Rise of the Nightmare Crestmaster

Aldrich stared at the letter for a while and blinked, he read it again just to make sure. It was written in a hurry, the letters were jumbled and the paper was wrinkled.

Honestly his first thought was that it was a prank. Yesterday Cole bragged that he advanced successfully and the next day his friends were kidnapped and he wants help?

Aldrich was not sure whether Cole would pull this kind of prank or not.

He could very well go there only to see that things were fine and Cole just wanted to hang out. But it was because of that uncertainty that he decided to go anyway.

If it was a prank then he could just smack Cole on the head for it. But if it wasn't…

Aldrich made haste but the streets of Voryhrm were always packed, crossing three districts to go to Lunsken was not so fast.

He had to pay the man some more coin to make the trip faster, and so they went through narrow alleyways and small arches. In the end they still took more than ten minutes which was already impressive.

Aldrich ran all the way around the pure fountain and turned to the Grinning Aatax but as far as his first look, things were peaceful as usual. Just as he was getting ready to beat the piss out of Cole he heard something.

"Here! Aldrich, quick! Here!"

Aldrich was about to open the inn's door paused his actions and looked to the left, there Cole was peeking out of the ally and motioned for him to come over. Apparently he wanted him to be quite about too.

He walked over, his eyebrows furrowed. He looked around carefully but there were few people around and they all seemed harmless and didn't pay him any attention.

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But he still watched out for anything unexpected. His demeanor changed like he wasn't in the safety of the city anymore.

He had a feeling that this was not going to be easy.

"What happened—" he tried to ask.

"Shshu, follow me first, I will tell you after we get out of here, follow me." Cole started running and Aldrich followed behind.

After going through some confusing lefts and turns Cole stopped and knocked five time on a wooden board in the wall of a building, half a minute later it opened like a small door.

A halfling popped out of the small door, she had a soot covered face and breathed in the fresh air like she hadn't seen the sun in weeks.

"How's it? You got eyes on them?" Cole asked urgently.

"We, do. But Tonton says they're going to change directions soon. We think they will go under the Strek bridge and to the Eve lodging street. But… we don't know where they'll go from there."

"I know." Cole said grimly, "I've been there before. Thanks, tell everyone to pull back and don't use the ways for the next week. I will take care of this."

The girl went back in.

"So, are you going to tell me what this is all about now or what?" Aldrich asked. He had to know some of the details if he was going to help.

"I'll tell you while we run." Cole said and sprinted away, Aldrich caught up with him in no time and he started talking.

"The entire Lunsken district is ruled by six syndicates, I don't know if you've heard of them. They have a presence in all of Voryhrm but mainly in Lunsken."

"In the past, was it three years ago? Or two? We had an unfortunate altercation with the Night Scales, one of them tried to take my friends and I killed him. All this time I thought it was over but, I don't know how, one of them recognized the two and took them again."

"I know the place where they're taking them. It's that hotel again. If they get them on a ship no one ever going to see them again."

"I… understand." Aldrich wanted to ask more but he knew that now was not the time. "We can't do anything where there are too many people… why don't we call the patrolling watchmen?"

"The watch won't do anything here, they're all in their pockets. You will only make things worse."

Aldrich decided to listen to Cole since this was his territory, he knew better. But if this was the case then things could turn very ugly.

"Look, there they are." Cole said, at last they were in an extremely crowded street and he couldn't make out their shapes properly but he could see three men and one woman holding hands with two halflings.

Aldrich and Cole no longer talked they used the crowd as a cover to follow them. The crowd was both good and bad for them.

They followed behind them for a while when Aldrich stopped in his tracks. He was not looking at the kidnappers anymore, he fixed his sight to the bend at the end of the street.

There, he saw a face he could never forget. No, even with the distance and the numerous faces in the crowed he could never mistake it.

The day of the attack on Wakefield he encountered two strangers that came to the village one was Keld Adash, who was pretending to be a flirtatious bodyguard.

Aldrich found him drinking and writing information in a notebook. He then passed out drunk and Aldrich stole the notebook from him.

In the notebook he found information regarding the state of the village from guard shifts and number to defenses and such.

Back then Aldrich wanted to tell the adults about it but he was afraid of confronting the grownups and decided to do it at a later time. What if he did tell them about it right there and then?

Perhaps things would have gone differently. Perhaps not.

Either way. Right now he was looking at Keld Adash himself, he was laughing out loud like he heard some joke and still had that smirk, as if he knew a secret that no one else was privy to.