by Ramy Vance
Stew leaned close to Suzuki and placed his hands on Suzuki’s knees. “What do you think is going on, Suz?” he asked. “I can see those gears grinding in your head.”
Suzuki was uncomfortable with Stew’s straightforwardness, and he leaned back and cleared his throat. “I don’t know what’s going on.” Suzuki groaned. “Up until a few minutes ago, I didn’t think there was anything going on. Now that we’ve stopped, and I’ve had a little bit of time to think, I can tell something’s not right. Especially with you, dude. You are way too… I don’t know, you seem a little bit off.”
Stew leaned back and smiled brightly. “You know, I was thinking the same thing,” he said. “I feel like…I don’t know, in touch with everything around me. In touch with the trees, with the grass, with you guys. I just feel…so open.”
Sandy poked Stew in the face. When he didn’t react, she grabbed him by the cheeks and pulled. “Where is my boyfriend?”
Stew laughed, a sound full of mirth and joy. It was drastically different than his usual coarse, sarcastic laugh. “I’m right here, babe.” He chuckled. “I’m more here than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I want to tell you that you’re beautiful. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And I love you.”
Sandy smiled and blushed as she hid her face behind her hand. “Shut up, Stew," she cooed as she playfully slapped his hand away. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“I mean it, though. And not just you. I mean, you’re beautiful, and I love you in an entirely different way. But all of you—you’re all great, and I fucking love you guys. So much.”
Suddenly, Beth and Chip fell from above in a crash of broken branches. Chip landed on her feet, while Beth fell on her ass, staring up at the branches overhead, laughing as the bodies of dead leeches fell from the canopy of trees overhead. Chip helped Beth to her feet, saying, “A wee bit of work on the landings, and you’ll be right as rain.”
Beth was elated and hugged Chip, then backed off awkwardly. “Thanks,” she muttered. “You’re a good teacher.”
Chip nodded and turned to the other Mundanes, who were still crowded around Stew. “Looks like your boyo is in tip-top shape,” she said.
Stew stood up and rushed over to Chip. He grabbed her hand and pumped it three times with the enthusiasm of a politician. “It’s so good to see you, Chip,” he gushed. “Thank you so much for getting that leech off me.”
Chip backed away, caught off-guard by the overflow of sincerity coming from Stew. “Uh, no problem, mate. Just glad to see you up and about,” she muttered before turning to Sandy and whispering under her breath, “Is Muscles all right?”
Sandy smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But whatever the hell is going on, I think I might like it.”
Suzuki looked at the sky. The sun was beginning to set. Waiting for Stew had taken longer than he had expected. Traveling through the jungle during nighttime seemed like a terrible idea. Even in the bright of day, they had been obstructed by creatures they weren’t even aware they should have been looking out for. Suzuki cleared his throat to get the attention of the other MERCs. “Hey, so it’s getting late,” Suzuki started. “Maybe we should make camp for the night and head out tomorrow. There could be worse shit out there we don’t even know about.”
The rest of the MERCs agreed to varying degrees. Diana wanted to find out what was hiding in the night. Beth was restless and didn’t want to set up camp just yet. Sandy was extremely worried about Stew’s sudden personality change. Chip was the only MERC who was indifferent toward the plan. She said it didn’t matter when they left, there was going to be something that desired to feast upon their flesh.
Suzuki didn’t feel comfortable giving a straight-out order. He wasn’t the leader of his party since the MERCs didn’t have a strict hierarchy. It was mostly based on an unspoken rule.
He also knew Chip and Diana were a party completely separate from his, and they had their own way of figuring things out. However, it seemed like everyone was waiting for him to tell them what they were going to do. “We should make camp for the night,” he stated.
There were no disagreements.
Everyone went about setting up their tents. It was not long before a fire was roaring and they were sitting around it, roasting meat rations Diana and Stew had brought along. Diana conjured bottles of mead and tankards and passed them around. Within the hour, Diana and Chip were singing old war songs that had been passed down through the MERCs for who knew how long.
