Chapter 25

Selb led me halfway back to the front desk, then diverted into a side room filled with boxes and cabinets. He rummaged around for a bit until he found a round bronze plate the size of my paw with a trident embossed on the front. A bit more rummaging produced a lanyard to which he clipped the plate before slipping it around my neck.

"Congratulations, Deputy Athos," he said, tapping me on the shoulder. "You have now been officially deputized. I'm short-handed right now, so I'll send you out with Carpenter. He's got the seniority and the experience, plus he's human." He gestured me to follow and started back towards the desk.

I frowned. "Why should it matter that he's human?"

"The majority of the city is human. People find it easier to take orders from one of their own, which means that human Guards have an easier time getting obedience. That's important when you're trying to do something like get people to abandon their homes and head for safety."

"Wait...are we doing that? I thought I was going to go defend the people against all these nasty demons." I glanced up. "Sorry, Murray."

He shrugged. "Eh, like I gives a toss. Ima imp, not a demon. Dose guys, dey can fuck right off. Buncha arrogant posers, ya ask me."

I huffed a laugh.

Selb chuckled as well. "You really think you can fight demons, dog? Keep in mind, this isn't just one or two demons that got loose from a summoning circle. This is multiple licks of demons, organized and led."

Murray snorted.

"What's so funny, imp?"

"Organized? Ha. Betcha twenny stone dat at least wid da balor da organization ain't much better den 'go kill stuff ovah dere.'"

Selb shrugged. "I'm getting reports of more than that."

"What kind of demons are they?" I asked.

"Balors, mostly. I have nine reports of hazdahem, although I suspect that some of those accounts are multiple sightings of the same individual. There's also some malazaheen and a few other types scattered around. Plus there's a ton of summoned creatures on the loose. Lots of mages summoned elementals or other spirits to fight the demons, then the mage got ganked and their summons were left uncontrolled. Can't predict what they'll do at that point. The only good part is that they're spread thinly through much of the city." He frowned. "I'd say that they were being randomly destructive, but they're not. They're being led by intelligent demons, and we have sightings of demons coming back to the leader and then going out again, like they were making report. It's almost like they're searching for something." He shook his head.

"Okay," I said. "But I'm going to stop them, right?"

"You're going to hook up with one of the Guard squads and be their heavy support. They're pinned down by a dozen or so demons over on Mage Street and they need some rescuing. Carpenter will guide you to them." He cocked his head. "How do you feel about being ridden? Melos knows you're big enough."

I snorted gleefully. "Mighty war dog!"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm fine with being ridden. I'll need a blanket and some rope so the person can hold on."

"I think I can do you one better. We've got saddles that can probably fit you. Stirrups, lance holster and all."

"No leash," I said firmly. "I know you humans and your tricksy ways. You're not going to get a leash on me when I'm not looking."

He chuckled. "I think we can accommodate you on that. Have you got any good Skills I should know about?"

"I've got one that lets me run faster for a little bit, but only a couple more uses of it today." I thought about it. "Oh, and one that lets me change the flavor of things. That turned out to be more useful than I thought."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"It turns out that the taste of—that sudden bad tastes can be very distracting." No one needed to know that I knew what cat poop tasted like.

"Huh. Yeah, I guess that would be." We emerged back into the main atrium of the where Goroblatz was flowermanning the desk. "Carpenter! Get in here! Goroblatz, resume your post."

"Yes, commander!" The corporal scurried back outside, almost bumping into Sergeant Carpenter who was rushing in at his superior officer's bellow.

"Commander?"

"This is Athos. He's smart, strong, and his teeth can probably kill demons permanently. You'll be taking him over to Wolf Platoon. At last report they were holding a building on Mage Street and Third. I sent Tiger Platoon their way half an hour ago but I haven't heard back yet." He stepped behind the desk and lifted a large piece of paper into view, laying it on the raised counter so that we could see it too. It was a map of the city with the Bastion marked in red. (At least, humans would have called it red. It was really more of a carmine, but I wasn't going to make fun of them for their terrible ability to distinguish colors even though they had been talking about 'green' in front of me for years, lording their oh-so-special human color vision over me. Well now I had the upper paw! Now my eyes were better than theirs in every way, so nyah!)

