Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Augustin and Braiden made the introductions, Elder Bahul responding to both Warren and Elyssandra with polite grunts, as polite as grunts could be.
“My grandmother proposed that we escort Elder Bahul down the dungeon,” Augustin said. “That way, he can assess it for potential installation of further conveniences: elevators, more drinking fountains, resting stops, and such.”
Elyssandra clapped politely. Warren murmured in approval, seemingly comfortable with the fact that the elder didn’t make a big fuss of seeing a burrowfolk man up close.
Braiden noted how Augustin had ended his introduction with unquestionable finality, completely skating over the messier details involving penalties for littering, food and beverage licenses, and other such necessary evils.
“And here we are,” Elder Bahul said. His mustachios quivered, but Braiden still couldn’t find his mouth, for the life of him.
“And here we are,” Braiden said nervously, his smile tight.
“Then shall we proceed?” Augustin suggested.
The five fell into lockstep, Elder Bahul naturally falling behind them, Warren and Elyssandra walking side by side. Braiden quickened his pace to match Augustin’s, hoping for as much privacy as a tight squeeze in a dungeon tunnel could offer.
This was about as awkward as being forced to hang out with all your friends, but also that one distant uncle you never got to know very well. And not one of the talkative ones, either, the one that just sat off to the side of every family gathering nursing one drink and staring into space.
The gangly, clumsy teenager that Braiden thought he’d left long behind him took over his body, the air thickened with the silence of never really knowing what to say around everyone but his tightest circle of friends. And even that was something he was still getting used to.
Elyssandra cleared her throat. Augustin coughed into his fist. Awkward, indeed.
“If I may be so bold,” Warren said from somewhere behind them. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I just have to ask. Do you carry your entire inventory in your backpack?”
“Chest,” Bahul replied.
“Ah, right. Yes, and what a fine chest it is. And may I ask: what do you carry in it?”
“Everything.”
And that was that.
“We’ll make the best of it,” Braiden whispered to Augustin. “It’s not a bad situation, really. This still means that we’re absolved of the dozens of debts your grandmother threatened us with.”
Augustin glanced over his shoulder, making it far too obvious that they were talking about Elder Bahul in particular. If the elder reacted, Braiden couldn’t see enough of his face to tell.
“The trouble is, I’m not sure I can manage a fleetfoot spell for all five of us.” He scratched the back of his head. “In fact, you might say I was bragging a bit when I offered outside the entrance. Three pairs of feet is doable. Four is a stretch. Five would knock me right into a stupor.”
“Want to walk faster?” Elder Bahul called from the back of the line.
Braiden stiffened. “Sorry?” he asked, forcing a casual friendliness to his voice, unsure if the elder was responding to their very noisy whispering or asking out of thin air.
“Do you want to walk faster?” Bahul repeated. “These upper levels are well explored. We can go deeper, faster. I happen to have a concoction that can help.”
Augustin leaned in even closer to whisper. “That’s the most words he’s ever spoken to us. We should take him up on his offer.”
“And what a fine offer it is!” Elder Bahul boomed, suddenly revivified.
Braiden and the others stopped in their tracks in shock, the elder’s tone so electric, so — charismatic. When they turned to face him, Elder Bahul’s chest was no longer strapped to his back, but placed on the ground, its lid opened wide to reveal a fine assortment of goods.
Because it wasn’t simply a chest, after all, but a bizarre sort of cabinet, compartments of various sizes built into both the lid and the body holding vials, trinkets, and scrolls of all sorts, charms and talismans hanging from hooks screwed firmly into the lid.
Everything seemed to sparkle somehow, even things that weren’t supposed to be shiny, the bits of coral, the pieces of parchment. Braiden poked a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. Was there calliope music coming from somewhere, too?
“And here it is!” Elder Bahul announced, stretching out his hand with all the bravado of a professional magician. That jar simply had no business looking so shiny and tempting in his grasp, but there it was, as big as a beer mug, a gleaming vessel in bluish-green glass.
“Smear this on your feet and your speed can’t be beat, whether meant for a hike or expeditious retreat.”
A former smuggler, now an elder, and a traveling merchant, too? Braiden blinked hard, trying his best not to show his shock. He could barely see Bahul’s eyes past the snowy bushiness of his eyebrows, but he knew that they were twinkling, as radiant as stars.
Who was this man? Was the dungeon now full of doppelg?ngers, or ghosts? Gods, had something wicked possessed the elder in all the five minutes they had their backs turned? Elder Orora would never let them hear the end of it.
“And all for the low, low price of — ”
The number went in Braiden’s left ear and out the right, barely leaving traces of its ridiculousness as it squeezed through his brain.
Why had he ever expected this to go so easy?
If Elder Orora wasn’t wringing every last gold coin out of them, Elder Bahul would.
He was still an elder of Weathervale, after all, one of the villains who called the Lighthouse their secret lair.
Out of the frying pan and straight into the hellish, flaming pit.
“We’ll take it,” Braiden groaned in surrender. “We have to. It’s for Bones’s sake.”
Elder Bahul’s shoulders slumped, the lightning receding from his posture, as if sucked away by sheer contact with the ground. He clicked his fingers and the chest snapped shut.
“All sales are final,” he droned, back to the boring old Bahul. “Here. Pass it around.”
