The torchlight swung away down a side gallery, the goblin laughter fading into the creak of the wheel.
Violet water dripped from the buckets far overhead, ticking onto Ray’s coat collar while he waited behind the nearest pillar. His HUD flickered against the wards, sputtering into grey static like a cheap motel television losing its signal at midnight.
[ INTERFERENCE ]
[Source: Maker Wards]
[Threat Tags: Unavailable]
[Map: Unavailable]
’The wards ate my map along with my threat tags, leaving me to do this the old way, with eyes and ears.’
Yuzu came down after him anyway, leaving her Veil glowing over the hatch while she hung from the bottom rungs.
"You’re doing the squinting face again," she whispered.
"Nothing went wrong, I’m just admiring the ambiance of a damn basement that wants to kill us," he whispered back, rolling his shoulders until they popped.
"You built two weapons last night without sleeping a wink, so forgive me for doubting your judgment."
He tapped his temple with one finger, "My judgment is flawless, seeing as I’m running on pure spite and Dredge’s tea, which tastes like a boot got arrested."
"How will you know where they are when you can’t see past the first pillar?"
"I’ll do it the way every pro does it... by listening for the idiots who walk loud," he said, crouching low against the pillar.
The lower vault stretched away from the ladder, pillars marching into the dark beside a sump that smelled of copper. Old Maker runes crawled along every arch, warm under his palm while they drank whatever light his eyes could borrow.
He checked Hard Sell along his right forearm, the spike housing snug against the bone with both cells seated.
’Fifty-four rounds, a full fifty mana, three charges in the fork and two in the gauntlet make a decent kit on no sleep.’
"My Veil covers the hatch but won’t stretch along the walkway, so don’t wander past the second pillar."
"Wandering is for tourists, Doc, while I’m strictly down here on business."
Below the walkway, the water in the sump shifted without any current to push it.
"Channel toxicity is thickest down here, though if anything bleeds on you, keep it away from your mouth and eyes."
He drew Payday from his right hip, "Noted, no licking the monsters, though that honestly cuts my weekend plans in half."
"Lick a monster and I charge you double for the antidote, with no discount for friends."
Feet slapped along the walkway beyond the bend, six sets of them, quick and careless like they owned the place. Ray lifted one finger toward the ladder, settling his shoulder against the pillar while Yuzu went silent on her rung.
’One drags his spear butt while another wheezes like a bellows, putting the loud goblin in front and the slow straggler at the back.’
"Keep the Veil dim and your head below the rungs until I say otherwise," he breathed without turning around.
Lantern fungus glowed on their spears as they rounded the corner, violet collars pulsing at every scrawny throat.
The skin around each collar was mottled grey, the flesh puckered where the crystal sent roots down into the throat. Whoever fitted those collars was not interested in taking them back off, judging by how far the roots reached inward.
’The clock starts now, though if I do this right the whole job runs six seconds.’
Ray stepped clear of the pillar with nothing left on his face, the grin and the squint both gone.
On the ladder behind him, Yuzu’s knuckles whitened on the rung as the vault turned colder than the water.
The lead goblin’s ears flattened against its skull a full heartbeat before it ever saw him.
The first round took the leader under the chin at nine paces, the second dropping the spear-carrier before either fell. Muzzle flash strobed across the dripping vault as the third goblin shrieked, charging at a noise it could not understand.
Ray stepped inside its spear, trapping the shaft under his arm before driving his elbow through its throat.
He shoved the twitching body into the fourth goblin, firing twice through the tangle until both of them stopped moving.
The last two broke for the bend, so he put one round in each back before they reached it.
The echoes chased each other between the arches until the creak of the wheel swallowed the last of them.
’That drake feat bought me a quicker first step, which honestly feels a little like cheating.’
"That was barely six seconds," she breathed, her rapier half-drawn on the rung, "though I never even got to cast."
"Six seconds is industry standard, given that anything longer and the client starts asking questions."
He spun the pistol once before holstering it, "Six rounds for six goblins leaves forty-eight in the bank, the kind of math I could do all day."
Yuzu climbed down the last rungs to look, her nose wrinkling at the sour smell rising from the opened throats. She knelt beside the elbowed goblin with a healer’s quick glance, because even monsters got their wounds checked by her.
