NEXT DOOR DUNGEON (Book One)

NEXT DOOR DUNGEON (book one)

By Paul Tobin

COMICS: Heist Made Men Mystery Girl

GRAPHIC NOVELS: Banana Sunday Bandette Colder Gingerbread Girl I Was The Cat Plants vs. Zombies The Witcher

NOVELS: Genius Factor Book One: How to Capture an Invisible Cat Genius Factor Book Two: How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees Genius Factor Book Three: How To Tame a Human Tornado Prepare to Die!

WEBTOON: Messenger

Why I wrote this: A few years ago, I was in a writing slump. It just wasn’t fun anymore. Everything I was doing felt like work. And then I realized that everything WAS work. Every single thing that I was writing was for publication. And, yes, I LOVED most of my projects, but they were still work. They were still going to copy-editors, publishers, etc, etc. The work wasn’t purely mine to enjoy, to simply wander off in any direction I felt. So, ever since then, I’m always working on at least one project that’s for fun… a project that I’m never going to pitch, never have to think about reader reaction, etc, etc. Next Door Dungeon is one such project, but with all the Covid-19 bullshittery going on, I wanted to give something to people who are stuck in their homes, and this is a thing that I can give. I enjoyed writing this novel, so, yeah, there will likely be more. I’ve already begun preliminary work on the next one.

What’s the appropriate age level?: Oh geez, I’m terrible at that. I was reading Anaïs Nin at age 10, so I’m a bad gauge. But Next Door Neighbor has some swearing, some sexual situations, and heaps of violence. I’d say young adult and up would be fine.

This is Book One of… how many???: I don’t know. Until I quit having fun. But yes, it is a Book One, so don’t expect a complete story. Sorry.

What you can do with it: You can read it! You can even send it to a friend. I don’t care. You cannot, of course, publish it in any way yourself.

Feel free to comment: If you want to say you enjoyed the book, I’m all ears. If you want to say you did not enjoy the book, I have zero ears. If you want to say you’d like more of “X” in book two, or less of “Y” in book two, that’s fine! If you want to point out some spelling errors or an improper use of the Oxford comma, please don’t. I wrote this for fun, and am giving it away: I don’t care if a few words are misspelled or if there’s an instance of improper grammar. I can be reached at the gmail address of paultobinwriter and usually take a long time to respond, because of work.

Dedication: This one goes out to Jerry, Bill, and Mike; my original high-school roleplaying crew.

When I was seven I lived alone with my dad. Mom died in that Fisherville gas station explosion, the one that tripped the gas main under the Westfall Convenience Mart and caused the entire building to launch like a rocket, splattering the neighborhood with flaming gas, a rain of potato chips and melted candy bars, and the assorted remains of two employees and three unfortunate customers. Dad mourned Mom for just short of two weeks and then began celebrating how the ladies at the Friendly Shore strip club gave him free lap dances if he pretended to be sad. He was drinking again in those days, and the drugs had their grip on him. This part of the story isn’t important, although I have to say it was in those days that I realized most strippers are nice people and that my dad wasn’t. The important thing is that there was a woman who lived next door to us on the third floor of our apartment building. Salena was her name. Twenty years old, I remember, because when Salena mentioned she was thirteen years older than me I’d said that thirteen was an unlucky number, but she’d told me, “No, it’s not. It’s a fine number.” Salena babysat me whenever dad was out at nights, and I stayed with her three times when he was in jail for a few days. Her apartment was full of plants, like walking into a jungle. The air inside was clean despite how, one step outside her hallway door, the air was full of cigarette smoke and the carpets hadn’t been cleaned since our building had been a semi-famous hotel and Iggy and the Stooges had stayed in our rooms, with three groupies setting up a tent in the hall and pissing and shitting in the corners because Iggy wouldn’t let them in through his door. Salena claimed she was a witch. She told me she had magic powers and laughingly declared that if I didn’t go to bed at the proper time she’d make my ass turn blue or my penis start barking. Those were powerful scares for a boy of my age. I remember her as a gangly, spidery thing. More sexual, probably, in my memory, than she was in real life. One time she ate a whole bag of marshmallows two nights in a row. A bag each night. As a child, I was very impressed by that. Sometimes she would sing. No accompanying music. Just her voice.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 5 Salena often told me stories when she was babysitting, epic tales of monsters defeated by clever women. One time when I went over to her place she was just getting out of the shower and I stood in that humid living room waiting for her to drive us to the pizza place, and then I realized I could see her in the bathroom, fresh from the shower, naked. What I mean is that the door was open enough to see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was amazed by that reflection because it was revealing something hidden, something that I wasn’t actually seeing, it being only a reflection of a truth that was powerful and real, with just a wall between us. I trembled in Salena’s living room, shivering along with all the leaves of her various plants, which were forever moving in the slight wind of her ceiling fan. One night when she was putting me to bed, I asked why she’d seemed so sad of late. This was in the days when sometimes, some nights, I could hear her crying through the walls. I’d lie in bed listening to her sobbing. It could go on for hours. It was killing me. I’d cry along with her. When I finally asked her why she was so sad, she’d gone silent for a time, and I expected she’d answer that I was too young to know about some things. Instead, she crawled onto my bed next to me, sending my mind reeling, to be honest, with her knees sliding against my sheets, my heart racing and shivering, and then she held my hand in a peculiar way. Our index fingers were straight. Extended. Hugged up against each other. The rest of our fingers were clasped. She breathed on our hands with a breath that was shockingly warm, and then used our combined index fingers to trace imaginary lines on the wall. A big rectangle, standing upright. Then she let go of my hand and stood on my bed, right on my mattress, rapping her knuckles on the wall like she was knocking on a door. She told me, “There, Josh. I’ve built you a doorway to elsewhere. There are terrible things in every world, but at least now you have a choice when things get too crazy, okay?” I nodded, because in those days I always agreed with whatever Salena said. She was an attractive woman, a mystery, and she’d been naked in that mirror, and she was crazy and often said strange things. I suppose I should’ve mentioned earlier how she often said strange things. Anyway, she did. But I loved her strange mind and the little slope of her breasts and the light t-shirts she would wear, always without a bra, because she claimed that bras interfered with her magic. I was too young to be sexually aware of Salena. I was just aware that she was sexual. There’s a difference. Anyway, that night of her drawing the imaginary door, that’s something I never told anybody. Maybe a week later there was a fire in Selena’s apartment while I was at school. They took her body away while I was at recess. By the time I was home, the landlord was assessing the damage and thinking about how soon he could have her place rented again, all while putting her plants on the sidewalk with the rest of the garbage. That night, at maybe three in the morning, I went out and took several of her favorite plants off the curb and put them on the desk in my room, but I was shit at taking care of them, and within a couple of months they were dead.

“It’s unhealthy, Josh” my sister Binsa told me. “Probably,” I agreed. “But my budget is far more unhealthy. Didn’t you see it outside? That little gray thing whimpering on the sidewalk?” “Oh shit. That thing? I think I stepped on it.” Standing in my living room, she was asking, with her eyes, where she should put the box in her hands. I’d written “kitchen” on it with markers, but she couldn’t see it from her angle. I pointed toward the kitchen with my shoe and then went into the bedroom to put down my own box, which was full of underwear and clothes hangers. “I’ve got to live somewhere,” I told her, returning to the living room. “This place was available.” “But this is where you used to live. It’s cursed. Full of bad memories. You’re taking a step back.” She was admiring herself in the full length mirror we’d already carried up from the moving van. Binsa has the darkest skin I’ve ever seen, and was wearing her yellowest t-shirt. She plucked at the shirt. Frowned. Plucked at it again. Smiled. I said, “This is the only place I can afford. Especially now that you’ve trampled my budget.” “Mercy kill,” she shrugged, watching the motion of her shoulders in the mirror. Earlier, she’d had my laptop playing music and was practicing dance moves while watching herself in the mirror. But my computer had run out of power, and so far we hadn’t unpacked my charger. My sister is two years older than me. Twenty-five, now. Not technically my sister, either. I’d moved in with Binsa and her parents when I was twelve, after my dad was shot dead while trying to rob a bar. He’d grabbed up an unimpressive two hundred and twenty-seven dollars and made it to the front door of the Downhill Bar, from where he could’ve gotten away, except he’d impulsively gone back for a handful of peanuts from a dish on the bar, and the bartender had gotten to her gun by then. Dad died on the floor, clutching peanuts in one hand and dollar bills in the other. The bartender still works there. We have a cordial, if distant relationship. Binsa’s parents adopted me three months after my dad died. They’re originally from Senegal and came to America because Binsa’s mother was attached to Boston University’s research project on emperor penguins. Their entire house is full of penguin paraphernalia. There’s kitschy toys, posters from animated movies, actual penguin skeletons, and even one of those weird anatomical models where you can take out the organs, one by one, like a three dimensional puzzle. Binsa and I had known each other from school. She’d almost broken my nose, once, spiking a volleyball into me during gym class. As we grew up together, we shared every secret. Mostly about girls. Despite how she’s two years older, we started dating girls at about the same time. I thought she’d be better at it than I was, with her insider knowledge, but it turned out that neither of us were experts.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 7 Dating’s still fun, though. You don’t have to win any medals to enjoy the game. “Why do you keep looking at yourself in the mirror?” I asked, reattaching the legs to my kitchen table. I’d taken them off to make it easier to move. “Date tonight. Do I look edible?” “You’re my sister,” I told her. “You look like a dude.” “Where’d we pack your knives? I need them to kill you.” “I meant you don’t look like a woman, to me.” “Seriously. The knives. Where?” “I mean you’re my sister. So you don’t look edible to my eyes. But, yeah, if you weren’t my sister, I guess you’d be gorgeous. Who’s the date with?” “I forget her name. Shit. I should look that up. The name she gave on her dating profile was ‘420-69’ and that sounded promising.” “And they say that romance is dead.” “I don’t care if romance is dead. I want sex. You know how long it’s been since I’ve been laid?” “Weirdly, I do. Because weirdly, you always keep me up to date. Weirdly.” “What’s a kid brother for, if not to act as a surrogate psychiatrist?” “Comedy relief?” I ventured, then added, “I’m heading down to get more boxes.” I left her staring at her reflection in the mirror. I would never let her know it, but she’s actually beautiful. Sharp cheekbones. Amazing skin. Moves like a ballerina. Well, a rookie ballerina. We’d caught various glimpses of each other around the house, over the years. Just the little, inevitable occurrences. Coming out of the shower. Dressed a little too casually in our rooms. Things like that. One day we’d stood for five minutes, letting each other see what we looked like naked. It was just curiosity. Almost a science experiment. There was no inclination to touch. There’d never been the slightest attraction between us. We hadn’t felt any desire when we were studying each other, or shame when we were getting dressed again. She’d only told me that she was glad she wasn’t attracted to boys, and I’d told her that I was glad that not all girls were my sister. There was probably some psychosis for both of us to unpack, but the boxes were small, so to speak. Outside, there was a gray cat on the lawn, staring at the moving van as if it was a mouse that needed pouncing upon, or a giant can of tuna that needed opening. It’d been watching Binsa and I through the whole process of me moving back into the building, sitting there for three hours. “Not much on your schedule today?” I asked, walking past the cat and up the ramp into the back of the small moving van. The cat yawned. Either cats are sleepy all the time, or else they find humans to be incredibly boring. I suppose it could be a combination of both. “You could help?” I told the cat. “I mean, we still have this dresser to move.” The cat’s tail swayed lazily. I wondered what it meant in cat language. Probably nothing I wanted to translate. I looked away from the cat and back to the remaining boxes that needed to be hefted upstairs. I chose the heaviest box so that Binsa wouldn’t have to deal with it. It was heavy enough that I just shoved it to the back of the moving van, then walked down the ramp and picked it up while I was standing in the street. The cat stared at me. The sun was giving me a pleasantly warm back massage. The neighborhood seemed little different than I remembered. Smaller, in © 2020: Paul Tobin 8 some ways, likely because I had an adult’s view of a kid’s memories. But it had the same languid feel, the same houses and the same small stores. Well, a handful of the stores were different, but in the same places as the old ones. A tattoo parlor had been replaced by a store selling a selection of plants, incense, and high-end ladies underwear. The Catch-All mom and pop grocery store had been renamed into Beto’s. A game store had been replaced by a vintage clothing store. A pet store had been subdivided so that they no longer carried any live animals, but just supplies for pets, and with the extra space they’d expanded into the marijuana business that’s boomed ever since the legalization. Binsa wanted me to buy her a little something, as thanks for helping me move. All in all, the neighborhood was quiet. No buildings over four stories tall. No current construction. Driving up, I’d noticed that the Friendly Shore strip club, four blocks from my apartment, was still in business. Dad used to bring me little pizzas from there. They’d been only about six inches in diameter. I wondered if they still made them. Walking across the sidewalk, I had a flashback to those old times, specifically to the night I’d gone out to the sidewalk to retrieve a few of Salena’s plants after she’d died and the landlord had tossed everything she’d owned. Standing there, I looked up to my windows, and to Salena’s old windows. Earlier I’d met the man who lived in her apartment, now. He’d only been living there a couple months himself. A twenty-something law-school dropout who’d moved to town to help run a youth shelter. Seemed like a nice guy. He and his boyfriend had peeked out from their apartment when they’d heard me and Binsa going in and out, moving furniture. We’d promised to have each other over for coffee at some point. He’d said he had some imported coffees that would make my taste buds get an erection. Binsa had pointed out that she was a lesbian and that she never wanted an erection in her mouth. The conversation could have been awkward but it wasn’t. Leaving the sidewalk, I struggled the box all the way to the elevator, and then a voice in my head convinced me that I was a wimp for taking an elevator up only two floors, so I opted instead for the stairs. It was the wrong decision, because the box was heavy and I actually am kind of a wimp. My legs and arms hated me with a virulent passion by the time I made it halfway up. Just as I put the box down for a chance to rest, a woman in a green dress came down the stairs from my floor. She was a gangly, spider-like creature, with flowing muscles. Breathtakingly beautiful. Some flowery scent filled the stairwell in a pleasant break from the general odor of cleaning fluids. The woman was wearing slippers and barely made any sound as she moved down the steps. We were too surprised to see each other to make any comment or give any greeting, beyond slight dips of our heads, the ones that don’t do anything other than make a general statement of, “I acknowledge you exist.” She was out the bottom door before I realized she reminded me of Salena, the woman who used to babysit me. The door clanged behind her. It was by far the most noise she’d made. Upstairs, I carried the box of books through my open door. I could hear Binsa talking as I staggered into the living room. I figured she was on her phone, but when I came through the door she looked up in surprise, her eyes darting to the small bedroom that used to be my room. I was taking my dad’s old room, now. It was © 2020: Paul Tobin 9 bigger and had a better view. “What?” I asked, seeing the confusion on Binsa’s face. “Hold on,” she said, in that tone of voice that means, “What the fuck?” She marched into my old bedroom, then stomped back out after only a couple seconds. “Weren’t you just in your room?” she asked, frowning. “Just got back with these books,” I said, kicking at the box I’d thumped onto the floor next to the pieces of three bookshelves I’d have to reassemble later. “But I heard you in your old room.” “You did not,” I told her. “I thought I did,” she said, more unsure of herself. “There was… some thumping. I thought you were moving boxes around. I was asking you about what you thought I should wear tonight.” She stopped, gave me a look of puzzlement, then again walked into my old bedroom only to return a couple seconds later. She frowned at me like I’d done something wrong. “Am I still not in there?” I asked. “Don’t make fun of me. I’m your elder. I can have you sent to prison.” “Maybe something just fell over?” “I’m positive I heard a voice. I guess… maybe it was just noise coming through the window? Anyway, fuck it. What do you think I should wear tonight? And, is that cat still out there? I’m thinking of taking a cat along with me. That way, me and 420-69 will have something to talk about if our date’s not working out. And I’ll seem interesting, because I won’t be just a girl, I’ll be a girl with a cat.” “I can’t see anything wrong with taking a cat to a dance club,” I assured her. “That’s why I love you,” my sister told me, giving my arm a little punch. “You’re exactly the right amount of stupid.” * * * I spent the first night back in my old apartment reassembling shelves and unpacking boxes, occasionally getting texts from Binsa concerning the progress of her date. I treated myself to delivery pizza and coffee flavored rum, eating too much of the former and drinking too much of the latter, so that the reassembly process of my shelves came with additional hurdles. I listened to a podcast about art theft during World War Two, and how the ownership was murky in today’s age. I had the first of my shelves assembled when I caught my reflection in the stand-up mirror and went over to look at myself. I’m five feet and nine inches tall, and in moderately acceptable shape because I enjoy my workouts at my climbing gym, even if I’m not impressing any of the other regulars. I flexed a bicep at the mirror, and while the mirror didn’t gasp, it didn’t chuckle, either. I stared closer. I have big ears. Thin lips. My short hair is dark brown and resists any attempts at cohesive structure. I have thick eyebrows and a solid jaw that even I admit isn’t bad. My eyes match my hair. I’ve got one of those ridiculous chins that I think looks like butt-cheeks, and Binsa agrees with me, although she claims it’s handsome rather than ridiculous, and even seems to be serious. Thinking of Binsa, I tried to emulate some of the dance moves she’d been practicing in the mirror. She’d been so graceful, but I looked like I was having a spasm. I tried for a couple minutes to attain even a kindergarten level of grace, but the cause was hopeless and I realized I’d better start in on the process of getting my © 2020: Paul Tobin 10 bed put together before the night got much older. Walking into my new bedroom, my dad’s old bedroom, I christened my return to the apartment by tripping on an empty packing box and sprawling onto my mattress with a slice of pizza in my hands, leaving a stain I knew would be there forever. “Nice job, Josh,” I told myself. “An excellent omen.” I was all the way done with my bed and beginning to think about working on the next bookshelf when my sister sent me a flurry of texts. The date was going well. They’d enjoyed dancing. The woman’s name was Joelle. They’d kissed on the dance floor and in the bathroom. There were no cats in the dance club, which sucked. After a few dances, Joelle had put her hand on my sister’s butt and Binsa had blurted out, “Yes I’ll go home with you!” and now, with Joelle in her bathroom showering to get ready for sex, my sister wanted to know if she’d seemed too forward or… maybe attractively impulsive? Binsa also wanted to know if she should still be dressed or naked when Joelle came out of the shower. I texted, “Holy shit stop texting me.” Ten seconds later, my phone beeped with, “Coward.” I shut off my phone and stashed it in the kitchen, where the coffee rum inquired if I would like another glass. “You’re so thoughtful!” I told the bottle, pouring another glass, and it was at that moment that I heard a noise from my old bedroom. A little thump. A murmur. “The hell?” I said. My first thought was a burglar. My second thought was a burglar who would murder me. My third thought was to find a weapon, but it was already too late for that because my inebriated curiousity had overridden my common sense and I was halfway across the living room and heading toward my old bedroom, so if there actually was a homicidal maniac in there, then he was going to have to battle against a twenty-three year old art history major armed with a glass of coffee rum, and good luck with that. There was nobody in my old room. Nothing seemed to have fallen over. The window was closed. I stood in the middle of the room, turning in a circle like a tipsy sentinel alert to any potential danger. But there was nothing to be seen and my head didn’t favor spinning. I decided to text my sister and tell her about how, like her, I’d heard noises in the old bedroom, too. When I picked up my phone I discovered a string of missed texts from her, including one where she said that she was going to peek while Joelle was showering, along with a picture of Binsa’s face looking frightened, with a text of “Women are so scary! I love it!” I decided not to bother my sister while she was busy, so I set to work on the next bookcase. Halfway through the assembly I thought I heard a light knock on my front door, but when I opened it up there was nobody there. “Cool,” I said to the empty hall and my apparently empty head. “First day back, and my mind is already gone. Maybe Binsa’s right. Maybe it was a mistake to move back here.” I was about to shut the door when I saw movement at the end of the hall. It was the gray cat I’d seen on the lawn. It padded silently down the hall, giving me the slightest of glances when it passed by, continuing on to the end of the hall, where it went down the stairs. The whole time it took the cat to move down the hallway, ten seconds at most, I knew that I was looking at a cat, but for some reason it felt like I was watching a ghost. The hallway was cold and smelled of cinnamon. I was very glad that I’d thought to get my bed set up, because I clearly needed sleep. I closed the door, locked it, and went to bed on my first night back in my old © 2020: Paul Tobin 11 apartment.

