[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 26 – Mint to be

“You idiots! You stirred the Nest! Do you have any idea how long it took me to get them all in there?” said a large, cloaked figure standing in the same alleyway as Winmore’s shop.

They stopped and stared at the figure, then back at the shouting, hissing voices released from the guildhall.

“Well?” said the figure. “Come on, unless you want to die.” It turned with a flourish of its black cloak and disappeared down the alley.

Shrubley instantly liked this person, if only because he had a rather positive association with Winmore. Perhaps spoiled a little by their current predicament. After all, he didn’t think it would have happened if they had just left as soon as they delivered the package.

Then again, the snake people would have been able to enact their plan without anybody the wiser.

Which afforded Shrubley the chance to save his new home and help the people who wouldn’t even look at him twice unless it was to sneer.

He wasn’t about to let it go to waste.

If he had been back in Taamra, he would have done the smart thing and taken that information to the Guild so they could properly assign the right Grade and ranked people.

There was a reason they had Grades and ranks. This was clearly far beyond Shrubley’s lowly G-Grade, and he wasn’t even Copper Ranked yet. The rest of his group were little more than junior adventurers. All of them needed training, essences, and gear.

But there was nobody else here to do the job.

The snake people certainly weren’t going to fix this mess. And this large newcomer was likely just as stranded as Shrubley’s group was.

Nobody else even knew what the Snake Lord was plotting. Likely by the time anyone found out from Taamra, it would be too late.

He had to admit, as he hurried into the alleyway and followed the swish of the cloak around another bend, that the Snake Lord had a rather good plan.

Anybody that might raise an alarm would likely be taken out of the equation entirely or replaced. And from what he understood, Taamra was quite the backwater station.

Nobody really cared about the place, and despite the fact that it seemed the best and largest city Shrubley had ever seen, the core races didn’t think like that.

They thought like a… like a tree. They had the trunk where all the important bits happened, these were all in the Inner Ring–whatever that was–and anything outside of it was considered a distant branch.

Expendable and not worth thinking about most of the time.

But as a shrub, Shrubley knew that even the sturdiest trunks could be infected with insidious rot from an untended branch.

And that was precisely what the Snake Lord was doing. He had the patience to enact his plan slowly, without arousing suspicion.

By the time enough people began to ask questions, how many of the citizens of Haalften and Taamra would be replaced by those snake things in people suits?

It chilled Shrubley’s sap to think about, but not quite as much as the echoing hissing cries for blood and death just a few streets away.

“Why do we trust this person?” Cal asked.

“Same reason why Slyrox trusts you,” the koblin pointed out, ears swaying as she hurried.

Shrubley and his group continued to follow the figure, who wasn’t hard to miss despite how fast they were all moving. They were practically a giant, especially to Shrubley’s diminutive stature.

Even a town as small as Taamra had a warren of side streets and back alleys where the buildings had grown up organically over time, leaning against one another and placed just about any old where.

More of those oily vines and roots draped their way across the alleys, blocking off certain exits or making the going slow and difficult. He could hear the snakes behind them getting ensnared in them.

For a brief spark of a moment, Shrubley was certain there was some greater will behind the vines. Something sculpting them into shape. After all, those vines that held the guildhall shut hadn’t grown there organically. They had been tamed.

Just like these, Shrubley thought, looking at the sickly things. But by whom?

In the lead, Shrubley lost sight of the figure at a junction. He could hear the snakes hissing so close that he was surprised they weren’t rounding the bend after them.

“Which way?” Cal asked, looking up and down the alley. He lifted his staff uncertainly.

Slyrox backed up to a wall covered in sweating black vines and put up her mitts, ready to fight to the last.

Shrubley looked around but could not see any sign of the very large figure they had been following. He felt nervous and afraid. This place screamed at his senses that it was wrong. Foul. It was unnatural.

“That way!” He pointed with his sword at the only path that was remotely clear. He couldn’t see a way through anywhere else, and the sound of pursuit was getting louder. Any minute, the snakes would be upon them.

Using magic to push aside the vines would expend too much energy from Shrubley and take too much time besides. He didn’t trust another attempt, not so soon after the last.

Additionally, there was no way the stranger could have gone through any of those barred paths. At least, he hoped his hunch was correct.

As soon as they picked their path, the cloaked figure reappeared down a narrow winding alley thick with black oily roots and vines that Shrubley would have sworn had no way through without hacking them apart.

Perhaps his guess had been off the mark, and the figure had some trick past them after all.

“Down here, and you best bleedin’ hurry!” The figure disappeared behind the vines.

