Chapter Thirty-Three: They’ll call us the Hottie Hobos.
The manhole cover slid aside easily enough.
“I just want to say,” Faedan said as I eased onto the first step of the ladder. “The sewers are extremely dangerous. No one really knows what’s down there, so good luck.”
“Not afraid of doing anything stupid,” I replied.
I looked up at Heather as I descended. “Not too late to get some shoes.”
“Nothing will be between me and the ground I walk.” She said reverently.
We slid down the slimy ladder as Faedan moved the cover back into place. When we reached the bottom, I pulled my mage lamp out of my inventory and handed it to Heather.
The sewer was lined with stone bricks in a tube shape with a walkway on one side and a river of the nastiest smelling shit you can imagine running down the middle. Well, maybe you could imagine it if you can imagine a dumpster behind an Arby’s, with a couple of dead cats and the crap and vomit from a thousand demonic hobos in one-hundred-and-fifty-degree heat, crammed into a shipping container bound for stink town USA. Needless to say, it hit us like a brick wall. Got to love my life.
I think if I squinted, I could see the stink.
“The mapping ability,” Heather said. I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. We were partied with Titus and his people, as well as each other. When we started getting close, we could be tracked with my own navigation.
“Shit.” I couldn’t exactly kick him out of the party. That would let on that we were on to him if he was really a bad guy. I didn’t want to think that, but I had to take precautions. I pulled the magic-suppressing manacles from my inventory and dropped them on the walkway with a clank.
I had a small hatchet in storage, so I summoned it into my right hand and hacked at the chain that bound them together. From my experience in the slaver cage, I remembered having to take both off before my magic was no longer suppressed.
I took a final look at my map, planning a route out of the Commercial District. I was happy to see the tunnels paralleled the streets above. I’d crawled all over this city long enough to fill in my internal map. At this point, I felt like I could find my way almost anywhere with my eyes closed, which was pretty much what I was doing now.
It took a couple of minutes of whacking at the chain, but I finally got them separated. I tossed one in my storage and picked up the other in my right hand, ready to slap it onto my left wrist.
“Wait!” Heather put her hand on my arm before I clamped it on. “Are we going to be smart about this?”
I groaned. Smart, I was not. Maybe it was the stink. Perhaps it was the accumulated misery of my life at the moment, but I almost clamped an object around my arm that would completely cut me off from magic and my storage.
I sighed, summoning stuff from my storage space and putting it on the floor. “You’re not just another pretty face.”
I pulled out a rapier, a couple of daggers, a healing potion, and a bag to put stuff in. Most importantly, I pulled out a set of lock picks to take the thing off. I pulled out a sheath for the sword and hooked it to my belt with a dagger. The rest went in a knapsack.
I locked the heavy iron manacle around my left wrist. I could feel the EP drain from me. It left a pit in my stomach and a shot of pain behind my eye. The map in my vision and the rest of my HUD disappeared. The world looked ordinary again.
“Oh Gods,” I muttered. Not only would Titus be cut off from the shared navigation, but so would my friends, but it was what I had to do to make sure that he wouldn’t be able to track us when we came out of this hells hole.
We marched in the general direction of the Entertainment District. It was just straight south. There would be no more than two or three turns as long as we kept ourselves pointed the right way. The place wasn’t dark, which was weird because we were about twenty-five feet under the city streets. The walls were coated with green, bioluminescent moss, algae, or, I don’t know, lichen, maybe? What the hells did I know about damp stinky shit cave plants. The place was otherworldly, and being cut off from my magical abilities left me feeling like I was buried alive.
I watched Heather. She strode next to me, her head high, seemingly oblivious to the waves of stink from the river below us. The heat and humidity were also stifling, like the stuff was simmering on the burner of the world’s nastiest stew.
I envied her at times like this. Not just her, but I was genuinely envious of anyone of faith. Even with gods that are all up in your face, it was hard for me to wrap my brain around putting my trust in them. But seeing what she got from Amania, the trust she had, and how it boosted her confidence and gave her a sense of purpose made me feel like a kid who didn’t get invited to the birthday party by the cool girl’s parents. I wanted that comfort, I guess.
