by Rachel Aaron
"How did it get in?" cried one of the schtumple guards, poking James in the leg with his weapon.
"All the doors should be blocked," agreed another, prodding James as well. "Someone check the wards!"
"Peace, peace!" James cried, fending off the sharp points with his feet. "I was sent here by the king!"
The schtumple in front of him--a salty-looking little creature with a long scar over one of its sideways-tilted pug eyes--lifted his visor to give James a skeptical once-over. As the schtumple studied him, James realized that all the schtumples surrounding him were wearing identical sets of glossy black plate armor embossed with veins of gold so bright, it almost seemed to glow.
Shit. These weren't just any guards. These were the Black Golds, the level-eighty-one crack troops of the Grand Schtump's army. They were only one-skull rated, but they were famous for having nasty abilities specifically designed to swiftly murder any player stupid enough to open fire in a bank.
A drop of sweat slid down James's whiskers. He smiled nervously, wiggling his right hand at the wrist to draw attention to the folded paper tucked into his belt since the golem was still pinning his arms. "That's a letter from King Gregory," he said quickly. "Please read it. It should explain everything."
Scowling, the schtumple who'd been studying him reached out to snatch the letter with stubby armored fingers. He read it quickly, nose wrinkling, then he handed it to the schtumple on his right. One by one, all the Black Golds read the letter Gregory had written, then the group stepped away from James to huddle in a little circle and discuss what should be done.
Most of their conversation was too quiet for even James's cat ears. In the end, though, they seemed to reach a consensus.
"We can't kill it without approval," said the one-eyed warrior who seemed to be their leader. "You there, go and fetch the Grand One."
"Yes, sir!" said the soldier to his left, who ran off and vanished down the ornate hallway at the back of the lobby.
When he was gone, the officer returned his steady gaze to James. The rest of the Black Golds held just as still. If they hadn't been breathing and blinking, James would have thought they'd turned to statues like the golem. He was fighting not to fidget when he heard shuffling from the rear hallway, then a booming voice echoed through the lobby.
"You'd best hope this player didn't get in through a fault in your ward," it warned. "If so, I might have to fire you."
The word fire was said with such dreadful gravity that James was unsure if it involved literal fire or not.
"I say, Grand One, that there is no fault!" replied a shrill, defiant voice.
The booming voice harrumphed, then the largest schtumple James had ever seen stepped into the lobby. He wasn't as tall as King Gregory, but he still dwarfed James at seven feet. He was almost as wide, too, huge and round and sporting the first and only V-necked breast plate James had ever seen, which revealed a tuft of bronze chest hair. Beneath the armor, the rest of his bulk was draped in a golden tunic that was cut to show off his arms, which were surprisingly muscular. His legs must have been just as strong, because he practically bounded across the polished stone floor, bouncing with lightness that belied his size as he walked over to get a better look at James.
James did his best to smile back. This, he realized belatedly, must be the Grand Schtump, the schtumples' racial leader. Other than his size, the Grand One looked like every other schtumple. He had a round, bald head and pug-like eyes set too far apart on the sides of his face. Beside him, a much shorter--which was to say perfectly normal-sized--schtumple wearing a purple wizard robe and carrying an abacus was quivering frantically, turning his round head to glare at James with each of his eyes in turn.
"I know not how he got in, your Grandness," he said angrily. "On my title as Head Financial Wizard, there are no flaws in my wards! The player must have used a hax. It is a skill of theirs!"
"Not anymore," the Grand Schtump said, shoving the wizard away. "There are no more hacks now. Go check your books!"
The robed wizard bowed and shuffled away, shooting murderous glances at James over his shoulder as he went. With another harrumph, the Grand Schtump pushed past the ring of Black Golds to stand in front of James himself.
"How'd you get in here?" he demanded in a rumbling, dangerous voice.
"The Arch-Sorcerer teleported me," James replied immediately. "I've come on behalf of the king. I wouldn't have burst in uninvited, but we desperately needed to speak with you, and your doors are locked."
