Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

On the ninth of Moonstone Arthur arrived at the southern district barracks and entered through the front door while a small handful of people employed by the city government shoveled snow away from the entrance so people could pass by.

Once inside the secretary quickly directed Arthur towards the office of Captain Tasius for the meeting they scheduled the day before. Before he entered Arthur knocked and entered upon hearing “Come in.” from the Captain.

Inside Captain Tasius was seated at his desk with his second in command by his side with a large map on the desk. “Ah, there you are Arthur. Please come here and take a look at this map.” Captain Tasius waved Arthur over and he followed.

The map was predictably a map of the city folded in such a way to only show the southern district, four locations across the district were circled with black ink separating them from the rest. One location in particular was quite large as it was an old warehouse within a section of the district that had several unused buildings, a small lingering problem from the first war with the Yolan empire.

“We have four locations that we need to strike today. My men can handle the three smaller locations, but I would like you to go along with Lieutenant Goldenshield to deal with the larger building. It was a warehouse that once belonged to the Good Tidings Trading Company that went under following an economic recession within recent history.”

“But I thought we would be waiting for a few days before we would conduct these raids. That was what you said yesterday so I assumed I would have more time to prepare for this.” Arthur gave a slightly annoyed look at the Captain as she spoke, this would be the second time he was misled by him, someone he should be able to trust.

‘If I need to keep unravelling riddles to work for the Captain I would rather not work for him at all. He should be upfront and honest, especially given his job and responsibilities.’

“Yes, I know. And I am sorry for that Arthur, at the time I believed that we would have the time to deal with them in a few days time. But we recently uncovered a plot that Ben Feig and his men are planning to steal from several loyal citizens of the kingdom and it is my duty to keep them and anything they own safe from such criminals.”

Arthur watched the Captain's facial movements as he spoke, hoping to see something that might give away if he was telling the truth or not. ‘I am really jealous of the priests of Solarius that have the ability to know if someone is telling the truth or not. I doubt I would be allowed to learn how they do it though, probably some sort of divine magic that only they can learn.’

“Alright, what exactly is so important that we can’t just recover it at a later date when we raid their hideouts?” Arthur had his suspicions but for the time he would keep them to himself.

“It isn’t what they are stealing, it is when they are stealing it. They plan to do it soon and are meeting together around noon today to discuss how they are going to do it. This gives us an opportunity to take them all out at once along with all of their hideouts where they might run off to or be keeping other things of value.” Lieutenant Goldenshield said as he pointed to the circled warehouse, he clearly didn’t mind the sudden change in plans.

“Alright, what exactly is the plan of attack Lieutenant? Will it just be the two of us or will we have back up of some sort?” Arthur asked while taking his plate armor out of his bag, he always kept it inside his dimensional bag just in case he needed it.

“We obviously aren't going alone, I have around ten men ready to follow us to the warehouse and support us. The main objective will be to apprehend Ben Feig and any of his associates that are there as well, otherwise we are free to kill any of his subordinates unless they surrender.”

“And what about anything at the warehouse that is stolen property, will that be returned to its owners?” Arthur had the feeling he would need to clarify their policy regarding anything they find in the possession of criminals.

“If we can find the owner of anything we find we will do our best to return whatever it might be to them unless it is some sort of contraband. Otherwise the city will claim it and likely sell it for funding the many services that are offered to citizens, law enforcement being one of the most notable ones.”

Arthur didn’t say anything to that comment, instead being turned to leave the room. “I will be changing into something more suitable for this operation.” Arthur said as he held up his helmet up above his head while walking away.

*********

Two hours later of waiting and preparing for the raid Arthur was fully fitted in his yellow dwarven plate armor and was following Lieutenant Goldenshield and ten other guardsmen towards this hideout belonging to Ben Feig. The trip took around half an hour resulting in them arriving at around 11:30, a good half hour before the meeting was scheduled.

The Lieutenant had everyone hide in another nearby abandoned building that had a half decent view from the second floor. The Lieutenant had one of his subordinates who wielded a crossbow wait up there and watch while everyone else waited. To pass the time Arthur counted up and handed out a few basic healing potions, one for each person.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting but was actually only around twenty five minutes the man with the crossbow slowly walked down the old worn stairs to report that he saw a small group of people no more than ten entering the neighboring building. After that the Lieutenant went up with him and kept watch with him for another ten or so minutes.

“Alright everyone, get up and get ready. Our target had shown himself and we want him taken alive unless there is no other option, a dead criminal is better than an escaped criminal after all.” The Lieutenant said this while he walked down the old stairs with the crossbow wielding guard behind, the other guards didn’t even say anything and Arthur quickly followed their lead.

The Lieutenant took the lead of the group by looking around just outside the door and quickly walking towards the target warehouse, the guardsmen and Arthur followed behind him the whole time. The first thing the Lieutenant did was look around for a secondary entrance towards the back that might be neglected, luckily they found that it had a few loose wooden boards keeping it shut.

“Hey, Arthur. Can you conjure something up to deal with this quietly?” The Lieutenant gestured towards the wooden boards and Arthur stepped forward.