“This place is dangerous.” She whispered. She looked at me, worried for the first time since we arrived. I had never really gotten into the lore of the city’s sewers, but being a geek about all things fantasy, I figured Murder World would have a bunch of nasty shit down here. Ok, shit is not exactly the right word, but gods, everything about this planet was about killing and eating you.
“Yeah,” I whispered back. I grabbed her hand for a second and squeezed. As quiet as we were, our whispers seemed to echo forever in this place. And really, the only sound was a calm, steady sloshing from the river of I’m-tired-of-saying-it, punctuated by some drip, drip, drips. I hated to see what this place was like during halftime on Nya’s Superbowl Sunday.
We crept along, as silent as we could. I activated Stealth, but Heather, a cleric for The Church of Purity, was all about being visible. Not the best person to bring on a covert mission. Her church was about standing on the hillside and shouting, “Repent Sinners!” Somehow, my girl managed to make bare feet sound loud. I cursed silently to myself.
The tunnel curved to the right up ahead, where I saw the first shadows of something that would be a problem. I held my hand out at Heather, and she froze, practically in mid-step. Shadows from a distant light source danced on the wall. There were lots of shadows.
At first, it looked like we were dealing with many big, nasty things based on the height of the shadows on the wall. Thank the gods, I briefly thought, for the low light angle. The dudes were only about eighteen inches long as they bound around the corner. I lifted my rapier and dagger.
Heather whispered. Which, in the stone tube, might as well have been just shouting. “Rot Rats!”
“Okay,” I murmured, taking a defensive stance before her. “These dudes aren’t too big.”
The little bastards were ugly. They reminded me of the bog rats I saw on the Imperial Highway. They were bipedal rats, just smaller, uglier, and smellier. My olfactory senses were pretty much blown out at this point, so I was guessing on that last part.
About twenty feet out, the little wall of rodents stopped, and the tallest one of the group spit at Heather. She ducked, and the spittle flew past and hit the wall, which hissed.
“Uh, is that acid spit?” I asked. Part in shock, and part kind of impressed.
“Yes.”
“Oops”
I pulled out my sword just as one of the spit on my hand.
DEBUFF:
RAT ROT VENOM.
YOUR MOVEMENT WILL BE 2% SLOWER FOR THE NEXT 10 MINUTES.
-2VP
DEBUFF CANCELED BY POISON RESISTANCE.
“You have poison resistance?”
“Yes.” Heather had her hand up over her face. “The acid can still burn you.”
The sewer pipe was starting to fill up with the things. And the spit started flying. Clothing and armor offered some protection, but after a few moments, the acid would burn through, and we would get the notice:
DEBUFF:
RAT ROT VENOM.
YOUR MOVEMENT WILL BE 2% SLOWER FOR THE NEXT 10 MINUTES.
-2VP
DEBUFF CANCELED BY POISON RESISTANCE.
And it burned like a mother fucker.
“Shit!” I cried, backing up.
DEBUFF:
RAT ROT VENOM.
YOUR MOVEMENT WILL BE 2% SLOWER FOR THE NEXT 10 MINUTES.
-2VP
Ah, hells! I thought. The resistance was a percentage chance, which meant that roughly a third or more of these attacks would land and cause me to suffer paralysis. I peeked under my arm to see dozens of these stupid things.
We shuffled backward as the wall of rot rats started firing
off acidic loogies at us. It wasn’t hard to dodge the attacks since they aimed at our faces, but charging in, swinging a sword, didn’t seem like the best move.
I charged in, swinging my sword. I raised my left forearm over my face, protecting it from the snotty projectiles, and swung low. I didn’t get a visual on the things. Based on the scraping of my sword on the ground and the little rat screams, I was reasonably sure my attacks were hitting home. My arm and body, on the other hand, were erupting in burning, stinging, and pain as I was pelted with the little corrosive projectiles.
The notifications flew across my vision as the rot rats were beating me. As the sole target, I was pelted with all the spittle the things could muster. It was just as I thought, compounding. But I was going to martial through.
Each swing delivered a little chorus of rat screams. I plowed through, half-blind, while my body felt more and more like a sack of wet cement. My legs started giving away, and I was down on my knees, which made swinging the sword harder. My hands, arms, and body were numb; even the burning of the acid stopped hurting as I swung my sword blindly at the hoard.
My breathing started to become labored. The paralysis didn’t just affect motor function. The rats began to move in closer, the barrage of acid spit not letting up, but I could see how they managed to secure large prey if the prey was stupid enough. Lucky me.
