The End of an Era.
Posted: Sun Jan 16, 2022 10:58 pm
AUTHORS NOTE: Hello, this is my first USB story. This is also the first part to a bigger story I plan to write.
The story is played out in a Dieselpunk/Victorian-Edwardian/WW1-2 setting, with a small bit of fantasy in it (cheesy as hell, I know, but I couldn't come up with a better explanation for the setting).
I should also warn you that this "novel" does not revolve around uniform/clothes stealing. While I will try to put in a lot of FUS-scenes in the chapters, there will be more of a overarching story where clothes-stealing isn't central to it. So I suggest you to just skip it if you only care about the steals, and not the plot.
Foul language, sexual and physical violence and mentions of it, and blood will also be present throughout some chapters, so be warned if you do not enjoy or can't stand any of it.
Well, enough of me babbling, here's the story. Hope you'll enjoy it!
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Epilogue.
Krendlebrach Cemetery, three hundred miles south of Färnwechler, a small town two days away from Olmdark, capital of the Olmdark Empire. Middle of Autumn of 1860 IB.
It's cold. Hügor Grimler, captain and second-in-command of the fifth Jäger-division, thought as he watched over the almost ancient cemetery in the brightly moonlit night, with it's graves, mausoleums and crypts. And the gigantic barrow the Kommendant had just sent eight of his best men into, to recover some kind of artefact. The squad had waited for almost three hours by now. He tightened his fur collar around his face with his hands as he looked around.
The cemetery was a strange place, since it was both huge and well used as it would seem, but so far from any civilised settlement and placed in an old forest. Strange was also the fact that while it was so secluded, it still had its own small road to it, big enough for at least one truck to travel on it without any qualms. The people in the closest town and villages had also warned the division not to go there, frantically telling them that it was cursed and haunted by ghosts and ice-demons. Hügor by now almost believed them, due to the bone-chilling cold and the unpleasant atmosphere.
It's cold. So bloody cold. Hügor repeated in his mind as he watched the eight soldiers return, dragging out a massive coffin out of the enormous barrow with thick beige ropes. The wind blew as if a massive snowstorm had just hit them, except it was even colder than that.
Hügor had experienced hard winters and cold climates before. During his youth in the Wultbart-mountains, his posting in Drolmfort in the northern parts of the Iskland-regions, and his later relocation to Stramleberg, commonly called "Castle Cold" by the members of the Empire's military staff. He had survived horrible storms of snow and ice, bone-chilling winds, and even hail of massive proportions. But this cold was unnatural. It was worse than anything he had ever experienced, and it was still only the beginning of Autumn!
"Um, pardon me, sir, but is that... thing, truly worth all of this hassle?" he mustered up the courage to ask the Kommendant through his clapping teeth, as he turned his head toward him. His commander was actually only a colonel, but he had told all of his subordinates to call him "Kommendant", and so they did. All of them, without any kind of questions.
The Kommendant was a quite tall yet thin man, with a gaunt pinched face, close-sitting brown cat-eyes, a large pointy nose, lips so thin that if he pursed them enough they would probably disappear, a thick cropped beard the colour of acorns, and ears so pointy that they could have belonged to a bat.
Johan Falkenklaue, the Bloody Falcon of Olmdark. Hügor thought as a shiver, almost as cold as the air around them, slowly slithered down his spine.
The Kommendant was also dressed in a long coat in stone-grey and dark green colours, with golden buttons, a black belt with a golden buckle, a white wolf-fur collar and cuffs, and the many golden and silver medals with the Empire's seal on his left breast that he had earned through his many years of service. On his left biceps was a small pointed triangle-shaped shield with the coat of arms of the Empire, a black crow ready to fly off on a golden field with three upstanding blood-red chevrons behind it. On the other arm was the Kommendant's own coat, an almond-shaped shield with a grey falcon holding a red snake in it's golden claws as it flew over a dark green field with two purple bendlets over it. He also wore black boots and gloves with fur trimmings of sable, a dark green scarf covering his entire neck, and a dark grey cap worthy of a general with the Empire's coat of arms fastened on its front. He turned his head to Hügor, and the shiver returned, even colder than before.
"Captain Grimler, do you doubt our beloved Empire's prowess and strength?" he asked in a deep voice, with a calm yet ice-cold tone.
"N-no, Kommendant!", Hügor answered quickly, to not be ensnared in a debate about loyalty. He had heard of a man who had been lured into a similar trap by another commander. That man had ended his days in the gallows, branded a traitor to the Empire.
"Good. But I do. I have served this great nation for more than twenty-five years now, and I, among a few others, see the truth that many of the military and the Emperor himself doesn't; we simply can't keep up this fight with Wrynore nor their allies as we have for the past hundred and eighty years. Give it two, maybe three decades and not a day more, and we will have ran out of both resources and manpower. But with this..." he pointed with his right index finger to the massive coffin, and the exhausted men who were now standing in front of and around it, and smiled the most frightening smile Hügor had ever seen, "...with this, we will have something that will give us the upper hand we require."
More soldiers started to surround the enormous coffin. Average sized and average built men in their primes clad in long dark green or dark grey coats with black buttons and brown fur-trimmed collars, black boots and gloves, black or green scarfs, and dark grey coal scuttle-shaped helmets with a single spike on top of each and their division's seal on both sides of it; a white hawk with red eyes on a moss-green shield, with a 2 and a 5 below the hawk in pitch-black. Some had bandoliers filled with 7.62 mm-ammunition from their shoulders to their waists and back again. A few others wore breastplates of black steel. All, however, wore holsters on mostly their right sides, armed with black Segfried-pistols. While the Republic still used mainly revolvers and bolt-action rifles, the Empire had shifted to semi-automatic pistols forty years back, along with semi-automatic rifles and improved machine guns thirty years ago. Almost all of the men were armed with those as well. Semi-automatic rifles with 7,92 mm calibres and made from black iron and dark brown oak, called Bratzman due to the name of their creator. The men themselves were hard veterans of this hard and long war. True soldiers who'd stared Death in the face more than once without fear nor regret.
The fifth Jäger-division, the pride of Schwarzhügel and the Empire's military. Hügor thought with pride as he looked over his comrades. The division he had served in for at least fifteen years, and been second-in-command for seven of those years. It was also one of the most dangerous and reliable forces in the Empire, known to make the impossible into the possible. Yet he still saw small glimpses of fear on the faces of his men, as they awaited the Kommendant and himself on the hill they stood on.
"What's the problem, Lieutenant Reffmeier?" the Kommendant asked the third-in-command, Arnfeld Reffmeier, as they descended from the hill down to the crowd. A tall and broad man dressed like the rest, with a flat nose, square jaw, small blue eyes, and the start of a beard with a short blood-red stubble all over his lower face. He had survived the siege of Dekkre, and together with the rest of the men as well as the thirty-first Panzer-division had won the brutal battle at Malmberg. He had left both those battles with a face as if carved in stone, yet now he was trembling like an Autumn-leaf and sweating bullets, even though the cold air almost froze them to ice as soon as they appeared.
"K-K-Kommendant, sir. W-we recovered t-the c-coffin f-f-from the t-tomb. B-but the m-m-men, t-t-they s-said t-they s-s-saw things d-down t-there. Horrible t-things." he said through shattering teeth, with eyes filled with fear.
"What things?" the Kommendant asked, looking mildly annoyed at how one of his best men had transformed from a fearless killing-machine into this shaking mess of an adult man.
Reffmeier only stared at him, while taking a few terrified glances back at the tomb, and always returning with wide eyes ready to break into tears. The Kommendant looked even more annoyed, but only shook his head in frustration and turned to the coffin. He looked at it as if it was the greatest price in the world, while Hügor and the other soldiers only looked at it with either pure fear or an unbearable curiosity. It was rectangle-shaped, huge, wide and long, but not that tall, and made from black stone, with depictions of skulls and inscriptions of a strange and ancient language written with gold and lapis lazuli all over it.
"This is just what we need." the Kommendant said in an assured tone, "Bring out the bars and hammers, boys!"
