Freelance Heroics

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

© 2016 Stephen W. Gee

All rights reserved.

This book takes place after the events of
Wage Slave Rebellion
. It can be read as a stand-alone novel, though you’ll probably get more out of it if you read the series from the beginning. If, however, you'd prefer to jump right in, don't let me stop you. You do you.

With this book I tried to do something a little different. Instead of a single plot that spans the entire novel, it consists of four tales told in succession. Think of it like this: if
Wage Slave Rebellion
was a feature-length movie,
Freelance Heroics
is four premium TV episodes. Not all adventures are large ones, and I wanted to tell those stories as well. I hope you enjoy them.

Off a winding street in one of Houk’s poorest districts, an unmarked door opened into a dark, dank staircase leading down. The wisdom of building a basement in an area that flooded in a light rain was suspect, but today there were only a few stagnant puddles in the room at the bottom of the stairs.

The basement, like everywhere else in the filthy, downtrodden district it inhabited, was crowded. What was unusual was the people who were crowding it. Everyone was dirty, but rather than the filth of the poor who couldn’t bathe if they wanted to, the basement’s inhabitants were covered in the dirt, grime, and dried blood of people who simply did not care. They also sported a great deal of weaponry, and not the notched kitchen knives of the locals. Swords, staves, and focus crystals glimmered in the dingy candlelight.

The room’s inhabitants slouched in wooden chairs in a semicircle on the stone floor. The chairs faced a lectern, if a box on top of another chair could be called as much. Standing behind the podium was a woman in a vest of dented chainmail over leather armor two sizes too large. Her black hair, whose gray strands were being stubbornly beat back with cheap dyes, was collected in a loose bun. Behind her was a large corkboard, on which scraps of paper with words like
Wanted
,
Quest
, and
Reward
had been pinned. Spelled out in wooden letters over the corkboard were the words
Job Board
, though time had changed it to read
J b Boapd
, which just looked sad.

The woman cleared her throat.

“We have a few new people here today, so I’m going to go over the basics.” She didn’t look up. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Chaedi Fre’Jirgn, and I’m the proprietor of this quest hub. You may call me Mis Fre. Nice to meet you.”

A twitching man with patchy brown stubble and a mace the size of a lacrosse stick mumbled. Everyone else stayed silent.

“On this board are all the quests I have for you today,” said Mis Fre, patting the corkboard. “I won’t kid you and say these are great quests, they’re just whatever the guilds wouldn’t take. Which brings me to my next point—this hub is for unguilded adventurers
only
. If any of you belong to a guild, please leave now.”

No one moved.

“Good. In a minute I’ll let you come up here and look at the quests. If you find one you would like to do, tell me. If more than one group wants the same quest, I’ll decide who gets it based on who I think is less likely to screw it up. I already have everyone’s quest history here”—she waved the sheet of paper—“so I’ll be deciding primarily based on that. Not being an asshole to me couldn’t hurt your chances though. Anything left after the initial look will be first-come, first-served.”

Mis Fre finally looked at her audience. “I know these aren’t the most glamorous quests in the city, but they’re real quests, and mostly from quest givers I’ve worked with before, so there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get paid. Just remember that if you do well on these, you might be able to get into the good graces of the guilds, or back into them for some of you. Any questions?”

A lone hand rose. Mis Fre pointed.

“Why the hell are
they
here?”

The entire room turned and looked at the three people standing along the back wall. The middle one sighed.

“You know, I’d like to know that myself,” said Mazik.

“Yeeeah,” said Mis Fre. “Then there’s you three.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Mazik as he pushed aside a bush with his dagger. The weapon was a “gift” from the Tyrant after their adventures a month ago, and one he wasn’t entirely happy to have, but he couldn’t deny how well it cut. He stepped through the bush. “After everything we did, we still can’t get into a damn guild!”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” said Raedren. He was carrying a large burlap sack. Blood dripped from the bottom. “They’ve been shooting us down for weeks.”

“Well,
yes
,” said Mazik as he hacked at a branch. “What I mean is, it’s bullshit.”

“Ah.”

“And before you say anything else, I didn’t say that because . . . I don’t have a good reason why,” said Mazik. “I just didn’t feel like it.
Shut up
.”

“That makes sense,” said Raedren.

“Are you guys even looking?” asked Gavi. She emerged from the underbrush several meters away, her eyes glued to the ground. “We don’t have all day. I’ve got work later on.”

“Definitely absolutely probably,” said Mazik. He bent to pick up a dead branch, and used it to poke through the underbrush. “How many more do we need?”

Raedren opened the bag. “We have four.”

“So six more,” said Mazik.

“Let’s spread out,” said Gavi.

“All right,” said Mazik. He sighed as he stepped over an anthill. “After all the people we saved, this is what we’re reduced to.”

“Less complaining, Maz. It’s not attractive,” said Gavi.

“Yeah yeah.”

Gavi buried her annoyance and kept her eyes on the ground. She didn’t want to step on a snake because she was distracted. It was bad enough that she was looking for snakes, which she was scared of, but she could handle that. She just wanted to make sure she was prepared before she had to deal with one. And that meant not stepping on them.

“You’d think they could leave poison out for them or something,” said Mazik.

“Why would they, when people like us will work for so cheap?” asked Raedren.

“Don’t remind me,” grumbled Mazik.

