Mistakes Were Made (A Pygmalion Fail Book 2)

by Casey Matthews

  As a game master, my first instinct was to cringe at the overpowered stats.

  “Looks like I can’t change the character sheet,” I announced.

  “What now?” Dak asked. He’d set the bag of chips down and leaned forward to see.

  “You’re going to like this.” I dropped the portal stone into orbit within the spinning armillary sphere of my transmitter. A fresh image projected from the transmitter behind the holographic computer display of Dak. It emitted a light—bright enough that I realized Ronin and Eliandra would see. The beam widened into a doorway-sized violet ring surrounding a pool of clear liquid. Through the rippling membrane of interdimensional fluid, I saw Dak’s room.

  He sat in profile at his computer, seated in his wheelchair. When he glanced at me through the portal, he gawped—his slack expression a close match to what was likely happening in his brain. His world was a well-shaken Etch A Sketch. “Isaac?” I could hear him through the portal and, a second delayed from dimensional lag, through the chat program.

  I wanted to gloat, but had no time. Shadows moved up the incline and I had only a few moments before Ronin or Eliandra interfered. “Hurry. Toss me the bag before they cut me off.”

  Snapping out of it, Dak scrounged for the bag. “Test it, man. Try to put your hand through.”

  I did, but carefully: my palm pressed flat to the portal’s corona. It felt like smooth glass. “Totally blocked.” Ronin hadn’t lied.

  “Stop!” That was her, coming over the rise.

  “Where’s that bag?” I glanced up and saw Dak on the other side, wheelchair pulled out and facing me.

  He flipped both brakes off and had a distinct “about to poke the tiger” look about him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You’d better not be messing with me.” He threw both hands forward and barreled into the portal using the same battle cry as that time he’d eaten a 48-ounce steak: “Ever blindly forward—come what may!”

  He leaned forward and rammed the portal forehead-first, but instead of bouncing off, the dimensional fluid engulfed him. It slid from his head to torso, seemed to grip his body, and dragged him abruptly from the wheelchair, which toppled to its side. I watched in horror as Dak, sucked wholly into the fluid, floated between worlds within the ring of the portal. He stared, cheeks puffed out, bubbles flying from his nostrils and hair floating weightless and wet.

  Ronin grabbed me and threw herself between me and the portal, more concerned with what was coming out of it than with me going in. Eliandra snapped her axe head into existence, illuminating the scene in electric blue.

  Dak changed. He grew over two feet, his already-powerful upper torso bulking into Conan territory, his relatively knobby knees strengthening into pillars of dense muscle. His brown skin greened and stubby tusks jutted from his bottom jaw where both canines would be. Though he retained the humanity in his eyes, his jaw and face widened even further than it already was. The clothing split off his body like it belonged to Lou Ferrigno.

  The nearly-eight-foot orcish Dak dropped through our side of the portal on hands and knees. He shook his head like a dog, flinging portal goo everywhere, then squared me in his dark-eyed gaze.

  Eliandra went to swing, but Ronin caught her arm.

  Dak grabbed me by my shoulders, pulled me close, and bellowed in a deeper baritone than I’d expected: “What the crap, Isaac, why didn’t you tell me this was real sooner! And why are you so tiny?”

  Chapter Seven: The Maze of Moronic Design

  Dak galloped through the cavern on enormous orc legs. “Ah ha ha! Look at me go!” He dove off the incline and pitched into a forward roll, coming to his feet and sprinting into the shadows. I worried until I remembered orcs could see in the dark.

  Eliandra slapped the back of my head. “Why did you bring an orc here?”

  “That’s not an orc, it’s my friend Dak.”

  “You are transparently wrong on at least one count,” she enunciated, and moved to slap my head again.

  Ronin stayed her hand. “Enough.” She plucked the gate stone from my transmitter and slipped it into a pouch on her belt, handing me the rest of my gear. “It’s done now and we’ll adapt.”

  I folded up the transmitter, made sure to switch it from EARTH to RUNE so our dimensions stayed disconnected, and pushed it into a vest pocket. “Why can’t I have the gate stone?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Dracon sealed your way. Didn’t you hear me say it before? Are your ears so dull?” There was brand-new scorn in her words. She was ticked.

