“There you go again, talking too much,” said his wife, arms folded. “She already said Dreadgrave knew about the brains. This is why everyone was so bored at our last dinner party.”
Civious shot a murderous glance at her. “I could have been rid of you when you grew too old, woman. There will always be youthful beauties who would willingly surrender to my dark power.”
“Yes, but none of them know how you like your porridge, do they?”
The dread lord unflinchingly inserted an emaciated hand into the adventurer’s exposed brain. It emerged holding what looked like a transparent rubber ball with a number of short, quivering tentacles. The inside was filled with green smoke that glowed softly from within. It was a similar shade of green to the crystals that had powered Dreadgrave’s mass resurrection spell back in the cemetery, during those happy, innocent days that seemed so long ago.
“That’s it!” said Meryl excitedly. “Those are the things Dreadgrave was messing with.”
Civious held it to his uncovered eye, rocking it back and forth between thumb and forefinger. “This is a Chlorofon’s Folly. It is an organ found within the brains of sentient creatures, but for centuries no scholar has been able to determine its purpose.”
“I’ve seen those!” said Meryl, like a teacher’s pet. “They don’t usually look like that, though.”
In response, Civious thrust his free hand into the albino’s brain and pulled out another little sphere. This one lacked the tiny tentacles, and the green inside wasn’t glowing. “Here is a Folly from an . . . ordinary individual. As ordinary as the cave-dwellers can be said to be, at any rate.”
“Yeah, what’s with those guys?” asked Meryl. “They say hello, by the way.”
Civious sniffed in contempt. It put all of Thaddeus’s best sneers to shame. “They oppose the world’s new order but lack the courage to take up the struggle, instead living a pathetic life of cowardice, huddled in the dark. They are worthless.”
“Still, nice to have some quiet neighbors for once,” sighed Mrs. Civious.
“From the moment an adventurer shows the symptoms of the Syndrome, the Chlorofon’s Folly inside their head mutates. It extrudes rudimentary limbs that lodge themselves in surrounding brain tissue. Any attempt to remove the object results in death.”
Mrs. Civious brushed aside a few giblets and set down a tray bearing cups of tea and a plate of biscuits. “’Course, we’re not one hundred percent sure if it’s the removal of the thing that kills them or the state he leaves the brain in while he’s trying to get it out.”
“So it’s some kind of symbiote?” asked Meryl, a former evil scientist’s assistant talking shop with another evil scientist.
“‘Parasite’ would be a better word,” said Civious, nibbling severely on a digestive biscuit. “My researches indicate that the Syndrome renders its victims permanently braindead upon contraction. The Folly then takes over their entire nervous systems, turning them into living puppets. When you interact with a victim of Syndrome, you are addressing the entity that controls
them, not the person to whom their body once belonged.”
“Urgh,” I said.
“So the Folly takes control of them?” asked Meryl, taking the little sphere from him.
“No, not in itself. It has more in common with magical technology. It’s my theory that it acts as a conduit for the instructions of the controlling entity.”
“You liar,” said his wife. “You know full well it was Carlos’s theory.”
He took that one in his stride. “It doesn’t matter who came up with the theory. The point is I believe it’s the right one to pursue.”
Every time I looked at Civious another of the dreadful blood-soaked stories of genocide and grotesque experimentation screamed at me from inside my head. Instead, I concentrated on the tea and biscuit he was holding. “So . . . Deleters are controlling people?” I said. “What for?”
“With no way to communicate directly with the beings you call Deleters, all we can do is speculate. The possessed adventurers make no attempt to seize power or gather intelligence, so invasion isn’t the motive. All they seem to want to do is adventure. But if we follow that line of thinking, it leads us to the inescapable conclusion that . . .”
“ . . . That the Infusion was orchestrated by these beings for no better reason than to make our world ideal for adventuring,” said Civious and his wife in unison. “A place where quests never end and everyone gets a turn to complete them.”
“You make this exact same speech to everyone we enlist,” said Mrs. Civious.
“So?” snapped the Baron. “It’s a good speech. Does the job.”
“I really don’t want to get involved in any of this,” I said, their horrifying use of the word “enlist” having only just sunk in. “I’m looking for the Deleters so I can stop having to live for any longer.”
“Why are you staring at my teacup?”
I jumped. “Sorry, sir.”
“If you merely wish to find the Deleters, that we can help you with. Magic analysis has led us to conclude that all of these spheres are sending and receiving invisible messages to and from a specific location in the world, the origin of all the Deleters’ influence, which I have called the Nexus.”
“That name was Carlos’s idea, too,” whispered Mrs. Civious into my ear.
“Assist us with our goal, and in return we will provide you with its exact location.”
“Assist you . . . how?”
“Erm,” said Meryl. “Is it supposed to do that?”
She held out her palm. The green color had vanished from the Folly, leaving a featureless black pearl. The tentacles hung off it like limp noodles. Civious snatched it from her. “What did you do?”
“Nothing! I was just holding it!”