Gavi bit back a retort and focused. She crept silently, her feet seeking out the soft dirt where she was less likely to make a sound. Gavi was taking this opportunity to polish the stealth techniques they learned while searching for the kidnappers-cum-cultists, rather than just complaining about it. She wished Mazik would do the same. She was getting tired of—

Gavi stepped around a tree and stopped in her tracks. “Uh. What are you doing?”

The three men kneeling in the small clearing looked up. Like Gavi, they were wearing light leather armor and wielding edged weaponry. Also like Gavi, they were covered in dirt and leaves, evidence that they had also been tromping through the forest for some time. Unlike Gavi, they were kneeling over a headless snake, and were in possession of two sacks which looked (and smelled) like they were full of more headless snakes. The nearest one had a stylized red fist tattooed on the back of his hand, marking him as a member of the guild Bloodfist.

“Erh,” said one of the men.

Another shoved the dead snake in his sack and stood up. “Gotta go!”

“Hey, wait a second!” said Gavi.

Mazik burst through the foliage and landed beside her. “What’s going o—oh, what the fuck?!”

“Good luck finishing that quest!” yelled one of the men as he hefted his bag of dead snakes over his head.

“Thank you for your kind words, because I’m about to
take those off your dead body!
” Mana coalesced around Mazik like light being sucked into a black hole, and with a crackle of blue lightning he shot after the retreating adventurers.

“Maz, hold on!” yelled Gavi. “Remember, you can’t touch them!”

“What happened?” asked Raedren as he jogged over.

“Guild adventurers,” said Gavi. “Mazik is chasing them. He’s . . . a little annoyed.”

“Uh oh,” said Raedren. “That’s not good. That’s not good, is it?”

“Only if he hits one of them.”

There was an explosion nearby. Bits of burning foliage rained down on them.

“That’s bad,” said Raedren. “We need to stop him.”

“I’ll get the rope,” said Gavi.

Mazik slumped against the bar. He smelled like blood and burning leaves, and felt like failure. Fortunately none of the blood was of the human variety, otherwise Gavi would have been livid, rather than merely sarcastic.

“It’s a good thing they were
so much better
than you,” said Gavi as she cleared the mugs from a nearby table. Her adventuring gear had been swapped in favor of the white blouse, black skirt, and apron of her work uniform. Short, vicious jabs with a rag pushed spilled beer off the table. “If you had actually hit one of them, we’d never be able to get into a guild.”

“Not that it seems real likely at the moment,” groused Mazik.

“So don’t make it worse!” snapped Gavi. She piled empty mugs onto the bar and pushed them toward Tielyr.

Gavi let out a sigh and calmed down. “What would you like to drink, Raedren?”

“Rae,” said Raedren.

“Him too,” said Gavi. “What would you like?”

“A pint of the bitter, please.”

Mazik raised his hand. “I’ll take a—”

“We already agreed on your punishment if you did this,” said Raedren.

“We did,” said Gavi. “Tielyr?”

Tielyr set a glass of clear liquid in front of Mazik. Mazik sniffed the glass and recoiled.

“Gin,” said Mazik. “Do I have to drink this?”

“Yes,” said Raedren.

“But it tastes like pine tree sem—”

“Pine tree semen, we know,” said Raedren. “You say that every time.”

Mazik stared despondently at the glass of liquor. “What if I—”

“
Drink
,” said Gavi. “Or don’t. That’s all you’re getting tonight either way.”

Mazik stared at the glass, and sniffed it again. He frowned. “I deserve this, don’t I?”

“Yes,” said Gavi and Raedren simultaneously. Tielyr placed a full mug in front of Raedren.

Mazik took a sip, and then hissed like he’d been attacked by a demon lemon. “Okay, I’m sorry I flew off the handle.” He looked askance at the glass. “I was sorry before this, but yeah, definitely sorry now.”

“Good,” said Gavi as she piled drinks onto her tray and departed.

“It’s just, it’s so fuckin’
stupid!
” said Mazik. “This is, what, the forty-seventh quest they’ve interfered with?”

“Sixth, but you were close.” Raedren took a sip. A look of supreme pleasure came over his face as the amber liquid swept across his tongue, which only made Mazik more surly.

“My point is, it’s getting annoying. I feel like we’re back in high school, and they’re the bullies messing with us.”

“We were never bullied in high school,” said Raedren. “We were ignored.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure it happens to some people.”

Mazik and Raedren stared into their drinks. For the past month they had been talking to every guild in Houk, from the Big Six down to the mid-tiers
¹
, but it was no use. It didn’t take a genius to understand why. The guilds thrived thanks to a virtual monopoly on the good quests, so when the city opened up the kidnapping job to freelancers, the guilds got annoyed. They were willing to ignore it though, as long as guild adventurers took the reward. When Mazik and the others completed it instead, they made the guilds look bad, which threatened their livelihood. Now the guilds were taking it out on the trio, with the goal of proving their power by driving the young adventurers out of the business.

Not that Mazik had any intention of letting that happen.

Gavi returned a minute later with an empty tray. “I don’t know why you two suddenly look so glum, but just remember that we can’t actually
do
anything to the guilds, even if they interfere with our quests.” Gavi gave Tielyr the drinks she needed, and turned back. “If we break the rules of this little cold war, they’ll have an excuse to ban us forever.”