Difference between revisions of "Xanthippe (Chapter 18)"

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Xanthippe (Act III)#Chapter 18

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-While they were exploring the second temple in the Kurast bazaar, Kasim seemed to be thinking.  After a while, he smiled, and said, "Hey, boss?  You know what?"
-After taking a moment to not-very-neatly remove a ghoul's head, Xanthippe answered, "What?"
-"I think you've been lying."
-"No, I haven't.  Incoming!"  They ran away just as a meteor crashed through the ceiling and shattered in a ball of fire.  Pity what these ghouls were doing to the city. "What makes you think I've been lying?"
-"Well, maybe not lying, but making it worse than it is."
-"Exaggerating."
-"Yeah.  It's like this: you said the Zann Esu wanted to reject everything men knew, right?"
-"Everything tainted by a biased male perspective, yes."
-"But you also said they brought a bunch of books with them into the jungle.  If they didn't want them, why'd they bring them?"
-After they'd beaten the last ghoul into a pile of bone splinters, Xanthippe answered, "So they could try to prove them all wrong.  Hard to do that if you don't have the original material to dissect and misquote."
-"Oh."
-"You know, the Zann Esu philosophy is supposed to be supportive, broad, nonjudgmental, and all-inclusive?"
-Kasim shook his head, and looked around the next corner.
-"Well, they are some of the most judgmental, intolerant philosophers ever.  Just try contradicting one of them sometime!  They all get the old girls' group together and jump all over you!  It's completely hypocritical!"
-"Heads up!" Kasim yelled, and sliced open a giant spider.
-Chopping up spiders, trying to avoid the webs, Xanthippe continued, "When we apprentices were supposed to look at 'older philosophies', they quoted the men's books at us.  The actual books were hidden so our delicate young minds wouldn't be polluted."
-"Yeah," Kasim grunted as he buried his poleaxe in a spider's bloated abdomen.
-"So I went and found where they were hiding them.  I stole one, hid it, and read the whole thing, not just the parts they wanted me to read."
-"You read a whole book?"
-After sticking her poleaxe in the last spider, it expired with a hiss.  Xanthippe smiled, and finally nodded to Kasim. "Ayuh.  A whole book."
-"Damn, that must have taken a long time."
-Turning away so he couldn't see the smirk, Xanthippe nodded. "Oh, yeah.  And you know what I read?"
-"About architecture?"
-"A lot more than that.  I thought, after reading one book, that one dead male had a lot better things to say than all my teachers."
-"Oh."
-"The book was about mathematics, and the elements.  It was all clear, concise, no babbling about political perspectives, or imposing male and female characters on fire, air, water, and earth.  They were just forces, energy, and matter.  I even found the sections the witches liked to quote; they'd been taken totally out of context to try to make them look stupid."
-They left the temple and trudged towards the bridge to upper Kurast; Xanthippe just went on and on.  Kasim tried to think of something that might shut her up again.  Finally, he remembered.  "Didn't you want to go into the sewers to look for something?"
-"Oh, yeah.  That heart thing."
-The Kurast sewers were huge, as you might expect for such a city.  They probably extended for miles underground.  Mostly, they were empty, but not completely.  Giant tentacled reptiles were living in the sewer nodes, and Mephisto seemed to have imported mummies, both greater and lesser, to fill in the dark places.  Pygmy skeletons were everywhere too.  On a trip back to town, Xanthippe visited Asheara, which she normally wouldn't do.  She couldn't even look at Asheara without giggling.  But Hratli didn't sell boots, and Xanthippe needed a new pair; they were one of her few items with fire resistance, and she needed much more than they had.
-"Hello there," Asheara smirked.  "You've been scarce."
-"Um, hi."  Xanthippe tried to look anywhere in the room but at Asheara.  "Just want to look over the stuff you've got for sale.  Need some boots."
-Asheara nodded, and stood behind her table of wares.  Xanthippe kept her eyes down hard on the table, the corners of her mouth twitching.  "Something funny?" Asheara asked.
-"No, nothing!" Xanthippe snerked.
-Patiently, Asheara waited, stroking her python and rubbing under its chin.  Xanthippe stood looking at the table for a long time... then began to tremble.  Asheara bent over to look at her downturned face.  Xanthippe's eyes were shut tight, tears trickling down her cheeks, her teeth clamped on her lip.
-"So laugh already," Asheara whispered in her ear.
-"BWA HA HA!"  Xanthippe face-planted on the table, dropping everything.  Her crown fell off, and her poleaxe clattered on the ground.  Smiling to herself, Asheara let her blow it off for a while before she spoke. "There, now.  Isn't that better?"
-"Yes... um..."
-"Now," Asheara handed Xanthippe her crown back, "what is so damned funny?"
