SILVERYMOON
Chapter Two
They all had daggers. Kate had slapped his hand when he reached for the dagger that had a sale price of 8,000 gold pieces. "I said not expensive, Castle."
"You never said that," Rick argued since he had let that go in one ear and out the other.
"I did, but you weren't listening," Kate countered. "As usual." Kate muttered that to herself, but Alexis was close enough and grinned. Alexis was learning to like Kate. It was apparent to her that Kate liked her dad, and she had a way of dealing with him that was different from hers.
In the end, they came away with their daggers – one Cold Iron Dagger, one Silver Dagger, and one Adamantine Dagger. Kate got the Cold Iron, Alexis got the Silver, and Rick got the Adamantine. The different materials in the daggers were meant to counter anything they found. Naturally, Rick's cost the most, so he was happy. He would have been happier if his was magical, but that was another 1,000 gold pieces that Kate wouldn't let him spend.
They had spent 5,400 gold pieces for the house and business and more gold for furniture. And still more gold for building supplies. Sixteen thousand for that magical instrument. Plus, shopping for fresh food daily at the market.
However 208,000 add 4,500 gold pieces, plus 4,800 gold pieces, still another 5,500 gold pieces, plus Glove of Storing sold for 8 thousand gold pieces, and Gloves of Arrow Snaring sold for 3,000 gold pieces. So they currently had around 212,000 gold pieces to live on until they started their business. Kate had every intention of being careful with what they had.
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Mostly due to her orange hair, Alexis was chosen as the barber's next customer that night. The idea was that while he was watching Patches, the burning cat, Alexis would charm him. Thirty seconds later, in would walk Rick and Kate. If Alexis didn't have him charmed, either Rick or Kate would give it a shot. Which would then be followed by Kate and Rick interrogating him.
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"Wow!" Alexis whispered while she and Kate watched Rick push the barber chair off to one side, exposing a hole in the floor with steps leading down.
Jooge would complain about that save for two things. One, he was charmed thanks to Alexis, and two, he was bound up like a mummy. They hadn't found any rope to tie him up, so they used strips of cloth and wrapped him up from head to toe. He had just enough room to breathe.
"Cloning?" Kate shook her head. She thought that was a modern idea back home. So how had these people done it? There were actually three Jooges: the original, the Jooge that did barber work during the day, and this Jooge that did work only at night.
"It explains why Mops sees differences in her father. Besides one having a metal tooth and being mean, while the other looks more like her father but doesn't feel like him," Alexis said thoughtfully.
"Stay here, Patches." Then Alexis went Ethereal to the point where none of them could see her, and she went down the stairs. It only took a couple of minutes, and she was back. "There are eight little dark blue guys down there. All of them are armed. They're bald and remind me of Minions from the Despicable Me movie but without the goggles.
"Another set of stairs goes down. There's a single groove down the middle of both staircases. I'm guessing here, but I think the chair goes down, turns, and goes down again. Down the second set of stairs is a larger room. There are two more chairs like this one, two more dark blue Minions, and it's a mess. There's lots of blood, hair, and even teeth. A lot of wigs on fake heads, and there's a machine that looks like one of those old-fashioned hair dryers. It's the kind with a dome that comes down over your head." Alexis demonstrated using her hands.
Alexis made a face. "It's gross down there."
Kate looked at Rick. "Eight."
"We can take them. We fought our way here, what are eight little Minions armed with daggers?" Rick thought they couldn't possibly have the strength the three of them had.
"Kill them?" Kate wasn't a fan of killing anyone. Granted, she had killed Drow getting here. But she had needed the blood, and they wanted out of there. Silverymoon was a nice city, a good city. They could make a future here.
"Capture all of them? Eight plus three more and where are the other Jooges? Is this the end, or are there more? I hate killing, but can we capture and hold all of them?" Rick wasn't fighting to kill, but they needed to succeed. Mops needed her real dad back, and Rick was all about family.
"Well, I'm not biting them. The Drow upset my stomach, so what will these guys do to it?" Kate took that off the table. "Fine, we kill if we have to. But I want one alive so we can question him." Kate pointed at these two.
Rick and Alexis took off their clothes so they could shift and not ruin them. As a Succubus and Incubus they had more strength and other abilities. "Wait here, Patches." Alexis went Ethereal and hurried down the stairs and over to a door to block it.
A moment later Rick charged down the stairs to take the first of them by surprise, while Kate turned into twenty or so bats and flew down and surrounded one of them, biting and hitting him over and over again.
Rick and Kate realized that killing even one was ridiculously easy. They were very weak.
Once they were at half strength one of them ran for the door to escape, only to run into Alexis who became solid and used her dagger and strength to kill one and capture one.
