64 Living on the Edge

Time quickly flew as Galahad and Terra walked to the various locations. After the sun came out, the frigid temperature almost ceased to exist and the clouds were cleared. The people walking around out in the streets were fine with the outside shine and air, until the cold wind blew a chilly reminder of winter back in their face.

Galahad and Terra walked out of the fourth building with disappointment hanging above their heads. He found many of the places had issues that would make his life living in Diagon only that much harder. So many building violations and lack of security stopped them from even entering some of the buildings.

The most recent building was probably one of the best choices he had, up till the end of the visit.

When they entered, the tenant manager of the building was nice enough and kept the rooms up to code. The only problem was at the end, where a middle-aged woman across the hall saw Galahad and Terra as strangers, which gave her to the need to stop the two from leaving and question them.

She became very invasive and chatty about who the two of them were, all while holding two infants in her arms. Once she discovered Galahad would possibly be moving in next door, she started getting really excited. She began talking about him being a nice neighbor; that meant he should come by during his free time and help his fellow building mates by babysitting.

Her eyes seemed a little to wild for Galahad to feel comfortable anymore and they bolted before she could place one the babies in his arms. He didn't want to figure out how well he could deal with small children at that moment.

The last thing he needed was that crazy mother just letting her kids roam his room while he was away and especially when it was to be filled with all kind of dangerous weapons and incriminating material that would sentence him to just a life sentence if he was lucky. The kingdom rarely but on occasion would do public hangings.

"I just need to find myself a quiet and hidden away little space. I value privacy more than anything else that place could offer. Maybe I can see about setting up a camp outside of the city wall. I just need to make sure the city knows I'm paying taxes." He started planning and pondering a new course of action.

Terra couldn't believe she was hearing, him talking about camping outside of a city just because the creepy neighbor. It was certainly a first among her clients. Her eyes then broke away from him when remembering a certain location she always tried forgetting about having.

"Well . . . I do have one more place I don't normally put on the listings." Her rather reluctant tone put Galahad in a place of both curiosity and concern.

"Where would that be?"

Terra tried stoking the fire of confidence back in her voice when she told him the address of the vacancy she had never once filled in her entire time working in the Home Rental Office.

Once she explained the location of the building, Terra figured he would just laugh at her and leave, instead he smiled and looked out to the street for something.

"Now how do you feel about a quick ride in a carriage detour." He said with an ever growing grin.

*****

Galahad had flagged down a carriage and listened to what Terra had to say about the property. The ride was going to take a while across Diagon, so there wouldn't be too much left to explain once they finally arrived.

During the conversation, Terra couldn't figure out if Galahad was a standard crazy for adventurers, or just an absolute maniac. The more detail she went into about the location being on the outskirts of the city and practically in open field isolation, the more interested he became in the property.

She had yet to tell him of the necessary renovations that the place would need after not being maintained or used for so long.

Apparently in the outskirts of the city, there were older community houses that were built shortly after the third war against the Silvate Kingdom ended.

After everything settled in during the peace signings, a few attacks led by monsters or agitated mystical creatures came from the nearby wildlands created a lot of casualties.

The houses turned into vacant obstructions that prevented swarms of beasts from easily rushing the city unimpeded. That was all before a high level magician created the enormous stone walls around the city, leaving the properties as nothing more than empty claims.

Eventually a rather odd man came in from nowhere one day and asked about putting one of the houses up to a modern codes. He put a large flow of money into the house and lived there for half a decade.

Then a few years back during his stay, monster sightings were somehow rising inside the city walls. It escalated fear to the point that a few citizens gathered up to find the being and catch or kill it. The whole thing turned into a skirmish involving a demon, wild beast, or some mystical creature; no one knew what the deadly beast was since they discovered in the middle of the night.

"Wait." Galahad interrupted the explanation with a bit of info he picked up. "Haven't there been monster sightings and even killings in the capital too?"

Galahad recalled his father reading the news on his tablet about dead bodies found in the Etherite Kingdom capital. Last he recalled, the body count was approaching double digits before winter even started.

"Those one's have only been more recent, and it hasn't been sightings in the capital, but only mangled corpses." Terra corrected.

Galahad questioned the timing of strange phenomenon occurring between the two cities and thought weird things always seemed to happen in this kingdom. He was completely unaware of the irony since he belonged in the category of strangest adventurers to have ever existed.

