Viv gaped at her felblood friend. One minute, they’d all been standing in a cramped room full of random equipment, and the next they stood at the base of the ladder to the sewers.
Still surrounded by that same mountain of gear.
“What -”
“Later,”Damaia said, anticipating the question. “Let’s just report to the inn and go back to the guild. Wait, no, other way around.” She shook her head.“Having someone try to eat your mind is kinda disorienting.”
“Let’s put as much as we can in the bag,” Jubel suggested as he looked around, “and come back for anything that wont fit later. Assuming that’s even a thing. Do bags of holding have limits?”
“Yes,” Damaia and Vivi said in unison. “There’s rumors of ones that don’t,” the elf added, “which are called ‘bottomless bags,’ but those haven’t been seen outside of legends for like… two thousand years?”
Lucas snorted as he started scooping fistfulls of gold into the bag. “They probably never existed in the first place. Anyone telling you something is endless or infinite is mistaken at best and a con artist at worst. Now let’s get moving!”
It only took about five minutes to fill the bag and climb their way back to the surface. Taking a deep breath of blessedly clean air, the adventurers emerged from the alley in which the sewer entrance lay, only to find themselves welcomed back to the city by a quartet of armed and angry guards.
“Lucas Lurant,” a well equipped guard proclaimed irritably, “lay down your weapons! You and your associates are hereby charged with the murder of Baron Menlay!”
“Who?” Lucas made no move to disarm himself, instead idly scratching his head with the dull side of his glaive.
“The jerk with the blue cape,” Jubel provided helpfully.
“That goes for the rest of you, too!” The guard snapped as his associates pointed loaded crossbows at the group. “You’re all considered suspects! Now disarm yourselves or we will open fire!”
“I’d like to change my question,” Lucas said calmly. “How?”
“By putting your weapons on the ground!” The now livid guard all but screamed. He was clearly not used to having his orders questioned.
“I meant how could we have murdered anyone? We were in the tavern - where plenty of people saw us - all last night. Then we went down into the Dungeon, where your associate, Maximus, saw us enter through the only entrance there is. We only just left now.”
The red faced guard narrowed his eyes at the lycanthrope. “How exactly did a dead man watch you enter the Dungeon?”
Valorous stared at him in confusion. “He can’t be dead!” Vivi objected. “We saw him only a couple of hours ago!”
“He was sent into the dungeon yesterday and never returned!” one of the other guards replied angrily. “Quit spouting lies!”
“Lifeblood slime,” Damaia said abruptly. “The whole dungeon was being controlled by one. It probably ate him, then imitated him at the front to watch for newcomers. Smart. Also really, really creepy. Oh, I have proof, too. Am I allowed to open my bag to show you, or will you shoot me if I try?”
“How often do you find yourself surrounded by angry people with crossbows?” Jubel muttered nervously to the engineer as the angry guard slowly nodded. “You’re handling this way too well.”
“I’m a felblood,” Damaia replied softly as she pulled out the orb from her bag of holding. “I’m used to dealing with angry authority figures. I should really ask the rest of you the same, actually. Most people would be panicking by now.”
“Honestly, I’m just too tired to panic at this point.”
“That’s fair.”
Then, loud enough for the guards to hear, she said, “This is the Dungeon Core we got from the slime woman! She tried to eat me, but we blew her up - repeatedly, I think - and then I used this to move all the loot out of her lair! There’s loot at the bottom of the ladder that couldn’t fit in my bag, if you wanna look. Some of it is probably stuff she took off the guards, now that I think about it, so let us know if any of it looks familiar.”
The guards shifted uncomfortably, shooting one another brief, nervous glances. None of them wanted to end up fighting a team strong enough to clear out a Dungeon on their first delve, especially not one with a core as big as the one the felblood was holding. Their leader spoke up, stomping towards Lucas as he spoke. “Even if what you’re saying is true, that doesn’t prove anything! You could’ve -” His counterargument was cut short as a crossbow bolt suddenly caught him in the throat. He staggered back, his eyes bulging with a mixture of anger and fear as he yanked the bolt free - but that was a potentially fatal mistake. Blood sprayed across the cobblestones as the dart fell from his hands.
“Arise, said Domas, and suffer no more,” Vivi chanted reflexively, but when she tried to run forward and patch the man’s wounds, she was met with a barrage of crossbow bolts one of which caught her in the shoulder. Forced to use the spell on herself instead, she yanked out the bolt and tried to make them see reason. “I’m trying to save him!” she shouted at the guards, but it was too late. The flow of blood was already slowing down. Vivi’s simple healing magic was too slow, too weak to save him now.
