“Ah, that’s just pirates. All mouth, no pantaloons. They’ll forget all about it by the time we’re out of the bay. Slippery John thinks you’re being too hard on them. After they fitted you with that nice wooden leg, too.”
I kicked at the shingle bitterly. “They broke it off of a stool, for god’s sake. There’s a splinter sticking right in my stump.”
“And anyway, what about my quest? You said Slippery John could escort you to the Suicide Squad in Lolede.”
“I’ll find them myself.”
“And how’re you gonna do that, dead man? Ask directions? Saunter up to the front door and ask to speak to the manager? Think about it. If they gave their address out to any old timewaster, the Deleters would just find them and rub them out, yeah? They never use the same meeting location twice. When they want you to do quests for them you have to put a bag on your head and have the details whispered to you from inside a toilet cubicle.”
There he was, standing smugly on the darkened beach, little arms folded, one little beady eye shining gleefully from behind his little mustache and pirate eyepatch. It would have been so easy to stove his little chubby head in with a rock. “All right,” I said, sighing the dust out of my lungs. “Let’s just find your stupid catatonic girlfriend.”
The streets were deserted. Barry’s thugs must already have picked up all the townsfolk. We made our way west through the maze of alleyways towards the main road where I’d entered the town. Slippery John insisted on darting stealthily from cover to cover while I sulkily tromped down the middle of the roads.
“So she just stopped moving?” he asked as we neared our destination.
“ . . . Yeah,” I said, deciding not to mention my part in Drylda’s current condition.
He clicked his tongue. “The final stage of the Syndrome,” he said, sagely. “Did I tell you about that?”
“You did, yes. So this whole mission is totally pointless. She’s not going to be of any use to you.”
“Slippery John doesn’t see the point in explaining this to you, corpse. You’d need things like feelings and actual human decency to understand. True love is blind to petty flaws like total catatonia.”
“I get the impression you’re hoping it’ll be blind to a few other things, too. Anyway, there she is.”
We were back at the border of Yawnbore, and the featureless, hilly, utterly-devoid-of-lunatics grasslands that surrounded the town had never looked more enticing. Drylda was exactly where I’d left her, half-in and half-out of an Applewheat grocer’s rusted wheelbarrow. Slippery John bounded up to her excitedly, smacked straight into unexpectedly solid thin air, and fell flat on his back.
Meanwhile, I strolled through the barrier and idly took up the wheelbarrow handles. “Shall we?”
Slippery John sat up, feeling his jaw for loose teeth. “Something’s not right. Why’s she all limp?”
I picked up her wrist for a second. It dropped back down with a jangle of bracelets. “I thought that was the last stage of the Syndrome. Isn’t it?”
“The last stage of the Syndrome is supposed to make them stiffen up. They stand in a nonchalant macho pose with their legs apart and their chest thrust out forever. You want to make them sit or lie down, you have to break their knees with a mallet. They’ve never gone all floppy like that. Are you sure she’s not just dead?”
I felt her. “I dunno, she’s pretty warm.”
Slippery John flinched, his hands pressed up against the invisible barrier like a gesture of placation. “Slippery John would prefer it if you didn’t put your hand there.”
I glanced down, then back up. “What’s Slippery John going to do about it?”
He scowled from behind the invisible wall. “Why do you feel you have to antagonize me, servant of evil?” A beat. “Actually, Slippery John sort of answered his own question, there.”
A loud crashing noise rang out from somewhere behind us, a safe distance away and yet upsettingly close. We spun around just in time to watch the historic town hall collapse into a pile of historic timbers. Barry was ahead of schedule. I ducked into what I assumed was a stealthy crouch and pushed Drylda away from the ongoing destruction, Slippery John keeping parallel pace on the other side of the barrier.
When we reached the cliff edge at the top of the hill, we were afforded a slightly acrophobic bird’s eye view of Yawnbore. I needn’t have worried. Barry was still occupied with the southern half of the town, most of which was already little more than an unusually large gravel driveway. The tallest remaining structure south of the clock tower was Barry’s trebuchet, poking out above layers of ruins like a curious gazelle peering over tall grass.
