Chapter 165: Five Mycari and a Dull-Ear

Once again, Cal was laying gear out on his basement workbench, albeit this time it was to stow them away for the mission, not use them.

Bael'zhar went into the void ring. So did Nen'tae, the fel oak, Mycari-headed spear, the throwing knives, Piker's daggers. He threaded the silver band onto a leather cord, knotted it twice, and hung it around his neck under his shirt where the armor would sit over it. Then he dressed the part of a man worth robbing for nothing.

His backup spear had a basic metal head and an ash shaft made out of decent E-tier materials, and the shortsword was plain, its blade sharpened but its guard scuffed and worn. The hunting bow he'd bought secondhand in Mirathra for a handful of gold, along with a quiver of standard shafts and a lesser harvesting knife with a bone handle. His armor stayed on his body, though, because looking harmless had limits, and he wouldn't sacrifice his overall safety. Everything else read as the kit of a competent nobody.

Five Mycari, one dull-ear, and roughly three days alone in a forest and dungeon. What could go wrong?

He worked the buckles at his ribs, where the leather had been laid open the night before and he'd quickly stitched it back together, hoping it'd hold until he could get it to a professional. The packet from Felicity had listed the delvers by name and tier and little else useful. But that had been enough. He'd read the word Mycari five times down the roster and then gone and created a Sneaky Protocol. Now it was time to get his guide on.

Outside, the air had a different taste than usual. Like woodsmoke, but the wrong kind—resin and burnt varnish. Maybe something sweeter underneath. Smoke hung in a haze over the north end of the village, and Cal went on his way without sparing the direction another glance, turning onto the road that ran down to the assembly point.

Hopefully, if any of these five knew Herod Blackbriar had coin out on a half-elf, they'd have heard by now whose house went up in flames last night. And if not? I'll make sure they do.

The team was waiting past the south gate where the Trace began, five of them in a loose knot with their packs already shouldered. The leader came forward a few steps. She had deep green skin, black hair bound close, a spear across her back, and was quite pretty. She looked him over the way a carter looks over a hired pack mule.

"You are the Hall's guide?"

"Yup, that'd be me." He inclined his head. "Call me Cal."

"Leylith. We only have two days to get this done because of your guild master's delays. You will walk where I tell you and speak when there is something to say. Do you understand?"

"That's easy enough."

"Good. You have done this before, yes?"

"I know the route to the dungeon core and will get you there faster than anyone else."

"We shall see."

Behind her, the big one snorted. He was broader than the rest, forearms thick and knotted, with an axe hanging at his hip and a shield on his pack. "Two days and a dull-ear holding the map." The man spat into the grass off the road. "They have honest Mycari in that Hall and they sold us this."

"None that have ever crossed the shard's barrier," Cal said cheerfully. "I'm happy to stay here, if you'd like? This job wasn't my choice, either."

The big Mycari man stared at him, brown eyes going hard. Leylith lifted two fingers and he stopped immediately, bowing his head in her direction.

A thin and fussy man came next, with a satchel across his chest that clinked when he moved, and a crossbow slung across his back with its string waxed to a shine. He looked at Cal's plain spear and the secondhand bow and sneered. "I'm Harl. You carry your own draughts, guide? Your own rations?"

Cal turned slightly to showcase the pack he always carried. "I've got everything I need right here."

"Good, good." Harl touched the satchel. "I wasn't planning to feed a guide out of my count."

"Of course you weren't."

"And another thing," Harl sniffed, cinching the satchel strap down as though it had personally wronged him. "Five days we sat in that village waiting on your Hall to produce a guide. Five days of lodging and eating at inn prices, against a writ that seats one window and no other. Another day and we would have had to go in without you."

"Take it up with Torben Grell." Cal kept his tone mild. "I wasn't available until today."

The fourth delver had been watching the whole time without joining any of it. Lean and slender, with a pair of long knives crossed at the small of his back and a smile that seemed to arrive when he decided it should, as opposed to any genuine emotion. He came in close and put out his hand, which Cal shook politely.

"Vesk. The friendly one's Skarn." He held the grip a half-beat past its natural end and looked down Cal's arm and back up to his face. "You a half-blood, huh? Mother's side or father's?"

"My mother was Mycari."

"Ah." He let go. "Local, then? Deadfall's a small place to be from."

