Puk swirled his nearly-empty glass and the gruff rocyan poured another shot of whiskey into it. Puk nodded in appreciation.
It was now hour three in the pub, which was quite a feat, given that it was only now approaching dinnertime. The first hour had been spent with Puk feeling angry and sorry for himself; the second trying to figure out a new plan for his life given that he was no longer a member of a troupe; and now the third would likely be spent wallowing again.
He did not want to know the amount of crescents he’d racked up on his tab so far.
It was going to totally drain his funds. That realization had come during hour two while trying to figure out a plan, and there had been a mild panic when he realized—not for the first time—that he would have no money left, and so the futility of his situation led him to the decision to spend it all on booze. He might as well.
That drink turned out to be his last, as the bartender cut him off afterwards.
Puk grumbled and paid his tab, which left him with only sixteen crescents to his name. Not even enough for one night at an inn, let alone a ticket back to Atlua.
He was stuck.
He needed to do something to make money. Any amount of money would help, really. But the more the merrier. He grumbled to the bartender, who returned with a scowl.
“Don’t bother asking for more,” the man said in a low growl. “You’ve had enough. Go home.”
“I don’t have a home, thank you very much,” Puk slurred matter-of-factly. “So I will not be going there. And I am not thirsty,” he said, which was an outright lie. “D’you know any…”
His drunken mind sought the correct word. The first one it found was “parlor,” which was not right, and not particularly close to what he meant. Next it stumbled upon “grocer,” which was even farther. Finally, it landed on what it was looking for.
“…games?” Puk mumbled.
The rocyan stared dead-eyed at him. “Games?” the man repeated blankly.
“Yes!” exclaimed Puk. “D’you know any games goin’ on in town? Perhaps in this bar? Somewhere a guy like me could, as you might say, gamble and win some damn crescents?”
The rocyan huffed and dipped his head down, indicating for Puk to turn around. “There’s a game right there,” he said, somewhat bemused.
Puk rotated one of his eyestalks, keeping the other on the bartender.
Behind himself, he saw a collection of ruffians gathered around a table playing cards with a sizeable pile of crescents at its center. They were hollering and slamming hands down on the table, making quite a bit of racket, and Puk considered that perhaps he was more inebriated than he realized, given that he had not noticed the noise at all.
“I thank you,” said Puk as his stalk languidly turned back around and he pushed himself off the stool. His ass ached from sitting on the hard, uncomfortable wood for so many hours.
Puk ambled toward the gang, attempting to decipher which game they were playing to determine if he had any chance of winning some money off them. He could not figure out what the game was, which was not a good sign, and it was a sign that he ignored.
His opening move was to clap the nearest person on the back and say, “Hello there, brethren,” which was a phrase he would have never uttered if sober.
The person he had touched was a rail-thin man with long, greasy red hair draped over his shoulders and down his back. His face was clean-shaven and surprisingly smooth, though his chipped teeth left a lot to be desired.
“What?” the man muttered.
“I’m lookin’ to join your game,” Puk said, hoping that none of his words had morphed together into an incomprehensible mess.
The man sputtered a laugh. “Buy-in’s ten crescents.”
“Fuck,” Puk accidentally said aloud. But the group ignored his outburst and he produced the money, which he tossed into the center of the table.
“Pull a chair up,” said the red-haired man. “What’s your name, brethren?”
“Puk,” he answered, grabbing a chair from a nearby empty table and dragging it noisily along the ground to slot it between the man and an amused jeorn that he realized was a woman. From a distance, and in his current state of mind, the group had been an amorphous blob.
“I’m Randolph,” said the red-haired man. “This is Virra,” he said, nodding toward the jeornish woman, then continued around the table: “That’s Baku, Carl, and Paya.”
Baku was a hulking brute with a bushy beard dyed purple and a tattered hat covering his head. Carl was a scraggly faif with a scar etched across the front of his neck, and he smiled at Puk as Randolph introduced him. Paya was a woman who looked remarkably similar to Randolph, and if Puk hadn’t been nearly blackout drunk, he likely would have put together that they were related.
He was distantly aware of the fact that none of these names would be even the slightest blip in his mind the next day. Possibly even the next hour.
“Greetings, all,” said Puk. “I need some money, so I am going to play this game to win some money.”
The group guffawed at his declaration, and they set to playing their game, finishing up the round that Puk had interrupted before folding him into the proceedings.
Hunt was the name of the game, which was unfortunate for Puk because he had never played it. It originated in his home country of Atlua, and he had certainly heard of the game before, but never played. It involved each player being dealt a hand of six cards, delineating weapons and various hunting supplies, while random monster cards were flipped over in the center of the table and players had to compete to slay the monsters. Each player started the game with thirty health points, and if their points were fully depleted, they were out for the remaining rounds. It seemed that in the version this group was playing, the person with the most kills racked up at the end of three rounds got to keep the pot.
