Holy Opposites 14

	“Not a bad one.  We’ll go with the Watch tonight, and when they complain and tell us to leave, we will.  We’ll just need to leave in a certain direction.”  Axio stabbed the map of abductions with his finger.  “The Watch came up with something to predict which house will be hit next in one day.  They won’t tell us how they got that location, they just got it.  Not even a few days, a few hours at most.  That’s fast police work.  If we go with them, we can stay long enough to find out how they got this address, and we can use that to discern where to go next.  Do you have any special vision abilities?”

	“Darkvision.”

	“Me, too.”  Axio tapped his finger on the map again.  “Any flaws in this plan?”

	“The Watch won’t want to talk with us anymore,” Cavria pointed out.

	“Surmountable.  They don’t need to like us, and whomever ordered them to work with us may come and talk to us in person, which is always a bonus.”  Axio looked over the map.  “We just need to follow the Watch when they go to stake out the next target’s home.”

	“Yeah, I don’t like that.  What if we blow their cover?” Cavria pointed out.

	“Mmm, true,” Axio mused.  “So… do we really just wait?”

	“We could check out the home of a previous target,” Cavria pointed out.  “We could ask the parents what they saw.”

	“The kidnappers didn’t always leave the family alive,” Axio said heavily.  “We’d have to find one.”

	She joined him in looking at the map.  “Well, then we’d better get started.”


	Several hours later, just before suppertime in the city, the two Paladins were standing before the fireplace of two distraught humans.

	“He was just gone,” the mother whispered, staring into the cold ashes.  “He went to bed, and then we haven’t seen him.  He’s just fallen off the world.”

	“We’ve done everything,” the father growled.  The list said their names were Farlie and Mirta.  Their son had been Renald.  He had been named after his father’s father.  “The Watch, the Guard.  Nobody will help us.”

	“The Watch are helping right now, I promise,” Cavria soothed.  “And we’re here.  We want to figure out where the criminals went after they took Renald.  Which way they ran, whether they used magic.”

	“Humph.  Well, the lock on the window was forced,” Farlie said coldly.  He jerked a thumb at the stairwell.  “He slept over the dining room, in the loft.  We slept down here.  We didn’t hear nothing.”

	“Thank you, sir.  May I examine his room?  I promise, I will be respectful,” Axio said gently.

	“If you think you can find something those Watchmen didn’t, fine,” Mirta sniffled.

	Axio bowed.  He walked up the stairs, careful not to strain them with his weight, and looked into the little loft.  Half was storage, with random boxes of wood and bags of burlap, and the other half was a cozy little bunkroom.  A bed, fit for a small child, filled one corner, with a chest of clothing, and some toys on a tiny table.

	His head sagged as he thought of the child who lived here winging his way off to the Arbor, lost and alone.  Renald’s name wasn’t on the list of those who had already died, but that list was far from complete.

	Cavria walked past him and leaned down into the little chamber, barely five and a half feet tall.  “Here,” she said.  “We’ll start here, okay, sir?”

	“Yes,” Axio said, shaking off his distraction.  “Yes.  All right.  What do we bring that the Watch doesn’t?”

	Cavria produced a small set of thieves’ lockpicks.  “This, for starters.”

	Axio stared.  “Dare I ask where you found that?”

	The disguised High Succubus giggled.  “Ryaire.”

	“You jest.”

	“Nope.  Going-away present.”

	Axio slowly shook his head.  “I… know little about her, it seems,” he said, but then Cavria laughed.

	“I’m pulling your leg, sir, I bought this at the key-grinder’s store in the market last night.”  Cavria smirked at the confused expression in her memory of the shopkeeper’s face.  “He was as surprised as anybody that a Paladin would be buying a picking set from a locksmith.”

	“Hmm.  Well, what do you mean to use it on?” Axio asked.

	“Observe.”  Cavria slid out through the window and closed it behind her.  She set the tumbler jamb against the keyhole and looked around herself.  “Okay,” she said.  “In order to use this, I need to be coming from above.  I’m crouched at the bottom of the gap between this building and the next.”  Indeed, she was sitting on a ledge over an alley between the house’s wall and the neighbor’s much taller home.  “So… how did I get up here?”

	Axio stooped over to the window and peered out.  There was no ladder.  “Hmm.  Jump, maybe?”