Binsa came to visit me in the morning. By then I’d gone to the corner store and stocked my refrigerator with enough food to feed a mid-twenties college student for a week, a precisely calculated figure that acknowledged my tendencies to eat poorly and frequently grab take-out. I made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, sat upon a thick slice of fresh bread and doused with ranch dressing, aware that I was being gross but also pretending that I was some sort of culinary genius. On the toilet afterward, I’d looked around the bathroom, perched in a familiar spot but now with a new perspective, that of being older and larger. I could remember, back in the old days, being confused as to what life would bring. My confusion, at least, remained the same. It was something to hang onto. I’d returned to the task of unpacking when Binsa knocked on my door. I barely heard her because I’d found my charger and gotten my laptop warmed up, belting out a selection of electro-swing music at “problem neighbor” levels. When I opened the door my sister stood there wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirt and a huge grin. “I got laid,” she told me, first thing. She wasn’t even technically in my apartment. She still had a foot in the hall. “I got drunk,” I said, because I felt competitive and needed to offer some sort of achievement. “Oh I did that, too,” Binsa said, plopping onto my couch, dismissing my accomplishments. “I’m glad your date went well,” I assured her, moving aside a few boxes that I’d stacked on the couch and that were threatening to topple onto my sister. “You going to call her again?” “Oh god no. I like her too much.” “That doesn’t make sense.” “Does too. What if the second date sucks? It negates the first one. Like, if I don’t see her again, the first date was valid, but if I see her again and things go wrong, then the first date was meaningless.” “Yeah,” I said, not agreeing at all. “Listen,” Binsa said, “do you have some orange juice or something? I feel depleted. And, oh, that gray cat’s still out there on the lawn. Maybe it’s one of those dogs.” “Cats aren’t dogs,” I said. I felt pretty confident. “No, I mean, like those stories you read where somebody dies, and the faithful dog just sits at a bus stop or something, forever waiting for their dead master to come home. I think that’s what the cat’s doing.” “I’m fairly certain the cat just likes the sun and it’s lazy. And it’s not out there all the time. I saw it last night in the hall.” “Whatever. Anyway, you should adopt it. Can you have pets here? Wait, postpone

© 2020: Paul Tobin 13 this discussion. I have to piss.” She stood and strode toward the bathroom, a woman with purpose. I was headed to the kitchen to get her a glass of orange juice and to mentally prepare myself to hear how her night went, in detail, with everything delivered in the frenetic pace my sister always has after a date has gone well. I’d barely set foot in the kitchen when Binsa yelped from my bathroom. I leaned out the doorway, preparing to call out and see if she was okay, but she walked quickly out of the bathroom, gave me a wink, and headed for my door. “Whoa, Josh!” she said. “First night in the new place? Sorry! Wow! Didn’t know! Congratulations! Maybe I was wrong about this place being bad luck? Anyway, high five!” Her words came out rapid fire, pleasantly embarrassed as she pantomimed a high-five from distance. She grinned as she opened my door, and grinned as she closed it, adding a wink as the door slammed shut. “The hell?” I said. I walked to my front door and opened it, looking down the hall, but my sister was already gone. “The hell?” I repeated, standing in my doorway. Closing the door, I stood in my living room, wondering what Binsa had meant. It was several seconds before I thought to check the bathroom to see if I’d left anything weird in view. Stepping through the door, I had brief moments of believing everything was normal. I mean, the toilet was there. And the sink with its fake marble countertop, the bathroom mirror and its cabinet made up to resemble an ornate picture frame. There was the Sailor Moon bathroom mat, a gift from my sister, who enjoys embarrassing me. So far, everything was normal. There was the window where I used to spend so much time looking out on the neighborhood. In the old days I’d had a clear view of Fern Park, but now there was a new apartment building that cut the view in half. I’d have to get curtains. All normality was banished the moment I looked to the tub. It was filled with warm, steaming water. There were flower petals. A scent like sunlight and honey. And there was a beautiful woman, entirely naked, half-slumbering, trailing her fingers in lingering fashion through the water, causing ripples in the surface, so that the flower petals were trembling along with the trailing strands of her long dark hair. It was the same woman I’d seen in the stairwell, back when I’d been carrying books and she’d been wearing clothes. And once again the sight of her reminded me of Salena, of the time I’d seen my childhood babysitter fresh from the shower, brilliant and alive, wearing nothing more than a sheen of water. The woman in my tub had the same full lips, the light brown skin, the heavy eyebrows, and the strangely green eyes that used to stare at me whenever my babysitter told me she was a witch. “Uh,” I said to the woman in my tub. She looked at me. Frowned. She took a huge breath that rose her nipples above the surface of the water, then let out a sigh that sank them below. “Shit,” she said. We stared at each other. “Seriously?” she questioned me, in a voice full of disgust and rumble. “You’re some sort of zero level dweeb?” She stood up out of the water. Water dripped noisily © 2020: Paul Tobin 14 into the tub, or ran with even more noise along her beautiful skin. I hurriedly stepped backward, quite a few times. I closed the bathroom door behind me and left my apartment entirely, hurrying all the way to Fern Park, where I sat on a bench and stared blankly at an ice cream vendor who was just setting up for the day. I focused very hard on him, on his exacting method for setting up his mobile shop, every move practiced and everything falling into place. I tried extremely hard to avoid looking to my apartment building, where I could see my bathroom window. “What the hell?” I said. * * * “So you just left?” my sister asked. I was still in Fern Park. I’d had my phone in my pocket and a desperate need to talk. The pigeons hadn’t understood my plight and the Labrador tied to a nearby bench hadn’t proved intelligent enough to provide any advice before a woman in a jogging outfit came out of the bathrooms and took him away. “Yes I just left,” I told Binsa. “I mean, what would you have done? And don’t say anything about getting naughty, because that not how real life works.” “I didn’t think finding gorgeous stray women in your bathtub was how actual real life worked, either, which just goes to prove we’re not Life Scientists. Go back to your apartment.” “What if she calls the cops on me?” “For being in your apartment after she broke in? Hardly. Maybe she lived there before you? Maybe she’s homeless now and needs a place to bathe? Try to understand people, Josh.” “Whenever you try to sound rational, you come up with the most implausible scenarios.” “You’re the one calling your sister about random women in your bathtub. Don’t chide me for being implausible. Go back to your apartment.” She disconnected. A pigeon landed near me and cocked its head to one side in a motion that I took to mean either, “Do you have some food?” or, “Do you need to talk about these hallucinations you’ve been having, Josh?” It fluttered about a foot farther away as I stood up. “I don’t have any food and there’s a woman in my bathtub,” I told the bird. It bobbed its head as if it understood. Maybe it did. Somebody had to, didn’t they?

I walked back into my apartment to find words floating in the middle of my living room, in neon blue letters.

Josh Hester Class: NPC Level: 0 Health points: 4 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good Strength: 10 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 10 Charisma: 10 Constitution: 11 Languages: English Special Abilities: None Magic Items: None

The woman from the stairwell, more recently from my bathtub, was holding a cup of coffee and frowning at the letters, shaking her head. She was now dressed in a pair of high-waisted green slacks and what seemed to be a leather bra. She was barefoot. Her long black hair was still wet from the bath. She’d obviously made no efforts to dry it, and it was dripping heavily onto my floor. She looked to me and then back to the floating words before heaving an enormous sigh. I could hear her leather bra creaking. “Not good, Josh,” she said. “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck is that?” I asked, pointing to her and then to the words. “That’s who you are,” she said, gesturing to the words. She put her coffee on a packing box and took out a marble-sized red stone from a pouch cinched around her waist. She tapped the stone with two fingers, murmured some words, and told me, “Now, this is who I am.” Even as she spoke, more glowing words appeared in the air.

Molly Fenriskicker Class: Barbarian Level: 8 Health points: 104 Race: Elven Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Strength: 16 Intelligence: 13 Dexterity: 17 Charisma: 14 Constitution: 16 Languages: Elven, English, Dwarf, Spectral, Feline Special Abilities: +6 against all giants, Murder Ballad, Animal Kinship, immunity to poison, immunity to debilitating inebriation, -3 against insects, weapons / armor will not deteriorate or break in combat, +3 to attack / defense in unarmed combat, +4 to all Bedroom Games, Double-Axe-Tornado Magic Items: Cup of Jester, Handcuffs of the Night, +2 Ring of Cat Summoning, Cedric’s See-All Stone, Veil of Increased Bowel Movements, Hell’s Axe, Barrette of Illicit Excuses

© 2020: Paul Tobin 16 “There,” she said. “I think that explains everything?” “It explains nothing!” I said. Ripe scents of cinnamon and orange filled the room, along with the odor of the coffee the strange woman had apparently made in my kitchen, and then there was her own scent, a mixture of fresh flowers and that particular smell of cordite after a gun’s been fired. There were sounds coming from my old bedroom, where the door was closed. “What’s in there?” I asked, walking closer, thinking of the knives in my kitchen, wondering if I could get to them and worried that the creepy woman had already nabbed a couple for herself. “Ooo,” she said. “I’d stay away from that door if I were you.” “Don’t tell me what to do in my own apartment. How’d you get in here? Why the hell were you in my bath? You need to leave.” I walked closer to my old bedroom door. There was a strange clicking coming from within, and a wet clay smell that reminded me of the pottery class I’d taken my freshman year in college. “I already told you my name,” the woman said. “Well, I showed you.” She passed a hand through the second group of floating letters. “I’m Molly Fenriskicker. A fighter subclass. A barbarian. An elf. Your stats say you speak English. Can’t you read it?” “You’re not an elf,” I said. “Elves don’t exist. But you know what does exist? Crazy people. You’re a crazy person.” There was now a thumping from inside my old bedroom, and an erratic hum, like a box fan in need of oiling. Molly said. “Don’t you know an elf when you see one?” She pulled her hair back to display pointed ears. “You can buy fake ears anywhere. They even sell them to crazy people who break into people’s apartments to take baths.” “The door was open. And I needed a bath because you wouldn’t have wanted to meet me when I was chock full of stank, owing to how I accidentally slept in bear piss last night.” “Bear piss? What? No, fuck it. Never mind. The thing is, Molly, I didn’t want to meet you at all, sweaty or not.” “Whatever, Mr. Zero Level Josh. But seriously, stay away from that room. It’s hard to explain, but there was a problem.” My hand was on the doorknob before I truly realized I had no idea who was behind the door or how dangerous they might be, so I glanced around for something to arm myself with, grabbing the box cutter I’d been using to open my packing boxes. Perfect. “I’ve got a knife,” I said, showing it to Molly so she’d know I was serious about her leaving. “Impressive as hell, Josh,” she said in a mocking tone. “I’ve got an axe.” She snapped her fingers and then a double-bladed battleaxe rose up from behind my couch, floating swiftly through the air. The temperature surged in my apartment and then both of the axe’s heads burst into flame, just as Molly grabbed the handle. “This is Hell’s Axe,” she said. “Forged from the pelvic bones of a Fire Demon. Your box cutter’s a limp dick. And, Josh, I keep warning you not to open that door, but you’re going to be dumb enough to do it, aren’t you?” “Yeah,” I said, because nobody can break into my apartment and tell me what to © 2020: Paul Tobin 17 do. I opened the door. * * * My old room was infested with three giant beetles. I understand how some people wouldn’t think three of anything counts as an infestation, but size matters. If you have a small room and it contains even a single elephant, then it’s infested. In this particular case the three beetles definitely counted as an infestation, because they were each almost a yard in length. They were pure black, but glistened with other colors, like the surface of an oil slick. They had horns and enormous pinchers and legs as large as my arms. One of the nightmares was just inside the door. Another was perched on a stack of packing boxes, clawing at the cardboard as if in dire need of the bath towels inside. The last was peering out the window, tapping at the glass with its claws. I screamed, “Holy shit!” and then the nearest monster sprouted wings and attacked, trying for my throat. I managed to ward off the insect by slashing at it with my box cutter, but my counterattack bounced off its shell and back at my chest, where I managed to stab myself. The beetle still slammed into my chest like a cannonball, lifting me off my feet and tossing back into my living room. “Giant beetles,” Molly said, conversationally. “What the shit?” I shrieked. The beetle landed atop me with its claws sinking into my stomach and chest. I dropped the box cutter and frantically grabbed the monster’s pinchers, which felt like dull knives. It took all my strength to keep them from closing around my shoulder, even as the other beetles scuttled forward to the attack. “Molly!” I yelled. “Help!” I had a brief view of her moving forward with her axe, but was blinded by more glowing letters appearing in mid air, this time in red, hovering just above the beetle that was trying to eat me.

