Chapter 70 - No Good Deed
Getting the bones and armor as clean as we could still meant the corpse was about 80% covered in shit and broken ring mail. Luckily, as far as I could tell, the armor itself wasn’t what was enchanted. There wasn’t enough sand in the world to restore that mail after what that creature’s stomach had done to it.
Unfortunately, that meant we weren’t done with our grisly task. Anna and I looked at each other over the tops of our improvised masks and I sighed. There’s conventional wisdom that says a good leader should never ask someone to do a task they wouldn’t do themselves. But if that was true, what was the point of having minions? Or, in this case, a bodyguard?
However, Annalisa was far too squeamish to go digging around in guts. She was far more used to just tenderizing them via applied force. I had some experience with intestines of the bird variety from the academy classes on omens and portents (and on a related note, the academy often served pigeon pie for dinner), but trying to think of the dwarf as a big, armored, bearded bird didn’t help much. I held my breath and raised my shovel overhead, bringing it down to split the ruined mail.
Unspeakable filth tumbled out, along with a glimmer of silver, which I quickly separated from the rest. I took a moment to collect myself and whisper my mantra while Annalisa doused it with the cleaning powder.
“Two-hundred cunnings. Two-hundred cunnings.”
She tapped me on the shoulder and presented the sanitized necklace. It had been shaped to resemble a circular mouth, like a lamprey or a leach, with concentric rows of teeth. Foul little thing. I dropped it in my pocket with the broach.
I had no jokes to make this time. “Let’s bag some of this stuff and head topside. I don’t think I can handle digging through something that fresh again.”
“Fresh is the last word you should use for this place,” said Annalisa. “Next time, we’re fighting monsters.”
“As long as we start with our bug friend”
“No!” she said. She lifted her shovel, as if to smack me with it, and I raised my hands.
“Alright, alright! We’ll find something with claws and fangs, not pincers and mandibles. Sound good?”
Annalisa lowered her spade, but still eyed me warily as she retreated to grab more of the sailcloth bags.
I picked up my own shovel. Before I could drive the blade down, the towers in my deck blared out a warning. I lowered the shovel and looked at the dwarf, confused. That seemed an odd thing to be concerned about. Unless...
I dropped the shovel called the two of towers to my hand, while grabbing Annalisa with the other.
“Hey!” she said, a moment before a bolt of frost smashed into her back. She staggered forward with a grunt. Luckily, with her frost plane aspect, she shouldn’t suffer any negative effects of such a spell. I shoved my way past her, trading out the two of towers for both the two of storms and four of dragons, scouring the room under my amber gaze. I spotted a shimmer gainst the far wall, and held the face of the two of storms toward it. I channeled my will into it, and the card sent a dazzling array of light beams spinning throughout the chamber. They coalesced into a singular beam striking the distortion, and a veil of minor invisibility shredded to reveal the adventurers from earlier, Cellithia and Volian.
Those two. I grit my teeth. I knew they were trouble. At least they had the decency to look chagrinned at being thwarted. The devilborn even had the audacity to wave.
“How long have you been following us?” I asked.
Cel shrugged. “We caught up just after you reached the first clutch of droppings. Figured we’d see where things went.”
“Even after we bailed you out with the crusties. That’s gratitude for you,” I said.
“No good deed goes unpunished, I’m afraid, Stitcher,” said Cellithia. He grinned. “Or, should I called you Barrow Knave? It’s not like there are many Soul Seekers partnered with devilborn pugilists—though, I had expected you were lying about the fertilizer run. I guess you needed to find the one place in Dragonmaw that smelled worse than Barrowdown? Though, considering what you found, perhaps you’re actually on to something with these fertilizer runs.”
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I growled, fanning my deck out behind me in anticipation of the fight. The two adventurers circled, one hefting his spear while the other weaved his hands in preparation for another spell.
“We were planning on taking you back up, turning you over to the guild. But I’ll tell you what. Give us those stolen guild badges, that medallion you found, and our translator’s pretty trinket you just cleaned off for us, and we’ll forget we ever saw you down here.”
Volian scowled next to the devilborn. “I told you, it were a brooch.”
Cel rolled his eyes. “Regardless. Fight us, and we’ll just take them anyway. The choice is yours.”
