Ryuk does a quick check. The guild’s shared bank account now stands at 5,309 rupees.
Getting better.
“And the dream armor?”
“Gee, I dunno. What do you think is in this other chest?”
“Nice.” Ryuk works his way over to Hiccup, careful not to step on a severed vine or in any of the visceral giant vine squid splooge. The spell he inadvertently cast on FeeTwix’s headlamp is still working, but the far corners of the room have already started to darken.
“Potion.” Hiccup extends an open palm to Ryuk.
“Seriously, I was robbed. When I went out to recruit for the guild, there were these two guys mugging a goblin grandma. Well, I killed them, and then she stuck me with this great big knife and stole all my stuff.”
“Ha! That’s the oldest trick in the book right there!” Hiccup chortles, snorts, and winces when he slaps his thigh with his new mechanical hand. “By the Empress’ Mahoosive Mammaries, you are fickin’ pathetic. We’ll just have to stock up in the next town, and now that we’re back in fundage we can afford the good stuff. I’m telling you guys, there are a couple of healing potion manufacturers, but Hopkins’ Holistic Healing Nostrums, well they’re the best.”
“I usually charge for endorsements,” FeeTwix reminds him.
“Yeah? Well I don’t have a terse and witty comeback for that, but if I did, I’d say it now. The night is young, kiddos, so get your dream armor, Marbles, and let’s get to the nearest town. We could all use a little rest and we have two more days before we have to face off against the Shinigami.”
FeeTwix brings up a blue map and scrolls through it. “A resort town called Sotla isn’t very far from here; I bet we can get there without getting in another fight.”
“Sounds like a plan, Twixy.”
Ryuk approaches the treasure chest. He runs his hand along its surface, admiring the wood grain for a moment. He pops it open and a rainbowesque energy radiates all around him. A tingling sensation wraps around his body as the armor takes shape. Aside from a chest piece and epaulettes, the dream armor forms peculiar looking ribbed vambraces on Ryuk’s arm.
+30 DEF!
“Holy fickered hog tits. I’ve actually seen this armor in use before! Watch and learn, Marbles.” Hiccup equips a tomahawk and tries to whack Ryuk’s arm off. Mid-swing, Ryuk’s vambraces extend downward, deflecting Hiccup’s attack.
“It morphs to meet the attack.”
“It sure does.” Hiccup tries again and the armor peels off Ryuk’s arm to meet the attack.
“Cool, huh?”
“Very.” Ryuk admires the dream armor for a moment and instantly wishes Tamana were here to see him growing into a more formidable character.
She will be soon, he reminds himself.
Chapter 10: The Thulean
The three Mitherfickers take the long and winding road to Sotla and Ryuk gets the uneasy feeling that they’re being watched. Soft glows in the misty forest catch his eyes and keep him on guard. Nothing comes of it, other than the growing realization that if his magical abilities continue to develop at their present rate, he may become much more formidable than he imagined he ever would be when he chose to become a Ballistics Mage.
He keeps half an eye on the forest and lets his mind drift back to less than a day ago when he and Tamana visited the cathedral in Jatla to choose their new resetter classes. She suggested they try something different, something more challenging, more difficult to master. She’d take on the healing and face-to-face battling as a White Warrior while he would pummel enemies from afar. It was a perfect match.
Originally, he didn’t agree.
He’d wanted to be a Dark Assassin, one capable of intensely fast attacks. Assassins level up quickly and are useful in battle and quest-based scenarios. Add a dark magic sub-class to that and you get twice the killer. But Tamana hadn’t wanted him to – and she had considerable influence over him, more than anyone else for that matter. He’d caved to her wishes – well, her directions more exactly – and the rest was history.
I need to test out my new knife marble, he thinks, as they pass a sign pointing towards the city of Jatla. The moon provides enough illumination to outline the sign and highlight its carved letters. He slows his pace so Hiccup and FeeTwix can go ahead, pouches up a marble and draws it back. The business end of the marble stretches into a sharp point, yet the base of the marble remains round.
So that’s how it works.
