Mantle of the Gods

I turned right as soon as I got through the portal.

The woman in front of me had the purple horned demon mark on the side of her face. She seemed surprised to see me and I didn’t give her a chance to try to fight back.

“BIND!”

To vines shot out of the ground and wrapped around her, pulling her to the floor and holding her tight.

“Let me go!” She thrashed as she tried to break free, “I must do the will of WURN!”

Ren was on her and slapping the restraints on her hands. As soon as the restraints were on, I released my spell and tried to help Ren get the woman to her feet, but she kept kicking and screaming and even tried to bite me.

I looked over at the other pair who were having a much easier time with their target. The balding man looked like he was high as he bobbed in Aelin’s grasp.

“What did you do to him?” I looked at the blonde.

“This is Charm.” Aelin smiled, “Give it a few minutes to wear off and he’ll be as feral as yours.”

“What is this?” Ether knelt down at what almost looked like a potted plant, except it was nothing except foot long black hair growing out of a pot of purple goo.

“I have no idea.”

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” The woman Ren was holding doubled her efforts to get free, “HEATHENS MUST NOT DEFILE THE SEEDS OF OUR GOD!”

I swallowed. I’d seen a dungeon seed a few days ago. It had almost caused a dungeon break in Tres. I did not want to be around if something like that happened here.

“A seed?” Ether looked at me.

“Dungeon seed, they must be growing them here.” I looked around at the rest of the pocket. There were two beds and some containers, as well as some papers, but otherwise, not much.

“Should we take them?” Ether backed up.

I swallowed. I had no idea what the proper way to transport them was and I really didn’t want to be holding one if it went off.

“Let’s leave them for Trent to clean up.” I looked at the rest of my team, “We’re just supposed to get the people and get out.” I nodded at the portal, “Let’s go.”

Ether got up and ran through the portal as Oz and I got our weapons out.

It was slower going back than it had been coming down because the prisoners weren’t being very cooperative. Aelin had been right, All it took was a few minutes for Charm to wear off and we had two resisting, screaming, and cursing prisoners. Aelin was at least able to reapply Charm, so I felt for Ren. She had to wrestle her prisoner all by herself.

Once we made it back to the dungeon gate, I linked it to the surface and fired it up. It took a moment to connect, but once it did, we were able to all get out of the dungeon.

Unfortunately, we had to go two blocks to get to the Authority Station and that took us right past Tophua’s Blacksmith. I’d tried to angle us through the middle of town to avoid the barracks and the bar on the outside, but the amount of screaming that the woman was doing, drew everyone out to see what was going on.

We must have been the first ones to reach the surface because there were a lot of confused looks on people’s faces.

“What’s going on?!” Aryne saw us and put his hands on his hips, “What are you kids doing to those poor people?”

“It’s a Temple matter.” I found myself wishing for some type of badge, then remembered the mark. I grabbed the woman and turned her face so the black-haired man could see. “They’re part of the Cult of Wurn.” I tried not to let the nervousness of seeing so many Tier Three and Four Adventurers focusing on me show, “We’re taking them to the Authority Station as directed by the Temple!”

Tophua came out of his shop and stood in between us and the crowd coming out of the bar to our right.

“Leave them alone!” Tophua motioned at us, “I’ll go along with them and make sure that this whole thing is on the up and up.”

While the crowd didn’t look happy, that was at least enough to get most of them to head back inside.

Tophua grabbed the woman Ren and Ether were wrestling by the collar and started dragging her towards the Authority Station. He looked at me as I jogged to try to keep up.

“You’re going to have to tell me what’s going on.”