"He had this letter, Grand One," said the Black Golds' officer.
The giant schtumple grabbed the folded paper and held it up in front of his wide face, scratching his tuft of chest hair idly as he read. "Hmm," he said when he'd finished, tossing the letter on the floor, where one of the Black Golds retrieved it. "You must be very savvy to get the king on your side." He glanced at the golem. "Put the player down."
The golden automaton obeyed, dropping James on the floor. As always, his jubatus instincts landed him neatly on his feet, and he used that accidental grace to sweep into a low bow. "Grand Schtump," he said. "It is an honor to meet such a wealthy one as yourself."
The Grand Schtump arched a wispy eyebrow. "Very savvy," he muttered, tilting his perfectly round head sideways. "Gregory's letter asks only that I listen to you. This is a cheap way to get a favor, so I will listen. Speak, player."
There was no more compelling argument he could think of than the truth, so that was what James went with. "Bastion is overrun by the Once King's armies. Other than your forces here, all the other living in the city have forted up in the castle, but it will fall within the hour if nothing is done. Therefore, the Holy King humbly requests your aid to save his people from undeath."
The schtumples must have been much more isolated here in the bank than James had realized, because his words went off like a bomb. One of the younger Black Golds actually fainted dead away when he heard, and even the Grand Schtump looked horrified, his small, floppy ears pulling back in distress.
"How can the castle fall?" he demanded. "What about the Bastion?"
"The Bastion has been exhausted," James reported grimly. "We have nothing left."
"We are doomed!" cried one of the Black Golds.
"They'll come for us next!" cried another, his ball-like eyes going even rounder. "What can we do?"
"Work with us," James said desperately. "You're the only fighting force left who hasn't entered the battle. If you help us, we might yet push the Once King back!"
The guards' pikes began to wave through the air as the schtumples all pulled in to whisper to each other. In the middle of the circle, the Grand Schtump crossed his arms tight across his chest.
"Hrmmm, hrrmm!" he said as his Black Golds whispered to him. "Hrrrmmm!"
James had no idea if that was a good "hrmmm" or a bad one. It must not have been a no, though, because the enormous schtumple pushed his way back out of the circle. "If we helped you, what sort of help would you want?"
"You have masses of two- and three-skull level-eighty-one golems in this bank," James said, rushing the words in his eagerness. "You also have the famous Black Golds, led by your illustrious self. If you rallied your full force and attacked the enemy from behind, it might be enough to break the siege on the castle and get us a chance to escape."
James finished with a big, hopeful smile, but the Grand Schtump was already shaking his rounded head.
"We cannot do this," he said. "We would help if we could, but are duty bound to protect the bank and honor our clients' deposits. Even to help the king, we cannot leave this building unguarded. To do so would violate our contracts and endanger the power of gold."
"I don't think your clients will care about their deposits if they're dead," James said hotly. "What about just letting us into our vaults? Several of us have flying mounts stockpiled here, and Xthr's already killed the Once King's undead Birds. If we could get even a few flying mounts together, we could load people up and escape by air!"
The Grand Schtump's wide face squished in a massive frown. "No withdrawals," he said tersely.
The "What?" shot out of him before James could stop it. "You're denying us access to our vaults?" he cried. "Isn't that breaking your oaths?"
"Yes and no," replied the giant schtumple. "They are your vaults, but you entrusted them to us when you opened an account, and it is our opinion that players have gone crazy. Therefore, as the trustees of your possessions, it the decision of the bank that your wealth must be protected from you until you are proved to be whole of mind again."
"Oh," James said, digging into his backpack for his copy of the Forlorn Hope agreement. "Well, problem solved, then. The players are cool now. We even partnered up with the king, see?"
He handed the scroll to the Grand Schtump, who read it so thoroughly, James could have sworn he was finding extra meaning in the ink blotches.
"It is a clever agreement," he admitted at last, handing the scroll back. "But the answer is still no. Signing up for a suicide squad is not proof of sanity."
"Oh, come on!" James cried. "It's our stuff! You have no right to keep it from us!"