	“Straight up?” Cavria asked.  “That’s twelve feet.  Who can jump that high from a standing position without making any noise?”  The glass muffled her voice, but she had a point.  There would have been a great clattering if somebody had simply landed on the edge of the awning.

	Axio rubbed his chin.  “…What if it wasn’t a humanoid?  What if it were a creature of some sort?”

	“Which creature can silently pick a lock?” Cavria asked, re-opening the window and crawling back in.

	“Well, anybody can pick a lock in silence if you can see it,” Axio said.  “The question becomes, then: who can see in the dark, jump and land in silence, pick a lock in the dark without making a sound, grab a child, and leave without waking it up?”

	Cavria shook her head.  “And without waking up the people in the room below.”

	Axio turned.  “We need expert advice.  We should find a consultant.”  He started moving towards the stairs.  It was no small feat in his massive frame, especially in the armor he was wearing, and under the cramped loft ceiling.

	“A consultant into magic beasts?  Like what?” Cavria asked.

	Axio smiled.  “An old friend.”


Chapter Eleven:


	Axio nursed his ale and listened to the bullshit all around him.

	“I doubt he really punched a bear in the nuts,” he muttered.  Cavria giggled.

	“He is a little short.  Can a gnome even reach a bear’s balls?”

	“One wonders.”  Axio sipped his drink and looked around.  “He’ll be here.”

	Cavria was sitting beside him, munching on bread and a light whiskey.  “So… this friend.  He knows about weird monsters?”

	“His family has been in the business of killing them for a hundred and forty years,” Axio said quietly.

	“And we’re in full Paladin armor.  That’s not weird at all, here?” the devil asked, scanning the room.

	Axio gestured with his empty hand.  “This place is packed with adventurers who want to tackle Undermountain.  There’s more now, even after that whole Tarrasque business.  There’s men and women in here with six, seven times our experience.  No, we fit in just fine.”

	He sat up as a new face walked in.  A human in worn clothes but clear eyes, both the color of steel, strode up and sat down beside the till.  A human girl behind the bar slung him a honey mead without even being looked at, and he caught it with such practiced ease that Cavria felt the urge to applaud.

	“Your friend?” she asked.

	“Indeed!”  Axio beamed and moved to sit beside the old man.  “Amsha, my man,” he said cheerfully.

	The human looked up, and his grey eyes went wide.  “Axiopistos, you’re gigantic.  It’s not fair at all!”

	The two embraced.  “How have you been, Amsha?” Axio asked happily.

	“Still skinning the things that get in my way,” Amsha said airily.  Cavria stared.

	Axio turned to indicate his new partner.  “Amsha, this is Cavria, a friend and fellow Paladin.  She and I are tasked with stopping the plague of child abductions in the city of late.”

	Amsha looked her up and down.  “Mmm.  Well, if that’s your aim, then good on you, and Tymora’s blessings follow you.”

	“Thank you, my friend.  We found evidence of magic beasts at a previous abduction locale,” Axio explained.  He leaned forward and tapped his mug on the table, and the barmaid fetched him another.  Cavria sat down on the other side of Amsha, and Axio nodded at her.  “Cavria and I suspect that it’s a magic beast, not a person, abducting the children, or at least one is helping a person do it.  Amsha, here, is a gifted trapper and tracker,” he explained for Cavria’s benefit.  “He catches the beasts that escape from the rifts in Undermountain into the ocean or the hills on the far side of Mount Waterdeep.”

	“And I own this bar,” he said proudly.

	The barmaid reached over and slapped his hand.  “No, you don’t, you old horsethief,” she chided.  “My great-grandfather Durnan built the Yawning Portal, and my father owns it now.”

	“He was my great-uncle, I should at least get a discount,” Amsha sniffed, though he sounded like he was just having fun needling the girl.  “Anyway.  You think a beast is about in town, eh?”

	“Either slaved to the will of the Baneites or acting on its own to cover its tracks by aping them.”  Cavria polished off her whiskey, taking a moment to appreciate the warmth as it worked its way down her gullet.  Of course, as a devil, she didn’t really need to eat, but it still felt nice to relax after a day’s walking about the city.  “So far, what we know is that it can jump great heights silently, it can pick locks in the dark, and it has strength and stealth enough to take a child out of its bed without waking the parents downstairs.”

	Amsha rubbed his chin.  “Flying or walking?”

	“We don’t know enough to rule either out.”