NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2: Adventure ho!
Week 1, The Queen's Castle
Gil stepped out of the portal and into a sunny forest. He wasn't sure how much good the ax would do if a wild animal attacked him, but the weight was comforting in his hand. Gil had been a solid swordsman in another life, but the Company usually wiped most useful skills unless you paid to keep them. There would be leftover shreds of insight, but nothing he cared to rely on. Unless you started as a fighter or had relevant perks, you don't want to pick fights early on. Hell, unless you knew you could win or the prize was really sweet, you didn't want to pick fights anyway.
Gil puttered around the portal, never going so far that it was out of his line of sight. He found himself staring long and hard at a patch of white capped mushrooms, and mourned his knowledge of foraging. Gil knew for a fact that some mushrooms were great sources of protein, but also knew that some mushrooms would give him the shits and others would probably kill him. The problem was that he didn't know which ones were which anymore.
He found some wild blackberries, largely through dumb luck, but nothing else presented itself as safely edible to the untrained eye. Hunting was basically out of the question, as the few animals he saw immediately proceeded to bug out and he didn't have a ranged weapon.
Even if he'd had a gun, Gil wouldn't have wasted a bullet on anything but a sure shot. Guns were good. They were easy to use, at least relative to the threat they posed, but he didn't get the impression that he'd kept the marksmanship skills from his shadowrunning days any more than his foraging skills from his time as a peasant shepherd. His main advantage over an actual newbie was that he had a much firmer grasp on what he didn't know and a wealth of purely theoretical knowledge.
With nothing to show for his efforts except a pocket full of slightly tart berries, Gil checked his tablet again. He had a mission, and he'd wasted too much time navel gazing and getting the lay of the land. An hour and twenty seven minutes, according to the timer prominently displayed on his menu. He was a bit tired from wandering, so he sat down in an unidentified patch of wild onion and examined the menu. Navigation and Missions had joined Portals, while quite a few more buttons remained obscured.
Navigation was a compass, pointing him directly towards the portal. Gil was comforted to know he'd always be able to find his escape hatch, all else being equal. Missions presented him with a single task.
"Capture or kill Snow White? That's a weird name…" Gil mumbled to himself. "And the reward is a Corruption Fruit. Nothing major, but a good start."
The name sounded familiar to Gil, but he couldn't put his finger on it. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't connect it to anything else in his head. He hated the sensation of deja vu. He could never be sure if it was something he was familiar with that was wiped from his mind, or just something that reminded him of such a thing.
Gil shook his head, picked a random direction, and started walking. He could use the compass to get back, if he really had to.
••••••••••
An hour later, while picking more wild blackberries, Gil heard singing through the trees. He hadn't encountered anything else promising, so he turned and began walking that way. He peeked through the trees, and saw a young woman gently talking to a bird. She was a pretty girl, perhaps 18, with pale skin and red lips. Her chin length black hair was held away from her face by a red ribbon with a bow in it, and she was wearing a strange dress. Blue, red, and yellow, all with a high white collar behind her head. Medieval, or at least medieval fantasy. Gil didn't know details, but he could start making assumptions about the world just from her outfit.
https://imgur.com/a/LW3s7nZ
"Why I believe you're lost." She cooed at the little blue bird, "oh please don't cry. Come on, perk up. Won't you smile for me?"
The strangest thing was that the bird tweeted back at her, and she giggled as if she understood. Gil hid in the bushes, wondering who the hell this woman was. Was talking to animals common here, or unique to this one lady? She seemed pleasant enough and was very attractive. Perhaps she'd be willing to help him out? She had a certain aura of distinctiveness; when you work with the Company long enough, you eventually learn how to pick out special and important people from the rabble.
"Oh, that's better." She said, "Your mom and papa can't be far. Ah! There they are!"
She was a pretty young woman in medieval clothes; that meant a chaperone was extremely likely. Gil looked around, and sure enough there was a tall, heavyset man watching from nearby. That was when the man drew a short, shining blade from his belt. Gil's eyes widened, thinking that he'd been seen, but the chaperone instead crept up behind the woman with a stoic expression. He raised the knife, his hand shaking.
