Worthy Core

DAY 350

Alizz gives her guest a slight smile as she sips from her tea. "My, what a face! I would have imagined you'd be more cheerful to be out and about for once! See the sun and sky! See Grassbrook for once - you've never seen it at all, have you? At least not from up close."

Lollyp grumps a bit as she sips from her own tea, while sitting across from Alizz at the drider's office desk. "Hey, I haven't been a complete shut-in. I go outside now and then, have a nice chat with Doorman! It's not so bad now that it's summer, and the mountain air won't freeze me solid in ten minutes." The slime smiles slightly, but it turns into more of a frown as she sets her cup back down. "It's just...embarrassing."

The Association Administrator tilts her head. "What? Being out in public? I would have imagined that crowded inn of yours would've gotten you used to crowds by now."

"Not that! It's just...Parker had to carry me down here. In a bucket."

Alizz nearly chokes on her tea. "A bucket!? Really?"

"The dungeon can't make the sort of slime-transporting bags the Domain uses for long-distance traveling. I wish we'd thought to put a lid on it...everyone saw me getting carried around like some sort of child!"

"Lollyp." Alizz gives her sister-in-law a firm stare. "You have, according to the Association's best records, the highest killcount in the entire dungeon. Higher than Taly, higher than Trush, even more than that berserker 'Valkyrie' of yours. The Initiates and Advanced of this town are terrified of you. Nobody is going to make fun of you for having trouble climbing up and down a mountain."

"Yeah, I guess." Lollyp purses her lips in thought. "Maybe I should play into it more. Be all, 'endure, my trusty rabbit mount, I shall ride you to victory!'"

"Well, that's between you and Parker, if you want to do that. And perhaps Laeniel if you want to be indiscreet with your phrasing."

"I'll chat with him about it for the ride back. But hey, I'm here now! So what's up with you?"

"You really came all the way down here just to chat with me about my day? We do that up at the dungeon every few weeks, at least. Are you sure you don't want to explore the town?"

Lollyp waves off the suggestion. "Eh, not really much in it for me. Not interested in shopping, the Lucky Bastard probably doesn't match up to Worthy Inn, and I hear the brothel's not officially open yet."

Fortunately, this time Alizz wasn't in the middle of her tea when she hears Lollyp's comment. "Brothel!? There's no brothel, now or coming!"

"Oh please. C'mon Alizz, I get you not wanting your rep tied to all the weird shit the dungeon gets up to, but you don't run the whole town. Especially not with the Highbranches moving down here soon. Face it, Challengers like to fuck, especially

the ones coming down here, and if there's not a low-key escort service running already I guarantee you there will be by the end of the season. Why's it bother you, anyhow? You're a widow, not a maiden nun. I know my brother wouldn't mind seeing you moving on, whether it was for a night or, y'know...more."

The drider sighs. "I know, I know. We talked about that specifically, even. And I actually have...given things a try, once or twice. But it's..." She trails off, before eyeing Lollyp cautiously. "Look, I'm not saying I had a particular 'thing' for slimes before I met your brother. But afterwards..."

Lollyp's grin stretches wide. "Nobody completes you quite like a slime, huh?"

"If we must use that particular term, yes. And there's not exactly a great many options now that I no longer travel to the Domain. Even now, Worthy Dungeon has yet to receive even a single slime Challenger. No one wants to be carried up here in a bucket, I suppose."

Lollyp considers that in silence for a moment, before sighing. "Well, I suppose if it comes down to me, then I'll - "

Alizz's eyes go wide. "Lollyp, no! I - please! I value our friendship too much to even consider that!"

The slime shrugs. "Doesn't really make any sense to me, but if you say so." She mentally looks around for a bit to find a new topic of conversation, and finds one. "So, you ready for the big day?"

Alizz raises an eyebrow, uncertain if this is in fact a change of topic. "Which big day is that?"

"The one year anniversary, of course! Two weeks away! I don't know about you, but I'm expecting some good stuff to come our way."

Hastily, the administrator pulls out a calendar and flips through it. "I thought - oh, no, that was the date we arrived. If Xenia's estimate of her 'birthday' is correct...then yes, fifteen days from now. Oh, my. And now that we have so many new Challengers here, it's going to be even harder to make sure everyone adapts to any changes. I suppose I'm thankful enough that Xenia allows us to perform peaceful inspections, to be honest I'd be a little hesitant to put our current team up against Brightsky or Parker, let alone after you make any further upgrades."

"Bah, forget the inspections! There's gonna be a huge party or two, and you're invited for sure." Lollyp's wide grin remains as she sips again from her drink. "This one's gonna be good."

 

---

 

Lyota grunts as she finishes scratching another line into the stone with a ragged, talon-like nail. It's a monotonous bit of work for the fury demon - after all, her nails are hardly anything like the claws a fiend might possess, let alone gremlins and their magical ability to damage things without hardly even trying. But on the other hand, it's not as if the Soul Lasher has much else to do. Leaning back, she examines her handiwork: exactly one hundred lines carved into the stone.

