I oriented myself by my bubbles, placed my newly shod feet against my still-lit rock, timed the contracting and dilating mouth of the anemone, and jumped as hard as I could.
I outraced my bubbles as I rocketed towards the distant ceiling. The purple tentacles writhed towards me, but this time I knew them, I knew their patterns, I knew what they wanted, I knew their blind spots. I made fins of my hands and friends with the water. It was easy, really. Just like Wind Stance, only with water as my medium.
<Niiiiice. Look at that new Armor Class! Yeah, Wisdom! Monks—and only monks—get to add Wisdom to their Armor Class in addition to Dex. Being two moves ahead of the bad guys isn’t just about being fast… it’s about being already there.>
I intercepted the ceiling with a four-point landing on my hands and feet and clung there, just out of the reach of the anemone. Lacking my rock, I put another Light spell on my dagger—
[Daily Mana Cast: 2/3]
—and held it between my teeth as I crawled along the rocky cave, moving slowly against the current, avoiding the spiky black urchins and smaller anemones, until everything sloped upwards and finally broke the water’s surface.
I took my dagger out of my mouth and emerged into what looked like another world. The walls of the vertically rising cave dripped with stalactites and waving sheets of rock as delicate as the finest satin, lit by the blue moss from the sewers, a few sporadic clusters of Lucerna Nanorum, and the rippling light of my own still submerged dagger. Everything glistened and sparkled with a fine coating of mist produced by the thin waterfall cascading from a wide opening about twenty feet above me.
<Oh wow. Just…. wow. This is amazing. I wonder if anyone has ever even seen this before? Sam, we might be the first!>
For a moment I just tread water and breathed real air, happy to bask in more subtle shades of blue and green than I had names for. But while the cave was beautiful, it was not warm, and I was feeling the need to get out of this water. I swam over to the waterfall, and tried to see the opening it came from, but my light didn’t reach that far.
<Wait! Check the plunge pool! If your gear went over the falls, maybe some other stuff has too.>
I had to concede this logic. I almost took a deep breath, then remembered that buoyancy was not a diver’s friend, and let out all my air instead. Past the churning bubbles at the base of the falls, the cave floor was deeper than I expected. I had to stop and take a couple of deep breaths before reaching the bottom.
[Swim11 check: Success]
There was some stuff down here. It mostly looked like rocks, sand, and various debris, but there were quite a few goblin beads (which usually only came out of goblin’s stomachs), a few coins, and, wedged beneath a femur --almost as if they were clinging to it-- the Gloves of the Ossian Puppetmaster.
[Perception check: Success]
<Meh. Looks like fewer adventurers than I thought have come this way. Oh well, loot is loot, I guess.>
“We could just leave the evil things down here.” I suggested, remembering how they felt on my hands. “And let them rot.”
<Nope. We are what is technically known as ‘dead broke’. As in, if we were any poorer, we’d be dead. And someone will buy those things.>
I supposed they would. I tucked them into what was left of my belt, and followed my sigh upwards.
The wall behind the waterfall did not look less daunting for my side excursion. It still looked ethereally beautiful, and fiendishly difficult to scale.
<And this is why we don’t dare lag on Climb.> Voice commented as I began to make my way upwards, heavy in my soaking wet clothes. I kept my focus on Wind Stance, which helped a little, but the spectacular aerobatics of Wind were prefaced with a jump, which I did not have the traction for on this slick wall. <But your Improvise Magic Device skill is now officially lagging, so be really careful if you pick up any new magic item that you don’t know what it does.>
I made it halfway up the wall before my numb fingers grabbed what I thought was a nice rocky outcropping but which was in fact a dead mushroom.
[Climb12 check: Failed]
I was still staring in betrayal at the lump of unilluminated Lucerna Nanorum as the wall fell away from me and I fell into space, and then down, and then into the water with a stinging splash.
<Damn natural 1s. I know the price to pay for critical successes is critical failures, but really! Whose idea of fun is that!>
“Not mine!” I grumbled around my dagger as I made my way back to the wall. Still, no way forward but up.
