Most of the rooms in the catacombs were in rough shape, no doubt the destruction of the Cathedral above them had something to do with that, but this one looked completely intact. The strength of its high, vaulted ceiling had likely kept it safe, along with a healthy layer of plot armor. Good thing, too. Its curved walls were lined with shelves, many of them filled with potion vials.
This was what I’d been hoping for, the cult’s secret stash of exorbitantly-priced healing potions. I was not expecting what else we found there, though.
“What’s this?” Lianna said, peering at a complicated apparatus lurking in the middle of the room.
It was the big brother of those tesla coil things in the summoning chamber, rising from the center of the room to its bulbous top and surrounded by five oval pods connected via wide, crooked tubes reaching down like a titan’s fingers. The first thing that came to mind were the cryo units from the Alien movies. The pods were the right size to hold a person, too.
“This, I believe, is how they made those potions,” I said.
Scarlet Hand’s Diabolic Extraction Unit
A relic of demonic technology from ages past, this device uses a complex alchemical formation to extract vitality or energy and convert it into elixirs.
Powers:
Drink Me - Convert siphoned essences into elixirs
It’s In You To Give - Siphon energy
This Won’t Hurt A Bit - Siphon vitality
“Yeuch,” Lianna grimaced at the sealed pods. “You don’t suppose there’s still...”
“One way find out.”
I went to one of the pods and pressed the big inviting button on its top. It opened like a clam revealing a padded bed inside complete with pillow. Thankfully, there was nobody still in it. On the underside of the lid portion there were three labeled buttons: Open/Close, Vitality On/Off, and Energy On/Off.
“Thanks goodness,” she said, seeing it empty. “I don’t think I want to see what a person looks like after all the life’s been sucked out of them.”
“Actually,” I said, pointing to the buttons under the lid, “I don’t think it was used to drain someone dry. Look, the controls are on the inside.”
“So the person inside could choose how much to drain,” Lianna said. “I guess this was used kind of like donating blood to the Red Cross.”
”Yeah, if the Red Cross was a for-profit cult aiming to drain people’s wallets dry.”
Once I’d moved and the apparatus was no longer in the way, I could see another solid metal door directly across from where we’d entered, less cumbersome than the one with the baby hand but still quite sturdy-looking.
Lianna ambled over to check out the potion stockpile while I went to examine the other door. It was locked, but there was a keyhole.
“Daniel,” Lianna called across the room to me, “would you say this room counts as part of the Cathedral?”
“I’d say so, yes,” I said, using the key I’d taken along with the metal hand from the head cultist to unlock this door and finding another room behind it. It wasn’t a large room, but it was packed full of bulky chests.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lianna said.
“Probably,” I said, entering the room.
“We are going to be so rich.”
“Um,” I said, opening a chest, “I think we already are.”
“Oh? What’d you find?”
Lianna jogged over to join me, then gasped when she looked inside the open chest.
“Holy shit,” she said.
I went to another and opened it, then another, finding the same thing inside all of them. It was like opening the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
The chests were full of gold, all the gold that the cult had extorted from all those Players who needed healing plus a whole lot more besides.
We stood there, goggling at the gleaming fortune in front of us for some time.
“You know we can’t just keep it all for ourselves, right?” I said.
“We can’t?” she said, then sighed. “Yeah, I guess we can’t. But what are we going to do with it? We can’t just give it back, we have no way of knowing who spent what on healing.”
“What do you think about reinvesting it back into civic improvements? Using it to make something that would benefit everyone, you know?”
“Such as?”
“I’ve got a few ideas,” I said, closing the chests.
“I’ll bet you do. Care to share?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Well, you know the cultural revolution we’re planning?”
“Ugh,” she said, sticking out her tongue, “that’s an even worse phrase to use than colonial, but yes.”
“What do you think about using this money to really fix the place up.”
“You mean the Cathedral?”
“I mean the city, and beyond. I was thinking that down the line we might want to build a new arena outside the city and repurpose the current arena for exclusive guild use. Now I don’t see a reason to wait.”
She held up her crossed fingers. “I know you’re like this with Annabelle and all that, but do you really think she’ll be okay with the guild taking it over like that?”
“Well...”
“Don’t fuck with me, Daniel. What aren’t you telling me this time?”
I produced the Arena and Cathedral medallions and explained how I got them.
Lianna treated me to another award-worthy sigh. “So in effect, when the city gave you this along with permission to use the Cathedral, they were actually giving you the whole thing. And that means that when Annabelle gave you hers she wasn’t just giving you the keys to the Arena, she was signing over the pink slips too.”
“That’s my suspicion.”
“And you were planning on telling me this when?”
“When I remembered to mention it, which I just did.”
“Christ, you really do need me, don’t you? You can't even keep all your assets straight.”
“That's what I keep telling you. And I don't want to build just another arena, I want a true colosseum that can host bigger spectacles for much bigger crowds. We’ve got the gold, and more.”
“If we're going all out, let's create a huge marketplace area surrounding the arena to attract merchants and clientele alike.”
“If you build it, they will come.”