Puk squinted his eyes at the cards in his hand. He held two potions, a “bad bow and arrow” as described by the card, dry bait, “smelly bait,” and, ironically, a halberd. He grimaced at the last card, but then saw how good its stats were, and hoped the halberd would come to his aid in the end.
Baku flipped the first monster card over, revealing an intricately-illustrated lamatka. Lamatkas were large, stupid animals that lived on the western edge of the country, in the savannahs that led into Gillus. They walked on six wide legs and had a thick, red hide that was impossible to pierce without the sharpest weapons or most powerful magic.
The bad bow and arrow was not going to cut it.
At the sight of the lamatka card, Randolph let out a soft chuckle. Puk found the man’s arrogance grating.
I will annihilate the lamatka, he thought to himself. I will win the money. I will have the money.
Puk more closely inspected the monster card and read over its attacks. It could pierce players with one of the three horns on its head for ten damage, stomp on them for five, or go to sleep to restore its own health. It also had a resistance to “piercing damage,” a category which both of Puk’s weapons fell under. It was not the best starting card to go against.
“Fuck,” he said again, and everyone laughed.
Baku won the previous game, so he got to go first. Each player was able to make two moves per turn: attack with a weapon and use a supply. They could opt to only do one of the two, but Baku went all-in.
He laid down a weapon card—a dagger—and a modifying card that granted him some resistance to whatever attack the monster used on him. He brought the lamatka’s health down from 50 to 45. He then rolled a die to determine which move the lamatka would use; a one or two would be the horns, three or four the stomp, five the rest, and six nothing. He rolled a three and sighed with relief, avoiding the devastating horn attack. He then drew two hunting cards to replenish his hand.
Next up was Carl, and then Paya (who held no weapons and irrelevant supplies so she skipped her turn but was hit by the lamatka for ten damage), and then it came to the confident Randolph.
As it turned out, he
had reason to be confident, as everyone discovered when he laid down a broadsword card, which through reasons drunken Puk could not understand did extra damage to the lamatka, and on top of that a dry bait card, which described “lulling the monster into a false sense of security,” adding even more damage to the player’s attack. He knocked the monster’s health down to 30, and then rolled a six. Randolph cheered for himself and then looked to Puk for his turn.
Puk inhaled deeply and glared at the six cards he held. His weary brain struggled to concoct a sound strategy, but it came up short. He was too tired and hungry for this. He yearned to take back the ten crescents he had tossed carelessly into the pot, and he also yearned to slap Randolph in the face for even allowing him to enter the game in the first place. Why had he not been less friendly? If he’d told Puk to fuck off, all of this could have been avoided.
But alas, he was playing Hunt, and he needed to make a move.
Now that he knew what a dry bait card did (the text written on the card had been too tiny for his blurry vision to make out), he deemed it a worthy card to lay down, so he did. Then, given it was his best card, he set the halberd card with its bent corner on the table and waited for someone to tell him what he had done.
Once they realized why he was sitting in silence, someone informed him that he had done ten points of damage to the lamatka, which was not half bad.
Randolph handed over the die, which was cool in Puk’s cupped hand as he shook it around before throwing it onto the table with a clatter.
It was a five, and the lamatka restored all of its health. Everyone swore.
“For fuck’s sake! I was about to kill it,” said Virra. Puk did not respond.
Instead, he drew his two cards from the hunting pile, and read them over. One was simply called “Trip,” while the other was yet another potion.
He moved an eyestalk closer to the “Trip” card to read its description and, upon doing so, let out another swear. He laid the card down on the table as Virra prepared for her turn. Again, everyone laughed at him.
In Hunt, tripping was a card the player laid down immediately upon drawing it. It dealt ten points of damage to the player, as well as made them vulnerable on their next turn. It was not an ideal position to be in.
The sixty crescents in the middle of the table felt farther and farther from his tiny grasp.
By the time the game circled back around to Puk, the lamatka was down to five health points.
Completely attainable. It was a miracle.
Puk read over the “bad bow and arrow” and saw that normally it would do five points of damage, but given the monster’s resistance to piercing, that number was reduced to three.
But with his smelly bait…
He laid down the bait and bow cards with a triumphant grin.
“I will annihilate the lamatka!” he declared, pumping a fist in the air.
Randolph burst out laughing. “Well, no,” he said, pointing at the smelly bait. “Look at the icon. It doesn’t match the lamatka’s. You use this card on something like a cordol or baiar or somethin’. It has no effect on lamatkas, so all you did was three damage.”
Puk’s fist hung in the air as he absorbed this staggering news. The lamatka wasn’t dead. He had to roll the die.
His hand slowly descended and grabbed the carved cube, only shaking it two or three times before letting it loose on the table.
It tumbled over his poorly-chosen cards before coming to a stop on a single dot.
“Fuck,” he said for the third time.
