Mistakes Were Made (A Pygmalion Fail Book 2)

by Casey Matthews

  I flipped through my sketchpad for something to help Ronin—not even sure how I’d free myself from the cramped triangular chamber—when the images on the walls changed to display both Eliandras.

  It was not going well for Other-Eliandra.

  Our Queen’s barbarian was out in force, beating her axe across the magical shield until Other-Eliandra was staggered flush to a wall. Seeming to tire of that, having yet to scratch her busty clone, Eliandra tossed the axe aside and tried her fists.

  Her right cross knocked Other-Eliandra sprawling to the floor, a spray of her blood speckling the reflective wall. Apparently the magic in Other-Eliandra’s lingerie didn’t protect her from her own flesh—it was vulnerable to clone fists. That’s a design flaw.

  Other-Eliandra yelped and tried to stand, but ours straddled her and for the first time I realized how unsexy actual wrestling between two women was. There was way, way more biting and cursing. Other-Eliandra tried to jam her thumb into her double’s eye, but ours managed to sink her teeth into the thumb.

  I winced away from the shriek, but when I glanced back the images had shifted again.

  Evil-me’s war mech had collapsed to a knee after Dak disabled the leg. Fletchings of crossbow bolts bristled on Dak’s chest like bloody feathers; the orc wrenched Not-Captain-America’s-Shield from the mech’s grip and cracked it across the machine’s faceplate, shattering it. My clone flinched from the glass filling the compartment, blood flowing freely from a scratch across his cheek. “Stop breaking my stuff, idiot!” The Gatling gun whirred, tubes blurring into rotation, firing again at close range.

  Dak’s shield deflected dozens of bolts. Two slipped past and thudded into his exposed shoulder. I tried not to think about how any one bolt would have killed me.

  “You can’t beat me,” Evil-me growled. “Why won’t you get the point?”

  “You did not just pun at me.” Dak panted for breath, ripping a bolt from his shoulder and flicking the bloody rod against his foe’s chest. His lips had grayed and a pool of blood gathered at his feet. He frowned at the blood and muttered, “Hoo. That’s a lot of pepnep.”

  “You don’t like puns?” Two tiny grasper arms on the machine’s back unfolded. The Gatling gun ejected an empty casing that had once held crossbow bolts, and the graspers pulled a fresh magazine from its rack along the spine. It loaded the cannon; the gun’s rotation started anew. Evil-me grinned sadistically. “Did I jump the gun?”

  Dak roared and seized the spinning barrel. It fired two more bolts into his chest, but the barrel ground to a halt between his huge hands. Delicately interlocked fittings stuttered. Smoke poured from the trembling mechanisms.

  Evil-me snarled, clamping Dak’s torso with those gargantuan steel crab claws.

  “Pun for me one more time!” Dak bellowed, ripping the gun from its turret, bolts and pinions flying. “I dare you!”

  Evil-me threw Dak to the floor, cracking tiles. He fit his opposite grasper around my friend’s throat. “Looks like I’ve got you in a pinch.” The claw tightened and Dak grabbed either side of the clamp, fighting against the strength of hydraulic pistons and inexorable gears that closed tighter and tighter, until the steel teeth broke the skin of his neck.

  “Pain,” Dak croaked. “So much pain is coming.”

  I pounded the mirror with the heels of my palms. Evil-me looked up and scowled. “What did you do with my Dak?”

  “Let my friend go!” I hurled myself into the mirror. It vibrated in its frame, but no fracture. I beat myself against it until pain radiated through my shoulder.

  “Did you kill my Dak?” Evil-me asked, voice cold and flat. His claw tightened, and my Dak’s chest and arms bulged to combat it. The angle of his grip compressed my friend’s windpipe.

  “No! I got him to leave, because you’re awful!” I resorted to punching the glass, pain flaring through my knuckles. I hit it until red smeared the image of Dak’s graying face.

  “You what!” my clone snarled. “You made him leave me? He was my friend. Mine! You take my Dak away? Guess I’ll take yours away too.” Steam hissed from his machine’s shoulders and the claw around Dak’s throat pincered two notches tighter.

  All Dak could do was thrash.

