Rakne's Tale: Hearing of Grievances: Short Tales From the World of Ere, #1

By Landon Porter

Every month, in a different town across the wide World of Ere, the fresh, untested initiates of the Fellowship of Assassins convene for the Hearing of Grievances. There, petitioners attempt to prove that their would-be victim deserves death and the initiates compete to prove themselves worthy to deliver that death and become a full member.

Rakne nil Thraeci has seen Hearings come and go. For years, she's honed her skills and waited for her chance. When she gets it, she'll learn that not everyone falls to a simple knife in the dark. It will take guile, strength and luck to make sure she isn't the one that ends up dead in the end.

Rakne's Tale: Hearing of Grievances is a 13K word short story taking place in the World of Ere, a land where high magic Fantasy and Steampunk adventure collide into a new genre called Dungeonpunk. The World of Ere is also the setting of the series Rune Breaker, the pages of which Rakne first appears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paradox-Omni Entertainment
• Release date: Jul 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501439650

Landon Porter

Landon Porter is a billionaire industrialist who fights crime with the aid of his magic sword and faithful companion, Distraction Lad whenever he's not dating supermodels or fighting evil robot bears from the future. On a completely unrelated note, he makes up fanciful stories for a living. An avid fan of superhero comics and roleplaying games, he blends tropes from both into his works along with themes of family, hope and redemption alongside a fervent rejection of cynicism and darkness.

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Rakne's Tale: The Hearing of Grievances

by Landon Porter

Rakne's Tale: Hearing of Grievances

© 2014 Landon Porter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The cover of this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license.

It uses the following licensed works:

Image of Sydney trapdoor spider copyright Johan C.G. Fagerholm licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brown_Trapdoor_Spider,_transparent_background.png)

Image of a dagger copyright Gammaflightleader licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en) license. Retrieved from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ReproMedievalDaggers.JPG)

The doorknob turned slowly and smoothly. The mechanism within didn't let out a single click or rattle.

The door itself opened quickly, only allowing the hinges to let out the briefest of creaks. A steel hairpin, previously wedged into the crease where the top of the door met the frame, fell into a waiting hand, where the soft leather of a glove silenced it before it could ping against the hard stone floor.

With a deft toss, the intruder sent the hair pin gently onto the cushions of a shabby but comfortable chair set next to the wood burning stove in the corner.

It's time. He spoke into the quiet room, voice barely above a whisper. Come.

And then he was gone, quietly pulling the door closed behind him. The tiny vibration set of by this caused a second, carefully balanced hairpin to fall from its precarious position atop the molding surrounding the door frame.

The resultant ping was just loud enough to let the intruder know that their infiltration hadn't been completely successful, but it wasn't needed to rouse the woman sleeping in the room. Anyone who didn't sleep lightly enough to have heard the summons wasn't ready to answer it.

Rakne nil Thraeci was ready. After three years of study and traveling to the various retreats and enclaves of the Fellowship scattered across the world, she felt she rather should be. Like any other initiate, she'd slept through her first summons to a Hearing of Grievances, but since that, she hadn't missed a single one, even when she knew she wouldn't be called on.

Tonight, she did have a chance though. Earlier in the evening, a small parchment envelope had found its way into her pocket during dinner. The contents were unimportant gibberish asking her about an elderly uncle she didn't have and a family vineyard that didn't exist. The important part was that it was addressed to Hilde Teppereas of Kithon Province, Mindforme. Tonight, that was her name and point of origin—there was no Rakne nil Thraeci.

Taking time to smirk at all the curses she imagined were going through the summoner's head, Rakne slipped out of bed and began her preparations. Tonight might be the night that she finally joined the official ranks of the Fellowship of Assassins.

She didn't have to dress. One of the early lessons she learned was that Assassins (the capitalization was important) made too many enemies to afford going to bed in any sort of bedclothes one couldn't run or fight in. Not only that, but she knew that, should she be called on at the Hearing, she might need to get straight to work. With those two things in mind, she'd gone to bed wearing a long-sleeved shirt of cotton and snug trousers of the same.

They weren't black. Black showed up readily in the half-shadows at night. Instead, she went with midnight blues for both shirt and trousers and hunter green for the sash and greatcoat she shrugged on. Her boots and gloves were both plain brown leather, as soft as she could afford.

She quickly picked up her hairpins and used them to secure her hair into a