Chapter 40: Rise of the Wretched Mole People

“First, can we like, move away from…” Electra pointed at Arlo’s corpse. “Y’know.”

I rolled my eyes. “We need to see how far the tunnel goes anyway.”

Electra tossed her little ball of light. It didn’t go very far. “Um.”

“Well.” I sighed. “I guess that answers that question.” I turned to the other three people in the tunnel. When the light hovered back over, however, I paused. “Electra, get that light over here.”

She peeked over my shoulder as I placed my hands on the shattered rocks. Mixed in with the simple stone were worked bricks, thick and polished smooth.

“We’re under the wall,” I said. “Arlo built a tunnel all the way under the inner wall.”

Electra let out a low whistle. “How long d’you think that took?”

“On Earth, I’d say months, but with skills?” I shrugged. “They could have started after we left Silverwall and still made it this far.” I frowned, annoyed that Arlo had a knife poised at the back of Seneschal Hawkwright and still chose to fight with me instead. “They must be going wild up there.” The wall would have crumpled at least, and maybe a whole section could have collapsed.

It meant we were on the clock.

“Means we have options, yeah?” Electra asked.

I turned back towards Rel and Dum. “Depends on what resources we have, including some I wasn’t expecting.”

Rel hunched. “Mistress, I—”

“You disobeyed my direct orders coming here,” I said. “How did you even get into the city?”

“We used your old tunnel, boss,” Dum called as he settled the guardswoman against the side of the tunnel.

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s too small for you.”

He grunted. “Wish I’d known that first off.”

“At least you didn’t drown.” I rubbed my face. “And Dee?”

He shook his head. “Dun’ worry. He stayed behind ta keep an eye on things.”

I sighed again. “Like you both should have done. I needed you there for a reason.”

Rel flinched, but then she stiffened her spine and met my gaze head on. “So you could get caught?”

I blinked at the pushback.

“Was that part of your plan mistress? Getting drawn into an ambush and probably killed in the basement of a bathhouse?”

“I wasn’t going to be killed.” I crossed my arms. “At worse, Arlo was going to cart me off to this woman here.” I pointed at the guard. “Thanks for bringing her, by the way, I’d like to convey my gratitude.”

“You’re changing the subject,” Rel said.

“Am I?” I asked. “Usually I don’t discuss important matters with an enemy in our midst, but I understand that many of my decisions have been questioned recently.”

Electra tilted her head. “Don’t you have skills for that?”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course I have skills for that.” My Little Mistress class focused almost entirely on information control. “See how her eyes are flicking back and forth constantly? She can hear us, but she can’t understand a word we’re saying.”

“I dunno,” Electra replied, “that really makes it sound like you were deflecting, Em.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side here.” I glared. “We had a fallback route and a choke point, even.”

“I mean, it’s not like we haven’t been in worse spots, but like…” She gave a helpless shrug. “Getting bailed out there is pretty preferable, ‘specially when they coulda just brought the tunnel down on us.”

I glared for a moment longer, before turning away. “Fine. Thanks for the help.” I met Rel’s gaze. “I would have preferred it if I’d known you were coming.”

She slumped at my words. “You would have told us to head back.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “And you would have listened?”

“You…know how to handle me, Mistress.”

“Apparently not well enough,” I said. “Helpful or not, if your resolve was so weak you couldn’t even look me in the eye and say you were going to ignore what I told you to do, then—”

“Jesus, Em.” Electra takes a step forward. “A little harsh, don’t you think? She did bail us out, after all.”

“And if they’d been just a little bit later, then what, Electra?”

“Well, they’d probably run into us one the way back.” She gives a grin. “I’m…pretty lucky these days.”

I pause. “New class?”

“Yep.” She pops her lips.

“Would be nice to be told things.” I raise a hand to forestall any reply. “No, no. Far be it from me to need to know the capabilities and decisions of my allies until we all wound up in a buried tunnel.” I raise my chin. “I notice that none of you are worried about being trapped underground; could it be because I shared my abilities?”

I walked past them all to the end of the tunnel, letting my skill lapse. From the corner of my eye, I saw Captain Maria shake her head as our words suddenly became intelligible. Of course, the first thing she heard would be me saying, “Put her out. We don’t need anyone seeing this next part.”

After all, whether or not she understood what we were saying, the very existence of my communication mirrors was a secret that I wanted to keep for as long as possible.

“Wait!”

I turned.

The captain struggled with her arms held behind her back.

I faced her. “What?” I spread my arms. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little busy here. And we only have so long before we run out of air.”

She grimaced at that, but Silverwall was a mining city, so the threat of suffocation was clearly one she was familiar with.

“I wanted to speak to you,” she said.

I pinched my nose. With a flick of my wrist, I summoned a pair of heckbadgers. “Got some overtime for you boys. Get us a tunnel back to the surface, don’t break out until I tell you too.”

