Chapter 27: A Hero's Welcome

Ronan took a hearty sip of coffee, nudged his head towards the map, then said, “If I’m not mistaken, Farrier had mentioned that this was a Norovir?”

Maritza’s eyes were a little less bloodshot after a few bites of fried eggs, and she said, “Yes. That’s right. I've forgotten that you’re as well-educated as you are keen.”

Ronan couldn’t conceal his grin, though he wanted to remain professional.

“Norovirs,” he said, sliding down on the bench and getting closer to Maritza, “are blue lizard looking monsters with two long, five-fingered hands and the tail of a fat snake.”

Martiza wiped her mouth with a napkin and unfolded a torn page from an old tome. The monster inked beneath the page’s old, scriptive text depicted a creature just as Ronan had described.

Ronan scarfed down his breakfast while Maritza continued her briefing.

“It would seem,” she said, pointing to a series of four wells spread closely together through the several city streets on the map, “that the Norovir is traveling underground in the water tunnel beneath these wells. It doesn’t have a pattern we’ve been able to predict, but reports have been sighted at each area.”

Her fingers curled into a fist, and she muttered, “There’s been at least seven deaths so far. And two missing children, though we can most likely assume—”

Maritza rose up from her seat, battered her eyelashes, then said, “It’s imperative that we get there soon.”

Ronan finished his meal and with a nod replied, “Then let’s get going. Lead the way.”

The walk from the temple wasn’t far. By the time the sky had turned from pink to blue, the two had taken the main road from the temple to the Augustate slums. As they had traveled, their packs and gear shuffling with each step, they had watched as the masonry and design of the buildings had gone from sophisticated near the temple, to downright poverty-stricken near the slums. The homes on the cracked stone streets near Maritza and Ronan were only a step above shacks, and held together with cheap cement paste and a lot of prayer.

“This is the place,” Maritza said, stopping in front of a three-floored building with a little more muster to it than the rest.

Ronan opened the brass knob on the faded wooden door, and as Maritza walked in noticed that the sign outside read, “The Frog’s Lilypad.”

When he turned forward to see the man with a black vest missing a white button working the front desk, he was attacked by a rude voice.

“Ay!” The man said, his greasy brown hair dangling to his shoulders as he smacked his hands upon the counter, “We can’t offer you a room. Ain’t no water here!”

“That’s what we’ve suspected,” Maritza said. Her voice was stern to shake the rudeness out of the desk attendant.

She gestured a hand to her chest and then to Ronan and said, “My name is Master Maritza, and this is the Nightblade Ronan. We’re here to slay the Norovir.”

With a furl to his brow, the man said, “My Inn here put in a request for Nightblade services weeks ago, and you’re just now arriving.”

Ronan wasn’t sure how to act or what to do, so he simply stood as strongly as able, and kept his face somewhere between mean and content.

“I assure you,” Maritza said, “There are many processes for these sorts of bounties. We came as soon as we were able.”

The innkeeper snorted and rubbed at his nose.

“Tell that to the dead Mary,” he sneered, “and now the little boy who’s been gobbled up three nights ago.”

Ronan flinched, but Maritza maintained a firm stance with her hands behind her back.

“As I’ve stated, we came as fast as we could,” Maritza said. Her words struck cold, and Ronan was left wondering if being so harsh was better an option than trying to sympathize. At the same time, he wanted to know why the pleas for help took so long to respond to.

The innkeeper waved a hand and led them through a back hall with a long, shaggy hay rug. He opened a back door to the outside where there was a well beside small stone walls and dead grass. Painted along the well were large red Xs, and lines of wire with pieces of scrap metal, pans, and pots attached to it blocked the direct paths between the stone walls.

Ronan understood this to be the citizen’s way of blocking the area off with whatever sparse resources they had.

Above them all, a window to a room on the second floor of the inn slid open. An elderly lady with a dirty white bonnet over her gray hair leaned her head out.

She dumped a full chamberpot of excrement in the direction of Maritza and Ronan. As if she had predicted such a thing to occur, Maritza quickly pulled Ronan out of harm’s way, and the chamberpot’s contents sloshed to the dead grass.

“Not exactly a hero’s welcome,” Ronan mumbled to himself, astonished. Shouldn’t everybody be happy to see him and other Nightblades?

“Aye, I’ve heard that you little shite!” the elderly woman spat down at Ronan. She chucked a candlestick at him, but he dodged it and it landed in the mud. “Parading around as heroes, when you couldn’t answer our calls to help. You should be ashamed!”

Ronan noticed that the hand resting on Maritza’s sheathed sword was shaking.

“Watch your tongue,” Maritza shouted. There was enough anger in her voice to make even the birds on the roofs go silent. “We’re here to help.”

The elderly woman shook her head. “A little late to help me.”

The innkeeper stepped forward and said, “All that remains of her grandson was an arm and a few fingers.” He shoved past Ronan and Maritza, then from over his shoulder snarled, “That boy’s death is on you lot.”

“Not to fret, Muriel,” he called out to the woman in the window, “I’ve got a stew boiling now that you’re welcome too, and an old bottle of rum from last holiday that we’ll split.”

“Hard to muster up an appetite with these two around,” Muriel said. “But I’ll give it a shot.”

The window on the second floor slammed shut and the door to the back of the inn closed.

For a second, it was only Maritza, Ronan, the crows cackling once more on the rooftops, and the musky, nasty scent of the mush from the chamberpot.

Finally, Ronan asked Maritza, “Why did it take so long for Nightblades to come here?”

Maritza bit the inside her lip and blinked very hard. She couldn’t bear the idea of lying to Ronan.

With watery eyes, she looked at Ronan and said, “There’s been an extraordinary increase in monster activity since you’ve found your way to our temple.”

Ronan’s breath picked up.

“And frankly,” she continued, “we don’t have enough Nightblades who are properly trained to be dealing with the number of bounties we receive daily. It’s what has The Elders biting their nails. They’re worried that whatever threat overtook your temple is making its way here faster than we had originally imagined.”

A fierce wind blew, and Ronan thought of the Black Blade Army, marching to the Temple of the Serpent. The Hellblade on his back throbbed.

“So that’s why you said you overworked, before,” Ronan said.

“Yes,” Maritza admitted, with a slouch to her shoulders.

Ronan stepped close to her.

“We’ll defeat this force, whatever it is,” he said.

Maritza nodded weakly.

“I wasn’t kind to those people,” she said. “They were hurting and are understandably angry. I shouldn’t have treated them like that, but being so overwhelmed got the best of me.”

“We can make things right,” Ronan insisted, jabbing his thumb towards the well. “If the Norovir isn’t in this well then we’ll search the next, and the next one after that. Hell, if I need to swim down there and wrangle him up here myself, then I will!”

“I appreciate your energy,” Maritza said with a soft smile. “That’s how I used to be.”

Before he could ask what changed her attitude, the ground shook beneath them. The lines of the pots and pans around the stone walls clattered like windchimes.

Maritza drew her sword in the blink of an eye.

“It’s here,” she said.

Then bubbling brown water with specks of purple poison gushed up from the well, shooting the small wooden roof clear off and into the sky.

The crows on the roof scattered.

“Get ready,” Maritza said, stepping on a stone wall to avoid the poisonous, bubbling water heading towards them.

Ronan stepped onto the wall along with her and drew his own sword. It gleamed with a strong black light.

He gripped the hilt tightly when a giant blue, clawed hand clutched the side of the well and crushed its stone to dust.