He relieves the tension on his slingshot and the knife marble returns to its original shape. He tries again, quickly this time, and as he pulls back on the pocket with the marble inside, the silver marble again stretches into a sharp blade on its business end.
He looses the blade and it makes a thunk sound as it hits the sign.
“Dragon Ficks!” Hiccup drops to the ground. “Incoming! Get down! Get down!” His spiked club appears in his mechanical hand. “Down you fickers, down! Someone’s shooting at us!”
FeeTwix laughs. “It was only Ryuk testing his new marble.”
Hiccup tries to push himself up, grimaces at the pain in his lower back, and eventually rolls to his side. “Hey, fick-face. Little help for your elder?” As FeeTwix helps him to his feet, Hiccup curses with a passion and depth of feeling usually reserved for faster cars, younger women, and older whiskey.
FeeTwix is impressed; Ryuk ignores him and looses another shot at the wooden sign.
“This is so cool! Did you see how this works?” he waves FeeTwix over and turns his hand slightly to show him the knife marble. “When I pull it back,” he demonstrates, “the other end stretches into a blade.”
“It’s like you’re pulling a blade out of thin air!” FeeTwix’s scrolls through his list. A classic TruMark Wrist Rocket appears in his hand and he offers a palm to Ryuk. “Let me give it a try.”
Ryuk hands him one and he pouches it up.
FeeTwix pulls back and …
Nothing. Ryuk smiles, feels ashamed for smiling, and looks away. Once he’s sure that his smile has vanished, he returns his focus to FeeTwix, who is still trying to pull a knife out of thin air.
“I guess you have to be a Ballistics Mage to use its magical properties.” FeeTwix gives the marble back and Fwitt! Ryuk sticks another one into the sign.
“You know,” huffs the brass-armed goblin, “some Sotlan signmaker is going to be royally peeved that some fickin’ douche canoe has been dagging his sign all night. How ‘bout you stop all the fickin’ around and we get to town.”
“Relax, goblin friend.” FeeTwix pats him on the shoulder. “It’s only just ahead.”
“I’m jumpy, that’s all.”
“Why are you jumpy?” he asks as they weave through a particularly dark part of the path. The sounds of wild animals howling in the distance prick Ryuk’s ears up. He turns to the misty woods, scans it again for foes. Again, nothing.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve been bamboozled by a racist ficktard ink shadow, had my arm stolen, been zip-tied, carpet-rolled, dragged through the mud, slammed around by a fickin’ vine squid – and that’s just since second lunch! Then Mr. Trigger Happy Japanese Ramen Sushi Sandwich over here just about gives his only friend a Valhalsian tonsure.”
“You aren’t my only friend.” Ryuk stays behind his two guildmates, another marble in the pouch of his slingshot just in case there is actual trouble. He’s entered enough Tritanian towns after dark to know to come prepared. He’s no longer of the ninja class now, but he was one for long enough to have some of the abilities permanently engraved upon his psyche.
Hiccup calls back to him, “Well, maybe FeeTwix here is your friend too, but you’ve only known each other like five hours or something so you can’t be that close. Who am I missing?”
Don’t let him egg you on … Ryuk reminds himself. Too late. “Tamana is my friend.”
“Oh, that’s right! I forgot what all this was about. Okay then, pretty little Tamana. Tammy and Good Ol’ Uncle Goblin, your only two pals.”
> FeeTwix, always the mediator, says, “You know, Ryuk, you’re polling quite high with my fans, which is a good thing. I’ve seen them get quite nasty about people I join up with. Now before you get all impressed with yourself, I do have to tell you that you’re not polling quite as high as Hiccup, but I think that’s mostly because Hiccup brings the comic relief, and the fans like to see him get hurt or do something stupid.”
“Hey!”
FeeTwix continues, “But people really seem to like you.” He turns to Ryuk and points at his eyes. Ryuk can see that they’re not recording. “Remember, most of them don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing,” he explains, “I try to record in a way that leaves those details out. Once they do, I expect they’ll really start pulling for you. Romance sells, and everyone loves an underdog.” His eyes turn black and widen. “Approaching the town of Sotla, who knows what we will find!”
Hiccup tugs on FeeTwix’s sleeve. “How many people are watching right now?”
