SILVERYMOON
Chapter One
This story is a continuation of a story in the Succubus Series called Prisoners (chapter 24 from that series). It would help if you read that story but it might not be necessary.
Yes, there will be sexual situations and discussion about sex. There will also be a small amount of violence. You will be warned when those sections show up so you can scroll past it if you don't want to read that type of story.
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Alexis had a key to get in the business door and one for the house door on the second floor. However, the business door had had extra precautions taken. There were bolts in the floor and the ceiling, along with a piece of wood barring the door. They weren't open yet and had nothing to sell. So she hurried up the stairs, unlocked the door, and went inside.
This floor had three rooms: the living room, kitchen, and dining room all open to each other thanks to beams. Upstairs were two bedrooms and a single bathroom. There was another bathroom on the ground floor, but it was tiny, with only a toilet and sink.
She didn't see anyone, so she went downstairs to their business and saw Kate right away. They had all the lumber and everything they were going to need. They just needed to get the work done.
Alexis was noticed straight away. "MEOW!"Patches spotted her and came running. They had lived here for a month, and over that month, Patches had learned how not to burn his best friend, so he jumped into her arms.
"PATCHES! You're such a good kitty!" Alexis nuzzled him and kissed his burning face. He wasn't hot even if literally all of him was on fire right down to his whiskers. He weighed nearly nothing since he was all fire.
Kate walked over to join her. "He really does love you."
"I love him too. If only I could take him to school with me, it would be perfect." On Alexis's first day, they banished Patches from the building and school grounds. The fiery cat had not taken that well, but he was getting better.
"Speaking of school…" Kate wanted to know if anything had changed.
Alexis rolled her eyes. "Nothing has changed. I'm still smarter than all of my teachers. It's amazing just how… I don't want to say backward this place is, but it is. Math is limited to no higher than Algebra, though they don't call it that. Quantum Mechanics? Forget that. Even Physics is limited. What they know about the human body is almost worse. If not for Clerics and their magic, no one would get helped."
"I'm sorry, Alexis. We really didn't plan to be here." Kate spread her arms wide. "How could we have expected this?"
"It's all right, I'm late because I stopped somewhere. Is Dad home?" She didn't want to say this twice if she didn't have to.
Kate shook her head. "Castle's out searching for our next date location."
"So you and Dad are getting better?" She liked Kate. Well, liked her more now than she used to. She had been really helpful getting them here. Hell, without her, they might not've made it at all.
"Yes, I'm different. I couldn't let myself feel anything for Castle. It wasn't going to work, but all that's changed now." Kate was doing her very best to let Castle reach her heart, to let herself fall in love with him.
They had learned that this place had a way of spying on people. It was called Scrying. It was a spell, and if you had a name, you could spy on them. Even watch what they were doing and possibly hear what they were saying. And since the three of them were new, someone might be watching them. So, they banned the words Vampire, Demon, Incubus, and Succubus from being used. EVER!
"Great. Knowing Dad, he could be anywhere. I guess I'll say this twice. I've learned that there's a magical instrument for sale, 16,000 in gold. What it does, is that you play it and maybe sing for, oh, thirty minutes, and you get a hundred people working for three days in the space of thirty minutes.
"Sadly, you can't rent it; you have to buy it. BUT, we can use it to fix this place from the roof, all the way down here. Use it to build what we want down here instead of doing the work ourselves," Alexis explained and then kissed Patches again.
"SOLD!" Kate was all for that. It meant spending gold, and they weren't making any yet, so they needed to be careful, but she was all for it.
"There's more. Remember that thing we sold for 208,000 in gold? We have other things we maybe need to consider selling. We should keep the Eyes of the Eagle and Robe of Useful Items. Though, the Glove of Storing and Gloves of Arrow Snaring can go.
"BUT, I have one more thing, and I learned this one at school. People have been disappearing at night in the City of Silverymoon. Some vanish entirely, leaving behind whispered rumors of fiends or other evil creatures having spirited them away. Others return strangely altered, with their memories of being kidnapped wiped clean and their minds strangely dulled – and always with remarkable haircuts.
"You know Dad loves a good mystery, but I think that if we solve this one, we could get on the good side of the people in this City, including the Lady. Maybe solve one of our problems," Alexis suggested.
"He does, and that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I am a Homicide Detective, so maybe I finally have a job." Kate was bored. She'd been taking these two with her, and she didn't like that.
