The Mimic Becomes a Merchant King

Deeper in they went, descending winding staircases and sloping tunnels, passing through chambers controlled by mechanisms and levers, giving a wide berth to the slimes and dire bats who called the caverns home. Coin lost track of how deep underground they had gone but knew, in his heart, that he was far lower in the earth than he had been before even as an ordinary mimic.

Yet he trusted Scylla to guide them, and the witch seemed confident in the route they had taken. But, as they neared one long chamber, they came upon their next obstacle.

A gang of goblins had set up a cookfire at the far end of the room, casting a glow that sliced past the doorway. Scylla had sensed them well in advance and took it as an encouraging sign. A ring of shadows surrounded the group, muffling their sounds as they drew near.

"Thought I smelled shit in the air," Varis said, pulling his hand cannon from his holster.

"The terrain is to their advantage," said Illyana in her usual knowing way. "They'll see us coming as soon as we walk through the door, and will have plenty of time to fire on us before anyone here can close the gap."

Coin frowned. Nice as it would be to run through them, it would run the risk of others being alerted along the way, giving them a chance to dig in.

"Scylla," he said, "can you extend this shadow into that room? Just so nobody can hear beyond it." Scylla nodded and did so, trails of darkness snaking out froun her feet and hastily moving into the room.

Coin was the first through the doorway, striding with purpose and glaring at the creatures as they quickly rose to their feet.

"It's him, the guy!" one of them hissed, nearly tripping over the unfamiliar syllables of common tongue.

"Shit! Run along and tell Lord-"

The crack of a shot filled the chamber, muffled in the confines of Scylla's magic. Varis' shot cleaved the skull of one goblin in twain, spraying gore into the guttering fire.

The goblins quickly raised their own weapons and returned fire, but Coin's allies had taken cover around the edges of the doorway. Coin himself sprinted forward like a raging bull, eyes aflame with anger. A rifle round caught him in the shoulder, ripping a great chunk away. Coin scarcely felt it, and the flesh was quick to knit itself together.

A few quick blows tore three of the goblins apart in the blink of an eye, leaving only one survivor that he quickly caught by the throat. "The kobold," he said, holding the wide-eyed and armoured figure up to eye level.

The goblin hissed in Coin's grasp, kicking and flailing to no avail as his skin shifted from green to purple. "Deeper. Beneath the red terraces-" he breathlessly hissed, "L-Lord Bleak wants-"

Coin squeezed harder and the goblin's head popped off like a champagne cork. "I don't care what he wants."

He thought to take someone Coin cared about, to bait him in? Well, he'd get exactly what he wanted.

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The other side of the room opened up into so vast a chamber that the others, save for Scylla, were stunned to silence. It was like a great fissure in the earth, either side lined with boxy buildings and great stone staircases. Both sides of the divide seemed like streams of city blocks, illuminated by pinpricks of campfire and lantern light.

"This is Elbrinth proper," said Scylla. The upper tunnels that lead to the surface are trading tunnels and storage chambers. The people lived down here and in the other honeycombed sections."

"It just... keeps going," Illyana murmured.

Curses and shouts echoed from down below, like the drunken grousing of angry sport hooligans, and a few bullets whizzed their way and tore into the surrounding stone of the doorway. "Shit," Cricket hissed, reeling away. "Save the sightseein' for later! We're sitting ducks here!"

The group hurried, beneath an umbral shield fashioned from Scylla's magic, racing down stone steps deeper into the bowels of the city. From on high it was easy to see where other goblins had made camps and watchtowers, seeded throughout.

They hurried into one large room, with a table and chairs hewn from black stone, and paused to survey their surroundings. "Goddess... there's so many of them," Varis said, hastily loading another ball into his hand cannon. "Illyana you really love bringing me to the worst places."

"You agreed to come along," Illyana said flatly.

"You could have tried harder to stop me!"

Scylla ignored them and pressed her palms to the ground. Her pulses shone from under her palms. "The numbers grow, deeper inside. But... I can see holding cells outlined below us. She must be down there."

"Red terraces," Coin murmured. He inched closer to the edge of the platform beyond the house, staring into the darkness while his vision hastily adjusted to the glow. Far below he could see larger houses distinguished by red-tiled terraces. "So beyond ther-"

An acrid scent suddenly hit his nose, making Coin freeze in place. The smell of the basilisk from his manor, now far stronger... and rapidly approaching.

He turned, just as something swept at him from above and crashed into him like a cannon ball. Coin gripped tight to his attacker as the two fell through the black gulch, grappling and striking at each other. They crashed through several terraces and floors until they came to a crashing halt on a particularly dense plaza of glittering black marble.

"Coin!" Illyana shouted from somewhere high above him.

"I'm fine!" Coin shouted, forcing himself upright through the cloud of dispersing dust. "Don't worry about me, you just focus on safely getting down!"

A great scaly fist charged through the dust and smashed into Coin's face, instantly pulping half of his vision into a great red haze. Coin reeled, skidding back, his jaw dislocating into a spray of gore hanging by a few frayed tendons while one of his eyes had been pulped and punched clean out of the socket.

Askyr loomed above him from the darkness, exposing rows of fangs in some monstrous parody of a grin. "That... felt far better than I dared to hope."

Coin narrowed his eye, swiftly regenerating the damage to his face, drawing more mass into his outer hide to toughen it. "You," Coin hissed, "hurt my friends. And took Essine."

"Fair is fair. You took Leona from me."

Coin thrust his hands forth, heralding a booming clap of thunder that smashed into Askyr, flinging him into a nearby wall and smashing it apart. "Leona? The assassin?" Coin shouted. "She came at me! I gave her every chance to surrender, and she chose not to!"

Askyr rushed him, unharmed, and threw a few swift claw swipes that Coin only narrowly avoided. "Don't care," he hissed. Great talons raked Coin's arm, drawing fresh gouts of blood, and Coin harshly booted his attacker backward.

The monster who became a man and the man who made himself a monster glared at each other in silence, circling each other. His scent had Coin's skin literally crawling, every instinct in his body telling him to turn and run. But there was a voice that drowned those fears out:

He hurt Essine. Kill him.

Askyr jumped high, avoiding a lightning bolt from Coin's fingertips, and sprang at Coin. The mimic struck at him, eyes ablaze with anger, and caught him with a crushing right hook that shook the ground and sent Askyr stumbling away.

Then a great sizzling pain tore up Coin's arm, making him cry out. A strange greenish substance was glistening on Askyr's bruised face, now scorching the flesh of his hands down to the bone. And yet, to Coin's horror, the melting flesh was not regenerating.

Askyr leered at him. "You like?" he asked. "A nice little feature of the basilisks, I think you'll agree."

Coin narrowed his eyes, and sliced his right hand off just below the wrist. The blackened, melting lump thudded to the ground, and a new hand grew swiftly to replace it.

"You're going to need a lot more than that," Coin growled.