Chương 146: CDM 3, Chapter 22: Succession Planning

Frank's house was one of a dozen identical brick homes in what was once a "company town." Mills and factories used to build these cookie-cutter neighborhoods for their workforces–simple box designs with four rooms on the first floor and four rooms on the second, a raised porch and foundation to account for Pittsburgh terrain, and only a few feet between structures to maximize real estate. He heard us climbing the dozen stairs up from the street to the porch and opened the door before we could knock.

Beth and I had to squeeze together in the entryway to shut the door behind us and take off our coats. Each room was wallpapered with a different floral pattern. Some sections were noticeably more sun-bleached than others from decades of sunrises and sunsets charting the same course across the room. The trim was a dark-stained woodgrain. Every end table and hutch was covered in picture frames. The few spaces that didn't have pictures were filled with stacks of books and magazines instead.

Those stacks spread along the walls, often 15 or 20 books high. The house smelled of old paper and lasagna. A tubby gray short-haired cat trotted out of a side room and started to weave around Beth's legs, rubbing its head on her shins.

"Gracie, psst," Frank said, trying to shoo the cat away but failing.

"I gave her a treat one time to get her away from a guest, and now she extorts me every time. Come on, Gracie. You win." The cat watched Frank venture down the narrow hallway to the kitchen but didn't follow. Out of sight, a bag of treats rattled.

"I'm not lying to you, Gracie," Frank called, and the cat went running. Once Beth and I had our shoes off, we made our way to the kitchen as well.

"You kids want something to drink? I got water, pop, iced tea."

"Iced tea sounds good to me," Beth replied, and I nodded that I'd take the same. As I joined Beth at the kitchen table, I caught a glimpse of the dining room. The table and chairs looked like a library book sale.

"Dinner will be ready soon," Frank said.

"Lasagna was one of two things I ever made for my kids. I hope it doesn't turn out too awful."

"Beth mentioned a while ago that one of your grandkids suggested you do more marketing for the shop," I began.

"Are they local too?" He shook his head.

"My youngest followed her husband to North Carolina. I had two boys who moved to California for crawling jobs, and I don't hear from their kids much. The other rugrats visit for the big holidays. Rugrats? Listen to me. They're grown. Almost done with college." Catching Frank's use of the past tense for his sons was enough of a clue for me not to poke at the wound. I learned later that they both died about 10 years before in an A-ranked gate. Frank joined us at the kitchen table with his own glass of iced tea.

"I've been hearing you're the least lucky crawler in the tristate area."

"That might be true," I replied.

"I was hoping this Stage 2 business was good old-fashioned fearmongering. Getting pretty hard to think it's anything but a new normal."

"How much does something like that influence business for you?" I asked.

"You'd think bigger challenges would get people buying better gear, but anytime there's uncertainty like this, business goes down. The reality is that folks running C gates and below are the bulk of your business. Top crawlers are good customers, but there's not enough of them." Beth raised an eyebrow as she finished a sip of tea.

"You've seen other things like this?"

"Saw a little bit of a dip during the crasher killings. Before that was a harvester strike. Was a stretch where drug dealers and muggers were a problem. Then way back, there was the E-Gate Eraser."

"What's that?" Beth asked.

"Serial killer who targeted female crawlers on small teams."

"Gross." The oven timer went off. Frank stood to get the lasagna. A minute or so later, he set plates in front of Beth and me–a square of lasagna and a pile of steamed broccoli with a slice of American cheese melted on top.

"This was my wife's recipe," Frank said, rejoining us at the table.

"I think she left something out because I never get it quite right."

"We were talking about something like that the other day, actually," Beth shared, referencing a drawn-out discussion we shared at the High Bar Pub.

"Food tastes better if someone makes it for you. Someone making you a sandwich is always better than making your own." Frank chuckled.

"I didn't think your generation were the sentimental types. Does make me feel better about my cooking, though."

"I don't know," I added.

"This lasagna is pretty good."

"Marie was an enchanter," Beth said to me. I took that to mean that Marie was the name of Frank's wife.

"She was an incredible artist too. You should see some of the pieces hanging up at the shop."

"What kind of pieces?"

"She did these really intricate engravings. My favorite has two armies of monsters, and they're about to meet in the middle of the frame. It feels like they're moving, like they're about to crash into each other any second, and it's all on the side of a bow." Frank nodded with a twinkle of nostalgia in his eye.

"Anything she touched was better for it."

"I'd feel guilty taking something that pretty into a dungeon," I said. Laughing, Frank replied, "Customers would say that to her all the time, and she'd always tell them she would be happy to sell them another one."

"Did she only enchant bows, or did she work on other gear too?"

"She always said bows were her favorite, but I think she just liked that we got to work on those together. Not much for me to contribute to a sword or shield." Beth leaned toward me.

"She's the one who convinced him to open a shop in the first place." Frank nodded at that too.

