Rise of the Living Forge

When Arwin and Lillia emerged from the kitchen and into the common room, they found the rest of the Menagerie waiting for them. The only one missing was Esmerelda, who technically wasn’t even part of the guild and had just been hanging around — and Arwin suspected that was more to argue with Madiv than it was for work purposes.

“Is this an intervention?” Arwin asked, squinting at the solemn expressions of gathered members of his guild. “Because I feel remarkably unnerved. Nobody important died, right?”

“Someone died, but they weren’t important,” Rodrick said. Anna elbowed him in the side and he coughed. “Sorry.”

“It’s not an intervention,” Anna said, pulling her eyes away from Rodrick and letting out a small sigh. “But… well, there’s no easy way to say this. Rodrick and I were speaking last night, and—”

“You were doing a lot more than speaking,” Olive said, glancing at the other woman out of the corners of eyes. “Lillia should really consider making slightly thicker walls.”

Rodrick started to grin before he caught Anna’s expression and hurriedly coughed into his fist to conceal his expression. Anna squinted at the one-armed warrior, who reddened.

“Not the right time?”

“The walls suggestion might be a good one,” Anna grumbled. “And you are completely ruining the atmosphere I am attempting to create here.”

Olive gave Anna a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

“I was going to speak to a mason today anyway, so I’ll keep note of the request. Having thicker walls would probably be a good idea all around,” Lillia said with a thoughtful nod. “I wouldn’t want people dissatisfied because they can hear too much from the other rooms.”

“Hey, maybe some people like to listen,” Reya said. “You never know. You could charge extra for it.”

“Godspit, I give up,” Anna said, flinging her hands up and running them through her hair with a defeated groan. “I don’t know what I was hoping for with you lot of idiots.”

“But the good news is we know what you were hoping for,” Olive said. “Also, you and Rodrick have a lot of stamina. It’s really quite impressive—”

“I am not above hitting you over the head.” Anna pointed her staff at Olive. “Don’t try me. It’s not real bodily harm if you can still walk afterward.”

“I’m not so sure that’s how the healer’s code is meant to work,” Madiv said.

“Are you a healer?” Anna asked.

“No.”

“Then you don’t decide the healer’s code.”

“Noted,” Madiv said. “I will locate a copy of the code and study it properly to ensure further misunderstandings do not occur.”

“I — oh, Godspit,” Anna exclaimed. She thunked the bottom of her staff against the wood at her feet to draw their attention. “Rodrick and I have been lying to all of you about who we are.”

Silence swept over the room.

“So Rodrick isn’t

a fallen paladin?” Reya asked hesitantly.

Anna opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. Her eye twitched. “No, he is.”

“Your names aren’t Rodrick and Anna?” Olive asked.

“No, they are,” Rodrick said.

“The next person who talks gets a staff to the head,” Anna snapped, glaring at all of them. “I should have been more specific. I’m the one that hasn’t been entirely honest. I’ve been trying to hide from that truth for a long time, but I don’t think it’s right for me to keep it to myself any longer. Not when there’s a chance of my actions affecting the guild as a whole.”

“Anna, whoever you may have been, I don’t think any of us are going to hold it against you,” Arwin said gently. He sent a pointed glance at Lillia. “Especially not me and Lillia. What matters is the person you are now.”

Anna gave him a small smile. “I suspected you would say that, but you haven’t even heard me out yet, so I won’t hold you to those words.”

“Honey, just get it out already,” Rodrick said softly. “If you don’t, I’m going to. And if I do, I’ll probably bungle it.”

Anna’s nose scrunched and she let out a sigh. “Before I met Rodrick, I was a member of the Secret Eye.”

Of everything Anna could have said, that wasn’t what Arwin had been expecting — nor did it seem anywhere near as big of a problem as he’d been prepared for her to reveal. He’d fully thought she was about to reveal that her pastime hobby had been kicking small animals.

“Whoa,” Reya said. She blinked, then frowned. “That’s… cool, I think? I mean, the Secret Eye are kind of pricks for almost covering up that Dungeon Break, but I don’t really hate them. Am I supposed to hate them?”

