Victor

  The aura of the room had changed significantly. Mal was kicking the mass of flesh that had once been Fayd; not real hard or anything, more like just making sure. Not that I'd have blamed him if he'd given him a good hard kick, though. Charlean took off her helmet and leaned against the wall, and the princess slumped to the floor. I also breathed a sigh of heavy relief as the finality of what just happened here became manifest. Well, localized finality at least; it was obvious that the mastermind was nowhere to be found in this place. I guess Mal thought it was a great time for a break time, too, as he then chose to sit upon Fayd's chair. After we'd rested a spell, I think it must have been maybe fifteen minutes or so, the princess got up from where she'd been resting and stood before Mal; he was doing the honest-to-god bored king pose and really hamming it up.

  "Malcolm," she said, "How do you feel, right now?"

  He shrugged, "Hmm, numb as usual I suppose. My usual malaise is still there, great serpent and all. Perhaps a bit cathartic, knowing that Fayd is dead, but still mostly the same. I am still not quite certain what to make of the revelation that the Black Order was responsible for the Spellscourge of all things…oh! I’m also fairly certain he said something about the plague that destroyed the Caran royal family, leaving my queen an orphan."

  "I heard about that," I said, "According to Hanzo's dossier on the queen, they caught the culprit, though."

  Mal nodded, "Perhaps the detective, Albert Bolneze, who became Sir Bolneze thereafter, caught the wrong man."

  "Could be," I said, "He could have been a fall guy, too, but there's nothing we can do by speculating. We need more information."

  The princess said, "I agree. I suggest that we check this entire bunker thoroughly, look for documents and other clues, leaving no stone unturned."

  I said, "and take anything of value that ain't nailed to the ground."

  "Mm-hmm! Gah!" The princess got a look on her face like she forgot to turn the oven off, and turned to Mal, "Malcolm, um, I wanted you to know something about your grandmother. She was Sylfaena's favorite teacher, and she always spoke of how kind and wise she was."

  Mal smiled, his eyes looked as though a lightbulb had clicked on, and he snapped his fingers, "That's where I heard the name! Yes, I knew that learning the name of a Kurvanian court wizard randomly while wrapped up in my work was a stretch. I am fairly certain that gran-gran mentioned one of her star pupils," He scratched his temple for a moment. "Ah yes, if I am not mistaken she was at least, advanced in ice, probably stronger than that."

  The princess nodded, "yes, she is actually adept-rank in ice magic, plus an expert at fire and lightning both!"

  Huh? I didn't understand any of that - I mean, the rank stuff. Obviously I understood that Mal's grandma was Princess Sylfaena's teacher, but also the fact that something else was bugging me.

  "Um, so magic ranks aside," I said, "I got a real dumb question. Mal, you're a quarter beastfolk, so, like, how, um…"

  Mal smirked, "You're wondering why I don't have my grandmother's fluffy cat ears or vertical pupils or anything of that nature. Oh very well might as well indulge our resident fish-out-of-water. When a beastfolk and a human engage in procreative activities, and it works as intended, the resulting offspring is always either a beastfolk or a human. In my mother's case, she emerged human - and so did I, down the line. Did I inherit some of my cat-like reflexes from her? Probably, but for all intents and purposes I am fully human with no special powers or a tail for that matter."

  I cradled my chin, "Huh. I wonder how that works. What about when it happens between elves and humans?"

  The princess said, "that produces a half-elf."

  "I shoulda known. Well enough biology. I'm rested, how about we scope out the rest of this room? For example, what the hell is that thing between them obelisks?"

  The princess and Mal nodded in agreement, Charlean remained silent; oh wait, no not silent, she was chomping loudly on some dried meat. Behind Fayd’s chair was an alcove, where there were four stone obelisks etched with runes surrounding a raised dais with some kind of design on the ground. A square with rounded edges, inside of which an elaborate pattern was traced.

  The princess said, "Well here's something. This used to be a teleportation circle."

  "Used to be? Also, isn't that a square?"

  She nodded, "Back when humans were first learning to make magic circles for summoning and teleportation, they learned it from the elves. Back then, summoning circles were actually summoning squares, because it was the style at the time. That would have been, um,"

  She did the finger on the chin and wagging her head thing; stop it, my healer can't be this cute!

