This is the first segment of a story I decided to make a main project of mine this year. I'm basing it off of the basic idea of "a fantasy noir story". I have no plan in mind for it, no character arcs planned out, no plot outside of the basic "pitch" plot, and I'm writing it as I go. I want to see what I can do writing a story with no real plan in mind, considering most everything else I write is meticulously planned out from beginning to end (with the middle sometimes being an issue). I am going to try to reach 50,000 words (aka, the NanoWrimo threshold) before the end of May.
So, as they say in the detective biz, the game is afoot!
The damn door repair people were a bunch of lying bastards.
When the dame-WOMAN, he chastised himself, you didn’t take those sensitivity classes for nothing-walked through the door, Elion’s ears picked up the faint squeaking sound that the phonebook ad had promised him would be a thing of the past. That’s one of the things he hated about being an elf. Humans hear squeaky doors and they find them annoying. Elves hear squeaky doors and want to break them off their hinges.
The woman walked up to his desk, sauntering over with the swagger of someone that just slammed an axe into someone’s head. This was partially because she held an axe in her hand that had a head attached to the blade. She tossed the axe onto his desk, smirking as she looked up at the elf. It took him a second, but he pegged her as a dwarf. Her feet were too small to be a halfling, and the muscle structure definitely wasn’t human.This was gonna be problematic. Sensitivity training or not-dear Galor, that class kept coming back to haunt him-dwarves weren’t really his favorite clientele.
She wore a suit, a grey and white combination with some blood splatters here and there. She wore shorts, an odd combination with the suit, but he didn’t dare question dwarven style choices. Matching black and white shoes and gloves completed the ensemble. She opened her mouth, a gruff and commanding tone coming through an oddly light and airy voice.
“You’re a detective. You’re gonna help me. Got it?”
Elion raised an eyebrow. “You know, normally, folks introduce themselves before slamming a decapitated head onto my desk. And ask what my fee is. And don’t slam a decapitated head on my desk.”
The woman scoffed, crossing her arms. “This isn’t just any old head. It’s evidence. And the name’s Olern Xaverty.”
The elf chuckled. “Kind of a short name for a dwarf. Aren't most of you named like "Leafo Barkersword" or something?”
“And you’ve got dumb hair for an elf. What’s your point?”
Elion instinctively ran his hand through his hair. Sure, it was a little more trimmed than most elves-as well as colored a light green-he liked it. It went well with his skin complexion. He hoped. He scowled at Olern, leaning back in his chair. The elf briefly considered removing his brown vest-why he thought wearing a vest in the middle of summer was a good idea, he’d never recall-but decided against it.
“The point is, I don’t usually help your kind. But, seeing as I am now required by law to offer my services to any and all races who can provide compensation regardless of my personal biases, I have but four questions for you.” Elion let go of the chair mid-lean, letting it wobble a bit. It quickly fell forward with a loud clack, the detective leaning forward as the chair hit the ground. He raised a finger, as if to emphasize the numbers.
“1. What’re you offering in return?”
Another finger.
“2. Why should I even bother?”
A third one.
“3. The hell does a dwarf need an elf’s help for in the first place?”
One last finger.
“4. The hell’s the suit for?”
Olern, Elion noticed, had been stepping back as he counted off the questions. Was the dwarf actually afraid of h-no, no, that was just a running start.
With a leap-and a “whoa, wait!” from the elf-the dwarf landed on top of the desk, a sickening crunch emanating from its midsection. Elion crossed his arms.
“Alright, dwarf-”
“Olern.”
“-Olern. You’ve succeeded in breaking my furniture and pissing me off. Kind of hard to do both at once so, bravo, give yourself a round of applause.” Elion noticed the axe had gone missing from the table. He looked around the room before glancing upwards, finding the weapon lodged in the ceiling. “Oooh, look, structural damage too.”
Olern strolled as far as she could across the desk, coming face to face with the elf. “1. I’ll give ye all the gold yer little pointy-eared heart desires from the mines of Kuldeth. They’re mine now, so they’re mine to give away as well.”
The detective went slack-jawed at this. Those mines were owned by the richest dwarf in the entire country, and the business he made from the gold digging turned him into a multi-millionare with a hand in every technological advancement that Fayestan had in the past fifty years. No one knew his name, but everyone knew his face-wrinkled, but kindly like an old man’s, with a beard that stretched around his head and out from the chin. They called him Fullbeard, for lack of a better name. It was a damn tragedy, then, that he died in a horrible accident involving a tumble down a mountainside. The whole nation mourned for a good week before the incident finally left the news. But if she owned the mines now, then that meant-
“You’re his kid?!” That would explain the tux…but not much else.
The dwarf cleared her throat. “2. You should bother because if you do, you’ll not only be a very rich elf, you’ll be the elf that helped avenge the death of a national icon. Can you imagine the recognition that could get you? The fame-”
“Look, short, buff and fearsome, you had me at ‘gold.’ “ Elion crossed his arms. “How do I know you’re really gonna follow through on that? What if you’re just some psychotic calling herself the kid of a mogul?”
She grinned, some blood splatter on her teeth. Elion grimaced, but before he could question her, she reached into her suit and pulled out a bar of pure gold, dropping it on the desk. “...well, you’re obviously the psychotic kid of a mogul.” Olern pushed the bar with her foot to the elf, who quickly pocketed it. She paced around the desk as she continued.
