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Chapter Twenty-Eight — Numero
Chapter Twenty-Eight — Numero Charlotte leaned over the map and squinted down the middle of it. There wasn’t much detail. It was a map of most of the country, so the space between Five Peaks and Six Hills wasn’t all that great.
“This is useless,” she said as she looked up.The carriage she and Dreamer had taken was rumbling along one of the better maintained roads that connected most bigger towns and cities together. That meant that for all that the road was bumpy and rough, it was still cobbled and well-maintained, with a cleared ditch on the side and potholes recently refilled with gravel to make the path a bit less cumbersome to travel.They had left Five Peaks in the morning, and it was nearing the early evening. She wasn’t sure how much longer they’d have to travel before they got to Six Hills, and the older gentleman driving their cart didn’t seem all that talkative.Which left either asking Dreamer, or some of the other passengers.They didn’t have the coin to rent a carriage all to themselves, which meant that they were sharing the ride with a few others. An older lady who was knitting with an ease and speed that suggested long practice, and a pair of gentlemen in finer clothes that Charlotte labelled as businessmen. The last was an older guy wearing some armour over a gambeson and with a big, clanking pack at his feet.“Um, forgive me for asking,” Charlotte said into the silence. A few heads turned her way, either from the books they were reading or from staring out of windows. Dreamer looked away from the lady next to her’s knitting needles. “We’re heading over to Six Hills, but we’ve never been there before. Do you think we’ll be arriving before nightfall?”“By a few hours, at least,” The younger of the two businessmen asked. He smiled at Charlotte, his whiskery mustache twitching up. “Are you visiting family?”“Not quite, no,” Charlotte said. She didn’t want to give away the reason for the visit if she could avoid it.“We’re going to buy a winter solstice gift for Abigail,” Dreamer said.“Winter Solstice?” the man repeated. “That’s not for... well, more than half a year. Do you mean the Summer Solstice, maybe?”Dreamer looked around towards Charlotte. “There’s a summer one too? Is there one in the other seasons? Wait, how many seasons are there?”“Four seasons, sweetie, and there are only two solstices. One in summer, one in winter. The longest and shortest day of the year, respectively. The Winter Solstice is spent with family and friends, and during the Summer Solstice there’s a great big festival.”“Bah, I remember when I was young. The festival was a grand thing,” the old woman muttered. “All the pretty dames, dressed to perfection like mid-summer flowers, and all the beaus chasing after them like rabbits in season. That was before the Inquisition, mind. Back in my day a little bit of sun worship didn’t bother anyone.”Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.Charlotte had to stop herself from cringing back, and the others in the carriage weren’t so restrained in their looks of distaste. Mentioning religion like that was a bit of a faux-pas, and a good way to have the inquisition poking around one’s business. Then again, she figured the older lady was at that age where people stopped caring all that much about the opinion of others.“Why would you worship a sun?” Dreamer asked. “That’s stupid. It’s just a lot of plasma holding itself together because it’s so fat.”“You know what suns are?” Charlotte asked.“Yeah, tasty,” Dreamer said. “I don’t know why mortals would want to worship one, it’s hardly alive. It makes more sense when they worship ideas, or like, the planet’s magic or even a tadpole. Maybe they’d give you something for worshiping them, at least.”“Right, right,” Charlotte said. She started patting Dreamer on the head, which led to the girl leaning into her side, and also stopped her from talking. The Inquisition didn’t like using the term 'heresy,’ because of its religious connotations, but that’s what Dreamer was spewing. “So, uh, what’s Six Hills like?”“It’s a nice enough place,” one of the businessmen said. “The hills have a few clay processing factories. They make a lot of earthenware that’s shipped back to Five Peaks. Lots of pottery as well.”“Plenty of artists live there,” the other businessmen said. “The less cerebral arts. Crafting, painting, pottery-making. Some of the things they produce are quite nice, and can fetch a good price elsewhere, if you can manage to transport them far enough without breaking them.”The adventurer-looking guy glanced up. “Safe place. For the most part. Roads are well patrolled around the town. Not the safest though.”