Broker

Sonya didn’t move an inch from her seat, her eyes fixed on the dungeon gate. Amos had already set up around it and was taking readings with his instruments and had even offered to send in more drones with flight plans. Sonya had turned the idea down, giving the explanation that she didn’t want to risk it. Honestly, it really didn’t matter and she could have even brought in a crew to mine the enormous wealth inside, but that would be basically broadcasting that the crystals inside were valuable way too early. It was again, disappointing, but what could she really do about it? She’d considered calling in Shark and his team to ‘raid’ the dungeon behind Firestorm in order to get the materials but there was no way that wouldn’t scream coincidence.

She frowned, the searching eyes of that detective popping up in her mind again. He’d had good instincts, even refusing to shake hands with her. Her finger twitched and she leaned back, crossing her arms and watching the portal carefully. It had barely been an hour since Firestorm’s team had gone inside. Will they really be okay? Should I send Marta in anyway? Hmm…

“Just let them have their time,” Marta said from her side, not even glancing her way.

Sonya let out a huff, “Am I that easy to read?”

“I’m tempted to buy you a hat that says helicopter parent,” Marta teased, eliciting a snort of laughter from Amos on the other side of the room.

Sonya clicked her tongue and looked away, a little embarrassed. “They…” She sighed, “They’re just what I want to see from the heroes. I want them to set a precedent. Not end up like Duong.”

“He officially became Vietnam’s top hero yesterday, started a guild with his fiance,” Marta said after a pause, not hiding the approving smile on her face. She shrugged and looked over at the portal, “They’re setting a precedent now. Whatever’s in there, it’s important, isn’t it?”

Sonya looked up at her friend and noted with her senses that the aides that had come with them had already left for a short break. It was just the three of them. She hesitated for a moment before nodding, “...yes.”

“More of that mysterious knowledge of yours?” Amos asked with a grin, glancing away from his equipment for the first time.

“Yes,” Sonya said simply, “It’d be better to see for yourself, to be honest, but suffice to say that it isn’t hard to figure out once you go inside. You ever play Shaded Spirts, Amos?” She asked and stretched her legs out, crossing them at her ankles.

He blinked at her in confusion, “Uh… yeah? Why?”

“There you go,” She said with a dismissive gesture, “You put it together on your own.”

He looked away with a furrowed brow for a moment before flinching and rounding on her, his eyes wide, “Are you serious? That’s what’s in there? Are they going to be okay? Wait…” He looked at his fingers for a moment, “So you’re saying it has to be cleared or…”

Sonya made a mock gesture of an explosion, “Pshhhh,” She elaborated with a bit of a goofy smile.

He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers into them before looking up at the portal, “Good luck guys, we’re counting on you.”

–

It turned out that the blade devils weren’t all that hard to kill. The trick, it turned out, was direct precision attacks. Indirect damage or splash damage did very little to their frail looking bodies and the only reason Firestorm’s flames did as much damage as they did was because of the raw power behind them. He had come to refer to it as the separation of tiers, there was simply a qualitative difference between the firepower of a heroic like himself and someone of the epic tier, for example. Then you had to take the unique traits of the monster or enemy into consideration.

Boiling it down, he got the impression that the little devils were barely uncommon in strength, hardly a match for a party of four heroics, but still a threat in numbers. The blade devils were uncommon as well, going down in a single hit sometimes from one of Bandit’s dark arrows, his blatant overkill of the first notwithstanding. Firestorm’s problem was that he had been acting in the role of crowd control, dealing with large swaths of enemies rather than focusing on single opponents, because of that, the blade devils barely noticed his attacks despite the tier disparity.

After his initial blitz, the ground floor turned into a killing ground on a similar level to the first floor they’d encountered. The only real dangers being nearly a dozen blade devils hiding throughout the room, their disturbing bodies contorted in on themselves and hiding in places no natural thing should be able to hide in. At one point one even came out of an air vent, attempting to cut Lifesaver to ribbons as he passed it. It had been riddled with bolts of blue light before it even got close, Bluestar’s own attacks having grown even stronger since they’d arrived.

