Ortai Legacy

12 - Betrayal (M/L)

Mar'kost's arrow felled yet another newt-like stonehopper. The shelled creature began to ooze acidic mucus from its skin—which he'd been told was orange and spotted.

"Gira." With a flick of Mar'kost's hand, the metal arrow flew to him. He notched it to his recurve bow and aimed at a stonehopper hiding under a shelf three decatails away. It was on the edge of his field of clear 'vision.' Past three decatails, he could only make out impressions of shape and movement. He was fairly certain his team was wise enough not to stray into his arrow's path, but just in case-

"Is my path clear?" His voice caused the stonehopper to tuck its eye stalks inside its snail-like shell.

"Clear," Thyr called, his voice muffled by his safety mask.

"All clear," Raeve called, her voice similarly muffled.

Mar'kost hesitated to draw his bowstring. "Harker?"

No response.

"Ha-"

"He's not in the way," Raeve shouted. "He's reading something."

With a sigh, Mar'kost loosed his arrow at the stonehopper. Its metal tip went straight through the creature's shell with a crunch. He magicked the arrow back into his hand before scanning the area within his field of clarity. Metal shelves littered with ancient—and unfortunately, mostly worthless—detrius stood or lay around him. He sensed no movement except for a few troglits skittering around. The glue traps Raeve was setting would take care of them eventually.

Referring to his mental map of the storage room, he moved to the next section in his search grid. At a glance, half a dozen stonehoppers resided in this area. They would be easy targets. Too easy. After four weeks of clearing out reavers and remipedes, exterminating the mostly harmless stonehoppers bored him to tears. The only real danger would be if he grabbed the arrow by the wrong end and burned his hand with acid. Though, even that wouldn't be too dangerous given his natural healing abilities.

His team might have been working on a more dangerous room if not for Raeve's wings. Without them, she would've been at great risk in a fight against anything above a Threat Level 2 monster. That left them stuck clearing the storage room.

He wouldn't have chosen to take Thyr's place cleaning up the stonehopper corpses or Raeve's place setting traps, but he wished he could trade with Harker. The lucky bastard was sifting through the detrius for valuables. Even the pieces with little monetary value held a wealth of information on the dungeon's previous inhabitants—primarily Shiel and her shifters. Unfortunately for Mar'kost, he couldn't sense inked words that he wasn't touching, and he couldn't sense small engravings from farther than two tails.

Harker could spot even dirt-obscured writing from a decatail away. Well, perhaps not an entire decatail. Five tails would've been more accurate, but that was still impressive compared to Mar'kost's own limited range. Mar'kost might have considered assuming a form with vision, if not for the unfortunate fact that remaining shapeshifted burned arka faster than he could recover it, even in the dungeon.

As he picked off the stonehoppers automatically, his mind wandered away from the task to a more interesting one—keeping an eye on Liza. He'd used slivers of his own flesh to set the bones in her legs, and he hadn't allowed them to dissolve yet due to their utility in tracking her. At the moment, she was several kilotails south-west of him—as expected—and in good health except for the crystage growing through every organ in her body.

It was thicker now than it had been yesterday, but it didn't seem to be affecting her in any negative way. That was a small relief, seeing as even a butcher would struggle to remove every last bit of crystage from her body. And of course, butchering Liza wasn't an option.