Dreamer's Throne

By the time Garrett woke up the next morning, Ryn was already bringing breakfast in. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked over what she was arranging on the table, his expression lightening up when he saw the hard-boiled eggs.

“I’ll trade you my porridge for your egg,” he said, pushing his bowl toward Ryn.

“Are you sure? There’s a lot more porridge.”

“I’m completely sure.”

Taking the egg she offered, he peeled it and took a bite, happy to be eating something at least sort of fresh for breakfast. The two eggs disappeared quickly and his slice of bread followed soon after. Faced with a day of working on the account book, he took the opportunity to learn what Ryn had heard from her listening around the inn. With a sigh, the young woman rested her spoon on the edge of her bowl and shook her head.

“Not much, honestly. At least, nothing that sounded useful. I did some work in the kitchen, and all the cook did was complain about the quality of the food they’ve been getting. But fixing that will cost a lot of money. And even if we did have the money, Henrick is such a skinflint that he’d never let the cook spend it. Most of the other problems I overheard were the same way. There’s a gang moving in on the Ghoul’s Tooth territory and it’s looking like it will be a fight, but a lot of the members are worried because it’s really hard to get medicine, so if they get injured it will be a major problem.”

“And Henrick won’t spend money on medicine for them?”

“Exactly. It’s tough having a boss who’s so stingy.”

“Indeed. Thank you, this is good information. Please continue to listen for more tidbits.”

“Sure. How’s the account book looking?”

“Certainly interesting,” Garrett replied, a wry smile curling the edges of his lips. “I think I’ll be done tonight if I work late, and then I’ll present it to Henrick. Oh, I have one other favor to ask of you.”

“Sure, what do you need?”

“I need a sturdy chair that’s slim, along with wooden wheels. Here, let me draw what I’m talking about for you.”

Unused to using his left hand, the sketch Garrett produced was rough, but it was enough to give Ryn an idea of what he was looking for. Taking it from him, she held it out as it dried and then nodded.

“I can ask around and see if someone could make this, but it’ll cost money. Money we don’t have.”

“Would a silver be sufficient?”

“Are you kidding? Ten copper would be more than enough,” Ryn said, laughing. “But I don’t think I need to remind you that we don’t even have a single copper to our names.”

“I should be able to solve that,” Garrett replied with a troubled smile. “How fast could something like this be made?”

“Uh, that’s a good question. I have no idea, but I’ll ask. Oh, I promised I would help the cook with cleaning up the dishes from the guests! I have to go!”

Watching her bustle out of the room, Garrett’s smile slowly faded but the conflicted look in his eyes remained. Yet even that began to clear up, replaced by a calm certainty.

Survival first. We’ll worry about other questions later.

The rest of his day was spent finalizing the transfer of the records and putting the finishing touches on the reports he was creating. Burning nearly a whole candle once it got too dark to see, Garrett finally finished up and stacked all the papers together. Putting out the flame that lit the room, he closed his eyes and entered the Dream. Thanks to his Awakened status he could operate with only a few hours of sleep a night, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get tired. Checking to make sure the hallway and stairs were clear, Garrett activated Dreamer’s Cloak and stepped out of the door.

His goal was to begin exploring the rest of the inn, and hopefully plant some Dream Seeds along the way. Ideally, finding the place with the highest concentration of lesser nightmares would be best, so Garrett was thinking of putting the first of his flowers in the hallway upstairs. The inn had four floors, including the basement, and two of those floors were devoted to rooms for guests, while the main floor held the great room where food and drink were served, the kitchen, Henrick’s office, and the small storeroom where he and Ryn were staying.

Before he committed himself to placing the flower, he wanted to check the rest of the inn to see if there were better places. Initially, the flower would only be able to help him observe its surroundings, feeding him information about what happened in that place, but as it grew his hope was that it would begin to provide him with more than just intelligence. Walking to the door in the hallway he hadn’t yet opened, Garrett paused to make sure Dreamer’s Cloak was working properly and then opened the door.

Off to his right was the kitchen, a large room with a wide fireplace, while ahead of him was the great room where patrons came to get food and drink. Thankful that the thick haze shrouding the outside of the building wasn’t so thick inside, Garrett walked forward, his eyes constantly scanning for wraiths. He wasn’t sure if the Dreamer’s Cloak ability was actually working, as he could still see himself just fine, so he moved cautiously, checking each corner and working his way down the hallway carefully.