Half the troop ran back to the convoy, and quickly came back with crates filled with huge crowbars and large sledgehammers. Then the strongest in the company quickly drove the bars into where the lid were, and started to hammer down on them with the sledgehammers. It took a while, but after a time they managed to open the lid. Hügor would regret that moment for the remaining time of his life. A horrifying teal shine peered out, and through the half open lid, ice-cold winds and small teal balls of light in the shape of terrifying human skulls flew out, letting out blood-curdling screams and laughs. The men who had their guns ready aimed in panic at them, while those who didn't started to cover, run, or scream out of fear. Hügor couldn't move and was about to faint of fear, but he heard something strange. It was the Kommendant, who was trying to open the lid completely.
"Grimler!? Anybody!? Help me with this, you damn cowards!" he yelled in a tired yet furious voice, as he kept pushing at the massive lid with all his strength.
Hügor knew he should have just ran, perhaps even deserted, to save himself from this nightmare. But he was too loyal. Loyal to the empire, the army, his squad, and his commander. He ran to the Kommendant's side, and started to push as well. They both called for more help, and soon they were eight who pushed. Himself, the Kommendant, Reffmeier, whose face was now almost completely covered in snot and tears, their demolishing expert Werner Dråkler, and four of the men who had driven the crowbars into the lid from the start whose names Hügor could not remember. They all pushed with all their strength, while the nightmare-like laughter and screams from the flying skulls echoed in their heads, louder and louder.
God, please, let it end... Please, let us open it... Please... Hügor thought as he kept pushing. And as a horrible sign from God, the lid opened.
The skulls disappeared as if they had never been there, but the cold and the lights stayed, and became even worse. Those few who didn't fall or ran when the freezing wind or the blinding lights struck them walked up to the now open and glowing coffin. Those were Hügor, the Kommandant, Reffmeier, and Dråkler. They all looked into the blinding coffin, and all but the Kommendant flinched back as if they had been hit by a bombshell. Hügor landed on his back and almost puked, Reffmeier did puke, even as most of it froze even before it reached the ground, and Dråkler screamed as if he had been shot in the most painful of areas. The Kommendant only stood there, and watched into the horror.
"Yes..." he said calmly in an almost silent voice, and looked back at Hügor with a smile. His shiver returned, worse than before, almost as bad as what they had just experienced.
"S-sir?" Hügor asked meekly, as he felt his crotch becoming warm and wet, then cold and stale again, and his eyes hurting from the tears freezing even before they'd left them.
"This is just what we need," he said in the same calm and cold tone he had spoken with earlier, "to end an era... an era of war..."
**************
Chapter 1.
Born of Filth and Theft.
Northern part of Boozebottom, the worst slum in Wrychester, capital city of Wrynore. Late Spring of 1876 IB.
The sun's goin' down. Evenin's here. And I'm late. Shit... Lidia thought as she watched the orange-blue sky with its grey clouds and black columns of smoke.
She ran as fast as she could back to Lennard's shop. If she would be late again, he would be angry. And probably drunk too. The old bugger drank like one of those strange animals from the far south-east, with two humps on their backs and a face only a mother could love. She ran past decrepit stone buildings either one or two levels high with either broken or boarded up windows, small plank houses which looked as if they would fall apart at any moment, small abandoned steel factories with lanky sky-high chimneys still letting out small columns of pitch-black smoke, dirty alleys in-between rickety and ramshackle houses of wood and bricks filled with manure and death, alehouses that looked more like used war cantinas or toilet-sheds made for four to five people, with only a few exceptions, that looked like shabby bordellos, and usually were exactly that. Boozebottom. The dirtiest, smelliest and most dangerous area of Wrychester, capital of the Wry Republic. More an old ruin than a district, with a majority of the buildings and facilities too dilapidated to even consider safe. It was nowadays only home to murderers and thieves, whores and degenerates, drunks and beggars, refugees and orphans. All the poor outcasts of a society where the high-and-mighty didn't wish to look upon anymore.
A true shithole.
All the nastiest gangs in the city also lived here, and in practice controlled the area, since the city's police force didn't really care about the place anymore than a horse did for the flies buzzing around it's arse. There were the Burning Buggers, Reynald's Rats, Bill Barchester's Boys, the Dealers, the Morsedi Brothers, the Rotten Apples, and some others she had forgotten the names of. Cruel cutthroats and brutal bastards, all of them. The kind of creeps and degenerates who would rape you while they robbed and gutted you. If you had a pretty face, that is.
Lucky me Lennard always says that I wouldn't be worth a bloody penny as a whore.
She ran faster, passing sleeping drunks and loud beggars, dirty and shabby whores looking for customers, and shady-looking men dressed in filthy coats and dirty jackets armed with all sorts of sharp or blunt things waiting for their next prey. They all ignored her.
'Course they do. I ain't got no money, I'm a youn' girl, and robbin' a child wouldn't be worth the damn bother. Well, she wasn't actually a child. She was sixteen, a woman grown. But she was small, one and sixty centimetres, a bit skinny, and looked half a child with her big green doe-eyes.
As she ran, she passed a smelly and hairy man dressed in a blue coat covered with patches and stitches as well as a pair of grey and yellow-lined pants who was selling mirrors in a small stand made from shabby light brown planks. Most of the mirrors were broken, or so dirty that it was impossible to see anything in them. However, one was not useless, and Lidia stopped for a short time to look upon herself in it. Her long loose dark brown and dirty hair, her pale dirt-spotted face, her thin build and finally her large green doe-eyes didn't give her a great impression of herself. Neither did her dirty orange vest with only three still intact buttons, her filth-spotted white lace-up blouse, her long patched blue skirt, and finally her shit-stained brown boots with a few holes that showed her smelly brown socks.
I need new clothes... Especially new boots... she thought sourly as she looked at her own reflection for a short time.
"Are ya buin', or just lookin'?" the salesmen asked in an annoyed tone that showed his pure disdain for window-shoppers. Lidia only gave him a sour look and a frown, then started running again. She could hear the salesmen mutter "Lil' twat..." under his breath as she extended the distance between them more and more.
Soon enough, she reached her destination. The Cocky Crab. The only inn in Boozebottom which didn't belong to any of the gangs or wasn't a ruin. A disgusting pile of rubbish and shit, but also her home for the past sixteen years. It was a broad and large two-level plank house, with almost no windows and six smaller shacks built into it from the sides. It kind of looked like the bloating carcass of a pig, full of sores left by age and termites, with the shacks looking like scavengers gathering around it for a feast. The biggest of these shacks were almost houses themselves, attached to the inn. There were Payter's Pawnshop, Fornelia's Fortune-Hut, Lennard's Service-Shop, the smaller shacks, and then the large inn itself, which was owned by a large and scruffy man with a red beard and dopey fish-eyes named Clarence Orlson, who everyone in Boozebottom called Old Craby.
Home. Lidia thought, as an old white-haired drunk fell face-first into a brown puddle in front of her. Ignoring him, she started to run towards the Service-Shop.
Halfway there, at an old brick house which could have been a bakery once, she passed two of Barchester's Boys. A pair of large, bald and thick-built brigands dressed in green button-up shirts of wool covered with different kinds of stains, black braces with red suspenders, brown shoes covered with black and green muck, and grease-stained red scarfs around their thick necks, armed with old but long and sharp dirks. They were harassing a shaggy-looking drunk dressed in a dirty brown coat covered with patches and a pair of rotting black shoes. The pair asked for money, while the drunk didn't seem to understand a single thing they said, only shambling and babbling something incomprehensible. Lidia, for some reason she didn't even know herself, stared at them a short while, before one of the brutes noticed her.
"What d'ye want, ye little cunt? Bugger off 'fore we make a rug o' ye!" said the one who had noticed her. A brutish-looking man with a thick brown walrus moustache, a pointy red nose, and a pair of dull angry pig-eyes. He also had a tattoo of a green skull on the right side of his head. His companion had also noticed her by then.
