by Dante King
I opened the fraternity house’s front door and found Odette Scaleblade and Enwyn Emberskull standing on the doormat. The two women looked about as badass and determined as I felt. They practically had ‘Fuck With Us At Your Peril’ branded across their foreheads. Ar-undead was lurking in the background but, zombie as he was, even he seemed to have picked up on the vibe they were giving off.
Enwyn was dressed in her one-piece outfit that looked more like biker leathers than anything else. Her attire showed off every curve and line of her body, and there were enough of those to bring the Jersey Turnpike to a standstill. There was a small pouch at the small of her back, which I knew contained her grimoire vector.
Odette was dressed in her usual garb; multiple layers of billowing skirts of myriad colors, a tangle of rattling necklaces around her throat, her wild raven curls bound up in a gypsy scarf.
“Damn,” I said, looking the women up and down. “You guys look ready for business.”
I turned my gaze on Odette. “You won’t even need a disguise for Buccaneer’s Finger.”
Odette’s eyes widened slightly under all the eyeliner and other womanly warpaint. “How did you know we were heading there?” she asked.
“My traveling companions,” I said, and stepped out of the way to reveal Idman Thunderstone, Barry Chillgrave, and Mortimer Chaosbane.
Odette’s eyes alighted on the tall, pale figure of Mortimer. “You came,” she said.
“I owed you a favor,” Mortimer said simply. “There was a debt owing.”
“Help us in this and you can consider the debt settled,” Odette said.
“Good,” Mortimer said, still in his placid voice. “You mentioned that this whole business—these three individuals that require expunging—needed to be taken care of within two days. May I suggest that we begin at once?”
“Those were just my thoughts,” Odette said.
“So, it’ll be just us?” I asked, indicating the six of us standing on the porch.
“Yes,” Odette said. “I thought that it would be just four of us—you, me, Enwyn, and Mortimer—but if you are set on bringing along Idman and your poltergeist, then I feel that they will be assets too.”
“All right, then,” I said. “How are we getting to Buccaneer’s Finger?”
“The portal stones,” Enwyn said. “The same way that we got into the Eldritch Prison. Chaosbane’s bribe still holds with the dwarf porter, Petram, so our comings and goings will not be reported.”
“Excellent,” I said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
We made our way down the hill and around the edge of Nevermoor. The village was slumbering still, but there were a few early risers out and about; mucking out pigs, collecting eggs, letting out chickens, and doing all the other things that country folk do before they’ve even had a cup of coffee and a slice of toast.
“You guys won’t be missed from the Academy?” I asked Enwyn as we strolled along a rutted lane that was flanked by drystone walls.
“No,” the Fire Mage replied. “Chaosbane came up with phony tasks that excused us from our duties for today. Madame Xel was going to come too, but there were a few items at the Academy that required her attention.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, thinking about the leggy succubus, with her little silver horns, bat-like wings, and insatiable sexual appetite.
We made our way briskly around the hem of the village, as more and more chimneys began to expel white smoke from their mouths; a sign that the occupants within the thatched cottages were getting their breakfasts ready.
I found myself marching along next to Mortimer, who walked with that strangely graceful, predatory lupine stride.
“So, Justin,” the man said, regarding me sincerely. “How many men have you killed?”
He spoke in the same way that someone might ask another person how many times they’ve clocked Half-Life: Alyx.
“Uh, none, really,” I said. “That’s to say, I haven’t killed anyone that didn’t regenerate.”
Mortimer frowned slightly, as if he didn’t quite catch my drift.
“You haven’t killed a single soul?” he asked.
“Well, technically there was Bernard,” I admitted. I still felt a bit guilty about that sometimes, but really, how the fuck was I meant to know that I was being put through a test? I was in my uncle’s occult bookstore, for God’s sake. Nothing of interest had happened there in a quarter of a century.
“Bernard?” Mortimer asked. “Was that your dog, or other small pet?”
“I—what? My pet?” I said, screwing my face up in confusion.
“It sounds like the type of name that someone would give a dog,” Mortimer said evenly. “Or, perhaps, a hamster. Or a goldfish.”
I shook my head and decided to just let that little bit of conversation slide on by.
“No,” I said. “No he was this dude whom I accidentally exploded when I was being put through my paces, and tested to see if I was a mage or not.”
Mortimer nodded. It appeared that having people explode around you was just one of those things that happened sometimes in his world.
I palmed my face. “Oh, and there were these trolls. And a few Gemstone Elementals. I killed them during my first class at the Academy. Do they count?”
“Certainly,” Mortimer said, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly, but they never formed into anything resembling a smile. “It seems you are not as fresh as I thought.” He let out a little sigh. “There is a beauty, of sorts, in the closing of a life.”
“There wasn’t much beauty when I spread Bernard across the ceiling like meat marmalade,” I said. “Although, maybe there was some beauty in killing those trolls.”
“There is beauty, I mean, in the responsibility given to those who take the life,” Mortimer said. He rubbed thoughtfully at one of his ludicrously discordant mutton chops. “The interest in taking lives was born in me when I started attending this same Academy with my cousins. However, it was only during the Void Wars that I truly experienced how killing could become a skill, an artform.”
