EPISODE 45:ADVENTURING SHOULD BE FUN“That arrogant, pig-headed son of a motherless whore!” Corwin swore as they walked away from the School of Blades. Vash noticed a few heads turning in their direction as they passed. He couldn’t tell if it was from the torrent of swears that Corwin was letting loose, or that news was getting around about their troubles with Sir Jacen.
Standing in the wide doorway of one of the school’s buildings, Vash noticed Kurt making conversation with a few other Wayfarers. Kurt looked earnest and made emphatic gestures as he spoke in low tones with the others, whose faces grew more and more concerned.
Vash thought, trying not to stare.
Kurt looked up, just as they were almost past. The look of grim sorrow and slight shake of his head that he gave them told Vash everything he needed to know. When the others turned to look, their faces stony, Vash tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“It’s just one vote.” Vash said. “Besides, you had little hope of getting Stahl on our side, anyway.”
“No,” Corwin conceded. “But I expected to have more of a conversation before he refused to help us.”
“We can’t worry about that now,” Vash said, studiously not looking back at Kurt and his audience. “We have four more schools to visit, and we just need three votes.”
Corwin nodded. “The School of Delvers should be our next stop. Assuming we’re still Wayfarers tomorrow, you’ll need to meet Master Lin anyway.”
“What can you tell me about her?” Vash asked as they turned to the eastern side of the village and the ramshackle collection of wooden buildings built into the sides of the hill.
Corwin took a moment to think about it, looking down at his boots as they walked. “She’s a halfling, so she presents a pretty friendly face to the world. I’ve never met a bitter or snide halfling, but underneath all those smiles and pleasantries, I’ve known a few that would stab you in the kneecap for an insult that you didn’t even know you made.”
Nodding, Vash remembered the Hollow Hill Boys back in Sathsholm. They were a halfling gang that shared Ragpicker’s Hollow with the Eth Mitaan. Byar had never enjoyed dealing with them because you couldn’t tell where you stood. Friend or foe got the same courtesy and pleasantness until the knives came out, of course.
“I’ve met some halflings like that,” Vash said. “It’s unnerving when they turn on you.”
“She’s always been nice to me, and seems to like Jabez well enough. That’s a plus.” Corwin said, lowering his voice as they approached the enclave of the Delvers.
The wooden structures appeared to be just facades dug into the side of the hill. Vash noted where the doors and windows stood. It was enough to give him a rough idea of the layout inside.
Vash thought.
A young man with a jet-black topknot and the sides of his head shaved lounged by the center-most door on the hill. He watched Corwin and Vash approach with an air of casual curiosity. Vash’s Core pulsed a muted warning, his alerting him to the two other men and one woman. The three others sat or stood near crates or in the corners near the School doors. Each was perfectly hidden from sight if one approached the front door from the village square. But they were anything but suspicious, just looking like they were working or sitting some place inconspicuous.
Vash thought, giving them each a casual glance, but nothing overt.
The youth with the topknot held up a hand when Corwin and Vash were about ten feet from the door. “That’s far enough, big man. Delvers only past this point.” He said, sounding incredibly bored. The youth eyed Vash speculatively. “You’re one of the Masked Ones?”
“Eth Mitaan.” Vash said, keeping his tone neutral.
The youth shrugged. “Same thing, right?”
“Not exactly.” Vash said, trying not to let the irritation show in his voice.
A slight smile quirked on the young man’s lips. “Come on then, Lin wants to see you.”
Vash looked over at Corwin, not sure what he was supposed to do. “What about Corwin?”
“I’ll be fine out here.” Corwin said, finding a seat on a nearby supply crate. “Just don’t take too long. We’ve got three others to visit after this.”
“We’ll have him right back out. No worries, big man.” Topknot said, grinning broadly. With a flourish, he stepped forward and opened the door beside him, giving a mock bow.
Vash hesitated at the doorway, but his didn’t go off. Cautious, but casual, he stepped across the threshold into the entryway. Topknot followed him in and shut the door behind them. With a series of deft flicks and twists, Topknot locked the door. Vash took a moment to look at the complicated locking mechanism.
. Vash thought. Looks like pattern tumblers.
Topknot followed his gaze and smiled. “Can never be too careful. I heard that there are thieves out there.”
Vash smiled weakly at the joke. Topknot didn’t seem to take offense, simply brushed past and lead Vash down the corridor. After a few turns, they came to another door. Topknot opened it easily. Beyond was a staircase leading down into a dimly lit tunnel under the hill.