"So it is…"

Vesk kept looking at him after the conversation stopped, weirdly calm. Cal had been sized up before, but this sat apart from other experiences. It was closer to the way Aurelian looked at a jar of reagents before he decided which shelf it belonged on.

The fifth Mycari stood a few yards back from all of it, and Cal nearly missed him. He wore grey-brown robes and carried no visible weapons, with a plain pack and folded hands. He hadn't spoken.

"Ondrel," Leylith said, without turning. "He is only here if needed."

Cal nodded at him. Ondrel stared back, and that was the whole of it.

While Harl argued with Skarn about pack distributions, Cal let his perception spread. Skarn came in high D-tier and fully red, no question that he followed the Martial Path. But the aura seemed thin somewhere Cal had trouble naming, until he set it against the monsters in his memory. The Imperial Academy nobles all had perfect foundations, and their auras were solid through and through. Skarn's had gaps in the mortar, as did Vesk's. Harl's was a shade worse than both of them, but they were all high D and physically attributed.

Leylith read differently.

Fuller than her grunts and firm all through, the note of her spirit holding steady without a flutter at the edges. A perfect foundation, laid brick by brick and paid for, and full Harmonic to boot. Cal had felt that exact solidity in the Veils and Team Zenith. Even in himself, if he sat and looked inward.

He swung back to Ondrel and found almost nothing. A faint, dim presence, which could mean nothing… or could mean a lot.

"Let us move out," Leylith commanded.

The Delver's Trace ran southwest, straight as an arrow through Sitka spruce with moss hanging in ropes off the lower branches. Skarn took point without being asked. Cal walked where he was told, which was behind Skarn and ahead of everyone else.

After they'd walked for an hour or so, Cal decided it was time.

"Did anyone else notice there was a fire in the village last night?"

Nobody bit, and Harl punctuated the lack of response by hacking up and spitting a loogie.

"I heard it came from the enclave," Cal continued. "Word on my walk down was Herod Blackbriar's own house, with him inside it."

Skarn stopped walking and swung around while Cal watched the rest pull up short behind him through his sphere.

"Blackbriar." Leylith said the name slowly. "You are certain?"

"That's the word, but I don't ship rumor as fact."

"No. Nor should you."

And that was all of it. Skarn muttered something in Mycari to Harl about human arson and old blood, and Harl answered him in kind, mentioning the lord kept nothing worth burning anyway. Unfortunately, it told Cal little about whether these five had learned about Herod's offered coin, but hopefully it would deflect any thoughts on collecting if they had.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Their group continued on for the rest of the day until they came out of the trees and into the dungeon entrance clearing, Aurum dropping low and the light bleeding to blood red. The rift shard's barrier stood at the far end like a wall of imperfect glass, and the Ordo cabin sat squat at the edge of the clearing with runelights lit in the windows. Beside the cabin door hung a slate board in a rune-lit frame that hadn't existed the last time around, and Cal read it on the walk in: the tide count, posted for anyone to see. Almost two days gone since the last one.

Huh, I wonder if a team of celebrities rolling through made them put up what I assume are basic delver amenities?

Leylith looked at the barrier, then at the sky. "Camp," she said. "We go through at dawn, fully rested."

And according to that board, sunrise opens the cycle's last day. Cal ran the numbers while the party shrugged out of its packs and started setting up camp. Harl wasn't complaining just for sport. The writ seats them for this window and no other—that's how the Dominion runs its farms. Five days waiting on Grell ate every hour of cushion the window had, and there's no waiting out the tide on a writ that's only good once a year. Tomorrow it's the core and back by dark, or they walk home with little gained. He watched Leylith study the barrier with her arms folded. Team Zenith cleared it in a couple of hours… I'll be curious to see how these Mycari fare.

Skarn kicked the char out of one of the old fire pits, while Harl began the inventory over from the top, aloud. Cal erected his own tent thirty feet off with a spruce trunk at his back, then crawled inside and lay in his bedroll, looking up at nothing.

It's interesting to think that the nobles didn't need a guide, although they'd clearly never been here before. Hope had the route dialed from the start. Does the Academy provide maps, I wonder? Or was it something else?

He shifted, and the leather cord pulled against the back of his neck. With five elves in spitting distance, he decided to pull Bael'zhar and Piker's daggers out in the privacy of his tent, hiding them under his blankets. Just in case. He recalled the bright-blond hawker in the Mirathra gate plaza, and her promised lozenges for a silver a piece. She'd said two could keep him alert for eighteen hours without a crash or jitters, and Cal had made a joke and walked on like a genius.