“A little over 600,000, my dearest goblin friend. Viewership declines when we’re not in battle, which is understandable.”
“We goblins got a phrase for that – bandwagon fickboys. Sounds like you have about 200,000 of them.”
Small cottages and farmhouses occur more and more frequently the closer they get to town. Most are all thatched roofs, cobblestone paths, and flowering window boxes back-lit by softly glowing candle light – the trademarked industrial quaintness and cookie-cutter individuality of KinkadeCo Proxima Properties. The occasional cottage is dark and empty-looking, and Ryuk wonders briefly about the places that don’t look lived in.
Do they belong to NPCs, or have player characters purchased them?
It is quite common for PCs to use real world money to buy digital, intangible real estate in Tritania. Some properties – especially those in Valhalla, the high-end fashion district of Porthos – can fetch upwards of fifteen to twenty million real world dollars. Location, location, location – and if you stick a price tag on it, some idiot will buy it.
“We’re here!” FeeTwix announces to his legion of fans. “Welcome to Sotla!”
Hiccup doesn’t even wait for the guards to swing the city gate all the way closed before he goes to bail on his guildmates. He clutches his groin a tad too enthusiastically with his brass hand, winces, and remarks, “Fick, don’t know my own strength yet. Anyways, fellas, as much as I’ve enjoyed our little sausage party, I need to take my own sausage to a party, if you get my drift.”
Ryuk looks blank; FeeTwix sniggers.
A passerby glances over at the Swede. He chuckles as he shakes his head and moves on.
With a theatrical roll of his eyes, the goblin elucidates. “A Yoshi ranch. A fancy house. The land of happy endings. Okay, a brothel. I need to visit a brothel, specifically one that has orc-gals.” His eyes unfocus for a moment as he murmurs, “Mmmm … orc-gals with nether teeth … ”
FeeTwix cringes at the word nether teeth.
The goblin shakes it off and resumes, “Might as well give you two the straight fickin’ scoop now that we’re guildmates and battle buddies and all – This ain’t my first rodeo, and it takes some pretty fancy bronco-busting to wet my willy if you catch my drift, but we can talk about that later.”
FeeTwix laughs. “Yes, you’ll have to go into great detail for me!”
“Later, Twixy, over a keg of Horse Piss.” Hiccup looks around for a moment, “... over there.” He points to the village square, a lovely open space with trees and flowers and chirping birds and a baroque fountain that features cherubs on unicorn-backs tastefully peeing into the central basin. “Tomorrow morning at the Hour of the Morning Wood … Just fickin’ with you, that’s too early. How about the Hour of the Morning Fire? Yeah that should be fine. Don’t be late, and if I’m late, wait for me.”
Ryuk starts to object but Hiccup silences him with a wave of his brass hand. “We all have our ways to recharge, Marbles, see you boys tomorrow.”
With that, the goblin heads east towards the small town’s tenderloin.
(0)__(0)
“Let’s head to the general goods store.” FeeTwix takes the lead, and quickly stops when he hears Ryuk curse. “What is it?”
He punches his fist into his hand. “That miserable fucking goblin grabbed half of the rupees that we scored in the storm shelter! How did he even do it? I put control panel locks on the funds knowing that he’d try to get more than his cut.”
“Did you promise him a cut?”
“I promised him 3%, which I will gladly give him.”
Their conversation is interrupted by a man pulling a rickshaw. Comfortably ensconced in the rickshaw are a pair of starry-eyed elven NPCs. “Make way for the honeymooners,” the runner shouts. “Honeymooners here! Make way!”
“Honeymooners?” Ryuk watches the runner weave in and out of the pedestrian traffic in the town square. There isn’t much, but he does have to pay attention to the mobile obstructions.
FeeTwix takes a mirror from his front pocket. “Anyone?” he asks his own reflection. “Ah, I see.” He returns the mirror. “My peeps say that there is a famous natural spring around here that’s noted for enhancing … um … endurance and fertility, which has made Sotla a popular honeymoon destination.