"Hey there," Sergeant Carpenter said, looking me over. "You're just a dog, right? No weapons, no fire breathing, nothing like that? Demons are pretty tough...."

I grinned, tongue lolling out happily. "Last time, it took my friends twenty minutes to get all the demon blood off my snoot." I leaned in and Murray whispered for me. "Turns out, the new fur soaks it up really well."

I'd been hoping for 'amused', but my joke left the sergeant looking more 'nervous'. Hrmph. Tough room.

"Take him around to the stables, get a saddle on him, get moving," Selb said.

"Yes, commander."

o-o-o-o

Twenty minutes later we were galloping through the streets of Hellsport. We had passed a few reflective surfaces—mostly shop windows—and I'd gotten repeated glimpses of Sergeant Carpenter clinging to the pommel of the saddle, hunching over with tears streaming from his eyes due to the wind, and an expression of barely-controlled panic on his face at our speed. His trident was tucked into the lance holster in front of his right knee, a pair of javelins were strapped to his back, and his shield hung on the left side. It banged against me with every stride and the trident swayed and whirled as I moved, but I didn't care. It took me a few blocks to get used to how they pulled on my balance, but it was fine. I had gotten used to the sway and the slapping and could ignore them and focus on speed. It felt good; it had been too long since I had really stretched out and dug deep like this, and the feeling of my ears streaming out behind me was delicious.

Murray fluttered down at the intersection ahead of us, hands waving as he pointed me to the left. He hadn't given me quite enough warning; as massive as I was, I needed a fair bit of stopping distance. Or even turning distance.

I cornered as hard as I could, managed to hit the wall with my shoulder instead of Sergeant Carpenter's leg, bounced off and continued straight again. Murray grabbed my tail and hung on; he couldn't keep up with me in a straight run so needed to ride or be towed until it was time for him to scout again. Halfway down the block he dropped off: Our prey was in front of us and he wanted no part of it. I howled in delight and cannoned into the first balor demon.

There were six of them. They were in a semi-circle facing away from me, pressing a contingent of five Guards against the wall. The Guards were in full battle gear just like Sergeant Carpenter. One of them was on the ground, clutching his arm in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, while the other four struggled to keep the demons at bay.

The demon I hit went flying into the wall, crunched, and fell in a motionless heap. The rest turned on me.

I jumped back, snarling and snapping. Sergeant Carpenter finally managed to scramble his trident out of the holster and get it aimed forward, but I wasn't worried about him. I was too focused on the eight-foot demons stomping towards me with blackened claws upraised. I backed up, my head low as I growled and snarled in order to keep their attention and draw them away from the guardsmen. The demons went for it, stomping forward with their focus completely on me.

The guards stepped forward and jammed their tridents into the trailing demon; the rest of the creatures ignored their comrade's enraged howl and kept coming.

The guards got the demon in the back of its right knee and tried but failed to hit up under its arms. The barbs on the trident that went into the knee tore the wound open on the return stroke, but the damage wasn't enough to cripple the balor or even knock it down. It turned back on the guardsmen, only to get stabbed in the throat by a pair of tridents. The throat was a good target against most things, but on a balor it was covered in a thick layer of scales that meant the tines barely penetrated. The guardsmen braced themselves to hold the balor back while their two friends circled around to stab it in the backs of the knees again. The demon backhanded one of them with a gorilla-like arm and bulldozed forward, making the guards who were attempting to hold it off stumble backwards across the pavement.

I noticed all that out of the corner of my eye, because I was busy with my own group. I leaped forward, juking to the side at the last second so that I hit One, the demon on the far left instead of Three, the one I'd apparently been aiming for. The sudden change of direction threw off Sergeant Carpenter's aim. Instead of going into Three with the full force of my weight behind it, his trident skittered off the scaled chest of Two and Carpenter himself swayed in the saddle, staying in place only due to the high cantle and the fact that he was literally strapped in with a leather harness.

