One Last Job is a piece of fiction from 99 Whispers and Rumors to Hear in Archbliss, The City of The Sorcerers one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara.

The Cloudwatcher Inn was a handsome structure of wood and brick, standing three stories above narrow side streets. It was clean, quiet and like many of the other structures in the neighborhood of The Respite, it was welcomingly normal. Assuming, of course, one could overlook the flocks of pseudodragons nesting in the eaves, the fairy lanterns hanging on iron sconces and the floors that cleaned themselves when no one was looking.

For some, it was a luxury accommodation. For the City of The Sorcerers, it was downright austere.

The inn’s common room was filled with travelers of all shapes and sizes. Some huddled over bowls of soup, exhausted from their travel through either the air or the ether to reach the floating city. Others made notes in journals, or reviewed sheaves of papers as they prepared to handle whatever business had brought them to this fantastical place. Those who had been to the other parts of the city either sat and stared into the middle distance, overwhelmed by sheer magic of a city built by and for sorcerers, or they talked animatedly to their companions about the wonders they’d seen.

In all that, the outlander passed relatively unnoticed. A handsome young man with a well-worn pack on his back, and a heavy walking stick in his hand, his woolens were hard worn, and his boots were rundown at the heels. His eyes were sharp, though, and his voice pleasant as he stepped up to the front desk and gave a name to the attendant. It was a false name, but it slid smoothly off his tongue, and she handed him a key to a room on the third floor. He climbed the stairs with his head down and his stick resting on his shoulder, his ears listening for anyone who might be following him. When he reached the third floor, though, he was utterly alone.

The young man’s steps got lighter as he walked down the hall, barely making any sound until he stood before the door that matched his key. He knocked five times; one long, three shorts and a long again, before he slid the key into the hole, turned it, and opened the door. He stepped inside, and felt a blade press against the small of his back, and the pressure of a cocked crossbow leveled at his head.

“Sorry I’m late,” Jace said, holding his hands up. “I ran into some trouble acquiring the last puzzle piece.”

Renard grunted, lowering the crossbow and slowly easing the pressure off the string before laying it aside. Meran left her blades in place half a second longer before sheathing them on her hips. She stalked back to the table where she’d been going over her equipment, ensuring it was all in working order and ready for whatever came next.

“We were getting worried,” Renard said, taking a seat across from Meran and opening up the hard-backed case he’d packed. The smell of chemicals and essences wafted up from it, along with a few puffs of colored smoke.

“You were getting worried,” Gregor said, picking up his guitar again and strumming a few chords on it.

“I’m touched,” Jace said, shrugging out of his pack and cloak. He tossed his quarterstaff onto one of the two still-made beds, and gestured at the table. “Clear this space. We’re going to need it.”

“For what?” Renard asked.

“You get your questions answered faster when you just do what I ask, Renard,” Jace said, unbuckling the flap of his pack and throwing it open. He withdrew a folded over piece of leather, and as the alchemist and the thief removed their tools, Jace flung it out like a tablecloth. It settled into place, revealing a map burned onto one side of the skin. It was expansive, detailing dozens of floors, complete with numbered indicators that represented guards, traps, watch points and axis shifts where rapid responses could lead to a full facility lock down. Gregor’s face went pale, and his fingers stumbled over the strings as he stared at the map, and then at Jace.

“Tell me I’m not looking at what I think I’m looking at,” Gregor said, a note of quiet pleading in his voice.

“This is where we’re going,” Jace said. “The Vaults.”

Renard’s face paled, and he swallowed. He worried his lip, as if he were trying to chew over his thoughts. Meran frowned with her mouth and forehead alike, her eyes rapidly taking in the details of the map in front of her, and looking for the pattern that held it all together. Renard was shaking his head, though it was hard to tell if it was in denial, or in defeat.

“Jace… why are you doing this? Why are you asking us to do this?” Renard asked. “What could possibly be down there that’s worth risking everything for?”

