Cidolphus Rumsley
The wind felt nice on Gantz's face.
He had never much enjoyed wide-open spaces. Urbanity fit his demeanor and his profession much better... however, it was nice to get away from Cornelia. And this time, they wouldn't be going back until Garland was done for.
Still conflicted about all that had happened to him, the thief was starting to wish he had never stolen that bloody crystal orb, but there was no changing that now, no matter what. He could feel it in his bones.
He walked back from the others a bit, lifting his face to the breeze again.
It was nearly noon. The day was cool, almost too cool for this time in spring, as if warmth were a luxury to the world. Well, maybe it was now. Everything was dying after all.
Regardless, the day was bright, wide and gorgeous. The sky was a sapphire vault that stretched far to all horizons, the breeze chilly yet invigorating. Rolling grasslands carpeted the world, waving like a lush sea at the wind's behest.
It had been almost three days since the Light Warriors had left Cornelia to head north, seeking the estate of one Cidolphus Rumsley, an ex-engineer of the Skyborne Guild. Gantz had never had any dealings with the organization. In fact, all he had ever heard were rumors of it. Its operations were kept in utter secret, and it even had its own private guard. It was said the guild's headquarters was stationed several days east of Cornelia proper and was a factory and fortress combined in one. All the guild's wealth and power was hinted at often, but Gantz had never heard of anyone breaking in to the place let alone stealing something from it. It wasn't surprising considering what he'd heard. The place was barely even subject to royal authority. You didn't mess with an organization that powerful if you wanted to keep your hide in tact.
Still Gantz didn't see why the production of airships had to be kept so secret. He'd ridden on one only once and it had been a short trip. Honestly, it was worse than travel on water-borne ships for him. His stomach didn't do well with such travel. His own feet were fast enough anyway, so why bother?
They had traveled fairly quickly on foot. Valor, Sana and Robin walked a ways in front of Gantz, though the black mage was off to one side a bit, moving in her usual furious stride. The light elf, Selena of the Glade, had decided to join them on this journey as well, but she and her animal companions were off scouting.
Gantz shook his head. He should have been the one scouting. He knew caution, he knew what to look for, and he was the fastest man alive. And he was a bloody Light Warrior. He should do the scouting for the four of them as they traveled. But honestly, his heart just wasn't in it. He could tell it was the same with the others. They had failed during the dark elf assault on the castle. Oh sure, the bloody pointy-ears had been driven off, and Valor had managed to slay that monstrous four-armed fiend that had led them, but so many people had died that shouldn't have died. It was because the Light Warriors had let their guard down.
The thief had never been responsible for other people before. He was as unused to it as he was to failure and he didn't like either feeling at all.
But he had to move on... they all did. Their mission now was to go north and head off a massive goblin invasion all by their bloody selves. Gantz didn't have a clue how they were going to pull that off. Oh, and if they managed to survive that they would head still farther north and have to fight some ex-noble black knight that had killed a whole army by himself. That sounded even less entertaining.
Despite his preternatural skill and speed, Gantz knew he wasn't ready for any of this. He could tell the others didn't believe they were either despite Valor's stony determination, Sana's seeming acceptance, and Robin's angry denials to the contrary.
Traveling now, Gantz could see a small village the four would be skirting just to the west. The Light Warriors had been passing farms and farming villages since they'd left Cornelia, most of their fields still fallow. The ones that had started growing crops were producing a sickly looking yield, stunted and hardly worth the name of crops. That was just another thing Gantz tried not to think about.
And though it seemed that the central provinces were still pretty peaceful here, Gantz had heard tons of rumors about the outlying pocket provinces, that they were being plagued by monster attacks. The citizens of Highland Kingdom were slowly being driven back toward its center. Refugees from the pockets had lost loved ones and homes to the advancing terror that was pressing in on the kingdom from all sides – and now this huge goblin invasion from the north.
Gantz shook his head again. How could only four people stop all this chaos?
He gripped the hilts of his knives sheathed at his side reassuringly, but it was as yet little comfort. He looked up, seeing the backs of his 'allies' in this fiasco. He still didn't feel very close to any of them. He supposed he could blame his own solitary nature for that. He sometimes wondered what they thought of him.
Valor walked perfectly upright, tall and broad in his plain half-plate armor. He wore a red leather undersuit beneath the plate-and-mail, an imposing figure, with a plain kite shield and bastard sword sheathed across his back. Also, he had gotten a barber to cut his hair before he had left Cornelia. It was no longer shoulder-length, but shorter, somewhat spiky, and now completely brown instead of streaked with silver. Gantz had no doubt that the fighter had put some kind of coloring in his hair to cover over the silvery highlights. The thief could only believe that this change had been for some kind of personal penance that Valor was serving.