  I was getting tired of that. “Why are you keeping the stone?”

  “Mind your tone.”

  “Mind yours! I’m sick of you taking my stuff. If you’re telling the truth about Dracon controlling the exit portals, you shouldn’t care whether or not I have it.”

  “You think I’m lying?” she ground out.

  I swallowed. “Maybe.”

  “You made that stone with a head injury. We have no idea what might come out of an unstable gate.” She grabbed the front of my shirt and dragged me close, her steely glare somehow even worse without the demon mask. “You have no idea what dangers lurk in the multiverse. You could have doomed us all.”

  “Oh.” I collected my thoughts. “I’d understand these things if you’d just explain them to me.”

  She released my shirt, as if dismissing me. “Why bother? You’d just call me a liar.”

  “Hey, look! You know plenty about me. My powers, where I come from—how about you answer some of my questions? Maybe if I had the slightest clue who you are, I’d trust you.”

  Ronin said nothing, but her glacial stare spoke volumes. I realized neither of us trusted the other, and that bothered me. Some part of me wanted her to like me, and I felt self-conscious under her gaze. It reminded me of my stubbly neck, greasy hair, and sweaty clothes.

  Dak jogged back into view, performing a cartwheel—never mind that his pants had been reduced to a floppy loincloth. “Dak’s got legs, yo. He’s got legs and he’s a big green stud! You guys feel that whoosh? That was all the world’s panties hitting the floor.” He took a running leap that cleared fifteen feet across and nine straight up, thudding to the alcove floor in front of us.

  Eliandra swung her scepter up, the blasty end leveled at my friend’s throat.

  Dak held his hands out in a placating gesture. “Whoa there.” Abruptly he snatched the scepter’s tip, redirecting it over his shoulder at the ceiling behind him, where a sizzling orb of energy obliterated a stalactite. He wrenched the staff from the Queen’s grip and trained it back on her.

  Face flushed with rage, the elf flicked a knife from her sleeve. It sank into Dak’s shoulder. He blinked and poked the hilt. “That should hurt more.”

  “Stop it,” Ronin barked at Eliandra. To Dak, she explained, “Northern Spine orcs are pain tolerant.”

  Dak nodded. “I remember writing that. But I’m only in the body of a Northern Spine orc and, while an acknowledged badass, I’m not quite this pain tolerant.”

  “The transformation altered your body and mind,” Ronin said. “Clearly your own mind is still intact, but augmented now by the orc’s. Try speaking in the orcish tongue.”

  He said something that sounded like mangled Russian spoken in a German accent, cracking a grin that displayed dazzling white teeth and the full length of his two tusks. “I’m bilingual. Oh, man—did you know orcs have about twelve different words for blood? It’s actually weird that in English there’s just the one.” Plucking the knife from his shoulder and studiously wiping it off on his destroyed pants, he handed both scepter and blade back to an agitated Queen. “The word for blood from trifling wounds is pepnep. It’s also an insult for people who are inept but not evil. Closest thing in English is probably ‘stumblebum.’ ”

  Eliandra sneered at him. “Keep it to yourself, beast.”

  “You got a problem with orcs?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Oh. Well. That�
�s racist.”

  “Orcs enslaved my family at the behest of Lord Dracon,” Eliandra growled.

  “Still racist. I haven’t enslaved anyone.”

  “Eliandra, this is my friend Dak,” I said in my most soothing voice.

  “Holy crap, Isaac, are you seeing the part where I ran around? And? I can dance!” His feet did a close approximation to flailing that maybe was supposed to be tap. “Sort of. But, you know, it’s an improvement.”

  “This is serious,” I said. “You’re in danger here. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “I’m not in danger. I’ve got it figured. When I came through, the portal translated me.”

  That made sense. I remembered my instructional doodle. It was meant to show modern-hat-guy transported to Rune with a fantasy helmet as replacement, but taken literally, it could be seen as instructions to translate whoever passed through into something that fit the world. “How did it translate you into an orc, though?”

