Loot and Booty Box Set

by Zeke Biddle

  Eulalia and I stand in the protective area behind them all. I’m on the left, Eulalia takes the right.

  “Yell if you want me to shift,” Ynes says.

  There are a dozen well-armed men in front of us. It’s tempting to let her turn into a dragon and destroy them all, but I don’t know if she’d even fit in the hallway. And back in the caves, it seemed like she’d only been able to target one giant before the change wore off.

  Without knowing more about how that skill worked or how many more guards might be on their way, I say, “Thanks, but probably not unless things turn to shit.”

  Despite their numbers, I’m really not worried.

  Sure, it’ll suck if too many more come to their aid, but after all we’ve been through, the thought of fighting even a couple dozen guards doesn’t intimidate me.

  Before I can yell something mocking the guards, a bolt of lightning zaps from somewhere in their midst and hits Alexandra squarely in the chest. She starts convulsing, and the lightning bolt passes right through her and hits me next.

  “Wizard!” I shout through gritted teeth as I twitch on the floor and hope I don’t piss myself. “Kill the wizard first!”

  “Where is he?” Gillian asks.

  “Left side. About three rows back,” Eulalia says before another lightning bolt sends her falling to the floor, too.

  Almost immediately, there’s a grunt from the attackers ahead of us.

  “Got him,” Gillian says.

  “Good job,” I say while painfully rising to my hands and knees.

  Someone trips over my back.

  I fall to the floor but spin toward the man, hoping I’ll be able to manage casting a spell before he stabs me.

  The blood flowing from the slash in his neck buys me a brief reprieve.

  Slightly recovered from the lightning bolt, I stand, not exactly quickly, but not too slowly, either.

  BoomBitch cuts one throat with her scimitar and almost immediately slices a second neck with her other one. Saying a silent prayer of thanks that she’s on my side, I look for a target of my own.

  Gillian’s arrows and BoomBitch’s swords have cut our attackers’ numbers in half.

  Alexandra leans against the wall, shaking her head of the cobwebs, but Eulalia is already at her side, somehow seeming like she hadn’t also just been hit by lightning.

  “Where’s Ynes?” I ask.

  “Over there,” Gillian answers, pointing with the arrow nocked and ready in her bow. “But I can’t get a clean shot.”

  My eyes follow to where she’s pointing. Ynes is trapped beneath three guards. They are packed together so tightly they can’t get a good swing at her with their axes, so they’ve resorted to using their boots.

  “What is she doing out there?” I ask, knowing my magic will be as useless as Gillian’s arrows in the crowd.

  I just can’t take the risk of killing her while trying to save her.

  Gillian turns a little to the right and shoots an arrow straight into the exposed neck of someone closer to us. “Don’t know. Doesn’t matter. Must kill the rest so we can save her.”

  She’s right. Blaming Ynes for anything would be stupid.

  I give two guards their own taste of lightning.

  BoomBitch leaps at the opening we’ve created and stabs the men I zapped through the heart almost before they’ve even hit the floor.

  “Damn, she’s quick,” I mumble under my breath.

  Without missing a beat, BoomBitch turns toward Ynes’ attackers.

  Rather than finishing the attack, she leaps back toward us when Ynes disappears, and the men fall on top of each other.

  “Uh oh. They’re going to regret that. Fall back,” I order the rest of my women.

  A smile spreads across my face when a cloud in the shape of a dragon forms behind the remaining guards.

  “They are so fucked,” Gillian says with a laugh while lowering her bow.

  The men don’t see it happening, though.

  They turn their attention to the rest of us and leer.

  I’m not really sure why. With just three of them left, we could easily kill them all. But men can be stupid, I guess. They see us retreating and assume we’re afraid of them rather than trying to avoid the mess their bodies are about to make.

  In dragon form, Ynes floats toward them.

  The guards start to get the hint something might be wrong when they see us openly laughing at them. They look at each other in confusion and finally turn and see the dragon as it swallows them whole.