“Lin’s down in the Tombs,” Topknot explained. “It’s where we do most of our training. One mechanism broke, and she’s the only one who knows how to repair it. She didn’t want to make you wait so…”
Another flourish, and Topknot gestured to the stairs down, looking at Vash expectantly.
Vash resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the theatricality and started down the stairs. It was no surprise at all when, by the time he reached the third step down, he heard the door click shut. The hinges were well-oiled and the door barely made a sound when it swung closed.
Vash thought and continued his descent.
The stairs went down about twenty feet and opened onto a broad antechamber. Stone pillars with decorative friezes stood every five feet in the thirty-foot wide room. Beyond the pillars was a long chamber, about a hundred feet from the antechamber to a raised dais at the far end.
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In-between stood several fountains and statuary. A flagstone path wound its way throughout the room, branching off and coming back together around stone planters with a variety of strange plants growing in them. Mage lights hung from chains embedded in the ceiling, giving off a warm yellow-white glow. The light was bright enough to see by, but left many shadows throughout the ‘garden’.
At the far end, on the dais, a halfling woman kneeled in front of a half-disassembled clockwork mechanism. She had taken it out of a large box on her right. Vash could see the glint of gears and springs.
The halfling woman looked up and peered past everything to look at the entryway. “Someone over there?”
Vash took a step forward and stood next to one of the stone pillars. “Yes ma’am. My name is Vash Ballard, and I was hoping to have a word with you?”
The halfling woman, Vash guessed this was Lin, cocked her head to one side and made a face. She was small, like all halflings, though it was hard to guess her height while she kneeled on the ground. Her honey-blonde hair was bound up in a messy bun, and her face had the crow’s feet and laugh-lines of late middle-age.
Vash didn’t know how halflings aged, so late middle-age could be anywhere from mid-forties to a century or more.
“I have to say, Vash, you picked a pretty awkward time to muck up the works.” Lin said, reaching for a slender tool on a leather roll on her other side and getting back to work on the clockwork.
“I didn’t mean to muck anything up.” Vash said. “Honestly, I didn’t know there was anything to muck up.”
“There’s always something to muck up.” Lin sighed, tightening something deep inside the mechanism in front of her. “But that’s neither here nor there. Right now we have to figure out what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.”
“I’m not sure how much you know of my situation.” Vash began descending the steps into the garden. There were three low granite steps that led to the flagstone path. Vash almost stepped off the last one when his gave him a low pulse of warning. He stood with his foot hovering in mid-air, considering the flagstone below his boot.
“I know you left a huge clusterfuck back in Sathsholm.” Lin said, not looking up. “You and your friends pissed off both the human gentry and the Vanan elves at the same time. That takes talent.”
Vash moved his foot over to the next flagstone over and thefaded. He stepped down onto the flagstone path.
he thought, looking at the plants for the first time.
Vash hesitated before speaking again, gambling that Lin would prefer the straight truth over excuses. “That’s true. It was a mess from the start. Though it wasn’t just our mess.”
Lin grunted in agreement, squinting at some part she couldn’t quite see. “I heard about that, too. Duke Adolus is listening to the wrong folk again. We hoped his father would steer him away from his less savory pursuits. Unfortunately, Duke Oskar died of dysentery during that squabble out east. Strange how quick he went.”
Carefully, Vash moved to step forward again. flared, loud and clear this time. There was something dangerous, very close by. Vash glanced up at Lin. She was elbow-deep in the mechanism, trying to get a small part to fit correctly.
Quieting his mind, Vash summoned the formula for. The formula snapped into place and Vash felt a quick pulse of mana flow into the structure. One by one, flagstones took on a reddish glow. Within moments, nearly half the stones on the path ahead of Vash warned of a trap trigger.
“See anything interesting?” Lin asked without looking up.
“A lot of paranoia?” Vash said, trying to find a pattern in the stones.
“Ha! I mean, it’s true, but this isn’t some sort of sanctuary. It’s a training room. Trust me, there are far worse places than this up in the deep forest or buried under some of the really old mountains.” Lin said, finally fitting the pieces she wanted back together with a satisfying click.
Vash walked lightly on the stones not ringed with an angry red glow. As he walked, he noticed the easy pattern to the safe stones.
“Now, I’m not all that concerned with your life before you took your Guild Mark. Most of us have some history we’d rather remained history. Especially us Delvers.” Lin continued, fitting pieces back into place. “What I am concerned with is what happened on this half-baked quest that Adolus and his lackeys dreamed up.”
