by Simon Archer
Magic.
One hand on the reins, I took out the shotgun, set up the freeze charm, and took aim. Soon as the sword-stinger pulled back to launch its stab at me, I squeezed the trigger just as it flung itself right at me. With a spray of frosty shards and icy steel balls, the blast coated the stinger in a thick block of ice, stopping it in the air as it flew right into the blades of the Gut Jelly’s metal cap. The ice shattered and cracked against the spinning turbine as the stinger was tossed to the side, falling back behind the monster as it was slowed down by it.
Turning the horse, I circled around the Gut Jelly, blasting the surface of the water with ice blasts to corral it into a sea pen, or at least put some obstacles between myself and it. The magicked metal balls of the shots thickened the ice around themselves, creating a low ice wall as well as a wide expanse of iceberg for the corral and completely surrounding it. The unnatural sea creature regained its composure, whirring back to full speed and charging back at me. Zooming towards the ice, the Gut Jelly ground its blades against the side of the ice ring, proving to me that it couldn’t jump as it kept on the straightest path to me. The free-floating and round barge swung around when the creature crashed against it, twirling the whole thing around the monster and barreling up at me.
Fortunately, the steed was fully able to jump, leaping over the ice as I blasted as much ice mass to drag to the thing as I could. The ice crawled out of the water a little higher than I would have liked since I knew that this ring was going to keep spinning as long as we kept this up, but I also knew the kind of jumps this dino strider was capable of. However, now inside the ring, I didn’t stop pulling that trigger with the corpse monster right behind me. While the ice ring drifted, the inner circle filled with shards of spiked ice blast cones floating like spiny platforms.
I reinforced the ice wall with more blasts of ice as I hopped over it once again, making the inner space of the ring smaller and smaller with every outcropping of ice I added. The pattern of my steed’s course had to be corrected on the fly, since the Gut Jelly’s shoving against the inlets of ice I made kept changing the free-floating ice ring’s twirling pattern as it pushed along with it. The shield top of the Gut Jelly’s metal cap actually helped me out here, keeping the spinning blades from constantly cracking the ice and breaking it.
As the metal ocean demon finally slowed down against the increasingly heavy ice prison, I pulled the dino-steed back to slow it down. The steed, however, had other ideas and continued on its pace the same as before. Settling for turning, I ignored the resistance to my rein commands for now and headed back to the ice ring. Odd, but I allowed it only because it was so helpful.
The spinning scrap blades of the Gut Jelly had rearranged, with the shield retreating behind them to allow the metal to shave away the ice of the prison. Before it got any other fancy ideas, like the logical one of transforming back into the Gut Crawler and just walking over the ice, I directed the horse straight at the circular berg, jumping it overhead as I shot down above the Gut Jelly to freeze it in place. With a sharp turn, I kept the Gut Jelly pinned by circling it with freezing shotgun blasts, encasing it like a crystalline display of a preserved alien oddity on a large, white platform.
The sword-stinger pierced out of the ice, swelling with veins and muscles as another transformation took place. Whatever metal plates and guts were free of the ice were incorporated into the new Gut Stalk, with the sword at the top, as it tried to slither out of my encroaching snare of cold. Desperate, it lashed out at me before it was finished reassembling itself, slicing at my other cheek. At the same time, I was still blasting ice, and caught most of the middle length of the Gut Stalk’s meat vine, weighing it down to the ground as its decreased movable mass kept it from lifting the block I placed in it. I pushed past the blade, shooting at where the block in the stalk hit the thick ice of the platform to glue it in place. From there, it was just a matter of keeping that ice as thick as possible, freezing any free Gut Stalk still trying to break free and adding more blasts until I was satisfied that it wasn’t going anywhere.
