Gremlin's Greed - COMPLETE Chapter 12 (Patreon)

The glowing ball of bodies hit the ground with a loud thud. A group of soldiers, just a stone’s toss away, leapt into the air as Linna interrupted their lunch. Linna groaned as the glow faded from around her.

“We are never doing that again.”

“Was a lot faster than walking,” Jasper said. “Maybe you should fly us around everywhere.”

“Suggest that again and I’ll see just how far you can fly,” Linna warned the gremlin while she pushed her sweat soaked hair out of her eyes and wiped her forehead.

“Fair enough,” Jasper said amicably.

One of the soldiers who was sporting a particularly ugly, rectangular moustache managed to swallow his food. He stood up quickly, accidentally driving his head into the nose of the man behind him who had been leaning too far forward. The moustached soldier pretended not to notice and cleared his throat theatrically.

“And who would you be?” He asked, puffing his chest out.

“You aren’t very intimidating with soup on your face,” Avril informed him.

“And the skid mark on your upper lip doesn’t help,” Jasper said, flicking his fingers at the man.

The soldier’s mouth snapped shut as a spark of purple light flicked out from Jasper’s hand. His eyes widened and he moaned in distress, but his mouth wouldn’t open.

“We’ve acquired your rogue Vision,” Linna said, taking care to avoid looking directly at the silenced soldier. “The Lieutenant on the other side of the forest said we could pass through if we took care of him.”

She nudged Raiki’s body with her foot and he groaned slightly. One of the other soldiers looked at the group suspiciously.

“How do we know that? You could be working with him.”

Electricity started to jump between Jasper’s hands, and he raised an eyebrow at the men in their way.

“Change of plans. We give you princess over here. Then you get out of our way. If you don’t, I zap the lot of you.”

“Sounds fair to me,” the soldier said, watching the crazed gremlin nervously. He jerked his chin toward Raiki’s prone body and pushed one of the other men toward it. “Go collect the Vision and properly restrain him. I’ll handle the paper pushing. Say, is my soldier going to…”

He trailed off and eyed the shocked man who was still trying to force words out of his unresponsive mouth. Jasper shrugged nonchalantly.

“He’ll be fine. Assuming you get out of our way.”

Some of the soldiers pulled several lengths of heavy rope out and started to tie Raiki up. The others moved to the side, giving the group a clear path through their barricade.

“Are ropes really going to hold a Vision?” Linna asked after they’d put some distance between Typhon’s soldiers and themselves.

“Absolutely not,” Avril replied.

Linna glanced back over her shoulder at the large group of men behind them.

“Shouldn’t we have said something?”

“They’ll be fine. They’re working for Typhon,” Avril said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“How will that help?” Linna asked. “It’s not like he’ll kill them any nicer because of who they work for.”

Jasper and Avril both laughed at the same time while Ethan let out an amused huff. The gremlin immediately glared at Avril as if her laughter had somehow offended him. He slowly turned to Linna, but one of his eyes remained pointed at Avril.

“Working for the King will do exactly that,” Jasper said. “He’s a Vision, and an incredibly dangerous one at that. Most other Visions will never act directly against him. Our friend will sit in prison for a few weeks and then break out miraculously. In exchange for not slaughtering his minions, Typhon will look the other way when he escapes.”

“Seriously? You could barely tell me to believe that I was strong, but people are so scared of Typhon that his word is law?” Linna asked in disbelief.

Avril put a hand gently on Linna’s shoulder.

“Your Asharr background is coming through, Linna. There’s nothing wrong with the Asharr’s desire to overthrow Typhon, but you need to watch your words. We aren’t in a city now, but you never know who’s working for him. Typhon’s influence is nothing to take lightly.”

“And it’s different with Typhon,” Jasper said. “If most Visions are a light breeze, Typhon is a monsoon. He’s not human, and he’s barely a Vision at this point. The man’s more like a force of nature. If you ever have the misfortune to meet him or see how he works, you’ll understand what I’m saying.”

