Late to the Party

by Ramy Vance

  “Not just kids. Halflings. Halflings do sing-a-longs all the time.”

  The halfling next to Stew perked up her ears. She leaned over and slammed her beer on the table. “What are you saying about halflings looking like kids?”

  “No, no, I was just saying that halflings sing.”

  “You saying halflings sing like kids?”

  “No! Nothing like that.” Stew shook his head. This conversation wasn’t going to plan. Not that he had a plan to follow. “I was just saying that halflings like to sing.”

  “Aye, everyone knows that. Why you making a news bulletin about it?”

  Stew threw his hands up, visibly annoyed. Then he figured out what he had to do. He turned to Fyodor. “I’ll take another.”

  Fyodor poured another Last Ale. “Good man.”

  Stew sipped his ale, narrowing his eyes like he thought an old-school bard would have done. Stoke the flames of intrigue. “It’s an old human tradition. Older than most. We gather in bars all around the world. After we have a couple of drinks, someone pulls out a guitar, and—”

  “Guitar?”

  “Or lute. Anything, really. We pull it out and start singing. Everyone joins in, the entire bar. And they keep drinking. People love to sing and drink.”

  Fyodor eyed the MERCs sitting at the bar. “Yes, yes, everyone likes to sing and drink. Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  Fyodor stumbled into the back room of the bar. He came back within a few moments carrying a lute. He thrust the lute in front of Stew. “So you gonna show us how this whole karaoke thing works?”

  Stew stared at the lute. His heart was thumping in his chest, and the halflings who were sitting at the bar were looking at him eagerly. Stew swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat and grabbed the lute. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll show you how it works.”

  Sandy was in the cellar of The Last Ale. She had been sneaking around the bar after her bathroom break and had found a staircase leading down to the dim, dank cellar. The walls were covered with barrels, some which looked noticeably aged from long before her time.

  She strolled through the cellar, which stretched as far as the length of the bar. The whole cellar must have lined up with the rest of the bar’s floor plan. There were no discerning features to any of the barrels. She had no idea how she was going to pick out which one she was supposed to lift from the rest of them.

  “Fuck,” she whispered under her breath. “Niv, you think you can give me a hand?”

  There was a loud pop, and her familiar stepped out from behind her. Niv was an amaraj, a large rabbit with a foot-long horn in the middle of his forehead. His eyes were blood red, and his fur was as white as snow. He hopped out so that Sandy could see him.

  Niv scratched his nose with his back feet. “What can I help you with?”

  Sandy knelt so she was at eye level with her bunny-unicorn familiar. “I need you to help me find this beer.” She blew into Niv’s face.

  Niv coughed loudly, and his nose started twitching uncontrollably. “Please, warn me before you overload me with scents.”

  “Sorry.”

  Niv sniffed and then bounded into the cellar. Sandy ran to keep up with him. The amaraj hopped through aisle after aisle of barrels, turning corners as fast as he could go. It was all that Sandy could do to keep up with him. Suddenly, he stopped in front of a stack of barrels that stood against the cellar walls.

  “Is this it?” Sandy asked.

  Niv nodded. “It’s the closest to the booze that was on your breath. Is this for the quest you and Stew are on?”

  “Yep.” Sandy tapped one of the barrels with a spout that connected to it using her Mend spell. “This should be it. Maybe I should test it, just to make sure.”

  Niv winked at Sandy. “Just to make sure.”

  “Yeah, just to make sure.”

  Sandy searched around the cellar until she found a ladle. She grabbed it, dipped it into the barrel, and withdrew a ladle full of ale for herself. She sipped it gingerly, belched loudly, and then covered her mouth in a last-ditch effort at politeness. “Damn, that shit is strong. Even stronger than whatever Fyodor is selling up there.”

  “Do you think you could get a little for me? Just a nip.”

  “Sure, little dude.”

  Sandy scooped another ladleful of ale, knelt, and held it out for Niv to drink. The rabbit guzzled the ale down quickly. “Yep, that’s the stuff. How are you getting it out?”