The end of the hall opened up into a large room filled with tables, about half of which were full. There were around thirty people in the room, all drinking, talking, and eating. A few of them were Awakened, including Gorn, who was sitting with a figure that looked like Obe at a table in the corner and a delicate-looking woman who was surrounded by half a dozen burly men. The scene in front of him made it even harder for him to understand how the Dream interacted with the real world, but his focus was elsewhere as he finally caught sight of his first real group of nightmares.

Strangely shaped creatures that looked like small, six-limbed monkeys scampered around the room, occasionally stopping to bite at the gray figures sitting at the tables. Their pitch-black bodies were spiky, almost as if they had fur, but as he watched them closer it became apparent that their forms were too mutable for that. They climbed and ran around the room, sometimes tangling with each other and sometimes lurking at a patron’s side. Barely daring to breathe, Garrett stepped backward into the hall.

They hadn’t seemed to notice him, which could only mean that they either lacked senses, or Dreamer’s Cloak was working. However, he hadn’t been spotted when he was in Gorn’s dream either, which added an extra variable to the situation. Glancing backward to make sure the way was clear, Garrett firmed up his courage and stepped out into the great room once again, slowly moving toward the nearest of the small creatures.

You have observed a Drudge Wraith, a lesser nightmare that likes to travel in packs and prey on those whose lives are filled with difficulty. You have gained 1 EXP.

EXP: 4/40

Despite getting close enough to reach out and touch the Drudge Wraith, the monster paid absolutely no attention to him, continuing to suck on the head of the patron at the table. As tempted as he was to reach out and hit the monster to see if he could knock it off, Garrett’s ever-cautious nature won out and he instead retreated. When he was a dozen steps away from the wraith, he dropped Dreamer’s Cloak and then activated it again as fast as he could. The response was anything but what he expected.

He’d thought he was either going to be ignored or attacked, but instead the Drudge Wraith jumped straight up into the air, so high that it splattered against the ceiling where it stuck, clinging like a blob of jelly while it writhed and roiled in panic. Slowly, the creature calmed down and appeared to be looking for Garrett. When it couldn’t find him, it returned to its normal form before dropping down to the table below to resume its meal.

I guess Dreamer’s Cloak is working. I wonder why the other nightmare couldn’t see me in Gorn’s dream though? Are the rules in the Dream different from the rules in a specific person’s dream? I’ll have to test that.

Since he’d earned an extra experience point, Garrett pumped two points into a Dream Seed and planted it just inside the hall, at the threshold to the great room. Without a person to tie itself to, the seed just attached itself to the wall, slowly absorbing the faint haze that drifted through the Dream.

That’s going to take a long time. Maybe I can speed it up.

Reaching out to touch the Dream Seed, Garrett began to push the energy from his soul spark into it, causing it to swell rapidly. It didn’t take much energy for the flower to break out of the shell and spread its roots along the wall, but Garrett wasn’t satisfied with that and continued to inject energy into it. Despite only having a fraction of Gorn’s physical ability, the strength of his soul spark was nearly twice as strong as Gorn’s, and as Garrett’s energy continued to pour into the seed its growth accelerated, forming a third flower to join the other two that bloomed.

With his soul spark nearly drained, Garrett was forced to retreat to the throne room before Dreamer’s Cloak disappeared, so he exited the Dream and went to sleep, intending to check up on the flower the following night. After breakfast it was time to present his report to Henrick, so he had Ryn go and fetch someone to help him into the office. Soon he was sitting in a chair by the desk facing Henrick, while Gorn and Obe lounged nearby. After his experience in Gorn’s dream, he couldn’t help but peer closely at the innkeeper’s face, looking for the inky black veins. Thankfully, Henrick’s complexion, though ruddy, remained normal, so Garrett felt comfortable getting down to business.

“As you know, over the last few days I’ve been helping you go through your books. I’ve copied them all over, using something called double-entry bookkeeping that makes it much easier to spot errors. This has proven insightful, since the way you were tracking your money was haphazard, to say the least. You’ll find the clean record here, in this new ledger.”