"I only got into making bows because I got sick of the overpriced chopsticks people tried to pass off as decent weapons. Had to craft them myself if I ever wanted something I could trust. Never intended to make a job out of it." I washed down a bite of lasagna.

"Fell in love with the craft?"

"More like I was falling out of love with crawling. Making bows meant I either worked by myself or with my lovely wife. I liked that when crawling arguments seemed to be happening more often. We all started running with each other when we were young, and I think we grew in different directions. 10 years of that? People stop getting along. Making bows was a nice escape." A few moments passed with no conversation, the silence broken by the clink of silverware on plates.

"Beth was telling me you're signing on to do wild hunts with the CDM," Frank said.

"Yeah. They're spinning up a program to get to wild monsters more quickly. The problem seems to be growing, and the EPA can't keep up."

"And you're running a dex build, right?" This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. I nodded.

"You picking up a preference for what kind of bows you like?"

"I've only ever shot recurve and don't really want to mess with adjusting to something else, and I've not really used anything too fancy. I borrowed a voidwood with a Bolt enchantment for a couple days, but otherwise I'm happy if the frame doesn't disintegrate in my hand if I push it too hard."

"How'd you like voidwood?"

"I was still adjusting to it when I had to give it back, but it was nice to shoot. The Bolt bonus made me feel a lot more effective than I was, I think."

"Pretty strange adjusting to that kind of action, right?"

"Definitely," I answered.

"I don't think I got comfortable enough with it to really see its potential. I kept catching myself not firing on something with cover."

"Mmmhmm," Frank responded with his mouth full.

"That's a tough adjustment for the brain to make."

"I'd like to try bloodwood just for the experience. Livingwood too." Frank scoffed.

"Livingwood is the most finicky, temperamental material you can find. The zen masters love to talk about the merits of bonsai and slow cultivation, but brother, a dungeon crawl is the farthest from those you can ever get." Beth and I laughed.

"Yeah, I can't see myself ever spending the money to buy one," I continued.

"Then starwood is on the bucket list, of course. That's probably where it will stay." Starwood was the rarest type of wood to come out of dungeon gates. Just holding the bow bumped all of your stats by 25% and did the same for the damage and accuracy of your arrows. I had only ever seen starwood in action once. Nad-Nade did a special on rare weapons and arranged for a crawler to borrow a starwood bow for a crawl.

In that same show, one of the commentators compared bringing starwood into a dungeon to "driving your 1 of 4 Lamborghini into a warzone."

"90 percent of archers never need anything better than ironwood," Frank said.

"Most of the guys running bloodwood do it for the image, but you really need a specific power build to get the most out of those. Silverwood isn't flashy enough for most people, but I recommend that to anyone looking to upgrade from ironwood. If you take care of silverwood, you'll never need another bow."

"Where does voidwood rank for you, or are you sick of talking about it at this point?"

"You mean because of the Martin Kielar investigation?" Frank asked in reply, chuckling.

"I am sick of hearing about that rat bastard, but that isn't voidwood's fault. Beth is probably sick of hearing it too, but what do I always say about voidwood?" She smiled.

"He used to say something different, but I've gotten him to update the language a little bit." Frank grunted at that. Beth continued, saying, "'Most people are too dumb and too afraid to use voidwoods the right way.'" I tilted my head. Frank pointed a fork at Beth. She blushed.

"Frank can explain it better than I can, but he always talks about how you should become an entirely different archer if you're using voidwood. Here's an example: What's the first thing people say is the advantage of voidwood?" I used a few seconds of chewing to think.

"You can hit targets that go behind cover."

"Yep, but no one talks about shooting from behind your own cover. Any other kind of marksman wants as much cover as possible, but archers who get a bow that can shoot through walls still stand out in the open to draw and aim." That got me to put my fork down and lean back. Beth was right. That's exactly how I thought about voidwood, and that's usually how the guides and analysts talked about it too.

"Shit," I mumbled. Beth grinned.

"Thinking that way is really tough for most folks because it defies Earth nature," Frank said.

"You have to rewire your brain to think of solid surfaces as permeable, and then you have to get so good at reading the battlefield that you can predict the movements of enemies you can't see." He slid a knife to the middle of the table.

"If this is a wall, floor to ceiling, traditional archers can shoot from here or here." Frank pointed to either end of the knife.

"The best voidwood archers I ever saw took Steady Hands so they could fire while moving without penalty. They'd take a peek at the battlefield and move from here to here, shooting the whole way from memory alone." Frank used his finger to represent an archer traveling the length of the knife, shooting at enemies on the other side of the imaginary wall.

"Can't be any old jagoff and do that, though," he continued.

"A dumb ass will miss everything in the room, and a bigger dumb ass will hit a few party members too. He died before yinz were even born, but I knew a guy who would clear boss rooms without ever going inside. Loaded up on a power draw and killed everything without opening the door. He could aim by listening to where he heard them moving if he didn't get it done with the first shot."