I had seconds. There was no EP to work with and no spell I could fire off to kill or even just beat them back. I could barely breathe at that point; I was getting lightheaded as my body started to feel the effects of oxygen deprivation.
Heather was shouting, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I hope she was falling back while they kept their attention on me. At least if I died here, The Ruby Necklace would be lost in this pit of despair.
Parts of my character sheet appeared in front of my vision, as if my mind was going through a series of troubleshooting options about not dying.
Black Rain: No
Nudge: No
Shield of Draining: No
Time Dilation: No
Fear of Death: No
Wait a second, I thought to myself. The description of Fear of Death came up in my head:
Fear of Death
Cast the fear of death. All affected targets in the area will become paralyzed or flee with fear for ten seconds. Higher-level targets can resist and or partially resist and suffer different levels of the effect. Targets may be picked as a group or individuals.
Activation time: Instant. Range: twenty yards. Cost: 0 EP.
Cool Down: 1 Hour
There was a zero EP cost for casting the spell. Holy crap!
Before I could test my theory, a light flashed around me. It was brilliant and blinding, and it filled the dark space as brightly as midday, and there was a crackling of electricity. I was pretty much lying on the ground by that point, with my face buried in my arms. So I couldn’t see what was going on. The sound of thousands of tiny, distant lightning strikes started going off like fireworks, and the rats started losing their shit.
“Thank the Goddess.” Heather breathed. She was above me, leaning down with her hand on my back.
The debuffs disappeared, as did the pain as I started to glow from her healing. Within seconds, I was only left with phantom pain from the attack, but the sting was still fresh in my head.
“Sorry,” she said as I pulled myself up to sit. “I should have thought of that earlier.” A rat apocalypse, with dozens and dozens of the little things dead, surrounded us. The smite was a bit overkill on the swarm, but that didn’t bother yours truly at the moment.
“You did amazing. That was kind of terrible.” I set down my healing potion next to her.
She picked it up and slipped it into storage, smiling weakly at me. “It just hurts.” She put on a brave face. “It’s not going to slow me down.”
“Save it then.” I stood and stepped away from her, stamping my feet and trying to loosen my body up. My armor was toast, pitted with holes burnt into it. “I’m sure there’s more nasty stuff ahead.” Heather’s outfit was looking about the same way.
We moved along more cautiously at this point. Dead rats surrounded us, and I kicked a few in the stream as we cleared the area, not wanting to step on any of them. We stayed close together, and I had the rapier out in front of us, ready as we hugged the wall. Heather had her hand on my shoulder, and to her credit, she actually kept things quiet.
There were, things, in the water. Stuff we couldn’t see. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. The stream would swell from time to time. Waves would ripple like tiny flash floods, and the level would rise until it sloshed over our feet before quickly retreating. I wanted to cast Eyes of Death to see what was invisible to us, but I didn’t want to pull the shackle off.
We followed the streets above. I tried to keep track of time as I moved. We started the chase in the early evening, and it was getting on to be about the middle of the night. Dawn would be in about four hours. This would be the last full day I had to complete the quest. However, it was a quest I had no interest in finishing.
It seemed strange to me to just say fuck it. I could live with the consequences and tank the whole thing. Leoleth was okay. I was okay. The Magistrate didn’t have much sway over me if I decided to run. Sure, I would’ve made an enemy out of an extremely powerful person, but I could chuck everything I owned into my storage and just run for it. It was a big world; if you could run fast enough and far enough, you could escape almost anything.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
However, something lingering in my mind wanted me to see this through. I’ve said that thwarting her plans was a noble thing, saving lives, saving a nation that seemed like a halfway decent place to live, helping the helpless, and all that shit, but there was something else under the hood that I could not quite place into words. I was compelled to do it.
The blackmail was bullshit. The threats were slight to nonexistent since I killed off her main minion. But for some reason, the lizard part of my brain wanted to stand in that office and win this quest. Fucking her over by removing the magic from the necklace that Amania had in mind would have been icing on the cake. I wanted to stand in front of her, triumphant in winning the quest and beating her simultaneously.
