by Logan Jacobs
Thankfully, even Dehn managed to quiet down as we crept down the street, and when we came to another alley, I could hear the two elves whispering.
“Sorry we’re late, that old hag at the market wanted twenty silvers for this invisibility spell,” one said. He had to be speaking to someone else, I reasoned. He wouldn’t have said that to whoever he had been with.
“I told you not to waste time haggling,” came another voice, stern and urgent.
“Relax, Calum, we’re here now,” said the third. “Are we all ready to go? I can’t wait to get this city air out of my lungs. It’s enough to give a dragon asthma.”
“Lower your voice, Ronan,” Calum insisted. “We’ll need to wait until it’s properly dark, less chance of being seen.”
One of the elves scoffed.
“Inry’s being real particular about this, isn’t he?” It was the first elf again. “Who’s he getting orders from? Nine hells, when did the Shrikes ever take orders from anyone? Thought that was the whole point of being thieves.”
“Shut up, Finn,” the one called Ronan snapped.
“Just saying,” Finn grumped, “if I have to be working for someone, I’d at least like to know who. Don’t act like you’re so comfortable with all of this. Some bastard none of us has ever heard of starts going around promising to make us all rich, but he never shows his face? He wants us to do all the dirty work, take all the risk, and he gets half our profits just ’cause he came up with the idea? I don’t trust it.”
“Then bring it up with Inry when we get back to Dredfen,” Calum said. “Come on, let’s start for the gate, we’ll need to go around the back way to keep from being spotted. You know what Inry said, from here on out, we kill anyone who sees us. No one can know we’re involved in this.”
Too late, I realized by the sound of his voice that the elf was walking out into the street, and before I could do anything but take a step back, he was in front of me. Like the pair that we’d followed, he wore a dark green cloak, and I could see the hilts of a pair of wicked daggers at his waist. His long fingers twitched to them as he locked eyes with me.
“Shit,” I hissed as I reached for my own dagger.
“Shit,” Aerin muttered behind me.
“Fuck yeah!” Dehn crowed.
Chapter 4
I drew my dagger and summoned the mana blade to it in the same moment that Calum drew his daggers. The elf’s eyes flashed as he took in my magical weapon and my companions behind me, and he wisely took a step back as his own friends rushed out into the desolate street after him.
Each of the other elves, who I realized by their matching shaggy blond hair and brown eyes must have been twins, were also armed with a pair of daggers each, and I noticed that the blades glistened with an enchantment of some kind.
For a tense moment, we all just sized each other up, but then Dehn rushed past me with a furious cry, his short sword in one hand and his axe in the other, at Calum. It was the sort of charge that could have been incredibly intimidating from someone like Maruk, a seven-foot-tall orc with biceps larger than most people’s heads, but the halfling reminded me more of an over enthusiastic Chihuahua in a spiked collar as he ran at our opponents.
But maybe Dehn did know what he was doing, because for a critical second, Calum seemed too stunned by the halfling’s wild charge to bother trying to block or dodge it, and Dehn leapt at the elf and knocked him to the cobbles.
With that, the spell over the rest of us was broken, and one of the twins moved forward with a swipe of his blades to drive me back. I raised my own dagger to block his without thinking about it, and there was a pop and a shower of sparks as the raw mana that made up my blade interacted with whatever enchantment the elf had used on his own weapon. The reaction wasn’t as extreme as the kind of explosion I’d created before with mana weapons, but so close, it was still nearly blinding.
The elf staggered back with a cry of pain as he covered his eyes, and I moved further out into the street while I blinked against the stars in my vision. When I could see again, I saw that Aerin was locked in combat with the second of the twins, and the pair struggled as Aerin tried to pry her axe out from where it was caught between the other elf’s daggers.