My target tried to swipe at me with its claws but I got in close too fast. I bit down on its bicep and kept moving forward, my weight and strength against its. Bipeds are good at lots of things. Balance? Not so much. Not compared to a determined four-legger, anyway. He went over backwards, his free arm windmilling in a desperate attempt to catch himself. I dragged him a few steps, then tossed my head up and to the left as I jumped forward. The move ripped half his upper arm away and left him on the ground, howling and clutching at the wound as it pumped a steady flow of vile black ichor that tasted utterly foul.

"Yah! Go boss! Kick dose bastahds in da teef!"

Murray was still halfway down the block, well away from the fight, but he was pumping his arms in a rah-rah gesture and shouting at the top of his tiny lungs. I snorted in amusement and jumped again. I landed on the downed demon's chest with all four feet, then pushed off at the second one, taking it on the angle so that it was between me and the rest. Sergeant Carpenter had gotten himself sorted out and his trident properly oriented, so it went in the demon's throat and out the back of its neck. The shock of the impact was almost enough to stop me in my tracks and the demon's massive weight went to the ground, pulling the trident down with it.

I put some extra pep in my step (as Dad would have said) and managed to run past my downed opponent while shoulder-barging the next demon out of my way. It swiped at me with thick and pointy claws but Sergeant Carpenter caught the blow on his shield and deflected it. At the same time he relaxed his grip on the trident, letting it glide through his hand as we moved closer so that it didn't lever him out of the seat, then gripping tight as we moved away so that my weight pulled the weapon free and tore the wound wider. Ichor fountained out of the demon and it stopped moving. The sergeant even managed to bring the weapon up in a weak swing that smacked the third demon in the nose, startling it and throwing blood in its eyes.

"I thought they were tougher!" the sergeant shouted, swaying in the saddle for a moment before he could catch his balance.

"Seem pretty damn tough to me!" shouted one of the other guards.

I looked over to the source of the words and saw the wounded balor laying into the four Guards who were trying to keep it contained. Their tridents could barely penetrate the monster's hide unless they hit very precisely in weak points and it was bulldozing them along as it went after the wounded guard lying against the wall.

The demon was facing away from me, focused solely on driving forward and not paying attention to anything else. I snarled at the demons I was dealing with and feinted a lunge. When they puffed up and raised their claws to attack I spun around, ran up behind the one that was busy with the guards, and crushed its head in my jaws.

The two survivors saw what I had done and looked at one another in surprise before beating their chests and howling their challenge—

Which was really a bad move because I had lunged to the attack while they were still getting the surprise out of their teeny-tiny little brains. Sergeant Carpenter's trident hit one of them in the face and rocked its head back while I got my teeth in the other's throat and bit straight through, the scales crunching in my teeth. It went to the ground and I ran it over as I went past.

The final demon was starting to look daunted. It bent its knees into a wrestler's stance, center of gravity low and clawed hands upraised in threat. Snarls and growls tore their way from its throat and its eyes glowed red like embers in the fireplace.

The guardsmen promptly charged forward and stabbed it while it was focused on me.

One went high, hitting it in the side of the head just to break its balance while another stabbed it in the knee and the other two spread around the sides. It spun towards the two that had struck it, but before it could attack the guard on its right stabbed it from the other side and levered it up and back. When it tried to turn to deal with its attacker, its leg buckled and it went to one knee, catching itself on its hands before it could fall.

At which point I bit through its head and the fight was over.

"Hey squaddies," Sergeant Carpenter said, grinning and leaning on the pommel of my saddle. "How's it hanging?"

"To the left," one of the men said automatically. "Thanks for the save, Sarge."

"We were in the neighborhood. You're Tiger Platoon, right? On your way to Wolf?"

"Yeah," said one of the guards, his nametag describing him as Corporal Belker. "They're still forted up on Mage and Third last we heard. We were supposed to reinforce them but our priest got ganked three blocks ago. These bastards don't go down when you stab them unless you've got a little holy oomph behind it."