-"YOU!!  Look at you!  What's with the leather bikini?!  And don't you think the snake is just a little too much?!  I mean, please!"
-"It's my look.  You have a problem with that?"
-"Your look.  'Hi, world!  Here are my tits!'  That's a look?"
-"And how is the typical sorceress belly-button display an improvement?"
-Xanthippe frowned. "Look, I don't know what the Zann Esu were thinking when they gave us all those outfits.  But I don't wear it into battle!"
-Asheara nodded, smiling. "That's all right, I don't either.  Then again, maybe you shouldn't even try.  You really don't have the bustline to pull off a bikini."
-Xanthippe smiled. "Maybe when I'm as old as you.  Or do the potions of manliness help somehow?"
-"Potions of manliness?" Kasim asked.
-"Sure." Xanthippe hunched over and did an imitation of Alkor: "Asheara is one of my best customers!  She buys a potion of manliness from me every week!"
-Asheara frowned, and tapped one bare foot.  "Do I look 'manly' to either of you clowns?"
-"It might explain why your voice is so deep," Xanthippe suggested.  "Come on.  What is this, some pathetic plea for attention?"
-Asheara snorted.  "You're sounding a lot like the rest of the Zann Esu right now."
-"No I'm not," Xanthippe retorted.
-"Oh, yes you are."  Asheara stood up very straight and huffed, "This blatant appeal to the lower emotions is undermining every effort we have made towards feminine equality!"
-"Uh... yeah, ok, the Zann Esu sound like that..."
-"Damn straight.  I studied under them for a few years.  I will wear what I damn well please.  Nobody tells me what to do."
-Xanthippe still looked unhappy. "Ok, you don't have to do what they tell you.  But that still doesn't explain why you're doing that."
-Asheara laughed, and struck a pose.  "Because I look damn good.  Why not?"
-"Well... men don't respect women who dress like that."
-"Hey, Vanji," Asheara said to her personal guard. "Do you respect me?"
-Vanji looked up. "Hell yes, I respect you, ma'am."
-"He's only saying that because you pay his wages," Xanthippe snorted.
-"No, he's saying that because if he doesn't, I'll kick his ass.  Look here, girlie.  You've been with the Zann Esu for how long?"
-"Ten years."
-Asheara looked surprised.  "What, did they steal you out of your cradle or something?"
-"I don't want to talk about that.  What are you getting at, anyway?"
-Asheara crossed her arms under her admittedly ample bosoms. "You've had no contact with men since you were a little kid.  All you know about them is what the Zann Esu told you."
-Xanthippe thought about the hundreds, maybe thousands of men who'd gone in and out of her grandmother's house.  Almost all the talk in the house had centered around men: how to please them, how to flatter their egos, how to get around what they wanted or satisfy their worst impulses.  "I think I know something about men."
-Asheara looked doubtful. "Girl, you don't know anything about men, or what men respect.  It's not what you wear.  It's not what you say.  It's not being able to kick their asses.  And it damn well isn't Zann Esu philosophical screeching."
-"Then what is it, since you are so incredibly experienced with men?"
-"Damn right I am," Asheara grinned. "What gets respect is this: guts.  If you have the balls to tell them off and fight back, they respect that.  Don't take anything from anybody, man or woman, and they'll respect you."
-"Balls?"
-Eyes narrowed, Asheara said, "It's just an expression."
-"I hope so... or you've really been hitting the potions of manliness too much."
-Meanwhile, off to one side, Kasim whispered to Vanji, "So, what's your boss like?"
-"A bitch.  Yours?"
-"A bitch.  Think they're gonna be friends?"
-"Or hate each others guts.  C'mon, she might start walking around in a bikini."
-"That wouldn't be bad.  She'll probably start asking me if the plate mail makes her look fat."
-"Don't go there, man.  Just don't even go there."
-Xanthippe left Asheara's hut laughing, but Asheara was laughing too.  It wasn't until they were back in the sewers that Xanthippe realized she'd forgotten all about looking at boots.  Oh, well, it was probably a good idea to wait until after they were out of the sewers to look for new footwear.  Navigating the sewers was a challenge in itself, even without the monsters; there were several sections where the walkways had collapsed, or bridges had never been built over the muck.
-At one point, they ran into a group of greater mummies, led by a glowing purple one.  They had a huge retinue of skeletons and lesser mummies, and a pack of exploding pygmy skeletons joined in on the fun.  It was next to impossible to hack through the crowd, the lesser undead kept getting raised as soon as they'd been smashed... until Xanthippe remembered she knew how to teleport.  Smacking herself in the forehead (good thing she had the battle crown) she grabbed Kasim and zapped over into the greater mummy pack.  A few choice slashes and the pack went down, and cleaning up the lesser undead was much easier.
