Surrounded In The Dark

Slowly crawling its way through a road beneath the earth, a carriage drawn by insectoids made its way out of the city of Eil'Drawwt. Nessa and Mair waited patiently in the carriage as its escorts. Mair found himself leaning his head out to peer down the tunnel ahead. Nessa instead kept glued to the mission report given by Director Veridan.

The report seemed simple on the surface, but as Nessa paid further attention to the hidden details, more and more of it seemed strange to her. The report detailed a thief with no actual physical description. They appeared to have struck each night with nary a sighting or encounter. Not to mention, the lost belongings ended up only resulting in mild inconveniences for the citizens of Viiest. With that sort of talent, Nessa wondered why the thief had so little in their sights.

"How do you even understand any of this? It all looks like gibberish," Mair complained, drawing Nessa's attention. She immediately spotted that he was flipping through her tome without her permission.

"Give me that!" Nessa swiped the tome out from Mair with an annoyed groan. "Can't you just sit still for once?" She scolded.

"I'm bored," Mair mumbled in protest, "It's boring here. Hey, how come you don't use all the spells in there? You use only a couple, but I saw that most of the pages were full."

Nessa hesitated to answer, but as she looked up at Mair's expression, she could tell he was just genuinely curious. She flipped through the ink marked pages with all their symbols and walls of indecipherable text.

"A lot of these spells are wind affinity spells left by my mom," Nessa explained with a defeated sigh, "Some of them are too advanced for me to interpret, so I just avoid them. Besides, I'm able to carry myself with the basics of pure magic at least."

"Affinity spells?" Mair muttered with a perplexed expression, "What does that even mean?"

"There are unique fields of magic called affinities," Nessa explained, "They all have different spells tied to them, but it's difficult to cast spells from multiple different affinities efficiently. As a result, I just use pure magic without any affinities."

"Come on, you gotta at least try those spells out. It would be way cooler than just regular magic." Mair looked out the carriage window as his attention waned once again.

"I am convinced there is nothing going on in that head of yours, I swear." Nessa sighed in annoyance as she opened her tome. As Mair's half brother, they didn't share the same mother. Nessa only had faint memories of her own mother, and most of them were of her casting wind magic to entertain her as a baby. Maybe following in her mom's footsteps was the solution to improving her magic, Nessa thought. So she looked through the spells she previously ignored with a desire to learn.

"We're coming up on Viiest," She was interrupted by the dusk elf carriage driver addressing them, "Don't worry about payment, the guild has it all covered, stay safe." He tipped his hard hat to the siblings with a smile.

Nessa thanked the man and looked out at the destination they approached. The town was an extreme step down from the architectural wonder of her home. Buildings were haphazardly constructed, and the lights of star crystals were few and far in between. The lack of light forced some of the residents to carry lanterns as they went about their duties. The carriage pulled to a halt which prompted Mair to hop over the side, restless after the long ride.

"Another second and I might've turned to dust," Mair complained as he stretched his arms and legs, "Let's go talk to the lord here and start doing something."

Nessa rolled her eyes at her brother's childish behavior as she exited the carriage politely. She took a look around in search of the town lord's residence, but she soon noticed an unexpected sight in the distance. A trio stood at the steps of a modest hall, not too far from the edge of town they were dropped off at. They appeared to be in conversation with a formally dressed man who seemed to be giving them directions.

Confusion set in for Nessa as she noticed the trio wore Hidden Star guild uniforms, "Something's off," Nessa mumbled to herself before speaking up to her brother, "It looks like some adventurers are already talking to the lord down over there."

"Wait, seriously?" Mair walked over to get the same view as her sister to see the ending of the conversation as the lord returned back indoors, "Veridan gave this quest to us, not to whoever these guys are."

"I'm sure we can get a reasonable explanation, it's probably some dumb misunderstanding," Nessa calmed her brother down as they both approached the trio. The siblings stopped in their tracks as the adventurers turned around to reveal themselves. The head of the three waved nonchalantly to Nessa with a devious smirk painted across his face.

"Hey Nessie, funny seeing you here," The demiserpus, Rex, was a familiar face to Nessa during her guild trials. She proceeded to recognize the other two with him. The serpus who dueled with her brother, and Eve who was hiding behind the serpus to peek out occasionally.

"What brings you so far out from the city?" Rex asked, still carrying his smile.

"It's Nessa, and the guild sent us out here to take care of a thief problem, you wouldn't have happened to hear about that from the lord did you?" Nessa rebutted.

"Guess we did hear something like that from him, didn't we? In fact, he must've assumed we were the adventurers set out to help him, so he gave us the rundown." Rex stepped forward to look down at Nessa, "So how about you just let us handle this and head back to the guild."

Mair stepped between his sister and Rex, threatening to shove him back, "What's your problem?" Mair grew heated at Rex's demeanor, "The guild entrusted this to us and you're trying to keep us out of it? Why're you acting like such a jerk?"

