My heartbeat pounded in my ears and I looked around frantically for anywhere to hide. The room was devoid of any crevices or furniture I could hide behind, which left only two options. Hide behind the door or be caught.

  I chose option one.

  Slipping to the side, I moved with the door, letting it swing open and block me from the view of the person entering the room. I held my breath as the door bounced against my body, pain flaring through my midsection as it pinned me between it and the wall. This was because I'd joked about Sil not needing luck, wasn't it? I cursed bitterly to myself, careful not to let the words actually leave my lips and waited.

  Peering around the edge of the door, I was able to see a man in a healer's robe step further into the room. He looked around for a moment and then reached for something on one of the shelves—a towel from the looks of it. He inspected it for a moment, then hummed to himself, as if satisfied, and turned back toward the hallway.

  I held my breath again as his eyes passed over me quickly. But somehow they didn't register the emerald gaze staring out at him. He left, leaving the door open.

  Letting out the breath I'd been holding, I pushed the door away from me slightly and then peeked around it. When I was confident nobody else was going to come walking in—the sounds of the man's footsteps having moved away enough to be drowned out by the hum of the magelights along the wall and the voices down the hall—I stepped forward, sticking my head around the corner.

  The guards were still gathered near the end of the hall, their voices having grown quieter now, but still in what looked to be a heated discussion. Had Sil been pulled into that conversation somehow? It was likely, I realized, especially if they thought he was a guard. Hopefully nobody in the group knew the form he'd taken on. The unease I'd felt before entering the clinic still rolled through my stomach, threatening to twist it into a knot. I tried to ignore it as I set off down the hall once more, dipping into another room on the right.

  This one was unmarked and inside I found an empty bed, though the sheets still carried wet blood stains. Whoever had been in here had lost a lot of blood, possibly even died judging by the fact that the room was vacant now. I checked the shelves along the walls, but didn't find any medical supplies beyond basic bandages and wraps.

  Returning to the hall, I carefully moved further down it, looking for another room marked like the first one. I knew it should be here, somewhere along the hallway, but exactly where was another question. Down the hall, the guard's conversation finally began to die down, and I had to slip into a room at the last moment to avoid being seen by three guards as they broke off from the group and started moving my way.

  I watched them as they walked past the half-open door of the room I was in, and then continued down the corridor toward the lobby. I waited, to see if anyone else would go the same way, but when nobody else appeared, I edged my way back up to the doorway and peered out.

  The hallway was empty now, save for some healers moving between rooms. I wasn't sure where all the guards had gone, which was troubling. For all I knew, they could be setting up patrols in the clinic now.

  I checked the room I was in for any signs of medical reagents, and when the search turned up empty, returned to the doorway and slipped out into the hall. I kept my footsteps light as I moved further into the clinic, watching the corners for any signs of movement. There were plenty of rooms on either side of the hall, many with their doors open or cracked, but I couldn't be sure which ones were vacant or which ones had injured people waiting to set off an alarm inside. All I could do was hope that whoever I stumbled upon wasn't quick to call for a guard.

  I checked two more rooms as I moved, each time ducking into the room, making sure nobody was in it, and then looking around the shelves for any signs of what I needed. Each attempt turned up nothing, and I felt a deeper unease growing in the pit of my chest. What if all of this had been for nothing? What if this clinic didn't have any of the stupid singing beans that Henrietta needed?

  I still didn't really understand why they were called singing beans—I'd never paid much attention to the work of healers before. Dragons had their own menders, and they were trained in magic far older than anything that humans were wielding today. Each step further into the clinic seemed to bring more threat. Footsteps around corners, coughs in the distance, and even commands barked loud enough for me to hear the guards scurrying off to deal with them.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I was close to giving up, worried the next corner might hold my demise, when I spotted a door with a runic label next to it. I smiled, reading the word to myself, and then pressed through the door. It swung open unimpeded, and I found myself staring at a room with shelves full of various jars lining the walls.

  "Thank the Seven," I muttered, moving into the room and closing the door behind me. I began sifting through the jars. Each one was labeled with a series of runic letters, just like the goods I'd helped Will with before. These were different than the runes on the label by the door. Instead of dragon script, these were made up of letters from the old Aeridith script. I didn't know many of the letters, which made sifting through them a bit more difficult. Luckily, I knew I was looking for a bean, so anything that wasn't bean shaped could probably safely be ignored.