“They’re mostly impartial, but there are multiple branches to any large organization,” Rodrick said with a grimace. “Anna, hon, I know you’re trying to be gentle about this, but it really isn’t working. Just get to the point and stop confusing everyone.”

“Fine. I was one of their Inquisitors,” Anna said.

They all stared at her.

“I… don’t know what that is,” Lillia said sheepishly.

“Nor do I,” Arwin said. “I’m afraid you might have to explain a little more.”

Rodrick put a hand on Anna’s head before she could say anything more. “The Secret Eye are meant to be impartial, but a lot of the time, that doesn’t end up being the case. There are so many different agendas in the kingdom. So many different guilds that want something — and a lot of people that aren’t happy with how they or their guilds get ranked. The Inquisitors were a group of people within the Secret Eye that handle all of that.”

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“We were assassins,” Anna said, her gaze falling to the ground. “Of a sort, at least.”

“How is that possible?” Olive asked. “I mean you no disrespect, but unless you’ve been intentionally avoiding using your skills, you’re no assassin.”

“Because I wasn’t that kind of assassin,” Anna said. She swallowed before continuing. “Generally, anyone who would have an issue with the Secret Eye was someone strong enough that they couldn’t just disappear. It would cause too much of a stir. Our purpose was to ensure that didn’t happen, so we couldn’t just go and kill our targets.”

Olive’s eyes went wide and she drew in a sharp breath of realization. “I heard rumors of this, but I thought they were just superstitious idiots. You went after your target’s friends and loved ones instead of them.”

“We couldn’t kill the bull. The kingdom needed it alive — so we made a leash.” Regret soaked Anna’s words and it was a moment before she spoke again. “Most of the time, the mere threat was enough. Most of the time.”

Arwin’s stomach tightened. He didn’t want to ask the question at the front of his mind, but he couldn’t keep himself from it. “Who did you kill? How many?”

“With my own hand? Not many. I made poisons, and those were usually enough. Not every target had to die… but some did, and it was my fault. I don’t know how many. I wasn’t privy to the full extent of what my work was used for,” Anna admitted, her voice taut. “But I occasionally heard word of what had happened to people. I could recognize the signs of my own work. I — I’m responsible for a lot of terrible things. Deaths. Disfigurements. Broken families. All because of my work.”

“Why?” Lillia asked. “Why would you do something like that?”

“The reason doesn’t matter,” Anna said with a shake of her head. “I was willing to sacrifice others for my own sake because I wasn’t the one driving the dagger into their hearts with my own hands. I convinced myself it didn’t matter because someone else would have done it if I didn’t — but the fact of the matter was, I did it. Nobody forced me to. It was my choice.”

“She was sick,” Rodrick said.

Anna glared at him. “Rodrick, be quiet. They—”

“Should know the entire story,” Rodrick said flatly. “I’m not justifying Anna’s actions, but she’s only telling you half the truth.”

“I don’t want to influence—”

“They’re not children, Anna,” Rodrick snapped, pounding a fist against the counter to silence any argument. “Everyone here can make their own decisions, but they deserve to know everything. That was what we agreed on.”

Anna’s shoulders slumped and she inclined her head. “Fine.”

“As I’ve said before, I was once a Paladin in the Adventurer’s Guild,” Rodrick said, running a hand through his hair nervously. “My immediate superior and his wife recognized a pattern in the sicknesses of family members of high-ranking people throughout the kingdom, and we’d heard rumors that they were working from within the Secret Eye. When he reported it to the upper members of the guild, nobody acted. He pushed, insisting that we couldn’t let someone terrorize the kingdom — and he was silenced.”

“Someone killed him?” Reya asked, her eyes widening.

