[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 28 – Bark to Basics

“We could become stronger? Perhaps muchly useful?” Slyrox asked. The koblin was new to this land and its means of advancement.

It was not for the first time that Shrubley wondered what was beneath that mask. Green, plush fur, just like the koblin’s floppy ears? Did she have a long muzzle like a dog, or was the end of her mask with the little holes that resembled a feedbag for breathing?

Without realizing it, he had built up an adorable imagery of what Slyrox might look like. Shrubley simply could not help his curiosity.

“If I may be so forward, Lady Haalften,” Cal said, visibly mustering up the courage. Even still, the skeleton didn’t dare look into the vampyr’s intimidating blood-red eyes. “If you were to boss us around… I mean, train us, each of us might increase in power.”

The Countess rested her chin on her fist. She flicked her eyes from one to the other gathered at the table. Even to Smudge, who had returned to resting atop Shrubley’s head. “I don’t like to admit when I’m wrong,” she told them slowly. “But there may be something to what you say. After all, my henchmen were not able to get through the portal, and those adventurers died as soon as they arrived.”

She looked into Shrubley’s lamplight eyes. “You four, however, not only survived an encounter with the Snake Lord but you also arrived here and managed to survive. Despite doing something dreadfully idiotic.”

“Which allowed us to get a precious artifact,” Shrubley pointed out.

He was right, but the Countess didn’t like his tone of voice. It almost suggested that getting the amulet was the point of what they did and until just a few moments ago there was no way in the seven Hells that they knew it was anything more than a gaudy trinket.

Still… she conceded Shrubley’s point with a faint nod of her head. She needed them, and it was beginning to dawn on her that the little blasted shrub was keenly aware of that.

She truly could have killed them all, but what would be the point?

And training them, as much as she was loath to admit, was a good idea. They were weak, but she saw potential there.

The problem was, vampyrs didn’t much like having to share power or secrets, and effective training required both. It had been a very long time since she had been under the expert—and cantankerous—tutelage of Mistress Ceasewane.

It would be all too easy for her own methods and teachings to be turned around on her, and then where would she be? Staked in the heart and then a pile of ash until some careless idiot dropped some blood on her in a few centuries?

Sometimes a good sleep was all right, especially when the mobs started coming out with their torches and pitchforks, but this was different.

Particularly since a spare drop of human blood might not ever come by in this mirror realm.

Would it still count as a stake if Shrubley used his sword? It was wood, after all. Not to mention, the little thing was made of wood, himself. His whole body was potentially dozens of tiny little stakes.

The Countess struggled with all of this in the span of a few seconds. Finally, she came to a decision.

Fond memories of her own dysfunctional group from her attempts at joining “polite society” decades earlier were the deciding factor. Under Mistress Ceasewane’s care, she had gained more power than in the previous century. The good memories were all too brief, ending sooner than they had any right to, as all things did.

“I can tell from your badge that you’re a greenie, and not a single one of you possesses a full suite of essences, which means Classes are out of the question. So let’s start with the basics, shall we?”

Shrubley nodded, shaking his leaves while bobbing enthusiastically.

The slime made a rumbling noise, its whole jelly body rippling. And then the koblin did as well, although this more clearly originated from the small thing’s stomach.

Apparently, both of them were hungry. Slyrox clutched her middle.

It would seem that the skeleton might not need the same sort of sustenance. As for Shrubley, it certainly wasn’t as clear.

She raised an eyebrow at Slyrox and Smudge. “Very well, come along with me and I’ll find you something to eat. I might be able to survive starving, but I doubt either of you are capable of doing that. You’re all Mundane anyway, which means your bodies are still in need of physical sustenance.”

“Pyuu!” the slime cheered.

Slyrox clapped her padded mitts together and bowed her head in thanks.

The room filled with the sound of the Countess’ chair scraping back, and then she went over to a tomb at the end of the room. The lid was carved into the likeness of a man in robes holding a rose to his chest. With a pale white hand, the Countess reached down and removed the rose.

“What are we–” Shrubley began, but the sound of stone grinding upon stone cut him off. The tomb slid back to reveal a set of stairs going even deeper into the earth.

