Chapter 73: Lessons
Garran’s friend had proven his deep knowledge of the market by quickly finding an old, two-room flat in a building with a weekly rent of five Caligian crowns. The price was rather steep, and it would’ve been seven crowns if not for the sudden interruption of Marcus, who suddenly decided it was high time he was done with brooding and instead went at the landowner with the stubbornness of a petty, bargaining man.
And so, they had managed to seal the deal.
Celme had been sighing at the conversation all along. Selin kept to herself as usual and peered sheepishly into the room she would be sleeping in for the foreseeable future. That had been the one thing the Captain made very clear before they arrived at the capital. Valens was to keep an eye on her and continue with her treatment.
Confused he might be about the certain correlations between the currency, economy, and his new monthly pay in his new job, Valens felt a gust of relief when he handed five gleaming notes to the landowner for the week’s rent. He then gazed across the old, dusty, a touch rusty, but not entirely unlivable, flat whose keys were now clasped in the palm of his hand.
He didn’t tell anyone anything about it, but the moment he locked the door after the landowner was the moment it truly dawned on him the implications of this decision. Until now, he had been a stray soul wandering about this place or that, tailing the Undead, the Guildsmen, the Templars, but no more. Old or not, he had his own place now, which called for a celebration.
Pity that Celme and Marcus had Guild business to be about, and Garran told him he would be attending a gathering in the afternoon to announce his return. Valens wasn’t sure if he could ever make peace with the fact that the mighty Templar who hacked, stabbed, and crushed shadows just weeks prior was now wearing a fancy suit and a hat that handsomely fit his head.
Speaking of suits, he was in desperate need of one. That, and new unders, and pants, and new of anything—as a man who arrived in another world without an ounce of preparation would need after dealing with the initial complications.
Two Rifts. One normal and the other Cursed. Two types of people. One Guild, and the other the Church. Two different worlds. The civilized society of Haven’s Reach, and the dreary stretches of the Broken Lands trying to spill into this part of the equation.This world is mad.
Which begged the question he’d been dying to ask since he set foot in Brackley and saw the people there working in their normal daily lives.
How? How did any of this make sense? Who in their right mind could live a life knowing that every day there were monsters worming their way across the Rifts, creatures of terrifying powers scheming in the depths of a mountain, or being schemed at by people who seemed to have a bone to pick with all of humanity?
He could still remember the things that Necromancer told him. Lies, the man had hissed at him in his final moments. A sick mind’s plot, he had insisted even in the face of his death.
Looking at Belgrave and its people now, Valens felt that he wasn’t even close to beginning to understand this world.