Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 8
Still, she continued to smile, gazing up at him with cheeks flushed.
“…”
How had he responded to her back then?
For some reason, Bete couldn’t seem to remember.
Maybe…maybe if he’d said something different…she and the rest of his fallen comrades wouldn’t have lost their lives deep within that cold, dark labyrinth.
“Bete Loga!”
Lena’s sharp call brought him back from the sea of his memories.
And when he looked up, he saw a face completely different from that of the girl in his mind, but smiling back at him all the same.
“I’m gonna do my best, okay? And when I finally prove that I’m not weak anymore, you’ve gotta make me your number one, yeah? Promise!”
“…Would you shut up already…?”
But his words didn’t have the same oomph behind them as before, and Lena cocked her head curiously and started back toward him. She took his hand, giving it a gentle tug.
Bete took one look at their hands clasped together before sullenly jerking his away.
Why, you! Lena’s face conveyed her thoughts clearly, her cheeks puffed out in anger, but it didn’t last long; her lips curling back into their usual smile as she renewed her cheerful step.
How sentimental. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything at all. But there was a question he couldn’t push out of his mind.
It was something he should have forgotten long, long ago, but this Amazonian girl had dragged it back to the surface, and now it was expanding in his thoughts like rings on water. Gazing off at nothing and no one in particular, he went with Lena into the winding corridors of the seemingly endless Dungeon.
“So…you got any idea of somethin’ you mighta seen that looked a bit like a key?”
“Like I’ve been saying this whole damn time, I don’t know!”
It was later that day, and just around when the sun was beginning its descent toward the western horizon, Tiona was accosting one of her fellow Amazons in the city’s Central Park.
“You’re sure you don’t have aaaaaaaany idea at all? C’mon, Salami! Do your fellow Amazon a solid, would ya?”
“My name is Samira! Not some food! Now you’re just messing it up on purpose! And don’t you try that with me. Amazon or not, you know the wants of Loki Familia are of no concern to me!” shouted the cocoa-skinned Amazon with the short ashen hair, her speech decidedly masculine as she stormed off.
“Well, that could have gone better…” Tiona moaned, scratching her head at the ex–Ishtar Familia captain’s rejection.
“Any luck?…Though it looks like I don’t even need to ask.”
“Ah! Tione! How’d you do, huh?!”
“Horribly. But that’s beside the point! Damn Freya Familia assholes. Dropped by their home with a letter from the captain but couldn’t even get them to answer the door. A bunch of jerks—all of them!”
“Well, our two familias have never really gotten along…”
Finn had tasked the two sisters and the rest of their group with seeking out any information they could on the man-made labyrinth Knossos. While it made the most sense to question the former members of Ishtar Familia, they’d also hoped to make contact with Freya Familia, given how they were the ones who’d effectively wiped Ishtar Familia off the map.
Tiona and her group had come up with a grand total of nothing.
Tione, meanwhile, hadn’t fared much better, completely ignored by Freya and her cronies.
“We were supposed to rendezvous back here with Aki and everyone, but…I’m guessing the results will be pretty much the same across the board.”
“Pretty much, yeah…Huh? Ah, there’s Lefiya!” Tiona suddenly exclaimed, bringing a hand up to wave at their stock-still companions a short distance away. It was the two elves—Lefiya and Alicia—the former of whom dashed straight over upon seeing the two sisters.
But the look on her face said immediately that something was wrong.
“M-Miss Tiona! Miss Tione!”
“Huh? What’s got you all worked up?”
“It…I-it seems that Elfie and the others recently caught sight of Mister Bete…!”
“…Yeah? And what of that damn werewolf, huh?”
Just the mention of Bete’s name was enough to put the two Amazons in a sour mood. Lefiya, however, couldn’t keep the flustered tremble out of her voice as she continued.
“M-M-Mister Bete, he…he seems to have been…out walking with an A-A-A-Amazonian girl…Almost as though they were on some kind of d-d-d-date…!!”
““WHAT?!””
Tiona’s and Tione’s eyes widened with almost audible snaps.
“So he thinks he can go around chasing tail while the rest of us are bustin’ our asses, does he?!”
“WHAT DOES THAT DAMN WOLF THINK HE’S DOING?!”
The two cries of rage were enough to shake the ground where they stood.
