by S E Zbasnik
She gestured around herself as, for the first time, Taliesin took in the place he barged into. Its soul was that of a modest hotel room, but a few amenities tried to elevate it to something special. A bed that could service three or four depending upon the species size claimed half the room. It was decorated with ten pillows done in sapphire embroidery of amorous plants. Hooks filled the space behind the bed, iron and deeply embedded into the wall.
Variel stepped away from him towards the table where the menu of services still rotated. A basket of varying fruits almost filled the table, while a small cutting board and accompanying knife claimed the rest. The elf didn’t recognize most of the food, some coated in spikes, a few bright blue, and one that hissed as his finger probed it. Instinctively, he picked up the small fruit knife and inspected the blade.
“This place does not appear to be related to a pleasure palace at all.”
She chuckled and said, “Look at the handle of the knife you’re holding.”
Taliesin moved his hand and turned the knife until enlightenment dawned upon him. “Ah…” he said as he laid it back down and thought about wiping his hand across his pants.
“Oh,” Variel clapped her hands together once, “and you haven’t seen the best part.” She dashed to the lone cabinet taking up the space where a vid system would have sat before the PALMs. Taliesin followed her, his fingers knotting around her spare hand as she opened the doors.
His eyes widened until they nearly filled his face. The cabinet was filled with strips of leather of varying size, some attached to a handle, others left free and long enough to wind about the room. She opened up one of the drawers full of a sampling of blindfolds with little plaques designating which species it was meant for. The “Orc” was worn beyond use. “It is a cabinet from a historical torture chamber,” he responded, trying to swallow down the squeak in his tone.
“Wait til you see this!” she said, and, reaching into the depths of the closet, yanked out an iron club twice the width of her arm. Its surface was mottled in deep crevices widening to the end. It winnowed down to a leather handle with a four knobbed end. Variel’s eyes sparkled as she slid her fingers up and pinched onto the sides. The device’s internal components groaned and a pair of spikes plunged from the head, clawing at the air.
“What is that for?!” Taliesin asked, terror palpable as he faced a world he’d never known.
But she laughed and shook her head, “Hell if I know.” The elf sighed as she tossed the weapon/sex aid onto the bed. Her arms wrapped around him, dipping inside his coat as she pulled him close. He returned in kind, his right hand trailing down her jawline as he lined up for a kiss. It was a pleasant experience, not one that elves participated in, but he discovered a joy in his lips plying with hers. Though, he wondered how much of that was due to her response.
“How long did you reserve this dungeon of screams for?” he asked, his fingers tugging on her earlobe.
“I really saved the Madame’s bacon with that butter. She said I could have the whole thing, completely undisturbed, for 25 hours.”
“An entire day?”
“Uh-huh. How’s that stamina of yours?” the grin lifted her scar until it almost crossed her eyebrow.
He was about to respond with a silencing kiss when her hand flashed. Variel crunched her fingers into her hand and cursed. “I thought you disabled it,” Taliesin muttered, impatience filling him.
“I did,” she sighed as she jabbed at her hand with her finger, “It’s Orn. He talked me into installing this game ‘Swamp Quest’ or some shit like that. You can either take a step each turn or set up a trap against your adversary.”
Taliesin thought for a moment, “The tactical approach would be to take the step each time.”
“If you cared about winning,” Variel said as she laid another ‘exploding mermaid’ in Orn’s swamp. Taliesin didn’t miss the cruel twitch on her lips as she folded up her hand, “Damn thing doesn’t run on the ether band. It connects two PALMs so I can’t shut it off. And of course Orn gets a kick out of finishing his turn at 3 in the morning, or while I’m showering, or in the middle of a firefight.”
“Why did you install it?” the elf asked, wading into matters he could never fully understand.
“Because he asked,” Variel said as she added a little message to her pilot in the convo bar, “F. U.” She reached for her lover’s shoulder when the damn light flashed again. “Okay, that’s it! Next stop, I’m uninstalling it!” her middle finger flipped off the flashing light, leaving it set on message pending.
