Chapter 3 choice #2

No.  If I was going to pull this off, I needed friends.  Sonna was the first person that was more or less my age who I might have something with.  At the very least, she didn’t call me ‘pelt’, ‘beast’ or ‘cat’.  Finding the Darkmarket wasn’t too difficult now.  It moved from place to place, but I could always find it by carefully watching the water.

The masked guardians intercepted me as usual before showing the way.  They didn’t talk.  Didn’t threaten.  But I had no doubt that if I made a problem for them, they’d make it a problem for me.  Today, the Darkmarket was in some vaulted crypt.  Rectangular tombs had been violated ages ago lay in a grid, and many of the shops either perched on the broken remains or between the crumbling sarcophagi.  I wondered how many of these large spaces could be under the city.  Eventually, you’d think, the whole place would start collapsing in on itself.

Other Isekais had protagonists bringing things like gunpowder or medicine or.. Or... economics to their worlds and suddenly changing everything.  Well this world had ‘blastpowder’ which was effectively the same thing, had healing magic, and I didn’t know economics.  I’d been here for two months and had barely gone further than a few blocks from Auntie’s tavern, in part because every time I saw a guard looking at my ‘slave bindings’ I nearly had a panic attack.  If a guy looked at me for three seconds I wanted to run because I knew the kinds of things a guy might think when looking at a scantily clad catgirl.  It was ironic that I felt safest in the Darkmarket because I knew the faceless would fuck up anyone that caused trouble.

Well, theoretically.  I’d seen them touch a drunk ogre pissed that he’d gotten kicked out of the red tent and he’d disappeared.  That was ‘fuck up’ enough for me.

I found Axelenar’s tent wedged in the footprint of a smashed tomb.  The duskenelf was setting up his wares and gave me a side look.  “Akira,” he acknowledged as he set out several large purple bottles.

“Sir,” I replied, and got a small smile universal to uncles everywhere.  “Is Sonna around?”

“She’s with her... associates... in the rings,” he said slowly.  “What are your interests in her?”

I blinked in shock at the candid question.  “Sir?”

“Are you planning to bed her?  Are you trying to use her?  Do you hope to gain off her?” he asked as he set the bottle aside.  “I don’t fault you if you are, as this is the Darkmarket, but I can suggest other easier and more profitable avenues if that’s your goal.”

I shook my head slowly.  “I’m just hoping we can be friends,” I replied.

“Friends,” he said with a sigh.  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“I don’t understand.  What’s wrong with being friends?”

He didn’t answer a moment.  Just went to another box and removed some brass knick nacks and set them on a folding shelf.  “I had a friend.  A Solari elf.  Jallecien.  I trusted him with my life.  But when the pogroms came, he sold me and my family out.  I escaped.  My family did not.”  He tapped the metal with a finger.  “Friends are a luxury.  Wonderful.  Enjoyable.  I understand why Sonna wants them so.”  He then fixed me with a gray stare.  “Would you sell out Sonna if a guard caught you?”

I started to object, but my mouth worked silently.  I thought.  “I don’t know,” I replied.  “I’d like to think I wouldn’t.”

He let out an ‘mmmm’ as he took out a crystal cluster.  “You’re too honest, Akira.”  He said as he set it next to the brass.  “Do you think Taght wouldn’t?  Or Yune?”  I couldn’t trust myself to answer.  “Every ‘friend’ is one more chance of failure.  Of vulnerability.  If she is captured by the guard, they will force her to swear by the law.  And she will never, ever, be able to return here.”

I didn’t know what to say.  I’d never been on the bad side of the law before.  Sure, I was skirting it now, but it was like not paying my car registration.  Illegal, sure, but I wasn’t technically hurting anyone.  But there were people who were against the law, or the law was against them, and that was going to hit me eventually.  “I understand.  Or I think I do, sir.”

He gave one more nod.  “I believe you’ll find them over there, Akira,” he said as he pointed towards the far corner where there was a lack of tents.  “Sonna said her friends had ideas.  I hope you will help her audit them.”

