“Can’t say that I do. Also, that’s disgusting.”
“Well, you have thumbs and weapons. I have natural weapons, like sharp teeth.” The drake pointed at his mouth with one set of hand claws. “You owe me for this.”
“First off, you have your tail weapon, and the rotting hell I will owe you! We made a deal already. This will square us up.”
“But—”
“Maybe you should have negotiated better.” When the drake’s eyes smouldered and he raised his top lip to show the teeth he’d mentioned earlier, I added, “Besides, we’re friends, right?”
Jadanak growled a sigh and lamented, “You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”
A new, deep voice announced, “Terrans always enjoy destroying everything around them.” I started, turning to see a man walk out from behind a nearby sand dune. He was tall, muscular, and dressed very strangely. On his bald head, he wore a crown of stone. His clothing was unfamiliar, not the style most men wore, and made of at least ten different colors. Stone tools hung off a belt somewhere in all the cloth, and his oddly handsome features were set in a smirk.
The stranger continued, “They are truly disgusting creatures, Terrans. It pains me every day of my existence that such beings even exist, but the fact I must work with them too? Terrible. I must suffer in silence though, all for the greater good. This is truly my noble burden.”
I thought I might recognize the voice, but I’d never seen this man before. With a frown, I turned back to Jadanak, only to see him lowering his head to the ground, shaking so hard his body swayed. It wasn’t until I saw the drake’s strange behavior that I was able to put everything together. The voice was familiar because I’d heard it less than a year ago when the world-wide bounty for orb-Bonded and Mo’hali Heroes had begun.
“Dolos!” I gasped.
He complained, “No respect left in this world, in this universe. Would never have thought I’d see the day when a silly lizard shows more awareness than a premier test subject. Then again, Terrans are just a step above murderous monkeys.”
I frowned, puzzled. My first instinct had been to bow or kneel like Jadanak, but I couldn’t tell if Dolos was talking to me or to himself. Maybe both? Plus, I could feel my old, stubborn streak flaring up. On top of my mixed emotions, I was confused, frozen. The god of Ludus randomly showing up on the beach next to me was so bizarre, so surprising, it didn’t even feel real to me yet.
With at least some respect in my voice, I asked, “Uh, sir, Your Majesty—” I paused. How should I talk to a god? Then I remembered Enheduanna, all my interactions with her. If Dolos was here, he probably wanted something too. Hopefully he wouldn’t be as annoying as his High Priestess. “Can I help you?” I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“The primitive creature says help, like she could actually do anything of any importance for the great god Dolos!” He scoffed. “Such a pitiful, limited, homely creature...The world, nay, the universe must be very confusing for a lower being with such poor grasp of her station!”
Yeah, I thought, I really don’t think I like Dolos very much. I didn't say anything though, just stared as Dolos continued walking. He still didn’t turn to look at me or Jadanak.
Suddenly, he stopped, making a big show of pulling a rock out of his pocket and holding it in front of him with two fingers. He dropped the stone to the ground and put the back of one wrist to his forehead. “Oh no, what a merciful, yet careless god I am! What a mistake!” he cried, looking at the sky. “I have accidentally lost a powerful magical item that happens to be able to shut down a hellgate from the inside! What would happen if some lowly mortal, even a stupid Terran, were to pick it up?”
I tried glancing at Jadanak to get his reaction to the bizarre display, but he was still doggedly staring at the ground, prostrating as best he could with his four-legged body.
Dolos nodded to himself and continued walking past. He was headed toward the surf, but as he got closer, his head spun without warning, starting at me—no, at my spear. He still hadn’t looked at me, but his gaze was focused on Eneus. “Now that is interesting,” he murmured. He rubbed his chin with long fingers. “I have not seen that weapon for a long time, and it is with a Terran. Why would—ah, Enheduanna. Sneaky, sneaky little Areva. Your greatest experiment? Of course this one is if she has lucked into that somehow…”
Dolos turned, focusing downward before moving his eyes to keep them from ever landing on me, and began mumbling to himself. I thought I heard him say, “change of orders,” and “new priorities.” He walked toward the sea again, like nothing had happened.
