Chapter 34

Tonight’s going to be a long night. When the fire burned itself out, which took a while considering two bandits decided to become firewood for our barricade, we entered the dungeon with our weapons ready. Compared to last time in the cave, the remnant smoke isn’t too bad this time around. Though we did keep the fire going for an entire hour last time, due to everything that happened this time, our fire only burned for around 40 minutes. It took us about 10 minutes to clear the seven bandits and another 15 for the fire to burn out. Also, this dungeon is massive compared to the cave once you get past the initial narrow passage. The passage leads to a small cavern and leaning against one of the cavern walls was our eight bandit. He had a large wound on his stomach and it looks like he died pretty recently. He probably got the wound while fighting the dungeon’s monsters and they were bringing him back out when they smelled the smoke, leaving him here while they checked out what was going on. Otherwise, with how big this dungeon is and how deep it goes, judging from the passageway that leads to a lower level, there’s no way they could have gotten that far in 10 minutes. But that begs the question, why didn’t they run back when they had the chance? The smoke wouldn’t have gotten them if they went even lower. The meat shield on the left hand side wanted to go back but he was stopped by the one standing behind him. Maybe he thought the dungeon was more dangerous than we were? If that’s true… Wraine and I grab the eight bandit by the arm and drag his body back to the dungeon entrance where the rest of the bodies are.

It’s not a pleasant experience hauling the bodies from the dungeon entrance back to the treeline where we hid the shovels. Especially Alister’s body and the two others who died in the fire. The smell itself is putrid and every time I catch a whiff of them, I’m forced to dry heave a couple of times, thankful my stomach is empty. At the same time as we’re ferrying the bodies across, we’re trying our best to clean up any traces of what happened here today. We carry back every log we didn’t end up using for the fire. Any blood we come across, we throw dirt on it and pick up the clumped, bloodied dirt and put it into one of the bandits’ bags. There isn’t much we can do about the scorch marks left on the dungeon entrance’s walls by our fire and can only hope it confuses whoever finds them. I even remembered the broken bolt Alister blocked with his shield and took it with me. We collect all their items and leave nothing behind, even the burnt out oil lantern they were using for light. These guys had a lot of things on them and judging by the clanging noises coming from the blond bandit’s body as we carried him across, they were really wealthy. If these fucks had this much wealth, then why did they rob two kids who looked dirt poor? I already know the answer and it sobers me up. Why not? Who’s going to stop them? They get some pocket change for free and they get to enjoy a spectacle as I get the shit kicked out of me. This is the type of city we’re living in. It’s either we learn and adapt or we get the fuck out.

When all the bodies are collected in one place, we start looking for a good spot to bury them. It can’t be too obvious or eye catching otherwise these murders will get linked to us and that can never happen. We’ve already gotten through the difficult part and now it’s time to make sure our clean up is flawless. Searching around the clearing next to the treeline we’re in, there’s a large hill here with a rocky overhang at the base of the hill on the hill’s northside. There’s a large dirt patch underneath the overhang but there’s a rotting tree log on top of it. When we roll the tree log away, there’s a perfect dirt patch underneath and we think this spot is as good as it gets. We drag all the bodies over to the overhang and we bring the shovels as well. I really want to take a look at what these guys were carrying on them but I’m afraid of anyone seeing us right now and decide to dig the grave first. That’s right, grave. One giant mass grave big enough to hold eight bodies. I’m no stranger to shovels and digging out the first shovelful of dirt feels satisfying. But digging holes is a tough task and even after nightfall we’re still digging. This has been a long fucking day and the moment I get back to the inn, I’m jumping into bed. Oh wait, we don’t have the coins. I really hope this blond bandit has a lot of money on him.

The moon’s bright tonight and it gives us sufficient light for this gruesome task. It’s already high above us when we finish digging the grave and half the night’s already gone. But we’re able to console ourselves when we start going through their pockets. I want to start with the blond bandit but Wraine wants to save him for last. We check the bandit who died from a stomach wound inside the dungeon first and he has a small leather coin pouch on him. The pouch has 1 silver and 83 copper inside. Not too bad, he at least helped us get a bed for the night. There’s also small red paper packages shaped into what Wraine called triangles inside his pockets. There’s four of them and when we carefully tear into the package, we find red dust inside. Neither of us want to check if it’s poison or not and we toss them into the grave along with the bandit with the stomach wound. I’d love to take his leather armor off and find someone to sell it to but it’s way too risky. We already discussed this while we were digging the grave and we decided to bury the armor and weapons. They’re too recognizable and too cumbersome to carry. We might as well bury them and only keep hard currencies. The next body we check is the bandit with a bolt through his throat. He doesn’t have a coin pouch on him and there’s nothing in his pockets. A bit disappointing but what can you do? We lay him in the grave along with his sword and move onto the first meat shield who died. He doesn’t have a coin pouch but he does have the same red packaged dust in his pockets as the first body. Wraine holds them in his hands and raises one of them high above him, getting a better look at it with more moonlight “You know, these might be drugs.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t but I remember hearing about Hermosa at the inn once from someone else’s conversation and I think I remember them mentioning the word red.”

“Do you want to take it with us? Maybe find a buyer for them? Might be worth a few coins.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I heard Alira deals with drugs and he could deal in Hermosa too. We have no idea what the connection is between the drugs and his men. We could bring unnecessary attention to ourselves if we show up one day trying to sell it.”

