Chapter 297: Franklin House
Ben bowed low. "Please, fair lady, I believe there is a misunderstanding. Can we talk about this situation?" He tried to use the identify skill on her but got nothing at all, which was disturbing because that meant her level was much higher than his.
She made a cut with her saber that caused him to jump backward and avoid a nasty cut. He pulled a heavy chair between them. She smiled like a cat playing with a mouse. "No misunderstanding, Damien. Not this time. You overstepped your already precarious position and have pissed me off. I think walking back from death a few times is the best thing for you." She made another small cut, forcing Ben back again, then kicked the chair over and advanced by stepping over it.
Ben put a large table between them and looked around for possible weapons. He had a whip at his belt and a hand crossbow in his backpack. His adze was sitting on a table where he had set it, but with only an 18" handle, it was only good to parry with, and he'd probably lose a hand. He'd rather keep one hand free. He didn't have a good counter for a sword in close quarters. His spells involved fire, and he hated the thought of being in a burning library.
"I am NOT Damien Franklin. Please, I've never met the man. Is Harmony here? She knows me."
His words seemed to infuriate the woman further. "You really should not have gone there, Damien. That's another thing I owe you for. Harmony is young and just starting her career. Posing as a distant cousin and abusing her trust is something I won't condone."
Ben lashed out with his whip three times, forcing her to dodge and giving him space. "Dammit. Why the hell do you think I'm Damien Franklin!"
She paused. "I'm astounded at the lengths you'll go to play out the role of a dimwitted, distant relative. But let's examine the facts."
"Fact one: Only I decide who will inherit the name of Benjamin in this family. You know this, and yet you perpetuate this farce by claiming to be the 7th."
"Fact two: I have it on good authority that a magic-tech device based on theories only you are familiar with was used in Sedgewick, in the affair of the Fallen, and was instrumental in his demise."
"Fact three: You showed up here after walking back from death, wearing your own pajamas and sleeping in your own bed."
"Fact four: You are disguising yourself with a clever role: The Friendly Local Courier. Very well done. It will fool most people. But you are using a glamour that a Tier 2 human has no chance of casting."
"Fact five: You're wearing your signet ring. How fething stupid do you think people are, Damien?"
She ran at him, leaping on the table and slashing at his neck. Ben dropped to the floor and crawled under the table, then lifted it, dislodging her to the floor and letting the table fall on top of her. Compared to Ozzy, he wasn't remotely strong, but even a few points of STR let a contract worker lift tons. Ben ran to the other end of the room and started throwing things, talking as fast as possible. A strangely colored rock from a shelf made a decent projectile, followed by a large clay mug. She dodged the stone but struck the mug, destroying it.
"You used to love that mug, a shame to break it. Of course, you used to love the family, and now you've started playing dangerous games that link us to a renegade Baron who threatens the empire."
Ben was about to throw another mug but stopped. "Billy? You think Billy is a threat to the empire. Dear god, woman, get better information. Have you read any of the Inquisition reports I've helped Diego with?"
She paused as well and laughed. "You? Working with an Inquisitor? That really is funny. I almost forgive you if you managed to pull that off. Almost. I'll give you thirty seconds to explain why you aren't our dear Uncle Damien. This should be amusing."
Ben started talking. "My name is Ben; the Franklin the 7th part got added by the system after I invented some small things. I met Harmony on the road, responding to an emergency. The reward I got was one of Damien's books. She laughed about it. Later, I discovered the book had some magitech theories that I modified to trap the fallen angel. The ring came from the same book. Um...the glamour? A deal with Wally, I can't talk about that without a long story. And I think wearing the ring pulled me here to resurrect. I'm very confused about that too. No more fighting?"
He'd certainly amused her. She was chuckling at his explanation and shaking her head in disbelief. "Oh, Damien. I really hoped for a better story. Say hello to Hades for me, and feel lucky he won't let me toss you into Tartarus. She ran at him, fighting seriously now. Ben snapped his whip at her, and she caught it with her sword, tangling the whip on the blade. "A poor choice for a weapon. You used to be a decent fencer. I even laid Glimmerfang by your bed to make this an even fight." She tried to sever the whip, but her edge didn't slice through the tough Sedge bull leather.
"It's not the whip that does the damage; it's the fire." Ben smiled and sent Phoenix Fire racing along the whip to his adversary, where it caught the sword on fire and the sleeve of her garment. She dropped the sword, and Ben flipped it to the other end of the room. Mist rose from a spell and put out the fire. She drew two daggers. "Now, what nasty little invention lets you do that? You actually burned me."
Ben wasted no time trying to make her back off with strikes from his whip. She dodged everything and started to laugh and say something. Whatever it was, she would have said it was interrupted by a heavy mug, a wine glass, and two forks thrown at her. She dodged the first two projectiles, used her dagger to deflect the knives, and saw the heavy crystal inkwell Ben threw last. Deflecting it with her blade shattered the glass and showered her with ink. She snarled at him and wiped her face on her sleeve, giving Ben the time to retreat to the opposite side of the room by the time she had cleared her vision.
"Please, can we talk like gentle people?"
"Not after you get ink all over me. This will take forever to get out of my hair." A gesture caused her sword to return to her hand.
"Now that's just cheating!"
She charged, and Ben slashed with his whip, trying to entangle her arm. Quicker than he thought possible, she grabbed the whip, pulled it from his grasp, and ignored the damage to her hand from the fire he put into it. With nowhere to run and expecting to be run through by her blade, a desperate Ben grabbed a thick book from the table and used it to block her sword. The lunging strike that should have pieced his heart instead pieced the front of 'Theories and Mathematics for Clearing Clogged Drains, Rainspouts, and Sewer Pipes.' The author was Professor Damien Franklin of the College of Mundane Magical Theories. Ben hoped the book was dense enough to clog her sword and keep his heart from leaking.
