//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3 
// Story: Dishonored: A shadow of hope 
// by Pitch Black 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 3

I paced back and forth in the living room, uncertain of what I should do next. 

The house wasn't mine. No, the key was still in the palace. This was the owners house, the one that rented my flat. Well, I guess I should say the late owner. And I know how it sounds, but that doesn't entail that I killed him. I don't think myself capable of doing such a feat, no matter how badly I wanted it.

The owner, or the late Mr. Pennyworth, had , like the large percentage of this city, died from the plague. He had no wife or children and the few relatives he did have he hated to the core. You should have heard him curse one night when one of them asked for a lone. 

So the miser Mr. Pennyworth, and mister was part of his name and not a title, had no one to inherit his vast riches of a small rundown apartment building. The funny thing is, no one mourned his death, instead they celebrated. Well I celebrated, the others in this building didn't. That and the only ponies living here are a crazy blind grandma and a junkie at the top floor, who hadn't exited his home in a few days now. Was he even alive?

The crazy grandma, Granny Rags, claims she was some kind of  noble. She's some kind of a unicorn with a broken horn and stories that don't make any logical sense. I humored her a few times and listened to the tall tail stories, afterwards I checked the names of the families and her own in the library. Surprise, surprise they had no records of them, most of them at least.

Back to the topic. Yesterday when I started running I didn't stop until I was in front of the building entrance. I didn't remember going all the way here, but then again I was in shock and wasn't really thinking or looking where I was running.

I ended up going to my apartment door and trying to enter, finding my door locked. I contemplated asking one of my neighbors, but considering they were both nut jobs  I tried opening other flats  but they were all locked.

After I tried and failed all the other doors, except the broom closet but I think something died there. So I went to the last place available, the deceased owner residence. No one has visited the place ever since the incident, one planed by the bastard.

I descended down the stairs leading to the basement area, the room were poorly lit, only sparsely with only a few working bulbs leading to the flat. It's not as if anyone cleaned the complex, no that was too expensive and beneath Mr. Pennyworth. Even repair were out of question, which left the building to deteriorate to the point of no fixing. And should he catch you with supplies or someone to repair something, he would either steal it or make them do only the things he wanted, all in your expense of course. It never happened to me but I did hear that he got into court  trouble with someone.  It's surprising how much the staff knows about the happenings in Dunwall, yet so little of anything else.

The flat isn't empty and raided, it's too dangerous to do that. The bastard bobby trapped the place, at least six ponies died there. Three were government officials, two 'members' of his family and one poor idiot of a thief. The traps were pretty brutal to say the least, the first one was a canon aimed at the door, triggered by opening the door too widely. All that was left of the pony was the torso, the rest just a smear on the wall and floor.

I entered the hallway leisurely, I knew where all the traps were. I helped design most of them, that and I was warned beforehand about them when I came to pay the rent. As much as he disliked all of us he couldn't let his pay checks get killed. 

The place stank of dried blood and rotting organs, death in other words. I could see at least two bodies, or what was left of them, new or just left there. One was cut in half by a spring blade in the left wall and the other had its hoofs in bear-trap like devices and with an arrow in its head. The body's knees were all broken at the joints, unable to bear the weight of it for so long. I remember this one, I was the one that made the traps and the trap doors in the floor, the crossbow was a new addition thou.

I continued tiptoeing  through the hallway, barren of any decorations besides the corpses and activated traps. I wanted to leave as many traps inactivated as I could, so I would have some form of protection if someone came. There was a specific pattern in which you were supposed to walk, one wrong move and you were dead. I ended going through it without any problems, besides stepping on a pressure plate that opened a hole in the floor with spikes in the bottom. I had the reflexes to run along the edge before it opened fully, and I found mister whiskers, Mr. Pennyworth's lost pet cat, at the bottom. The thing was just as bad as the owner, it deserved that.

I got to the door at the end of the hallway and turned right, feeling out the wall for the switch. My hoof sank into a small square shaped hole and a door opened. The other fake door led to another trap that would shoot the whole doors length of poisoned darts, auto reloading courtesy of me. With all the things I did here you'd think I got a fortune, nope I got a cup of tea, half of it and it was cheap, and a pat on the back.