Giant Beetle Level: 2 Health points: 14 Attack Class: 2 Defense Class: 3 (natural armor) Attack: 1d4-1 (pincher) Special Attacks: Latch (if pincher lands, next round is an automatic hit unless victim rolls a strength check) Stink Oil (beetle releases a burst of foul-smelling oil: victim must save vs. dexterity to avoid, failure requires a second roll vs. nausea {Constitution} or be nauseous for 1d4 rounds)

I was losing the battle to hold the pinchers away from me, then gasping in pain as a second beetle’s pinchers closed over my leg, at which point Molly let out a yell that rattled the entire apartment. “It’s about to get… COMBAT in here!” she shouted. Her flaming battleaxe came cleaving down, entirely bisecting the beetle on top of me, which marked the occasion of its death by gushing out a copious array of blood and guts all over my chest and groin, a splattering cornucopia that included a tsunami of green juice that smelled and tasted like a mustard gas attack. I turned to my side and vomited enthusiastically, then frantically shoved the two halves of the dead beetle away from © 2020: Paul Tobin 18 me before crawling speedily along the floor in what I guess was an escape attempt, but it ended when I shuffled headfirst into a wall, nearly braining myself. I heaved up another bucket of vomit and dizzily tried to stand, but the second giant beetle slammed into my stomach, at which point I slipped in my own vomit and went down again. “Hold on, dweeb,” Molly said, in a “holy shit you’re useless” voice. I was trying to crab-crawl away from the giant beetle and it was trying to ram its horn into me like some nightmare rhinoceros. I cornered myself in a pile of packing boxes and a partially assembled television stand. The beetle was clacking its jaws in what I assumed to be laughter. I squealed. Molly leapt on the beetle from behind, grabbed one of its wings and tore it completely away with a sound like an elephant’s wet fart. The beetle twisted and latched its pinchers around her leg. “No,” she scolded. “Fuck off.” She knee-dropped the beetle, cracking its shell, then drove a fist down into the insect, wrenching it back out covered in oily green blood. “This sucks,” she said, frowning down at me. “You really had to go and open that door, didn’t you? How many times did I warn you?” Not waiting for any answer, she stomped angrily to my couch and wiped her hands on the decorative blanket. “I hate insects,” she said, talking mostly to herself. I was still trying not to vomit. “Seriously,” she said, discarding the blanket. “They’re creepy. Don’t you think bugs are creepy?” “I think I’m hurt,” I moaned. “Where’s that third beetle? Why are they so huge? What’s going on? Who are you? Am I dreaming? This has to be a nightmare, right?” “Slow down, Josh. Your veins are throbbing. You know, when Mom used to talk about how the two of you were hanging out, I always thought you’d grow up to be more… heroic, I guess. Less puke-y for sure. And I seriously can’t believe you’re a non-player character. That’s ridiculous.” I whimpered in reply. Not my best moment. But in my defense I’d spotted the last of the giant beetles scuttling along the ceiling, digging its powerful claws into the plaster, which rained down in little puffs of white. “When I was a little girl,” Molly said, “I’d dream of teaming up with you. In my fantasies you were a lot more powerful. Noble, even. Guess I was wrong. You just puke and squeal. It’s not a good look, Josh.” I choked back a squeal and some vomit, vaguely gesturing to the insect above Molly’s head, about to drop on her. “I already saw it,” she said. “But thanks at least for something.” Even as she spoke, she grabbed one of my kitchen chairs, flipped it upside down and then jabbed it upward, spearing the beetle with two of the chair’s legs. A thick spurt of the foul green oil lashed across my chest. Molly thumped the chair back on the floor and sat on it, staring at me, with the giant insect still pinned beneath, slowly dying. Its pinchers snapped at air while its legs scrabbled frantically, but every movement was weaker until finally the bug went still. Molly stared down at me for a long time. I was still slumped against the packing boxes, stained with a combination of my own vomit and a startling array of unwholesome liquids and repulsive chunks from the © 2020: Paul Tobin 19 dead beetles. Molly’s emotions seemed mixed, but the kindest of them was pity. “You probably need coffee,” she finally said. “I made enough for both of us.” She stood from the chair, careful to avoid the corpse of the giant beetle pinned beneath. I reached out and tapped the bug with my foot as Molly disappeared into my kitchen. The beetle didn’t react, which was good. But it also didn’t disappear, which was terrible. It meant it was real. I stared at that dead thing, and at the two halves of the first beetle Molly’d killed, and finally to the one slumped against the nearby wall with a hole in its back, a hole that was the precise size of Molly’s fist. I thought of how easily she’d killed the three abominations. I thought of how normal she’d looked when she was in my bathtub, besides how she shouldn’t have been there. I thought of the glowing letters that were still floating in the air, and even as I was looking to them, more of them appeared over each of dead beetles, all saying the same thing.

+19 Experience Points

“What the fuck?” I asked, chanting my new mantra. When Molly returned from the kitchen she was smiling again. I stared at her, wondering how such brutality could come from such a beautiful woman, and also how she’d managed to avoid getting the slightest speck of bug juice on her clothes. Her green slacks were completely unmarked. The strange leather bra didn’t have the merest drop of the stinky bug blood. Her arms were smooth and unblemished. She wouldn’t even need another bath. She handed me a coffee and I gulped it down, burning my throat, but unable to stop gulping. I felt like a child when I handed the cup back. “Another?” she asked. I nodded. She disappeared into the kitchen and I staggered into the bathroom, checking myself for wounds, of which there were several. I stuck my head underneath the shower, but that didn’t feel like enough so I climbed inside the tub and stood beneath the shower, fully clothed. After a few minutes I was free of the various remains, although they were now clogging the drain. Molly walked into the bathroom and handed me another coffee. I had to lean outside the shower to drink. The coffee helped. My head was clearing. Honestly, I’d expected the coffee would wipe away all evidence of the giant beetles and even Molly, that everything would fade away in the manner of dreams. Unfortunately, both Molly and the stink of the beetles in my living room remained. My various wounds were resolute in their pain. But my head was finally clear enough to ask the question that’d been charging through my mind for several minutes. Leaning out from the shower, I stared at Molly. “I used to know your mother?” I asked.

“Drink this,” Molly said. We were on my couch, but not alone. After the fight with the giant insects, Molly’d announced that we needed food and stepped out for about a half hour, coming back with four of the small pizzas from the Friendly Shore strip club. The gray cat had been with her when she returned, darting into my apartment as Molly opened my door. The cat had immediately gone to my couch, but settled only momentarily before deciding on the window. But the window hadn’t proved sufficient either, and the cat was again on the couch, nestled against my feet. Molly had told me the cat’s name was Charles and that it was a witch’s familiar. I hadn’t said anything. I had nothing to say. I was mostly just waiting to wake up or for my pain to fade. I had the deep slash on my chest where I’d accidentally stabbed myself, and a series of dime-sized chunks missing from my shoulder. One of my fingers was broken. I had an extensive range of bruises and cuts, the latter ranging from “this barely needs a bandage” to “Josh, get off the couch and go to the hospital.” “Drink… what?” I asked the crazy woman. She was holding up a menacing blue fluid in a clear glass vial, gesturing for me to drink it. “It’s a healing potion,” Molly said. “There’s no such thing as healing potions.” “There’s no such thing as giant beetles, either, right?” Her eyes didn’t even flicker to the three dead insects in my apartment. They didn’t need to. Her point was made. She nudged the top of the vial to my lips. I opened my mouth and drank, well aware I was acting like an obedient child. Maybe afterward she could toss me over her shoulder and burp me. “This is supposed to be magic?” I asked. It tasted like spicy toothpaste. “Potions are a kind of magic, I suppose.” She was munching on pizza. She’d brought back two with sausage, one with abundant mushrooms, and one with pepperoni. The distribution was that I got one of the sausage pizzas, and Molly got everything else. She said, “But potions aren’t like, real magic. I mean, they’re not like spells. They’re more similar to stews. It’s just that one of the ingredients is magic. It’s hard to explain. I’m not really the one to ask.” “I’m supposed to believe it can heal this?” I asked, pointing to the wound where I’d managed to cut up my chest with the box cutter. I was a total mess. My broken finger felt like it was being continuously slammed in a car door. I held it out and looked at the broken thing, showing it to Molly. “Your magic potion didn’t work,” I told her. “It’s not ‘my’ magic. Fridu made it. The two of us spent an entire week collecting honeycombs, butterfly wings and virgin dryad piss, so… yeah, I did some of the manual labor, but Fridu’s the one who put in the magics. And, yes, it’s working. Quit being such a dick.”

© 2020: Paul Tobin 21 She leaned closer and touched my chest, with her finger circling my wound, drawing my attention. I watched in amazement as the wound closed, with the flesh knitting together until there wasn’t even a scar. And then my broken finger snapped back into position. All my bruises disappeared. I felt reinvigorated. Honestly, I felt better than ever. I felt super-charged. “What the fuck?” I said. “Magic,” Molly told me. “Even though it doesn’t exist, of course.” She laughed to herself, then looked to the cat and mumbled something that involved several hisses. Charles glanced up and did a coughing sort of laugh. It was almost as if they were communicating. The cat ambled onto Molly’s lap, leaving mine. “My mother was a witch,” Molly told me. “You met her. She used to live next door to you. Salena was her name. Remember?” “You’re shitting me! You’re Salena’s daughter? When? How?” “Well, you see Josh, when a woman loves a man very much, they smash their privates together and—” “I meant, she didn’t have a daughter when she lived here. Or at least never talked about one? About… you?” “We don’t talk to outsiders. Not about real things. But she did, I guess, with you? I want to know why. She told you she was a witch, didn’t she? Before her murder?” “She wasn’t murdered. She died in a fire. It was an accident.” “You’re such an innocent, Josh. Witches don’t have accidents with fire. Ask Fridu when you see her.” “Who’s this ‘Fridu’ you keep talking about?” “A witch. A dwarf. You’ll meet her. I adore her. I’ve known her for something like fifty years.” “That’s impossible.” “It’s not, though. You keep thinking in terms of what’s possible in your world. But there’s an impossible amount of possibilities in the other worlds. For one thing, how old did you think my mother was?” “I remember exactly. She was twenty. Thirteen years older than me at the time. I knew her when I was seven.” As we talked, I was grabbing clothes from a packing box. For some reason it’d felt okay to be in my shorts when I was injured, but now that I was healed it was wrong. I shimmied into a pair of blue jeans and an old ZZ Top concert shirt that I’d inherited from my dad. Molly said, “Mom lied to you, then. Good. She should’ve always lied to you. She was a lot older than twenty, Josh. She dropped a couple zeroes. She was over two thousand years old.” “Fuck off,” I said. Then, “Ah. Sorry. I mean, that’s not even possible.” “We elves live a long time. I’m five hundred and thirty-six years old.” “You’re not a real elf,” I stated. “You an expert, then? Glad to meet you, Professor Elf Scholar. Listen, I’ve seen your intelligence rating. An eleven? Honestly, that’s not bad. I’ve seen worse. But an eleven can’t exactly run around proclaiming themselves as an expert on anything. Here, hold this.” She stood and picked up half of the giant beetle she’d sliced in two, all but shoving it at my chest. There was nothing to do but take it. It was heavier than I’d expected, and I almost dropped it. © 2020: Paul Tobin 22 Molly said, “Unless you’d like to decorate your apartment with dead monster beetles, we should get rid of them.” She paused, looking at me. I didn’t know what she was waiting for. Then it hit me. “Oh,” I said. “No. I definitely do not want them in my apartment.” “Some boys do,” she said with a shrug. “Like, as hunting trophies, I guess. Some kind of ‘masculine identity’ thing, a not entirely subtle way of walking around with your cock jutting out.” “Wake me from this dream,” I muttered, low, under my breath. “Wake me from this dream.” “What?” “Nothing.” “Cool. Follow me.” Molly walked toward my old bedroom, picking up the beetle she’d stabbed to death with the chair. She carried the full-sized beetle with more ease than I was carrying the bisected portion, and I tried not to let that bother me, even when we walked past the floating words that listed my strength at ten and hers at sixteen. Inside my old bedroom, she walked around the stacks of unpacked boxes to get to the desk I had against the wall. She plopped the dead beetle down onto it and then pulled the entire desk away from the wall. “Did you ever go through?” she asked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, still holding half a beetle and trying very hard to keep the gooey parts from my clothes. “The door, Josh. The door to Goncourt. Did you ever go through?” “Goncourt? A door? Molly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I was thinking of how the floating words in my living room had listed her intelligence at thirteen and mine at eleven. That wasn’t such a big difference, was it? “Oh, Mom,” Molly said with a sigh, muttering to the wall. “What did you ever see in this kid?” She turned to me and said, “Mom made you a door, Josh. You could’ve gone through anytime you wanted. Although, I have to say, maybe it’s best you didn’t.” Shaking her head, she reached out to the blank wall with its aging wallpaper of medieval heraldry, the wall I’d had next to my bed, back when I was a child. Even as Molly’s hand reached out, I abruptly remembered the night Salena and I’d held hands, sort of, and we’d used our combined fingers to trace lines on the wallpaper, and she’d told me that now there was a door. Molly’s hand found a latch where there wasn’t one. She pulled. A door opened in my wall. Sunlight poured through, and a pleasant wind. There wasn’t, as there should’ve been, a view into the adjoining apartment where Salena used to live. No view of the youth center manager and his boyfriend drinking fine coffee. Instead, there was a vast meadow bisected by a wide stream. Immense mountains loomed in the distance. There was a herd of wolf-like creatures, but with the heads of deer, with antlers twisted in odd shapes. They were grazing and paid us no mind. A flock of passing butterflies filled the air, each with wingspans of nearly two feet. Most alarming of all, a woman was fluttering among them. She was a short, stout, bursting plug of a woman, swooping along with the butterflies, yelping in delight until she © 2020: Paul Tobin 23 saw us, at which point she zoomed closer, covering almost a hundred feet in no more than a couple seconds. She hovered in the air an arm’s reach away from us, and waved. “Molly!” she said. “Hey Fridu!” Molly said, and then put a hand on my shoulder. “I found Josh,” she told the flying dwarf.

It’s not easy to get used to leather underwear. It just isn’t. Like, I remember my second year of college when I was living for a few months in an off-campus apartment with my sister and a tall man named Valentine she’d met at a Pride March. He was into kink and had a very active sex life, partially owing to his involvement in the local burlesque scene, where he’d perform either as a man named Peter Pangs or a drag queen named May B. Later. He wore, on occasion, leather underwear. I can remember him telling me that if you wear leather underwear, you want to have as few hairs as possible down there or else the leather can tug at them. At the same time you don’t want to be freshly shaved, because if you’re too smooth the underwear will adhere to you like a bandage, and of course we all know how thrilling it is to pull off a bandage. “Why are you telling me this?” Fridu asked. I was standing in a clothing store that was exactly like I’d have envisioned such a store in the fifteenth century, except instead of wallets and socks as the impulse buys, there were magic potions and a wide assortment of daggers. At least there were belts; that was more or less familiar. The clerk had the head of a giant rat, though, which I’ve never encountered anywhere before in my life. Not even at Wal-Mart. I told Fridu, “I’m telling you about my old roommate because I’m nervous. And because I don’t know why you had to come into the dressing room with me.” “She has a keen eye for fashion,” Molly answered. “I don’t know why you’re in here, either,” I told Molly. “Because she likes watching naked men squirm,” Fridu said. “Yeah,” Molly nodded. “You really do squirm, Josh.” “Why’s it have to be leather underwear?” I asked, walking back and forth in the small confines of the dressing room. I wanted to reach inside my shorts and adjust myself, but there were two women in the room, and my decorum was at stake. “Because you have to dress like a native if you’re going to be in Goncourt with us,” Fridu said. “You can’t look like you normally do.” “Zero level dweeb,” Molly added in helpful fashion. “Besides,” Fridu said. “These underwear are a lot better quality than you’ll ever find back where you live. That’s giant mouse underwear. Soft, right?” “I’m wearing a giant dead mouse on my dick?” “Essentially, yes. Feels good, right?” I had to admit it wasn’t bad. Once I grew accustomed to the feel, the underwear were comfortable. I tried not to think of the fact that it was mouse leather. The only giant mouse I’d ever encountered in my past was when I’d posed with Mickey Mouse for a picture at Disneyworld. Twenty minutes later my old clothes were stuffed into one of Fridu’s pouches and I was dressed in an assortment of fine homespun clothes. I wore a shirt and pants.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 25 Leather boots. A travelling cloak. I had a wide belt of alligator leather, complete with a pouch and a dagger dangling from loops. Fridu paid the rat-headed clerk an assortment of shiny coins and patted his human-looking hands in a gesture of familiarity. The clerk’s voice sounded normal, albeit with a teeth-y, gnashing accent. “Want to see the world, now?” Fridu asked, looking up to me. Her head was at the level of my lower ribs. The dwarf had the beauty that a stout woman can so easily attain, but it was a condensed beauty, like a not-unpleasant funhouse mirror version of a taller woman. She had reddish-blonde hair worn in a thick ponytail that reached to her waist, clipped to the side of a wide belt so that it would stay out of her way. She wore what resembled aviator goggles slid back into her hair. Her patched tan pants were tucked into thick boots sturdy enough for long hikes in either hurricanes or meteor swarms. She was dressed in a wrapped blue tunic, cinched at her waist by the wide belt with its incredibly array of pouches. There was leather armor added to the mix, sewn onto the clothes, chiefly around her shoulders. She had copious rings and bracelets. Three necklaces. Stickpins on the back of her cloak, like bumper stickers on a car. She had sigils tattooed all along her arms and smelled like wet rocks, like the time me and an ex-girlfriend had been hiking in the woods and a rainstorm pinned us in the mouth of a cave for two full hours. When I’d first met Fridu, stepping impossibly through the doorway from my old bedroom into the world of Goncourt, she’d helped us heave the carcasses of the giant beetles out from my living room and into the meadow. From that meadow, the doorway appeared as a faintly shimmering outline in the air, but I couldn’t see back into my apartment. I tried to cement the location in my mind, because if you find yourself traveling along the road to insanity, it’s goddamn important to remember the way back. As we heaved the dead beetles out from the impossible doorway, the deer-headed wolves had immediately switched from grazing on the grass to grazing on the beetles, which was perhaps the grossest thing I’d ever seen or heard, because they sounded like they were slurping on ice cream and cracking walnuts at the same time. Even Molly thought it was awful, so we’d moved about fifty feet away and then, as part of introducing Fridu and I to each other, Molly had used her weird stone to bring up the glowing words I’d seen in my living room. One of the deer-headed wolves had trotted over and sniffed at the words in disdain, then began grazing only a few feet away, uncaring of our presence, returning to eating grass, though now with its neck and jaws stained with the beetle’s green blood. Molly had tapped her strange stone on Fridu, and then there were words above the dwarven woman as well.