From here I could even see the pirates’ cove, right past the town at the other side of the bay, and if I strained my undead eyes, the glint of Captain Scar’s spyglass at the ship’s prow. Or stern. Or whatever the front bit is called.
“You going to send up that firebolt, then, villainous wraith?”
“Seems a shame to interrupt such a peaceful evening,” I muttered, as another building collapsed. I waited for the cover of a suitably large demolition, then held my hand aloft and set my fingers a-waggling. “Arcanus, Inferus . . .”
I stopped. I had suddenly noticed movement on the outskirts of the town. Slippery John followed my gaze. “Hey, aren’t they friends of yours?”
“Oh, god, no,” I whispered.
Two distant figures were walking up the main road into Yawnbore, exactly the same one I had took. The first figure was wearing pigtails that looked like two guinea pigs were trying to escape from its head, and the second one was walking with its hands behind its back, pretending to have nothing to do with the first.
“Hey, Slippery John thinks you might want to finish off that spell.”
I looked at my upraised hand just in time to see my sleeve catch fire. I snapped it off my robe and stamped on it, then stared at Meryl and the priest again. They were only blocks away from Barry’s operation. I broke into a run.
Then, two steps later, I broke out of it. A lot of conflicting thoughts were having a shouting argument in my head. If I couldn’t reach Meryl in time, she’d stumble right into Barry, true to idiot form.
But I didn’t give a furious flying toss about Meryl. She was a big enough girl to take responsibility for her own stupid actions.
But then I looked down at my wooden leg. I imagined myself hundreds of years down the line, still pursuing my quest for deletion, my non-regenerating body gradually being worn down by repeated damage and wear and tear until there was nothing left of me but half a skull dragging itself along by its eyebrow.
“Slippery John wishes he could get away with your kind of indecisiveness in Slippery John’s fast-paced life of adventure and peril,” said Slippery John pointedly.
Meryl had been the only thing holding me together since my rebirth. She might have been offensively chirpy and a rabid nationalist, but at least she knew how to sew. I ran. Slippery John remained where he was, leaning on the barrier and making comforting small talk with Drylda’s indifferent carcass.
By the time I reached the main road, they had already moved on into the inner suburbs. Fortunately, the priest had been scattering pamphlets on people’s driveways. I followed the trail, trying to keep as quiet as possible with my new leg clacking woodenly against the cobblestones.
I was passing by a cottage home with a particularly well-kept lawn and an inept attempt at topiary, when I heard noises from the adjoining street.
“—Ust wondering if you’d seen our friend anywhere,” came Meryl’s voice. “You remember? Thin, no nose, talks like a complete miseryguts all the time?”
“Yes, I remember him.” Barry’s voice sounded irritated. “I’m just surprised that you’re coming to me about it.”
I hopped over the fence. My foot caught on the crossbar and I fell on my face into the immaculate grass, turning it into an impressive stealth roll as I freed myself. Then I gathered myself up onto hands and knees and crawled past the
cottage to the rear garden, where I took up position behind a conifer, gently pushing the leaves aside with one hand.
I was looking out onto a street that seemed to mark the border of Barry’s demolition work for the day. Every building in my field of vision had now been leveled. The timeshare holiday homes of an entire continent’s middle class lay in a thin layer of shattered bricks and plaster.
Barry and his squad of mercenaries were nearby, gathered around the trebuchet with their backs to me. Meryl and the priest were a few yards down the road. It was like a stand-off between two miniature armies, one of which had apparently forgotten it was at war.
“It’s never too late to bury the hatchet, that’s what Dreadgrave taught us,” said Meryl proudly.
“I remember that hatchet,” muttered one of the adventurers.
“So I just wanted you to know I forgive you for trying to burn us and ask if Jim passed through here.”
Barry scratched his head. He seemed more confused than malevolent. “Well . . . actually, yes, he did. We had him destroyed.”