It was simply too much—not only had all their information-gathering efforts failed, but that detestable werewolf was off chumming it up with girls.
“And after all that time ignoring Leene! That son of a
!!”
…Perhaps telling these two wasn’t the best idea…Lefiya couldn’t help but think, finding the information hard to believe herself as the whole dumbstruck group watched the twins flail and rant.
For just a moment, she could have sworn she heard Leene’s ghost weeping in the air next to them, but it was just her imagination.
Around the same time that Tiona and Tione were blowing their lids…
Lena’s Dungeon date had come to a close. That didn’t mean, however, that the “date” itself was finished.
“Hey! Bete Loga! Over here! Do you think this looks good on me?”
“It looks like shit.”
“Heeeeey!”
They were in one of the small back alleys set off from the main street, Lena having posed the question while standing excitedly in front of a small accessory stand. Returning the hairpin she’d picked up to the cloak laid out across the cobblestones, she turned to Bete with a harrumph.
“Shit, shit, shit! Is everything shit to you? You’re never gonna get any girls to like you like that, you know!”
“Yeah? Great. Then maybe you’ll stop following me around.”
“Yoooooooooou!” she moaned, bouncing around in frustration.
It had been like this since they’d returned to the surface, to the point where Bete felt he didn’t have any sighs left in him to sigh. He couldn’t even find the effort for his usual ascerbic remarks.
Lena’s eyes trembled in anguish as she looked up at him, until her usual smile returned in an instant mood shift.
“Are you gonna tell me about that key already or what?”
“No way! As soon as I do, you’re gonna leave me high and dry! You will! I’ll only tell you if you stay with me aaaaaall day!” she declared before taking off down the bustling backstreet, glancing back and forth between the stalls of jewels and accessories on either side.
Bete had already gone past the point of caring. Lena may have been an Amazon, but she was also a teenage girl, so it only made sense she’d want to date like one, as well. Bete only half paid attention to her. The hell is fun about this? he silently grumbled as she picked up one item after another, eyes sparkling—“Look at this! Look at this!”—as she turned back to show him.
“You don’t like exploring the market? I thought you would.”
“Like hell I’d enjoy playing house with you, you dumb brat.”
“Cold as always, I see, Bete Loga…Ah! A florist!”
Upon leaving the backstreets, the first thing to cross their path was a small flower shop. Named “Dia Floral,” it was run by a young, free girl who’d stocked its shelves high with an assortment of colorful flowers. The human girl herself must have just come back from making a delivery. Her goddess-rivaling beauty drew all manner of adventurers’ gazes as she made her way toward the store.
Lena, meanwhile, was perusing the flowers out front thanks to an arrangement of tiny light-blue blooms that had caught her eye.
“Hey, Bete Loga!”
“What is it now?”
“Wanna hear what I like the best? And I mean something that I’d be super-pumped, super-jazzed to get as a present?”
“Nope.”
“Then I’ll tell you! There’s nothing that makes me happier than getting forget-me-nots!! They can make me fall in love with a man all over again! Wink, wink!”
Bete almost hurled.
Which was a feeling that was becoming as common as breathing for him at this point as Lena shot him an all-too-expectant glance next to him. He didn’t even have to try to look fed up—his features had already formed the expression for him.
“…Lena? And is that…Vanargand?!”
As the two of them were standing in front of the florist, a voice accosted them from behind.
Turning around, they came face-to-face with a long-haired, long-legged prostitute.
“That woman from the bar…!”
“Guh! A-Aisha?!”
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Lena? Why are you fraternizing with his type?”
It was none other than Aisha Belka, one of Lena’s sisters from her former familia and the same Amazon Bete had gone toe-to-toe with in the pub the night prior. Brows raised in surprise, she quickly grabbed Lena’s arm and prepared to pull her away from the werewolf.
“W-wait, Aisha! Bete Loga and I are on a date right now! Th-this is the chance I’ve been waiting for!”
“A date? With this werewolf? Fool! Just how low have your standards dropped?! You’d do better to find yourself someone with at least an ounce of integrity!”
“I’m right here, you know…”
“Flowers are about the last thing you can expect from a man like this,” Aisha continued, still testy about the fight in the pub and not even trying to hide her disdain. She must have heard their conversation, as she threw a disgusted look in the direction of the light-blue flowers Lena had been ogling (and she certainly didn’t pay Bete’s annoyed comment any heed, either).
