by Neven Iliev
There was no telling when another nosy do-gooder might interfere though, which was why Boxxy made extra sure it wasn’t being followed prior to entering Fizzy’s place.
*Ring-a-ding-ding*
The door frame hit the bell hanging above it as per usual, signalling the Mimic’s entrance.
“Ack! Hey! B-Boxxy!”
Fizzy was behind the counter instead of working on her various projects in the back. At a second glance though, she did have her tools out, so it appeared she was busy as usual, only in a slightly different place.
“You’re here, um, early!”
Her eyes darted between her visitor and the door in the back. Was it really early though? If anything, Boxxy had arrived later than intended since it slept in.
“Ah well, no time like the present!” squeaked the gnome. “Wait right there; I have something I want to give you! Just, just sit right there, okay?”
Boxxy nodded, and Fizzy ran into the back room. It honestly didn’t mind waiting around for a bit. It was very good at waiting. In fact, it was practically an expert on the matter. One could say it was born to wait in one spot until something tasty jumped in its mouth. It wouldn’t get to show off its waiting skills today though, as Fizzy returned from the back within seconds. She trotted up to the counter and climbed atop the small crate she always stood on.
“Here, this is for you!”
The gnome held out a small metal ball. It was about five centimetres in diameter and had a deep groove running around its circumference like it was two hemispheres that were bolted together. It was plated gold and there was a large button on the side. As for the interior, it was an Artificer contraption of some sort.
“It’s, uhm, a gift for, uh, for being such a great student! Yeah!”
Her behaviour struck Boxxy as a bit odd, but it wasn’t about to turn down a shiny gift. This was the third free thing it had gotten today, so it was quite elated as it reached out and snatched the metal orb from Fizzy’s hand. The gnome recoiled slightly from the sudden action, but the Mimic was far too enthralled by the shiny object it had been presented with to care about her. Even if the gold was only on the surface, that was still enough to suit its very basic tastes.
“What’s this?” it asked, brimming with curiosity.
“Like I said, it’s a gift! It’s, err, a prototype toy! Yeah! It’s super fun! Just push the button and you’ll see!”
Boxxy promptly did as instructed and pressed the switch with its thumb as Fizzy ducked behind the counter.
*Click*
*BAZZZUZZUZUZUZUZZZT*
Blue arcs of electricity shot out from the device and into Boxxy’s body.
“SKHRAAAAHHRG!”
It let out a loud, inhuman scream as the powerful current rocked it to its very core.
[You have been electrocuted. HP -258.]
[You have been stunned for 4 seconds.]
[Your Skills have been disabled for 4 seconds.]
Losing control of its body, the two-metre-tall figure fell to the floor. No, it would be more accurate to say it collapsed in on itself as the fake limbs and head dissolved into a sort of red, slightly pulsating meat paste.
“Hah … Hahahaha!” laughed Fizzy as she peeked over the counter. “I knew it! I knew I wasn’t crazy! I kept telling them those dreams were far too real to just be my imagination! Well who’s crazy now, eh? Hahahaha!”
Clearly, Fizzy had been subjected to Xera’s mind wipes one too many times, resulting in the worst-case scenario where she regained those memories. The Mimic didn’t have the luxury of deducing that though. Right now it was barely even conscious, unable to move even a single muscle fibre. Even its magical perception was spinning around wildly, making it impossible to tell what was going on.
“Snack!” it called out telepathically. “Come gnome shop now!”
But there was no response. Boxxy didn’t feel its wounded body healing, either, despite having left Mend Flesh toggled to ‘on.’ It then remembered that last notification said something about Skills being disabled. So that was what it meant.
“Now, you’re mine!” declared the gnome. “And you’ll pay for toying with me! For scheming behind my back!”
She ducked behind the counter and pulled a lever – the same one she had been fiddling with just moments ago. A large number of steel rods sprang up from the wooden floor, tearing it to pieces in the process and extending upwards all the way into the ceiling. The disabled monster was now surrounded on all sides, trapped inside a circular cage three metres in diameter.
