The ruins of Azure Falls spanned a greater area than the scrapyard in the Overlord’s Mercy. Unlike Nua’s native city, which replaced ancient Eshunna, the desert town did not cover the bones of its predecessor. Recent earthquakes rearranged the terrain, revealing long hidden structures, and for the first time in centuries, showing the full outline of the metropolis once lost to time. The interest that followed was inevitable.
The party passed through the wasteland coated in red dust, with remains of crumbled walls sticking out from the ground here and there. Nua scouted ahead. Officially on her own, secretly with Anki’s assistance. She tried to pull her own weight. She put Hessa’s lessons into practice and watched out for every detail in her surroundings, paying attention to the behavior of scarce wildlife and traces left in the sand. Still, it was Anki who gave her a heads up about four girtablils roaming the area. She didn’t feel too bad taking the credit, though. The monsters were not directly in their way, and the group did not have to run into them, but the mercenaries decided otherwise. She got to watch the group in action.
The late prince Flavius went exploring alone, so he used poisonous herbs to soften his opponents. Her current companions – everyone except Raya – acted as a coordinated battle unit. Zaina went ahead – she climbed one of the walls and ran towards the half-scorpion hybrids, making a lot of noise. When she had their attention, she lured them into an enclosure. Then, she took out her small curved bow and started shooting. Her aim was not as good as Hessa’s, but that did not matter, because she set the arrows aflame. Girtablils were ultimately just animals, and that launched them into a panic.
The enclosure had only one entrance, and that’s where the others were waiting. The monsters did not get the chance to use their stings. They didn’t even know what hit them.
Truth be told, it was mostly Oswald, who was using his heavy long sword with bone-shattering force, but Quintus also got a few stabs in with his gladius.
The mercenaries then dragged all four corpses into one place. Oswald looked at Nua as if expecting something. Nua returned the glance without comprehension.
“Well?” the mercenary said. “Do your thing.”
“I think he wants you to cut out the parts for sale,” said Anki.
Nua was staring with horror at the carcasses. Their upper halves looked human.
“Um,” she said. “I don’t think we covered these ones yet.”
“Hessa takes the poison glands from the tails,” Oswald explained. “She uses gloves. Says this is easy.”
Zaina handed her a pair of rather used leather gloves. They were close enough to Nua’s size. The girl had her own knife that replaced the one she had broken. It was made of brass and not steel, and it still took half of her savings but it could do the job. It turned out that gutting hares was good enough preparation for removing the sting with a careful cut, prying the chitin, then slicing the tail open. Then, she picked out a pear-shaped, bloodied organ the size of a walnut.
“Say, with everything we can find, aren’t these pocket coppers?” She proceeded with the next one.
“Don’t look a gift musushu in the mouth,” quipped Lykomedes.
“They are very useful in topical elixirs for blood clotting,” Raya explained, content as a cat after a hunt, despite that she did not lift a finger in the fight. “They’re free and they’re fresh. Put them in a purse with salt, thank you very much.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Nua was annoyed, but at the same time, she appreciated the resourcefulness of her new companions. It was a mindset that appealed to her deeply ingrained frugality. In fact, once she finished hulling the scorpion tails, she wondered briefly if Hessa would point at other ingredients to collect.
Soon after, the group entered the excavation site.
The area seemed abandoned, but Nua still had an uneasy feeling that they were trespassing. The hole in the ground resembled a miniature coliseum. Two smaller buildings, the size of cottages, were unearthed in full, and there was equipment left on site – a broken wagon and tracks that led right into the entrance of a tunnel. The shape of the hill over the excavation site suggested the top floors of a ziggurat. The girl knew already that there were several such towers in the vicinity, and some were found to be interconnected.
She wondered why the Antiquarians – or other treasure seekers – did not excavate the scrapyard that neighbored the Bottoms in the same way.
“There was nothing like this in Overlord’s Mercy,” she said. “No holes in the earth whatsoever.”
“It was likely plundered before you were ever born,” Oswald said.
Nua shook her head. No one has breached the Southern Temple before her. Was it due to udugs – the spirits that defended it? Flavius dispatched them with the etheric shield that was supposed to be priceless. Could Antiquarians not have the means? Until now, all she heard about them indicated that they were THE people who collected relics. And even the Overlords were wary of them.
“There were buildings remaining that no one explored before.”
“Ancient ruins are known to emerge or open after earthquakes or are revealed during construction works, or when certain conditions are met, like the constellations aligning in a special order”, Oswald shrugged. “These, for instance, were mostly inaccessible, until twenty years ago.”
“Do you think he’s right?”
“I am not certain. I wasn’t aware of the external world,” Anki said. “I cannot exclude any possibility. My priests have conducted a ritual that sealed the temple against the enemy and sacrificed chosen soldiers as guardians, but the specifics are unknown even to me. I was busy embedding my spirit in the machinery, and my thoughts were clouded by illness.”
“What are you looking for, exactly?”
“This place was a world-famous medical facility,” he replied. “They were miracle workers. Regeneration, prosthetics, you name it, they could do anything. They were very close to inventing the cure, but that obviously did not work out. I am positive that there are still working appliances down there.”
It could be a convincing explanation, and Anki seemed interested, but not as desperate as when he was pleading with her to go.
“You’re not telling me everything. There is something else you want to find.”
“Yes…” this time, his voice cracked. “Yes, but this is a fragile hope. Let us not talk about it.”
Nua frowned. This was not about a new goliath or another death machine, or even a new body. This was deeply personal.
He eyed her with suspicion.
“And what about you? Why do you want to go along with my wishes all of a sudden? Their potential findings would be enough. A couple of aurei would get you the equipment you need. Or are you finally less reluctant to my proposition?”
Nua had time to think. The nebulous, yet urgent feeling of wanting to do something, to change something, coalesced into words she could relay to Anki without him twisting her intentions. Letting him run the show would be disastrous – she could tell it from the very first time in the Southern Temple. She needed to do things her own way.
“Of world conquest?” she scoffed. “Get a grip. I want to be a master thief.”
“I remember you kind of having this idea before…”
“Yes, and I have improved upon it. I’m not talking about foodstuffs. I was thinking, I’m kind of illegal one way or another, right?”
“A person cannot be illegal, Nua,” Anki gave out an exasperated huff. “But I get what you mean.”
“So I want to get etheric stuff that would make the Antiquarians bawl their eyes out of jealousy,” she concluded. "Relics, knowledge. All of it.”
“And then?”
“Make my people safe without ruining the cities they live in? I don’t have the details planned out,” she said. “Do you? I’m new to this. I need to figure out a lot of things first. Like, the politics Hessa was talking about – it sounded mighty important. I need to train. This - ” she pointed to the excavation site. “Is training.”
“I still think you are very naïve about your approach,” Anki sighed. “But given your age, it is to be expected.”