  Since she’s just some kind of vapor cloud, her teeth cause no harm. She just passes straight through their bodies.

  But that doesn’t help the guards one bit. Her attack isn’t at the macro level. Somehow she gets down inside their molecules and starts tearing shit apart…or something disgusting like that.

  The men scream as their bodies turn to goo. When Ynes is done, they are just one big pile of wetness on the floor. The sight nearly turns my stomach. I doubt I’ll ever get used to watching it, but much like BoomBitch, I’m really glad Ynes is on my side.

  The cloud of dragon splits apart, and a few seconds later Ynes is left standing before us.

  “Sorry,” she says, looking down at her feet like she stole the last cookie. “I tried to hold off.”

  “No worries,” I say as we all rush forward to give her a hug. “You did what you had to do. Now, we’ll have to make sure you don’t need to do it again until we get the chance to recharge overnight.”

  “Or we could just fuck,” Gillian says with a grin.

  The one drawback of the spell is that Ynes can only do it once. To recharge she either needs to wait until the next day or have sex with her harem leader.

  It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

  “First, we have to get out of this hallway before more guards come,” I say. “Alexandra, can you work on that door again?”

  “Like I need your permission to do anything, wizard,” Alexandra says from behind me.

  When I turn, I see she’s already managed to open the door.

  “How’d you do that so quickly?”

  “It’s a lot easier when I’m not being attacked. There’s a trick I forgot in the moment.”

  “What is it?” Gillian asks.

  “Like I’d give away palace security secrets to a thief.”

  “Fair enough,” Gillian concedes.

  “Now what?” BoomBitch asks.

  “We see what secrets are waiting in the queen’s quarters,” Eulalia says, gently pushing us all toward the door. “Hopefully there won’t be any more surprises inside.”

  4

  A quick search of the room shows us plenty of wealth but no answers to the mystery of what happened to the queen.

  “Oh my God, you guys,” Gillian calls out from the enormous bed that’s easily twice as big as any I’ve seen before. “We could all easily sleep together on this thing. And these sheets are the softest things I’ve felt since Alexandra’s tongue licked my—”

  “That’s my mother’s bed, Gillian. Get off.”

  Gillian slides off the side and even manages to blush. “Sorry.”

  “I mean, my mom can get freaky with however many men she wants to in that bed, but there’s no way you perverts are going to use it.”

  “Wait,” Eulalia says. “Your mom…and a bunch of men…”

  Ynes answers for Alexandra. “Standard, really, for queens. After all, kings spend all day being as boring as possible. A queen needs something to pass the time.”

  “I thought you said nobody but your mom and her maids were allowed in,” BoomBitch says.

  “There are, of course, some discreet exceptions as befitting a queen.”

  “Anyway…” I say to get the conversation back on track. “We need to find this portal. She probably didn’t keep it right out in the open, especially if she…entertained…so much in here.”

  I take a step back when Alexandra turns toward me. Rather than draw her swor
d, she laughs so hard she bends in half.

  When she collects herself, she winks at me. “Good one, wizard. Mom really does love her men. All of them except my dad. Not that I blame her about that. He’s an asshole.”

  I’d love to ask her to explain further, since any information might prove critical if we’re going to be stuck in the castle where everyone seems interested in trying to kill us.

  But since getting away is our safest option, I say, “There’s probably more to her quarters than just this room, right?”

  “Of course,” Alexandra says. “She’s the queen of a large kingdom. She has three estates spread across the lands. She certainly has more than just this one room inside the castle.”

  “Cool, cool. Thanks for the clarification. I’m not exactly an expert in these things. Back before I came over to these lands I lived in a dorm room that was probably smaller than your mom’s bed and was lucky there wasn’t anyone available to be my roommate.”

  “I don’t understand this joke, wizard.”

  “Yeah, me, either. College sucks. But anyway, where would your mother store something that she doesn’t want her maids or visitors to know about?”