"Heh, calm down Rudden. She's just a wee lass, what can she do? Oy, bonnie! Ye better leave 'fore tings get rough. 'Is ain't a dandy place 'or lil' ladies." the other one said. A calmer-toned man with a short but thick and grizzled black beard which looked like as if he had flayed a bear and glued its hide onto his face. He also had a pug-nose, brown eyes, and brown teeth too. Both he and his friend reeked of ale, onions and piss.
She did as he said and left. The drunk still didn't seem to understand what was happening around him, only looking around and spurting some gibberish as the two criminals started to threaten him again. Lidia ran the rest of the way to the front door, banged the code on it, and waited. For quite a while.
Where the hell is he?! she thought angrily and looked around to make sure she wasn't followed by the two brutes, or anyone else.
Is that old sack o' shit on another bender? I'll kill 'Im if that's the bloody case... She was about to knock again, even harder, but stopped herself when she heard the sound of a lock being unlocked, and the door opened.
Inside stood a short, bowlegged, skinny and sour-looking greybeard, with dark green eyes, a bald pate, a grey and white beard covering everything below his red potato of a nose to his crotch, a hunched back, and huge leathery hands. He was dressed in a patched and faded yellow coat with a high collar, black pants, and grey boots in need of a cobbler's magic hands. Father. He wasn't her real pa, just an old man who had adopted her at a really young age. Or that's at least what he had told her angrily last time she called him father, which had been eleven years ago.
"Yer late," he said in a stern yet quite high-pitched voice, "we got work t' do."
Still looks the same, except that green mould-stain by the window. Lidia thought uncomfortably as she looked around her home while following Lennard. First after entering the door there was a large room that worked like an entrance hall, with a quite high ceiling with a cheap wooden chandelier filled with candles, as well as brown floors and sea-green walls filled with different oddities and relics Lennard had collected during his long life placed on pedestals or hanging on the walls, like a pair of blue monkey feet, a black and pink feather which was almost a whole meter long, a long row of blood-red shark teeth, the shrunken head of a strange-looking woman with sewn-together lips and eyes, a small statue of black stone depicting a naked girl with a frog's head, an egg as large as a grown man's head and coloured in cream and gold, and a hundred other weird and strange things. After that there was a pretty long and thin hall with six doors, three on the left, two on the right, and a final one at the end of the hall, which led to Lennard's office as he called it. Its walls were dark blue, while the floor was still wooden brown, and on the walls hung a few paintings of fantastic animals and bitter-looking aristocrats, mostly stolen ones they hadn't manage to sell. The doors to the left was her's and his own living rooms, as well as a shared bathroom. The ones to the right was first a closet filled with different useful things they had gathered over the years, from a small arsenal of weapons to different tools they could use one way or another, and then another door she had always been ordered not to enter, which she for some strange reason had obliged. Then they entered the office, a quite large windowless room with two large wooden bookshelves on either side filled to the brim with books and almost obscuring the walls, a large dark brown desk almost at the end of the room, with a flask-shaped candle-lamp and a small and messy pile of paper on it, as well as a pair of fancy green chairs on either side of it, and finally a large collection of paintings depicting famous places and stuffed fish on trophies of different sizes (all stolen as well) on the bright yellow wall behind the desk. They both seated themselves in one of the chairs at the desk, opposite of each other, and simply sat there in silence. All the while, Lidia started to think about the Service-Shop.
The store's services were quite simple. People paid them to perform honest tasks. Most requests were thefts or espionage, and sometimes a few killings, but Lennard always refused the last kind. "It's bad enough we live in a dirty shit-covered dump and have t' steal and spy t' survive!" he had once told her angrily while being drunk like a skunk. Most of the jobs usually involved Lidia, the more agile and younger of the two, infiltrating some place, mostly rich mansions or estates in Golden Grove, the richest area in the capital. High-ranking generals, mighty and rich businessmen, and a large part of the nobility who were placed in Wrychester lived there. Lidia's job was usually to find some poor girl with her build and stature, knock her out, take her clothes, find the price, take it and return home. It was way easier than what some may think. Most of the rich buggers didn't even care to look closer at their younger or shorter servants, which made it all much easier for her to blend in. She had also mugged schoolgirls, young nurses, novice nuns, performers and even two young socialites. One had been at a funeral, wearing a black dress and face-covering veil, which had made it all easier. The other one had been a girl from the south-eastern country of Marzeer, wearing a strange and colourful concealing dress, as well as a head and face-covering shawl, making it also quite easy to not be noticed.
"Ya know the job?" Lennard asked, braking the silence.
"The normal kind?" Lidia asked back while sneering a little, knowing that the geezer hated when she answered his questions with another question.
"Yea," the old man answered while scowling through his almost yellow teeth, "information this time. The track o' a weapon transport led by Baron Hjordheim's youn'er brother, Phineas. Ya know where the Hjordheims' live?"
"The large blue estate with the statue o' a blue bull with golden lightning bolts as it's horns standing on a white flowerbed in front o' it?" she asked, knowing Golden Grove well.
"Yea. They're havin' a party t'night, celebratin' the Baron's son Albrecht's safe return from the war." the old man said, clearly disappointed by the outcome. Lidia knew Lennard's hate for the nobility all too well, since she shared it to a fault.
"Have we won?" she asked, too curious to stop herself, even though she already knew the answer.
"One rich cunt returnin' doesn't mean the end o' the fightin' with the Olmdark Empire." the old man answered bitterly, "But this information may perchance be o' use for some true patriots o' the Kingdom. A document, preferably. But if ya have t', try t' eavesdrop on the Baron or any o' 'is cronies and remember the information on yer own."
He opened a drawer and picked out a few things, then handed them to Lidia. He gave her a small bag of a green fabric filled with enough rope for two people and two pieces of thick beige cloth, to tie up and gag her victims with. A small knife for any kind of emergency that was quite easy to conceal. And finally a small red pouch with five gold coins in it, if the need for a bribe would ever appear, as well as a small brass key that Lennard had bought from a retired maid who had worked for the Hjordheims. A key that would probably work on a lot of the doors inside the mansion. He then waved her to his side, leading her to the other door on the now left side of the hall, the one she'd been told never to open. Lennard opened it, and outside was an alley big enough for a carriage and two horses on a row to stand in, which Lidia had never seen before, even though she'd been around the Cocky Crab a thousand times. A few feet from the door stood an old carriage, it's driver, and it's transport. The carriage was old and without any paint, except the wood's natural colour, which reminded Lidia of something she'd once been forced to clean up while disguised as a nurse. It had marks of age, much use, and termites. It's driver looked similar in an uncanny way. An elderly bugger dressed in a brown jacket, pants, boots, scarf and bowler-hat, with short yet wild grey hair and sly old eyes the same colour as the carriage. His face and carrot-like red nose were pox-marked and covered with early syphilis wounds, as well as black and grey stubble all over his thin cheeks and chin. Finally the poor nag, who was brown and covered with white spots on it's arse and sides, as well as having a grey mane and only one functional eye.
"The bleedin' hell is that?" Lidia asked in an annoyed tone. She had always preferred to walk as well as hating carriages, since they were a symbol of the wealthy, who she hated almost more than the pox.
"It's yer ride." Lennard answered as he was taking out a small hidden bottle of green glass in his coat, "The streets ain't safe no more. T' many fuckers who'd rape and kill ya, and that would mean the end t' our business, wouldn't it?"
Lidia looked at the old driver, who gave her one of the most disturbing smiles she'd ever been given. It felt as if a snake made out of ice slithered down her spine.
"And what if he rapes and kills me? He looks the type." she asked while shifting her gaze from the still smiling perv to Lennard, who was taking a healthy swig from the bottle.
"Crill may look like a perverted killer, but he's in me debt, and he's trustworthy. He'll take ya t' Golden Grove without any problems," Lennard said as he was re-entering the shop via the door, "and don't ya come back without the goods, ya hear!?" he yelled to her as he closed the door with a pretty loud bang.
