The Phoenix of Altria

by David M Zahn

  "I don't," I said, trying to understand what it would be like. "I don't honestly know much about the Mormon church."

  Eldertits laughed sarcastically and said, "That's probably for the best. My parents and the rest of my family wanted nothing to do with me. I was a stain on the family. My so-called friends abandoned me, even the one I'd been fucking. I spent almost two years being shunned everywhere I went until I was finally old enough to leave. Once I left and moved north to Salt Lake City, things got better. I became as offensive as I could be in the church's eyes right in the heart of their holiest city. I fucked right on the temple grounds, I swore constantly, and said anything someone might find offensive."

  "Well, that explains a lot about you," I replied, trying to give my friendliest smile.

  "I also swore never to get bent out of shape or overly offended by something, and look at me now," Eldertits said, beginning to cry again.

  Cautiously, I wrapped my arms around her and held her as she cried. Once she felt my arms around her, she leaned over, rested against me, and sobbed uncontrollably for about five minutes.

  This poor woman had been through so much. At sixteen, she lost everyone she ever cared about, and then at eighteen, she set out completely on her own. Then a bit later, she got cancer and was forced to leave everything she knew for this world. Some people just got all the bad luck.

  "Tits, it's fine," I whispered softly after she stopped crying. "We all get upset by things sometimes. It's part of being human. Hell, Rondo is overreacting to what that young man and the priest were doing."

  The sound of metal clanging against metal resounded down the staircase, and I guessed that Rurir decided to try fighting against the group. It's not what I would have done, but then again, I wouldn't have kidnapped a bunch of people and locked them in cages underground either.

  "Shit, they're fighting," Eldertits muttered. "We should go and help them. I really shouldn't have stormed away right before a fight."

  "You're fine," I replied. "They can handle one guy. If over half our group can't handle him, then we probably weren't going to get out of here anyway."

  "Thanks, Ryland. I can't believe I told you that stuff about my childhood," Eldertits said, sounding mentally exhausted. "I haven't talked about that to anyone in over a decade."

  "Sometimes it's better to let stuff out than to keep it bottled up inside," I replied.

  "Yes, but now you know some of my deepest secrets," Eldertits said. "What's to keep you from telling everyone you know?"

  "My word," I muttered slightly annoyed.

  "You know what's better than your word?" Eldertits asked. "You telling me something terrible about yourself, so that way, if you talk I can start spreading nasty rumors about you, too."

  "I don't know about that," I replied, starting to feel uneasy.

  Eldertits leaned away from me, smiled up at me, and said, "Mutually assured destruction is a deterrent that always works."

  "You're too cynical sometimes, you know that?" I replied flatly.

  "Well, I also want to get the goods on you," Eldertits said, with the tiniest hint of her trollish-self returning to her eyes. "Your image is way too good. We've got to dirty it up a bit."

  Sighing, I said, "I can tell you I'm no better than the rest of you. I've done plenty of regrettable things in my time."

  "Like?" she asked, egging me on.

  "Fine," I sighed. "I'll tell you one thing, but don't repeat this to anyone. I'm not proud of it. Back in my fifties, I had an affair with a younger woman. As my wife got older, I became less and less sexually attracted to her until I basically didn't want to have sex with her anymore."

  "So, you'd say your wife had some elder ass titties, and you weren't down with that?" Eldertits cut in.

  "Hush," I responded. "Let me finish. I loved my wife. I really did, but she didn't do anything for me sexually anymore. I met this beautiful young sexy woman at work, and well, a man at fifty still has a libido. She showed interest in me, and boy did I have an interest in her. After flirting with each other for a while, we finally gave in and started an affair that lasted around six months. I didn't love this young woman, I just used her for sex. I didn't care, because the sex was so damned good."

  "And here I was starting to think you were asexual," Eldertits quipped.

  "I can assure you I'm not," I responded. "I broke that young woman's heart when I finally ended it. I just couldn't keep doing it to my wife even though, and this is the worst part, she never found out. I broke one woman's heart and broke the trust of another, and all I got out of it in the end was guilt."

