Chapter 37: Back and There Again

Chapter 37: Back and There Again

It’d been three days since I’d last spoken with Rel, and getting the Mirror Nest set up was the only thing that had gone well in that time.

“Were we followed?”

Electra glanced away from the window. Rain trickled through the narrow gap in the shutters, wetting her cheek. “Doesn’t look like it, but...”

I grimaced. “We don’t have any detection methods.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Electra turned back to the narrow gap. “Not like we have anywhere else to go.”

I knelt, floor creaking beneath my power armor. “We’re being hunted. Systematically.” Our only saving grace was my second class. had leveled steadily from parsing the motives of the people around us. I’d caught more than one tail with newly-unlocked skills, and pumped quite a few stat points into my summoning.

It might not be enough.

“That’s why we’re in this rats’ nest?” Electra kicked a broken brick away from the wall. “We hit this place more than a week ago.”

I let out a huff of laughter. “The villain always returns to the scene of the crime.”

Electra grumbled. “That’s advice for law enforcement, Em.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t have gritty private investigators in Silverwall.” I looked up. “We’ll have to move again soon, though.”

“Where?” Electra pulled the battered shutters all the way closed. “Back to drown in a graveyard?”

“I don’t know.” I wormed my gauntleted fingers beneath a shattered floorboard. “I just hope the rain is good for something.”

Electra snorted. “Yeah, those poisonous flowers better be sprouting like weeds.”

The board came loose in my grip. “That’s what they do, I’ve been told.” Beneath it, I didn’t see waterlogged mud like I expected. Instead there’s more wood, sealed with rough plaster. “Hello there.”

“What’s up?” Electra glanced over.

“I think we might just be about to figure out how this bathhouse was so profitable,” I said.

“Thought it was the gambling.”

“Yeah.” I reared my fist back. “I did too.”

It took two blows to break through the second layer of wood. A flare of magic announced the feeble defenses of the structure fracturing, and proved my first instinct right. People in this part of town didn’t have money to waste on structural stability.

“Here, help me with this.” I yanked at the wood, quickly widening the hole as Electra shoveled broken planks out of the way. More excavation revealed the hidden floor to be a ceiling. No doubt there was a surreptitiously hidden trap door somewhere else in the bathhouse, but sometimes brute force was a skeleton key.

Electra peered down into the hole. “You take me to the nicest places.” We could make out the barest hint of a floor in the dim light, but nothing else. “Think it’s a smex dungeon?”

“Child.” I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t you go find out?”

“Nuh uh.” Electra shook her head. “You’re in armor, I just have a few scraps of metal over normal clothes.”

“You have a reactive skill,” I replied.

“True!” She raised a finger. “But, when we were hummingbird hunting, you promised that you’d let me toss you into danger instead.”

I frowned. “You really are a child.”

“My PR agent said I was one at heart.” She shrugged. “And in brain. Now, am I gonna have to throw you down the hole?”

“And people say I’m the villain.” I shot her a glare, but flicked on my shoulder-mounted flashlight. “Geronimo.”

I landed against the packed dirt floor a moment later. Standing up, I turned to cast the flashlight beam across the narrow room. I saw shovels and piles of stone, but other than that, it was empty. The sound of the rain faded to a distant patter outside.

“Anyone down there?”

“Just me!” I took a step to the side, following a trail of moisture in the dirt. It didn’t come from the rain, though; instead, it led me to the mouth of a narrow tunnel leading off into the distance. My flashlight disappeared into darkness framed by rough-cut supporting beams. “Interesting.”

“Oof!” I glanced over my shoulder at Electra dusting herself off. “Find anything interesting?” With a flick, she threw a caged mote of electricity into the air. Actinic light bounced off unadorned walls. In the opposite corner of the tunnel, I saw a rickety wooden staircase leading back up to the bathhouse.

“It was a front,” I said.

Electra tilted her head. “I mean, yeah? Isn’t that the whole point? The bathhouse was just a front for a gambling den.”