“We’ll see how the city guards deal with you!”
Fizzy leapt over the counter and ran out into the street.
This was not tasty at all!
[You are no longer stunned.]
[Your Skills are no longer disabled.]
“Snack!” it tried again.
“Yes, Master?” came Xera’s reply.
“Come towards the shop and find the gnome!”
“Did you mess up with –”
“Now!”
“Right away, Master!”
The monster tried standing up, but couldn’t properly control its extremities. Its entire body was numb, like it was not its own anymore. This was the first time it ever felt such a sensation. Or rather, such a lack of sensation.
[Your flesh has been mended. HP +140.]
Good, that was working again as well. However, this situation was already beyond the monster’s control. At that moment, the Mimic decided to run. It already knew it would be no match for an entire city’s worth of guards and adventurers, so running was a no-brainer, really. Which was good, because whatever passed for the shapeshifter’s brain was still scrambled, making it hard to form complicated thoughts.
[Your flesh has been mended. HP +140.]
The mental and physical discomfort faded away almost completely once Mend Flesh restored the monster’s HP to full in the next second. Now fully in control, Boxxy discarded the cheap clothes it was wearing and stood up on its spider legs. It took a step towards the edge of its prison but immediately shrank back from the buzzing steel bars. The Mimic didn’t want to get anywhere near them, let alone touch them. The instincts that had been quiet as of late were screaming at it not to get close. It wasn’t sure how, but some baser, more primal part of it recognized that its cage had been electrified.
This was bad. Electricity was bad. This entire damn thing was so bad that it made the Mimic want to hide in the deepest, darkest hole it could find.
“Ah!”
It finally understood. This was its elemental weakness, its vulnerability. Much like how undead would be made brittle and slow when bathed in holy magic, so too would shapeshifters lose control of their bodies when exposed to a strong electric charge. This phenomenon, officially referred to as ‘Bane,’ was something present in all monsters without exception. Boxxy had overheard other mercenaries discussing it, but it had no idea it would be this bad. Fizzy must have really done her homework to prepare a trap like this. It was the perfect snare for capturing a mimic.
Unfortunately, for all her theoretical knowledge, the gnome had neglected to take one thing into account: A trap was only as strong as the surface it was built on.
The chest opened up and a fleshy tongue wiggled free. A small hole appeared on its pointed tip and a green liquid sprayed out of it, courtesy of Acid Spray. It clung to the steel pipes and started eating away at them with a steady, hissing noise.
“Master, I see the gnome!” reported Xera. “She’s shouting at a group of guards and pointing towards the store.”
It looked like that Boxxy’s time in Erosa was now officially over.
“Leave her and come to me.”
“Understood, Master.”
While the acid did its thing, the Mimic forcefully dismissed Kora from the warehouse and started summoning her back. The acid was steadily eating away at its prison but would obviously take a long time before it completely broke through. That was fine, though, because this wasn�
�t the monster’s goal. The corrosive liquid leaked down between some cracks on the floor, causing sparks and smoke to erupt moments later. The Mimic used its magical perception to confirm that the wires under the floorboards were melted completely through and that the buzzing coming from the cage had died down.
Boxxy should have noticed this trap much, much sooner. It knew this expandable cage was there beforehand, but it failed to notice the extra machinery that wasn’t there the last time it had checked. That was because it simply didn’t have a habit of looking beneath the ground. Actually, it was more accurate to say that it had a habit of ignoring what lay beneath its feet unless it was actively looking for something beneath the surface. And since it had been to Fizzy’s numerous times without incident, it allowed itself to be distracted by her ‘gift.’
In short, Boxxy had gotten complacent and was now paying the price.
Kora’s summoning finished several seconds later. Using a big chunk of its MP like this was perhaps not the smartest idea, but the Mimic needed all the help it could get right now. Besides, it had just gotten a bunch of potions to help with that should the need arise.
