by Neven Iliev
There was the briefest moment of silence before Fizzy and Boxxy hit the deck as fast they could.
*SHKRA-PRING*
Forty tiny blades shot out from the steel rose-looking contraption in all directions. Some stuck into the ceiling, others into the wall, a couple cracked the window and a number of them hit the various metal bits and pieces strewn about the shop.
“YEOOW!” screamed Fizzy. One piece of shrapnel had ricocheted off something and stabbed her in the back of the arm, which started bleeding profusely.
“Son of a bitch, that hurt!” The realisation that there was another person in the shop dawned on her in the next instant. “Oh no – Boxxy!” The thought that her carelessness might have killed or seriously injured someone sent her practically flying up to the counter to check on her customer.
“Hey! Are you … oh … kay?”
The tiny gnome had lucked out and was only hit once, but her towering customer had not been as lucky. Boxxy’s massive stature had prevented it from ducking out of the way in time, causing it to get hit by two blades – one in the forehead and another in the eye. It casually stood and reached a pale hand up to the foreign objects, pulling them out without uttering so much as a peep.
“What … are you?” mumbled the dumbfounded gnome.
That was when she noticed the viscous yellow blood oozing from the wounds. The gnome’s already large eyes became the size of dinner plates. Even if she had never been in a fight, she still knew that only monsters had disgusting blood like that.
“GUA-Hrmhp!”
She tried to call for help but was silenced when Boxxy lunged forward over the counter and put a hand over her mouth. The flesh of its palm and fingers swiftly reformed into an airtight gag that kept the gnome from mustering anything other than a muffled scream while also making it hard to breathe. She struggled, kicked, and clawed at the monstrous appendage as tears welled up in her eyes, but she was unable to so much as budge her assailant’s grip.
The Mimic climbed over the counter and got closer to its thrashing captive. A fleshy tendril shot out from under its cloak and picked up a length of rope that was nearby. This was quickly wrapped around the tiny prisoner, binding her hands and feet together.
“MMmmf! Fmmph!”
Fizzy watched in abject horror as her freedom was robbed from her. The monster in front of her produced some cloth scraps and lodged them in her mouth and throat, forming a less terrifying – though no less effective – gag. It then casually carried her into the back room, far away from any prying eyes.
This room was about the size of the storefront and was, quite frankly, a mess. A tiny table had been turned into a workstation on the right, and a plethora of tools lined the wall around it. Numerous crates and boxes filled with various parts and pieces were strewn about haphazardly. A small hearth and anvil were in the far right corner of the room, the place where the shop’s owner forged any custom parts she couldn’t acquire for herself. A pile of iron, copper, bronze and other common metal ingots lay next to it, and a rack with special alchemical solutions was hung up on the wall. The far left corner had a set of stairs leading up to the gnome’s bedroom, and between it and the door were a line of cabinets stuffed with failed inventions, ruined prototypes, broken contraptions, and other random scrap.
*Ring-a-ding-ding-ding*
“Hey! Are you alright in here?”
A ringing noise and a man’s voice came from the storefront at almost the same time. It appeared someone had noticed the commotion and stepped inside to check. The ginger-haired young man saw the devastation caused by the Bladeblossom as well as what looked like bloodstains on the counter, but didn’t see a person, living or otherwise.
“Oh, merciful Teresa!” he exclaimed. “Hello? Is anyone hurt!”
A pink-haired female gnome leaned out from behind the door in the back. Only her large head and upper body were visible.
“Yes, hello!” she yelled back with an oddly chipper voice.
“What happened here?” he asked, gesturing at the walls and ceiling.
“Accident.”
“I see blood! Was anyone hurt?”
“Nothing serious.”
The young man thought something was off about the gnome’s tone of voice, and her attitude was a little bit suspect. She was way too happy considering her shop was just wrecked. And that thumbs up she gave was a little too enthusiastic. There was also the weird sense of dread the young man felt when he looked into her large yellow eyes. He couldn’t put his mind at ease, no matter how much he tried.