"Anyway, the situation a few years ago was the complete opposite. We had monster sightings, but no body found of the man that lived in the outskirts. It took three days before anyone in the city noticed he was even gone. By the time guild officials went to his house to find him; the blood was already dried out in his front yard and nothing else was discovered."

"Huh, and that same place is up for sale?"

"It's been unfortunately for some time. My boss pushed the property under my belt in order to avoid any black lash the company keeps dishing out because the kingdom still makes us pay for the damn thing."

"Well it sounds like that place has a rich history." Galahad stated nonchalantly as he sat back in the seat of the carriage and watched the last of the outer district buildings disappear from the carriage window.

*****

Galahad payed and thanked the driver for his time and tossed a few apples from his food bag to the horses. The apples were heavily bruised from his most exhilarating moments in the dungeon, but the horses didn't seem to mind.

Galahad watched the carriage disappear and started looking around the remains of some houses that still stood. They were coming up to a hundred years without any maintenance or updates, so the fact that the wooden frames were still standing seemed promising to Galahad.

'Well the old houses seemed to have a pretty big plots and quite a few rooms. I hope the murder/missing persons case here brings the property down to a more cheaper option.' Galahad chuckled at the joke he made to himself.

He didn't know how serious this place was to Terra since she had dealt with the place for a while, so he kept the laughs to himself.

"How come there isn't any homeless living around here. If seems like a nice little place to take shelter this time of year." Galahad asked instead of joking when they started walking to the only operating house around.

"A lot of people that are superstitious consider this a freshly cursed land. The man who used to live here was forgotten by his neighbors, because of that his soul now torments those who dare come too close. That's how the legends go at least."

'Or at least that's what I made up so everyone would keep off the damn property.' Terra thought. She was irritated at always coming out to the outskirts of the city just to clean the graffiti off the wooden structures her boss made her deal with. In order to get rid of the frequent vandalism, she started rumors of people going missing near the place and that slowed the criminal artists down to only painting it once or twice a month.

Terra was soon growing tired of the tour to her haunted house, wishing Galahad would soon choose to leave and see the last spot before sundown. It was one thing to humor him and come all the way out here, but she figured he just was curious before looking at the last spot from the map.

She had to deal with a lot of paper the next morning and that seemed to be the only thing she was looking forward to for the week. Terra may have excelled at her job, but that was because it took up most of her time. Terra worked well past five in the afternoon on weekdays and with nobody home to greet her except self-sustaining plants, there was almost no motivation to leave the office most times.

Galahad hadn't picked up on her urge to leave and spotted the place on the small summit. It was obvious as the structure didn't appear to be a log cabin skeleton like the rest of the aging houses.

The house was once made of dark logs and planks, but the renovations included stone brick walling that Galahad couldn't believe was so clean despite the weathering of time. Not only was everything reinforced and insulated, but a smaller second story was added to the structurally sound base. Around the left side was a even a vacant carriage stable that attached to the house with a door.

The part to really catch Galahad's eye on his approach was the cellar doors at the side of the house. They were level with the ground and made it almost hard to notice until the person was close enough, and both doors were covered in multiple metal bars for padlocks to keep in place.

Galahad knelt down and felt a lot of resistance when he tugged, they weren't coming off with a lot of elbow grease. 'That could be a nice hiding spot for extra crap, a little bonus to having a ghost town for neighbors. I am loving this place already.' He thought without even looking inside yet.

Terra sighed as Galahad asked her to let them inside to see. After she fished out the key and opened the door that squeaked from lack of oil, they were in what truly seemed like a haunted house.

The whole place had a heavy coat of dust across its surfaces that would explode out in every direction when a gust of wind disturbed it, casting little grey ghosts in the light. Galahad and Terra walked inside to find not much content inside the house.

The door opened up to a wide kitchen space with a broken table and two chairs in the center. To the right was an empty living room and small staircase to the second floor, the left was a door that led to the carriage stable outside.

The only sign of modernization among the old inside was the light crystals hanging from the ceiling and water tap sink next to the kitchen stove.

"So the guy who used to live here had a water line put all the way out here?" Galahad asked Terra.

She only quietly nodded and awaited for Galahad's sensible response to say the man was crazy and they should just go back.

What she actually received in response was something that made her eyes grow wide.

"I'll take it."