On my previous visit, Grizzle’s capital, Actinup, had looked like any town in any low-magik dimension. Practically all traffic moved at ground level, and people had to snoop into each other’s business by straightforward means like eavesdropping and gossip. This time, thanks to the thick haze, I couldn’t see more than twenty feet from the end of my nose. I could hear alarmed voices and the sound of wagons and dray animals retreating from our position.
“The force lines aren’t much to write home about,” Aahz said. That was my cue to scan the local source of magik and see what we had to work with. No one outside of M.Y.T.H., Inc. knew that Aahz had lost his powers #. As a Pervect, he was pretty formidable anyhow, but the illusion that he was still a fearsome master magician kept a lot of trouble at arm’s reach.
“The red one under the main road isn’t too great, but it’ll do,” I said, with a casual flip of my hand. I was glad I had filled up my internal batteries before we left Deva.
“I’ll clear the air so we can see what we’re dealing with,” Aahz said. With theatrical passes for the benefit of Havago and Gazinda, he spread his arms out and rotated his hands in circles.
From the tips of his fingers, I extended visible cones of blue lightning. The base of each cone drew the smoke inward and sucked the ashes out of the air, trickling them into heaps on the ground. In moments, the street cleared.
“Voila,” Aahz said, clapping his hands together. It was a Pervish term he sometimes used. As far as I knew, it meant “Admire my handiwork.”
“Nice,” Markie said, applying her sucker to her outstretched tongue for a lick. She tossed her head of golden curls. “Couldn’t have done better myself.”
“Crom’s antlers!” Gazinda said, looking around us. “What a mess!”
Knots of Grizzlies and hairy gray animals clung to one another in what shelter they could find, in the corner of ruined houses, under bridges, or behind fallen blocks of stone. Half the buildings on the cold street were on fire, had chunks gouged out of them, or both. Not too far away, I could hear banging and crashing noises. Whatever had caused all the mayhem was still there.
“What happened?” I asked the nearest Grizzly, a tall female with a gold chain around her neck. The locals had long, thick, brown or black fur, prominent muzzles filled with sharp teeth, and little round ears.
“It came out of nowhere!” she said, pointing an impressive talon into the air. “Huge! Ugly! Blue! All of a sudden, it started thrashing and breaking things! We’ve been running away from it ever since.”
Aahz’s eyebrows went up. Grizzlies might be boring, but they had a reputation for being able to defend themselves. Something that scared them had to be formidable.
“What is it?” he asked. She turned wide brown eyes toward him.
“We don’t know! We’ve never seen anything like it – or them. I… I can’t tell you if it’s one thing or a bunch of them!”
“An it or a them?” I asked. “What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” Aahz said, scratching his chin. “It could be a lot of things. None of them good. I’d like more data, preferably before that thing, or things, comes charging out here again.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is!” Havago proclaimed, stepping forward. He drew his sword with an audible clash of metal and held it up to the murky sky. “I, Havago, am here to save you!”
Then the Doodlebug hit him.
A long chain of brilliant electric blue, taller than me and almost half a block long, moving on tiny pairs of black legs, shot out of a nearby alley, hurtled past us, and bowled into the Titan. Havago went flying down the street. His sword went one way, his silver helmet another. The blue beast, or beasts – the Grizzly wasn’t wrong – put a long, skinny black nose under Havago and flipped him over. The Titan bellowed, but couldn’t get to his feet. The Doodlebug flipped him again, rolling him down the street like a hoop.
“Stop! That! You! Varlet!” Havago bellowed, one word per bounce. His cuirass fell off, followed by both gauntlets. “Let! Me! Up!”
“Oh, my!” Gazinda shrieked. She shot after Havago, picking up his discarded belongings along the way. “Oh, my! Oh, my! Havago!”
The Grizzlies rushed out into the street, watching the three of them disappear in a cloud of dust.
“That’s not local. What’s it doing here?” Aahz asked.
