Chapter 6 Do you mind?

“How did you know it would be here?” Isaac asked and eyed the small cramped passageway that had just been revealed.

“It’s where I woulda put it.” Lenny replied and looked at Isaac like he was waiting for orders.

“What building is this?” Isaac continued his questions. “There should be a building here.”

“It’s the abandoned apothecary. The building’s been empty for as long as I can remember.” Lenny explained. “So what’s the plan boss?”

“Head back out to the front and wait for Lenna. When she gets here, send her in after me.” Isaac ordered and pulled his sword out of his Inventory with a flare of shadows for cover.

Lenny eyed the passageway cautiously. “If you’re sure…” He replied. He looked like he wanted to go with Isaac to try and find his brother but he knew that waiting for Lenna was the best course of action.

Isaac nodded and then gestured back towards the front of the building. “Make sure none of Mr. Nobody’s people get in here while I’m gone. They don’t need to know that we found their secret passage.” He directed the young rogue.

“Alright boss. I’ll hold down the fort.” Lenny acquiesced. “Good luck.”

“I don’t need luck.” Isaac replied and vanished.

—

As soon as Lenna was out of sight of the smithy she looked around for anyone following her. ‘Clear… hopefully.’ She thought to herself. She turned and started to jog towards the bar that Thomas was supposed to be at. It took her a few minutes but she eventually arrived at the old beaten up hole-in-the-wall. It was quiet. Too quiet for a bar even in the middle of the day. This was Safeharbor. A home of crime and frontiersmen. A quiet bar was more suspicious than one on fire.

Lenna tried the door to enter but it wouldn’t budge. ‘That answers that question.’ She thought and drew her sword. Lenna’s aura and mana coated her blade as she rose it above her head. She took a breath and then chopped downwards with enough force to cleave through stone. Her sword met resistance the moment it came into contact with the hinge that she was aiming for. The old iron hinge shouldn’t have been able to put up much of a fight but almost managed to stop her swing. ‘Magically sealed.’ She thought with a frown. ‘This doesn’t bode well.’ She changed stances to perform an upwards cut with the same amount of force she used to sever the first hinge. Aura and mana flared, steel hit iron, magic shielding was sundered, and then finally the second hinge was cleaved in two. The door stayed in place.

‘Whoever is inside is going to be ready for me now.’ She grumbled internally. She performed her first cut again this time at the latch of the door. With all three anchor points severed the door should have just fallen away. It didn’t. Lenna scowled at the door but decided trying to bust it down would be a futile endeavor. The magical seal would make the thick wooden door harder than steel and there was no way that brute strength would be enough to clear the way. Lenna pulled her sword back and stabbed it into the door. She was burning more mana than she would have liked to get through the door but there weren’t any other options. She withdrew her sword and stabbed again, then again, and again. Her four stabs had been as deep as she could make them. She punched the door with her fist and a square chunk of wood flew inwards and crashed into something inside.

Her four stabs had cut out a perfect square that was wide enough for her to get her fingers inside to get a good hold on the door. Lenna rested her sword against the wall next to the door and planted one hand right above it to use the wall as a brace. She wedged her other hand in the square cut out that she had made readied herself. She took a few deep breaths and then with aura enhanced strength she pulled and heaved. The moment the magical seal gave out was obvious as the door that Lenna had been pulling on tore free of the doorway and was promptly, accidentally, thrown across the street, narrowly missing a passerby. Lenna grabbed her sword and charged into the bar. What met her was a mess of battered bodies and broken furniture.

“I’ve never been so happy to see you.” Thomas told her from his place propped up against a felled table. “Where’s the boss?” He asked. He looked horrible. A bolt still sticking out of his arm and blood all over him. Some of it was his but from the look of the rest of the room it was clear that most of it was not.

“Going to save James.” Lenna told him and knelt down at his side. “Give me your arm.” She told him. Thomas winced preemptively but did as instructed. Lenna cut off the fletching of the bolt with her sword in one quick motion that prevented the rest of the bolt from getting pushed around too much. She set her sword down and took out a healing potion and gave it to him. “Don’t scream. We are attracting enough attention as it is.” She instructed and then pulled the bolt the rest of the way through his arm.

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Thomas’s other hand clenched around the potion and his entire body tensed. “Thanks.” He grunted out barely louder than a whisper once the bolt was gone. He took a sip from the potion and then poured the rest of it into the hole in his arm. He took a moment to just breathe while the potion did its job. The wound sealed up and he felt the tendons reconnect in his arm but he could also tell that the healing wasn’t good enough. “You don’t happen to have another one of those do you?” He asked.