Faedan put a lot of trust in me and Heather to do the right thing and succeed. I wasn’t sure how brazen the agents of Granvul would be if we carried this thing into the Temple of Amania. Would they charge in with swords and magic to take it by force, killing a whole building full of pacifists to seize the artifact?
Gods, I hoped not.
Titus was the other problem. My trust in him seemed to vanish with a few words from my friends. The nature of gods here made sense, but I didn’t even consider it a possibility because I’m not from this world. Joining a religion here was like joining the mafia. You can’t just walk away.
Amania seemed okay with someone not joining her religion if the fit wasn’t right. The Unnamed God didn’t seem to care if you did anything other than just acknowledge that he exists. What was the deal with Granvul? Did he care if you decided you were done conquering others and settled into a nice, quiet life? The damn tenets kept coming back to me every time the question in my head came up: Power is the right of those who dare to wield it. No resting on laurels with this god, I suppose. Was there ever a retirement from that?
Until I had a chance to speak to him or see if there was the possibility of stepping away from The Church of Domination, I would have to treat Titus as an enemy. It was hard. I felt so good around him, and I trusted him. But objectively, that trust came on quickly, extremely quickly. I accepted his invitation within minutes of meeting him and was doing naughty things with him the first time we were alone together.
I guess it could be part of my biology. But despite what my friends said about half-elves. I wasn’t out banging everything and everyone, I was horny like a teenager, but I wasn’t being promiscuous in any way. But it was easy to fall into his bed.
If he was part of the same hierarchy as the Magistrate, then there was a solid chance he was doing her bidding. Or was it the other way around?
“Is this it?”
We reached a dead end. The tunnel of shit ran under a metal grate, and there was a long ladder heading up. I climbed it, tucking my dagger into my belt. The alley above was clear, at least.
The cool air of the city washed over us as we emerged. I pulled myself out of the hole in the alley and rolled onto my back, taking in the night air. I flopped my hand over to Heather as she climbed up after me. She took it, and I weakly helped her up.
“I could live a thousand years and never do that again.” She gasped as she breathed in her first clean lungful. She slumped down next to me, her body just as gelatinous as mine.
“Shit.” I croaked. “My metric for filthy just shifted.”
“Yeah,” she said with a slight chuckle. “I would eat off these cobblestones.”
Above me, sandwiched between the two buildings, the sky glowed pinkish red above me, and the city’s smog reflected down a thousand torch and mage lights, painting everything a rusty dark sepia. I loved it. Everything city to me seemed beautiful.
We were alone, and for some reason, it was reasonably quiet. There was some sound, distant cheers, music, and overall revelry on the second to last night of the Festival of Renewal. But, in our little alleyway, we were in an oasis of peace at this exact moment.
“Let’s just stay here,” I gazed at the shifting smog. “We can just scoot over to the side and never leave. They’ll call us the Hottie Hobos.”
“Okay.” She said. She sat up, holding her arms out. “I mean, we already look the part.”
“You still manage to pull it off.” I smiled at her and lecherously ran my eyes all over her. She did, of course. My straight girl crush managed to crawl through a sewer, get herself covered head to toe with muck, get pelted with hundreds of acid loogies, and still could be featured on the cover of Vogue.
“Sure.” She got to her feet first with a little grunt. It was her turn to offer me a hand. I took it and stood. “Whatever.”
“This is going to be a bit of a challenge.” I groaned as I pushed the cover back over the manhole.
“How so?”
“We have to stick to the alleys and side streets, which means…” Unpleasant memories of the strangler star came rushing back.
“Oh,” she moaned. “Lots of less than savory elements.”
“I don’t have spells.” I pulled out my rapier and checked it over. The spit didn’t do anything to it, thank the gods. “But I have my martial skills, which can hold up against most streetlevel trash.”
“I can use my sword.” She shrugged.
“Glowing sword of the gods is a bit too high profile.” I pulled a dagger from my bag and pushed it into her hand. “If the wrong person gets too close to you, just poke them with this.” “Okay.” She slipped the dagger into her belt.
We were on the edge of the Entertainment District and needed to cross it before getting to the temples. Most of the prominent streets were well-lit and hopping with activity. Vendors were selling party supplies of all kinds, musicians were on every corner, it seemed like, and a different medieval fantasy rave was happening on each block, complete with psychedelic light shows, glowing makeup and paint, and thousands of people jumping up and down.