  “Well, I only need one barrel, so we’ll take the one that we opened. I was going to levitate it out.”

  “You know how levitation spells work, right?”

  “Broadly speaking, yes,” Sandy said.

  “If you cast a levitation spell, it’ll be similar to you actually lifting the barrel. You’ll have to focus on it a lot to make sure that you don’t drop it or spill it all.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Sandy raised her hands, and they began to glow. “I cast Levitation.”

  The ale barrel started to glow. It floated a couple of inches off the ground. Sandy turned to walk away, and her hands suddenly dropped to the ground as if she were being pulled down by a large weight. “Holy shit, that is heavy.”

  Suzuki wandered past the pink walls of wherever he was. At this point, he was no longer concerned about finding out. He had cast Find Target a while ago and was marching after the golden light. The rat was still following after him, nearly close enough to trip over Suzuki’s plodding boots. “Quest, my ass.”

  The light suddenly disappeared. Suzuki checked around. From what he could gather, he was behind something that looked like an electric stove. He turned to look at the rat. “Does any of this look familiar to you?”

  The rat stared at Suzuki with unblinking eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  There were traces of the gold light that led up the back of the stove. Along with the trace of gold, a pinkish skin-textured sludge was pouring out of the back.

  Guess that’s where all that junk is coming from, Suzuki thought to himself. Well, might as well get to it.

  Suzuki went to the back of the stove and started scaling it. He thanked whoever was listening that he was stronger in Middang3ard than on Earth. This would have taken all of his strength at home, but now he was able to easily make the climb. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t tiring, just not as exhausting as it could have been.

  The rat scurried up the stove behind Suzuki.

  The pink, fleshy, juicy mucus that was coming from the stove gave Suzuki a little bit of extra leverage to pull himself up. It didn’t take too long until he came to the opening the pink stuff was pouring out of.

  Suzuki pulled himself up and rolled into the stove. The rat came right after him, tripping over him so that they both went rolling around in the dark. Suzuki pulled out his sword, and the blade caught flame. The rat initially recoiled from the fire, but when it saw that Suzuki held the blade, it seemed to calm down. Suzuki instinctually reached out and petted the rat on the head. “It’s going to be okay, buddy. We’re gonna get through this.”

  He scanned the room, and his eyes widened in horror. They were inside a stove that had fallen into disrepair. The inside of the stove was covered in the oozing pink slime he had waded through earlier. In the middle was a person-sized mound that had risen from the rest of the gunk.

  On top of the mound were three shining pearls, each roughly the size of Suzuki’s chest. He assumed they might have been only marble-sized if he hadn’t been so small. Suzuki slowly approached the pearls in the center of the room, trying to pay close attention to what was happening around him. He wasn’t sure what could have created this kind of mess, but he was certain that he didn’t want to be ambushed by whatever it was.

  The pearls perched on the flesh mound. Suzuki reached out for them, but stopped when he heard a loud screech from above. He looked up. Above him, in a mass of tentacles and dripping sludge, something stirred. Just as suddenly as Suzuki heard the screech, someth
ing large and hairy fell to the floor. Suzuki backed up as the thing stretched out and stood to its full height. It had eight legs resembling needles that were covered in thick, coarse hair.

  The top half of this creature was a naked woman, equally covered in hair. A massive head sat on the thing’s shoulders. It was part human, part spider. It had a slack jaw that was a mix of a human’s mouth and a spider’s mandibles, presently dripping thick, pink mucus.

  The spider-woman had eight eyes and two arms in addition to the eight legs that held her up. She screeched as she scurried over to the pearls and wrapped them in silk webbing.

  Suzuki shouted as he leapt forward. “Oh no, you don’t,” he cried as he jumped through the air, slashing at the spider-woman. The rat bounded after him.

  The spider-woman dodged to the side and slapped Suzuki across the face, sending him flying across the room.