  "The time of the Gaian empire if I remember my histories. But this circle is ruined, probably from when Fayd was transforming."

  At that Mal grew pensive, looking around. "The Gaians. Hmm, wait a moment. Your highness, look around us. Doesn't this architecture look familiar?"

  The princess looked up, and looked around, then her eyes widened, "Wait! These columns, could this be a Gaian ruin that we stand in?"

  Gaians? I'd heard of them before, but only in passing. Note to self, have them elaborate. I'm glad I have such capable loremasters at hand.

  Mal said, "Fayd used to make regular reports to the mastermind, which I found strange. Yes, when we all had that briefing he acted as though he had just spoken to the mastermind but he had never left the compound. This teleportation square would go a long way to explaining just how he was able to do this. Victor, are you, perchance, thinking the same as I?"

  "Are ya askin' me if I'm pondering what you're pondering? In that case, yes," I detected irritation from both of them. "If this is a Gaian ruin, and that's an old-ass transporter pad, then it stands to reason that the destination must be another Gaian ruin. I mean that's assuming the Gaians were in the habit of building teleportation networks, and, well if they happened to keep a map somewhere?"

  Mal gave a snap-point like a certain cartoon tiger, "Precisely! As you have surmised, the Gaian Empire did create a network of teleportation circles just like this one. What better way to maintain control of such a far flung nation?"

  "Television," I said, flippantly.

  The princess flinched, "That…is that even a word? It comes through as belonging to two different languages, none of which are your native tongue!"

  I laughed, "Well nothing good ever came of mixing Greek and Latin roots. Maybe we can talk linguistics later, though. What this means for our purposes-"

  Mal said, "-is that the mastermind's lair may very well be inside another Gaian ruin, far away from here, and if we knew the destination of this particular teleportation circle we might be able to find him!"

  "My thoughts exactly," I said.

  Mal sighed, slumping and groaning, "but where to even begin looking?"

  Nobody had an answer to that, so, all we could do was start the process of strip-mining the place; and there was a lot. So very much. Not only did we take everything good off of our defeated opponents, we raided their footlockers, the vault, the stables, the pantries, and even the training hall; we went over every room with a fine-toothed comb. All twenty four of the fully equipped guys on the first floor had masterfully crafted weapons and armor, and the elites in the basement even had magic gear; as in magic weapons! It was my first time seeing any magic weapons since I'd held Valyrian's sword.

  I selected one of their magic arming swords for myself, a short sword for a special purpose which I shall elaborate on later, magic brigandine, a magic shield, and magic chainmail to go beneath the brigandine. In one footlocker, I think we found the equipment belonging to the poor sucker who had just got done taking a shit; straight up mithril chainmail, a full suit, and a magically enchanted one at that! It was one of the prettiest hunks of metal I'd ever seen; and it immediately went to Charlean as per our arrangement. Darn! Oh well. The same footlocker had a magic kukri knife and a few other nice things. That was the extent of the weapons and armor that became "personal gear" - the rest would get sold off. There were other pieces of magic gear as well; and once we'd gotten it all in a pile we distributed them.

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  "Sir Victor," the princess said, passing me a belt, "please try this on."

  It fell to her to identify each piece we'd found and she'd just finished with this one. I turned around and swapped out the belt on my jeans for this new belt - whoa! I felt a surge of something go into my body, what was that? Huh? I pulled out my gun and aimed at the wall, finger off the trigger obviously; steadier than usual, even one-handed, and the iron sights seemed to come into deeper focus. I started to tap dance, yes, it was a little easier than it had been before. I drew out my bowie knife and focused on the edge. There was something different; I flipped it in the air and caught it, a trick I'd done many times, but with less hesitation.

  "What is this? This is incredible!"

  The princess said, "’Tis magic belt designed to let you move more gracefully."

  I nodded, and said, "It feels like it helps with fine motor control and hand-eye coordination as well."

  "Very likely," said the princess. "When I realized what it was, I knew it'd be perfect for you and your fighting style."

