by Robert Bevan
Dusty Sheglin stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Okay. I simply must know what it is you fellows are talking about.”
“It doesn't concern you,” said Tim.
“Yeah,” said Cooper. “Let's find your stupid fucking relic and get out of here. I'm hungry and my chest hurts.”
“Yeow!” a voice screamed from behind them.
“They're right behind us!” said Dusty. “We must hurry!” He scrambled down the passage, and the others followed close behind him. They stumbled along the dark and dirty path for another five minutes or so before it came to an abrupt end.
“Well shit,” said Julian.
“What are we going to do?” asked Dave.
“The only thing we can do,” said Cooper. He unstrapped his axe and tried to maneuver his body in such a way that he would be able to swing it in such tight quarters.
“Nonsense,” said Dusty. “We'd be sitting ducks for those drow poison arrows. He reached up and pressed his palm against a part of the dirt wall which looked exactly like every other part of the dirt wall. A section of floor slid open under the wall, revealing a hidden staircase. “Hurry,” he said. “Go down there.”
Without hesitation, Juilan, Cooper, and Dave hurried down the stairs. Tim took a single step down and stopped. He was descending further into complete darkness, and he didn't like it one little bit. “What's down there?”
“Eternity!” said Dusty.
Tim didn't even have time to voice the 'Huh?' in his head. Before he knew what hit him, his crossbow was swiped right out of his hand, and a sudden jolt to the back sent him tumbling head over feet down the stairs.
When he finally hit the packed dirt floor at the bottom, he opened his eyes and waited for his vision to stop swirling. As it turned out, swirled vision wasn't a problem. He had no vision. He had to close and open his eyes a few more times just to make sure they were indeed open. They were, but there was nothing to see. He was in an inky black void. “Where are we?”
“In a cell, by the looks of it,” said Dave.
“You can see?” said Julian.
“Yeah.”
“I can't.”
“You've got low-light vision,” said Dave. “I've got darkvision. Your eyes can function with a small amount of light. Mine function even with no light at all.”
Tim felt around in the dark for the bottom stair and sat on it. “That's really fucking interesting, Dave. Would you mind giving us some kind of idea about the situation we're in?”
“Why don't you ask Dusty?”
“Because he just kicked me down the stairs like a redneck abortion.”
“Speak of the devil,” said Dave.
Suddenly Tim could see again. The room was lit with torchlight as Dusty Sheglin walked in. Unfortunately, he was on the other side of a partition of iron bars. A quick observation of the lock to the cell door told Tim he was going to need more than his dick to pick it.
“It's a pleasure to see you gentlemen again,” said Dusty, affixing his torch to an empty sconce on the wall. “Have you met my friend Gimble?”
“What's going on, Sheglin?” demanded Tim.
Dusty ignored the question. He tapped quietly on one of two wooden doors in the cramped little room. “Gimble?”
“Out in a minute!” said a voice from within.
Dusty simply stood in the middle of the room and the awkward silence.
Beside the door this Gimble character was behind, there sat a wooden desk piled high with books, papers, quills, and jars of various colored ink. In front of the opposite wall stood a bookcase filled with books, vials, scrolls, and assorted knick-knacks. Some of them looked decorative. If any of them had a function, Tim didn't know what it was.
Finally, Gimble's door opened, and a drow emerged. His hair was as white as any other drow they'd encountered down here, but it was wild, haphazardly braided in some places, tied off with beads here and there. It was as disheveled as his desk. He rubbed his black hands on his filthy robe and squinted at his prisoners. Unsatisfied, he produced a pair of glasses from an inside pocket. They were huge and round, and made his already wild red eyes even more unsettling, as did his yellow-toothed grin when he finally got a good look at his captives.
“Well done, friend,” he said to Dusty. His voice was like silk rubbing against sandpaper. “Fine specimens, all of them. But you’ll recall that I needed the blood of five different sapient creatures.” He grinned his wicked grin at Dusty. “Are you volunteering yourself as the fifth?”
“The elf has a bird tucked under his robes.”
“Sapient creatures, you fool!” said Gimble. “A bird is not sapient. You barely qualify yourself.”
“It’s his familiar,” said Dusty. “It can talk, and it’s a notch more intelligent than any of these others here.”
Gimble raised his white bushy eyebrows. “Stupid bunch, are they?”
Dusty looked at the prisoners, shook his head, and laughed. “Don’t get me started. They blew all their money on one day's worth of food, which they wanted to gobble up as soon as we entered the catacombs, and more than a dozen torches. Tell me, what do you need so many torches for if you're only planning to be gone a single day?” He threw his hands in the air. “And they didn't even buy a ten-foot pole! Who goes exploring underground tombs without a ten-foot pole? I ask you that!”
“A grievous oversight indeed,” said Gimble.
