A mouse? “Is it a pet? Or, for dinner?” I had never imagined Voice doing such mundane things as eating, but I used to catch packrats sometimes out in the desert. They weren’t really what you’d call a meal.
<What?> Voice sounded horrified. <Of course not! It’s a machine. For gaming. Like the keyboard. At least, my other keyboard is for gaming, this one is for hiding under my bed. So when my mom comes home unexpectedly and takes my nice one, she gets to operate under the happy illusion that I’m offline and properly grounded, and I don’t have to go insane from being locked in my room all day with nothing to do.>
Speaking of being locked up… I looked around. Whatever I had imagined a vampire’s lair to look like, this was not it. It was one long and spacious stone room, with vaulted ceilings of medium height, crisscrossed by an array of pipes. The air was stale and smelled slightly of the sea, which might have been from the cylindrical stone well projecting out of the floor at the far end of the room.
The furniture was quality and well made, but other than the one armchair there was nothing for any usual activities; no table (though there was an empty workbench), no other chairs, no bed or stove or washbasins, nor even an obligatory gothic coffin or drippy candelabra. There were no rugs, although there was a magic circle inlaid into the floor in shattered obsidian, and scuffmarks where chalk might periodically modify it. There were wardrobes, and chests, and bookshelves, then the workbench and the glowing machine. All were neatly lined up, logically and without aesthetics, along one wall.
I held up Keen’s illusi-frame and took a few pictures. Ramsey’s never going to believe this.
My first stop was the armchair, where I picked up the jar of magenta liquid and drank it in one long gulp. It tasted like liquid fire. It burned the bile out of my mouth and seared its way down into my belly, where it radiated outwards with the warmth of a sunburst. Everywhere it touched, my blood and my bones and my skin wicked it inwards, and inwards some more, healing and refreshing until everything inside me felt as shiny as a new minted coin. I wanted more, even as I knew I didn’t need it, couldn’t take in any more anyway; the excess magic built up like a pressure wave before diffusing out of my pores and effervescing into the surrounding atmosphere. Sublimation, I thought.
<From the root word ‘sublime’.> Voice added for me, in the now familiar I-read-dictionaries-for-fun kind of declaration.
[Cure Serious Wounds5 bestowed: 7 Hit Points]
[Hit Points: 15/15]
<Well it’s not your level back, but it’s something.> Voice still sounded a little bitter. <Damn Keen for showing back up at exactly the wrong time. That last quest should have been worth 5th level, at least, but the power leveling penalty nerfed the XP6 down to nothing.>
“Well then,” I said, gazing around the lair with an eye towards inspired revenge, “let’s see how he can pay us back.” I walked over to the first piece of furniture to catch my eye: a large, dome-lidded sea chest.
<Wait wait wait!> Voice cried. <Check for traps!>
Oh, yeah. I supposed goblins weren’t the only creatures with nasty ideas about trespassers, and if I were an evil vampire bastard with a mean sense of humor, I’d probably boobytrap my own house, too.
The hinges, handle and seams showed no signs of tampering, and neither did the floor in front of it. The lid was unlocked, so I pushed it up and open. It unfolded like a jewelry box, all full of neatly compartmented shelves. They were filled with pouches and vials and boxes, which in turn were filled with what appeared to be ingredients. I recognized a few of the rare beetles Voice was always on me to send to Ingenium, dried mushrooms, dried frogs, goblin beads, stranger things that looked like powdered gemstones, and a tuft of something tied with thread, sitting next to an amber rod.
<Is that cat hair?>
I smelled it. “Yep.”
<I don’t want to know.>
“Nope.”
Most of the ingredients did not look magical in and of themselves, but in the curved lid of the chest were a few polished rocks which looked rather like leaded crystal and sparkled more than the ambient lighting strictly called for.
<Sirenstones!> Voice exclaimed. <Those can’t be made, only attuned, and unlike a Scrying or a Clairaudience, nothing can block them. They come from the Sirenstone, a tiny island made entirely of crystal, far to the south in the Miahan Sea. They say mermaids gather there to sing in a language so haunting, any sailor that hears it will throw themselves into the sea in pursuit. Furthermore, they say it’s best to let them, because anyone so afflicted will spend the rest of their life chasing the horizon, and will walk heedless into the deepest water whenever there’s a full moon. They never even find the bodies.>
“Have you ever been there?”
