Harpy Core: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Read online

  Harpy Core

  A Fantasy Harem Adventure

  Noah Layton

  Copyright 2019 Noah Layton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Contents

  Chapter One – Keys to the Kingdom

  Chapter Two – Harpies vs Snatchers

  Chapter Three – Swords and Wings

  Chapter Four – The Warrior’s Rage

  Chapter Five – Audience with Royalty

  Chapter Six – An Unwelcome Gift

  Chapter Seven – A Perilous Quest

  Chapter Eight – Into the Dark

  Chapter Nine – Golems and Puzzles

  Chapter Ten – Beneath a Setting Sun

  Chapter Eleven – Diversion

  Chapter Twelve - Ruaos

  Chapter Thirteen – Do the Right Thing

  Chapter Fourteen – A Different Man

  Chapter Fifteen - Chimera

  Chapter Sixteen – Passing the Mantle

  Chapter Seventeen – The Path Ahead

  Chapter One

  Keys to the Kingdom

  Everything rested on this. If I made it, I would win everything.

  ‘This is for the gold. The shot’s lined up. You’ve got this…’

  I rotated the paper football with my thumb, holding it in place with my index finger. My other hand was at the ready, my middle finger shaking…

  The tension built and my finger released, snapping forward and striking the paper. It spun forward from the counter, hurtling on to the closest table and flying through the space between two coffee mugs that I may or may not have set up deliberately half an hour prior.

  ‘Boom!’ I called out, fist bumping the air, ‘and Kit Jones nails the shot, the crowd going wild!’ I looked about the coffee house, not a soul in sight. ‘If there even was a crowd… Not that I’d actually want anybody to see me doing this.’

  What my bosses had been thinking keeping the coffee house I worked at open until 10pm was beyond me, but I wasn’t exactly complaining. During the day I might have been kept constantly busy, but at night I was nothing more than a glorified watchman. Thursdays were supposed to be jazz and reading nights, but those two things didn’t really appeal to the populous of the sleepy town of Chesterfield.

  I had returned to Chesterfield after my three-year stint at college while I looked for a job, but like most of my graduate buddies that notion had pretty much gone out the window. Now I was saving up in an effort to move to the West Coast and get a job in aerospace engineering, and the only way to do that was to take on as many extra shifts as I could.

  Which resigned me to playing one-man football with a piece of paper.

  That said, I had always been pretty good at keeping myself amused. I had never even met my mom, and my dad was… Somewhere. Alive, that I knew, but not where. Not that I cared. It was my grandfather who had done the real work up until I left for college. He was old-fashioned but relaxed – a hardass at times but always willing to let me do my own thing. I watched the guy pass in the summer after my first year, where he made me promise not to mourn for him. I had resigned that to being a product not of himself, but of how he wanted me to be; willing to be my own man and to take loss on the chin like a man should, and to stand straight back up after it hit you.

  I cried after, in private and only for a few minutes. Then I got up and went straight back to work.

  He had left me the apartment that we had shared since I was a kid, but he still owed a few back-payments on it – I sold the place off for the cash that I could keep and bought a much smaller apartment in town that could keep me going and be my own until I moved, putting the first part of my plan in place.

  Until then, I would keep serving up the double-mocha-frappa-lacca-cinnos until the dollars and cents added up to enough to make the move, while setting up my next penalty shot with my paper football.

  ‘You staying busy there, rookie?’

  My finger jolted out of place, hitting the paper at its folded edge and sending it flying off into a darkened sectioned beneath a table halfway across the coffee house. I turned sharply to see Helena leaning against the stairs that led up to the storeroom above us. She worked the busy 12-6pm shift with me when the lunch break locals and the after-work patrons came wandering in for their elaborate drinks condensed with their weekly allowance of sugar.

  She was 5”3, a sharp contrast to my looming height seeing as I stood around a foot taller than her – but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a handful. She was petite and slender with flowing black hair and a flawless face that bore a perpetually flirtatious expression.

  ‘No, I was just, uhh…’

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. My ways to kill time are way more boring than yours, evidently.’

  ‘Why, what do you do?’

  ‘Count ceiling tiles, tap-dance… See how many of the dipping cookies I can eat in an hour without making myself ill.’

  ‘I think you’d give me a run for my money.’

  ‘I don’t know about that…’

  She sauntered to the edge of the counter in her tight black jeans and a white vest, her bag resting on her back as she leaned over the ledge and gazed over at me.

  ‘How long’s it been now? Since you started, I mean?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘No, the invisible man standing behind you. Yes, you.’

  ‘I don’t know… Four months, I think.’

  ‘How’s the money-saving going?’