The guts at the sword end were still trying to move about, although with a lot less zeal than before, wiggling about as they pointed the sword up to fight me. I took the massive sword by the handle, the weight hitting me in the gut as the meat tentacle resisted me. The dino-steed slowed down at the pull, its lizard feet sinking into the water to answer the question of why it didn’t want to slow down earlier. Still, though, it was trucking along, pulling the huge iceberg while we headed back. These steeds were already the size of draft horses, but this one was the draft horse of dino-steeds.
Our sea battle hadn’t drifted us too terribly far from everything, and my steed got us back in excellent time. That scaly stallion could have beaten a motorcycle and a motorboat in the same race. As we approached, I manipulated my machete against the strap sheathe against my hip with my palm, pushing it against the tentacle and snapping it. We launched away as I sealed that last bit of flesh up, taking the sword and dashing up to the cliff side with the keep. With some powerful leaps, it climbed the stone cliff side like a mountain goat. I was shooting both the iceberg and the cliffside with the ice shots, letting what little growing ice from the gauges help keep it from drifting away. I reached the battlement shortly after, and hopefully, I wasn’t too late to clean my mess up.
“Wildheart is dead!” I proclaimed before I had even landed, holding up his sword in both hands, “His pack belongs to me! I order them to--” My voice died down as I witnessed the outcome of the battle. The sight compelled me to regret my escape from the keep that had me coming back far too late, had I just known.
7
I couldn’t hear anything over the cheers of dozens of my guards, clamoring up from the sides of the battlements to crowd me and the steed. Clapping and whooping as loudly as they could, with a few jumps for joy, they were in a practical frenzy at my announcement. Taking a mental step back to evaluate the circumstance, I looked around to see why they had begun cheering before I had even gotten up.
Of the nine knights that came in with Wildheart, six of them remained in the courtyard. Ten of my guards, a few keep and a few city ones, were next to them, pinning their hands behind their backs as they leaned on them on the ground. The carriage was missing, along with all of the dino-horses. As I was speaking, another city guard rode in from the open gate, riding one of the missing steeds rather clumsily to the point of just holding on while it ran by itself. As it got into the keep, some of the free guards helped stop it from moving long enough for the guard to get off. The city guard stumbled to his feet, pulling out several sets of manacles he must have gone to get.
“Did you boys win the fight without me?” I attempted to cut through the cloud of voices still cheering, setting the hulking blade down and letting some of my guards take it. Being a lord had its perks, like wordless commands you could just have assumed were being carried out without thinking about it.
“Well, it was mostly Hopper and Tinker,” one of the guards admitted as the voices died down, “They sprung into action as soon as you had run off to draw the monster thing away.”
“They were supposed to have found you,” another one added, “When the other striders wouldn’t jump up over the wall like yours did, they were determined to find another way to help you get there. We offered them a strider to get around faster, but Hopper said there was no time, took Tinker on her back, and hopped through one of her portals.” Oh, they were called striders. I had to stop calling them dino-horses, I guess.
“What were they--?”
There were so many of them, more than I could have fought off alone. More than anyone could have. An overwhelming force that I couldn’t have ever hoped to defeat in all the years of my life, an assault with no defense I could muster, assailed me right at that moment. I was doomed beyond words. All of my girls, appearing from a portal right above my head, poured down upon me, knocking me off my mighty steed and straight onto the stone floor, led by Tinker, tear
s in all of their eyes.
As a gentleman, I would have never even remotely considered putting the thought of any woman, especially any one of my girls, next to even the faintest hint of the thought of their weight being in any way above that of a cotton swab. But with so many at once… Anyhow, I was definitively buried.
“We’re so glad you’re okay, my lord!” Petulia, a fairly pale pink-furred bunny with a tinge of purple to her hair, nearly choked me in her arms as her tears bled into the collar of my coat.
“We tried to get to you, sir,” Tinker sobbed, sucking breaths between phrases, “and we couldn’t, and we thought you drowned, but then you were on the water, and then the crab followed you, and it turned into a jellyfish, and then we tried the striders, but they wouldn’t jump, and then we tried portals, but we couldn’t reach you, and the portals were hard to use with no land, and we didn’t want to get in the way, and we thought we could get a boat out there, but we were too slow, and you were so fast, and we’re so sorry we couldn’t be there, sir!”
