An Amazon of Limited Means

Day 18

Kitsilan crawled out of her bedroll and noticed it was still raining. And that the straps on her splint mail were turning a sickly greenish colour. "Come to think of it, so's my pillow," she muttered, pouring an extra mug of tea and settling in for some gear maintenance.

An hour or so of this found her decked out in gleaming steel and ready for whatever the day might bring. She pulled Yatiraj out of a dice game and headed for the waypoint to the Kurast Bazaar.

They wandered around the Bazaar, sniffing out Bramble Hulks and Hell Swarms and the occasional pitiful pack of Zakarumites. Blood Crawler the Dead (mana burn) and his Hulk buddies accosted Kits on the west, and Doom Pox the Hammer, an extra strong bug swarm near the centre. Doom Pox dropped a Glimmering Breast Plate and Kits decided to move on to Upper Kurast.

Thrashers and Winged Nightmares, followed by Zealots, raced up to greet them. Kitsilan methodically took them down, and then noticed minions among the Zealots. Grief Maim (lightning enchanted) got stuck on some stairs but freed himself much more quickly than an Apparition would have. His charged bolts stung a bit, but Kits shrugged them off, firing rapidly and falling back slightly. The air cleared, and she looked around. Yatiraj was nowhere to be seen.

Slightly miffed, Kitsilan continued roaming the alleys. She heard an odd noise nearby, and after thinking a moment remembered it as the noise monsters make when acquiring a certain peculiar aura from a boss. She readied her bow and turned down an overgrown path leading to the southeast.

Thrasher minions creaked out of a ruined veranda, in their midst Devil Shifter the Cold. Kitsilan simply found it impossible to be even mildly worried by Hulks, and toyed with the lot of them, leading them down the path and ducking around before they could get their arms up to swipe at her. Might aura or no, they fell quickly and Kitsilan filled her pack.

She found the waypoint shortly after and continued criss-crossing east. Winged Nightmares and Zealots ran up to die at her feet, and soon she decided to portal back to the docks to empty her pack and maybe pick up another cold merc.

After selling the Plate Mail and pretty (though useless) blue claymore she'd found, Kitsilan wandered over to Asheara's hut and checked over her roster. She was not amused to see that Yatiraj had apparently gotten back ahead of her and was even now back in the dice game she'd interrupted that morning. Kits threw up her hands in disgust and turned back to Asheara.

"You got anybody who'll stick around till the end of a fight?"

"Hey, these are Iron Wolves you're talking about, kid," Asheara retorted.

"From what I've seen, they're more like Rust Puppies. Look, just send me someone whose name I can spell."

"How about Telash?"

Kitsilan handed over the gold and looked up as the new Wolf ambled over. "So, you're Telash, right?"

"Hi! My name's Telash!"

"Yes, thank you, I knew that."

"I'm an Iron Wolf!"

Kitsilan shook her head and started back to the waypoint with Telash on her heels, chattering happily behind her. "I can shoot Glacial Spikes right out of my fingertips!"

"That's nice." She stepped through her portal and picked up a blue Military Pick she hadn't had room for.

"And I can—where are we?"

"A long way from home. Look, if it moves, spike it. And no talking!"

Telash pouted, but followed her out of the building and down the alley. They came upon some more Thrashers, pacing behind a columned wall across an open ditch, and Telash cheered up when he saw how blue they turned when he spiked them. Just after that, as Kitsilan kicked over some baskets, he grabbed her shoulder and began yammering.

Kits turned and looked across the way. "Grief Maim! So that's what happened to you." Telash was already spiking like a mad thing, and Kitsilan hurried to add her Magic Arrows to the mix. Grief Maim's charged bolts covered the area, but Telash stayed just out of range as Kitsilan shot off large chunks of Grief Maim's life. He went down in short order and she stowed his drop, a blue Broad Axe.

Realizing that Upper Kurast was pretty much cleared, Kitsilan elected to take a peek into the Forgotten Reliquary. A gaggle of Flesh Hunters pounced right at the foot of the stairs, and Kits was glad she'd stopped at a nearby combat shrine outside. More Flesh Hunters raced up to greet them as they eased down the narrow corridor, and then all was quiet.

"Wow! That was exciting! Don't you think that was—"

"Shut up. Please," Kitsilan said, peering into a dark room. It was empty, except for a couple of locked chests. Kits felt in her pockets. No keys. "Dammit. We need to go back."

"But what about over there?"

"Where? Oh. Yeah, okay." Kitsilan stuck her head inside the doorway Telash had indicated. It was wall-to-wall Spider Magi and Flesh Hunters, and she backpedalled hurriedly as they skittered out after her.

Packed in with the Spiders was Gloom Shard (cursed), and Kits and Telash fell back and then back some more, winnowing the crowd into a more managable state. Just when she thought she'd have to fall back all the way to Upper Kurast, Kits shot a last arrow into Gloom Shard's bloated form and punctured it. Picking up the greaves it dropped, they portalled back to the docks.

Kits remembered to buy some keys from Hratli, but there was nothing much in the locked chests after all. They headed back toward the stairs, but stopped short as a huffing noise penetrated the stone walls. There was still something alive down here. Kitsilan cast Slow Missiles two or three times, trying to get a fix on the monsters, but all she could tell was that they were close.

As she and Telash came to an intersection of the narrow corridors, the huffs became roars. Wailing Beasts, a boss pack of them led by Wrath Pus (stone skin) poured out of the room they'd hidden in, crowding Kits and Telash, trying to trap them against the walls. Kits shot rapidly, keeping a concerned eye on her merc, who was taking the brunt of the attack. She'd barely paid for him, and didn't intend to get less than full value, chatterbox or not.

She needn't have worried—for all his faults, Telash was quite sturdy and came through the encounter with minimal damage. Kitsilan checked the room thoroughly and confirmed that this had been the last of them, and they went back up and took the waypoint to the docks to repair a few recently obtained dents.

Back in Upper Kurast, Kitsilan checked her map and located the Forgotten Temple. Stopping only to touch the combat shrine, she raced north and leapt down the stairs, Telash tumbling in her wake. No one was there to meet them, but the welcoming crew of Flesh Archers arrived a second or so later.

"What's a Flesh Archer, exactly?" Telash asked, stepping over the prone forms.

"Dunno. Maybe they sometimes shoot souvlakis. C'mon, this can't be all there is to this Temple."

Although it pretty much was, as Kitsilan found out. Blood Fiends hovered in the corners, and she used them for light target practise, but aside from these and a pack of Flesh Archer Champions, the Forgotten Temple wasn't worth remembering.

Kitsilan shrugged as she counted her meager change and headed for shipboard and a quiet night's rest. "Maybe the drops weren't so hot today, but there's always cocoa."

Not only was there cocoa, but Meshif had had her pillow cleaned.