“The barbarian,” Dusty continued his rant, “unquestionably the dumbest of the lot, flew into a rage just to increase the ferocity with which he fell down the stairs. Don't even get me started about the halfling and the horse. Can you believe he fancies himself a rogue, and he doesn't even own a set of Thieve's Tools? It's insulting really.”
Gimble put his slender black hand on Dusty's shoulder. “There, there, friend. Calm down.”
“I don't get it,” said Julian. “Why are they friends? He's black.”
This drew blank looks from everyone on either side of the prison bars.
“Dude,” said Cooper. “Not cool, man.”
“For the last time!” Dusty said. “He's a drow!” He pulled at the hair above his temples. “Would you believe me if I told you that this elf over here has literally never heard of drow before?”
Gimble pursed his lips and furrowed his brow. “I would find that most unlikely.”
“Fuck this,” said Cooper. “I'm hungry. Let's break out the food.”
“I tell you, Gimble,” said Dusty. “These past couple of hours have been mental torture. I didn't think I could –”
Someone from outside rapped loudly on the door. Dusty put a finger over his lips and gave the prisoners a warning glare. He retreated into the room Gimble had come from. Gimble waved his hand at the cell, and a rough grey curtain slid across a rod, blocking their view.
The door creaked open.
“What is it?” snapped Gimble.
“There have been,” a second voice began, and then stopped. “Why do you have a torch lit in here?”
“I came down with a chill,” said Gimble. “I wanted to warm my hands. Is there a reason you disturb my study?”
“There have been reports of intruders at the back of the catacombs. Two of our number have been slain. Your brother requests that you –”
“My brother,” snarled Gimble, “cares not what ills may befall me. I'm just an incompetent wizard. He said so himself.”
“I have been ordered to –”
“Stuff your orders!” snapped Gimble. “If my brother requires my counsel, he can pay me the respect of coming here in person. Now go away before I feed you to Oliver!”
The door slammed shut. A second later the curtain flew open. Gimble paced as much as one could in such a tiny space. He was lucky to get a second step in before he had to turn around. “My brother requests my presence!” he said to the prisoners. “Like he's the high priest of Meb-Gar'shur.”
“Older siblings can be a pain in the ass,” said Tim, leaning face first against the b
ars.
Gimble pulled down on his long black ears. “I know, right?”
“Don't listen to him,” said Dusty, who had just re-entered the room. “He is trying to establish a friendly rapport with you. Make you feel empathy with him, so that you don't kill him.”
“Ha!” said Gimble. “Fat chance of that. But I have a bone to pick with you, old friend.” His index finger thunked against Dusty's fake armor. “I just got word that two of my kin are dead. We had an arrangement. No one was supposed to get killed.”
“The first one caught us by surprise,” Dusty explained. “We didn't have a choice. I dispatched him quickly and quietly.”
“And the other?”
“I don't know,” said Dusty. “Your little halfling friend there shot one of them, and set a group of them on fire. One of them must not have survived.”
“Mercy of darkness!” said Gimble, glaring at Tim. “How am I supposed to enslave and rule over my people if you go and burn them all to death? Answer me that!”
Tim put his palms up in the universal 'What the fuck?' stance. “What was I supposed to do? They were –”
“He even tried to kill Oliver,” said Dusty.
Gimble gasped. “No!”
“Who the fuck is Oliver?” said Tim.
Gimble pulled open the bottom right drawer of his desk. It was twice as large as any of the desks other drawers. The smile across the drow's face was met with excited squeaking from within the drawer. The dark elf pulled out and cradled a fat white rat.
“Shit,” said Tim.
“I nearly blew my cover trying to save him.” Dusty smiled at Tim. “Fortunately, this group will believe anything you tell them, so long as it comes with vague promises of treasure. They are as greedy as they are stupid.”
“Hey!” said Tim. “Fuck you, Sheglin!”
“Yeah,” said Julian. “For a priest, you're kind of a dick.”
Tim and Dusty simultaneously palmed their foreheads.
“What?” said Julian.
“He's not a priest,” Dave explained patiently. “He's a rogue, just like Tim.”
“Hey now,” said Dusty. “I'm a far better rogue than your idiot friend there.”
Julian didn't look like he had quite put it together yet, so Dave explained further. “The whole thing was an act. The fake armor, the quest for redemption. His inability to perform even one minor clerical act.”
“Ooohhh...” said Julian, the light of understanding finally sparking in his eyes. “So he's like a con-man, or a criminal?”
Dave shrugged. “Sure, something like that.”
“Which explains why he's cool with black people.”
“Jesus fuck, dude!” said Cooper. “Cool it with the black people already. He's a fucking drow! This is a fantasy game world. There are no black people.”
“Cooper!” said Dave.
“Oh wait. That didn't come out right. What I meant was –”
“Shut up!” cried Dusty. “All of you just shut up!” He turned to Gimble. “Give me my reward so that I may get out of here... away from these cretins for good!”
