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Chapter 77 - A Smoking Gun
🕑 Added 2024-12-04 20:06:57 +0000 UTCCoin had opted to simply use shapeshifting to replace his bloodied clothing when he first returned to Elijah's home, and he was damn glad of that decision. It made it so much easier to morph his body, not needing to worry about storing his clothing.
He followed after the Manticores soon after they entered the burned out building, moving through one of the windows on the upper floor. His body morphed as he went along, until he became a shadowy mass that crept quietly about on four angular limbs. All around him was darkness, but he could see lantern light glowing through the floorboards.
Coin tracked the Manticores quietly, until the floor and walls ahead of him have way. Much of the building, it seemed, was a crumbling wreck. But he was able to quickly scuttle up to the rafters above, and used them as a series of perches from which he could better track the Manticores.
"Those Brotherhood bastards are crafty, I'll give them that much," Ladoss said, picking his way through half-rotted furniture. "Adept at hiding in middens and dung heaps. But don't you dare underestimate them when we're down here. The old hands are trained, veteran killers. And whatever youngsters they've recruited, whether through abduction, trickery, or simply plying them with gold... they're bound to be well trained too."
"Aye, Captain," several of the Manticores replied in unison. Even Illyana, Coin noted. She had adapted rather well to her new role, for as displeased as she seemed to be by her surroundings.
Eventually, Ladoss came to a stop beside the ash-strewn wreck of what had once been a chimney. He clicked his tongue before reach for the back of the brick structure. He groped about for several moments before finding a brick that pressed inward at his touch. The noise of stone grinding against stone echoed through the vacant building.
Coin peered over the edge of the rafters for a better look, watching as a section of the chimney's floor slid away to reveal a darkened tunnel. Ladoss' lantern lit the edge of a few metal rungs, a ladder that descended into pitch blackness.
"Hard to believe there's so many underground hideaways in the city," one of the Manticores remarked, hitching his lantern to his belt.
"There's an awful lot hidden away in this city," Ladoss said. "Sentinel's an ancient place. So much of it has been sunken away by the passage of time. Stick close. I'm taking point."
One by one the Manticores sank into the earth, halos of lantern light being steadily swallowed into the blackness. Once he was alone, Coin clambered down by sinking his claws into the wall. The Manticores, fortunately, made no move to close the tunnel up after them. No doubt it was better to keep the hatch open in case they needed to beat a hasty retreat.
Coin waited silently for several long moments, hoping to give them a head start, before he too started to climb down into darkness. He would his limbs and torso in as he went, rendering himself into a sleeker, humanoid shape. The tunnel was narrow, crudely hewn into the earth in places.
Inwardly he had to wonder if there were many other places like his dotted around Sentinel. The prospect worried him more than he cared to admit. In his mind's eye he could vividly picture goblin hit squads, armed with hand cannons, creeping up from the darkness to murder the enemies of the Brotherhood. And then vanishing just as quickly through some other foxhole.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, which took a worrying amount of time in and of itself, he found that the lanterns of the Manticores had grown rather distant. Coin dropped low and scuttled after them, barely making a sound.
The ability to move quietly was one of many evolutionary tricks that mimics had mastered centuries ago. Though the forms they usually chose to adopt were large and cumbersome, they had taught themselves how to creep with feline grace.
A treasure chest couldn't well scuttle from room to room if it was making an ungodly racket in the process.
The Manticores barely made a sound as they went, save for their footfalls and the clanking of their weapons and armour. The noise echoed toward him. None of them said a word.
Was Valle even down here? Coin's gaze scanned his surroundings, the crumbling stone walls laden with moss and mould. A few wall sconces had been carved into the tunnel, but only a handful of them had been lit. Coin didn't know if they'd been lit by the Manticores, or if someone had lit them up beforehand.
He sniffed the air, trying to make out any new human scents in the area. Instead his nose was assaulted by the fetid stench of a sewer, making his blackened flesh wrinkle in disgust. With the air so rife with the stink, he wouldn't be able to make out any distinct scents from afar.
Coin fought the urge to growl. Another inconvenience. But this was still the only lead he had to follow at present. And if Valle didn't turn up this way...
He narrowed his burning red eyes. He'd find a way to get the bastard.
