Chapter 46: 6- Shake The Mountains To Rubble

Prissy immediately snatched up Enervating Strike, which was a nice rare Corbin planned on using a lot. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but approved of her immediately equipping it once he got a look.

Sapping an enemy’s Strength and Endurance was incredibly powerful, but with the high mana cost it was going to be a one-and-done situation, until they got some serious mana recovery.

“There’s more treasure down in the cellar,” he told them.

In the aftermath of the battle, they discovered the flimplings were guarding a rather nasty smelling horde of treasure: another thousand silver pieces in a small chest (only ten gold, but practically a fortune compared with their starting point), with another fifty gold scattered throughout. This came out to 65 gold in total, a massive haul comparatively. A couple of dead bodies told a story about some other adventurers trying to get at this treasure, and when Corbin attempted to snuffled through their bodies for some loot, Kyessy stopped him.

“We don’t disrespect the dead by rooting through their loot piles,” she told him.

“You’re not a paladin, okay?” he said. “We’re going to come across something worse than this, and we’re going to need every advantage we can get.”

“Roight? Don’ be so prissy,” Prissy said. “Finders keepers and all that. They call it loot for a reason.”

“This is wrong,” Kyessy insisted.

“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “Anything we can’t use and don’t need, we leave. The people attached to these corpses might come back and grab their stuff. Or if you want, we can just leave some coins to pay for whatever we’ve taken.”

“Yer too generous,” Prissy said. “They lost it, they don’ deserve it, seems ta me.”

“I accept your terms,” Kyessy said. Maybe it was because she’d spotted something that would fit nicely among her cards. Corbin noted her scanning a pair of cards, face twitching a few times with indecision. A few moments later she produced some coins and placed them, and one of the cards, next to the corpse.

Not like a video game at all.

Prissy was taking her time. Because he was equipped as one of her cards, he could see the inventory spread out in front of her, with all the cards, coins and items she’d gained during her time away with the otherworlders. She had Spectral Blade and Silent Step as Core cards, but hadn’t filled the third Core slot.

After that, he recognized Shadow Clone, Evoker’s Fiery Blade, the item card Sabaton of Springing, and Berserker’s Bellow. He also recognized the Unobtrusive Cloak inventory item she wore, and she’d applied Protective Greasepaint from some clown-based enemies she must’ve fought somewhere along the way. +25% on all resistances until she was hit five times was a decent deal. She’d also gotten a Trick Flower, probably from that same clown, which gave her water damage, increased lightning damage on someone you soaked, and other minor bonuses.

So item cards existed, along with items that just equipped on the body. It wasn’t much to think about; you’d only equip the cards if you didn’t have a full list of abilities or the item card was indispensable. Kyessy had a cloak that made her intangible a few times a day, which was situationally indispensable but otherwise just took up an equipped card slot… it had saved her life once in the thick of things, so worth keeping around, but it wasn’t equipped normally. With Prissy too, this jumping boot was usually quite useful, but as soon as they divvied up the loot and found a place to shop, she was going to get something much better to just equip on her feet, and a card that was better in all ways to replace it. Kyessy had a general Passive bonus and skill improvements from a single card, One With the Wilds, and Prissy could use the rogue version of that. Vethros and cultists probably meant more forbidden or hidden dungeon areas, and those types of things meant more traps, and more traps meant they needed Prissy to be at the top of her game.

If only they could get a spellcaster on the team… if only wizards weren’t complete assholes (or corrupted cultists). Maybe Kyessy was wrong and they could find a druid that would work with them.

Maybe getting one would cause Kyessy to quit the party again… he was kind of okay with that, all things considered.

He’d drifted away from the task at hand, and took a closer look at Prissy’s other cards. She’d picked up three more, giving her seven equipped and two Core.

These three were all Scoundrel ability cards, he saw, two commons and an uncommon. He only got a look at the first common before she shut down her inventory: Evasive Maneuvers was a special ability. It would give them +5 Agility for dodging for a full minute. Minimal mana, but the cooldown was really long: 10 minutes. There would only be one chance to use it in combat, and if the fight ran long, she’d be out of luck.