“3. I need yer help because the underground has it that you’re the best tracker in all of Fayestan.”
Elion shook his head, opening his desk drawer and sighing with relief. He took out a flask, adorned with a shield and sword crest. It wasn’t his crest; it belonged to the poor sap he beat up on his case in Dulteran, but he wouldn’t miss it where he was. He took a long swig before responding with, “Well, I wouldn’t say best. I’d say greatest. Or better than the best.”
Olern shot him a glare. “They also said you had a bigger ego than the richest kings in history.”
“Hey, I take offense to that entirely accurate statement.”
“4,” she spoke through gritted teeth, “this isn’t my suit. It was my father’s, and I intend to wear it until he is avenged.”
Elion glanced at it. The suit had seen a few days’ worth of dirt. And blood.
“What’s with the-”
“Assassination attempt. Took them out in less than a minute.”
The elf turned towards the window, walking up to it as he mumbled a few swears in Elvish. “Isn’t that your answer, then? They killed your old man, they went for you next? I’m sure that the company secretary would just love to be President.”
Olern shook her head. “Assassination attempts are common for the company. Everyone wants a chance to have a...hostile takeover, we’ll say. The man who killed my father is currently lodged in your ceiling.”
Elion looked at her, confused. “Wait, didn’t he tumble down a hill?”
“That’s the truth. No one ever said who pushed him. I saw it happen, though, and took matters into my own hands.” Olern sat down on the desk, going quiet for a moment. The elf cringed. Did he piss her off, now?
“You, uh. You need a moment?”
“No.” She looked up and continued on as if her quiet spell had never occurred. “As he attacked me, he babbled something about a boss, someone he thought would kill him if he let me live. I want you to find that boss and bring him to me.”
“Why didn’t you call the police, then? I’m sure they’d love the work.”
“I don’t want them involved.”
The dwarf wasn’t very good at hiding her agenda. She wanted the boss to meet the business end of a axe, no doubt, but she’d be the executioner. At least, that’s what the elf got from Olern’s solemn expression.
“Why’d they want to kill him?”
Olern spat on the desk. The elf made a mental note to clean it up later.
“You said you only had four questions.”
“The number went up.”
Olern growled. “They were after the Blade of Anigmar. My father possessed it, but it went missing after his murder.”
That got Elion’s ears to twitch. The Blade of Anigmar was a one-of-a-kind sword, forged by a dark wizard back in 156, long before the current age of Technomagism. He had used this blade to seemingly suck the souls from all the enemies it felled, but the blade was lost when the wizard was ambushed by a lowly bandit. How the hell did it get in the hands of Fullbeard?
“So,” Olern said, breaking the elf from his concentration, “what do you say?”
Elion put a hand to his chin in thought. He did need the cash-especially after the damage done in just the past few minutes-but going to find a mogul’s murderer-by-proxy? He’d been in some crazy situations before, but this blew all those out of the water. With the Blade of Anigmar out in the open, and a nation still stinging from Fullbeard’s loss, there was a huge chance that he’d have his career ruined if something went wrong, or worse. Was the payout really worth it?
No.
He was going to say no.
He was going to just kick the damn dwarf out and live the rest of his life solving cases that didn’t put his neck on the line.
...he was, anyway. But something about the proposal-and its proposer-snared the tiny little part in his mind that lusted for adventure. The kind he couldn’t get out of smaller cases, the kind he used to have before…
The dwarf waited as the detective withdrew his hand from his chin. Slowly, the elf extended it towards Olern. She wasted no time in grabbing it and shaking it vigorously. The elf looked behind him, out the open window.
This is the first chapter, basically, and I hope to be updating you all with a lot more sometime soon! Until then, all criticism, commentary, suggestions, etc. are appreciated. Constructive, please. "This sucks" doesn't help as much as "This sucks because x should be y" or the like.
I can bet that when you started to look for a cell phone look up, you typed the search phrase along with the word "free". There is nothing wrong about using free services, but sometimes it may turn out that they are actually much more expensive than the ordinary paid ones. Such situation is very common among "free lookups", they offer a free search and show you a very small bit of the retrieved information which is completely useless for you. And when you want to see the rest, you will have to pay for it. This is how the most of free services work. There are also a few which will return some random data upon your query, which means that they're completely useless since the information is fake.
So if you decide to pay for the service, you may think, why to pay for a cellphone directory, when I can hire a private investigator and get far better results with this. This is true and nobody will argue that a cell phone directory is more comprehensive than a good PI. On the other hand, when you compare the cost of a detective to a phone look up, you will quickly notice the huge gap between them. PI can charge you even one hundred times more for the same service which you can from a phone directory for a few bucks. You might be astonished with the difference, but this is a fact. Private investigator's work involve much more effort than simple typing a phone number into a search engine and gives much better results, since you can be sure that information which you received is real.
Ordinary cell phone lookup will cost you from $5 to even $60, but the second price is much to high and you should always try to pick a service which costs around $10, because this means that the price is not to low for the company to keep the records updated and you also know that this is a fair price. All the prices which I mentioned are for a single lookup, if you need to perform many queries, you should go for a subscription. You will find two types of subscriptions - one which bills you monthly and lets you perform unlimited amount of searches and second which bills you when you need to perform a certain number of lookups. So if you know that you need only 10 look ups, you should always buy a subscription to save a lot of money.