“We’ve had the misfortune of running into him a few times,” Ethan added. “He’s every bit as powerful as people think. Keep your desires to overthrow him hidden until you have the strength to back it up.”

Linna grunted her assent, but she didn’t sound very convinced. After a few more hours of walking silently, the green plains gave way without warning to a huge expanse of flat gray sand. Once they reached the near straight line that split the two biomes, Linna knelt beside the sand and rubbed some of the particles between her fingers.

“What is this? It doesn’t look like any sand I’ve seen before,” she said.

“It’s sand,” Ethan said. Linna tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at the tall swordsman. He just shrugged in response.

“There’s not much else to say. Have you not been to the southern parts of Gellan before? It’s all like this,” Avril said.

“But I only got to Gellan recently. I was only on the mainland for a week before I worked with Jasper and Ethan to…liberate some goods from Melinda’s caravan.”

“Whatever happened to the money you earned?” Ethan asked.

“I gave it to the Asharr working in Rellen,” Linna said. “There was no way for me to lug it all around easily. They’ll repay me when I head back through the city.”

They soon resumed their trek onwards through the gray sand. As the day dragged on, the temperature plummeted and the wind picked up without warning. When the sun finally threatened to dip below the muted hues of the horizon, everyone other than Ethan was shivering.

It was with no little chagrin that they realized that none of them had brought anything to burn for a campfire. The vast flat expanse of gray stretched on as far as the eye could see. There was nothing usable as shelter within miles.

“Anyone not particularly attached to their clothes?” Jasper asked through chattering teeth.

Three glares pierced the gremlin immediately. Jasper raised his hands into the air and let out a childish huff. He immediately regretted the decision as the cold nipped at his fingers. He stuffed his hands under his armpits and scowled.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“There’s a small village half a day’s travel from here,” Avril said. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

“How do you know?” Linna asked.

“It’s Avril. Worthless in fights, but makes a great compass,” Jasper muttered.

“Let’s annoy each other later,” Ethan said. Of all of them, he was the least affected by the cold due to the ever present winter cloak that shrouded his body. “It will only get colder as the night goes on, and I’m not giving anyone my cloak. I don’t want it to smell like rancid gremlin.”

Even Jasper was too unhappy to argue with that, so they pressed forth into the dark. By the time the four had reached the village, the sun had taken the moon’s place in the sky. The houses within the village were made of rough brown stone with poorly thatched roofs. There was a small wall surrounding the houses that had long since crumbled and become useless.

The party could have passed quite easily for creatures of the night due to the array of scowls plastered to their faces. Ethan’s winter coat was the only article of clothing among them that hadn’t turned stiff in the cold night air. There was no guard at the gate, so they walked in without any delay. Their disheveled appearance drew more than a few unhappy stares from men starting the day’s work.

They made a beeline toward the largest building in the town, a square two-story inn that looked like it was one rowdy sneeze away from falling in on itself. Ethan shoved the door open, nearly tearing it from its hinges, and the group stormed in.

A thin man stood by himself beside a stairwell at the back. His face was weathered, and his large nose was bent at just enough of an angle for it to stand out. He glanced over at them as they entered, but quickly returned to the cup of beer in his hands.

“Room. Food. Now,” Jasper ordered, massaging his ears in an attempt to push some warmth back into them.

The man looked down his nose at Jasper. His mouth twitched into a small frown as he looked over the annoyed group of people and the gremlin that had just entered his building.

“I’m afraid we don’t serve food until lunch,” he said in a nasal tone.

Jasper tilted his head back so he could make eye contact with the man.

“Yes you do. There’s a frying pan hanging on the wall behind you.”

The man looked over his shoulder and grunted.

“We only serve lunch. You’ll have to wait.”

Jasper’s eyes narrowed and he studied the man for a few moments.