Torches flickered on by magic. Stooping to avoid hitting her head, the Countess led them down the stairs. Nobody else was nearly as tall as her, so they walked down the six-foot-wide stairs with ease.

Somebody had made an effort to turn these tunnels into something cozier and more comfortable. Unlike the spartan crypt above, the torches seemed almost merry down here.

Large spacious rooms branched off from smaller corridors lined with moth-eaten tapestries. Wherever the Countess went, torches flickered to life and lit the way.

Ever enterprising, Slyrox reached up to take one, but stopped when Cal shook his skull.

“We are in the Haalften crypts,” she told them. “These hills have long since belonged to my family, well before Taamra ever existed. We were here living and dying before the first rude hut was put up by the Stohl River.”

“But this is not our world,” Shrubley pointed out.

“No, it’s not,” she said bitterly. “But it is a reflection, and a reflection cannot create new things. It must copy that which is already there.” She motioned to a large room filled with dusty cobwebbed suits of armor and many long tables. The room had a vaulted brick ceiling and several pillars with iron brackets with torches lit up the space.

It was larger than the guildhall by a wide margin, with enough tables to sit hundreds of people comfortably.

“What would happen if we brought something back from here, to our world?” Shrubley wondered aloud. “Would there then be two of the same thing?”

“If they were the same thing at all, perhaps.” Countess Haalften swept down the middle aisle between the tables and entered a darkened arch at the other end just as the torches sprang to life. “Or you might find it was slightly different from what already existed.”

Shrubley thought about this for a while as the Countess approached a tall cabinet. Inside, she removed four black cases that had a new look to them. They weren’t caked with dust or cobwebbed.

She set them down on one of the tables in the mess hall, then motioned for Shrubley to open the first one.

He wriggled his little nimble fingers and undid the gold latches on the slim case and was met with a glorious display of glowing and shining bottles.

“Each bottle will keep you full for a day, depending upon how hard you train and how much your body needs to be built back up,” the Countess explained. “Keep the cases in here and they will replenish over time. So long as those idiot henchmen are able to do what they’re told without me constantly breathing down their throats.”

“Amazing! These are… mirrored?” Shrubley said, touching one of the bottles.”

“Yes.”

Cal looked from one case to the next, then back to the Countess. “Then that means somewhere beneath Taamra you… have a secret crypt that contains many rooms and a mess hall that could fit all the people of the village–”

“Do go on,” Lady Haalften said with a feral grin.

“Which, as I was saying,” Cal went on slowly, grateful he couldn’t sweat, “is a totally normal and respectable thing to be doing for a Lady of your stature–I mean status.”

“Very good.” She turned to the others. “Drink one potion. Then, when you are finished, come down the hall. I’ll be waiting.” She turned at the arched entrance to the mess hall. “And I do not like to be kept waiting.”

Once alone, Shrubley and the others pulled out a bottle each. The potion swirled with tiny flecks of light. His voice was quiet as he thought aloud, “I wonder if the good Lady and the Snake Lord were planning the same thing, only in different ways….”

To the diminutive shrub, this place was proof that either Lady Haalften or somebody in her line had thought ahead enough to provide a… whatever this place was.

Shrubley didn’t know much about people, but his recent interactions had been very fruitful. Why would somebody make all of this and hide it under people’s noses?

Shrubley didn’t know.

“To protect her people?” Slyrox asked. “Or to hurt them?”

“I don’t know,” Shrubley told her truthfully.

“Are any of them milk flavored?” Cal asked the group, no longer bothered by what this underground area might have been meant for.

Slyrox stared at the skeleton. “Why?”

“No reason,” he said innocently.

Popping the wax seal off his potion, Shrubley tipped it into his leaves below his yellow eyes, where he was able to drink it. It tasted faintly of golden raspberries and did indeed fill him up. He felt great after finishing it.

Looking around at the other faces, he noticed that everybody with an empty potion bottle looked the same.

Smudge still had his potion bottle floating around inside his gelatinous body for all to see.

“Does it need to be opened?” Slyrox asked, putting her lenses up to the slime’s body to get a closer look.

As she watched, the wax seal dissolved and the contents slowly vanished.

The koblin squeaked.

“Pyuu!”