Divinity Rescue Corps

116- My Glorious Butt

By that time, Drat announced he’d found yet another piece.

“You’ve got to see this,” he said, and almost had an inflection in his tone.

He led us to a small brick building, where he pulled on a wrought iron fire poker. What followed was straight out of a movie: a circular section of the floor began to slide down and form into a spiral staircase, complete with spooky light drifting up from below.

“I assume you didn’t enter?” I asked.

“No way. Need a Guardian, or a cognitively challenged and foolhardy Healer.”

I frowned at him, then grinned. “Good news, since I’m both.”

The staircase was cramped, for a smaller creature, but manageable if you didn’t mind a bit of lower back pain. It opened out into a low tunnel that didn’t just head in one direction. It was like Glumpdumpkin had a sewer system. The walls were brick, for a little while, until they were sculpted earth down one direction, and became bubble material in the other direction. Small sconces lit the way.

“I guess we’re going dungeon delving,” I told him.

Back in camp, we discussed the situation with the team.

“I know I’ve been asking you all to level up Divine Resistance when you can. I also know that I don’t get skill points at every level up—” I was willing to bet Drat got skill points at every level up. “And you don’t have my Healer’s Resistance special ability. We need to go through your current levels anyway, because this is not a one or two person job.”

All of them had Divine Resistance at level 3 or 4. The Guardians, save Larelle, had only 3 levels because they’d only gained that many levels since the order came down. Trent had it at level 6, like me, since he had been working his stone sorcery all day, every day. He had, in fact, made the level 25 jump, and become a Journeyman.

He didn’t share what kind of rewards that entailed, because that was who Drat was. Now more than ever I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake the crap of out him so I could get information on my own upcoming Journeyman ascension.

I was on the cusp, and I could just about taste the rewards. I’d been promised… something. Everyone was real cagey on the details because they didn’t want to spoil the excitement.

“Here’s the deal,” I said, “I can lend you Healer’s Resistance now. It will delay the onset of divinity poisoning by 90%, and it only costs an Ingenuity Token… from you.”

Hushed conversation started up at this.

“Meaning we can all go in together, and we can all take care of this.” The plan was to head down into the secret passage tunnel in pairs, and map out the place. Obviously Drat was the most important mission member, since he had bonuses to spotting secrets. Next came Trent, who could

I looked at her, and again she burst out laughing.

“You’re making me sound like a sludge,” I said.

“I mean if the foo shits,” she said.

“Ouch.”

“Is that why you’ve been in the lead position?” she asked, smirking. “Don’t want to be tempted to look at my glorious bisexual butt?” She turned and wiggled it at me.

“Is that why you wore the full uniform down here?” I asked, “so you wouldn’t have someone looking at your glorious bisexual butt?”

“That’s correct.”

She was so danged cute. I was glad she’d found happiness in Ivy, who truly did dote on her whenever they weren’t working.

“Don’t look now,” she said, “but I think we’ve found another divine artifact.”

Like the other Guardians, Isabelle had a number of different powers specifically for guarding her charge from danger. With a team member nearby, she had a danger sense, which triggered when the danger came close enough.

We couldn’t see the thing, but it was close enough to ping her danger sense. I couldn’t be sure if we were talking some kind of pressure plate and trap situation, but I doubted it.

The tunnel here had been used as a cellar. A number of crates, scraps of tarpaulin, and other miscellaneous items lay around all over. We soon had a pickaxe uncovered, which glowed slightly with divinity in the dim gloom.

“Wow,” I breathed. “That was easy.”

In total, the team uncovered another sixteen divine items throughout the next six hours. We all took a breather outside of town, where we wouldn’t contract divinity poisoning, and updated the map. That meant retiring to Trent’s house.

Trent had really gone all out with his house. He’d been the interior decorator and exterior decorator for all our houses as well, giving me the lab space I needed, a nice sized bedroom, and a working shower with hot water. I couldn’t have asked for more… was what I would have said until I saw Trent’s house. Or what we thought of as Trent’s house before he revealed its true form.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, and laughed. He’d removed the top bits and showed us the real thing.

First, it was recessed. It didn’t look any bigger on the outside than our houses, but it went out and down. You could walk down stairs, or take an actual slide. Sculpted out of pure stone with magic, it was the smoothest slide I’d ever traveled. It let out into a large chamber that led into other rooms. He had a sauna and a spa, complete with jets.

But in the center of a large meeting room with a wraparound couch, sat the map. This wouldn’t work for our purposes anymore, not exactly…

He grinned. “Watch this,” he said, and made a motion with his hands. The whole map was sliced in two, and rose up on several pillars of stone so the v-shaped subterranean section could be accessed. The secret room’s entrance was one such pillar of stone.

Using the sketches we’d made into a piece of clay, he began hollowing out the chambers and passages roughly.

Soon he had the subterranean passageways and cellars and basements with or without hidden passageways to crawlspaces or tunnels. I was blown away by the quickness and detail, but mostly by his ability to take messy scrawls and notes on crap clay tablets and turn them into a functional 3D map.

“Incredible,” I breathed. I didn’t think it was my imagination that some of the strain and weariness fell away from Trent’s face at the words. When Cinzy patted him on the shoulder and used an ability, he perked up much more visibly.

Finally he took a handful of fist sized rocks, concentrated, and morphed them into chips of crystal. After that, more mana flooded out of him and he transformed the chips into tiny versions of the tools we found. These floated down and went on to rest in the underground passages and hiding places where we’d discovered them.

This is Christopher’s team being fracking awesome and making some headway.