I grudgingly got up and joined him at the map. I’d been dreading this part. Carcalla was surely going to ask us to do something nefarious and illegal on his behalf. “We’re not crooks. We’re not thieves or leg breakers.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Mr. Carnavon. I have plenty of those already.” He pointed at a small island on the Core City’s southern bay labeled Korthican’s Warning. It had words written around it likedanger, cursed,andhere be monsters.“I am in need ofadventurers.”
I swallowed the rest of the dragon murder rum or whatever it was called in one gulp. Unfortunately, it didn’t put me out of my misery.
Six
While most of the Elemental Plane of Fire is constantly shifting and churning, and solid ground comes and goes, there remain some permanent places. Those stable areas were created through powerful spells utilizing chronomancy long ago. My people weren’t the first to settle Fogo, not by a long shot, and there are quite a few ancient ruins scattered across those enduring islands atop our plane of fire.
Us locals knew better than to fuck with those places.
But not the adventurers. Oh no.
Ancient ruins mean treasure, treasure brings adventurers, and adventurers have got to be the dumbest bastards there are. What kind of lunacy must possess a man to make him want to delve into the darkness, searching for lost magic, when everyone knows that old magic draws unnatural creatures to it? Sometimes old magic evenspawnsmonsters. Not to mention the ancient wizards very much seemed to be of theif I can’t have it, no one canphilosophy when it came to their property, so they tended to leave all manner of brutal boobytraps around their homes for unwitting trespassers, which remained effective long after the wizards were dead and gone.
Yet, along comes these blithering idiot adventurers, full of swagger and bravado, thinking they could stroll through the Fogo gate and strike it rich quick. All they had to do was go into one of our selections of ancient ruins, defeat the traps and whatever horrific beasties had accumulated therein, and carry their loot back to the Core to sell in the grand market, so they could retire and live the rest of their life in luxury. Easy.
As a trapper, I actually knew how to navigate the fiery wastes, so on a few occasions, I’d been hired by adventuring companies from other realms to be their guide. This was a profitable side job for those in my profession, but we all understood to always get paid up front. Because it was all too common for one of us to guide a party of adventurers to their location, and then return to Port Silver alone after none of them came back out.
I always tried to warn these fools about how dangerous it was, but they never listened to me. What did I know? I was just a local who’d grown up in this godforsaken realm who knew it like the back of my hand. They were mightyadventurers.They had enchantments. They had weapons and skills! They fought monsters and found treasure for a living! I’d just smile and nod, take their coin, wish them good fortune on their noble endeavor, and wave as they descended into the dark, before setting up camp outside for the agreed upon amount of time to await their return.
Then after a few days, I’d return to Fort Silver alone. Occasionally, I’d be tempted to go in after them to loot their bodies, thinking I could sell their fine weapons and armor in town, but I wasn’t ever greedy or stupid enough for that.
Now, adventurers didn’talwaysperish. Other trappers had told me of parties they’d guided who’d actually made it out alive. Well, some of them at least. And most of those hadn’t come out with armloads of treasure either. It was more like a handful of trinkets that were hardly worth dying over.
I suppose once in a great while, some party must have found something incredibly valuable, because their triumphant return to the Core was enough to inspire the next batch of morons who weren’t very good at calculating odds or probability to come die horribly in my back yard.
Needless to say, I thought that being an adventurer was the stupidest career possible.
Only now, apparently, I was one, because a crime boss said so.
“I hereby call this meeting of the Outcast Academy student council to order.” Since he didn’t have a gavel, Rade banged his fist on the table.
Since our door was still covered in tons of dirt, which our students were having to dig out with shovels because we were afraid to try anotherShape Earthspell to move it, our council had convened at a seedy tavern down the street. There were enough bitter drunks in the Slumps that the place was always busy. I liked to imagine the proprietor had promptly given us our own table because we were the respected new wizards in the neighborhood, but more than likely, it was because we had Trax with us, and everyone around here was terrified our Squalo might get upset and start eating people again.
“I bit a few humans upon my arrival here—in self-defense, mind you—and I never hear the end of it.”
“It’s a cruel world, buddy.”
“Humans are very judgmental.”
“Ahem. Chair has the floor.” Rade, being a fake nobleman, enjoyed having a bit of decorum in our meetings. “Our first orderof business is, of course, discussing Carnavon’s volunteering us to work for the deadliest criminal organization in the Slumps.”
“The word ‘volunteering’ makes it sound so…voluntary,” Azarin said in my defense. “I doubt that was the case. Was it, Oz?”
On the walk here, I’d already told them how my meeting with Carcalla had gone. “What was I supposed to do? Tell Carcalla no?” Just my saying that name caused a dozen other patrons to glance our way nervously, and I hadn’t even been talking loud. I leaned in a bit closer and lowered my voice. “Believe me when I say he’s not the sort of fellow one haggles with. When Gaul Haddar gets back?—”
“If,” Azarin corrected.
“When, if, whatever, then Haddar will demand more respect than I got. With him back, we can renegotiate terms from a position of strength. In the meantime, it’s just us and our merry band of rejects.”
“Useless.” Krachma rarely spoke during these meetings.
“Me or the students?”
Krachma nodded.Yes.
“I beat you in the arena, didn’t I?”