The Manticores pressed on, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the city, checking every nook and cranny they could see. Of which there was no shortage. Coin found himself increasingly daunted by the scale of the place, the winding corridors and shaded rooms seeming to stretch on forever.
Coin clung to the shadows and peered around one corner, watching as the Manticores came to an abrupt halt. They had sprang into action in the blink of an eye, drawing their weapons as footsteps echoed toward them from the darkness.
A goblin emerged from the shadows, his eyes glinting like two gold coins. "A goblin, down here?" one of the Manticores asked, aiming at it with his sword.
"Guess there's some underground tunnels that fed into here from outside Sentinel's walls. Might be a few of the little bastards around," Ladoss remarked.
More golden eyes glittered in the pitch, drawing in closer. Goblins, naturally, didn't need torches to see in the darkness. But their vision adapted quickly to the presence of lanterns and other bright glows.
Humans had a tendency to give themselves away to goblins from a considerable distance. But Coin couldn't fault the Manticores for not expecting their presence underground. He certainly hadn't. Even their scent didn't stick out amid the humid aroma.
"Kill 'em quick and let's move on," Ladoss bluntly remarked.
One of the Manticores stepped forward, raising his axe overhead. Coin was about to look away, doubtful goblin slaughter was worth watching. But, in that moment, he saw a glint of metal in the darkness as the goblin pulled something out of his grubby cloak.
A hand cannon.
The boom of thunder was near deafening in the confines of the tunnel, the flash of black powder briefly lighting the area. One moment the Manticore warrior stood proud. The next, a ball of lead was punching clean through his breastplate as if it were no sturdier than rotten driftwood. Blood and gore erupted from between his shoulder blades.
The rest of the Manticores started to move, spurred to action as other goblins emerged fully from the darkness with hand cannons of their own.
Coin's eyes widened, and he debated what to, only to freeze in shock as Illyana moved to guard her nearest allies. Her claymore swept upward with incredible quickness, almost invisible to the naked eye. Two shots struck off her blade, shattering great chunks off of it, and went wide- embedding in the ground at her feet.
She hurled her broken blade like a spear, skewering one of their attackers, and hurled herself behind the cover of a most-strewn archway. Other shots echoed in the dark, leaden balls tearing chunks from the stone surroundings.
"What in damnation are those?!" Ladoss roared, recoiling from a spray of shrapnel that narrowly missed his face. "Tore straight through Gellen's armour!"
"Some... some kind of projectile weapon! Like a portable cannon!" Illyana shouted.
Coin narrowed his eyes, hastily grabbing a pair of falling stones. From where he stood he could see a few of the goblins reloading their hand cannons, carrying small pouches of black powder and leaden balls on their belts. Others, however, only had one shot. They had moved to holster their hand cannons, instead drawing hatchets and cleavers from their belts.
"Limited resources," he murmured, taking a tighter grip on his makeshift projectiles. Well, they had been damn desperate to get their hands on some black powder.
Coin took aim and hurled his stones from the shadows, both rocks cleaving through the air. Two of the reloading goblins were smashed into pulp, earning confused snarls and shrieks from their allies.
"What just-" one of the Manticores exclaimed.
"Doesn't matter!" Ladoss burst from behind cover, a crossbow in his hands, and loosed a bolt that skewered the skull of one reloading goblin. Others followed his lead, a hail of bolts cutting down several goblins in the ensuing confusion.
One of them managed to aim and fire, his shot striking the pauldron of one Manticore and knocking him flat on his ass.
Coin hurled a few more stones, killing more of the goblins, and then crept further back into the darkness to hide himself. The last thing he needed, or wanted, was to have to fight agents of the Archchancellor. Nor did he want them to catch even a stray glimpse of him.
One of the goblins, in his haste, threw a handful of smoke pellets to the ground. They exploded in a series of hissing bursts, releasing choking blue smoke to conceal their retreat. They did not bother to take the bodies of their dead, but they did snatch a few of the fallen hand cannons as they went.
The darkened corridor fell silent, the Manticores keeping to cover for several long, tense moments. Eventually, when all seemed clear, Ladoss moved to the corpse of the nearest goblin and lifted his hand cannon from the ground.
"What kind of Bleakborn monstrosity is this...?" he murmured.
