“So, we can have replacement bracelets, but you can't kill anyone anyway,” Arne said, nodding at Dia, “because of the Justice thing.” He raised his hands as if bound. “So, I say we leave you as our spokesperson to do the official things.”
Dia should have raged. She shrugged.
Toog and Arne exchanged glances.
“So, here is the list of things I have decided are important,” Arne stated, looking intently at Dia, expecting a hot-headed reply.
Still nothing. She just stared blankly up in the ceiling, nodding.
“We need to crack the statue. I can't sneak in there while I have the bracelet on, and the wards prevent you from doing anything magical.”
“We need to confirm that the statue is there, and that the tether even exists in there,” Toog said.
Arne sat on the sex swing in the corner of their room, staring at his tiny bare child feet as he swung back and forth. He finally reached a conclusion. “I agree. I would like to have eyes on it and know what we are up against but right now that’s just another thing we don’t have information about. It didn’t seem farfetched to The Vampire, however, and the temple is the most logical place to put the tether, I suppose. We need allies or a distraction. A really, really big distraction. Then Dia can begin working on breaking the wards, or…”
Dia lifted her head to stare at him. “If I begin to noodle with those wards, they will explosively unravel and begin to lash, burn, and shred each other. Potentially, a bad mage can level the city with carefully applied ignorance.”
Arne snapped to attention. “Are you sure?” he asked hopefully, a whole mess of new options clamouring for attention in his mind.
“And that would take days to even begin to figure out and I wouldn’t have anywhere to go afterwards so I didn’t get murderised in the process. This is a stupid plan. As usual,” Dia stated before lapsing into apathy again.
“We really don’t need to …do anything magical, right?” Toog asked. “We need to break a statue we assume is inside of a temple. We really just need the temple to collapse so the statue gets broken, right?”
“I suppose…” Arne nodded.
“I sent for a lot of laurel scented lube from the temple of Debauchery in Estrin,” Toog stated. “A lot! It’s, pardon the joke, a really dry commercial niche here, and the customers absolutely love our product. We’ve really hit a market here. All the harbour front brothels have signed up for lube subscriptions after I went round with free samples and demonstrations. This is a truly high-quality personal-use product, and we now have an obscene number of barrels of it.”
“Ehm… that went in a different direction than I expected,” Arne said, fully realising that surprise was both futile and a little embarrassing at this point.
“Well, the thing is, we have more than enough lube for a very large orgy. Very, very large. And we have a nice big ritual bowl right there.” Toog nodded to the small window where the enormous lagoon was visible beyond; a square of golden lamp light reflected on still water stretching into darkness.
“If… that works…” Arne said slowly. “Do they scale to the water? Can you call them big on purpose?”
“Sure, I'm pretty sure.” Toog shrugged and looked at Dia. “It’s quicker than poisoning everyone in the entire city as a diversion, I suppose. And I wouldn’t know where to get that much death’s head mushroom anyway.”
“Dia?” Arne inquired. “Do you know if you can scale the tentacle creatures you summon?”
Dia just stared blankly into the ceiling, seemingly not listening.
“Dia? Can you summon a huge monster to crush the city?” Arne repeated, watching her snap to attention.
“With the Chant of Joyful Union?” she asked. “Yes. How big do you want it?”
“Lagoon sized?” Arne asked, and Dia finally snapped completely to, looking him in the eyes and giving a small, throaty laugh.
“Let me know when you have a floating orgy of sufficient size ready,” she said and then fell back on the bed, staring blankly into space again.
o-0-o
Arne sat at his little secret rock ledge above the houses nearest the temple, turning the bracelets over in his hands. He had found a way up here via a shed built onto the side of the house and from there onto a balcony and the overhang of the roof. His slight weight and the fact that his original strength had not changed with his body, made the climb easy. From the roof, he had found the dark ledge along the cave wall the house stood against. His small, sandalled feet dangled over the edge. He really should get some boots, Uldran Underwaves was both chill and moist, but he hadn’t thought of it back in Rasheed.