  "Guilt and some damned fine sex," Eldertits said with a laugh.

  I laughed a little at this and said, "Yes, I suppose I got that. It wasn't worth it, though. I've carried this guilt and regret with me for almost forty years. I know you don't believe in love, but I do. It's the greatest thing in the world for me, and I betrayed it."

  A short silence followed after this, and the sounds of battle filtered in from the cavern above.

  "Yeah, love is a crock of shit," Eldertits replied with a smirk, "but this at least explains how you can deny the sexiest woman in all of Alderoth when she jumps in a tub with you."

  "The sexiest woman in all of Alderoth jumped in a tub with me?" I asked, smiling mischievously. "I feel like I'd remember that if it happened."

  Punching my shoulder, Tits said, "Oh, shut up. I can't believe you turned me down just because there wasn't any love in it. Are you going to remain celibate for the rest of eternity?"

  "Ouch, damn it, Tits," I snapped, grabbing ahold of my shoulder. "Did you forget you punch like your arms are made of stone?"

  "Oh, sorry," Tits said, obviously not sorry at all. "I forget my own strength sometimes. Just be grateful you weren't the last guy I tried giving a hand job to."

  "That is an image I didn't need," I muttered. "Also, no, I'm not planning on remaining celibate forever. I'm just waiting for the right person and the right connection."

  Tits sighed, stood up, and said, "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I hope you find her. You're my best friend, and I want you to be happy."

  Standing up myself, I smiled and asked, "Wait, can you repeat that? I could have sworn I heard Eldertits say something nice, but that couldn't possibly be right."

  Her response was to punch me into the wall, knocking the smirk right off of my face.

  "Don't ever repeat that, or I'll bury you in that wall," Eldertits said while I extracted myself from the wall.

  "Jesus Christ, Tits," I said once I finally managed to get myself back up straight. "That really hurt."

  "Jesus Christ's tits," Eldertits said, laughing and ignoring me. "Can you imagine how saggy they would have gotten if he had some big ol' titties up on the cross?"

  "What?" I said, more to buy myself time to think than as an actual question. "That's fucked up. How do you even think up these things?"

  "The real question is how could you not think of these things?" Eldertits asked, summoning her axe. "Let's go kill some shit. I'm tired of talking about my feelings."

  Shaking my head, I started walking up the stairs after her and muttered, "I wish I could use this statuette on you."

  Chapter Fifteen: The Ruins of Rurilae

  Climbing up the stairs, we entered into the large chamber with the fountain where we left the rest of the group and Rurir. Upon reaching the top of the steps, I saw that Rondo, Elaria, and the goblins were doing battle against three skeletons and Rurir.

  "What the hell guys?" I asked jokingly, and we moved towards the action. "I left you here to take care of one guy, and you couldn't even do that without us?"

  Rondo breathing hard shot back, "This one guy is a necromancer, and these skeletons are not easy to deal with. Slashing and piercing weapons are useless against them. Iasz and Graard are the only ones who have made a dent in them so far."

  "Luckily for you, I brought the cavalry with me," I said, gesturing to Eldertits in front of me.

&
nbsp; "Oh, this is going to be a great time to try out my new ability," Eldertits said excitedly. "It's called Menstrual Rage and goes something like this: when the she-barbarian's puss be a drippin', the fan, shit be a hittin'."

  At this point, she charged forward, flipped her axe sideways, and smashed it into the skeleton that was currently attacking Rondo. Rondo pulled back to allow our barbarian to do her work unimpeded.

  "There's really an ability called Menstrual Rage?" I asked shocked, forgetting for a moment that we just walked into a battle.

  "Focus," Elaria yelled, dodging as a skeleton slashed at her with a rusty sword. "Talk later. Watch out for Rurir. He's got an ability that siphons your health into either him or his skeletons."

  As if on cue, Rurir cast a spell on Eldertits. Creeping black tendrils reached out from Rurir and latched on to Eldertits and the skeleton she had batted away from her. Eldertits' hit points began slowly draining, while the skeleton's began recovering.