  ‘Decently, although it’s gonna take another year for me to at least get where I need. And that also assumes I live like a freaking monk until then, living off noodles like some kind of nomad.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound that bad,’ she laughed, ‘hey, if you want, I could even buy you a brown gown, rope belt… Hell, I’ll even pay for a bowl cut and a bald patch on top of your head so you can get that authentic monk-look.’

  ‘And I’ll go ahead and add that on my list of fastest ways to not get laid.’

  ‘Not that you need any help with that.’

  ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ I laughed.

  ‘Kidding, kidding,’ Helena laughed, ‘I’m sure you got around plenty at college, especially with an ass like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m not gonna brag.’

  ‘You don’t need to, believe me,’ she winked at me, kicking back from the counter and heading towards the door. ‘Well, it’ll be a sad day when you go, even if it is a year from now. I’ll be here a lot longer, no doubt.’

  ‘Really? You don’t want to do anything else?’

  ‘I want to travel one day, but I’m not like you. Can’t hold on to my money. But if you ever wanna warm these Autumn nights drop by my place. I don’t mix work and play, but for you I might make an exception.’

  She turned, shooting me a look up and down over her shoulder before pushing out of the door, the bell ringing in response, before she headed off down the street, her hips swaying back and forth in time with her steps.

  I exhaled deeply, puffing out my cheeks and collapsing against the counter, bowing my head against it.

  ‘I don’t mix work and play,’ I repeat
ed, shaking my head. I used to look at men whose empires had crumbled because they had messed around with women who weren’t their wives and used to wonder how they hell they could be tempted so easily, but my grandfather had cleared that one up for me too.

  ‘A man may carry out actions that he thinks are his own, but a woman has access to him in a way that none of his advisors or yes-men do – she can guide him from behind-the-scenes, from his bedroom and his chambers. Just look at Lady Macbeth. If it weren’t for her, Macbeth wouldn’t have done a damned thing.’

  Maybe it wasn’t the same thing, but I understood exactly what he meant when he told me a few years back.

  Considering the amount of time I spent working I rarely had time to socialise outside of work, and the dry spell that I had been going through since coming back to Chesterfield was sometimes way too much for me, but when you spend all day with somebody, which often occurs at work, these things can happen.

  But I was determined for them not too – if anything went awry I could get fired from this job, and work opportunities weren’t exactly abundant in a town as quiet as this one.

  Setting aside my next paper football I returned to the cappuccino machine, snatching up my cloth and getting to work on polishing its chrome exterior. It didn’t need to be done, but I couldn’t score fake goals forever; something remotely productive had to fill my time.

  I had been humming along to the smooth jazz playing in the background and working away at the machine for several minutes when the bell rang at the door again.

  ‘You forget something?’ I smirked, continuing with my polishing as I waited for Helena’s voice to call out.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  I halted in my tracks before rotating like a ballerina in a music box to face the door.

  Instead of Helena, a suit-clad man stood in the darkened doorway, looking up from a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

  ‘Sorry…’ I said quickly. ‘Sorry, I thought you were somebody else, sir.’

  ‘Oh, right… It’s no harm.’ He moved a little closer into the low fairy lights of the shop, stumbling past chairs and beanbags. At first I thought he was drunk, but in actuality he was just a little dishevelled thanks to the light breeze and pattering rain that had started up outside. His overcoat was stained with water, as well as his balding head. He was in his mid-50s, stooped shoulders, with a look on his face that said while I don’t like my job, I’ve been doing it for so long that I wouldn’t know any other life.

  ‘What can I get for you?’ I said, putting on my customer-service voice. ‘We’ve got a weekly deal. Two bucks for an extra-large slice of cake when it’s bought with any large coffee.’

  ‘I’m not here to buy actually. I’m here looking for someone. Do you know a… Kitrington Oliver Jones?’

  I cringed instinctively at the sound of my full first name. A million insults from grade school came flying back to me in a single moment. I took an extended blink to revel in them, just for a second, then to ditch them from my thoughts.

  Cry me a river, right?

  But when I had gotten over that brief hiccup, it wasn’t what my mind had decided to settle on. It was the fact that my first name had been said in the first place. Nobody knew my first name in its complete state. I only ever signed it on official forms.

  ‘That’s me,’ I said slowly, setting my cloth down like a bartender in the old west and leaning against the counter to look across suspiciously at the man. ‘What’s this about…? Look, if this has something to do with the $4 in library fines that I never paid back after leaving college then I can pay it right now, just don’t throw me in the can…’

  I said it sarcastically, but the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble with the government.

  ‘No, no,’ the man laughed, ‘it’s nothing bad. It’s actually very good. I’m from Maxwell and Caulson. We’re a law firm. I represent the estate of a Ms Doreen Hunt. Did you know her?’

  ‘No-o-o. Although I know the name Hunt.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘It was my mother’s maiden name. Only time I’ve ever heard it, but I guess it could have belonged to somebody else.’