The guard shifted back on her heels. “I thought you didn’t want to suffocate.”

I smiled. “Your old friend Arlo dug this tunnel, did you know? All the way under your vaunted inner wall.”

The woman stiffened at that, glancing back over her shoulder.

“Makes me wonder what he planned to do with it after he finished up with me. You know, if he maybe had any designs after your whole army marched south to deal with my little port.”

“He couldn’t have taken the inner city,” she replied.

I pulled out the golden vial Arlo had used to boost his powers. “Not even with this?”

She flinched.

I tucked dust back into my belt pouch. “Seems like you’ve been betrayed.” I straightened up, brushing the dust from my armor. “Anyway, excuse me if I don’t have much time to chat; I have to finish this stupid war your Seneschal started.”

She swallowed once. “And me?”

“Well, if you’re a good girl, we’ll just put you to sleep for a little bit.” I smiled at her again. “Who knows, maybe you’ll even be lost in the confusion.”

“Even if the Tarnished could sack the palace, you four certainly can’t!” Her voice echoed off the stone. “If anything, you should be planning how to get out of the city.”

“That’s a lot more digging,” I said. “Tell you what: you give us a nice easy escape route, and we’ll consider it after we finish handling your boss.”

She cast her eyes around the dimly lit tunnel. “And the rest of you are just going to go charging to your deaths?”

I was a little proud that even after my reprimand, none of them broke ranks.

Rel did flick her gaze over to me.

I sighed. “We’ll finish our conversation later, but for now we’re in this mess together, and the only way out is through.”

She nodded.

Maria laughed, one harsh, sharp sound. “I’d heard you inspired loyalty, but maybe all of your followers are just suicidal instead.”

“Loyalty?” I asked. Behind me, the heckbadgers continued to dig. “You mean like how Arlo was loyal to you? Or maybe how the guard who let me into the city was loyal? Or perhaps do you mean about how all the guards on the Tarnished’s payroll were loyal?” I scoffed. “Don’t run your mouth about things you don’t understand, kay?”

The woman glowered up at me.

“Done?” I asked.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Why am I—” I shared a much aggrieved look with Electra. “Why do people always ask me that? Aren’t my motives clear? Transparent even?”

“I mean, not really, but you’re pretty straight forward for a supervillain.” Electra shrugged. “Also, pretty sure you just told her that you wanted to be left alone.”

I snapped my fingers. “Exactly. I’m here because I want your boss to leave me and mine the fuck alone. He’s proven incapable of that, so I’m here to take my complaints to him directly.”

Maria looked down at the ground, a long strand of brown hair slipping free to hang over her tanned face.

“Somehow I doubt you’re about to have some revelation about your loyalties,” I said. “But I’ll let you sleep on it. Electra?”

“Gotcha.” She placed a hand over Maria’s head. “Time to go night night!”

The woman flinched, then with a spark of blue, she slumped over.

Electra knelt down, checking her pulse before nodding. “We’re good. Don’t know how long until she wakes up, though.”

“Probably sooner than average, given how the system works.” I passed a hand over my utility belt. “I don’t carry zip ties. Dum, you’re on prisoner duty.”

The big man nodded.

That done, I pulled out my communication mirror. When I flicked it open, I was met with black. There was no image of Dave’s slowly blinking eye, or even of my own reflection. Instead, it was as if the mirror was held in complete darkness.

Electra peeked over the top of my head. “Huh, don’t think we’ve ever had no service before.”

I snapped it shut with a frown. “The repeater is on my sky whale.”

“And it’s all the way over the monster camp.” Electra took a step back. “Meanwhile, we’re here, underground.”

“Things could be going very badly, right now.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why you set things up to run without you steering the ship, ain’t it?”

I glanced over my shoulder, toward Rel. “Half the people I left in charge are here now.”

She shrugged. “Once we get out of this tunnel you should have a signal again, right?”

I clicked the mirror shut. “After we get out of this tunnel, we’re going to be very, very busy.”

She looked over her shoulder as well. “Aha, yeah. Y’know, only being a few feet from a collapsed section of the wall would do that.”

“It might also draw the rest of the guards in the city to our very spot.”

Electra didn’t reply for a moment. “Think we should dig a little further?”

“This section of tunnel is perhaps about six feet high by five feet wide. And it’s only a few yards deep. That’s not a lot of oxygen, Electra, and we have five people breathing it.”

She pulled at her collar. “Already getting a little stuffy.”

“So whatever the situation is above ground, we’re just going to have to roll with it.”

She gave a light chuckle. “Carpe Diem and all that.” She bumped her hip against mine. “Why the long face, ‘Em? We’ve been in worse spots.”

My lips twitched. “I suppose we have.” Usually on opposite sides, but there was some camaraderie to be had even in that.

Then the heckbadgers stopped digging. One of them turned, chuffing at me.

“Right.” I nodded once. “Show time!”