Despite a few scares, I made it all the way to the top this time, now at least warmed up a bit from my efforts. The cave led away from the falls for another ten feet, and then branched into a pitchfork of tunnels that twisted away, the trickling stream winding amongst them.
Now finally on dry land (or the closest equivalent to be had), and away from the mocking eyes of other people, I shrugged out of my sea-saturated clothing and squeezed out as much water as I could. I then dunked it in the fresher water of the stream and rinsed out the salt and leftover bits of tentacle goo, and as I wrung it dry again, I noticed an earring glinting on the cloth, its post snagged on the loose fibers. Aha! My sirenstone!
To my delight, the sirenstones were still tied up in a neat little knot that was now officially worth about ten times as much as everything else I had ever owned put together.
<Alright! Not broke anymore! Well, theoretically. But where’s our XP? We lost our stuff, we found it. Done. So why is the quest not finished?>
I unrolled my wraps the rest of the way, a sinking feeling in my stomach, but even with the whole silken length laid out, there was no sign of Cynric’s Goggles.
<Awwww man. We can’t abandon those. I mean, Cynric’s is an artifact. I don’t even want to know how much Keen had to farm for those.>
I managed an outfit out of the remains of my silks and acid-laced uniform, which, among other things, now had no sleeves. I tore my silks in half and used them to at least wrap my forearms and give me a place to stash my daggers.
<On second thought,> Voice continued brightly, <I totally want to know how much time he spent farming them. I hope he remembers every second of it. And then I hope he takes the time to think of how quickly we stole them. Ha!>
“Well, let’s see if he does.” I took my earring, steeled myself for the pain, and pushed it through my earlobe, which was once again whole after my Resurrection. A single drop of blood fell into the cool water at my feet.
“...and then I said, ‘Darling, if you want something on my resume besides that tight ass of yours, you’re going to have to put it there yourself’.”
“Oh my God, Blaze, you didn’t!”
“You’re damn straight I did! And then he said something even I won’t repeat about my mother, and THAT’S when I hit him. I retrospect I shouldn’t have gone to the interview drunk. On the plus side, the rest of my afternoon is free for raiding, if anyone’s up for a quick Hound-Vod-Shroud...”
I practiced drawing my weapons as I listened to Blaze’s rant, but while I hadn’t forgotten how to use them, they didn’t quite fit into my katas. Everything I knew was based around a flat palm or a fist, and when I tried any version of a ki strike, I seemed to fumble my daggers. My dagger was also still the best light source, unless I drew more magic and lit something else, but didn’t have the mana for more than one more spell, and I’d rather save it. Oh well. One problem at a time.
All three branches of the cave fed the stream that fed the waterfall, so which one had my gear come from? Holding my dagger low to the ground, I bent over and examined the places where the streams came together. All three were of roughly equivalent water flow, but only one had the silt on the bottom of it recently disturbed, as if by a pile of clothing rolling downstream.
[Hunting13 check: Success]
<
The middle tunnel it is.>
The stream twisted and wound its way through a narrow tunnel of natural stone that eventually became a half-finished utility tunnel of sorts, its pipes and levers long since corroded away. My feet splashed through water and crunched on small bones and my bright dagger gave temporary shadows to glowing mushrooms, until I came to a cylindrical metal door rusted and set askew of its no longer cylindrical metal frame, the victim of some long ago seismic activity.
The stream poured out from under the off kilter base from a wide, smiling crack too narrow for me to fit through. Probably. Safely, anyway. I went up to investigate.
The door was more a hatchway, designed to fit anything up to a human and then some, and swing outward toward me on some spectacular, no-nonsense hinges which might once have been brass but were now a bluish green alloy of their own devising. The bottom one had snapped completely. Hmm. I grasped the edge of the doorway, braced my feet on the frame, and heaved outward.
[Strength check: Failed]
The door shifted a crack, but not much more.