“How should I know?” the Grizzly bellowed, going nose to nose with my partner. She bared her teeth, which weren’t as impressive as Aahz’s, but still pretty fierce, and held up her claws. “I don’t know where you came from, either!”
I pushed the two of them back with a thread of magik, just enough to get in between them. With Aahz growling over my shoulder, I turned to face the female.
“Okay, let’s start over. I’m Skeeve. This is Aahz, and Markie. We’re from M.Y.T.H., Inc. We’re here to help you. What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Tedina,” the Grizzly said, still glaring at Aahz. “I’m mayor of this city.”
“Glad to meet you,” I said, with a pleasant smile. “Your representative came to see us yesterday. You… you did send for us? Because of a destructive monster? That destructive monster?”
“Yes, we did! We thought you’d be able to handle it, until those two idiots got involved! Who are they?”
I glanced up the street, where the Titans and the blue monster had disappeared in a cloud of dust.
“Uh, well.” I swallowed my misgivings, and held my chin up proudly. “We were fortunate to be able to bring the great hero Havago with us. He’s defeated monsters in sev—um, a few other dimensions.”
“Well, he looks like an idiot,” Tedina said. “We thought M.Y.T.H., Inc. would be more effective!”
I felt a pang. Our reputation had already taken a hit. I cleared my throat.
“Havago will take care of it for you,” I said. “And his assistant Gazinda. Have no fear.”
The Doodlebug hurtled past again, knocking us all off our feet. Havago thundered behind, waving his sword. His shiny silver helmet had a visible dent in the side.
“Come back, foul knave!” he bellowed. “Come back and let me chop you into pieces!”
“Yeah, right,” Tedina said, her furry face a mask of skepticism. I couldn’t disagree with her.
Gazinda puffed in his wake, her handbag slung over her wrist, her short legs threshing as she did her best to keep up with him.
“Oh, dear! Oh, my!”
I heaved myself to my feet and took off running after them. Markie lifted herself on a carpet of magik. I grabbed up Aahz in an envelope of force so he looked as if he was floating by himself. He swam through the air to catch up with me.
“How can we get rid of it?” I asked. “Brute force doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on it.”
“You have to trap it in a place where it can’t split up,” Markie said. “That big idiot is doing it all wrong. If you attack it in the open, it will just divide into segments. If we’re really unlucky, it’ll spawn more of them. Watch!”
Just as she predicted, the Doodlebug headed straight for a wrought iron gazebo in the middle a garden in the town square. The round structure had only one entrance. It looked almost strong enough to hold the creature in place.
“Aha!” Havago chortled, bearing down upon it, sword held high. “I have you now!”
But instead of plunging into the metal cage, the bright blue streak divided into a dozen smaller pieces that raced off in all directions. Two of them came around the far side of the gazebo and charged each other.
“Uh-oh. Down!” Markie yelled.
“Drop us,” Aahz commanded.
I dropped us into the scorched grass on the edge of the garden. Aahz threw his arms over his head. The Titans stood watching the pieces of Doodlebug hurtling toward one another.
“Havago, move!” I shouted.
A deafening boom split the air. A blast of flame shot toward us, melting the ironwork into red-hot slag. The big warrior stood as if stunned. Gazinda
leaped on him, knocking him sideways. The tongue of fire missed her by inches. The two of them went rolling over and over into a flowerbed. She lay on the ground coughing, a wreath of daisies festooning her hair. Havago sprang up and brushed down his armor, ignoring her. Masses of smoke rose around us, obscuring the buildings on either side. The Doodlebug had used it to make a complete getaway.
“Does the phrase ‘doesn’t know what he’s doing’ start to make sense?” Aahz asked. I pulled us both to our feet.
“I vote for ‘complete lunkhead,’” Markie said, clearing the air without ceremony. “And ‘inconsiderate jerk.’ But he is the client.”
“One of them,” I said. “We’re making it worse for our other client.”
“Where did it go?” Havago asked, looking around in puzzlement. Gazinda climbed to her feet, the smile on her face as undimmed as if he had rescued her. He took his helmet off and shoved it into her arms. “Here.”