The Grand Schtump hrrrmed and harrumphed, his round eyes looking at everything but James, and the longer he stalled, the more suspicious James became.
"That's not the real reason, is it?" he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're not just keeping us from our vaults because you think we're crazy. There's something else."
The giant schtumple shuffled his feet. "There are many factors to any--"
"My sister could be dying as we speak!" James cried. "If you can't help us and you can't give me the stuff I deposited, the least you can do is tell me why!"
The Grand Schtump's round face fell. "It is owed, yes," he muttered under his breath. "And what is owed must be paid." That seemed to decide him, and the Grand Schtump straightened up. "You are crazy," he said apologetically. "But that's not the only reason we can't let you in. Players cannot be allowed to make withdrawals because players have too much gold."
"Wait," James said, rubbing his ears, because there was no way he'd heard that right. "Too much gold? You won't help us because we have too much gold?"
"It is a critical problem," the Grand Schtump said nervously. "The Nightmare showered wealth upon your kind like it was nothing. There is one player who has one billion gold in his accounts. One billion! Such numbers were unimaginable before the Nightmare. Players have more money than this world can support. If we let you take it out of the bank all at once, gold would become worthless, and we schtumples would be ruined!"
James bared his fangs. And to think, he'd defended schtumples to Ar'Bati when the warrior had called them greedy. "We're all about to die, and you're worried about inflation?" he yelled. "The Once King is about to conquer Bastion! This whole continent will be a giant grave crawling with undead! Who cares about gold?"
"We care about gold!" the Grand Schtump bellowed, his huge voice echoing through the cavernous lobby. "Gold is our magic, our purpose! We are not like you, cat-elf. You and all those descended from the first elves were born with the blue mana of the Boundless Sky within you. You are beloved by the Sun, beloved by the Wind and the Water, but we are different! We schtumples were born from the Moon as the Birds were, but the Moon has long been silent. There is no god looking out for schtumples now, only gold."
He slammed his fist against his inch-thick golden breastplate as his guards nodded in reverent awe. "Gold is ours!" the Grand Schtump cried, throwing his brawny arm up at the mural on the wall of the winged elves descending on the ancient schtumples like vultures. "We remember the day the elves came from the sky. Greedy, arrogant creatures! They had the whole Boundless Sky, and they still wanted what was ours. So they took it. They took our land, took our gold, the only source of magic that belonged to us alone!"
The Grand Schtump turned back to James with a defiant look. "My great ancestors sacrificed everything to make this vault. We made this place specifically so that we could preserve and protect the value of gold. This is not just a safe house for valuables. You stand in the heart of the schtumple people! The only fortress that preserves our place in this world! And now you--you twisted little elf-cat-player-thing--have the gall to ask me to save the elves by letting them steal our power again? To ruin gold?" He scoffed. "I would rather die."
James bit his lip. "But the Once King--"
"The elf called King is the first and last of the celestial elves," the Grand Schtump said bitterly. "They're the ones who broke this world. Let them finish the job. He cares only for the descendants of celestials, anyway, the humans and jubatus and fish-men and such. Not schtumples." The enormous schtumple shrugged. "Let him come. Whatever he does, it can't be worse than losing gold."
James's mouth opened and closed several times, but no words came. There was so much to sort out that he'd never heard or read about before, like mana being the essence of the Boundless Sky or the Schtumples not being descended from elves. He was desperate to know more, like how the elves had come here and why they'd stayed. All the celestial elven stuff he'd read in the game had depicted the Boundless Sky as a lost paradise, a home they could never return to. But if they'd landed of their own accord, why couldn't they just go back? The Once King still had his wings, even. If he was so miserable, why couldn't he just fly home instead of trying to kill everyone?