Luckily, the alleys and side streets were the cool-down spots, where people pulled themselves out of the fray, smoked a pipe, made out with a drunken partner, or just caught their breath. At least the ones close to the party streets. We slipped through them quickly enough. I was tempted to do some pickpocketing, but I was worried about some karmic backlash.
However, getting away from the larger boulevards, the dark of the night seemed to close in. Even in the Entertainment District, some streets were completely deserted, and I could hear our footsteps echo on the cobblestones as we moved south. Some of the spaces we passed through were so narrow that we brushed the walls with our shoulders as we walked side by side and even had to pass a single file through a few of them.
“Thought you vagrants would be bedded down by this time.” A croaky man’s voice met us as we emerged from one of the alleyways to a small courtyard.
A small equine statue of a dwarven warrior stood in the middle, covered in bird crap and graffiti. No business windows were facing the small outdoor space, so I had a feeling they just dropped the statue down there in hopes of making it all a little less depressing.
We had been sailing through at a fair clip up to that point. I was secretly hoping that we could keep it up. But as we got toward the district’s edge, our luck seemed to run out.
The man was flanked by six others, four men and two women. It was dark, but my night vision could easily make out their features. All were human, wearing random bits of armor under dark cloaks. Weapons were a mix of maces and swords, all sheathed, which was a plus.
“Just headed home.” I rested my hand on the hilt of my sword. “Bit partied out for the night.”
“Lots of folk thinking the same as you.” The man answered, his friends moving around, blocking the exits. “But you have a toll to pay if you want to pass through our little courtyard.”
“I’m guessing the coin isn’t going to maintain the statue, is it.” I nodded at the filthy thing. “Who is that anyway?”
“Don’t know, Don’t care.”
“If it’s your courtyard, why wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Drop your sword and your bag there, and I won’t be hanging you and your friend from that ugly statue.”
“See,” I started walking into the space. I slipped my left hand behind my back and gestured at Heather. She got the hint and stepped back a few steps into the small alley we had just exited.
“I kind of need the sword.”
“Regan,” Heather said quietly. “You don’t need to do this.”
I sighed, reaching into the knapsack and pulling out my lock picks. I tucked them in my belt.
“You guys are lucky I’m with her.” I tossed it onto the ground at his feet.
The man huffed and bent to pick it up. I didn’t move but kept my eyes shifting around the group.
“Nothin’ in here,” he said. “Just a dagger, a lamp, and a couple of potions.”
“What can I say,” I shrugged. “Been a night.”
“Guess we’re gonna need that sword then.” He dropped the bag to the ground.
“I’ll be the first to admit that I am not at one hundred percent tonight.” I held up the manacle and showed it to them.
“No access to my spells, but I don’t think you want to take on someone that is stone fucking sober right now and perfectly okay killing a courtyard full of fools.”
“Doubt you could kill all of us.”
“Alrighty then, how about this: let’s say I only manage to kill half of you.” I swept my hand toward the seven thugs lined up in front of me, watching their faces shift between bravado and doubt. “Now, do me a favor. Everyone, take a good look at the person to your right.”
Predictably, they hesitated, some even fumbling over which side was their right until someone corrected them with an annoyed nudge. The one furthest to the right just gave me a helpless shrug. I sighed.
“Here’s the thing,” I continued, “I’m right-handed, which means the lucky soul to your right will probably be the one who survives.”
I swear to the gods, one of them tried to shuffle sideways, squeezing into her neighbor’s spot.
“You wanted some easy coin tonight, but it won’t come from me and my friend.”
“Don’t be craven, you idiots!” The leader guy barked. “It’s just a tiny little elf with a sword too big for her to swing!” He unsheathed his and held it up with a roar. He ran towards me, having to go around the statue as he did. The rest did the same. Swords and maces in the air. Very theatrical.
I swooped in, sword and dagger out, activating Sword Dance. I had practiced the martial skill during my downtime in the last couple of days, but this was the first time I had to use it in the field.
My body became limber as time seemed to slow down. Not quite like time dilation, but more like my senses were enhanced so that I could see objects, not where they are, but where they will be. True, with this group of losers, there wouldn’t be much to anticipate, not a lot of skill or imagination in use.