“Yeah, jumping over the wall wasn’t my smoothest move,” I said, pulling in as much breath as I could into my lungs. “That wasn’t what I was going for at all. I thought I could get an angle on the thing with enough speed. And I didn’t know that strider could jump that high.”
“It certainly worked out for all of us.” Hopper stepped out of the portal, wiping a few tears away from her eyes as she closed it behind her. “Without Wildheart’s monster to fight, the knights were nothing against our numbers.”
“Were you not worried, Hopper?” I grunted out the question.
“Oh, no, I was a wreck,” Hopper said plainly, “I’m just letting them have their time with you now.”
“Alright, girls, there're things I’ve got to get sorted out before the day is over,” I told them. “People to interrogate, supplies to pack, evidence to gather, all kinds of baron stuff that needs a baron to baron it up. That means I need to move. We can do this somewhere softer later.”
“Five more minutes,” Tinker held on even tighter to me. “You can still talk and give orders. Hopper can get Bugs up here for you. Have him start his baron-for-a-day early.”
“Despite both of our dearest wishes, there are things I have to be present for.” I clawed a couple of inches out to get a little bit more air. “Places to go personally so I can see some things for myself. Those knights have to swear their loyalty to me, for one thing. I promise, there’ll be more than enough time for all of you.”
“How important could they be if they aren’t here, your grace?” Miffy, a little higher in the pile, scoffed at the thought. “If they were really worth the effort, those knights and places can come here and tell you themselves.”
“All of you are wrong.” Hopper knelt down to us. “The baron does have somewhere he needs to be, and I will personally escort him there myself. That fight wasn’t nearly long enough for me. Tinker, you said you’d like to come, too?” Oh, right, I did have that prior obligation.
“What?” Tinker’s mental circuits stretched, finally making a connection as her eyes lit up. “Oh! Yes, I’m helping with that! Very important business. We’re running out of time as it is.”
A collective disappointment moaned out of the girls as they sloughed their way off me, giving me the room I needed to get back up. Hopper helped me up as Tinker popped out of the mob, all of them standing back up and pouting at me.
“I did make a promise.” I sighed deeply as the fight’s stresses started to pain me. Pointing to the big strider, I called to one of the guards nearby. “Malamute, have this strider taken to the fanciest equivalent of a stable we have around here. He’s the real hero today, keeping me above water while I fought Wildheart on a whim. Feed it all of the best strider food things you can get. Ask the knights we just got if you’re confused.”
“I’m usually confused,” Malamute responded.
“That’s okay, bud.” I slapped him on the back. “I should probably get them to swear loyalty first, anyway. One sec, girls.” I leaned over the inner parapet of the battlement. “Hey, knight Wolves. Get over here!”
The six knights were held up in the manacles, and the guards watching them pushed them forward to come to address me.
“I beat Wildheart and brought his sword back.” I held my out and waved a finger back to prompt the Wolf holding Wildheart’s sword to present it. “He’s dead for real this time. Swear loyalty to me.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” One of them shouted back up to me, “Many who he’s challenged have thought they’ve finished him before. His corpse reassembles itself once it kills whoever killed him, you know. It’ll use the victim’s organs to repair its own, and Wildheart will be right back to his old self.”
Eugh. None of that, thank you very much. But, that did mean the Gut Monster was damaged. I wasn’t wasting my time hurting it. And I was on the money in thinking this was a failsafe. Maybe I’d actually burn him this time. I hadn’t done any professional cryogenics or anything. His frozen parts were dying just as fast as any parts would have.
“I’m still here.” I raised my voice a tad. “His corpse is frozen in a block of ice right down here that’s half the size of this whole keep. I have his sword. When these other opponents thought that they won, did they say or think that before or after the nasty transformation?”