"There's more." Patches started getting fussy, so Alexis put him down and watched him run around the two of them, perfectly happy. "Dad and I have built-in abilities. Around here, they're called Spell-Like abilities. Real magical spells. Not David Copperfield illusions, but real magic.
"And how we do this is a lot like what someone does that they call Sorcerer. Or for you and me, Sorceress. There's also something called Warlock and Witch and something called Favored Soul that's a Sorcerer Cleric. I discount the Favored Soul for obvious reasons. But we could look into being trained in being a Sorcerer, Witch, or Warlock unless you want to learn how to use a sword. A King Arthur kind of sword," Alexis said.
"But I'm not you." Kate was a Vampire, not a Demon.
"No, but you can do things. You might like being a Rogue that's a Thief, pretty much. And before you say anything, there's a Good Thief. It's called a Slayer of Domiel. It's a Lawful Good Assassin that's partly a thief. The things you can do would work well."
Then Alexis beat her to it, and she stopped her from complaining about being a thief, or worse, an assassin. "You wouldn't be breaking any laws. If anything, you're enforcing them."
"All right, what's the catch?" Kate just knew there had to be one.
Alexis broke it to her. "The catch is that we have to pay to be trained, and that's if we can find someone willing to train us."
"Money." That was their primary problem. Even allowing for what they'd been spending this last month, they still had a decent amount. But they weren't rich. With money going out and none coming in, they needed to solve that. "We need to open this store and start selling things." Except Kate didn't know what.
"And that leads me to the last thing you and I need to discuss. We bought a store, and after we get that instrument to fix this place, we need something to sell. Dad's planning on books that he either buys from somewhere or writes himself. Short stories or complete books like he used to.
"I was thinking Christmas for you and me," Alexis said. "We make Christmas decorations. Write Christmas stories. Everything old is new again."
"Christmas? Does this place even celebrate Christmas?" Kate would ask just how they would make these decorations next.
Alexis screwed up her face since that was the bad part. "No. But we can teach them." Alexis brightened at that prospect. She loved Christmas, and she would teach these people about it. "We'll have to leave out all the Son of God stuff since this place doesn't have that God. Not the God we call God. This place has more Gods like Zeus, Apollo, and Athena. And believe it or not, they believe in those in addition to an enormous list of others."
"To tell the truth, that isn't all that surprising. If you can think of a way for us to make them, I'll listen." Kate wanted money coming in and not just going out. Mostly, she was going to leave it to Alexis.
"How are you at blowing glass?" Alexis crossed her fingers but then saw Kate shake her head. "Sounds like more classes. We need to talk to Dad about what he has planned. We put up a wall across the back, make everything back here," Alexis pointed, "and sell it there."
"I could maybe write up Christmas songs. I messed around with a guitar a little, and I could write a few." Kate shrugged. "But over and over again to sell more than one?" That was the pain Kate saw for both of them.
"Honestly, I'm hoping Dad has an answer to that. But I have to leave. Patches has another class today so he doesn't burn this place to the ground."
"MEOW!"
"I was not insulting you, just explaining why we have a class. Come on, UP!" Alexis patted her chest, caught Patches, and walked toward the stairs. "Tell Dad all that when he gets back."
Kate was hoping she remembered it all.
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"Please don't be mad," Rick asked Kate after he came home, and Kate told him everything that Alexis had told her.
"It sounds like I should already be. What have you done now?" Kate got ready to blow up at him and come down on his ass. Well, head, really. She might not have his strength, but as a Vampire she had above normal strength.
Rick proceeded to tell her what he'd done. "I hired someone to make typeset letters and symbols for a printing press. I can't make them myself, but I know how to make the printing press. I only need the typeset, some ink, and paper. That way when I write something, I can make several copies and make more money."
"Do I want to know what that cost us?" Then Kate sighed and raised a hand to stop him. "No, don't tell me. Using Alexis's idea about Christmas, I offered to write some Christmas songs and sell them. Your printing press just might come in handy.
"So are you in on this mystery about missing people and the ones that come back changed? It might earn us some gold, and we need money." He hadn't said anything about that yet.
"Of course. Solve a mystery in our new hometown? How can I say no? We can start tomorrow after we talk with Alexis. Speaking of which, where is she?" He hadn't seen her since he got home.
"Class with Patches so he doesn't burn us down. You know, I think she's starting to understand his meows." Kate wasn't sure, but it certainly looked like it.
"Well, say this Sorceress works out for her. She'll already have a familiar in Patches. So I suppose it makes sense. What are you thinking? Are you ready to be an Assassin?" Rick teased her.