Lena, however, wasn’t one to give up, and she implored the woman who was as good as an older sister to her. “Pleeeeeease, Aisha! Just gimme some time! Let me pop out two kids!”
“Say that one more time.”
“I see. Like a studhorse, then?”
“Say that one more time.”
“Mm…More like a studwolf!”
“JUST TRY SAYING THAT ONE MORE TIME!”
Bete’s indignant commentary grew louder and louder as the two girls talked around him.
“So, just let it go, yeah? Pretty please? What’re you doin’ out here anyway, huh?”
“I seriously can’t believe you…Me? I’m out on a walk is all, and keeping an eye on things while I do. I like to make sure our fellow sisters and Berbera who’ve been scattered to the wind aren’t in any trouble.”
“Really? You old softy!”
“Oh, don’t patronize me. Which reminds me—you haven’t been using that ‘secret place’ of yours in the Pleasure Quarter again, have you? I heard you didn’t return to your familia last night!”
“Guh?! F-forgive me, Aishaaaaa!”
“How many times were you told to stay away from those old buildings?!”
The conversation continued as though Bete wasn’t even there.
Whether the first-rate courtesan, who had a decidedly more put-together look and sexually alluring body than Lena, had been persuaded by Lena’s arguments or not, she finally let out a sigh and gave up on her lecture. This didn’t stop her, however, from menacingly advancing toward Bete before taking her leave.
“Hey, Vanargand. I’ll permit you to drag her along for now, but if anything, and I mean anything, should happen to her, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
“She’s the one doin’ the dragging here—not me,” Bete grumbled under his breath as the older Amazon walked away with a final glare.
“Aisha may not look it, but she’s a real sweetheart underneath everything. I can’t count the number of times she’s helped me out, and I’m basically nobody among the Berbera. She’s even looked after the old crackpots of the group who everyone else had already given up on. She just does a whole lot, you know?”
“You think I care? And, hey! Stop pullin’ me!”
Lena had taken to clutching Bete’s arm in her glee, rattling on and on about the older woman like a proud younger sister. Bete attempted to peel her off, grimacing internally.
I shoulda known this would attract more attention than the Dungeon. I don’t even wanna think about what’d happen if we bumped into someone I know…
The fact that Aisha had discovered them so quickly only added to his already growing sense of paranoia. If any member of his own familia were to see them, it would only be worse.
Indeed, if even Aisha had noticed them—
“…Mister…Bete?”
—then anyone could.
“…A-Aiz?”
It was her, Aiz, and the moment he sensed her shock, his face froze in terror.
Sweat began leaking down his skin like a waterfall as the tail protruding from his backside tensed up like a lightning rod. Aiz, too, was staring at him with an expression of sheer disbelief, almost as though she’d just encountered the most outlandish of phenomena. She looked back and forth between Bete, his cheek twitching, and Lena, who happened to be clinging to his arm.
A strange sort of tension wove its way between the two first-tier adventurers, neither one making the first move.
“Huh? What’s going on, huh? Don’t tell me…the Sword Princess is your wife?!”
Fortunately, there was someone there to break the ice for them—a certain reckless Amazon.
“Nuh-uh! No way! I’m gonna be Bete Loga’s wife, you hear? I’m the one holding him in the middle of a crowded street, aren’t I? And I’ve already promised him a pair of healthy bundles of j—”
“Would you shut the hell up already?!”
“Gwwwuaagh?!”
Bete didn’t even try to restrain himself this time, aiming his elbow at the back of the girl’s head. The impact practically knocked her eyes out of their sockets, and with a sharp yelp, she was out like a light, Bete lugging her body up under his arm.
Aiz had yet to get over her shock, and as Bete continued sweating buckets, he did the only thing his lupine instincts could think to do—he ran.
“D-don’t get the wrong idea, Aiz!” he shouted back as he picked up Lena and fled.
Meanwhile, Why am I running?! was all he could think, unsure as to why he was sprinting like his life depended on it. But that didn’t stop him from hightailing—or perhaps wolf-tailing would be the better word—it out of there, the passersby on the street looking on in bewilderment as he raced by at full speed.
“W-wait!”
Finally recovering her senses, Aiz took off after him.
“Oh, sure! You choose now of all times to chase me!”
