“Do you remember the way way back to Barracuda Street?” Kel asked. The two of them were standing on the city side of the pool leading into the Depths. The second time through hadn’t been any more pleasant than the first, leaving them both landing on the hard stone of the road. Jazathya had even, quite embarrassingly, not gone through with enough force the first time she tried, leaving gravity to pull her back into the pool beneath her for another rough fall onto the sandy beach.
“No idea,” Jazathya replied. “I don’t think I could even backtrack to the Twilight Eye guild hall.”
“I suppose we’ll have to hail the next gondola that comes by,” Kel said, turning to the canal.
“Where are we headed next?” Jazathya asked. “Reeftown so that we can see if that witch can offer us any leads?”
Kel grimaced. “I told you, we don’t need to go to some cultist over this.”
“What else can we do?”
“Since we’re sure Kashin is involved with the theft now. We could follow up on him,” Kel offered.
“True…” Jazathya said as she pulled out her copy of the Twilight Eye’s file on Kashin to peruse. “Says here that he had no family in town and lived alone. If his guild kept track of who he associated with, they didn’t see fit to tell us.”
“We could ask around at more bars for Divers. He had to have some other connections outside his guild to pull off the heist,” Kel reasoned.
“Unless all the muscle came from other members of this alleged cult,” Jazathya countered. “Besides, I have no idea where Divers go to socialize. Do you?”
Kel shook her head. “Niva would, but she’s run off on her own.”
“And that leaves us with no better option than the witch,” Jazathya concluded.
Before Kel could muster a response, a voice called out from behind them. “You lot waitin’ for a gondola?” Turning, she saw that the speaker was an orc woman, with her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail.
“Lazgurb!” Jazathya said. Kel raised an eyebrow at how the duchess might have met the leather armor clad orc with a greataxe strapped to her back before it occurred to her that they had just been in a bar for Divers about an hour ago.
“This is Kel,” Jazathya continued. By then, the orc had made her way up to join them, offering her outstretched hand to the knight.
“Name’s Lazgurb, with the Reeftown Guild,” she said as they shook hands.
“Just Reeftown? You didn’t go in for one of those fancy nonsense names, eh?” Kel said with a smile.
The green skinned woman snorted. “Hah! We’re a practical bunch alright! We bring in a lot of people from up northwest who barely speak a few words of Artrellian anyhow, so it’s not like they could appreciate it if we had a more stuck up name anyway.”
“Lazgurb’s the one who told me about the witch,” Jazathya explained.
“Oh,” Kel said, suddenly feeling much less warm towards the orc. Jazathya must have caught her reaction because she rolled her eyes.
“Kel’s letting her qualms about asking for help from a witch get in the way of tracking down the stolen property I mentioned,” Jazathya said.
“My parents always taught me to honor any being that might offer aid, be they god or spirit,” Lazgurb said with a shrug. “If one can’t help you, you move on to the next.”
“I thank you for the advice,” Kel said, speaking in a measured tone and choosing her words carefully so as avoid getting dragged into a religious debate. “But I…”
Luckily, an interruption presented itself in the form of Jazathya whistling. Kel saw that a gondola had finally come by and that Jazathya had hailed it.
“Where to?” the gondolier asked as they climbed aboard.
“Reeftown for me,” answered Lazgurb.
“Same for me,” Jazathya said, glaring at Kel in a way that dared her to complain. “I’m going with or without you.”
“Fine,” Kel said with an air of resignation, plopping down in her seat.
“You should count yourself lucky,” Lazgurb interjected. “My guild’s hoping to talk her into working exclusively for us. We expect she’ll crack soon.”
“I…” Kel began, only for the gondola to begin to shake. Three figures with tridents strapped to their backs and wearing sea-green armor deftly climbed over the side of the gondola. The armor was fashioned of overlapping plates, and the material looked to have more in common with fish scales than any kind of metal. The fingers of the gauntlets ended in sharply pointed talons. The helmets featured metal grating over the mouth, and the eyes were covered by a strip of black glass which concealed to wearer’s face. Overall, the armors gave the impression of a sea monster more than a human.
The gondolier, for his part, had reacted almost instantly. As soon as they had emerged from the water, he had leapt from the boat with practiced ease, using his oar to pole vault himself safely to the canal bank and leaving them stranded.
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“Well, well, well,” said the man in the center. Kel recognized his voice. It was the elf man Niva had gotten into a fistfight with back in The Last Gulp. “I suppose Niva gave us the slip. We’ll just have to pound some respect into you two first.”
“Look, I understand that you’ve got good reason to be upset,” Kel said. “I know Niva, and I’m sure her behavior wasn’t appropriate. We’re hunting for stolen property on behalf of the Twilight Eye. We have to be thorough and ask about every possible…”
“’Ask’ nothing!” the elf spat. “That bitch was letting the whole damn room know that the Tide Masters had stolen some magic cauldron and was asking for information on any of us who were acting ‘suspicious.’”
“Niva…” Kel said with an exasperated sigh. “I am very sorry for that. I promise that I will make sure that she doesn’t do anything that stupid again. However,” she continued, her apologetic tone swiftly replaced with a hostile edge. “That doesn’t give you the right to threaten us. You’ve already made your point, so let this go and don’t escalate things any further.”
“Hah!” the elf laughed. “Don’t think you’re getting off that easy.”
With a flash of pink light, Kel’s divine silver sword and silver shielded emblazoned with a rose were in her hands. “I’m warning you, we aren’t a couple of defenseless little girls.”
