Neen awoke to the sounds of someone rummaging around in the apartment. Instinctively she went to grab her pistols, but then remembered where she was. She climbed off the mattress and found Sliver in the tiny kitchen preparing two packets of instant noodles with some boiling water, from a less than hygienic looking kettle. He handed her one of the containers, she sniffed at it and frowned.
"OK, maybe I need to stock this place a bit better with food," he admitted as he forced down a mouthful himself.
"What is our next move?" she asked, putting the pot noodles back on the bench. Suddenly she was not that hungry.
"We arm ourselves to the teeth and go get our money, if anyone gets in our way we kill them. Simple."
"With what? Expired pot noodles?" she asked sarcastically.
"You may not be impressed with my hospitality, but I am sure I can cater to your professional needs. Let's go shopping," he said with a wry smile.
Sliver lead her back out of the kitchen and across the living area to where the bedroom should have been. However when he opened the door, hidden behind it was another heavy reinforced steel door.
"The whole room is a specially made vault. You would need enough explosive to take out the whole bottom floor of this building before you could break into it," said Sliver proudly. He then entered another laboriously long code into the touch pad on the door to unlock it. The door was so thick and heavy that it was on a hydraulic ram and it hissed open to reveal a treasure trove of weaponry. The whole room was filled with racking that held knives, grenades, assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and ammunition containers. Neen had her own weapons cache hidden in her apartment, but it was nothing even close to this scale! Her wings pulsated in excitement and she involuntarily lifted from the ground in an exhilarated hover.
"Just let me grab a few special items first and then you can go nuts, but everything you take comes out of your half of the loot."
Sliver entered the room first and headed straight for a long metal box in the rear. He lent down beside it and spoke the words of a disenchantment spell before opening the box. Whatever was inside must have been special and Neen was keen to see so she followed him in and tried to look over his shoulder.
After a few moments of rummaging Sliver pulled out what he was after, a long two handed sword. He held onto it almost lovingly as though he had actually missed it.
"You've been holding out on me Sliver. A weapon that old has got to be worth ten times everything else in this vault combined."
"It's worth more than you could imagine. This is Tathra. It was a gift to Prince Ethala for convincing the fairy clans to rise up to join the rebellion against the orcs and help win the battle of Tarva. It was forged by dwarves and enchanted with ancient Griffin magic and has some very special properties that might be very handy in our current predicament. It's also my retirement fund so if it ever goes missing you are the first person I am coming for Neen, so don't get any ideas," he said as he pulled out a fanciful black leather scabbard that was designed to strap the sword neatly on his back in between his wings.
"Don't worry about me I prefer my guns and a good dark elixir round to an ancient sword any day."
“You are missing out Neen, there is something special about the tactile sensation of ending a life with a good blade.”
“I bet that’s exactly what you said to its previous owner before you relieved him of it,” she teased.
“How I came about this sword is none of your business” he snapped irritably.
Neen raised her eyebrows at his reaction. She had hit a raw nerve there somehow and it was something she wanted to revisit, as much out of curiosity as anything else, but she left it alone for the moment.
“Fine by me, lets load up and get this over with then.”
The pair of them then went about methodically reloading and cleaning their weapons. Neen grabbed as many ammo clips as she could attach to her belt and strap to her leg holsters. Normally she would have been content armed with her pistols and enough ammo for a prolonged fire fight, but going up against an entire army of undead orcs was going to take quite a bit more. Sliver gave her an old envirocoat he had in the apartment. It was oversized and loose, but had plenty of space to clip on a dozen grenades. With those and an assault rifle slung over her shoulder for good measure, plus her repertoire of magic spells she finally felt up to the task.
Meanwhile Sliver had strapped his sword to his back, reloaded his pistols and equipped himself with two mini submachine guns held in chest holsters. He too stocked up on grenades and to cap things off a repeating shotgun, with a Tommy gun style drum shaped ammo clip filled with exploding dark elixir rounds.
"I'm ready to go send back some undead orcs right back into the abyss. How about you?" asked Sliver sounding almost gleeful.
"This better work Sliver, because when Clix finds out we freed his dex he is going to put prices on our heads so large that every bounty hunter in Myriad city will be gunning for us."
"Forget Clix, when we get the treasure secure we can pay him off. After that we can go find that damned orc wizard, kill him then sell that elixir to the highest bidder!"