This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 168

Chapter 168 - The Same Side

Eve had expected all sorts of responses to Alex and Mila popping out of hole in the ground in the middle of a palace courtyard. After seeing the guards react to Reginald’s appearance, a circle of spears leveled at the new arrivals would’ve made sense. Since, by nature of their arrival point, Alex and Mila had already made it past the gates, Eve would’ve understood if the queensguards had established some sort of defensive perimeter around them. Alternatively, for the same reason, she might’ve expected the guards to attack outright.

Eve hadn’t even imagined that she, Preston, Reginald, and Lumy would round the corner to find row after row of palace guards on their knees before She Beneath the Earth.

What the hells? Eve silently asked the others. They dragged me in in chains and they kneel for her? She’s not even a queen!

She’s also not a wanted criminal, Lumy rattled back.

“Evelia Greene,” Mila’s gravel voice scraped through the courtyard, “explain to me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”

Eve cracked a lopsided smile. “Because we both know I’d escape.”

“I don’t see a leyline.”

“I said escape, not kill you,” Eve clarified.

Mila glared at her, the dark holes in her obsidian flesh where eyes should’ve been conveying more than enough disdain. She growled.

“What happened, Eve?” Alex asked. “Why are we here?”

Eve shrugged. “I basically told you everything in my shadowgram. His army’s out, he’s coming for humanity, I don’t know if we can stop him.”

“We will.” The confidence in Mila’s voice spread through the kneeling queensguards. “We’ve stopped him before, we’ll do it again.”

Preston stepped forward. “What I want to know, actually, is why you never deigned to tell us what the Man of the Mists wanted. This all could’ve been so much easier if you’d fucking talked to us.”

“We didn’t know,” Alex breathed.

Mila sighed. “Every century or so, he tries to pull something. His goal is different every time—usually with the end result of destabilizing my organization—but without fail his plans end in mass casualties. We keep memory crystals from witnesses of all his attacks, show them to all new recruits so they know exactly what we’re up against. Alex wanted to show you.”

Eve blinked. “But you wouldn’t let her.”

“I would have if you hadn’t trapped us in that ruin,” Mila growled. “Good people died while I was stuck down there.”

“To be fair,” Eve pointed out, “you did try and trap me first.”

“We’re getting nowhere,” Alex snapped. “You wouldn’t have believed anything we said without the memory crystals, and you never would’ve come with us to see them of your own will.”

“Well maybe if you hadn’t skipped straight to putting a collar around my neck, I would have.”

The courtyard went quiet.

Eve’s heart pounded. A cocktail of emotions fueled by rage and adrenaline coursed through her. This was all Alex’s fault. This entire, gods-damned, apocalyptic mess never would’ve happened if Alex had just fucking talked to her.

“I know,” Alex exhaled. “I’m sorry. When I saw those memories, when I saw what he’d done and that you were working for him and hadn’t told me, I felt…” She let out a breath. “I guess I felt the same way you feel right now. You were the first person I trusted after what happened to my old team, and you turned right around and betrayed that trust.”

Alex shut her eyes, shook her head, and took in a deep breath. “I know I should’ve told you about Mila, about the black rook, about the memory crystals, everything, the moment I found you at the lungeon. I was just so angry, and now everything’s fucked, and I just… I want you to know that even if we manage to survive what’s coming, I’m never going to live down the part I had in it.”

Eve swallowed back the knot in her throat, blinking back the first moisture of a tear that had yet to form. “Me neither.”

The crisp snap of someone taking a bite from fresh, juicy apple shattered the tense silence. A familiar voice spoke up from behind Eve. “Now that we’re done talking about our feelings, you think we can move on to the looming threat of mass extinction?”

Eve whirled around to find her old nemesis leaning casually against the palace wall, half-eaten apple in hand. She sighed. “Of course you’re with them.”

The woman, for once away from her usual spot behind the desk at somehow every adventurer’s guild office in every city, winked at Eve. “I do like living, yes.”

Eve glanced back at Alex. “How is it that every asshole I’ve ever met ended up on your side?”

“We’re on the same side,” Alex said.

“I’m the asshole?” the guild clerk asked. “Last I checked, you’re the one who let his army out of its prison.”

Eve blinked. She hadn’t included that tidbit in her shadowgram.

The clerk read her expression. “It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. I had a little conversation with a hive mind named Dave and worked it out from there. You’re not as sneaky as you think you are.”

Eve grit her teeth, biting back any further snarky comments. She took a breath. “Alex is right. We’re on the same side now.”

“Are we?” the receptionist asked. “Or is this another one of his tricks? Maybe she’s still working for him, and we’ve walked right into a trap.”

“That’s enough, Rel.” The command in Mila’s voice stilled the air itself. “The point is immaterial. We don’t stand a chance without Miss Greene’s help. Not accepting it brings about the same result as her betraying us: our failure. We have no viable alternative to taking her at her word.”

Rel bristled, but said nothing.

Introductions complete, Eve turned her gaze away from Rel to return her focus to She Beneath the Earth. “So, how much do you know? I can say with confidence he’s got his sights set on ending humanity, but when or how are still up in the air. I’d wager he’ll hit Pyrindel first, but I wouldn’t wager much.”

