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🕑 Added 2025-01-24 21:37:07 +0000 UTCIt wasn't as easy as Venna made it seem with her declaration of their success. There was a reason that the noble who'd commissioned the hunt for the ruin crab hadn't gotten whatever was in the reliquary out when they'd been studying the ruins it'd been in. The stone coffin-like box that held the true prize of their mission was sealed tight, both physically and magically. Being ripped out of its original home and added to the ruin crab's hoard seemed to have disrupted most of the magical protections on it, but there was still a barrier covering the lock on the side that prevented them from touching it. Thankfully, the rest of the reliquary was merely tough stone, so they could break through it.
"Why didn't anyone include details about this in the description of this bounty?" John complained as he generated another orb of transmutation magic. He pressed it into the side of the reliquary and they all watched as the white stone was changed into a dull metallic color.
Venna leaned in and tapped against the changed section. "John, did you just turn it into metal? That's worse than it was before!"
John threw up his hands. "Look, there's a reason I don't have a fancy job working for a merchant guild, okay? My magic doesn't always do what I want." He started gathering magic between his hands again. "I'll get us in, it might just take awhile."
Dryth leaned into Venna's field of view before she could get worked up about it. "While he works on that, should some of us start searching the rest of the shell? We get to keep anything else we find on it, right?"
"... That's a good point." She admitted after a moment of visible struggle with her own temper. "It's not John's fault that we didn't get told about the seal and we do want to search everything so we don't lose any loot." She blew out a breath and nodded then patted John on the shoulder. "Sorry for getting frustrated."
"Don't worry about it." He replied without looking up, "It's not exactly fun to have magic that acts chaotically for me either, so I get where you're coming from."
"Still, we wouldn't be getting into it at all without you, so thanks."
Dryth, Sindri, and Tobias started picking through the chunks of building adhered to the crab's shell. The uppermost sections of the various pieces of the haphazardly attached ruins had been broken during the fight, especially when the crab had flipped and landed shell down, but most of the damage sections had been too small to hold any loot. The body tilted on it's side which turned the shell into a ramp mixed with an obstacle course. It strained Dryth's muscles as as he climbed after Sindri and he was quite jealous of his partner's ability to slither along and practically ignore gravity.
"What kind of treasure do you think we're going to find?" Sindri asked excitedly.
"I have no clue. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't find any."
"What? Why?" Sindri pointed all around with his nose and his tail. "Look at all these ruins!"
"Ruins don't automatically equal treasure." Dryth hauled himself onto what looked like a piece of a banister and sat there for a moment to rest. "Unless something bad happened all at once most people would have taken their valuables with them when they left whatever place became a ruin."
Sindri climbed up a fragmented section of wall and glanced inside the leftover wedge of what might have been a room, but found nothing. "Oh. Then why was part of the reward the right to anything we loot from the crab?"
"Two reasons. First, it works as bait to draw people in to do the job. If you say that it's part of the reward some people are going to assume that there must be loot because it was mentioned. Even if they know that there's a good chance there won't be it can work on people subconsciously. Additionally some people will try and say that since the reward includes some kind of loot then they don't have to pay as much in coin."
"That's mean!"
"Yeah, it is. In this case thought we're already getting paid well, so I think it's more of the second reason for us. Which is to act as a 'just in case' clause for the bounty."
"What would you need to have a-" Sindri perked up as he made a connection. "Oh! So that the person putting up the bounty can't make a stink about any loot we find being part of the bounty and them trying to take it?"
"Exactly. Since this bounty was technically just to get the contents of the reliquary back to client I'm guessing they put that clause in to reassure us they wouldn't do that, but sometimes the Agency of the people taking on a bounty will demand that something like that get but into the job description to make sure no one tries to cheat the bounty hunters." Dryth glanced into the a small crevice he found and saw nothing in it. He used it as a handhold to pull himself up higher as he continued along.
"How do you know all this stuff?"
"Talking to people, reading, and some of it's just from growing up and experiencing stuff."
"How come I haven't heard any of this then? We're together all the time, I should have heard some of this when you were talking about it."