“I’m supposed to…to watch out for you…!”
“Well, that’s news to me!”
“I know you’re upset, but…children, Bete? Don’t you…think you’re being a little too…hasty?!”
“You’ve got it all wrong!” Bete howled back.
Aiz must have taken Lena’s words to heart, the airheaded swordswoman now trying desperately to warn him against the dangers of having children across familia lines. She was like an assassin, ready to do whatever it took to carry out Loki’s orders, and Bete put everything he had into his legs to increase his speed to its utmost limit.
Just when it seemed he might get away, Aiz sped up, too.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it…!”
“Awaken, Tempest!”
“Damn iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttttt!!”
Throughout the streets, they ran, the golden-haired swordswoman gaining, the limbs of the Amazonian girl bouncing wildly, and one final scream ripping its way out of the wolf’s throat.
Sweat pouring off him, Bete fled.
“Haah…haah…gnnagh…Damn…woman…”
Night had descended upon the city.
Having arrived safely back at Lena’s secret place in the ruined Pleasure Quarter, Bete tossed aside the girl beneath his arm and collapsed to the ground.
He was still the fastest runner in Loki Familia, able to outpace Aiz even when she used Airiel. As he sat there, shoulders still heaving, Lena gave a small moan—“Ngh…”—from where he’d thrown her as she finally came to.
“Huh? Is this my…secret place? And…Bete Loga, why are you all covered in sweat?!” she furiously inquired, though she was quickly silenced by the werewolf’s bloodshot glare (“Gngh?!”). Taking in his worn-out state, she seemed to postulate what had happened, letting out a forced laugh. “Aha…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Sorry, it was…my fault, wasn’t it?…Though now what’re we gonna do, huh? It’s night already, which means I won’t be able to…”
Finish the date? Fulfill the requirements for the date?
Either way, their time was up. And from the look on Lena’s face, she was greatly regretting the time lost.
Bete pressed his lips together in a tense line, picking his spent body off the floor and sluggishly rising to his feet.
“…I’m tired. It’s too much trouble to go anywhere else at this point, so I’ll just stay here.”
“Huh?”
“But you’re gonna help me search for that thing tomorrow, you hear?!” he quickly snapped as Lena looked up in surprise.
“You’ll stay here again? Really?”
“…Whatever.”
“You’ll really stay here with me?”
“Do I gotta say it again?” Bete growled.
A smile popped onto Lena’s face, and she jumped to her feet, arms flailing. “W-wait! I’ll cook dinner! We can eat together! So just…You can just go upstairs and rest, okay?!” she urged excitedly before racing toward the kitchen.
Bete watched her disappear down the hall, not saying a word before trudging his way up the stairs to the bedroom on the top floor. Same as the night before, he disregarded the bed, sitting himself in front of the open window.
“…I shoulda gotten what I needed and left…” he mumbled. As the night breeze played with his gray fur, he narrowed his eyes. “…I’m not even thinkin’ straight anymore…”
Was it because it’d been so long since anyone had shown him any sort of affection? Or because the girl downstairs had repeated those same words Leene had told him so long ago? Bete wasn’t sure. All he knew was that little by little, his lips were starting to forget how to sneer.
Down below him, the Night District was as tranquil as the sea, the whole of the Pleasure Quarter drenched in shadow. Maybe today, too, beneath the lights peeping out from the surrounding buildings, men and women were giving themselves up to passion, whispering the sweet nothings of love. Even if that love was nothing but a fleeting night’s dream.
Bete could feel his eyelids grow heavy as he gazed out across the night landscape.
He was tired. For many different reasons. So many reasons. The past haunted him, and the words of a girl no longer with him kept creeping into his thoughts, drowning him in a strange sort of sentimentality. Somehow he knew he was going to dream again—a continuation of the one last night.
Even as he heard Lena’s footsteps dance lightly up the stairs, Bete could already feel himself succumbing to the darkness like waning moonlight.
When was the last time anyone had shown him any affection?
Waiting for him at the end of his long journey from his homeland were the towering walls of the Labyrinth City of Orario. And his first order of business upon arriving was to get himself a blessing from the gods. He already had a pretty good idea what these “gods” were, given how many had passed through his tribe’s village on their way to Orario: insincere, pleasure-seeking hedonists, the whole lot of them. For an adventurer to get picked up by a good god, it required considerable luck—and a few hints from the rumor mill, as well. No one could afford to simply wait for a god to choose them on a whim. No, a great deal of meticulous care had to be taken.
