Library of Rain

Debut

A week after Mr. Markson’s first book shipment left, Rain got the message she had been waiting for.

[Reader Hornet has attained the skill: Death Wisper.]

[Creating class around Death Wisper for reader Hornet.]

[Notice: Reader Hornet is immune to physical corruption.]

[Notice: Reader Hornet’s mental corruption has risen 63%. Current mental corruption 63%.]

Perfect.

With a high mental corruption, there was no way Hornet wasn’t insane. ‘Death Wisper’ also sounded deadly enough that Rain felt confident that the bandits were now having a bad day. 

The outcome wasn’t as certain as she would have liked. She would have preferred being added to the shipment in a slave cage to ensure everything played out right, but she had picked Mr. Markson because he never got involved in that filth. It would be suspicious if he suddenly tried to ship one slave. 

Leaning against a clean Mid Ring wall, Rain watched the sunset as she waited for more messages. When the sky went dark with no more notifications, Rain decided that none were incoming and pushed herself off the wall. 

Her plans with Mr. Markson were coming along nicely, but Rain needed far more sway in the city than one merchant to influence things in the right direction. It was time to dip her toes into the city's crime to go with the finger she had in its economics. 

Rain headed to a section of the Low Ring she usually avoided. As she walked down the steep ramp that led from the Mid Ring to the Low Ring, the colorful, neat signs and bronze filigreed walls of the Mid Ring gave way to the dirtier and colorless streets of the Low Ring. Unlike other sections of the Low Ring, though, this part had no children playing, even with an armed adult to keep watch. 

That wasn’t to say the streets were empty, though they were just filled with a different sort. Rain wrapped her face in her scarf. That bit of clothing did more than she thought when she first bought it - or, well, the scarf that her cloak ate at least - it kept the ash out during eruptions, the warmth in, and her face hidden. Rain just wished it could hide the rest of her as she avoided the third person who thought a small girl on her own might make a good payday. 

Eventually, she found the place she was looking for, a rundown housing building. Rain counted the windows seven floors up; there was a light. Her target was home. 

It was a shared living space, so it shouldn't be too hard to get in, but Rain wanted to make more of an entrance than just knocking on his door. Looking at the building, Rain sighed. She could use the window; it just wouldn’t look as cool as she wanted. If she could sneak in unnoticed and be there when he turned around, that would be the best; then she could say something cool and make a dramatic escape like in the plays she had been watching most nights. 

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Rain checked that her hair was hidden in her scarf and entered the building's front door. One of the door's hinges was broken, making it harder to open than she expected. The inside of the building was dimly lit and had a funny smell. Once her eyes finally adjusted, she saw the dirty stone walls with a pair of doors on opposite sides of a rickety pine staircase. Some of those steps looked rotten.

Rain checked the connection to the coin she had hidden back in the Mid Ring. She got ready to use it if she fell through the stairs. Rain walked up the steps, ready for something to go wrong. The only sounds were the creaking steps and someone coughing in one of the suites. 

On the seventh floor, Rain entered the dark suite on the left. The smell of alcohol and rot was strong in the air. In the corner, a blond man with sunken cheeks and wearing grubby gray clothes lay on the floor. Rain couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. Taking a detour from her business, she crept over to the man to check if he was alright. She placed her hand close to his nose and mouth and felt no breath. Letting her worry beat her caution, Rain felt his neck for a pulse. It was cold. The man had been dead for a while. 

Looking around the room, all Rain saw was a rundown bed and broken furniture. There was no sign of others living here. No friends, no family, no one who would care or notice that the man was gone. Rain wished she could do something for the man to show someone remembered him. Taking a coin out of her pocket, she wrapped his hand around it. Rain found it sad that she could feel reality indent where the coin was due to the value people placed in it, yet when she looked at the man, she could feel nothing. Rain didn’t know how to feel about that. 

With nothing more she could do for the man, Rain walked to the window. The moons' silver light filtered through the clouds, casting pale lances into the city. Rain took a deep breath and let it out. She was going to have fun tonight, and nothing would stop her.

Looking down, Rain changed her cloak into the outfit she had put together in the past few days: tight black pants and a sleeveless shirt with a shoulder cape over the left shoulder and white bandages covering her left arm. She let her hair free of the scarf she had been using to cover herself and replaced it with an awesome-looking eyepatch. Rain removed the belt she had bought and wrapped it around her right thigh to complete the look. 

She still wasn’t sure what the belt was supposed to do, or why so many black classers in the plays wore tight clothes like this, but they looked cool, so Rain was ok with it. The shoulder cape originally came from a young lord in her favorite play. He and the evil black classer had eventually fallen in love and married in the end. Rain designed her look to be a mixture of the lovers' costumes.  

Getting into character, Rain slipped through the window and grabbed a ridge in the stone to hold herself up. Heights became far less scary when you could teleport yourself to safety if you fell. 

Using the ridge as a handhold, Rain scaled sideways towards the lit window. Holding herself up with only her hands was way more tiring than expected.

Moving faster to get to the window before her arms gave out, Rain slipped into the lit room with a relieved sigh. Unlike the rest of this building, this room was clean and well-kept. The furniture was still old, and the blankets on the bed were thin, but they looked cared for. What was more important was the two small sleeping figures in the bed and the young man standing between Rain and the bed, pointing a dagger at her.

Rain was impressed with how fast the red-headed man had moved from where he had been sitting at a desk to between Rain and the bed. The man, who couldn't be older than eighteen or nineteen, perfectly matched Rain's description with his sharp nose and piercing eyes. 

“Hello, Mr. Less.” Rain whispered so as not to wake up the sleeping kids. 

The man, full name Worthless - which pretty much summed up how his family had treated him - didn’t waver in his protective stance over the kids behind him. 

“Why are you here?” 

He also spoke in a whisper. 

Rain walked over to look at what he was reading on the desk. The papers there had crude drawings of everyday things with their names written in overly simple letters to the side. Under the neat, simple labels, the words were repeated in rough beginner handwriting.

“Learning to read.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Why are you here!”

“To offer you a way to get those two a better life.”

“I'm not selling them or letting you take them.”

“No, they will have a better life because I can offer you the power to build them one.”

Rain wasn’t sure if she was playing her part well enough. The dialogue seemed ok, but she was just standing there. She needed to figure out how to do a cool pose or walk before her image as a mysterious woman in black was ruined.

With no better ideas, Rain decided that sitting on the desk would have to do. Placing her hands on the desk behind her, Rain tried to boost herself up onto it. She misjudged its height. Glad her hair covered her burning ears, Rain decided that using the chair as a stepping stool was a better way up. 

“The terms are simple. I’ll give you the power to take over the Ash Grifters like you’ve been aiming for. I’ll even help you take down the Black Stones and the Bloody Shovels afterward. In exchange, you’ll help me with tasks from time to time.”

“What are you talking about? I’m Ark’s loyal man!”

“We both know that you’re not.”

The knuckles on Less’s hand turned white at Rain’s comment. He took a step towards Rain, knife ready.

“I’ll show you how loyal I…”

“I guess I need to show you what I can do.” Rain cut him off, Right leg dangling off the side of the desk while she rested her chin on her left knee. 

Rain opened the container deep inside herself, where she kept all the feelings she wasn’t ready to deal with; letting out a single drop of twisted black emotion, she pushed it into her aura. The shadows exploded out from under her, extinguishing all light.