Pulling the book over, Henrick leaned back in his chair and began to flip through the new account book. The writing was a bit shaky, since Garrett had been forced to use his left hand, but overall everything was neat and tidy, showing a clear sum at the end of each page. Flipping to another page, he stopped and stared at a circled number up at the top of the page.

“What’s this?” he asked, his finger tapping on the circle.

“Money that’s missing from the account,” Garret said calmly. “If the number is circled, it’s the running total of missing funds. If there’s a square around the number, it’s a mistake in the math that was caught in time. You’ll see a number of those as you go through.”

Quickly flipping through the book, Henrick watched the number in the circle climbing, eventually growing into multiple gold. Muttering a low curse, he looked up at Garrett, his eyes hard.

“This is a lot of money to have just gone missing,” he growled.

“Indeed. If you flip to the latest entry, you’ll see that the total is twenty-two gold, the equivalent of six months of your annual revenue. While this has been sucked away over the last three years or so, that just means that your yearly revenue has been a sixth less than it should have been. It’s a significant amount of money.”

Throughout Garrett’s calm explanation, the temperature of the room appeared to be rising, and both Obe and Gorn stood up straighter, not daring to lounge against the walls like they had been a moment earlier. Henrick’s temper was flaring, and neither of them wanted to be on the receiving end of his growing wrath. To their relief, Garrett seemed to have an answer. Waving a stack of paper he’d carried in with him, he spoke softly.

“It’s not as if the money isn’t recoverable, though you’ll have to check to see since some of it might have been spent already.”

“You mean you know who took it?” Obe asked, his voice gruff.

“In part, yes,” Garret replied, shooting a glance at the heavily built man.

“In that case, spit it out,” Henrick said, a dangerous look in his eyes.

Smiling at the irate innkeeper, Garrett shook his head slightly.

“I would strongly recommend this be a confidential report. Would you give me a moment of your time? Alone?”

“You want to talk to me alone?” Henrick asked, sitting up and staring at Garrett, who simply nodded. “Fine. The rest of you, get out.”

“Hey, hold up,” Obe protested, “why do you have to talk to him alone? Are you trying to hide something? What are you trying to pull?”

The anger in Henrick’s eyes started to intensify, but before he could blow his top Gorn stepped in, grabbing Obe’s shoulder.

“Come on, the boss told us to leave, so we leave. Since when have we gotten to question him?”

Half-dragging Obe, Gorn pulled him to the door, Ryn trailing doubtfully behind. At the desk, Henrick gave Gorn a nod.

“Don’t go far, this won’t take long.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

When the door had closed behind him, Henrick stood up and grabbed a bottle of wine by the neck. Taking a swig as he walked around the desk, he sat down on its edge, towering over Garrett.

“You wanted my undivided attention. Well, you got it. But if it isn’t worth it, I’ll wring that scrawny neck of yours.”

Completely ignoring the threat, Garrett handed over two of the sheets he’d brought.

“There are three groups to discuss. The first are individuals whose math is atrocious and should never be allowed to touch the accounts again. Gorn and the cook are among them. In fact, I doubt the cook even knows how to add, considering he didn’t even bother trying. You’ll see their transactions on those two sheets. The cook should have returned twenty-six copper, and only returned fifteen. A relatively small mistake, all things considered. Gorn had close to thirty transactions, and almost twenty of them were off by at least a few copper, but it’s apparent that those were calculation mistakes, rather than malicious effort.

“Second, we have those who have actually embezzled gold, equaling twenty-two gold, forty-three silver, and eight copper. You’ll find their names, along with the total amounts and their locations in the account books, both old and new, on these sheets,” Garrett said, passing over four more papers. “You’ll have to forgive me, as I don’t know the individuals in question, so I couldn’t come up with a plan to retrieve it from them. I imagine you might be more capable in that regard.”

Taking the sheets, Henrick flipped through them, his face strangely impassive. He didn’t seem surprised by the names on the sheets and soon turned his attention back to Garrett, taking another swig from his bottle.

“Who’s the third group? You said there were three groups, right? Idiots, thieves, and who?”

Smiling slightly, Garrett held out the last piece of paper for Henrick to take, his gaze just as placid.

“You.”