Calum was back on his feet, but it was all he could do to keep Dehn at bay as the halfling chased after him and shouted taunts. Dehn’s particular fighting style, I quickly realized, had little to do with finesse and more to do with moving so erratically that he couldn’t help but hit his enemy at some point. It might have been fun to watch, actually, but I didn’t have the chance, because the elf who’d attacked me had recovered enough to give it another try.
At a glance, I could tell that the contact with my mana dagger had cut cleanly through his blade, and it had permanently destroyed whatever enchantment he’d put on his own dagger, so at least I didn’t have to worry about that. Of course, it also meant that I couldn’t use the explosive effect to my advantage again.
No matter, this fight wasn’t going to last much longer, anyway.
Before my opponent had taken more than two steps in my direction, I rushed him with a jab aimed at his sternum.
He reacted quickly, and though he couldn’t adjust his forward momentum in time to dodge properly, he brought both of his daggers up in an x in an attempt to stop my blade. The move would have worked if my dagger had been an ordinary metal blade, but instead, it cut through the elf’s blades and fell just short of making contact with his body.
The elf threw himself awkwardly out of the way as I regained my balance, and his eyes were wide as he took in the severed sections of his weapons.
“What in the gods’ names--” he started, but I lunged at him again, and he yelped as he scrambled back. This time, though, he wasn’t quite fast enough, and the tip of my dagger sank into his shoulder just over his heart. The elf’s body convulsed like he was being electrocuted as his every nerve lit up bright blue, and then he slumped back onto the dirty gray cobblestones. The edges of the fabric of his shirt where my dagger had cut through were burnt, and the wound smoked.
There came a strangled cry from behind me as his brother saw what had happened, but he was cut off a moment later when Aerin drove her axe between his neck and shoulder and he, too, fell to the ground with a wild spray of blood.
Aerin and I turned at once to see how Dehn was faring. The halfling and the elf moved together in a strange sort of dance as Dehn slashed out with abandon, and Calum leaped nimbly out of the way, just barely in time. I stepped over the elf’s body at my feet to help, but Dehn gave a wild cry and threw himself into a somersault toward his opponent’s feet.
Calum clearly hadn’t seen that coming any more than I had, and he tripped over the halfling and fell on his face in the street. He was fast enough to flip around, but not fast enough to get up before Dehn landed on his chest and smashed the butt of his sword into the elf’s face.
“Take that! And that!” the halfling cried with each smack of his weapon until the elf’s face was nothing more than a bloody pulp. Calum’s limbs were limp, and his head jerked from side to side with every hit Dehn landed, as floppy as a ragdoll.
Speckles of blood sprayed up over the halfling as he continued to drive the butt of his sword into the mess that had once been the elf’s head.
“Lowlife bandit!” he growled. “That’ll teach you!”
“Dehn,” I called, when he showed no sign of letting up. “Dehn! It’s over, he’s dead.”
The halfling paused and blinked, almost as though he was coming out of a dream, and turned his gore-splattered face to me.
“We need to search them,” I said with my hands raised slightly in a placating gesture.
Dehn snorted and wiped his face, though he only succeeded in smearing the blood around.
“Right, yeah,” he muttered as he stood.
I knelt over the elf I’d killed and rifled through his pockets as I considered what we’d overheard. I supposed their group was called the Shrikes. Between them, th
e first group we’d encountered with their phoenix motif, and that mysterious swan stamp on the papers, there seemed to be something of a bird theme going on. I hoped that could turn out to be a helpful clue. They’d also mentioned someone called Inry, probably their leader, and a place called Dredfen. I was willing to bet that was the Shrikes’ camp.
The elf had nothing on him except a small vial of powder, the invisibility enchantment that he’d been complaining about having been overcharged for. It wasn’t everything I’d hoped to find, but I pocketed it anyway.
“Find anything?” I called to the others as I straightened up again.
“Nothing.” Aerin sounded uniquely dejected as she toed at the corpse of the other twin with her boot. “Not even a copper piece. Weren’t they just at the market?”
“What about you, Dehn?” I asked. The halfling was in the process of trying to remove one of the elf’s boots, and I went over to help him.
