The Merchant of Tiqpa: The Bathrobe Knight's Sequel Page 24

  “Now, let’s go see what spoils there are,” Locke suggested encouragingly.

  Even before the words had left Locke’s mouth, Reginald had already made his way across the room and opened the chest.

  “Well?” Eliza asked impatiently. Her tone of voice earned her a few rough glances, but no one said anything.

  “Yeah, and not just one. There are ten of them. Or, at least, I think this is them,” he answered as he began pulling out tiny, black potions and passing one to each member in the party.

  Locke inspected the tiny vial as soon as it was in his hands and read the description aloud. “Ink of the Color Shifter: Allows the user to change the color of their eyes permanently to any color of their choice. To reverse the effect, hold eyes closed for five minutes while applying pressure to eyes with one’s hands at the same time. Options to reverse changes will become available afterward.”

  “So we could even make our eyes red like ‘Liza’s with these?” Reginald asked, a little too eagerly.

  Eliza cast a wary glance in his direction but didn’t immediately say anything. Locke could tell by the look that she wasn’t too happy about being assigned a nickname, but he also had the feeling that it wasn’t the first time she had heard something similar.

  “Yeah, we could. Although, I imagine we may want to save them for future disguises,” Locke suggested. “I don’t think we’ll be as welcome in the city as we were when we left,” he noted. Not that they had been particularly welcome when they first departed. Given that they had been forced to fight their way out of the city and escape from two different groups, it was highly unlikely that the Holy Alliance would have forgotten them so quickly. Additionally, they had just slaughtered a third group of Alliance members here inside the caverns. If they were so set on farming these drops for war funds, it was likely that word would have been passed around rather quickly as to who had stood in their way.

  “You're not really going to expect us to believe that one little scuffle with two no-name bands of Holy Alliance rank and file would result in us being banned from an entire city, are you?” Reginald scoffed at the idea.

  “Well, he doesn't need to suggest it at all,” a voice called out from behind them. Locke turned to see Sampson walking into the chamber looking rather somber. “I hope that loot was worth it. The entire city has gone into lockdown while we’ve been gone. The White-Wings and the Holy Alliance have apparently barricaded the entrances to the town, and they've started a sort of slow siege on the Fire-Walkers who are trapped inside.”

  “What? All because of us?” Reginald's mouth hung open.

  “Reggie, I know your mom told you that you were special, but no one is that important in our group,” Sampson laughed. “Rather, from what Bianca and Katherine have reported--they are both locked in the Wench’s Best Bubbly Head--it's because there is some bigwig Fire-Walker sailing in from across the sea. Everyone is expecting him to arrive today, and the Holy Alliance wants to shore up its resources and make sure the city is in their control before he arrives.”

  “But why?” Locke asked. “I know we were told that the Holy Alliance was trying to recruit the White-Wings into the war against the Demons, but why lock down the entire city? Are they really that worried about some random Demon managing to stray into town? Or has his holiness the bigwig charcoal showing up unannounced really got them worked up into that much of a tizzy?”

  “No, it means that they plan on killing all the Fire-Walkers,” Eliza explained. “The lockdown is as much to keep them trapped inside the city as it is to prevent anyone from getting in. It means that they’ve finally decided to make their move against the Fire-Walkers. It’s been fairly quiet for a while now, but those two factions have been locked in some ridiculous holy war about the true nature of their Sun God for ages now.”

  “Are the other factions doing nothing?” Locke asked incredulously.

  “From what I can tell, based on the information I found online? No. This seems to be a tight struggle so far, with only the Fire-Walkers and the White-Wings facing off.”

  Sampson’s reply was both good news and bad to Locke. On one hand, it meant that none of the other races would help the White-Wings crush the Fire-Walkers. But on the other, it meant that the Fire-Walkers were guaranteed to be outnumbered with no way to defend themselves against the coming onslaught.

  Where there is tragedy, there is opportunity. Right, Pops? Locke remembered one of his dad’s old lectures. Granted, his dad had given him the lecture with much more of a hopeful, lemons-into-lemonade perspective than genocidal plots allowed for, but Locke knew that the Fire-Walkers’ dilemma, terrible though it was, offered a way to keep the Blue Phoenix Brigade and Eliza working together and take a stab at the Holy Alliance all at the same time. Plus, it seemed like the White-Wings were of the same ilk as Anthony--power-drunk jerks who were so into their cause that they could justify treating anyone like a disposable peon. That didn’t sit well with Locke. “So I guess we don’t have a lot of time to act.”

  “Should we change eye color now?” Reginald said, he and Tubal both looking at Locke.

  Locke’s gut instinct told him to answer ‘Yeah, we definitely should put together as much of a disguise as possible so that we can sneak through unnoticed,’ but then he remembered what Sampson had told them. If the Holy Alliance had imposed some sort of martial law and weren’t letting anyone in or out of the city, then they were assuming that there wasn’t any real threat actually inside the city. That’s why they were still allowing foreigners to remain inside, even if they were sequestered in the Wench’s Best Bubbly Head. As long as someone wasn’t roaming the streets, they wouldn’t be perceived as a threat. Since there weren’t any Demons in the city before the lockdown, they wouldn’t be on the lookout for any organized threat to their plans--other than the Fire-Walkers, of course.