<No, it’s higher level content. And anyway, there’s rumors… I’m sure it’s just dumb gamer superstition.>
“What sort of rumors?”
<Oh, well, you know. Silly stuff. Like how your sound card malfunctions in the area, and the people who manage to fix it quit the game soon after, give away all their stuff, and delete their accounts.> Voice actually sounded kind of embarrassed. <I mean, half of me wants to go objectively test this, but you know… I mean, what if it’s true?>
I held up a sparkling stone. It was fastened on one end with a post to make it into an earring. “So how do they get the stones then, anyway?”
<I dunno. Maybe they only send deaf people. Or maybe the mermaids aren’t always home?>
“I suppose the stones are really expensive, then?”
<Yeah, they don’t even go up for auction very often.>
I grinned and put the whole handful of them into my pocket, except for the prettiest one, which I held up to my ear, imagining what I’d look like.
<Try the other ear. Hmm. Nah, go with both ears!>
I took another stone as matched to the first as I could find, steeled myself, and pushed the metal posts through my earlobes. It stung, though nowhere near as bad as the crossbow bolts had earlier. Although that gives me an idea…
I went back over to the bottle that had contained the magenta liquid, and ran my finger around the inside of the rim, trying for the last few drops of healing potion, which I quickly dabbed on my pierced earlobes. A tiny burst of heat, and the flesh closed around the post in my ear, as if I had been wearing them for a year.
<Nice!> Voice commented. <Those look good on you.>
I shook my head, making the earring swing and bounce, then put my hands up to still them. As my fingers brushed the one in the left lobe, I felt the tiniest click of magic activating.
“…I want a Dimension Door back to the other casters, Keen, no point in making them run through the forest and use up all their mana picking off squirrels.”
“But Robyn,” a second voice mocked, “I need ten red squirrel tails for that one guy back in town!”
A smattering of laughter at this.
“Ha, yeah, that bastard from the Experimental Thaumaturgical Testing Facility. I’m sure he just wants all the endangered species to go from ‘endangered’ to ‘extinct’ so they can build the monstrous factory here in the valley. I swear the next time I see him trying to scam some poor noob into collecting thirty something-or-the-other pelts, because the first ten weren’t good enough, I’m going to skin him myself.”
“I have the D-Door prepped. Blaze, are you lot still in the guild hall?”
“Oh, uh, we kinda left. We’re at the Tears for Beers Tavern. Back room.” A pattering of background noise came through this time; the clicking of glassware, giggles, voices talking.
“AGAIN?”
“Hey, you’re the one who didn’t want the whole bar stumbling through the portal with us! And the waitresses have promised to lock the door this time. And anyway it was happy hour, and it was really boring in the guild hall after we killed the training dummy.”
“What is this ‘we’ shit, Blaze?” A different voice, but with the same celebratory background murmuring. “You’re the one that made potash o
f the training dummy, and now even the self-repair magic is burnt to a crisp.”
“Focus guys! Ok, we have a D-Door to the entrance up. I’ve got the incense for the dream gate, but no lollygagging, ‘cause remember there’s a lockout mechanism on this one…”
<Oh my gosh, this must be the Black Bladesmen’s private raid channel!>
“Where do you suppose they are?” I asked, and then clapped a hand over my mouth in panic. And can they hear me like I can hear them? I had only met Keen’s fellow guild members once, and while they didn’t seem quite as psychotically evil as him, they were pretty… intense.
<No way, I always have push-to-talk on. Not only does it cut down on ambient noise interference, voice-activated mics were surely invented for the purpose of blackmailing people who can’t work a mute button.>
There was no evidence my eavesdropping was noticed, and I relaxed.
