Shocker's Stories
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Chapter 68 - A Cornered Rat
🕑 Added 2024-11-04 18:41:31 +0000 UTCCoin stared at the two doors, shut tightly before them. "Are you sure it's going to be open? I would have thought most people would lock up at night." He paused, thinking on this. "Oh, do you want me to just pull them off the hinges?"
Elijah laughed nervously. "Let's... save that as a last resort, lad." He approached the doors and gave them a few teasing pulls and pushes. They remained rigidly in place. "It's as you said. But, fortunately, I think you have the means to get us true."
Coin leaned closer as his mentor tapped the keyhole a few times. Coin peered at it, the gears in his head slowly turning. "You think I can use my shapeshifting to change a lock?" he asked in a low voice.
"If you can mould your flesh to fit the tumblers? I don't see why not."
His mind briefly wandered back toward their trip to the bank, the idea that had sparked in his mind when he saw Fiodor's vault. Making his flesh contort to a lock would be uncomfortable, but seemed entirely doable.
He inched closer, allowing Elijah to block his body from sight, and pressed his index finger to the lock. The flesh of his finger suddenly oozed forward with a texture like melting candle wax, moving to fill the opening. Then gradually, he stiffened his warped finger until it was as sturdy as iron.
Wincing, Coin rolled his wrist and unlocked it in a single fluid movement. The lock clacked noisily, before the twin doors were pulled open by both men. He pulled his finger free and flexed his digits a few times as his flesh realigned itself.
"That really is an incredible ability," Elijah murmured. The more he saw of his apprentice, now knowing the truth about him, the more Elijah became aware of how dangerous a mimic could actually be.
He had rarely given them much thought in the past. He'd rarely had cause to go poking around in old ruins and tombs, which mimics haunted like hungry ghosts. His more adventure-inclined friends, many of whom had died in wholly preventable adventure-related incidents, had referred to them as insidious and stealthy nuisances, natures way of weeding out rookie adventurers.
Now, however, Elijah thought that mother nature had been incredibly generous when she didn't make mimics smarter than the average wild animal.
Elijah was a man who had picked up many odd tidbits and pieces of trivia along his travels, near as valuable to him as his ducats. He had heard that it was not known how old mimics could be. Those that lived for a long time tended to be quite good at avoiding detection.
But the oldest mimic known to man, as one scholar had told him, was a taxidermized corpse currently on displayed in the Celestine Lodge in Thallborea. It, supposedly, was nearly two hundred years old, and shockingly massive in size. Elijah wondered, in a dreadful haze, what a beast like that could do if it had been granted knowledge like Coin had.
He shelved his worries as best he could and led Coin deeper inside the factory. Coin was a good lad, he reminded himself. And he hoped it would stay that way.
All was silent around them, save for the echoes of their footsteps. Everywhere they looked it was easy to see forges, racks of ominous tools, piles of coal, great anvils that had weathered many beatings, and the occasional ominous stain on the floor.
Workplace safety was a foreign, bizarre notion in the Spokes.
A staircase stood at the back of the vast factory floor, and they quickly ascended them to the next floor. Valle's office was of a considerable size, with great windows that overlooked the factory floor. Even when they entered, they had been able to see flickers of distant lantern light through those same windows. But the angle had not allowed them to see the man himself.
It was only as they entered the large room that they finally glimpsed Valle. He stared at them, perched by the lantern on his desk. In the low light of the office, he looked like an absolute wreck. Gaunt, sunken eyes that had likely barely seen a wink of sleep over the past few days. His face was slick with sweat, his hair and beard a tangled mess.
"E-Elijah," he murmured. Valle swallowed harshly. "I trust all went well with your journey."
Elijah's face shifted, becoming like a mask carved from wood. "No, Valle. All did not go well." He sighed, clasping his hands behind his back. "I had faith in you, Valle. Have had it for years, even when we were lads just starting out in the Mercantile Guild. Fun days, weren't they? You, me, and Imelda Orchard. The 'three menaces' as the old heads called us. Then your vices took hold, and your debts mounted. Yet for all the sneering and mocking people gave you behind your back, I always believed you could come out on top. And this... this is how you repay my faith. By striking deals with the Brotherhood."