"What the hell are you doing?" Gil shouted, revealing himself and brandishing his axe.
The young woman turned to look at Gil, then noticed the looming figure behind her. She shrieked, then scrambled to her feet. The woodsman raised the knife, then dropped it with an explosive exhalation.
"I can't do it." He said, his voice quavering. "I just can't do it. Highness, forgive me. The queen has gone mad with jealousy. You must flee! Flee, or your life is forfeit! She will stop at nothing! Run away, hide in the woods, anywhere!"
The woman, apparently royalty, bolted. Gil started to run after her, thinking she might be Snow White. Capturing a hot princess in the middle of a succession crisis sounded about right for a starter mission, since it would drag him into local politics. Unfortunately, the woodsman moved to block his path.
"I'm sorry, sir. Truly I am." He said, holding his dagger in front of him. "In a fairer world, I'd thank you for stopping me and we would part ways. Alas, you know too much, and if I return to the queen without a human heart my whole family will be put to the sword."
"Look, I don't want any trouble." Gil answered, holding up his ax with steady hands. "I won't just let you cut out my heart."
"Then kill me," The woodsman answered, his voice dripping with despair, "and leave my body to be found. Perhaps the queen shall spare my family then."
Gil was the smaller man by a large margin, but his ax gave him a small edge in reach. The woodsman lunged forward, but his heart wasn't in it; a weakness that Gil wasn't too proud to exploit. Before he could close in and stab with his knife, Gil juked to the right and swung wildly with the ax, striking the bigger man in the leg. The woodsman stumbled, and Gil scrambled away. The man limped towards Gil, blood seeping from his wound.
"How about this," Gil said, vaguely remembering something from the pamphlet. "You can give me your soul and I'll sell it right back for your memory of me. I'll run off after the princess, and you'll forget you ever saw me. Hopefully after that, we never see each other again."
The woodsman's mind flashed with knowledge, an instinctive understanding of what Gil asked. In an endless moment, he considered it. It would clear his conscience, perhaps, to think that he could spare the princess without being interrupted. He looked down at his leg; he was losing a lot of blood. He knew, deep in his bones, that injury would vanish if he was sold. He might bleed out otherwise. He found that he almost didn't care.
"Make me forget, sir." The woodsman said, as the insight faded from his mind, "I place myself into your hands."
Gil had expected some kind of light show, a fanfare… anything, really. There wasn't any such thing, so he assumed that he would need to sit a new recruit down and explain everything. He ran off in the general direction Snow had escaped, not sure if it had worked at all. It was only when he stopped to breathe and drink from his canteen that he saw what he'd missed.
On his tablet, a new button lit up labeled "retinue." There were two entries: Gil and Humbert. Humbert's profile included a headshot of the stocky middle aged man, as well as several tags including "outdoorsman," "injured," "familiar," "Tier 2," and "male." Beneath the list of tags, Gil found another button labeled "sell." Gil nervously tapped the button, and it brought him to a submenu.
Value: 1 credit, 1 Seal of Mercy (this individual is a Minor Name, so he can be sold for slightly more than a generic individual of his tier.)
Sell (oblivion)
Sell (forget)
Gill tapped "Seal of Mercy," and it proved to be a hyperlink to the item he would be granted in return for Humbert.
Seal of Mercy: Can be used once to convince any individual or group to spare your life. They will decide that your death or severe injury is an undesirable outcome at this time. They will not become friendly to you, barring unusual circumstances, but they will not seek to harm you unless further provoked. If they have a personal stake in your destruction, such as vengeance, they will decide to shift to nonlethal options for at least a few days.
"Sounds like it could save my ass." Gil mumbled to himself, then pressed the button to sell Humbert's memory.
••••••••••
About a mile away, Humbert flickered. The blood on the ground faded, his injury vanished, and he found himself sitting on a log with his head in his hands. He just hadn't been able to kill the princess when the moment was upon him. He couldn't afford to waste any more time, however. Humbert knew of a farm nearby, where he could kill a hog and place its heart in the box. Such a ruse would hopefully fool the queen for a time. He would gather his family and flee, just as he'd told Snow White to do. Unless the princess died, surely the Queen would learn of his deception eventually.