"Calm it down friend, you're causing a bit of a scene here," Rex motioned around them, civilians paused to observe what seemed to be a fight starting up between outsiders, "If you're so adamant on staying here, let's just see who catches that thief first. It'll be some fun competition."

"Competition?" Nessa made sure to keep her voice low and calm despite getting worked up, "Do you really think this is some game to play? We're here to help, not to compete."

"You can't be that oblivious are you Nessie?" Rex chuckled, "Not every ragtag bunch of adventurers makes it big just helping the elderly and finding lost pets. We're always competing, whether you're aware of that or not. Best you learn that now if you want to survive. Now I'd love to chat, but we've got a thief to catch." Rex motioned to his allies to follow him off to the outskirts of town.

Nessa was left speechless at the situation at hand, but Mair finally spoke up, "Sorry, I shouldn't have gotten all worked up there." He mumbled, sounding defeated.

"It's alright Mair. We need to worry about where we're going to be staying the night though. The lord was supposed to provide a place to rest, but Rex and his team already took that from us too."

Mair took a look around the town, "Who knows, they might have an inn or tavern or something. Let's take a look around and hope for the best." Nessa only nodded in response.

They silently wandered the town in search of some haven. The confined nature of the town limited the length of their search. Eventually, they stopped at a modest inn made of stone with an aged but welcoming sign near the entrance. One small gem of a star crystal hung from a chain in front of the door, guiding their vision towards the entrance.

"This doesn't look too bad does it?" Mair said as he hopped up the steps to the door with his sister close behind.

"Better than anything we'll get around here, that much is true." Nessa followed through and opened the door into the inn, walking into the nearly barren interior.

It was a simple run-of-the-mill tavern, a human with rich brown skin and short black hair stood behind a counter at the end of the room. She was locked in conversation with a blue scaled reptir whose focus was more keen on his drink than the actual discussion at hand. The innkeeper soon noticed the visitors and broke into a smile.

"Hail there," The older human woman jubilantly greeted the elven siblings, "Welcome to The River Dragon, feel free to take a seat anywhere or come right up!" The innkeeper quickly gathered up the leftover glasses on the counter from her one other patron and cleaned up anything that appeared out of order.

The siblings both greeted the innkeeper back and flocked to a nearby table. Nessa took out a small bag from her pack and handed it to Mair.

"See if they have any rooms open for the night, I'm going to look through the map the guild gave us and see where we could head first." Nessa asked him, which Mair complied and walked over to the counter. Still in a cleaning panic, the innkeeper rushed to address him.

"What can I get for ya, sweetie?" She leaned over the counter with an infectious and brilliant smile.

"I was hoping to see if you had any rooms my sister and I could stay in? Just for the night is alright but we're not too sure when our business here will be finished unfortunately." Mair explained while opening up the small pouch his sister gave to him.

"Rooms?" The innkeeper's eyes shifted to Mair's chest and found the Hidden Star apprenticeship emblem pinned onto his uniform, "Oh you two are those adventurers that got called in, aren't ya? Well if you're helping get rid of that nasty thief lurking about, I'm sure a few copper would be a fair price don't you think?"

Before Mair could answer, the reptir looked up from his glass and sat up from his slouch, revealing just how towering he was even while seated.

"Mariah, the adventurers you're thinking of already came into town hours ago. Don't go jumping to conclusions." The reptir said. His voice was deep and threatening, and his scarred face was aged from battle and time matched it precisely. Fitting to his battle scars, the reptir appeared dressed in armor beneath his set of clothes.

Mair dropped some copper coins onto the table and turned his attention to the reptir. "I know it sounds crazy and all, but the guild sent us here and those jerks are scavenging off our work. So now my sister and I are left to do this on our own basically."

The innkeeper, Mariah, shot a glare towards the reptir before shuffling the coin away and placing a key in front of Mair.

"See Fausm, maybe I'm not the one jumping to conclusions now am I? Don't worry sweetie, he just gets cranky when he ain't buzzed yet," She remarked, prompting Fausm to down the rest of his glass in silence.

"No worries," Mair said as he picked up the key from the counter, "Thank you again. Hopefully we can make it up to you by catching that thief."

"Speaking of that," Nessa called over to her brother as she stood over an opened map of the area, "I might have an idea on where they might be hiding out." Mair approached and looked over her shoulder. "The guild at least provided us this to work with. It's not much, but the tunnels around here are named, all except these routes here," She continued to point out, "They're not used anymore because they've just been made inefficient by later made tunnels, making them suitable to hide out in."

"You really thought this all up quickly didn't you," Mair mumbled, slightly confused at Nessa's logic.

"I just don't want to fall behind," Nessa retorted with a slight crack in her voice, gathering up her things hastily, "I'll meet you at the edge of town, Mair." Without waiting for a response, she rushed out of the inn. Mair tried to say something to slow her down, but she was out of the door before he could react. Mair turned to the innkeeper as he followed after his sister.

"Sorry about leaving so soon, but we'll be back later!" Mair called out.

