“So did you sell the sword?” John asked, clearly intrigued by Gell’s peculiar tale.
“Sure did. Landed me a pretty penny for it, too, and no mistake.”
“Who’d you sell it to? Anybody who figures into this wild tale at all?”
“Nah, just some longshoreman over in Port Penrod. Reckon he figured he’d have a go at adventurin’. Name was… Darren? Darryl? Ah, somethin’ like that. I don’t remember — it was a fair bit ago now.”
The blast was powerful enough that it rocked the entire foundation of the vault, sending stones tumbling downward and threatening to bring the entire tower down on top of them. Gell didn’t fare much better — hurled violently across the chamber, he plowed solidly into the quivering wall behind him. Dragging himself to his feet, clutching at Saturnine, he looked up at the towering beast lumbering toward him and cursed.
“For fuck’s sake,” the Puritan muttered, “why can’t anything ever just go easy?”
“I don’t know, John. Maybe I just don’t understand women.”
Gell took a long draught from his tankard and prepared to settle into a nice drunken mope. John, the bartender, gave him that typical bartender look that somehow manages to appear interested even while communicating that he’s seen it all before.
“Girl troubles, Gell? Ah, don’t let it get to ya. You win some, you lose some.”
“Move, move! Plenty more laborers where you lot came from — if you don’t pick up the pace, we’ll just have to get new ones!”
Bialy was the foreman at Breugger’s Artifact Site #15. He was a small man with thin hair and a bushy black moustache, and, at this exact moment, he was hollaring himself red in the face. He didn’t think of himself as a bad man, particularly, and (though he would never admit it) he always regretted yelling at the workers like that. It’s just that, ultimately, he was terrified of Mr. Breugger, terrified of what would happen if he didn’t meet his deadlines and quotas, terrified of losing his job. He didn’t want to end up as a rock-digger himself! So he yelled, and he screamed, and he did everything in his power to seem like he was doing everything in his power to make the dig go as smoothly as possible.
Rain softly fell over the rooftops of St. Langostine, lightly caressing the sleeping city with its countless gentle fingers. She ran deftly amidst the rain, hopping from roof to roof, from building to building, tirelessly seeking her prey. She was almost the only thing moving in St. Langostine in the deepest hours of the night, and she liked it just fine that way. She had spent months in preparation for this hunt, stalking her prey, studying his movements and his routines, waiting for the right moment to strike. And her moment was here at last. She could all but taste the triumph.