“It’s Esperanza,” Gregor said. Renard’s head whipped toward the dark-haired man, but he was looking at Jace. “She’s down there, isn’t she Jace?”

“Of course she is,” Renard said, his mouth twitching. “This explains everything! It’s why you were so secretive. It’s why you told us not to bring anything enchanted. It’s why you brought him along-”

Jace turned, and looked at Renard. His face was a mask of calm, but as his eyes met the alchemist’s Renard shut his mouth so quickly that his teeth clacked together. There was a cold fire in Jace’s gaze that would have shaken even the most powerful sorcerer in the city to their very marrow if they’d stood in his way in that moment. Jace returned his gaze to the map, and then touched one, scarred finger to its surface.

“We enter here,” he said, before lifting his hand, and touching one of the hundreds of cells marked on the map. It was located four floors beneath the surface, behind a slew of listed wards and deadly hazards. He leaned over, and tapped the restricted cell with a scarred index finger. “And we need to get here. We have until tomorrow night to work out the route, and prepare any back-ups. After that, everything is going to shift, and this map won’t be worth a hot piss in the wind.”

“I’ll have them send up dinner,” Gregor said, standing and setting his instrument aside. “And maybe a pot of dark brew… this is going to take some time.”

What the Mountains Hold is a piece of fiction from Settlements of the Dragonsbreath Mountains, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara.

The burly, onyx-scaled lizardfolk took a deep breath of the hot, gritty air, his crimson crest and frills extending as he savored the sensation as one would a fine tobacco. The boom of a volcano erupting in the distance added another dimension to the simple pleasure. Gnav smiled as he exhaled.

He didn’t need to look behind him to know that his charges were averting their gazes and shifting their feet. The sudden, sweet inflection of their scents was as good as them telling their Cinderscale guide that they were uncomfortable. Uncomfortable because of him. How could he pause to enjoy a place that was the spitting image of the hells portrayed in the holy books of so many faiths?

The three men wouldn’t say anything, though. They were laborers from the town of Osmen Slough, a once-prosperous mining settlement that was now steadily buckling from senescence and stagnation ever since the ore dried up. Age had already etched its first lines on the men’s faces, put bags under their eyes and shortened their breaths. They had left Osmen Slough in search of better prospects before they were no longer able to.

And right now, Gnav of the Razor Skulls was the key to those better prospects. He continued on the rough defile that cut between two jagged mountains, and he didn’t look back. The crunch of boots on gravel told him that his charges were keeping up. The jaunty pattern of their steps told him that they were desperately eager to be done with the journey. Eager to see whether all of the talk about Ironfire was fire or merely smoke.

Since slaying the red dragon Arvothaxx, most of Gnav’s jobs had consisted of escorting travelers to and from the City of Steel. The travelers felt protected, if not at ease, in the presence of a dragonslayer. That suited Gnav just fine. It meant quiet journeys with few questions and plenty of time to enjoy the ambiance, especially on this journey.

Gnav and his charges had already been on the road for two days, and they would be on the road for at least three more. The Razor Skull had had to cross through the heart of the Dragonsbreath Mountains to meet the laborers, of whom he had received word from a relative of theirs living in Ironfire. Even for a seasoned native like Gnav, the journey had not been easy, and he took petty pleasure in the fact that they would have to go back through the heart of the mountains. Home sweet home to him. Volatile hellscape to them.

The laborers’ breathing was getting ragged, and the day was barely half over, but Gnav didn’t slow down. He knew that he was doing them and Ironfire a service. If they couldn’t handle the heat, rock and smoke now, they would never make it in the city. And Gnav knew just the place to test his charges’ tolerance for heat, rock, and smoke…

The laborers shared a drink from a shriveled waterskin. Gnav quickened his pace. Lava rumbled off in the distance.

About an hour later, the defile yielded to a towering volcano. Gnav and his charges were like insects before it. The rumbling lava had grown louder, too. The laborers gasped with nervous awe and sweat sweetened their scent. Gnav smiled, a gesture that was partly mischievous and partly predatory.