Fridu of Stone Wood Class: Witch Level: 9 Health points: 71 Race: Dwarven Alignment: Neutral Strength: 12 Intelligence: 17 Dexterity: 11 Charisma: 13 Constitution: 16 Languages: Dwarven, Elven, English, Witch’s Cant Special Abilities: +2 to all spells outdoors, +2 to all defense outdoors, Befriend Animals (3 times a day), Plant Lore, © 2020: Paul Tobin 26 +3/-3 to all rolls (in Fridu’s favor) vs. sentient plants Magic Items: Wand of Stone, +1 ring, Cloak of Rain, Blank Slate

I’d had a few questions, like where and what was Stone Wood, what exactly could a “Cloak of Rain” do, and what a “Blank Slate” was for. Fridu answered my questions during our walk. Stone Wood, I was told, was a vast forest within an even more vast cavern. An ancient, petrified forest, in this case, where the trees had turned to stone millions of years in the past, and many of them had since toppled, like the remnants of marble columns in a Greek ruin. Fridu’s Cloak of Rain could apparently make it rain, fiercely, once a day. And if she showed someone her Blank Slate, Fridu could make that person believe her slate was showing whatever she wanted to be shown, a magic she said was frequently useful for fooling someone into thinking she had the required authority to gain admittance into such places as the Royal Botanical Archives or the Stalwart Brotherhood’s shower rooms. I was just getting to one of my most pertinent questions, namely if I’d be able to go back through the strange doorway and return to the increasingly questionable sanity of the world I knew, but our conversation had been cut short as we topped a rise and found ourselves on a scenic valley overlook with a city of some ten thousand people in the near distance, only two or three miles away. “That’s Whitewater,” Molly said. I looked to the spires rising from the great walled city, and to several caravans travelling to and fro. Lines of smoke rose from hundreds of chimneys and from various encampments outside the city, some of them temporary while others more permanent. I could faintly hear the calls of trumpets and horns, and boats of many sizes were languidly traveling along a wide river that cut through the city and its wall. More boats were moored at the docks just outside the wall. It was like a city from the middle ages, but like the ones in movies rather than how I suspected they’d been in real life. I strained for more details, but much of the city was blocked by the walls, which ranged between twenty and fifty feet tall. They looked at least twenty feet thick, and maybe more. I could just make out the thin windows where archers could rain down arrows from above. Soldiers patrolled the tops of the walls, appearing as moving dots from our vantage point. A selection of wooden structures had been built atop the walls, perhaps guardhouses, and then extensive bases for catapults and trebuchets, or ballistae, those weapons that resemble monstrous crossbows. “Big walls,” I said. “Traditionally to keep out any raiders,” Fridu said. “But just as handy for keeping thieves inside. Whitewater’s a city of thieves.” “And courtesans,” Molly added in a complementary tone of voice, as if praising the city for a job well done. “Fighters, rogues, exceedingly vulgar bards and sorcerers with malignant intent,” Fridu said, almost singing the words. “And witches of ill repute,” Molly told me, putting a hand on Fridu’s shoulder. “Such as our Fridu, here.” The two laughed, and then Molly added, “There’s also thousands of tiny little zero level people like you, too, Josh. So you’ll feel right at home.” I tried to think of a sharp retort, but failed until maybe ten seconds had passed, © 2020: Paul Tobin 27 meaning even the wittiest of replies would make me seem like a fish flopping about. We hiked in silence down from the meadow’s rise to a hard packed dirt road that led to Whitewater. In some ways, I was enjoying it. The smell of fresh air. The feel of the breeze. The sight of the distant mountains. It was amazing. There were animals everywhere. Further herds of the strange wolf-deer. Always another flock of birds in the sky. Foxes darting past. The grass was alive with an incredible range of insects, including dragonflies flitting here and there or even occasionally landing on us, which Fridu seemed to love but clearly made Molly uncomfortable. Soon enough, we’d hailed a passing farmer on his way to market, and the three of us rode in his wagon, nestled amidst various crates of fruits and a shabby looking mongrel that stared at the three of us as if we were assassins. By the end of the ride he was slumped happily against Fridu’s legs, but still glaring at me, openly planning where and when and how many times he’d bite me. And then we were in Whitewater, riding through an immense gate in the towering walls and into streets that seemed a combination of Victorian and Old Dutch architecture, with a bit of hobbit thrown into the mix. The streets themselves were a blend of cobblestone and hard packed dirt, lined with trees I didn’t recognize, but that Fridu spoke of warmly, telling me, “Those are Ocadia trees. And, oh, a Bantamsinger. You don’t see those much outside of the Culling Woods.” I kept silent, staring in wonder at the strange town. I tried to pet the dog but it snapped at my hand. The farmer let us off at an outdoor market in a place called Palisade Square, where the market shared space with a festival. The thick crowd was full of couples and families either hurrying or dawdling, never anything in between. They were carrying ice creams and pastries and warm breads with meats, and trinkets of a hundred natures, books from booksellers and so much more. There was plentiful music and laughter, and curiously loud calls from several crows. “The crows are pissed off about the festival,” Fridu told me. She gave a knowing nod and added, “Not invited, you know.” I returned her knowing nod, though right then I felt as if I didn’t know anything. I was just amazed at the crowd. There were hundreds of people, and my definition of “people” was being extensively stretched. There were other elves like Molly, and dwarves like Fridu. But there were also what amounted to giants among the crowd. People who were seven or eight feet tall, and one man even taller, making his way carefully through the crowd, taking care not to trample anyone, his eyes flickering between those around him and a roasted pig he was eating from a skewer nearly the size of a fence post. And there were others who definitely weren’t human. People covered in fur. One woman with extra arms. A man slithered past us with the lower body of a snake. Nobody but me was staring at these people. It was evident that, to everyone else, this world was normal. In fact, the one who’d stood out the most was… me. “Because of your clothes,” Fridu had said. “They’re bizarre. Well, bizarre for this world.” I looked down to my blue jeans and my ZZ Top concert shirt even as Molly took my hand and pulled me into the clothing store. When we’d emerged a half hour later, nobody gave me so much as a second glance, allowing me to more fully take in the sights and the sounds of the festival. And the smells as well. There was a coconut odor coming from a fruit-seller, although the fruit she was © 2020: Paul Tobin 28 splitting open for her customers was nothing like any coconut I’d ever seen, because when the shells were cracked something like an egg yolk bubbled out from within. And there was the odor of sweat from all around in the festival, and the smells from the bakers with their breads and pastries. Roasting meat. Sugary confections. The perfumes of three women dancing to the music of another woman playing on a pair of copper drums. There were jugglers and fire-eaters, people performing fake magic tricks, and others performing what I’m fairly certain was real magic, forming coils of smoke into the likenesses of strange animals. The air hung so heavy with coal and wood smoke that I could feel it sticking to the roof of my mouth, down my throat and inside my lungs. I walked among the delighted shouts of children and the gasps from those watching a huge lizard performing tricks at its master’s command. The reptile had six legs and a bull-like head, leaping through hoops and breathing fire. “What the hell is all this?” I asked, gesturing around. “A normal day in Whitewater,” Fridu answered. Molly was a few steps away, flirting with the three women who’d been dancing to music. One of the women had cat-like eyes and a long tail that brushed, perhaps accidentally, against Molly’s face, causing both women to smile. “I don’t belong here,” I told Fridu, staring as two men walked past. One of the men was, for lack of better definition, a ghost, a creature of fluttering red mist. He left behind a chill in the air and a trail of frost on the cobblestones. The two men were arguing about whose turn it was to babysit their child. The ghost’s voice was hollow and echoing. “We’ll make you belong here,” Fridu said, taking my hand, leading me through the crowd. It was ridiculous that someone so short was better at navigating the festival, but she moved with such confidence that most people simply stepped out of her way, and those that didn’t got jabbed with the wand she was carrying. She said, “We’re going there,” gesturing ahead of us. In the distance, just past the festival crowds, was a building that looked like a well-decorated and heavily renovated barn. “The Leaky Centaur,” Fridu said. “Excuse me?” “A tavern. Rather a rough place. Can you take care of yourself for a bit? I need to meet someone there.” “Of course I can take care of myself,” I said, unable to mask the lack of conviction in my voice. I sounded like a five year old child proclaiming his independence. “We’ll bring Molly along,” Fridu said, patting my hand. * * * The three of us entered through a side door. I could hear a raucous party going on in the common area, but we walked along a hallway that was already small and was made even more cramped by a variety of barrels and crates stacked along the inner wall, so that the three of us had to turn sideways for almost the entire extent of our walk. The building was made of stout wood and large bricks, both blackened by age. We passed several doorways, all of them closed, until reaching a stairway leading down. Soon, we were in an extensive basement with a damp floor. “Recent flooding,” Fridu said, tapping her foot in a stray puddle. “They had to move most of the stock up in the hall.” © 2020: Paul Tobin 29 The basement spanned what had to be half the entire block, with recesses lost to shadows. There were still a large number of barrels in evidence, many of them stacked to the ceiling, gathered around support beams. The cavernous space was sparsely lit by oil lamps. It smelled damp, and like a barn. There were trickling noises, and the constant murmuring of those in the bar above, like a muffled hive of giant bees. Now and then someone would stamp on the floor above, causing showers of dust to billow downward. Whenever the dust met the oil lamps there were flares of brighter light. All in all, it was a fine lair for a serial killer. “You wait here,” Molly told me. She and Fridu turned to leave. “What? Fuck no. Like, huge fuck no.” “We’ll be right back,” Molly said. “So don’t soil your diapers. We need to find Gerik.” “I’ll go with you,” I said, barely stopping myself from reaching out to tug on Fridu’s cape or to try to hold Molly’s hand, either of which would’ve been incredibly embarrassing and likely the Hindenburg of my manhood. “Did his voice just squeal?” Molly said, smirking at Fridu. “I think his voice just squealed.” “It didn’t,” I said, in as low a voice as possible. “Just stay here,” Molly ordered as she and Fridu disappeared in the darkness. “If you get bored waiting for us, maybe you could pass time by going through puberty.” The two women were only black shapes on the stairs, creaking upward. The sounds of their footsteps faded. “I’ll just wait here in the darkness, then,” I said. The only reply was the murmur of the crowds above, the flaring lights whenever dust flittered down, and the trickling noises of unseen water. “Good choice of venue, too,” I said. “Like, it would’ve been awful to wait outside. In the festival. With all the foods. The sunlight. That sort of crap.” The ceiling beams creaked. “Yeah. It’s much nicer down here. With all these weird sounds. And the darkness. And probably not that many monsters.” I could hear my own feet shuffling in the moist dirt as I thought of how crazy my life had become, and how quickly it had all happened. My sister was right. I should’ve never moved back into my old apartment. “Think I’ll take a look at this dagger Molly bought me,” I said. “Just from curiosity. It’s not as if I’m feeling any need to hold it right now, like a security blanket.” I drew the blade from its sheath. The edge was wickedly sharp. A pointed blade of some seven or eight inches in length. The pommel was a balanced knob of metal about the size of a golf ball. The handle was of heavily burnished wood with the figure of either a tooth or a claw. I couldn’t quite decide. The guard was a simple affair, sticking out a couple of inches to either side, lending my dagger the look of a Christian cross. I made jabbing motions, both to get the feel of the weapon and also to alert anyone or anything watching from the shadows that I was well armed. In truth, though, it felt awkward, so that anyone watching had better be easily impressed. “Amazing!” they would hopefully think. “See how he jabs! See how he drops the point of the dagger, so that at best he’d be slapping at me with the flat of his blade? In fact, see how he’s just lost his grip and fully dropped the dagger in a © 2020: Paul Tobin 30 puddle? Obviously a ruse! I will by no means attack him! I will only wait here in the shadows, motionless and silent, until this virile warrior departs the premises.” “Warrior,” I said, jabbing again with the point of the dagger. As daggers go, it seemed finely balanced. But, as daggers go, this was the first dagger I’d ever held, so what did I know? There was a tiny splash somewhere in the darkness. “Eh?” I said. I’d been hearing constant splashes before, the sound of droplets hitting water, but this one felt different. I listened hard, but couldn’t hear anything else, not beyond the endless creaking of the ceiling beams and the muffled sounds of someone in the bar above me singing a bawdy song at the decibel level of an airplane engine. “I’ve got a dagger,” I told the darkness. The darkness made no reply. I listened for another twenty seconds, then chided myself for my paranoia. Just as I was getting back to my masterful jabbing practice, I heard the splashing noise again. This time there was an added shuffling. And a snuffling. “Hello?” I said. “I’m a dagger! I mean, I’ve got a dagger!” There were more shuffling noises in response. No snickering, though, so I had that going for me. I made some slashing motions with my dagger. It was time to open up my repertoire. With both slashing and jabbing, I’d obviously be unstoppable. There were more snuffling noises from the darkness. The splash of something moving through a puddle. Then there was a particularly raucous stomping from above, and the resulting rain of dust caused another flare of the oil lamps, and in the momentary brightness I could see a hunched shape moving against one of the far walls. “Molly?” I said. My voice broke. Five letters to her name, but I squealed at least three of them. “Did you sneak back down?” I asked. “Are you trying to scare me? It’s not working. But I have a dagger so you shouldn’t come any closer. I could hurt you.” Was it really Molly out there? Or Fridu? I wasn’t sure. At least not until I saw two glowing eyes, red and beady, staring at me from where I’d seen the moving shape. And then it moved forward, cautiously, with whiskers twitching and a nose sniffling at the air. It was a giant rat. “Oh fuck no,” I said. The rat was the size of a small pony, easily as big as me. It had matted, dirty hair, cracked yellow teeth, and horrible red eyes locked onto mine. “Dagger dagger dagger!” I told the giant rat, backing up. It made a rumbling sort of squeak and stepped forward. Its tail was sloshing through the puddles. “Stay away or I’ll stab you,” I said, waving my dagger. Apparently, the rodent didn’t care, because it came leaping forward with front teeth easily the size of my dagger, and wielded in much more competent fashion. I tried to stab the rodent as it came at me, but missed entirely and stabbed a barrel instead. My dagger slid a good two inches into the wood and became stuck. The rat was halfway through a leap, so I released my dagger and tried to catch the rodent, which was absolutely the dumbest thing I could’ve done. Even my idiotic attempt went awry as I slipped in a puddle, wiping out completely and toppling over backward. The leaping rat passed overhead like a low flying plane and rammed his beady face into a support beam © 2020: Paul Tobin 31 with enough force to knock loose an oil lamp, which landed just above his eyes and caused his furry face to burst into flames. The rat let out a chilling shriek of pain, loud enough to stagger me backward. The rat was writhing and wiggling. Its teeth were snapping, as if the rodent was trying to bite at the flames around its eyes. The giant rat rolled across the wet floor, using the puddles to put out the flames. It all smelled terrible, like a wet disease, or a tire fire doused with urine. By then I was futilely trying to wrench my dagger free from the barrel I’d stabbed, but I’d driven it too deep. The rat was recovering. I had only seconds to act. In my panic, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to free my dagger in time, so I picked up the entire barrel and smashed it down on the rat’s head. Impact was even more impressive than I’d hoped. It not only brained the rat, but knocked my dagger free. It bounced several times on the floor with a metallic tink tink tink, and I scooped it up and faced the rat, holding the dagger before me like a cross to ward off a vampire. “Stay back!” I warned the dead rat. It stayed back, being dead. I stared at it for several seconds, wary, and then I cautiously made my way forward, inch by inch, until I was able to poke at the rat with my dagger. It didn’t react because, as I could clearly see, it was dead. I’d broken the rat’s head open. Its brains were merging with a puddle. “Did you just kill a giant rat?” I heard. I barely managed to stifle a yelp, turning quickly to the stairs, where Molly was standing. She moved down a couple more steps, staring at me. “Josh?” she said. “The giant rat? Did you kill it?” I didn’t know how to answer. Had I killed it? Maybe? I guess? And then a “+22 Experience Points” popped into being above the rat’s corpse, glowing blue, floating closer and closer until it sank into my chest. “You did!” Molly said. “You killed a giant rat! You son of a bitch! Nice job! I leave you alone for a couple minutes, and you do something awesome! Nice work!” “I killed it,” I said, trying out the words, seeing how they felt. “Let’s see your stats!” Molly blurted, hurrying down the stairs and giving the dead rat a kick in its ass and me a pat on my shoulder before using that stone of hers to once more bring up my floating status report.

