Chapter 67 - The Fire of Dragons

Fire wasn’t in the card. It was in the dragons. The mountains had given it to them at the dawn of time. Did I have the greed of dragons? Sure. Did I have their rage and their anger? In spades. Did I have their fire? The card in my hand blazed white-hot as my answer. I took a deep breath, held the back of the card to my lips, and blew.

A cone of flame erupted out the face of the card, sweeping forward and broiling the little crusties in their own shells. The swarm flinched away, squealing, as the hard shells of the little crustaceans began to burst apart beneath the intense heat. There was no stopping to feast on the guts of their buddies this time. I took a deep breath and blew again. The fire was so hot I worried it would singe my eyebrows off, but I swept a wide arc clear around us and the crusties that had been trying to munch on Annalisa dropped off and scuttled away from the heat.

My throat burned as I blew a third time, the card siphoning something from my lungs along with my will to fuel its fire. My last breath turned into a sputtering cough that shot wet sparks and dark smoke from the card and I gasped for air. “Anna!” I rasped. Gods, that had taken it out of me. Luckily, the crusties didn’t seem to notice that I was out of juice and were in a full retreat down the tunnel. The remains of the dozens I’d flash-broiled hissed and smoked on the cavern floor.

Annalisa came over to me as I hacked and coughed, helping me straighten.

“Thanks,” I whispered. My voice was hoarse and tortured, throat burning with every choking breath.

“Some set of pipes you’ve got on you, though I do have to wonder why you didn’t open with that,” said the adventurer mage, ambling over. He was a gold-skinned devilborn about a hand-and-a-half taller than myself. He stopped and grinned when he saw the card in my hand. “Gotta say, I’ve never seen a Soul Seeker do that.”

“Just don’t expect to see it again any time soon,” I rasped. It had taken more than a bit out of me.

The devilborn offered me his wrist, and I clasped it. His guild badge gleamed blue with veins of orange. Rank 5, then.

“Cellithea. Celli, should you prefer something smaller. That sad-sack of muscle over there is Vollian,” he said, jerking his thumb toward his partner.

“I’m not a sad-sack,” mumbled Vollian, scowling. I noticed he was quite muscled, though. He handled his spear with practiced ease. Now that was a practical weapon for fighting monsters.

“I’m Stitcher, this is Frost,” I said, straightening. “Thanks for the assist.”

“Always happy to help a fellow guildie in need,” he said, nodding toward Annalisa’s badge. “All sorts of nasties are crawling up from the west side. Sea tunnels popping up faster than we can plug them. You lose your badge, Stitcher?”

I lifted the lapel on my cloak to reveal the rank 4 true-iron badge. The description had switched yet again, this time to fire-throated warbler. Now I’m sure that wasn’t a real designation. Hells, I’m pretty sure it was a species of bird.

The spearman, Vollian, wandered over along with the three pistoliers. I nodded my chin at the drakkyn trio. “What’s their deal?”

“Not the faintest,” said Vollian. He frowned. “Their translator got ‘et up more’n a day past. Dwarf fellow.”

“Along with their fourth member. If they speak a language on the Bastard, we’ve yet to savvy out what it is, yeah?” said Cellithea. “We’re taking them back to the surface. You’re welcome to join us, should you wish to avail yourself of sunlight.”

The card above his head showed the warlord arcana, inverted. Bloodthirsty, exploitive. His partner had the planes, also inverted. Unexpected danger, wrong turns.

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Well, they’d certainly wandered into some unexpected danger. But I didn’t trust the mage a single solitary iota. Overfriendly adventurers aren’t exactly good news as a wanted man—nor as a disadvantaged kindred spirit. There were no laws in the undercity. No patrols, no authority except the sword. An adventurer on the wrong day is as dangerous as any monster.

I had to project confidence. I stilled another set of coughs. “We’re good. Headed down, still.”

The devilborn shrugged. “Suit yourself. Take care moving west.” he pointed at the charred remains. “You mind?”

