First Seed

First Seed

Rain stared down at Mr. Bartel and struggled to stay in character. She had been right to test him before offering him a deal. If she had simply offered Mr. Bartel a bad deal and let him destroy himself, she would have been hurting a good man. Also, she hadn’t had this much fun acting in a while.

Her usual black classer act was fun, but she wanted to play so many other roles. Heroines, farmers, ladies, and soldiers all had fun things she could do. And to top it off, right now, she had the best stage anyone could ask for.

Rain made a predetermined hand signal behind her back, and Ms. River lowered the pressure in the room. Rain wasn’t sure exactly how Ms. River did most of what she did in this dream, but allowing Mr. Bartel to think normally without realizing he was asleep was incredible. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t seem to realize that the walls were shifting around him to better fit the story.

“Tell me what is coming that you are so afraid of.” Rain said in her most imperious voice.

“I don’t know! All I know is that a few weeks ago, a masked man approached me and offered me a position on a paradise island if I helped him eliminate a rival noble faction. I want nothing to do with this, but the feeling I got from this man was that he would kill me on the spot if I refused. I tried sounding out the other guard commanders, but all of them are either scum who replaced noble born commanders after they all left, or they refused to talk about it. The good commanders who I’ve known for years all seem stressed. Bird was found dead a day after the mysterious man approached me, and I know for a fact that Bronze’s family is missing.”

Rain was taken aback by the flood of words as the collected guard commander let his mask fall, exposing the fear behind.

“If the commanders are corrupt or coerced, then why haven’t you approached the Arch-lord and warned him?”

“Because he might be behind this! I don’t know who the mysterious man works for and if I approach the wrong person I’ll be killed! The only thing I can do is wait for the day when we’re all told who we're going to attack; then, I’ll do my best not to die and to save as many good people as I can. What else can a guard commander do in the face of lords with their wealth and classers?”

Rain remembered the conversation she and Ariana overheard at the gation. The lord had been recruiting other lords to take down the Arch-lord. He’d promised them that the city guards would help. It seemed Rain had found a chance to disrupt that scheme. The question was, should she?

“Very well. I’ll offer you a class to help you survive the coming eruption, but there will be some conditions.”

Rain explained corruption to the man and then offered him a deal. The terms were simple: Rain would give him a book, and he would do nothing to harm Rain or her loved ones. She also added in a bit about telling Ady what was going on and making sure her father was taken care of in case things went poorly. Bartel seemed all too happy to agree to everything Rain wanted.

The murky atmosphere of the library shattered Rain's desire to play and returned her to the task at hand. Marching to her hoard room, Rain retrieved her earring and summoned Ms. White.

“What can I help you with today?”

“I need a book that will help someone get a class that will make them very hard to kill.”

“Follow me.”

Rain was a little worried when Ms. White didn’t mention Rain’s promise to get her a body, but she didn’t have time to go into that right now. Rain simply followed Ms. White to where she pointed at a book. Like most things in the library, the book was odd. It almost looked like it was made of mist until it fuzzed and became a normal leatherbound book. Moments later, it had returned to being made of mist.

“Thank you, Ms. White.” Rain said as she lifted the book from the shelf and tucked it under her arm.

Without even a goodbye, Ms. White faded back into Rain’s shadow, and the familiar feeling of filth flooding her very being washed over Rain.

[WARNING: Physical corruption has risen 2%. Current Physical corruption 9%.]

Rain grimaced at the cost. Oh well, it was too late for that now.

She headed to the mirror to check for any obvious changes to her appearance. It only took her a moment to see that there were. The bumps around her left eye had grown into a ring of sharp bone thorns, and the whites of that eye had darkened to black. It looked awesome and gave her face a lopsided look with one white eye and one black. Rain immediately started posing and thinking of cool lines she could use.

“The darkness in my eye can spot all evil!”

That sounded cool, right?