All The Skills

The big question was: Where would the Free Hive hide a stash of stolen combat cars?

Arthur had a pretty good guess.

It would have to be a place that was fairly inaccessible to the hive civilians and yet reachable by the council. A place nowhere else would go, and unlikely to have someone stumble upon it. Most importantly, it would have to be somewhere protected.

Arthur would bet money – and indeed he was about to bet his safety – that this location would be either in or near the underground prison complex.

He hadn’t been back there since that initial visit with the would-be assassin, but he’d made a point of mentally marking where the entrance had been on top of the Mesa.

The only problem? It was underground. That meant it needed to be accessed using Earth powers.

None of which anyone had.

Luckily, both Arthur and Brixaby had the solution in their heart decks.

Over the last couple of months, both had kept an eye on who had the most interesting cards. Arthur, out of more scholarly curiosity, and Brixaby out of greed.

It was a green dragon who had muddy brown splotches covering the bottom of his belly and up his neck. It had the unfortunate side-effect of making it look like a disease. He wasn’t pretty, but he was pleasant enough to talk to. He was also one of the many dragons who had his own crafting booth, including several employees.

Since he was a green, his core card should be some kind of nature-based ability. But neither Arthur nor Brixaby knew what that could have been. Instead, this green was obsessed with pottery. And he had an Uncommon Earth Manipulation card he used to make his wares.

It was a simple task to stroll down to the crafter’s cave in the evening, stand beside the open-air booth, and watch as the dragon smoothly crafted a vase made of expensive white clay on his pottery wheel. Two apprentices – both human – sweated as they ran round and round in a circular pit, pushing bars that linked up to the giant wheel above. They must have had endurance cards because they were able to maintain an even jog for hours at a time. Meanwhile, the dragon’s claws seemed to coax thin walls to spring up out of the clay like magic.

New Counterfeit Spell: Basic Earth Manipulation

Time remaining: 11 Hours 59 minutes, 59 seconds.

Arthur and Brixaby exchanged glances and then casually strolled away from the booth as if deciding to purchase elsewhere.

They now had a solid 12 hours to work.

That night was a quarter moon, waning. A few clouds scuttled across the sky, casting shadows on the silvery dark landscape.

They’d had to wait seven hours since getting the cards, but that still left them to find the complex and explore. Everyone had taken care not to do anything out of the ordinary for that day, aside from looking at the crafter’s booths. Arthur was fairly certain they weren’t being closely watched. He, Cressida, and the dragons had given every indication that they were settling into life at the Free Hive, and so far the council had left them alone. He rarely spotted Ghost following him—which might be the point. Arthur suspected they were waiting for the fury over the would-be assassination to die down before he was approached.

The only issue was Joy.

“I don’t understand why I have to stay behind,” she repeated, pacing anxiously around their small cave. She looked unhappily to Cressida who was checking her dragon’s saddle for signs of wear.

“You don’t have a Stealth card,” Cressida repeated.

“But I’m big and strong and now I can poison anyone who threatens you! What if you get in trouble and I’m not there to help?”

“No one is going to attack us,” Arthur said, hoping it was true. “If they have prisoners, they’ll be behind bars. And the point of stealth capabilities is to make sure we aren’t seen by anyone else.”

“But—”

Brixaby made an odd rumble that Arthur had never heard from him before. It cut Joy’s words short. Flapping his wings, Brixaby spoke.

“You can fight, which means you can protect us – from above. If this so-called council or anyone else tries to stop us or cut off our way of escape, you have my full permission to poison them.”

She perked up. “Really?” Then she jerked in a familiar way, her bright eyes going slightly unfocused. “I just got a quest! Ohhh. It’s a quest of protection!”

Cressida let out a breath. Arthur could tell she wasn’t entirely thrilled with Joy’s new bloodlust, but this was an aspect of who she was now.

I thought that would happen, Brixaby sent smugly into Arthur’s mind.

Arthur gave him a surprised look, then shook his head and addressed them all. “Once we’re outside, if you have to speak, whisper. If we get separated and you can’t find your way back to the group, look for Joy. She’ll be the beacon.”

If anything, Joy looked even more pleased at this… though being visible on this mission wasn’t a good thing.

Joy had now grown large enough that it was possible to carry Arthur and Cressida at the same time. But her wingbeats would be labored, and therefore, loud. So, she took Arthur and Cressida up to the top of the mesa in two trips. Cressida went first.

When Joy returned, Arthur swung himself up in the saddle and activated his Stealth skills. Brixaby did the same. Though Arthur could hear him buzzing right outside of Joy’s slipstream she made in flight, it was as if his brain didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Once leaving the cave, Joy flew through a series of tunnels that led to the main entrance. From there she took into the clear dark sky and started climbing higher and higher as if she intended to hunt out in the desert wilderness. Only when she was out of easy sight of the hive did she turn and head to the south. She’d turn again once she reached enough height and head straight back for the Mesa. This wild flight path took time, but it was necessary. Going straight from the cave to the top would be too suspicious.

Joy landed near a small pile of rocks. Cressida seemed to emerge out of nowhere as she temporarily deactivated her stealth card.

“While I was waiting, I saw a flight of dragons fly off towards the sea,” she said, pointing. “Might be night fishing.”

Arthur frowned. He thought that the salt sea was too briny for any good fish. “Might be merchants… or scouts.”

Either way, there was nothing much they could do about it other than to stay undetected. Their task was head.

Dismounting, he pulled a length of twine from his Personal Space. Through some brief experimentation in their cave home, they learned that it was very easy to lose track of one another while using Stealth. So, they’d come up with this solution.