“Excuse me,” I said. Dolos didn’t react and Jadanak frantically waved a claw at me to get my attention, making the sign for “no.”
“Hey! I have something to say!” I shouted.
Dolos stopped, and I heard him hiss, “Terrans!” He stayed facing away from me.
I said, “Sir, since you obviously care about tomorrow too, but also obviously can’t directly help, and I will be doing you a favor, can you please make sure my friend Reesi is alive and well? I will be able to fight better knowing that.” From my perspective, it was a very reasonable request, and I felt I’d been very respectful.
Jadanak looked like he was about to die from fright. I understood why. There were stories of Dolos killing people or even wiping out entire towns.
Finally, still having never actually looked at me once, Dolos merely raised a hand and waved it. He began to stride right into the Berber sea. The water rose up his body as he strode out into the waves, unconcerned. I wasn’t sure if he would actually help, but he was the god of Ludus, so I bowed as low as I could. By the time I stood back up again, he was gone.
Minutes passed as I stood still, waiting to see whether he’d come back. When he didn’t, I walked over to pick up what Dolos had dropped. “It’s just a rock,” I said out loud. I kept turning it over in my hands, but other than a “D” inscribed on one side, it truly did appear to only be a stone. Just to be safe, I stowed it away in one of my pouches, the same one I had removed the Dolos orb from earlier.
Silence rang for some time other than the crashing waves and the sigh of the light breeze. I stared at the horizon, trying to make sense of what had happened until Jadanak spoke. “That’s it,” he quavered. “Friends or not, after I do this thing for you tomorrow and you find Tascany for me, we are done. I never want to see you again after that. Since I have known you, everything has become complicated and terrifying. Sitting around Dingeramat with nothing to do for a few hundred years was boring, but safe. This is awful.”
With a nod, I just said, “Alright.” I couldn’t blame him. The timing was bad, but I also added, “You'll need to carry some people on your back tomorrow too.”
“By ‘people’ you mean the street gangers, the Serpents?”
“Yes.”
“Figures.” The drake clawed aimlessly at the sand for a while, staring at the water where Dolos had disappeared. “Nora?”
“Yes?”
“You are kind of a bad friend.”
“I know.”
Echoes
Nerves ran up and down my spine as sea spray hit my face. I was heading back to my childhood home for the first time in near twenty years on the back of a drake, surrounded by tough street fighters, on my way to kill Jackals. Only five years before now, I could have never imagined such a thing.
The Serpents had managed to put almost every large boat they had in the water. All the Serpents’ water mages that could hide the boats from the monsters below were flanked by other boats. In turn, they all followed Jadanak, with the commanders on his back, and a small group of boats surrounding him.
Nothing in the water here was scarier than Jadanak, so the procession stayed safe.
So this is the day we either save Bittertown or it won’t exist anymore, huh? The thought was obscene, bizarre, and I couldn’t help remembering Soron. If I hadn’t helped stop the slavers then, the cultists, would they have come back? Probably. At the very
least, people would have moved, and more would have died.
And now if we failed, everything I’d done in the past would be pointless. If true-demons ran around Berber destroying everything, they’d no-doubt eventually find Soron too. I thought about all the kind people in Soron, how they’d helped me fix my battered and broken body. My eyes narrowed as I spotted land and gritted my teeth. I really hated the dark cultists. Whether they worshipped Asag, or some other nightmare thing, I was going to stop them. Everyone knew I was no rotting hero, but sometimes rabid monsters needed to be hunted and put down.
I glanced behind me, making sure all the other groups were still close. Luckily, they were. In fact, the boats were so near, I was able to see a fighter in one of the rearmost boats heave over the side, puking her guts out. Nerves, I thought, and felt a flash of empathy. All of us had the jitters, and most of the Serpents weren’t used to it like I was. This was going to be real, kill-or-be-killed combat, no raids, no honor duels, and no posturing.