He had followed the dwarf he was extorting to make sure the man didn’t rat him out, while Toog had made withdrawals of funds hidden as business expenses for their lube expansion. Arne had paid his extortee to get the materials for their dud bracelets and ordered some extra items as well on a whim. Their goods had just arrived. His extortee had been especially relieved to hand the bracelets over when Arne had picked them up about an hour ago.
It was nice not to be underequipped in regard to magic for once, and it was The Vampire’s money, so... They’d had a long conversation about magical needs that went basically nowhere, Dia only supplying that if Arne got her a wand, she’d stab him with it. He had of course ordered a wand, hoping it would end up looking like something from the temple of Debauchery. At least his nine-year-old self could bleed out deeply inappropriately with a laugh on his lips. Beautifully, it had turned out to be shaped like a long fork. Apparently arcane focus items were frowned upon in certain parts of the world and some were disguised as mundane items. At least that was the explanation he’d gotten when his extortee handed over the fork. Maybe he’d just paid a ridiculous amount for a dinner table utensil.
Having magical items at the ready was never amiss …when they worked… and he would make sure to stash them in the mine he had woken up in after his meeting with the hallucinogenic fermented bat milk he had been high on at the execution. But for the time being, Arne now carried five small vials of liquid that could turn them invisible, three rings that let them breathe under water in case they needed to deal with the lagoon if they ended up enacting their insane plan of calling up a massive death crab, and a small statue of a four-legged animal with a creepily elongated, almost skeletal head. Supposedly, holding the statue and speaking the code word would summon the beast so they could ride it. Supposedly, it could enter other parts of reality. Supposedly. He wanted to speak it now, but he’d been warned that it would need to rest for several days after having been activated for a few hours, and until he knew what their plan was, he didn’t want to test and maybe squander it if things got bad quickly.
Arne had no illusions that his extortee didn’t grasp the usefulness of the objects. But it couldn’t be helped, and the man probably didn’t guess at the enormity of the plans they were making. As soon as he got his bracelet changed, he could always go and stab the man if he needed to. It would be nice to have that option. Since he had the trouble of doing the extortion, Arne had also decided to treat himself with some sort of item that made scrying possible and whatever he could get that was good against vampires. He’d ended up with a small sphere made of clear glass to scry and what looked like a wooden stick that could supposedly make night into day, harming vampires.
When he went over the potential plan in his mind, it went something like: a boat full of orgying business contacts and clients of Toog’s from the various brothels would sail out onto the lagoon. Dia and Toog would have to be aboard and define five of the lights already surrounding the lagoon as points of a star and then begin to summon a huge death crab. Once it emerged, the dwarves would need some time to rally and then attack. That would leave Dia and Toog out on a boat on the lagoon, and assuming the creature didn’t capsize and kill them upon arrival, depending on its size, then how were they even going to direct the creature towards the temple anyway? Misdirection was an excellent tactic, provided you were doing something else in the background, but he still needed to break into the temple, get eyes on the statue, hope the magic didn’t kill him – or at least didn’t hurt too much doing so – and that he could haunt the others and have a good laugh at their expense as they struggled to recover his corpse. Then he’d have to find a way to keep the monster alive so it could harm the temple, or find some way to get in there and damage it himself while Dia and Toog escaped the lagoon, made more difficult if Dia couldn’t level everything around her like she had done in Arabesk because of Chuckles and Justice and whatever other army she had stuck her face in with that imp of hers, and should he even succeed in locating and verifying the tether and then see it damaged sufficiently, whatever that actually meant, he had no means of escaping. There were entirely too many variables, and hurrying with an impossible task like this would mean things were overlooked.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Additionally, a break-in at the main temple would in itself be nearly impossible, and he didn’t know how to verify if whatever he would find at the holiest inner sanctum would actually be the tether itself. And they would all need a place to flee to where they would be safe, and preferably not surrounded by angry dwarves or at the bottom of the ocean. That left only the Maze, which he knew nothing tangible about.