“Rest soon,” the Razor Skull rasped.

The laborers gulped and nodded. Gnav knew that they were trying to convince themselves that this, whatever this was, was still better than Osmen Slough. For their sake, Gnav hoped that they were successful.

He led his charges around the volcano, and as they passed into its lee, the laborers’ eyes widened as a lake of lava came into view. In loose crescents radiating from the banks of the bright lake stood clusters of buildings of black rock with scaly, red roofs, roads winding between them. A foreboding cavern loomed at the back of the town, due south from where Gnav and his charges stood. The Cinderscale paused to take another deep breath, savoring it more than the last now that the air was more heat than grit.

“Are we there?” one of the laborers dared to ask. “Have we reached Ironfire?”

Gnav chuckled, a throaty, entirely inhuman noise. “No.” He looked back at his charges. They were standing closer together and gripping their hiking staves tightly. Their faces, clothes and hands were smudged with dirt. “This is Desire’s Fall,” Gnav said, “We will rest here and restock our rations before continuing on to Fireheart. After that, we will go to Thousand Step Gorge, and then we will be at Ironfire.”

One of the laborers frowned. “Why so many stops? Wouldn’t it be better to go through the mountains as quickly as possible?”

“These mountains are dangerous. We must meet them on their terms,” Gnav replied matter-of-factly. “That means that when they offer us one of the treasures they hold, we graciously accept.”

“So why is it called Desire’s Fall, then?” another of the laborers asked.

Gnav smiled. “You’ll have to follow me if you want to find out…”

A Tall Glass of Winter Wine is a piece of fiction from 100 Whispers & Rumors To Hear in Hoardreach, The City of Wyrms!, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara.

The wind that swirled through the North District had claws, and it raked them over any patch of exposed skin it could find, digging at padded coats and fur cloaks as it tried to get at the warmth underneath. It wasn’t just the cold of a mountaintop, either… the chill in this part of the city was unnatural, and it went bone-deep. Frost spread over the windows and doors like creeping rot, and most people on the street were bundled to their eyes, with thick hoods pulled over their heads, and heavy boots wrapping their feet. Some, though, were dressed in light jackets, dresses or even shirt sleeves, as if they couldn’t feel the cold. One woman with her hair blowing in the wind had the blue-stained lips that testified to a regular use of potions, while a kobold in a leather jerkin had the sere, white scales of those born to the mountain peaks.

Most who seemed comfortable in the cold, though, bore the black-edged wyrm mark of Frost Fang, the dragon who claimed at least half of the district’s territory on any given day.

A man in layered leather and woolens, with a headscarf tied around his face, walked through the chill streets. He carried a hard-used quarterstaff, using it as a walking stick on the icy paving stones. Outlanders were fairly common in the City of Wyrms, even in the North District, and there was nothing truly curious about him at a glance. Those who met his eyes looked away quickly, though. They burned with purpose, determination and focus. They were the eyes of a man who would brook no obstacle to his course of action.

The outlander came to the doors of a huge longhouse that stood outside the walls of the city proper. Built of massive timbers, and a roof shingled in dark slate that captured the warmth of the sun, one of the narrow sides was a set of doors that were over twenty feet high, reinforced with steel bands the width of a man’s arm. A smaller, wicket door set inside one of the larger doors allowed more average-sized customers to make their way inside. The man knocked the head of his staff against the door, and a moment later he heard the sound of a heavy bar being drawn back. The door opened, and he stepped inside before the wind could beat him over the threshold.

The longhouse was dim inside, lit only by storm lanterns and candles that seemed to wilt like burning flowers in the chill. Wooden tables were scattered around, and those that had customers seated at them had fire-heated bricks placed beneath them to warm the area. A heavy bar with thick curtains that kept in the heat ran along one of the long walls, but the back of the place was a massive, stone fireplace so large half a dozen men could stand shoulder-to-shoulder inside it. Carved into the shape of a gigantic mouth, the flames that blazed inside of it were enough to banish the cold, and turn the frost on one’s clothes into a gentle trickle of tears.

