by Stone Thomas
“You’re rambling,” she said. “What I heard was the name Mercifer.”
“Oh,” I said. “You know that name?”
“If it’s Mercifer Soff you spoke of,” she said, “then yes. He was a client of mine. Not just of my business, but of me.”
“Oh,” I said. “And he wasn’t too old to…”
“He came here to talk,” Zid said, “and that was all. It’s uncommon, but it happens. My girls stay away from law enforcers, and sometimes we get criminals who use my business like a confessional. He gave your friend her body, didn’t he?”
As we talked, the green slime mouse I had seen the night before crept into the room and twitched its shiny nose. Already its body was weaker, more translucent.
“Yes,” I said. I stooped to pick up the small slime rodent, cupping my hands together and lifting him chest height. “We need to find him before she starts to look like this little guy.”
“Then your trip was more of a waste than I thought,” she replied. “Mercifer is in the prison farms now. He was so distraught over his daughter’s death, he couldn’t let her go even though summoning her soul into a slime frame was illegal. His ability with slime was highly advanced. If anyone could achieve this, he could.
“He didn’t though. Your friend is no elf. He turned himself in when he returned to Mournglory. He’s a broken man now, and I doubt he wants to see her again, of all people. A reminder of the daughter he couldn’t save.”
“I feel for him,” I said, “but I have to try. He may not have succeeded in bringing his daughter back, but there’s a woman in that slime body that needs help.”
Just then, that bastard green mouse bit my thumb.
I dropped the little guy without thinking, and his body bounced against the floor, then he skittered off toward the room’s edge.
“I’m bleeding!” I said.
Zid rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a baby about it. Do you need a recovery bed or are you going to tough it out?”
“You have recovery beds here?” I asked.
“Just one,” she said. “Some of my patrons enjoy an unconventionally rough evening. Whips, paddles, chains. We do it all, but we don’t like to send them home with visible marks. We heal them before they leave.”
I followed Zid into the hallway and down the stairs, where she pointed at a small door that said “Recovery Room.”
“The basement,” I said, peering down the next flight of stairs. “Is that where you keep the whips and chains?”
“No,” she said. “That’s a little something I call the Meditation Room. Some of our patrons get rowdy with my girls, and I send them downstairs to cool off,” she replied. “The whole room is enchanted with a calming effect, so I put a few extra beds down there. I send the girls down too, usually once each month. You can imagine why.”
“Do establishments like yours always have a Recovery Room and a Meditation Room?”
“It’s pretty standard,” she replied.
I couldn’t wait to tell Nola about this. “So about these prison farms,” I said.
“Don’t even think about it,” she replied. “They don’t take visitors, especially humans. I cater to all clientele, but the city itself is unwelcoming to non-elves, especially with what’s going on this week.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Kingling Mourn’s wake,” she said. “Today is the last day, and Queenette Glory can finally bury him.”
“His wake has gone all week?”
“We can’t carry weapons, but we still work magic. There are a lot of mages here that practice variants of life and death magic, which means there are ample sponsors for the next generation of the same. In a place like this, death can be masked by half the population and murder faked by the other half, so the wakes last longer.”
“Masking death.” I said. “Like with a pseudomortis potion. We have to get in there, wake or no wake. Will they let me into the temple?”
“You are a head priest,” she said. “I’m not sure what they’ll do.”
The floorboards creaked overhead. Cindra was on her way downstairs.
“Good,” Zid said. “Now that you’re both awake, it’s time for your end of our deal.” She pushed open the door to the front of the building, where shelves held bars and bottles of soaps and perfumes. She lifted a large bell from the counter and rang it with gusto.
The whole building came to life with the sound of women yawning and yelling, jumping and scuffling, dressing and clomping shoes against the wooden floors. Doors flew open, and a veritable army of elf women marched toward us after a few minutes’ preparation.
They had young, pretty faces — mostly yellow-skinned and golden-haired like Zid, but a few were red, or blue, or green. They all wore long dark cloaks that covered their bodies neck to toe, with flowing hoods hanging behind them. Some left their cloaks unfastened in the front, revealing the same delicate lingerie that likely served as their daily uniform.
“Smart timing,” Zid said. “If this were a raid, we might all get out in one piece before the lawmen showed up.” She held a different demeanor now. She was militant. Stern. Any sense of casualness was gone.
“Our profession has always had risks. Pushy customers, extortionist police, the occasional case of snatch spiders. A new threat emerges now: Mugging. Stabbing. Murder. You are all skilled in special classes — I wouldn’t have taken women that couldn’t defend themselves — but none of you have weapon classes to defend against this new wave of attacks. That changes now.
“I have struck a deal with a head priest who promises to skill you all in swordplay. Today, we gather our swords. Follow.”
Zid threw open the front door and marched into the morning sun, leading us toward the portal arch without once looking back. She cut across the dirt path without following it, past gigantic trees that took five minutes at a time to leave behind us. Smaller trees pocked the space between those behemoths. In the forest outside Halcyon, they would look full-grown. Here, they were saplings.
