Into the Mana Mine (Original Dark Fantasy) 1 (Patreon)

As the door to the tavern swung open, a tall and muscular figure strode in, her armor and weapons clanking with each step. Her short black hair was tousled and sweat-streaked, framing sharp features and piercing green eyes. A collection of scars crisscrossed her arms and face, evidence of the many battles she had fought and won.

She wore a fierce expression, her eyes scanning the room with a predator's gaze as she moved towards the bar. The other patrons gave her a wide berth, some even scurrying out of the way, but she paid them no mind. She was a woman who knew what she wanted, and she wouldn't let anyone stand in her way.

The woman reached the bar and signaled the bartender, her voice low and commanding. “Ale,” she growled, and the bartender hurried to comply, pouring her a mug of frothy beer. The woman took a long swig, wiping foam from her lips with the back of her hand.

As she turned away from the bar, her eyes caught on a man sitting alone at a nearby table. He was bookish and unassuming, with wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, but there was something in his eyes that caught her attention. It was intelligence, curiosity, and a spark of courage. The woman found herself drawn to him, and she made her way over to his table, her armor clanking with each step.

“Mind if I join you?” she asked, her voice gruff but not unfriendly. The man looked up at her, surprise evident in his expression, but he nodded, gesturing to the chair across from him.

“Please, be my guest,” he said, and the woman sat down heavily, her muscles relaxed for the first time that day. She took another sip of ale, letting her eyes fall shut as the sweet drink went down her throat.

The man watched her intently, wondering what was going through her mind. After several seconds, she opened her eyes and spoke, “I'm called Drusilla.”

“Oh, ah. Finnegan. O'Hara. I mean, I'm Finnegan O'Hara. Pleased to meet you, Lady Drusilla.”

She snorted, “I'm hardly what one would call a ‘Lady’, Twig.”

He shrugged, “Well, I don't know too many people, so it's just easier to say 'lady'.”

“Ahh. Well, Finnegan, how are you enjoying your stay here?”

“It's... different,” he said, shifting uneasily in his seat. This wasn't quite the sort of conversation he'd expected when meeting an attractive stranger, but he supposed he couldn't complain.

“Different? How so?”

“It's a lot more... civilized than I thought it would be.”

“Civilized? Care to elaborate?”

Finnegan winced, realizing how it sounded, “Not like that. I’ve been to rural communities before, but Zoustatt feels more like the larger urban centers. Except everyone seems to have jobs, or at least they're looking for work. There aren't any beggars, no thieves, no brawls in the streets.”

“So what's wrong with that?”

“Nothing. There just doesn't seem to be much else going on. Everyone goes about their business, and most of them look like they've been doing it for years. In the cities, there are always people living on the streets, begging for coin due to having few other options.”

Drusilla shrugged. She'd been in some cities, but her height, scars, and muscles meant that she was left alone by those types. Plus she tended to stay in the sort of rough places that one would go to find mercenaries. Which reminded her...

“You know anything about the ore mined around here?” Drusilla asked, catching her table partner off guard.

“Oh, you ah, you mean mana ore? Yes, I've made studying it my academic specialty. Most of my travels have been to examine the different ways refined mana ore is utilized, by both modern and earlier societies. I was actually transcribing the notes I took earlier today on the obelisk in the Town Square when you arrived.”

She raised an eyebrow curiously, “If you already have the notes, why are you writing them again?”

“Two primary reasons,” he answered, some nervousness leaving his shoulders as he spun one of the two books in front of him so she could read it. The contents were a large mass of gibberish and rough sketches that made no sense. “The first is when I'm taking notes I use a form of shorthand that lets me get my thoughts out of my head and onto parchment quickly. But since I need to share my findings with my colleagues and superiors, I need to write it again in a more standard format. The second reason is that by translating my notes from my shorthand, it makes me review what I wrote and allows me to find things I might have missed the first time. That it helps me remember and organize my thoughts is a pleasant bonus.”

“That sounds interesting. Do you mind if I take a look?”

“Not at all. If you think something needs correcting, feel free to add it. You'll notice I've started using a different color ink for each section. It's a little trick I picked up from my professors back in university. Helps keep the sections separate.”

She flipped through the pages, noting the differences between the notes and the final product. The majority of it was incomprehensible to her, even though she could read it. Her skills lay in the martial and wilds, not academic and arcane.

Pushing the books back across the table, Drusilla leaned over, “Got an offer, if you're interested, Twig. Local merchant put out a job to retrieve some mana ore samples from up in the mountains. I can get up there and deal with the pests easy enough, but from the sounds of it you have an eye to spot the best ore to bring back. We'd split the pay, and you'd get a chance to look at raw mana ore, up for it?”

[hr][/hr]

“You didn't say there'd be praeda incolae!” Finnegan shouted as he took in the sight of the retreating ash-skinned, goblin-like creatures.

“I told you there were pests,” Drusilla snapped back, annoyed at having to use her smaller hatchets over her preferred two-handed ax. The tight confines of the cavern made the finely crafted weapon unwieldy, so she relied on her backup weapons. “The merchant called them Urchins.”

“Right, right, colloquialisms,” Finnegan muttered as he looked around, trying to see if there were any more. He couldn't tell, and the constant flickering of the torches and lanterns only made matters worse. “How many of these things are there?”

