Based_Con

Deep in the heart of the stygian jungle, beyond the fog-laden hollows and twisted boughs, lies the Ziggurat of Xen'Thul, a blasphemous edifice to the Lord of Decay. The three hundred steps leading to the accursed entrance of this vile temple bear glyph inscriptions of lepers swathed in soiled gauze, of carrion fowl feasting on the rotted stump limbs of mottled-skin mendicants. No mortal who cherished reason would dare set foot upon these lurid steps, let alone ascend them. Yet the two figures at the base of this unhallowed ruin knew no such timidity—hardened by experience, unyielding in spirit, they were that rare breed, known throughout the bustling cities, revered across the wild, untamed lands, as Adventurers. "Nymph's Nuts." The Marksman hawks and spits a wad of chaw. "How long does it take?" "Patience, friend," says the bespectacled Artificer beside him. "We must give the mage time to survey the ruins. Who knows what treachery awaits within?" "Feh." The Marksman's caterpillar mustache squirms in agitation. "Speakin' of treachery, wasn't this little posse of ours 'posed to have a fourth hand?" "Yes. A Shadowstrider." "Shadowstrider?" The Artificer nods. "A practitioner of the Veiled Arts. He came highly recommended by the Guild." "Fancy title for a man with no aptitude for punctuality." The Marksman works up another wad and spits. "Way I see it, a fella can walk on water, but it don't mean a lick of steer shit if he ain't got the common decency for basic manners." The Artificer eyes the freckled ring of tar-blotted soil encircling the Marksman. "Quite." "On the contrary." A voice drifts in on a chilly breeze from somewhere in the verdant gloom. "It is you who kept me waiting." From behind the woven trunk of a great Banyan tree, the Shadowstrider emerges, draped in a living cloak of umbralweave that sways and breathes with the shifting of the shadows. His deft movements cast no sound; a deadened, eerie silence punctuated only by the grating squeak of his wheelchair’s faulty axle. "What in tarnation..." "At light's boundary, the world lies bare." The masked youth unsheathes his daggers, cascading them through his fingers in a mesmerizing rhythm. "And the Shadow knows all. My name is—" "Boy, what the 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 is that?" The Marksman yips in disbelief. The Shadowstrider flicks his eyes, still twirling the blades. "What is what?" "What you mean, what is what?" The Marksman points. "You're sittin' in a goddamn rocking chair with cast-iron wheels!" "Easy now." The Artificer holds up a hand. "Let's not utter uncouth words before our companion has a chance to explain himself." He turns to the Shadowstrider. "What's with the chair?" The two men gaze expectantly at the new arrival. He stops twirling the daggers. "It's for my uh..." He gestures to his bandaged foot, the only part of him not clad in umbralweave or shadowsilk. "Alicorn Ass!" The Marksmen whips off his wide-brimmed hat and slaps his knee. "They sent us a cripple!" He leans back and guffaws. "H-hey!" The Shadowstrider yanks down his mask, his youthful cheeks flushed red. "You can't say that! I've got a condition!" He looks at the Artificer. "He can't say that! I've got a condition!" "While I admit my associate's reaction is...untoward at best," the Artificer concedes. "I find myself at a loss as well." "Huh?" "How do you intend to assist us in this venture, considering..." The Artificer trails off, gesturing to the flight of stairs. The Marksman pinches his lips, suppressing a snort. The Shadowstrider scowls. "How dare you. I graduated at the top of my class at the Abyssal Academy. I endured the Trial of Night longer than any acolyte on record." He went on, sputtering in highly credentialed protest. "Why, I've even completed a twilight residency at Nightfall Fortress!" "Yes, yes, yes, that's all well and good." The Artificer says. "But how will you get 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦." The Shadowstrider looks up at the stairs and shrugs. "...we just, ya know, go on up..." Unable to contain himself any longer, the Marksman bursts out: "Let him go, let him go!" He seizes the Artificer's shoulder. "If the boy gets halfway up and rolls back, he'll hit the ground so hard, he'll be flatter than a prairie dog under a cattle stampede. Pffthahaha!" The Marksman tosses his head back, cackling madly. Annoyed, the Artificer brushes his hand away. "Laugh it up, cowboy." The Shadowstrider raises an ebon blade pinched between his fingertips. "They'll be laughing real hard back at the Guild when they hear this cripple took your life." The laughter stops. "That so?" The Marksman squares up, his eyes narrowing as his hand drifts over his hip holster. The Artificer steps forward. "Now, wait a minute—" "Stay out of it." The Marksman shoots the Artificer a look. "This is between me and the boy. Ain't it, Wheels?" Eyes brimming with determination, the Shadowstrider nods. The Artificer tosses his hands up and steps back. "Selkie's Sack." The Marksman and the Shadowstrider stare each other down. Dappled sunlight streams through the jungle canopy, dancing across their tense, sweat-slick brows. Somewhere in the distance, a toucan cries. 𝑪𝑨𝑾𝑾! The Shadowstrider flicks his wrist, sending the dagger sailing. Mid-flight, gleaming, it separates into three blades. The youth's lips curl in sadistic satisfaction, for this was the Phantom Shard, just one of the unassailable techniques he had mastered at the Abyssal Aca— 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗠. 