“Yes,” Rodrick replied. He started to pace back and forth across the room, wringing his hands together as he spoke. “His death was ruled an accident, but I know it wasn’t. And I knew I would be next if I or his wife tried to bring up what happened. So I went off on my own. I abandoned my post in the guild and used my connections to sneak into the Secret Eye. Over the course of years, I worked my way up its ranks. I’d always been good at sniffing out information, but they made me great. I made friends. I sucked up to my superiors. They had absolutely no idea. But I got cocky. They found me sniffing around where I wasn’t meant to be. I fought back — but not everyone in the Secret Eye was evil. Most of them weren’t. They were just following orders, and I killed an innocent man and betrayed my oaths. My powers shattered and I was captured. They had me dragged to the dungeons to figure out what my motives were — but I wasn’t easy to break. They needed someone to keep me alive while they questioned me.”

“That was where I met Rodrick,” Anna said, averting her gaze from everyone. “The dungeons. They brought me in to keep him alive while they tortured him.”

“Would have died if she hadn’t been there,” Rodrick said. “She did more than heal me. She spoke to me when the other Inquisitors left. She told them it was because she was searching for more information, but she was really just keeping me sane. Turns out, she was sick. Dying from a poison that her mother had ingested before she was born, and that had been eating away at her from childhood. She needed money to buy supplies.”

“Money that I couldn’t earn through normal jobs,” Anna said. “I needed more money than I could have ever hoped to make. The poison was incredibly potent and spread throughout my entire body. Other healers couldn’t remove it, but I could temporarily neutralize it through my own poisons. The Secret Eye heard of my talents and picked me up. They gave me the materials I needed to make poison, but that is no excuse for what I did. I sacrificed my morals and the lives of others to try and buy my own.”

Rodrick nodded and his pacing drew to a halt as he let out a slow breath. “Anna told me all of this when I was imprisoned. I realized that she was the person I set out to kill, and that she was trapped there as much as I was. She was a child when the Secret Eye took her in, and I couldn’t fault a child that had nobody for trying to survive.”

“But he could certainly try to convince me to be better,” Anna muttered, a tiny smile flickering across her lips before it fell away. She sniffled and wiped her face with the back of a sleeve before continuing. “Rodrick spent every second we had telling me about himself and his superior. About what the value of a life was. He did all of that after refusing to give up his real identity. If he had, they might have gone after his superior’s wife as well to remove any loose ends.”

Arwin swallowed. It felt like a lead ball had caught in his throat. If he’d been in Anna’s shoes, he would have liked to say that he’d done differently, but he honestly couldn’t know for sure. His thoughts were a mess. “How did you escape?”

Rodrick smiled. “Anna saved me. Broke me out after one of the Inquisitor’s sessions. We both ran for it. None of them ever expected her to betray them, so it was almost easy. Then we ran. Been at it ever since.”

“How is Anna alive, then?” Reya asked. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

A bitter smile pulled across Anna’s lips. “Turns out, I’d cured myself of the poison a long time ago. The leader of the Inquisitors was keeping me sick. He must have been adding poisons to my meals and water. I never found out what, but shortly after Rodrick and I escaped, I found that the poison had purged itself from my body. Years of being the vehicle of death… and it was for nothing. I wasn’t even saving myself. I’m just a murderer that was scared of dying.”

“Until someone showed you better,” Rodrick said firmly. “You never had anyone to show you a different path. You chose to save me even though you believed doing so would result in your own death.”

“That does not change what I have done.”

“No,” Rodrick said, inclining his head. He picked a mug up from the counter and stared into it for several seconds. “It does not. There is more to it, but we felt that we couldn’t keep this from all of you any longer. This isn’t the situation that Arwin and Lillia were in. They had no choice. I’m sorry we didn’t reveal this earlier. We should have said it some time ago, but it has been so long since I’ve seen Anna enjoying herself like this that I insisted we keep it to ourselves.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong beyond defending yourself,” Olive said. “You lost your paladin class because you killed someone innocent, but it was a mistake. We can’t hold that against you.”

“You may believe that, but it doesn’t matter. I travel with Anna,” Rodrick said with a soft smile. He set the mug in his hands back down and crossed his arms behind his back. “And if you want us to leave, then we will do so immediately. Don’t worry — neither of us will ever reveal the truth about the Menagerie. I’m very good at keeping things to myself.”

And, with that, every eye in the room turned toward Arwin.