A journey that took me and Cindra the better part of yesterday now took our group only an hour, under the perfect guidance of a short yellow brothel owner.
It was my turn now. I pressed my hand into the space under the stone arch. “Halcyon.”
Everyone gasped at the portal’s power, including Zid, as though none believed I could activate it. I disappeared to the top of our hill for a moment on a quick errand to the smith’s “Forgery.”
When I got to his shop, he was all like, “Whose going to pay for these swords?” And I was all, “Oh, you. I’m good for it, you’ll see.” Then he cursed a lot, but he helped me carry swords to the portal arch anyway. This guy had been working his ass off, and he deserved to be compensated for it. We both knew it. Yet, he didn’t refuse to help me when I needed it, just like he didn’t stop supplying Vix with the tools she and her work crews needed.
It was nice to have that kind of loyalty. I’d be sure to reward him for it later. But for now, I had work to do. It’s not nice to keep a lady waiting, especially when it’s actually forty ladies. All wearing lingerie.
Back in Mournglory, the portal arch cooled behind me while I held out my arms, allowing each sex worker to claim a simple iron sword for herself.
“This will go a long way,” Zid said. “The only weapons we’ve been able to keep on hand were letter openers, butter knives, and nail files that we filed down with other nail files into pointy emery shivs — none were very effective when a client got too pushy with my girls. You ever try cutting someone’s balls off with a butter knife?”
I said nothing. I felt like nothing needed to be said. Zid felt otherwise. “It can be done,” she explained. “It’s just very messy.”
“Anyway,” I said. “Now it’s time for the fun part. Fight!”
“Wait!” Zid said. “No one orders my girls around but me. We’re not here for a brawl.”
“I can’t unlock sword skills until they’ve used their swords enough to open up a weap
on class,” I said. “They don’t have to hurt each other, just take a few swings, clash weapons, get the feel of the iron in their hands.”
“Oh,” Zid said. “Okay then. Fight!”
The women shrugged their cloaks off their shoulders and tossed them into piles by the side of the arch. The air clanged with the sound of sword on sword as the elf women play-fought with each other. Thighs tensed and calves lifted as they spun and swung, their tight lacey clothing clinging perfectly to their bodies as they moved.
My mind wandered. What would this scene look like if I had returned with forty pillows instead?
I only had a moment to daydream before the skillmeistering began. I improved my Precision Training skill from 7 to 8, further reducing the XP each girl needed to spend for her upgrades. Training that many women would take a while, but I’d earn XP myself as I went along, enough to cover the cost of my own upgrade.
None protested that the empire forbade this free training, which was refreshing. By the time I was done, all the girls were beaming with excitement.
All, that is, except Cindra. The slime woman sat in the shade, hiding beneath her parasol while she leaned against a tree, her eyes closed. Her body had dulled against the morning sun.
“I’ve never seen a slime pet last longer than a week,” Zid said. “She’s older than that though.”
“Yes,” I said. “Years, though she spent most of that time trapped in a cavern.”
“Perhaps that’s it then,” Zid said. “Most people take their pets into the light, which wears them down. I recommend you get her back into that cavern. Fast.”
“What good is freedom if she can’t use it?” I asked.
“Freedom and safety,” Zid said. “Who can afford both?”
“I think we’re done here,” I said. Zid snatched my arm and pulled me close.
“If you take that woman into the city, they will confiscate her like the contraband she is. Mercifer wasn’t just a client, he became my friend. Creating your Cindra was his life’s work. Don’t throw her away so easily.”
“You know what will happen to her,” I said. “Nothing is the worst thing I could do.”
Cindra walked toward me as I left Zid behind.
A creature made of shadow walked beside me now, a plump lizard with a pointy face and round bulges where eyes would be. It strutted on short legs, curling and uncurling its long tail behind it.
“Savange,” I whispered. “Why are you still here?”
“Aw, you noticed,” she said, morphing her shadow shape into that of an elf woman with long ears rising into the air and a long truss of hair behind her. “Forty whores with swords. I never would have imagined it. That, and what I saw you up to last night, might make the final chapter of my memoir.”
I ignored her as we walked.
“It’s a tell-all,” she continued. “Of the dirty little secrets this world holds in its palm. I’m calling it Very Loose Lips so far, but it’s just a working title.”
I was so focused on ignoring Savange that I hadn’t stopped to consider where Cindra and I were walking to.
“Why all the silent treatment?” Savange asked.
“You should leave,” I whispered. The swarthling’s elven shape pressed a hand to her face, feigning shock.
“I can’t leave yet,” she said. “Soon enough though. I hear you’re planning to die. That will surely end our little partnership.”
I turned my head toward Cindra to avoid Savange’s glare, but I didn’t see her there. “Cindra?” I asked. I spun around. She had fallen behind. Zid was back there with her, helping steady her for the walk. She had draped one of the other girls’ cloaks over Cindra, struggling to pull the dark hood over Cindra’s new rabbit-like ears.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Zid said. “Of course I’m coming with you. You’re a head priest, with portals and swords, an ailing slime woman, a quest to find my long lost friend, and absolutely no idea what you’re up against. Either you’ll be in my debt after this, or I’ll be in yours. Either way, you seem like someone I shouldn’t let slip away.” She tossed me a cloak fit for an elven woman. It only came to my knees, but I put it on anyway.
