System Lost: My Own Best Friend

There are days when being a ranger is the greatest thing in the world. Living among nature, protecting the countryside, and carefully managing convergence points—those mixed blessings that have been the source of both fortune and disaster. Then there are days when Draga feels like he's back in the army, going through the motions and observing duty out of rote habit rather than any real passion for the work.

Today is looking like one of those days.

"I assure you, Sir Draga, that Sagaasi does not require the aid of mercenaries to keep the peace," the sheriff sneers, sarcastically emphasizing the honorific. "If any would-be rebels passed through our harbour, they knew well enough to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble."

Draga bows his head in a conciliatory gesture. The sheriff is a familiar kind of woman. He'd met her sort by the dozen during his time in the military. She is of clan Foren, but her position gives her elevated power and prestige. Baanu are easy to deal with—they like compliments and showing off, but they're usually comfortable in their superiority. It doesn't matter if you're Foren, from the tribes, or entirely clanless—they are better than you, and they know it.

But give a Foren power? They are desperate to prove that they have it—to demonstrate that they are better than others of their clan—and especially those without one.

"You're a credit to your city, officer," Draga says politely. City, not town—make her feel more important. Use titles. "I'm certain you have the local crime well in hand. I'm not here to interfere with your business—just following up on potential leads. The man in question would have been piloting a small personal craft—possibly recently repaired. He's suspected of attempting to foment rebellion, and I need to be as thorough as possible in my report."

He doesn't, really. His career is already over, and even if he single-handedly uncovered an entire rebel conspiracy it wouldn't save him. Draga doesn't blame Allie for it—nor any of her other selves. He should have done a more thorough investigation into the details of the job, and refused Kiera's demand to enter the convergence point with only her personal escort.

But until they take his commission, Draga is still a ranger. Duty and discipline aren't about self gratification.

"I understand, sir ranger, but that was months ago and we have a busy harbor here," the sheriff says, shuffling a few papers on her desk without even bothering to look at him. "There's nothing I can do."

"With your permission, I'd like to audit the local armory," Draga replies cooly. He knows there's no hope for a witness report of the rebel, but his weapons had to come from somewhere. "I have reason to believe he may be distributing stolen military surplus."

That gets the sheriff's attention, and she shoots him a nasty glare as she rises from behind her desk and walks around towards the door.

"I refuse!" she declares simply. "And I resent the implication that we would be so lax as to allow our armory to be raided by criminal scum without noticing. I believe we are finished here."

She opens the door and points—her dismissal clear. Draga stands firm and crosses his arms. That refusal was too firm to be about mere pride.

"The armory is technically owned by the local garrison," he explains. "As a third-tier member of the Stebaari Order of Rangers, an officially recognized military adjunct, I do have the right to request aid from local forces in service of my mission."

No rangers ever bother to do that, mind you, because any soldiers or militia they requisition have to be paid, and the order takes it out of their commission. He doubts the sheriff is aware of such minutiae, though.

"Then you can take it up with the garrison commander," she counters. "Though we aren't at war, so she's probably back in Stebaari."

"And in the absence of a ranking military officer, the garrison's assets are the responsibility of the local militia leader—which would be you."

The sheriff grinds her teeth and clenches her fist, doing her absolute best impression of a deathglare basilisk. "I. Am. Aware," she hisses. "And I have refused your request. You have the right to request aid, and I am under no obligation to grant it."

Draga nods coolly. He expected this much. Maybe if he'd brought Talla with him, things might have gone better, but he's been doing this for far longer than he's known the quirky noblewoman.

"Very well," he sighs. "Then I'll just need you to sign a writ of refusal so that I can include it in my official report, and then I'll be on my way."

She freezes. It's one thing to flex your power over some clanless nobody with a middling rank in an adjunct military service, but quite another to explain in writing why you refused to aid in the investigation of a possible rebellion and permanently attach your name to it.