"Did any of that blood land on you?" she asked without looking up.
"Not a single drop, considering I was standing upwind of the whole thing like a gentleman."
"There is no wind in a basement, Ray."
He nudged a fallen spear with his toe, "Bone point, rotten shaft and a lantern mushroom glued on for style, which prices the whole thing at maybe two copper."
"Leave the spear alone, since it carries the same taint as the collar."
The collar on the dead goblin’s throat kept pulsing, a slow violet heartbeat that matched the drip from the wheel.
"He’s dead, but the crystal is still feeding straight from the water like a tick on a cow."
’If every collar drinks from the same line, then the tap is close and whatever guards it is closer.’
Ray crouched beside her, unslinging the long two-pronged weapon from his back, "Then he makes the perfect test dummy for my new baby."
He held it up in both hands like a proud father, the tuning prongs catching the glow of the fungus.
"Say hello to Severance, built in a dusty attic out of tuning forks, copper and pure stubbornness."
"It looks like a giant’s dinner fork... a cheap one," she said flatly.
"It’s a resonance gun that listens for the note a thing breaks at before singing that exact note right back at it."
She folded her arms over one knee, "Hmph, then call it a resonance gun the way a sane person would."
"Nobody sane builds a resonance gun in an attic, so the name stays."
He set the prongs a finger’s width from the collar, thumbing the dial while the hum climbed through his teeth. Somewhere inside that rising whine the crystal answered him, a thin glassy shiver like a wet finger circling a goblet.
’There you are... now hold still while I match your exact pitch.’
He squeezed the trigger, bursting the collar into violet sand without leaving a single scratch on the neck.
[ SEVERANCE ]
[Status: Charge Spent]
[Charges: 2 / 3]
"Hahaha, look at that clean cut, would somebody please write down that I am a certified genius!"
"I’ll write down that you talk to your weapons," she said, though the corner of her mouth twitched.
"Every great craftsman talks to his tools, while mine happen to be excellent listeners."
She pinched a little of the violet sand between two gloved fingers, rubbing it with a clinical frown.
"The taint left it with the note, leaving it as harmless as beach sand."
"That’s a surgical breach, with the collar gone and zero damage to the patient."
He slung the fork across his back, "Two charges left is plenty, seeing as the rest of this job is a stroll to the tap for some easy—"
The water in the sump went still, every ripple flattening at once as if something below was listening.
The shattered note was still ringing between the arches when a much larger collar began humming somewhere far beneath them. It answered the exact pitch Ray just taught the vault, only deeper, slower and loud enough to shiver the walkway.
"Tell me that hum is the wheel and not something your fork just woke up."
"That’s not the wheel," Ray said quietly, his eyes fixed on the sump, "though whatever it is, it heard us."
The sump bulged slowly upward like a blister, violet water sheeting off a skull the size of a wagon wheel. Crystal plates jutted from its shoulders in jagged rows, each one threaded with veins that brightened as it climbed out.
Its collar was no collar at all, but a fused ring of crystal grown straight into the chieftain’s throat.
Even waist-deep in the sump, the thing stood nearly three times Ray’s height.
’That’s a goblin chieftain wearing the whole tap like a necklace, which means my fork just rang its doorbell.’
"Oh, hell no, I want a full refund on this entire basement, seeing as nobody mentioned a boss!"
"Get up that ladder and stay there no matter what you hear," he barked, backing toward the pillar with the pistol raised.
"I am not leaving you down here alone with that thing!"
"Somebody has to stop its little friends from coming down that ladder behind me, so you’ve got wall duty."
"If you die down here, I am billing your corpse for the antidote."
She held his gaze for one long breath before she climbed, gold light already spreading across the hatch above her. Rungs rattled under her feet as the Veil sealed behind her, leaving Ray alone with the creak of the wheel.
The chieftain dragged one huge hand onto the walkway’s edge, the boards bowing as it hauled itself upward.
He raised the pistol toward the rising bulk, "Come on up then, you ugly bastard, and let’s find out what key you sing in."
It opened a jaw full of glass teeth, the whole vault ringing with the note Ray just taught it.