I nodded and rose, moving past the stalls and tents in the corner he indicated.  Every Darkmarket had something different when they moved.  Here, a fighting ring had been erected and a trio of dwarves were taking on a troll.  Square cube law was not on their side, but they seemed to be tenacously beating on him with a storm of blows.  On one stand I spotted Sonna, who gave me a wave when our eyes met.  The other two with her didn’t.

Yune fixed me with the same cool look Axelaner did, but with a bit more haughtiness to it.  She stood out as much as I did.  She was a ‘half felyn’, a concept that made my biology classes cringe almost as much as the idea I had a reproductive system that could make one.  She had the feline ears and tail of a cat, but not the eyes, claws, fangs, or annoying patches of pelt.  They were human enough to not count for the bounty.  But what set Yune apart to me was the fact she was too clean.  She didn’t have the pong of someone who missed a bath here and there.  The leather armor she wore was a little too neat.  Her weapon, a rapier, didn’t have a dent, knick, or fleck of rust.  It wasn’t fancy, but just too clean.

Taght on the other hand couldn’t have fit in to the Duskmarket better if he tried.  The dwarf stunk in a stale-beer-and-old-cheese sort of odor that corkscrewed into the nostrils over time.  His clothes fit the people he’d robbed to get them.  The patchy beard he was growing had handfuls missing, and at least half a meal plastered to it.  And if there wasn’t enough there, he could always find something to munch on up a nostril.  Which he was doing right now.

Sonna, however, smiled at me as I approached.  “Hey, Akira!  We were just talking about you,” the duskenelf said brightly.  Her silver hair was cut boyishly short.  Less to grab in a fight, I supposed, as opposed to Yune’s long brilliant white hair. “Well, not precisely you.  Someone you sized, and here you are.”

“I’m not sure how alarmed I should be,” I replied, getting a chuckle from Yune.  It didn’t help.

Sonna gestured me closer. “We need someone to help us break into a rich guy’s place.  Yune knows the guy’s security.  Taght can find his basement.  I can get us through the wall.  We just need someone small who can squeeze in and find the score.”

“You want to rob someone?” I asked in alarm.  The trio shared a look and raised their hands, brass rings glittering on their fingers.  “Right.  Right.  Sorry.  Who is this guy?  What are you planning to steal?  How dangerous is this?”

“Who doesn’t matter.  He’s rich and he’s an asshole.  That’s all that matters,” Yuna said with a snort as she crossed her arms.

“What I can tell you: anything valuable that isn’t nailed down, but the big thing is four soulite crystals.  Four, Akira.  Soulite.”  She said excitedly.

Soulite, near as I understood it, was the magical stuff that made adventurers possible.  It was ridiculously expensive.  So much so that I wasn’t even sure how one got it, let alone how I would.  But it seemed theft was one possibility.

“As for danger, he’s got plenty of guards outside, but none underground.  That’s why this works.  We get in the basement, steal the soulite and anything else, and get out,” Yune said with a nod.

I stared at her.  “And... ah... are you sure?  How well do you know this guy?  This place?”

She must have caught my skepticism, because she immediately frowned.  “Well enough to know that he doesn’t need it and won’t miss it.  He’s afraid of city thieves and the help robbing him.  Last thing he’ll expect is us coming in through the foundation.”

“And once we’re out, Taght can seal up the stone and he’ll be none the wiser.  And we’ll have soulite, Akira.  We can get our souls bound.  Become adventurers.  Start becoming someones in this city!” Sonna said eagerly.

I couldn’t help but feel the heist coming off this plan and knew it wasn’t going to go right.  “Have you run this by Axelenar?” I asked.

Sonna immediately snorted.  “He thinks he has to take care of me.  This will be proof he doesn’t.  We can get in and out and then everything will be just fine!”  She crossed her arms.  “So what do you say, Akira?  Are you in or out?”