Josh Hester Class: Open Level: 0 Health points: 4 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good Strength: 10 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 10 Charisma: 10 Constitution: 11 Languages: English Special Abilities: None Magic Items: None

“Your class is… open?” Molly frowned. “That can’t be right.” “What? Why?” “Well, you can’t just stay open. You’re either a fighter or a sorcerer or a thief or whatever the fuck. But… open? That doesn’t make any sense. We should talk to Fridu, see what she says. She’s just upstairs with—” © 2020: Paul Tobin 32 “Ding!” I heard. A musical chime. “Ooo!” Molly said. “The rat had treasure!” “What?” “Damn. Don’t you know anything? When you defeat monsters, sometimes they drop loot. Let’s see what you got.” She was kneeling next to the dead rat, picking something up. “Check it out!” she said. “You got three silver pieces and a bottle of wine.” “The rat had a bottle of wine? Where the hell was it carrying a bottle of wine?” “You’re thinking too much. Let’s celebrate!” She popped the cork, took a massive drink, and then sat on the dead rat, instantly vaulting it to the pinnacle of the “Worst Chair Ever” awards. “Yours!” she said, handing me the silver coins. “The spoils of your virgin victory!” The coins were hand-stamped, like ancient coins I’ve seen in museums. They each had a lion’s head on the front, with palm fronds on the back. “Wait a second,” Molly said. “This is your first victory, right? Are you… did you ever kill any other monsters?” She was trying to get more comfortable on the dead rat, which included her partially reclining, as if she were one of those seductively sprawled models in those old French paintings, except instead of a plush velvet couch she was perched on a monstrous dead rat with its brains spilling out. “I barely killed this thing,” I said, gesturing to the rat. “Never anything else.” “I was there when you popped your cherry, then,” Molly said. “Here’s to further battles fought!” She handed the bottle to me and I took a long drink, very aware that I was trying to emulate the way she’d swallowed about a third of the bottle’s contents in one go. To be honest, the adrenalin of the battle was starting to kick in, and I was beginning to mentally revise the way it had all played out. In my new version I’d been in control of the battle from the start, and never once squealed. The wine tasted of tannin and leather, with hints of fruit. It was quite good. I thought of handing the bottle back to Molly, but decided that as a Warrior Born I deserved another go. I tipped the bottle back again. The cool heat charged down my throat and lit a cold fire in my stomach. If this was the sort of treasure that rats left behind, I planned on becoming the bane of the rodent kingdom. “What was that thing with experience points?” I asked Molly. “After the rat died? The beetles in my room did it, too.” “Experience points are how you make progress. Like, if you kill something, or sometimes if you do something impressive, something that speaks to the skills you’re trying to develop, then you get experience points. Gain enough experience points and you can raise a level in ability. Like, remember how I’m an eighth level barbarian? That gives me bonuses to my health points, meaning how much damage I can take. And then I get all sorts of other bonuses, like I can hit things easier, or harder, or do more attacks per round, learn new abilities, and other things. When I turned fifth level, for instance, I gained my total resistance to any debilitating drunkenness. I can drink this whole bottle,” she held it up, met my eyes, and took another deep swig, “without ever really getting drunk. Well, I mean I only get the fun parts of being drunk.” “That’s fucking cool,” I told her. I was, myself, well into the fun parts of being drunk. The basement no longer seemed frightening. Now it felt atmospheric, like © 2020: Paul Tobin 33 when you’re enjoying a horror movie and admiring the set design. “Where’s Fridu?” I asked. “Meeting with Gerik. We’ll go up in a while. She’s telling him all about you. Although, this thing about you having an ‘open’ class? It’s really bizarre.” She passed me the bottle and brushed hair behind her ear. Dust filtered down from above at just the proper moment, flaring the oil lamps, brightening the side of Molly’s face and the strands of her hair, with myriad reflections flickering from the puddles on the floor all around us. I found myself sitting down on the giant rat next to Molly. She moved over to make room. The rat was full of muscle and bone, like a lumpy beanbag chair. “You’re a pretty level barbarian?” I asked, which was a complete abomination of what I’d been trying to say. I found myself blushing, and thanking the surrounding darkness for hiding it. “Oh shit,” Molly laughed. “You’re already drunk!” “I guess I am,” I admitted, leaning back with that swaggering air of confidence that only a drunk can attain, especially if he’s fresh from triumph in battle. Unfortunately, my drunken mind had forgotten that, while giant rats do make surprisingly comfortable chairs, they don’t have any built-in backrests. I was forced to scramble in order to avoid toppling over backward. Molly helped by reaching out to grab my arm. Her fingers were warm and strong. “You good?” she asked once I was balanced again. Her hand was still on my arm. “I’m a warrior,” I said, even though I was being defeated by the way her hand was still on my arm. “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves,” she cautioned. “It’s incredibly rare for a non player character to defeat a monster of any type, and even more rare for an NPC to change their class, but… that was still only one giant rat. Me and Fridu will take you monster hunting. Then we’ll see then what you can really do. Oh, and if Gerik asks you to go with him on any of his own monster hunts, totally refuse, okay? Promise me that you’ll refuse.” She was looking into my eyes, and I had wine frolicking in my stomach, and her hand was still on my arm. I would’ve promised her pretty much anything. “I promise you, Molly Fenriskicker.” “Well, that was rather formal, but thanks. Gerik is too intense. Too… oh he’s like a goth drama queen or something. He’d get you killed. I don’t want you killed until we figure out the mysteries.” “I’d rather not be killed at that point, either.” “Fair enough,” she said, with a smile full of different mysteries. I tapped my foot in a puddle and wondered who this “Gerik” guy was, and what he meant to Molly. And I wondered if I was going to be able to make it back to my apartment, and how Molly could possibly look so beautiful. I also wondered about her mother, Salena, and of how she’d apparently been murdered, and I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d ever opened that door in my bedroom years ago, when I was child, and walked through it all alone. But all of these questions were bullshit, or at least felt like it right then, because I was still riding high on the adrenalin of not only surviving my fight with the giant rat, but winning. And I was riding even higher on the little hints of admiration I’d seen in Molly’s incredible green eyes, and the touch of her fingers on my arm, The © 2020: Paul Tobin 34 damp rank of the surrounding basement was floating away, replaced by the flowery caramel of the wine, and with Molly’s not unpleasant scent of sweat, and of something like a rich dark coffee. Her leg was nearly against mine. Our shoulders were all but touching. She turned to me and saw me looking at her, and gave a querulous smile, a raised eyebrow. “What the devil are you thinking?” she said, amused by me, not taunting for once. I thought of a thousand things to say in the following instant, and dismissed them all as equally insipid. This wasn’t a time for words. This was a time of wine and action. This was a time for a kiss. I leaned closer and Molly didn’t retreat. I leaned even closer, so that our shoulders were touching. Our eyes were meeting each other’s. I could already feel her breath, and I knew that her lips would taste like more wine. Deeper wine. Better wine. It was at that point, just before our lips made contact, that the giant rat emptied its bowels. Perhaps it was because I’d shifted my weight atop the rodent’s corpse. Or maybe it was just time. Regardless, a stream of molten shit spewed out of the rat’s ass in a nightmarish version of Old Faithful. “Oh crap!” Molly said, leaping up and away from the sudden expulsion. She used her grip on my arm to haul me along with her, so that I stumbled to my feet. There was a brief moment of nothing, and then she was laughing. “Literally crap!” she laughed. “Crap! That’s crap! Damn, that stinks! What the hell was that rat eating?” “I don’t even want to guess.” “Let’s get out of here,” Molly said, taking her hand off my arm and heading up the stairs. I watched her go, and then hurried after, shaking my head. “I can’t believe I’m actually sad to leave this basement,” I said, taking care to speak beneath my breath, because Molly would’ve had too many questions if she’d heard.

“Gerik left,” Fridu told us. “I guess he’s in trouble with the law?” She gestured to where three city guardsmen, forty feet away, were standing at the bar. They were solid fellows, with ill moods and suspicious eyes. One of them, the largest of them all, had a face resembling a pig’s. Like the others, he wore a uniform of light leather armor. They had swords at their sides. “Whitewater Guardians,” Molly told me, noticing my curiousity. “They’re like regular beat cops back in your world. I suppose they’re reasonably honest overall, but only by the standards of this city.” “They won’t step on your toes if you don’t step on theirs,” Fridu said. “Does that mean your friend Gerik stepped on their toes?” I asked. “Probably,” Molly answered. “Gerik’s never met a toe he didn’t step on. But he’s a damn fine thief, and we need a thief in our party.” “We’re having a party?” “Damn you’re dumb,” Molly said. “No, we’re not having a party. Well, actually, we could? I enjoy parties. A few flagons of ale. Punches getting thrown. Clothing getting tossed. But when I said we needed a thief in our party, I meant our adventuring party.” “Oh sure,” I said, nodding. “Out adventuring party.” I looked around the room, which was vast. There were two separate bars and an open kitchen where rudimentary foods were being prepared. Plates of meat and bread, mostly, cooked on spits over open fires or within wood-fired ovens that reminded me of the kilns from the pottery class I’d taken as a freshman, largely in the hopes of getting laid. The fierce scent of the meat swaggered throughout the entirety of the bar, while the rich aroma of the bread mixed with a thousand other smells. There were at least a hundred customers in the Leaky Centaur, seated at small circular tables or at longer ones of the type I’ve seen illustrated in depictions of Viking longhouses, the tables that look like stretched out versions of picnic tables. The ceiling was easily twenty feet above us, and higher in some areas, a mix of solid wooden beams and colorful banners. There were scores of the banners, small and large, or even enormous, all of them bright, some of them warning against breaking the bar’s rules, some of them menus, some of them lewd, some of them with comical sayings, many of them in languages I didn’t recognize. And all around me I could hear seemingly endless waves of languages being spoken as well, ranging from the guttural to what sounded like birds trilling. There were numerous dancing women, and a couple dancing men, and something that resembled a human-sized blob of gelatin, a creature that shifted from male to female and to permutations of other things. Men and women were tossing coins to these dancers. A band was playing on a makeshift stage of two tables shoved roughly together. The musicians played flutes and drums, and stringed instruments similar to banjos with shorter necks. A

© 2020: Paul Tobin 36 small boy with a feline head hurried continually around with a bucket, collecting the coins for the dancers and the band. The air was filled with sweltering sweat. The perfumes of several women who were clearly courtesans. The yeast-filled smell of the bread and ale. The scents of old wood and fresh iron, tobacco and wine. Molly and I’d joined Fridu at one of the circular tables, heavily notched with an array of vulgar carvings and stained with liquid history. We drank wine from beaten tin cups. The wine was a poor cousin to the bottle Molly and I’d shared in the basement, but had just as powerful a kick. I was reaching to pour myself some more when a scuffle broke out next to me. A man had tried to steal another man’s wallet, and he’d been caught. The victim punched the thief twice in the gut, another in the face. Staggered by the beating, the thief fell backward onto the floor at my feet. When he hit, his cinched tunic loosened for a moment, and I saw a modest collection of purloined purses, small leather bags secreted in the folds of his tunic. He saw me noticing his cache of stolen goods and gave me a grin through his bloody lips and a newly broken tooth, then lurched to his feet and made his way to the bar. Nobody had paid overly much attention to the fight, and they paid none to the aftermath. It was that kind of bar. I turned away from the scene and back to Molly. “So, what does an ‘adventuring party’ do?” I asked. “We take missions from the Adventurers Guild,” Fridu answered. “Pretty much any dangerous job that needs to get done, we take it. If there are brigands that’ve been harassing caravans, we go out and fight them, for instance.” “Slaughter them, for instance,” Molly amended. “There’s that,” Fridu agreed. “Or, let’s say some shit-filled giant rat’s gotten itself camped out in a bar’s basement, we might get sent there to deal with it.” She winked at me. “Kobolds on the march,” Molly said. “Warlocks trying to take over a city. Vampires sinking their teeth where they shouldn’t. Anything that needs doing, we do. And of course, there’s dungeons.” “Dungeons?” I asked. “Yeah. Dungeons,” Molly said, with a light in her eyes that was close to lewd. Fridu said, “Dungeons are underground complexes. Temples of forgotten gods. Remnants of ancient civilizations. The lairs of monsters. Things like that. Commonly full of monsters and treasures.” I said, “If there are monsters, shouldn’t you stay away?” Molly immediately repeated my words, but in a far more mocking tone. “Well I’m sorry,” I said. “But monsters are dangerous. And what kinds of monsters are we talking about, here? What’s in this world?” I gestured around the room, meaning the greater world of Goncourt. Wine spilled over the edge of my cup during my gesture, much of it splashing onto Fridu’s leather shoulder armor. She barely noticed. If I’d spilled wine like that back on Earth, I’d have been considered a monster. “The usual abominations,” Molly said. “Giants, for one thing. Not just giant people, but giants of all kinds, like bugs, which fucking sucks. And there’s other giant animals of all types. You haven’t truly lived until you’ve stabbed your sword through the throat of a giant gorilla.” © 2020: Paul Tobin 37 “Okay,” I told her. “And there are griffins,” Fridu said. “And there’s the undead, of course. I mean, there are sooo many undead. Skeletons. Vampires. Ghosts. Zombies. All those sort of bastards.” I drank more wine, thinking of all the questions I still had, and if I wanted any more answers. At the table past me, a huge bear of a man heaved a large sack onto the table and revealed its contents to the woman sitting across from him. There was a decapitated head in the bag. It was something like a horse’s head. But smaller. And more human. The woman nodded and gave the man some coins, downed the rest of her ale in one go, then strode out of the bar carrying the bag, struggling with the weight. I looked back to Molly as she put her feet up on the table. It showed off her legs, which would have been pleasant, but she was still explaining the world around me, and it was making my gut clench like I needed to puke. “Demons, of course,” she said. “Devils of all types, really. Ettins and gargoyles. Goblins by the millions. I hate those little fuckers. Hmm, let’s see, I’ve fought a minotaur or two. And the lizard people, who are sometimes nice but most often vile as shit. There’s trolls and ogres. I once fought a vampire rhinoceros.” “A vampire rhinoceros?” I asked. “Don’t get her started on that old story,” Fridu cautioned. “It gets bawdy. Anyway, we need to talk about something else. Your stats, Josh. How the hell do you have an ‘open’ class? That’s just not possible.” “We were hoping you could explain it to us,” Molly said. She moved her feet from the table to my lap. It wasn’t a gentle transition. She looked to me, glanced down to her feet in my lap, and shook her head, telling me, “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t ever get drunk enough to sleep with a zero level man.” “She does too,” Fridu told me. “All the time. But, more importantly, let’s talk about this ‘open’ class of yours. What do you do, Josh?” “I don’t know.” “Sure you do. I mean, what do you do back in your other life?” “Oh. I’m a college student.” “Terrifying,” Molly said, taking her feet off my lap. “Listen, you two talk about this. I need to take a piss and punch somebody.” She stood from our table and strode away, purposefully shouldering a couple of men, seeing if they would take offense. They both did, but both clamped down on their feelings when they noticed it was Molly. She’d soon disappeared into the crowd. “That woman’s violent,” I told Fridu. “There’s that,” the witch agreed. “I love it about her. Now, are you sure you’ve never been here before? In Goncourt?” “Never.” “You’re positive? No dreams that might not have been dreams?” “I don’t think so?” I was racking my brains for childhood memories of fighting giant rats or being chased by hordes of skeletons. There was nothing. “When you knew Salena, back when Molly’s mother was babysitting you, do you ever remember her casting any spells?” “No.” “You seem pretty sure of yourself for a man who didn’t believe in magic just © 2020: Paul Tobin 38 yesterday.” “I still don’t believe in magic.” “Then open your eyes, halfwit.” Fridu gestured with two fingers and my tin cup rose from our table to hover three feet in the air. It tipped and spilled the wine, but the wine only collected into a pair of eyes that kept opening and closing. This continued for several seconds. I couldn’t breathe. Other people were watching, but nobody was taking particular notice. To them, it wasn’t worth more than a glance. The cup fell to the table with a metallic thud. The wine collected into a single line and spooled back into the cup like a rope being lowered. In seconds it was over, and everything looked normal again. My skin was tingling. I had a powerful desire to run, but stronger knowledge that I had nowhere to go. So I sat there until my breathing slowed, staring at the wine cup, and staring at the dwarven woman across from me. Finally, I said, “Is this safe to drink now?” I tapped on the side of my cup. “Sure.” I grabbed the cup and gulped the entire contents in one desperate gulp, then hurriedly filled it back up from the bottle, which was running dangerously low. “Believe in magic now?” Fridu asked. “I don’t disbelieve in it. That’s as far as I’m going.” “Fair enough. It’s a start. Now, did Salena do any magics? Cast any spells on you? Ones that maybe some part of you understood what was happening, but your old mind refused to accept?” “I really don’t think so. All I can remember is talking with her. And those plants. She loved plants. Another thing, she always seemed to have snacks handy. Candies, mostly. Maybe she created those by magic, but I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.” “Not really. I mean, did she cast spells on you? When she tucked you in at night, did she do or say anything special?” “I had a crush on her.” “What?” Fridu looked over to me. She’d been studying the pig-faced guardsman. “Shit,” I said. I hadn’t meant to blurt out anything about my old crush on Molly’s mother. I’d only been seven years old. It shouldn’t be counted against me. I’d wanted to kiss Molly in the basement, and I was still hoping it might happen at some point in the future, but there can’t be many women who find it enticing if men spout out their feverish memories of seeing the woman’s mother naked. “Nothing,” I said. “Doesn’t mean anything. I only meant that when she was tucking me into bed, I wasn’t paying attention to anything but her. I was too busy being aware that she was a woman. But only aware of it in the way that a kid is aware, you know? Like, there’s that knowledge that something is there, and of how that evasive ‘something’ is definitely… nice? But it’s something you can’t put your finger on.” “At seven years old, you keep your damn fingers to yourself,” Molly laughed. “But I know what you mean. It used to be that way with me and magic. I remember being a little girl. This was in the days when I lived in Stone Wood. In the caves. You maybe don’t know this, but as a people, dwarves don’t much care for magic. My kind are into rocks. And minerals. Making armor and weapons. That’s the life for a dwarf. Not me. I enjoy magic. And forests. Give me a goddamn lake with a beach. I love it.” She © 2020: Paul Tobin 39 wasn’t looking to me. She was looking away. At first I thought it was because she was talking about some of her private feelings, and most people have trouble talking about things like that while looking someone else in the eye, but then I noticed she was looking to the pig-faced guardsman again. “You think he’s handsome?” I asked. It seemed inconceivable, but I’d recently walked through a doorway into the land of the impossible, so who knew? “I think he’s trouble,” Fridu said. “Trouble?” I asked, but even as I voiced the question, I saw what she meant. Pig- Face was doing his best to be subtle, but he was making his way toward us. It was a meandering route, going around other tables, pretending to be interested in other things, but his eyes kept flickering to Fridu and I. His hand was on the pommel of his sword, lightly resting, but never leaving. And the two other guardsmen were acting much the same, spread out in a triangle formation, closing the distance to our table. Shit. * * * “Are you… did you do something?” I asked Fridu as the guardsmen slowly approached. “You said your friend Gerik was in trouble with the law. How about you?” “Nothing that should make them take any particular notice. Listen, when they get here, let me do all the talking, okay? You don’t know this world, and could fuck it up.” “I could fuck it up,” I agreed. We sat tight as the guardsmen approached. I could hear Fridu murmuring words, but couldn’t hear what she was saying. As she spoke, she was pretending to speak with me, like we were having a normal conversation. One of her fingers was, to my eyes, aimlessly trailing over the top of our table, but I noticed that she was leaving a tiny trail in the sand atop the table, which I found notable because there hadn’t been any sand on our table. Around us, people were making space. Unspoken words had sent ripples all throughout the Leaky Centaur, and the patrons were giving room to the guardsmen, clearing space. “Shit shit shit,” I said. “I need to piss so bad.” I was still pretending I didn’t notice the oncoming guardsmen, which was ridiculous. Of course we saw them. “It’s just because you’re nervous,” Fridu said. “Which is normal before a fight.” “A fight? There’s going to be a fight?” I hadn’t considered the possibility of the guardsmen actually attacking us. I’d only been worried about being arrested. “You there,” Pig-Face said, stopping a few feet from our table, looking straight at me. His beady eyes were boring into mine, and his hand was on the grip of his sword, as if he might need the weapon at any moment. “What’s your name?” he demanded. “Josh Hester,” I said. Beside me, Fridu hissed. “What’s your business in town, Josh Hester?” Pig-Faced asked, smirking. Before I could answer, though, there was another voice. “Josh?” I heard. “This is Fridu. I’m talking in your mind. You’re the only one who can hear me. Tap your fingers on the table if you understand.” I felt my eyes go wide as she spoke. I was looking right at her, and her lips weren’t moving. She wasn’t © 2020: Paul Tobin 40 even really looking at me. She was more intent on Pig-Face and the guardsmen. Plus, her voice had been… alone. Just… alone. With no background noise. It was as if her voice had been normal, but spoken in a giant, empty, silent warehouse. Her eyes flickered to me, and then to my hands, which I had flat on the table. I tapped my fingers. “Good,” I heard her say in my mind. “Now, first of all, you’re a complete fucking idiot. I told you to let me do all the talking, and the first thing you do is give them your name. This is a problem.” “Problem?” I asked her. “Yes there’s a problem,” Pig-Face answered, thinking I was talking to him. “You’re the problem. I asked what you’re doing in Whitewater, and you sit there like you’ve got a log shoved up your ass and you’re waiting for someone to whittle it. Now answer my question.” He slid a couple inches of his sword free of the sheath. His voice had been guttural, with his teeth gnashing and his tongue forming the words like a club. Now that he was closer, I could see that he didn’t just have a few pig-like features, it was more like he was a pig with a few human features. “He’s an orc,” I heard in my head. “Well, a half-orc. Listen, I think we can talk our way out of this. The important thing is to keep our heads. Let me do the talking. Don’t you say another word. We’ll deal with them knowing your name later. For now, I can smooth out whatever problem they have. The important thing is, do your very best to avoid any trouble whatsoever.” It was at that point, just as I was about to nod my head, that Molly rushed out from the crowd, jumped onto our table, ripped the leather bra from her chest to expose her breasts, yelled “Combat!” at the top of her lungs, and kicked Pig-Face in his frothing jowls. “What the hell, Molly?” Fridu gasped, even as Pig-Face was tumbling over backward and the other guardsmen were drawing their swords. “Who’s up for some DRUNK?” Molly yelled, leaping off the table at another of the guardsmen. Meanwhile, I was checking to see if our table was big enough to hide under. It was not. Molly was nearly impaled by the second guardsman, who dealt with her incoming leap by thrusting his sword at her. But she knocked it aside with one hand and then crunched into his face with her knee, riding him down to the wooden floor with a resounding thump that sent the covering layer of straw bouncing about. I had a vision of the basement below us, with the oil lamps burning brighter whenever dust cascaded down, and my thoughts of the basement made me remember that I was now a true warrior. I was no longer a man who hid beneath tables, especially when they were too small. And so, with thoughts of somehow replicating my feat with the giant rat, I picked up our small table and hurled it at the guard, who dodged it with ease and then punched me in the face. I went down. “Fuck!” I mumbled, dazed and bloodied. The guardsman loomed over me, sword at the ready. “Here’s the easiest hundred gold pieces I’ve ever made,” he snickered. His sword flickered forward and he poked me in the chest. It was only an exploratory poke, as if he was checking to see if his sword was sharp enough to run me through. It was. Even just the little thrust had gone into my chest a full inch, which doesn’t sound © 2020: Paul Tobin 41 like much in most situations, but is of great consequence when being stabbed. “Don’t kill him!” Pig-Face shouted, instantly putting him on my “friend” list. “We’re only supposed to torture him!” he added. “Find out what he knows!” I scratched him off my “friend” list. I kicked out and hit the guardsman in his knee, making him stumble. While he was regaining his balance I rolled to my feet and grabbed up a handful of the straw that’d been spread across the entire bar’s floor as a way of making cleanup easier whenever anyone spilled ale, food, or blood. The particular clump of straw I’d grabbed was full of mystery substances. I tossed it in the guardsman’s face to distract him, giving me a chance to gain more distance from his sword. Even as I was scrambling away from him, his stats appeared above him in the floating neon letters, this time in red.