“ … You sure you’re not hurt? There’s blood and … is that mustard sauce?”
“I am fine. Drank healing potion.”
“I see. That’s good to hear.”
If the person herself insisted she was okay, then he would have to take her word for it. Even if this was his first time in here, this place was known for for being the only gnome-run store in town. That was how he knew that even though that pink-haired girl looked like a little kid, she was an adult who was more than capable of taking care of herself.
“Sorry for intruding,” he apologized. “I’ll be going then.”
“Bye ~♪!”
“Ah, yes … goodbye … ”
Well, that response was definitely weird. The young man concluded that the rumours he heard about all gnomes having a few screws loose weren’t entirely fictitious. He decided to leave the store and go about his day, trying his best to put the incident out of his mind.
*Ring-a-ding-ding-ding*
After making sure nobody else was coming to investigate, the imitation Fizzy hid itself from view, slamming the door to the back closed. As for the actual Fizzy, she was in a state where she earnestly hoped she’d gone mad. A myriad of scenarios had played out in her head when she was bound, gagged, and dragged into her own back room by what appeared to be a male stranger, but none of them were even close to this.
What had resembled a man who stood over two metres tall was revealed to be a monstrous chest roughly forty-by-fifty-by-ninety centimetres in size. It had grown legs on its left side, a head on the right, and arms and shoulders from its top and bottom, near the head. The resulting figure was unquestionably humanoid, although the chest-shaped torso was extremely unsettling. Then again, that was probably why the monster wore that heavy cloak and baggy clothes. They did a very good job of obscuring its more rectangular features.
At least until it heard that nosy do-gooder calling out into the shop. The monster had abandoned its guise the instant it heard the bell at the entrance and reverted back to a monstrous treasure chest with eight freakish spider legs sticking out from its bottom. Its lid opened up to reveal two rows of terrifying, jagged and misaligned teeth. A massive red tongue then stretched out of its maw, licking the bound and gagged gnome across the face and hair three times. She struggled pointlessly against her bindings and rivers of tears flooded out of her eyes – a natural reaction, considering it was obvious she was about to be eaten.
Fizzy realised she was mistaken about Boxxy’s intentions when she saw a near-perfect replica of her own face emerge out of its flesh-red tongue. It was like looking into a mirror, if not for the overtly silly grin and unnaturally yellow eyes. The rest of the moist appendage transformed into her upper body and was rapidly dressed in the oily clothing she had discarded earlier. The Mimic then poked the resulting meat puppet through the door and convinced the gnome’s last and only hope of being rescued to leave. Once that was done, the monster reeled in all its freakish appendages, sat down in front of her and then ... just waited.
Fizzy hyperventilated. Her throat never stopped trying to scream, and her eyes didn’t even dare to blink. Right now, she felt more terrified than she had ever been before. Not because there was a monster in front of her. Well, there was that, but her biggest fear arose from how … ordinary it looked.
She was quite aware of what a mimic was and had little doubt the creature in front of her was one of those. And yet, it didn’t look out of place. A rando
m wooden chest lying around haphazardly in the middle of her workshop where it would undoubtedly get in the way was bound to be an eyesore. Yet it seemed like this chest had always been there.
A monster was sitting right in front of her, and yet some part of her didn’t find that odd. It was this freakish sense of familiarity that somehow plunged her to new levels of despair. Upon making this realisation, the gnome desperately wished she truly had gone insane. At least then she could dismiss this experience as an extremely vivid hallucination.
*Ring-a-ding-ding-ding*
The bell at the front door rang, bringing her out of the depths of despair she was sinking into.
*Ring-a-ding-ding-ding*
The door slammed shut and a set of footsteps could be heard on the wooden floor. With renewed vigour, Fizzy struggled and tried to scream, desperate for something – anything – to save her from this living nightmare. The footsteps drew closer and the door to her workshop creaked open.
A woman dressed in a nun’s habit walked in like she owned the place.