"Don't blame me if you weren't paying attention to my conversations."
They continued to bicker light-heartedly as they searched through the tilted collection of assorted chunks of old long-abandoned buildings. The shell was covered in pieces of ruins, but it was only the size of a hill not a full city, which meant that searching all of it didn't take very long. Sindri found a few pieces of broken pottery that might have been worth something if they hadn't ended up as ceramic shards when he discovered them and Dryth found nothing at all. When they made it to the top they took a moment to look around and enjoy the view before Dryth turned and looked down the inclined shell to the others. Tobias was already down there so he cupped his hands and called down to them. "Find anything?"
"Yeah! Tobias found something!" Venna shouted back, "What about you?"
"Nothing!"
"Come on down then!"
Not having to fight gravity on the way down didn't make the climb easier, it just changed the type of hazard he was facing, so Dryth was slow and methodical on the descent. It took him less time to climb down because he wasn't searching anything as he went, but it still took him almost half an hour to make it back down. When he reached the reached the rest of the group he found John once again channeling magic into a shifting orb between his hands and Venna and Tobias interestedly looking over a solid metal cube.
"What's that?"
Tobias glanced up from the cube. "No idea. There was a secret compartment that got busted open at some point and this was inside." He pointed at the corners of the cube, which was covered in finely carved details. "Look at this." He grabbed one of the corners and twisted it. It made an audible click and turned in place. "I think it's a puzzle lock. See?" He pressed one of the images on a side of the cube and it depressed for a moment before popping back out. "If I'm right there's something inside here and we just need to figure out the puzzle to open it."
"Nice. If someone went to the trouble of hiding it in a secret compartment and locking it up in something like that it must be valuable."
"I know!" Tobias grinned widely and started energetically testing every inch of the cube. "I wonder what it is."
"Well, Tobias you found it so go ahead and try and get it open while we work on the reliquary." Venna told him. "John, how close are you to getting in?"
"No idea. The last two tries turned the stone into something we could break or dig out but whatever this stone is its much more resistant to magic than anything I've run into before. I'm only changing a small bit of it at a time and I don't know how thick the sides are."
Venna sighed deeply and shook her head. "Just keep working on it, then. Let us know if you need to take a break. "
Xinath stepped into view to check on John now and then in between running patrols, Tobias climbed a few feet up the shell while he fiddled with his find, and Dryth wandered with Sindri around to the other side of the crab and started trying to pry some meat out.
"We're not going to be able to take that much back with us, are we?" Sindri whined as Dryth hacked at on of the sections of one of the legs that weren't covered in stone.
"I don't know if we were ever going to be able to haul that much meat back with us." Dryth admitted, "What would we carry it in?"
Sindri harrumphed and sighed dramatically as Dryth managed to slice a chunk of bloody meat out and held it up for him to examine. He leaned in close and sniffed it. "It smells... fine, I guess?"
"Want to try it?"
"No use wasting it." He opened his jar wide and started sucking down the strip of meat. After he'd fully swallowed it he took a moment to decode the flavor. "It's alright. Could be better if we cooked it."
"I'll get a bit in the bag, but if it's only alright I'm not breaking my back hauling a huge amount with us."
"Yeah, alright."
There hadn't been any cards available that had fit in to either of their decks available since they'd started completing bounties and making money, so most of their profits had been set aside into savings or invested into items that supported their jobs. One of those was a fairly expensive bag that wouldn't get stained by fluids or let them leak out and kept the contents stored in it from spoiling for slightly longer than they would in a normal bag. Enchantments that helped keep food fresh were expensive, which meant their bag wasn't that powerful or that big. Dryth managed to fit a couple of pounds of meat into it and sealed it up before hanging it from his belt. With that done he wandered back over to the others.
John was crouched down over the side of the reliquary with one arm reaching inside of it, his face screwed up in concentration.
"Oh, you made it in. Good job."