  Then she reached out and grabbed the rat, causing the creature to squeak loudly as she snatched it up in her arms and sank her teeth into it. She dropped the rat on the oven floor, where it convulsed, foaming at the mouth.

  As the rat twitched, the skin around its stomach started to bubble. Then eight legs shot out, sending blood spewing everywhere. Its jaw broke in two and spider mandibles came through its skin, snapping uncontrollably. Six more eyes opened across the rat’s head.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Stew stood on top of one of the bar tables, gripping the lute in his hand. The halflings and gnomes were gathered around the table, murmuring to each other. Their eyes were shifting. They did not look like they had hope for this “karaoke” Stew kept talking about. Fyodor brought Stew another Last Ale and put it on the table. Stew cleared his throat and turned to the crowd. “This song is a classic tale of the treacheries of love. Please, turn your ears toward me!”

  Stew cleared his throat again. What came out surprised even him. Stew sang, his voice floating up and filling the bar as if an angel had come down from heaven with a knowledge of cheesy pop songs.

  He belted the opening verse of Hey Jude, his voice quivering at first and then rising to a swell as he belted out the chorus, strumming the lute as he sang.

  When the chorus was over, he looked down at the halflings and the gnomes. Their faces reflected only disinterest. He turned internally to his familiar, GB, the quiet stone gargoyle with the face of an ass.

  GB, you gotta help me. All I know is human songs. Halflings don’t give a shit about human songs. What do you have?

  There’s this ditty I know about the old gnome kingdoms, his familiar mused.

  Tell me. I’ll sing it while you do.

  Stew started strumming the lute again. The tune that came out was slow and melancholy, something like the sound of first love gone sour. He cleared his throat again and started singing again.

  “It was a time before a time we lost

  When gnomes were known to boast

  We feed ourselves on beets and roots

  And leeks and corn and shoots.

  A maiden was once wed to a king

  Who felt his power slip and wane

  He called his court and strode to war

  Upon the castle walls he—"

  A gnome close to Stew spat on the floor and sneered. “We’ve heard that one before,” the gnome shouted. “What else do you got?”

  “Uh,” Stew stammered, “how about this?”

  GB groaned loudly and started reciting another song to Stew.

  “How’s this one? An old halfling folktale.”

  “There was a ring, we’ve heard it all

  Nice and shiny and gold.

  The ass who held it in his palm

  Grew stinky, fat, and old.

  He swore by his wealth

  It was good for his health

  But he always had—"

  One of the halflings smashed his tankard on the ground. “Who the hell are you to be poking fun at our ancestors?”

  “I’m sorry.” Stew fumbled as he turned to face the halflings behind him. The crowd was starting to get surly. Stew hadn’t been in a barfight before, but he could sense one brewing now.

  GB, he said, directing his thoughts toward his familiar. You gotta help me out, man. I’m bombing hard.

  There’s a lot of…racial politics that I’m not sure I really understand well enough—

  A gnome was making his way toward the table Stew was standing on. His eyes had murder in them, and he stumbled over his own feet in the way of the experienced heavy drinker.

  “Looks like your karaoke is just a way to come in here and insult us small races,” the gnome slurred.

  “No, no, hold on! I got one. This is a classic human song!” And then he belted out the only song that came to his mind.

  “The wheels on the bus go round and round,

  Round and round, round and round.

  All through the town.

  The babies on the bus go wah wah wah…”

  Stew had launched into the loudest, most boisterous rendition of The Wheels on the Bus ever sung, belting out the lyrics as loud as he could while he chicken-walked on the table, plucking the strings of his lute so hard he thought they were going to break.

  The murmuring in the bar had stopped. The gnomes and the halflings looked up at Stew as if they had just been given a divine revelation. One of the halflings raised his drink into the air. “Hey,” he shouted. “Now I like this one!”

  The halflings and gnomes were picking up the lyrics as he sang them. They were singing along with him in a matter of seconds. Stew started in on the next verse, hoping that he could remember the entire song.

  Suzuki squared off against the spider-woman and her newly created spider-rat. He’d never fought something with so many legs, let alone two of them.

