Somnium Online

Patrol

In the morning, Eric roused himself and went downstairs. The warehouse was cold and dark. Eric lit a candle left on the dining table and brought it over to the small kitchen.

He took out a pan and cracked an egg. Then another, and another. Whisking them together, he whistled to himself.

The room was still, and his whistling echoed off the walls, disappearing into the darkness.

He went about the business of cooking breakfast slowly, but efficiently, moving on to sausage, bacon, and finally a massive stack of pancakes.

He hummed while he worked, the song had no particular melody or rhythm, or even any sort of logic to it, but it was beautiful nonetheless, and it set his mind at ease.

By the time the sun rose, the dining table was piled high with breakfast foods, anything he could think of and make, given his meager supplies were stacked high on a plate.

Brian was the first one to come downstairs, stumbling, almost half asleep to a place at the table where he began tearing into the mountain of food before him like a man possessed. Eric wasn't even sure if he was fully conscious.

Alice was the next one down, her eyes lit up at the sight of all the food, and she promptly joined Brian in devouring it.

Lin and Alex came down roughly at the same time, and each took their seats at the table silently and started tearing into breakfast.

Eric ate very little considering how much he had made, taking a small pile of eggs, and a single pancake, but Brian ate enough for all of them, which seemed odd considering that he was if not slim, then at least in shape.

Eric shrugged and continued with his breakfast. After he finished, he took his plate to the sink and sat back down.

"Keep eating, all of you, and listen closely." He said. "It's our responsibility to patrol and supervise this district. Now, I know most of you probably aren't exactly thrilled by the idea of watching over a bunch of empty storerooms.

But the powers that be seemed convinced that somewhere among these acres of unused space, criminal masterminds are lurking, and planning the downfall of the city.

Unlikely as this may be, I want you all to stay on guard, and travel in groups. For now, I want Alex and Brian to stick together, and Lin and Alice to do the same.

If you find anything seriously dangerous, don't engage. Players may not look like it, but they're highly dangerous and fight to the death. Last night the Commander called in four units just to handle a single building with a handful of players.

The players lit the building on fire, and it was destroyed during the operation.

That's not really the point though. We weren't part of the assault. The commander isn't stupid, she didn't call us for a reason. I'll leave it to you to decide what that might be."

If Eric had to hazard a guess, it wasn't because any of them were incompetent, if anything these four were perfectly competent so far.

Eric figured Anne knew something about this area, and she was hoping Eric would deal with it for her. The question was what?

Which was why Alice, Brian, Lin, and Alex found themselves shopping for more groceries while Eric went on a cursory patrol.

Eric flew across the rooftops, grinning like a madman as he landed one death-defying leap after another.

There had been a clause in the letter of his instructions about not doing anything to alarm the public, but Eric figured that mainly applied to populated areas and so far h e-d hadn't spotted a single sign of life.

Eric had always wondered what people did with warehouses anyways. They seemed sort if like gigantic storage units rented by shipping companies for when they ran out of space at home. The trouble was, to his knowledge the capital didn't have any such companies.

Eric turned head over heels as he rolled out the impact of a fifteen-foot jump.

"Hey N, do you have any way to scan for players in an area?"

Eric rolled to his feet, saying a taller building, and launched himself forwards, starting a mad dash up its side, running nearly vertically up it, his feet just barely gripping window ledges and cracks in the brick.

"Well, I can locate nearby players, but I can't give you anything beyond their numbers and locations. You could run straight into an ambush."

Eric gripped the edge of the roof, and yanked, swinging himself up over the edge. He reoriented himself from there and got to his feet. From this vantage point, his entire sector was visible.

"That won't be a problem. I just want to know where they are and how many." Eric scanned the rooftops.

"In that case, initiating program." N sounded a bit nervous.

Eric blinked, and suddenly red dots appeared in his field of vision.

Most of them were small and far away, but a few of them were clearly within his jurisdiction.

"Are these all..."

"Players." N finished, affirming what Eric had feared.

"Looks like Anne has her work cut out for her," Eric muttered. "Hey N, is there any way to filter out the players that aren't inside my assigned district?

The vast majority of the dots disappeared. Actually almost all of them.

There was a small cluster of them off to his right, moving swiftly towards his position at street level. Curious, Eric decided to pay them a visit.

Without his flashy blue coat, Eric looked almost street worthy with his white dress shirt properly ruffled and the sleeves rolled up.

He drifted downwards on a gust of wind, landing in an alley across from the building.

He watched as seven figures, each wearing dark cloaks that concealed their features ran into the empty warehouse upon which he had been perched.

Spying a broken window a few stories up, he waited until he was sure they were inside before making the jump.

Technically such feats of athleticism were impossible, even with an assist from N. But magic, particularly wind magic was incredibly versatile and made the twenty feet to the second story nothing but a small hop.

From his vantage point on the catwalk, Eric watched the seven hooded figures split into smaller groups and spread throughout the building.

Technically, as suspicious as they were acting, Eric couldn't engage them unless they did something particularly menacing.

So he remained a silent observer, flitting from shadow to shadow, occasionally stopping to track everyone's locations.

The seven players had spread out across the first floor. From what he had overheard, someone called Lysander would be arriving soon with some hostages.

Clearly whatever they were up to was plenty menacing, but Eric wanted to see where this was going. This Lysander sounded important, and Eric wanted to meet him.

He watched as the sun went about the business of climbing higher into the sky, reflected by the shifting of the shadows he was concealed in.

Eric supposed that his unit had probably finished shopping for groceries by now, and took it to mean that he should head back. But this lead was too good to miss.

He slunk deeper into the shadowy corner.