The next morning, they delved into the Labyrinth again.
“Paraleech, four of them.” Exill reported back to Envy. They cautiously looked around the corner to observe the monsters attached to the ceiling, lying dormant. Their flesh was an overripe translucent grey, quivering as they dangled from the ceilings. Rows of sharp teeth could be glimpsed behind the drool trickling down their gaping maws.
Flipping through the pages of the handbook, Exill double checked the entry on the monsters. Their flesh was resistant to blunt and to a lesser extent, puncture damage. Their venom sacs could be harvested as an ingredient for paralysing poison and enchantments.
“Let me handle it, I’ll slice up those uncut dicks.” Envy viciously stepped forward and waited for Exill to take the first shot with the bow. Clad in scrap leather armour, the Vampire struck an imposing pose with sword and shield held at the ready. She looked every inch the lithe and lethal predator, the tight straps securing the armour plates only accentuating her curves.
He winced at the inappropriate comparison. There was no room for distraction in the field of combat and he was determined to remind her that even metaphors had a time and place. Nocking an arrow to his bow, he let loose, only to see the projectile fail to fully penetrate the Paraleech.
It fell to the floor, and the clattering arrow shaft awoke the remaining three and they began to crawl towards the two mercenaries with surprising speed.
Standing in the passageway, Envy fended the monsters off with a buckler, swinging her sword to keep them at bay. Exill was eyeing the ceiling and their left flank, and managed to impale a Paraleech through the mouth as it leapt at them from the ceiling.
“One down,” Envy reported, stepping back from the steadily deflating carcass of the beast she had been facing. It was covered in cuts from which a milky fluid was leaking. Before long, the mercenaries had safely dispatched the remaining two and were crouched down with the unenviable task of removing the venom sacs from the moist corpses.
“Let’s go back” Exill suggested, wiping the mucus off his sleeves with a grimace.
Today had been a good haul, and they exited the Labyrinth to the hallowed grounds under the vaulted ceilings of the Tower. Disbanding the Party, they returned to the Guild, hauling the corpses of several monsters crammed in nets over their shoulders.
“It looks like you had a good haul, you’re not hurt anywhere are you?” Iris’s kind eyes examined him, ignoring the assortment of ingredients arrayed on the counter.
“A few scrapes but I’m fine.” Exill assured the guild clerk as he extricated his palm from her familiar grip. Iris reluctantly let him go and eyed the impassive Vampire at his side warily, then began the task of tallying up the rewards.
“That will be 46 denars.” She pushed two stacks of coins, splitting the rewards equally in two. Before Envy could reach for her share, Exill quickly slid all the coins into his coin pouch, leaving both women flabbergasted by his greed. Noticing too late what it looked like, he hurriedly explained:
“The money we earn in the morning goes toward funding her freedom,” he said, mostly for Iris’s benefit.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know that!” The guild clerk was taken aback. She hadn’t realised Envy was a slave since the Vampire had never registered with the Guild. Her voice grew quieter as she continued on, “Are you… dating? Is this like Trey and Maxine?” She paused for a moment, noting their confused expressions, “Oh! You wouldn’t know about them since they work in the evenings.”
Everyone in the Guild had heard of Trey and Maxine. Trey was a former slave who had been purchased by Maxine, a blonde bombshell of a berserker wielding a greatsword. Some found it romantic, while others joked the freeman was still a slave to her whims. As always, the truth lay somewhere in-between.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“I’ve heard of them.” Exill admitted. He couldn’t deny hoping for something more when Envy was first rescued, but upon actually getting to know her… things had grown complicated. Glancing to his left, he noticed derision creeping up the corner of Envy’s lips.
‘Of course she would feel that way.’ He thought, but didn’t understand the disappointment seeping in his heart.
“I’m so sorry!” Iris gripped his hand apologetically, and he assured her all was fine as they stepped away from the counter. He didn’t know how he felt about being mistaken for a couple, but judging from Envy’s earlier expression, she found it insulting.
“Are you going to go hunt alone?” Exill halted before the double doors of the Guild and turned awkwardly to his companion, eager to put the misunderstanding behind them. It was well past noon, and he needed to return to the Inn and standby for emergency summons from partnered clinics.
Envy nodded once in affirmation, refusing to look him in the eye.
“I’ll see you later then… take care of yourself,” he replied, and they went their separate ways.
Later that evening, Exill returned from Perg’s Clinic to find Envy struggling to unbuckle her armour. One hand had been hastily wrapped in a bandage and was stained red with blood. For a brief moment, he felt panic give way to anger as he rushed to her side.
With shaking hands, he hurriedly unbuckled the straps securing the worn scrap leather armour. As if sensing the simmering anger behind his actions, the Vampire became meek while he sat her down and unwrapped the bandage hastily wrapped around the blood soaked hand.
Glancing at the discarded forearm guard on the floor and pattern of the wound, she had deflected a slash at the last moment that had grazed the back of her sword hand. Thankfully it wasn’t deep and only required a few stitches.
“You know what you did was dumb right? What’s the point of specifying in our contract that I can’t harm you if you go out alone and take stupid risks? I’m going to have a chat with Iris tomorrow about setting you up with a partner while I’m on duty.”
Exill had no right to lecture her, after all, he had made the same mistake when he first entered the Labyrinth. His thigh had been punctured by a mud fly and he had received the same reprimand from Iris. Still, it felt good that he wasn’t on the receiving end for once.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Envy still refused to meet his gaze, but a flicker of eye movement was all he needed to inspect the shield hand that was covered in scrapes. This was the first time he had examined her hand up close and noted the hard calluses on her palm, as well as painfully dry cracked skin around the fingers.
After treating the wounds, he tossed her a small, battered iron tin.
“This is a balm for dry skin, take care of your fingers. If I don’t find you using it, I’ll massage them into your hands myself!” he added in a condescending tone.
Turning away from the chastened Vampire, he released a pent-up breath. Now that the latest crisis was over, he could finally focus on the task he had been called away from. He had been trimming his hair earlier that evening when the emergency summons came, causing him to rush out before finishing the task.
Examining himself in the burnished brass plate, he squinted at the hazy reflection while holding a blade to a lock of hair. His hair had grown too long and needed a trim, something Luna had been more than happy to do for him while back at Savta’s clinic.
He felt a hand wrap around his wrist, disarming the blade from his grasp. Exill looked back in surprise at the Vampire who had crept up on him, the sharp blade held menacingly in her good hand.
“I can cut it for you, tell me how you want it done.” Envy clinically examined his hair from the front and back, noticing the mismatch in length.
“I don’t trust you holding a blade that close to my head. Besides, your sword hand is wounded.” He shirked away from her grasp.
“I’m ambidextrous. If you keep struggling, I might really skin you, simply to teach a lesson. Just show me how short you want it cut.”
In the space of a few minutes, their roles were reversed, and Exill was put under her firm grip as she made small adjustments to the cuts that had already been made.
“I’ll be cutting your hair from now on.” She held his chin and drew closer, turning his face left and right to examine her handiwork with clinical detachment. Her amber eyes were gleaming with satisfaction of a job well done.
“F-fine.” He pulled away from her grip, flustered that her face was inches away from his. Up this close, it was difficult to ignore that the knife wielding woman was alluringly beautiful.
She let him slip away, noting his aversion and clasped the short blade back onto the table. Cutting his hair had brought up bittersweet memories where she had done the same for her younger brother. Still, it was the least she could do after he treated her hand.
Returning to her side of the bed, she sat cross-legged and massaged the hand cream onto the cracked surface of her palm, and the evening slowly descended to night.