“Yessss," she said, her face veritably glowing as her imagination ran wild. "I can see it. Shops, restaurants, vice parlors, the whole Vegas scene. Expand our penny ante bookie biz into proper casino mogul action. Part civic improvements, part bread and circuses.”
“We’ll need theatres, too.”
"Everybody likes a good show," she said.
“And a spa!”
“Hell yeah. A Norweigian spa with saunas and hot tubs and cold waterfalls and massages and hammocks and bonfires and gourmet food and oh my god let’s do it.”
“We’ll need to build up infrastructure to support the increased traffic and population boom." I opened my map. "The town of Caldeon here is close enough to the city, we could build the arena and marketplace area between here and there. Caldeon doesn’t have a wall so it could expand easily, so yeah, let’s use this gold to make major improvements there and turn the whole region into a tourist mecca.”
“Create a twin city? I like that idea.”
“Good, because you’re gonna run the show.”
She made a face. “I figured as much, but it does sound like fun.”
“We just need to do one thing first.”
“What’s that?”
“Solve the Darkness Dungeon in Caldeon. We can do that when this quest is over.”
“Suuuure," she said, "Let’s just go solve the Darkness Dungeon, then after a breakfast break we can grab a few more dungeons for the hell of it. You say these things like it’s normal.”
“Solving it won’t be an issue. I already have a good idea what the Darkness quest is, the only real problem is figuring out the hidden quest. I’m curious what title and benefits it gives.”
Lianna pondered me with an amused look. “When you play D&D you go room by room and fill in the whole map, don’t you? You need a hundred percent completion.”
“Don’t you?”
Just then, my Dick Tracy Communicator vibrated with an incoming call. The sapphire was glowing, meaning it was coming from Sigrid.
“Here,” I said, handing Lianna both the key and the metal hand before answering the call.
“You really trust me enough to give me these?” she said. “The keys to ridiculous riches?”
“Shhh,” I said, then turned to Sigrid’s image floating in front of me. “Whattup Sigrid?”
“You guys coming or what?” Sigrid said.
“Where are you?”
“Outside the arena with everyone else, where are you? It’s starting soon.”
“We’ll be there in a jiff,” I said, then closed the call and opened a portal. “Time to go. Ready?”
“No,” Lianna said with a quake in her voice. I couldn’t remember seeing her this nervous before. Or nervous at all.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got this, Vice-Captain.”
She huffed a short laugh and I saw her hands clutch the cold metal grips of the pistols strapped to her legs. “I trust you, too,” she said, and stepped through the portal.
We emerged onto the gazebo platform and I quickly closed the portal. I was hoping it would appear like we’d simply teleported here from another circle. From our raised vantage point on the gazebo we saw Sigrid was right, everybody else was already there and the crowd nearly filled the entire courtyard. The entire place buzzed with excitement.
Players milled around in clusters, eyeing each other as they sized up the opposition and jostled for a position to enter once the arena gates opened. Everyone was decked out in full battle gear, armor glinting everywhere and fearsome weapons openly carried. Almost everyone had jumped on the theme look bandwagon, and the place looked like the most incredible cosplay event on this or any other world.
I was wearing the outfit I’d premiered during my duel with Flint, even the cape. It was more stylish than my old nehru suit, but still only looked like a set of clothing rather than real armor. I must have looked underdressed by comparison, but I knew I was better protected than anyone else there.
I also didn’t need to openly carry any weapons on my body, I could make any of the many different ones I kept stashed in my inventory appear in my hand with a thought, but I still wore my paired elven knives, one strapped to the outside of each thigh, forest-style, as well as my P3’s in their hip holsters. That was enough. I didn’t see the need to hide everything anymore, given my escapades in the arena that cat had probably long since fled the bag.
It was Lianna who spotted Team Maple Leaf first, and we made our way off the gazebo then headed toward them.
Listening to snippets of conversation as we moved through the crowd, I discovered the cat was definitely out of the bag. Everywhere I went, Players whispered to each other about me being the guy who took out two whole teams single-handedly in the arena. Seems not only word of my miscreancy had spread, so too had the brash embellishment of its scope. Regardless, people now saw me as a clear and distinct threat.
Well, let them think that if they wanted. As long as it kept people from getting up in my business and looking to start a fight, then it worked for me.
Lianna clung close to my side as we made our way through the crowd. She was wearing the Black Widow catsuit tuned to a deep green color and her weapons were worn opposite to how I had mine: P3s holstered below her hips and twin elven blades easily accessible from their crossed sheaths on her lower back.
The reinforced padding in vital areas made her outfit look a bit more like armor, but like me she still appeared relatively defenseless compared to all the heavily armored Players milling about. Like me, she didn’t need to worry about it; anybody who tried attacking her would soon regret it.
I didn’t need to be able to read minds to know what she was thinking, although I did have a power that could let me glimpse surface thoughts. It was clear by the tension in her body and the way her eyes darted around that she was extremely apprehensive, whether because this must have been an overwhelming new situation or because she was still not used to the form fitting catsuit was anyone’s guess.