“What is that?” Caroline shrieked as she jabbed one finger in the direction of the zombie hydra.
“It’s a long story. Just… I’ll explain later. Get somewhere safe, okay?” Gerald clutched the talisman under his tunic. His legs were shaking so badly that he would have fallen over if one of the rats hadn’t tapped a few pressure points to keep his legs from giving way. The rodents were still firing away with their ballista, and a couple of them were readying what looked like massive snares, but Gerald knew what they needed to win this fight. “Sam, I could really use your help right now, and I’m willing to pay you in cake. Lots of cake.”
Sam must have heard him because the air in front of him quivered as though it were a leather hide being stretch taut before a large sphere of writhing, protoplasmic flesh rippled into existence. People who’d finally managed to stop screaming after the dragon had appeared began to scream again as Sam used some of his eyes to look at Gerald, Caroline, and the others as his other eyes locked onto the dragon. Sam’s tentacles moved, and the horror changed his shape and colour.
“Huh?” Gerald fumbled for the phrase book Timmy had given him to help translate Sam’s ‘speech’. “Wait… you weren’t looking at cake? You were… oh. I get it!” Gerald felt bad for wondering if Sam had abandoned him. “You were gathering more power, so you could fight the dragon properly! Great. Does that mean you’ve got enough power now?”
Sam bobbed up and down in the air in what was unmistakably his equivalent of a nod, and then he began to change. His already massive body – he was a sphere of flesh roughly five yards across – expanded. Wings appeared, strange fibrous wings with beady eyes and hungry mouths, and his tentacles joined, fusing into claws and blade-like appendages. Instead of a sphere, Sam’s new form was vaguely draconic, a mocking, twisted reflection of the dragon circling overhead. The dragon must have thought the same because it gave a roar of outrage and unleashed a wave of fire that would have swamped both Sam and Gerald.
“Ah!” Gerald threw his arms up as the rats readied another defensive barrier, but he needn’t have worried.
Sam twisted, launching himself into the air and spreading his makeshift wings to take the brunt of the attack. The ghostly flame enveloped him, but Sam scarcely seemed to feel it. Dimly, Gerald realised why Sam hadn’t bothered to dodge. His kind weren’t subject to the ravages of old age, and their bodies barely obeyed the laws of nature. What threat were distortions in time and space to a being like Sam who came from a dimension where concepts like time and space were utterly without meaning?
Even so, the dragon’s fire was still immensely hot. Chunks of Sam’s body were burnt away, and although Sam had protected Gerald from the attack, his immediate surroundings were less fortunate. The paved stone immediately beneath him was stuck in an endless loop of cracking and then fixing itself as the flow of time stopped, started, and twisted into a loop. The sunlight around Sam was even eerier. It formed jagged arcs of radiance interspersed with long arcs of absolute darkness as space was torn asunder. With a ponderous groan, Sam shook off the attack and heaved himself into the air, more of his flesh sloughing off as he rose. The space around him rippled again, this time of his own doing. Sam grew larger still, expanding like the world’s scariest balloon until he was every bit as big as the dragon.
“I don’t even know what to say about… about… that… that thing!” Caroline waved her arms in the general direction of Sam. “But we are definitely going to talk about this later!”
Gerald could only nod as Sam hurled himself into battle. Timmy had once mentioned that as affable as Sam was – and he was very affable indeed if he had plenty of cake – there was a reason the other protoplasmic horrors listened to Sam and a reason why Timmy’s master had gone out of his way to bind Sam in particular with extra rituals and magic. Sam’s size wasn’t merely for show. Oh, he could simply swallow his enemies and devour them, but Sam had been around for a very long time, and unlike many of his brethren, he had learned how to fight instead of relying purely on instinct.
The protoplasmic horror crashed into the dragon at full speed, slamming a pair of those enormous claw-like appendages into the dragon’s side. The dragon’s scales held firm, but the ear-piercing shriek that filled the air when Sam split his claws apart and raked them down the length of the dragon’s side made it clear that even dragon scale couldn’t shrug off Sam’s attacks. The dragon whipped its head around and tried to blast Sam with its fire. Sam extruded a barbed tentacle and grabbed hold of the dragon’s throat. There was another cacophony of shrieking sounds as the barbs ground against the scales on the dragon’s throat. Desperately, the reptile wedged a foot in between them and managed to kick Sam away.
The dragon backed off, trying to get some distance as it peppered Sam with blasts of its unearthly fire. But the horror barely seemed to notice the attacks at all as it lumbered after the dragon. Oh, Sam wasn’t anywhere near as agile in the air as the dragon, but he was fast, and he’d abandoned his clawed appendages in favour of longer tentacles. If Gerald had to guess, Sam would probably try to grab the dragon, maybe even drag it to the ground. The dragon must have seen the danger because it upped its speed, wheeling through the sky and firing ever more panicked bursts of fire at Sam.