Guardsman Class: Fighter Level: 3 Health points: 16 Race: Human Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Special Abilities: None Magic Items: None Damage: 1d6 (short sword)

I didn’t have time to truly digest what I was seeing, other than noting his weapon was listed as a short sword, even though it looked like a very long sword to me. He came charging at me, but I tipped another table into his path, causing him to stumble and sprawl on the floor. While he was down, I tried for a kick to his face, but he blocked my incoming kick by rapping hard on my shin with the pommel of his sword, which did not feel good. I hopped back, cursing. “Fuck this,” the guard snarled. “So what if we’re not supposed to kill you? It’s going to be worth it.” He was striding forward. The crowd around us was jeering or cheering, taking bets. I had tunnel vision, entirely focused on the guardsman and the way he was stalking me, and on how I couldn’t get my feet to move, couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t think of what to do. I was so absorbed that I didn’t see Molly until she broke into my tunnel vision by clocking the guard in his cheek with the most committed punch I’d ever witnessed. Molly put everything she had into that punch, launching herself like a torpedo and shattering the man’s cheek. I could actually see his face crumple. He went down. Unconscious. “Fucked him up!” Molly yelled, grabbing a clay pitcher of ale from a cheering man who’d strayed too close to the fight. She took a heroic swig from the pitcher, then spat its contents in Pig-Face’s eyes. I hadn’t even noticed him coming up on us. While he was trying to deal with the ale in his eyes, Molly cursed the ale as foul, poured the rest of the contents all over her breasts, slapped me across the face for some reason, then shattered the pitcher by breaking it over Pig-Face’s skull. He went down to one knee, managing to stay somewhat upright, but with eyes that couldn’t focus. Molly kicked him over and then slapped my face again. “Why the fuck do you keep doing that?” I asked. “Yes!” she laughed. “That’s a good question!” I was trying to figure out how to deal with her when I heard a terrifying scream. It was the last of the three guardsmen. He was turning into a tree. Growing leaves from his arms. Tiny branches, like living © 2020: Paul Tobin 42 tendrils, slithered out of his nose, his mouth, even his ass. They grew down from his legs as well, merging with the floor, anchoring him. “I’ve got this one, Molly,” Fridu said, gesturing to the plant-man. “Are you killing him?” I shrieked. I didn’t want to kill anyone, and the way the man was screaming was going to haunt me forever. “Calm down,” Fridu said, this time directly into my mind. “It’s a temporary spell. It’ll last, eh, an hour at the most.” The man’s skin was turning to wood. The surrounding crowd was laughing. Bets were being paid off. Molly was leading the crowd in a chant, in a language I couldn’t understand. “This isn’t right!” I told Fridu, gesturing to the guardsman, who was looking to me with pleading eyes. “Stop! Turn him back! I’m… I’m not leaving here until you fix this!” “More guardsmen coming!” a man called out from the front door, looking back to us. “Let’s get out of here!” I screamed at Molly and Fridu, already heading toward the back, scooping up Molly’s discarded leather bra as I ran. “Give me a moment,” I heard Fridu say in a mixture of shouting at me while also speaking in my mind, like I was hearing her voice from two different speakers. I looked back to her and saw that she was holding up her hand, with her palm flat. There was a miniature cloud floating an inch above her hand. She puffed at it with her breath, and it grew in size until the entire bar was full of a thick, choking fog. Within moments I literally couldn’t see two feet in front of my face, and I let out a shrill screech when I felt a hand on my back. “It’s just me, o’ exalted warrior,” Fridu said in my mind. “Calm down. I can lead us out of here.” “How can you see?” “Because magic. Same way I’m in your mind. And, I have to say, Josh, it’s rather foggy in your mind, too. Lots of lust in here.” “There isn’t,” I said, defensive. But she was probably right. “I’m totally right,” she said. “Sorry about reading your mind. I know it isn’t fair. But the situation demanded it.” She was guiding me through a doorway, and soon we were out back of the Leaky Centaur, where I could finally see again. Molly was already outside, leaned against the building, laughing. Her breasts were still exposed. Stained with ale. Her nipples were dark and puckered. Every laugh made her breasts jiggle, like some sort of entirely uncoordinated but still fascinating dance. “Yeah,” Fridu said. “Lots of lust in your mind.” “I brought your bra-thingy?” I blurted, talking to Molly. “What a shame,” she said, taking it from me as if I’d offended her in some manner. She put on her leather bra in the manner that only women seem able to do, with her arms twisted behind her back in a manner that would snap my elbows if I tried. After her clothing was restored, Molly gave me a wink and said something that was too slurred to truly understand, then gave me a slap across my face that was only slightly above a companionable level. “You told that guy your name?” she said. “Uh, yes?” © 2020: Paul Tobin 43 “Dunce-wad,” she told me. “Don’t tell people your name. It’s what got my mother killed. Names have power. Let’s steal horses.” “Huh? What was that last part?” “Horses,” Molly said, holding my shoulders, looking deep into my eyes, stinking of ale. “Let’s steal some damn horses.” Twenty minutes later we’d stolen some horses, and we’d ridden out of Whitewater and made it back to the meadow, where Fridu cast a spell that made her fingers turned blue, and then when she touched my chest I was healed from the shallow stab wound. Afterward, she was easily able to find the doorway back to my world. I stepped through into my old bedroom and waited for Molly and Fridu to appear, but the seconds ticked by, and I was still alone. After a few minutes, I realized they weren’t coming. They’d left me. I took a shower and fell asleep.

Nothing happened for three days. It was ample time for me to increasingly allow myself to believe that nothing had happened in the first place. I’d obviously had some sort of lucid dream. There was nothing to it. One proof of that was how I’d gone to sleep wearing the clothes I’d bought at the shop in Goncourt, but woke up naked in bed with no sign of the clothes or the dagger I’d worn in Whitewater. That was more than circumstantial evidence. That was proof I’d imagined everything. I’d clearly triggered some lurking psychosis by moving back into my childhood apartment. After all, my mother had died in an explosion, my dad had died during an attempted robbery, and my babysitter had died in a fire, and it’d all happened when I lived in this apartment. So of course I’d experienced mental troubles after walking back in through that door. Of course I was going to have a few hallucinations. A batch of homework consumed a batch of time. Plus I spent a couple days sketching out ideas for my thesis. Art history, for all the art, can be boring. I wanted to liven it up, so I was working on an idea of comparing and contrasting the sex lives of Vincent van Gogh and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and of how their women, or lack thereof, had influenced the two men’s art. For mental breaks, I walked my old neighborhood, letting it transform into my new neighborhood. I did have coffee with my next door neighbor. He and his boyfriend were right: the coffee was damn good. But I can’t say that I developed any real friendship with my neighbor. Not even a burgeoning one. It was my fault, not his. He wasn’t Salena. His plants were the wrong plants. The boyfriend smoked, and it reminded me of how my old babysitter had burned to death in the room where I was sitting. The smell of the cigarette overwhelmed everything else. The visit was short. I hung out with my sister a couple times, telling Binsa absolutely nothing of Goncourt or giant beetles or the other things I was now certain I’d only imagined. She accompanied me to several thrift stores, driving around with me to accumulate a few furnishings on the cheap. I ended up with more throw pillows than I would’ve ever bought alone. There were only four of them, but that was four more than I would’ve thought to buy. One of them was embroidered with a cute baby chicken saying, “Yeah, but I shit on the ground.” I suppose I might’ve bought that one even without Binsa. My sister also bought me some candles as a present, and took me to a grocery store and bought me a fridge’s worth of food instead of snacks. “You realize that I can function as an adult?” I told her. “All by myself? Alone?” “I’m rooting for you,” she said. “You’ll get there.” That night, three days after my hallucination of another world, she sat in my kitchen going through a dating app on my phone, showing me a variety of women she hoped could save me from… in her words… my lonely wretched life. Later, after she was gone, I watched a movie from the 60’s until almost four in the morning. The movie was about a gang of spies who

© 2020: Paul Tobin 45 needed to save America from… something? I wasn’t really sure. I was again going through the dating app on my phone, looking at all the women Binsa had thought were a good match for me, psychoanalyzing what made them attractive in my sister’s mind. I was also looking at the two women Binsa had mentioned she’d dated in the past, with me nixing their selection. There are worse things in this world than dating the same women as your sister, but you have to actively search for them. I fell asleep on the couch, fully dressed. I woke up in bed. Naked. There was a note on my nightstand. It said, “Quit falling asleep in your clothes.” It wasn’t signed. The handwriting was feminine. I stared at the note for a long time. Finally, I took a shower. When I came out of the shower the note still existed. I got dressed and went to my classes, strenuously avoiding my apartment for the entire day. When I came home, the note was still there, still existing. I called Binsa. “Did you leave a note in my apartment?” “About what?” “About, uh, how I fall asleep in my clothes.” I couldn’t possibly tell her how the note implied that she’d undressed me. And carried me to bed. That was absurd. “I didn’t leave any notes,” she said. “I know.” “You know? Then why did you ask me?” “Because it wasn’t until I was asking you that I realized how stupid it was.” “Oh. I get that. Sometimes I say things at parties, and then I wake up at four in the morning and I want to punch my own face.” “Exactly. Okay, bye, sis. Talk to you soon.” “Wait, Josh!” “Okay?” I said. “Who left the note, then? Who was in your apartment? Is it that woman again? The one I saw in your bathroom? You never mentioned her when we were going through the dating app, so I kept my mouth shut in case she dumped you. But, she was so pretty! Is she smart? Funny? Where’d you meet? Are you actually seeing her? Does she have a sister for your sister? Do I get to come to your wedding?” “Holy crap. Uh, no wedding. That was Molly. She’s just a friend.” I was hurrying around my apartment, searching for anything else strange. If a note had appeared out of the blue, then what else might materialize? As I made my rounds, there were two points of extra consideration. The first was the spot on my kitchen counter where I’d been arranging my various bottles of booze, because it was clear that I was going to need some alcohol handy. The other spot was my old bedroom door, because Binsa’s mention of having seen Molly in my bathroom meant that Molly was real, and if Molly was real than the magical door in my old bedroom was real. I clicked the switch on my ceiling fan to circulate some air. I was having trouble breathing. “Just a friend?” Binsa said. “That’s cool. Where can I get some friends who are beautiful women that randomly appear in my apartment to lounge naked in my tub? You know, harem friends?” “It’s not like that. Listen, I should go. I still have a lot of unpacking to do.” “We all have a lot of unpacking to do. That’s why I’m seeing a shrink.” She paused, © 2020: Paul Tobin 46 but I could hear her thinking, the way it’s sometimes possible on a phone. “Josh?” she said. “Seriously. Are you okay?” “I think so.” “You’ll call if you need anything?” “I will. And same for you.” “Thanks. I mean that.” We hung up, and I tossed the phone on my couch, still making the rounds through my apartment, looking for anything amiss, feeling like a soldier on patrol in enemy territory. It was just after seven, which meant it was acceptable to have some bourbon, so I poured myself a small glass with one ice cube, then decided it was a bad sign to try to drink my fears away, so I poured it all out in the sink. Then I felt stupid, because it was my best bourbon and not cheap, and I should’ve poured it back into the bottle. Also, it was time to eat dinner, and having bourbon with dinner would’ve been perfectly acceptable. I compiled a few sandwich ingredients from the groceries Binsa had bought me as an apartment-warming gift. I grabbed a loaf of fresh bread, two small tomatoes, and some deli slices of turkey. There was some mayo. Some cucumbers. Some sort of interesting cheese that Binsa said was her favorite. I arranged all the ingredients on the counter, paused, and then slid the bourbon over to nestle among them. It was officially part of the team. “Knife,” I said. “Wait, no. Where’s my cutting board?” I’d need a knife to cut up the tomatoes and slice the bread, cheese and cucumbers, but first I needed the cutting board. I had a sudden memory of Salena one night, back when I was a kid, making me a sandwich. We didn’t have a cutting board in those days. My dad and I’d just cut things up on the counter or on a plate. Salena hadn’t liked that, so she’d brought over her own cutting board, saying that cutting boards were an essential requirement of a civilized apartment, that without them you ended up with all sorts of notches in your counter, and that we weren’t barbarians. “Your daughter’s a barbarian,” I said, looking through one of the boxes marked “kitchen” that were still on the floor. I found the cutting board. All of the knives and the silverware were already in their proper drawers. I found the bread knife and cut off three slices of bread, then cut one of them in half, so I could make one and a half sandwiches. I used a paring knife to cut the tomatoes and slice off a generous portion of cheese. A sample of the cheese had it tasting like Swiss, but sharper, with traces of almond. It was good. The entire time I was making my sandwich, I was alert to any sounds from my old bedroom, paranoid that something would scuttle out and attack me from behind. I was also thinking of Salena. She felt like a ghost, now. Not an actual ghost, but something more substantial than a memory, at least. I could remember her in more detail, now that I was back in my old apartment. I could recall her scent, suggestive of orange peels and a wood fire. I could remember her laugh. I could remember how much she’d taught me, and how little my dad had taught me. Standing next to my sink, I could remember the precise words she’d said when she’d caught me walking away from dirty dishes in the sink. “It doesn’t make sense,” she’d said. “You either do your dishes right away, or you leave them for later. If you do them right away, they’re done. If you leave them for © 2020: Paul Tobin 47 later, you’re still going to end up having to do them, but you wear them like a weight until you do. So just get things done when you can, Josh. It’s the best way.” She’d been wearing a green skirt. A white top. She’d had a little brooch in the shape of a jeweled bee. Her feet were bare. She’d left her shoes in her own apartment, just next door. We’d eaten cold pizza that night, and she’d even made us a pair of cold pizza sandwiches, just for fun. Slices of cold pizza between slices of bread. We’d both known it’d been dumb. That’s what made it fun, and worthwhile to do. Had Salena ever cast any spells? I thought back to Fridu’s question, and back to the time I’d spent with Salena. I could remember the pleasantly long nights when she was babysitting me, the endless conversations we’d had. I realized, now, that she’d been trying to distract me from how my father was steadily abandoning me. As an adult, I’d come to the conclusion that I’d been an unwelcome anchor for my father. I didn’t represent the life he wanted, which could be best summed up as a life with zero responsibilities. If I hadn’t had Salena, I would’ve only delved deeper into my thoughts of all the things Dad had been doing rather than spending any time with me. He’d often come home disheveled and drunken, sometimes overly mellow but more often abusive, making vulgar comments about Salena that she tolerated with a grace and patience that was somehow depressing. She never should’ve been forced to develop those emotional calluses, those casual deflections. My father had been a terrible man. When I’d been adopted into the Hester family and Binsa became my sister, it’d taken well over a year for me to understand that Ben Hester, my adopted father, wasn’t the same as my father, that he wouldn’t get bored of me after three minutes, wouldn’t yell at me after five minutes, and would always call me Josh, and never once “the mistake.” “Spells,” I said to myself, standing at my kitchen counter. “Did Salena ever cast spells?” But all I could remember were her stories of fantasy worlds, and as I opened the mayo jar while making my sandwich, it hit me that all those fantasy stories Salena had told me were real. She’d been telling me about the world of Goncourt. She’d been telling me the stories of her own life. The burning horse that galloped its spectral way through Silverbog Marsh on a nightly basis? Real. The brigands that became a flock of sparrows? They’d been real. The dungeon where a princess had been forced to kiss a living skeleton in order to effect her release, bestowing that kiss on nothing but gray bones and cold teeth teeming with scurrying ants? It was Salena who’d given that kiss. I decided it would be a good idea to write down all the stories I could remember. Maybe there was something in them to help solve Salena’s murder. Her… murder. Somebody had murdered her. Somebody had murdered the woman who would let me stay in her apartment while my dad was out for the night. The woman who once fought a mock battle between the chunks of sausage and the slices of pepperoni on a pizza. The woman who’d had me help water her plants, and who told me all their names and their favorite television shows. Somebody’d murdered the woman who took me for walks to Fern Park, where there always seemed to be a surprising collection of cats to feed, cats that would sit on the park benches with us and hum and purr, and Salena would laugh and tell me that the cats were like a barbershop quartet, and then we would © 2020: Paul Tobin 48 mentally devise intricate haircuts for each of the cats, all while the cats watched us with the patient tolerance of their kind. Salena had been the type of woman who made everyone around her breathe easier, deeper, and better. But somebody had burned that woman alive. Someone had meant to do that. Someone had actually wanted that to happen. I had to sit for several minutes at my kitchen table, and I honestly thought I was going to break down into tears, but it didn’t happen. I got angry instead. I could feel my fists clenching. I was picturing Salena on the night she’d laughed about a movie we’d been watching, a night where I could later hear her crying through the walls after she went back home. I was picturing Salena as she drew me the watercolor drawings she liked to draw, the ones with green trees on gray mountains and multicolored fish beneath the sea, and the one time she’d drawn me swimming along with the fish, and when I’d said that I would drown, she’d shaken her head and told me that I needed to remember that she was a witch, and that she’d cast a water- breathing spell on me. Had she really done that? Maybe she actually had cast a spell? But, no; she’d only been joking. It was my thoughts of that possible spell that gradually drew me out from my rage, letting it subside. I was still hungry. My sandwich remained only a work in progress. I reached into the silverware drawer for a knife to spread the mayo, grabbed one, and was about to close the drawer when I noticed the dagger. It was the one from Goncourt. The one Molly and Fridu had bought me for a present. The one that I’d tangentially used to defeat a giant rat. In the unorganized chaos of the silverware drawer, I hadn’t seen it before. And there was also a note. In the same handwriting as before. “Didn’t know where you put your knives,” it read. “Hopefully… here?” I picked up the dagger. It no longer felt foreign in my hand. It felt good. It felt like it belonged. It felt like it could help me do something about a witch who’d been murdered long in the past, in the days of my childhood.