  Seeing this, I moved forward summoning a fireball and shot it across the room hitting Rurir in the side with it. His head snapped toward me and growled something in a language I couldn't understand.

  The point became obvious a second later when the skeleton that Iasz and Graard were fighting broke away from them and charged at me. Its movements were clunky, and I easily dodged to the side away from its initial thrust. The problem was it recovered quickly. Probably quicker than a person could have, and it caught me with its second slash before I could move again.

  The rusty sword didn't have much of an edge on it, so it only cut slightly into my side. The majority of the damage it caused was blunt force impact that left my ribs aching. I was certain that in addition to the shallow cut, I would have a lovely bruise after this battle was over.

  "Iasz," Eldertits yelled, deflecting a blow with her axe. "You and Graard take that skeleton that is on Elaria. Elaria, you and Rondo go for Rurir and take him out. Ryland, can you handle that one on your own?"

  "I'll do my best," I said through gritted teeth, shooting a fireball into the skeleton at point blank range. It stumbled back from me slightly. My Fist of the Phoenix Flame would have been better, but I didn't have time to wait for that to charge.

  Recovering quickly, it slashed down at me with its sword. At the last second, I managed to summon one of my daggers and catch the blade on that before it could hit me again. The dagger would be mostly useless for attacking the skeleton, but for blocking his weapon, it seemed to be working pretty well.

  At this point, feeling comfortable that I had something to stop his attacks while I charged up an attack, I began charging my Fist of the Phoenix Flame. What I didn't count on was the fact that the sword wasn't the skeleton's only weapon.

  While I was busy holding off its sword with my dagger and charging my other fist, the skeleton reached out with its free hand and wrapped its boney fingers around my neck and began to squeeze. The air instantly went out of me, and I punched up at its arm with my still-charging fist.

  My punch did nothing and probably hurt me more than the skeleton. Its grip was like iron, and I involuntarily tried to jerk away, which also did nothing. I pushed his sword away with my dagger and dismissed the weapon and tried to get a grip on his fingers to try to peel them off. No matter how I shifted my hand, his grip remained unmovable.

  Having its sword-arm free, the skeleton slammed its sword straight into my shoulder, and I tried to gasp in pain, but nothing came out. I tried to stagger underneath the weight of the blow, but it held me up by its unyielding grasp on my throat.

  Finally, after the longest five seconds of my life, my fist charged, and I unleashed it in an uppercut to the skeleton's forearm. Upon hitting the forearm, my fist actually shattered both the radius and the ulna bones and pushed right through. The remainder of the skeleton's arm, now ended in two short jagged bones jutting out from his elbow, and he jerked backward.

  The grip on my throat loosened, and I sucked air in greedily, but the hand didn't fall away from my throat. Reaching up, I grabbed the remainder of the arm that was attached to it and pulled it off easily.

  Cheekily, I folded down all of the fingers on the hand except the middle one and held it up to the skeleton and said, "Oh look, you want to fuck you. Bend over, and I'll find a place for this fist."

  The skeleton tilted its head at me in response as if to ask, "Really?"

  "Yeah, I suppose that wouldn't really work on you," I said shrugging and began charging my Fist of the Phoenix Flame once more.

  "You know these things can't understand anything you say, right?" Eldertits called over to me as she used her axe like a baseball bat and knocked her skeleton's head off its body and into next week.

  The rest of its body crumbled to the ground and vanished as its hit points dropped to zero. The skeleton didn't drop anything, but I didn't expect it to.

  "Tits, smash," I said, adopting my best impression of an idiot's voice, gripping the bones I was holding by the hand, and catching the skeleton's sword in between the remnants of the bones. "I'll handle negotiating with the undead here."

  "How's that going for you?" she asked, taking her time as she walked toward me and the skeleton.

  As she said this, the skeleton let out a rattling shout of frustration because it couldn't free its sword from my improvised shield and stabbed forward with the remains of its other arm. The jagged points of the two bones sunk into the upper right side of my chest, and I let out a wheeze as my health began dropping rapidly. As far as improvised weapons went, that was a pretty good one.