A woman sat a dozen feet from that fire, one leg crossed over the other in a heavy, straight-backed chair. She was dressed in thick, whipcord trousers, with boots made from bearskin. Her tunic was made of the same material, edged in white fur. Her arms and face were bare, and she held a goblet in one hand as she gazed into the fire. Her skin was the pale blue of ice, and her hair was a soft white that held the fire’s glow until it drowned between the pale waves. Perhaps the most striking thing about her, though, was that if she’d stood her head would have brushed the rafters.

Even in a place like Hoardreach, Ravina Hundar stood out.

The outlander crossed the wide floor, skirting around the tables, and bypassing the bar entirely. He tapped his staff on the flagstones as he approached, the sound clearly marking him out. Despite that, the frost giantess didn’t turn her gaze from the flames. The outlander rested his hands on his staff, and looked up at her.

“It’s a bit early in the day, isn’t it Ravina?” he asked.

The blue-skinned giant blinked, and turned her head to look at the man. She pursed her lips, and a frown line creased her forehead as she regarded him with eyes that had all the color and warmth of an iceberg. After a long moment a smile crooked one corner of her mouth.

“I know your voice,” Ravina said after a long moment. “Jace?”

The outlander pulled at the headscarf, letting it slide down around his neck. He offered the giant a smile and a bow, spreading his arms wide without taking his eyes off of her. Ravina slowly recrossed her legs, and took a long sip from her goblet.

“It’s a pleasure to lay my eyes on you once again, captain,” Jace said.

“If my memory serves, when last we met I threatened to throw you over the side of my ship,” Ravina said, idly swirling the dark wine in her glass.

“Your memory is as perfect as the rest of you,” Jace said, holding up a small, leather bag. He opened it, and spilled the contents into one hand. A collection of flawless rubies caught the light, winking in his palm. “However, if you’d allow, I’d like to buy you another drink and apologize to you properly.”

Ravina took a deeper drink from her goblet, and stood from her personal seat. She gestured toward a set of stairs that led up to the side table near her chair. Two strides took her to the bar, and she went down on one knee, setting her goblet on the ground. The barman swung over a barrel of winter wine using a chain hoist, emptying it into the cup. Once it was full, Ravina stood, hefted her glass, and returned to her seat.

“What is it you want this time, Jace?” she asked, taking a gulp that cost more than some men made in a year.

“Your forgiveness, of course,” Jace said.

“And?” Ravina asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, there is one other thing…” Jace said. “Would it be possible for you to find room on your next voyage for, say, four extra passengers?”

Bottom of The Bottle is a piece of fiction from 100 Whispers and Rumors For Silkgift, The City of Sails!, one of the supplements for Cities of Sundara.

Despite the name, Nightmare Alley didn’t look like much at a glance. The cobbled street was narrow and winding, and the buildings to either side were built mostly of stone, with wooden upper stories, lots of windows and tiled roofs. Oddly-colored smoke plumed out of various chimneys, and there were some rather loud bangs from one third story window, but other than that the neighborhood seemed rather harmless.

Appearances could be deceiving, though… especially in a place like this.

The Outlander found the address he’d been given down a side street that was little more than a wide crack between two of the houses. The narrow walking path was close, and it stank of refuse and slop water. The door at number 16 and a half was made of heavy timbers held together with iron banding, and while it bore an intimidating a lock on the outside, the Outlander was sure there was also a bar on the inside. There was no pull rope for a bell, but there was an odd mesh of brass over a hole in the wall. He leaned down, and heard a strange sound coming out of the metal mesh. It was a thick, panting, animal sound. A sound full of growling aggression and barely controlled anger.

“Renard,” the Outlander said into the mesh.