I woke the next morning with a distinct need for plants in my apartment. I’m fairly certain I’d had extensive dreams of Salena, but all I could truly remember was her talking about a collection of plants she’d artfully arranged beneath a window in her apartment, where they could grab the most sunlight. Lying in bed, half awake, I thought of how she’d moved those plants on a daily basis, in real life. The plants in my dreams were the same ones she’d had in her apartment, back when I was a child. There were twelve plants in all beneath that particular window, vying for space on a card table. Every day, the witch would take the plant that was the farthest from the window and move it to be the closest. All the other plants moved down one slot. “This means every plant gets the same amount of sunlight,” Salena had told me. “What happens if it’s rainy on the day they’re in the best spot?” I’d asked. “What happens then, Josh, is that the plant is provided with proof that life is unfair.” During that conversation she’d been wearing a dark white dress with lace trimmings, along with a cooking apron because she didn’t want to get dirt on her dress when she was repotting one of the plants. She’d had her hair up. She’d been wearing multiple rings on her fingers. A necklace. Her feet were bare. I could remember how she’d moved so silently around her apartment. I always felt plodding in her presence. In my dream, just as in real life, she’d told me the names of each of those plants that were slowly, day by day, milling around on the card table. Their names were such things as Gershwin, and Beethoven, Mozart, Oscar Wilde, Agatha Christie, and Agatha Harkness. I recognized all of the names except the last one. She’d told me that Harkness was a character from comic books. “A witch, like me,” she’d said. I couldn’t remember if she’d ever said that in real life, but she’d said it in my dream, and after I got out of bed I tried to clutch at the memories of my dream, to cement the look of each of the plants in my mind, but they slid away in the manner of most dreams, leaving nothing behind. Except for, in this case, a nearly painful desire to fill my apartment with plants. I called Binsa. “I’m going plant shopping,” I told her. “Where’s good?” “I’m an expert on plants, now?” “Yes. I promoted you.” “Fine. Try the hardware store.” “Did you just get up? I was talking about plants. I’m going to seem like a nutjob if people come to my apartment and find a selection of potted claw hammers.” “Actually, that would be interesting. Like an art installation. But seriously, that hardware store a couple blocks from your place? Remember when we went there to get paint? And there was that whole ‘home and garden’ section with the plants?”

© 2020: Paul Tobin 50 “Oh. Yeah.” “Oh. Duh. And the plants there will be a hell of a lot cheaper then if you go to some hipster plant emporium, so that’s good, too. I know you’re cheap.” “Frugal. I’m frugal.” “That’s what I said. Cheap. You want me to come along? And, why plants?” “No need to come along. I’m a big boy and most plants don’t bite. And I want plants because of Salena. My old babysitter. I had a dream about her.” “Sexy?” “Hell no. But it made me remember back when I was a kid. How my apartment always seemed barren, like I was a prisoner in some bleak Russian tv show about delusion and abandonment, but Salena’s apartment was literally a breath of fresh air because it was literally full of life. All thanks to plants. So, I’m gonna go get some.” “Go get some,” my sister told me, putting extra emphasis in the words, and then we said our goodbyes and I left for the hardware store. The gray cat, Charles, was out on the front lawn. “Morning, Charlie,” I said. The cat growled. “Charles,” I amended. The cat seemed to accept this as an apology, and fell into step beside me. “You accompanying me on this botanical adventure?” I asked. The cat still padded along beside me, so I took that as meaning that I had a stalwart companion. During our walk to the hardware store I explained, to Charles, one of the oddities of being human, that of systematically paving our streets with concrete and asphalt, and building structures out of metal, and chopping down trees to make space for our homes, and then filling our houses and apartments with plants because, obviously, we like them. By the time I was finished explaining this peculiar blend of human complexity and stupidity, we’d made it to the hardware store, right past the Friendly Shore strip club. I wondered how many people popped into both of them during their daily errands. “Sorry, “I told Charles. “But I don’t think they’re going to let you in the hardware store.” He stared at me. “Don’t think they’ll let you in the strip club, either.” The cat stared at me. “Club’s not open yet, anyway,” I noted. The cat continued to stare at me. I gave him a skritch behind his ears and went into the hardware store, where a woman asked if I needed any help and I said “Nope! Thanks!” instead of, “All the damn time, honestly, but especially now that I’ve discovered another world where my babysitter lived before she was murdered.” The home and garden section did, as Binsa had remembered, have a wide selection of plants. I stared at them for only two or three seconds before I realized I had no way to get them home. I could easily carry one or two, but anything past that, and I was out of luck. Charles probably couldn’t carry even one, if he was even still waiting for me outside. Cats aren’t known for their patience, loyalty, or eagerness to perform favors. In the end, I chose several things with leaves and a selection of ferns, picking all of the plants because of how big they were, meaning how impressive they would look. I © 2020: Paul Tobin 51 also picked three small trees in big pots, because I wanted to truly transform my apartment. I’d gone to sleep in an apartment that had felt normal, but woke to the realization that it was dead. It needed life. I spent almost three hundred dollars buying that life, along with some plant food and a spritzer bottle for fooling the plants into thinking it was raining. Charles was still outside waiting for me when I left the store, emerging along with a Cebulski Hardware Store employee named Stalia, who rolled all of my purchases to the curb on a wheeled cart sturdy enough for a side gig as an aircraft carrier. She gave me a fist bump after we had all the plants on the sidewalk, told me “Good luck with your apartment!” and then left me and Charles alone. With the plants. “So, you’re a witch’s familiar, is what I’m hearing?” I told Charles. He batted at a fern’s leaf. I nudged him away from my newly acquired greenery. I’d spent almost three hundred dollars, and they weren’t cat toys. “What I’m thinking is that you could magic these plants back to my apartment.” The cat yawned. My brilliant plan was falling apart. So I brought up a ride share app on my phone and it wasn’t long before a woman named Elsa arrived in a Subaru, and we loaded all my plants into her car for the epic journey of two blocks back to my apartment. I asked Elsa if it was the shortest route she’d ever driven someone, and she told me that she’d once picked up a drunken girl at her apartment, for a ride to her apartment. “That’s a serious drunk story,” I told Elsa. She was helping me move my plants onto the sidewalk. “Want help carrying these inside?” she asked. She was playing with one of the leaves of my ferns. I just let it happen. It would’ve been rude to nudge her away with my foot, the way I’d done with the cat. Charles stared at me in outrage. “I’m good,” I said. “It’ll take me a few trips but I’ve got a helper.” I gestured to Charles. “Cats don’t help,” Elsa said, getting back in her car. She waved and drove away. I began systematically carrying my purchases upstairs, moving them first into the lobby, lined up against a wall near the elevator. Every time I came back outside, Charles was the picture of innocence, curled up against one of the potted trees. I tried not to wonder what he was doing to my plants when I was out of sight. I hit the stop button on the elevator and loaded it full of plants, then rode the newly tropical elevator up two stories, pulled the stop button again, and moved all of the plants into my hallway. From there I ferried them one by one into my apartment, grouping them together in my living room, nestled with some boxes I still hadn’t gotten around to unpacking. The plants barely made a dent in the room. I realized that what I’d thought was an amazing array of plants was really only the beginning of what I needed. I decided that I’d arrange them all in my old bedroom, making that room a bastion of life that I would slowly extend outward until all of my rooms had a wide variety of plants. Did plants do well in the bathroom, though? I went online to search for the answer and found that there were all sorts of plants that would thrive in my bathroom. Ferns. Gardenias. Aloe Vera. Begonias. Even bamboo. I decided that my bathroom would be more interesting with a wall of bamboo, and during my moments of thinking about my bathroom I remembered the sight of Molly naked in my bathtub, and since I was © 2020: Paul Tobin 52 already online that led to an hour of looking at internet porn, followed by a shower, followed by lunch, so that by the time I was ready to start arranging my plants in my old bedroom it was already the early afternoon. The first thing I had to do was move a collection of packing boxes from in front of the door. I’d built a little barricade there in order to give me some measure of notice in case anything or anyone snuck in through the door to Goncourt. I took a deep breath before opening the bedroom door, but there wasn’t anybody or anything lurking inside. I began arranging the plants as best as possible, and even though I consider myself as a private person I opened all the window curtains because plants love sunlight, and not everything is about me. When I first came into the room I was nervously looking at the wall with the hidden door to Goncourt every ten or fifteen seconds. If anything, I started doing it even more frequently the longer I was in the room. I felt like I had a deadline of some sort. It felt like being in the room was a beckoning call to the monsters on the other side of that door, that I was a beacon they could follow. I put on some music and that helped calm my stupid nerves. I was standing in my living room, holding a fern and considering breaking my “all the plants go in my old bedroom” rule by putting the fern in the bathroom, listening to “Ballroom Blitz” by the band Sweet, when I was nearly bowled off my feet by a memory. Salena. Salena and I. Standing in this very room and listening to this very song. My dad was over at the Friendly Shore strip club, spending dollars we didn’t have. Salena had made us sandwiches and we’d marched over to the local convenience store to buy potato chips, pretending the whole way that we were Neanderthals on the hunt. We’d eaten while Salena had told me a story about a hollowed out giant with a bird’s nest where his heart should be. She’d described the giant in detail, her voice like a song, and when that hadn’t been enough for her she’d conjured up an actual image of the giant, a thick man so tall that he’d had to hunch over to fit into the room, even though he was down on one knee. It was true magic. Salena had done real magic. I almost dropped the fern as the memory flooded into my head, as I remembered the giant’s gray flesh, the expanse of his muscles, the dullness of his features, the way that his hair kept getting batted by the ceiling fan, the tremor of his breath in the room, the flex of his fingers and the way that Salena had opened a door in his chest to show me the bird’s nest, which smelled faintly of cold iron and driftwood. With the giant seeming barely aware of his surroundings, Salena had taken my hands and we’d danced to Ballroom Blitz, a ragged bedlam of a dance, nothing planned, giving in to complete musical abandon, a frenetic dance that continued even as our feet raised off the floor and we were dancing in mid air, and I could remember Salena whispering words of power as we danced, and then musicians began to appear all around us. Strange musicians with strange instruments. Musicians who looked human except for all the myth and legend they had in their eyes. The music was unearthly. Supernatural. Primal. Salena and I continued our dance, and in the end she fell over laughing, bursting with life and joy, tumbling not to the floor but only onto her back, in mid-air. I could smell the cinnamon of her breath as she took my shoulders and said, “That was wonderful! It feels so good to dance! But, I’m sorry, © 2020: Paul Tobin 53 Josh. I shouldn’t do magic in front of you. I’m afraid you have to forget.” She’d touched my forehead with a finger. And I forgot everything. The music. The giant. The dance. But now, standing in my apartment with a fern trembling in my hands, I remembered forgetting. I found myself staring at the space where the giant had been. I found myself moving my hands through the air where a witch had danced. I found myself putting the fern in my bathroom, on the counter next to the sink, moving aside my toothbrush and my razor to make room. And I found myself looking into the mirror, looking into my own eyes, trying to look beyond them, deeper into my mind, wondering what else was hiding in my head, and what other magic I’d forgotten. * * * The next day, I was in line to pay at the college cafeteria. Slightly ahead of me was an attractive brunette in a dress full of dark colors, swirling patterns, floral designs, and it made me think of how I wanted to decorate my apartment. I stared at the patterns for far too long, suddenly remembering that I was staring at a woman, starting to look away just before she turned around. She gave me a brief smile and then went back to scrolling through her phone, balancing a tray with her free hand. Her tray had a salad liberally doused with the sorts of things that make salads less healthy but far tastier, along with a muffin encased in plastic wrap. When she returned her attentions to her phone the tray slid in her hands, and she too hastily readjusted, causing the muffin to slide to the edge of the tray and then topple off. She tried to grab it but ended up batting the muffin into the air. On reflex, I caught it as it began arcing past me. I put it back on her tray. “Nice catch,” she said. I nodded like it was no big deal, but didn’t say anything in return. Mostly because I was looking at a message of “+25 Experience Points” floating in mid air, a message that nobody else seemed to notice. * * * Sitting in art history class, listening to my professor talk about her experiences during an archaeological dig in the northern Peten region of Guatemala, I stared in rage at a fly that had decided its life’s work was to land on my forehead. It kept resting on my desk for moments at a time, as if catching its breath before once more launching itself to the promised land of my forehead, where it would briefly alight before I waved it away, and then we would play the game again. This time, as the fly rested on my desk, I slowly, patiently, gradually moved my fingers into a position where I could flick the insect away. I’d tried the move several times before, but just at the greatest moment of tension the fly always seemed to sense the attack and buzz itself onto my forehead. I could almost hear it’s taunting laugh. This time, though, the fly was too late. I flicked my finger. It caught the fly like a wrecking ball, smacking it into the wall next to me. The fly dropped to the floor and buzzed once, weakly, and then went still. Except for the “+1 Experience Points” that rose up from the tiny corpse. * * * I met Binsa after my classes to help move her old mattress out from her © 2020: Paul Tobin 54 apartment. She’d bought a new one and the store was delivering it and taking away the old one, but the old one needed to be waiting outside on the curb, where she’d take delivery of the new one. “Lot of memories on this old girl,” Binsa said as we stood on the sidewalk, patting the side of the mattress we’d wrestled off the frame of her bed, through her kitchen, squeezed through her front door, and then failed to fit into the elevator before wrangling it down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk. “Naps and farts?” I asked. “Those kinds of memories?” “Lots of those. And maybe seven women. And a guy.” “Whoa! What? A guy? You slept with a guy?” This was news to me. “Not really. Tried, though. I read an article that women aren’t ever sure of their sexuality. We’re more fluid, apparently.” “Was this article in a magazine geared toward men?” “Yes.” “Thought so. That’s bullshit. Don’t ever believe anything a guy says about sex, except ‘I would like some, please.’ Other than that? All lies.” “Well, I thought I should try. But he was all penis-y.” “Yeah. That’s… yeah.” “We ended up playing video games. I let him kiss my boobs. Not the nipples, though.” “I really treasure these conversations with you. I’m not in the least bit uncomfortable.” “I just enjoy joshing you, Josh. That’s why Dad named you Josh. I mean, yeah, that was your name in the first place, but even more so once you came to live with us.” I didn’t say anything in reply. I just stood there, holding one side of the mattress, waiting for the delivery driver from Sentinel Springs Beds, wondering why the two of us were holding the mattress on its side rather than just letting it fall to the lawn. I was also thinking back to those first days after the Hester family had adopted me. Remembering the smells of home cooked food and the clean bathrooms. The perfumes of having a girl in the house, Binsa with her junior high fascination for makeup, and Mrs. Hester with the spray she’d always put in her hair, which she once described as smelling like a loud peach. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I was sure she was right. Holding Binsa’s mattress, now, I wondered what the person who’d murdered Salena was doing, back then, during those days, when my babysitting witch was only a few years in the grave. What do murderers do after a murder? How do they live? I couldn’t come up with anything. It wasn’t something I could conceive. “You’re awfully silent,” Binsa said. “I’m just thinking about my old life. My babysitter.” “See? I told you moving back into that apartment was a bad idea. You’re just stirring up old dust.” “Sometimes it needs to be stirred.” “Oooo. So spooky and wise. ‘Sometimes it needs to be stirred,’ said the wise man, with the words slightly echoing from where his head was firmly wedged up into the caverns of his own ass.” “Doing you a favor, here,” I noted. “Helping you with your mattress.” © 2020: Paul Tobin 55 “I helped you with your mattress and twenty seven thousand other things. I’m way ahead in this game.” “Granted,” I told her. The two of us went silent as a pair of women jogged past, along with a dog that looked like a cross between a Beagle and a pit bull. It was an ugly, beautiful creature, loping along with the two women, both of whom were in jogging clothes and attractive enough that Binsa and I stood up straighter. The two women looked at my sister and I, standing the way we were on the lawn, holding an old mattress, and then jogged on. “I wonder if we looked like an opportunity for a quick threesome,” Binsa said. “Foursome.” “Right. Well, five if you count the… well, nope.” “Nope,” I agreed. “How are things going with you and that Tub Mermaid?” “Molly,” I said. “Her name is Molly.” We paused as Binsa’s phone let out a couple chirps, alerting her that the delivery driver was only a few blocks away. “And?” “And I told you. She’s just a friend.” “With benefits?” “I kinda wish. But, no.” “Keep wishing. Maybe there’ll be a falling star, and it’ll all come true.” “Yeah, maybe,” I said, and then part of my world broke down. Just like when I’d been standing in my living room, holding the fern, now another memory came crashing back. This time, though, it wasn’t my memory. It was Dad’s. A bar. He was holding a gun. I was holding a gun. I was feeling and seeing the memory from two perspectives, one of floating in the air, watching like a ghost, and the second of being inside my father’s mind, watching through his eyes, feeling his emotions, catching fleeting moments of his thoughts. I needed money. I’d borrowed three hundred dollars from the wrong person and they were going to break my legs if I didn’t pay. I was half drunk on beer, more drunk with fear, feeling like my life was seeping out of me along with my sweat. Everything was sticky. Everything was too dark. Too bright. Too loud. I couldn’t be heard. Nobody ever let me speak. I thought of my son. Of Josh. He was in the way. Always in the way. Without him, I could leave. I could be gone. I could run. All those bills. Too much. Everything was always too much. Everything needed money. Simone at the Friendly Shore strip club, she needed money. So did the other girls. Money. Groceries. Rent. The gun felt cold in my hand. It was burning me. I needed to remember that, if it came down to shooting, I only had three bullets. I needed to be smart. But for once, everything went so easy. It was exactly like the script I’d written in my head. Walk in, have a beer to calm my nerves. Don’t forget to get a good beer. Get the goddamn best beer. It’ll cost more but who cares? I’ll get the money right back. Just show the gun. Just let them know who’s in charge, that you’re the only one that © 2020: Paul Tobin 56 gets to make the rules. Let them know not to call the cops. Get the money. Standing next to Binsa, holding her mattress, I was living the final moments of my father’s life. I could feel the way his heart was beating. Much too fast. And his breath was even faster, except for the moments when he was forgetting to breath entirely, so that several seconds would pass before he’d take heaving gulps of air, nearly spasming in his need for oxygen. The feel of the mattress I was holding, standing next to my sister in the real world, was fading, replaced by the feel of the money I was scooping up from the bar. Tens and twenties. God, there’s even a fifty dollar bill. That’ll help. That’s a treasure. Maybe I won’t even pay back that fucker with his three hundred dollars. Maybe I’ll get a bus. Maybe I’ll listen to the wheels of the bus go round and round, like in that children’s song. Maybe I’ll be like one of those men in the movies, the ones who punch Fate in its fucking face and trust Luck to play her better game, get on the bus in a land full of fog and smoke, and step off the bus somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere with women, a beach, a new life, no fucking kids to take care of, an apartment with a big bathroom, a royal bathroom, a king size shitter. Maybe I’d call Simone to come visit. Maybe I wouldn’t give a fuck about her. New life. New everything. I could feel my Dad thinking ahead about robbing other places. Other bars. Gas stations. Maybe he’d even rob some strip clubs. It was only fair, seeing as how much money he’d given them. Now, maybe it was time for them to give some back. It was amazing how much power there could be in three little bullets. Clutching the money, Dad was almost to the door when a man stepped out from the shadows. Something was wrong. I knew the man. Standing next to my sister, I almost fell. The memory was too strong. Too much… everything. I knew that man. I knew him. But I could feel barriers in my mind, locks and chains straining, holding back his name, his face, his memory. “Josh,” my sister said. “You okay? You look like a fucking dishrag.” “Please,” I whispered. “Quiet.” I waved a hand at her, trying to get her to understand, and then I was back in my memory, or my Dad’s memory, or someone’s memory, at least. The man who’d walked inside the bar had a blur for a face. He was dressed in a black suit with a lapel pin in the shape of a golden fox. He was tall. Lanky. Predatory. His voice came from blurred lips, beneath his misty face. “You’re hungry,” his voice said. “I’m hungry,” my Dad’s voice, repeated. “There are peanuts on the bar,” the voice said. “There are peanuts on the bar,” I told him. And then I found that I was hurrying back for the bar. I’d been so stupid! The peanuts! I could eat peanuts! I was so hungry! Famished! When the bartender shot me, it was an inconvenience. Didn’t she know about my hunger? The peanuts? I stumbled, letting money drop from my fingers. Then there was another shot. It was… such a fucking burning in my chest. A bright fire. A dulling fire. There was nothing but the fire in my chest. Alarms were ringing out. A bitter cold was sweeping in. The cold and the fire were battling in my chest. My legs were © 2020: Paul Tobin 57 gone. The bartender shot me again. Things were wrong. Things were Wrong. I needed air. Let me breathe! Gravity was everywhere. A pile-driver. The man with the blurred face was stepping out of my way so that I could fall, but I knew that if I fell then I’d be dying, and I couldn’t possibly be dying, so I vowed that I’d stay on my feet, but then I felt my cheek slam into the floor. Everything in my chest bounced and twisted. There were loose things. Burning things. I couldn’t find any air. It was all gone. Everything felt gone. I could see chair legs. The man’s shoes. They were blurred, too. Everything was blurred, everything was… it was… oh. “Fuck!” I yelled, standing next to my sister, feeling my father die. I let go of the mattress and trembled, fighting for balance. Binsa lost her grip and the mattress fell, slapping me to the ground, with my cheek hitting the grass exactly like my father’s cheek had slammed into the dirty wooden floor of the Downhill Bar. “Ah, Josh!” my sister yelped, helping me out from under the mattress. “Sorry! The mattress slipped!” I was amazed that the two attractive joggers hadn’t returned to witness me crawling out from under the mattress like some dazed cockroach from beneath a rug. I was clutching my chest where I could still feel the bullets that had killed my father. I was still focused, in my mind, on trying to capture the face of that blurred man. What was his name? I knew him. I knew who he was. But those locks and chains in my brain were still holding fast, keeping the information locked away. What the hell had happened to me as a kid? What was stored behind the closed doors of my mind? “You okay?” Binsa asked, staring into my eyes. I wondered what she was seeing. Could she see all the secrets? Could she tell me about them? “Just got dizzy,” I said. “Been staying up nights, working on getting unpacked.” It wasn’t really a lie. It was just an omission of truth. Now I was the one keeping things hidden. “God,” Binsa said. “Go home and get a nap. You’re a college student. You’re supposed to be napping and doing drugs and having orgies.” “You’d make an excellent student advisor.” “I’m all about real world education. Seriously, go home. I’ll manage the mattresses.” “You can’t carry your new mattress upstairs alone.” “Those joggers will come back. I’ll invite them upstairs to test out the mattress, if they help carry it up.” “Your optimism is a wonder to behold.” “I like to focus on the positive. Keeps me from turning to the dark side, like those Star Wars people. The Ewoks or whatever. Seriously, you okay? You look dumb in the head.” “I’ve just been ragged, lately. Oh, here’s your delivery guy.” A mattress truck was pulling up. Conversation was put on hold as two men who looked like mixtures of sumo wrestlers and German dock workers parked on the curb, somewhat up on the grass, and then silently unloaded a mattress and took away the one my sister and I’d dropped on the ground. I could tell that Binsa was a little sad to see it go. As she’d mentioned, my sister had definitely had some good times on that mattress, and people do get hooked on their memories of the past. © 2020: Paul Tobin 58 CHAPTER TEN