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗠. 𝗕𝗟𝗔𝗠. Like a scattered skein of mallards, the deflected knives fall out of the sky and skip off the dirt, the edge of each blunted by a bullet. The Shadowstrider gapes. The Marksman stands motionless, his hand still hovering over his holster. "Never saw me draw, did ya boy?" "N-no," the Shadowstrider stammers. "Ha! That's cause I didn't!" With impish glee, the Marksman squats and slaps his thighs. "These are 45 caliber knees, son!" Six round cylinders pop from the sides, and snub-nose barrels extend from the caps. "Huh?" "My design." The Artificer adjusts his spectacles. "Compact chambers, socketed into the patellar housing. And the firing mechanism is surprisingly simple. By routing the trigger through the posterior chain, he needs only clench his gluteus to—" "We don't need to talk about how it works!" The Marksmen snaps. "Point being, I lost these knees when a gang of cattle-rustlin' desperadoes blew my legs off point blank with a coach gun." "Bugbear's balls..." the Shadowstrider mumbles. The Marksman flashes a tar-soaked grin. "Made me a better man." "No, the only thing that would do that is a straitjacket," the Artificer sighs. "Now if you two are done with the pissing contest, we still need to address the matter of your limited mobility." He turns to the Shadowstrider. "You were told about this temple before you took the job, yes?" "Yeah." "And the infamous 300 steps depicting all manner of rotting horror?" "Of course." "And you didn't think a wheelchair would be an impediment?" "Or anybody at the guild," the Marksman grouses. "I, uh, I think they felt bad for me." The Artificer pinches the bridge of his nose. "I shouldn't ask, but how exactly did you plan to ascend the steps?" The Shadowstrider shrugs. "I figured one of you would, you know, push me." The Marksman chuckles. "This just gets better and better." As the Artificer opens his mouth to respond, a floating purple orb of incandescent light descends the 300 steps. "Gentleman, it's your bog standard death maze dungeon—bog included. Pressure plates, poison darts, pit traps, and one giant rolling boulder," the Orb flatly remarks. "Left corridor leads to a narrow catwalk over an endless abyss with the prerequisite swinging pendulum blades. Right corridor leads to glass mirror rooms and toxic gas vents. Central chamber secured by a two-ton limestone door with a match-3 combination puzzle a half-blind farmhand could solve. The whole affair is almost stultifying in its lack of originality, an insult to—" The Orb notices the Shadowstrider. "Who's the gimp?" "Hey!" "That's Wheels." The Marksman grins. "He's a Shade Shuffler." "Shadowstrider!" "Shadow𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳?" the Orb repeats incredulously. "This 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘥 couldn't stride through a field of dandelions, let alone the shadows." "He wants us to carry him up the steps," the amused Marksman adds. "Oh, posh." The Orb zips over and floats around the Shadowstrider. "This is what the Guild sends us? We're being set up to fail." "You can't talk to me that way! I'm a certified Guild member, same as you!" "Pray tell, boy, if we did get you up and in, how would you navigate the terrain?" "The terrain?" "Yes, the terrain: piles of jagged rubble from collapsed ceilings, crawl spaces infested with deathstalker scorpions, the occasional knee-high parapet or pony wall." "Uh..." The Orb looks back at the others. "The infirmity of his mind is worse than his leg." "...I figured once we got inside it would be, you know, relatively flat." "Ah yes," the Orb muses. "The famously handicap accessible ruins of Xen'Thul, Lord of Decay." The Marksman snorts while the Artificer releases a long, pained sigh. "Hey pal, I know when I'm being condescended to." "Oh, do you now?" "I do," the Shadowstrider huffs. "Why don't you step out of that little orb and face me man to man." The Orb gets in his face. "Man to man huh?" "Yeah." "Face to face?" "Yeah, face to face." The Shadowstrider sneers. "If you even have one, you fatuous flaming fart!" While the shadow and light bicker, the Artificer turns to the Marksman. "Gods, another pissing contest. We're never getting into this damned temple." "You know," the Marksman says. "If it were me I simply wouldn't go around pissing off every lass and lad when I got a bum leg." He hawks and spits. "'Specially those of the magical persuasion." "Eh? You harassed that thaumaturge at the bar last night until she telekinetically tossed you out a second-story window." "She had a robe full of wonders," the Marksman marvels in memory. "And I don't have a bum leg." The Artificer grits his teeth. "Because I fixed it this morning." "You're a saint and a half, lad." The Marksman grins. "Never doubt it." "Behold!" The Orb zips high into the sky and bursts into a blaze of blinding light. "The true might of this fatuous flaming fart!" All present shield their eyes. When the Orb descends, the purple light is gone—replaced by a bald, disembodied head encased in a translucent sphere. The Shadowstrider shifts, taken aback. "You're...just a head?" "No," the Mage intones. "This is merely a pleasant veneer." "Chrome dome in a glass globe," the Marksmen quips. "Real pleasant." "The common rabble would be too squeamish to perceive my true form since my body was sacrificed." "Sacrificed?" "Destroyed in an experiment that pushed the limits