Meryl’s smile froze. “You what?”
“You said you destroyed him, Benjamin?” said Barry to the mage in his employ.
The pack of mercenaries passed around a few panicky glances, then all of them made a brave attempt to simultaneously hide behind Benjamin. “Er, yes, that’s right,” said their reluctant spokesman. “Trapped him on the beach, blew him up. Pow! Just like we said. Nothing but ashes left.”
“Ya, and dey orl bloo out to sea,” said the freshly resurrected northern barbarian bloke. “And dat’s vy dere’s no body and joo can totally stop tinking about it.”
“We destroyed him because he defiantly refused to reveal your location,” said Barry. He was trying to be triumphant about it but Meryl’s puppy-dog stare and oozing tears were making him visibly uncomfortable. He gave an embarrassed cough that resounded like a thunderclap. “So . . . now we’re going to destroy you, and you’ve rendered his sacrifice moot. Sorry.”
A very awkward moment of silence passed as Meryl took this in, mouth quivering.
“Behold, I have brought this minion of heresy to undergo your proper judgement,” barked the priest suddenly, who knew a turning of the tide when he saw it. “May her smitation be deservedly swift, my brother in God.”
“But . . . what did we ever do to you?” said Meryl, her cheeks swelling up and something burbling disgustingly in the back of her throat.
Barry puffed himself up, clearly preparing to deliver the same line of bullshit he’d fed me. “I am the avatar of a divine power,” he said, grandly. “The undead are aberrations to His . . .” His enthusiasm died, withering away against Meryl’s pathetic stare like butter under a level 60 Infernal Destructoblast. He turned his back on his targets. “Oh, just blast them.”
“Yes, blast her,” said the priest smugly, folding his arms and taking a step back.
“Blast both of them.”
“Yes, blast both of her legs,” said the priest as fast as he could. “Her sinful, whorish legs.”
I was waiting for Meryl to don her usual set of reality blinkers and say something chipper and blasé in the face of annihilation. She didn’t. Her shoulders were slumped and her head was hanging glumly. Her pigtails seemed to be drooping like the ears of a dog cornered by a master with a rolled-up newspaper. The moonlight shone off globdules of gray, viscous tears on her cheeks.
Benjamin held a hand out towards her and began to twiddle like a pro. “Arcanus, Inferus, Maxima . . .”
“Maxima” is an all-purpose word added to an incantation to amplify the spell’s effect, generally to the point of leaving the caster completely exhausted for a good ten or twenty minutes. There wouldn’t be enough left of Meryl’s head to spread on toast.
A second passed.
Suddenly, I was standing out in the street, off balance. My wooden leg had somehow found its way into my hands, which were still reverberating from an extremely powerful impact. Benjamin lay on his back, a comically large lump rising out of his hair and arcane fire still crackling about his fingers.
All eyes were upon me in a frozen tableau of surprise. The only sound was the bush behind me gently rustling back into place. Barry, who had been floating disgustedly away from the scene, stopped and spun around. Any moment now, I thought, someone is going to take the initiative and get the action going again. And it would probably be better if it were me. I crouched, grabbed Benjamin’s sparking hand, and pointed it skywards.
“Telechus?” I said.
I hadn’t been sure how advanced a mage Benjamin was, but judging by the power of the blast he must have at least been a post-graduate. My vision whited out, and a deafening roar flooded my ears.
My vision cleared after a few moments. Benjamin and I were unharmed, of course. It’s a legal standard for spells to come pre-installed with a complex system of sub-spells that protect the caster or casters from harm. Otherwise there would have been a lot of mages running around with blackened stumps where their forearms should have been.
The adventurers had taken the worst of the blast. Every single one of them was flat on their back, arms and legs protectively curled up like cockroaches, groaning like rusty garden gates. Thin columns of smoke were rising from where their hair and eyebrows had been.