  At least they don’t have any weapons, Suzuki thought . He didn’t even want to imagine how many axes and swords could be wielded between the rat and the woman. There were far too many appendages to keep track of. He circled the two creatures, his sword and shield raised high. It couldn’t be said who was going to attack first. Suzuki wished that Stew and Sandy were with him. Whatever they were going through, it couldn’t be nearly as bad as this.

  The spider-rat leapt forward, scurrying along the floor with its grotesquely hairy legs. It slammed into Suzuki just as he managed to use his shield to block the attack. The spider-rat flipped over on its side, and Suzuki moved to stab it through its abdomen. As he raised his sword, the spider-rat shot a wad of sticky silver webbing.

  Suzuki raised his hand, and the webbing hit him with enough force to stick his hand to his helmet. He stumbled away, trying to rip his hand from his face. As Suzuki struggled, the spider-rat tackled Suzuki to the ground, where they both rolled around, covering themselves with mucus.

  Pushing the rat-spider over with his free hand, he rolled on top of it and drove his shield into the spider-rat’s head. He lifted his shield and brought it down again.

  Blood gushed from the spider-rat’s open wound as Suzuki rolled off the dying creature and ripped his hand from his helmet. He leaned over, picked up his shield, and stared down the spider-woman.

  Stew sat at the bar surrounded by the MERC gnomes and halflings. They were buying him drinks faster than he could finish them.

  “So what is this ‘bus’ you speak of?” a gnome asked.

  Stew leaned back with a professorial air. The only thing he was missing was a cigar and an open book. “It’s like a giant yellow dragon, but it’s the dragon’s job to take children to school or back home…or anywhere, really.”

  “And these windshield wipers?”

  “Er, those? Those are so the dragon can see in any weather. All across the Earth, buses are feared. No one knows when they are going to arrive or when they’re going to leave.” This wasn’t true, but it made for a great story. “They come and go as they please. And their horns! Their horns are so loud that you can hear them for miles. And it’s not just children they eat—”

  “Wait
, you said they transport children.”

  “They do transport children. But they have to eat the children first. Then the children, or anyone else that they’re taking, sit in the stomach until the bus vomits or shits them out.”

  “Human children must be very brave,” a gnome mused loudly.

  “Extremely. To deal with our high school system? Extremely brave.”

  “What’s a high school?”

  “Uh, it’s sort of like a prison.”

  “And you feed your children to these buses so that they may take them to prisons?”

  “Exactly. Humans are hardcore. We don’t fuck around when it comes to child-rearing.”

  The spider-woman and Suzuki circled each other. Fire spread over Suzuki’s blade and shield. The heat caused him to sweat behind his helmet. His HUD read eighty percent chance of success. The spider-woman raised up on her hind legs and sprinted at Suzuki. She came down on him hard, her fists beating against his flaming shield as he tried to slice at her with his blade. She was too large, and there were too many legs. One pair swiped Suzuki’s feet from under him.

  Suzuki rolled to the side as the spider-woman slammed her feet into the soft, gooey floor. The spider-woman tried to back away, and Suzuki leapt at her, his sword aimed at her head.

  He wasn’t fast enough, though.

  The spider-woman whipped around and smacked Suzuki with her spider ass. Suzuki skidded across the floor, trying to catch his breath. He coughed up blood and raised his hand in the air, willing his sword to appear above her head.

  It worked. A golden sword appeared above the spider-woman and came crashing down as she leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding being impaled.

  Suzuki doubled over.

  He could hardly breathe, and he could feel that something was dislodged in his chest. The spider-woman also looked winded as she spat a wad of silk.

  Suzuki rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, then tore off toward her. The spider-woman answered his call, running toward Suzuki as well. They collided in a mass of legs and arms, Suzuki trying to get his arm around to stab the spider-woman in the back, the spider-woman wrapping Suzuki up in her legs, squirting silk all over his body. Suzuki fought through the silk with his sword and sliced off of one of the spider-woman’s legs.