  Alexandra shrugs, and so we all set off in separate directions to explore the queen’s quarters. She must have close to a dozen rooms. It makes the tiny tent we’ve been sharing seem ridiculous.

  No wonder Alexandra hasn’t rushed to join my harem.

  I’m going to have to step up my game. No matter what she says, she isn’t going to want to spend her life with a broke wizard. I need to really start worrying more about the loot than the booty for a while, until I can afford somewhere nice enough to live; not just for her, but the rest of my women.

  We all rush back to the bedroom when Eulalia screams. Instead of more guards attacking, we see Gillian on the bed straddling Eulalia and tickling her. Eulalia wiggles beneath her but can’t escape.

  Alexandra explodes. “I said not on my mom’s bed!”

  She rushes to the bed and shoves Gillian.

  Gillian falls to the floor. “Hey, relax. We weren’t doing anything. It was all innocent and—hey, what’s that?”

  From her spot on the floor, she points at something underneath the bed.

  “I don’t know,” Alexandra says, looking ready to kick Gillian.

  I place my hand on Alexandra’s arm and say to Gillian, “What is it?”

  “A big chunk of wood. Like a picture frame or something. Could it be important?”

  Alexandra flops onto the edge of the bed and rests her head in her hands. “Don’t be stupid. Mom wouldn’t store something valuable under her bed.”

  Gillian starts pulling it out anyway. “Is that a door? Why would anyone store a door under the bed?”

  I give her a hand. She’s right. It is a door. It looks out of place in this game world, though. It reminds me of the doors to the classes on campus back at college.

  We stand it up.

  “This is a waste of time,” Alexandra says. “My mom could be—”

  I pull the door open.

  Rather than seeing the other side of the room, all we can see is a swirling pool of black.

  I rub my hand through Gillian’s red hair. “Good job. I think you found the portal.”

  “That is what us thieves do best, but we’re also really good at sneaking into places and scouting things out.”

  She runs through the doorway and disappears.

  “Damn it, Gillian. Come back here so we can come up with a plan,” I shout into the opening, but she doesn’t reply.

  “I guess I get to storm after her and save her ass.” Alexandra says and charges the door.

  Instead of disappearing like Gillian, she hits the blackness and bounces back like she’s hit a brick wall.

  “Ouch. Fucking magic. It’s such bullshit.”

  I grab her hands and help her to her feet.

  We all freeze when we hear voices whispering out in the hall. I can’t make out the details, but I don’t think they are throwing us a surprise party.

  BoomBitch reaches tentatively toward the portal. Her hand disappears. She tries to pull it back out. “I’m stuck. What should I do?”

  “It must be a one-way portal,” I say. “The only thing for you to do is go the rest of the way through, find Gillian and stay with her.”

  BoomBitch’s ears droop nervously, but she nods and bravely steps forward and disappears into the portal.

  “You should all go,” Alexandra says. “They won’t hurt me, but I can’t make that same promise for the rest of you.”

  Eulalia pokes the portal and meets resistance. “Looks like I can’t.”

  Ynes comes to the same conclusion when she knocks on the blackness.

  “Now you,” Alexandra tells me.

  “I’ll try after we deal with the guards.”

  Alexandra relents and turns toward the door. “Fine. Stand behind me. Eulalia and Ynes, hide behind the door and—”

  She doesn’t finish the thought.

  Right when I let down my guard, she spins and shoves me at the portal. “Be safe, wizard. Figure out how to bring them back. I’ll take care of the others.”

  I pinwheel my arms, trying to keep my balance. It’s no use. I fall through the portal. One second I’m in the queen’s bedroom preparing to fight a new wave of armed guards. The next I’m on my back, lying on concrete and staring up at a traffic light.

  “Where are we?” BoomBitch asks while helping me to my feet.

  Gillian is standing nearby, spinning in a circle with a dazed look of confusion on her face.