“You’re the one getting the warning here, bitch!” snarled the elf, and the three of them readied their tridents
“You!” one of the other Tide Masters finally spoke up, addressing Lazgurb. “We’ve got nothin’ against you. Go on. Jump off and swim back to the street.”
Lazgurb was already pulling the greataxe off her back and into a fighting stance before he’d even finished speaking. “And miss a chance to bash in Tide Master skulls? This is payback for what you bastards did to Gor-vol’s group last year!”
With that, she bellowed a startling war cry and sprinted a few steps forward, swinging her axe in a wide arc. The first two ducked under it, but the third tried to step back out of range, only to misjudge its length and catch the tip of it to his side, knocking him off balance. Lazgurb didn’t let the opportunity slip, continuing her charge forward and bashing him with the shaft of her axe, sending him tumbling into the water.
The other two maintained their crouched posture as they advanced in turn, ignoring Lazgurb to target Kel and Jazathya. “I am a knight of the goddess Alvaelle, and I will accept your surrender!” Kel shouted though it garnered no reaction from any of the combatants. The elf thrust his trident forward meeting Kel’s shield. He proceeded to unleash a rain of blows leaving Kel’s arm numb from the repeated impacts. Yet his weapon’s greater length kept him out of range of a counterattack from her sword.
The Tide Master who had targeted Jazathya took a lightning bolt to the chest just as he came close to her, forcing him to stumble backwards. Another blast of lightning caused his grip on his trident to loosen, allowing it to drop onto the deck.
Lazgurb didn’t let that moment of weakness pass unexploited. When another scream, she plunged her axe into the man’s back as he bent down to rearm himself. The axe head rent his armor, and he fell to the deck, gurgling and bleeding. Lazgurb pulled the axe free and brought it back down again, this time severing his head.
“You’re outnumbered!” Jazathya yelled at the elf. He ignored her words, continuing his relentless assault as the boat suddenly began to rock. The three girls were thrown off balance, struggling to even maintain their footing, but the elf had no trouble at all moving along the gondola’s lurching deck. Seizing that advantage, he swiftly turned from Kel to plunge his trident into Lazgurb’s side.
He let go of the haft and hopped backward, turning to plunge over the side and dive straight into the canal. “I can heal you!” Kel shouted as she dismissed her sword and shield, stepping to Lazgurb’s side. She reached out to the gash, her hands glowing with pink light. As the orc’s wounds started to close, the boat’s swaying intensified until, with one fine lurch, it tipped over. All three screamed as they were tossed into the canal.
Kel took a large gulp of air just before she hit the surface, the momentum carrying her down several feet into the water. Quickly trying to get her bearings, she glanced around. The two Tide Masters were next to the boat. They must have toppled it over, she surmised, and now they were swimming towards her with speed and grace that men in such heavy armor should never have been capable of.
She turned and paddled towards the canal edge, but she barely knew how to swim and was no match for the Tide Masters and their aquatic magic armor. She was barely halfway there when one of them grabbed her ankle. She tried to kick the hand off her, but it was futile. The swimmer easily maintained his grasp and even reached up with his other hand to rend her leg with his gauntlet’s claws.
Frantically, Kel looked for the others. Lazgurb was wrestling with the final Tide Master for control of his trident. Jazathya was next to them, three bleeding wounds on her arm and a collection of bubbles floating above her from where she must have let out her breath.
Kel tried to change course towards the other woman, but the Tide Master was pulling her away, back towards the overturned gondola. She called out her sword again and made an awkward attempt at slashing at his arm. She had never tried to fight underwater, and her clumsy swing completely missed the experienced aquatic warrior.
Quite abruptly, a powerful current slammed into her, and she and the Tide Master clawing her leg were both swiftly launched towards the canal wall. Luckily, the water had spun them around, leaving the Tide Master to take the brunt of crashing into the wall only to have Kel’s body crash into him in turn.
Kel seized the opportunity to reach out of the water and grab the edge of the canal while the man was disoriented. As soon as she pulled herself up, she scanned the canal and saw Jazathya floating on top of the water. She hastily pulled the mage up and performed her healing miracle on her arm’s trident wound.
Jazathya spat out water with a hacking cough as Kel worked. “Sorry I overdid it with the current,” Jazathya said. “I was too panicked to control it any better.”
“Shush,” Kel said. “You did fine.” A shadow covered the two, and Kel’s head shot up to identify its source. Luckily, it was only Lazgurb, who had ended up with the trident and was now standing with her back to Kel, leveling the weapon at the two, now unarmed, Tide Masters.
“This isn’t over, you pieces of shit!” the elf screamed. “You and that lying bitch friend of yours are going to pay for this!” With that last threat, the two dove back into the canal.
As soon as Jazathya was healed, Kel approached Lazgurb who was standing by the water’s edge and began healing her as well. “I saw them swim downstream. They’re gone for real,” Lazgurb said.
Kel looked across the canal, and saw that Mipmip was clinging onto the side of the overturned gondola’s hull, shaking in terror and crying while unleashing a pitiful sounding “miiiiiiiiip.” She hadn’t known cuddlefish could stick to surfaces like that.
The gondolier was still standing on the canal’s other bank, looking quite befuddled about what he should do now that the Tide Masters had lost. “Hey ya bastard!” Lazgurb yelled at him. “You’re still taking us to Reeftown!”