Sam simply waded through the attacks. When too much of his flesh was burned to allow easy movement, he simply used some of his tentacles to tear it away. It didn’t matter. Within seconds, his flesh had regenerated, and unlike the dragon, Gerald had a feeling that Sam would only need to land one solid hit to end the fight. This dragon wasn’t like Black Scales. It wasn’t a living legend of incomprehensible power. No, it was an upstart hoping to claim some territory for itself after the aforementioned legend had met his end. In a century or two, perhaps, it might be big and strong enough to challenge Sam in a place full of eldritch power that the horror could draw upon. Right now, however, it was in big, big trouble.
Seemingly fed up with being unable to reach his opponent, a vast mouth opened up along what Gerald supposed was Sam’s back. Teeth the size of grown men parted to reveal a gaping maw filled with seething energy. Reality shattered and tore as Sam unleashed a withering salvo of otherworldly energy at the dragon. The dragon gave a cry of alarm and banked sharply to avoid the attack. It was only partially successful. It had managed to avoid the worst of the attack, but Sam had still managed to score a glancing hit along the dragon’s flanks. Yet even that glancing hit had done terrible damage. Blood bubbled up from between dozens of cracked and broken scales, and the dragon gave an agonised hiss before it used its magic to flee. Sam lingered for a few moments to make sure the dragon was truly gone before he began to shrink and fade from view. Just before he disappeared, the horror gave Gerald a meaningful look. The bureaucrat gulped. He would definitely have some cake ready for Sam later.
As the townsfolk cheered, a bit bewildered but glad to be rid of the dragon and the abomination that had driven it away, Gerald dismissed the zombie hydra and looked around for the rats. To his relief, they were all still alive although some of them were definitely a bit worse for wear. His stepsister marched up to him with an inscrutable expression on her face before she grabbed him by the sleeve and began to drag him toward the inn, which had miraculously emerged from the battle undamaged.
“We need to talk.”
* * *
Caroline stared at Gerald as though he’d grown a second head as he gave her a highly edited account of what he’d been doing recently. He could trust her to be discrete, but he doubted she would have believed him at all if she hadn’t seen what Sam and the rats were capable of with her own eyes. To be fair, his story was quite unbelievable. How many people could honestly say they’d seen a zombie kraken throw the wreckage of a galleon at a fort? Gerald could.
“So… you… you go around and… and do missions…” Caroline shook her head. “With… with necromancers… and… and the dragon today wasn’t even as big as the one you dropped a tower on? I mean…” She lowered her voice,
and her eyes widened in realisation. “You killed Black Scales?”
Gerald nodded.
“…” She took a deep breath and then nodded firmly. “It’s official. I no longer understand how the world works.”
“If it helps,” Gerald said. “I mostly ran away and screamed a lot, and I was very lucky. If they hadn’t been hitting the same spot over and over, I doubt even a tower to the head would have stopped him for long.”
“But you still killed him!” Caroline shrieked before lowering her voice again. “You still struck the killing blow.”
“I suppose I did.” Gerald shivered. “But you have no idea how terrifying it was. It was a miracle I wasn’t killed in the first ten seconds of the fight. If he’d thought I was a threat – if he’d even suspected what I could do – he would have incinerated me as soon as he laid eyes on me. I got lucky. The people I was with are much more of a threat than I am, so he went after them first. They’re good at giving orders too. All I have to do is listen and follow their instructions. It’s worked reasonably well so far.” He smiled. “And whenever I’ve fallen behind, they always come back for me.”
“They’d better,” Caroline growled. “But can you really trust them, Gerald? They sound like criminals.”
“They are for the time being, but I can trust them.” Gerald wasn’t sure about a lot of things in his life, but he was sure he could trust the others to keep him alive.
Caroline held his gaze for a long moment. “Okay then. If you’re sure, I’ll trust your judgement.”
“Thank you. But you need to keep this a secret, okay?”
“Oh, I will. And who would ever believe me if I told them?” She shivered. “And… that… thing from before… you asked him to help?”
“His name is Sam. He lives in the castle. Some of his people want to, uh, end the world, but he’s quite nice as long as you don’t try to steal his cake. As for what he is, he’s a protoplasmic horror from another dimension. He’ll be dropping by for cake later, so I can introduce you if you want.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“And the rats?” Derrick asked. The rodents were watching over the boys as they played outside. The boys were captivated by what the rats could do. Picasso, who was up on his feet again if a little less spry than usual, was teaching the boys how to juggle. The boys were using beanbags that Gerald had gotten with his magic. Picasso? The rat was juggling miniature daggers.
“I don’t know where they’re from, but they are handy to have around. They’ve saved my life several times already, and they are absolutely loyal.”
His stepsister sighed and took a sip of what Gerald strongly suspected was alcohol. “Well, it’s good to know you’re being taken care of.” She smiled. “Can you stay for a few more days? I don’t think we’ll be able to do much today given what happened, and I’m not up to doing any wheeling and dealing today either.”
Gerald smiled back. “I can do that.” He paused as a familiar presence drifted past, invisible and intangible although the innkeeper’s cat hissed and swiped at the air. “Give me a second. I’ll be right back, but Sam wants his cake now.”