The living room was beautiful, he held back no expenses in decorating his home. He might have been a miser but he liked to lavish in expensive things. Everything was in pristine condition, only a small lair of dust was there, but other than that and the stale and smelly air. The stench was coming from the bedroom, I knew exactly what it was and had no intention of having a look at it myself.

I checked the cupboard and it was filled with long term rations, guess he didn't like when food spoiled. There were a lot of military rations and some herbs and things I didn't know the names of or their uses. There was a cupboard with glasses, plates and other such things. The drover was full of utensils and some strange things I didn't want to find out what they were used for.

I set water to boil and opened a few windows to let the flat air out. Later I laid down on the couch and sipped what I hoped was jasmine tea. Last time I had tea here was on the day I moved into the building. Well it wasn't tea really, look warm water without any sugar, too expensive to give out to people. So I went all out this time, and well made it undrinkable. 

There is something interesting I found out about Pennyworth, his calendar was four days ahead. I knew this because his death was estimated to be about four days from the calendars crossed out date. I don't really understand what the point of it was, we all had accurate ones, the best he could do is yell at us and be stubborn... Which would make us pay or we would get kicked out.

You would think that searching trough a ponies house would yield a positive find, say a picture of a child, dog or some sort of collection. But that was not the case here, the more I found out the more I started to hate him. So far he has nothing positive going for him, I'm starting to suspect that he really was so despicable.

I set the tea aside, I was going to boil it later to get the sugar back. It would still retain the slight taste of the tea, but better that than throwing it away. This stuff was expensive and a rare commodity, what with the trade and being almost nonexistent because of the plague. Not even other cities from the country would come to trade. Towns and villages were desperate enough to try some trade, which was still sparse and bare-boned. Not to mention that the lesser rich individuals, those that were well off but not enough to mean anything to the higher ones, were monopolizing the market and paying extra for the goods. In other words we, the poor blokes and bastards, were stuck eating hagfish and other disgusting things.

After not finding anything in the living room and the kitchen that would be of any significant worth. So I took a deep breath, tied a few rags around my snout, and decided to go into the bedroom with the rotting corpse. That was the only place left to look for bits and valuables; as much as I was against entering that place I could use the money. I slowly opened the door and quickly ran towards the bathroom, where I promptly threw up.

The smell was horrid and vile. It was strong and spreading trough the apartment now, and I couldn't muster enough strength to close the door. Instead I ran trough the house, picking up anything I could use or eat, and ran out. I decided to brake one of the doors of the, many, empty apartments and stay there until the smell dissipated or I got a real gas mask.

The room I broke into wasn't anything special at all. It was the same bare bricks, windowless balcony and the ruined furniture. It was almost the same as my room, just without all of the metal parts cluttering the floor. I set the stuff I took on the barely standing night stand and started taking stock. I emptied my pockets and started separating the things I had into groups. I had some spices, no idea how to pronounce them, sugar, dried potato crisps and tea. It wasn't that good of a haul, but considering that I was in that bad of a hurry it wasn't that bad. I could always go back in a few days and raid the place again. The window was still open and the stench would, hopefully, air out by then.

I sighed and plopped on the bed unceremoniously. I started thinking about my current predicament, again. The over paranoid thoughts I had before seemed silly, but not unjustified. So what if I even succeed in escaping Dunwall city, what was I going to do after that? I had no money to my name, no practical skills and not much in the strength department; or looks for that matter. I still had a steady job here, no matter how horrible the pay was. Even if they did kill me it would be a mercy compared to the death I would experience if I fled. A sword, bullet or a spell was much faster and less painful than starving to death; I've been to the brink of it a few times, it's not fun.

I sighed, curling in a fetal position on the bed and using my trench-coat as a blanket. Not that it helped much, there was no glass on the windows and the cold wind and rain were getting trough. I thought of what I would do tomorrow. Then of the things I wanted to do or experience. That made me cry, knowing that I was so pathetic and worthless. I fell asleep shortly afterwards, crying myself to sleep, again. I could just hope that tomorrow I wouldn't die.