“He hid something in his boots?” I frowned as I pried the elf’s other boot off his foot.
“Nah, nothing in his pockets, either,” Dehn replied as he pulled the first boot free. “I just wanted these.”
I tried not to be too disappointed. Given how careful the elves had been trying to be, it made sense that they wouldn’t have kept anything on them that could be used to identify them, or their group. At least we had gotten some information before they’d realized we were spying. That would be enough to move forward, at least.
“Why do you want some elf’s boots?” Aerin asked as she slid her axe into the sheath at her belt. I heard the chime of bells as she used her magic to clean away the blood spray on her face and clothes from the battle.
“I think they’d look nice on me,” Dehn replied. “They’re pretty sturdy, though they could use some buckles, steel toes, maybe some studs.”
“Uhh, you don’t think they’re too big for you?” Aerin asked hesitantly as the halfling stood up one of the boots. It had reached the elf’s knee, and it came up fully up the halfling’s thigh.
“Oh ha ha, very funny,” Dehn sneered. “I’m the tallest in my family, you know.”
“So you’ve said,” Aerin replied. She looked over to me with a barely suppressed grin. “So, uh, if that’s all the loot we’re gonna get, we’d better get back and find the others. They’re probably wondering where we are.”
“Should we do something about...” I trailed off and gestured vaguely to the three corpses bleeding onto the cobbles.
“We could drag them into the alley,” Aerin offered uneasily.
“Don’t bother,” Dehn snorted as he gathered his new boots in his arms. “They’re not worth the trouble. We have more bandits to hunt, don’t we?”
This area was deserted, so it probably wouldn’t matter to anyone but us what we did or didn’t do with the bodies, but somehow it didn’t feel right to just leave them in the middle of the street, so Aerin and I dragged them into the alley and left them there while Dehn watched and shook his head. Then we retraced our steps back to the black market to look for the rest of the guild and tell them about what we’d found out.
We found Lavinia and Maruk first, which wasn’t difficult because they were arguing enthusiastically right where we’d left them.
“I’m not saying you have to actually beat him up,” Lavinia explained. “I think the threat would be sufficient.”
“And I told you,” Maruk responded as he drew himself up with a self-righteous air, “that’s not how I wish to conduct myself, even if he did insult my vest.”
Lavinia was about to say something else when she caught sight of us and stopped short. The ladona ranger’s red eyes went from me to Aerin to Dehn, who was still covered in the elf’s blood, and her shoulders sagged.
“Aww, you got into a fight?” she groaned. “You couldn’t have come to get us before?” She shot a glare at the orc. “Happy? We missed all the fun.”
“Goodness, what happened to you?” Maruk asked as he placed a large green hand over his heart.
“We found a lead,” I replied. “Things got a little messy. We’ll explain more later. Have you seen Lena and Emeline?”
“No.” Lavinia crossed her arms. “We spent about five minutes talking to that weapons merchant, but he didn’t know anything, and then we couldn’t decide where to go next and Maruk’s too good to threaten strangers for information, so we’ve just been here.”
No sooner had Lavinia finished speaking, however, than Lena and Emeline appeared out of the crowd to join us.
“There you are!” Lena said brightly.
“Looks like we got back just in time,” Emeline remarked. She and Lena each had two paper bags clutched in their fists that were almost full to bursting.
“Did you find something?” I asked hopefully as I eyed the bags.
“Oh!” Lena’s violet eyes went wide, and then she blushed slightly. “No, we asked all around, but no one we talked to knew anything about the bandits or the heist.”
“So what’s all that?” Lavinia asked, one brow arched as she jabbed a finger at one of the bags Emeline was carrying.
The panthera woman blushed as well.
“We were getting kind of hungry,” she explained, “and there was this merchant selling candy.” She opened one of the bags to reveal an assortment of colorful hard candies.
“We got all kinds,” Lena put in as she offered up her bags as well.