Suzuki sat by the fire, watching the flames lick up the wood. Beth was across from him, her face highlighted by amber light and shadow. Stew and Sandy were trying to learn the words to the song Chip and Diana were singing. Stew’s voice rang out the strongest of anyone’s. Suzuki remembered that Stew had mentioned he liked to sing but was very shy about it. This was the first time he had ever heard Stew sing without fretting. Stew belted the lyrics he knew and hummed through the sections he didn’t. His voice filled the campground as the Mundanes, and the Horsemen grew tired. Eventually, they put out the fire and retired to their tents.
Beth was already in the tent by the time Suzuki arrived. She was wearing a silk robe as she sharpened her sword by candlelight. She looked up at Suzuki as he entered. “Wild day, huh, Suzy?”
Suzuki sat down next to her and removed his shirt. “Really, you think so?”
“Uh, yeah. A long, meandering, and pointless walk through the jungle. Stew gets a brain leech and suddenly has an entirely different personality. I’d say it was pretty fucking interesting day.”
“I don’t know. I feel like that’s just the norm now. What’s a quest if one of your party members doesn’t try to kill you?”
Beth put away her sword, laughing as she laid back on her sleeping bag. “Things definitely work differently in the MERCs than the military,” she said. “I really like it. A lot more room to breathe.”
“What was it like in the military? You don’t talk about it much.”
Beth stared into Suzuki’s eyes. Her gaze was heavy, and she held his eyes for far too long. Suzuki had to look away. “It was, I don’t know…the military,” she explained. “You follow your orders. Do what you’re told. Help your—I wouldn’t call them friends—your squadmates when you can. No one tells you shit. I mean, not real shit. Like what Milos pulled on us, sending us out here without letting us know how dangerous it is. That’s nothing compared to the military. Milos is just being an asshole. With the military, though, I mean, they treat you like pawns on a fucking chessboard. All of us were expendable. They never said it, but it was obvious. Made me wonder why the fuck I was fighting the Dark One for a while, to be honest.”
Suzuki didn’t know what to say. His experience with MERC had been the complete opposite. He wanted to be there for Beth, but he had no idea how to relate to what she was saying. Since he had come to Middang3ard, all he had felt was unrestricted freedom. He had felt like he had the ability to be whatever he wanted to be. It was nothing like what Beth had experienced. “Yeah,” he finally managed. “That sounds really fucking rough.”
“It was more than rough. I felt like I was losing myself, even though I was doing something I knew I was capable of. Every day, it just felt like I was a little bit less of myself, you know? It was weird. Serving for the common good. Trying to take down the Dark One, and the whole time feeling like I was losing myself. That’s why I couldn’t go back. I mean, of course, I wanted to be with you guys, but even if you had told me the MERCs weren’t taking anyone else, I wouldn’t have gone back to the military. I would have gone home. I’m not that person. I don’t think I could ever be that person.”
There was a time and place for words, and this was not one of them.
Suzuki wrapped Beth in his arms and they sat there in silence for some time, letting the weight of Beth’s words sink into them both. They drifted to sleep, both of them thinking about what had been said and what was to come.
5
The MERCs awoke
to their usual morning routines. Diana and Suzuki rose early and went about their business, the rest of them trickling in as they saw fit. After breakfast was finished, they packed up their camp and continued into the jungle, making sure to watch the canopy above for leeches.
Around noon, they stopped at Stew’s request. He said he thought they should rest for a bit, seeing how the heat was accosting them no end.
Once they made camp, Stew began cooking. He coaxed Diana into sharing some of her coveted inventory and managed to whip up an amazing meal that was both reminiscent of home and paid tribute to the wilds of Middang3ard. All the MERCs were impressed. Stew had wowed them with his culinary skills before, but the meal he created that day was unprecedented. It was art, as Diana subtly put it.
