The Lord of Ragnarok

Mini Chapter 11 - Adventures in Security

Flumen Subjicite - Adverturer's Guild - Clopmanic's P.O.V.

Gettin' looked at like I'd done something wasn't high on the list of things to do today. Still, there Blackjack and I stood, Cynthia looking at both of us before leading us upstairs. The whole reason we were here was to check on Claudia. We found her working in the back, jumpy, but doing well enough. She'd ended up coming clean to Cynthia, and her sister wanted to formally thank us for helping her sister. Of course we were invited to join the guild, touched a mirror, and were promptly informed we needed to come upstairs.

Cynthia sighed. "If I hadn't seen this before I would be a bit more freaked out, but the truth is you're not the first level one hundred pluses that I've had in here," she said as she offered us both some tea and biscuits.

I took the offered tea.

"Got any whiskey?" Blackjack asked.

Cynthia brought up a small bottle, "It's designed to replenish magical energy. It's not terribly effective though, so it's fairly cheap."

She poured Blackjack a large tumbler of the liquor, and I watched as she sipped the tumbler until it was done. She leaned back in her chair, looked at us both, and presented two identical contracts. I looked at one, and saw that we would start out as the lowest level of Adventurers there were. Honestly, that was fine with me.

"Are either of you going to have a problem with taking quests from someone who is a lower level than yourselves?"

I shook my head, "I donae see why I would. As long as ya pay me, then Imma golden."

Blackjack smiled, "Same here. I worked for Bottlecap, and I'm pretty sure that I could have kicked her tail if I wanted. I just wanted to get paid, and that's all I really want now."

She gave a nod to us both, "Okay, I need your blood seal on the contracts themselves. Once you do that I'll be able to officially assign you both with adventures. Of course you are welcomed to turn any down if you want to, but you can only get paid upon completing adventures," she said as she handed me a dagger.

I pricked my thumb, pressed it to the page, and I felt it become warm. A moment later i passed the dagger to Blackjack and I watched as she did the same. The contract glowed a brilliant red for a few moments, and then it simply stopped. Once it finished Cynthia lead us both back down to the first floor of the guild. She walked toward the collection of adventures, adn she pulled on. She sighed, looked at us both, and then cleared her throat.

"This was originally a seek and rescue mission. A girl from a wealthy family ran off into the Tenebris Forest. It's filled with monsters, and when we first got the request it was assumed that we would be able to rescue the girl, return her to her family, and that would be it," she sighed, "The problem is that we've had adventurers go missing after going to search for her."

She looked at both of them, "I've wanted to raise this to silver level, but since both of you are as high level as you are I feel that allowing you to take it should be fine. I'm not sure what resides inside of that forest, but whatever it is has caused fifteen different adventurer parties to disappear. I will pay a reward for information on what happened to the parties, and the family will pay their reward for knowledge of what happened to their daughter."

I nodded, and we headed out. Blackjack brought out a map she had bought of the surrounding area, held it for a moment, and then folded it back up. She then looked at the amulet on her wrist.

"Okay, the mapping feature took that map into its memory, and we've got about a day and a half's journey toward the forest itself."

Personally, I felt a little jipped. Discord had basically given her a version of her Pipbuck that would work here. She could map the entire world, gain knowledge of what animal hides were worth, and even keep a running track of her currency. From what she had talked about already I could believe that it would easily keep track of anything and everything she decided ta carry. It was without a doubt one of the most useful magical items I'd seen, and that wasn't even including Eyes Forward Sparkle and the Stable-Tec Arcane Targeting Spell.

Even without traditional firearms S.A.T.S. made her attacks far more deadly. She could shoot her crossbow with amazing accuracy, and I'd seen her use it once. I wanted ta see how Discord had done it. It'd be a handy thing ta have, but then it could become something that I would end up becoming dependent on. I didnae want that. Still, even with all of the possible drawbacks it didnae take away from the fact that she had a leg up on everybody else.

We walked down stairs, and Claudia called us over. She looked at both of us, and slid what looked like a few healing potions, some bread, and a small wedge of cheese toward us.