Lidia glared angrily at the closed door, sighed deeply, and entered the carriage. The way to Golden Grove in that old carriage proved to be one of the most boring experiences in her entire short life. Looking out for anything interesting proved useless, since the carriage didn't have any windows, except for four wide slits, big enough for a child's hand to slid through, made for air. One was at the front behind the driver, one each was placed in the doors, and the last was behind Lidia's head. It was almost impossible to see through them, but hearing was no problem. However, the streets were seemingly dead, as quiet as they were. Speaking to Crill proved fruitless as well, since the bugger was either mute or just ignoring her. The trip was also slow, even though she rode in a carriage, something she knew could go faster than a running man. She guessed that either the old perv was treating the nag nicely just to spite her, or that the poor creature was too old to walk faster than a snail. Even though she knew she would probably either be raped, gutted, or both if she fell asleep, she quickly started dozing off. She was tired, partly thanks to the boredom, and soon entered the land of dreams.
**************
"Oy, m'lady! Wake up! We're 'ere!" a hoarse voice called out, waking Lidia up from a dream where she had danced on a beautiful meadow filled with yellow, red and white roses. A dream that had made her more happy then she had ever been in her whole miserable life.
"Shut that fuckin' trap, arsehole!" she called back, enraged. Both out of annoyance for the fact that the old bugger wasn't mute but had just ignored her during the ride and that he had ruined her wonderful dream, and fury over the fact he had called her m'lady, when she hated the nobility even worse than the plague. She left the carriage and came out into a large yellow brick alley that was made to hold garbage. As she walked up to the old bastard, she noticed that the sun had only almost gone down, making the night sky dark blue instead of black, yet filled with golden and silver stars.
"Oh, aren't we lovely 'is dandy evenin', eh?" Crill said, chuckling.
Lidia was surprised that he hadn't raped or murdered her, and even more surprised when he told her with a prideful voice that it had only taken them two hours to get here, when her own walks usually took three hours, and that the old nag didn't even seem tired from his lightning-fast sprint, as Crill put it. When she asked how it was even possible, the old man just smiled and told her to hurry on to the estate, and that he'll be waiting where they now stood for her.
"Okay, but ya best be here when I come back." she said and started walking, hearing no answer from the old crook as she strolled on her way to the blue estate and its bull with the lightning bolts as its horns. She looked out from the alley, and took a good look of her surroundings.
Place's still the same Lidia thought as she looked over Golden Grove from her hiding place. Almost all of the huge buildings were identical. Incredibly large and high square or rectangle-shaped mansions placed in the middle of huge square grounds, filled with either huge hedge-labyrinths, enormous gardens, or small forests made for partying and merrymaking. Almost all of the mansions looked the same, with the only exceptions between them being their colour and exterior décor. Most were coloured in shades of white, beige or brown, with a few sculptures and planted trees in the front yards. But some had much more impressive colours and décor, such as blue, green, red, yellow, orange, and purple, and beautiful statues, gardens and fountains. The Voltrell's, the royal in-laws, mansion was coloured entirely in gold, silver and black, with huge marble gargoyles resembling demons and goblins on the balconies, and with a magnificent fountain made also out of marble at the middle of the yard, with a huge blue-painted and beautiful naked nymph riding a large silver salmon as its motive. While the Orkwall's, the country's richest banking family, mansion was coloured purple and in a shade of green Lidia didn't know the name of, with a statue of a bronze stag with a hawk's wings at the gate, and wonderful gardens containing the most rare and exotic flowers. Another thing all the mansions shared was the walls protecting them from burglars and assassins. From four and a half to almost seven meters high they were, and usually heavily guarded by tough and brutish-looking men wearing the emblems or insignia of the family they served.
The estate would be easy to find, even without the bull. More than thirty carriages and less than ten automobiles in hundreds of colours and metals stood outside of the teal-coloured five and a half meters high front-wall, like a massive way-point on wheels and coloured in gold, green, purple, blue, red, yellow, black, orange and more colours she couldn't even name. The open main gate, which was made in the traditional way, consisting of two massive rectangle-shaped oak doors with the family's coat of arms painted beautifully on each one, was guarded by a pair of rough-looking men clad in blue brigantines, golden lobster-tailed pot helmets with face-shields in the form of bull-faces, chausses and vambraces enamelled in aqua blue, and finally gold-coloured braces, jackets, leather gloves and boots. Both were also armed with thin sabres with golden hilts, and loaded Bedwells 1859 with gold-plated barrels and ash handles. They were at the moment asking a pair of peacocks with human heads for their invitations.
Hell, those rich pricks even dress their guards up in fineries.
The main gate was out of the question, so Lidia quickly and quietly snuck behind the carriages and around the wall, to look around. And as a sign from Heaven, she saw a small wooden door made for the servants so they could easily take the trash out to three large brown containers made for depositing the filth. And even better, someone was there, taking the trash out. It was a girl of eighteen years, with pale skin, big blue eyes, a small yet pointy nose and freckles all over her pretty face. She wore a black front-button dress with an ankle-long skirt and long sleeves, puffed shoulders, white ruffle cuffs, a high collar with white frills at the end and an unnecessary bowknot-tie around the throat. She also wore a snow white apron with ruffle edges and ends, an equally white frilly mob cap concealing her hair and most of her upper brow and lower back of her head, and grey lace-up boots with slightly heightened heels. And as another gift from Heaven, she looked about Lidia's size and height, with a thin build and hardly any breasts at all. Lidia walked over to her, fast and quiet like a cat so not to be spotted by the soon to be unfortunate maid. When she was almost right behind her, Lidia picked up a well-placed glass bottle at the foot of the closest container, which looked as if it had previously been filled with milk, and smashed it over the poor girl's head. With only a quick and squeaky OW! leaving her lips, she fell down face-first onto a closed bag made from dirty grey plastic, unconscious.
"Nothin' personal, dove. Just business." Lidia said, smiling at the poor girl as she brushed away the glass from her cap and started to work.
Lidia started with dragging her off the bags and turning her over, then unlacing her boots and removing them, as well as her long white stockings. Then she untied the apron and removed the cap, revealing her victim's beautiful brick-red shoulder-long hair. After that, she started to unbutton the dress, untied the tie and removed the white undershirt with the frilly collar and the long underskirt with frilly ends. Soon enough, all the moaning girl was dressed in was her undergarments, consisting of a long white shift and thin long white close-fitting bloomers. Lidia then removed her own clothes; her orange vest, her white blouse, her blue skirt, and finally her boots and socks.
"Ahh, it feels quite good t' come out o' those clothes. I'm goin' t' ask Lennard t' buy me some new ones when we get payed for this job." she said nonchalantly to herself, as she started to put on the maid's stockings, undershirt and underskirt, buttoned up the collar, tied the apron and necktie, hid her dirty dark brown hair inside the cap, straightened the skirt, and lastly laced up the boots. She also folded her own clothes into a neat pile, hid them where only she would find them nearby, and took her small green pouch, her knife and her red bag and hid them all inside her apron.
Being all clear, she then began to work on the poor redhead, starting with tying the wrists of the young maid behind her back, securing her ankles and her knees, and finally wrapped and tightened one of the coils of rope around her lower breasts and upper arms to pin them on her sides. She then used one of the pieces of cloth to gag her. She quickly placed the cloth over the maid's mouth-area, from below the nose to just below the chin, and tied a hard knot behind her head. A cleave-gag would perhaps have been more effective, but the cloth was too big for her mouth, and Lidia was in a hurry. She placed the maid against the wall beside one of the garbage containers, and placed a few of the large bags made of grey plastic and filled with garbage around her, to make it extra hard for anyone to spot her.
"Well then. Have a dandy nap, miss, and thank ya for this nice new outfit. Now I'm goin' t' take a good look around this fancy house..." Lidia said as she sarcastically waved goodbye to the sleeping beauty and walked through the small door. And entered a fantasy-world.
(Horribly sorry that it took so long to complete. A million different things constantly came into the way, but I hope it was worth the truly horrendous wait. Also, due to making it a tad too long, I was forced to split both chapter 1 and 2 into 2 different posts, so pardon for that one. I'm not entirely sure when a third chapter will come, but I will try and make it as soon as possible. I'm also going to write down some short-stories in the near future, so I hope it can suffice. Thank you very much for reading and waiting.)