He wound twine around one wrist, gave it a few feet of cord for slack, and then handed it to Cressida to do the same before she passed the last of it to Joy. Brixaby refused the twine, electing to sit on Arthur’s arm.

Tied together and under Stealth, they moved across the top of the mesa.

Every one of Joy’s steps seemed to crunch incredibly loudly. If someone spied them from above, she would look strange… but less strange than a whole group moving together.

Arthur glanced around constantly, but the starry sky above was empty. No shadows fell over them except those caused by clouds crossing the moon.

It was strange here. Desolate. There weren’t any sounds of crickets or night calls of birds from the distance. Just silence with the loud crunches of dragon feet behind them.

Trying to shove the worry that something was off to the back of his mind, Arthur directed them toward the location he remembered of the prison.

It turned out he was a bit off. Before he hit his mark, his temporary Earth Manipulation skill transmitted a vague idea of a large space under their feet.

“Do you feel that?” Brixaby asked at the same moment. “It’s here.”

“I’m not sure.” Arthur looked down at his feet and wished he had siphoned some sort of Seeking skill. Unfortunately, neither he nor Brix had found anyone who both had one of those cards and used it often. “We’re still pretty close to the mesa edge. I don’t think this could be the prison.”

“Well, we aren’t looking for the prison, are we?” Brixaby asked. “That was only a starting point.”

“What’s going on?” Cressida’s voice sounded distant even though she was only a couple of feet behind Arthur. That was an effect of layered Stealth skills.

“We found an empty space below us,” he answered.

“Well? Then what are we waiting for? The longer we’re out there the more chance Joy has of being discovered.”

She had a point.

Arthur nodded, took a breath, and then pushed his arm out to the side. A scoop of earth perhaps a foot wide and a few inches deep scooped itself out at his motion. At the same time, Arthur felt a drain from his mana reserve.

That helped explain why such a powerful Earth Manipulation card was found at Uncommon rank. Lower cards could have higher abilities, but there was usually a downside. This card would need to be paired with some sort of mana-unlocking ability. Luckily, Arthur – and therefore Brixaby – had one.

From his shoulder, Brixaby made a similar gesture and the trough widened.

Soon, between them, they had scooped a shallow pit out of the rocky mesa topsoil.

“That should be good enough,” Arthur said. “Joy?”

“Are you sure?” she asked, reluctantly. “My quest said I need to protect… not that I need to get all dirty.”

Brixaby buzzed down to the edge of the pit. “Think of it as the best way to explode upward and surprise your enemies.”

Joy turned to give a long, sorrowful look at Cressida. When her rider didn’t relent, she sighed and shuffled over to crouch in the pit with her wings tucked tight as if to ward herself from the dirt.

With a few more earth manipulation scoops, Arthur and Brixaby settled a thin amount of dirt over her, leaving her head free.

Arthur relaxed. In the black-and-white gloom, the soil obscured Joy’s silhouette. Her head could easily be mistaken for a stone within any distance, and the red coloration in her pink scale made her that much harder to see in the dark. Joy was in place to watch and stay safely hidden. Now the hard part began.

Arthur stepped to the side, using the shadow of a nearby boulder to obscure the hole, and then he again used Earth Manipulation to dig down.

When Chablis had done this before, she had elegantly opened up an opening that led to a downward staircase. However, Arthur and Brixaby were only working with temporary power – one not stamped on their heart and core like a real card would be – and had no experience working with Earth.

The hole they dug was ugly, ragged, and Arthur felt his mana drain alarmingly whenever they had to lift boulders out of the way.

He wasn’t sure if it was he or Brixaby who broke through first. But suddenly the soil at the bottom of their hole collapsed downward. He heard stones, pebbles, and dust falling on a hard floor below.

Everyone froze.

Joy shifted around in her shallow pit a few feet away, craning her head. “Is everything okay?”

“I think so.” Arthur strained but didn’t hear anything. No shouts of outrage, or alarms being tripped. Whatever room they’d broken into was not protected.

Kneeling, he peered over the edge. He had a Night Vision enhancement, though he’d never put much effort into leveling it. Squinting, he picked out shapes through the gloom. Shelves?

Forgoing all caution, Brixaby buzzed down and then immediately up. “Pah. It’s a storage space with cleaning items.”

Arthur perked up. “Really?”

“Yes. Why are you happy about this?”

He shrugged. “Some of them might be joined to card anchors. I’m tired of leveling my tidy skill.”

And more importantly, they hadn’t broken into an empty prison cell which would do them no good. They’d just have to find a way to break out of that, next.

“How far down is it?” Arthur asked.

“Fifteen feet.”

Cressida let out a breath. “I can make that if I use my mana shield but,” she cast a guilty glance at Arthur. “Carrying two within the shield bubble will drain my mana.”

“Save your mana. I have a better plan.”

With that, he removed a ladder from his Personal Space.

Cressida stared. “Where did you find that?

He eased the ladder in. It was one of the longer ones, about 20 feet, and the top poked out. “Oh, they have them all over where I work – they’re used to go from cave to cave for those who don’t have a movement card. I’ll have to return it by morning. Hold the top, will you? I’ll anchor the feet when I’m down.”

Cressida nodded and held the ladder gingerly as if she had never touched one before. Considering she grew up as a pampered novel and then a dragon rider… she might not have.

Arthur stepped around and started to descend, Brixaby buzzing at his side. His last view of the topside was of Joy sticking her good arm out from the ditch and waving.

He lowered into the gloom, jumped the last two steps, and then looked around.

Brixaby had given him the impression that this was a cleaning closet, but the middle of the space was dominated by a giant wooden desk, finely carved and polished to a gleam. One wall had papers scrawled with writing, and the closest…

He stopped.

It was shelves filled with faintly glowing enchanted items.

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