Chapter B3: Ch 27 - Into the Depths

    The big question was: Where would the Free Hive hide a stash of stolen combat cars?

    Arthur had a pretty good guess.

    It would have to be a place that was fairly inaccessible to the hive civilians and yet reachable by the council. A place nowhere else would go, and unlikely to have someone stumble upon it. Most importantly, it would have to be somewhere protected.

    Arthur would bet money – and indeed he was about to bet his safety – that this location would be either in or near the underground prison complex.

    He hadn’t been back there since that initial visit with the would-be assassin, but he’d made a point of mentally marking where the entrance had been on top of the Mesa.

    The only problem? It was underground. That meant it needed to be accessed using Earth powers.

    None of which anyone had.

    Luckily, both Arthur and Brixaby had the solution in their heart decks.

    Over the last couple of months, both had kept an eye on who had the most interesting cards. Arthur, out of more scholarly curiosity, and Brixaby out of greed.

    They both knew just the person they needed to visit for this task.

    It was a green dragon who had muddy brown splotches covering the bottom of his belly and up his neck. It had the unfortunate side-effect of making it look like a disease. He wasn’t pretty, but he was pleasant enough to talk to. He was also one of the many dragons who had his own crafting booth, including several employees.

    Since he was a green, his core card should be some kind of nature-based ability. But neither Arthur nor Brixaby knew what that could have been. Instead, this green was obsessed with pottery. And he had an Uncommon Earth Manipulation card he used to make his wares.

    It was a simple task to stroll down to the crafter’s cave in the evening, stand beside the open-air booth, and watch as the dragon smoothly crafted a vase made of expensive white clay on his pottery wheel. Two apprentices – both human – sweated as they ran round and round in a circular pit, pushing bars that linked up to the giant wheel above. They must have had endurance cards because they were able to maintain an even jog for hours at a time. Meanwhile, the dragon’s claws seemed to coax thin walls to spring up out of the clay like magic.

    New Counterfeit Spell: Basic Earth Manipulation

    Time remaining: 11 Hours 59 minutes, 59 seconds.

    Arthur and Brixaby exchanged glances and then casually strolled away from the booth as if deciding to purchase elsewhere.

    They now had a solid 12 hours to work.

    That night was a quarter moon, waning. A few clouds scuttled across the sky, casting shadows on the silvery dark landscape.

    They’d had to wait seven hours since getting the cards, but that still left them to find the complex and explore. Everyone had taken care not to do anything out of the ordinary for that day, aside from looking at the crafter’s booths. Arthur was fairly certain they weren’t being closely watched. He, Cressida, and the dragons had given every indication that they were settling into life at the Free Hive, and so far the council had left them alone. He rarely spotted Ghost following him—which might be the point. Arthur suspected they were waiting for the fury over the would-be assassination to die down before he was approached.

    The only issue was Joy.

    “I don’t understand why I have to stay behind,” she repeated, pacing anxiously around their small cave. She looked unhappily to Cressida who was checking her dragon’s saddle for signs of wear.

    “You don’t have a Stealth card,” Cressida repeated.

    “But I’m big and strong and now I can poison anyone who threatens you! What if you get in trouble and I’m not there to help?”

    “No one is going to attack us,” Arthur said, hoping it was true. “If they have prisoners, they’ll be behind bars. And the point of stealth capabilities is to make sure we aren’t seen by anyone else.”

    “But—”

    Brixaby made an odd rumble that Arthur had never heard from him before. It cut Joy’s words short. Flapping his wings, Brixaby spoke.

    “You can fight, which means you can protect us – from above. If this so-called council or anyone else tries to stop us or cut off our way of escape, you have my full permission to poison them.”

    She perked up. “Really?” Then she jerked in a familiar way, her bright eyes going slightly unfocused. “I just got a quest! Ohhh. It’s a quest of protection!”

    Cressida let out a breath. Arthur could tell she wasn’t entirely thrilled with Joy’s new bloodlust, but this was an aspect of who she was now.

    I thought that would happen, Brixaby sent smugly into Arthur’s mind.

    Brixaby buzzed down to the edge of the pit. “Think of it as the best way to explode upward and surprise your enemies.”

    Joy turned to give a long, sorrowful look at Cressida. When her rider didn’t relent, she sighed and shuffled over to crouch in the pit with her wings tucked tight as if to ward herself from the dirt.

    With a few more earth manipulation scoops, Arthur and Brixaby settled a thin amount of dirt over her, leaving her head free.

    Arthur relaxed. In the black-and-white gloom, the soil obscured Joy’s silhouette. Her head could easily be mistaken for a stone within any distance, and the red coloration in her pink scale made her that much harder to see in the dark. Joy was in place to watch and stay safely hidden. Now the hard part began.

    Arthur stepped to the side, using the shadow of a nearby boulder to obscure the hole, and then he again used Earth Manipulation to dig down.

    When Chablis had done this before, she had elegantly opened up an opening that led to a downward staircase. However, Arthur and Brixaby were only working with temporary power – one not stamped on their heart and core like a real card would be – and had no experience working with Earth.

    The hole they dug was ugly, ragged, and Arthur felt his mana drain alarmingly whenever they had to lift boulders out of the way.

    He wasn’t sure if it was he or Brixaby who broke through first. But suddenly the soil at the bottom of their hole collapsed downward. He heard stones, pebbles, and dust falling on a hard floor below.

    Everyone froze.

    Joy shifted around in her shallow pit a few feet away, craning her head. “Is everything okay?”

    “I think so.” Arthur strained but didn’t hear anything. No shouts of outrage, or alarms being tripped. Whatever room they’d broken into was not protected.

    Kneeling, he peered over the edge. He had a Night Vision enhancement, though he’d never put much effort into leveling it. Squinting, he picked out shapes through the gloom. Shelves?

    Forgoing all caution, Brixaby buzzed down and then immediately up. “Pah. It’s a storage space with cleaning items.”

    Arthur perked up. “Really?”

    “Yes. Why are you happy about this?”

    He shrugged. “Some of them might be joined to card anchors. I’m tired of leveling my tidy skill.”

    And more importantly, they hadn’t broken into an empty prison cell which would do them no good. They’d just have to find a way to break out of that, next.

    “How far down is it?” Arthur asked.

    “Fifteen feet.”

    Cressida let out a breath. “I can make that if I use my mana shield but,” she cast a guilty glance at Arthur. “Carrying two within the shield bubble will drain my mana.”

    “Save your mana. I have a better plan.”

    With that, he removed a ladder from his Personal Space.

    Cressida stared. “Where did you find that?

    He eased the ladder in. It was one of the longer ones, about 20 feet, and the top poked out. “Oh, they have them all over where I work – they’re used to go from cave to cave for those who don’t have a movement card. I’ll have to return it by morning. Hold the top, will you? I’ll anchor the feet when I’m down.”

    Cressida nodded and held the ladder gingerly as if she had never touched one before. Considering she grew up as a pampered novel and then a dragon rider... she might not have.

    Arthur stepped around and started to descend, Brixaby buzzing at his side. His last view of the topside was of Joy sticking her good arm out from the ditch and waving.

    He lowered into the gloom, jumped the last two steps, and then looked around.

    Brixaby had given him the impression that this was a cleaning closet, but the middle of the space was dominated by a giant wooden desk, finely carved and polished to a gleam. One wall had papers scrawled with writing, and the closest...

    He stopped.

    It was shelves filled with faintly glowing enchanted items.