A Werewolf In Under-Town

Shaggy turned up the spiral staircase for what felt like the fourth time. Ahead of him, Levy was happily darting her head into every room she spotted. There was a door at every landing so far and each time the happy drow woman would cackle at what she saw. She was practically skipping up the stairs as Shaggy scratched his head at the changes to the tower.

When they had dropped off the artifact, the tower had been a simple stone thing. They climbed the stairs and placed the object in the room at the top of the tower and then returned. Now there was a damn forest at the lower level, and the tower seemed to stretch into infinity. Behind him, Ren and Dave were trudging up the stairs as well. Ren's bulky body should've scrapped the sides of the staircase. But the tower's magic seemed to make the building stretch around the big alien in a way that hurt Shaggy's eyes.

Shaggy heard Levy's constant happy skipping and laughing stop and turned around, worried. He was in time to see his wife close a door sadly and sigh.

"Something wrong?"

Levy looked at him and shook her head. "Naw. It's just a kitchen. A nice and well-stocked kitchen, but I was expecting something more magic-y, y'know?"

"Not really, no I don't. Can I get an update as to what the hell happened to the tower? Did the doodad do all this?"

Levy nodded, back to being excited. "Oh yeah. I mean, I made all the selections on the Tower's Terminal. But the changes were supposed to take weeks as the Tower absorbed the ambient mana."

"So you chose that blood dome thing?" Ren asked.

"Nope. I reckon that was done by the Big Guy's power itself. But we won't know exactly what it does until we get to the terminal."

"And, like, you couldn't script in an elevator, dude?"

"To be fair, I didn't know the tower would grow this tall."

"How did it grow this tall? I mean, from the outside, it's barely three stories."

"Magic nonsense." Shaggy answered Ren.

Levy scowled at Shaggy before huffing and turning back up the stairs. She hurried off as Shaggy groaned at the thought of more floors. As he hurried after his wife, he heard Dave explaining how neat the kitchen actually was. He did his best not to roll his eyes as he caught up with Levy on the next landing. She was, again, shutting a door and turning back up the stairs.

"Lounge!" she shouted over her shoulder as she rushed off.

"Library!" she shouted again at the next landing.

"Lab!"

"Dungeon!"

"Why is the Dungeon this high in the tower!?" Shaggy shouted at his wife's back as she ran off.

"Because the next floor up is my chambers! Which means I'll be close by and they'll have to escape all the way down the tower to get out."

"Or they could go up a floor and kill you!" Ren shouted from behind Shaggy.

Levy's response was to laugh loudly while she slid to a stop at the top of the tower. The last landing was right in front of a massive wooden door. Dave and Ren joined them as Levy spread her arms wide and a huge round sigil appeared on the door. It glowed with a deep purple light and Shaggy was sure anyone trying to attack his wife in HER tower would not last too long.

The massive doors creaked open as the sigil on them faded away. Beyond the door was a giant room filled with all sorts of bedroom accouterments. A four-poster bed sat against the right most wall while the left wall was a massive curved bookcase. A terminal was straight ahead of them, next to an oblong window that looked outside the tower. Just beyond the terminal was an ornate writing desk filled with scrolls and vellum pages.

Levy rushed toward the terminal, and Shaggy moved to follow her. But his vision was immediately obscured by a purple flash as pain stabbed into his cheek. A familiar squeaking entered his ears as Shaggy cried out from the sudden pain. He heard Dave and Ren rush to help him, but they were stopped as Levy shouted.

"Why the hell did you do that…F-Pixie?!" Levy stumbled at the end of her sentence, but her anger remained.

Shaggy's face rapidly healed, and he blinked his eyes rapidly to get a look at his attacker. Although he was pretty sure he knew who it was. His wife's pixie familiar floated in front of Levy, her tiny arms crossed across her chest. Levy was wagging a finger at the flying creature as she berated her. But the pixie wasn't hearing it, simply staring daggers at Shaggy and not looked his wife in her eyes.

"Great." Shaggy groaned. "The racist pixie's back."

Another purple ball of magic flash from the pixie's hands and Shaggy put his own up to defend himself. The ball hit the wrist of his right hand and scorched his skin a bit. The tiny pixy's magic was very destructive, but it stung like hell. Shaggy defended against a few more blasts until Levy placed herself between the two of them.

"STOP! I thought we talked about this already! You said you'd get used to him in time."

The pixie just squeaked and danced around in the air as Levy listened intently. When the squeaking stopped, Levy rolled her eyes and wagged her finger again.

"What do you mean you expected me to dump him by now!? He's my husband!"

The pixie scowled as she started squeaking and dancing again. Ren and Dave sidled over to Shaggy as he shook the pain out of his arms.

"Can we get some context?" Ren asked.

"You remember my wife's familiar, right? Little Pixie we rescued a while back? Her family was used as subjects in some kind of experiment. So we got her out of there and Levy journeyed into the Fae realm to send her home."

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"And that didn't take?"

Shaggy shrugged. "I have no idea what happened in Fae. All I know is my wife came back with an irate pixie that hated me."

"But why? Why does she hate you?"

"She says I feel 'wrong' to her. Something about being a non-magical Were and touched by a demon or something."

Dave got a sad look in his eyes as he glanced at the pixie. Ren also turned to watch the byplay still ongoing between Shaggy's wife and the pixie. The two seemed to be in a heated conversation about something. But they could only understand half of the conversation. Eventually, Levy slammed a foot down and pointed at the door.

"No! I'm not rehashing this conversation with you. Now, your forest has been created on the first floor. Didn't you have a mission set forth by the Fae Council?"

