sum, Perval, who was slouched on a nearby barrel, snapped his head up.
“A thousand crowns?” he asked, his stomach chiming in with a loud, hollow growl.
“With that kind of coin, a man could lock himself in a brothel for a week.
Hell, they’d even bring breakfast to the bed!”
Yerga stood beneath a small, magical parasol of woven shadows that perfectly shielded her immaculate hair and makeup from the downpour.
Void, her skeletal feline, perched on her shoulder, shivering in the damp chill and chattering its bone-white teeth; more out of phantom habit than any biological necessity.
“Silent Bliss…” the necromancer purred with evident distaste.
“How dreadfully pretentious.
And this wretched region…
it’s the domain of Lord Memrot.
I’ve heard tales of the man.
He has the girth of a small whale and the aesthetic sensibilities of a peasant fishwife.
If he’s the one opening his coin purse, darlings, you can bet the affair is utterly filthy.”
“Mendokusai…
(Troublesome),” Duria sighed, leaning casually against the wooden post.
She was so thoroughly bored that she had resorted to juggling a dagger with one hand.
“A monastery named ‘Bliss’?
Sounds like the name of some cheap okabasho (brothel).
Ten-to-one the monks just got plastered on communion wine and stopped paying their taxes.
“She cast a sidelong glance at Lengos through half-lidded eyes.
“Ne, Lengos-san…
(Hey, Lengos…) Do you really want to wade into the messy politics of local lords?”
Lengos let out a ragged sigh.
He unhooked his coin purse and gave it a shake.
It didn’t make a single sound.
It was as empty as a politician’s promise.
“I don’t want to, Duria.
But I have to,” the paladin replied dryly.
“Our supplies are dangerously low.
Perval ate our last dried fish yesterday, thinking it was a light snack, when it was meant to be a two-day ration.
Figlin is running out of black powder.
And you…
you haven’t stopped complaining that your katana requires ‘worthy oiling,’ whatever the hell that means.”
Neira, who had remained silent until now, huddled beneath the folds of an oversized cloak, stepped closer to the notice board.
Her tail twitched nervously beneath the dense fabric.
“I have a terrible feeling about this,” she murmured, her nostrils flaring slightly as if she were catching a scent on the damp wind.
“‘Silent Bliss’…
To me, a name like that should sound like a promise of absolute paradise.
But all I sense in it is…
deceit.
True passion pulses with life; it is loud, chaotic, and scorching hot.
But this?
This sounds like a velvet gag.
That place isn’t a temple.
It’s a flytrap.”
“Your little premonitions are simply adorable, sweetheart, but they won’t pay for a dry bed,” Yerga remarked, elegantly folding her shadowy parasol as the rain momentarily eased into a drizzle.
“Memrot is a known coward.
If he’s tossing around this kind of coin, it means he’s terrified of sending his own guards into that valley.
Which means, darlings, we are going to find either a delightful surplus of corpses to reanimate…
or a colossal amount of trouble.”
Figlin ripped the parchment from the board and stuffed it into his coat before the rain could completely ruin it.
“Corpses, trouble…
who cares?
Gold doesn’t stink!” the dwarf cackled, though the hearty laugh quickly devolved into a wet, hacking cough.
“We march to the fat man’s house.
Tell him to prep his coin purse.”
Lengos looked over his misfit crew.
Plucked from the darkest corners of the world; each of them bearing a different flaw, each harboring a different shade of madness in their eyes.
“Agreed,” he decided.
“We go to Memrot.
We take the contract.
Let’s find out exactly why this monastery went silent.”
Perval hopped down from the barrel and stretched lazily, his joints cracking as loudly as a snapped whip.
“I just hope this Memrot character has a pantry that matches his bloated reputation.
Fighting on an empty stomach is a grave sin against the body.”
They set off toward the Lord’s estate that loomed ominously over the squalid town.
They were entirely unaware that the torrential rain lashing against their backs was nothing compared to the storm they were willingly marching into.
None of them noticed the strange, damp residue left behind on the wood where the bounty poster had hung.
At a passing glance, it looked like common rot.
But upon closer inspection, the dark mold perfectly traced the silhouette of a blooming rose.