Mila nodded. “We know he has a lair in mountains north of the dragons’ valley; he’s been gathering his strength there. This morning I received the confirmation that the fog has started rolling south.”

Eve gulped. “He’s on his way here.”

“He is,” Mila confirmed. “The good news is, as quick as he can move alone, his army is slow. We should have a week before he arrives.”

“That’s good,” Eve exhaled, sharing a relived look with Preston. “We have time to prepare.”

“For all the good it will do us,” Rel snapped. “If your theory about Burendia is right—”

“It is.”

“—then any magical defenses we can put up will be of little use. You saw the vault. You know what it takes to stop him.”

Eve nodded. “That vault was likely the greatest work of the best enchanter to ever live. Even if we could match his prowess, he only had to lock up a small room, not an entire city, and that’s not to mention the fact he had a leyline convenient to power the whole thing. We don’t.”

“Every bit helps,” Mila said. “We have a week, surely we can put something together that can at least slow him down.”

Preston nodded. “The extra time also means more civilians can make it behind the safety of the city walls before the fighting starts.”

Rel rolled her eyes. “And that won’t matter if the city falls.”

“But civilians won’t be the only ones coming,” Eve said. “The guild and the mercenary companies have sent out word. Every adventurer in Leshk is on their way here. A week is a lot of time for them to make it in.”

The conversation derailed as the palace door swung open, revealing yet another contingent of queensguards following a particularly flustered-looking Emily. She smiled at the sight of the high-levels gathered in the courtyard. “Mila! You came!”

“Of course, your majesty,” Mila replied without any semblance of a bow. “I would never ignore your call, not for this threat.”

Eve blinked. “Wait, you came for Emily? What about my shadowgram?”

Alex stared at her. “Um… Eve, your shadowgram never said where we could find you.”

Eve froze, summoning the mental image of the message she’d written to Alex. “Huh.”

Emily laughed, reaching into her pocket to pull something out. She flipped a black chess king into the air and caught it again. “It’s a good thing mine did.”

Eve furrowed her brow. “Hold on, why is your piece a king? You’re the only one who’s literally a queen.”

“It’s a metaphor, you idiot,” Rel said.

Emily let out a brief laugh. “The queen is a fighter.” She looked pointedly across the courtyard at Alex. “I’m a ruler.”

“Actually, I have a question,” Preston spoke up. “What’s with the chess metaphor, anyway? It seems like the one thing you and the Man of the Mists can agree on is that this whole thing is like a game of chess.”

“One of my abilities allows me to create totems through which people can communicate to me,” Mila explained. “I chose chess pieces because they’re distinct enough to be memorable, small enough to conceal, and mundane-looking enough not to raise questions. Our adversary caught wind of them and decided he liked the idea enough to replicate it. How he managed it, I’ve yet to discover.”

Eve raised an eyebrow. “And you chose to be black? Even with all the good versus evil, light versus dark parallels? I mean, I get it with the whole obsidian-is-black-and-mist-is-white thing, but still, it’s not a good look.”

Rel rolled her eyes.

Preston glanced sideways at Eve. “Have… have you ever played chess?”

“Um… no? But I know white goes first.”

“In chess,” Mila said, “white attacks, and black defends.”

Eve stared across the courtyard, meeting not Mila’s gaze, but Alex’s.

The Indomitable Defender held up her black queen and winked.

Emily cleared her throat, somehow bringing her authority to bear over the assembled crowed with such a simple gesture. The courtyard fell silent. “I believe this conversation has gone sufficiently off the rails. Mila, Rel, I would speak with you in private. We have much to plan.”

Eve opened her mouth to object to her exclusion, but Emily flashed her a sideways look and focused her mind hard enough on a single word that Eve’s telepathy picked it up. Later.

Eve subtly nodded back.

In moments the gathered queensguards had vacated the courtyard to return to their posts, Mila had resealed the tunnel she’d dug to travel there, and she, Emily, and Rel had vanished into the halls of the palace.

Eve, Reginald, Lumy, Preston, and Alex were alone.

“Okay,” Preston said, clapping his hands together to refocus everyone. “We have a week to prepare. What do we do?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Eve said. “A week should be plenty of time for what I have planned.”

Oh no, Lumy sent. She has a plan.

Preston sighed. “What’s your plan?”

“Well,” Eve said, “Rel is right that building up defenses can only help so much. This’ll come down to a fight, so we should be focusing on making sure we’re as strong as possible when the time comes, and I just so happen to be level ninety-nine.”

Alex stared at her. “You want to hit a hundred.”

“So, what?” Preston asked. “Your plan is to grind monsters to level up one last time before the Man of the Mists gets here?”

“Not quite,” Eve answered. “I can’t grind five trillion exp in a week. I need a quest milestone.”

“So you want to pull a quest milestone out of thin air?” Preston exhaled. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

“I’m gonna do the same thing everybody else does when they want to reach a milestone. I’m gonna try and complete my life quest.”

Preston paled. Alex stared. Lumy flashed anxious red.

A maniacal grin spread across Eve’s face as she turned to the nearest guard. “Excuse me,” she got his attention. “Could you tell me where the nearest bakery is?”

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