After lunch, they broke camp and continued on, Suzuki watching Stew closely. For some reason, Suzuki thought “Steward” fit better than Stew. He pondered it for some time, knowing full well why he believed there should be a proper name change. The man at his side was not the same one who had been there before. There were only trace elements. The sophomoric humor had disappeared. Instead, there was what seemed to be a solemn, almost contemplative attitude, still drenched in good nature, yet at least twenty years older.
Suzuki was wary of the sudden change.
Sandy, on the other hand, seemed to be relishing Stew’s sudden change of heart. While the rest of the MERCs trod through the jungle, slashing at the vines that fell in front of them, hacking away, trying to make their way through the jungle, Sandy fell into conversation with Stew in a way Suzuki had never seen them speak.
What he could catch was mostly in whispers, yet Suzuki could see how close Stew and Sandy walked next to each other. They were already very close, but this was unprecedented.
Stew asked questions about magic, but they were not the questions a novice would pose. His questions were insightful, the sort one asks when they have listened to a subject for some time yet are not as knowledgeable as those they converse with.
Sandy ate it up.
The conversation on the jungle walk pertained to magic and magic alone. Diana scooted closer at some point, and the three of them spoke of magical dealings, of curses and charms that had been forgotten for a millennium. The oddest part of the conversation was that Stew was completely keyed in to what was being said. He asked question after question, his earnestness almost tangible. In this way, they journeyed through the jungle.
Nearly two hours after lunch, Suzuki finally realized he had forgotten why they were lost in the jungle. Ambrosia. That was the point of the mission. It didn’t seem as if any of the Mundanes or Horsemen had any idea how to find the fungus. True, they had a photo of it, but they had hardly spoken about how to find the plant. Suzuki thought about it for a while. He assumed it was an effect of the jungle. Since they had initially arrived on the island, it seemed like the jungle had had some kind of effect on them. Being captured by Smuggles was something that wouldn’t have happened on the mainland of Middang3ard. Suzuki thought it could be a form of ambient magic similar to what he had seen in the Dark One’s defense rings, the sort of magic that disrupts without making itself obvious.
With that in mind, Suzuki stopped. He tried to gather his thoughts and focus on the purpose of their mission. They were here to find ambrosia, which was a fungus. “Diana,” Suzuki said as he turned to her. “Are there animals that eat ambrosia?”
Diana scratched her chin as she thought. “Hm. Now that I think about it, yes, there are,” she answered. “There is a type of beetle that exists purely on ambrosia. They search it out over anything else. Water. Sex. Anything. All they care about is the fungus. Needless to say, they do not have very long life spans.”
“Perfect.”
Suzuki pulled up his HUD. He opened the menu that pertained to his scent upgrade. It was the first SD upgrade Beth had sent him when she’d first introduced him to the MERCs. At the time, Suzuki had thought it was a completely useless addition to what was already shaping up to be an overwhelming experience. How wrong he had been. He scrolled through a multitude of scent settings, looking for something specific until he got annoyed. Then he remembered Fred.
His familiar had been extremely quiet since they had gotten to the Island. His pride was probably hurt from being tied up earlier.
Then again, it might have been more than that.
Seemed all the Mundanes’ familiars had been silent since the Battle of the Viceroy. They still spoke to their owners if the occasion demanded, but they made no effort to start a conversation.
There had been something about that event—the chips and the monsters that spooked them—and the Mundanes had all agreed to give their familiars space.
So, instead of reaching out to Fred, the imp who dwelled in his body, Suzuki concentrated his thoughts on a specific scent, hoping Fred would pick up the slack and serve as a mediator between his desires, the magic, and the HUD.
Suzuki knew Fred had been paying attention when Suzuki become aware of the funky smell coming off his skin. That must be the smell of ambrosia, Suzuki thought. Gross isn’t the word.
The rest of the MERCs looked at Suzuki, scrunching their faces with disgust. Stew was the only person who didn’t seem to mind. He walked over to Suzuki and inhaled deeply. “That’s a beautiful scent.” Stew sighed. “Very floral. Almost like…lavender?”