Valle paled. Impressive, for a man with a complexion that already made ivory look like charcoal. "I don't... I don't know what you're talking about," Valle replied, in the tones of a man who knew exactly what he was taking about.
The older man shook his head slowly. "I believed in you. And trusted you. And you used me as a pawn to supply some of the worst scum in the kingdom. I would have helped you with your debts, if you had but asked. Instead you allowed yourself to become a pawn to the Brotherhood."
"You... you don't know a damn thing!" he growled through clenched teeth.
Coin took a step forward. He hadn't so much as blinked since he laid eyes on the other man. Ordinarily he would not have thought of Valle as a threat. He was a small and unassuming man compared to the adventurers he'd torn apart in the past. But he saw the mania in Valle's eyes and knew, instinctively, that he would do anything in the name of self preservation.
A desperation that could make a man as dangerous as any wild beast.
"You! You think you have any right to judge me?! You jumped up little prick!" Valle hissed, thrusting a finger forward. His fear had shifted into blistering anger, a fury being directed at anyone and anything that caught his eye. "You don't know what it's like! You don't know hardship! You just stumbled through life, having success and luck heaped upon you like the Goddess herself was bending over backwards to aid you! What do you know of my struggles?! You damn-"
"Valle!" Elijah snapped, so loud and forceful that it voice sounded like thunder in the vacant factory. Even Coin was shocked, jerking his head toward his mentor. "Stop flapping your gums, for goodness sake!"
"I..." Valle looked like a kicked puppy, his anger melting away. "I'm... I'm sorry, Elijah. Please, forgive me. We... we're friends, you know? I... did not wish for you to get hurt. I did not think you would be in any danger."
Elijah sighed and closed his eyes. "I'm afraid... I will need to tell the authorities about this Valle. In two days time, I will go to the palace and tell them everything. I advise you to get your affair in order and leave Sentinel as quickly as possible."
Valle took a nervous step back, his eyes darting all around the room and paying close attention to the shadows. "Elijah, you... you don't want to do that. They... they're dangerous people. They'll kill you," he hissed.
"I don't care," Elijah bluntly replied.
"Nor I," said Coin. Though, admittedly, the thought of a shot from a hand cannon hitting him again didn't fill him with joy.
"You shan't be getting your black powder. Nor shall you be getting anything else from me, but this small bit of mercy. Don't make this harder for yourself, Valle."
The gaunt man winced and looked away from his former friend. "It's too late," he whispered.
Elijah narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"She... they already have it, Elijah. I'm truly sorry."
The rafters creaked above them, so silently that a normal human wouldn't have heard a thing.
Coin sprang into action, grabbing Elijah by the shoulders and pulling him aside. A figure shrouded in black crashed into the floor a split second later, driving two blades into the boards. A blow that would have skewered Elijah in an instant.
In the darkness, the orange-hued hair of their attacker was unmistakable.
Leona rose sharply to her feet, wrenching her blades from the floor with sprays of splinters. She sighed, cracking her neck lazily from side to side. "You really should have minded your own business."
"You shouldn't have dragged us into your business in the first place, lass!" Elijah shouted. Despite the danger she posed, and though he'd only barely avoided two blades in his ribs, he was remarkably devoid of fear.
"Keep behind me," Coin warned. He knew first hand how dangerous Leona was. But now, at least, he wasn't facing her in some cramped tunnel. He took a step forward, power pulsing through his body until a sphere of wind took shape in his right hand.
Leona smiled. "Still a brave boy. I was impressed, seeing you in action against Fatty Broadfellow's thugs. I think... you might even have a chance to kill me," she said, lifting her right sword and aiming the tip his way.
Coin watched her, stone-faced. "You don't want this fight," he warned. Inwardly, his mind was racing. Could he beat her? She was shockingly fast and strong, and the magic she used made her incredibly versatile. And though he was confident in his power, he had to wonder if he could take Leona on without Elijah getting hurt in the process.
"Believe me." Leona grinned wolfishly. "I do."