After clearing the floor, they’d heard an elevator ring in the distance, alerting them that they could continue going up. They’d half expected to have to ascend the building by the stairs and had been pleasantly surprised at the streamlined way this ‘dungeon’ handled traversing its various floors. One thing they did notice though was that the service elevator they had come out of had dimmed and become unusable. Unless they literally burned through the floor, there was no turning back. 

As they ascended to the second floor, they discussed their strategy. An initial blitz by Firestorm seemed like the best option and they weren’t about to deviate just because they wanted to shake things up. This was a live-or-die situation and they didn’t know if there would be even more types of monsters inside. It was best to purge as much as they could in the initial contact before assessing the situation further. These monsters were in no way interested in talking, and his team was fine with that.

The door chimed as it reached his destination and Firestorm held out his palms, concentrating on another explosive burst of flame just as they opened. As before, the entire floor was filled with fire in a matter of seconds, his hands spreading out as he took a step outside to force the flames across the floor and pursue any of the little devils that had been waiting for them. The screams of dying monsters was evidence enough that their plan was a good one. That was until they got a good look at the interior.

This floor was less open as the ground floor, looking more like the interior of an office building. It kind of surprised Firestorm that the walls themselves didn’t catch fire, but he supposed that was a unique trait of this place. More important was the thing standing amidst the burning corpses of its comrades. It was at least three times the height of one of the diminutive little devils, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with Firestorm himself. It had the same reddish skin and cloven hooved inverted legs, but that was where their similarities ended. 

It looked more like a saytr if he had to put a name on it. Its horns were fully grown compared to its kin and its eyes had a gleam of intelligence to them. It wore very little, just like the others, but he supposed it dressed ‘better’. It wore a fur lined sash of some actual design and quality that hung down like a loincloth between its legs. It also held a weapon, a big step above the other creatures. A steel mace was gripped tightly in its right hand, the metal gleaming against the sea of fire that surrounded it. It tilted its head and sneered at Firestorm, flexing the fingers on its free hand.

“He is way more dangerous,” Bandit said for everyone thinking it, already knocking an arrow on his bow. The creature’s eyes shifted towards Bandit and seemed to dismiss him before he turned his gaze on Bluestar. That was when things got unsettling. Its smile turned cruel and its eyes glittered with barely restrained delight. It held bore its teeth, looking in her direction before they could even react, a glow flashing from its eyes. Firestorm moved to get in her way, throwing up his arms to block whatever attack was incoming only to blink when… nothing happened.

He glanced over his shoulder at Bluestar and she looked equally confused, looking herself over a little and scratching her head.

They looked back at the creature and it just frowned, its eyes narrowing, “Mago.” It snarled and changed tactics.

“They can talk?!” Was Bandit’s first reaction before a ball of fire was hurled in his direction. He raised his bow to intercept it with an arrow only for the flame to wink out of existence. He blinked and looked up at Firestorm, the team leader’s face set in a deadly scowl. “Uh…”

“He’s mine,” Firestorm growled, stepping forward into the room, “Clear out the blade devils.”

“Are you sure?” Bluestar asked, “He didn’t do anything I don’t think.”

“He sure as hell tried to, I’m pretty sure I know what we’re dealing with here,” Firestorm grunted and stepped out into the open space where the thing he identified as some kind of incubus waited for him. It made a disgusted face, waving its hand dismissively at him before glancing lecherously in Bluestar’s direction. Firestorm raised his head and looked down on it, “I don’t know if you can understand me, but you just crossed a line.”

It turned its eyes back on him and though there was no gleam of understanding his words specifically, the meaning had come across loud and clear. It sneered at him and the mace in its hands ignited only to immediately wink out. It blinked and looked down at its weapon in confusion, it was like it had never had this problem before. “Performance issue?” Firestorm asked with a grin, tilting his head. The creature scowled and looked up at him just in time to get a fist in the face full of flame. Not the weaker spread out flames he’d used to deal with the little devils still littering the floor in the room, but a concentrated flame hot enough to bend iron.