The story is played out in a Dieselpunk/Victorian-Edwardian/WW1-2 setting, with a small bit of fantasy in it (cheesy as hell, I know, but I couldn't come up with a better explanation for the setting).
I should also warn you that this "novel" does not revolve around uniform/clothes stealing. While I will try to put in a lot of FUS-scenes in the chapters, there will be more of a overarching story where clothes-stealing isn't central to it. So I suggest you to just skip it if you only care about the steals, and not the plot.
Foul language, sexual and physical violence and mentions of it, and blood will also be present throughout some chapters, so be warned if you do not enjoy or can't stand any of it.
Well, enough of me babbling, here's the story. Hope you'll enjoy it!
**************
Epilogue.
Krendlebrach Cemetery, three hundred miles south of Färnwechler, a small town two days away from Olmdark, capital of the Olmdark Empire. Middle of Autumn of 1860 IB.
It's cold. Hügor Grimler, captain and second-in-command of the fifth Jäger-division, thought as he watched over the almost ancient cemetery in the brightly moonlit night, with it's graves, mausoleums and crypts. And the gigantic barrow the Kommendant had just sent eight of his best men into, to recover some kind of artefact. The squad had waited for almost three hours by now. He tightened his fur collar around his face with his hands as he looked around.
The cemetery was a strange place, since it was both huge and well used as it would seem, but so far from any civilised settlement and placed in an old forest. Strange was also the fact that while it was so secluded, it still had its own small road to it, big enough for at least one truck to travel on it without any qualms. The people in the closest town and villages had also warned the division not to go there, frantically telling them that it was cursed and haunted by ghosts and ice-demons. Hügor by now almost believed them, due to the bone-chilling cold and the unpleasant atmosphere.
It's cold. So bloody cold. Hügor repeated in his mind as he watched the eight soldiers return, dragging out a massive coffin out of the enormous barrow with thick beige ropes. The wind blew as if a massive snowstorm had just hit them, except it was even colder than that.
Hügor had experienced hard winters and cold climates before. During his youth in the Wultbart-mountains, his posting in Drolmfort in the northern parts of the Iskland-regions, and his later relocation to Stramleberg, commonly called "Castle Cold" by the members of the Empire's military staff. He had survived horrible storms of snow and ice, bone-chilling winds, and even hail of massive proportions. But this cold was unnatural. It was worse than anything he had ever experienced, and it was still only the beginning of Autumn!
"Um, pardon me, sir, but is that... thing, truly worth all of this hassle?" he mustered up the courage to ask the Kommendant through his clapping teeth, as he turned his head toward him. His commander was actually only a colonel, but he had told all of his subordinates to call him "Kommendant", and so they did. All of them, without any kind of questions.
The Kommendant was a quite tall yet thin man, with a gaunt pinched face, close-sitting brown cat-eyes, a large pointy nose, lips so thin that if he pursed them enough they would probably disappear, a thick cropped beard the colour of acorns, and ears so pointy that they could have belonged to a bat.
Johan Falkenklaue, the Bloody Falcon of Olmdark. Hügor thought as a shiver, almost as cold as the air around them, slowly slithered down his spine.
The Kommendant was also dressed in a long coat in stone-grey and dark green colours, with golden buttons, a black belt with a golden buckle, a white wolf-fur collar and cuffs, and the many golden and silver medals with the Empire's seal on his left breast that he had earned through his many years of service. On his left biceps was a small pointed triangle-shaped shield with the coat of arms of the Empire, a black crow ready to fly off on a golden field with three upstanding blood-red chevrons behind it. On the other arm was the Kommendant's own coat, an almond-shaped shield with a grey falcon holding a red snake in it's golden claws as it flew over a dark green field with two purple bendlets over it. He also wore black boots and gloves with fur trimmings of sable, a dark green scarf covering his entire neck, and a dark grey cap worthy of a general with the Empire's coat of arms fastened on its front. He turned his head to Hügor, and the shiver returned, even colder than before.
"Captain Grimler, do you doubt our beloved Empire's prowess and strength?" he asked in a deep voice, with a calm yet ice-cold tone.
"N-no, Kommendant!", Hügor answered quickly, to not be ensnared in a debate about loyalty. He had heard of a man who had been lured into a similar trap by another commander. That man had ended his days in the gallows, branded a traitor to the Empire.
"Good. But I do. I have served this great nation for more than twenty-five years now, and I, among a few others, see the truth that many of the military and the Emperor himself doesn't; we simply can't keep up this fight with Wrynore nor their allies as we have for the past hundred and eighty years. Give it two, maybe three decades and not a day more, and we will have ran out of both resources and manpower. But with this..." he pointed with his right index finger to the massive coffin, and the exhausted men who were now standing in front of and around it, and smiled the most frightening smile Hügor had ever seen, "...with this, we will have something that will give us the upper hand we require."
More soldiers started to surround the enormous coffin. Average sized and average built men in their primes clad in long dark green or dark grey coats with black buttons and brown fur-trimmed collars, black boots and gloves, black or green scarfs, and dark grey coal scuttle-shaped helmets with a single spike on top of each and their division's seal on both sides of it; a white hawk with red eyes on a moss-green shield, with a 2 and a 5 below the hawk in pitch-black. Some had bandoliers filled with 7.62 mm-ammunition from their shoulders to their waists and back again. A few others wore breastplates of black steel. All, however, wore holsters on mostly their right sides, armed with black Segfried-pistols. While the Republic still used mainly revolvers and bolt-action rifles, the Empire had shifted to semi-automatic pistols forty years back, along with semi-automatic rifles and improved machine guns thirty years ago. Almost all of the men were armed with those as well. Semi-automatic rifles with 7,92 mm calibres and made from black iron and dark brown oak, called Bratzman due to the name of their creator. The men themselves were hard veterans of this hard and long war. True soldiers who'd stared Death in the face more than once without fear nor regret.
The fifth Jäger-division, the pride of Schwarzhügel and the Empire's military. Hügor thought with pride as he looked over his comrades. The division he had served in for at least fifteen years, and been second-in-command for seven of those years. It was also one of the most dangerous and reliable forces in the Empire, known to make the impossible into the possible. Yet he still saw small glimpses of fear on the faces of his men, as they awaited the Kommendant and himself on the hill they stood on.
"What's the problem, Lieutenant Reffmeier?" the Kommendant asked the third-in-command, Arnfeld Reffmeier, as they descended from the hill down to the crowd. A tall and broad man dressed like the rest, with a flat nose, square jaw, small blue eyes, and the start of a beard with a short blood-red stubble all over his lower face. He had survived the siege of Dekkre, and together with the rest of the men as well as the thirty-first Panzer-division had won the brutal battle at Malmberg. He had left both those battles with a face as if carved in stone, yet now he was trembling like an Autumn-leaf and sweating bullets, even though the cold air almost froze them to ice as soon as they appeared.
"K-K-Kommendant, sir. W-we recovered t-the c-coffin f-f-from the t-tomb. B-but the m-m-men, t-t-they s-said t-they s-s-saw things d-down t-there. Horrible t-things." he said through shattering teeth, with eyes filled with fear.
"What things?" the Kommendant asked, looking mildly annoyed at how one of his best men had transformed from a fearless killing-machine into this shaking mess of an adult man.
Reffmeier only stared at him, while taking a few terrified glances back at the tomb, and always returning with wide eyes ready to break into tears. The Kommendant looked even more annoyed, but only shook his head in frustration and turned to the coffin. He looked at it as if it was the greatest price in the world, while Hügor and the other soldiers only looked at it with either pure fear or an unbearable curiosity. It was rectangle-shaped, huge, wide and long, but not that tall, and made from black stone, with depictions of skulls and inscriptions of a strange and ancient language written with gold and lapis lazuli all over it.
"This is just what we need." the Kommendant said in an assured tone, "Bring out the bars and hammers, boys!"