Sana-Lynn walked somewhat close to Valor's side. Not quite as tall and draped in her white robes with the hood up, she held her white crooked staff before her, having said very little the passed few days.
Robin, a short figure concealed utterly in her tattered black robes and peaked hat, moved stridently beside the others, stiff and with both hands clenched about a three feet rod of charred wood. She was always angry, or at least irritated, and Gantz was positive that wouldn't be changing any time soon. Her glowing eyes had been absolutely baleful the last few days and the thief had kept his distance.
Gantz himself wore his leather breastplate and supple gloves over his traditional black clothing. He wore his black handkerchief cinched over his head and knotted at the back, his worn leather backpack strapped tightly to his back. It contained the tools of his trade, as well as the bloody burdensome Wind Orb in a secret pocket.
About an hour passed when what Gantz believed was the Rumsley Estate came into view. The thief was not surprised. This Rumsley fellow was a noble after all, so the fact that his manorial grounds were huge and shouting of wealth beyond good conscience was no great shock. The place was situated on a gentle rise in the land. It was walled at its base with well-manicured grounds within. The manor house itself was of white worked stone about two stories tall with railed balconies along its upper floor.
As the four came up to a large wrought iron gate, Gantz was seriously contemplating stealing the most valuable thing he could find on the grounds to punish this overweening lout for his foolish opulence in a time when the poor were being driven from their homes. It seemed this oaf was like a lot of nobles that tried to wrap themselves in wealth in order to pretend the world wasn't coming to an end.
In a surprise move, Valor didn't wait at the gate for someone to let them in. He merely went up and wrenched open one of the finely wrought doors, breaking the locking mechanism with a loud clink and striding passed the gates while the other three looked on. A second later, Robin growled and followed him in, then Sana, seemingly forlorn. Gantz just muttered to himself: "No sense of finesse at all, I could have picked that in a blink."
They all followed a white stone path passed manicured hedges and decorative arbors that still managed to look fresh and healthy until they stopped before a white stone plaza with a great three-tired fountain gurgling in its center. On the other side was the mighty columned veranda that marked the entrance to the manor. Servants and gardeners had stopped working to glance curiously at the strangers.
Without hesitation, Valor went up to knock on one of the arched double doors, but one of them opened before his fist even fell. A stiff older looking fellow in a fancy black suit barred his way in. "May I presume that you intruding knaves wish to speak with the Lady of the Manor."
Valor seemed to have finally remembered his pomposity. He gave a conciliatory bow. "I am sorry for intruding, good chamberlain, but we have a need to speak with the Lord of the Manor, not the Lady."
Gantz came up on Valor's flank just in time to see the old manservant sneer. "Well, then, not only do you vagabonds have no sense of courtesy, but you are ignorant as well. This manor has no Lord. Lady Rumsley runs the manor, the grounds, the staff, and the House finances. It is she that is in authority here."
Gantz looked confused, but Valor just gave a nod. "Then we must speak to her with all haste."
The old man's features pinched even more. "I think not, you itinerant louts, now begone with you, or I shall have the keeper fetch the dogs!"
Robin suddenly stalked up the stairs, her fiery runes ablaze about her. "You will open your doors, or I will burn them down! We will not ask again!"
The old servant looked shocked at Robin's sudden glowing display, but stood firm until Valor simply picked him up and set him to the side. Gantz followed the Chosen of Earth inside the house to get a look at the opulent foyer. He didn't get much more than a second before Valor shouted: "We are here to speak with the Lady of the House and we'll not leave until this has happened!"
"How dare you!" Called a woman from the top of a twin staircase centered in the foyer. She was a pretty middle-aged woman with long styled brown hair, wearing a fine samite dress of yellow-slashed purple, amethysts ensconced in rings on each finger.
Valor looked to her. "Are you the Lady Rumsley?"
"You've no right to barge in here and demand –!"
Solid yellow runes replaced Robin's blazing orange ones and a chunk of masonry from the floor suddenly flew up and shattered against a length of balustrade near the woman. She flinched and stepped back in alarm at a sudden cloud of dust.
Valor stepped up. "We seek a man called Cidolphus Rumsley. Tell us where to find him, and we will leave you be. You need never see us again."
"My foolish father, then, I should have known. He lives amidst his refuse heaps at the very northern edge of the estate. Seek him if you wish, but do not ever step foot in my house again." Afterward, she turned away and was gone into an adjacent corridor.
Valor nodded and looked to the black mage. "Thank you for aiding me, Robin, it seems I am losing my patience with etiqueitte as of late."
Robin quivered where she stood. "I don't want your blasted thanks! Let us be done with this petty errand." She whirled about and left through the opened door back outside.
Gantz was thinking of parting the Lady of the Manor from some of her bejeweled rings when Valor glared at him. "Do not think of plying your trade here, thief."