Most likely it would be filed away in some dusty corner and never looked at again. But on the off chance that an actual uprising occurs, when the higher ups are looking for someone to blame, those corners get dusted off, and the scribes and clerks spend days and weeks poring over every little detail. And in such unlikely scenarios, one does not want their name to come up.

"I believe my verbal rebuke will suffice," she hedges carefully, not quite backing down just yet. "Though if you wish me to write a full report of your indiscretions today, Draga Clanless, then I will be happy to oblige."

A common strategy. Pull rank, threaten, reverse the blame. Unfortunately, she doesn't realize that Draga already has no future to be concerned about.

"Please do," he replies smoothly. "I'll be returning to Stebaari as soon as my investigation is concluded, and I'd be happy to file your report alongside my own."

The sheriff's jaw drops. She's probably used to those threats shutting down any argument from her subordinates. She searches Draga's face for any sign of weakness—anything that might reveal his bluff. Any other time, he'd have to work to keep his face straight, but not this time. This time it's easy.

This time, he's not bluffing.

* * *

As is so often the case, the reason for the sheriff's reticence is a boring one.

"So you've been issuing alchemical arms to your officers without proper approval," Draga sighs as he pores over the requisition forms, checking each one against the neatly organized racks of weaponry. "I'm not here to investigate misappropriation of military issue, officer."

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The sheriff scratches at her horns nervously—like a child that's been caught in a lie, her demeanor completely shifting under the light of her trivial misdeeds.

"It's not misappropriation!" she insists. "We've kept careful track of each and every item, see? Everything has been properly signed for and replaced. All my militia is doing is borrowing the unused surplus to supplement our own materials."

A move that probably had a fantastic impact on the town's budget and earned the sheriff a lot of political points with the lady in charge. To her credit, the paperwork is good. Everything has been meticulously logged and accounted for, and all of the proper procedures have been followed. With just one caveat—they never received permission from the garrison commander.

It's a small thing—a technicality. The sheriff takes on much of the garrison commander's responsibilities in the army's absence, but there's a limit to how far they can stretch that power. It's risky, but so long as nothing goes wrong, she shouldn't expect more than a stern talking to about overreach—a small price to pay for the boost it's no doubt given her career.

"Some of these requisitions are still outstanding," Draga notes, ignoring her arguments. "And have been for a while. Have the officers been observing check-in procedures?"

"Of course," the sheriff says. "Each and every one is required to present their weapons when reporting for duty."

"That's..."

A bigger paper trail—one that she'd rather not leave in the hopes that her misappropriation would go unnoticed and get swept under the rug. Draga sighs and shakes his head.

"If you're willing to testify that the weapons are accounted for, I'll take your word for it."

"They are! Not a single one has been lost, I guarantee it," she insists. "In fact, we've increased the stock."

Draga furrows his brows. "Wait, increased? How?"

"Oh, it's nothing impressive," she assures him. "The previous quartermistress must not have done her due diligence—there was an entire crate of alchemical arms in storage that wasn't on the books. I took the liberty of getting them properly documented."

A crate full of undocumented weapons in the armory of a border town? Draga feels his fur rising—that's not normal.

"How many?"

"Hm? Oh, just a few dozen—"

"No—" Draga shakes his head. "How many crates? How long were they sitting in here, unaccounted for? How many might have gone missing in that time without anybody ever knowing about it?"

She blinks. "I-I don't know, we only found the one," she stammers, now starting to look worried. "I told you before, nobody is smuggling things out of this armory. Nobody comes in or out of this place without my express approval."

Draga turns his attention back to the requisition forms, flipping through them and taking note of the names as he goes. "And how many officers do you have under your command? How many militiamen? How many people come and go from this place—with your express approval—in a day? A week? A season? Can you vouch for every single one of them?"

The sheriff's eyes go wide. "No, I—I mean, my officers, of course, but—"

Blood and acid. Godshit! He didn't expect to actually find anything! He still hadn't—not really. Circumstantial evidence. A possibility—but an extremely concerning one.