After a few seconds of inspecting the boards Arthur saw that the nails that were used were old like the wood and could be slowly wedged off with minimal amounts of noise. He closed his eyes and focused his mind towards conjuring up a tool that had a wedge that could fit into the small space between the board and wall while also usable as an actual tool.

The end result wasn’t pretty, but it was a functional flat stick thing that had a curved wedge on end that could be pushed on to pry the boards off. It took only around a minute to remove all the boards covering the doorway and there was no sign of anyone inside hearing anything.

Thankfully no one had thought or was able to lock the door, that might have been why it was boarded up. Regardless, the Lieutenant took the lead once again and opened the door.

Inside led to a small office space that was clearly improvised and intended to be temporary, it consisted of a cheap and uneven table and chair and an empty doorway not far past where the door to the outside was. Slowly the Lieutenant led everyone further in where the sounds of a few voices would be heard talking.

As the group passed through several old boxes that were mostly empty to a small opening where a group of around twenty people could be seen standing over and around a table in the middle of this warehouse. Most looked to be quite normal or stereotypical looking excluding one single person standing in the middle of this group.

This man looked to be in his late twenties and wearing an expensive and worn yet well maintained cloak over some noble looking clothes that were in roughly the same condition as the cloak. Unlike the others within the room he looked mostly calm and composed and was trying to get everyone else to keep calm while he went over his plan.

“Please everyone, keep calm. I have already thought of what to do in the event of security seeing through our disguises, there is a reason why we are working in groups of at least three. If you are discovered, kill everyone who knows and hide their bodies under a bed or in a closet that is out of the way and where it is unlikely to be discovered for some time.”

While the others in his group were keeping their focus on the Lieutenant and following him Arthur decided to listen in on what was being said.

“And what about the parchment that we are stealing, why is that even valuable in the first place? Just about anything else would be more valuable, even if we just stole blank pieces of parchment it would sell for more given that these already have ink on them.” One of the lesser members of the group spoke up, his accent giving away himself as lower class while also having a slight speech impediment. Everyone in the room tensed up, questioning your criminal boss was typically a bad move. Yet Ben Feig just smiled and answered.

“An excellent question, you see these pieces of parchment have some very important things written on them. Things that some people would be willing to pay a lot of money for, people that could give us a lucky break and a lot of money in exchange for it.”

It was a logical answer that almost everyone there figured out on their own, they were still expecting Ben Feig to do something to the man in retaliation yet it didn’t happen. He just turned his attention back towards the plan he came up with.

“Most of us will be disguised as servants, to keep up the illusion you will need to clean rooms, floors, and anything else that looks like it needs to be done. The remaining few will be disguising themselves as actual guards, I have everything hidden in those boxes over to the back of the room.” Ben Feig pointed towards the boxes that Arthur, the Lieutenant, and the other ten guardsmen were hiding behind.

Clearly Lieutenant Goldenshield was also listening as he stopped in his tracks and gave a few gestures to his men that they seemed to understand. They readied their weapons slowly while hiding behind the boxes, Arthur followed their lead and raised his hands ready to cast the first spell that came to his mind.

The sounds of several sets of footsteps could be heard coming towards their location, likely being led by Ben Feig to take a look at the disguises he procured. The first set walked right up to the second box blocking Lieutenant Goldenshield from being seen, slowly someone picked it up and began to move it. He took the opportunity to push the box to try and knock whoever it was over. Arthur and the guardsmen followed suit and jumped forward with their weapons ready.

A small handful of the criminals were caught off guard by this and were struck by the boxes, though only a few were hurt as those boxes were the ones containing the metal armor and weapons for the guard disguises. The criminals towards the back of the group chose to either run to draw their weapons, those that chose to draw their weapons didn’t have much compared to their opponents but it was better than nothing in this situation.

Five chose to try and run away, the one lagging behind was quite unlucky as he was the one to have a crossbow bolt go through his leg and fall to the floor. He cried out in pain as there was a literal sharp piece of wood and metal sticking into his thigh.

The other criminals with weapons including Ben Feig readied themselves and struck at their attackers, most of those attackers were quickly blocked or parried while Arthur instead elected to block by conjuring up shields from earth and counter-attacked with the Tri Earth Bolt Spell aiming directly towards the chest area. At the current range it was the place to aim for.

With the first several attacks blocked, the guardsmen and Lieutenant struck back with their weapon of choice and left deep wounds in the mostly unprotected torsos of the criminals. Seeing their attacks doing nothing, several of the criminals began to panic, Ben Feig did his best to calm them down but wasn’t very successful as several more that were able began to follow the first five who ran and did the same.

This continued with the Lieutenant, Arthur, and the guardsmen pushing forwards while heavily wounding the criminals before them, even Ben Feig suffered a few wounds here and there that left him bleeding slightly on his arms. Eventually the remaining criminals were either dead or far to wounded to fight back and that included Ben Feig, Arthur began pouring basic healing potions down the throats of the still living criminals to keep them alive while the guardsmen bandages their wounds using the criminals own shirts that they would cut if they needed more.

‘Hey, that isn’t that bad of an idea. Using clothes as an improvised bandage, I should probably look into that and learn how to do it. Calavia works in a clinic, she would likely know how to do that. I guess I need to invite her over for dinner again sometime and ask her.’