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Sure enough, they found a nightmare. Blood was on the floor, there was a station to pull teeth and iron teeth waiting for implantation, lots of wigs in different colors. Then a room behind a door that held glass tubes full of colors, and they didn't know what. However, three creatures in cages shrieked at them, causing them to look and close the door.
There was indeed a station to dry hair using a wood-fired stove to create the heat.
"Weird. What does he do down here?" Kate was still looking around. There were towels, water that flowed out of the wall and straight down a drain, and one of the chairs. Then there was the tooth extraction location: pinchers, clamps, drills, awls, and other implements of dentistry.
Rick was right behind her. "I'm not coming here if I ever get a cavity, I know that much."
"So what has this guy got to say for himself?" Kate, with Rick right behind her, joined Alexis.
"He says his name is Redcap, and he's Jooge's assistant. They cut hair, but the hair itself comes to life somehow. Something about a comb." Alexis pointed, and that had Rick walking over to it and picking it up to look at it.
Alexis told them what else she'd learned. "Jooge was trying to create the ultimate wig. It's actually a life form that's supposed to brainwash the wearer. Even the teeth he implants do things. In that room are vials of all kinds of things. They're all hair dyes, and each color does something different, all magical. Then there's the hairdryer over there. It's used to wipe a person's memories permanently. Magical, naturally."
"Now I know I'm never coming here again," Rick swore and Kate just glared at him.
"So where are the real Jooge and his double?" Kate questioned her, only to watch her point at the door behind her.
"Down there are more Minions, and someone called Errevastica. She's in charge around here, and supposedly she has power," Alexis said. "Something about hair is all I get. Not sure even he understands just what is going on here. We need to find the real Jooge and this Errevastica."
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"MEOW!" Patches hated this room. It stunk and was ugly. He just wanted to go home and take his best buddy with him.
"I know it stinks down here." Alexis reached down to pet him and calm him a little. Hearing that, Kate looked at Rick and grinned. She really thought that Alexis was learning what he was saying.
"So we go down again." Kate was ready to get going.
"That sounds like my cue. Just give me a couple of minutes. You stay here, Patches." Alexis went Ethereal again and then went through the door and down the stairs.
"She makes a great scout," Kate commented.
"So did you when we were trying to get home," Rick reminded her. It was her ability to fly and scout that got them to go in the right direction.
"Except me as a group of bats would give us away here," Kate countered and waited for Alexis to come back.
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Alexis was back. "MEOW!"
Alexis did her best to soothe him. "I was perfectly safe, Patches." Then she turned to tell her dad and Kate what she saw. "I think I found the real Jooge, maybe. He's locked up in a big birdcage that's hanging from the ceiling, and he's behind another eight of those Minions. He wasn't awake. It's a bit of a maze down there, and there's hair everywhere. We won't be able to walk and not step on hair," Alexis warned them.
"What is it with hair?" Kate didn't understand. Okay, yes, he was a barber, but why so much hair?
"Not loose hair, either. It's like the hair you had cut off of someone and dumped it all down there. I'm talking Rapunzel-type hair. Jet black hair, and it's everywhere," Alexis added.
"Now that is weird. Live hair or dead hair? What if the hair's an alarm?" Rick wondered aloud as his imagination began to work on all kinds of theories.
"Well, we need Jooge. Maybe he can tell us what's going on around here." Kate was ready to get started. "Lead on, Alexis. We'll bring Patches for you. Hopefully, he won't catch the hair on fire and use up all the oxygen." Kate didn't want to be trapped underground with fire everywhere.
"Oh, and save for where the Minions are, it's pitch black down there," Alexis cautioned.
"Then it's a good thing we can see in the dark out to sixty feet." That wasn't going to stop them.
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Sure enough, they found hair on the stairs and had a hard time not stepping on any of it, but so far, they were managing.
They came to a fork in the road, so to speak. And Alexis showed up. "We go straight, I didn't go to the right. The Minions are just ahead. I'm going to go past them and try and block access to Jooge just in case they decide to try and kill him." And before either of them could complain and say no, she was gone again.
"I'm going first." In less than a heartbeat, Kate shifted into a swarm of twenty or so bats. She waited for a moment and took off down the tunnel. Now it was her sonar that told her where she was. It had taken her some practice to get used to it since it was so different.
Rick was trying to hurry while not stepping on hair, and when he showed up, he saw Kate as a swarm of bats attacking one of the Minions while Alexis was also in combat. Oblivious of the hair, Rick charged in and attacked one. Along with his dagger, he damn near plunged his entire hand into the Minion's body.
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It turned out Alexis was wrong. It wasn't Jooge. They found someone that looked a little like a Dwarf inside the cage, and it looked like he was the source of all the hair. It was coming from his cage. Though based on the fact that his feet looked like a goat's, he wasn't a Dwarf. Since he wasn't Jooge, they let him sleep and moved on.