-Teleporting made life so much easier!  Xanthippe would have to remember to teleport more often.  Eventually, they found a sewage node with an iron gate on the floor.  Next to it was a big wheel, set into the ground.  They turned the wheel, and with a rusty groan, the gates swung up, revealing stairs down to a large chamber.  Why is this here, Xanthippe wondered?  Is it some kind of control room?  A hidden treasure room in the sewers?
-Down below, Xanthippe and Kasim found a small chamber resembling a four-pointed star, with a pool of water in its center.  All was quiet.  Xanthippe looked at the pool; it was black and still, but bubbles occasionally broke the surface.  "Ok... looks like we've got a tentacle beast.  You stay here, I'll go around to the right."  Kasim nodded, and after Xanthippe moved, stomped on the floor next to the pool.  That usually brought them up.
-Then it happened.  A pack of pygmy skeletons, led by an extra-strong one, came out of nowhere behind Xanthippe and attacked.  Kasim ran around to engage them; Xanthippe tried to get her shield off her back, but the little bastards weren't giving her a chance.  The head of a tentacle beast came up from the pool... then another, and another.  All of them decided that Xanthippe was their new special friend, and spit globs of poisonous mucus at her back, knocking her right into the middle of the pygmy skeleton pack.  Kasim killed the first pygmy just at that moment.
-<nowiki>*</nowiki>BOOM!* it went, knocking Xanthippe off her feet and into the pool.  A fourth (!!) tentacle beast put his head up and spat Xanthippe back to the pygmies.  They were hacking at Kasim and her with their little knives, and when Kasim killed another *BOOM!* Xanthippe saw ooooh, pretty colors!  There's a red one and a green one and a purpleberry one and there's flowers and pretty unicornys!  All four tentacles were spitting their serpentine guts out as fast as they could, and as pieces of pygmy lodged in Xanthippe's skull, she wondered why she was covered with green stinky slime and why all these cute little guys with those cute little codpieces that say "C4" on them were trying to pull her eyeballs out, cause it was really really really starting to hurt.
-Purpleberries!  Xanthippe wondered what purpleberry tasted like, so she grabbed something purple and drank it.  She immediately felt much better!  Wow!  There was a pygmy skeleton standing on her chest, spinning on its knife like it was trying to drill for oil.  That would be bad.  She'd never be able to wear a bikini if he kept doing that.  Kasim was covered in slime, there were pygmies dancing on his head, but he was screaming at her to get up.  Get up?  Oh yeah, these things are trying to kill them!
-Tossing the pygmy skeleton off her chest, Xanthippe got to her feet, nearly slipping in the slime.  There was almost no room to maneuver in the tiny chamber, she couldn't get any distance from the skeletons when they blew up.  And those damn tentacles kept knocking her where she didn't want to go!  After tossing Kasim a purple potion, she skidded over to the pool, and hacked at the nearest tentacle.  It submerged, but the others spat her back to the pygmies.  *BOOM!* *BOOM!* This was really starting to hurt.
-Finally, they'd killed two tentacles and all the pygmies but the last, the strongest one.  Would it run away and give them time to breathe?  No, it wouldn't.  It suicidally leapt straight for Kasim, and he skewered it.  **BOOM!!!**  The blast knocked Xanthippe back into the wall.  A momentary hallucination passed through her mind, of someone pressing a button marked 'C' and looking at a life indicator, which read exactly '3'.  Kasim killed the last two tentacles while she was prying herself out of the wall.  Both of them were badly poisoned; what little life they had left was ebbing fast.  Quickly, she made a town portal, and they crawled back to Ormus's feet.
-"Ormus, first I want to say, I'm very sorry about all the things I said about you."
-"Ormus cares not for the slings and arrows of outrageous verbiage.  What harm can an adjective bring?"
-"Could someone get this flayer skull out of me?" Kasim whined.
-Without haste or delay, Ormus healed them both, and flushed the poison from their bodies.  "There is no need.  It will serve as an extra-rich source of calcium, as well as other essential vitamins and iron."
-"Just don't incorporate the green gunk into us," Xanthippe snarled. "You don't know where it's been."
-The chamber under the iron grate must have been a treasure house, though why someone would put it in a sewer was anyone's guess.  Sure, very few people would look down there, but you have to go through a sewer to get to the place.  There were several chests full of gold and other valuable items, including... Khalim's heart.  It looked like it was carved from solid ruby, with a light burning inside.  She couldn't bring herself to touch it, even though it looked kind of cool, so Xanthippe scooped it up in an old helmet.  It seemed to throb and pulse, but that might be her imagination.

Difference between revisions of "Xanthippe (Chapter 18)"

Latest revision as of 09:16, 12 February 2017

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