"Not when you say it like that, no. But yes, I'm thinking about it. I don't want to be a Witch and get burned at the stake. I'm not sure I qualify to be a Sorceress. What about you?" Granted, he hadn't had much time to think about it. But she knew him. He already had ideas.
"I don't know anything about it, but I like the sound of being a Warlock. I just need to figure out if I qualify and what that really is. Or I may have to be a Sorcerer. That or figure out if I can use a foil. Alexis and I did a lot of fencing practice in the loft. So I suppose I need information. Plus, what it will cost us for training. All the more reason to solve this mystery. Maybe it would get us another one from someone." He wanted to make gold almost as much as Kate did.
"Then I guess we start in the morning. It'll be good to be doing something useful. I've been going mad doing nothing all day except searching our new city so I can get around. There are an awful lot of different races in this place." She didn't even know what some of them were.
"Real Elves and Dwarves, and yes, there was one that I didn't know what he was. It's going to take some work." He was used to humans, and this place didn't have that many of those.
"Have you noticed that English is almost a match for what they call Common? I can speak Russian, but nothing else. Do we take classes for those too? Spend more money?" Kate questioned him.
"Let's solve this mystery first, see if we get paid and how much. Then go find out what the cost is for training and learning languages.
"Should we sell those gloves?" Rick asked. "It sounds like we might not need them."
"I don't think we have a choice. We need more gold. After that, we can talk," Kate offered. "By the way, where's our next date? Keep in mind that I hate surprises."
Rick grumbled about that. He loved surprises, both getting them and giving them. "I found a theater that shows live plays. Too bad Mother isn't here. She would jump at the chance."
"Neither is my dad, Lanie, or the guys. They don't even know where we came from, so how do we go back? And how did they get us here in the first place? Who brought us here?" Kate crossed her arms across her chest; she was still angry about that.
Rick walked up to her and put his arms around her. Kate realized that she really needed his touch. She was allowing herself to love him and being embraced felt pretty good.
"Mystery first, then we can make choices," Kate said and tried to melt into his arms. It did feel pretty damn good. Maybe for them being a couple, being here was just what they needed.
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The three of them started by interviewing the surviving people and they soon learned that their hair was indeed very unique. Very vibrant colors.
Jooge Nopsmoth was well regarded both as a good father and an expert barber. But he was known to be bad with money and was always buying expensive new hair cutting equipment and pricey gifts for his daughter, Mops. He had taken out small loans from his neighbors more than once though these were always repaid. His neighbors also knew that Jooge had recently taken to carving and selling abstract metal sculptures shaped like locks of hair.
Neighbors told them that the barber purchased a flail snail from traveling wizards some six months ago, hoping to use it to create unique hair dyes and pigments. Flail snails were rare and valuable, and the people of Silverymoon were impressed. For a brief time after that, some mysterious, short, cloaked figures were seen around the barbershop. Though many of his friends feared that these strangers might be planning a robbery, Jooge seemed unconcerned. In any case, the cloaked figures had not been seen in months.
However, one of his neighbors mentioned how Jooge had one of his own teeth replaced with an iron tooth sometime within the last six months. Why Jooge didn't use a gold or porcelain replacement tooth, the neighbor didn't know.
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The next day they learned that Jooge took out a loan of 10 thousand gold pieces from some criminals to buy the flail snail. Further research revealed that Jooge borrowed the money from darkling moneylenders – the cloaked figures seen by his friends and neighbors.
It took another day to arrange a meeting with one of those moneylenders. They said that after several unsuccessful attempts to get their money back from Jooge, they sold his debt to a mysterious, rich, human woman. The woman never gave her name; the darklings knew only that she was beautiful (by human standards) except for the false teeth she wore, all of which were crafted of iron.
The three of them spent the night talking and brainstorming about Jooge's iron tooth and the woman's iron teeth. "Who uses iron even here?" Kate didn't understand.
They decided to place a stake-out of his shop and just watch for now. From the outside, Jooge's shop and house made up a modest, well-kept building whose only remarkable feature was the flail snail he kept in his garden.
This small backyard garden contained geraniums in bloom, assorted plants and herbs, and Jooge's flail snail. The snail turned out to be a lot larger than they expected. It was no ordinary snail. It had five tentacles that were in constant motion. It had several distinct colors on its shell, it moved very slowly like an average snail did, and it ate what was in the small garden.
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The next day it was up to Alexis to talk to Mops, his daughter, to see if she could make friends with her.