“Go back to sleep now,” Gimble whispered to his rat, covering its face in little kisses. He lowered the rat back into the drawer and slid it ever so gently closed.
He opened the top left drawer and pulled out a flat, square box, only about an inch thick. He opened the box and reverently picked up a braided cord – too big to be a bracelet and too small to be a necklace – with a single green gemstone at the front.
“The Headband of Intellect,” he whispered. “What do you plan to do with the gift of such higher intellect?”
“Nothing,” said Dusty. He licked his lips and stared at the headband. “This is my big score. I'm gonna sell it for a fortune, and retire in the Southern Islands.”
“You humans disgust me sometimes,” said Gimble, making sure to hold the headband a safe distance from Dusty's reach. “Always after some next big score, a quick fix to all your problems. You lack patience and forethought. It took me years of careful planning to steal this from my brother. Years more to construct tunnels and secret entrances so that I might hire someone to smuggle in volunteers for the blood ritual which, in turn, took years to research.” He looked down at the headband in his hands. “Clever as I am, I lack the brain power to complete this ritual on my own. I need the extra intellect which this headband will provide. Only once I have completed the blood ritual, and have successfully enslaved my people, may you take this and sail off to whatever island you like.”
“Very well,” said Dusty. “How long will this take?”
Gimble placed the headband on his head. The green stone glowed bright on his forehead. His eyes rolled back into his head and he trembled for a moment, and then it was done. He snapped back into focus and his cunning eyes looked sharper than ever.
“I have most of the preliminary work completed,” he said. “It will just be a matter of setting things, up, drawing a few runes on the floor, and exsanguinating our guests.”
“Sweet!” said Cooper. Everyone looked at him.
“What the fuck is sweet about that?” said Tim.
“He's going to set us free,” said Cooper. “You know, like Lincoln?”
“That's emancipate, fucktard,” said Tim. “Exanguinate means he's going to drain out all of our blood.”
“Oh,” said Cooper. “That sucks.”
“You see what I've had to deal with all day?” said Dusty. “Half the time I don't even know what they're talking about.”
Gimble opened the door he had first appeared through. “Stop moaning and help me get these boxes out of the closet.”
“Well why don't we just kill them first?” suggested Dusty. “Their blood isn't going to go anywhere.”
“For the spell to take effect,” Gimble explained, “I need to be consuming their blood at the precise moment they pass from life to death.” He handed Dusty a wooden box about as large as two adult-sized shoe boxes side by side.
“Something's moving inside here,” said Dusty.
“Of course they're moving,” said Gimble. “They're snakes.” He opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out a black dagger, similar to the one Tim had taken from the drow Dusty had killed.
How could Tim have been so blind. He should have recognized Dusty for what he was right then and there. That had been a classic rogue Sneak Attack. A cleric couldn't have pulled off a move like that.
Dusty held out the box at arm's length. “Are they poisonous?”
Gimble scoffed. “Of course not, stupid human. Don't be ridiculous.” He sliced his thumb open with the dagger, got on his knees, and began to rub a circle of his own blood on the floor. “It hurts my brain to hear such silly babble.”
“Ah well,” said Dusty, smiling. “You can never be too careful.” He pulled the box in closer so that he could hold it with one arm. With his other arm, he carefully lifted the lid to look inside.
Gimble continued scooting backward and counter-clockwise, letting his thumb bleed a circle on the ground. “Poison has to be inhaled or ingested. Snakes are venomous.”
“Huh?” said Dusty. He was quickly answered with a hiss and a snake to the face. He screamed and dropped the box. It landed upright, but with the top wide open. “Fuck! Help me!”
It was a tiny black snake with yellow stripes, maybe six inches long. But it scared the shit out of Dusty as it hung from his nose by its fangs.
“You cursed fool!” said Gimble. He pinched the snake gently on its neck. “Hold still, you sniveling little... huh? What's...” The drow looked confused. Even more interesting, however, was the headband levitating above his head.
“My prize!” Dusty screamed, jerking his head up and tearing a gash in the left lobe of his nose where the snake had been hanging on. He pushed away Gimble, who stepped in the box of snakes. After a brief chorus of hissing, Gimble's red eyes went as wide as 3-balls, and he collapsed to the floor.
“What the fuck is going on?” said T
im.
“Mage Hand,” said Julian. “Can you believe it's a zero-level spell?”
Tim looked over. Julian had his arm extended, pointing at the floating headband. It was just out of Dusty's reach and floating toward the torch on the wall.
“No!” cried Tim and Dusty at the same time. Dusty ran to the wall. Just as he was about to reach it, the headband suddenly switched course, flying straight up to the ceiling, away from both the flame and Dusty's grasp.
Cooper reached into Julian's bag. “Huh huh,” he grunted. “Watch this.”