“It split,” Aahz said. “Let’s take the timeout to hear from the locals what’s been going on.”
“Barstow didn’t exactly give us a lot of information,” Aahz said, to the gathering of Grizzlies who met with us in what remained of a sports center. Springs and weights still clung to the broken walls, and sunlight filtered through holes in the ceiling. Everything was covered with dust. “We came into this flying blind. When did the Doodlebug first show up?”
“You know what that thing is?” Tedina blurted, over the murmurs and complaints of her citizens.
“I’ve seen one in a book,” I explained. “I didn’t think they were from around here.”
“They’re not! We never have anything like that, except when you people come charging through Grizzle on your way to somewhere else!”
“Cool your jets, lady,” Aahz said, the veins in his yellow eyes turning ochre. “We didn’t dump it here.”
Tedina sighed and backed away. “No. I know that. It was those BEASTA people.”
I felt my ears prick up, not in a good way. “BEASTA? They were here? Why?”
The Grizzly patted the shaggy animal at her side with an affectionate paw. It drooled and leaned against her leg.
“They don’t like our pets,” she said. “We’re good to our grizzhounds! They eat the same food we do, sleep in our dens, go to school and work with us! Setting them loose to fend for themselves would kill them! But the BEASTA people wouldn’t listen.”
BEASTA. I groaned. We had run into the Beings who Enjoy Altruistically Starting Trouble over Animals more than once. They caused a near riot in the Bazaar on the one time they made it through into Deva. They were known to be sneaky about promoting their agenda. The details of that agenda weren’t really clear to me. I only knew some fast-talking individuals tried to take Gleep away, citing his right to be free to be a dragon. Fortunately, my dragon is smarter than he looks, and led them all over the Bazaar before dumping them in the dungheap behind the dragon lot. The Merchants’ Association had kicked them out and put a bounty on their heads, so they never tried to come back.
“Doodlebugs come from Boozen,” Markie said. “They’d be at the top of the food chain anywhere else. Except maybe Draco. Or Cupy. Import is outlawed anywhere else. They’re too dangerous.”
“Get it out of here!” Tedina exclaimed. “That’s what we’re paying you for!”
“It shouldn’t be that serious,” I said, alarmed. “Look, it’s one monster – ”
“Or group of monsters,” Markie interrupted.
“Right. We’re going to….” I began.
“Good people of Grizzle,” Havago announced, spreading his arms wide. Gazinda had pulled a polishing cloth from her tiny handbag and was shining the big Titan’s silver armor to a gleaming finish. “I have defeated innumerable creatures and brought justice to legions. Let me assure you that it will be my pleasure to free Actinup from the toils of the treacherous Doodlebug! It will trouble you no longer. I would give my life to defeat the monster in your midst!”
“If there’s anything left of the town once you’re done with it!” one of the Grizzlies said. “It blew up the town square!”
“How was I to know it was that fiendishly clever?” Havago asked, with a majestic frown.
“You’re supposed to be experts!” another Grizzly said.
“And we are,” Aahz said, moving over to crush Havago in one arm. The Titan grimaced. “He’s just a little exuberant. He was testing the monster’s reflexes, that’s all.”
“My intent was to slash its head off! I will rend it into quivering ribbons. I will…!”
“Havago,” I said, taking the Titan’s other arm. “We need your guidance. Folks, let us confer with our, uh, hero, and come up with a plan.”
Over his protests, Aahz and I steered him away from the crowd. The Grizzlies gave us baleful looks as we moved into a corner.
“Why did you stop me?” Havago said, looking back at the locals. “I was gaining their confidence!”
“Any more confidence, and they’d run us out of town on a rail,” Aahz said through a fixed smile that showed all his teeth.
“They do not know what true heroism is,” Havago said. “I will show them. I repelled a Kraken from a seaside town! The Ferdalump that threatened Gurnie is now a trophy on the Gurnica king’s wall! I shall go up against this Doodlebug in single combat and defeat it.”
