The 'boarding house' that the baker described was perhaps the strongest form of understatement I had ever heard. If by 'boarding house' she meant 'five-star hotel,' then she could have been forgiven. I had never seen anything like it during my twenty something years in the new world. The lobby was done to perfection, there was an immaculate diner and tavern, and the bedrooms were almost completely untouched.
All of this only served to heighten my suspicion.
Inns and boarding houses were like public toilets, and I didn't like using public toilets. Someone could have pissed all over the sheets and left them there for the next guy to use. These sheets were squeaky clean. There wasn't a single mystery red-brown stain to be seen. The fact that we were getting good service for the price I usually had to pay for those kinds of rooms, now that was unbelievable. A four-bed room that didn't stink of piss and shit.
I offloaded some of my travelling supplies into the cupboard and considered my next move. How could I find the cursed object that Adelbern brought here? Nobody knew who took it except the very same person who now possessed it. What kind of person would even want it? The ambitious and the foolish most likely.
At least they didn't have to worry about having their soul torn to shreds like I did.
But what grand ambition was there to fulfil here? This was a sleepy, middle-class town with nothing notable beyond their apparent love of gardening. You could find hundreds of places like this if you looked hard enough – though not in as good a condition.
"Would you like to sleep in the same bed?" Tahar asked.
"No."
We had not yet 'consummated' our involuntary marriage. As attractive and helpful as Tahar was, I wasn't the type of person to jump into bed with someone just because they asked. Tahar kept a respectful distance from me on most days and wouldn't cross my boundaries without permission. I could still feel a lot of tension between the three of us though.
I decided that standing around and thinking wasn't getting me anywhere. I needed to scout the place out, get a feel for it. If I was lucky I'd run into a clue or the person I was looking for. I decided to bring my armour and Stigma with me, just in case. Also – leaving a valuable item in a public hotel was asking to have it stolen. They'd take anything.
The man behind the counter waved at us as we headed back out through the front door and onto the street. In the twenty minutes it had taken us to rent a room and come back out, nothing had changed. It was still a total ghost town; how unsettling. I chose a direction and started walking. It didn't take us long to find ourselves deep within the suburban jungle once again.
The houses stretched on over the horizon, hundreds of them, all with different styles of garden out front. They were just as carefully constructed as the buildings themselves, boasting a vibrant rainbow of colours and styles. As I came to a stop in front of one of them and looked to the home that sat behind it, I noticed something strange.
"Hey Cali, doesn't this house look weird to you?" I pointed to the living room window – which was covered with a low-grade pane of glass. High class, but cheap enough to use in a construction like this. The uneven surface distorted our view somewhat, but no amount of distortion could hide the issue.
Cali studied it closely and met the same conclusion, "There is… nothing inside."
Indeed. From our point of view there was nothing else inside the cottage. No furniture, no fittings, no portraits hung from the walls. It was completely and totally barren. Even a show home would do the bare minimum to demonstrate the space on offer. Yet despite the clear lack of occupants, the garden had clearly been touched up.
We walked a few metres further down the road and found a similar, single-floor home next door. This time the curtains were drawn shut. That wasn't going to stop me.
"Stay here for a second and shout if someone approaches."
With Cali and Tahar on guard, I hopped the iron gate and approached the front door. I never went anywhere without my lockpicking tools, you never know when you need to open something. With my pick and leverage tools, I easily opened the domestic security device within seconds of inserting them. I slipped through the gap and closed it behind me.
I was greeted with a long corridor that connected to all of the other rooms in the house. The walls were plastered and ready to be used, as was the wooden floor, but there were no signs of life. I went deeper and turned left into where the main living space should have been. Aside from a fireplace, it was empty.
I scratched the back of my head in confusion, "What the hell is going on here?" There was no point in looking at the rest of the rooms, which I did anyway just to be sure – nobody lived here. I exited and shut the door behind me, returning the lock into place to cover my tracks.
"What did you find?" Cali asked.
"Nothing. Nobody lives here."
She grimaced, "Tahar and I searched the other houses – none of them are occupied."
Tahar wasn't happy with the waste, "Cold hearths. Lonely huts. Resources wasted."
"I suppose your tribe used everything you gathered. But if all of these houses don't have owners, why do they all have these gardens?"
"The competition?" Cali ventured. I'd told her about it while we ate earlier.
But isn't the point of a competition to crown a winner? And if they didn't have enough people competing to make it convincing to outsiders – where did they find the manpower to manage so many gardens? Normally I wouldn't think anything of it, but combined with everything else I'd seen so far, I concluded that there was more to this town than I first thought. Was that why Adel was told to bring a cursed item here?
