Heart Strings

One Quick Gold

"Waste of my damn time," Goldie sighed as she chucked the artifact into the jade lake in front of her. She felt the flesh around the arrow in her shoulder, pressing around it with the tips of her fingers. It wasn't the worst injury she'd ever sustained. She twisted the arrow out and threw it, too, into the green water. "Some ancient stupid rock with empty eye sockets..." She'd been directed by a group of Latch Monks back east in the Latch Region to find the Tomb of Pariah if she wanted to gain riches but once she arrived, it was mostly already picked dry by some other hunters. "That's what I get for going for such an easy target. I gotta get back near the Emblems if I want anything worth anything..." She lifted her mapping device from her backpack and tossed it into the air where it rotated and whirred, waiting for her voice command as it floated. "Make me a map back to the Codendra Wood." She said as she applied pressure to her minor wound with a rag soaked in medicine.

"You're wanted there, Goldie." Said the device in its robotic computer voice.

"No I'm not! I am? For what?"

"The combs. Each comb was worth about nine thousand Shells."

"Codendra's  combs were not worth that damn much. There's no way. You're drunk."

"I'm a machine."

"So do a machine's work and make me a map back to Codendra Wood," Goldie said as she stood and dusted the dirt off of her pants. "I'll lay low. Plus, I don't gotta be there for long. I just need some info on anything good. Literally anything. I'd steal a teddy bear from a kid, shit, I need something other than rocks!"

"You'll lay low?"

"I'll lay low."

"...No you won't, but fine. Generating a map from North Olly Lake to Codendra Wood for User Goldie Grandeur."

"Codendra Oilslick needs to engineer a 'mind your business' software to download in her stupid tech..." Goldie looked around her at all of the lush, green scenery of North Olly Lake and sighed. She'd been looking for a good lead for months at this point and all she could find were some combs that Princess Codendra Oilslick kept at one of her many homes, nothing more. No news outlet was even discussing Goldie anymore ever since she stole all four Boats of Isla back in the Latch Nation. Gigantic, these boats, and crawling with Latch Soldiers. It had to be one of her greatest heists yet. She'd camped on their territory for just three days, completely unnoticed, even eating their food and washing in their barracks. She'd certainly made a fool out of that army of 900. She'd made such a fool of them that some of them retired the moment they saw the six foot tall girl sailing away with their ships and everything on them, her wild Afro hair decorated with whatever money she'd pick-pocketed from them during the fray she should have died in. Using some of the tech she'd stolen from Oilslick's army, she attached the ships to each other. The tech, now discontinued, used individual anchor devices, each about the size of a pebble, on each ship that communicated with a lead hub that the user sailed the first ship with. Using these, anyone could captain multiple ships at once. Still, two months after the heist no one knew what Goldie had done with the ships. That kind of mystery was one of the many things that kept Goldie going.

"I've generated your map, Goldie, and I found one of your lost Oilslick devices along the way. Shall we retrieve it?" The mapping device chimed, projecting the finished map for Goldie. A red dot marked where the device found Goldie's missing tech about twenty miles back east. "Oh, cool," Goldie said, getting a closer look. "Wait...that's where I ran into..." Goldie shook her head as she felt some anxiety well up inside of her. The tech in question was a very important shield that she'd lost in a fight with...Polite. One of her sisters. "Is there any human activity in that area right now?"