“This lady creeps me the hell out,” Novos loudly whispered to Remus. The two of them sat across from a woman they’d never met before, but with whom our four heroes had met quite recently: a woman clad in a porcelain mask, wearing an elegant black dress, who sat opposite them in a dimly-lit room.

“I heard that,” the woman said.

“Well it’s true! We’ve been sitting here for like four minutes and you haven’t said a single word!”

“It has been eighty seconds,” Remus chided Novos.

“Same thing,” Novos replied. “Point is, why the hell did you call the two of us out here? And what’s with the letter being addressed to both of us?”

“Am I mistaken, or are you two not a package deal?” the woman cocked her head.

“If by that you mean this little parasite is stuck to me, then yes, we are a package deal.”

“Then I was not mistaken,” the woman chuckled softly. “But I digress. I’ve called you here, as you’ve no doubt surmised, to invite you on a quest. A rather important quest.”

“How many people gotta die?” Novos snickered.

“As few or as many as you’d like,” the woman cooed.

“Hell yeah.”

“I have recently dispatched four adventurers to seek out an artifact of immense power-”

“And we gotta kill them and take the artifact, got it,” Novos began to stand up.

“Not quite,” the woman raised her hand to stop him. “Shortly after I sent those adventurers after the artifact, I received word from one of my associates that an integral piece of that artifact is, in fact, missing. And that said piece could be found somewhere else entirely.”

“So… we have to get that? And then what?”

“You’ll retrieve that piece of the artifact… and then it is yours to do with as you see fit.”

“Will we not need the larger remainder of the artifact for our piece to work?” Remus asked.

“The artifact is most powerful when it is whole, most certainly, but even separated you will find that the artifacts possess phenomenal power. Your piece- the integral piece- possesses nearly one-third of the total artifact’s power alone.”

“So…” Novos mused, “why don’t we get the artifact and this other piece, and take them both for ourselves?”

“I believe you will struggle greatly with retrieving the artifact,” the woman chuckled, “should the other adventurers have already claimed it. And claimed it they most certainly have, either by now or within the near future, given their five-day head-start on you.”

“Five days?!” Novos shouted.

“Novos,” Remus pulled on his shoulder, “we were ferried across the whole of the Argothian Ocean. That trip alone was four days long.”

“Fine…” Novos slouched into his chair. He paused, then sat back up, leaning forward with a sinister intent on his face. “Where did they go?”

“Ad Limosa,” the woman replied, “but like I said you need not bother. Your piece of the artifact is located within the City of Tears, deep within Sarfeed in the Hinterwelt.”

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Novos whistled, and Remus cringed. The Hinterwelt was a vast and largely unexplored subterranean realm that existed parallel to civilization on the surface, where survival was dictated by strength and by cunning. Life was concentrated into small lairs of monsters and small nations of people, and the nation of Sarfeed was the nation of the Szi-Hach, the serpent-people. Sarfeed was widely considered to be a nation of thieves and of charlatans, where the silver of one’s tongue and the stickiness of one’s fingers decided a person’s fortune in life.

“Sarfeed, huh…” Novos pondered. “Not exactly a place I’d like to visit… Yeah, I think I’d rather not.” Novos nodded to Remus.

“Would you be able to tell us the vector coordinates of this city- Ad Limosa- in relation to us?” Remus asked.

“Vector coordinates…” the woman put her finger to her chin. “I see, so that is your plan. Well, as I have yet to hear any news of the artifact being uncovered, perhaps you will, in fact, be able to catch up with the four of them.” The woman smiled, and gestured, and a man carrying a coffer, which Novos and Remus would have no way of telling was identical to the last three, stepped out from the shadows.

“Darling,” the woman cooed, “what might the vector coordinates from here to the gates of Ad Limosa be?”

??? casts Abacus

An advanced spell that allows the user to rapidly calculate mathematical equations by means of converting said equations into mathematical series.

Blue light surrounded the man’s head. “Eighteen thousand forty-one feet at an angle of one hundred and eleven,” he said.

“Thank you,” Remus bowed. “Now then, Novos, shall we be off?” Remus stood up and offered him her hand.

“Hell yeah,” Novos took her hand as he stood up.

Remus casts Wormhole

A supreme spell that allows the user to tunnel through the fabric of space and time by rapidly increasing the weight of the user- and those nearby- to warp reality via relativity. Can be used only briefly, but allows the user to quickly travel great distances in a straight line.

A black sphere appeared and swallowed Novos and Remus, and light itself seemed to warp around the circumference of the sphere into a fisheye distortion. In a flash, the sphere careened out through the wall, passing harmlessly through it, and away in the direction the man had stated.

“Wow…” the woman mused to herself. “I didn’t even have to bribe them with the silver.”

It was midnight in Ad Limosa. A lone man wandered down an alleyway, drunk out of his mind. So drunk, in fact, that he failed to notice the two figures- a tall man and a short woman- approach him.

“Looks like somebody’s having a great night,” Novos whistled.

“You… fuckin… betcha…” the man slurred out as he wobbled further down the alleyway.

“What’s the news? Can’t be every night a guy like you gets sloshed out of his mind.”

“Ain’t yew heard? Some adventurers came through and got rid of the Red Swans, brought Captain Finn’s ‘ead in on a fuckin platter for the mayor!” The drunken man laughed heartily.

“Oh really?” Novos cooed. Before the man knew what was happening, there was a sword on either side of his neck, pinning him against the wall as they crossed over his throat in an x-pattern. “Now,” Novos continued, “how might an honest, well-meaning gentleman like myself find these adventurers?”

Being short is not always useful. As a matter of fact, it rarely is- everyone taller than you makes fun of you, you can’t reach high places, and finding gear that fits you becomes that much harder. But for tracking? That’s where it really comes in handy.

Amid the festivities, the heroes guards were completely down. Discarding her regal raiments at their inn in favor of commoner’s clothes, Remus pursued Mina, Dianna, and Lawrence as they caroused about Ad Limosa, partaking in all the merrymaking they could. When their guards were down, Remus silently snatched their belongings, one at a time, out from their bags. She checked them for anything related to this artifact they were hunting for, but found nothing. Lawrence carried nothing on him but assorted pirate memorabilia, Dianna carried nothing on her at all, and Mina’s bags were full of nothing but food and ingredients for food.

At her wit’s ends with the sheer mind-numbing irrationality of these three, Remus finally elected to check on their fourth member- a recovering man by the name of Simon, who was currently being healed at the Church of Malivectus. Remus was by no means exceptionally good at sneaking, and so she would have to rely on her magic to sneak into the place. In the dead of night, she phased through the wall into Simon’s room as he slept, and quickly went through his belongings. She found a number of standard adventurer’s equipment- it was clear that Simon carried everything for the other three- as well as an inexplicable bismuth crystal, but what concerned her the most was a small and hastily-scrawn and blood-splattered map, which depicted the local area of Ad Limosa. Southwest of the city, about three hundred feet away, was drawn a great red X. Remus perfectly copied the map, placed it discreetly away into Simon’s bag, and phased back through the wall.