The sword hit the silver lock on the front of the book and penetrated completely through the heavy cover, pages, and back cover, stopping just before it touched Ben's chest. Before she could draw her sword back, an explosion of electrical force erupted from the book, traveled down the blade, and knocked her to the floor, where she lay stunned or unconscious. The locking mechanism on the book fell apart, and Ben glanced at the title page.
Experimental Theories of Teleportation and Why the Mages in the Empire are all Idiots.
That looked like good reading! Ben stored it inside his courier's ring and quickly checked the woman's pulse. It was strong and healthy; she'd wake up soon. He propped her in a sturdy chair and restrained her with the cords from the draperies, then tore down several model ships suspended by wires from the ceiling and made doubly sure of the restraints. Not satisfied, he tore up the bedsheets and wrapped them around and around her.
Stepping back to catch his breath, he wondered what to do next. Wait for her to come to and try to convince her? That was risky; she was a much higher level than he, and who knows what abilities she had. He contented himself with hiding her weapons behind a bookcase and decided it was time to find out what was beyond this room.
House. Lots and lots of house. The hallway outside the door ran in two directions. Rooms were on one side, across from a wall of large portraits. Elanor Franklin...Desiree Franklin...Phineas Franklin...Tobias Franklin...he said hello to each relative as he went. A staircase led down to a lower level at the end of the hallway. He found more hallways and more rooms. The rooms had nameplates that matched up to some of the portraits. At the end of the hallway was an extravagant parlor. Large group portraits hung on the walls. There were dozens of them. The latest was sitting on display, painted recently.
The stern-faced woman he'd just fought was dressed formally in a grey dress, her white/grey hair tied up in a bun. She held a small dog in her lap. Four young men and three women stood behind her, all wearing the uniform of the emperor's couriers. Harmony stood in the center of the three younger women. The nameplate read:
Graduates of the 197th class of the Imperial Academy of Couriers
Back Row: Francis Franklin the 6th, George Stanton Franklin, Raphael Franklin the 4th, Thaddeus Franklin the 2nd
Center Row: Loren Franklin the 6th, Harmony Franklin, Sora Franklin
Front Row: Countess Dame Harmonia Franklin the 3rd, Matriarch of House Franklin and Fluffle.
Ben mulled that over as he looked at the other portraits. The room was deceptive, with alcoves hiding the entrance to rooms beyond. It was like a museum to one large family. He found a picture of Damien. Ben looked at himself in a mirror. If he had a twin who somehow aged forty years, that would be Damien. Not surprising as he had a passing resemblance to most of his new relatives. Whoever painted the portrait emphasized Damien's piercing eyes and amused smile. It said, 'I know something.'
In the same portrait was Benjamin Franklin the 6th, who could pass for his own twin. He began to hurry through the rooms, glancing quickly at the paintings. He found in quick order Benjamin the 5th and the 4th, centuries apart, but with an uncanny resemblance to each other and to himself. Harmonia the 2nd could pass for the woman he had tied up in the study. He moved further back into the last room and stopped, stunned to find a ten-foot-tall bronze statue.
The inscription read Benjamin Franklin the 3rd, the first of his line to come to these new worlds. It looked like him, which wasn't surprising since all the other Bens looked like him. But what bothered him was the statue's dress. Where all the other portraits were formal and wore Victorian-style clothes, the statue was dressed like a pirate. A certain pirate. It was the outfit he had worn long ago when he sailed the seas of EOQ2. The portraits in this room were different. They'd been painted but from photographs or screenshots. Scenes from EOQ2 and EOQ3 of a white-haired female pirate dressed in a grey tunic and breaches. They advanced down the wall, each showing the same girl but younger. They ended with a girl in a grey hooded tunic sitting in the rigging of a ship. He'd seen her before.
The last picture made him cover his face in shame. He stood in the rigging of a ship, wearing only his underwear and a hat. Across the water on the dock was a crowd of hundreds of cheering people. He knew the ship and the scene; here it was, bigger than life. Embarrassing, but only a bit. He'd really looked good back then. The portrait was hundreds of years old if he was any judge of artwork. And he'd stolen quite a bit of it over the years.
He went back through the portraits of the girl in grey, following her progression from a traveler, to pirate to commanding her own ship. Then in the next room, a young Harmonia Franklin the 1st, standing in front of a much smaller Franklin House. Benjamin Franklin the 4th seemed to be her grandson. Harmony was actually the great-great-granddaughter of the current Harmonia Franklin. There was a puzzle here. Fourth Ben was the first at Franklin House, but third Ben was 'first in these new worlds'.
He pulled out the hand xbow that Harmony had given him and looked at the maker mark on the back. To himself, he whispered, "It all fits. Crazy, but it fits."
He heard a noise and turned. Harmonia stood in the doorway, looking at him, ink stains half wiped from her face, her burnt and stained vest and tunic removed, now wearing a short, grey undertunic. She stared at him and stepped forward as the years fell away from her face. Within three steps, she looked younger than Harmony, again the shy girl he had met on his ship. Her eyes were huge as she looked at him. Then she raced forward and caught him in a fierce hug. Then stepped back and was again the woman he had dueled in Damien's study.
"You came! You finally came!"
He looked up at a soft laugh from someone else. Harmony stood in the doorway, smiling at him and wiping ink stains from her hands. "I hope you can explain things, cousin, because I grew up in this family, and I'm confused."
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