Meryl and the priest, who had been furthest away, were stunned, but standing. Meryl snapped out of it first and ran to my side as I hastily lodged my wooden leg back into the stump with a sickening thump. “They said you were dead!”
“I am,” was the obvious response.
“They said they destroyed you!”
“Well, they didn’t. Let’s go.”
My first instinct was to get the hell away from the scene before the adventurers could regain their senses. I had my fists clenched and one leg raised in preparation for breaking into a run when a wall of holy white flame burst forth from the ground, surrounding us.
“You said you destroyed him!” said Barry, floating into view from his hiding place behind the trebuchet. Little white sparks were bursting from his furious eyes. “Clearly you didn’t! And yet you said you did! That’s just . . . not professional!”
I could have run through the fire and hoped for the best. I could also hypothetically have existed with all my skin burnt off. But it still seemed like a better plan than standing and waiting for Barry to start smiting . . .
Something crashed to the street nearby. Everyone turned to see a brick rattling to a halt on the ground.
“Er,” said Barry. “Where did the sunlight go?” He looked up, and was immediately answered by a piece of plaster bouncing off his nose. He opened his mouth to say something along the lines of “ow” when there was a horrible wet crunching sound and a hefty chunk of cornice was suddenly sitting where his head had been.
Barry and his team had been working to bring down a sturdy two-story post office before Meryl’s interruption, and the impact of Benjamin’s blast had encouraged it to finish the job by itself. Now it was bending slowly towards the ground as if it had been punched in the gut, sprinkling loose objects and architectural features as a prelude to a spectacular collapse.
“Run,” I suggested.
Holding our arms over our heads like evening commuters caught in the rain, Meryl, the priest, and I made it past the stricken building moments before it smashed to the ground. A great cloud of brown dust billowed out, discouraging the few adventurers who were on their feet and trying to give chase.
“Weren’t you in New Pillock?” I asked Meryl, as we ran towards the coast. “Given up on the revolution?”
“On the contrary!” she said, thrilled by my question. “The people of Borrigarde have risen up! A mighty fist of guerrilla resistance swept across the land, and the reins of power were seized from the Pillock occupying forces in a historic battle by dawn!”
I jogged thoughtfully in silence for a few steps, trying to process this. “What.”
“An interim government has been formed and a new
age of hope and liberty has begun. Our people’s spirits have been carried through these difficult times by the stories of a man, a pureblood Borrigardian, who rose from death itself to carve out a legend!”
I was certain she’d been repeating that to herself the whole way here. “Please don’t say you’ve been telling them about me.”
“The stories of your exploits inspire our fighting men!” A pause. “I might have exaggerated a little. But they’re really impressed with how you rose to the rank of Executive Rat Pit Administrator so quickly. Everyone wants to meet you, Jim! There’s talk of a seat in the government! You’re a hero to the people!”
By this point we’d arrived back at the coast. “I already told you I don’t go for the ‘hero’ thing,” I said distractedly, looking for an escape route.
“Ho really? So what was all that business back there if it wasn’t leaping to the rescue?”
From somewhere behind us came the crunching of heavy adventurer boots coming across freshly-created gravel. I ran into the beach and started scraping up shingle. “That was sort of a reflex action,” I said, stuffing my pockets. “Come on. Pick up some stones.”
“What for?”
“We need to hide under the sea.”
“Right.” She stirred the pebbles uncertainly with a toe. “So what’re the stones for?”
“To weigh you down.”
“Oh I see! Of course. Sorry.” She turned to the priest, who was watching disdainfully with arms folded. “We need to pick up some stones!”
He sniffed. “The day I scrabble in the dust for my gratifications is UNGH.”
I looked up just in time to see Meryl and the priest felled like bowling pins by a flying donkey before its musty flank hit me full in the face, knocking me off my feet. I spent a disoriented second struggling to push the hairy, foul-smelling mass away before it hurtled off into the sky with a single despairing hee-haw.
Benjamin the mage walked slowly towards us, hands still raised from casting Level 12 Animal Levitation. “Found you,” he said, with murder in his eyes.
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