  Mal nodded, "Believe it or not, that belt is the weakest grade available. I think that I can get by without such enhancements for a while," he did a spinning backflip, a handstand, and then an arabesque, "Yes, you need it more than I do."

  We went on like this for a good while until all three of us had what we wanted. Mal received the aforementioned kukri, and I couldn't wait to see him throw it. There was also a magic ring that helped deflect blows to a degree, and as it turned out Fayd's cloak really was magic so he took that too. The princess now had a new set of magic bracers that protected her as though it wer armor and a ring of the same sort Mal received; additionally, she'd taken the spellbook of that mage we fought and was planning to see if she could learn anything new from it. The last item was a small circlet that enhanced a person's force of personality; this we decided would be best given to Meli.

  So as far as everything else, we couldn't carry it all - it would be impossible. This had been a secret base from which clandestine operations were being carried out capable of hosting upwards of a hundred men. Apart from the aforementioned personal gear, there was a lot of food here plus spare armaments, a lot of cash money, and gems. Luckily a solution presented itself to ensure that we would end up with a great haul. There were ten mules in the stable, plus four horses. One of the horses was a stallion, blacker than black, ah what a glorious mane; he seemed different from the rest. Mal took to him almost immediately.

  "Darkheart perhaps? No. You're Coffeebreak," he said, smiling.

  So that horse would become his personal mount, which was good because the princess and I already had a pair of horses we were attached to. We did find documents in his saddlebags, but that would become important later. In addition to the mules themselves there were three carts; we put our heads together and figured they must have taken these guys out for supply runs somewhat regularly. I assure you, we went over the math of the logistics numerous times. So it was decided that we would take just half of the mastercraft gear with us, plus all the magic gear, three quarters of all the coin and gems, plus all of the food we could load onto ten mules and three carts.

  Charlean and the rest of the dark elves would pick the place clean, and she would take the other horses back to Ara Lahee. It was a lot, and I mean a lot of stuff, it was going to take weeks to get it all sold off and then the moneychangers (we'll get to that later too).

  Getting everything sorted out was hard work and so we actually spent the night in the dungeon itself - the girls borrowed Fayd's bed while the gents slept upstairs in the bunks. Incidentally, we took his silk sheets, his down comforter, and his case of expensive imported liquor. There was a nice desk made of mahogany but we had no way to carry it out, sadly. Ma-hogany.

  It took us a bit longer to get back, we needed to camp twice as many times because of the fact that we were leading a train of animals and hauling a ton of cargo. I mean an actual ton, maybe two? There were so many food barrels. Some forty-two were normal provisions and there were a few special ones: there were two barrels of dwarven ale, one barrel of imported wine, one barrel of whiskey, and last but not least, a barrel of straight up potatoes!

  Yes, taters! I guessed that they had to be imported from far away, so they likely acquired them from a port settlement somewhere. The princess didn't know what they were for, but her face lit up when I reminded her of the salty snacks she had before. Life got easier for us when we reached Ara Lahee, because now there was an actual road to follow.

  Charlean dropped off the horses plus such things as she had carried personally and that is where we parted ways with her. We didn't need to take her with us to make quest completion official, it was enough that our chips were in close proximity, and she didn't sweat her share of any bonuses since we'd just made her family significantly wealthier.

  Charlean spoke to each of us in turn. "Kirkland," she said, "You have a warrior's heart. May you take many wives, keep them satisfied."

  "Ah, I don't know about many, but," I coughed, "Thank you. You were a big help out there, give my regards to the Dach!"

  She approached the princess, "Fla-...Princess Illiana. You're not so bad, for a non darkborn. I thank you." She pressed her hands in front of her face with eyes closed as though in prayer.

  The princess only curtsied, smiling.

  Then Charlean spoke to Mal, "May you find happiness. And crush the master-head with your bare hands! But," she paused, even under the mask I saw pity, "More importantly, find happiness."

  Mal bowed, "I thank you, brave-lady."