Half the troop ran back to the convoy, and quickly came back with crates filled with huge crowbars and large sledgehammers. Then the strongest in the company quickly drove the bars into where the lid were, and started to hammer down on them with the sledgehammers. It took a while, but after a time they managed to open the lid. Hügor would regret that moment for the remaining time of his life. A horrifying teal shine peered out, and through the half open lid, ice-cold winds and small teal balls of light in the shape of terrifying human skulls flew out, letting out blood-curdling screams and laughs. The men who had their guns ready aimed in panic at them, while those who didn't started to cover, run, or scream out of fear. Hügor couldn't move and was about to faint of fear, but he heard something strange. It was the Kommendant, who was trying to open the lid completely.
"Grimler!? Anybody!? Help me with this, you damn cowards!" he yelled in a tired yet furious voice, as he kept pushing at the massive lid with all his strength.
Hügor knew he should have just ran, perhaps even deserted, to save himself from this nightmare. But he was too loyal. Loyal to the empire, the army, his squad, and his commander. He ran to the Kommendant's side, and started to push as well. They both called for more help, and soon they were eight who pushed. Himself, the Kommendant, Reffmeier, whose face was now almost completely covered in snot and tears, their demolishing expert Werner Dråkler, and four of the men who had driven the crowbars into the lid from the start whose names Hügor could not remember. They all pushed with all their strength, while the nightmare-like laughter and screams from the flying skulls echoed in their heads, louder and louder.
God, please, let it end... Please, let us open it... Please... Hügor thought as he kept pushing. And as a horrible sign from God, the lid opened.
The skulls disappeared as if they had never been there, but the cold and the lights stayed, and became even worse. Those few who didn't fall or ran when the freezing wind or the blinding lights struck them walked up to the now open and glowing coffin. Those were Hügor, the Kommandant, Reffmeier, and Dråkler. They all looked into the blinding coffin, and all but the Kommendant flinched back as if they had been hit by a bombshell. Hügor landed on his back and almost puked, Reffmeier did puke, even as most of it froze even before it reached the ground, and Dråkler screamed as if he had been shot in the most painful of areas. The Kommendant only stood there, and watched into the horror.
"Yes..." he said calmly in an almost silent voice, and looked back at Hügor with a smile. His shiver returned, worse than before, almost as bad as what they had just experienced.
"S-sir?" Hügor asked meekly, as he felt his crotch becoming warm and wet, then cold and stale again, and his eyes hurting from the tears freezing even before they'd left them.
"This is just what we need," he said in the same calm and cold tone he had spoken with earlier, "to end an era... an era of war..."
**************
Chapter 1.
Born of Filth and Theft.
Northern part of Boozebottom, the worst slum in Wrychester, capital city of Wrynore. Late Spring of 1876 IB.
The sun's goin' down. Evenin's here. And I'm late. Shit... Lidia thought as she watched the orange-blue sky with its grey clouds and black columns of smoke.
She ran as fast as she could back to Lennard's shop. If she would be late again, he would be angry. And probably drunk too. The old bugger drank like one of those strange animals from the far south-east, with two humps on their backs and a face only a mother could love. She ran past decrepit stone buildings either one or two levels high with either broken or boarded up windows, small plank houses which looked as if they would fall apart at any moment, small abandoned steel factories with lanky sky-high chimneys still letting out small columns of pitch-black smoke, dirty alleys in-between rickety and ramshackle houses of wood and bricks filled with manure and death, alehouses that looked more like used war cantinas or toilet-sheds made for four to five people, with only a few exceptions, that looked like shabby bordellos, and usually were exactly that. Boozebottom. The dirtiest, smelliest and most dangerous area of Wrychester, capital of the Wry Republic. More an old ruin than a district, with a majority of the buildings and facilities too dilapidated to even consider safe. It was nowadays only home to murderers and thieves, whores and degenerates, drunks and beggars, refugees and orphans. All the poor outcasts of a society where the high-and-mighty didn't wish to look upon anymore.
A true shithole.
All the nastiest gangs in the city also lived here, and in practice controlled the area, since the city's police force didn't really care about the place anymore than a horse did for the flies buzzing around it's arse. There were the Burning Buggers, Reynald's Rats, Bill Barchester's Boys, the Dealers, the Morsedi Brothers, the Rotten Apples, and some others she had forgotten the names of. Cruel cutthroats and brutal bastards, all of them. The kind of creeps and degenerates who would rape you while they robbed and gutted you. If you had a pretty face, that is.
Lucky me Lennard always says that I wouldn't be worth a bloody penny as a whore.
She ran faster, passing sleeping drunks and loud beggars, dirty and shabby whores looking for customers, and shady-looking men dressed in filthy coats and dirty jackets armed with all sorts of sharp or blunt things waiting for their next prey. They all ignored her.
'Course they do. I ain't got no money, I'm a youn' girl, and robbin' a child wouldn't be worth the damn bother. Well, she wasn't actually a child. She was sixteen, a woman grown. But she was small, one and sixty centimetres, a bit skinny, and looked half a child with her big green doe-eyes.
As she ran, she passed a smelly and hairy man dressed in a blue coat covered with patches and stitches as well as a pair of grey and yellow-lined pants who was selling mirrors in a small stand made from shabby light brown planks. Most of the mirrors were broken, or so dirty that it was impossible to see anything in them. However, one was not useless, and Lidia stopped for a short time to look upon herself in it. Her long loose dark brown and dirty hair, her pale dirt-spotted face, her thin build and finally her large green doe-eyes didn't give her a great impression of herself. Neither did her dirty orange vest with only three still intact buttons, her filth-spotted white lace-up blouse, her long patched blue skirt, and finally her shit-stained brown boots with a few holes that showed her smelly brown socks.
I need new clothes... Especially new boots... she thought sourly as she looked at her own reflection for a short time.
"Are ya buin', or just lookin'?" the salesmen asked in an annoyed tone that showed his pure disdain for window-shoppers. Lidia only gave him a sour look and a frown, then started running again. She could hear the salesmen mutter "Lil' twat..." under his breath as she extended the distance between them more and more.
Soon enough, she reached her destination. The Cocky Crab. The only inn in Boozebottom which didn't belong to any of the gangs or wasn't a ruin. A disgusting pile of rubbish and shit, but also her home for the past sixteen years. It was a broad and large two-level plank house, with almost no windows and six smaller shacks built into it from the sides. It kind of looked like the bloating carcass of a pig, full of sores left by age and termites, with the shacks looking like scavengers gathering around it for a feast. The biggest of these shacks were almost houses themselves, attached to the inn. There were Payter's Pawnshop, Fornelia's Fortune-Hut, Lennard's Service-Shop, the smaller shacks, and then the large inn itself, which was owned by a large and scruffy man with a red beard and dopey fish-eyes named Clarence Orlson, who everyone in Boozebottom called Old Craby.
Home. Lidia thought, as an old white-haired drunk fell face-first into a brown puddle in front of her. Ignoring him, she started to run towards the Service-Shop.
Halfway there, at an old brick house which could have been a bakery once, she passed two of Barchester's Boys. A pair of large, bald and thick-built brigands dressed in green button-up shirts of wool covered with different kinds of stains, black braces with red suspenders, brown shoes covered with black and green muck, and grease-stained red scarfs around their thick necks, armed with old but long and sharp dirks. They were harassing a shaggy-looking drunk dressed in a dirty brown coat covered with patches and a pair of rotting black shoes. The pair asked for money, while the drunk didn't seem to understand a single thing they said, only shambling and babbling something incomprehensible. Lidia, for some reason she didn't even know herself, stared at them a short while, before one of the brutes noticed her.
"What d'ye want, ye little cunt? Bugger off 'fore we make a rug o' ye!" said the one who had noticed her. A brutish-looking man with a thick brown walrus moustache, a pointy red nose, and a pair of dull angry pig-eyes. He also had a tattoo of a green skull on the right side of his head. His companion had also noticed her by then.
"Heh, calm down Rudden. She's just a wee lass, what can she do? Oy, bonnie! Ye better leave 'fore tings get rough. 'Is ain't a dandy place 'or lil' ladies." the other one said. A calmer-toned man with a short but thick and grizzled black beard which looked like as if he had flayed a bear and glued its hide onto his face. He also had a pug-nose, brown eyes, and brown teeth too. Both he and his friend reeked of ale, onions and piss.