“I’m going to go find the smelly little stable boy that your daughter is in love with. Then I’m going to give him fifty gold and find a priest of whatever religion you follow. Next-”

“Okay, okay! That’s enough,” the man said, his tanned face paling. He revealed a small metal key from somewhere within his pockets and tossed it onto the table.

“Ten silver,” he said.

Avril mutely dropped the coins on his counter and grabbed the key. The innkeeper swept the money into his pockets and jerked a thumb toward the staircase.

“Only four rooms up there. Try it till it clicks.”

He looked back down at Jasper and shuddered involuntarily.

“I’ll have food sent up in an hour.”

They filed past the innkeeper and up the stairway and emerged into a small hallway at the top with two pairs of wooden doors on either side of them. The doors were rotted and the air smelled like mildew, but everyone was too tired to care.

The key worked on the third door. It swung back with a creak of protest and they poured through the entrance. Ethan pushed the door shut behind them, purely out of habit as the door wouldn’t stop anything more than a light breeze. The room was small and clearly only meant for one person. A bed was shoved in the far corner under a dim window, its sheets dusty and unkept. The windowsill had a large cobweb hanging in the corner, but even its spider had abandoned the run-down room.

“I call the bed,” Avril said, flopping onto the sheets and sending a puff of dust into the air. Linna didn’t even say anything as she claimed the other side of the bed.

Jasper and Ethan laid down on the floor, pushing their cloaks back to form makeshift pillows. Soon, the room was silent save for breathing and the occasional curse that slipped out of the gremlin’s mouth as he slept.

A sharp knock on the door rudely pierced through the room and tore them from their sleep. Ethan sat bolt upright while Jasper groaned, turning over and pulling his hood closer to his face.

“I shouldn’t have asked for food,” Jasper said, pulling his cloak tighter around his head.

Ethan rose to his feet and opened the door. The innkeeper, balancing several large plates on his arms, stepped into the room. Each plate had a bowl of soup and several slices of light pink meat with a dark crust around the outside.

The buttery smell emitting from the plates was enough to summon Jasper’s nose from within the depths of his hood. The innkeeper cleared his throat and took a small step away from Jasper, who had started to slowly scoot across the floor toward him like a worm.

“Just set it on the ground,” Ethan said.

The man gave him a grateful nod and practically dropped the plates before rushing out the door and slamming it shut behind him. Ethan delivered two of the plates to Avril and Linna before claiming one for himself.

Jasper’s crawl finally brought him to his goal. A small hand emerged to snag a plate and, a few minutes later, he ejected the empty plate from his cloak. Everyone else finished eating a few minutes later and sleep took over the room once more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warm morning sun rays trickled into the room through the window above the bed. Avril let out a slow yawn and wiped the sleep away from her eyes. She climbed out of the bed, grimacing at the fine layer of dust that had made her body its new home. She walked in front of the window and peered out of it.

“It’s still morning?” Linna groggily asked while rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“It’s the next morning,” Avril corrected her. “The sun was higher than this yesterday. We slept all day.”

Jasper sat bolt upright and practically jumped up to his feet.

“Are we still on schedule?” He asked, eyes wide.

“We’ll be fine,” Avril reassured him. “We should arrive at the Ashen Lands with almost a week left.”

Linna sniffed at her arm and grimaced.

“Can we bathe before we start moving again? I’m going to start killing flies.”

Jasper looked like he was ready to argue, but Ethan nodded before the gremlin could voice his dissent.

“I agree. We look and smell like beggars. No reputable ship in Stormfront will take us the way we are now. We might as well bathe and avoid suffering the rest of the trip.”

“Fine,” Jasper huffed. “Should we wait for a tailor to size all of us up while we’re at it?”

“An hour or so won’t cause any issues,” Avril said, ignoring the gremlin’s complaints.

She walked out of the room and the others trailed behind her. The innkeeper watched them out of the corner of his eyes as he cleaned a plate with a musty brown cloth in the corner of the lower room.

“You’ll have to pay more to stay longer,” he said.