"I need to see that crate of weapons."

"Of course," she says, fully cooperative now that the gravity of the situation is sinking in. Prideful, ambitious, maybe just a little stupid, but not incompetent. "Right this way!"

She leads him through the armory to an empty loading bay, with a large pair of steel doors that open to the harbor. At the back of the warehouse, crates marked with military insignia line the walls, stacked two or three high.

"Most of this is just basic supplies," the sheriff explains. "Our policy is to leave it where it is—most of the boxes are shipments that got called off when the war ended. I assumed that's how a crate of arms ended up misplaced to begin with."

And she's probably right. It had already been ten years since the Blessed Colonies declared independence, and the war ended abruptly after over a year of brutal fighting. Draga had never learned why—nor questioned it. He was all too glad to move on from killing people to killing monsters. He wouldn't be surprised if there were dozens—even hundreds of lost shipments from that time.

"It's this one," the sheriff says, snapping him out of his reverie as she indicates a non-descript crate with the same markings as all the rest. "My girls didn't disturb it, except to document its contents."

"The manifest?" Draga asks.

A step ahead of him for once, she produces a small sheet of paper, upon which the contents of the box are written in dense but tidy handwriting.

"Do you need me to read it, or...?" she offers.

"I've been reading all of your other documents just fine so far," Draga sighs. "Did you think I was just looking at them for show?"

She looks away, unable to meet his eyes. Literacy is a prerequisite for both army service and commissioning as a ranger. Well—the army teaches recruits the bare minimum necessary. The sheriff should know that, but prejudice often finds a way of jumping in front of common sense. He shakes it off—if he let minor slips like that bother him, he'd go insane.

"These are the same make and model as the ones I confiscated down ringward," Draga groans, scanning through the manifest. "Open the crate."

The sheriff pulls open the box and hands him one of the all-too-familiar weapons. The exact same design—a former military standard that went out of service shortly before Draga left the army. Around the end of the war. Most damning of all...

"No maker's stamp," Draga hisses. "Sheriff, how did you miss that?"

"W-we were just counting them," she says, horror dawning on her face. "I didn't think to order a full inspection. But this doesn't mean the weapons came from Sagaasi!"

"No," Draga agrees. "But wherever they did come from—it's the same as this crate. An old smuggling operation, forgotten for the last decade and quietly collecting dust. Until now."

"What do we do?" the sheriff asks nervously. "Obviously I have to report this, but—"

A resounding crack echoes through the air, cutting her off—the familiar report of an alchemical weapon. Draga draws his sword and bounds for the exit, following the sound. To her credit, the sheriff keeps up, her own weapon drawn.

"Which way did that come from?" she asks, deferring to his higher tier—good combat instincts.

"The mayor's estate," he growls in reply. Blood and acid—is this the goddess punishing him for leaving Talla to face her clanmate alone?

The estate isn't far for two high-tier fighters at a dead sprint, but in the time it takes them to run from the armory to the mayor's house, another loud bang fills the air, followed by a high pitched scream.

"Godshit!" Draga swears, forgoing the front entrance and vaulting the estate walls in a single leap—the sheriff following closely behind him.

He finds Talla by the riverbank, kneeling over the mayor's prone form, a worried look on her face. Allie is face down in the grass, but he can see her moving. There's no sign of hostiles.

Staying alert, Draga stows his weapon and rushes to Allie's side to check her injuries. When he rolls her over, the strange woman looks up into his eyes, her glasses askew, and then bursts into a fit of giggling.

"Hail drunk!" she slurs. "I'm Draga! No, wait—" she snorts, then falls back into an uncontrolled fit of laughter.

He turns to the mayor—now sitting up and being attended to by both Talla and the sheriff—and also giggling madly. He glances from her to Allie, then back again, growing more confused with every passing second.

"What in all the goddess' names is going on?"