Dehn snorted derisively. “Well, at least we were able to get some real work done.”
“You three found something?” Emeline asked, her catlike ears pricked up in an expression of excitement.
“We did,” I replied. “Let’s get back to the guild hall, we can talk about it there and plan our next move.”
We wasted no time getting back, and when we were all gathered around the long dining room table in our guild hall, Aerin, Dehn, and I explained what had happened with the elves we’d followed.
“There’s no Dredfen here,” I reported as I pored over a map spread out on the table. I couldn’t find anything, not even a little village, with that name. An uncomfortable feeling twisted itself up in my gut. “Do you think that’s some kind of code, too? They seemed really worried about anyone being able to follow them.”
“Dredfen,” Emeline repeated as she leaned over my shoulder, and her dark curls brushed against the map. “Dredfen, Dredfen... It sounds familiar, but I can’t think of - oh! There was a story we used to tell in the dorms at the university on stormy nights about this place, the Dreaded Fen. According to legend, there was this great treasure there, but no one knew exactly what it was because the whole place was haunted, and anyone who tried to look for it was killed.”
“And do you know where this place is supposed to be?” Lavinia asked. “Or is that part made up, too?”
The panthera woman rolled her eyes.
“It is real, and it should be right around here.” Emeline tapped one long nail on the map in a spot in the Diru Wilds, several miles outside the city.
Lavinia arched a brow. “Maybe you spent too long in that tower,” she replied. “We’ve been all over that area on our missions, and we never saw any secret, haunted bandit hideouts.”
“That’s because it’s underground,” Emeline said matter-of-factly. When she realized we were all staring at her, she crossed her arms. “Look, I know what I’m talking about! I studied this whole thing, I was going to go look for it!”
“I’m sure you did, but this is a little too important to base on a treasure-hunting story, don’t you think?” Aerin asked with a sympathetic sort of frown. “I can get in touch with some contacts--”
“But I saw it!” Emeline insisted. “When we were escaping through those old drainage tunnels, when--” she cast a nervous glance to Dehn, “--when I was down there with Etienne.”
The halfling frowned suspiciously, but thankfully, he didn’t press Emeline about what she’d been doing sneaking around in the tunnels beneath the city.
“You believe me, don’t you?�
�� Emeline grabbed my arm suddenly, and I was surprised by the intensity in the mage woman’s green eyes.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” I asked. I remembered the network of tunnels, but we’d really only been concerned with the quickest and safest path out of the city when we’d broken Emeline out of prison. I figured the rest of those tunnels just led to dead ends and rank sewage, and I hadn’t given them much thought.
“I didn’t realize it until just now, but that must be the way,” Emeline said. “There’s a whole maze down there, and I’d bet anything that’s how to get to Dredfen.”
“You know, it would make sense,” Lena put in as she leaned on the table. “All these bandits want to rob houses in Ovrista, right? I’m sure they’d try not to use any of the gates to get in and out, especially with all the things they’re planning on taking. If I were the one organizing all of this, I’d make sure everyone had a good way of getting around without being noticed, and if some bandits already had a place that was connected to the city, I’d want to recruit them.”
I considered what the alchemist said. She made a good point. I still wished we had a little more to go on than stories, but Emeline seemed sure of herself, and we didn’t have any other leads. It was worth checking out, at least. Even if there was nothing there, it would be a good idea to ensure that the very tunnels we’d used to sneak in and out of the city weren’t available to the bandits.
“I’m hearing a lot of stories and speculation,” Lavinia remarked.
“Personally, I’d like to know that the crumbling sewers are our only option before we go splashing through them,” Maruk added.
“They are the only option,” Emeline said firmly. “I’ll go by myself if none of you believe me.” She stood with her chin held high, and her hands curled into fists as she looked around at the rest of us.
“I’ll go with you, Emeline,” Lena said gently, and the alchemist placed a hand on the mage’s shoulder.