  “I don’t know, BoomBitch.” I start spinning, too, trying to take in the details. “But we’ll figure it out and get back to…Wait, I know that place.”

  I point toward the bleachers off in the distance.

  I used to walk past them every day for the whole semester on my way to my classes.

  “We’re on Earth.”

  5

  “What’s Earth?” BoomBitch asks. “Isn’t that the kingdom where you’re from?”

  Not ready to fully explain all that, I say, “Yes.” To myself, I mumble, “Yeah. This doesn’t make any sense. How can I get trapped in a VR game and then teleport from the game back to Earth? Won’t there be two of me here?”

  BoomBitch’s sensitive ears easily pick up my words. “None of this makes any sense to me. I’m just along for the ride.”

  I squint at her. Something she’s just said feels important, but I don’t know why.

  “So what do we do next?” Gillian asks. “The queen must be somewhere. Where would a queen trapped on Earth go?”

  “No idea. We can’t even walk around asking people if they’ve seen her. We don’t know her name or what she looks like. Hell, we don’t even know how long she’s been here or if time moves the same speed between the worlds. She might be thousands of years ahead of us by now.”

  BoomBitch hugs her stomach. “Some food would be great.”

  I grab her face with both hands and kiss her on the mouth. “You’re a genius.”

  “What did I—”

  “There are two things that we need to do. Well, three, I guess. First, we go to my dorm room. I need to know if I’m in the room or not. Maybe this is a fake-Earth we’ve teleported to; just another part of the game. While we’re there, I can use my computer to send a message to my sister to investigate this game and the company that made it. She’s a wizard at that stuff.”

  “Wizard? It runs in the family?” BoomBitch asks.

  Her naivety is a pleasant diversion to the fucked up situation. I laugh despite myself. “No. It’s different here. It just means she good with computers. Never mind. I’ll message her, and then we can do the third thing. Track down Kip’s house and beat his ass until he answers some questions. Let’s go. I’ll make you some ramen noodles when we get to my room. That’s about as close to magic as we have in this world.”

  Happy to have a plan, I start toward my dorm. BoomBitch practically bou
nces beside me. Gillian follows silently a step behind, lost in her own thoughts.

  I ignore her to wrestle with my own.

  Why were the three of us able to teleport but not the others? Maybe it has something to do with character classes.

  I don’t like that answer, but it’s all I’m able to come up with as we head up the stairs to my room.

  “Crap. I don’t have a key. I hate how these doors lock automatically” I say when I try to open the door. “Come on. The RA has a master one he can use.”

  Neil wobbles when he opens the door and looks out at us. He does a lot of drugs. Unsteadiness is not uncommon for him. He can’t seem to figure out which of us to focus on.

  “You dorks cosplaying? And what kind of furry are you?” he asks BoomBitch.

  I hadn’t even thought of how out of place we must appear in our game-world clothes. We’ll need to make more of an effort to keep a low profile.

  “I’m in a hurry, Neil. I locked myself out again. Can you please just unlock my door?”

  “Who are you?” he asks, wobbling precariously.

  Remembering I don’t look anything like my real self, I pray the drugs are hitting him heavily. “It’s me, Marcus.”

  “I love you, man.” His burp smells like mushrooms, but at least he doesn’t try to screw with me, and we’re in my room before anyone else notices us.

  Before he steps back out in the hallway, he asks, “Looking for another man for this party?”

  BoomBitch growls.

  Gillian shoves his chest, sending him falling to his ass. She slams the door after him and flips on the light switch.

  I idly wonder how she knew how to do that, and just barely hear her start to say, “Marcus, there’s something I need to tell—”

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” I ask when I see Jenny, the girl I spilled my beer on at the party, sitting on the bed next to the Earth-me.

  God, that was a lifetime ago.

  She is wearing her own VR headset.

  Just like me…well, Earth-me…she’s not moving.

  I tap her shoulder, but there is no response. She’s off in her own little game world.