Xanthippe (Chapter 10)

Template:Xanthippe nav The Horadric Cube was an incredibly useful thing. You could make rejuvenation potions, greater rejuves, improve gems, change item enchantments, craft items with specific properties, there were all kinds of recipes. Most needed rare and expensive ingredients, but that's pretty common in alchemy. Some recipes, like the gems and potions, seemed to follow a "law of threes"; three of something made an improved version of the same. Others didn't have much rhyme or reason -- for instance, two packs of arrows would make a set of bolts, or two bolts would make a bunch of arrows. How the cube differentiated one unenchanted pile of sticks and another was unclear.

After playing with the cube for a while, Xanthippe ran out of things to transform. Her chest had more room, and she had many valuable gems. One was a big diamond, about the size of her mom's pendant. The pendant was a gift from a customer, maybe Xanthippe's father, and mom was very protective of it. Looking at the sparkling gem, it occurred to Xanthippe that she hadn't gone to visit her family. She wasn't sure if she wanted to. They did sell her to the Zann Esu. The Zann Esu always claimed they don't "buy" their apprentices, but the families are always rewarded. Xanthippe couldn't imagine her grandmother giving up anything without some kind of compensation.

For that matter, Xanthippe hadn't seen anyone from the guilds on the streets. The buildings they worked out of didn't smell of perfume, and none of the expected sounds filled the night. She went to look at her grandmother's house, near the palace; it had been divided into a set of apartments not long ago, and families were living there. Where was her mother? Jerhyn was outside his palace; he must know.

"Lord Jerhyn, I crave a moment of your time."

"You need but ask. Please, how may I help you?"

Xanthippe smiled. Lord Fat-ass never said 'please' to anybody. "When I visited here last, there were several harem guilds operating..."

"Ah, yes. Another relic of my father's days. I fear the reputation of our city and our people suffered greatly during his reign, and it will be years before we recover our good name."

"So... you've banned the guilds?"

"No, no." Jerhyn smiled. "My father, though I owe him my life and position, enriched himself by pandering to man's lowest impulses. Gambling houses, hired women, blood sports, all of these things were used to separate the unprincipled from their wealth. I want to change our city, and make Lut Gholein a true jewel of the desert, not a polished paste gem, cheap and showy."

"So the harems had to go."

"The harems..." Jerhyn thought for a moment. "They presented me with a quandary. I believe our city -- my city -- should have real products to offer the world, not low entertainments. Did you know that, before my father's time, there was a great tradition of craft here? Works in glass, clay, and stone, the best in the world."

"No, I didn't know that."

"Antiques from that period are treasured in the noble houses of every land. Now, our potters and glass blowers produce nothing but cheap trinkets and souvenirs for visitors. The waters of the bay were once clear and clean. Fish were abundant, but between heavy fishing for the feasts, and the sheer... waste that flowed back, the fish are nearly gone. Weeds and slime choke the waters."

That was well before Xanthippe's time. The bay had always been black and smelly, as far as she knew. "So, you want everyone to go into 'honest' business."

"I want my city to be something more than a bawdy house, for visitors to let themselves loose in. With time to recover, our bay could produce fish for sale again, in quantities that could be sustained for centuries. I have been encouraging our craftsmen to return to the old ways of making things, and revive our past glory."

"What about the harems?"

Jerhyn took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. "The harems... no longer have official sanction. Depending on them was degrading for our city, and for the poor girls forced into that way of life by my father's greed. I will not force them from their business, but I will not condone it. They continued to operate, but were no longer allowed to parade their 'wares' in the streets before visitors. They are no longer taxed, so none of their profits flow to me, but I have forced heavy fines on them for any public displays of licentiousness."

Xanthippe slowly nodded. "You say, 'continued.' Where are they all now? I don't see any sign of them."

"Since the troubles began, I have allowed them to... live inside the palace."

"Inside the palace?"

Jerhyn looked nervous. "Yes. There are many refugees from the deserts and oases hiding inside our walls now. Some are rough folk, probably bandits. Others are strongly religious, and think the harem girls were the cause for the countryside's corruption. After many unpleasant incidents, the girls begged me for more protection. Scattered throughout the city, my guards could do little, so I offered them shelter within the palace walls."

Feeling a bit skeptical, Xanthippe nodded. "That was very generous of you, Lord Jerhyn."