<But I don’t know where they are. Sounds like somewhere under Mt. Temperament, maybe. If they’re doing the Hound of Shadows raid, they’ll be at it for a while, ‘cause they’ll be doing the sister quests too; Vodou Vespers and the Shroud of Night.>
I tuned out the Bladesmen and turned my attention to the next piece of furniture, a standalone wardrobe, and reached for the handle on the doors. It was made of well-sealed wood; a beautiful birds-eye maple, with delicate oiled steel hinges. The fancy fretwork on the front, suitable for a rich lady’s bedroom, showed off the chatoyant effect of the golden wood. Its glowing beauty was wasted in this dank green dungeon.
Inside it was filled with robes. Most of them were black, heavy on the skull-and-bones motif, and beaded with gems. One was red, with embroidered flames licking the bottom and crawling in yellow and red greed halfway to the waist.
<This must be Keen’s old gear.> Voice mused. <Oh, look, a Robe of the Magi! I remember when those things were top tier loot. Heh, see if it fits!>
I pulled out a robe stitched all over in a glittering violet swath of amethysts. Hesitantly, I put my arms through the sleeves to see if the tailoring spell would take effect, but it itched. Not an itch I could pinpoint, but a whole body someone’s-walked-over-my-grave tingle, and I could smell him on it, the dusty, dead, old blood and leather smell of his breath, and I whipped my arms back out of the robe and hurled it away from me.
<Bummer. It’s blood-bound to Keen. Well, that figures, it would have been pretty useful to have.>
“…trap. Trap! TRAP, I said, there’s a… Oh. Nevermind. Blaze found it. Let me get my crowbar. I don’t know why I even bother to detect these things in advance.”
“Ooooowww, Robyn! I need a heal!”
“And I need a t-shirt that says ‘I can’t heal stupid’. The next time you run ahead of the trapbuster, you’re on your own.”
I ran my hands over the other garments, all of them had the same blood-bound tingle. A series of boots and footwear sat underneath the robes, and the drawers at the foot of the wardrobe contained mostly gloves. One set of these, in soft silk and garnets, was unbound, and experimentally, I tried them on. They shrunk to fit my hands, and I could feel the garnets whispering to each other, urging, bossy… like old ghosts with grudges. I held my hands up and flexed my fingers…
[Improvise Magic Device7 check: Partial success]
…and, lacking any other skeleton in the vicinity, shadowy projections reached out and grabbed my own bones, trying to twist and flex them out of shape. Gah! I stripped off the gloves and hurled them after the robe.
“Doesn’t Keen have anything useful and non-evil around here?”
<Let’s try the next one.>
This wardrobe was identical to the first, even down to the grain of the maple wood. I frowned at it in puzzlement and picked at the golden swirls, but they were indeed a feature of the wood, and not some kind of embellishment. Like the first one, this was also clear of booby-traps, but inside it contained shelves. The first shelf was full of hats. Well, hoods mostly, and headbands, skullcaps, and helmets. Below it was one of masks, including one I was certain was made of a real demon’s skull, and then a row of eyeglasses, monocles and goggles. I ran my fingers over these. Only a few were unbound (though nothing in Cerulea was going to convince me to put on the demon skull mask), but down at the bottom was a pair of goggles. Opalescent lenses were set into a patent leather frame that connected to an adjustable band in the back, and the edges of the lenses were set with three pairs of stones; selenite, black opal and bloodstone.
<No way.> said Voice in a tone of awe. <They can’t be…>
I ran my fingers over the gems.
[Improvise Magic Device check: Success]
The selenite whispered to me that it knew the true names of things, the opals laughed at lies and illusions, and the bloodstone called out to its namesake; the fast rushing river of red, the intertwining dance of living structures, the template of vulnerability on which we are all built.
<Cynric’s Goggles.> Voice continued in something approaching reverence. <They were supposedly made by Cynric the Surgeon, before she went mad. They grant True Seeing as well as… something else that’s not displaying correctly. I don’t even know what raid these come out of! Holy cow, I can’t believe Keen isn’t wearing them.>
I put them on.