I cleared my throat reprovingly just as Murray flapped up to us and landed on my head. I had been doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.

Corporal Belker glanced at me and then back to Sergeant Carpenter. "You mind riding with us the rest of the way? We aren't going to be able to carry Smith and also fight." He jerked a thumb back towards the now-unconscious Guardsman slumped against the wall.

"How much farther is it, Sergeant?" I asked.

The corporal looked surprised, clearly trying to figure out why Murray was talking.

"This is Athos," Sergeant Carpenter said with a grin, probably gesturing to me and no, it wasn't even slightly annoying to have someone in the conversation who was above and behind me so I couldn't see him. "He's smarter than the average dog and talks. Needs the imp to translate, but there's a person in there."

Belker's eyebrows shot up and his troops looked surprised.

"Excuse me," I said, turning away and walking over to Private Smith. I booped him with my nose and transferred five Spirit into him. His wound promptly sealed over and he blinked his eyes open. It took them a moment to focus and I didn't like how pale he was, but he was able to sit up under his own power.

Sergeant Carpenter cried out in surprise as he and the saddle fell off; I hadn't thought about the fact that the girth would go slack when I shrank from transferring so much Spirit. He grumbled for a moment as he undid the straps that were holding him to the leather-and-horn construct, but stood up and brushed himself off with no sign of injury and started repositioning it.

"That Skill is real convenient, but the growing and shrinking part is not," he said as he got the saddle resituated. "Hold still." He jabbed me in the shoulder with one of the demonic spike devices that Commander Selb had sent with us. I felt my insides fill up with Spirit even as my outsides grew back to normal size and once more filled out the saddle girth. Sergeant Carpenter adjusted it to make sure it was tight, then climbed back aboard and strapped himself in again. "Next time, warn me?"

"Sorry," I said, hanging my head. "I didn't think about it."

"No harm done," he said, thumping me affectionately on the shoulder. He raised his voice to speak to the other guardsmen. "Any of you lot got useful Skills that need mana?"

"I've got Unmoving Bulwark," the squad leader said. "The rest of these guys are greenhorns, only the basic unlock signing bonus."

"I was going to be able to buy in next month," muttered the blond-haired Private Funter. "I was going to be a healer."

"Well, don't worry lad," Sergeant Carpenter said, something that was only pretending to be humor in his voice. "The hero's tales you'll be living today, you'll buy the whole package by sundown."

"If t'was easy, t'wouldn't need us," Private Garcia said with a laugh. "Smith, you doing okay?"

Private Smith was on his feet and checking the wound in his arm. It wasn't completely healed, but it was at least enough for him to be up and around. "Yeah," he said. "Arm still hurts like a bitch, but at least I can see straight. Thanks, dog."

"Athos," Murray said. "And you're welcome." He turned to look at Sergeant Carpenter where he sat on my back. "Oi, I thought we wuz gonna all go get killed? If we're doin' dis, let's get it done, eh?"

"Right. Hang on. You lot, c'mere. I need three Spirit from each of you. My boy here can use his for healing and I want to make sure we have enough in the spikes to keep him topped up." He grimaced. "I'd take less, but this spike only stores one for three and it won't take partial points."

The guardsmen looked unthrilled about it, but they trotted over and allowed Sergeant Carpenter to jam a spike into their arms. Each of them shivered in that same not-pain way that Marcus had back at Simon's place. I was glad it didn't hurt.

"Sergeant," I said once the last soldier had been spiked and everyone was doing a final gear check before stepping off. "We need better communication in the next fight. You were being thrown around whenever I moved, you couldn't land a hit, and you nearly dragged me off-balance a couple of times."

Murray was hovering a few feet in front of me and more or less at my eye level, although he kept bobbing up and down as he flapped. "In the innerst of keepin' you alive sohz I can keep gettin' paid," he said, folding his tiny arms on his chest and looking grumpy, "I'll signal to 'im. You say what yer gonna do as soon as ya can, I'll read it offa ya spirit an' tell 'im." He flapped upwards until he was at a convenient height to talk to Sergeant Carpenter. "Oi, listen up. Ima sit on yah shouldah and talk in ya ear, right? Ya can hear me wit' dat ugly bucket on ya head?"