This was all pretty weird and uncomfortable talk, and I could tell that the others walking around us were trying their best not to listen. For all its macabreness though, it wasn’t every day that you got to pick the brain with a professional killer. I imagined that most of the brain picking that was done in Mortimer’s company involved something sharp, with him holding the handle.
“I don’t know if I’d let too many people hear you talk about offing people as an artform, bud,” I said.
“Yes, yes, I understand your reservations, of course,” Mortimer said. “People can look at you a bit strangely when you say things like that.”
No shit, I thought.
”What I was trying to convey though,” he continued, “is that the art is in getting better and more proficient. Like anything. If you get good enough, you can turn even assassination into an artform.”
I considered this, trying to open up my mind to see this point of view from all sides.
“I think I understand where you’re coming from,” I said. “Wanting to be the best at something is a goal that most people can probably agree with. As the great philosopher Ron Swanson once said, ‘Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing.’”
Mortimer considered this. “Eloquent, in a rustic way.”
We walked around the corner to the lane on which the portal station was situated.
“Tell me,” I said, “have you ever met anyone in your occupation who wasn’t afraid of death?”
Mortimer turned and gave me a ghoulish, thin-lipped smile, which was made even creepier in a bizarre way by those mutton chop sideburns of his.
“Oh, the world is filled with tough, hard-bitten people who profess they aren’t afraid of Death,” he said graciously. “But not one villain I ever met seemed pleased to see him when he came knocking.”
I mulled over the thought of learning this so-called ‘art’ as we approached the white grave
l path and the little porter cabin that marked the entrance to the portal station.
Would it really be such a bad thing to learn how to more efficiently take someone out? I mean, I was training to be a fucking War Mage, wasn’t I? Surely, refining my killing technique was beneficial to me, as well as probably being, in some way, kinder to those I was knocking off?
So long as I didn’t go Agent 47 and just start killing all and sundry for pots of cash, I couldn’t really see the harm in it. I decided that I may as well, while the opportunity presented itself, take as many notes from Mortimer Chaosbane as possible.
Knowledge was power after all.
When we stepped up to the porter’s booth we found the dwarf, old Petram, huddled over in a half pained, half ecstatic slumber.
“Oi!” I yelled, taking a leaf out of Reginald Chaosbane’s playbook, and rapping my knuckles on the wooden counter.
Petram jerked awake. I snatched his escaping gold-framed spectacles out of the air and placed them back on the countertop.
“Good-good day,” he spluttered through his white beard.
“Hey, Petram,” I said, “remember us?”
The dwarf porter brushed off his velvet uniform, replaced the glasses onto the bridge of his nose, and peered at me.
“I remember,” he croaked.
“What the hell has happened to you?” I asked the little fellow. “You look like you’re on the verge of pushing flowers, man.”
“Ah,” the old dwarf said, with a wave of a hand and a great deal of phlegm, “don’t you worry about old Petram. I’ve just been overdoing it a little at the monastery—making the most of the deal that the Headmaster set up with me.”
“Sexhaustion, huh?” I said. “Well, more power to you. Just make sure that your foreskin doesn’t become a soreskin.”
Petram wheezed and chuckled. “Soreskin!” he spluttered. “Not bad!” His face fell a little. “And, a warning that has already come too late, I fear.”
I winced.
“Where are you off to this evening?” he asked.
“Buccaneer’s Finger, if you would be so good,” I said, “And if you let us through without so much of a question, I’ll see what I can do about Chaosbane extending your credit at the nunnery, yeah?”
“Much appreciated,” he said. “Although it might be some time before the old dwarven hammer is ready to pound an anvil again.”
I smiled. “Never say never. I’m sure you’ll be in top shape in no time. Now, how about it? One trip to Buccaneer’s Finger.”
Petram bowed reverently and held out a hand in the direction of the portal stones.
I nodded and motioned the others to follow me.
The lurching, back-flip simulating, vision-warping, sensory overload that accompanied a trip through the portal stones was over in a second.
Idman, Mortimer, Enwyn, Odette, and I landed on the ground, staggering slightly. Barry, however, simply floated in the air as a ghost tended to do.
The first thing that I noticed, even before my vision had cleared, was the smell. It was the pure, clean smell of the ocean; of salt and seaweed and life. I took the time to inhale a deep lungful.
When my vision had returned to normal, I saw that we were standing in a circle of portal stones that had been carved and graffitied with all sorts of crude and offensive drawings. To be fair, some of the more explicit ones were actually quite good—or, at least, biologically accurate.
We were standing at the beginning of a rocky headland that stretched out about two hundred yards into a huge lagoon of still water that I assumed was Hardfought Bay. The headland ran out, straight as a finger, to where it joined what was, essentially, a floating town.
“As I live and breathe, Buccaneer’s Finger!” Barry said happily.
“You don’t live… or breathe, Barry,” I pointed out.
“It was just an expression, young master,” the poltergeist said reprovingly. “An old salt can reminisce, can’t he?”