He jerks his thumb to the west and Ryuk notices the dozens of elaborately designed hotels that are situated on two narrow lanes. Their signs are illuminated by twinkling fireflies and advertise their various romantic amenities – from hot tubs in each room to something called a lube slide.
A tall, slender woman in form-fitting armor walks towards them. She stops and a breeze ruffles her short orange mop.
“She looks interesting.” FeeTwix nods his head up and down as he reads messages from his followers. “Oh I see, she’s a Thulean!” he says just a bit too loud.
Thulean Juvenile Level 11
HP: 308/308
ATK: 89
MATK: 8
DEF: 78
MDF: 43
LUCK: 14
She glances at Ryuk, executes a perfect cartoon double-take, draws two short swords and charges. Ryuk gets a knife marble in the air, which she flicks aside with a casual sweep of her sword. With barbwire baseball bat in hand, FeeTwix moves in a-swinging, only to be lifted in the air by an invisible force and slammed into the ground.
FeeTwix: What the hell was that?
Ryuk: Using her ghost limbs!
The Thulean descends upon Ryuk with both her short swords. He parries, and brings up his forearm as the armor fans out to shield him. Another dodge and duck and Ryuk is inside her reach. She spins to meet him as Ryuk crosses his arms over his head in a defensive X.
“We don’t want to fight you!”
The orange-haired warrior strikes with both blades and again his armor morphs to meet her attack. She grunts, grimaces, bears down on him and he just manages to kick her off.
FeeTwix: So that’s what ghost limbs are? COOL! Fans to the rescue!
The Thulean brings her blades down again and again Ryuk catches them with his armor. She lifts her leg up lightning fast and spin kicks him right in the face: -32 HP!
His vision pane flashes as he stumbles left and hits the dirt. He’s still okay for hit points, but a boot to the noggin is still a bell-ringer. He fumbles out a clear marble, zings it on its way and gets the sword mistress with a good, solid hit.
The town freezes all around him.
Individual droplets of cherub piss hang suspended in midair; the rickshaw man stands motionless, poised in mid-step.
A time marble!
Ryuk hops to his feet, palms a knife marble, steps in front of the intransigent warrior and aims right for her scaly, green-tinged throat. He waits for time to resume its normal pace so he can end this foolishness.
Well, he thinks, then again maybe not. It would probably be a better idea to interrogate her first and maybe kill her later, if necessary. He sighs, returns the knife marble to its pouch, equips a black marble and aims just in front
of her.
Time undilates, the marble explodes and takes the Thulean warrior off her feet. FeeTwix sports an oversized blunderbuss, and as their orange-haired adversary struggles to regain her feet, he blasts her with it.
A bolo net wraps her up like a kosher-vegan-halal salami and takes her back to the ground.
In a conversational tone, FeeTwix warns her, “The net’s self-tightening monomolecular diamond wire, so you probably want to stop struggling before it slices you into sashimi.”
“Release me now, commoner scum,” she demands. “NOW!”
FeeTwix crouches in front of her and offers her a friendly and disarming grin. “All in good time, all in good time. You attacked us first, remember?”
She moves and hisses in pain as the diamond wire tightens.
“Anyone recognize her?” he asks his audience, his eyes black. He reads responses for a moment as Ryuk crouches down and considers her for a moment.
“What’s up with attacking us for no reason?”
“Not no reason. I thought you were an enemy, and clearly you are!” Her ghost limbs strain against the net, and again she hisses in distress.
“Seriously, what part of self-tightening diamond wire don’t you understand?” FeeTwix asks.
Ryuk: I’m sure your fans have already told you this, but if we kill her, every Thulean this side of Ultima Thule will be on our asses.
FeeTwix: They mentioned that, yeah.
Ryuk: What did your fans say?
FeeTwix: They said to question her.
Ryuk: That’s what I was thinking.
Ryuk examines her more closely, and can see how her chainmail armor is relieved to accommodate her invisible ghost limbs; the vestigial remnants of their dragon ancestor’s wings.
“Give us your word of honor that you will cooperate and we’ll release you,” Ryuk finally tells her.
She frowns and narrows her eyes to orange slits. “I swear not to immediately kill you; I make no promises beyond that.”
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