I fell back to let Zid lead the way, since she seemed to know the forest so well. Before long, a set of trees emerged that were packed more densely than the others. Their massive bodies and roots had formed a solid wall of living wood at the base, though their trunks tapered slightly as they reached the sky, allowing a few slivers of golden sunlight to peek through.
“Just a few more steps and you’ll see it,” Zid said.
I didn’t have to ask what. As I passed over the threshold of some invisible barrier, the cluster of trees in front of me glittered with a magic sheen. It lasted only a moment, but when it dissolved, the trees were no longer naked spires reaching for the heavens. They were adorned with buildings now, tacked onto the trees a quarter of a mile up and higher. Support beams ran diagonally from the buildings’ edges toward the bark that supported them. An entire city, built above the ground — in, on, and through the trees that formed this colossal forest.
There were no stairs, no magic platforms rising and descending to allow visitors entrance. The city was protected by the rough bark wall that nature had grown for it and a moat made of sheer vertical distance.
“Where do we go now?” I asked Zid.
“Up.”
+37
“Glad I came along,” Zid said, “aren’t you?”
The yellow elf climbed like a squirrel up the rough bark of the massive tree before us, using her levitress abilities to carry Cindra through the air alongside her while Cindra held onto my lance. Zid didn’t have enough AP to levitate me up the side of Mournglory’s support wall too, so I had to climb the old-fashioned way.
By Vaulting.
Small nubs of long-removed branches dotted the tree’s outer wall. The elves had taken great care to trim this tree back, but they didn’t make it impossible for outsiders to get in. Just very, very difficult.
I climbed when I could to save on action points, tiring out my legs, my arms, and my fingertips, but whenever I hit a gap between toeholds, it was Vaulting that did the trick. It added five feet to my natural leaping height. When I ran into a particularly tough jump, I spent down my XP to improve the skill, giving me a full ten-foot boost, though the skill jumped from 30 AP to 36 AP to cast.
A quarter mile in the sky sat an arched hole in the wall of this tree. According to Zid, that was our way in. She got there first, setting Cindra down just inside the arch. The slime woman straightened out her dress and propped up her parasol. It took me another hour to finish the climb, pausing occasionally to regenerate enough AP for my next Vault.
Just inside that arch, a set of wooden steps were carved into the living tree. “Oh good,” I said. “More climbing.”
“There’s a guard ahead,” Zid said. “Let me handle him.” She disappeared two stairs at a time.
“The elf lands are very different than ours,” I said to Cindra.
“They’re lovely, and so tranquil,” Cindra said, handing me my Vile Lance.
Then Zid screamed.
I ran up the stairs to find a glassy-eyed elf guard holding Zid off the floor by her throat. His expression was blank, passive. I kicked him in the side and he let go.
He turned his lifeless eyes on me next, swinging a punch with his little yellow fists. He was like a toddler throwing a tantrum… because he didn’t want to take another bath. He had gotten into Father Cahn’s supply of frankincense on purpose because he wanted to smell good when the orphanage girls came for Sunday services. He was tired of smelling like bat dung and the musty old catacombs!
Or something like that.
I thrust a hand out, holding his cranium in my palm and letting him swing at me and miss with his little yellow arms.
“There’s nothing,” Cindra said. She had bent down to stare into the elf’s eyes. “Eye of Beholding won’t activate.”
“Here’s why,
” Zid said. “A knife.” She pulled a white blade from the man’s side while he continued to swing. “Bone. And the wound is fresh.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. I knew what she was saying, and it gave me the creeps.
“He’s being necromanced,” she said. She sent a beam of golden light at him, locking his body in a glowing shell and levitating him off the ground. She maneuvered him past us, then sent him adrift out the tree’s archway.
“He’ll float until he’s too far for the necromancer to control,” she said while the undead elf guard kicked at the air. His body bumped against a tree limb and continued away from the city. “I’m already worried though. He should have stilled by now. Whoever’s doing this is strong.”
“And armed,” I said.
We stepped through the next arch and into the open. A wide wooden concourse spread in either direction, like a boardwalk, extending from the inner ring of the eight thick trees that supported Mournglory. The spokes of the boardwalk pointed inward, toward the trunk of another tree, massive enough to form the center of this cylinder. It sprouted no wide branches at the top though. It seemed to be a hollow dead trunk, rising high and then stopping abruptly.
“You there!” an elf guard yelled. He jogged toward us in simple leather armor and without a single weapon at his side.
“He’s a live one,” Cindra said, pulling her hood down over her face.
“We can’t let him see the empty guard desk behind us,” Zid said.
I held my lance behind my back while Cindra and Zid hid their own weapons.
“No humans this week,” the guard said. “How’d you get past security?”
“You’re late,” Cindra said. Her eyes glowed green under her hood.
“Excuse me?” the man asked.