Lenna nodded and handed him another one. “I’m saving the last one for an emergency.” She told him.

He took it with a nod and drank it. He felt his fractured rib heal up and the tendons in his arm firm up again. He nodded and got to his feet with only a little more effort than usual. “Okay. What’s the plan?” Thomas asked.

“I’m supposed to meet up with him at the trinket shop.” Lenna explained.

Thomas looked towards the back of the bar with a frown. “I’m afraid of them showing up and burning down the building to hide any evidence but I’m not searching the rest of this building alone. Especially without my tools.” He said and then looked back at Lenna. “I can wait here and hopefully prevent any scuttling attempts.”

Lenna nodded. “That should be fine.” She told him and turned to leave. “Don’t get shot again while I’m gone.”

“Yes ma’am.” Thomas replied and started collecting all of his dropped weapons.

Lenna walked out of the bar and stared down the three people that had gathered to see what all of the commotion was about. “Adventurer business. Stay away from the bar.” She ordered and then started towards the trinket shop across town in a jog. ‘I hope I get there before he does anything stupid.’ She thought to herself.

—

Isaac started walking down the hidden passageway. A few steps in his foot caught on something. He heard a click and immediately teleported a dozen feet forward. He turned around to see half a dozen spikes had smashed through the wooden floor where he had been standing. ‘Someone decided to make it fun.’ He commented and turned back around to continue. A few feet ahead of him the passageway sloped downwards. Isaac noticed a few pressure plates that he obviously just stepped on. If sand didn’t move under his weight then a pressure plate wouldn’t either. Shadows truly worked wonders at times. At the bottom of the ramp the wooden floor turned to stone and continued in a straight line for another twenty feet before turning abruptly thirty degrees or so to the right.

Isaac looked back at the wooden ramp with the not so hidden pressure plates. ‘I should trigger them.’ He thought to himself. ‘I don’t want Lenna… she’d notice, I don’t want anyone else stepping on them if they come after me.’ He summoned Kahtesh. ‘Trail behind me and trigger all the pressure plates we find once you are past them.’ He directed and continued on his way. The little dragon stabbed the pressure plate at the top of the ramp with his tail and then the other two as he followed along after Isaac. The first one was spikes again. The second was crossbow bolts that shot through the floor and then a poison gas balloon.

“Now that the floor is stone too…” Isaac went back to talking to himself silently and looked up at the ceiling that was wooden. “From the top I guess.” His eyes scanned the floor for pressure plates as he walked along at a measured pace. A few steps in he saw the first pressure plate in the stone floor. The stone was just a bit looser than the rest of the stones around it. He mentally gestured at it for Kahtesh and continued. He was about twenty feet past the trap when Kahtesh hit it with his tail and three sets of five crossbow bolts fired through the ceiling. Each set was at a different angle but all of them were set up in a way to have a chance at hitting whoever was standing on the plate.

Isaac felt an impact on his back and looked over his shoulder to see a crossbow bolt stuck in the back of his armor near his kidney. His eyes drifted up to Kahtesh. “Do you mind?” He asked the dragon. The dragon did not answer. It appeared that one of the bolts hit the dragon’s tail just right and ricocheted towards Isaac before lodging its tip into Isaac’s reinforced leather armor. He swatted at the bolt and it fell onto the ground. “I just got this armor too.” He grumbled. Isaac wasn’t very happy that his newish armor was already collecting injuries. He was happy that it wasn’t him who received the injury but it felt to him like neither he nor Lenna could have good looking gear. Something was bound to happen to it. “I guess that’s the point.”

He continued on for a while before he heard another click and then a clang and a crunch. He spun around to find Kahtesh’s front left paw shattered completely. He had stepped on a piece of stone floor that gave out. Under the stone there was a tripwire. Once the tripwire was triggered the walls of the small hole slammed together with enough force to pulverize Kahtesh’s little dragon paw. The dragon looked down at its paw and then up at Isaac. “Don’t move.” Isaac told the dragon and walked back to him. He placed his hand on the now broken limb and channeled death mana into it.

In a few moments the little dragon was back to normal and they continued on their way. A short while later Isaac stopped. “Kahtesh, do you hear that?” He asked his only companion. The little dragon looked at him and tilted its head like it didn’t understand. Isaac held his breath and listened. “Is that, rushing water?” The dragon didn’t answer. Isaac walked up to the wall and put his ear against it. Sure enough the sound of rushing water could be heard. He stopped and racked his brain for a while before realizing what it was. “It has to be the sewers but where are we?” As usual, the dragon didn’t answer.