Killstreak Book One

by Stuart Thaman

  Syzak led the group through a winding series of roads, each one bustling with activity, until they ascended two sets of staircases leading to an inner section of the mountain away from the din of the outer harbor. The courtyard before the actual guildhall was sprawling, filled with well-manicured shrubs, flowers of every color, and a quaint fountain made from bronze, trickling a stream of water into a series of cascading metal buckets.

  Two people were busy tending to the horticulture, one an older human male with a wispy beard and the other a snake-man like Syzak, covered in scales from head to tail.

  “What was the name of your contact?” Kadorax asked.

  Brinna didn’t slow down to ask either of the guild members in the courtyard any questions—she just marched right up to the door. “The serum was to be made by a woman called Jorn, but that’s just what the messages said. We had paid a courier from Assir to communicate the village’s needs. I never thought that the courier might have been compromised.”

  “That might be exactly what happened,” Syzak said. “When was the last time you saw the courier?”

  Brinna knocked on the door. “He was still in Assir when I left with my son, recently returned from a trip to this very building, or so he had said.”

  As a class, couriers didn’t have much in the way of deception talents like rogues, fences, or assassins, but that wouldn’t stop anyone from either multiclassing or being an outright liar. Kadorax didn’t bother to ask how much Brinna had paid.

  The door opened a moment after Brinna’s knock, and another half-serpent greeted them. The female was smaller than Syzak and clothed with a colorful robe lined with many pockets. The tops of various alchemical implements could be seen at her waist. “Yes?” she asked.

  “Do you know anything about a serum, an antidote, scheduled to be delivered to the village of Assir?” Brinna started right away, nearly knocking the snake-woman back with her gusto.

  “Y-yes,” she answered, making all three stop at once.

  “You have?”

  The snake-woman stepped backward to let the newcomers enter the guildhall. “We sent the shipment out a week ago, I think. It was a just a box of potions containing Cure Minor Disease, right? One of our newly recruited members took the box himself.”

  “Has he returned? Did you get any news?” Kadorax asked. Next to him, Brinna was speechless.

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t involved. You’ll have to ask the Potion Master. He’s downstairs,” she explained, pointing toward a nearby staircase with a scaled claw.

  Brinna didn’t wait for any more directions. She took the steps two at a time, a dangerous feat considering she was descending, and barged onto the lower floor with all the decorum of a wild animal.

  The potion room, illuminated brightly by magical lanterns anchored into the ceiling, was full of guild members, and every bit of conversation in the laboratory came to a halt the moment Brinna entered. Several large desks full of implements dominated the center of the room, and a few racks of completed potions hung on the walls to her left.

  “The Potion Master,” Brinna demanded. Behind her, Kadorax, Syzak, and the snake-woman from foyer awkwardly tried to defuse the situation by looking as normal and calm as possible.

  One of the alchemists holding a small vial of purple liquid motioned to another room at the end of the lab. “He’s that way…” the man said.

  A little more reserved, Brinna walked briskly to the indicated door and knocked. A voice from the other side told her to enter, and Brinna pushed open the door.

  The Potion Master’s office was brimming with activity. Several large cauldrons simmered over a low fire against one wall, and almost every inch of open space was crowded by scrolls, books, alembics, beakers, and all manner of other alchemical items. In the midst of them all was a tall human man. Half of the Potion Master’s facial features were obscured by an extensive pattern of scarring that began at the corner of his mouth and carried up through the rest of his forehead and scalp.

  Again, Brinna didn’t wait to begin her interrogation. “You sent a shipment of cures to Assir?” she shouted over the noise of the bubbling cauldrons.

  The Potion Master looked up from a scroll he was reading, furrowed his brow, then returned to his reading as though nothing had happened.

  Brinna gave the man a few more seconds before repeating her question slightly louder.

  At the same time, Kadorax brought up the Potion Master’s character sheet, or at least what little he could read from it without them being on better terms. The man was a level forty-one alchemist multiclassed as a wizard as well. If he wanted to, it wouldn’t take him much more than a thought to kill all three of them.