“We have no plans to stay any longer, but we would like to have a bath drawn up before we leave.”

He extended the fingers on one of his hands and went down the row with his other hand, muttering under his breath.

“Eight silver,” he said, furrowing his brow in intense concentration.

Avril placed the coins on the counter with a grimace at the ridiculous price. The innkeeper grabbed one of them and brought it up to his face. He gave the group a suspicious look and took a deep sniff of the metal. The man nodded in satisfaction and pushed the coins into his pocket.

“The tub is in the back. I’ll fill it. It’ll be ready soon,” he said as he walked out the door.

“Can you actually smell if a coin is real or not?” Linna asked.

“Nope. Sand does strange things to people’s heads. Makes them loony,” Jasper said, earning a glare from Avril.

“He’s got a grudge against anyone who lives in a desert because I was born in the Ashen Lands,” Avril said.

Linna nodded sagely. The time to wonder about Jasper’s mannerisms had long since passed, and some things were better left unasked.

They headed out to the back of the inn. There was a small shed-like building sitting in the inn’s shadow. It was barely standing, but the small pillar of steam rising up from a hole in its roof told them everything they needed to know. The innkeeper emerged from within the dimly lit entrance of the shed and gave them a nod.

“Bath is ready,” he said gruffly.

“We’d also like some food that will last us until Stormfront. Two tents as well,” Avril said. A gold coin flashed between her fingers and the man’s eyes lit up as the argument died on his lips.

He practically tore her hand off grabbing the coin. With a distracted nod to the tall Vision, he wandered away into the town.

“I paid, so I’m first,” Avril said before rushing into the room before anyone could beat her there. She emerged a few minutes later, her dark hair matted down over her face.

“Cheap bastard didn’t even give us soap,” she complained.

“Soap is disgusting,” Jasper piped up as Linna claimed the next chance to bathe.

“Small creatures that don’t bathe are disgusting. Soap is wonderful,” Avril said.

Jasper flipped her off. They waited silently until Linna emerged from within the shed with her dark hair looking similar to Avril’s. She squeezed as much water out of it as she could and tied it up behind her head.

“I’m next,” Ethan said. “Jasper will turn the water brown and I’ll just end up getting dirtier.”

Jasper sighed and shook his head as the swordsman walked into the bath house.

“Me against the world. When you all find out how bad water is for your skin, I’ll be laughing behind you.”

“The way you are now, someone will smell us from the next city over and put an arrow in you before the physical manifestation of the plague enters the city,” Avril said.

“That someone might be me,” Linna added.

Jasper harrumphed and crossed his hands over his chest. Once Ethan had finished bathing, he mutely walked into the dark entrance. There were several loud splashes from within it, followed by a bang and a string of curses.

The gremlin emerged, clothes sopping wet. He scowled at them and crossed his arms in front of his chest dramatically.

“There. I did it,” he said.

“Did you take your clothes off before you got into the bathtub?” Linna asked the fuming gremlin.

“Of course not! Why would I do that?” Jasper shuddered.

Avril put a hand on Linna’s shoulder and shook her head.

“This is the best we’re going to get. At least his clothes got washed too.”

The innkeeper arrived once more, halting any further conversation about Jasper’s level of cleanliness, and shoved a ratty canvas sack into Avril’s hands.

“Dry meat. Hard tack. Water. One week’s worth. Tents too,” he said gruffly.

Avril took the sack from him and promptly handed it over to Ethan.

“What am I, a pack animal?” Ethan complained, but he slung it over his shoulder regardless.

“Well, there’s nothing else holding us back. We still have two days of travel until we reach Stormfront, so we might as well set off,” Avril said.

That was the first thing all day that Jasper was willing to agree with, so they left the nameless town behind without any further delay. The gray sands, now hazy from the morning heat, greeted them with open arms.

The following two days went far smoother than their first night in the desert. The food, while hard and tasteless, was edible. The rough canvas tents offered just enough protection against the desert winds to keep the temperature around ‘ridiculously cold’ rather than ‘freezing to death’.