“Any problems lately?” Charlotte asked him. She didn’t care much for pottery.“Nothing official,” he said. “But there have been people going missing lately. Kids, mostly.”“Oh,” Charlotte said.“I think there were three missing children, it’s hardly anything to be worried about,” the younger businessman said. He smiled at Charlotte in a way he probably thought was reassuring. It really wasn’t.“Five,” the adventurer corrected. “You two watch out while you’re around town,” he said with a nod towards Dreamer.Charlotte nodded. Though really, she doubted anything could really harm the girl.“Just a few goblins or the like causing trouble,” the businessman said.The old woman sniffed. “They know better than to sneak into a town. And they’re noisy besides. A clan of the bastards wouldn’t last a week before the guard rooted them out. Got to be something else. Something more nefarious.”“Now, now, that’s just superstition talking,” the businessman said. “Though, that might not be bad for business, I suppose.”“Right,” Charlotte said. “Right.”She was beginning to wonder what kind of trouble they were travelling to.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Nine — North Hill
Chapter Twenty-Nine — North Hill Dreamer waggled from side to side as the carriage rode up and down the hilly countryside. It was more fun to waggle than to sit still, and if the mortals across from her told her to stop, she could just ignore them because they didn’t matter.“Almost there,” Charlotte said.“Really?” Dreamer asked between one waggle and the next.... When did a waggle begin? Was each tilt to the side a single waggle, or was a waggle a full back-and-forth? Maybe a waggle was the entire act of waggling, regardless of how much or how little there was. After all, going for ‘a run’ didn’t really imply any sort of distance necessary for it to be considered a run.“Yep, I can see the town already. Not a very big place,” Charlotte said.“Six Hills isn’t that impressive from afar,” One of the mortals who didn’t matter said. “But the town’s spread out over a wide area. It’s nearly as big as Five Peaks, but without nearly as much density.”Dreamer didn’t understand how a town could be thick, but she had other things to think about. Maybe she could ask Abigail about her waggle conundrum? Abigail was smart. But that would have to wait for eight or so months.“Um,” Charlotte said. It was a very concerning sort of um.“What is it?” Dreamer asked.“I think I saw something when we crested that hill. There’s a group blocking the road ahead.”The others in the carriage all tensed except for the old lady. “Bandits?” The one with the armour and the weapons asked. “So close to the town?”“I don’t think so,” Charlotte asked. She had her face pressed up against the glass, but Dreamer imagined she couldn’t see all that well.“Let me see,” the man said. He opened the door and stood up, most of him sticking out of the carriage to see the road ahead. “It’s the Inquisition,” he said when he swung back in.“Oh, them,” Dreamer said. For some reason that got the old lady to laugh.The carriage rumbled onwards, and Charlotte shifted next to Dreamer. She had a hand on the hilt of her sword, and her other hand snaked down and grabbed Dreamer’s.The carriage stopped, and the guy sitting in front of it talked to some people who circled around the carriage. Then the door opened and a young guy with a rather small hat poked his head in, mustaches twitching as he looked everyone over. “Hello citizens,” he said.“Can we help you, sir?” one of the well-dressed mortals asked.“Just keeping an eye on things. Would you mind terribly telling me where you’re destined for?”The people in the cart rattled off some places that Dreamer didn’t care about until it came to Dreamer’s turn. “The place with the plushies,” she said.The inquisition guy’s smile grew a little strained. “Ah, that’s on North Hill. That area’s quarantined for now.”“It is?” Charlotte asked. “What for?”“Inquisition business, ma’am,” he said with another lame smile.Dreamer sniffed. “If you told us, it’d be our business too,” Dreamer said.“It’s fine,” Charlotte said. “We’re heading over to the, uh, East Hill. I have family there. But I promised her we’d go see the plushie place. Um, some other time, maybe,” she said.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.