  Luckily, the Potion Master wasn’t in the mood for a slaughter inside his own office. “Are you always so loud, or are you simply deaf and cannot hear yourself speak?” he said flatly.

  Blushing, Brinna offered a weak bow of her head as her only apology. “The shipment—” she went on, but the Potion Master began to speak again before she could finish.

  “Yes, yes, I heard you the first two times,” he replied. He set his scroll down on a nearby table and removed the monocle he wore on the unscarred side of his face. When he had sufficiently polished the lens on a bit of his cloth apron, he looked Brinna up and down, no doubt scrutinizing her by magical means as well as mundane. “I sent the cures last week with one of our initiates. Did it not work?”

  Brinna’s hands were clenched into fists. All the sorrow she felt at the loss of her son and mother had been channeled into the only thing she had left to occupy her mind, and more and more of the grief turned into anger every time she hit a snag in her quest. “Has the initiate returned?” she asked.

  The man shrugged. “Tal!” he called to the main area of the lab. “Tal? Have you returned?”

  “He’s not back yet, sir,” one of the other researchers responded.

  “There you have it. He has not yet returned.” The Potion Master thought for a moment, then plucked a thin glass vial from one of the wooden racks in front of him and moved to add its contents to a large beaker.

  “The potions never arrived in Coldport!”

  Studiously taking notes on the swirling admixture he had just created, the Potion Master didn’t bother to look up from his paper as he replied, saying, “Then you are welcome to stay in Kingsgate until Tal returns here, and I will notify you once he does. Just tell someone upstairs where you are staying.”

  Brinna stomped her foot on the floor. Kadorax held his breath as a few of the nearby vials clinked together from the vibration. He was ready to make a run for it if any of them broke or fell. “Can you locate him?” the woman demanded.

  The Potion Master let out a long sigh. “I can, but I do not have the time. And frankly, I do not think I have the patience, either,” he stated.

  “What would it take for you to scry him now?” Kadorax ventured to ask.

  Looking directly at Brinna, he smirked. “A thousand gold. If it’s that important to you, you must’ve brought ample payment, right?”

  Kadorax placed a hand on Brinna’s shoulder and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Go wait upstairs in the garden,” he told her. “I don’t think he likes you. We won’t make any progress with you yelling at him.”

  Though her eyes shot daggers at everyone else still in the room, Brinna left.

  “My apologies,” Kadorax began. “She just lost someone, well, two someones. She’s in a bit of a hurry to get back to Assir with a cure. If I still had my fief, I’d pay your thousand gold. But you’ve probably seen our sheets—we just respawned not long ago. I’m Kadorax, the former Lord of Darkarrow. Perhaps you previously dealt with the alchemist from my estate, a gnome by the name of Cassi. Is there any chance you knew her?”

  Intrigued, the Potion Master thought for a moment with a hand on his chin. “Cassi… Cassi… Actually, yes, I do believe I remember her. Everyone who’s been around Kingsgate for any real length of time would know Darkarrow. What
happened?”

  Kadorax laughed at the thought of his previous life’s reputation. He felt utterly helpless in comparison. “Jackals,” he said with a bit of disgust. “Damned doghead temple in the north, east of the mountains. But trust me, I’ll get my revenge.”

  “I hate those filthy dogheaded scum,” the Potion Master sneered. “They’re always going on about summoning their gods to Agglor, setting up temples all over the place, sacrificing virgins and the like. Bunch of bastard lunatics, if you ask me.”

  “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said those exact words,” Kadorax added.

  The Potion Master came around from his table to shake Kadorax’s and Syzak’s hands. “If it helps you get back at a pack of those filthy beasts, count me in. I’ll find Tal and let you know what happened. A simple scrying like that should be easy, especially to find someone I’ve known for a good bit of time. Wait in the garden, and I’ll be up before long,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it,” Kadorax said.