Suzuki took a step back from Stew. “Uh, dude, you’ve been acting really fucking weird. Like, really weird.”
Stew inhaled Suzuki’s fungal scent again. He breathed it out slowly as if he were a perfumer. “Really?” Stew asked. “How weird have I been acting, my dude?”
“That! See, that right there. ‘My dude?’ Why the ‘my?’ Why the hell are you being so…nice?”
Stew smiled sweetly as he embraced Suzuki. “Because I fucking love you, my dude. You’re my best friend. Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”
The rest of the MERCs surrounded Stew. Diana was staring at him as if he were a test subject. She looked like she was going to rub her hands with glee. She pinched Stew’s cheeks, but Stew just kept smiling. Then she slapped Stew across the face. He took a step back, his eyes wide and worried. When Diana moved to strike Stew again, he grabbed her hand and held it steadily.
Diana slowly withdrew her hand as she began to pace around Stew. “Fascinating. He’s had a complete temperament change, but it hasn’t changed his cognitive function. Observe.” Diana whipped out her wand and pointed it at Stew. She blasted a fireball toward him.
Stew yelped and jumped out of the way, then pulled out his axe and squared up.
Diana squealed with excitement as she put her wand away. “See! He still has his fighting techniques and his warrior disposition. He’s become empathetic without losing his killer instinct, or at least his instinct for survival. We’ll see if he still has a killer instinct when he’s in a situation that requires killing despite having an emotional tie to the individual. We should test that as soon as possible.”
Sandy came up to Stew’s side and stared at him, her eyes scanning every part of his body. She grabbed his hand, and Stew pleasantly smiled as she looked at his palm. “Fuck you, Stew,” Sandy shouted. “You’re a fucking asshole!”
Stew’s face instantly collapsed in contrition. “Babe, what would make you say that?” he asked. “Did I do something to upset you?”
“You talked my ear off last night, even though I told you I needed to sleep. You just kept fucking talking.”
“Babe, you told me you wanted to talk about things. That’s why we were talking.”
Sandy narrowed her eyes at Stew. “All right, he’s definitely broken.” Sandy sighed. “He’s never this…reasonable, especially about something I just made up. I don’t trust it, although I like it. A little. When is he going to go back to being, you know, Stew?”
Diana pulled down her HUD and scanned Stew. “There’s no way to tell,” she admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like this. There are no recordings of people being changed b
y a leech attaching to them. This is unprecedented. I think the most we can do is observe. Outside of that, this is all new territory.”
Stew smiled brightly as he puffed out his chest. “So, I’m just Pleasant Stew for a little while?”
Sandy sighed as she shook her head. “You don’t have to be so fucking cheerful all the time.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, babe. I can tone it down.”
“Or accommodating.”
“I can work on that.”
“Ugh, could you just go back to normal!”
Stew shrugged, smiling sweetly. “Don’t know. Hope so!”
Sandy shook her head and leaned over to kiss Stew on the cheek. “You get into the weirdest shit. Even if you’re suddenly a completely different person than the emotionally stagnant man-child I fell in love with, I’ll still love you. Not even ironically.”
“Uh, babe, that means a lot to me. I’m glad you can have a sense of humor about this.”
Beth threw her hands up and walked away from the group of MERCs. “Jesus Christ, Stew, will you stop being so goddamn pleasant?” she shouted.
“I’m sorry!” Stew shouted back.
As Stew’s voice rose, there was another rising sound. It was as if a thousand hands were clapping at once. All the Mundanes drew their weapons, Stew stepping to the forefront of their phalanx. He grabbed Beth’s shield, pulling it off her back, and pounded on it, attempting to draw whatever was approaching’s attention.
A swarm of insects flew out in.
Each was nearly the size of a baseball. Their compound eyes had multitudes of colors, and their thin, nearly translucent wings fluttered uncontrollably. Hundreds upon hundreds poured from the trees, each of them with a head like a mutated horse skull. Their jaws snapped, legs twitching as they flew and stumbled over each other, a plague from the confines of the jungle.