I waved him on, and he picked up the still-steaming corpse of one of the creatures before snapping off its right claw and stuffing it in his bag. Vollian was doing the same. The guild must have had a standing reward on crusties. Too bad we couldn’t cash in. I shimmied back up the column and onto the shelf to drop our packs to Annalisa, and we took a moment to consult the charts. Celli came over to look over our shoulder. It would have been suspicious to close up the maps, so I let him look.

“What’s there?” he asked, gesturing to the marked spots. “You don’t have to tell me, of course. I understand wanting to keep your loot spots safe.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s monster dung,” I said. “We’re on a fertilizer run. Two cunnings a pound, and there’s more’n we can carry out, I’m sure.

Celli wrinkled his nose. “Hear that, Vollian? They’re picking up poop. Glad we found ‘em on the way down, not the way up, yeah?” he pinched his nose and shook his head. “Some jobs, I tell you. Good luck with your leavings.”

“Good luck with your drakkyn,” I said.

I waited until Celli and Vollian left, pistoliers in tow, before following Annalisa down a passage leading north, hopefully toward our target. An hour later without incident, we were able to find a recognizable landmark marked on the delving chart and used it to orient ourselves. We passed a trio of bronzers led by a pig-iron heading back up as well, but we hid ourselves as they passed. They had blood on the front of their armor, and one had his arm bound to his side. they were so exhausted that they barely even looked around. These guys would have been toast if they’d run into the little crusties.

Annalisa walked ahead of me most of the way, since she was both tougher, and could read the charts. But she dropped back to me as we were about to descend another level.

“Darcent, why did you give those two fake names?”

I glanced over at her. “Does it bother you that I lied to them?”

She shook her head. “No. It’s actually kind of exciting, like we’re on a secret mission or something.”

“We are on a secret mission, Annalisa. But since you asked, they weren’t trustworthy.”

Annalisa tapped the front of her forehead where the precipice arcana burned. I nodded. She pursed her lips. “It’s not fair that you get to just know when someone is a jerk, or a cheat, or about to lose a fight. Other people have to go through life in the dark about that sort of thing.

I pulled out my deck and rifled through it. “Comes with being a seer. Also…”

“What?”

I wasn’t sure how to phrase my next statement. “Not all devilborn are as trustworthy as you.”

Annalisa stopped and looked at me. I thought she might get upset, but instead, she grinned. “No devilborn is as trustworthy as me! I’m the most trustworthy woman in Dragonmaw.”

I chuckled. “I don’t know about that,” I said. And then I considered it. “Huh. I think you might actually be. But that says more about Dragonmaw than it does about you.”

“It does not!” Annalisa protested, grinding her foot into the tunnel floor. She stomped ahead in a huff for a few seconds, and then turned back. “Just because the city is full of thieves, cheats, and tail perverts doesn’t diminish my virtues!”

I winced. “Anna, I told you that tail thing was a misunderstanding.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

She clearly was. But not only was Annalisa the most trustworthy woman in Dragonmaw, she might also claim the title of the most stubborn woman in Dragonmaw. And that’s quite a feat when the city has almost seven thousand dwarves. I changed the subject, instead.

“We must be getting close to the next stepdown, right?” I asked. It felt like we’d been walking for hours. Traversing the tunnels wasn’t like walking the streets. The claustrophobic gantries and wide-open galleries that comprised the top levels of the undercity were treacherous places—even absent the large monsters that roamed the lower stretches. Besides the crusties, the only monsters we’d seen were small, maybe a threat to a bronzer with a hangover, but not enough to threaten us.

“According to Alondalis’ notes, we should drop down in a few hundred yards, then we’ll follow a long, thick masonry wall south that runs down to the first marked spot.”

“What’s the wall to?”

Annalisa twisted the map. “It doesn’t say. But whatever it is, there’s quite a void on the other side. We could check it out. I bet if you give me the dragon juice I can tunnel us through it without passing out this time.”

Something about that idea resonated with the knaves in my deck. I suppose nothing pleases them more than trying to sneak into places others had worked very hard to keep them out of.

“Sure, but quick-like. We’ve got a plan, and we should stick to it.”