  “You summoned the gate stone and your character sheet from the same page of your sketchpad. Somehow, the wires must have gotten crossed, so when it transported me, it looked for my character sheet. Guess who it found?”

  I groaned. “You’re not telling me you’re… him?”

  “Dakrith.” That was the character from whom Dak derived his nickname, since he hated his real name.

  “That big, stupid barbarian. Great. You know I hate that character.”

  “Only because he—that is, I—took a dump in your dwarf’s helmet.”

  Eliandra held hand to mouth. “That’s foul.”

  “Yeah.” Dak’s voice contained no hint of contrition. “Our game master declared the stink uncleanable and the helmet gave him a penalty on stealth checks because of the odor.”

  “Orc or not, this place is deadly,” I said, pointing to my bashed temple.

  “Seriously? So am I. You know I did downright scandalous things with this guy’s combat stats,” he cajoled, pointing at his new barrel chest. “Draw me a sword, wizard. I’ve got eighty one-liners stored up from action movies and comic books that are utterly original in this world. I intend to work my way through every last one of them, starting with, ‘It’s clobbering time.’ ”

  I shook my head. “I can’t. My brain is broken and I’m low on mana.”

  “Well, take a nap. Then reopen the portal so I can grab a camera and see if it’ll pass back through. When my sister starts the slide show of her Peace Corps trip this Christmas, I’m going to one-up her so hard the Earth will tilt off its axis.”

  “What language was that?” Eliandra whispered.

  “Did you miss the part where the portals are one-way?” I asked. “We can’t go home until we defeat Dracon.”

  For the first time Dak looked briefly worried. He was probably thinking about his parents and sisters.

  “You subsist primarily on corn chips, artificial flavoring, and caffeine. Your favorite place on Earth is the Longhorn Steakhouse. Favorite medium? Film.” I gestured around the cavern. “Do you see a Longhorn Steakhouse? There’s no tent-pole movie coming out in this world anytime in the near future. You’re stuck here. And there’s no one around to explain this to our families if…”

  “If what?” he asked, folding his arms.

  “If, you know. We don’t make it back.”

  “Your plan—if you died—was what? Rely on ol’ Dak to tell your aunt and uncle?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “You never think.” He jammed two fingers into my shoulder when he said the word, prodding me back two steps with ease. “You think I want that job? I don’t want to deliver news to your grieving family any more than I want to be Computer Hacker Wheelchair Guy. I want to be in the teeth of it beside you, strangling anyone who might have forced me to deliver that news. That’s the goddamn job I’m signing on for.”

  I couldn’t believe how selfish he was being. “You have three sisters and two living, breathing parents whose hearts will be ripped out of their chests if you die. That’s a wound that never, ever heals, and it’ll be that much worse if no one tells them where you went.”

  “Don’t you dare lecture me on loss. Your dead parents don’t give you the right.” He frowned. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like—”

  “Screw you!” I shoved him.

  The shove wouldn’t have budged him if he hadn’t stepped back, lifting both hands. “Calm down.”

  “You have zero brain-to-mouth filter. You want to know why I’m the only one who hangs out with you? You complain about the wheelchair, but that’s a cover. People abandon you because you’re an asshole.”

  “I thought they were friends,” Eliandra said to Ronin.

  Dak spread his hands. “Fine. I’m an asshole.”

  “I’ve always defended you and said, ‘He’s just honest.’ ‘He doesn’t mean to be cruel.’ But I think you like inflicting pain.” Some part of me knew it wasn’t true, but it was the first time Dak had treated my parents’ death with disdain. Even in the heat of the moment, I knew it was wrong—but I needed to hurt him back.

  “You’re right!” he shouted. “And you’re going to have to grit your teeth and put up with me a while longer, because guess what? Your stupid fucking dungeon’s not going to kill me. You want brutal honesty? Honesty currently set to eleven: I’m better at this game than you.”

  “What?” I blinked up at him. “It’s not a game, Dak.”

  “It’s close enough. Your dungeons are stupidly derivative and predictable. Half the time, I walk into your traps just to keep you from being pissed off.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He gestured to the goblin-faced door. “Opened by a riddle?”