He died in seconds - but not alone. Another guard doubled over as a crossbow bolt caught them in the temple, and a third screamed as a bolt of lightning lanced down from the clear blue sky and fried him to a crisp. The final guard realized just in time that the adventurers staring in horror at the bodies weren’t the ones attacking him, and threw himself to the ground as a knife passed through the place where his head had been an instant before.
“Protect him!” Lucas snarled. If the last guard died, they’d lose the only proof they had that they weren’t the ones responsible for this, and he had a feeling he knew what the penalty for killing guards would be.
“On it!” Damaia moved faster than any of them thought possible for someone covered head to toe in steel, dashing past Lucas to interpose herself between the fallen man and the direction that the attacks seemed to be coming from. “Jubel, Vi, can you see anything?”
“Dark figure on the roof there!” Vivi shouted, pointing at the barely visible form of a man with a crossbow.
“Not for long,” Jubel replied bleakly, pointing the hilt he’d claimed from Deena at the sniper. “Void take you!” The usual thin line of dark energy seemed empowered by the weapon, lancing out faster than it ever had before and catching the agile figure in the shoulder as he tried to roll off the roof. To the team’s shared astonishment, another blast of lighting lanced out of the sky towards the terrified guardsman.
The engineer acted on pure reflex, throwing one hand over the fallen man and, in the process, creating a conductive path for the freshly formed bolt. She wanted to scream as the pain tore through her, but she couldn’t - her muscles had all locked up.
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Then, the pain passed and she could breathe and move once more. “Second enemy!” she shouted with the first breath she took. “There’s a mage somewhere!”
“Be torn asunder by the roar of thunder,” Vivi’s voice echoed as she spoke, a chant springing to her lips almost unbidden as she spun to face the alley they’d just left. As she’d feared, a masked man with a wand in his hand was already trying to duck back around the corner.
It wouldn’t save him.
“Shatter!”
The thunderclap that followed the arcane declaration echoed throughout the alley, drowning out the mages scream of pain. By this point, passersby had already realized something dangerous was happening, and several had run off in terror, screaming loudly.
As distracting as the screams were, Lucas was glad for them. If the guards showed up now, not only would they see his team defending one of theirs, they’d likely jump in to help, and Lucas wouldn’t turn down aid when dealing with men that could call down bolts of lightning.
Then he saw it. It was just a distant glimmer, a reflection of the midday sun off something the sniper was wearing as he tumbled to the ground, but it was enough.
“Bastards!” He snarled, pointing his glaive at the man. “Has the Order sunk so low as to attack innocent men?!” There was a fury in his voice that gave even the rest of his team pause. “How dare you? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?! Get over here, coward!” There was hatred in the mercenary’s gaze as he surged towards the dazed and fallen assassin in a rage.
The man rolled out of the path of the gleaming glaive just in time, springing to his feet and drawing a flail even as a second thunderclap heralded his partner’s defeat. He whipped the weapon towards Lucas, but the mercenary deftly snatched the chain and pulled the flail from the man’s grasp. “Not good enough,” he growled as he threw the weapon over his shoulder. His fist slammed into the man’s face, sending him tumbling to the ground. He pulled the man forcibly to his feet, only to slam his knee into the man’s groin, causing him to crumple to the ground once more. He stomped on the would-be assassin’s leg, shattering it beneath his boot.
The man groaned and tried to crawl away, but Lucas picked him up before he could and threw him over one shoulder. “Let’s get you to a prison before I really lose my temper,” he growled.
He marched over to his team, who were all looking at him nervously. “I’ll explain once we get someplace safer,” he assured them, nostrils flaring with barely contained fury. “For now, let’s worry about getting our friend here back to his barracks. The other guy survive?”
Vivi shook her head. “My second spell caught him just as he tried to fire off one of his own. The backlash combined with the blast was too much for him.”
“Then it’s a good thing I held back,” Lucas said with a nod. “Let’s move.”
----------------------------------------
They were, predictably enough, met with measured hostility on their way to the barracks. “Drop the prisoner and stand down!” a white haired man in ornate, polished armor demanded as over a dozen guard pointed crossbows at them. “While you’re at it, explain what in the hell made you think the use of wide range offensive magic in my city was acceptable?!”