I moved to an unheard song, my torso and limbs twisting and turning as the leader approached. His sword painted strokes in my vision of where it was to fall, and my body slipped around the path while I slashed with my rapier, not once or twice, but three times under the seam in his cheap leather breastplate. My dagger followed, piercing him under the arm as it penetrated to the hilt. He spasmed in pain and injury, and I left the dagger under his arm and spun on my heel as the first of his lackeys attacked.
The woman came at me with a mace, swinging it down at my head. I turned right, just enough to have her miss me by less than an inch, the thing almost tapping me on the nose. I hooked my left arm under her right as she brought it down and bent backward while twisting, flipping her over my body as I combined the momentum of her movement and my own to send her flying into the path of her approaching friend. They slammed into each other with grunts and cries as both forms merged into a quivering bundle of limbs that crashed down on the cobblestones.
I allowed the movement to continue as I rotated back around and jammed my rapier into the thug’s heart next to them. He didn’t even have his weapon up. I gave him a swift kick in the chest as I pulled my blade out. And he was dead before his body hit the ground.
I pivoted on my heel again, this time having to parry an attack from one of the gang members on the other side. Three were left, but they weren’t fighting together. However, he had closed the space between us too quickly, and my rapier wouldn’t be very effective. I could see the lines in my vision where his short sword would come down and dropped my own to free both hands.
I grabbed his sword hand with both of mine and slammed my shoulder under his arm. There was a satisfying pop as it dislocated. He cried, releasing the grip on his weapon. I grabbed it with my right and spun, jamming it into his gut as hard as I could. He fell to the ground, impaled on his sword.
The martial skill stalled at this point. Sword dance required a rapier to work, and I had to abandon mine. The world shifted back into reality, and I faced two armed enemies, one with a broadsword almost too big for him and the other with a mace in her right hand. She was holding it back, ready to bring it down hard.
“Stupid elf.” She smiled, stepped forward, and swung for the fences.
She had a point. I was caught up in the sword dance and danced myself out of having a weapon. Heather had my other dagger, and everything else was either planted in a bad guy or on the ground. I was out of options. I cast Fear of Death on all the living combatants.
It was like swinging an invisible wrecking ball against everyone who wasn’t already dead in the courtyard. The guy with the broad sword spun and fell straight down, losing his footing. The two tangled on the ground, screamed, and seemed to get more wrapped up as they tried to free themselves from each other.
The mace-swinging woman looked at me as her weapon hand slacked, losing her grip on the weapon. Her eyes were wide with fear, and I could see tears glistening. I leaped to catch the falling weapon and grasped it before it clattered to the ground.
I rolled once and got to my feet, keeping my momentum and swinging the mace around, connecting with the forehead of the broadsword guy. There was a satisfying crunch as it exploded, spraying the cobblestones with blood and gray stuff. I slipped a dagger out of his belt.
The woman I disarmed was back in it. She lunged at me, grabbing for her old weapon. Of all the directions one could run…
I lunged at her, abandoning the mace, and slammed the dagger into her chest with both hands. Her look of fear never changed as she went down.
I grabbed my rapier off the ground and ran to the two squirming villains. My first thrust went into the eye of the woman, ending her quickly. I pulled it back out with a grunt since it had wedged into the bone.
“Regan!”
Heather stood in the courtyard now, shock on her face. She held the dagger limply in her hand and just looked at me.
“Sorry.”
I turned and stabbed the man in the heart, pushing so hard my blade went through his entire body and into the cobblestone underneath. The life drained from his face as tears ran down his cheeks. In his early twenties, he was young, with a scruffy beard and collar-length, dirty blonde hair. His head tilted back. His eyes glazed over. He was gone.
There were no notifications. I was cut off from magic, and really, it seemed all I got were debuffs. But they were all down. I started moving through them, pulling at purses and bags and weapons, tossing everything into a pile next to the ugly statue. Two of them had cloaks that were in pretty good shape. I pulled them off, tossing one to Heather.
“How can you do this?” she asked. She gripped the dark green fabric in limp fingers.
I looked up at her and sighed. “Someone has to.” She was so beautiful, a Helen of Troy-level beauty that could bring nations to war if she were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her kindness was reflected in that beautiful face. “You’re the one who told me once that we need to do the hard stuff sometimes.”
“I know.” She dropped her dagger on the pile of weapons. It clattered as it bounced. “It just doesn’t look that hard for you when you do it.”
