RavensDagger

  Chapter Two Hundred ay-Eight - Disorder in the Port

  I gnced bad forth betweerand the sylph who had decided to front us. The entrance had security, who I imagined would probably not be super pleased that we’d maybe done a bit of trespassing.

  The other sylph though, they were about as suspicious as people hiding in the shadows to ambush a group of girls could be.

  In the end, it was Amaryllis that made the choice. She swiped a talon though the ball of light I was still holding onto, then she grabbed me and Awen by the scruff and tugged us bad deeper into the warehouse.

  “e on,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Right right,” I said as I turned around so that I wasn’t running backwards.

  There was just enough light from the entrahat I wasn’t totally blind as I followed after Amaryllis.

  The two sylph that had appeared were running bad to the end of one row of crates. They pulled one aside, revealing a hole in the artially covered by a piece of tarp to keep the light from the other side out.

  They slipped through a moment before we arrived. Amaryllis dove in. Awen turned around and swung her arm out in a wide semi-circle behind us. Gss glinted in the partial light as a dozen little caltrops made of magical gss cttered to the floor.

  That was a , if very mean, trick.

  “Go go,” I said as I pushed Awen towards the hole. She nodded and squeezed through.

  Then it was my turn. My upper body fit in fine, but then things got a little tricky when I was hip-deep in the hole. I grunted while pushing at the edges of the hole, tail squeezing down to try and pass.

  I fell through with a plop, and got a quiotification for my efforts.

  gratutions! Through repeated as your Proportion Distortion skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank D is a Free Rank!

  Well, that was one use for that, I thought as I rolled to my feet. We were in one of those thin alleyways behind the warehouses, old boxes against the walls and trash heaped up and rotting on the ground.

  “There!” Amaryllis said while pointing down the alley. The two sylph were flying off in the distahe taller buildings around us and the multitude of rails and poles above stopping them from gaining too much height.

  We took off after the pair. I don’t know why, exactly. If oal was to get away, then it made a heap more seo not run after them and go the other way instead, then the guard would have to pick between us and them.

  We spun around a er, then darted across to the front of the warehouse. The two sylph gained some altitude and moved up a floor before flying through the alley between two warehouses across the street.

  There was a carriage in the middle of the road, white, with the words Dock Security written on its side in blocky letters.

  “Faster!” I said before I scooped up Awen mid-run. I saw some security guards spin around by the entrance as we shot by.

  I jumped and nded on the floor above, Amaryllis followed me a moment ter after she jumped onto the carriage, thehat to boost herself up to the sed level catwalk. I made sure she wasn’t far behind as I tinued after the two sylph.

  “I think they’re thieves,” Awen said.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  “Those two! They’re thieves!” Awen reached out ahead of us, and a ball of magic shot out from her open palm. It rocketed past the sylph, who both ducked and started shouting some rather rude things about us.

  “What was that spell?” I asked.

  “Sparball,” Awen said. The one spell that wouldn’t hurt anyone, even if it nded a direct hit. So it was a distra.

  The sylph the end of the alley and then turned left at the interse.

  Amaryllis caught up just as I started to turn that way too. “The guards are after us,” she gasped out.

  “Oh no.”

  “Faster!” she called out.

  I could hear the disanised and fused call of guards trailing after us. The sylph took a right, ran past a road just outside of the warehouse district, then into another alley where I saw them take anht.

  I kept after them.

  “There!” Awen called out. She poio a small shack set up against the side of a rocky cliff. It wasn’t all that big, just a pce where someone could store a few shovels and such, maybe.

  The sylph disappeared through a window and then closed it behind them.

  I slid to a stop in front of the window, then tried to open it. It wasn’t a gss window, but a set of steel shutters, and it was pletely refusing to budge even as I grunted and gave it my all.

  “Back up,” Amaryllis said.

  I stepped back, especially when I saw electrical sparks rag across her feathers and hair.

  A loud cra ter and the window was blown off into the shack. “Amaryllis! You could hurt someoh that!”

  “We don’t have time!” Amaryllis said. She jumped forwards, into and through the window just before Awen vaulted in too.

  I gnced back down the alley. The guards weren’t in sight, but I could hear them, and they were getting closer. So with a few st seds of hesitation, I hopped through the window and into the poorly lit shack. Tools y on the ground, along with bundles of tarp and broken shelves. There was a noticeable ck of sylph maybe-thieves too.

  “Um,” I said.

  “They ’t just have disappeared,” Amaryllis said. “Quick, check the walls.”