“Mmph! Hrlf mmfff!”
Fizzy tried to warn the stranger, but the nun only glanced at her with a sort of cold contempt. Then she looked towards the chest, then back to the gnome, then at the chest again.
“Really now,” she said in a clearly displeased tone. “You need to be more careful, Master. This is the third time already!”
“…”
The gnomish tinkerer went still and quiet for the first time since she’d been bound and gagged.
“Of course I can fix it, but this can’t keep happening. There are only so many times I can wipe her memory before her brain turns to mush.”
“…”
The nun walked over to the captive woman and placed a slender hand on her head.
“Mmmmph! MMMMPH!”
The gnome started struggling valiantly once more, but try as she might, there was no escape for her. Not only for her current predicament but also for the days, weeks, possibly even months to come. This was the consequence of someone skilled and naive catching the interest of one who barely knew what compassion, mercy, or kindness even meant.
“Sleep,” chanted the nun.
Fizzy’s consciousness began to slip away from her. She instinctively tried to stay awake, but her world turned dark all the same. The next thing she knew, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and climbing over the counter.
“Hey, Boxxy! Are you okay?”
“Fine,” said the towering adventurer.
The gnome looked him over frantically and was relieved to see her visitor hadn’t been injured in that unfortunate accident just moments ago.
“Oh, thank god! I’m really sorry about that! I don’t know what came over me! An Artificer of my Level setting off a Bladeblossom like that – it’s inexcusable!”
“It’s okay.”
“No, I insist I make it up to you!”
“Then teach me.”
“You’re sure? Even after what I did?”
Boxxy nodded. This girl was still the best (and only) Artificer trainer in town. She was the one who had taught the Mimic the gadget-focused Job in the first place.
“I still feel terrible, though … I know! How about I give you a few lessons free of charge? Let me do at least that much.”
The disguised monster gave her another nod, this one accompanied by a thumbs up.
“Alright!” she exclaimed, her voice full of vigour. “I’ll make sure to teach you everything I know! I won’t go so easy on you now that you’ve shown your talent, though, so you better get ready for a crash course like no other!”
Boxxy gave the strangely pumped-up Fizzy another affirmative gesture. The gnome turned around and headed towards her workshop in the back, but paused for a moment when she reached the door.
“Huh? That’s weird …”
The shut door.
The one she never fully closed because she couldn’t hear the bell at the entrance if she did that.
“Well, whatever,” she said dismissively and waved her guest over. “Right this way, Boxxy. It’s time to see how well you handle blast powder.”
Part Three
The front door to Fizzy’s Fidgety Widgets opened up with a ring and a humongous cloaked man exited the store carrying a large hemp bag. By the sun’s position, it was late afternoon, maybe two or three hours from sunset.
The Mimic and the gnome had spent most of the day inside Fizzy’s workshop as the hyperactive little mechanic eagerly showed off her skill at tinkering and construction. As expected of a Level 56 Artificer, her dexterity and precision were the real deal, and Boxxy eagerly soaked up all the tips and tricks she shared. It also closely observed her well-trained hand movements with its magical perception and made sure to memorize them so it could replicate them later.
The disguised monster surveyed the street. Foot traffic had died down quite a bit while it was inside, which was both good and bad. Good, because it meant fewer eyes would be on its conspicuous form, and bad because its stupidly tall form stood out like a sore thumb and was even more noticeable from a distance. Deciding it didn’t want to spend any more time exposed like this, it hoisted the bag onto its shoulder and trudged off towards its ‘home base.’
This bag was filled with yet more toolboxes and parts it purchased from Fizzy. The reason it had to carry the items around like this instead of sticking them its Storage was that it had to open its maw in order to fit the large container in its pocket dimension. While it could discretely deposit and withdraw small objects like a Bladeblossom or a satchel of gold, no amount of sleight of hand would let the Mimic do that with those bulky metal boxes.