  The two adventurers thanked the Potion Master, then went back up to the first floor, careful not to interrupt any of the other alchemists more than they already had.

  In the garden, Brinna was busy pacing back and forth, her knuckles white at her sides.

  “Calm down,” Syzak told her. “He’s going to find Tal, and then we’ll know what happened to the shipment.”

  “Really?” Brinna gasped.

  They explained what had happened below, and then all there was left to do was wait. Thankfully, the garden was a beautiful place to spend the morning, and they weren’t there for very long—half an hour at the most—before the Potion Master emerged. He carried with him several different vials in leather pouches that could be attached to belts—they were the same kind of pouches Kadorax and Syzak had both used countless times before in the midst of combat to gain all sorts of alchemical benefits.

  “It seems your fear was well placed, my lady, and I do apologize,” the Potion Master began. “Tal was killed. I was able to scry his body in one of the warehouses by the docks. He never made it aboard his ship.”

  “And the cure?” Brinna pressed.

  The Potion Master shook his head. “I didn’t see it. I’d bet Tal was murdered for the vials, and whoever did the killing didn’t realize exactly what they were. So now you have two options: I can set a pair of my apprentices toward synthesizing a new batch for you to take back to Assir, but that will require time, or you can try to find the original shipment. I doubt the thieves would have been able to find a fence for Cure Minor Disease potions, and they’re too useful to just dump them into the sea, though you never know.”

  “We’ll take the quest!” Kadorax announced before any of the others could say anything different. “Killing lowly cutthroats is kind of our specialty right now, and we can all use the experience we can get. Where should we start the search?”

  The Potion Master chuckled and handed one of the elixirs he had brought to Brinna. “Here, this is the last Cure Minor Disease I had in the storehouse. I saw your sheet. You might as well be the first test subject, right?” he said.

  Brinna removed the stopper from the potion and held it to her lips. It smelled like blueberries and jasmine. Tipping it back, her expression contorted as she drank. When the vial was empty, Wasting Sickness: Rank 1 disappeared from her character sheet. She also regained one point each in Strength, Fate, and Charisma.

  “Here,” the man went on, offering a vial to each of them, “these should help. It doesn’t seem right to have the Lord of Darkarrow running around with almost no gear. The potions are old, so the taste has probably gone sour, but they’re the least I can do.”

  “Healing?” Syzak asked. He swished the liquid side to side in the glass.

  “Minor Healing Potion: Rank 4,” the alchemist confirmed. “It’ll patch up some pretty nasty wounds.” He turned to Kadorax, whose potion looked nothing like the others. “That one’s a special, homemade brew. It’ll let you find dogheads from quite some distance, though you probably won’t need it considering their perpetual stench. And when you drink it, save a little bit to douse your weapon. That stuff’s like liquid fire to a doghead. One hit and they’ll turn tail.”

  Kadorax hooked the pouch onto the side of his belt with a huge smile. “How long will it last?” he asked.

  “Only an hour. I’m still working on a more potent version, and then hopefully a permanent brew later on.”

  “Let me know when you get it figured out,” Kadorax told him. “I’ll be your first customer.”

  Once Brinna and Syzak had their healing potions secured, the alchemist explained where he had seen Tal’s body, drawing a crude map of Kingsgate’s docks in the garden soil. He had some suspicions, and he was able to narrow down the warehouse selection to three that each bordered the waterfront. One of them was rather close to where the Grim Sleeper was moored, so that was the direction in which Kadorax led the others.

  “None of us have any talents related to investigation,” Kadorax said. They stood outside the first warehouse, completely unsure what their next step would need to be.

  “All we really need to do is find the body—at least for now,” Brinna reminded him. “The Potion Master didn’t say it was hidden or had been removed.”

  “Right,” Kadorax agreed. “Now how do we get inside?”