With a single deft twist of his hand, he opened the jar and scooped out a quantity of yellowish gunk to smear on the soles of his boots.
“What just happened?” Elyssandra hissed as Warren looked bemusedly from his handful of ointment to the bottom of his feet.
“I don’t know,” Braiden hissed back. “Just go with it.”
“I’ll put it on your tab,” Elder Bahul said, fully lodged back into his normal catatonic state. “Flutterbutter don’t come cheap.”
“Much appreciated,” Braiden said, hoping he didn’t sound too sarcastic. Flutterbutter? Honestly.
He scooped up half a handful of the stuff with his fingers, grimacing at the oily, oddly familiar texture of the ointment. He wrinkled his nose as if that might help him avoid its smell, but it wafted up to him even as he smeared it onto the soles of his shoes.
It wasn’t unpleasant at all, actually, reminding him of something cloyingly sweet. Honey, maybe, or nectar, something he imagined might taste of rich sugar.
He slid his foot along the ground experimentally, pursing his lips when he found that the ointment had only made things more slippery when he walked.
Great. What was this purportedly magical mixture that he and Augustin had already preemptively paid out the nose for? Perhaps Elder Bahul could add snake-oil salesman to his impressive resume.
“It’s awfully slimy,” Elyssandra said, plodding unsteadily forward like a newborn foal.
“I don’t know,” Warren said, his elongated feet plopping wetly as he paced a few steps. “It’s a little nice, actually. I feel very moisturized.”
“Give it time,” the elder said. “You’ll know when the magic kicks in.”
And that didn’t take very long at all. Suddenly the dungeon walls were passing by a lot faster, though it didn’t feel as though Braiden was making much more effort with his muscles.
Quite the difference from Augustin’s fleetfoot spell, where Braiden had been very much conscious in the moment of how his feet had moved so fast as to turn into a blur, a burst of speed that exacted its toll on his physique after the fact.
He looked down at his feet to check if they were doing the same thing, his eyes going wide open when he saw the wings attached to his boots. Butterfly wings, in fact, several pairs lining either side of both shoes.
He gasped, stopping in his tracks to marvel at the sight, then gasped again when the wings vanished.
“Gotta keep moving or the magic don’t work,” Elder Bahul said. “Make the most of it. Flutterbutter wears off quick.”
A single step forward and Braiden’s shoes were covered in vividly colorful butterfly wings once again. He felt lighter than air, propelling himself with greater ease when he understood that the motion of his legs was what activated the magic, every step synchronized to the flutter of each wing.
Elder Bahul held on to his bandanna and jogged tirelessly along. His massive chest did nothing to slow his stride. Elyssandra tittered as she pranced down the passage, happy as a clam to go delving down to the fiery depths.
Augustin’s gorgeous boots were only enhanced by the butterfly wings, their deep beetle black festooned in delicate fluttering clouds of color. He frowned at his feet, clearly intrigued by the flutterbutter’s magic, and perhaps a little jealous of how well the ointment worked.
But Warren, well-moisturized and well-heeled, took to the ointment most naturally. Each of his bunny hops was boosted enormously by the magic, bounding along with such great leaps that he had to stop and wait for the rest of the group to catch up.
As they pressed further into the dungeon, Braiden noticed that the few elementals they ran into did indeed look smaller and weaker than before. Pellets of rock sailed past his head, fired almost lazily at him by one of the rockwalkers.
Aha. No more icicles, and terrible aim, to boot. Augustin was right — banishing the frozen cube had indeed altered the fundamental composition of the dungeon. He wondered how the rest of the place must have changed, fauna aside.
This also showed Braiden the wisdom of Elder Bahul’s intent to build infrastructure into the dungeon itself. These rockwalkers posed little threat and offered little of interest or value to more experienced adventurers.
As they’d seen for themselves in their first descent, the lesser elementals didn’t yield anything of worth when destroyed.
Elevators like Elder Bahul was proposing would allow the stronger sort of adventurer to quickly descend to the more dangerous, but certainly more profitable levels of the dungeon.
Onward they went, downward they plunged, taking the familiar paths they’d already trodden through the dungeon. From memory Braiden knew that they would run into the great luminous cavern soon, lit by its abundance of glowing mushrooms.
And after that, the Underborough!
How long had it been since Braiden had a bite of rooty tooty stew? He always felt a bit shy about requesting that Warren bring some with him, feeling it too much of an imposition to request a pot each time he visited his grandmother.
Still, it was tempting to ask. And the tastiness of scooping up the stew’s sauce with delicious burrowfolk flatbread? Braiden pumped his legs faster, motivated to run by food, of all things, feeling slightly guilty that he hadn’t already been moving faster for Bones’s sake.
Surely the skeleton was still doing fine. Valefour wanted so badly for Braiden to descend, for whatever reason, that it was highly unlikely he would do something unsavory to his undead bargaining chit.
Braiden wondered how much hotter it might be down in these newly discovered depths. It was growing hotter even now, in fact, and not just because the icy cube was no longer cooling the dungeon with its ambient influence.
No, this heat must have been caused by the dungeon’s elemental shift in composition.
Or maybe it was caused by the great, flaming humanoid thing lurching at them from just around the corner.
Braiden gulped.