"Generosity had only a small part to play. With so many crowding inside the walls, keeping the peace was absolutely necessary, and my guards must concentrate on their real duties. Besides which, much of the palace was empty. Moving the harems inside allowed refugees to stay in their houses, and greatly relieved the crowding."

That might actually be true. It sounded plausible. "Well... I suppose that under unusual circumstances, unusual measures must be taken. I hope your city survives, Jerhyn. Now, I'd better go help you with that."

Well, at least her mom was probably all right. Jerhyn sure was nervous, though. He must be concerned about the city; if he was nervous about just himself, he'd probably be on Meshif's ship and sailing away. But he'd ordered all ships to remain in the bay, so nothing evil could infect other lands. Jerhyn might be sacrificing himself to try to protect the rest of the world; that would make anyone nervous. Xanthippe should know.

When she'd walked back to her chest, she saw something on top of it: a pair of light gauntlets, and a note. "Dear Xanthippe," it read. "Having great time. Wish you were here. XOXOXO The Mule." The gauntlets were magical: 30% cold resistance, and 10% increased attack speed. No one had seen who'd left the gauntlets. Xanthippe read the note again, not sure if she was grateful or insulted. But the gauntlets would come in handy.

Back out in the field, Xanthippe and Waheed entered a bug-filled oasis. Clouds of demon mosquitoes, with a collective will of their own, tried to drain her dry. Huge beetles spat lightning when struck. But she kept a close eye on Waheed, feeling more than a little guilty about Razan, and Debi, and Gaile. Now she understood, when Gaile jumped between her and a demon, she was just trying to protect her flank. All the other mercs did the same thing; soldiers are trained to work together and look out for each other. If only he wouldn't keep wandering away from the cliff walls, out in the open.

"Hey, Waheed. I want you to do something."

"Okay. Like what?"

"I want you to stick closer to the cliff, and not get out in the open where you can be surrounded."

"Uh... but you're there."

"Yeah. I want to keep our backs to it."

Waheed stared at her. "Uh..."

"That way, monsters can't come up behind us."

"What about those vultures?"

"Vultures?" Xanthippe looked up.

A cloud of vultures was swooping down the cliff. So much for protecting her back. These were a group of champions, very tough and fast. Waheed's spear came in handy, though; she'd bought him one with an Amplify Damage curse on it. With that, they vanquished the vultures, and Waheed returned to his old position, away from the cliff. He still got clouds of mosquitoes around him, but seemed less bothered by them than the vultures.

In the middle of the oasis, a round hole, easily large enough to admit a man, descended into the sand. It did not look man-made; the walls looked like sand glued together by a insects. This might be where the giant bugs were coming from, so Xanthippe went down. There were plenty of giant bugs down there, and pieces of dead people, some of them wrapped up in slimy tendrils and writhing with gigantic, growing maggots. They squished them all.

Deeper into the maggot lair, swarms of bugs and huge sand maggots were everywhere. The sand maggots had always been a threat, but they were never so numerous or powerful before this. When they ran into one that was demonically enchanted, things became very bad. Its skin was like stone, very tough, and its blood was enchanted with lightning. They could only beat on it for so long before they had to retreat to heal, and it kept regenerating all the damage they could do. Finally, Xanthippe just decided to charge the thing, and bash it into oblivion or die trying. Waheed and she chopped and stabbed, while it spat poison and retreated into the sandy floor to heal. In the end, it died, but Waheed died first; Xanthippe's potion belt was empty.

At her request, Greiz brought out another mercenary: Kasim. Determined to keep him alive, Xanthippe raided Fara's smithy and Elzix's back-room pawn shop for anything with lightning resistance or poison resistance. All of her mercenaries had been killed by those, so she obviously needed to guard against them. The rest of the maggot lair went smoothly, down to the deepest part. A huge, bloated, pulsing queen of the maggots was down there, laying adult maggots. As disgusting as the queen was, killing it was fairly easy; it went up in an explosion of poisonous slime. Xanthippe brought antidote potions for both of them, but it was still totally gross. Inside the maggot queen's lair was an old staff, with its headpiece broken off.

As she suspected, the staff was a Horadric staff. If she could keep herself, and her mercenary, alive, she might be able to locate the headpiece and reunite them in the Horadric Cube. Diablo had not put in an appearance. Cain said the third of the brothers, Mephisto, was on the other side of the Twin Seas in Kurast, and Diablo would need a ship to reach him. It was safe to assume Diablo was still searching for Baal, but probably not for much longer.