  “Screw you.”

  “What’s the riddle?”

  “Screw you!”

  “What. Is. The riddle.”

  Eliandra read it out loud: “ ‘A riddle to throw you in circles.’ ”

  Dak strode to the dial, flicked each cam until the numbers read “314,” and punched a secret button between the “3” and “1” where the decimal point went. The goblin-faced door’s jaws ground open. Dak folded his arms, facing me. “Forget sleep. We’re doing this dungeon. We’ll clear it in under three hours, probably without taking damage. You want to send me back? Let’s go kick the bad guy’s ass into his tonsils so I can go home and screw the prom queen.”

  I snorted. “You mean whack off while thinking about the time Allison Greer touched your arm and asked to borrow a sheet of paper?”

  He leveled a warning finger on me. “Too far, Isaac. Also: we connected. Words weren’t necessary.”

  ***

  “First room is a maze.” I strode behind Eliandra, her staff illuminating claustrophobic walls that funneled us into a T-shaped intersection. “Take it slow and quiet. There are ogres and goblins crawling all over the place.”

  “Dakrith will feel right at home,” muttered Eliandra, casting him a fisheyed glance.

  “God, princess, we’ve known each other two minutes,” Dak said. “What is your beef?”

  “Queen. And my problem is that you’re an orc, a species responsible for the bulk of wars, rapes, and murders; and for some ignorant reason, we’re trusting you.”

  I frowned. “Didn’t you say back in the palace that outward appearances don’t govern inward character?”

  “For people they don’t,” she said.

  “Seeing as how I’ve abstained from war, rape, and murder thus far, how about you cool it?” Dak asked.

  Eliandra glowered. “I’ve seen orcs consume man-flesh in the heat of battle.”

  Dak rolled his head back and groaned. “I promise not to put you in a sandwich. Can we move on? Isaac, let’s just chalk the maze walls to avoid going in circles.”

  “Don’t bother. There’s a magical moss that eats chalk marks.” My grin was a little smug, I’ll admit. “Best way through is to always turn right.”

  Dak snorted. He knelt to rummage through dusty sackcloth and bones on the ground, picking up a hatc
het in one hand and leg bone in the other. “Our main danger here is tetanus.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean there’s nothing in this dungeon but bones and rust.” He presented the femur. “See those marks?”

  I squinted. “Teeth?”

  “You ever think about how much food a thousand-pound ogre needs to survive?” Dak asked. “Next time, give your ogres and goblins something to eat besides each other. And the moss.” He motioned to the cave walls, scraped clean of all vegetation.

  “Crap.”

  “Try not to think too hard about how they all died eating their friends, in the dark, after being forced into a decades-long vegetarian diet.” Dak loped off into the shadows.

  ***

  We came to an empty, straight corridor and Dak froze, signaling us to stop. “Traps.”

  “Can you… smell them?” asked Eliandra. “With your orc nose?”

  “No, I’m using my superior orc brain. It’s a long, featureless corridor, and Isaac never puts a room in for no reason. Ergo, traps.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protested. “There are columns at the beginning and end. I put some features in my trap rooms.”

  “Floor triggers?” Dak asked.

  “Yeah, but there’s a pattern for avoiding them. I think it’s two-two-three-two-two-three. Or maybe it was two-three-three-two-three-three…”

  Dak gripped a thick column beside him and grunted, ripping a barrel-sized section of stone free and tossing it on the floor so hard it cracked the tile. He booted the stone barrel into a slow roll down the hallway, triggering flamethrowers and freeze rays from the walls. The four of us strolled safely in the rolling pillar’s wake.

  “This proves nothing,” I said.

  ***

  Dak solved the drowning room by bending a pipe and the bug room by bending a slightly larger pipe, and he was starting to get on my nerves. “What’s your dungeon going to do next, Isaac? Tie our shoelaces together? Maybe ring the doorbell and run away giggling?”

  For the life of me, I didn’t want any of my traps to kill him. But it would be great if one would maybe hit him in the balls or something.