  Around me, the three scrying walls displayed different scenes: Dak flattened on his back, dying. Ronin bled from a wound staunched by her clothes, kneeling on the floor and barely deflecting slash after slash from her doppelganger; reflective blood dripped from her fingertips. Eliandra, admittedly, was winning, based on the flurry of punches she rained down on her enemy’s face and the gory stump where Other-Eliandra’s thumb used to be, the digit still clenched in the Queen’s snarling mouth.

  I leafed frantically through my sketchpad for something—anything—that would help my friends. Volcano? Probably not a good idea. Xenomorph? Definitely no. Nymph? Maybe later.

  “Now I see it,” Other-Ronin whispered, standing over her injured foe. “The real fear that slows you.”

  My Ronin struggled to her feet, blade seeming to weigh a thousand pounds.

  “It’s not Eliandra you’re afraid for.” Other-Ronin raised her steel. “In a moment, he’ll see you for what we are.”

  Evil-me was laser-focused on killing Dak, his pincer so tight that only thin needles of oxygen seeped into my friend’s enormous lungs. The mech opened its opposite claw and from the joint a massive harpoon jutted free. He inserted the spike into Dak’s shoulder with torturous slowness, until my friend’s whole arm trembled from holding back the claw. In spite of choking, Dak managed a howl that curdled my blood.

  I flipped to an old sketch of my cat, Buckles, which I’d later transformed into a kind of knife/cat hybrid for a “realistic Pokémon” art contest.

  Ronin was barely deflecting her enemy’s surgical killing blows; Dak was being choked to death. I glanced between them, aware I only had the mana to help one. I didn’t worry about Eliandra; she had her double freaking handled.

  I felt bad, because it wasn’t even a hard choice. I blew on my hand and pressed it flat to the portrait of Buckles, focusing on the room with Dak, attempting a distance pull through the scrying mirror. Sparks hissed from the portrait, which disappeared from paper. “Sword-Cat! I choose you!”

  Evil-me flinched. Dak twisted his head around to see, a look of hope in his eyes.

  Buckles alighted on the floor with raised hackles made of keen, bright steel. When nothing threatened him, the tiny housecat padded in a circle and sat with his back to Dak, casually licking one paw.

  “Goddamn it,” Dak choked out. “I hate that cat.”

  I knelt and made kissy sounds through the scrying mirror. “C’mon, Buckles. Kill daddy’s evil clone.”

  Buckles shifted to turn his back on me as well and kept licking his paw.

  “Daddy’s disappointed in you.” I searched for help and found none. My mana was practically guttered. Flipping open my art pad, I rapidly sketched something new in a quick, cartoon style. It couldn’t be powerful, but what I had in mind didn’t need to be.

  While I worked, I noticed what was happening with the Ronins.

  “Surrender.” Other-Ronin had mine cornered and bloody. “I won’t spare you, but I will the others.”

  My Ronin sheathed her sword and sank back to her knees.

  Wait. Did we just lose? My pencil stalled momentarily, then scratched anew.

  “How did one so damaged kill our sisters?” Other-Ronin chided.

  Owing to my Ronin’s position on the floor, her doppelganger couldn’t see her palming the ghost stone, which was not quite so dark as before. “I cheated.” She popped it into her mouth and disappeared, along with the sword coated in rivulets of her own blood.

  When she reappeared behind Other-Ronin, her sword manifested already driven through the clone’s back and out her chest.

  Just once, Other-Ronin coughed, her lips shiny with that strange blood. She stared down at the gleaming steel protruding from her chest. Her head lulled and she shattered like Oth
er-Dak had.

  My pencil completed the final stroke. It was messy, somewhat off-proportioned, and a clumsy reinvention of something mundane from Earth. Its plastic construction was replaced with big steampunk chambers and hoses. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. Exhaling on my hand, I distance pulled while focusing on a spot directly beside Buckles.

  And I summoned a running vacuum cleaner.

  Buckles let out a sound like someone had lit his tail on fire. He launched from the floor and flipped end-over-end two full rotations before his body flattened like a kite, as flying cats are wont to do. I’d positioned the vacuum cleaner such that Evil-me was on Buckles’ opposite side, and sure enough, the soaring beastie went headfirst and about halfway into the gaping hole of his faceplate.