  The shack’s outer walls were all made of tin over a frame of wooden beams, there wasn’t much to find there. But one wall, on the inside, artially made of stohe same rocky cliffside that the shack ressed up against.

  There was only one part that wasn’t just rock, a part of the wall covered by a shelf that, wheugged back, swivelled out to reveal a square-cut tunnel cut right into the stone.

  “Huh,” I said.

  "A smuggler's tunnel?" Amaryllis guessed.

  "Doesn't matter," Awen said, shoving my birdy friend into the dark. "Go, go, go!"

  "I'm going, I'm going!" Amaryllis squawked. "Broc, hurry up!"

  I could hear the guard's feet hammering the alleyway, but threw annce dowunnel. No telling what was down there, and I didn't want to be caught ft-footed again.

  "Broc!" Amaryllis shouted.

  "One sec; I need a on!" I called back as my eyes skipped over a scythe, some trowels, a few rakes, a hoe, wickedly-sharp gardening spears atop a tin bucket--

  I grabbed the bucket and lunged into the cave after my friends, dragging the door shut behind me. Instantly we were plunged into darkness, so I summoned a light ball in my free hand, and pushed some magito the bucket itself until it glowed ever so slightly. The tunnel cut into the cliffside for a dozen or so metres before opening up into a bigger, wider tuhat meant that I only had to crouch for a bit, after which I could almost stand to my full height--my ears were squished down by the low ceiling.

  “A miunnel?” Amaryllis guessed as she followed after me.

  The tunnel tio our left, but only for a little bit before ending at a rough wall. It went on to the right for quite a ways, at least as far as I could tell. There were rails on the ground, and I could imagine a cart using them to ferry stuff bad forth.

  “Do you think tunnels like these are on under Goldenalden?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Amaryllis said. “The city is said to have survived a few dragon attacks ba the day. Being partially underground might expin some of that.”

  “And now that it’s abandoned, it’s bee a super cool underground thieves' hideout,” I said.

  “I don’t know if I would use some of those words to describe a grungy, poorly lit tunnel, but yes, essentially correct,” Amaryllis said.

  Awen looked up and down the walls, especially at the rge wooden beams set every couple of metres. “I wonder if they build things above knowing that there are tunnels down here. It could be dangerous.”

  “Let’s not look too deeply into it,” Amaryllis said. “Knowing the sylph, they’d accuse us of plotting to make their city fall apart.”

  “I’m sure they have iions sometimes,” I said.

  We started following the rails. The ck of dust atop them, and the bare, scratched metal on their surface, hihat they had been in use retly. Likely by the sylph we were still chasing. It made sense, if their hideout had a system to carry stuff already in it, why not use it?

  The tunnel curved, aarted dowerse when I heard something thump behind us. I started to turn, when two sylph stepped out of the shadows before us. A third was blog the way back, long shiny knife in hand.

  “Who are you?” One of those in the lead asked.

  “Hello!” I said with as much good cheer as I could mao put them at ease, of course. “My name’s Captain Broccoli Bunch, and these are my friends. We were, ah, well, this is a bit awkward.”

  “What’s a bun doing here? With one of those chis and a human girl of all things?” the sylph asked.

  “That’s the thing, I’m irely sure. See, we were looking for some cargo in that pce when two of you showed up, then the guards showed up and you ran, so we ran after you. I’m starting to think we might have made a mistake.”

  “Yeah,” the other sylph said. “Your mistake was messing with the Mitchhum gang.”

  I blinked. “Oh! You’re the Mitchhum family?”

  “Who’s asking?” he snapped.

  “I just introduced myself, but I don’t mind doing it again,” I said.

  “You mog me?” he asked, his knife waving in the air before him. I ied him real quick. It wasirely polite to use Insight on someohout permission, but he was waving a knife in my general dire.

  Gutter Thief, level 10

  The other two weren’t much strohan that. With our sed csses, my friends and I had half a dozen levels more than them. “I’m not mog you, mister.”

  Amaryllis sniffed. “Perhaps you could sider helping us, instead of being quite so hostile.”

  “And why would we help fn scum like you, huh?” the first sylph to speak up said.

  “Because the three of us are seasoned adventurers used to raiding dungeons far more dangerous than some old abandoned mih a few scruffy thieves,” Amaryllis said. There was a smell to the air, of ozone and danger, and it was very clearly radiating from my harpy friend. “Because it would be much better for you to work with us, than against us, and because I have a notoriously short fuse and don’t appreciate being called a chi.”

  The thieves swallowed.

  I grinned, even bigger and friendlier. “e on, I’m sure w with us wouldn’t be all that bad! We’re nice people, I swear!”

  ***

  RavensDagger

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