  “No, we won’t be needing them.” Locke finally answered. He was much more sure of this than he had been earlier when he had taken a gamble with the Mohawktopus. “I think I might already have a solution, but we’re going to need to move fast if we’re going to beat them to the punch.”

  “Are we rescuing the Fire-Walkers or killing the White-Wings?” Tubal asked, putting voice to the question that was probably on everyone’s minds.

  “That’s not even a question. We help people first. I thought you knew that,” Sparky answered, silencing the debate before it could even begin.

  As soon as Sparky spoke up, Tubal and Reginald were both nodding with what she said. Yeah, she carries a shield first. Locke gave Sparky a half-smile. “Alright, what we need now is a plan . . . and we don’t really have time to put one together.”

  Locke was actually keen on the idea of attacking the White-Wings while their guard was down and they were preoccupied with the Fire-Walkers. The Blue Phoenix Brigade might be good guys, but he had his doubts as to whether this motley crew could really provide any true opposition to the well-organized Holy Alliance or White-Wing forces. Regardless, it didn’t look like he had a choice in the matter. If he was ever going to strike a blow against the Holy Alliance, he was going to have to keep pushing boundaries and testing his luck.

  “Can’t we just kill everyone on the way to the keep and fight our way into their headquarters? We could just pretend that the head of the Fire-Walkers is a damsel in distress and save everyone else like heroes,” Reginald laughed. “Who knows, maybe the Fire-Walker head honcho is actually a girl. She could even have long hair that we could climb up.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure the Fire-Walker boss would be underground, not in a tower.” Tubal pointed out. “We never see them in any of the towering buildings that the White-Wings use so often, so it’s a safe bet that they’re under the city somewhere.”

  “Yeah, and I know exactly how to reach them,” Locke added, recalling the map that Red-Dragon had given him. “But if we go in with guns blazing, won’t the Naga be against us?”

  “Well, the Naga aren’t going to try to keep us out, are th
ey?” Tubal replied.

  “They were already helping to search for Demons and keep them out of the city before the Holy Alliance even made their move, so who is to say that they aren’t passively restricting things in favor of the Holy Alliance? This means that either the Naga are letting this happen because they have a stake in the White-Wings’ success or the Holy Alliance has found a way to bribe each individual Naga city guard. No matter which of the two it is, we still can’t just fight our way through without undoing the very thing we’ll be trying to prevent--their sealing the city against the Demon Host.”

  “The Demon Host?” Eliza asked skeptically. “You mean the StormGuard Alliance.”

  “Thanks for letting us know,” Sampson said, acknowledging Eliza’s correction and moving straight back to the point. “So exactly how are we supposed to get into the city if we aren’t allowed to stir things up with the guards at the gate? They’ve clearly already sealed the place, so what’s your idea?”

  “I got these from Red-Dragon,” Locke said, pulling out the maps and showing them to everyone else. “I didn’t exactly get a chance to look over them entirely, but I did see that one of the tunnels leads into the city, and I know for a fact that there is a hidden entrance leading up to the Wench’s Best Bubbly Head from the tunnels below. As a matter of fact, I almost got killed in it. The only problem we’re going to have is that there probably won’t be any source of light at all throughout the entire network. Fire-Walkers are their own torches, and from what I noticed while I was down there, the tunnels aren’t very accommodating for anyone else.”

  “Well, not to go all D&D on you, but if we’re traveling through a dungeon without light, we either need dark vision or some actual torches. That’s something every good adventurer knows before he even leaves the general store,” Reginald said, pointing at the moss that was lining the wall. “And this time, we don’t even need to deal with oil and fire. We’ve got an endless supply of light we can just rip up off the ground.”

  “Oh . . .” Tubal grabbed a piece of wood from the shattered sushi stand’s frame and then began to wrap it in the glow-in-the-dark moss. “Reginald, I don’t say this often, but sometimes you’re really smart.”

  “Yeah, it’s how I got into medical school,” Reginald responded with a laugh.

  Wait, Reggie, the troll who likes to mess with people for fun, is trying to grow up and be a doctor? Locke felt his confidence in doctors drop a few points as soon as the words left Reginald's mouth. I’m never letting Jess visit a hospital again. Ever. Locke stared at Reginald, mortified at the idea of a prankster with such an immature attitude ever giving someone health advice.

  “You should probably make a few dozen of them while you’re at it. You don’t want to roll a critical failure and have your GM punish you by making you attack yourself with your torch until it breaks,” Reginald pointed out as Tubal was about to walk away from the shattered sushi stand.

  “Wait, for real? That happens?” Sampson asked, chuckling. “Were you the GM?”

  “I was not! It was Simon. During that game, I was playing with Barnes and them. That guy may be a really good GM, but his twisted sense of humor left our party in several sticky situations.” Reginald was laughing heartily, even though he was the only one who found it amusing or had any idea what he was talking about.