“It’s not.” I yanked my sword out of the blonde guy. “Look at all this crap they’ve collected.” I gestured around. “How many people do you think they may have killed or hurt to get all this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me neither,” I glared at the bodies around us. “What if a family with kids walked through that alley after us?”
“Look,” she frowned at me. “I get it.”
“Good. I’m glad you got it. Because you need to know that I don’t love doing this shit. But I must be the person that guts these mother fuckers because there’s no one else to do it.”
I found a knapsack on one of the thieves. I set it down next to the statue. There was some gold and a few trinkets that they must have pulled off other victims. I stuffed them in, along with everything that looked valuable. I shoved the knapsack into Heather’s arms. “For the temple.”
I hooked one of the maces to my belt, tucked in three daggers, and sheathed my sword before pulling the other cloak over my shoulders. I cursed, yanking it off. It was so long it had dragged on the ground.
I dropped to one knee, pulled out one of the daggers, and started cutting about a foot and a half off the bottom of the garment. Heather just watched as I bitched quietly to myself. I could hear her sigh as I worked.
“What?” A growled.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For saving me.”
I chuckled, but then I realized she was serious. I looked up at her. She smiled at me. It was warm and kind. I smiled back and winked.
“You and me to the end.”
We headed off again, hoods up, moving quickly and cautiously through the alleys of the entertainment district.
We kept to the side streets but tried our best to avoid the neighborhood’s alleys and spookier parts. I kept my daggers out, making sure they were visible. More than once, I got a nervous look from more than one passerby. Unsavory types were around, but the visible blades kept them at a respectful distance. The presence of the City Guard was virtually non-existent. It was a holiday, after all, and if calling out were a thing in the Empire, then who was I to act surprised?
It was a city-wide street party, that was for sure. It was virtually every main street that was shut down. We pushed through, but my dear, sweet Heather was still laying hands on the more drunken and passed-out revelers as we passed, healing them of their inebriations and curing the world of future hangovers with the blessing of the Goddess Amania.
We passed The Grand Coliseum. The games had been running for days, and there was no sign that things were stopping. I could hear the crowd roar and the sound of amplified voices even in the middle of the night. Vendors yelled at us as we passed, trying to get us to buy everything from fruit and snacks to seat cushions and miniatures of the most notable fighters.
We slipped through the Capital District without incident. With The Festival in full swing, all commerce in the city was shut down. Even the alleys were abandoned. All the action was in the entertainment district, so even the dodgy people were either taking the week off or were in more populated areas.
The sky to the east was glowing yellow and orange when we made it to the Temple district. The predawn streets were quiet, but we made our way through slowly, trying to keep our heads down.
“Here,” Heather whispered as we approached the Temple of Amania. She directed us into a narrow alley, barely wide enough to fit a small hand cart. It is not exactly a service corridor, but it is more like a secret entrance. We reached the back of the massive building. The small wooden door was a discreet entrance.
She gestured for me to wait while she approached the door.
I could feel a pinch on my back. Then, there was a surge of burning pain right below my belly button. Heather looked over at me, and I guess I made some kind of noise. Her eyes grew wide. I tried to step towards her, but I couldn’t move.
A Red Hook stepped up from behind a crate in the back of the temple and slipped a bag over her head. I could feel a cold feeling come over me as I started to lose all sense of consciousness. I tried to move again, I cried out, but my voice caught in my throat. I looked down and saw a narrow blade of a rapier poking out of my lower abdomen.
With a flash of agony and a small spurt of blood, the blade vanished. My legs gave out when I tried again to step forward. Heather was being pulled away as another member of the gang grabbed her, helping his buddy get control of the priestess. She cried out, but my ears rang so severely that I could barely hear anything.
I fell, clutching the hole in my body like I could keep the blood from coming out. It was pouring by this point, and I was pretty sure there was not anything I could do. I thought about reaching into my bag and pulling out my lockpicks.
An arm reached under me, keeping me from hitting my head on the cobblestones for the umpteenth time. I was lowered and looked at the owner of said arm.
Titus looked down at me. A smile on his face. It wasn’t his charming, roguish grin that I loved. It was the same kind of smile a shark had when cornered a harbor seal. Cold, emotionless, and terrifying. I tried to say something, but his fist came down, smashing me in the face.