As if the name was a trigger, the snarls grew into a low roar. The door shook in its frame as something started hammering on the other side. Wood cracked, and one of the hinges bent out of true. Thinking quickly, the Outlander stood clear of the door, speaking rapidly into the mesh next to the door.

“Sunset. Moonrise. Starshine. Lullaby,” he said, speaking the sequence of words quickly, and clearly.

As soon as he finished speaking, the hammering on the door stopped. The enraged roars ceased, replaced with a low, pained moaning sound. Several moments later the Outlander heard panting breath, and raspy words come back through the speaking tube.

“Jace?” the voice asked through the grille. “Is that you?”

“It’s me, Renard,” the Outlander said. “Is it safe?”

“Safe enough,” he said with a harsh chuckle. “Give me a moment.”

The Outlander waited, arms folded in the narrow alley. An argument broke out on the street where he’d come from, and all he could make out through the slurring were two men trying to quote mathematical formulae at once another. A cart filled with heavy barrels rolled by, pulled by an ogre with a harness across his chest and shoulders. The sun slid down a few more inches toward the horizon. Just as he was beginning to wonder if Renard was in danger, he heard grunting, and the sound of the bar being lifted out of its brackets. A moment later the door opened with a creak, and the Outlander was face to face with the man he’d come all the way to Silkgift to see.

There didn’t seem to be much to him, truth be told. Renard was a slight man with stooped shoulders, disheveled brown hair, and a rather average build. He was a head shorter than his visitor, and several days of salt and pepper stubble sat on his chin. He looked like any of a dozen other tinkerers and alchemists who made their home in this part of the city. Unlike those others, though, Renard was dressed in torn and tattered clothing that was much too big for him, and there was a sizable leg iron around his right ankle. The chain had been snapped with great force, and a short length of it dangled from the manacle like a dead snake. When Renard raised his gaze to his visitor’s face, his eyes were deep, dark and haunted.

“What happened?” The Outlander asked.

“I was trying a different treatment,” Renard said. “He was… I was growing resistant to the old formula. The alterations seemed to be working.”

The Outlander glanced past Renard’s shoulder. Deep gouges ran across the hardwood floor, and a steel cage had been rent asunder. The cage’s bars were all bent outward, as if whatever was being held inside had broken out. The Outlander turned his gaze to Renard, and he shrugged one shoulder, letting his gaze drop back to the floor.

“What brought you all this way?” Renard asked.

“I need your help,” The Outlander said.

Renard laughed. It was a bitter, angry sound. He flung a hand over his shoulder to indicate his broken laboratory. “I can’t even help myself, Jace. What is it you think I can do for you?”

“Gregor is here,” the Outlander said. Renard blinked.

“Did you… did you tell him your purpose in coming here?”

The Outlander smiled. “I daresay he knows.”

Renard swallowed hard, and looked back toward the wreck of his laboratory. He chewed on his lip for a moment; a nervous habit that even after all these years he hadn’t broken. The alchemist rubbed the back of his neck, and tilted his head. It was as if he was listening to a conversation only he could hear.

“Where are we going?” Renard asked.

“Hoardreach,” the Outlander responded.

Renard’s eyes widened. For a long moment he didn’t say anything. Neither did his guest.

“Is that where she went?” Renard asked.

“It is,” the Outlander replied.

“Ah,” was all Renard said. He swallowed, and nodded his head once. “Where are you staying? I need to… clean up. And prepare enough doses for the road.”

“You can find us in Great Ferry,” the Outlander said. “The Inn of The Red Ox.”

“I’ll be there by sunset,” Renard said.

“Good.” The Outlander favored the alchemist with a smile. “I’ve booked us passage for the morrow. The journey should be uneventful, if luck is with us.”

“I hope it is,” Renard said as he closed the door. “For once, I hope it is.”

The Outlander turned, and retraced his steps. He had assembled nearly all of his allies. The last, though, he felt would be the most difficult to persuade to his cause. But that would be a challenge he would face when they reached the City of Wyrms.