  Evil-me jerked back in surprise, releasing Dak so he could try to grab the hissing knife-cat perched on the lip of his broken faceplate. However, grasper claws aren’t as a rule terribly dexterous, and he made the mistake of poking my cat in the butt with his spike.

  The very big mistake.

  Buckles yowled his fury, front claws gripping something inside the helmet. Evil-me’s face was obscured by a cat’s bristle-brushy rear end, but from the girlish shriek, I figured Buckles had latched onto something tender.

  Dak, reaching with the caution of a first-time snake handler, tapped Buckles all the way into the suit.

  The squeal shot up an octave. Reacting to the sound, more blades flicked from Buckles’ paws. Through Evil-me’s shattered faceplate, I could see my cat reflexively curl into a wheel shape. Razor edges clicked from his spine and tail, transforming him into a saw blade. When he commenced his special buzzsaw attack, whirling down into the tight confines of my evil clone’s suit, it sounded over the screams like someone had jammed a whole turkey leg down a garbage disposal.

  It was super effective.

  Gory streamers of blood fired from the face hole and arced over Dak’s shoulder. He stared. “The orcish word for that kind of blood is grosh,” he said matter-of-factly.

  I could no longer see through what remained of the grosh-spattered faceplate, but the louder Evil-me screamed, the more Buckles buzzed, which in turn made Evil-me scream louder, until even Dak winced at the awful racket echoing from within the suit.

  I was horrified. But frankly it was too perfect and it had to be said. I cleared my throat. “What’s the matter? Cat got your—”

  “No.” Dak pointed at me. “Puns are a war crime. We’re not those guys.”

  The whole trembling mech turned gray and shattered. Buckles thudded to the floor, still in spinning-metal-death mode. He rolled violently around, finally stopped, and steel slid back into his spine and paws. My cat sat up with a somewhat shell-shocked expression, until he noticed one of the bloody crossbow bolts lying on the floor and started batting it around like a plastic milk cap.

  The vacuum cleaner had shorted out moments after being summoned, likely a result of its hasty creation. The whole appliance listed somewhat to the right.

  Around us, the room’s mirrors descended into the floor and I could see across the chamber. Dak sucked in huge breaths and Ronin clutched her wounded shoulder. We all turned our attention to the Eliandras.

  Our Eliandra held her clone facedown, clutching a fistful of hair, and spat her foe’s severed thumb across the room.

  “Whoa,” Dak said, and that pretty much covered my reaction as well.

  “You don’t understand,” Other-Eliandra sobbed, looking right at me. “I’m not evil.”

  Eliandra growled.

  “Easy,” I said, hands placating as I approached. “She was just doing what she was told by Evil-me and Other-Ronin. They’re the ones who dressed her that way, who manipulated her. She’s your worst fear; not necessarily evil.”

  Other-Eliandra looked gratefully up at me, but ours rolled her eyes. “Waiting around for someone to save you? For your mother, or Isaac, or,” she laughed bitterly, “the orc? Let me show you what happens to people who wait for a hero.” She grabbed her doppelganger’s chin and the back of her head, brutally snapping her neck. The clone slumped dead and shattered into dull glass.

  I gaped.

  “Dude,” Dak whispered.

  “Eliandra!” I fought to work something else past my lips. “She wasn’t—”

  “She was an illusion.” Eliandra stood and smoothed her bomber jacket, swiping strands of hair behind her ears but seeming to have forgotten about the blood on her chin. “None of them were real. Get over it.” Her gaze danced to Ronin, as if searching for confirmation.

  “She speaks truth.” Ronin turned toward the far end of the chamber, where a door like the one we’d entered was parting. At the first crack, natural daylight speared across the room and stung my eyes. Beyond the clacking of chains, I heard a waterfall hiss, and it appeared our exit from the dungeon was concealed behind descending water.

  Buckles sprinted abruptly out the door, just as he’d always torn straight for any open door.

  Dak blinked. “Your cat got out.”

  “He’ll be okay.”

  Dak punched my shoulder. “It’s not cool to release nonnative wildlife into an ecosystem. It’s bad for the environment.”