"Why do you think you don't see more people doing that now?" I asked. He shrugged.

"Most training is based on the bell curve, so you can get as many people as possible to competency. The way I'm talking about voidwoods, you have to break a few sacred rules, and if you screw up, you could kill one of your own. There's a reason blind-firing is discouraged in nearly every scenario." I let that sink in instead of replying.

"I hope you two see how what you have is pretty damn special," Frank said after a pause. Beth and I both gave him a curious look.

"One of you has the touch to be one of the best bowyers in the world, and one of you already has the reputation of being unkillable. Civilians and jagoffs will call that luck, but I've seen crawlers who have that knack. They see things in battle that us normal folk don't." Now Beth and I both blushed. I tried to make eye contact with Frank again but ended up staring at my plate instead.

"Beth has told you about that, huh?"

"Not me," Beth exclaimed.

"She's not sharing your secrets," Frank confirmed.

"The crawling world is smaller than you think. Going after an ogre boss at level 10? People are going to talk about that. Both of you wait here for a moment." Frank wiped his mouth on a napkin and scooted his chair out. He opened a basement door on the opposite side of the kitchen and grumbled about Gracie running down ahead of him. Every board creaked on his way down. We heard Frank coming up the stairs a short while later. He emerged with a bow case, a bound set of printer pages, and Gracie under his arm.

He set the case on the kitchen counter but put the papers on the table in front of Beth as he reclaimed his seat. He flopped the cat around until he held her like a baby. He scratched her stomach, and she started to purr.

"I'm not planning on dying any time soon, but a lot of the guys I came up with have already kicked it, so I want to make sure this all gets done exactly how I want," Frank said. He tapped the booklet and looked at Beth.

"This is my will. I'm giving you a copy because it says the shop is yours if you want it. I love my grandkids, but that generation is full of little weirdos who get greedy sometimes. I don't want you getting cheated out of anything, so you have an original record to back your claim." Beth went ashen.

"What? No, Frank. I can't do that."

"Like I said, I'm not dead yet. The only catch is that you have to keep the shop going. If you don't want to do that, that's fine too. I won't be around to care."

"But- But- Shouldn't your family get the shop? That's still your money, and I… I don't feel right taking that from them."

"First of all, it's my stuff, and I get to do whatever I want with it," Frank replied.

"Second of all, none of them give a shit about archery. Third of all, I got a basement full of bows they can sell. They'll be happy with what the collection gets them." Frank turned to me.

"I wanted you here because I know she can be too nice to fight for what's hers. Don't let her walk away from this if she wants it. You hear?"

"Yes, sir." Beth covered her mouth and went still. I knew this reaction. She was trying her hardest not to cry but would definitely fail. She threw her arms around Frank.

"Thank you so much. I'll do you proud."

"Nonsense," he said, patting her on the back.

"Make money instead." When Beth pulled away, she sniffled and reached for a napkin. As Frank stood again, he ruffled Beth's hair. The clasps on the bow case snapped when he popped them loose. When he turned around, he held a dark purple recurve in his hand. Glowing runes lined the inside arc of the bow, and the string seemed to shimmer.

"Marie is the real reason people came to the shop," he explained.

"She could do Summon Arrow and Hardening enchantments, and that brought in a lot of business. This will take some getting used to, but the biggest thing to remember is that you have to use spidersilk strings. Anything else will get shredded by the mana load after a couple dozen shots." He held out the bow for me to take. I slid away from Frank.

"I can't accept that."

"As soon as you get a nickname like 'the Unkillable,' people start acting like it's true. Every time you pick this thing up, I want you to hear my old ass saying, 'no, you aren't,' because this woman needs you alive. This thing was just collecting dust with a pile of other bows I never use anyway." And that wasn't a lie. The case was coated with the kind of gray-brown grime that took years to build up. But collecting dust didn't make it any less valuable.

From my hobbyist auction lurking, I guessed that the bow in Frank's hand would sell for $350, 000, at least. A question struck me: Were any of the bows in that pile voidwood enchanted with Fire 3? I tried to picture him lining up a killshot in the middle of the city, but I knew so little about him that the only Frank I could picture was the crotchety old man having conversations with his cat.

I was curious if my hunch was correct, but then again, investigating that hunch could flip the rock that ultimately got him caught. If Frank was Kielar's killer, I didn't want to know because if I didn't know, I couldn't be the one who blew his cover. Whatever his reasons were, I was glad he took that shot, and I would play no part in him being discovered.

"Take it," Frank commanded. For the first time, a force entered his words that only a grandfather could manage. They carried a weight and a seriousness to them that implied he knew what he was doing and that he would kick my ass if I didn't listen.

"Thank you," I said, accepting the bow.

"Good," Frank replied.

"You two need to look out for each other, you hear?"

"Yes, sir."