The dragons raged in my deck. There is nothing, nothing a dragon hates more than parting with valuables. I was inclined to agree with them. I hadn’t just dug through a mountain of shit just to be blackmailed by some delver thugs. Annalisa came to stand beside me, already in her fighter’s stance.
Annalisa shot them a rude gesture. “How about this,” she countered, “You walk away, and I don’t punch you inside out.”
That actually gave the devilborn delver pause as he considered how such a thing would even happen. But if there’s one thing you can count on adventurers to do, it’s arrive at the worst possible decision. After all, that’s how they become adventurers in the first place.
“Annalisa,” I muttered, “Sneak attack.”
Her eyes widened and sparkled. I tapped her with the three of dragons, and she opened a portal behind the spearman.
To my surprise, Volian was ready for it, and he whipped around as soon as he felt the frost on the back of his neck, driving the point of his weapon back through the portal, which Annalisa only narrowly avoided. At the same time, I infused a handful of cards with the two of knaves and sent them spinning toward the devilborn mage.
Cel didn’t get to be a fourth-rank in the guild by being that easy to deal with. He put out a hand and scattered the incoming cards with a blast of unrefined magic. With his other hand, he drew the battle wand I’d seen him use earlier and pointed it at me. I tried to call the two of storms again, but it was still charged from the last spell it had countered and resisted my will. I switched to towers, instead, just in time for the wand to let lose its explosive enchantment.
The walls of the gallery rattled with the report, and much foulness was smashed against the back walls. But, crouched behind a shell of bolstered cards, Annalisa and I weathered the worst of it. When I brought the screen low, Volian had closed the distance with a leap so high it looked as though he’d taken flight, and that was almost the case. Cel was enchanting him with some sort of feather-weight spell. Still, he came crashing back down heavily enough, scattering cards and barely missing after Annalisa pushed me away. In a flash, my devilborn partner was on the offensive, trying to close with Volian and get inside the range of his warding spear. He defended against her jabs and kicks by giving ground and thrusting where he could. Annalisa knocked his blade to the side each time.
Celithia moved his hands through a blur of gestures, and Volian’s spearhead burst in a flash of radiant light. The next blow Anna deflected made her scream in pain, and I quickly responded by willing the three of dragons into Annalisa again. Volian had her on the backfoot now that she couldn’t properly defend herself from his spear. But he still had me to contend with. I sent my cards out in a whip, wrapping them around the spearman’s leg and pulling him off balance. Unlike the rookie fighters in Jeedle’s pits, Volian was a seasoned warrior. He planted his spear in the ground and used it to steady himself. Annalisa used the opening to tunnel another portal and kick through it, catching the spearman low in the ribs. He grunted and stumbled back.
I called the two of dragons to my hand, ready to toast the fucker. But Celithia saw me draw the card to my lips and countered with his own frost breath, feeding arcane energy into his lungs. Unfortunately, being a professional delver, his lung capacity and stamina were much greater than my own. Dragonfire choked off without hurting either of them. Celithia raised his wand to cast again, but Annalisa had used cover of cold to sneak one of her portals behind him, and she looped an elbow around his throat and pulled him back against the portal. He dropped the wand in shock and choked out a cry for help.
Volian glanced back at his partner’s shout and drove toward Annalisa. I stepped in again, weaving my cards in an elaborate pattern to throw off his aim. I tried to breath deep for another dragonfire but began coughing at the height of it, ruining the spell. Using the two of dragons left my lungs feeling raw and ragged. That failure forced Annalisa to abandon her tunneling as Volian hurled his spear. It narrowly missed, but before I could grab it, he held out his hand and the shaft snapped back to his palm. I grit my teeth. A gods damned spear of returning. He raised it overhead again. I didn’t know how many times he could do that before the spear needed to recharge, but I guessed it was at least a few more. This time when the spear came, it came with a rain of sharp ice shards from all around the spearman.
Annalisa ducked the spear, but she couldn’t dodge everything. I saw ice shatter off her forearms, and blood spurt from exposed flesh that wasn’t blessed with obsidian.
“Anna!” I cried out. The adventurers were partners, used to fighting together just like we were—only they were a rank above, as well. I grit my teeth. Always, no matter the challenges we overcame, it seemed we were constantly finding ourselves outmatched by adventurers. I was really starting to grow a profound dislike for the guild.