Chapter 3

Some time later - having endured innumerable setbacks through the winding gantlet of streets, vigilant eyes, and near run-ins with the Guard - Gellan's battered form collapsed against the scarred wooden door to his tenement hideaway. He lacked the coordination for the usual knocks or countersigns, simply slapping his palm against the boards again and again until they swung inward.

A familiar reedy voice greeted his ingress: "By all the gnarled roots, please tell me that unholy reek isn't you again, Gel!"

"So happy...to see you...too, Liri," Gellan managed in a gravelly rasp, sloughing off his sodden cloak and discarding it toward her general vicinity. The diminutive alaghi woman squawked in dismay, dancing back from the filth-matted bundle with a curse.

"Light's bleeding tears, I thought you'd finally taken a garderobe dive! Wait, is that...?" Liri's angular face split into an approximation of a grin as her eyes settled on the graven sigil etched across Gellan's cupped palms. "You mad scumchucker, you did it! You actually cracked the Order's coffers!"

Before she could say more, Gellan unceremoniously cracked open his arms, allowing the Midas Glove to clatter free onto the grimy planks between them. It landed with a solid thunk, orichalcum surface glinting through the caked rivulets. "All yours," he growled.

Liri, typically so mindful of keeping her spindly hands retracted within her coarse linen tunic, reached out with blatant avarice to scoop up the relic. Unfortunately, one of her extending digits happened to brush the faintest edge of putrescence crusting the Glove's wrist-guard.

Her reaction was instantaneous - and absolutely volcanic.

"Aaaaaggghhh! Saints sting me sideways, that's foul! What in the nine hells did you roll in this time?!" Liri backpedaled in revulsion, pawing at her face as if to slough off the scent now searing into her keen senses. "You putrid cesspit leech, I'll have you gutted and used as a tannery vat if you tracked whatever death-spawned filth into our haven!"

Gellan fought through the dual agonies of his protesting body to muster an indignant glare for the flustered rodent-woman. "Well then maybe get this hide stretched over a rack, because I'd sooner birth a goat child than put myself through that kind of gauntlet again just to bring home a few soiled-"

Whatever counter-retort he'd summoned up sputtered out into a hoarse, racking cough. The exertion aggravated already pulverized ribs, lancing agony up his torso until he doubled over clutching his sides in a full-body flinch.

Liri's ire cooled just as fast. She shuffled back toward him, abruptly shifting into the mantle of their makeshift crew's self-appointed medic and matriarch. One slim hand stretched out to pat his heaving shoulder while the other steadied his slumping weight. "Easy, easy now. I've got a salve for that."

"For...turning me...inside out?" he managed between wheezes, head still swimming with vertigo.

"Rest now. Stories later." Somehow she guided his lurching frame further into their clandestine flat - what little sanctuary and respite Gellan could call home in this world of amorality and knives. Down cramped, dingy halls until the scent of stale must gave way to humid steam and flickering candlelight emanating from an archway ahead.

The safe-room's ancient bathhouse tiles still bore the faded remnants of Imperial Asrelic mosaics. A sunken tiled pool dominated the center of the small chamber, pale vapors roiling across its surface from discreet vents feeding the steaming reservoir underneath. Not for the first time, Gellan felt a pang of gratitude for the meager luxuries modernity allowed in these squalid tunnels away from scrutiny.

Liri shoved him firmly down onto the stone bench circling the bath, already turning to fetch clean towels and unguents from the shelves. "Oran's left nut, you smell like the pits of some netherspawn's colon," she tossed over her shoulder as she worked. "Far as I'm concerned,that loads enough storytellin' to merit a proper scourging before I even consider dousing your hide in anything curative, y'hear?"

Gellan grunted, but lacked the strength at that moment to argue. He just nodded amicably and began peeling away each grimy layer of armor, weapons, and saturated leathers, leaving them in a spreading midden at his feet. The quiescent heat already billowed up to rekindle his abused sinews.

Within moments, Liri returned clutching a wooden pail of steaming water and bristle-brush alongside a patient's array of poultices and alchemical undients. She shoved the bucket brusquely into his chest. "Don't just sit there gaping. You know the drill by now, saddle-sore. Start scrubbing before I call natasha down here to show you the true meaning of agony."

Gellan smirked in spite of himself. "Save the hollow threats for amateurs, whisker-lick. This fresh hell is preferable to whatever your lithe roach-limbs could muster."

"Better not find out." She filled the heavy stone basin with a dollop of the thick alchemical unguent, sending up a billowing cloud of pungent steam as the purifying solution hit the heated water.

Peeling away the last tatters of his ruined clothing, Gellan snatched up the scrub-brush and dunked his whole head beneath the surface. Working in sharp efficient strokes, he began assaulting every inch of his caked musculature, emerging in fits and gasps to drain brownish rivulets from his eyes and nostrils and renew the steaming suds.

True to her word, Liri watched it all with an impassive clinical eye, scrutinizing every inch of skin as the obscuring layers of grime gradually sloughed away to reveal the battered musculature beneath. Only once Gellan's entire body had turned a violent angry red from the scouring did she deem him thoroughly scoured.

"That's enough for now," she pronounced at last. "Into the pool before you scrape yourself down to a fresh skeleton."

With a hoarse grunt of gratitude, Gellan slipped over the tiled rim and submerged himself fully in the steaming bath's embrace. The heat immediately began leaching the aches from his battered bones. He sank up to his neck, allowing the mineral-rich vapors to waft up and unseal his senses further.