I glowered at the immobile lump of metal in front of me. Once upon a time, this piece of engineering had probably been so well balanced it would have swung open at a touch, unlocked. What I needed was a lever, but my daggers weren’t long enough. I idly flipped my lit one into the air, catching it by its handle, making the shadows dance.
<Yeah, or a time machine, while we’re wishing for stuff. Then we’ll just go back to when this door actually opened, walk through it, and come back.>
Back when there was no corrosion impeding its opening. I looked at my dagger. I looked at the hinges.
<Of course, if we had a time machine, we could just skip ahead to when your insurance policy expires and you’re legally safe from Keen. Then he couldn’t torture you to death without getting banned, and I don’t think he’d risk that.> Voice pondered a moment. <Huh, I wonder—if we did time travel into the future, and then you died, would the Temple not resurrect you because your policy was bought more than a month prior, or would they honor the policy anyway because it’s still on your arm? Is the policy in you, or in the contract?>
Ignoring Voice, the non-existent time machine, and all philosophizing on divine contract theory, I climbed up on the once brassy hinges and began picking and scraping away the corrosion with my dagger, focusing on the sliding joint of the metal.
[Trapsmithing14 check: Success]
When I figured I had it pretty much cleared, I crawled back over to the far side, set my feet again, and heaved it open. It swung about halfway out before stopping with a final sounding skreee-thunk! noise that left it set halfway open in the tunnel. I swung down one handed and landed lightly in the room beyond.
The room was long, low, rectangular, and stank. The stream ran in a gutter through the middle of the room, and all around the sides were…
…cages. Improvised, ramshackle cages of every description; vertical wooden slats looked like a hastily repurposed fruit box, which sat on top of a very professional looking birdcage for ostriches, which was next to a lobster trap, and so on. The only thing each one had in common was that it looked old, and was accessible from the isle.
The stink was coming from the cages. Dagger held in front of me, breathing shallowly through my mouth, I advanced on the nearest one. Inside was a dead dog, long decayed, a few scraps of fur clinging to a complete skeleton.
<Oh no… this must have been what Hel was talking about.>
“What are you talking about?”
<Remember when Hel was hiring you for the bounty on the goblin tails? And she said people’s pets had started going missing? I think… I think we found them.>
Each cage held the remnants of some poor creature. Not all of them looked like pets; I saw a few raccoons, one pig, and a bird cage of ten recently deceased red squirrels, minus their tails.
“But who would do this to a bunch of animals? Just lock them up to starve and die down here? Why?” One very well-made cage in front of me was empty, and locked. Scratches around the keyhole suggested that the thieves hadn’t bothered to steal the key, thus accounting for its empty status. Not all of the corpses were animals, either. I passed a coffin, grave dirt still clinging to the outside, containing a well dressed, elderly corpse and a bouquet of flowers.
<Let’s see, who lives in the sewers, is cruel and stupid, and likes to steal random stuff they don’t know how to use? You get one guess.>
Next to the coffin was a giant, rather open bird cage big just enough to hold a human, provided the human didn’t want to stretch or turn around or move in any way.
<A gibbet.> Voice identified. <For holding prisoners. I didn’t know Triport even did that stuff anymore.>
At the bottom of the gibbet, though, was not a pile of bones, but a scrap of blue cloth, and a pair of selenite and opal encrusted goggles, last seen on my hastily abandoned corpse.
<Yeah! Cynric’s Goggles! Finally! Ha, and no Samiel bones, either. That Ordenian’s Summoning of Garret’s must have discorporated your body as it built a new one, dropping all your gear into the stream. I told you it was a solid spellcasting!>
I settled Cynric’s on my head with a sigh of relief that was one part having-all-my-gear-back, and at least two parts not-having-to-worry-about-how-weird-it-would-be-to-find-your-own-corpse.
“I thought the little goblins were going to eat me.”
<Evidently not. They must have dragged your body back here while we were trying to get you resurrected, and left it to rot.>
“That’s just strange. Goblins are always hungry.” I countered. “You really think they could resist a feast like this?” I waved at the corridor of cages.