It hurtled back almost three meters, letting out a shriek of pain as it clutched at its face and scrambled to its feet, conjuring another ball of fire in its palm. Firestorm just willed the fire to vanish and gave it a condescending look, “Looks like you just met a bad match-up.” It looked up at him with more confusion than fear, as if it had never met something that could simply overpower it in its life. Had it always been an apex predator? Among the blade devils and little devils, probably. But now it was faced with a heroic-tier who had more control over fire than it could have ever imagined possible in its life.

The fight went quickly after that, the corpse of the thing laying on the ground in a matter of minutes after Firestorm finished with it. He turned away and found his friends waiting for him, Bluestar giving him a bit a weird look, “What?” He asked.

“You didn’t have to do that,” She said, “It didn’t have any effect on me.”

He frowned and looked down at his hands, “Yeah, well, I felt like it…” He said with a bit of a flush to his face and rubbed his neck, “On to the next?” He asked, noting the defeated blade demons scattered around the room.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Bandit asked.

He blinked at his friend, “Huh? What?”

“Loot, brother! Loot! My god have you ever played a video game before? That mace looked sick, man,” Bandit exclaimed, getting a tired look from Bluestar and a laugh from Lifesaver.

Firestorm frowned, turning back and pulling the weapon out of the creature’s broken grasp. He looked it over, “It’s not that impressive,” He said with a frown and began to channel heat into it, “See? It…” Nothing happened. He channeled more heat, “Wait a sec…” He scowled and the flames on his fingers began to turn white, he concentrated, squeezing the weapon tightly before he finally let it go with a gasp, looking at the weapon with a bit of wonder now. “Holy shit, it’s fireproof.”

He glanced up at Bandit who was giving him a smug look from beneath his hood and couldn’t help but appreciate the guys insight. He held it out, “Do you want it?” He asked.

Bandit sighed dramatically as if he was explaining something to a child, “Your kill, your loot, more importantly I’d say it’s a perfect fit. That whole boxing thing earlier looked kind of dorky.”

“It wasn’t dorky!” Firestorm protested.

“If you boys are done bickering, the elevator is waiting,” Bluestar said with a small laugh, passing between the two of them, Lifesaver in tow. “I’m going up, what are you going to do?”

Firestorm and Bandit exchanged looks before he ultimately gave up on the argument. He looked down at the weapon in his hands and clutched it by the grip. He pursed his lips and considered the weapon for a moment before the wicked-looking head of the silvery weapon ignited into intense yellow flames. He swung it around a few times and was pleased to see it wasn’t that hard to maintain. He pat the flaming head of the weapon in the palm of his hand and glanced up at Bandit who was giving him a smug look.

He grunted, “Yeah, yeah, it’s nice,” He grumbled and hurried to follow the other three as they made their way to the elevator and crowd inside. 

Bluestar stood next to the button and they got back into formation. “Ready boys?” She asked.

“Let’s do it,” Firestorm said and the doors closed in front of him.

The next four floors went about the same, just with larger numbers to be honest. It seemed like the primary creatures of this place were the blade devils, little devils, and the incubi acting as some kind of leaders. At one point things got a little hairy as one of the incubi and a crowd of little devils managed to escape Firestorms initial blitz and mounted a solid counter-attack. It seemed like the incubi were some kind of commanders, able to keep the little devils organized during a fight and make them significantly more threatening, but ultimately they were no match for the party of heroic-tiers. While they ignored most of the bodies, they did make an effort to gather the weapons of the incubi, the material they were made was something Amos would be very interested in.

It was as they were getting into the elevator and began heading towards the eighth total floor that things began to feel different. The button had changed from the usual illuminated yellow to a dark red. 

“The boss, you think?” Lifesaver asked, his arms crossed.

“Seems likely, but we’ve only gone up eight floors, the building is way bigger than that,” Bluestar said thoughtfully, “Though based on the windows, it does seem like we’ve been skipping floors now and then.”

“Windows?” Firestorm asked.

“You haven’t been looking out the windows? They’re right there, you can see the city,” Bluestar said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. The three men looked down at their feet and she let out a sigh, “Anyway, Sonya’s waiting for us, so let’s get this over with,” She said and hit the button. The doors shut, and the team of four, full of confidence, began their final ascent.