  It took several minutes, my heart pounding in my throat each time I heard footsteps or voices outside the door, but I eventually settled upon two jars with bean-shaped objects inside. One was filled to the brim with dark colored beans, while the other was only partially full, and the beans appeared to be a foggier, dull white color. What was it Henrietta had said about the singing beans? They were harvested from the archipelagos in the Irindor Sea? That likely meant a lot of sunlight. I stared at the script on the jars, but couldn't make out any of the letters beyond b and e, which made a lot of sense, as they were both beans.

  I used [Insight] on the beans, cursing myself quietly for not thinking to do that immediately, and the System directed me to the jar of white-colored beans. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for being correct, and then grabbed some nearby bandages and scooped some of the beans into them. I tied up the bandages into a bundle, to help keep the beans from moving around too much, and stuffed them into my pocket.

  Now all I had to do was find Sil and get back out the clinic.

  I peeked my head out the doorway, scanning the corridor with wary eyes. I still hadn't seen many of the guards since they'd broken off, which was concerning enough on its own. Add to that the fact that the elderly man from the lobby might be looking for me already, and things were not looking particularly favoring for me at the moment. I let out a soft sigh and watched as the healers moved through the hall, still a blur of motion as they worked.

  I followed a group of them as they moved further into the clinic, even moving up a set of stairs that led to a second story. There were more long hallways here, magelights illuminating the white walls, and more doors. The air was also heavier with the scent of fresh blood, and I could hear groaning from somewhere off to the right. A couple of guards stood outside of one of the rooms, and as one of them turned toward me, I ducked to the side, hiding at the top of the stairs.

  I peered around to find a familiar face staring at me, eyes wide. Sil. Confusion visible across all his features.

  I offered him a smug smile and then mouthed the words, ‘I’ve got the beans. Let’s get out of here.’

  He shook his head, as evidently as he could and the guard next to him made a noise, causing him to snap his attention back forward. He said something to the other man that I couldn’t quite make out.

  "…you, something isn't right about him," a muffled argument echoed up the stairs, the words becoming clearer as the voices drew closer.

  Once more, panic seized my chest, and I looked around quickly, looking for somewhere to hide. The only actual option I had was to move to the next landing—the one leading to the third floor—or out into the hallway. I knew there were guards in the hall, including Sil. So the stairwell was the best choice.

  I moved up to the third-floor landing, listening to the voices as they grew louder.

  "He could be new, you don't know." Another voice responded to the first. "There's a lot going on right now."

  "He doesn't even have orders. He said he was brought in because someone else was sick, but he couldn't even give me the name of the person who assigned him here." The first voice argued.

  Resignation tainted the next words. "Where is he now?"

  "We put him outside the General's room with Cal. He’s right over here.” The way the man spoke reminded me of old soldiers who had spent too much time on the frontlines. Violence seemed to emanate from every word. Dripping like oil onto a fire.

  Their footsteps reached the landing below and stopped. I peeked over the edge of the stair railing to find two guards standing at the top of the stairs to the second floor, looking down the hallway toward where I'd seen Sil a moment ago. It was impossible to see their faces from this angle, but the man on the left was shorter and pudgier than the one on the right.

  "See what he says," the taller of the two said.

  “I say we take him in, now.” Anger laced the shorter man’s words.

  "What? And put us down another man? Morale is already strained."

  "Absolutely. You think it's a coincidence he’s here right now? Did you forget the survivors are already coming in?"

  I quirked my head to the side. Survivors? The pit in my stomach grew. Hadn't the short man mentioned a 'general' before? Could it be the general from the camp? The same general who had killed that innocent woman on the gate? Anger bubbled up within me, a roiling wave that I couldn't slow. We had left the camp in chaos, and it seemed that the prisoners had managed to actually revolt successfully.

  The taller man brought a hand to his face and stifled a groan. "And if he’s innocent? You'll be the one who has to answer for the crimes later on."

  The shorter man scoffed. "There won't be any crimes," he said, already turning toward where Sil and the other guard were waiting down the hall. "The Empress herself will probably thank me for my service when I'm done with him."

  MESSIAH OF STEEL

  When faith meets firepower… sparks will fly.

  Derek Steele was once a man of science, a brilliant engineer who built his own power armor from scavenged alien tech. He believed in data, not destiny. Then a relic from a forgotten civilization ripped him from Earth… and dropped him into a realm where magic spheres grant power, and gods rule through their chosen champions.

  Messiah of Steel.

  “Iron Man crashes into epic fantasy and nothing will be the same.”

  New chapters every week ? Progression Fantasy ? LitRPG