  That was that, and whether we saw Charlean again thereafter may be a story for another time. Three days later we were back in Northbrook, having left the grim darkness behind. Meli was, of course, elated to see us and showered us with hugs; much to the princess' delight and Mal's annoyance. We'd been gone several days after all, and we had much to tell her of course. My beautiful Cadillac was looking even better than ever; turns out Meli had gotten bored and started polishing the finish. Ah, she also really liked her new headwear and - what the - did her curves get more pronounced when she put it on? Nevermind.

  So with that out of the way we immediately set out for Caer Caradon. We rented two sturdy draft horses for the job of pulling the car, and given that Mal now had his own horse and one of us would always be driving the draft horses, we figured, why not pick up some escort missions down that way since we had extra seats? We'd be dumb not to! We scored two wood ranked transport quests, who they were didn't matter, and it never amounted to anything later down the line. Heck I don't even think I got their names, but I made sure to tell 'em to spread the word about Red Lightning.

  It had taken us less than an hour to get to Northbrook before but with all of the cargo we were hauling it would be a whole day's endeavor. Ugh, bandits tried to inconvenience us, but Mal and the princess were able to drive them off with magic - at least the clients were happy. The princess caused the grass they rode on to grow rapidly and trip them up, while Mal created noise to frighten the horses. This really was a dangerous world, but at least it wasn't boring. Moving on.

  The first thing we did, at the princess' instructions, was to sell what we could. By selling magical equipment directly through the adventurer's guild we actually scored some brownie points so those were, at least, relatively easy to offload. Gems were as good as gold and weighed less, so we didn't need to sell them so much as we could use them as currency. Now we come to the topic of the moneychangers.

  In addition to ordinary crowns, helms, and the occasional platinum drake, there were a bunch of different gold coins of varying sizes and some of them looked fairly old. Very old. There was a specific type of coin, a thick gold ounce bearing the face of a stern looking man, that especially intrigued me; a Gaian Sovereign worth three gold crowns. Since they were usually only carried by bigwigs, gold coins this size didn't remain in use into the current era, but if you'll remember the other four common denominations were also set by the Gaians.

  A moneychanger in this sense referred to a mage specializing in metal magic capable of converting an amount of precious metal into an equal amount of standard-sized coinage; literal changers of money. There was always some gold or silver left over, and that extra was given to the money changer as their labor fee; that made math easier, thank God. If one were also skilled in earth magic, as was the dwarven gentleman who changed our coins, one could also standardize all of the gemstones. This was actually a real money-maker for him since the byproducts in this case were gem dust that could be sold for profit, especially diamonds and rubies. We sold all but two of the mules and kept one of the carts as well. Until we managed to get rid of all the excess equipment we'd need to stash it back at the suite.

  When we returned to the adventurer's guild to collect on all of the various quests we'd completed, it was Juliette who greeted us. We had actually ranked up again; that's right, we had all made tin rank! Mal, too, thanks to some "catch up" rules the guild had in place. There were also achievement patches handed out.

  We got Danger Dorm, for spending the night in a dungeon, and Bandit Raider, for having defeated at least a score of outlaws in their own lair. I actually got one for taking out Fayd: Pragmatic Heroism - prevent a demonic summoning or apotheosis with decisive action. Oh shit, the princess got Mageslayer, the one I already got whenever I hit Wylt with my car! Nice, princess! Mal even got Critical Assist for throwing that dagger, a sort of adventurer's RBI - "wound an opponent so grievously that he die within six seconds by the hand of another".

  So let's see after fees and dues and such, we made somewhere around 1000 gold pieces from quests alone. Oh, the queen's quest had a major award, too. Just a trophy, actually, nothing special, but it looks cool. Plus now I have something to point to and say it's a major award, we won it!

  While I was busy loading up our earnings, the princess paused for some reason, with a light "huh", and her gaze lingered on Juliette.

  "Um Juliette," she said, "May I ask something?"

  She leaned in to whisper, while I whistled the famous refrain from Stars 'n Stripes Forever so as to not accidentally hear any gossip. Yup, girl talk ain't none of my business!

  Juliette covered her mouth and gasped, "Um, maybe, it's not impossible..."

  I kept whistling.

  "Thank you," she turned around, smiling, lightly bobbing, "Come, Sir Victor, let us hie ourselves to our suite."

  I saluted, "Yes, ma'am!"