“What was –! Eck!”
The fiend had been ready to complain about being dismissed so suddenly but gave up on that in favour of letting out a stupid noise when she saw her master in a cage. The stench of burnt shapeshifter flesh hit her nose in the next instant.
“Boss? What the fuck?” she exclaimed, covering her nose and mouth.
“Break this thing!”
“Alright!”
Her other three muscled arms gripped a steel bar each and pulled on them all at once. The metal creaked and groaned under the stress. Already weak from the acid, it gave and snapped off at the corroded points near the bottom. The fiend flexed her muscles and bent the vertical bars upwards, creating a gap large enough for the chest to exit sideways. Which was precisely what it did, though not before hesitating for a moment.
Obviously, this event wasn’t doing much to help with the Mimic’s grate-related trauma.
Having been released from its prison, Boxxy immediately leapt over the counter and started unlocking the metal safe hidden in the floor. It already knew the combination, since it spied on Fizzy opening it a few times. Inside were several satchels of gold, a few gems, and a weird metal tube-shaped device. It quickly tossed everything it could into its Storage without bothering to count it.
“Master! The guards are right outside the shop!”
The Mimic sighed at Snack’s report. Now it would have to murder who knew how many people until it reached the gate, probably wasting even more of its limited resources along the way. And now that its identity was out in the open, its alter ego would probably get a bounty, making it harder to reintegrate into society. Meaning that recouping its losses would be far, far more difficult.
And today was going so well, too!
Interlude
That Nagging Feeling
It started, as many life-changing revelations seem to, with the simplest thing.
A door that should have been ajar, wasn’t.
Gnomes were often creatures of habit, and Cornie Fizzlesprocket was the embodiment of that stereotype. She woke up at precisely 6:41 every morning. She then rolled around in bed until 7:01 before getting up. Her morning routine of getting dressed, doing her hair up and eating breakfast was over and done with by 7:26, and she opened up her shop at exactly 7:30.
She spent the majority of an average day tinkering away at some project or another. On the rare occasion that a customer visited, she would yell out at them that she would be ‘just a minute,’ and exactly sixty seconds later would emerge from the back room to do business. At 12:45 in the afternoon, she temporarily closed up shop for lunch until 1:24 and resumed her business hours until 7:44. She spent the next thirty minutes cleaning up the store and organizing her workshop, before having dinner at 8:50. She was in bed by 9:15 and fell asleep by 10:43.
That last bit of her routine was a recent addition, however. Normally she’d be asleep by 8:44 after a long day of hard work, but she no longer had anyone to help out with chores. And nowadays, she normally spent nearly an hour and a half weeping in grief over the recent loss of her father and brother. They were the only family she had left in the Empire, so their deaths hit her hard. Alone in the dark with only her thoughts and memories for company, she cried herself to sleep nearly every night for twelve days straight.
People said wounds like these healed with time, but how much more would she have to endure this horrible pain? Weeks? Months? Years? She wanted specifics, an exact date and time when it would finally stop hurting, but nobody could give her a clear answer. ‘It’s not a set amount of time,’ they would say with a shrug, ‘It just happens.’ – a clearly unscientific approach that endlessly infuriated Fizzy. If she had a clear goal, then she could grin and bear it while silently counting away the seconds to that release inside her head.
Literally.
As an Artificer, Cornie was in possession of the Tick Counter Skill. It was an invaluable ability that allowed her to precisely measure the passage of time inside a corner of her mind. Using this Skill also allowed her to accurately gauge the interval between two events. It was precise enough to let Fizzy tell the difference between 2 seconds and 2.01 seconds if she put her mind to it. This was a very useful Skill when it came to building machines with many moving parts that had to work together.