“Before.” The knight sheepishly lowered his head.
“I have figured out about the corpse-monster party trick.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “I have the sword here with me, which he wouldn’t have just taken from me, especially since that’s what he was trying to kill me with. Unless he decided to just give this to me, therefore conceding defeat, he’s probably double-dead, therefore defeated. Does that work for all of you?”
“There’s a time limit we’re waiting on, my lord.” The knight at the end spoke up.
“Quiet, traitor!” The one next to him stepped on his foot. “Faithless mutt!”
“Ow!” The knight at the end hopped on one foot. “You saw how quickly he dealt with Sir Wildheart before the transformation, with no charms or magic, and with only two scratches to his face to show for it!”
“If we’re getting technical, the second scratch happened after he transformed.” I rubbed my cheeks, feeling the pain of those gashes he left behind. “So, one scratch to show for the fight. Gotta say, that’s the most I’ve been harmed by a noble in their normal, not-cheating-death -like-a-little-wuss form. Yes, I have fought more than one noble that cheated death after I beat them thoroughly.”
“He’s bluffing!” One of the middle guards spoke up. “Wildheart’s ability is a blessing of the Regent. A sign of his chosen Wolfish superiority! No one in this backwater would be graced with such a gift.”
“Oh, dear.” I clucked sarcastically. “Blessing of the Regent? That sounds like something that I--”
“The guards are already taking care of your new strider, my lord.” Hopper grabbed my shoulder while she intensely stared into my soul. “Are you going to do that thing where you weave your silky and tricky words to get them to tell you about whatever secret thing you want to learn? We already didn’t have enough time for my request even if we started from the moment I asked you in the first place, so I would humbly ask that you find out only what is absolutely necessary for tonight.”
“They did say they were on a time limit,” Tinker argued.
“Boys!” Addressing the nearby guards, I pointed at the insubordinate knights. “Separate the knights into different cages! Three in the guard tower, three here. None of them share a space within the eye-line of another and twice the guards for each prisoner as usual. If you can find out when that time limit runs out, let whoever’s in charge at the time know. Coincidentally, I’m on a timer of my own, too. Terrier, Husky, Bulldog.” I pointed to those three nearest guards, placing my shotgun in Terrier’s hand. After touching the fire charm to turn it off, I kept my instructions clear, simple, and detailed. “Don’t touch the blue
one unless it isn’t glowing. If it’s spewing fire, the red one is probably glowing, so touch it to turn it off. We don’t want fire right now. This is the trigger, just point this end at the iceberg down there and pull it, it should blast out a big spray of ice. Do not point it at anything else ever. Your job is to keep that iceberg down there stuck to the wall. We do have to get to the body later, so not too thick. If you see any blood or juices, anything wet, shoot it with ice. Keep a watch on it, so it doesn’t get out. Did you get all of that?”
“Yeah, boss,” Terrier answered. “Shoot the cold bullets from the magic musket at the frozen corpse for a while. Simple enough.”
“Perfect! Dismissed.” I turned to my girls. “Sorry about that. That’s everything urgent. Now, where did you want--?”
That was all I had to get out before I was dragged through a portal by two very unappeasable bunnies. For that was not everything urgent for tonight. Not by a longshot.
The portal spat us out into a familiar-looking room, and the bunnies wasted no time pulling me toward the oversized bed. Tinker grabbed me by my shoulders and spun me around at the last minute before pushing me backward. The backs of my knees buckled when they hit the mattress, and I fell gently back onto the silk sheets. Hopper giggled and climbed up onto the mattress beside me while Tinker stood at the foot of the bed and furiously stripped all of her clothes off. I felt Hopper’s warm breath on my ear as she nibbled at my earlobe. She sprawled, her body up against mine, but she slid off to the side when Tinker rested her hands on my knees.
I looked down at Tinker as she slid her hands up my thighs and inched up my body, but she stopped at my belt line and began undoing the button on my pants. Hopper giggled again.