  Each of the warehouses along the waterfront was privately owned, and the different companies made sure to protect their goods from trespassers, often touting their level of security as a point of marketing to potential renters. The warehouse before the group had several guards: two dwarves, short warriors with nasty-looking spears, watched the front, and another pair continuously patrolled around the perimeter of the building with their weapons on their backs.

  “Just a month ago, I could’ve broken into a compound guarded by forty dwarves, all expecting my arrival,” Kadorax lamented. Most of his assassin talents had been geared toward the actual act of assassination, but almost every piece of gear he had owned in that previous life had been to get him in and out of various places undetected.

  “I’ll do it,” Brinna said calmly, an air of determination coming over her features. “If I see the body, I’ll find a way to signal you from inside. If not, I’ll just sneak out.”

  “Do you think Sneak: Rank 1 is going to be enough?” Syzak asked.

  Brinna nodded. “Those guards aren’t very attentive. They probably don’t see much action here anyway, and I think I can climb the supports on the side without them noticing. As long as I can climb faster than they can circle the building, I can drop in through the roof before they have a chance to see me.”

  Brinna did have the Surefooted: Rank 1 talent, but Kadorax wasn’t confident that it would be enough. The sides of the warehouse were climbable, anyone could see that, though the task would be difficult—and falling would alert all four dwarves. A risky task indeed. “Be careful,” Kadorax said.

  The rogue nodded and slunk away at an angle that kept her a good distance away from the warehouse, but brought her to a better vantage point from the side of another building. When the guards were just making the turn out of her view, she sprinted for the warehouse, vaulting over a short span of ocean where the decking had rotted through and not been replaced. She grabbed one of the support beams that extended maybe eight inches beyond the rest of the walls, then began to climb.

  Kadorax had to admit he was impressed. He hadn’t considered the backwoods mayor as anything more than a politician with a few combat skills, but Brinna was quickly starting to prove her worth. The woman only slipped once, and then she was on the roof searching for an easy access point.

  Before long, Brinna dropped into the warehouse and out of view.

  “If this all goes to hell,” Syzak said a moment later, “do we try to save her, or do we make a run for it?”

  “You can’t see the guards’ stats from here, can you?” Kadorax asked. He had been pondering the same question ever since Brinna had left.
/>   “Not from this distance, but I doubt they’d be friendly anyway,” the snake-man answered, shaking his head.

  “The Kingsgate docks aren’t as heavily guarded as other cities since they have the royal guard here, but that doesn’t mean the company employing those dwarves went cheap,” Kadorax said. “I’ve at least got them beat for reach if I use my whip, and dwarves can’t really jump over your traps, but that’s it.”

  Syzak’s tongue nervously darted out over his lips. “A distraction, then?”

  “It is the best we could offer.”

  “We need the Grim Sleeper here. She could take on all four dwarves without a problem,” Syzak continued.

  “And get the whole royal guard called in!” Kadorax laughed. “She’s an abomination—a monster. Kingsgate wouldn’t let her live if the leaders knew she was openly stalking the streets and killing warehouse guards.”

  “Brinna better pull it off,” Syzak agreed.

  The two waited in their hiding place behind a few barrels and discarded fishing nets next to a market building for a few more minutes before movement in the water caught their eye. It was Brinna, and she surfaced about fifty yards south of Kadorax and Syzak, pulling herself onto a dock. She wore a smile that said she’d found something.

  “There wasn’t an easy way back to the roof,” the woman explained as the other two met her on the dock, “but the floorboards were pretty old, so I just wrenched one of them up and slipped through.”

  “I take it the body wasn’t inside?” Kadorax asked.

  Brinna shook her head. “No corpse, but it had been so long since I’d snuck past anyone that I actually ranked up in Sneak! I forgot what it was like to actually adventure and use my talents. Being a mayor… that’s boring.” She was sopping wet and probably cold, but her expression showed nothing beyond her excitement.

  “Good to hear it!” Kadorax said. “Now let’s get to the second warehouse before anyone wonders why you took a swim while fully clothed.”