It was maddening. He was on completely foreign ground, barely knew the rules of this place and had no idea about the basics of what he needed in order to carry out the task. Arne felt happy his bearded temple teacher had taken it upon himself to instruct him in the ways of vampire repelling after Arne had bothered the man with his fear of vampires for days. The venerable gentleman had told him of a certain perfume imported from Heimhavn in the far north called jernrod, which all the fighters of the city apparently wore as part of their armament. Arne didn’t quite know if it was just in case the clever undead managed to sneak past the wards or to honour the heroes of the past who fell in battle with vampires earlier in uldra history. He had gone to buy a small, silvered flask of it and sent it off with an acerbically terse report. Perhaps it was the same as the vervain he had sent her previously, just under another name.
There was no doubt in his mind he would pay for his audacity with an even more slutty dress, probably sneakily delivered to his bag to shock him, or, why not, he’d probably wake up wearing it.
o-0-o
Arne skipped down the street a short while later, giving his best innocent child performance as the false bracelets weighed more heavily up Sir Nanners’ dagger hole than he had expected. Granted, he would just lie intensely in case anyone discovered them and wipe it off on someone else but the thrill of doing something naughty was running pleasantly through him. It felt like working again. Finally. There were still hundreds of unknown factors he had to overcome, Toog and Dia being two of them, but a small glimmer of hope presented itself.
When he had a better grasp on things, they could go into the mine where he had first encountered his extortee and there they could do the bracelet exchange. Then they might have to consider sneaking into the Maze to get a feel for the environment there and the options available in case they had to flee that way.
The giant fish ship surfaced out on the water, slowly opening its mouth so the ship inside could escape it. He was so familiar with the sights and sounds of it by now that it didn’t really register, nor did the groups of sailors, drunks, officials, merchants and prostitutes on the harbour front really make an impression. Dia stomping down the street, much taller than everyone else, did, however. The wild expression in her eyes bordered on madness and the crowds instinctively parted before her. Toog came running from the tavern down the street, trying to catch up.
Arne felt a heavy sense of foreboding spread in his small body and settle in his fingertips as a prickling warning of hardships to come. Something was wrong but whether it was just an internal Dia problem or a larger issue was impossible to say at the moment.
When Dia came closer, she spotted him, sneered, and passed him with no further comment, cocking her head oddly for a second and changing direction down a street that led north through the city.
Arne took a second to close his eyes and breathe deeply as Toog caught up to him, whispering, “She says she’s leaving.”
“Of course she does,” Arne said and ran to keep up, Toog following as they both removed their amulets. “First, get her language amulet so everyone does not understand her, then we fix it and bring her home. I'll knock her out if I have to and you can drug–“
Toog looked at him puzzled. “Can't we just leave? Don’t you have them?”
“What?” Arne exclaimed as they caught up with Dia who was now muttering under her breath. Arne reached for her, grabbing her arm, and she turned on him, the same madness in her eyes as he’d seen that day an eternity ago in Arabesk just before she tore down several buildings.
Instinctively, he reached out and snatched the amulet from her neck, snapping the chain.
“Don’t!” Dia just said. Then she turned and proceeded down the street, stomping off, sometimes looking upward at the far ceiling, sometimes staring dead ahead.
Toog and Arne ran up to flank her as she made her way through the street, staring so grimly at oncoming pedestrians that they gave her a wide berth.
“What is going on!” Arne demanded.
“You have the bracelets on you. We are leaving right now so we can get that solved!” Dia said through clenched teeth, not looking at him.
“But th–“
“There is a gate out of this city right there!” Dia exclaimed, pointing up the street. “You knew that all along and you ran around like the bossy little fart-sniffer you are, not telling anyone!”