Randolph couldn’t contain his laughter. When he regained control of himself, he said, “So that’s ten points of damage. But since you tripped and are vulnerable, it’s doubled, so that’s twenty. And you already took ten from tripping, so…”
The math, simple as it was, proved to be too complex for Puk at the moment.
“…so you shoulda used a potion, brethren,” Baku finished for him. “You’re outta the game.”
Puk’s heart sunk. Eliminated already, after merely two rounds. And with only six crescents to his name now.
He felt nauseous.
“You got a buy-in for the next game?” Randolph asked.
Puk shook his head and got up from the table, sullenly striding toward the door.
The sun was only just beginning to set when he stumbled out of the Tilted Tailbone. The city was already fairly dim and streetlamps were lighting up, with the diminished sunlight having to filter through the long-dead aeon’s skull. Little light shone through the eyehole at this time of day, though many still gathered around the Gaze. Soon a hint of moonlight would shine down and grant the pool a mesmerizing sparkle.
What he craved was a dark, quiet place away from everyone else where he could ingest some fire-spit. That would really hit the spot. A pleasant pairing with the whiskey that was weighing him down, and a reprieve from the thoughts of the game he’d just blundered.
Each step was sluggish. It was like walking through quicksand, though his feet only sunk half an inch or so into the white sand. He had done his best to resist while concentrating on the game, but now he leaned hard into the stupor of inebriation.
Double-vision plagued his sight, and he moved out of the way of people who weren’t actually there, only to knock into others who shouted at him to watch where he was going.
“I am,” he mumbled at them, his eyestalks drooping.
Lethargy gripped him tight as he stepped forward, dragging his meager bag of belongings behind him, and held onto the skinny metallic body of a streetlamp for support.
Puk slid down the length of the pole onto the ground, relishing in the warmth of the sand. His eyelids fluttered and his body was heavy as an anchor.
“Are you okay?”
The voice was distant. Hardly an echo. But Puk opened his eyes and saw that it belonged to a chubby jeornish man who was kneeling before him, not so distant after all.
The man cocked an eyebrow, staring down at the pathetic qarm, and asked, “Can you hear me? Are you alright? Let me help you.”
He reached for Puk, but he shooed away the man’s hand.
“Mmfine,” he said, not even convincing himself.
“Please,” said the man, “let me help. I own an inn, and we have vacancies tonight. You can stay there.”
“Nuhmunny,” said Puk.
The man smiled, revealing dimples in his puffy cheeks. “You don’t need to pay,” he said. “Just come rest. It’ll do you a world of good.”
Puk blinked away the man’s double and let out a sigh so hefty he thought it would turn his body inside-out.
“Fine,” he relented, allowing the man to help him to his feet.
They walked together down the street, past the Gaze, and turned down an alley that Puk couldn’t catch the name of in his drunken state. The two came to a wide, three-story building with a sign that read SHIAR’S SLUMBER.
The name barely made sense, but Puk wasn’t sure if that was completely true or if he was simply too drunk to comprehend it.
He followed the kindhearted man inside and was blinded by the lights hanging from the ceiling. He shielded his eyes and let out a gurgled moan, which elicited laughter from the man as well as a woman who stood behind a nearby counter.
It was an excruciating walk up to the available room—all the way on the second floor—but the relief Puk felt as he collapsed onto the bed was immense. The sheets were ten times as soft given how drunk he was and how uncomfortable the church cot had been the night before.
Sleep was closing in fast, but the man stood at the bedside and said, “My name is Botro. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything, though I reckon you’re about to be out cold for the night.” He chuckled. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thanks,” Puk said, hardly getting the word out.
He closed his eyes and welcomed the dark. He could hear the door quietly shut as Botro made his exit, but moments later, all else fell away.
CHAPTER III
SWALL
OWED BY THE SANDS
Sunlight was hell. Movement was hell. Noise was hell. Everything about the morning was hell.
Puk groaned (which was hell) and rubbed at his eyestalks as he shifted in bed, his legs tangled in the sheets, which were still incredibly soft even though he was now sober. A headache pounded within his tiny skull and he pledged to simply lay there and die in that bed.
But an hour later a knock came at the door, and he grumbled for the intruder to come in. The jeornish man from the night before—Botro? Puk tried to recall—pushed the door open slowly with an agonizing creak and peeked his head inside.
“How’re you feeling?” the man inquired.
“Bad,” was Puk’s answer. He tried to tone down the irascibility in his voice.
Botro chuckled. “I figured as much. You were far beyond what I’d charitably call out of sorts when I found you last night. If you’re feeling up to it, please come downstairs and partake in some breakfast.”
Puk sighed, then reminded the man, “I don’t have any money.” Every syllable he spoke was like a shot to the head.
“I know,” said Botro. “That’s alright. We’ll fill you up with some eggs anyway. Come on down whenever you’d like.” And with that, he disappeared back into the hallway, careful to shut the door as quietly as possible.
Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2) Page 6