As soon as Shrubley reached the vines and roots, he realized they had been cunningly cut and pruned so that from anywhere but right in front, they looked complete and whole.

Up close, however, there was a very narrow and twisting path through. Shrubley had an easier time than the figure ahead due to his size. The much larger person ahead had to duck considerably and slide against the wall more than once where Shrubley could easily walk through.

Once on the other side, a door of peeling red paint was pulled open and Shrubley followed the cloaked person inside.

They went down several flights of steps into the cool confines of a cellar held up with piles of ancient stones in a crude attempt at forming pillars.

Shrubley noticed that there were no oily vines or sickly roots here. Even still, everything had a strange, sterilized scent to it. Earth should be teeming with life. It was unsettling.

“Pyuu?” Smudge squeaked quietly.

“I like this ambience much more,” Cal said, looking around and holding his staff close to his ribcage. He turned his skull downward, noticing a few ribs missing from his earlier fall through the transplanar portal. “Oh, darn it.”

“As do I, young undead,” said the figure, leading them down a twisting series of tunnels that broke through countless old cellars until they arrived in a tall vaulted area full of bones crammed into small alcoves.

Cal gasped. “An ossuary!” He immediately ran to the nearest shelf of bones.

Their guide’s voice lashed out like a whip-crack. “No!”

Just in time, too, Cal’s curious hand was inches from one of the ribcages. He pulled it back sheepishly. “I was only going to try it on… honest!”

“Leave them. They are roused by touch, and you would not like them to wake up. Trust me on that score.”

“Who are you?” Cal asked. “Please, and thank you, that is. Not to be rude, you understand, but… well, we didn’t expect to find anybody here.”

The figure stood nearly 7 feet tall if not a little over. They pulled back their cloak to reveal feminine features, blood-red lips curved into a sinister smile, skin pale and plump. Shrubley imagined she was very beautiful, though he didn’t understand how people judged such things.

“You are quite large,” he said as a means of complimenting her.

“Pyuu?” Smudge interjected, as if anyone could understand the slime other than the vaguely questioning tone.

Slyrox certainly didn’t find the lady off-putting and did not appear to find anything amiss. If anything, she relaxed for the first time since getting to this mirror realm.

The koblin sat down to rest with a weary sigh, oversized shoes idly kicking.

Cal cowered visibly. He held onto his staff and shook so hard that his rattling filled the undercroft with noise.

“Cut that out this instant!” the tall woman instructed.

Her refined voice had such command and presence that Cal immediately stopped before he even realized what he was doing. The way she talked was unlike anyone Shrubley had ever met before, as if she was from another time than the rest of the humanfolk.

“That’s better.” She looked at Shrubley’s group. “You may call me Lady Haalften, or Countess. I care not which you use.”

“You are Count Haalften’s wife?” Shrubley asked. He vaguely recalled seeing her portrait in one of the rooms while they were searching for Winmore’s box.

She turned her ruby-red gaze on Shrubley. “You have seen my husband? Is he well?”

It was odd to see such worry and tenderness from somebody so powerful and commanding. Shrubley shook his head sadly. “I do not know everything… but it sounds like the Snake Lord was going to imprison him in–”

“A special canvas, yes,” Countess Haalften finished for him. She deflated and seemed suddenly bent and bowed by countless years. Rather than the stately carved marble pillar of power she had seemed, she suddenly reminded Shrubley of those shabbily constructed pillars that a good sneeze would topple.

“It only just recently happened,” Cal explained nervously. “Or might not have just yet? We tried to stop him but….”

“Come along then,” she told them, flicking her hood up again. “Best to tell me everything when we’re safe.” She hurried on into the next vault and turned to look over her shoulder. “And touch nothing.”

Cal kept both hands firmly on his staff, nodding his head so hard it rattled slightly.

Shrubley wasn’t sure if vampyrs had a particular hold over the undead, or if Cal’s behavior was just his personality and background.

When they started walking again, Shrubley heard him sigh and mutter under his breath in an odd tone, “She’s so wonderful…. I wish she’d boss me around all day.”

That made even less sense to Shrubley. That sounded like a romance kind of thing, which he himself was a bit too young for. Or perhaps just hadn’t met the right shapely shrub yet.

It would be nice to have companionship, Shrubley thought.

Eventually, they came to a heavy wooden door of aged oak set with bands of iron. Shrubley trusted oak. It was sturdy and regal. He placed a hand on its age-darkened surface.

Good oak turned harder than iron as it passed through the years, and this one in particular was likely even stronger than the iron bands around it.

Inside the Lady Haalften was lighting candles. “Do shut the door on your way in.”