The Bank
(Set Before Two Necromancers, a Bureaucrat, and an Elf)
One of the problems with being a semi-villainous necromancer who lived in a castle built atop lightless chasms of unfathomable doom was finding a place to store all of his valuables. True, Timmy kept the majority of his wealth in his castle. It was an eminently practical approach since breaking into a castle full of thousands of his zombies, not to mention Sam and who knew how many other protoplasmic horrors from another dimension, was essentially a death sentence for anyone who wasn’t either an exceptionally gifted thief or a brilliant assassin. And that was assuming whoever tried to break into his castle could somehow get past its many, many magical defences and traps. However, Timmy had realised long ago that being a necromancer with a range of enemies, some of who were actually intelligent and powerful enough to be real threats, meant that he might one day have to abandon his beloved castle.
The most likely scenario involved him fleeing after a full army marched on the castle with a large complement of war mages and siege mages, as well as several members of the Council. However, there were other possibilities. Perhaps his enemies in the necromancer community would band together to defeat him, or perhaps his enemies in the tomb-raiding business would do the same. He was confident he could handle any two of his enemies on his own, but there was a reason people talked about strength in numbers.
If he was forced to flee the castle, then storing all of his valuables there would leave him destitute, and that was assuming he managed to escape at all. He somehow doubted that his enemies would simply let him walk away unscathed. There was also the issue of verifiable wealth. It was all well and good to tell prospective business associates that he had plenty of gold back at his castle, but not everyone would believe him, and simply carrying a lot of gold around was asking for trouble. What he needed was a place to store some of his valuables that could also vouch for his financial status should the need arise, such as during a business transaction. Semi-villainy occasional entailed doing business with some very ruthless people, people who did not like to take chances when it came to money.
In other words, what Timmy needed was a bank.
Banking happened to be one of Everton’s most important industries. Due to its incredibly developed – some would say overdeveloped – bureaucracy, Everton’s banks were considered some of the most secure and stable in the world. Moreover, there were a plethora of banks available to cater to different markets. There were retail banks, which specialised in serving the general public; there were commercial banks, which saw to the needs of businesses; and there were even investment banks, which helped link businesses to investors. For prospective villains and heroes there were also banks that invested aggressively in individuals, providing funds to help them pursue their dreams and ideals in exchange for a slice of any profits those dreams and ideals might generate in the future. Naturally, there were also companies that insured those banks, just in case any of those individuals happened to run into a dragon or something similarly likely to end in death en route to achieving their dreams and ideals. Apart from banks, there were also guilds and other non-bank entities that offered similar services.
There was a guild for necromancers, but the level of dysfunction involved was horrendous. Apparently, asking a bunch of people who could create zombies and who were used to ruling in a fairly tyrannical manner to cooperate was a recipe for disaster. Indeed, studies over the years had shown quite conclusively that any gathering involving more than four or five necromancers inevitably devolved into complete bedlam, usually after some seemingly minor incident, such as a disagreement over zombie nomenclature, escalated into full-blown zombie-based mayhem.
As a result, the necromancers’ guild was one of the most shambolic in the world, and that ineptitude extended to its ability to offer attractive financing options. The thieves’ guild was a more reliable source of funding, even taking into account all of the theft and treachery that was likely to occur whenever someone took out a loan. Thus only very young and inexperienced necromancers or those who had committed acts of truly genuine and despicable evil relied upon the guild for funding. Everyone who could went elsewhere, and Timmy was no different.
His fondest memories of the necromancers’ guild were of the free cookies he’d gotten whenever his master had visited their closest office. His master had done his best to deprive Timmy of baked goods because he was a jerk, so he had looked forward to those visits. The cookies hadn’t been very good – necromancers were not usually known for their baking prowess – but mediocre cookies had been better than nothing. The old necromancer who’d watched over the foyer hadn’t liked Timmy’s master, which was likely why he’d given Timmy cookies in the first place. It was a pity the old fellow hadn’t lived long enough to hear of his master’s demise. Timmy had a feeling the old man would have repl
aced his usual dour look and shamble with a sunny smile and a merry jig.
As a necromancer who specialised in what were generally classified as minor to semi-major acts of non-apocalyptic villainy, Timmy did not have to rely on the guild for additional funding. That didn’t mean he could use a regular bank like the Everton First Kingdom Bank – one of the greatest banks in the world, and the number one bank in customer satisfaction for ten years running – but he could use one of its subsidiaries, the Everton First Kingdom Secondary Bank.
The Secondary Bank had been founded shortly after the original when it had become apparent that certain individuals, amongst them mercenaries, assassins, and various independent mages, possessed significant assets that they wished to place in a bank, either for safekeeping or as part of an interest-generating account. Bankers being bankers, they had wisely opted not to deny them service, especially since the authorities were mostly willing to turn a blind eye, provided taxes were paid on time and in full and that any particularly heinous individuals were not served. The bank vetted out the worst of the bunch and split the Secondary Bank off as a subsidiary to protect the reputation of the original bank, all while making deals with the authorities to report any legitimate attempts to cause the end of the world or the destruction of Everton. Naturally, the Secondary Bank charged higher fees and demanded greater interest on loans to compensate for the questionable legal status of its customers, but they were still a far more palatable option than the various loan sharks, guilds, and other dubious organisations that certain individuals had previously been forced to rely on.
The Hungry Dragon Cookie Company Page 17