"Yeah, I did, but whatever's in here is almost as long as the reliquary long and doesn't want to turn to fit through the hole I made. I'm trying to see if I can fiddle the lock open from the inside or if we'll-" The loud pop that went off suprised everyone including John, who smacked his elbow on the edge of the box when he tried to jump away. "Ow! Dammit!" He stepped back, rubbing his elbow. "I think it's open now."
Venna stepped forward and slowly peeled up the lid, which was just barely open. It slipped up and off like the lid of a coffin or tomb being pushed out of the way, and they all leaned in to see what the prize was. Set into a small indent carved into the bottom of the reliquary was a two foot long, twin headed scepter. On each end of it were twin pyramids shaped out of a brassy looking metal that pointed outward away from the center. The rod of the scepter itself was a bleached white piece of material with inlays set into it's surface. The inlays spiraled around the scepter, shifting from a sky blue color at one end into a deep, dark blue in the center that became a deep green by the time it reached the other end. Tiny shaped jewels were affixed to the spirals, with the light blue section marked with glittering clouds made out of diamonds, while sapphire waves were in the center, and trees craved from emeralds decorated the bottom section of green inlay.
"... Damn." Venna managed to mutter as thy all stared at it in surprise. "That's gorgeous."
"And expensive." John added. "That's got to be worth a lot of gild. Just those gems on it alone are probably worth more than what we're getting paid for this job."
Slowly Venna turned to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Are you suggesting...?"
"Oh, not at all." John denied as he waved his hands in front of him. "Stealing it would be a terrible idea. The person who put up the bounty for it is a noble who makes Holter nervous, it'd be a terrible idea to double cross them. I was just admiring it." He turned and looked down into the reliquary again. "And I suggest being very careful with it until we get that safely delivered."
"I think that's cared out of someone's bones." Dryth said. He'd been listening to them talk, but he hadn't taken his eyes off the scepter.
"What?" Venna took a step back from the open reliquary. "Why do you think that?"
"Well, for one it looks like it's bone. But also, we've been calling this a reliquary the whole time, right?"
"Yeah, that's what the job description called it."
"Sure, but why use that word and not call it a chest, or a box? Reliquary means a special kind of container that holds something holy or spiritual, so I was kind of wondering why that was the word used. That right there though definitely looks spiritual or holy, and that's a solid piece of bone for the rod itself. I'm guessing that whoever the people who made this were, they either used a holy figures bones to make it or it's from some holy animal or beast they worshiped."
Venna shuddered and took several more steps backward. "That's even worse! I am not touching that. What if it's cursed or something!?"
"Sindri, does it look weird to you in any way?"
"How would that help, I can't see curses."
"But you do have different sense than the rest of us, just tell me if it looks alright or if you smell anything."
He took a moment to inspect it from his perch on Dryth's shoulders. "No, looks like a normal thing made of metals, rocks, and bone."
"You don't have to carry it if you don' want to," Dryth said to Venna. He stepped forward and wrapped the scepter in a spare sack he kept on him, taking care not to touch it directly as he did so. "I'll carry it."
Venna watched the bundle in his arms warily from a distance. "Okay... Shit, the faster we get it back the faster it gets delivered and taken away from me. Tobias, Xinath, we got what we need, let's get out of here!"
Xinath silently popped into view behind John as usual, but Tobias shouted down from his perch above them on the dead crab's shell.
"One second! I think I've got something..." He frowned at the cube in his hands as it failed to do whatever he was after. Scowling, he stood up went to stick the cube in a pouch. "Alright, let me climb down."
"Don't worry about the cube!" Venna called up to him, "We can get an appraiser or someone to-"
The mysterious cube never made it into Tobias' pouch. They all stared in shock as a figure wrapped from head to toe in black cloth that resembled bandages appeared behind Tobias. A hand grabbed his wrist just before the groups puzzling loot was tucked out of sight and held him in place. The person's other hand came up holding a thin, curved black dagger and they jammed it into Tobias' chest. The archer's eyes went wide and he gurgled uncomprehendingly as the dagger was pulled out of his heart, and he died.
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Danielle Warvel
Well. That took a sudden turn.
