Quoted By:
>Continued
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It's going fine. It's going fine. Certainly Earl and you are crouched in muddy ruins, and certainly there's a whole pack of skimmers hunting for intruders outside— but have they found you yet? No! Positive thinking.
Things went like this. Wayne and the fish— okay, <span class="mu-i">"Felicia"</span>— got a good eyeful of Earl. "Spastic's here," remarked Felicia. While you were trying to figure out whether you should beat her up for that, Wayne started going on about "grotesqueries" and "warped mirrors" and "<span class="mu-i">imitateurs</span>" and the "human condition" and you think he would've gone on forever, probably, if you hadn't cut in and requested a gameplan.
The gameplan isn't complicated, as it turns out. There's a lot of things buried in the Mud Flats' mud, and a lot of people willing to devote their lives to dredging them up. Usually skimmers strain for trace amounts of chit, or for pre-flood objects to clean and sell, but there's been a brand-new development— within the last week or so, they've dug up a town. <span class="mu-i">Antediluvian.</span> Buried under mud and water and preserved like that for 200-odd years.
So far, so much you already knew. (Wasn't the Nothing packed with celebratory skimmers a while back?) Is Wayne a history buff, then? Or does he want you all to swoop in, clean the place of antiquities, and cash out to somebody wealthy and unscrupulous? Does he know somebody named Horse Face?
No, no, and no, apparently. "Nothing so base." Wayne (said Wayne) had hired a dyad of— (well, a triad now)— a triad of professionals to, as they say, 'search and retrieve.' It's been rumored that the skimmers found something major in the depths of the dig, and he would like to have it.
What thing? Wayne began to waffle. A seal, you eventually pried from him, a stone seal. Not the animal. (You're pretty sure it wasn't the animal.)
Okay, and what good is that? He's not planning on summoning any dead gods with it, is he? Your response was more waffling: the seal is powerful, and of the utmost importance, yada yada.
Of importance to <span class="mu-i">what?</span> Or who? "Bad luck to be <span class="mu-i">nosy,</span>" hissed Felicia. "You want to bring that down on us? All by yourself?"
You didn't. You waited for the rest of the plan to be laid out, only to learn that this was the plan— go in, find the seal, leave. Felicia was good for exfiltrations and tight spaces. Earl was good for making tight spaces wider. You were good for... "You're completely extraneous. Profligately so."
"Could cut her loose now." Felicia was using the empty skewer to pick at her teeth. "Think the bloody spastic's going to know? Look at 'im."
At this point Earl had sat down cheerily and was moving his palms in circles on the ground.
You were affronted on multiple levels, and launched a counter-offensive proclaiming your intelligence, your skill, your positive attitude, your astonishing magyckal powers—
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