Personally, I didn't think that the Guards' armor was that ugly. They wore a helmet that left their face exposed except for a metal bar that came down in front of their nose. The sides had a half-dozen small holes around the ears to make it easier to hear from and there was a feather sporting off the top. They had something like a steel vest that covered their chest, back, and sides but left plenty of freedom of movement for the arm. They had metal plates strapped to the front of their thighs and shins, and metal bracers that covered their forearms. It was all brightly-polished steel with the logo of the City Guard stamped on each piece. It looked rather spiffy, if you asked me. Which, of course, no one had. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that no one was consulting the dog for fashion advice, but that was silly. I saw so much better than them that I could have complimented them on the attractive ultraviolet iridescence around the welds in the steel, and the occasional flecks of discoloration that would eventually become rust if not cared for.

"I can hear you fine, imp. Okay, squaddies. Let's go!"

With a sigh I climbed to my feet and moseyed off where Sergeant Carpenter pointed with his trident. No more delightful running with the wind flapping my ears. Not when I had to shepherd the humans along. Not that I minded looking after humans of course, and I almost always enjoyed going walkies with Mom and Dad, but right now a run would have felt really nice.

o-o-o-o

Ten minutes, two encounters with minor demons, and a frightened-away water elemental later, we arrived at Alchemist Way and Fourth Avenue, one block east and one north of where we had been told Wolf Platoon was forted up. With much grumbling, Murray went off to scout. I knew we were close because I could hear screaming in the distance, as well as things breaking, monsters roaring, the sound of metal on metal, and occasional explosions. I'd been hearing it for blocks now, from all around us. Much of it was too faint for the humans to hear, but I knew they were getting at least some of it because they looked more and more serious and clutched their tridents tighter the farther we moved.

Murray was back in under a minute.

"Yeah, dere all dead. Let's go."

{What are you talking about? I can hear fighting from over there. They can't all be dead.}

He took a deep breath, clearly gathering his temper up in both hands, and sprouted ears and tail. {bad place. dangerbad. door locked. many bad Peoples. not go. go is bad. not go not go. dangerbad.}

{You need to translate this out loud so that the others can hear it.}

He groaned and lost the (very handsome) canine equipment. "Really, boss? Ya can't jes take my woid for it?"

"Explain, please. I hear fighting, so how can they all be dead?"

Private Smith nudged Private Garcia. "Imp with two brains arguing with himself," he whispered. They both laughed but quickly straightened their faces when Sergeant Carpenter frowned at them.

"So, when I said 'dead', I was talkin' metaphorical. Maybe dere still breathin' right now, but they ain't gonna be soon and dere's nuttin' we can do about it. Let's go find some uddah humans ta rescue. Ones dat ain't surrounded by fi'ty balor and t'ree malazaheen."

I cocked my head. "Fifty balor?"

He rolled his eyes. "Okay, fine, forty-eight. Close enough. Not even you can take dat many, boss." He gestured to the humans. "Dese guys just gonna get splatted in da first couple seconds."

"Fifty?" Sergeant Carpenter said. "It was supposed to be twelve."

"Dey musta got reinforcements," Murray said. "Now let's get outtah heah."

I scratched at my ear with a hind foot, thinking about those words. My collar tags did not jingle because they were lying forgotten in a graveyard weeks from here, and the thought made me sad.

"Uh...Sergeant?" Smith asked. "I don't mean to be a quitter, but it sounds like the imp is right. That's not a doable mission."

Sergeant Carpenter rubbed his jaw. "I don't accept that," he said after a moment. "I'm not leaving our brothers to die." He looked around, searching for inspiration, and his face lit up.

"You got an idea, Sarge?" Private Chi asked. Chi was shorter than the other troops, to the point where his uniform had clearly been modified to fit him. He had been silent thus far and I was surprised at how deep his voice was.

"Yeah," Sergeant Carpenter said, chuckling and pointing at the building we were all huddled up in front of. "What do you suppose they might have in there?"