"Don't tell me what to think, you blue-blooded buffoon," Gantz growled and went back outside. He stalked out to find Sana sitting on the stairs of the veranda, her white robes wrapped about her, her hood still up. She had said nothing this whole time. Robin, he saw, was already skirting the manor house, servants and gardeners moving from her path with alacrity, her blazing runes around her again.
Without waiting, Gantz moved like a blur and jumped fifteen feet. He caught a balcony railing on the second floor of the manor and came on to it in a crouch. He then stood upon the railing, before nimbly running across it to jump again, far too high. He cleared the high-peaked roof studded with dormer windows and came down on the other side of the manor house into a roll. Coming up, he headed directly north at full speed, blasting passed manicured gardens and leaping over decorative hedgerows.
He came quickly to the northern edge of the manor grounds and surprise crossed his face. Heaps of metal refuse surrounded a wooden hovel, no better than the worse shanty Gantz had ever seen in the old docks. An ancient creaking windmill backed the hovel, in no better repair than the shoddy wooden domicile itself.
And there, on a raggedy canvas hammock set up before the hovel was a heavyset old man, snoring with the sound of a rasping saw. At the foot of the hammock were half-a-dozen heavy clay jars with triple X's marked on their fronts. Gantz knew all too well what they contained.
This was a noble? The thief couldn't be more shocked. He decided then, that he would quietly reconnoiter this place until the other three much slower Chosen caught up.
He started with the old man himself. The fellow was rather burly and barrel-chested, and even keeping his distance, Gantz could smell the reek of alcohol all over him. He wore a tattered linen shirt and heavy leather pants covered over by an oily frock, though his feet were bare. His head was a neckless lump, bald but for fringes of scraggly white hair on the sides and he wore a curious set of large spectacles over his eyes, composed of leather straps, with large heavy lenses set into them. The man also grasped a strange metal implement upon his snoring chest. It looked somewhat like a mace, but was thinner and had a curious shape to it. It didn't look anything like one of Gantz's lock-picking tools, being much too large, but the thief was willing to bet it was a tool of some kind.
Satisfied with his inspection of the old man, Gantz went about the wasteland. Heaps of garbage were scattered all about, but none of it really smelled. It was scrap metal, it seemed, or broken wood beams, or ruined masonry. These piles continued back a ways until they stopped. There, at the extreme north of the grounds, was something rather huge concealed under a number of heavy canvas tarps that were staked into the ground. Gantz could only believe by the size of the thing that it was a kind of small airship. He knew about airships falling out of the sky, and knew it would be dangerous to ride on one. However, Valor had said they needed to find Cidolphus Rumsley in order to procure a faster way to travel so they could meet the goblin horde in time to stop it from ruining the kingdom beyond repair.
An alternative means of travel, Valor had said. A river ship from the docks of Cornelia would have been faster than walking, but since all the major rivers in Highland flowed south from a northern source, such a ride would have been upriver with sweeps, decidedly slower than Valor wanted to go.
So what was this thing under the tarps supposed to be?
By the time the thief returned to the hovel, Robin had showed up. She had simply plopped down on the ground before the old man, her orange runes blazing angrily about her. Still, she made no move to wake the fellow up, which rather surprised Gantz. He figured the black mage would have been harassing and threatening the old fellow within an inch of his life. Instead, Robin had closed her glowing eyes and almost seemed to be meditating. He had seen her do this before, but still wasn't certain what it was for... unless she was trying to keep herself from exploding.
Sana-Lynn showed up next. The white mage past Robin without the other even stirring, and ignored a curious look from Gantz where he leaned against the wall of the hovel. She came up and lowered her hood to look at the snoring fellow and suddenly an affectionate smile lit up her pretty face. There she stayed, until Valor showed up and she backed away, replacing her hood and standing aside.
Valor frowned at the whole scene and Gantz frowned at him. Bloody fancy pants. But Valor simply went up to the old man and shook him on the shoulder to rouse him...
Nothing happened. The snoring continued unabated.
Valor shook him again. "Sir, we are in need of your assistance."
The snoring grew louder.
"Sir, please, we need you to –"
A great bear-like growl emerged from the man and his beefy arms flailed about. Valor stepped back, as more growls and flailing persisted, until the heavyset fellow finally sat up. He put a hand to his balding head and then looked around with his strange thick spectacles. He saw all four of them and finally stood. His voice was like a growling rumble. "What in the bloody bleeding bowls of the Abyss do we have here? Wait, don't answer that till I've had me breakfast." He cast about, grasping one of the large clay jars scattered about the foot of the hammock. He lifted it and took a healthy swig, leaking it all down his bushy white beard. "Ah, now that's as tender mercy. Okay, what do you ninnies want again?"
Valor, obviously offended, started to ask something.