“Alright, toss it in then.”

The next body we check is the guy who was threatening us and he doesn’t have a coin pouch on him. However, he does have a silver coin inside his pockets and there’s a small knife in his back pocket. I think the knife’s fine, there’s no distinguishing writing on it or anything and it looks like an ordinary knife you could find anywhere. The next two bodies we check are the two who burned up in the fire. The burnt bodies are miserable to look at but it doesn’t look like they have pouches on them. Right as I’m about to toss them into the grave, Wraine stops me, “Look at their waist and thighs.” Looking at what he was pointing at, I’m disgusted to see silver and copper coins embedded in their flesh. The coins didn’t melt but rather the fire heated them to the point they sunk into the two bandits’ flesh. Giving Wraine a glare for pointing it out, I get to work. The knife I just found comes in handy as I cut the coins out of the body while trying my hardest to suppress my inner disgust. I’m able to get out two silver coins from the one who got tossed into the fire when I need to take a break. I hand Wraine the knife to let him keep working while I took a breather but he refused to even touch the knife. This little bitch. When I feel up to it again, I continue extracting coins but I don’t bother with the copper coins. There’s too many and we’ll be here the rest of the night if I’m the only one cutting the coins out. In the end, I’m able to cut out 4 silver and 2 copper coins from the guy who got tossed on the fire and I extracted 2 silver and 1 copper coin from the other meat shield with a bolt in his face. I didn’t want the copper coins but a few of them fell out when I cut the silver ones out. Even with the coins cut out, Wraine isn’t willing to put them into our personal coin pouch unless I clean off the remaining flesh. This little motherfucker. I spend a few minutes rubbing the coins with my fingers, cleaning them of any remnant flesh, having never felt more disgusted in my entire life as I am right now. When it’s done, I toss them at Wraine and enjoy his flustered attempt to dodge them.

As Wraine puts the coins into our pouch with a scowl on his face, we move on to Alister. His body is badly burnt but nowhere near as bad as the previous two. Seeing the golden pommel on his sword and the golden bird at the top of it, my greed stirs up inside me but I know I can’t. Sighing in disappointment, we search his pockets and find a charred letter but it’s too scorched to see anything and neither of us can read regardless. Alister disappointingly didn’t have a coin pouch on him but he did have 3 silver coins in his pockets along with the letter. When we’re finished, we toss him into the grave, golden sword and all, and move onto the blond bandit. For some reason the blond bandit excited me more than Alister. It probably has to do with what we saw yesterday when he beat the shit out of Alister but it could also be the jingling coins we heard in his coin pouch when we were moving him. Wraine lets me do the honors since I was the one with the crossbow and did the majority of the killing. Well, all of it. Opening the pouch open, the gold glint coming off the coins inside makes my mouth water. Taking out each individual coin carefully, we count 1 gold, 10 silver, and 16 copper coins. This is the largest amount of money we’ve ever held in our hands and just thinking about the sheer amount of wealth inside this pouch boggles my mind. I can’t help but think this is why people rob each other. Unfortunately, we have to put the coins away and close our pouch up because it’s time to get to work again.

Before we start tossing the bodies in, we toss the lantern in first followed by the leather bag full of bloodied dirt. I also toss in the knife because it’s too disgusting to keep on me after what I’ve done with it. We toss the blond bandit into the grave and we start shoveling dirt into the grave, covering all eight bodies with a thin layer of dirt. We spend hours burying them and it’s already dawn when we toss the last shovelful of dirt on top of the new grave. We smooth the top of the grave with our shovels and when it looks good enough, we roll the rotting log back to its original position and take a few steps back to inspect our work. I can’t help but think if no one knew what to look for, they’d never be found here. Taking our shovels, we head back to where we left the axes near the treeline and dig another, smaller grave. Once it’s deep enough, we toss in the axes and the remaining logs we carried back before we finally toss in the shovels as well. Getting down on our hands and knees, we scoop the dirt back into the hole and bury the tools for our murders. We thought about burying our swords and the crossbow as well but I can’t bring myself to bury them. But Wraine seems adamant on getting rid of all the evidence. We sit down to talk about it for a few minutes and as a compromise, we’ll keep our swords and shield since they weren’t really used at all this whole time except for once and bury the crossbow and its bolts. Gods we’re stupid. Why’d we bury our shovels before we were finished burying everything? Whatever. We march up to the top of the hill and take in the beautiful scenery all around us. At the very top of the hill, we use our hands to make a hole big enough for the crossbow and gently place it inside. We place the bolts next to it and slowly scoop in dirt to bury it. We’re not completely sure whether burying the crossbow is a good idea or not since it might make us seem suspicious if we head back into the inn without it but at the same time we can’t help but think about what happens if the bodies are found. At least we might be able to deny having a crossbow? We could just say it was stolen from us or something. We’re not sure but we don’t want to take the chance.

Standing back up, we’re covered in dirt and we’re extremely exhausted but there’s a feeling of relief inside of us. Or perhaps it’s only me. We did it. I did it. I finally got rid of the source of my uneasiness and I can finally go back to normal. I close my eyes for a moment to rest and when I open them again, I’m still inside the tunnel. I shouldn’t say still since I never left. But what a nice dream that was right? Wraine shakes my shoulder and brings me back to the dream, “You alright?”

Giving him a bright smile, I laugh before saying, “Of course. Never better.”