“Look, Havago,” I said, keeping my voice as reasonable as I could. “This one doesn’t behave like those other monsters.”
“All monsters are the same,” Havago said, with impervious confidence. I felt my temper rising. I wanted to take him back to Deva and leave him there until someone asked us to save a cat from a tree.
As if she could sense my mood, Gazinda fluttered in between us. From her handbag, she had drawn a silver tray. On it sat half a dozen silver cups frosted with condensation. They were filled with pink liquid.
“Strawberry cordial?” she said, with a brilliant smile at me. “Havago likes to have a cold drink at this time of the morning. It helps brighten the day!”
“Uh, thanks,” I said. I sipped the beverage. It actually did make me feel more relaxed. I made my ire retreat.
“My cordial!” Havago said, raising the small beaker to the others in the room. “To the success of our enterprise!”
“You have anything bigger than a thimble?” Aahz said, tossing back the contents.
“Of course!” She pulled the purse open and felt around inside it. “Ooh, it’s cold!” She handed Aahz a chilled silver jug that must have held a gallon. Aahz grinned and took a solid slug from the lip.
I was accustomed to extradimensional spaces, so the idea of a handbag that was a lot bigger inside than outside didn’t surprise me. The contents did, however. I caught a glimpse of several pieces of armor, a wall of weapons, and a formal portrait of Havago that was even larger than the oversized original standing beside me. She noticed me looking, and gave me a conspiratorial smile before she closed the clasp.
“Why do you let him treat you that way?” I asked her.
“He’s wonderful!” Gazinda gushed, hugging the purse to her. “You just aren’t seeing him at his best.”
“He has a best?” Aahz asked.
“Oh, he does! In the end, he manages to make everything go right!”
He didn’t seem to live up to her ideal, no matter how I stretched the definition. She spent the next hour helping him to tidy his armor, fussing over him, and feeding him small delicacies from her handbag.
“Just keep your mind on the job, partner,” Aahz said.
Markie popped out of Grizzle and come back with a massive bestiary.
“I borrowed it from the Library at Mesozandria. I have to get it back before night, but there’s a comprehensive article about Doodlebugs. Did you know this dimension doesn’t even have a decent library?” She set the huge scroll hovering in the air. It unwound, passing through one fascinating-looking illumination to another, until it stopped on an ornamental letter D. “Doodlebug.” The scroll obediently
burped up the appropriate page and folded back on itself so we could all read the hand-limned text.
“They start out as single pups,” Aahz read aloud. “Their natural habitat is caverns and closed places, kind of the opposite of claustrophobia. Hey, Havago, are you listening? This is important stuff.”
The Titan looked up from sharpening his sword on a grinding wheel that Gazinda kept for him.
“I care not for unimportant details. I will follow my instincts. I only care about slaying the beast and freeing the people of Grizzle from its turmoil.”
“How about doing it with the least disruption for the local population?” I asked.
“Collateral damage happens, my Klahdish friend,” Havago said. He tried the edge out on his thumb and shaved off a translucent slice of fingerprint. “What care I for such petty considerations when a great task is at hand?”
“Maybe you should listen to them, Havago,” Gazinda suggested humbly. “They have a lot of experience.”
He didn’t even look at her.
“Not as great as mine. Don’t try to tell me how to manage great deeds!”
I wasn’t the most polite being in the world, but I found myself speechless at his rudeness. I started forward, my hands balled into fists at my side. I was ready to let him fall on his face, reputation or no reputation, and take care of the matter by myself. Aahz dropped a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, Havago, c’mere a minute,” he said. He threw a companionable arm around the Titan and dragged him off the grinder stool. I followed until we were out of Gazinda’s hearing.
“Why do you behave like that?” I demanded. “Why do you treat her like she’s not there?”
The Titan peered down at me from his lofty height. “Who do you mean?”
“Gazinda,” I sputtered. “The woman you can’t even seem to address politely, let alone thank for running damage control for you.”
“Do not dare to sully her name with your foul tongue, Klahd!”
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 8