Near the middle of the third day travel, Stormfront finally showed itself at the edge of their vision. At first, the city was nothing more than a yellowish white blob on the horizon. But, as they grew closer, the city revealed itself in its full splendor.

Rectangular buildings of all heights peppered the city. Many of them stood tall enough to rival the spires of Rellen. It was apparent that calling Stormfront a mere city would have been an understatement.

Stormfront was enormous. By some stroke of hubris the builders had decided that not only did they want towers to scrape the clouds, but they also wanted it to sprawl across the landscape like a sleeping giant.

A sturdy limestone wall marked the line between the end of the gray desert and Stormfront. It was about the height of a two-story house and was peppered with slots for archers to shoot from. There were several large open arches along the length of the wall.

By the time the group grew close enough to one of the arches to make out any detail, the outer edges of the city had faded out of visibility. No fewer than fifty guards stood alert on the city side of the arch. They were all lightly armored and held intimidating halberds with elegant designs carved into the shafts.

“You clearly aren’t merchants. Sightseeing, travel, or Typhon’s men?” A guard with a dirty blond goatee called, eyeing Jasper warily.

“What kind of gremlin goes sightseeing?” Another guard asked and scoffed. “Two silver says they’re here for passage on a ship.”

“You ever see a gremlin go sailing? Deal!” The first man confidently shot back. He turned toward them and pointed the butt of his spear in their direction.

“We’re here for a boat,” Linna answered.

The goateed guard cursed while the other beamed at Linna, but his grin turned into a distrustful scowl as she grew closer. He collected his winnings and waved for them to enter the city.

“You might want to cover up,” the second man suddenly said as they started to walk by him.

“Who, me?” Jasper asked, his lips pulling back to reveal his teeth in a menacing grin.

“No, the islander,” the guard said distastefully. “It ain’t a good time for islander folk to be around here. Damn Vision working with the Asharr just attacked Ringden. Haven’t you heard?”

Linna’s eyes widened indignantly and she started to protest. Avril put firm hand on the younger Vision’s shoulder and squeezed.

“She was adopted raised in a small village on the mainland, so she finds it hard to believe her countrymen would do something like that. And we’ve been travelling for the past week without stopping at any large cities,” Avril interrupted.

The guard gave a knowing nod.

“That’s understandable. But out here on the frontier, she’ll learn soon enough. Ignorance is no excuse for murder, and there won’t be any of that in Stormfront. However, walking around with an islander, Asharr or not, will bring you nothing but trouble. Consider lending her a cloak for the duration of your stay.”

Avril’s grip tightened on Linna’s shoulder as her brow lowered in anger. However, Jasper reacted before she could.

“You want me to give up my cloak? Perhaps my pants too?” The gremlin asked as he angrily started to undress in front of the guard.

“What? No, I-”

Jasper’s shirt hit him in the face. The other guards erupted in laughter as he peeled the dirty article of clothing away from himself with two fingers and dropped it on the ground in disgust.

“Maybe you’re curious? Never seen a gremlin naked before, have you?”

A sandal bounced off the guard’s head.

“Stop that!” He barked.

“Oh? You don’t want to see my little green-”

Jasper rolled out of the way as the guard’s boot suddenly occupied the space where his butt had been moments ago.

“Put your clothes back on, you little puke,” the guard said as grabbed a piece of paper and a small rubber stamp from his pockets. He stamped the paper and tossed into the air.

Jasper grabbed it and stuffed it into his pants before scampering to put his clothes back on. Once he finished, he started into the city as if nothing had happened.

“Raphael, I think you just got scammed,” the goateed guard said between bouts of laughter.

“Shut up,” the other guard growled. He turned to the remainder of the group and waved them away.

“Get out of here. And if I find out you caused trouble in my city, I’ll tie you to a stone and toss you into the ocean myself.”