“I don’t doubt that he can, Barry,” Idman Thunderstone said smoothly, “but perhaps it would be best if the old salt did it on his own time, hm?”
I couldn’t help but agree with Idman. We were short on time.
“There’ll be time for sightseeing on the way to finding this Vakash the Vile. First, we need disguises. That’s where you come in Barry. Idman, Mortimer, and Enwyn, you all need to get your pirate on. Barry, you might as well make yourself look different on the off-chance someone recognizes you. Odette should be fine as she is.”
Barry snapped his fingers and transformed his own ghostly face into a haggard old pirate’s with a thick beard and scar right across his brow.
“What about you?” Enwyn asked me.
I winked at her. “I’ve got my cloak.”
I focused my will, and my clothes morphed into those of a swashbuckling terror of the high seas.
I sported a bandana rather than a hat, and a pair of crocodile skin boots. I wore tight trousers of worn black linen, a white shirt, and a waistcoat of deep navy velvet. Over all this, the cloak crafted a knee-length coat of midnight-black with a few bits of tarnished gold braid dangling from it in places. All in all, I liked to think that I looked like a fairly successful pirate.
Barry changed Idman and Mortimer into a couple of corsairs, complete with tight breeches that aided movement in fighting, billowy shirts, waistcoats, knitted caps, and a sash apiece, which was tied around the middle and presumably used for tucking knives and cutlasses into. Mortimer’s sash was a dirty yellow, Idman’s a dark red.
Enwyn’s transformation was what really captured my attention. Barry had cleverly used Enwyn’s biker outfit by leaving her leather pants, but adding a loose linen shirt over the top, a bandana of red silk around her head, and a sash of shining black taffeta around her middle, which only emphasized her ass and breasts.
“Shiver my fucking mainsail, you better make Barry let you keep that after we’re done,” I said, leaning in to speak in her ear. “If we were alone, I’d take you down to the beach and do what those two cartoon people are doing on that portal stone over there.”
Enwyn laughed. “Very kind of you to say so, but I think your pirate talk needs a little work.”
“You calling me a landlubber, sugar?” I asked in mock outrage.
Enwyn laughed again.
“Barry,” Odette said, “ I think an ‘at for me would be in order, if you please?”
“I’ve just the thing, miss,” the poltergeist said.
He snapped his fingers, and a worn leather tricorn hat appeared on Odette’s head. The Death Mage reached up and tilted the hat onto a rakish angle that made her look like some sort of sultry gypsy pirate-queen.
Man alive, what I would give to get under those skirts, I thought to myself. That woman is as hot as she is mysterious.
“Perfect,” Odette said and smiled. “Let’s find us an orc to slay!”
We walked up the headland path toward the looming expanse of rickety wooden buildings that occupied the head of the rocky promontory. It was clear that Buccaneer’s Finger had started off as a small collection of shacks on the head of the peninsula and then spilled out onto the surrounding beaches. From there it had no doubt blossomed like algae, growing and overflowing out into the sheltered waters of Hardfought Bay. The town looked like how Laketown in The Hobbit might have looked, if it were run by a bunch of insane, murderous drunks and impregnated with magic.
As we approached, I got the impression that it was like a cocktail of a Disney theme park and a combined eight of the nine levels of Dante’s vision of Hell.
“I don’t know about you guys,” I said, “but this is either the coolest or the most fucked up place that I have ever seen.”
Barry let out a small whoop of delight. “Argh, but why can it not be both at once, captain?”
Before even setting foot in the town, I had already caught sight of at least four dead bodies. One was lying broken on the rocks with a couple of enormous crabs attached to his face,
sitting down to a civilized breakfast of eyeballs and tongue. The other three were washing about in the surf like grizzly flotsam. One of the guys bobbing about in the water looked like he had most definitely been mauled by something with large teeth and no sense of humor.
I pointed out the crabs feasting on the dead man’s eyeballs to Mortimer.
He watched the grisly sight impassively for a moment or two and then said, “Yes, I do enjoy a crab myself. Boiled and buttered.”
I looked across at Enwyn to see if she had caught this insane remark, but she was looking at the crabs with a disgusted expression on her face.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t have breakfast this morning,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Seeing that, I’m glad I stuck with the coffee.”
We walked through the outskirts of the town proper, which seemed to be home to those seafarers who were particularly down on their luck, drunk, or dead. The shacks on land were, oddly enough, in more dismal repair than those out on the water. There were a few gross-looking gin shops that sold the sort of booze that’d probably begin embalming you before you died of alcohol poisoning, as well as a smattering of shops selling a motley collection of gear and weapons.
“I’ve just realized that I haven’t yet given you the vessel into which you are going to store the soul energy once you have… liberated it,” Odette told me, as we exited this ramshackle warren of rundown buildings. “Here, you’ll need to be wearing this when you let fall your judgement on Vakash the Vile.”
She handed me a simple silver bracelet, on which dangled three tiny but beautifully worked skulls of spun diamond.
“How does it work?” I asked.
“There is a spell laid upon this bracelet,” Odette explained. “A powerful and time-consuming bit of magic which will automatically draw the exiting soul into one of the three diamond skulls, keeping it safe and contained.”
