Interlude: Payment (Patreon)

 Hector scowled at the setting sun, watching as the brilliant light slowly dimmed, and the waters themselves shone orange as she dipped below the horizon. Even that warmth didn’t last long, and as orange turned red, and red dark blue, he was stuck reflecting on the events of both the night prior, and the day itself. 

He felt incredibly thankful that the worst of it had apparently ended, after he’d left that horrible dungeon he’d immediately made for rendezvous point he was previously informed of. The swim had taken up most of his day, and this was in spite of the fact that the so-called ‘barren’ island he was to meet his employers ‘in one night’s time’ was rather close by, as far as distances were concerned. He had been hoping that sometime during his wait, his two companions would have caught up to him, even if it had been a fool’s wish.

He hated to think about it, but that hole had almost certainly claimed the lives of his group, they hadn’t even gotten five meters in before they were came under siege. And due to how intense just that first attack was, he’d held little hope that his companions he’d left behind were going to meet back up with him any time soon. Jenna, especially, was left in a bad way, and it pained him dearly to see her in that state. Unfortunately, he felt he had to place his own survival first, and he was fortunate enough to find a strong enough excuse to leave that place, or so he hoped.

Of course, while he was mourning the loss of two people which were considerably important to him, he couldn’t help but hope they’d at least managed to put that elf somewhere she would last. If they hadn’t, then maybe the tail end of what could be an Oceanid, a small mermaid, or just a fish that even he hadn’t seen before would be enough to justify taking the job, and losing what had been, up until then, quite a team.

While he was trying, and not necessarily succeeding, to organize his jumbled thoughts, a nearby disturbance drew his attention, and his head snapped towards the source of the disturbance. His face became even more twisted as he realized that the source of the noise, some overly large behemoth of a human, or maybe an elf, hector wasn’t too well versed in the surface races, had managed to splash their way nearly directly beside him, and he had no idea.

And given the confusion that human looked to be having at his own surprise, they weren’t making any attempts at sneaking up to him. He felt yet another wave of anger, downright fury even, at the persistent ringing in his ears, lamenting the fact that he wouldn’t be able to hear practically anything regardless, even if that shrill screech faded away.

Unfortunately, now was far from the proper time to be feeling pity for himself, and the man wading towards him opened his mouth, and asked a simple question in a surprisingly booming voice that was still only barely heard by the deafened merman.

“Before we start, where’re the other two?”

“Probably not coming, I left early. Saw something I think important to share.” The man furrowed his brows at this, mostly because Hector practically shouted into his face without even meaning to, though there was likely some curiosity as to what exactly this ‘important’ information was.

Still, the man didn’t follow up on that, instead fishing around in a pouch at his side for something. It didn’t take Hector long to figure out what this something was, though, when the man pulled out a milky white crystal, roughly the size of his fist. The merman was experienced enough to realize that it was a communication crystal, and that the man before him was nothing more than a liaison for someone else. He’d already thought as much during their first interaction, he was too mechanical in his instructions, too rehearsed in his answers, so it stood to reason there was someone behind him.

And from the looks of things, hector was now going to have to report to those very people. The man channeled a small pulse of mana into the stone, lighting it up, and a small voice could be heard at the other end, speaking with the man. The merman had no idea what the two were saying, both because of some crafty magic distorting whatever it was they were discussing and his already heavily impaired hearing. After a short moment of discussion, the human turned back to Hector and tossed the stone to him, which he managed to catch. 

Not wanting to be further handicapped in this discussion by how difficult it was to hear anything above the water, he slipped his upper body back under the waves, relieved by the fact that it was now at least a little easier to understand the speaker when they spoke up again. 

“So, I have been informed that there were some… complications, as it were, in completing the task I sought you out for?” A couple of things stood out at once. Firstly, it was very clearly a man on the other side of the crystal, but something about it was off. The pitch was just a touch too high, and the volume just a bit too low, but everything he could hear told Hector that this was how the man normally spoke. Which meant that he was either disguising his voice, or was of a smaller race.