As for the cost of its new purchases, it came out to a whopping 1,170 GP. A naturally greedy creature like Boxxy severely disliked parting with that much shiny gold at once, but it was for the sake of advancing its Artificer Job, so it couldn’t be helped. That money was essentially a form of investment, as the monster stood a very good chance of securing a profit.
Most Artificer-made devices were difficult to put together since they required specialized parts, tools, and know-how, but the final product was extremely simple to use. As a side effect, the value of such gizmos would go up immensely when compared to the cost of the raw materials to make them.
A good example of this was the one hundred Bladeblossom kits the Mimic had purchased three days ago. The raw materials to produce all those spring-loaded single-use devices only cost Fizzy about 150 GP. She had then used her workshop to transform the metal ingots into tiny blades, springs, wires and other necessary parts. The finished components were sold to Boxxy at a total price of 650 GP, which consisted of 50 GP worth of tools and 600 GP worth of parts. Even then, a single well-made Bladeblossom from Boxxy could be sold at 15 GP. So it was theoretically possible for the Mimic to make almost three times as much gold as it had spent on the parts.
Unfortunately, reality wasn’t anywhere near as rosy as such wishful thinking.
Of the first thirty devices that Boxxy made, twelve were complete failures, fourteen were of poor quality and only the remaining four were of standard quality. And while the next seventy were at least of middling value, only twenty or so of them were as good as the ones it sold at the Mercenary Guild.
Whether there was anyone around willing to buy a hundred Bladeblossoms was a different question altogether, though it wasn’t something Boxxy even considered. In fact, it had already set off a number of the things for testing purposes and put a bunch of them aside for later use. Once its supply of raw parts was exhausted, it began taking them apart and putting them back together in order to acquire more Artificer XP.
This new endeavour worked well, but it came at a price since not all of the components could be safely extracted from a finished Bladeblossom. The petal-shaped razors were mostly fine, but the more delicate internal parts got dented or broken from the repeated strain and were quickly rendered unusable.
Boxxy assembled a total of 170 Bladeblossoms before it
decided to stop. At present, it only had fifteen or so well-crafted ones and six crappier ones. It was no longer in a position to recoup its losses even if it were to sell all of those, but that was fine. The main purpose of spending its gold to increase its Artificer Level was already accomplished.
Besides, all the money spent on this endeavour would eventually come back to it since it was an investment. Which in Mimicanese meant that when Boxxy was done with this city, it would kill the gnome, absorb her body, steal all her money, take every single ingot, spring, sprocket and nail in her workshop, and then have Xera burn down her house for good measure. That way it would be able to get all of its assets back and then some.
Boxxy was, however, completely oblivious to the fact that Fizzy had already used a large chunk of said assets to settle outstanding debts. She’d also had to set some aside to pay taxes and purchase necessities like food, tools, and raw materials. Her pockets were therefore no more full than when the Mimic entered her life, but at least she had some semblance of peace of mind.
As for the blissfully ignorant shapeshifter, it walked through the city streets in the vague direction of the southern gate for about half an hour. At one point it went off the main road and into a less populated side street, then proceeded through a series of increasingly dingier alleyways until it reached an old, run-down stone and wood building in the middle of the slums. This place was likely a warehouse at some point, considering how large and spacious it was.
Boxxy went inside through what was once the building’s loading entrance. Rotting boxes, bits of rubble, glass shards, a couple of wrecked carriages and other useless junk was lying strewn about the place. It was also once home to a small community of sixteen wretched vagrants. They were so pitiful that the only successful Cadaver Absorption they yielded was just two points of Endurance (END). Merely a drop in the lake that was the Mimic’s HP at this point.
The monster in question proceeded towards a doorway that led farther to the back. This appeared to have once been an office at some point; the old desk, wooden cabinet, broken chairs, and old, musty bookshelves the Mimic found when it first entered the place suggested as much. All that garbage had been thrown out since then, though. The room was now completely empty except for two dead bodies on the floor, a rusty iron trunk in the corner, and a red-skinned, four-armed demon sitting on top of it with a bored expression.