I'd pay gold a piece tonight. I don't think I'm going to get a good night's sleep. Not that I really think they'll try anything until we're there and back again, if they aim to try something at all.

It felt like he slept in twenty-minute pieces, waking each time to Skarn's snoring or the sound of somebody adding wood, and he got up before the first bell would have rung, with grit behind his eyes.

At the cabin, after they'd all roused and prepared, one Ordo agent took Leylith's writ and gave it a quick once-over. The other eyed the rest of them, but only Leylith and Ondrel walked forward with an offered hand, which the agent swept a runic crystal bar over, grunting at every flash of green. His partner inscribed six names on the grey slate. Cal had a moment of panic about his own void ring nestled under his chest armor, but the agents didn't seem to detect it.

"Bah, only one day to clear…" Harl grumbled into his satchel.

"We didn't come here to fail," Leylith said. "Let's move."

They pushed through the barrier and into the yawning dungeon entrance.

Leylith kindled a soft green Spell construct above Skarn, and Cal set his own light orb over his right shoulder. Ondrel cast an aqua blue light from the back, and they pressed on. The first descent gave them the corridors Cal remembered, all rough-hewn dark stone veined with glittering minerals, wide enough to walk abreast, running down at a slope that never leveled and never stopped. It also gave them four sporecap shamblers at the second junction, squatting bear-sized in the passage with growths along their backs that wept something that hissed on the stone.

The party formed up without a word. Skarn front with the shield, Harl and Vesk wide, Leylith behind them with her spear grounded and one hand out.

And the fight took… a while.

Skarn absorbed a corrosive spray on the shield and gave ground. Harl put crossbow bolts into the caps, while Vesk worked the flank, cutting, darting back, cutting again, wearing the things down through the thick fibrous mass that made up their bodies. Leylith put lances of pale green light through the monsters and had to build each one externally by hand, three seconds apiece. They eventually killed all four but lost as many minutes doing it, and Skarn's shield came away pitted. Everyone was breathing hard.

It was good work, truthfully. Cal took it in from the rear, spear idle in his hands, and understood exactly what he was looking at: four coordinated professionals, in control of every exchange and paying full price for every yard earned.

Zenith would have torn through these monsters in seconds, not minutes.

He kept it off his face.

Fungal jackals came at the third junction in a pack of nine, and that went better and worse. The party's focus-fire dropped them one at a time in a pattern that never faltered, but the pack was fast and the corridor was wide, and it cost Leylith even more lances than the last group, and Skarn a bite through the greave.

The big Mycari hauled his axe out of the last one and counted them off the floor. "Four more! That makes five for me, two apiece for you lot, eight for the lady, and zero for the guide back there still holding his spear like a broom." He laughed at his own joke until Leylith urged him to continue.

Harl called the first draught stop before mid-morning. "Two Mana and a healer." He mourned the number aloud and handed the vials over. "Three potions gone before the suns have crossed. It's just… wasteful. When is Ondrel—"

"Drink," Leylith commanded.

Huh, Zenith barely ate or drank anything all day, if I recall correctly. Their wanton slaughter seemed near effortless.

At the fourth junction, Skarn stopped and jerked his chin down the left passage, which was black and unlit.

"I'm tired of taking point. I think it's time for the guide to earn his keep."

Cal looked at Leylith. "Keeping your team pointed in the right direction is what I'm here for, nothing more."

She stared back at him unflinchingly and remained silent. When he glanced back at Skarn, the Mycari was grinning cruelly.

"Fine, why not. If your bravewarrior needs a little breather, who am I to deny him?" Cal adjusted the bow on his back and made sure the shortsword on his hip was loose in its sheath, then took his spear in both hands and went down the passage.

He scouted on detailed information, which was the bit nobody in the party could see. His perception went ahead of him as a narrow beam, sweeping floor and ceiling in a grey model of the tunnel that lacked spiritual detail. It found the hollowed alcove hidden just beyond the next turn, and the fog hound flattened into the space inside, half-phased into the rock.

Perfect ambush predator, Cal thought. And a perfect opportunity. Try to get me hurt out front, will ya?

He rounded the corner without breaking stride, Sunny shining brightly down the corridor over his shoulder and failing to make the hidden alcove stand out. "Path's clear," he called back. "Watch for a patch of slick rot on the left in about ten feet."