  “Relax. What’s he going to do? It’s not like there’s any other sword-cats out there for him to knock up. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s fixed.”

  “Stop bickering.” Eliandra strode for the door. “I’m tired of living in darkness.” Her figure was briefly silhouetted by daylight before disappearing around the side of the falls.

  Dak glanced down at his ragged chest. “Your armor sucks.” He grimaced and pulled one of the bolts from his flesh. There was four inches of crimson shaft to be dragged free. The hole left behind burbled, but Dak had apparently given his orcs fast healing, because it was already scabbing.

  I sucked on my bloody knuckle, an ache blossoming in my hands from punching that mirror. At least it didn’t feel like anything was broken. “Maybe you should get shot with fewer Gatling guns.”

  Dak stared with resignation at the fourteen remaining bolts in his torso, then at the open door. “I’m going outside. Sick of this hole.” He wandered after Eliandra.

  That left Ronin and me to size one another up. Being alone with her put a nervous flutter in my belly. “Sorry I didn’t help you. I had to choose Dak.”

  If my admission bothered her, she didn’t show it. “He means a lot to you.”

  “It’s not that you don’t…”

  “He’s your friend. We’re just two soldiers.”

  I frowned in memory of what her clone had said. “What did she mean about killing your sisters?”

  “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.” It came out more as a promise than a dismissal.

  Then there was the other thing her clone had mentioned, and my heart quickened when I asked, “Were you really afraid for me?”

  “Of course.”

  The pounding in my chest rose to the back of my throat. “Why?”

  “Because I require you to defeat Dracon.”

  “Of course.” I felt remarkably stupid.

  “Once again, you fought well, Isaac.”

  I really liked how she said my name—the real one. “Thanks, I guess.”

  She smiled. A brief, honest-to-God smile, the first I’d seen on her. Then she turned and was out the door too.

  I stared down at the pile of jagged fragments that had once looked exactly like me; I thought about his sense of ownership over Dak, the way he drew Eliandra’s clothes, and I wondered if he had any qualms about being attracted to Ronin. I had no hints of their relationship from the fight, but thinking on the man he’d been, I shuddered. Dak was right. If I didn’t want to be that guy—or like Dracon—I couldn’t give in to the temptation to treat people like toys. That included the mysterious samurai woman born from my fantasies, who just happened to possibly be attracted to me.

  I stepped into the light of day. The falls misted against my face and stuck my shirt to my s
kin. I worked around a slippery pathway of stone behind the falls, always one hand to the rock wall beside it, coming out on a cliff side. I stared up into a clear blue sky that quenched some wild thirst in my heart I hadn’t realized was there until just that moment. The sunlight warmed my skin and fed the part of my soul that had shriveled in the underground. Beyond us, the waterfall emptied into a bright river that cut a winding line through green treetops, stretching as far as I could see.

  It was a good moment, up until I realized what lay in front of us.

  I shimmied along the narrow footpath with the rock wall beside me, catching up to my best friend. We’d both just faced Bizarro versions of one another—he’d basically killed a version of me—and I searched his face to see what the fallout would be.

  He glanced from me down to the treetops far below. Hawks lazily circled beneath us. Dak appeared to be in deep contemplation. “Bet I could pee on a bird.”

  “No chance. Ever seen how birds always get out of the way of cars?”

  “But those ones are looking down. I could totally pee on a bird. It’d be awesome.”

  I laughed, and it felt good after what we’d just been through. “I forbid it.”

  “Oh, forbid me do you? That’s the best way to make me do anything.” He started to unhitch his belt, I slapped his arm, and he flexed a huge fist at me. I danced back a pace and almost stumbled, but he steadied me with a hand clapped to my chest. “I’d give you two for flinching, but I’d disintegrate you.”

  I couldn’t help chuckling, but it died quickly. “Hey, Dak,” I said after a moment. “You realize we just spent the last day or so almost getting killed by my own stuff?”

  “What about it?”

  “Now we have to go fight Dracon and survive all his stuff. And unlike mine, we have no idea what twisted crap has crawled out of his head.”

  Dak matched my frown. “We’re going to need something bigger than a cat.”