  I guess it’s one of those ‘had to be there’ moments, Locke thought and shrugged it off.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Eliza began, “we need to get moving before anyone has a chance to figure out what our plan is. I’m sure those guys we killed are eagerly spilling their guts to their friends about now, and the longer we wait, the more heavily they’re going to fortify their defenses. They know that I’m in the area, and they’ll be expecting me to try and make it into town. Not to mention, if we don’t hurry, we might lose our opportunity to gain support from the Fire-Walkers.”

  “I actually agree with her. Everyone help me make these torches. If we waste too much daylight down here, the target might be dead before we even get there,” Tubal ordered, and Locke and the others quickly complied. They bundled up the torches, rushed to the surface and beelined straight for the town, all the while hoping that they weren’t too late already.

  -----

  Locke could see several thin trails of smoke climbing above the city like curled-up spaghetti even before they approached the walls. It really has started already, Locke thought unhappily. Despite the information that Sampson had given them via Katherine and Bianca, who were still trapped in the city, he had been holding out some small bit of hope that things weren't quite as bad yet as they had made it out to be. At this point, he was praying he wasn’t too late and that the smoke was only the sign of the battle starting and not that it wasn’t already over. He had delayed the group a little by stopping along the way so that he could pick the flowers that he needed to replenish his stock of potions and poisons for the upcoming battle. Without spending time in the swamp, though, he couldn’t make any new Fragility Poisons--not that his supply of those was running low after making so many inside the Mohawktopus’ dungeon--but he didn’t know how long the fight was going to last and was slightly worried he’d run out.

  He also made sure to divvy out over a dozen of the Health Potions and five or six Deadly Poisons to each group member as they traveled so that they wouldn’t suffer under a long encounter. Eliza was particularly stubborn about accepting them, but something about the urgency of the situation combined with the fact she had already experienced the quick healing of the Health Potion changed her mind.

  “So Katherine and Bianca are still inside the Wench's Best Bubbly Head. What’s the fastest way to get there?” Tubal asked, once more taking the reins of the Blue Phoenix Brigade. Locke wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Even if it had only been for a single boss encounter, he had actually liked being the one who came up with the plan. It had made him feel a lot less useless than when he was forced to stand around and watch the fight.

  “Well, judging by the maps, if we approach the city from the coastal side of the town, there should be a tunnel that leads directly under the city and straight to a stairway that will put us on the pathway that runs under the Wench’s Best Bubbly Head. It shouldn’t be an issue, but I’m seeing a few X’s that we’ll run through, and I have no idea what those are or what they could stand for,” Locke said, studying the map.

  “You think they may be guards? Pits of acids? Traps meant to catch people who aren’t supposed to go through the tunnels?” Tubal asked.

  “They very well could be, but I don’t think there’s much we can do it about it if they are. There isn’t a single pathway that I can see which will lead us to the Succubi without forcing us to travel through at least one of the X’s,” Locke said. “I don’t think we have a choice unless you want to go up to the street level right away.”

  “No, that doesn’t sound like a good idea at all,” Sampson answered almost instantly.

  “Hold up. There is definitely a shoe shop right here. See? I’ve passed it a few times.” Reginald pointed to one of the dungeon’s street exits on the map. “I mean, I know it’s a city invasion and all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a quick detour to pick up some kicks. We stopped twice for Shy to go flower picking, right?”

  “Reggie, I’m taking back that compliment I gave earlier. You really are an idiot sometimes,” Tubal said, shaking his head in disbelief along with the rest of the group.

  And a potential doctor! Scary! That small bit of information had wormed its way into Locke’s brain, and there was no way that it was going to be forgotten. He could just imagine Reginald walking in and high fiving him, cracking some joke and pulling a stunt that resulted in a missing appendage.

  “You’re only saying that because you have great feet. Look at them, all normal and whatnot. I have these awful, cleft, hoofed goat-feet. You know how long it took to get used to walking as a Satyr? And how awful it feels to look down and see lamb chops for legs?” Reg
inald complained. “Man’s gotta have good kicks, and mine got dirtied up and ruined in the last fight.”

  That actually raises a good point: What the heck is it like to play as one of the races that has an extra limb? Would the player get phantom limb syndrome whenever he exits the game? Would he be trying to move a body part that doesn’t exist in the real world? Locke couldn’t help but wonder as he looked down at Reginald’s feet. That can’t be comfortable at all. I know what it’s like to feel a cell phone I no longer carry vibrate all the time randomly against my leg, and that’s just something that goes off every now and then. Imagine losing an entire limb every time you log off the game . . . Locke suddenly felt even better about his decision to play as a Human. Initially, it had been only so that he could get the extra stat point for crafting and so that he could be closer to one of the more heavily-contested noob islands. Now, however, there was also the added benefit of not having to go through a traumatic experience every time he disconnected the dive device.

  Wait, if Sparky and Sampson are girls in real life, and either Katherine or Bianca is actually a guy in real life, then that means . . . Locke shuddered and ended his train of thought forcefully and instantly. That was the type of rabbit hole he just never wanted to go down. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. He filled his thought with the single word over and over again until the horrible idea had left his consciousness altogether, adding a mental reminder to never consider phantom appendages again if he could help it.