FSE

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There were a few reasons why dungeon-exploring parties had several members.

Most of them had to do with safety, with covering each other’s weaknesses, covering more ground and boring stuff like that. Locke didn’t really care about it, mostly because he was used to working alone, but also because he didn’t think any of those mattered more than the two things he constantly aimed for – recognition and coin.

And it was fun how the two of them usually went hand in hand.

As the clementine-furred tabaxi traversed one of the last floors of the dungeon, he considered his options. He hadn’t entered the cavern alone, but by now the other party members must have really fallen behind. It wasn’t his fault that they were so damn slow, Locke thought. Sure, he was the only rogue in the party, but how could they expect him to wait if they couldn’t keep up with him for a whole minute?

Plus, it wasn’t like anything bound him to those strangers. Locke wasn’t an adventurer stuck in one of those stupid parties, but a mercenary. The only language he spoke was coin – and bigger quantities of coin came with recognition. Needless to say, sharing said coin with four or more other people wasn’t an option.

The tabaxi treaded carefully through the long corridor leading to the deepest chamber. He could tell he was getting closer to the end of the dungeon now. There was this feeling that Locke would usually get – a shiver in his spine, a general dampening of all sounds or a certain sour scent in the air, like rotting food – which only came with experience. As his paws moved slowly through the floor, avoiding all those pesky hidden traps, the tabaxi reminded himself of the real reason why he was there, which had nothing to do with the poor souls who were very likely stuck in the upper levels of the dungeon.

He’d been hired by those adventurers the night before. They’d met at the inn and their leader, a particularly handsome wolf who was the group’s healer, had been the one who’d talked with Locke.

“As much gold as my heart desires, you say?” the tabaxi had asked once he’d gotten the initial proposal. “Okay, doggy. I’m listening.”

The wolf had held his gaze for a few seconds. Locke could tell he was wondering if he’d come to hire the right mercenary. The tabaxi couldn’t help it – he had a tendency to tease canines whenever they came asking for help. Plus, he’d always thought that if adventurers needed mercenaries to fulfill their goals, they’d better be humble about it.

“There’s this grotto a few miles east of town,” the wolf had continued. “They say whoever walks in never walks out.”

“Oh, yeah. That one. I don’t think it’s a particularly deep one.”

“How can you know? Have you been in there?”

“Not really.” The tabaxi had shrugged. “It’s just a feeling I get.”

Locke wasn’t stupid. He knew he had to oversell himself if he wanted the party to pay a proper rate for his services. The tabaxi hated people and he was only willing to work with a group as long as the coin was good… and sometimes, even that wasn’t enough.

“They say there’s a basilisk inside,” the wolf had mentioned. “And a pretty powerful one, at that. Do you think you can handle it?"

Locke pretended to think about it.

“Tell me about the gold again.”

“They say there’s a hidden treasure there. An amount of gold that rivals the Emperor’s private chambers.”

Locke scoffed.

“They always say that.”

“I guess they do. So what? Are you interested in joining us?”

Locke could have said he wasn’t. He could have admitted that the only reason he was doing that was because the grotto was sealed from the inside and only a magic caster could clear the entrance. That he was simply interested, as he’d made abundantly clear already, in gold.

But he’d simply nodded. It wouldn’t make things any different, though. Those poor adventurers would find out soon that he wasn’t loyal to their cause, no matter how altruistic it was. And he highly doubted it was altruistic to begin with – they were probably after the gold, just like him.

Of course, there was the single, little, tiny problem of the basilisk.

Just think about how much you’ll be able to raise your rates once you’ve cleared this dungeon single-handedly, the tabaxi thought. How invaluable you’ll make yourself. People will queue just to hire you.

It was an alluring perspective, and certainly one that made Locke’s fear of basilisks and other dangerous creatures fly out of the window. Whenever he thought of that particular scenario, the tabaxi felt like he was capable of doing anything.

He approached the last door, which was unsurprisingly locked. There was probably some kind of silly puzzle to make it open naturally, but he hated those and had never been too good at them anyway. Luckily for him, he had brought a few picklocks with him and he was somewhat proud of his skills in that regard. It took him less than a minute before the door creaked open.

Locke sneaked into the open chamber, trying to merge with the shadows.

There it was.

The basilisk stood on the other corner of the room – a massive lizard-like creature with feathers on its head, which miraculously seemed oblivious to the fact that the door had just opened. It was the first time Locke had seen one in person, but he’d heard many tales about them. Obviously, the tabaxi knew he wasn’t supposed to go for a staring contest with the scaly fiend. That was bound to end badly for him.

He moved stealthily towards one of the sides of the room, where mountains of gold glistened under the shuddering flame of close torches. That wolf hadn’t been wrong at all – there seemed to be enough gold in the room to fill the Emperor’s chambers twice. The only thing that caught Locke’s attention as his padded paws closed the distance between the entrance and that spot was that the gold didn’t seem to be coin-shaped. Not even goblet-shaped, crown-shaped or collar-shaped, which were the most common shapes gold tended to adopt in dungeons like that one.

No, this gold was adventurer-shaped.

The tabaxi’s gaze rested for a split second on the figure of a big, strong bull who was raising an axe over his head, probably getting ready to land a fatal blow that now would never happen. Locke gulped as he understood the implications of that. Those gold statues were far too detailed to be simple sculptures. And he knew what basilisks were capable of.

Well, that wasn’t a collection Locke wanted to take home. Even if the bull looked kinda cute, helplessly frozen like that, it would scare most employers.

He turned around, aiming for the exit again, and only realized then that the basilisk was nowhere to be seen. His heart rushed as he turned his head around, trying to find the scaly creature, but it seemed to have moved out of his sight when he wasn’t looking. Fuck, he thought. I need to be really careful now.

The tabaxi tried to take another step and noticed he couldn’t. He tried again and his muscles refused to work with him. A muffled groan escaped his throat as he forced his legs to move. Nothing.

It felt like an immobilization spell. Was that basilisk also a mage, or what?

Locke struggled, but he was prisoner within his own body. And he knew it’d only get worse unless he managed to break free. There was a certain spell he had learned ages ago to break free from those situations, but it’d been a long time since he’d learned it and he couldn’t remember the words. As he looked into the depths of his brain to find them, the basilisk walked into his field of view.

Those black eyes pierced through Locke’s soul like darts. The tabaxi felt consciousness abandoning him as he struggled over and over, trying to break free of the immobilization spell. The problem being that, by now, that wasn’t the only thing keeping him motionless.

His paws had become rigid, solid. Locke couldn’t look down and he needed to in order to know that they were slowly becoming as golden as the rest of living statues in the room. The tabaxi groaned once more as the stiff sensation crept up his thighs and reached his waist, crawling slowly towards his chest and then cascading down his arms and hands. As his neck became hard and shiny, the tabaxi thought that his only hope lay on the party of adventurers he’d so carelessly left behind. Oh, no, he realized. I’m doomed.

The basilisk hissed. It seemed to be enjoying the situation. Locke couldn’t know because his eyes were still fixed on those deep black pools that kept sucking at his consciousness, but perhaps it was glad that he’d finally added a tabaxi to its collection of statues.

The last thought that crossed his mind before it became as golden as the rest of his body was that he’d been caught in a crouching position, trying to be stealthy. The bull next to him looked so much more menacing. Next time he should also draw his knife or strike a pose or something like that.

He could only imagine how ridiculous he’d look from now on.