She did as he said and left. The drunk still didn't seem to understand what was happening around him, only looking around and spurting some gibberish as the two criminals started to threaten him again. Lidia ran the rest of the way to the front door, banged the code on it, and waited. For quite a while.
Where the hell is he?! she thought angrily and looked around to make sure she wasn't followed by the two brutes, or anyone else.
Is that old sack o' shit on another bender? I'll kill 'Im if that's the bloody case... She was about to knock again, even harder, but stopped herself when she heard the sound of a lock being unlocked, and the door opened.
Inside stood a short, bowlegged, skinny and sour-looking greybeard, with dark green eyes, a bald pate, a grey and white beard covering everything below his red potato of a nose to his crotch, a hunched back, and huge leathery hands. He was dressed in a patched and faded yellow coat with a high collar, black pants, and grey boots in need of a cobbler's magic hands. Father. He wasn't her real pa, just an old man who had adopted her at a really young age. Or that's at least what he had told her angrily last time she called him father, which had been eleven years ago.
"Yer late," he said in a stern yet quite high-pitched voice, "we got work t' do."
Still looks the same, except that green mould-stain by the window. Lidia thought uncomfortably as she looked around her home while following Lennard. First after entering the door there was a large room that worked like an entrance hall, with a quite high ceiling with a cheap wooden chandelier filled with candles, as well as brown floors and sea-green walls filled with different oddities and relics Lennard had collected during his long life placed on pedestals or hanging on the walls, like a pair of blue monkey feet, a black and pink feather which was almost a whole meter long, a long row of blood-red shark teeth, the shrunken head of a strange-looking woman with sewn-together lips and eyes, a small statue of black stone depicting a naked girl with a frog's head, an egg as large as a grown man's head and coloured in cream and gold, and a hundred other weird and strange things. After that there was a pretty long and thin hall with six doors, three on the left, two on the right, and a final one at the end of the hall, which led to Lennard's office as he called it. Its walls were dark blue, while the floor was still wooden brown, and on the walls hung a few paintings of fantastic animals and bitter-looking aristocrats, mostly stolen ones they hadn't manage to sell. The doors to the left was her's and his own living rooms, as well as a shared bathroom. The ones to the right was first a closet filled with different useful things they had gathered over the years, from a small arsenal of weapons to different tools they could use one way or another, and then another door she had always been ordered not to enter, which she for some strange reason had obliged. Then they entered the office, a quite large windowless room with two large wooden bookshelves on either side filled to the brim with books and almost obscuring the walls, a large dark brown desk almost at the end of the room, with a flask-shaped candle-lamp and a small and messy pile of paper on it, as well as a pair of fancy green chairs on either side of it, and finally a large collection of paintings depicting famous places and stuffed fish on trophies of different sizes (all stolen as well) on the bright yellow wall behind the desk. They both seated themselves in one of the chairs at the desk, opposite of each other, and simply sat there in silence. All the while, Lidia started to think about the Service-Shop.
The store's services were quite simple. People paid them to perform honest tasks. Most requests were thefts or espionage, and sometimes a few killings, but Lennard always refused the last kind. "It's bad enough we live in a dirty shit-covered dump and have t' steal and spy t' survive!" he had once told her angrily while being drunk like a skunk. Most of the jobs usually involved Lidia, the more agile and younger of the two, infiltrating some place, mostly rich mansions or estates in Golden Grove, the richest area in the capital. High-ranking generals, mighty and rich businessmen, and a large part of the nobility who were placed in Wrychester lived there. Lidia's job was usually to find some poor girl with her build and stature, knock her out, take her clothes, find the price, take it and return home. It was way easier than what some may think. Most of the rich buggers didn't even care to look closer at their younger or shorter servants, which made it all much easier for her to blend in. She had also mugged schoolgirls, young nurses, novice nuns, performers and even two young socialites. One had been at a funeral, wearing a black dress and face-covering veil, which had made it all easier. The other one had been a girl from the south-eastern country of Marzeer, wearing a strange and colourful concealing dress, as well as a head and face-covering shawl, making it also quite easy to not be noticed.
"Ya know the job?" Lennard asked, braking the silence.
"The normal kind?" Lidia asked back while sneering a little, knowing that the geezer hated when she answered his questions with another question.
"Yea," the old man answered while scowling through his almost yellow teeth, "information this time. The track o' a weapon transport led by Baron Hjordheim's youn'er brother, Phineas. Ya know where the Hjordheims' live?"
"The large blue estate with the statue o' a blue bull with golden lightning bolts as it's horns standing on a white flowerbed in front o' it?" she asked, knowing Golden Grove well.
"Yea. They're havin' a party t'night, celebratin' the Baron's son Albrecht's safe return from the war." the old man said, clearly disappointed by the outcome. Lidia knew Lennard's hate for the nobility all too well, since she shared it to a fault.
"Have we won?" she asked, too curious to stop herself, even though she already knew the answer.
"One rich cunt returnin' doesn't mean the end o' the fightin' with the Olmdark Empire." the old man answered bitterly, "But this information may perchance be o' use for some true patriots o' the Kingdom. A document, preferably. But if ya have t', try t' eavesdrop on the Baron or any o' 'is cronies and remember the information on yer own."
He opened a drawer and picked out a few things, then handed them to Lidia. He gave her a small bag of a green fabric filled with enough rope for two people and two pieces of thick beige cloth, to tie up and gag her victims with. A small knife for any kind of emergency that was quite easy to conceal. And finally a small red pouch with five gold coins in it, if the need for a bribe would ever appear, as well as a small brass key that Lennard had bought from a retired maid who had worked for the Hjordheims. A key that would probably work on a lot of the doors inside the mansion. He then waved her to his side, leading her to the other door on the now left side of the hall, the one she'd been told never to open. Lennard opened it, and outside was an alley big enough for a carriage and two horses on a row to stand in, which Lidia had never seen before, even though she'd been around the Cocky Crab a thousand times. A few feet from the door stood an old carriage, it's driver, and it's transport. The carriage was old and without any paint, except the wood's natural colour, which reminded Lidia of something she'd once been forced to clean up while disguised as a nurse. It had marks of age, much use, and termites. It's driver looked similar in an uncanny way. An elderly bugger dressed in a brown jacket, pants, boots, scarf and bowler-hat, with short yet wild grey hair and sly old eyes the same colour as the carriage. His face and carrot-like red nose were pox-marked and covered with early syphilis wounds, as well as black and grey stubble all over his thin cheeks and chin. Finally the poor nag, who was brown and covered with white spots on it's arse and sides, as well as having a grey mane and only one functional eye.
"The bleedin' hell is that?" Lidia asked in an annoyed tone. She had always preferred to walk as well as hating carriages, since they were a symbol of the wealthy, who she hated almost more than the pox.
"It's yer ride." Lennard answered as he was taking out a small hidden bottle of green glass in his coat, "The streets ain't safe no more. T' many fuckers who'd rape and kill ya, and that would mean the end t' our business, wouldn't it?"
Lidia looked at the old driver, who gave her one of the most disturbing smiles she'd ever been given. It felt as if a snake made out of ice slithered down her spine.
"And what if he rapes and kills me? He looks the type." she asked while shifting her gaze from the still smiling perv to Lennard, who was taking a healthy swig from the bottle.
"Crill may look like a perverted killer, but he's in me debt, and he's trustworthy. He'll take ya t' Golden Grove without any problems," Lennard said as he was re-entering the shop via the door, "and don't ya come back without the goods, ya hear!?" he yelled to her as he closed the door with a pretty loud bang.