I looked up at the store's sign. It was in a weird, florid writing style that it took me a moment to sound out.

"What does 'Albintor and Son Alembics and Alchemic Supply' mean?" I asked.

"Alembics are a type of glassware," Sergeant Carpenter explained. "'Alchemic' is a fancy way of saying 'stuff related to alchemy'. That's the art of magic done by mixing things together."

"Usually stinky stuff," Private Garcia grumbled. "What?" he demanded when Private Smith snorted in amusement. "It is! Seems like the more important the spell the stinkier it has to be. I saw this guy use a potion to turn himself into a cat. Made a cloud of smoke that stained my clothes blue and I couldn't get the smell out for a week."

"If that's the case, then the magic in there is really powerful," I said, snuffling around the doorframe. "I can smell it through the door even with the stench of the city in the way."

"Hey!" Private Smith said. "This is my city, and it doesn't stink!"

I gave him an unimpressed stare. "It absolutely stinks. The whole place smells like rotten eggs."

The humans all frowned. Sergeant Carpenter sniffed the air experimentally. "I don't smell anything."

"Yes, well, you're only human. Now, what's in there that you wanted?"

He shrugged. "Dunno, but if there's as many demons over there as the imp says then we'll need an equalizer. One thing that alchemists are really good at is blowing things up and setting them on fire."

"Fiyah ain't no thing fah demons," Murray noted. "On account ah we live in it." He sighed. "I miss da T'oid Pit. It had da prettiest blue flames. Kept da clients nice and toasty, and lots ah little nooks in da walls dat ya could coil up in fah a nap widdout da supervisahs seein' ya."

"I didn't realize that imps napped," Sergeant Carpenter noted.

"Oi, keep ya racism ta yaself, meatsack," Murray snapped, tremendous offense in his voice. "Jes cause I'm a imp, you t'ink dat I don't gots needs? I'll have ya know, us imps? We eat, we sleep, we shit. Basically, anyway. It's a little different den you humans but da same ideas apply. Anyway, dat ain't da point. Don't ya be layin' ya racist comments on me or I'll report ya to da Arbitratah!"

"Okay, okay," the sergeant said, raising his hands in placation. "No need for that. Look, we just need to get into this shop and see what supplies we can gather. There's got to be something that will help." He turned the knob and rattled the door but didn't get anywhere.

The building, like much of Hellsport, was solid grey stone. It was lower than many around us, only two stories where three or even five were common. There were two large windows on this floor and two on the next but they all had steel shutters pulled over them. The door was wood but thick and heavy with hinges on the inside where they weren't vulnerable.

"We could try one of the adjacent stores, see if there's a connecting door?" offered Private Funter.

"There won't be," Smith says. "These guys are all territorial."

"Right," says Sergeant Carpenter. "Find a ram. We'll knock it in."

The guardsmen looked around for something big and heavy. I coughed.

"Excuse me, are you sure it's okay for us to break this person's door down? Mom and Dad got really mad that one time that I was scratching up the door trying to get out, so I think that's frowned on."

Sergeant Carpenter got a strange look on his face, as though exasperation and humor had derailed and spilled all over each other. "Yes, it's fine," he said.

"Okay." I turned around and backed up to the door, braced myself, and kicked.

The door flew off its hinges, smashing off something inside and clattering to the ground.

The guardsmen all stared at me in shock.

"What? You said get something big and strong." I shook my head in dismay at the ridiculousness of people, then turned around so I could stick my nose in the door and see what was in there.

The store was dark and not as large as I would have expected. The frontage was perhaps twenty feet but it went in only fifteen. There was a counter dividing the room about five feet out from the far wall, with a door leading to a back room. The front of the store was lined with shelves around the walls and free-standing cabinets in the middle. It would be a tight fit for a human, so I didn't even attempt to squeeze in.

"Right," said Sergeant Carpenter. "Everybody in. I want anything that burns, anything that booms, and anything that looks like it might be useful in a fight."

"Yes sir!" All five guardsmen crowded inside and started smashing open cabinets and pawing through whatever they could find.

