We had walked for roughly 37 minutes and 13 seconds and had crushed, stepped on or incinerated 5 DireRats when the notifications came.

-- An adventurer (Eilnys of Many Talents - Level ??? Class ???) has entered! -- -- An adventurer (Zinnaella Harpsorcerer - Level ??? Class ???) has entered! -- -- An adventurer (Ghost Mamba Steve - Level ??? Class ???) has entered! --

This was initially a welcome reprieve from the High Mage's absent-minded and incredibly tuneless humming that bludgeoned into my skull as he performed what he seemed to find as the relatively mundane task of elephant-sized rodent extermination (or maybe normal-sized? My sense of scale had become a bit confused over the course of events). At the same time I had kind of thought that there was going to be bit of a moratorium on adventurers while Terendrian classified me so I decided to raise this with him.

"WooOOooop. WoooOOOoop. Intruder Alert. Intruder Alert. Please be on the lookout for Eilnys of Many Talents, Zinnaella Harpsorcerer and Ghost Mamba Steve. Level Unknown. Class Unknown. WooOOooop. WoooOOOoop. Intruder Alert. Intruder Alert."

"Confounding Zounderkites, that blasted Duke has sent in Assassins again. Why he feels the infernal need to double-check my work, I do not know!" Terendrian stomped back down the passage towards the entrance chamber "Well I'm not bloody having it! I'm going to give them a piece of my bloody mind this time"

I sighed with relief to have a few moments to myself before awkwardly following along behind him.

What kind of name is Harpsorcerer? That's just random fantasy words shoved together...

For all that she was an assassin, Eilnys never really considered herself to be a particularly bad person. She just provided a necessary service.

And sure she was often vague about the nature of that service when she discussed it with her mum at Sunday lunch, but she had her code and had really just chosen a profession where she could sleep in and didn't have to speak to people much.

It was even on her business cards:

"No Children, No Cripples, No one under Level 30, No Mornings and No fucking Talking, now Fuck off."

Admittedly it wouldn't have been the best sales technique in a lot of businesses, but people like the Duke didn't really hire her for her kindly demeanour, so generally it worked out.

This was not one of those occasions and the reason for that was named "Zinnaella fucking Harpsorcerer". How in the Seven Hells you could be an assassin who talked all the fucking time, Eilnys didn't know, but she dearly wished the Guard had caught and hung Zinnaella a long time ago and was, by this point, very much considering knocking her out and hand-delivering her to them herself once the job was done.

As it was, one of her "Many Talents" was scouting ahead and so she did that for the moment instead. She could almost feel sorry for Steve who was at least a mute, but he was also a complete fucking psychopath so it was possible just some God's form of Karma.

And besides maybe if she left them alone together long enough the Death of Killers would do what Eilnys herself wouldn't, without getting paid at least.

Still she was very much enjoying the NeoIndustrial decor, which was at least a bit of change to the normal medieval doom and gloom Dungeons she normally had to check out. Maybe she would bring home a nice souvenir for her mum this time. Something nice and bright to put on the mantle instead of another fucking skull.

Hopefully at the very least she would get to wind up that poncy wizzard again.

Ghost Mamba Steve was in fact currently considering slitting Zinnaella's throat ear to ear and then chasing down Eilnys with pliers and a pair of chopsticks and forcing her to eat her own fingernails for abandoning him.

There was something about Zinnaella's voice that just never ever faded into the background and in the name of dear Bilous, did the woman continue to talk regardless of the appropriateness of the situation.

Like the job they did on the Earl of Marthwaite's widow during the Earl's funeral.

It was supposed to be fun, stealthy and easy, and while sure it ended in a complete bloodbath, Steve couldn't help but feel that the fact he'd had to kill all six of the pallbearers simply because they had tried to escort them out when someone kept talking over the priest during the ceremonies lacked a certain professionalism.

And even now, in Steve's happy place, a Dungeon that hopefully would provide endless numbers of creatures kill, she was still talking. And yet somehow still hadn't gotten to the point. Ever. In the entire time that he's known her.

No, Steve was definitely going to kill her.

He just needed to figure out a way to do it without her making any noise and spoiling it.

“And at the age of 6 they called me a prodigy, never had they seen an individual with such an amazing vocabulary and such eloquence of thought at such an early age, now obviously by this point Monsieur Mamba you know me well enough to know that I'm not saying that just to flatter myself, rarely you will find an individual more humble than myself, but my point is that that configuration of pipe reminds me of the maintenance section of the east wing of the museum of Extraordinary Art and Recreation which was in fact I think the place where they remarked...”

Zinnaella continued to scream endlessly inside her head, but as ever what escaped her lips was absolute drivel.

At least the job gave her an outlet from the rage that being trapped eternally inside her own head left her with. It was part of the reason she got on so well with Steve, the family curse made her little more than a mute with extra noise.

It's not even like her name was Harpsorcerer, that was a brand left by the moronic originator of the curse so that her family would always know who had cursed their line and the heinous actions that had been committed to deserve The Curse of Endless Chatter.

The irony of all this was that the curse stopped the bearer from mentioning anything about it, so of course the reasons for any of this were now long forgotten.

Still she kept up hope, like she always did, that this would be the Dungeon where she could find some kind of cure and finally let Steve know how she felt.