Lidia glared angrily at the closed door, sighed deeply, and entered the carriage. The way to Golden Grove in that old carriage proved to be one of the most boring experiences in her entire short life. Looking out for anything interesting proved useless, since the carriage didn't have any windows, except for four wide slits, big enough for a child's hand to slid through, made for air. One was at the front behind the driver, one each was placed in the doors, and the last was behind Lidia's head. It was almost impossible to see through them, but hearing was no problem. However, the streets were seemingly dead, as quiet as they were. Speaking to Crill proved fruitless as well, since the bugger was either mute or just ignoring her. The trip was also slow, even though she rode in a carriage, something she knew could go faster than a running man. She guessed that either the old perv was treating the nag nicely just to spite her, or that the poor creature was too old to walk faster than a snail. Even though she knew she would probably either be raped, gutted, or both if she fell asleep, she quickly started dozing off. She was tired, partly thanks to the boredom, and soon entered the land of dreams.
**************
"Oy, m'lady! Wake up! We're 'ere!" a hoarse voice called out, waking Lidia up from a dream where she had danced on a beautiful meadow filled with yellow, red and white roses. A dream that had made her more happy then she had ever been in her whole miserable life.
"Shut that fuckin' trap, arsehole!" she called back, enraged. Both out of annoyance for the fact that the old bugger wasn't mute but had just ignored her during the ride and that he had ruined her wonderful dream, and fury over the fact he had called her m'lady, when she hated the nobility even worse than the plague. She left the carriage and came out into a large yellow brick alley that was made to hold garbage. As she walked up to the old bastard, she noticed that the sun had only almost gone down, making the night sky dark blue instead of black, yet filled with golden and silver stars.
"Oh, aren't we lovely 'is dandy evenin', eh?" Crill said, chuckling.
Lidia was surprised that he hadn't raped or murdered her, and even more surprised when he told her with a prideful voice that it had only taken them two hours to get here, when her own walks usually took three hours, and that the old nag didn't even seem tired from his lightning-fast sprint, as Crill put it. When she asked how it was even possible, the old man just smiled and told her to hurry on to the estate, and that he'll be waiting where they now stood for her.
"Okay, but ya best be here when I come back." she said and started walking, hearing no answer from the old crook as she strolled on her way to the blue estate and its bull with the lightning bolts as its horns. She looked out from the alley, and took a good look of her surroundings.
Place's still the same Lidia thought as she looked over Golden Grove from her hiding place. Almost all of the huge buildings were identical. Incredibly large and high square or rectangle-shaped mansions placed in the middle of huge square grounds, filled with either huge hedge-labyrinths, enormous gardens, or small forests made for partying and merrymaking. Almost all of the mansions looked the same, with the only exceptions between them being their colour and exterior décor. Most were coloured in shades of white, beige or brown, with a few sculptures and planted trees in the front yards. But some had much more impressive colours and décor, such as blue, green, red, yellow, orange, and purple, and beautiful statues, gardens and fountains. The Voltrell's, the royal in-laws, mansion was coloured entirely in gold, silver and black, with huge marble gargoyles resembling demons and goblins on the balconies, and with a magnificent fountain made also out of marble at the middle of the yard, with a huge blue-painted and beautiful naked nymph riding a large silver salmon as its motive. While the Orkwall's, the country's richest banking family, mansion was coloured purple and in a shade of green Lidia didn't know the name of, with a statue of a bronze stag with a hawk's wings at the gate, and wonderful gardens containing the most rare and exotic flowers. Another thing all the mansions shared was the walls protecting them from burglars and assassins. From four and a half to almost seven meters high they were, and usually heavily guarded by tough and brutish-looking men wearing the emblems or insignia of the family they served.
The estate would be easy to find, even without the bull. More than thirty carriages and less than ten automobiles in hundreds of colours and metals stood outside of the teal-coloured five and a half meters high front-wall, like a massive way-point on wheels and coloured in gold, green, purple, blue, red, yellow, black, orange and more colours she couldn't even name. The open main gate, which was made in the traditional way, consisting of two massive rectangle-shaped oak doors with the family's coat of arms painted beautifully on each one, was guarded by a pair of rough-looking men clad in blue brigantines, golden lobster-tailed pot helmets with face-shields in the form of bull-faces, chausses and vambraces enamelled in aqua blue, and finally gold-coloured braces, jackets, leather gloves and boots. Both were also armed with thin sabres with golden hilts, and loaded Bedwells 1859 with gold-plated barrels and ash handles. They were at the moment asking a pair of peacocks with human heads for their invitations.
Hell, those rich pricks even dress their guards up in fineries.
The main gate was out of the question, so Lidia quickly and quietly snuck behind the carriages and around the wall, to look around. And as a sign from Heaven, she saw a small wooden door made for the servants so they could easily take the trash out to three large brown containers made for depositing the filth. And even better, someone was there, taking the trash out. It was a girl of eighteen years, with pale skin, big blue eyes, a small yet pointy nose and freckles all over her pretty face. She wore a black front-button dress with an ankle-long skirt and long sleeves, puffed shoulders, white ruffle cuffs, a high collar with white frills at the end and an unnecessary bowknot-tie around the throat. She also wore a snow white apron with ruffle edges and ends, an equally white frilly mob cap concealing her hair and most of her upper brow and lower back of her head, and grey lace-up boots with slightly heightened heels. And as another gift from Heaven, she looked about Lidia's size and height, with a thin build and hardly any breasts at all. Lidia walked over to her, fast and quiet like a cat so not to be spotted by the soon to be unfortunate maid. When she was almost right behind her, Lidia picked up a well-placed glass bottle at the foot of the closest container, which looked as if it had previously been filled with milk, and smashed it over the poor girl's head. With only a quick and squeaky OW! leaving her lips, she fell down face-first onto a closed bag made from dirty grey plastic, unconscious.
"Nothin' personal, dove. Just business." Lidia said, smiling at the poor girl as she brushed away the glass from her cap and started to work.
Lidia started with dragging her off the bags and turning her over, then unlacing her boots and removing them, as well as her long white stockings. Then she untied the apron and removed the cap, revealing her victim's beautiful brick-red shoulder-long hair. After that, she started to unbutton the dress, untied the tie and removed the white undershirt with the frilly collar and the long underskirt with frilly ends. Soon enough, all the moaning girl was dressed in was her undergarments, consisting of a long white shift and thin long white close-fitting bloomers. Lidia then removed her own clothes; her orange vest, her white blouse, her blue skirt, and finally her boots and socks.
"Ahh, it feels quite good t' come out o' those clothes. I'm goin' t' ask Lennard t' buy me some new ones when we get payed for this job." she said nonchalantly to herself, as she started to put on the maid's stockings, undershirt and underskirt, buttoned up the collar, tied the apron and necktie, hid her dirty dark brown hair inside the cap, straightened the skirt, and lastly laced up the boots. She also folded her own clothes into a neat pile, hid them where only she would find them nearby, and took her small green pouch, her knife and her red bag and hid them all inside her apron.
Being all clear, she then began to work on the poor redhead, starting with tying the wrists of the young maid behind her back, securing her ankles and her knees, and finally wrapped and tightened one of the coils of rope around her lower breasts and upper arms to pin them on her sides. She then used one of the pieces of cloth to gag her. She quickly placed the cloth over the maid's mouth-area, from below the nose to just below the chin, and tied a hard knot behind her head. A cleave-gag would perhaps have been more effective, but the cloth was too big for her mouth, and Lidia was in a hurry. She placed the maid against the wall beside one of the garbage containers, and placed a few of the large bags made of grey plastic and filled with garbage around her, to make it extra hard for anyone to spot her.
"Well then. Have a dandy nap, miss, and thank ya for this nice new outfit. Now I'm goin' t' take a good look around this fancy house..." Lidia said as she sarcastically waved goodbye to the sleeping beauty and walked through the small door. And entered a fantasy-world.
(Horribly sorry that it took so long to complete. A million different things constantly came into the way, but I hope it was worth the truly horrendous wait. Also, due to making it a tad too long, I was forced to split both chapter 1 and 2 into 2 different posts, so pardon for that one. I'm not entirely sure when a third chapter will come, but I will try and make it as soon as possible. I'm also going to write down some short-stories in the near future, so I hope it can suffice. Thank you very much for reading and waiting.)
It's a bit of a detail, but it does a lot to create an atmosphere and to set your story apart.
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