"Technically we're not allowed to sell more than one potion per adventurer, but both of you helped me, and I wanted to help you. The bread and cheese are enchanted. When you slice off a piece of the loaf it will become whole again after ten minutes, the same for the cheese. But the more you take off the longer it takes to become whole again. And if you eat it all then it's just gone."

I looked at the gifts, "That's right nice, and we'll use 'em, thank ye," I said before we headed out.

Tenebris Forest - Two days later - Mouth of unknown cave - Blackjack's P.O.V.

Stepping into the cave sent shivers up my spine. I could feel it already, something off, something wrong, and I didn't know what it was. The last time I felt like this was when I went into the tunnels under Hoofington. There was something wrong and deadly there, and it was the same here. I felt something wrong about this place. The clues we found that indicated that the runaway was in here was too obvious.

I'd never been a tracker. If I needed to find something I looked for the Pipbuck tag, followed it, and found the person that way. It was seldom that I had to actually use my eyes. But even I noticed the torn cloth, the mangled shoe, and then there was bits of armor. Mom had taught me quite a bit about security, and she had taught me about seeding evidence. What I saw was a prime example of seeding evidence. Somepony, or someone rather, was wanting us to go into the cave. The last time something like this had happened I had ended up nearly getting taken apart by the ghost sisters Gem and Mini and their brother Taurus.

Sure, it had been a little different. And granted it hadn't been them specifically that had seeded evidence. In truth, it wasn't so much as seeded as it was just a memory orb left out for me. But it was still close enough to make me feel wary of it. Was I certain that I could get through it? Sure, I could, and I was certain that Clopmaniac could do the same, but it didn't stop me from feeling like there might be something dangerous waiting for us. Still, we stepped forward into the darkness.

Clopmaniac lit up her horn, and I did the same with my compact horn. Our auras glow was enough to really light up the cave. As we moved inside I saw two side caverns that split off to the sides. I pointed them out, and she nodded. I lifted my crossbow, thumbed the red ruby, and I was happy that Eyes Forward Sparkle was activated. I could see the red dots of enemies, and I noticed that one was closer. I faintly saw an outline, and I activated S.A.T.S. I was so glad that it still worked in this world. I let the flaming bolt fly and we were rewarded with a scream. I thumbed the ruby again, let another fly and the scream stopped. The sounds of feet running echoed through the cavern, and we got ready. There were at least a dozen goblins, but they hadn't surrounded us yet.

We slew them, making sure to put them down as quickly as possible. One thing I had learned was that Goblins hated fire, but then most living creatures didn't like dealing with fire. Burning them seemed to take them out the easiest, so my crossbow was firing enchanted fiery darts. A small part of me really wished for a combat shotgun and those special incendiary rounds we found. Moving forward I could hear chanting, and looking ahead I saw a goblin standing, its body covered with a robe, and it held a glowing sphere. It tossed it toward us, and I stopped Clopmaniac from grabbing it with her magic. It wasn't likely a memory orb, but there was that chance, and the last thing that we needed was to have her out of it while she relieved someone's memories.

The sphere bounced harmlessly against the wall, and the robed goblin stomped the ground. It created a ball of fire, but I shot it with a bolt from the crossbow first. I looked around as the room began to change. Apparently the goblin had been a wizard of some kind, and it had changed the room. I saw nearly twenty girls, of various ages, some like Claudia, a few mares, and a few others, but they were all tied down. All of them had vacant looks in their eyes. I neared one of them, and I could see how badly she had been abused. My blood boiled.

I heard a few steps and out stepped a huge goblin. It stood nearly a head taller than either of us. It's mouth opened wide.

"CUNTS!" it cried.

I pulled my dragonclaw and introduced it to the large goblin's reproductive equipment. I didn't stop there. I began slicing it up, taking time to not kill it right away, but instead really take it apart in the most painful way before it could die. It screamed, trying to get back, but I didn't let it. I kept it up, making sure that I didn't give it a chance to attack.

When I was done I looked for more, because I planned on killing every last one of them.