WeSum, aside from the rich areas tight around the university, was now considered the poorest part of the city. It also happened to be among the most diverse, populated with only forty percent humans. With Elves, Orcs, Wilders, Goblins, and other mammalian sentients making up the remaining portion of the city, it was considered the “melting pot” district. 

There used to be civilian checkpoints at all the walls leaving this part of the city, so I’d been told, back before the Empire really got going, before the University ‘claimed’ the nicer areas nearest CenSum for itself.

The even and neat cobblestones that existed elsewhere in the city were missing here, as Dwarven contracts for street repair were funded for WeSum last in the fiscal year, because locals ‘would tear them up anyway’. Because the streets were bad, trade goods couldn’t come in by wagon as easily, which meant things were a little more expensive, to pay for the labor of delivery. Those that didn’t work in this district were doing manual labor on wages barely sufficient to pay for the food they unloaded elsewhere for richer clientele for lower prices, then ended the day traveling extra hours to return home. 

Twenty years ago after the Empress’s amnesty, the local leaders in WeSum tried to hire a tunneling Kobold clan to maintain and manage the streets and undercity, but Dwarven trade guilds quickly pushed to make it illegal for those non-guilded to ruin historic masonry. 

I’d memorized the address as soon as Justin had shown it to me, of course. The street was in a poor neighborhood, with the crystal towers of the University visible above the low buildings in much need of repair. I didn’t blame the occasional more hungry eyes in the shadow looking at me, not unlike the rats had in the sewer, sizing me up for scraps. It was less odious than stealing from their neighbor. 

I didn’t blame these people, but I wasn’t afraid to let the steel of my shin guards and the hilts of my daggers show a little either. I didn’t want to be bothered as I scouted. I had packed a bag and changed into my clean adventuring gear with a heavy cloak. Hauling the bag over my shoulder, I looked like a servitor Kobold on any of a thousand lesser tasks, or so I’d planned. 

The alleyway was described as “between the Finer Things tobacco shop and the blood bank”. It was less an alley than a crawlspace between the buildings, with space enough that I could touch both buildings with my arms outstretched. 

I didn’t dare go into the alley, it screamed danger even without the obvious bait. Instead, I walked past, seeking a way up. 

I finally found a slumping wall of large blocks of stone, mortar long turned to dust and still upright only by inertia and the building adjacent. I could tell I wasn’t the only one to use this pathway up, and that Kobolds hadn’t made the path. Clambering along paths made for other species was something I was well adapted to. 

Some of the roofs were sloped and covered in cracked tiles, others were flat and with rims and drain holes. I avoided any well lived areas, sticking to the traveled paths. I took a circuitous route to the trap, not sure if it would be a paid squad or the mages themselves who would be checking their work.

No one on the roof looked any more out of place than I did. My Discern warned me that, while there was a couple of Humans who looked willing to jump me if I gave a sign of weakness, but I would be more or less unaccosted if I kept my head low. 

I set up on the roof of the blood bank, which was only a three story building. Across the alley, Finer Things was housed in a large flat of apartments five stories tall. While I could probably find a way up there, I couldn’t get back down in any sort of time to help Justin. 

Assuming I wasn’t already late. It would have been perfectly reasonable for the kid to have made it from CenSum to WeSum on his own in the time it took for me to go north to my apartment, change and come back. 

We’d left the party at foredusk. It was night proper now, sixteen hours after dawn, but just before the glow lights turned on. 

I didn’t see signs of a recent struggle in the alley. No onlookers, no scavengers, no blood.

As it turned out, I had only just barely made it in time. 

Justin wandered down the same street I’d been not ten minutes earlier. His dark and rich robes, rented in my name, were attracting all sorts of attention, though he seemed barely to notice. He paused when he saw the name of the tobacco shop, frowned at the blood bank’s sign, a single red drop set in the center of a cauldron, and started down the alley immediately. I was a shadow among many above, and he didn’t look up once. He weaved down the alley past piles of trash. The backs of the buildings formed an alcove that turned into a three way alley as they met a third building. There was some garbage and some carts in disrepair stacked with moldering fabric in the alleyway. 

On the wall of the third building, where a fourth alley path would have been, there were supposedly some removable bricks, according to the note. This deep into the alley, it was deep shadow, and from my vantage point above the alley entrance Justin had used, I couldn’t see well. 

Justin appeared to be moving something. It looked like he disappeared up to the elbows into the wall, before stopping suddenly. He seemed to shudder and yelp. He grunted and tried to jump. 

He was stuck. Whether by mechanical or magical means, I couldn’t tell. But he was trapped. I sighed and pulled my two daggers, having sincerely wished for Justin’s ego and wellbeing that I’d been wrong. 

The question was, who was going to retrieve him, and how long would it be? I suspected it would be quick. The mages wouldn’t want to have their prey taken from them. Would they hire toughs, or come themselves? A physical trap like this was ready-made to disable the agile, spellcasting Justin, so either would suffice. 

I could hear the echos of soft sobbing from below, a snared animal, waiting for their killer. 

I remembered being fifteen, my five parents debating running further into the forests and being killed by the wildlife, or surrendering to the soldiers sweeping the area. I was malnourished, afraid, and desperately trying to hold onto all the things my brood parents had given me to protect. All despair, no hope.

It made me sick, leaving Justin there, but I didn’t move, even as I saw the three robed figures come too casually wander down the street from the direction of the university. 

The three went through the same alleyway as Justin, one of them saying something muffled to the other two before waiting about halfway down the alley. The one taking the lead casually cast a light spell on, the globe of light hovering over their shoulder. 

Justin had more or less managed to stifle his sobbing by the time the figure in front had gotten a few feet behind him. 

“So you must be the mysterious Justin Stormhallow!” The leader said with a flourish, as I dropped onto their lookout in a blur of golden light. 

Hadassah

Good narra1tive design doesn't make it so that the protagonist is always right. Obviously conflict tends to get boring if the story is entirely predictable.

But I wanted also to talk about the realistic fact that if any one of us fell into a game world we were intimately familiar with, like, say, Mario, we'd probably get tired of listening to the demands of a condescending Goomba, no matter how much sense they spoke. I don't really blame Justin for breaking off from Scaleen narratively. Another version of this story had them go their separate ways for some time. But because our poor portal child has not quite experienced true failure, its easy to forget there is no save state.