Instead of going back, they kept walking and found another fork in the road. But the one to the left had a cast iron-looking sewer cover that had holes in it, and the hair didn't go that way.
Rick tried to look through the holes and didn't see anything, so he lifted the cover off, and they all looked down. "GROSS!" Alexis pinched her nose closed over the smell.
"MEOW!" Patches didn't like the smell either, however, he moved over to the other manhole cover. "MEOW!"
That had Kate going over and looking down. "I've got someone." Kate looked over at Rick and Alexis.
Rick moved in and was all set to lift the cover off, but Kate stopped him. "Are you going to stay looking like this? What if he's awake? Do you want him to see you like this?"
"Kate, we're naked!" Rick reminded her since they had left their clothes behind.
Kate raised an eyebrow and glared at him. "Which is it going to be? Naked Demon or naked human?"
"She has a point, Dad." Alexis got it and made a choice. Better a naked human instead of a naked Demon.
"FINE!" However, Rick stayed Demon, lifted the cover off, and placed it aside. He then changed to look like a naked human.
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He was thirty feet straight down, so the question was how to get him out since they had finally found the real Jooge. Going back to the last room solved that problem.
Jooge only had one main concern. "Where is my daughter? …And why are you two naked?"
"Mops? She's upstairs in her bedroom. She's fine. Nothing has happened to her, I promise," Alexis assured him. "She's such a sweet eight-year-old. She even liked Patches."
Jooge pointed at Patches. "Is that cat on fire? Is he supposed to do that?" He looked at them worriedly. "I need to find Beozar. He's my best friend."
"He wouldn't happen to look a little like a Dwarf with goat feet, would he?" Kate inquired.
"You found him!? Beozar is a Korred. He's my very best friend." Jooge followed them to his best friend. Soon they had him out, and those two were hugging it out. Next came how to cut his hair short, so he used Rick's dagger to cut Beozar's hair.
Kate questioned them both. "So what's going on here?"
"Errevastica is an Annis hag. An Annis hag is a repulsive, hunchbacked crone with skin the color of a fresh bruise. Despite her hunch, she looms taller than a human. But she has the ability to hide what she looks like. What she can't hide, though, is her metal teeth," Jooge informed them. "She's an Evil creature."
Then Beozar spoke up. "She has a lot of Xvarts helping her. Somehow, she learned of a way to use my hair to make duplicates of Jooge here. One is nice but stupid, and one is pure Evil. What her plan is, I don't know."
"We need to find her and kill her," Jooge argued. "I want to keep my daughter safe, and I need my shop back." He frowned. "Why are you two naked again?" They hadn't answered that question yet.
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They walked back to where they went left last time and turned right this time with Alexis out in front in Ethereal form. She was back no more than a minute later. "There's one guard just ahead and another eight Minions just past him in a room. Based on what we've seen in town, it looks like a shrine to some god."
"That would be Raxivort. He's their god. Evil and supposedly a creator. We need to destroy him right after we kill Errevastica," Beozar told them and raised his dagger. He was more than ready to kill a few Xvarts, what Alexis called Minions.
"I'll take the guard while you go past me and attack the others. I'll be right there." And with that, Kate shifted into a swarm of bats.
Jooge's eyes were huge. "Bats?" He hadn't seen anything like that before.
Alexis was ready for him. "Magic item."
They gave Kate about thirty seconds and then went past her and into the room where a fight started. Except this fight wasn't so easy. It seemed one of them was a Wizard. He got off one spell and tried to hit Rick with tiny shooting stars. Though, for reasons that Rick didn't understand, they did nothing to him.
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"GROSS!" Alexis didn't like the room. It was gruesomely decorated with skulls and bones.
"MEOW!" Patches didn't like it much either.
"No need to translate, Alexis, I can guess," Kate said grimly.
"Stay here, Patches, I'll be right back." Alexis went Ethereal again and went back into the tunnel to see what was ahead.
Eventually, Alexis returned just as Rick was getting worried.
"We have trouble. I counted forty-seven Minions all over a big cavern, plus one big, lovely, purple woman sitting in a chair. She was playing with some kind of fancy comb."
"Forty-seven!?" Kate didn't like that number. That could well be far too many for them.
Jooge corrected Alexis. "They are called Xvarts. But without her disguise, they would flee in fear of her and not fight us. They may worship an Evil God, but they're all cowards. If they could see her, they wouldn't fight."
"Hmm." Rick considered that.
"I can get in really close to her and not be seen," Alexis suggested. "Maybe give her a quick blow to a kidney if she has a kidney. Would that get her to drop her disguise?"
Rick didn't like it. "Alone? With whatever a hag is since it sounds pretty bad."