Taliesin twisted his lips in that tiny elven smile and scooped his hands around her. “I believe you mentioned something about having 25 hours at our disposal?”
Variel moved his hair with her fingers, tossing it into its proper part as she added gravitas to her words, “Yes, yes I believe I did.”
Her toe kicked into her heel, slipping one shoe off, then the next as her arms hooked around the back of his neck. Taliesin took the weight upon him as if she were a necklace and sighed in ecstacy when her fingers worked around to his ears. She raised up onto her tiptoes to kiss him, her lush lips easily outflanking his. His fingers trailed down her waist, still tender from her self inflicted wound, to land upon those human hips, curved in an exotic bend. Before there could be anymore interruptions, he reached for the button binding her trousers. She smiled during her kiss at his impetuousness, but dropped one hand away from his ears to assist.
As it returned to travel up his chest, her other hand joined it across his acre of buttons. She undid one, then another when a knock pounded against the door. Variel paused, but shook her head. Uninterrupted had been stressed. Going for another kiss, she popped open the third button when the knock on the door increased. The sound of wood splintering answered back from the meathook banging upon it.
“For the…what is it?”
The knocker did not answer, only silence followed.
“Wrong room?” Variel mouthed to the elf.
Taliesin cocked up an eyebrow, and he let her descend to her stocking feet. As she crouched for her pants to sort this problem out, a blast ricocheted outside the hall. Instinctively she ducked down, dragging Taliesin with her, when a thick boot crunched through the door and a bipedal guard in a black uniform burst in.
He trained his gun upon the two of them and shouted “On the ground, or I’ll kill you both!”
CHAPTER SIX
He was not a cruel man by nature, or so the therapy sessions insisted, but Orn smiled wickedly as he responded to the Captain’s trap. He may not want to know the details of what she was up to, but he reveled in sowing a kernel of chaos into the festivities. It only seemed fair; he’d somewhat assisted in the butter acquisition. Well, he didn’t impede it entirely.
Orn put down his PALM and flexed the motors in his typing hand. He’d have preferred to have the chip implanted in his right hand, but the damn device could only run on “body energy” and background MGC. Even going through a gargoyle rep ended in a lot of angry calls about how he didn’t need his stone polished.
His fourth finger froze during his flex and he shook his hand, trying to restart the motors. “Gnome built piece of shit,” he cursed while twisting his finger in ways that would invert the stomachs of most organics. The cold elf eyed him out of curiosity but didn’t turn away. He’d never thought much about Brena aside from the occasional need to accuse his captain of engaging in some illicit affairs with the bard to keep sharp. A warmth never reached those yellow eyes. Sure, you’d get that ice princess schtick off most Dulcens, but once they were out of polite company they could fart and belch as powerfully as any dwarf. Brena was different in a way that should disquiet Orn if he cared.
Cracking the errant finger, a familiar whirr began below his glove and it curled up with the rest of its brethren. Having solved his problem, Orn scanned the area seeing if anyone else watched him struggle. The upper balcony thinned as people escaped the afternoon doldrums. Only a pair of dwarven girls
chattered like mine birds outside a very shiny store. If he was twenty years younger, he’d have felt terrified at their mere existence. Now, with age and wisdom, he tried to block them out entirely.
The elf said something, her eyes peering across the vast expanse of the shopping experience below her. Orn couldn’t make it out through the rising pitch of the teenagers. He took one step closer to her when the world exploded.
The force hit first. Tossed like a tissue in a hurricane, Orn’s body flew back from the balcony. Pain lanced across his spine and around his ribs. Only the sound of waves lapping against a smooth shoreline thundered through his head. He opened stubborn eyes and closed them immediately against the smoke.
Wiping at his face, he tried it again while a small part noted that at least his arm still worked. Broken glass glittered off the metal grating of the floor, silhouetted through the smokey fog. The dwarf put one hand on the ground and tried to rise, the waves fading as a tinny whine filled his ears. His back screamed at him to lay down and forget about this whole surviving thing, but he ignored it, trying to fall back on his haunches. The familiar drip of warm water pooled against the back of his sweater. He tried to reach for the wound, but his ribs screamed at him for trying.