The guard they’d saved stepped forwards immediately. “Captain Darlow, I can assure you that these adventurers acted only in defense of themselves and others,” he said as firmly as he could while pinned in place by his Captain’s withering glare. “I myself wouldn’t have survived the attack without them. If I may give my report?” The guard Captain’s glare slowly faded into a stern mask.
“Proceed.”
Lucas very carefully put the prisoner down in front of the guards along with his glaive. If they fired, he’d either be dead instantly or have time to transform; the weapon wouldn’t be of much use. He took deep breaths, trying to contain his anger as the recent battle was quickly summarized for the Captain.
“-and then we headed over here immediately,” the guard finished. He’d told the whole story in as much detail as he could manage - including everything he’d heard the team say.
“I see.” Captain Darlow shook his head. “These bastards better be the ones responsible for killing the nobles, too! If there’s more than one group of hired killers working in my city today of all days, I’ll never hear the end of it from his Majesty! You!” He pointed at Lucas. “Mr Lurant, was it?”
“Lucas Lurant, unofficial leader of Valorous,” he said, instinctively clapping a hand to his chest in salute as, for the second time that day, his military instincts took over. Rather than being met with laughter, like he was earlier, the guard Captain gave him an approving nod. “A military man, I see! And one far from home, to judge by that salute. We can swap war stories later, boy - right now, I need to know one thing and one thing only!” He stared at the team of adventurers for a moment before elaborating.
“Who the hell is the Order?”
“The Order of the Broken Claw,” he replied immediately. “Fanatics, I suppose you could say. I worked with them in my younger years. Damn good in a fight, but only really concerned with fighting shapeshifters.”
“Shapeshifters,” the guard Captain repeated softly. “Why the hell would they attack my men, though? Did they think them imposters?”
“Possible, but not likely,” Lucas said, being as honest as he could afford to be. “They are, as I mentioned, fanatics. They don’t appreciate people leaving their group. I suspect that I was their target, and they hoped to implicate me in the guards’ deaths as well as the Baron’s murder. Or perhaps they improvised that plan, forced to adapt when their ambush was disrupted by your men’s presence. It’s even possible they believed me to be a shapeshifter, given that I had abandoned them rather abruptly. I probably should’ve talked it out with them when I signed up with the military, but I was only 17 back then, and not the brightest kid.”
The Captain chuckled. “I see. Well then. I’d love to send you back to your inn for a well deserved rest, Team Valorous, but I’m afraid that there’s a bigger issue at hand - one that may require the city to go into full lockdown for the day.” He nodded at one of the guards, who hesitantly pulled out a piece of parchment and handed it over.
“This note was attached to the front of the barracks this morning,” Darlow said somberly as he passed the note to Lucas. “One with similar handwriting was found near Baron Menlay’s body, bearing a list of names - including mine.”
Lucas grimaced as he read the note.
To you who walk the traitor’s path
Now comes the day of promised wrath
To each corrupt and twisted heart
This is your last chance to depart
And those that deem my words a lie
I hope you’ve bid the sun goodbye
For this shall be your final day
The Beast’s unleashed, and you’re his prey
This your final warning
Sincerely,
His Majesty, The Shadow King of Terra
“Well, fuck.”
Lucas couldn’t think of much else to say as he pursued the threatening poem a second time. “And there were names?”
“Mine, Menlay’s, and half a dozen others,” the guard Captain confirmed. “All of whom are widely disliked.”
The guard the team had saved cleared his throat. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but that seems a bit unfair. People don’t hate you!”
“That’s kind of you to say, Finnley, but -”
“At worst, you’re mildly resented,” the oblivious guard continued.
“Thank you, Finnley,” the Captain said through gritted teeth, “that will be all! Please return to the barracks and rest. You’ve earned it.” His voice was strained, and Lucas could’ve sworn he saw one of the man’s eyes twitch.
“Is this your way of asking for our assistance?” Vivi asked tersely.
“We would appreciate it if you’d be willing to help us catch the killer, yes,” Captain Darlow admitted. “I hate to admit it, but I can’t look to my own safety and provide adequate defenses to the half dozen nobles still in danger with the manpower I have available. The assailant must be quite dangerous, given the state we found Menlay’s personal bodyguards in, and you’ve proven yourselves to be quite skilled. If you were willing to lend a hand, we might even be able to catch the bastards!”
Valorous shared a quick but meaningful series of glances. “I really wish you hadn’t explained all that,” Lucas muttered irritably. Now that they knew, his friends were sure to answer only one way.
“We’d be happy to help!” Damaia said cheerfully.
The mercenary shook his head. This was sure to end poorly.