I left them to it and checked my character sheet. Those six balor demons had been worth three thousand Attunement and I was curious to see if there was anything useful on the Skillweb.

Ever since arriving in the Realms I had been unlocking and buying Skills in a long chain that wound outwards from a Common-grade Channeling +1 attached to Supreme Exemplar. There were seven other nodes of various sizes attached to Supreme Exemplar. I poked at one of the larger ones that was just a little bigger than an Uncommon, making me guess that it would be Advanced.

You do not have the 17,496 Attunement necessary to unlock this Advanced Skill.

Harumph. Well, at least I got the rank correct. How about this other one? This was just Uncommon.

Unlock Uncommon node for 2,916 Attunement? (Yes) / (No)

Dang it. Earlier this morning I had unlocked Mystic Acceleration for Eugene and then again for myself, and having already done two unlocks today was really hiking up the prices. Unlocking the first Uncommon node of a day only cost 1,296 Attunement.

Mentally, I shrugged and hit 'Yes'.

The node unceremoniously blinked into the silver of unlocked status, revealing three more nodes adjacent to it, two Commons and a Rare. At the same time, information filled itself in within the node.

Perk: Enhanced Tracking Rank: Uncommon Duration: Permanent

Your tracking skills increase tremendously. You will be able to follow the tiniest traces.

Bonus! Your 'Enhanced Senses' Perk interacts with this Skill! Your tracking abilities will be raised 5x more than usual! This stacks with all other bonuses.

Given your bonuses, your tracking abilities will be beyond what is normally possible for your species.

Bonus! The spiritual sensitivity granted by your 'Dyadic Unity' Perk interacts with this Skill! Your tracking abilities will be raised 10x more than usual! This stacks with all other bonuses.

Given your bonuses, your tracking ability will be pushed into the realms of legend, amounting virtually to postcognition.

Spiritual sensitivity? I didn't know I had spiritual sensitivity.

I read the description over again grumpily. Sure, it was a nice ability but I had really been hoping for something more along the lines of 'shoot demon-killing death lasers from your eyeballs'. Oh well. I closed out the Skillweb without bothering to buy the perk or unlock anything else.

The guards emerged from the store, backpacks bulging and each carrying a sack in one hand. Corporal Belker had a medium sized wooden cask, maybe five gallons worth.

"What's that?" Sergeant Carpenter asked, pointing at the cask.

"Blast juice, sarge." He grinned, revealing a mouth full of terrible teeth. "And we're all loaded up with smaller containers of it."

The sergeant took a step back. "Best be careful with that, corporal. Wouldn't want to send you to the Sky Hall the fast way."

"Yes, sarge."

"What's blast juice?" I asked.

"It's a clear liquid that blows up if you shake it too much. That cask is probably treated with some kind of magic to keep the stuff from going off, but if it's not then dropping it too hard would be enough to demolish the building."

"I got a bunch of burn gel," Private Smith said. He held up something that looked like a can of potato chips, except it was painted with red flames.

"I'm guessing that's not the stuff you put on burns to make them feel better?" I asked.

The guardsmen all laughed.

"Nope," the sergeant said. "You light it and it burns very hot and very bright. Also, if the alchemist didn't keep track of the purity then it splatters everywhere, which can be a problem. It's also super sensitive. It wants to burn. It'll literally reach out to the nearest flame source. The longer you leave it sitting around uncontained the farther it can reach."

"How about it, Murray?" I asked. "Is the burn gel likely to hurt demons?"

He hesitated. "Regulah fiyah, nah. If dat stuff is just a bunch ah chemicals mixed tagedah, no chance. If da alchemist actually used magic...maybe. It would be his magic skill voises da magic resistance ah da demon. Balors ain't got much. Malazaheen, dere a lot tougher. Hazdahem, ain't gonna do squat unless dis guy was a archmage."

Sergeant Carpenter grinned. "Cool, sounds like a plan. Come on, folks. We've got a barbeque to arrange."

Ooh, barbeque! Hopefully there would be some unattended buffalo wings.