Of course, it'd been more like a hundred and thirty days since her initial arrest. She hadn't spent all of them here in the posh comfort of Fort Stonebound, though. Initially the Highbranches had handed her off to the Grassbrook Fort garrison, while word of her arrest was sent to the capital. It had taken a few days for her transfer north to be ordered, and then several weeks more for said transfer to actually occur. Her second stop had then been a secretive prison in the Rainlander heartlands, where the kingdom's spymasters had convenient access to her.

It hadn't been such a bad stay, all things considered. The torture was largely just psychological, if anything her interrogators actually seemed to respect her status as a fury demon. Aided by truth-detection spells, the interrogators seemed largely inclined to accept her word at face value, and the truth was that her time in the Rainlands had been almost entirely law-abiding. Yes, she had written reports back home to the Domain on things she'd seen, but until the recent relic theft attempt the most 'active' she'd ever been as an agent was to help track down fugitive Domain criminals. The murderers and thieves were no more welcome in the north than in the south, and the Soul Lasher found herself actually being thanked for taking a few of them off the streets.

Beyond that though she had little to tell them that was of any interest. She knew of no secret Domain plans, she knew the names of no co-conspirators - her orders had all been thoroughly anonymized - and she didn't even really have any particular insights on Worthy Dungeon. Not that any of them had asked how sinful the dungeon was, though, and Lyota had kept that particular tidbit to herself. Eventually she was then sent on to her potentially final residence: Fort Stonebound.

The place was nominally a mountain garrison used to watch the borders with the Valleylands, but the pass it guarded was unusable for half the year and barely usable the other half. For the most part it served as a remote prison for politically important prisoners. The fact that Lyota Silverstar was an enemy spy who had participated in the slayings of two nobles certainly qualified her for a hanging, but the Rainlands had few Domain prisoners at the moment which made her a valuable bargaining chip. One day the kingdom would likely want to effect a prisoner exchange for one of their own, and Lyota would fly free once again. Perhaps literally, as they'd even been kind enough to heal her wings, never mind that she barely had room to spread them in her cell.

That time would be years in coming though, most likely. Plenty of time to fill up the mostly-empty wall with quite a few more scratches, and to - what was that? As Lyota turns her head, she hears the distinct sound of soft-stepping feet. Which is odd, both because a guard wouldn't be trying to step silently, and because it was currently after midnight, when no guard ought to be approaching. Lyota tenses, assuming it's likely to be an unwelcome visitor coming her way, but her emotions largely change to confusion when she finally sees a cloaked succubus and a red slime come into view beyond the bars of her cell.

"What? Who are you? Did - " Lyota's questions are shushed by the slime, who puts a finger to his lips before then pressing his hand against the cell's lock.

"Marvyp, Stickyfinger Rogue at your service. Quietly now, I'll have this lock picked in a jiffy, and then we can be out of here. We're busting you out!"

The fury demon is confused for a number of reasons, but one concern in particular comes to the forefront of her mind. "How did you get through the hall? The cell lock is the least of our concerns." Indeed, the prison's primary defense against escapes wasn't physical, but magical. An anti-life field blocked the only exit from the cells, which could only be disabled by holding down a switch that was placed within the field itself. The only way to do so was to wear a specifically enchanted bracer which would protect the user, and from what Lyota had heard the bracer was secured more tightly than any set of keys. The fort commander herself kept it locked away in the most secure part of the prison, when she was not wearing it herself.

The succubus answers the question with a smile. "Oh, simple - Marvyp here and I slaughtered every guard in the fort, slew the commander in dramatic single combat, and we're now free to stroll out at our leisure." Lyota needs no special senses to detect the lie, and after seeing her unimpressed look the succubus sighs and tries again. "We brought along a specialist. We'll be out of here and hours away before anyone even knows we were here at all. I'm an Illusion Mage, I'll get us out of here quietly enough, no worries about that."

Marvyp pops the cell open with his shapeshifted limb, but Lyota feels the need to ask one more question as she makes her exit. "Why go through the risk, though? I have no particular value - do I?"

The slime shrugs. "That's between you and the Dragonlord. We just follow the orders. Now, get your winged butt moving, will you?" Lyota needs no further prodding and soon starts following the other two down the hall. As they make the turn towards the final exit, the team's final member soon becomes obvious, or at least somewhat so. A cloaked figure stands at the anti-life field shut-off switch, holding it down, but to Lyota's surprise the man's arm seems to be armored with a standard gauntlet rather than the enchanted item that would allow someone to reach the switch and survive.

As she gets close enough to see under the man's cloaked hood however, that mystery is soon explained. Although the figure appears to be wearing a heavy suit of armor, as she looks under the cloak the demon realizes that there's no body within the metal shell at all. Instead it seems to be guided by nothing more than a skull, floating in place above the armor's neck, its eye sockets lit up by blue flames. "I - who or what are you?"

The skull grins, somehow. "Well, the Dragonlord told me they had a rescue job that required someone with guts, a fellow with massive balls, a soldier with serious backbone! I told em, I ain't got any of those, but I'd give it a shot anyhow!" The skull leans in as it finishes its introduction.

"You can call me Dave."