The Plan

After Din agreed to join the Ravagers on their mission to raid the governor's secret base, he was taken back to the room where Cyen had been sleeping earlier. She sat back on the same chair as soon as we entered the room.

"You can just head up the stairs yourself, right?" Cyen asked. "Your room is 302, the key should already be inside the keyhole."

"Isn't it a little reckless to be leaving the keys out like that?" I asked.

Din didn't bother asking her that. He gave her a slight bow before heading up the stairs. The spiral staircase led us through two hallways before we reached our floor. Each of the hallways were identical except for the contents of the paintings on the walls. On this floor, the painting was that of a natural view. There were mountains in the back and a giant lake in the front with many unique looking trees surrounding the lake. I didn't know whether it was an actual place or just a painting.

Just like Cyen had mentioned, most of the rooms had their keys inside the keyhole. The rooms with the keys missing probably had people inside of them.

As we moved towards our room, we overheard voices coming from the room next door.

"How come— get the— piece?!"

The voices were muffled, but we could pick up some of what they were saying. Right as we walked past their door, it swung wide open.

"It's 'cause I always do most of the work!" Tal yelled out behind him.

He then noticed us right outside his door. "Huh? What are you doing here?" he asked. He then turned back inside his room, "Hey, Mun, check it out. It's Din."

"Eh? I don't really care. Just close the door, you're letting all the cold air in!"

Tal angrily closed the door. With a sigh, he turned to us, "So you actually managed to get out of that village, huh? Did they give you a room here? Let's just talk in there."

We entered room 302. After Tal clicked a switch, the entire room was bright with light. There was one bed, a closet, and a small drawer near the bed. On the walls, there was one window with the blinds shut and a few paintings. The floor was wooden and the walls were painted orange.

Tal relaxed on the bed as Din closed the door. "I was kinda worried about you, partner. That night when we executed our plan, Mun accidentally placed too many bombs too close to each other so rather than creating a bunch of small light explosions, it created one large stun grenade. Hope everyone in the village didn't look at that light directly. I'm sure that can cause permanent blindness if they were looking at it."

"I don't think anyone became blind from that," Din assured him.

"That's good. Great, that's one less thing I'm worried about now. At least the plan was a success, right? You managed to get out and no one got hurt, just like you wanted," Tal exclaimed proudly.

"I wasn't able to get out that night," Din scratched the bottom of his chin as he explained. "The explosions caused a lot of the guards to run away from you and towards me, where they found me and caught me."

"Ahh! Shit! I guess that was something that could've happened!" Tal screamed as he held his head.

"It was worth an attempt though," I added in even though Tal wouldn't be able to hear.

"Wait so then how'd you get out?" Tal asked.

Din thought for a moment. "I don't really know the exact reason, but after I had a talk with my uncle, he just changed his mind and let me leave."

"Well whatever works works, I guess," Tal folded his arms as he rested his head on the pillow. "So anyways, were you talking with Eliana a few minutes ago?"

Din nodded. "Yeah."

"What'd she want from you? After I told her about you and Lorelei, she told everyone to look out for you and to bring you to her if we saw you during our watch. She wouldn't tell us what it was for though."

"She wanted me to find out more about the kidnappings."

Tal tilted his head, "Why was she expecting you to know? You're not even from around here."

Din shook his head. "That's not it. She wanted me, or actually, she wanted Lorelei to talk to the ghost of someone who had been kidnapped before."

"What?!" Tal screamed. "Lorelei can see ghosts?!"

Not knowing truly how it worked, Din turned towards me.

I replied, "I can see them while I have contact with the body. I can't see them otherwise."

"She says she can only see them if she has contact with their body."

"Oh, hmm, that's interesting," Tal nodded as he placed a hand on his chin. "That's really convenient, isn't it? She can talk with ghosts and then you can talk to her! That can be useful if we use it right. It's a little scary knowing that ghosts actually exist though."

"We don't really know how it works," Din added.

Tal scoffed. "That doesn't matter. All it matters is that it works that way and we can use it. As long as it's not broken, we don't need to fix it."

After having relaxed for a bit, Tal finally got off the bed and then asked, "So, what'd you find out from the ghost?"

Din told him about the secret experiments and about the plan on invading the governor's garden.

"I see, looks like we're going to have a pretty rough day. We only have a day to prepare for the attack, huh? Yeah, then that only leaves one night for us to do this. I guess it does have to be tonight," Tal began murmuring to himself.

"What's wrong?" Din asked.

"Hey, Din. Want to head somewhere tonight?"

"I don't know, I'm pretty tired right now. Where'd you want to go though?"

Tal grabbed Din by the neck and then pulled him close. He had an unusual smile on his face as he spoke, "So you see, I heard from Mun that there's this brothel in the far corner of the city."

"A what?!" Din was taken by surprise.

Tal shushed him. "Don't yell. Lorelei is nearby, right? You wouldn't want her listening in on this, would you?" Tal whispered.

Din looked up at me. I could clearly hear everything Tal was saying, but for some reason, Din didn't stop him.

"So how about we go there tonight and have ourselves a great time. That way, after we get rid of our fatigue, we can prepare to do our best on the day of the mission. You hear me?"

Din seemed hesitant as he would glance at me every few seconds. "I can't… I shouldn't. I'm a knight, I can't be—"

"You used to be a knight. You're not a knight anymore, Din. You don't need to worry about the small stuff like that. Just live a little, y'know?"

I sighed and then moved away. From the other corner of the room, I couldn't comprehend Tal's whispers anymore.

After a while, they moved towards the door. Tal had a wide smile on his face while Din was trying his best to cover his smile.

"W-we'll be going out for a drink, Lorelei," Din announced unconvincingly.

"Take care," I said with as much sass as I could muster.

I couldn't believe him.

—Later that night, the two returned with disappointment filled in their faces. When I asked Din what happened, he only told me that it wasn't a brothel for guys like them.

He didn't even bother hiding the fact that he went to a brothel.