Fortunately for Bete, he was picked up rather quickly by a god who didn’t really care one way or another if he joined, and he was soon inducted into Víðarr Familia, a Dungeon-type familia led by the god Víðarr.
Víðarr himself was a god of few words and just about as far removed from Bete’s philistine image of the gods that one could get. More of a hermit than anything else, he had two defining features: his long auburn hair and matching eyes. There was something about the god’s calm, tranquil features and oracle-esque speech that pulled at Bete’s heartstrings.
“Protect that jaw of yours—and that fang—at all costs, yes?”
—Just let anyone try!
The words of his god brought a fierce grin to his face.
His peers had been much the same, all of them purebred adventurers, relatively young, and quite a few animal people were among their numbers. It almost reminded him of his tribe on the plains, and it didn’t take long for Bete to decide this was the familia for him, even if the decision itself might have been nothing more than atonement for abandoning his own tribe.
He butted heads with his colleagues even back then, but that didn’t keep him from slowly making a name for himself in the familia. The experience he’d gotten fighting in the wild as a Beastman of the Plains became a powerful weapon even far beneath the earth in the Dungeon. But more than anything else, Bete wanted to continue tempering his fangs, plowing through the monsters of the deep with a sort of fierce desperation, giving himself up completely to the days of combat. His insatiable desire to feed on the strong was enough to earn him not only the trust of his fellow familia members but their commendation, as well. Before he knew it, he’d become a sort of beloved father figure to the rest of the familia, like an alpha wolf looking over his pack.
All of a sudden, the completely unknown Víðarr Familia was making news. Led by Bete and his superior skills, the familia saw the number of its members leveling up rise. Even when other familias attacked, they were able to pull out ahead, and soon they found themselves sitting nicely among the other midsize familias of the city. It was during this time that Bete received his first title: Fenris.
The familia itself acted about as terribly as most civilians imagined a group of battle-crazed animal people would act, Bete included. That said, none of them was the type to commit any misdeeds that Bete would’ve deemed “lame” or “stupid.” They weren’t about to become chumps who tormented the weak. There was no room for the arrogance of the strong. If anyone had so much free time they could afford to waste it harassing others, they should’ve been using it to sharpen their fangs. Under the leadership of their captain, Bete, Víðarr Familia quickly positioned itself as the strongest combat familia in all of Orario.
It’ll be different this time. Not like before with my childhood friend.
Make ’em stronger. Show ’em how it’s done.
That way, even those weaker than me’ll be able to bare their fangs. Become warriors who can fight back against that whole survival-of-the-fittest mentality.
Even the weak could become as strong as him. That’s what he believed. Protecting them as they ran along after him, seeing their smiles when they flipped the tables and protected him in return—yes, he’d been able to believe that.
To Bete, who’d lost everything, Víðarr Familia suited him just right.
They were a group of idiots who risked the Dungeon for drink money, pulling their god into all-night booze fests. Patronizing the pub with its newly hung red-wasp sign and causing a commotion every single day, not sparing a thought for their antics as they exchanged insults with the unsociable old dwarf who ran the place. Bete, too, had run his mouth off at him innumerable times. And sometimes, even Víðarr himself would give a speech, letting his hair down just a little too much and eliciting terror from the boys and laughter from the girls. It really seemed like Bete had recovered the one thing he’d lost so long ago—his family.
There’d been a girl in the familia, too. One of the few humans.
She was the vice captain of the familia, second in line to Bete when it came to sheer power and resentful of the fact that he constantly had to look out for her. Her long chestnut-colored hair had run down her back like silk, and she’d always had a determined grin on her face—and was always first in line to scold Bete when he was injured, tending to his wounds in reticent silence.
She’d been a good woman.
From the way she’d felt in his arms, to the way her sighs tickled his ears, to the slight trouble she had with her words sometimes—she’d been his warmth. They’d gotten into a huge fight one time. Bete had complained about her perfume (the smell was hard on his sensitive nose), but sure enough, he noticed the scent was nowhere to be found the next day or the day after that. She’d always tried to be strong for Bete’s sake. For the sake of a man hungry for power.