And yet, the handful of fighters that had drawn straws to stay back on the island to protect the non-combatants had felt guilty about it. I’d tried to address that during my speech last night, and I hoped I’d helped. My military service had helped me know what to say to groups of people before a fight, mainly because I could just parrot the words of people smarter and more influential than me from the past.
I met Beem’s eyes, and her second in command, the newly orb-Bonded Anippe. I approved of this, and Anippe had told me this morning that she’d gotten a modular Dolos orb—first generation. I’d have to take her word for it, since I wouldn’t see the text over my eye—I’d known her before she became ‘Bonded. Even though there seemed to be exceptions to this rule, most people accepted that this was how the system worked. Dolos hadn’t exactly given much information on it.
Both Anippe and Beem nodded at me. Frederick had stayed back on the island, but the other man on the leader team, Trevor Young, flashed me a grin and saluted with his huge bow. He hid his discomfort well, but I noticed his green complexion. The healer couldn’t heal his own motion sickness, it seemed.
“Alright,” I muttered. “Time to work, Nora.” The plan I’d put together with Beem involved me going ahead to kill the cultists’ sentries and verify the target before the rest of the Serpents landed. If my childhood home wasn’t actually our enemy’s base, the Serpents would pull back and make one last, probably pointless effort to find it...somewhere. We didn’t know how much time we had left, but smart money was on the end of Bittertown happening at nightfall.
After the time we’d taken to prepare for this attack, now we had a few hours, if that.
I stood and kicked up from Jadanak’s back, nervously hefting my pouch with the signal flares. If I lit one of them, it would create blue smoke. That was the signal to turn back. The other would make red smoke: attack.
As I gained altitude, I gripped another unfamiliar piece of gear, my crossbow, one of the new weapons I carried now. With my new Element: Air power, I could kill at range, or I could use Pewpew, but the goal for this plan was to be stealthy. Crossbows still made noise but nothing like my ranged abilities, and this one had wool silencers on the string.
Now I was getting close. Once I landed, I only had about twenty minutes to get a signal up, one way or another. I hadn’t been able to start my mission earlier than this, because alerting the cultists to an attack too far ahead could get all seventy Serpents massacred, or the signal might be missed, or I could be discovered, leading the enemy to be waiting on the beach. The signal’s colored smoke wouldn’t last long, so my timing was important, and so was stealth.
I could only hope the Jackals and Wyverns would cooperate.
There was one house between the Berber Sea and my old house. I flew low over the water, just in case there were any sentries posted, but as I landed on the roof of the nearest, decrepit house, I saw my caution hadn’t been necessary. There were some guards at my old house across the street, but I didn’t see any others nearby. Old memories overwhelmed me as I looked down at my old neighborhood.
The street below was where I learned to ride a bike, my father pushing my seat. After hurting myself on the corner a year later while playing ‘Bonded and Heroes with other children, I’d experienced magic for the first time. One of the mothers of the family down the street had been a Life mage and had healed my elbow.
Waves of memories washed over me before the current state of the area overlaid them all. The entire neighborhood, once one of the classiest places in Bittertown, was now more like a homeless camp. Nothing had been maintained in over a decade, there were signs of past crime everywhere, and some homes had even been partially burned at some point. Everyone in town, including me, had just assumed that after my father’s company had gone out of business, it’d started a chain reaction that brought down many of the rich, and this area had never recovered. Over the years, it had not been worth the trouble for the city to try fixing the area. They’d always seemed to have other, more pressing problems.
But after hearing about what had happened when I was a girl, about how my mother had been chased out of town, I’d put the pieces together that the cultists had begun claiming this area a long time ago. I hadn’t imagined that my old home in particular actually was their headquarters, or a hub of sorts, though. Of course, the Serpents’ scouts hadn’t been sure. They’d just reported that the surrounding homes functioned as barracks of a sort, and cultists went in and out of my old house in a steady stream.