of the arcane frontier." "Troll's taint," the Shadowstrider blinks. "What happened?" "I harnessed forbidden transmorphogenetic flesh-shaping magicks to endow Cephalocerebrovores with augmented mammary glands." The Shadowstrider furrows his brow. "...you mean the brain-eating squid people?" "Yes." "You were putting big human honkers on brain-eating squid people?" "Yes. Size triple G, to be precise." "Why would you put triple G honkers on brain-eating squid people?" "Because if any man is about to have his brains sucked out by an Eldritch, interplanar nightmare, he deserves to be motorboated by a billowing pair of unreasonably large breasts one last time." The Marksman and Artificer nod in somber agreement. "That's the dumbest thing I ever..." "Regrettably, an instability in the aetheric conduit I bought half-price at a underground goblin bazaar caused an overload in the phlogiston chamber, obliterating my lab, my body, and my life's work. Fortunately, a protective sigil preserved all that truly mattered." In another blinding flash of light, the contents of the sphere change. "My God!" Now the head is gone—replaced by a floating brain, two eyeballs, a pared-down circulatory system, and a full set of genitalia. The Shadowstrider leans over the side of his chair and vomits. "Nope, I already saw this once." The Marksman lowers the brim of his hat, shielding his eyes. "And once was too much." "Why do you still have your balls?" The Shadowstrider cries through the violent retching. "Because there's no point in living without your nuts!" The Marksman and Artificer nod in somber agreement. As the Shadowstrider gags and heaves, the Mage shifts back into the bald head and floats over. "I say we leave him here. Gods willing, a passing panther takes the little twat and spares us the trouble of wheeling him back." The Artificer glances at the Marksman. He spits. "I had my fiber today, I ain't pushin' that little shit around." The Artificer looks back at the Shadowstrider. "Stay out here. I will accompany you upon the return." "Come on, man. Have a heart." The Shadowstrider spits and wipes a string of bile from his chin. "I got a condition." "And you'll have worse if you join us." "This ain't fair! Just 'cause you got working arms and legs, you think you're better than me! You think I'm just a burden!" The Artificer sighs. "Tell me, is Shadowstriding a family affair?" "Of course!" The youth lifts his chin. "I come from a long line of Shadowstriders, Gloomgallopers, and Penumbraprancers." The Artificer nods. "My profession is much the same. My father was a Master Artificer, head of the Clockwork Collegium. Once, I made the mistake of telling him I didn't want to follow in his footsteps—that I didn't want to be an Artificer." He holds out his hands, palms down. "A mistake I never made again. Deploy." The Artifcer's hands separate at the wrists and fall to the ground. -𝗧𝗛𝗨𝗡𝗞- -𝗧𝗛𝗨𝗡𝗞- "Lamia's labia," the horrified Shadowstrider mumbles. The hands jolt up right, poised on fingertips like spiders. "After my father finished with the axe, he tasked me with building these replacements." "What a sadist..." "Using only my feet and mouth." The hands stand up on two fingers and embrace one another. "He said it would build character. And truth told, it did. You don't know what you can do until you've had to endure an...impediment." The hands dance and twirl in a synchronized ballroom waltz. "I, uh, guess you're not on speaking terms with your father." "No," the Artificer says. "But he's not on speaking terms with anyone these days." "Oh," the Shadowstrider says. "Because you killed him?" "Oh no, I'm not some deranged murderer." The Artificer gently smiles. "I merely cut out his tongue." "So sadism runs in the family too..." "Hey now there's an idea!" The Marksman interjects. "A telescoping metal tongue. Dames would go wild for it!" "Quite," the Artificer says. With a click of his lips, his hands end their waltz and scurry up his legs. "The point is, we've all lost something. And we're all professionals here—appearances notwithstanding. A professional never asks another man to carry his load; he bears it gladly and shoulders the slack when needed." The hands skitter to the ends of his arms and re-attach themselves at the metal stumps. He turns away. "Well take you back after we're done." The Artificer heads up the stairs, flanked by the Marksman and Mage. The flustered Shadowstrider shouts after the trio. "H-hey! Maybe I can't afford fancy metal parts, huh? Maybe I don't want to live the rest of my life as a floating dick in a jar, you ever think about that?!" The Mage bristles. "If he says one more fool thing, I'm incinerating him." "So no one's going to help me up? Really? REALLY?" The Marksman grins back. "Really." "Honestly, it's a wonder he made it through the jungle at all..." the Artificer mumbles to himself. "Fine." The Shadowstrider gets out of the chair and hobbles around to the handles. "I'll just push myself up." The Marksman halts. "What in the Sam hell?" The Artificer looks back and freezes. "You can walk." "Uh...𝘥𝘶𝘩." He turns. "You said you had a condition." "Yeah I got a condition!" The youth shouts. "I need the chair 'cause I sprained my ankle shadow stepping!" "You can walk," the Artificer repeats in mounting incredulity. "How do you think I got the wheelchair out here?" "YOU CAN WALK?!" The Shadowstrider throws his arms wide. "Of course I can walk, Rust Knuckles!" Two orbs of searing flame appear over the Mage. "Not for long."