She took out Berserker’s Bellow and placed it in her regular inventory, which was full of random bits and bobs, like the flimpling pelts, and other crafting supplies. Another card went into the lineup of equipped cards while he was perusing Evasive Maneuvers. She wasn’t a crafting character, which meant all this stuff would just get sold off once they got to the right place. So all the cogs, power cores, pelts, venom glands, throat sacs, hairballs (hairballs?) and other random junk was just taking up space. Luckily cards could be stacked. She had a stack of at least 5 others, which surprised him. They’d been apart for a long while.

She dropped a small stack of gold next to the body and opened her hands, gesturing toward it and staring at Kyessy.

“‘S more’n fair, innit?”

Kyessy nodded in response.

They made camp outside the tavern stone, with a large fire that would hopefully scare off anyone interested in trying to rob them, any mercenary bands looking to profit off this squabble between Denspire and Fellwroth, or any scavengers who might’ve caught the scent of the flimplings. Kyessy did the honors of getting camp going while Prissy and Corbin collected firewood, and herbs. Soon they had a great meal of roast flimpling about an hour after the fire got roaring. Corbin had never gnawed on a bone before, and found it a hypnotic and satisfying experience. His teeth and gums absolutely loved the sensation.

“You think we’ll find anything tomorrow?” he asked.

Kyessy shrugged.

“Make you a bet,” Prissy said, nodding toward Kyessy. “I bet we fine some scavenger fingies under this Ullennai. They bin eatin’ up all the dead folks. Got ourselves a war ‘tween the He Who Slumbers and the cannibal corpse eaters.”

Kyessy stared at her, blinked several times, and shrugged again. “I’ll take that bet. How much you want on it?”

Prissy had clearly been making a joke, but Apathetic and Stoic Kyessy wasn’t having it.

“If oy win, you gotta say ‘Oh Priscilla, what a resourceful and much-needed member of the team ya are.”

“Agreed. And if I win, you have to keep quiet for an entire day.”

Prissy stared like the tiefling ranger had just slapped her in the face. Corbin didn’t exactly blame her; it was pretty rude to tell someone how little you wanted to hear them talk.

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“We’ve got to reconcile these differences,” he told them. “We can’t keep on like this.”

But neither of them had anything to say to that. Prissy was seething, while Kyessy had gone back into her stoic/apathetic mode. Instead they stared into the fire, decided without speaking that Kyessy would be taking watch, and turned in for the night. Corbin lay awake a while, wondering how they might end up trusting one another, if not liking each other. A lack of teamwork would get them killed… and there were ways to make that permanent. He couldn’t have them at each others’ throats while monsters and cultists were at their throats.

That night, his dreams were a bizarre mix of human past and canine present. The girl was there, the one with the freckles and the raven black hair, looking fearful. Corbin could finally see why now: the dwarf wizard had a rope around her neck, and was stroking her face.

The dwarf wizard was named Rico, and he was one of The Five, even though they were more accurately called The Four, now that one of them had been ejected from the magic zone. Corbin knew he was the effective one, the one to be most worried about now that their leader Hyacinth was no longer part of the picture. The others (Stephie and Jamal) were dangerous, but seemed to mostly be concerned with being all over each other, and the nellwynian bard who wanted him dead was only a bard. Dangerous perhaps to anyone whose pants he wanted to get into, but after that, not so much of the danger.

“You’ll never get her back,” Rico said. He was grinning under his beard. “Maybe Steve stole all your levels, but I’m going to steal so much more.”

The girl squirmed in Rico’s grasp, and called out for Corbin, but Rico cast another spell and tore out her voice. The blue energy came streaming out of her throat and up into his wand. That same blue energy screamed ‘Corbin, help!’ several more times, quieter and quieter, until it was all sucked back into the wand. The girl opened and closed her mouth, panic written all over her face.