Civious placed it under a magical analysis device he had set up on the workbench. It was the same model as the one from my old university lab, but presumably wasn’t crusted with dried bodily fluids from years of creative hazing rituals. “It’s dead,” he announced. “It’s lost connection to the Nexus.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Meryl fretfully. “Shall I pay for it?”
“Don’t worry about it, love,” said Mrs. Civious, patting her maternally. “We’ve got loads.”
“The mutated Follies are unbreakable. I’ve never seen any stimuli cause them to change in any way.” The Baron tapped his chin. It tinged metallically. “James. You take one.” He grabbed a small bloodstained tray of the things from another workbench and held it out as if offering around nibbles at a party. I took one, and it almost immediately clouded over with blackness, like ink being dropped into colored water.
“Hey, it happened much faster with him,” said Meryl, then she looked at me. “Jim, what’s the matter?”
I couldn’t look away from the little black ball. Something inside it screamed tinnily, as if from far away, then was cut off by a harsh crack. The tentacles stood on end. I could feel the Deleter thing inside my mind shuddering, as if in pain, before it gave in and flashed something new before my eyes.
From: “William Williams”
To: “Donald Sunderland”
Subject: Re: Fwd: account probz
k stop worrying
From: “Donald Sunderland”
To: “William Williams”
Subject: Fwd: account probz
Dub, I’m at the airport on one of those coin-op internet terminals. Look after this pleb’s issue ASAP. And DON’T let Simon do anything STUPID while I’m on vacation. The doctor says I CAN’T have ANY STRESS.
From: “Pus Monkey”
To: “Support”
Subject: account probz
aight guyz 1 of teh chars on my accunt int workin nemore wuzup wid dat!!?!!
login: wakbakboggart
name: drylda
peace
- todd
I was stirred from my reverie by the unique sound of Meryl snapping her half-skeletonized fingers. “Jim?” she said, checking my pupils. “Where’d you go?”
Baron Civious was seated at a workbench, scribbling madly with a large feather pen upon an ornate sheet of vellum scroll. The man’s commitment to tradition was nothing short of applaudable. “I observed that the activated Folly reacts extremely negatively to the touch of Dreadgrave’s free-willed undead,” he read aloud as he wrote.
“You could use their actual names,” said Mrs. Civious, who was standing over him. “They’re not adventurers, you know. They’re actual people with feelings.”
“Comma, James and Meryl,” continued Civious, pretending he wasn’t listening and was going to add that anyway. “This calls for an opening of a fresh line of enquiry. I theorize that the spheres have some close connection to, perhaps powered by, the presence of life. The same corruption of life that powers the . . . that powers James and Meryl may be spreading to whatever magitechnology exists within the sphere.”
“I don’t really like ‘corruption.’ It implies that there’s something wrong with them.”
He smacked himself in the face in irritation. His signet ring clattered loudly against his mask. “They’ve both been dead for six decades and they’re walking around. That strikes me as pretty damn wrong.”
I, meanwhile, was debating with myself whether or not to reveal to the bickering Magic Resistance the details of the Deleter correspondence in my head. There was no way to convince myself that it wasn’t vitally relevant to their goals. But then again, the blob of amber hanging heavily in my robe pocket reminded me that Mr. Wonderful was going to render the goals themselves irrelevant. All I had to do was hold on long enough to learn the location of the Nexus. In the meantime, though, the mention of Drylda’s name in my last vision had helped me remember something I’d been meaning to bring up.
“Drylda,” I said. “Drylda went all weird and floppy after I touched her in the dead world.”
“You touched her?” said Meryl, horrified. “Where?”
“In the Applewheat battle.”
Mrs. Civious chuckled to herself. “I’ve never heard it called that before.”
I explained what had happened that eventful afternoon in Applewheat. How I had seen the tiny Deleter inside the Syndrome-inflicted Drylda, and how my touch had caused it to spazz out. I made a particular point of mentioning how I had lumped Drylda halfway across Garethy at my own pointless expense in the increasingly futile hope that she might eventually prove useful.
“Where is she now?” asked Civious. “It would be useful for me to examine her.”
“I bet it would,” said Mrs. Civious. I got the impression that she and Captain Scar would have gotten on extremely well.
“Slippery John knows where she is,” I said.
“Yes, where is Slippery John?” asked Mrs. Civious. “He was supposed to be the one to bring you in.” A pause. “Why are you looking at each other like that?”
Sensing that he could seize an opportunity to be the center of attention, Slippery John the rabbit peered out from Meryl’s neckline, snuffling at the air. I meaningfully jerked my head towards it.
“Oh, sorry love, didn’t know that was in there,” said Mrs. Civious. “I thought you were just a bit fat.”
“I don’t understand,” said the Baron. “Is that his rabbit?”
Once again I found myself exhaustively providing exposition, explaining exactly the circumstances by which Slippery John had been transformed into a rabbit. This time I placed particular emphasis on how it would be extremely unfair to describe it as my fault.
“You’re saying,” said Baron Civious in a deadpan voice that put all of mine to shame. “That a basic Bunnymorph spell acquired from a franchised magic shop has maintained a transformation for over four hours?”
“Ooh,” said Mrs. Civious. “Well done, you. Have you considered taking it up competitively?”