“Mmhmm,” the guy said. “Well, thanks for your time everyone, have a safe ride, and welcome to Six Hills.” He backed up and closed the door, then the carriage started riding again.The old lady sniffed. “There’s no East Hill here. Two of the hills are to the east. No one could agree on which one should be called the East hill, so neither are. At least, that’s the local legend from back when I was about this brat’s age.”“Oh,” Charlotte said.“It’s fine. You don’t owe it to anyone to tell them what you’re up to,” the old lady said.The carriage stopped at a place in town with a bunch of horses and stables and stuff, and everyone got out in a hurry. Charlotte and Dreamer didn’t really bring anything with them, so they took off hand-in-hand and crossed a busy street.There were plenty of people around, but not nearly as many of them as there were in Five Peaks. It also smelled a lot less like bathrooms outside, and there was more room between the homes. The town might have been as big as Five Peaks, but a lot of it was trees and gardens and little barns with chickens and other tasty animals in pens.There were six hills though, which pleased Dreamer because if there were only five or if there were seven it would have been a very silly place.“That’s the North Hill,” Charlotte said. She pointed to one of the hills. There were factories to the east (Abigail had taught Dreamer her directions in a few months) and to the west were some nice homes atop some of the hills that way. The hill to the south had a little castle on it.“That’s where the plushie person is,” Dreamer said.“Apparently,” Charlotte agreed. “But that Inquisition officer said that it was quarantined.”“I don’t know what that is,” Dreamer said.Charlotte hummed. “That’s when you block an area off to stop people from going there. Usually because there’s something dangerous.”“Oh,” Dreamer said. “Well, I’m more dangerous, so we can go there no problem.”Charlotte reached down and ruffled Dreamer’s head. “A few problems, actually. We want to be sneaky, right?”“Do we?” Dreamer asked.“We do,” Charlotte said. “We don’t just want to reach the shop, we want to get a commission. Which means that we need to talk to the artisan that makes those plushies. Then they’ll need to make your gift.”“Oh, right,” Dreamer said.“That’ll take some time. If we get into a big fight with the Inquisition, they’ll be all over the hill, and you can bet that it’ll be a lot harder to convince the artisan to make anything.”Dreamer pinched her lips together. Why did things always need to be so complicated? Back when she just floated through the void doing nothing for millenia, she never had to think so much. “Okay, fine,” she said.Charlotte nodded. “It’s getting on in the day. We’ll try to sneak over, see if we can get that commission of yours, and then figure things out from there. Get ready to fight if we need to. But, ah, try not to kill anyone.”“Okay,” Dreamer agreed. It was easy to agree to that. She was trying not to kill anyone already, so technically she’d succeeded already.Charlotte gave Dreamer her hand again. “Alright, let’s get sneaking!”
* * *
Chapter Thirty — Sneaky Scary Tentacles Send Shivers Down Your Mind
Chapter Thirty — Sneaky Scary Tentacles Send Shivers Down Your Mind When Charlotte told Dreamer what she meant by ‘be sneaky’ she tried to keep it simple. Dreamer, the... somewhat innocent girl that she was, had a better time understanding simple things.Charlotte laid out a plan to approach the North hill from the north, as opposed to from the town itself. There were likely to be fewer eyes that way, and if they were caught, they could always pretend that they were just heading to the town from the north, on foot.It wasn’t the best excuse, but Charlotte was ready to give it a go.So she instructed Dreamer to make sure she stayed silent.Dreamer’s response was to ‘eat’ all the sound around them, rendering them entirely, impossibly, silent.Charlotte felt that maybe no matter how much she planned or tried to think ahead, Dreamer would always just... be Dreamer.“Okay,” Charlotte whispered as they hid behind a large bush at the base of the hill. Dreamer kindly refrained from eating Charlotte’s voice, which was nice. There was a switch-back path cut into the hillside, and a palisade halfway up it. Likely to keep out any wandering animals. She pointed up the hill, where the setting sun turned the yellowing grass to orange-gold. “There’s a little gate there, that’s the only way in, which means...”Dreamer rubbed at her chin. “It means that that’s where normal people go in?”