At first nothing looked any different. There was still this long room, the logical furniture, the weird green glowing machine. I held my hand up at arm’s length, palm facing away from me, and examined my fingernails. Nothing strange there. Just the nail, resting on its blood-rich matrix, protecting the nubby little bone…
Suddenly disturbed, I took off the goggles. My fingers were as normal. I flexed my hand a few times for reassurance and put the goggles back on. My fingers regained that sudden depth, as if I could see them for everything they truly were. I looked down at the rest of me, concentrated, and was a little queasy to notice the roadmap of the rushing energy of my blood, servicing all the various important squishy things inside me, the seeping, gurgling, pumping chemistry supporting the delicate electrical dance of my nervous system, in turn guiding the mechanics of muscle and bone… all of it coming together in a mad circus of a balancing act, keeping me, from moment to moment, improbably alive. I could see how it all worked.
And I could see how it all might not work, too; the fulcrums and sensitivities where a small push at the right time would send the whole circus crashing down…
<Ah, there it is; True Seeing as well as an extra 3d6 Sneak Attack8, since you have Rogue levels. Heh, the next time we fight an ork, you won’t have to guess where its kidneys are.>
I looked back around the room. The amethyst beaded robe lay where I had thrown it. Robe of the Magi, the goggles whispered to me, and the garnet gloves were on top of it. Gloves of The Ossian Puppetmaster.
I looked back through the wardrobes, and most of the clothing had names. Garments of the Ageless Apprentice, Dreamgraspers Gauntlets, the Hood of Shadows, Face of the Fiend, Waterwalking Boots…
<Wait, what? Waterwalking Boots are like level 0 starter gear. I mean, they work for about 60 seconds, and then take 3 minutes to recharge. Keen must have better stuff than that. Why would he still keep them?>
<A strange trophy.> Voice mused.
“…betcha a potion I’ll win the killcount.”
“I’ll bet you two that you won’t.” Keen’s voice again.
“I’d win it every time if I wasn’t busy picking the pyromancer out of the pit traps. Heck, I’d bet you I’d win the trapbusting count, but it’s not even a contest.”
“Of course it’s not a contest. It’s your JOB. Why do you think we let you come along?”
“’Let’? You watch, me and Cat’s Claw will make mincemeat of these hellhounds…”
I checked the next chest.
It was full of gold. Filled to the brim with perfect gold coins shining sickly in the dim light; more gold than I could imagine one person ever needing in thr
ee lifetimes. I dug around inside with my hand, in case it was some kind of trick, like the fruit stalls in the marketplace where the vendors would sometimes bulk up the bottom of the box with sacks, to make it seem like they had a whole crate of apples when they didn’t. It was all gold all the way down, as far as I could tell.
Wait ‘til I show this to Ramsey! I took another picture.
Voice whistled, low and impressed. <He must have been hoarding this for years. I’m impressed so much money taken out of circulation hasn’t put a big ol’ dent in the economy!>
The next chest was full of gold, too. At this even Voice fell silent.
<Ok, seriously, what the hell?>
“He wasn’t bluffing when he said he could afford all the healing potions he wanted.”
<No kidding. Let’s find something to put it all in, and keep you in a Gold Level insurance policy for the next century!>
“…Tasha, Keen, I want you on kill team one. Go left and make sure nothing gets into the magic circle in the center. Rok and I are going to be the chew toys. Everyone else clear to the right, and Blaze, you know what to do?”
A male voice answered, breathless and lilting: “Burn it all?”
“Always. You need any sparq potions?”
“Darling, I don’t need anything to get me hot.” A smattering of laughter. “Anyway, your healing is more important, keep the pots.”
“Alright, begin buffing. Haste means go.”
I tuned out and moved onto the bookshelf. On the upper shelves, where a human or an elf might easily reach them, were dozens of bottles in the same shape as the magenta healing potion, but colored an evil, eye watering purple. The same color as the leycrystal was, before it got reattuned. I put on Cynric’s Goggles and concentrated; Potions of Cause Major Wounds.
<Eeew. Like healing potions, for undead. Any living thing that drinks one of those will watch their flesh rot right off their body.>
Exactly the opposite of what I wanted, then. On the shelf below were more potions, in funny shapes that looked like some eccentric glassblower had heard of the concept of bottles but wasn’t really sure what they were for. These were filled with a sparkling, iridescent liquid that twinkled like a galaxy far, far away.