I got the feeling that the Baron was having trouble believing me, and he was waiting for me to give him the actual justification for bringing an adorable fluffy animal into his presence and undermining his entire image. “I have noticed that being undead sort of amplifies the effect of my magic . . .”
“Yes, yes, the Civious Effect. I know of it; they named it after me. That wouldn’t account for an extended transformation of this length.”
“Hang on, loves,” said Mrs. Civious. She had been poking around in a nearby filing cabinet and had produced one of those vellum scrolls. “I know something like this came by once. Tch. Why do you always write everything on scrolls? It’s such a nuisance to sort through. What’s wrong with pages?”
“I like everything to be neat and together,” said Civious, drumming his fingers on a table.
“They have these things now called ‘staples.’ Wouldn’t hurt to not be a complete luddite, would it?” She skimmed the contents of the scroll for a moment, then pointed triumphantly. “Here we go. There was no official record, but two hundred years ago Roggar the Invincible reported that he bunnymorphed his assistant in a pet shop north of Deborah. The assistant wasn’t recovered for six hours, at which point he was found in a hutch with three female purebred show rabbits.”
“Yes, well,” said the Baron. “This is a tactic well known to competitive bunnymorphers. The willingness to remain a bunny can be strong enough to overpower the reversal of the spell.”
“But what could . . .” I began. Then I noticed that Slippery John had disappeared back inside Meryl’s dress, and was wriggling around in a manner that could only be described as “rummaging.” “Oh.”
NINE
XxSuperSimonxX signed in at 1:44PM
XxSuperSimonxX: hey dub
XxSuperSimonxX: the dubster
XxSuperSimonxX: dubolicious
doublebill: hello simon how are you
XxSuperSimonxX: is don enjoying his holidays
doublebill: probably
doublebill: hes stoped calling every hour
XxSuperSimonxX: spot on
XxSuperSimonxX: hey speaking of don do you know how to work his thing
doublebill: what
XxSuperSimonxX: you know his thing where you type in an npc and it tells you where they are in mogworld
doublebill: uh
doublebill: yeah i know hwo to work that
doublebill: and so do yuo cos don showed you on yor first day
XxSuperSimonxX: oh yeah
doublebill: you do rememer how to use it right
XxSuperSimonxX: yeah totally
doublebill: you must have uesd it if you got rid of those three unded like you said you did
XxSuperSimonxX: oh yeah i totally did that
XxSuperSimonxX: never mind
XxSuperSimonxX: hey ive got this great idea for the game
doublebill: uh
doublebill: okay
XxSuperSimonxX: you know how theres all these different countries and factions and junk
XxSuperSimonxX: why don’t we just unite them all into one big one
doublebill: why would we want to do that
XxSuperSimonxX: and have one big leader in chaerg of the whole shibang
doublebill: maybe yoy shold wait til don gets back
XxSuperSimonxX: come on man cant you make one decision without old tall dark and broom stuck up ass holding yor hand
XxSuperSimonxX: this is a great idea right??
doublebill: well not really no
doublebill: i mean don made it so thered be as many countreis and factions as possable
doublebill: the more conflict there is the more quests and battles and raids
XxSuperSimonxX: cmon itd be great
XxSuperSimonxX: ive planned it all out and ive even got an npc in mind for the world leader<
br />
doublebill: simon listen to me
doublebill: absolutly no this is not goig to work
XxSuperSimonxX: we ll see about that
doublebill: what does that mean
doublebill: simon
doublebill: hellooo
“Hey.” Meryl snapped her fingers in front of my eyes. “Stop zoning out.”
I shook my head to dispel the vision. “The stuff’s coming out by itself now. I don’t know how to stop it.”
We were back on the streets of Lolede City—having stopped by the albinos to ask directions back to the surface —and had spent a short while looking for somewhere to place a rabbit so that it would swiftly not want to be a rabbit anymore. We had eventually settled on the dog track.
The two of us leant on the barrier, looking down onto the field, waiting for the race to start. Slippery John was obliviously nibbling at a daisy.
“So, working with Baron Civious,” said Meryl. “If Dreadgrave could see us now, eh?”
“I’m just wondering what his motives are.”
“I’d have thought they’d be the same as everyone else’s. Making everyone become mortal again.”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it. He’s always been immortal anyway.”
“Then I guess he just misses being special. Anyway, we’re really making progress now. We’ll have that Infusion down before you know it.”
Another vision of Mr. Wonderful flashed through my mind’s eye. This time he was picking bits of children out of his teeth. “Meryl, there probably won’t be anything we can do about the Infusion. Let’s just focus on getting me deleted.”
“Wouldn’t you like to die with the knowledge you did something truly selfless to help your fellow man before you left?”
I imagined another possible future. This time I saw a colossal statue of myself with devil horns and a diabolical sneer. The pedestal had once borne the words THE GREAT BETRAYER, but was now unreadable beneath several layers of rotten fruit, dung and bodily fluids hurled by passers-by. I was the adversarial figure of a new global religion that would exist for the rest of eternity, possibly worshipping Thaddeus as the messiah.
Mogworld Page 23