“That’s right. And the Inquisition doesn't want people inside. Which in turn means,” Charlotte said. She paused again, to let Dreamer think. The girl wasn’t dumb. Unusual, certainly... very certainly, but not dumb.“Oh, we can’t go there because they’re looking for people to pass by there.”Charlotte gave Dreamer’s head a rub. “That’s right, little genius. Let’s go that way instead, see where there’s a bunch of rocks and the big bush. It’ll keep us covered. Then we can figure out another way in. Either under, over, or through.”Dreamer nodded, and together they scurried up the slope. It was strange to not have her footsteps make any noise, or the bushes they rustled past or loose rocks that clattered behind them.When they reached the hillside right under the palisade, Dreamer summoned a few tentacles to act as steps and they climbed right up to the edge of the wall.Charlotte leaned against it. The wall was fairly thick, wooden beams, cut in half lengthwise and staked into the earth, with stacked stones along the base cemented in place. Some small effort had gone into making it look nice, a wooden beam crosswise to the rest had simple carvings in it, but otherwise the wall was simple and tough.“Okay, Web, it’s your turn,” Charlotte said. She reached down the front of her shirt and pulled out her little arachnid summon. She rubbed Web’s abdomen, the way the spider liked it. “Up and over the wall, tell me if anyone’s there,” Charlotte instructed before she brought Web close to the wall.The spider climbed up the wall, both Dreamer and Charlotte watching her go.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.“I could have looked,” Dreamer said. “I have eyetacles.”“But then poor Web wouldn’t have any part to play,” Charlotte said. She wasn’t going to admit that she trusted Web’s judgement a bit better than Dreamer’s.The spider disappeared for a minute, then reappeared at the top of the wall. It wiggled its forelegs around, then made a cross with them while shifting from side to side.“Coast is clear.”“What coast, this is a hill,” Dreamer said.Charlotte patted her on the head again. “Come on, I’ll boost you up and over, then you help me.” A moment later, the two of them were on the other side, properly sneaky-like.The town was, expectedly, entirely empty. The North hill had a few large factory-like places, though they were nothing like the factories back in Five Peaks. There were also a few shops, all of them built around a neat square in the middle of the hill.That was about all that Charlotte could tell from peeking around alleyways.There was one other thing she couldn’t fail to notice.“Where’s all the Inquisition people?” Dreamer asked.There were ropes across some road, blocking them off, and placards had been left around, with large letter-number combinations on them, but there weren’t any signs of life that Charlotte could see.“Dreamer, can you get one of your eyetacles to, uh, spawn really high up? Tell me if you see any Inquisitors anywhere on the hill?”“Okay,” Dreamer said. She blinked. “Nope, there’s none.”“Not a single one?” Charlotte asked.“Not on the hills. There’s lots near the hill, and some are walking in big circles around it. Also, there’s lots of blood over that way, and one of their nice hats on the ground.” Dreamer pointed.“Huh,” Charlotte said. “Let’s stay sneaky anyway, alright?”They moved out and stuck to the edges of buildings, with Dreamer keeping an eye out on all the Inquisition around the hill.They found the spot Dreamer had mentioned in short order. The girl was right, there was a lot of blood, a whole puddle of it, with bootprints and marks as if someone had been dragged through it. “Looks dry,” Charlotte said.She knelt next to the old puddle, then looked around, at all the workshops with darkened windows where shadows lurked deep and undisturbed.“What happened here?” Charlotte asked.“Feels like the Inquisition place in Five Peaks,” Dreamer said.“How so?”Dreamer shrugged. “Someone poked holes from here to elsewhere, and they didn’t close them up good. That’s a silly thing to do, some monsters can come through those, you know? Tasty, tasty monsters.”“Maybe that’s what happened here,” Charlotte muttered.“Maybe,” Dreamer said. “Or maybe it’s something here trying to get to the elsewhere. Hard to tell. I’d need to poke at the holes to see.”“Where are they?” Charlotte asked.Dreamer pointed back towards the square at the very top of the hill. “That way.”“Well, maybe we can go poke ourselves. It feels like there’s a lot of things missing here.”“Does that mean the plushie shop’s closed?”
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