Cali pulled on my shoulder, a lone figure crested the horizon and approached us. He was a young man with dirty blonde hair and a set of light armour. A long sheathe was strapped to his waist, with a long, curved blade contained within. It reminded me of a Katana – though this world didn't have Katanas in the same way that Japan did. He staggered up to us and used the stone wall to support himself. His impish face was twisted with exhaustion.
"Help… please!"
He wasn't injured, yet I found myself asking anyway; "What happened?"
"This place is totally wack man, I've been lost here for two freaking days!" His accent was unmistakable. Even as a Japanese guy I had a passing familiarity with this kind of faux-surfer speak. Was he an outworlder? "You're the first people I've seen in like… fifteen hours."
"Uh, okay. What's your name?"
"I'm Ryan, Ryan McDermott."
"I'm Ren. This is Cali and Tahar."
Ryan nodded with a bright, toothy smile – his neck bent backwards when he gazed upon the large form of Tahar. "Woah! She's pretty tall!" He'd already forgotten why he was asking us for assistance in the first place. For that matter he must have had a pretty awful sense of direction to get lost around here. The roads were long and straight, and all led back into each other. If you kept walking you'd find your way out with a small pinch of luck.
I snapped my fingers to get his attention, "Why do you need our help?"
"I'm looking for some directions," he revealed. He reached into his pocket and unfurled a piece of parchment in front of my face. "Oh! And if you've seen this lovely lady anywhere, it'd be super awesome if you could tell me."
That 'lovely lady' had been sketched onto a missing persons poster. 'Mary Freeter.' Her personal details, identifying marks, last known location and a reward had all been included. I didn't recognize the face. I'd only seen three people up close since I arrived. The last known location was odd; Blum Grove was a small town just to the East of our current location.
"Aren't you looking in the wrong place?" I asked, pushing his hand aside.
Ryan smirked and spoke with every bit of American bombast he could, "Hey, I know a thing or two about finding missing people buddy. I wouldn't be out here if I didn't have an eyewitness to back me up. Friend of mine passed through here, said he thought he saw her. I came down to check it out."
"We have not seen anyone," Cali stated.
Ryan ploughed on and ignored her, "Sheesh. You're one lucky guy getting to travel with two girls." He stepped behind me and hissed at the sight of Stigma, "And man, this is one gnarly looking sword! You killing giants with this thing?"
"I did."
He clapped his hands together, "Oh man. That's crazy. You must be really tough! But you should check this out…"
I stepped back as he drew his own blade. As I had initially identified it – it was a Katana. The quality of the blade was peerless. The metal was decorated with a small mural of a flowing river that ran down the lower side. I could sense how powerful it was just from looking at it. Don't tell me…
"Another relic," Stigma said, "In the hands of a blathering moron."
"Don't judge a book by its cover," but in this case it was really hard not to.
"You already know, don't you pal? This is Raiju – the legendary thunder sword."
Hearing that name roll off his tongue made me shiver. I couldn't stop myself.
"It's pronounced Raiju."
"…Huh?"
I poked him in the chest, "Raiju, not whatever you just said."
Why did this sword have a Japanese name? Japan didn't exist, nor did the Japanese language. Had an outworlder found it first? Ryan repeated the correct pronunciation a few times before laughing, "Oh man. Sorry. That was embarrassing. I never was into any of that Japanese stuff. I guess you're from there?" It was a surprisingly accurate deduction from a man with his head in the clouds.
"…Yeah. I am."
"Cool! You know, I've only met a few other outworlders before – there's this guy back in Sull; they call him Udo. He's scary, huge guy, the best fighter I ever met."
"We're getting off track," I interrupted, "You've been stuck here for two days?"
"Sure was. Running out of rations and water too. You really saved my butt. I tried knocking on the doors to speak with the residents, but nobody was in!"
"That's because none of these homes are occupied," Cali explained, "There is nobody to answer the door."
"Really? That's crazy weird man. They all have such nice front lawns too."
To be truthful, he was starting to grate on my nerves a little, so I turned around and pointed out the way we came. "If you keep following the road, you'll eventually reach the centre of town. From there you need to head past the bakery and boarding house. There'll be some people there if you get lost again."
"Thanks buddy, you're a lifesaver. Hey – come hit me up if you ever find my soulmate here. I'm not having any luck finding her myself."
Like a whirlwind he came and went, off down the road and out of sight once more. Was this the calibre of person the legendary swords were being given to? He didn't identify mine thanks to the leather cover. The less he knows the better, I reckoned. But I still found myself going with his rhythm and telling him I was an outworlder. Some people had superstitions about that, I needed to stop being so loose with it.
"Interesting person," Tahar giggled.
I sighed, "A little too interesting for my liking."