Liri bustled about the bathing room's perimeter, preparing tinctures and salves from an array of alchemical ingredients. Little pots, bottles and stone mortars clinked together as she worked with brisk efficiency. "Don't get too comfy just yet, wastrel," she called over one bony shoulder. "Soon as this drawing solution finishes steeping, you'll want to hurl yourself right back out of that piss-pot."

Gellan grunted acknowledgment, eyes drifting closed in respite as he simply allowed himself to float for a blissful handful of moments. The Midas Glove - along with the dangers of retrieving it - could wait just a little longer. Just this once, he earned a modicum of well-deserved relaxation first.

But soon enough, the cloying scent of Liri's aromatic infusions dragged him back to full wakefulness. "All right, out with you before those bruises congeal too deeply," she ordered, prodding him with the end of a gnarled mixing spoon. "Got a fresh pasting salve to slap over those festering battle-scars."

With a grunt of resignation, Gellan hauled himself from the pool's depths and sprawled lengthwise across one of the raised alabaster slabs usually reserved for assisted embalming. Ancient Asrelics hadn't exactly been prudish about where they conducted their ritual corpse preparations.

True to her expertise, Liri set to work transcending the line between mortuary propriety and legitimate medical treatment. Dipping a wooden ladle into one of her simmering concoctions, she began slathering Gellan's entire body in a pungent greenish paste that immediately set his battered flesh to tingling. Wherever her deft strokes layered the viscous unguent, Gellan's discolored contusions began fading from angry reds and purples to more muted hues.

"Work fast enough and you'll be back to flitting across the rooftops before the week's out," she muttered between dabs, deftly globbing more ointment over his shoulders and chest. "Just don't go forgetting to powder down with the setting dust after it cures, or you'll harden up like a damn rock golem instead."

Gellan stifled a wince as her spoon prodded a little too enthusiastically against one of his cracked ribs. "Your bedside manner remains as magnificently brusque as ever, fauna-licker." Despite the barb, there was an undercurrent of fondness to it.

"And yours is a churlish as a half-daemon's bastard, city-boy," she shot back, lips twitching. For the first time in too long, they slipped back into the familiar banter and jibing that characterized their little found family. "Not that I'd expect much better from the lonely guttersnipe bowen and I dredged up off the street gruel all those years back."

"Don't get overly sentimental on me just because I narrowly avoided turning into an underground abbatoir's offerings this time around," Gellan warned in a low rumble. He resisted the urge to squirm as her deft fingers spread another layer of unguent across his abdomen. "You'll flare up my nasal allergies with those crocodile tears of yours."

She responded by slapping an particularly cold dollop square between his pectorals, making him outright yelp. "Watch your tongue, wretch-foot. I still outrank you around these parts."

"By what grounds? Because you're the only one even shorter and more foul-tempered than me?"

Liri answered by jabbing his sternum with one bony fingertip hard enough to leave a bruise. "Because if you ever go sprouting that kind of lip around natasha again, she's liable to have your tongue bronzed and mounted above our hearth."

Despite himself, Gellan chuckled at that - a full-throated rumble that set his newly poulticed ribcage aflame with fresh protests. "Fair point, fair point. I'll mind my druthers around the good Dame's sensibilities in the future."

"See that you do," Liri chided, but her tone carried nothing but affectionate exasperation. She finished slathering the last few streaks of ointment across his brow and jaw, then stepped back to assess her handywork with a critical eye. "There, that should have you well on your way to some semblance of presentability again. Now get yourself cleaned up proper..."

She trailed off with a significant glance toward the open archway, where two hulking silhouettes suddenly loomed from the gloom beyond.

"...because we've an audience awaiting storytime by the look of it," Liri finished in a loud stage-whisper.

Despite his lingering aches, Gellan forced himself to a seated position and shot the new arrivals a cheeky wink. "Well if it isn't the gruesome twosome themselves, slinking in all broody and dramatic as always."

From the shadows emerged the hulking outlines of natasha and bowen - twins torn from the same blighted womb. Warped and disfigured, their conjoined frames towered to nearly eight feet of densely-muscled battle-scarring and graven sigils. Yet despite their fearsome appearance, both stared back at Gellan with what passed for bemused exasperation in their world.

"Someone's feeling rowdy for a sod who was busy getting reacquainted with the separation of soul and body not long ago," bowen rumbled in a voice like glaciers rending apart. He ducked low to clear the bathhouse entry, biochromatic eyeshifting from orb to orb around the cavity where his nose should have been as he scented the pungent medicinal vapors. "You stink of the grave-dirt and burnt needles all over again, runt."

"Then today must be thingzied, because you two stringy-limbs smell even riper than usual," Gellan shot back without missing a beat. He planted his hands squarely on the slab and started to push upright before Liri inserted herself between him and the approaching twins.

"Ah ah ah, not until I've dusted you nice and crisp, first." She scooped up a small ceramic bowl of glistening silvery powder and began delicately sprinkling it across Gellan's paste-slathered hide. Wherever the metallic grains touched exposed skin, a crackling filmskin of rigid sealant encased the unguent into a hardening biological cast. Within minutes, Gellan's entire torso and limbs had transformed into an exoskeletal second skin that should protect the mending ointments over the coming days.

Only once Liri deemed the coating fully set did she step away and allow Gellan to carefully mantle himself off the high slab. He took care not to crack or split the cast in any areas, shuffling stiffly across the floor to grab his fresh garments.

All while keeping one eye cocked squarely at the two colossal siblings looming like secular gargoyles in the archway's span.