Everything about her, from her looks to her personality, was different from his childhood friend back on the plains. But that didn’t stop Bete from falling for her.
Somehow, something inside him told him that she’d be able to heal the scar of his first love.
He’d been infatuated. A love so sweet, he would’ve been lying if he claimed he didn’t want to lose himself, to drown himself in it.
But Bete’s fang wouldn’t allow that.
No, the blue tattoo on his face, racing across his cheek like a bolt of lightning that represented all those irreparable wounds guiding his actions, would allow only one thing:
Be stronger.
Feed on the strong.
Indeed, Bete was already stronger than anyone and everything he knew.
The young, weak boy he’d left behind on the plains was nowhere to be found.
It was four years after he’d arrived in Orario. Sixteen years old and now a Level 3, he knew it was time. He was going to take down the Master of the Plains.
He was strong now. And past the point where he could leisurely bide his time, telling himself he just needed to be a little bit stronger, a little bit stronger. Even here in Orario, people knew of the creature stalking the plains far, far to the north. If Bete didn’t kill it, surely somebody else would. And Bete wasn’t about to let that happen. No, Bete was going to take that thing down with his own hands.
Receiving permission from Víðarr and the rest of his peers, he departed alone from Orario. He left his anxious companions with nothing but a few off-color words, telling them not to worry and to look after the place in his stead.
That girl, too, had tried to keep him from leaving. But Bete had simply shaken her away. He knew she liked him. Knew she loved him. But this time, Bete refused to face her. He’d chosen his fang, after all.
To this day, he couldn’t get that final image of her out of his mind, that resolute smile of hers as she watched him leave.
Víðarr, too, left him with a final set of words as Bete made his way past the gate.
“Bete…someday, you’ll understand the true meaning behind your fang.”
The trip took him three months with all the stopovers he was forced to make.
But finally, he arrived—the plains of the north and the place of his birth. The wide-open fields stretched out before him like an ocean, followed by the deep green of the forest past the short hills, and even farther than that, the steely mountain range whose tips were covered in white snow. There was even the large lake he remembered swimming in together with his sister and friends. They’d wandered across it time and time again, their backyard rich with nature’s bounties. But now it had become nothing more than a parched land of bones, its surface ravaged by the new master who’d laid claim to it. Bete clenched his teeth together as he looked out across the plains he’d once called home, anger coloring the old memories.
He ended up finding the beast, strangely enough, on that very same day, the moon high overhead in the night sky.
And as for the fight, it lasted the entire night. The beast itself had grown stronger, too, after feeding on not only human prey but its own brethren, as well.
Bete fought with everything he had, blood pouring from his wounds, his bones snapping, sacrificing countless weapons. He repelled the mighty claws that had once rent his mother and father limb from limb, he dodged the great galloping feet that had once crushed his sister underfoot, and he smashed the sharpened jaws that had once fed on the flesh of the girl he’d loved. The dying cry of his enemy echoing out against the moonlit sky, Bete became a beast even greater than the Master of the Plains, brandishing the fang that had led him to this point.
Then.
The colossal beast came crashing to the ground, shaking the very earth and leaving Bete standing alone, his body bathed in red. He’d won. He had consumed the strong. His fang was victorious.
Body battered and bruised and broken, he cried out, the same as he had on that day that started it all so, so long ago.
Joy, anger, sadness, futility, pain—everything welled up inside him, forming one giant ball of emotion that burst out in a howl that crackled in his throat. Toward the moon, he howled, toward the dark night slowly fading into the light of the dawn.
I won!
I devoured it!
I’m the strongest of them all!
I’ll never let anyone take anything from me ever again! Never!!
A trickle of blood wove its way down the fang on his face.
No matter how strong he became, that pain would always follow him.
Night’s shadow curled itself around the half-ruined buildings and strewn rubble of the Pleasure Quarter’s third district—the territory of the former Ishtar Familia. Down among the ruins, voices quiet, Loki Familia conducted their investigation. Their ranks were small: Finn and Gareth in the lead, followed by a few lower-level members and a very disobliged Loki. They conducted their search without light to help guide them, not even the glow of their magic-stone lanterns.