Drusilla glanced back at him, answering with a slight shrug, “The merchant said a small clan, didn't get any more specific than that.”

“A small clan? Then there’d be between eighteen and forty, assuming they hold the same population densities as those found in Wystwyrd.”

“Well, that's a lot of numbers,” Drusilla muttered. “Why do you care how many of them there are?”

“Because if we don't kill them all, then they will flee and reproduce. If they do that, then in three months they’ll have the same numbers they had when we got here.”

“But the merchant said they were just a small clan. How are we going to get them to stay put long enough to kill that many?”

“We aren't,” Finnegan replied, his eyes dancing between the different items left by the miners and the surrounding rock, “we're going to lure them into a trap.”

Drusilla watched as the short, lanky man bustled about, picking up bits and bobs while muttering under his breath. ‘He's cute when he's like this,’ she thought to herself. Finnegan stopped what he was doing and turned to her, his eyes bright with an eager light. She looked over the items in his hands: rope, oil, old wood. She didn't understand what his plan was, so she asked, “So, what are you planning to do with all that stuff?”

“It's simple, really. We set a trap for them. They come in here for the bait we set, and we lure them down into a section that terminates in a dead end. Once they're trapped, we can kill them without worrying about them getting away.”

“And how exactly are we going to lure them in?”

“Rope. Oil. Wood. All the materials needed to make a fire. Now, let me show you…”

[hr][/hr]

“There's no way that trap is going to work,” Drusilla said. “Those things are smart, and they know better than to go anywhere near a fire. Besides, it's pitch black in here. No one would ever notice it.”

“That's true,” Finnegan agreed, “but we have another advantage. I'm sure the merchant gave us some sort of light source, right?”

“Yes, but it doesn't last very long, and it's not much good for lighting up the whole mine.”

“Then we need something brighter. Something that will burn longer, or something that won't die out quickly. Something like raw mana dust.”

Drusilla turned, “Mana dust?”

He nodded, “You know how when mud dries out, you can crumble it into powder? Or how mills grind wheat into flower? Same basic idea, just with mana ore. It's a big reason why mining mana ore is such a lucrative business, even more so than gold. Mana ore's more dangerous to mine, you have to be careful not to start a chain reaction and bring the entire mine down on your head.”

Her eyes widened, “If it's so dangerous, why are you planning on starting a fire?”

“Because the ore doesn't burn, it only has that sort of reaction to prolonged repeated exposure to kinetic energy. Probably why this mine's not in use, to give the ore seams time to settle. But mana dust, we can stick it in some glass bottles, shake it up, and it'll glow brighter than a bonfire.”

“I've never heard of anything like that.”

“It's not commonly used, because for it to work you need to keep shaking it,” Finnegan explained as he pulled a glass flask from his pack. “It just isn't practical to use mana dust as a light source, but as bait for a trap it'll do.”

She shrugged, “Okay, fine, but how are we supposed to lure them into the tunnel? There's nothing down here worth stealing. The merchants said they weren't interested in trade goods.”

“They wouldn't be, they’re smart enough to use weapons but their minds don’t seem to comprehend the concept of trade or currency. There were studies done where praeda incolae, urchins, were raised by humans, and even without having been exposed to another of their kind, they just didn’t understand. It was,” Finnegan paused, shook his head and took a deep breath. “How much do you know about them?”

“They bleed green, but die like everything else,” she replied.

Finnegan nodded, “Right, so… the thing is…” He sighed before forcing himself to say, “They’re minor demons that reproduce using humans as hosts for their eggs. The ovipositor resembles male genitals and is used the same way.”

“So they’re rape demons, that it?” Drusilla asked bluntly, making Finnegan pause.

“Ah, expected a different response, but, um. The best bait I can think of is, well, that is to say, us.”

Drusilla raised an eyebrow before looking Finnegan up and down, “Unless you’ve been lying or had some very cruel parents, I’m pretty sure you lack the bits to be a mother.”

He scratched at his cheek, “Vaginal, anal, oral, doesn’t matter so long as they can plant their eggs in a body to incubate for a week. At which point the host becomes the first meal for half a dozen larva. Another week or two after that, depending on the resources in the area, and then the larva will form a cocoon. A month in the cocoon, and they’ll pop out as the pale, ugly child looking thing you saw back there.”

Drusilla nodded, “So we’re the bait, how do we draw them in?”

“Some of them already fled, they’ll go to get the rest of their clan. They’re smart enough to know that the only way to capture us is with overwhelming numbers, but don’t expect much in the way of strategy or tactics beyond that. We have a map of the mines, assuming that they haven’t dug out enough tunnels to make it worthless,” his words trailed off, muttering and mumbling as his mind worked. He pulled out the map they’d been given for the job, stepping closer to one of the torches. After a few minutes, he rolled the map up and met her gaze. “I’ve got it, but we’ll need to make ourselves appealing enough for the entire clan to follow us. Meaning we’ll have to go bottomless.”

“If ya wanted to see me naked, ya should have said so,” Drusilla drawled as she untied her kilt, letting the garment of fabric and chainmail drop to the ground.

“Oh! Uh, I… I meant when we were, well, drawing the, the, the, them, t-to our trap,” he stammered as he averted his eyes.

Drusilla rolled her eyes, “Focus Twig. Where’re we setting the trap?”