The tiny Pixie swirled about in anger before squeaking and rushing off. Shaggy dipped his head as the tiny thing went by, happy to be rid of her. A sharp sting to the back of his head made him whirl around to see the fluttering down the stairs. She just had to get in one last shot.

"What mission from the Fae Council?" Ren asked curiously.

Levy shook her head. "Sorry. Sworn to secrecy. It took quite a bit of pull to get the council to agree, and I won't betray that trust in-game."

"Nor out of game," Shaggy grumbled as he felt the hair on the back of his head grow back out again.

"Well, that's just because you're so fun to tease, love. But seriously, I promise, the deal I made with the Fae Court will benefit us all."

"I just have to put up with an asshole pixie."

"She's really a sweet girl once you get to know her."

"I'd believe you more if the damn thing wasn't constantly attacking me. Those fucking little blasts hurt. Way more than usual."

"Oh, that's because of me and our shared connection to the tower."

"So when I helped with the whole Artifact crap..."

"You inadvertently made her more powerful."

"Fan-bloody-tastic."

"Can we see the terminal now?" Dave asked, looking around the room excitedly. "I want to see what the blood dome is doing."

Levy gave Shaggy a warm smile before she and Dave rushed off to the terminal. Ren clapped his shoulder with a massive hand and shrugged. Sighing to himself, Shaggy joined everyone near the terminal as Levy brought up the Tower's interface. A blue outline of the tower appeared. Several tags were placed at various spots on the tower and Shaggy realized those were the rooms they passed to get up here. But Levy quickly tapped the tag for her own room.

A visual representation of Levy's room came up, and she zoomed in to the ceiling. There in the image was the Artifact suspended in the air above them. All four of them looked up at the same time to see the actual Artifact floating in the air.

"That's not where we left it," Shaggy grumbled.

"Yeah, but it needed a place of its own, didn't it?" Levy asked, shrugging.

She tapped the digital representation of the lamp and it brought up a page on the items' effects. Shaggy's eyes grew wide as he read through everything.

"Whoa."

Shaggy could only agree with Dave's assessment. The lamp was a hell of an upgrade for their forces. The increases looked small, but they could be powerful. Especially for him. Ren's chin was in his hand as he read through the benefits again. Meanwhile, Levy was opening a separate tab and pulling up the Blood Shield Information. Shaggy moved next to her to read the details there.

It worked pretty much as expected. It was a shield that only let in their people. Also, the blood red light it emitted counted as Xang's Holy Light for purposes of the benefits. Anyone not already on their Legion Guild List would be 'consumed' by the shield. Although the shield could be bested by overwhelming force. Thankfully, the system generated a number to express the amount of damage the shield could take before it fell.

"Is 12,000HP a lot in this context?" Shaggy asked.

"It seems like it," Levy said as Dave and Ren hurried over to their screen.

"Double-Whoa." Dave intoned as he read through the shield stats.

Ren nodded, still stroking his chin. "We'll need to cycle our people through here all the time."

"We were already going to do that, though, right?"

"Yeah, but now we have a schedule. Every three days in-game, we want our people back here to bathe in the light. The bonuses are too good to pass up."

"Can we strengthen them, though?" Shaggy asked.

Levy quickly looked through the Artifact's page. Speed-reading through the information, his wife nodded. "You can all probably guess how as well."

"Blood for the Blood God." Dave said sagely.

Ren squinted at the Artifacts page as he reread everything. "So this is literally a Level 1 Artifact and we have to feed it 'The Blood of The Powerful' in order for it to level up. Do we know what exactly that means?"

"I'm guessing that ordinary thugs will not appease Xang." Shaggy said. "Maybe it means in-game bosses."

"Supers?" Dave wondered.

"Or the highly magical." Levy added.

"It's probably going to be trial and error, then. But this is huge."

"It's also a target on our backs. The NPCs gangs are probably going to want it. But the Player guilds are going to be up our ass if they hear about this."

"Oh, then I should probably stop recording, huh?" Dave chuckled.

Shaggy and the other two whirled on the man to see Dave backing away with his hands up.

"Joking! It was a joke, I swear!"

Shaggy did his best to keep the smile off his face as Ren and Levy threatened Dave's digital life. When they were finished, Ren tapped the screen with the benefits again.

"Do we know if Xang can have more than one champion? Also, does he have a Head Priestess?"

Levy raised her hand. "Yeah, he sort of anointed me when he charged the lamp with his power."

"So you and Shaggy get double benefits?! Foul. I call foul." Dave whined.

"I'm not sure about the multiple Champions thing. But maybe if we level the Artifact up a few times?"

Ren nodded as Levy cracked her knuckles. "Guess this means I gotta start learning Blood Magic."

"No kidding."

"Vlad's going to have a field day with all this blood-based crap." Ren chuckled.

"Yeah. Where the hell is he? Slink I get, the kid is always buried in his work. But I figured they'd both be right behind us."

The four of them shared looks before shrugging at each other. Levy walked to the window in her room and looked out just in case. As soon as her head passed the threshold of the window, they all heard Vlad's dulcet tones screaming at them.

"OPEN! THE! DOOR!"

Shaggy, Ren and Dave rushed to crowd the window as Levy started laughing. Vlad and Slink were just outside the tower, looking miffed at having been left behind. Ren placed a massive hand on Shaggy's shoulder, chuckling.

"You can be the one to explain everything to them. I need to get back and start scheduling things."

"Oh! Oh! Can I record their faces when they learn about the bonuses!?"

"No, Dave!" they all shouted down the excitable streamer.

Dave's face fell as Levy rushed off to let the others in. Shaggy rubbed his hands together. With the power of the Blood God on their side, things were going to get a lot more fun.