Then more magic streamed out, this time coming out of Corbin, being sucked into his wand. This, he knew, was the sum total of his memories. While Steve the bard, Stephie and Jamal had killed him over and over again, Rico had been busy erasing his past. They sucked out his levels, sure, but they also took everything that made him him.

He bolted awake in the night, whining.

That was why he couldn’t remember the girl with the black hair and freckles: the wizard had done this to him. It wasn’t like any conventional amnesia you’d get after cracking your head, this was fully intentional. Somewhere, some little dwarf asshole was laughing at him. Maybe he had Corbin’s girl in a jar, maybe in an echocrystal, or maybe she was safe somewhere and only Corbin’s memories of her were gone.

“What is it… boy.” Kyessy asked but didn’t ask, expressionless. She clearly didn’t care, but he was in a state of panic and brushed past it.

“Quit it. It’s… my past. It matters, but not to this mission. A wizard stole my memories.”

“I told you wizards are the worst.”

He considered this for a few moments. She seemed to hate everyone, except perhaps her former human lover, the beekeeper. “So wizards are the worst, and druids… are the worst. Is there anyone you do like?”

 

You’ve succeeded at a Charm (Mingle) check! You’ve also succeeded at a Luck (Serendipity) check. Hang on to your butt!

 

She considered this. “You were growing on me for a little while, until you dragged me along for the lecture on He Who Slumbers. Now I can’t get away from it. I have a card I literally cannot throw away.”

That was something of a revelation. She hadn’t shown him the card she’d received out in the fens, from the frillux’s lair dungeon, but it was a mythic and had allowed her to blow a gigantic holy hole through Magistrate Findell, so it was useful. But he was confused by the idea that she couldn’t give the card up.

“But–”

“You don’t think I know he’s dangerous? Oh, I know. I grew up getting those bedtime stories to keep me from getting out of bed at night. I grew up getting those horror stories to keep me in line.” Here she put on an even more grating voice. “‘Kyesiara, if you don’t shape up in school, He Who Slumbers will shake the mountains to rubble and destroy our entire village! Do you want to be the reason there’s no more village? Do you?’ And then there’s ‘He Who Slumbers likes to peek open one fiery eye at night, and if little tieflings aren’t in their beds, do you know what happens?’ And then I whisper ‘I know what happens Mama’ and she says ‘good! Keep him sleeping, all right?’ This isn’t my fight, dog. If you respected me and weren’t constantly only considering yourself, you’d know how important it is for me to stay out of all of it.”

“I–”

“Let me finish.” She leaned forward over the embers of the fire, her face mostly shadows, but he saw her dart a glance over toward Prissy, who had her back to them. “I’m not equipped to handle a being of divine evil. I’m not good enough. I know you understand this. You knew your limitations as a raven, and you picked your battles carefully. I know my limitations very well, Corbin. If I haven’t become a hindrance to your mission already, I soon will. It ends with my death.”

“That’s not true. You can’t know that for certain.”

“This game system has shown me exactly how strong I am, and it pales in comparison with the forces arrayed against us. There are more capable men and women who have devoted their lives to taking down the cultists following He Who Slumbers. Paladins of righteousness and clerics of the light. Whole armies will gladly stand in defiance to He Who Slumbers. Who am I compared to these people?”

He didn’t have an adequate answer to this. Instead, he said, “We’re the people with the information. So if we get an answer to where He Who Slumbers has his forces, we’ll hand that information off to the more capable people. Does that sound all right?”

She nodded.

“Personally I think you’re awesome. And I think you’ll do more than you think you’re capable of. You’ve already taken out an avatar. Listen, neither of us can destroy a god on our own, sure. But we stick together, and we’re stronger for it.”

 

What an inspiring speech. Sadly, you’ve failed your Charm (Mingle) check. You have, however, succeeded at a Luck (Kismet) check.

 

Well it was worth a try. A brief surge of frustration rose up within him. He hadn’t meant to use a skill against her. Her features froze in the midst of an adoring smile, until it slowly morphed into a grimace of regret and secrecy, mixed with her typical anger.

“Sleep,” she told him. “We investigate the ruins in the morning.”

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