The Guild had stationed guards around the perimeter to keep anyone from entering the Pleasure Quarter, but they clearly hadn’t assigned enough, as their group didn’t run into a single soul on their way inside, and from the looks of the untouched rubble, none of the reconstruction efforts seemed to be making any headway.
“Any thoughts on all this, Finn?” Gareth asked slowly from his spot in the shadow of a nearby brothel, most of the others already dispersed to the four corners of the wreckage.
“Hmm…The way I see it, the enemy has to have left behind at least one key somewhere in the city.”
“And what makes ya think that, huh?” Loki this time, giving a little snort from atop a dilapidated barrel she was using as a chair.
“Because Ishtar’s been sent home,” he answered, glancing over at his goddess. “We already have reason to believe Ishtar was colluding with the Evils after what happened back in Meren. Perhaps the Evils enlisted Ishtar as a source of funds, what with her grip on the Pleasure Quarter. And what would they give her in return for all that?”
“…The downfall of Freya Familia?”
“Indeed. Ishtar’s antipathy toward Freya and her familia is practically common knowledge. So I can’t imagine it would be anything but.” Finn turned his eyes back to Loki.
“Mm, guess that’s true. I bet she was plannin’ on enlistin’ Kali’s help in luring Freya and her goons down into Knossos. Spoiled brat of a goddess, really. There’s no way she wouldn’t’ve asked for a key of her own so she could go slitherin’ through the halls whenever she pleased.”
“Hmm…” Gareth mumbled at this, stroking his beard in thought. “But wouldn’t ye think the enemy’d wanna keep knowledge of a place like that well under wraps? Ye wouldn’t think they’d be handin’ out keys like candy, now, do ye?”
“Well, if what Lefiya learned from Thanatos is anything to go by, both the Evils and the creatures want nothing more than the destruction of Orario, meaning they’d come head-to-head with Freya Familia sooner rather than later anyway. Another obstacle to their goal, so to speak, much like us.”
“I see what yer sayin’. They figured they’d use Ishtar as their front man to take Freya and her bunch down now—or weaken ’em, at the very least. Which is why they agreed to help, yeah?”
Finn nodded.
Hell, that demi-spirit they fought down in Knossos may have even been Ishtar’s trump card.
“For Freya and her men to take out Ishtar Familia now…I would imagine this has the Evils reeling, too.”
“Hmm, here I was thinkin’ we’d lost everything with Ishtar Familia’s destruction, but…lookin’ at it a different way, this might be the chance we’ve been waiting for.”
“That it might. If Ishtar really was in possession of a key, then the Evils will do everything possible to try and retrieve it.” Finn nodded, finishing Loki’s thought. Though it was possible the Evils had already recovered the key, the way he was licking his thumb was evidence enough that the prum thought they still had a chance. “The Evils or us…Who’ll be the first to find it, I wonder?…The fight for the key has begun.”
“Lady Valletta! Loki Familia has been seen prowling about the palace in the Pleasure Quarter…!”
“Goddammit! So they’re on the move, are they?” Deep beneath the earth in the man-made labyrinth Knossos, Valletta cursed under her breath at the news from one of her subordinates. The accessories dangling from her ears jangling, she furrowed her brow in indignation.
“What will you do, then, Valletta dear? If I may be of any help at all, do let me know,” Thanatos said from his spot atop the altar, his black garments fluttering with the slight movement.
Valletta didn’t respond for a moment. The cogs in her head were turning within the ethereal gloom created by the blue phosphorescence of the magic-stone lanterns.
“…There’s no way they got a tip or somethin’, is there?”
“I—I wouldn’t think so, ma’am! There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to their search. Word on the street is they’re also approaching the former Amazons and prostitutes of Ishtar Familia…”
Valletta stilled, bringing a hand to her lips in thought.
Finally, she raised her head, as though she had reached some sort of conclusion.
“I want you to assemble all our assassins.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“And you, Thanatos! Go get that jackass Barca up here…Tell him to start making those cursed weapons of his. As many as he possibly can.”
“Oh? You aim to take them on, then? Outside of Knossos?” Thanatos watched Valletta issue orders, his eyes widening as a smile rose on his face.
Valletta simply brushed her hair back. “Didn’t wanna cause a ruckus up there, but…Well, what can ya do?” she retorted. “I’m not about to let Finn get his grubby little hands on even one of our keys.”
Her lips curled into a vicious smile.
“—We’re going to war.”