The party followed, their attention drawn to the floor. As Harl drew level with the alcove, a blur of swirling grey mist erupted from the right wall. The creature solidified for an instant—all teeth and vapor—and tore a chunk out of the quartermaster's thigh.

Harl screamed and stumbled back against the far wall, clutching the wound. Before the hound could phase again, Leylith's spear shot past and pierced the creature through the eye. It dissolved with a faint hiss, leaving only the scent of blood.

Skarn shoved past Cal, axe in hand. "Clear? You call that clear, you useless dull-ear?" He kicked at the dissipating wisps of fog. "You walked him right into its teeth! Why I oughta—"

"Enough games," Leylith interrupted. "Skarn, you're back on point. Get on your feet, Harl."

Leaning against the wall, Harl groaned. "Another healing draught…"

Leylith looked from Harl's bleeding leg to Cal, her expression unreadable. "Vesk, see to him and then get caught up." She gave Skarn a curt nod. "Take the lead, vanguard."

They ground down through the branching middle reaches, fork after fork, and the party's methods continued to serve it, even as its consumable stores dropped. At a three-way split where Perren's notes offered a smudge and a question mark, Cal called the left branch without slowing, the memory of Hope's route forever ingrained. Harl had begun muttering about the tide timer at every stop, progressively louder each time. By the time they came into a wide hall where standing water sheeted the stone, Leylith had gone to the spear she carried more than her Spells, Harl had counted six Mana potions out of his satchel, and Skarn had to retrieve a backup shield from Leylith's ring.

A rotcap troll was standing in the water at the far end with twelve jackals fanned around it.

Team Zenith had defeated a similarly arrayed pack in fifteen seconds in a display so dominating Cal relished the recollection, savoring his own awe.

Leylith's party held the line for two minutes, and then it started coming apart.

The pack split, four peeling wide to the right, and Harl went with them, planting bolts as he backpedaled. The crossbowman's focus-fire on the troll dropped and the thing waded out of the deeper water, swinging. Skarn caught the blow and dropped to a knee in six inches of standing filth, while Vesk cut a jackal's hindquarters out from under it and took a set of teeth in the calf for the trade. Leylith's lance built and fired again and again, and Cal watched her wrist begin to shake and her nose start to bleed.

Then the troll got both hands on the top of Skarn's shield and started to pull it down, and Skarn's arm gave, and the spore-crusted mouth opened above him.

Two jackals broke past the line entirely and came at Cal.

Fast. Creatures almost a full tier above him, with no hesitation or inclination towards self-preservation. He set the spear haft and took the first one through the throat on the lunge, rolling it off the point with a twist of his wrists, and had the butt end into the jaws of the second one before it finished its jump over the body of its packmate. Then he reversed, spinning, and drove eight inches of hard metal down through the ribs into the stone while it was still dazed.

Neither of them made much noise. It took under three seconds, and nobody in the party had turned to help him. Not that he'd expected them to.

Behind him, Ondrel stepped out of the rear. He walked six yards past Cal and put one hand out, palm-down.

The stone answered. Or rather, something answered from beneath the stone. Roots drove up through the floor of the corridor, fast and deadly, breaking rock as they came. Four jackals took one through the spine in that instant. The troll's wrists were caught, then its elbows, then its knees, and a root went up under its jaw and out through the crown of its skull with the neatness of a needle through cloth. The remaining jackals died as the roots found them, one after another.

It took ten seconds. Maybe eleven.

The hall went quiet except for Skarn coughing water. Then the troll's carcass shuddered and collapsed inward, swallowed to a point with a pop that stung the ears, and a red stone dropped into the water where it had knelt. Harl waded out and took it without being asked.

"One," he muttered.

Ondrel lowered his hand, turned around, walking mutely back to the rear of the formation. Harl started counting restoratives out of his satchel as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Cal was impressed, and a little intimidated if he was being honest; doubly so, considering the man's aura suppression had briefly dropped during his attack.

Well, I guess Leylith isn't the only D-tier with a perfect foundation in their party.

Ondrel lifted his head and turned toward him, raising an eyebrow, and Cal let his perception fall away as he went to work on his boot strap that'd loosened.

When he looked up, Vesk was still on one knee in the water, ignoring the blood running out of his calf and watching him.