<Maybe if they were scared enough, they could.>
“Scared of wha-aaaahh!”
One of the things in the cages moved. I jumped backwards about ten feet into the air before realizing my inevitable motion would land me on one of the other rotting cages, dropped into Wind Stance, and then twisted out the rest of my momentum in a new kata I was naming Going Over Waterfall Backwards While Avoiding Being Scalped By A Barracuda, which is what I probably looked like. I managed to land back in the open gutter that passed for the stream, and did not knock over an entire row of precariously balanced cages.
[Dexterity check: Success]
I brandished my dagger the cage, illuminating the thing inside of it.
<Oh shit, it’s a zombie! Run! Before it bites you!>
But the zombie blinked two blue eyes at me, the color of faded indigo, and made a pathetic little meeping noise.
I’ve seen those eyes before, somewhere. I pulled down my goggles and looked closer. The blue eyes sat in a mop of matted feline fur, the cream and white swirls hardly recognizable anymore under the filth and grime, but the regal stare I had last seen in a portrait in my bedroom at La Baleine was utterly unmistakable.
“Pequod?”
[Lost and Found: Quest update!]
[New objective: Nine lives, save the cat]
“Mrowr!” He demanded, pushing his nose against the bars of his oversized cage, squeezing as if this time either the bars or his bones would give way to freedom. By the rubbed raw skin around his face, this wasn’t the first time he’d tried it.
“Ok, ok!” I told him. “It’s ok, I’m going to get you out.”
The cage had been designed to hold something big but not dexterous; spring loaded latches sat on either corner of the front side, the entire section of which would then swing up and out. A long armed human or elf could probably work a latch with either hand and then lift the gate with both arms; I, however, could not reach both latches at once.
<Wait, did you hear that?>
I cursed as I fiddled with the second latch, making the first one (that I had oh-so-delicately shimmied into its unlock position) snap closed yet again.
[Trapsmithing check: Failed]
I paused and listened, and heard a repetitive sound that might have been distant footsteps. Must work faster.
&
nbsp; There wasn’t enough flex in the door to open the latches one at a time, and my every attempt to keep one open while I messed with the other hadn’t worked. If I had something to brace it with, maybe I could jam it open, but I didn’t.
<Yeah, we really need some trapbusting tools. After a few levels, the improvised pry-it-open-with-a-dagger just doesn’t cut it.>
The distant sounds of footsteps came closer, now accompanied by squabbling goblin voices.
“This is dumb job. Why can’t we eat it? Dead squishies not fight back!”
“’Cause Shaman says so. You remember what happened last time someone ate bodies.”
“But he only wants bones, not guts! I just wanna eat squishiest bits. Not bones.”
“No eating! Or else WE get to be the dead body.”
“Yeah.” said yet another voice. “We just get some more bones and come back. Then we get shinies and not dead.”
“… dumb rule. I could eat the squishy bits AND still give bones back, no problem…”
“Hurry up! You have sack?”
“…bone farming is dumb. Worms eat, goblins hungry… not fair…”
I stepped back. What I really needed was longer arms, pronto. Or someone else to hold one end. What I had was an impatient, mostly starved cat, a glowing dagger, and roomful of stinking bones.
Bones…
As quietly as I could, I broke open one of the wooden cages and sorted through an unidentified pile of decay for a couple of vertebra, which I carved out so the hole was just able to be wedged over the each latch on Pequod’s cage, then stepped back and put on the Gloves of the Ossian Puppetmaster.
The greasy, creepy tingle walked up my arms as soon as my fingers slid into their slots. My sense of touch seemed to expand away from me, poking and prodding where it shouldn’t, violating the physics of flesh. I swallowed against the rising nausea, grasped each newly placed vertebra with the shadowy projections of my hands that only I could see, concentrated, and flung my hands up and over my head.
The vertebrae snapped the latches up and out simultaneously, flinging the cage door open—