“What the fuck was that?” he shouted, barely able to hear his own words over the dampening waves. “Ah shit,” he placed a finger in his ear and tried out his best curse words, all of which sounded the same with or without the mute.
A hand landed on his shoulder and he twisted, then groaned from the pain. Brena searched his face. Her own wasn’t looking so great. Red scratch marks crisscrossed her cheek as if she’d slithered across a cement floor, her hair ballooned out of that pinning thing she did until half fell while another quarter stuck out at weird angles. Blood dribbled from her mouth where she must have bitten a lip.
“Are you all right?” the elf asked.
But the dwarf only shook his head and shouted, “What?”
“What?!” Elven hearing was more sensitive than dwarven. Fancy britches was gonna be deaf for awhile.
Orn lightly placed his right hand on her arm. She tensed after a beat, but didn’t yank his whole arm off in a Beowulf rage. Gesturing to his ear he mouthed “Gone!” then pointed to his damp and sticky back. “How bad?!” he mouthed again, looking like a mermaid gasping outside water.
Brena rose from her crouch and stepped across the detritus upon the ground, her shoes cracking the display glass from a jewelry shop. If he’d been in a better mood, Orn would have suggested doing a bit of looting before the corps arrived. As he shifted his back another thrash of pain snapped across the sinew. He dropped any pretense of being a rogue scoundrel and mumbled under his inaudible breath for Ferra.
The warm hand of the elf lifted up the end of his sweater and Orn bit back the terrifying thought of how pissed his wife was gonna be. Well, she wasn’t here so maybe she wouldn’t find out. The thunderous waves of his thumping heartbeat washed away as a high pierced wail took its place. Probably an emergency alarm.
Brena touched a finger to his back. He sucked in a breath and giggled at the pain digging into his internal organs. “It is not that bad!” her soprano voice bellowed beside his ear. Girl must not have hear own hearing back.
Orn wanted to argue. By the monstrous agony, his entire spine must be hanging on by a shred, but she held up a handkerchief dotted with some of his crimson blood, barely even enough to count as a tissue sample. Staggering up, the dwarf rose to his legs and finally surveyed the destruction before him.
Whatever happened occurred near the window. “Shit, a few more feet and we’d all be space dust now,” he whistled under his breath. A black mark scorched the ground as if a giant slammed his fist down, scattering everything in the shockwave. The reserved tables and chairs smashed into the window, leaving hairline cracks in the process. Water poured across the scorch mark, shimmering in the pulsing red light, the hand of the statue floating in the rising pool. Not a soul moved below, though bits and pieces undulated.
Orn shook his head, still trying to fight off the whine in his ears, when he turned and stopped breathing. The bannister, thick as a proper dryad tree, was blown free of its tether straight into the storefront taking out anyone in the way with it. Thicker red water welled from a small arm and leg buried underneath. Nothing else was visible of whatever had once been alive. Orn’s gag reflex was grateful. And then the other side shifted.
“Holy shit, someone’s alive under there,” Orn shouted, trying to get the elf’s attention by yanking on her sleeve.
As Brena turned to see, he scurried away, his boots crunching through shrapnel. Hopefully shrapnel that wasn’t once internal organs. Orn didn’t look at the crushed body as he rose to his toes to find the face screaming for help.
Her dark skin was pocked with microcuts from the flying glass, a pale matte overtop the natural dwarven sheen from the dust. She struggled across the pool of broken glass, trying to inch away from the blood pouring across the floor, but her legs were trapped beneath the bannister. Wild eyes didn’t see the dwarf staring her down, all she could focus on was the sight of her legs crushed beneath an immoveable object.
“Brena!” Orn shouted, waving his arms to get the elf’s attention.
She stepped towards him, her own assessment grim, and surveyed the girl. “She will not last long.”