"A pleasure havin' ya!" Mariah waved off Mair as the inn emptied back to its usual occupancy, "Aren't young adventurers just the cutest, Fausm. Let's hope they don't run into too much trouble." The innkeeper happily remarked as she placed a newly filled drink at her customer's seat. When she looked up though, she found Fausm had already left as well.

"Always up to somethin'." The innkeeper rolled her eyes and leaned onto the counter.

"C'mon Nessa, what was that all about?" Mair questioned after he had finally caught up to his sister at the edge of town. She was crouched over the ground at the entrance of the deserted tunnel, utterly distracted and unresponsive to Mair's concern.

"Look here," Nessa pointed out as her hands traced over the ground outside the tunnel, "Plenty of prints, mostly recent, looks like someone was using this path for a while."

"Reassuring," Mair mumbled sarcastically, "but you didn't answer my question, why are you in such a rush? It's not like you at all."

Nessa stood up and held her tome and wand tighter in her grasp, looking away from her brother's gaze.

"Sorry, you're right. I need to calm down," She took a deep breath and loosened up, "What Rex said earlier was getting to me. I got wrapped up in the idea that I have to compete with others to be a real adventurer, but that's not true."

"Exactly, he was just trying to get under your skin and throw you off." Mair kept up his support with a wide smile on his face. "Now let's get through this, with your usual degree of caution."

Nessa couldn't help but catch her brother's contagious smile as they began to follow the tracks through the old tunnel.

"It still bothers me that his allies can stand with him despite this, or even that there are other adventurers who share his ideals. We're not always meant to be at each other's throats, but I guess there's a lot about the culture we still don't know much about," Nessa spoke up about what troubled her finally.

"Maybe, but I have a feeling that not a lot of adventurers share those ideas really. Just doesn't seem right you know?" The two of them continued their conversation until they eventually came across an intersection with a sheer drop past it. Mair stopped to look in both directions but Nessa kept going to look over the edge.

"Any idea where to go? The tracks are getting faint," Mair asked.

"Over here." Nessa leaned down behind a rock at the edge where a rope ladder hung down a dozen meters down to an extension of the tunnel. "I have a feeling we should go down there."

Mair nudged at the top of the ladder to test how well anchored it was. He ultimately agreed and led the way down as Nessa followed close behind. The cavern that surrounded them closed in as they climbed deeper into the complete darkness, alleviated only by their elven eyes that helped them see in the pitch black. Eventually Mair reached the bottom and waited for his sister when a sound echoed from above.

A cold snap rang out as the ladder fell to their level. Nessa yelped as she lost her balance, but was luckily caught from the couple meter fall by Mair. He quickly set her out of the way of the rest of the ladder falling down with her. Though they couldn't see what exactly happened, they could clearly tell that the ladder was cut from the top by someone.

"Looks like we found something." Mair reached for his pike as he attempted to see what was above them, meanwhile Nessa took a look at their surroundings to find the tunnel system had been quite expanded compared to the map she had read. Just at the edge of her vision, she saw piles of supply crates and a glint of metal rising up to eye level further down one of the tunnels.

Nessa gasped at the realization of what she was looking at, flipping her tome open quickly. The echoing crack of a crossbow firing rang out as the metal glint in the distance flung itself towards the siblings. With a swing of her wand, a violet barrier was casted in front of Nessa to cover both Mair and herself. The soaring bolt struck and cracked the momentary screen that shielded them. The bolt dropped to the ground with a clink as the magical barrier dissipated. Mair's attention turned to their assailant as the two siblings prepared to fight back.

"Nessa, we have to go. Now," Mair said quietly.

Nessa aimed her wand forward at the crossbowman, still concealed by the shadows and stepping forward while loading another bolt.

"What? But we have to catch him!" She scolded back.

"He's not alone," He muttered. The realization hit Nessa that he could see further down the tunnel. "There's about four more and counting, We gotta go!" Mair pointed out a route nearby with his pike and stood in front of his sister. Nessa hesitated at first to let Mair take the front against their attackers but ultimately ran out for their escape. Mair soon followed, keen not to turn his back completely to them.

As they tried to escape, an arrow shot out from the darkness, lodging itself at the edge of Mair's side. He cursed from the pain but kept running with his sister.

"Are you alright?!" Nessa was set into a near panic at the sight.

"I'm fine!" Mair replied through gritted teeth as they hurried down darkened paths.

They cut into sharp turns in an attempt to lose the fevered sounds of footsteps, shouts calling to action, and the scathing sounds of steel drawn from their sheathes. Mair soon took the lead to better guide them through the darkness, but stopped in his tracks as he noticed a figure standing in the middle of the tunnel.

Neither he or Nessa could make out the stranger's features at first, except that their shadowed outline was towering at nearly eight feet tall and carried with it a massive broadsword. The figure stepped forward slowly, entering Mair's and soon Nessa's sight to reveal himself as the blue scaled reptir from the inn.

Mair raised his pike to Fausm, which prompted an answer in the form of his broadsword being heaved in front of him in a defensive stance. Silence followed, as their conversation was soon to be made in the clashing of steel.