cerealissoup
patreon
Chapter 74: The Invitation and Trois Pilier
🕑 Added 2024-03-04 19:41:43 +0000 UTCI led Richard through the labyrinthine outskirts of Glorenstein, toward the building I had once broken into personally.
Richard followed me curiously as we closed in on the worn house. The door was still broken with no wooden lock on it.
Wild grass grew far up from the ground and scuffed our trousers, almost as if they would prickle my skin.
I placed a hand on the door and pushed it slightly, revealing the inside. Yet again, dozens of cockroaches and rodents were squeaking around inside.
“Is this alright?” Asked Richard.
“He’s still being treated,” I said as I covered my mouth with a handkerchief and stepped inside the house. Richard followed, carefully tiptoeing over the bottles on the ground and covering his mouth too. “When he’s done, he will be tried for subordination to a criminal. This place is fair game.”
“It still sounds like trespassing to me.”
“I didn’t say it wasn't.”
Richard held in a sigh, even sighing in this place felt disgusting. Talking was just as bad, but we had no other choice.
We kicked the stray bottles in our path and stepped up to the blockades on the windows—The guards wouldn’t mind us messing with this place at all.
Richard tapped the boards and shook his head. It was too tough still to just be pulled out. For him, that is.
I simply used my elbow and broke the wooden boards from the center. The boards on the windows were crushed and fell, letting in the myriad of lights into the room.
The first thing Richard noticed was the thick black layer of mold and dirt on the floor. He covered his mouth and retched.
“How do people live here…”
I continued breaking the windows open to let some fresh air in. Though it felt like it was more dangerous to let out this stale air into the free world.
“It’s only that drunkard bastard…” I said, grimly staring at my elbows. I felt something damp at the end there and it gave me the same scare as a child would receive when looking underneath their bed and actually seeing something.
The two of us held in our reservations and started looking around. As I had seen the place before, other kinds of thoughts entered my mind.
What had that guy done to end up like this? Was he always like this?
Maybe he had lost someone, or maybe there was something so horrible that he couldn’t bear it. I had similar experiences before, and at that time I only got up from the mud because I had people around me…
A sigh left my lips.
What was the point of thinking about this?
“Oh, look what I found…” Richard turned to me and raised a poster with his gloves. The poster of three swords and a shield.
“I have seen it before. Do you think this might have something to do with our guy?” I said and walked over to Richard.
“I doubt… the Trois Pilier wouldn’t stay quiet. Not those bastards.”
Right. Even if I was going through the worst of problems, I wouldn’t have supported criminals painting themselves in a noble light.
Not these revolutionaries. Not these ones.
There were many groups of revolutionaries, some that I personally identified with. But I knew the Trois Piliers were not deserving of any of it. They wanted to commit vile crimes in the name of protecting justice.
Even the army pillaged at times, but these bastards did not leave anyone behind. They would loot everyone, defile everyone, and keep their heads up and call themselves warriors after it all.
They were disorganized, hasty, and mostly dead.
That’s right. The army had stopped in between the war and had gone out to annihilate these bastards. The hero was a part of that operation too.
Now all that was left was their dregs. That was why they weren’t considered a serious threat.
There was no need to sympathize with that bastard, not for now.
Richard and I continued to search around the room.
That was when we found something. A small envelope.
It was an invite to an event. One without any marks of any sort. There was only one instruction, to watch L'Éclipse Noire.
“What in the world…” Richard muttered as he stared at the emblem.
It was an invitation to a meeting, in the house of a revolutionary of the Trois Pilier.
It was extremely strange. This wasn’t their modus operandi. These bastards wouldn’t even think of doing something like this.
Not the ones that I knew about. It was possible that they might have changed the way they operate and the way they work now that they were at the brink of extinction.
But there was a different, clearer explanation in my mind. Gladwin had mentioned that there were many different groups targeting the city.
Then there was something organized. The fact that we had a young man under suspicion. The sheer scale of any operation that would take place in this city.
It was all far too much to trust this old coot with.
“What if there was a group using the Trois Pilier as a cover?” I said. “In this city?”
Richard gulped at my words.
He seemed to be considering the possibility.
“If that is really true… then there would really be trouble around us, isn’t that right?”
The Trois Pilier might just have been a cover. A detraction from the real problems.
It was possible. There was another group in my mind, one filled with youth, which did just this… But the problem was this old bastard’s involvement.
“Wait!” Richard yelped, his eyes on the invitation. “This thing is today!”
“What?” I asked, surprised. “When did it come here?”
“It’s stamped for two months ago by the post office. They sent it through the mail boxes to avoid being seen.”
That meant before this old man was caught…
Did these collaborators make this plan before the old man was fired from the academy? Then could it be… they weren't just using the Trois Pilier as a cover for themselves but also to manipulate this person who was possibly an ‘in’ into the academy?”
“Where is it taking place?” I asked.
Richard shrugged. “It only mentions L'Éclipse Noire.”
“And what is that? Some kind of code word?”
“It must be,” said Richard. “Where do criminals meet?”
“In sewers?”
“Nope. Too conspicuous. People frequently visit sewers, you know?”
I hummed and Richard crossed his arms.
“Maybe someplace in the woods? An outhouse?”
“Gladwin would have known. A outhouse would never escape him.”
We both thought. I took the letter from Richard and flipped it around and—
“Richard…”
“Yes?”
A sigh left me.
“It even has the location on the backside. What the hell were you doing?”
“It does?”
“Yup, The Velvet Veil. It’s a theater company here.”
“Oh… there was a location…”
That was embarrassing.