“I’m sure that’s what everyone was supposed to think.” I pointed towards the tunnel. “Seems like Arlo decided to get a little more clever than that.”

Electra leaned over my head. “Secret passage. Neat!”

Electra leaned back against the wall of the tunnel, making a zipping motion with her lips.

I took a deep breath before pointing down the tunnel. “Forwards. We try to take out the man in charge, and hope to get out afterwards in the confusion.” I pointed towards the staircase leading out of the basement. “Backwards. We give up, and hope to hell that we can get out now while everyone is looking for us. Point is, we don’t just get to take our chips to cages and book a loss.

“Sometimes, the only way to get out of the game is to go all-in on one last hand.”

Electra didn’t say anything for several seconds. Finally, she took a deep breath. “Is that another one of those little things you’ve practiced, waiting for a moment like this?” she asked.

“Yeah, every night in front of a mirror, thanks so much for the chance to pull it out of my back pocket.” I threw my hands up in the air. “What do you want from me?”

Electra chewed her lip for a second. Then she asked, “If I decide I’d be more useful back in Lady’s Port, what would you do? Would you walk away with me?”

I drew myself up to my full height, such as it was. “No.”

Electra covered her face with one hand. “Well, crap.”

“And here I thought you couldn’t swear,” I said.

She pushed herself off the wall. “You know what I want, actually? I want you to stop deflecting.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What, is this an appeal to—”

“No.” She shook her head. “No, no, no. Now it’s your time to shut up. I gave you your thirty seconds, now it’s my turn.”

I opened my mouth.

Electra glared daggers at me.

“Fine.” I took a step back. “You have the conch.”

“The conch?” She shook her head again. “You know what? No, again. I’m not even going to touch that.” She groaned, rubbing her face. “The way I see it, you were right when you said we only had two choices, but this is what I think those choices are.”

She pointed to the tunnel. “We make the wrong choice, say damn the torpedoes, and if we’re even the slightest bit unlucky, a lot of people die.” She pointed towards the stairs. “I make the right choice, and put myself in the best place to protect the most people.” She swallowed. “And one person I care about a lot, lot more than I should...almost definitely dies.”

I said nothing.

“So tell me, Empress.” Electra spread her hands. “What should I choose?”

Before I could muster up a response, though, the door at the top of the stairs flew off its hinges. It hit the far wall with a bang, and Electra and I spun just in time to see a man with a familiar silver armband walk down the stairs.

He wasn’t alone.

“Well, well.” Arlo gave both of us a grin as the rest of his gang filed in behind him. I counted at least two dozen. “Almost thought you weren’t here, if not for the shouting.”

I took a step back towards the tunnel. “Guess we figured out what our choice is.”

“Guess so.” Electra shifted to cover my side. “Fun talk.”

“The best,” I replied.

Arlo scratched his beard. “What’s that, not gonna try to talk me around? Spin some yarn about how now that we’re all here, we can finish this here tunnel that I’ve already been working on and take the fight to the real villain, or some such rot?”

I let out a wan laugh. “Seems like you’ve laid out all the relevant points, old man.”

“Ah, but see, I wanna hear it from you.” Arlo leaned forward, grin growing wider. “So go on, girly, convince me. I’m listening.”

“Oh, Arlo.” I shook my head. “Give me a little bit of credit? We both know your mind was made up the moment you walked in here.”

“And what makes you say a thing like that?” he asked.

“Because your mind was made up the moment you tried to ambush me the first time around.” With a wave of my hand, an army of my own stepped into being. “All the rest was window dressing.”

He chuckled. “Kill the blonde one, but bring me the girl alive.”

I settled into a ready stance as the Tarnished pulled out their swords and clubs. “Hey, Electra.”

“Yeah?” She tilted her head.

“It was a good run, wasn’t it?”

Lightning danced over her knuckles. “The best.”

Then three people crashed through the hole in the ceiling.