He was itching to ask the Grand Schtump for more details. He also wanted to interrogate his eclipsed steel staff since it was apparently a telephone to the Once King. There was clearly way more going on with the history of this world than the game lore had explained. He was sure the answer to why all of this had happened in the first place--and more importantly, how it might be stopped--was in there somewhere, just beyond his reach. Just a little more knowledge, and it might all fall together, but they had no time. Tina and the others might already be dead--or worse, undead. He'd come to the schtumples in a last-ditch Hail Mary for help. He still wasn't entirely sure what gold meant to them, but if he couldn't find a way to make this work, everything was lost.
"Thank you for telling me all of this," James said when he could speak again. "I was ignorant of how important gold was to the schtumples, and I didn't know what I was asking. I'd never demand that you sacrifice your people for ours, but we need your help. Please."
The Grand Schtump sighed. "It isn't that we don't wish to help," he said. "We have lived here in peace for many generations now. Despite our history, the humans and elves of Bastion have been good customers to us for a long time. We do not wish to see you die, but the costs of saving you are just too great. I'm sure you understand."
James did understand, but he couldn't accept it. He'd known this was a long shot, but if the bank couldn't help, then he was utterly out of ideas. It didn't help that he'd started everything off on the wrong foot. He'd barged in and made assumptions despite knowing nothing of the schtumples' actual history. He wasn't even that familiar with their in-game lore since he'd always dismissed them as a joke race.
If he'd been less arrogant, he might know something he could use, some trick or loophole that would convince the schtumples to overcome their reservations and help. There had to be something. The bank was in Bastion, after all, and doing business with the outside world seemed to be core to their racial identity. They might not be willing to die for Bastion, but surely there was something they could do. Something he could get.
"'Put your money where your mouth is' is a schtumple saying, right?" he asked, looking hopefully at the Grand Schtump. "I understand that opening the bank to all players would destroy the value of gold, but what about just one? I'm already in here. Could you let me access just my vault?"
The Grand Schtump blinked at him, then he began to laugh. "You speak like a schtumple, indeed," he said, flashing James a gold-toothed smile. "I think we could weather one account. What is the name?"
"James Anderson," James replied, then he grew worried. "At least, that's what it was on the TrueID s
ystem, if that's still even a thing."
The Grand Schtump clapped his gold-ringed fingers, and several normal-sized schtumples suddenly appeared in the teller windows, their round eyes wobbling as they peeked at James through the golden bars.
"Bring me the account ledger for James Anderson!" the Grand Schtump ordered, then he glanced down. "You want account-level access, yes?"
"Yes," James said firmly. If he was going to do this, he was getting the vaults for all of his characters, even the low-level ones.
"Bring it all," the big schtumple bellowed.
The teller schtumples nodded and scrambled into action, wheeling out ladders and climbing up to access the glittering walls of filing cabinets behind the teller windows. A few moments later, an older schtumple wearing an elegant burgundy velvet coat and a gold nameplate that read Bank Front Manager shuffled out to bow before the Grand Schtump before reverently handing him a golden clipboard.
"Very good," the Grand Schtump said, turning to walk toward the enormous vault door that took up the entire wall to the left of the tellers. "You come with me, Mr. Anderson. I will give you the personal treatment today!"
Feeing quite honored, James followed the trundling ball of schtumple out of the lobby. He was surprised at the complete turnaround in the Grand Schtumple's attitude, but he supposed it made sense. The Grand Schtump had said he'd wanted to help but just didn't know how. Now James had given him a potential way out of becoming the First Bank of the Undead that didn't require crushing his own people. No wonder the big schtumple was whistling as he unlocked the huge vault door with a complicated code sequence.
Even with the Grand Schtump's impressive strength, it still took the assistance of all the Black Golds to actually open the three-foot-thick door. Inside was a long stone hallway lined with what appeared to be mirrors. Since he'd only ever accessed his vault through the teller interface, James had never seen the bank's inner workings before, and he watched in awe as the Grand Schtump followed the clipboard he'd been given to one of the largest mirrors in the middle. After checking his reflection in the eight-foot-wide span of glass, the Grand Schtump pulled a gold coin out of his pocket. Flipping it in his stubby fingers, he cleared his throat and spoke in a ringing voice.