  "Could be better," I muttered, finishing the charge on my attack and unleashing it right into the side of the skeleton's skull.

  Upon impact, the side of its skull caved in, and the remnants shattered around the heat coming off of my fist. With the skull gone, the skeleton's HP dropped to zero, and the rest of its body vanished leaving two leaking holes in my chest and a new bleeding status effect.

  I began casting cure on myself at once, not only wanting to deal with the bleeding status effect but also wanting to get rid of the pain that was going on in my body. These little bastards hit hard.

  In the time it took me to beat my skeleton, Iasz and Graard dealt with theirs and were now slowly advancing where Rondo and Elaria battled with Rurir. Rurir, for his part, looked to be getting increasingly frustrated at the turn this battle took, but he was showing no signs of giving up.

  "Try to take him alive," I yelled over at them. "We might be able to get some information out of him, or at the least, we can keep him from warning the rest when he respawns."

  "Easier said than done," Rondo yelled back panting. "This fucker can heal himself faster than we can damage him."

  Elaria slashed out at Rurir with a short sword, to which he danced away and shot her with a ball of necrotic energy. She stumbled forward and looked like she was going to be sick. Rondo quickly attacked from the other side and stabbed Rurir in the side with a dagger, but as soon as this happened, black tendrils shot out from Rurir and latched on to Rondo. Health was drained from Rondo and transferred to Rurir whose meter returned to full once more.

  Fuck me, but that is a nasty trick, I thought, as I began walking to the fight. Graard got there first, because he came up behind the unsuspecting necromancer and whacked him over the head with his club.

  Rurir dropped like a rock, falling to the ground unconscious. Graard silently gave a look to Elaria and Rondo as if asking how they were having so much difficulty with this. The two of them just shrugged and walked away breathing hard.

  I finalized charging Cure and cast it on myself, ushering immediate relief while saying, "We should probably carry him back to that room and place him in one of those cages. Tits, would you do the honors?"

  "Oh sure, make Tits do all the manual labor," Tits said grumbling, but she moved over and picked up the unconscious young man.

  "You're the strongest one," I said, as I began the processes of healing the rest of the group that took damage in the fight.
r />   Tits hadn't been hurt at all; neither had Iasz, but Elaria, Rondo, and Graard took some significant damage. Rondo, in particular, lost nearly eighty percent of his health. Of course, after a couple of healing spells from me, he was practically back to full health.

  Tits, Elaria, Rondo, and I walked back to the room with the cages to lock up Rurir while the rest of the group waited in the large cavern. When we got there, Martha stared sourly at us while we dumped and then locked Rurir in a cage across the room from her.

  "Did you really get an ability called menstrual rage?" I asked as the four of us walked back to the other room.

  Tits burst out laughing, and even Rondo let out a chuckle.

  "Of course not," she said wiping away a tear. "I can't believe you'd actually believe some developer would throw that into this game. Thank god menstruation doesn't exist in this world. That would just be awful."

  "What is menstruation?" Elaria asked curiously.

  "Uh," Rondo responded looking as uncomfortable as I felt.

  "Oh, let me tell you all about it," Tits said with her most devious smile.

  Over the next minute, Eldertits explained what menstruation was in vividly disgusting details.

  As Elaria listened, her face looked more and more horrified until she finally snapped, "There is no way every woman in your world goes through this. This is some typical Titty bullshit, right?"

  "Actually," I said trying to shake the imagery out of my head, "Tits is telling the truth on this one for once."

  "Your world must have been a truly horrific place," Elaria said, placing her hand on Eldertits' shoulder in a sign of compassion. "No wonder you became mentally unstable. I cannot imagine suffering through that every month. I would rather face the undead than that any day."

  "Speaking of the undead," I said, changing the topic. "How does necromancy even work in a world where no one can die?"

  Elaria sighed, shaking her head and replied, "We've gone over this already, Ryland. Death existed in this world before the current state of immortality. Those skeletons are from beings that died long before Kuolema was banished. Necromancers can tap into and raise the dead from that time period, which was far longer than the current one."