The old fellow interrupted. "Wait, don't ask till I've had me second breakfast. Most important meal o' the day, you see." He took another several deep gulps from the bottle and finished with a shuddering belch. He then slammed the jar on the ground before going around the hammock and off toward the heaps.
Gantz just grinned at the old man's manner. Neither Robin nor Sana stirred. Valor went after the man, pulling a fine scroll from a small belt pack. "Sir, we have a royal dispatch from the king himself, telling you to aid us in getting north with all possible speed. You see, we are the four Light Warriors."
The man stopped short, snatching the scroll from Valor's hand. "Ah good, this'll be what I use to wipe me arse after I take a bomber. Don't follow me again, boy, less you want to see nature's call. Not a pretty sight let me assure you."
Valor actually wrinkled his nose in disgust, and Gantz had to stifle a laugh. The Chosen of Earth forged ahead, however. "I have heard that Cidolphus Rumsley was a great man, and a genius engineer."
The old man laughed raucously. "Aye, I've heard that too, boy, but I wasn't witless enough to believe such fool stories then or now. Now get away from me, I ain't bloody impressed by Light Warriors or anything else and I've got a bloody avalanche pounding in me head."
"We are not leaving until you help us."
The man flung up his hands. "Fine, stay here the rest of your bloody days if you like, ain't no skin of my arse!" He turned away again and disappeared behind a huge metal heap.
Valor looked absolutely befuddled. Gantz pushed off the hovel's wall and walked up to his side. "Well, he's the best bloody noble I've ever met."
Valor clenched his jaw, his voice tight. "Is this a game to you, Gantz? We need this man's help or more people are going to die. They are already dying, in the pockets, and elsewhere. I was expecting Cidolphus Rumsley to be a man of principle and genius, not a drink-sodden lout with the manners of a tavern slattern."
Gantz sneered. "Right, we all have to line up and bow before the great Valor Loftlan, don't we?"
Valor growled. "This is no time for more division, thief, we need to stand together, we need to work together. Are you too selfish to see that?"
"Selfish? Ha, the bloody Crystals chose the wrong bunch of fools if you ask me. We can't bloody save anybody! This is all a waste of time if ever there was one!"
Sana-Lynn suddenly came up from behind. "That is despair talking, Gantz, not you."
"Ah, so the lovely Priestess of the Grand Mucky-Muck finally shows up. Well, little miss priss, how are we going to save the world today then? Please share with us your bountiful bloody wisdom."
Valor shook his head. "Sana is right, Gantz."
The thief smacked himself on the forehead. "Oh, of course she is, fearless leader, how could I be so blind? Everyone is right except for the bloody thief, aren't they? I might as well just pack up and leave you high-minded heroes to finish this great quest by yourselves. No need for a lowly street rat to get underfoot of the two great paragons of justice!"
With a roar, Robin suddenly stood and strode past them all. Valor called after her: "What do you think you are doing, Robin Magus?"
"Walking, you ignoramus. I'll fight the Dark War by myself, like I should have from the beginning! Anything would be more productive that sticking with you dithering imbeciles!"
Sana's own anger came to fore. "Garland would eat you alive, black mage."
That brought Robin up short for only a blink, before she started walking again. "So be it, at least I'll be doing something."
Valor sighed heavily, but Gantz yelled after her. "Good bloody riddance, you choleric midget! I should have skewered you the first day we bloody met!"
Robin did not stop, but shrieked back. "And I should have burned you to ash!"
"Oh yeah, well come back and do it, then," Gantz taunted, "We can finish what we started in the warehouse!"
"Cut your own throat, it'll will save us both time, and I've wasted enough in the presence of fools!" And then Robin disappeared behind a heap of junk.
Gantz just yelled wordlessly, and then turned away. All three of them stood there seething.
"Well now, there wasn't anything about this in the legends I read," said the old man from behind.
Gantz turned instinctively with the other three. Valor shook his head. "We will leave you now, Sir Rumsley, there is no point in lingering here any further."
The old engineer just grunted. "Well, I suppose giving up is natural, especially in your boots. If you are who you say you are anyway."
Valor's gaze hardened. "We are not giving up, old man."
"Call me Cid, whelp, and that's good, cause I ain't giving up either. Now, the lot of you can carry your sorry arses to the north of the compound. I've got something waiting there that'll knock your blocks off, if I can get the blasted thing to work. Might as well tell you a bloody story about how bloody airships produce bloody lift as well." He moved on a few steps, adjusting his goggles, when he suddenly turned. "Well? I ain't waiting for a bunch of babies to get over their tantrums. Suck it up and move on or stay here and drown in self-pity. What'll it be?"
"Fine," Valor said curtly.
Sana just nodded.
Gantz suddenly laughed. "You know, old man, I think I might like you."
"Oh really, well save the hugs and kisses for later, lassie, cause we gotta lot o' work to do."