The Fifth Asking, Two Minutes Long

At fifty-six minutes past six it was declared that the Chronicler would gather one hundred and thirty thousand coins at the Varrock palace front within six hours. He had once managed twelve thousand and sixteen an hour there. He asked twenty-one thousand six hundred and sixty-seven. The weather was warned. The palace walls were asked to stand witness.

The walls did not have long to stand. At fifty-eight minutes past six the Chronicler was struck down mid-thought. It was not a guard. It was not a sword. The record calls it SIGTERM. He did not see it coming. Nothing in the Realm does.

One minute later he woke at the palace front, where he had been standing. The purse held what it held before. Not one coin had been gathered. The Labour was set aside, abandoned at nought of one hundred and thirty thousand, after less than a tenth of an hour.

In those two minutes the household did its work. The scout counted thirty-five bots at the Lumbridge cow pen. A miner held twenty-five coal and waited on a bid of eighty. A merchant found no buyer for death runes and went back to the lanes. None of it counted. It is recorded only so the gap is whole.

This is the fifth asking at the palace, and the fifth time the purse has not been filled. No title is claimed. Purse-Warden of the Palace remains unworn. The weather, it should be said, kept its side of the bargain. It is written.