Meanwhile, Rick and Kate studied his sign out front.
Shave: 5 copper pieces
Simple haircut: 2 silver pieces
Fancy haircut: 3 to 5 silver pieces
Coloring: 5 silver pieces (in addition to haircut cost)
Extract tooth: 2 silver pieces
Root canal: 1 gold piece
Leeching (blood extraction): 1 gold piece
Battlefield surgery: 5 gold pieces
Rick came up with an idea. "What do you think? We could pretend we're customers and look the inside of his business over."
"What if his customers are drugged somehow? Are you immune to poisons? Is Alexis? I don't know if I am or not. I get that we need inside but let's wait until after Alexis comes home and tells us what she's learned," Kate proposed instead.
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Kate was all over Alexis the minute she stepped through the door. "What did you learn?"
"Mops — strange name, but that's her name — is saddened by the mysterious changes in her father, yet unfortunately for us, is unaware of all the evil goings-on in the shop. She spends most of the day alone in her room or playing in the garden. Her only friend is a 't ask me what boggle is, even I don't know, and that's after she told me.
"Some days he's happy and doing his job. But nights when he's open, he's different. Mean and a lot less kind to her. He cuts hair upfront; storage is in the back, and hers and her dad's rooms are upstairs. She does know that there's a trap door in the storage room. She saw it used once. He keeps leeches down there as part of his business. He bleeds people." Alexis made a face of disgust at that idea.
"Mops has also seen this little dark blue fellow with yellow eyes. He was the one that used the trap door in the floor. Oh, and that snail. If you sing to it, it becomes tame enough to extract some of the color from it. Her dad uses it to change hair color for customers. That's it, that's all she knows.
"To her, her dad's really nice, except at night which is why she stays in her room."
Rick and Kate looked at each other. "Sounds like we need inside," Rick commented.
"Yes, but why is her dad mean at night? One of us needs to be a customer," Kate decided. "If I stare at him long enough, I can charm him."
"Dad and I can do that with our abilities. Spells, if you like. I can even dominate him, get him to do what I want. I think I need a haircut." Alexis was offering to do it.
Kate shook her head. "No, Alexis." It was too dangerous for her.
"I can handle him. If I have to, I can kiss him again and again." Alexis wasn't afraid. She was a Succubus, and she had strength. "We might want to go shopping for weapons tonight, though. Our Drow weapons turned to dust on us."
"That might not be such a bad idea," Rick agreed. "But I'm giving you just 30 seconds or less before I come charging in."
"We both will." One of the things Kate was learning was that she really liked Alexis. She was smart, mostly fearless, and pretty. "What do we do about Patches? He's going to want to go where you go."
That had Alexis looking down at him. He seemed content to have her home. He was just sitting there swinging his tail back and forth while watching her.
"I guess he comes with me. If I try locking him up, he might burn the place down because he's pissed at me." Alexis patted her leg and watched Patches leap up into her lap and he let her pet him.
"Tomorrow night then. Right after the sun goes down," Kate said. "First, we go shopping for weapons. Something small and easily hidden, and not too expensive. Are you listening, Castle?" Kate just knew he would want the most expensive thing they had.
"I'm listening. Nothing overly expensive." Except Rick was hoping for a difference between what he thought was overly expensive, and what Kate thought was overly expensive.
"Once we finish this, we can use that Lyre of Building we bought for 16,000 gold. It better be worth it. That was expensive." Kate hadn't liked how it had taken a large chunk of money to purchase it, and they still didn't have any money coming in. If anything, more and more was going out.
Charm, Domination, Ethereal Jaunt, Summon a Demon.
Gloves of Arrow Snaring, Robe of Useful Items, Glove of Storing, Eyes of the Eagle
One large gem that was red in color. It was just that it didn't look like a ruby to any of them. Looking into it they swore they saw something on fire inside it. (4,550 gold pieces)
One was wearing a silver ring that appeared tarnished in the light, but when viewed in the shadow, it gleamed as if highly polished. (Ring of Drow Blood, 4,800 gold pieces)
An iron skullcap was wrought to appear as if it were covered in eyes. (5,500 gold pieces)
(246 gold pieces in total and another 549 silver pieces)
So after selling what they didn't think they needed they were richer but Kate still worried.
Humans: 40%, Elves: 30%, Half-Elves: 15%, Dwarves: 8%, Gnomes: 3%, Halflings: 2%, Other: 2%. Was the basic breakdown of their new home.