While Vash picked his way through the trap-filled room, he told the Master Delver as much of his tale as possible. He didn’t mention absorbing soulstones, including one from a person trapped in the Underlands for an untold amount of time. When he got to the part about the Shadow Temple, she looked up from her work and looked at him, appearing startled that he’d made it as far as he had across the room.
“The big ruin with all the columns? About two miles from the river if you’re traveling upstream?” She asked. Her startlingly blue eyes were very serious.
“I think so.” Vash nodded. He’d just had to hop over three sections and was now balancing on one foot next to a potted plan. “I didn’t really make a map.”
That was a bit of a lie. Using his, he had imprinted a fairly detailed map of his journey in his memory. Even now he could close his eyes and see any place that he had been in the Underlands.
Lin frowned. “That’s not good. We’ve avoided that ruin for a while, ever since I was an apprentice, anyway. But it’s always been dormant. No Heartstones, even the Therium in that area absorbed little mana. Most creatures seemed to avoid it, and that was good enough for us.”
“You’ve been down there?” Vash asked, incredulous.
“We send an expedition down every year or so.” Lin nodded, lifting the clockwork contraption and settling it gently into the control chest. “Clear some of the more troublesome monsters. Make sure that no dungeons are forming beneath our feet. If that temple is active, though…”
Lin broke off, thinking hard. She closed up the control chest and flipped a few switches. A sudden whirring sound began under Vash’s feet. He felt the flagstones shifting, the trapped stones forming into a new pattern.
Vash swore and jumped to the nearest clear stone.
“And you said this Zakarias was a servant of Rasu?” Lin said, idly flicking more switches and turning knobs,
“That’s what the Hollowmound Queen said, that he was a Champion of Rasu.” Vash said, searching out another clear stone. The safe stones were moving back the way he came, and the other side of the room was filling up with trapped ones.
flared in Vash’s Core, urging him to move to his right. Vash glanced rightward, seeing the last safe stone was at least ten feet away. Pushing a quick pulse of mana, Vash summoned . He leaped for the safe stone just as a clockwork click sounded from a statue nearby. The statue, a handsome bronze statue of a warrior in the late Malconian style, twisted using unseen clockwork, and slashed his bronze sword through the empty air Vash had recently occupied.
“Rasu is the demon lord of corruption. The Defiler of the Flesh, he’s called.” Lin said, halfway talking to herself while she twisted a knob.
The stone Vash stood on suddenly lurched to the left. Vash pumped more mana into , shifting it to his agility. Even then it was blind luck he kept his balance. When the stone moved close to one of the garden beds, Vash took a chance and jumped into the soft dirt.
“A nasty character.” Lin continued, either ignoring Vash’s distress or genuinely distracted by her own thoughts. “I don’t like the idea of someone that tainted by the shadow being so close to Duke Adolus.”
Vash’s pulsed. He turned to see a plant with a large seed pod behind him. The leaves around the pod peeled back, revealing mottled green plant flesh. Vash recoiled as the plant’s pod opened, revealing multiple rows of thorns that the plant was using as teeth. He turned and ran, making a desperate leap for the dais. The plant made a hollow behind him as it snapped its pod, missing by a hair’s breadth.
Vash landed on the dais, but only just barely. The toes of his boots landed on the very edge. He struggled to keep his balance, but felt his Talent fall apart.
The sea of red stones directly below him filled Vash with icy dread.
Suddenly, as he toppled backwards, a firm hand grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him forward onto a more stable footing.
“The Duke sends one of his men up here, gives him a knighthood because he knows we won’t mess with the gentry, all while supporting and funding a shadow-tainted…who knows what.” Lin said, continuing her own train of thought while Vash fought to catch his breath. “And Sallick forces us to get involved with this Council vote. It’s smart. Annoying, but smart.”
“I came here…to ask for your support.” Vash said, struggling to get his breath back.
“Hm?” Lin said, distracted. “What? Oh, in the Council? Of course, I’m not sending anyone back to Adolus while he’s mucking about with demon lords. At the very least, it’s bad for business.”
Vash stared at the halfling for a moment. “Then…then why…” He waved at the room behind him. “I thought this was some sort of test!”
“That?” Lin asked, looking back at the rapidly changing room. “Oh no, I was just repairing the control system. I didn’t stop you because you looked like you were having fun.”
“Fun?”
“Of course.” Lin said seriously. “Adventuring is supposed to be fun, Vash.”