“It was never a secret! It’s a giant civic feature! So what if there’s a gate, it leads into the Maze,” Arne said through clenched teeth.
“I had to have Imp go scouting for me to find o–“
“Or you could have helped actually do something while we have been here rather than just staring at the ceiling and making death threats!” Arne snapped, anger rising as they walked.
“So, we are going! I am fixing half of the problem, and then we get a bunch of people together for an orgy, so I can get out of here!” Dia screamed.
“We cannot just leave!” Arne objected. “There are guards there and they will register our bracelets on the way out if they don’t just deny–“
“Then I will take Chuckles, and Justice and godsdamned sir paladin what’s-his-camel can go suck a gnome!”
Fury and cold foreboding built up in Arne’s chest as they marched on in silence. There was no solution short of violence and she smartly kept to the bigger streets, sometimes glancing up at what Arne realised must be Imp, invisible to all but her, guiding her towards what it had seen on its scouting missions.
Finally, they reached the outskirts of the city near the northern wall and saw a small crack in the dome of the cave, a dark, foreboding gap in the stone, circled by torches in sconces and flanked by sturdy stone balconies on either side that archers patrolled, and a guard post of ten armed fighters with sturdy spiked spears.
Above the narrow exit they guarded, a huge metal bell with a hammer on a mechanical arm was poised, ready to sound the alarm, and a system of fires appeared to be lightable at a moment’s notice to warn the city of an incursion.
The commander of the guard post, a grizzled old soldier in a sturdy but ancient set of armour, stared at them with stern eyes as they approached. Dia stomped there and Arne quickly put on his language amulet and pushed in front to bow to the scarred old soldier while he resigned himself to the likely fate of dying in a moment when Dia attacked.
“I’m a student of Master Krobol at the temple of Hilden,” Arne said quickly. “I was told that I should be out training with my unit to be a good dwarf, but I don’t have a unit yet, so I brought my …parents,” he quickly said.
The soldier stared at them, one of her eyebrows crept up under the helmet and disappeared when she looked at Dia, fuming, and Toog, politely waving. Arne closed his eyes for a brief moment and drew a deep breath. This was a whole new kind of idiocy, but he could adapt to everything. He had proven that over and over in his life, especially the three times he had lost everything. This was sunlight in comparison. He had the power of a child who lied like a grown man.
“Master Krobol of the temple of Hilden has honoured me by teaching me how to gain strength from history’s lessons. And how that means I have to show responsibility and improve myself to be a valuable asset to my home. I cannot do that if I don’t test myself and prove my strength. Please, don’t stand in my way.”
The old soldier looked at him sternly. “You are not a dwarf. You don’t have to prove anything. And it’s dangerous out there, kid. Trust me. Unless your parents are fighters…” she looked Dia and Toog over with contempt, “you won’t survive out there. It’s crawling with maze voids, and you have no idea what you are up against.”
“But I do. They can take other shapes but naturally they are the size of three to four dwarven men and have eight legs although they can stand on the back ones of them. They are rarely encountered alone but in groups of four as a minimum. Their carapace is—”
“That’s just the shape of them, kid.” The old soldier shook her head. “You still have no idea of the meanness.”
“And I won’t, ever, unless you let me through. We are gwiri anyway, you are not responsible,” Arne said, looking at her with all the self-assured calm of his grown-up self. “I either return with a trophy to prove my value or I die trying.”
“Ri-diculous!” Dia exploded and began walking towards the dark gap in the rockface leading into the Maze.
“It’s not really your problem if the kid dies or not. Or us, too,” Toog interjected and started walking after Dia who marched past the soldiers guarding the gap.
Arne stood a moment, staring after them and preparing to bolt if the dwarves attacked. The old soldier grabbed him by the arm.
“Don’t die out there. Do not let your guard down. They can sense your thoughts and feelings and any weakness will draw them like a beacon, understood?”
Arne quickly nodded and then hurried after the others who were squeezing through the gap and vanishing.