“Help me,” Orn said, scrambling overtop the bannister. He leaned down to the girl still pushing with all her might against the monster laying across her legs. Her hands were slick with her own blood. “Hey, hey, what’s your name?”
“Get me out of here!” the girl shouted.
“We’re gonna do just that,” Orn said, gesturing to the elf. Brena raised her shoulders, uncertain what she could do in the situation. “Why don’t you tell me who you are,” he said as he motioned for the elf to find some leverage.
The dulcen tossed up her arms and walked away, searching. Orn grabbed the girl’s hand, trying to stop her before she overexerted herself. She didn’t turn her head to look at the stranger holding her. Tears rolled down her cheeks, as she repeated, “I want to go home. I want to go home.”
“Shh, it’s okay. We’ll get you home,” Orn promised, uncertain if he could fulfill it. “Brena?!”
“I am coming,” the elf called. She shouted an unelfy “Yarg!” and fresh steam poured onto the still smoking corridor. She returned to the pair, a metal rod thicker than an arm in her hand.
“What is that?” Orn asked.
“Leverage,” Brena answered as she jammed the pipe into a notch below the bannister. “I will attempt to lift this while you remove the girl,” the elf explained.
Orn nodded his head as he stepped behind the girl. His hands hooked under her armpits. She tried to turn around to watch him, but couldn’t follow. Brena spat upon her hands because she’d seen so many do it before. Summoning up an elven strength, she pushed down on the pipe. The bannister rose an inch.
“Come on!” Orn shouted, “You can do better than that!”
The elf glared at him, but she rose up, putting more of her weight upon the metal pipe. The bannister rose another three inches. “Remove the girl,” Brena gritted through her teeth.
“Right,” Orn tightened on her shoulders and pulled back, her body sliding with him.
“Hurry…please,” the elf said, a vein in her brow popping as she bit down on her lip. Without lowering the bannister, she tried to shove the pipe down more, getting another half inch and a pop from her shoulder.
Orn dragged the girl back, the last scrapes of her legs sliding from out of the wreckage and shouted, “She’s free!”
The bannister slammed into the ground so hard the leverage pipe careened into the air, landing with a splash in the water below. Brena popped her arm back in as she climbed over the bannister to the girl and paused. Bone and muscle were shredded as if they’d been fed into a blender. She lost nearly everything below the left knee and above the knee on the right. Orn undid the tie stri
ng on the hood of his sweater. The girl reached for Brena, smearing her in dwarven blood.
“You freed me,” she said to the aloof duclen.
“I suppose so,” Brena answered, not lowering to her knees.
Orn breathed through his mouth as he lifted the shattered remnants of her right leg and tied his string as tight as possible. Slicing off the remnants of his ligature with a piece of glass, he repeated the procedure with the second. Blood seeped into every porous surface; it was amazing the girl yet lived.
“Why?” her voice cracked across every heartbreaking frequency as she begged, “Why did this happen?”
Orn looked up at the elf and she lightly patted the hand still clutching hers. Brena blinked against the smoke infesting her larger eyes and answered, “I do not know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I said down on the ground!” the weapon wavered, a knock off assault rifle that jammed on the third battery change. Variel glanced at her fellow in flagrante hostage as she slowly lowered her legs.
Taliesin’s eyes flickered towards the sex toy left upon the bed and within grasping reach, but he’d need a distraction to get at it. Their new friend seemed a bit out of his depth as he eyed her up, noticing the lack of long ears and a pair of breasts that gave away her species.
He banged his left hand on the end of the gun, getting an eye roll from Variel. Very sloppy. “Commander,” his voice lifted at the end as if every word were a question. “I found two fornicators.”
“Fornicators?” Variel mouthed to Taliesin, “How quaint.” The elf lifted one shoulder; the uniformed man was technically correct.
The helmet that obscured a face also garbled the words as he shouted into a PALM. That’s why you get a hookup inside the helmet controlled by a passphrase, Variel critiqued, her hand reaching behind her naked knees. “One’s a Tree Licker,” the merc said, getting a cold glare from Taliesin, “and the other’s human. What should I do?”