It also had the side effect of allowing her to tell what the time was without having to look at a clock. Granted, it wasn’t flawless, but it was still accurate to within ten seconds of the actual time – quite enough for one’s day-to-day needs. So she was more than a little shocked when she realised one day that her internal clock was nine minutes slow. The gnome deduced it was probably caused by all the stress she had been through lately. It was a Skill that relied heavily on one’s mental state, so things like that could happen. Therefore, Fizzy simply calibrated it to match the clock in her bedroom and thought nothing more of it.
But then, three days later, she realised her internal clock was five minutes slow. She corrected it again, but the very next day it was behind again, this time by sixteen whole minutes. Her father always used to say that ‘once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time’s a pattern.’ So after the fourth time it happened she grew considerably worried. Was she going mad? Was the Skill somehow malfunctioning? Or maybe every single clock in her house was afflicted by some strange, identical defect?
The first one was a frightening possibility. The second was impossible and the fact she even considered that third scenario only made the first seem more likely. So she thought back on the days where she had been, for lack of a better term, missing time. And a pattern did indeed emerge.
It was all on days she was visited by her mysterious new pupil, a gigantic man who went by the slightly odd name of Boxxy. Not every visit of his was accompanied by a time lapse, but he had still been there every time there was an incident. Was that man somehow responsible? Cornie didn’t want to believe it. She refused to accept that a person who was thoroughly amazed by something simple and innocent like a wind-up toy mouse would harbour any sort of malicious intent. Someone who she could only think of as a ‘slightly awkward gentle giant.’
But then again, the door that should have been ajar, wasn’t.
Fizzy remembered that on the third and fourth times she noticed a ‘time skip,’ the door that connected her storefront and the workshop in the back had been firmly closed. She never shut that door. Ever. Not only did it block the sound of the entry bell, but it was much too big for her. It was designed for humans, after all. A gnome like Fizzy had to reach up just above her head to grab the door handle, which was so old that it often got stuck. It was inconvenient, awkward, and annoying to close and open that damned door. So she never did. The fact it had been closed on those days – and only those days – was her physical evidence that something or someone was messing with her.
And, of c
ourse, the only one present in the shop during those times was Boxxy.
She was deeply conflicted. On one hand, she had grown fond of the amazing pupil who eagerly soaked up all her teachings. It was even to the point where she chased off that guy who came asking questions. The innocent gnome did not want to believe that her only ray of happiness – that awkward, yet brilliant stranger – was somehow scheming something behind her back. But how? And to what end? She thought long and hard on those days but just could not remember anything else out of place.
That was when a creeping thought wormed its way into her head. It wasn’t that she couldn’t remember, but that she was not allowed to remember ... that her mind was being influenced somehow. And, of course, this immensely disturbing thought reared its head when she was rolling around in bed. She obsessed over it until well past midnight before sleep finally claimed her.
And that was when she had a nightmare. Of Boxxy unravelling into a collection of wood, tentacles, and teeth that held her down, tied her up, and dragged her off. A woman showed up next – a simple village girl with a plain appearance. She shared a few words with the monstrous creature and then placed a hand on the gnome’s head.
That was when Fizzy woke up screaming, drenched in sweat and out of breath. After calming down and realising it was still the middle of the night, she tried to dismiss it as just her mind playing tricks on her. She had been obsessing over this Boxxy thing all night, so it wasn’t all that surprising she’d have a nightmare.
But then she had another. One where a Bladeblossom was set off accidentally and her student was injured without uttering a peep, despite being stabbed in the face and leaking sickly-looking yellow blood. It then leapt over the counter and again bound, gagged, and dragged her off. A woman appeared again, but this one was completely unlike the village girl in every way. She was a nun, with an entirely different voice and face, but she behaved in much the same way, right up until she put a hand on the gnome’s head.
Fizzy woke up screaming once more. This wasn’t her imagination running wild. It was way too real, way too detailed, and much more terrifying than any nightmare she’d ever had. Dawn was about to break, but she didn’t wait for it. She immediately got up and ran off into the street to find a guard.