"I'll be right there with her in seconds, Castle." Kate looked at Jooge. "You need to be right, or we're all in trouble." Forty-seven Minions sounded like big trouble to her.
"I'm positive," Jooge confirmed.
"Give me a minute then. When she screams, come running or flying in your case," Alexis told Kate. "Stay here, Patches. Be a good kitty. I love you." Alexis bent down and petted him, then vanished again.
"If this goes wrong…" Rick didn't like it at all when Alexis risked her life.
"Alexis goes Ethereal again, and we all run for it." Kate got ready to shift and fly in to attack this supposed hag.
Kate heard a scream and shifted into a swarm of bats. She flew down the tunnel and into a large cavern which was indeed filled with Minions, along with one purple woman who was now standing and looking for who or what stabbed her.
Since she was distracted, she didn't see Kate coming until suddenly she was surrounded by a swarm of bats and every one of them was hitting her.
Rick, Jooge, and Beozar came close to being run down by a stampede of Minions fleeing for their lives. It became a challenge they had overlooked while trying to get into the room to fight the hag.
What the three of them saw was indeed an ugly-as-sin old hag. She had these tree limbs growing out of her back. She was wearing damn little, and her skin looked putrid and gross. She even had skulls hanging from her waist.
Even bent over as she was, she was easily eight feet tall. She seemed to be swinging at all the bats biting her when she cried out again as Alexis stabbed her dagger into her side, hoping to hit a tender spot. But Alexis took a hit that sent her flying. At least everyone else was uninjured.
The hag was dead, and the Minions ran out of the barber's building into the city, running toward one of the gates. The fight was over.
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Jooge and Beozar had gone off looking for a machine Jooge had been told about to tease him about what they were doing to his business. That left Rick, Kate, and Alexis looking for treasure that the hag might have.
1,325 gold pieces, 2,500 silver pieces, 625 copper pieces, a golden spindle worth 150 gold pieces, a potion of resistance (poison), a potion of fire breath, a spell scroll of cure wounds, assorted small pieces of jewelry worth a total of 750 gold pieces, and a spellbook.
Evil Comb needed to be destroyed by a Wizard, but finding it and handing it over gained them a reward.
Eventually, Rick, Kate, and Alexis caught up to them and were introduced to the ultimate machine: The Prismatic Coloring Machine. It tapped into extradimensional forces to reach a dimension of pure color, where hues were the expression of primal forces beyond any mortal's understanding. The cavern walls around the ominous iron device were streaked with kaleidoscopic patterns and rainbow shades.
Red did fire damage that, so far, always killed someone. Orange did acid damage and killed everyone that gained that color of hair. Yellow was lightning damage and, so far, always killed the subject. Green caused the subject to be turned into a yuan-ti pureblood (part snake and part person). Blue did cold damage that, like the other colors, killed the person. Indigo caused the person to be turned to stone, effectively killing them. Violet caused the person to be permanently blind. These people always had their minds wiped and were released. On occasion, the subject was subject to two colors which always resulted in death.
With the threat of the Annis hag ended, Rick, Kate, and Alexis earned the gratitude of the folk of Silverymoon, the eternal friendship of Jooge and Mops, and free haircuts for life. Local authorities took responsibility for cleaning out and sanctifying the cellars and caverns beneath Jooge's house, which were then sealed off.
Our heroes would soon learn that the City would call on them yet again for another problem that they might be able to solve. For a price, of course.
Once they were home, Kate played and sang, starting with the roof and working her way down for thirty minutes of playing for today. Tomorrow and however long it took her, she played and made changes to the entire building till it was all changed and perfect for them.
Rick smiled at her. "So, you sing?"
"Don't go getting used to it, Castle. I'm not a singer, I'm a homicide detective," Kate insisted.
"You mean you are or will be a Slayer of Domiel," Rick corrected her.
While Kate didn't want to be an assassin, a Slayer of Domiel wasn't Evil, and it did closely fit what she had been doing as a Homicide Detective.
Meanwhile, Alexis found out that she qualified to be a Sorceress. Which just left Rick. He eventually found out that with training, he could be a Warlock.
They now had more gold which meant they could easily afford the training, and they certainly had the time. Rick needed to work on constructing his printing press, and Kate needed to write up Christmas songs for people to play and sing. She started with Silent Night.
When not undergoing training, Alexis took sewing lessons. She was planning to sew as many Christmas decorations as she could manage. Mostly miniature dolls or other things like Frosty the Snowman or perhaps Santa himself.
Alexis's regular classes in school were costing 268 gold pieces per year.
Learning to be a Sorceress, a Warlock, and a Slayer of Domiel would cost them each 6,759 gold pieces every year. And it would take them four years, much like a college back home, adding up to a staggering total of 81,108 gold pieces.