Secondly, and not quite as important, the man was both very well spoken, and very arrogant, meaning that whoever it was, was likely a noble, something Hector was greatly displeased by. While it was entirely true that nobles made for some of the best clients, they simply had a knack for making nearly everything they become involved with far more complicated than necessary. Redundancies, tricky wordplay, and their downright refusal to do anything to make a job easier was absolutely maddening at times, and being a part of a moderately well-known group focused on some shadier dealings meant that Hector had experienced this firsthand more than a few times.

Hopefully whichever House he was dealing with this time around would be one of the better ones, as he was decidedly not in the mood to be dealing with some of the ‘games’ they so enjoyed playing. He cleared his throat, then began speaking, more quietly this time.

“That would be correct, while there was no problems with the cloaks you gave us, and we snatched some elf without any difficulties, the inside of that place was different. I barely made it into that hallway you mentioned before we were ambushed. I think it was those shrimp everyone’s been talking about, since it was loud and small, but I didn’t really see anything myself.

“What I did see, though, might be interesting. I don’t know if it was a mermaid, or an Oceanid, or what, but it was a small, probably sapient thing. Again, I’m not too well versed in Dungeons, so I’m not sure if that’s important, but since every rumor and story about them I have heard only talks about them being breeding grounds for monsters and loaded with traps, never inhabited by ‘people’, I thought that maybe it could be important?”

Hector’s voice trailed off there, the uncertain question lingering in the air. As he was reporting this, he started thinking about how important it could actually be. While it was true he’d never heard of something like that before, that doesn’t mean whoever his employer was hadn’t either. This was especially true considering they were likely more experienced than he, and by the time he’d finished speaking, and then remained in silence, he’d begun to wonder whether he had gone and made a fool of himself, using some flimsy excuse as a reason to abandon his companions and his paycheck all because of his fear and uncertainty at the beginning.

“I see, then you should be glad to know that you were correct in your judgement, this information is indeed quite important to me.” There was a hard edge to the man’s voice, now, but Hector could tell that it wasn’t directed towards him, and the tension he didn’t even realize he was carrying drained away in an instant. He practically rolled onto his back, even, realizing that there was at least some hope that this job wasn’t an outright failure, even if it had gone monumentally poorly.

“So then, tell me what exactly it was you saw, and then we can begin discussing the rewards which are in order.”

With a renewed vigor, Hector did exactly that, detailing everything he could about those brief moments he was inside that death trap, hoping that even the most minor of details could make him that much more valuable in the eyes of whoever it was that he was speaking with.

It also helped that there was surprisingly little of the arrogance and trickiness he’d come to expect when speaking with a noble, and he hadn’t even needed to devolve into flattery, instead having a proper, if short, discussion. In the end, the white glow faded away from the crystal, and he resurfaced. He tossed the now inert stone to the hulking human, who caught it without issue, before pulling out a second, smaller one. There was little doubt in the merman’s mind that this was to inform the brute of the payment they’d agreed upon, and after a brief conference, once more completely unintelligible to him, the man turned back to him and nodded.

He dug through his bag, something Hector realized was a spatial artifact upon closer inspection, and tossed the merman a small pouch, the metallic clanking telling him all he needed to know. After a short coin count, finding everything to be in order, he turned away from shore to leave.

Unfortunately, this was not even nearly what the job was initially worth, barely a tenth of the initial sum, but considering everything that happened, he was simply happy to receive a payout at all. Even more unfortunate for the mermaid, his degraded hearing and slightly lowered guard meant that he was unaware of the human rooting around in their pouch once his back was turned, and even though he realized something was afoot very quickly there was already a rather grand artifact pike driven cleanly through his chest.

His assailant was very swiftly hit with a spear of ice through his own skull, a sign of just how accomplished the merman was at his castings, but experience and capability was of no use to him. The human splashed into the shallow waters in short order, and Hector wasn’t long behind, having managed to remove the weapon from his chest, but unable to bring his health shell to his mouth before his wounds claimed him.

As the first of the nights many stars began to glow, finally mustering up their courage to join the moons in painting the night skies with their soft colors, two bodies were carried out over the Reef by the soft waves, left to drift wherever it was the sea may take them.