I narrowed my eyes, noticing the guards around the building. Luckily, they were lazy—and why wouldn’t they be? They weren’t professionals, and they’d already either killed or had chased away almost all their enemies. I briefly considered taking a shot with my new crossbow from where I was, but decided against it. After some practice with the thing, I was confident with it, but not confident enough to be making soundless kill shots from across two front yards and a street. Not only that, if things went wrong, I needed to be able to deal with it immediately, not from a distance.
I thought about it for a while, then used Flight to float from rooftop to rooftop, soundlessly moving down the street and around a bend before crossing the street out of sight. Then I timed my leaps carefully, keeping to trees in order to make my way back. I could feel time ticking away as I finally landed on the house next door to my target on the correct side of the street. The state of the yard below pained my heart, one last memory-based twinge before I got down to business. Any grieving or deep thinking I still needed to do, I’d need to do later.
The backyard of my childhood home was all overgrown and wild now. There were two guards, one a Wyvern, and one a Jackal—both were half asleep, leaning against different walls. My first target, the Wyvern, was a big, dirty-looking woman with half her head shaved. I aimed my crossbow carefully, aiming for the base of my target’s skull. After breathing out, I let my mind clear, and slowly pulled the trigger. My weapon twanged louder than I’d hoped, but I didn’t allow myself cringe or to otherwise throw off the shot. The bolt hit true.
One down. The other guard couldn’t see the dead guard where she’d crumpled, but she seemed to be more alert now. Despite being silenced, the sound of my weapon must have pulled her out of her stupor.
I quickly ducked back on the other side of the roof and reloaded my crossbow. Despite how awkward it was to cock the weapon in this position, my orb-given strength helped. After the next bolt was loaded, I took a deep breath, centering myself. “Time for more murder,” I whispered, my heart cold. To this day, one of the few things Lisa had been right about was that all killing was murder. People dressed it up, moralized it for killing that they thought was justified, but I knew I was planning to take a person’s life. I smoothly rose over the top of the roof, resting my weapon there, and lining up my shot.
The next guard went down as quickly as the first, but while the first had acted like a puppet with its strings cut, this woman thrashed, her limbs twitching in death. Luckily, I’d s
till hit her squarely or she definitely would have been making more noise. One arm hit a bush, though, and I hissed—my head swiveled up. Nobody came running.
Damn, I thought. Time was running short, and I could be discovered any moment—there were more guards too, just a bit more than a stone’s throw away in the front yard. I grabbed Vistvis behind my back and softly asked, “See anything?”
I hadn’t talked to Vistvis in a while, but she was always with me and I trusted she’d understand what I meant. She could be short-tempered and awful sometimes, but she had never been stupid.
I broke the connection and nodded.
With no time to waste, I extended Eneus to full size, then collapsed the handle, turning the spear into a short sword. I weightlessly, soundlessly hopped down to the yard below and stabbed both guards through the heart just to be safe. The Jackal had looked familiar when I’d gotten closer, but I hadn’t lingered to be sure.
Then I tried the back door of my old house, finding it locked. “Of course,” I muttered. I didn’t want to go to the front of the house, since there would be more chance of being seen there, so on a whim, I flipped over a rock near the door where my father used to keep a spare key. The glint of brass in the dirt made my eyes widen before flattening in pleasant surprise.
As quietly as I could, I unlocked the back door and let myself in, ready for everything, but I still nearly grunted in surprise when I saw how nice the house was. The yard, the neighborhood, and the outside of the building all looked horrible, but the inside was actually more lavish than I could remember it being when I was a girl.
I gawked, but quickly hid as I heard the front door open. A couple people also moved around upstairs, probably more guards. My heart dropped as the fact that I was surrounded, and in an unknown situation, really settled home. The visitor through the front door sounded like they were heading to the library. I grew curious about what they were doing, and desperate since they’d be moving close enough to see me.
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