  ‘It could, but in this case it doesn’t. Ms Hunt is your grandmother.’

  ‘My… What? My grandmother?’

  ‘On your mother’s side, yes. I take it you didn’t know her.’

  ‘I was raised by my grandfather on my Dad’s side. Never met my mom, and I don’t remember my dad. My grandpa didn’t seem to want to remember him either, and I knew he didn’t want me to ask, so I never did. But I don’t know a thing about my mom’s side.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to inform you, but she recently passed away.’

  I took a deep heaving breath, trying to take it all in. I hadn’t even met this woman, but I still felt an encroaching sadness hit me. My family had been scattered about beyond belief since I was a kid, and with my grandpa gone, even with the independence that I had carried with me for as long as I could remember, I still felt alone.

  Now a person who I hadn’t even known was a part of my family was gone too.

  But, just like the ones that had come before it, it was a feeling that I had learned to quickly set aside in order to get back to the present moment.

  ‘Right…’ I said slowly. ‘So why have you come to me? I’m sure she has other relatives that know her better than I do.’

  ‘Unfortunately not. You were the only one we could track down.’

  ‘Way to rub it in, man.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘So do I need to sign something related to her death to confirm it, or something?’

  ‘You do need to sign something, but it’s not related to her, it’s related to you. We couldn’t find any other relatives, but that didn’t matter. It was you who she was looking for.’

  ‘Why was she looking for me?’

  ‘Because she’s named you as the sole heir to her estate.’

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. This is an unknown princess story where the hapless lead gets led to fortunes prior unknown – but hold up for just a minute.

  ‘Her estate?’ Grand images of a castle stretched out before me. I was a broke coffee house barista looking to get his foot in the door as an engineer after college. Why wouldn’t that be the first thing that I thought of? ‘What does that include?’

  ‘A piece of property and everything in it, located in Wintermoss. You know it?’

  ‘A few towns over, sure.’

  ‘Do you accept?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘You’re getting a piece of property for free. Do you want to be given a choice?’

  ‘Fair point.’

  So right there on the coffee house counter I scanned my way through a few legal documents before signing my name on the dotted line. The unnamed representative reached into his pocket upon taking the forms back and retrieved an old keyring with three even older keys attached. They were huge and spotted with rust.

  That should have been enough of a clue as to the state of the place, but I was too blinded by the possibility of the metaphorical winning lottery ticket awaiting me.

  It was as easy as that. The representative handed me his law firm’s card and took off, running out the door and into the rain with his collar pulled up around his neck, while I was left standing there with the keys in one hand and the card in the other.

  ‘The fuck…?’ I said to myself, setting the two items down on the counter and examining them like they were some kind of ticking bomb that I had to defuse.

  For a few minutes my mind buzzed with incoherent thoughts, up until the bell above the door rang again. I jumped nervously, looking up at the door to see nobody. The wind had picked up and was shoving it from its latch.

  And the café was still empty, save for myself.

  I crossed to the door and pushed the bolt across, locking it. The weather being as grim as it was, nobody would be coming in any time soon.

  Returnin
g to the counter, I first googled the law firm. They were real. Website, references, news articles, the whole nine yards. This wasn’t some elaborate hoax.

  Then came the problem of my grandmother… That was still a weird concept to even consider. I had never bothered to look up any of my family members before tonight, and it felt weird breaking that trend now, but circumstances had changed.

  But a thorough search brought back nothing. I checked registries, articles, anything – there was nothing related to her, even with the peculiarity of the name.

  By the time 8pm rolled around, main street had become largely drowned in silence. All was quiet except for the pattering rain against the sidewalk and the windows outside.

  And all I could think about was this mysterious place that I hadn’t even known the existence of an hour ago, but which now belonged to me.

  There were two hours left of my shift, but I couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer. I had to know what had been handed to me.

  Back when I needed this job earlier that day the thought of abandoning my shift before it ended was ludicrous… But that was back when I needed it.

  Fuck it.

  It was a twenty-minute ride to the house. I called a cab and gathered up my things, quickly shutting the place down and checking that I had enough cash to get to the place. Enough to get there, sure, but not to get back.

  I could have taken some from the register, but that wasn’t me, even if I did plan on putting it back first thing in the morning. I would walk back if I needed to.

  But one thing was for sure – I was going to see my inheritance tonight, no matter what it took.

  Chapter Two

  Harpies vs Snatchers

  ‘What a fucking dump.’

  I had thought it out loud as the cab took off up the street through the darkness. Rain was still pouring several towns over, even a little worse out here. I glanced back and forth between the address written at the top of the deeds and the building that it apparently related to.

  Darkness had fallen hours ago, and on the remote country road the only source of light was the moon, left alone by the red lights of the back of the cab as it disappeared into the night. It bore down on the house at the end of the drive, where I stood at the entrance.