Biking home was shit. It was about forty blocks. Normally no big deal. I’d ridden my bike to classes and then to Binsa’s apartment, and the city has safe bike lanes for the most part, except for when I have to go around all the delivery trucks that consider bike lanes as parking opportunities, and the scattered trash cans the garbage trucks pluck up from the curbs and put back in the bike lanes, and of course the random pedestrians that wander into the bike lanes whenever the sidewalks get too busy. Nothing too terrible for an alert biker. But I ran into something unexpected. I ran into a murderer. Though at first it was the foxes. Just past the Circuit Climbing Gym, just when I was idly watching a pair of lanky women leaning up against the outside wall, a fox darted out from behind a car and loped across my path. “What?” I said. “Fox?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Foxes don’t live in the city. Was it someone’s escaped pet? The fox dashed across the bike lane and almost into traffic, then back into the bike lane, where it continued to lope at maybe half speed, just ahead of my bike, for the better part of a block. I was trying to take a photo that I could post online, maybe get it to go viral, maybe get the two rock climbers to send a reply of, “Oh wow! We saw that too! We should get together and talk about it in the nude.” It was that kind of whimsical fantasy, watching that fox run along the bike lane in the city, because everything felt unreal. Even otherworldly. I could hear the pad of the fox’s feet hitting the painted green concrete of the bike lane, could hear its breath above the sounds of the traffic. Then the fox darted beneath a parked VW van and I continued biking, having failed to get a photo. Nobody else seemed to notice the fox. Everyone else was too absorbed in their own world to notice the creature in their midst. Three blocks later I saw a different fox. It had a darker coat, a mixture of blacks and tans. It was perched atop a newspaper box, staring at me as I went past, ignoring everyone else, and being ignored in turn. I thought about stopping to take its photo, but something about seeing another fox sent warning bells down my spine. I had goosebumps. I pedaled faster. A few blocks ahead, just as I was passing the Destitute Frog Café, I saw a line of foxes moving along the sidewalk, winding their way in and out of the various pedestrian’s legs, all of whom seemed oblivious to the presence of these sleek creatures, even when the foxes began… as a group… to make sharp yipping noises as I cycled past. Their eyes were bright red. Their teeth looked sharp. The sounds of the city were fading. I couldn’t hear any cars. No horns. No people and no music. There was nothing left but the sound of my own breath. The wind. My tires rolling over the concrete. The padding of fox feet. The panting of their breath. The yips and the

© 2020: Paul Tobin 59 howls. Three blocks further on, with me getting tired from how I was now pedaling like crazy, feeling the fatigue in my legs and the harsh grip of my tiring chest, I saw three foxes blocking the bike lane ahead. They were simply sitting. Eyes unblinking. Tails twitching. Watching my approach. The world turned gray. The air turned harsh. Like winter chill. Then the man with the blurry face walked out from behind… nothing. He simply stepped out of midair to join the foxes. He was exactly the same as he’d been on the last day my father was alive. The same clothes. The same blur. He held up his hand to motion me to stop. “Fuck that,” I whispered. I was already sweating, having been biking as fast as I could, nervous about the inexplicable foxes. Now, fresh sweat covered my forehead. Everything felt wrong. There was a sliver of open space in the traffic outside the bike lane, and I turned my wheel and leaned to the left and… not a damn thing happened. My bike kept plunging forward. I struggled against the handlebars and almost fell off my bike trying to lean so far in one direction, but my bike adamantly kept rolling forward. I clenched on the brakes and they didn’t care. “Fuck this,” I said, and I leapt off my bike, crashing and rolling to a stop that was aided in rather abrupt fashion by a parked delivery truck, smacking my head through a rear mudflap and thumping my head into a tire. My whole body was burning for escape. I was in a panic I couldn’t understand. I scrambled on all fours and noticed that the foxes were padding forward in a line, intent and menacing. “Josh Hester,” the man with the blurred face said. “That’s not me,” I told him, scrambling back, watching as my bike slowly rolled to a stop. It didn’t fall over, though. It stayed upright. Fuck that. Fuck everything. My lungs were ragged, trying to breathe air that, like everything else, felt wrong. “It’s you,” the man said. “We have business.” His voice sounded blurred, too. Like something that’d been broken apart, then pieced back together. It hurt me to listen. I circled around the back of the delivery van. The rear doors were open. There was a ramp leading up. Packages to be delivered. I thought of crawling inside and locking the door behind. But then a fox leapt up onto the ramp and barred its teeth. Another fox was on the street, watching me, unconcerned by the cars and the trucks. I couldn’t see where the third fox was at. I ran. But I didn’t get anywhere. It was like one of those dreams where you’re running but your whole body is anchored to one spot. Your feet keep trudging, each step demanding more effort than you can bear, but you push on, and it still doesn’t matter because you’re not making any progress. You’re being cheated. I was running as fast as I could, but the man with the blurred face caught up to me while walking at a leisurely pace. He put his hand on my shoulder. My chest went numb. It felt like my heart would seize. I tried to punch him. He deflected the blow, moving it aside with ease, guiding my fist to one side with the back of his hand. My entire arm went numb. Prickly. “You have something of mine,” he stated. © 2020: Paul Tobin 60 “Did you kill my dad?” I screamed. I thought everyone would notice what was happening, but the gray world around me was plodding along in oblivious fashion, like I wasn’t a part of it anymore. Nobody even looked in my direction. “No. He killed himself. He made the decision to walk into that bar. I only cemented the decision he’d already made. But that’s no matter. He was nothing consequential. You know that, right? You know your father was nothing?” Despite how the man’s entire face was a blur, I could still feel his eyes burning into mine. I could feel my will turning to his. I could feel questions in my mind. Maybe Dad really had deserved to die on the floor of that bar, with the bullets in his chest? It was absolutely true that he was nothing. For his entire life, he was only dead meat walking. His end was fitting, lacking any tragedy. My mind was fighting a battle I couldn’t understand, fighting to be heard, to keep my thoughts as my own, to filter out the man’s thoughts and stamp them down. But they were seeping inside. I wasn’t winning the fight. “You have something of mine,” the man repeated. The foxes gathered around us. I could hear them breathing. It sounded loud. “I don’t have anything,” I said. “What could I have?” “Salena gave you something,” the blurred man said. “Before she died she—” But at that moment one of the foxes let out a terrible, fierce howl that sounded more like it came from a wolf’s throat than a fox’s. Black and red colors swirled in the misty blur of the man’s face as he glanced down to the fox. The other foxes joined in, creating a chorus of howls. “Damn it,” he said. “Another time, then.” He put his hand on my chest. I was too numb to avoid him, feeling like a puppet hanging from strings. A chilled puppet, in this case. I could see my breath bursting from my mouth as my lungs heaved for air. There was a terrible pain in my chest where he was touching me. Murmurs came from his blurred lips. “One month,” he spoke after some few moments, the first clear words. “One… month?” “Before the foxes meet,” he said. Then he tore my shirt away from my chest, revealing that he’d burnt me, a dark mass of blackened scar tissue almost like a tattoo, formed in the shape of a fox. Even before I could react, harsh pains erupted all throughout my body, with the burning sensations even worse on my arms. “A binding spell,” the man explained, with his voice sounding clear even over the screams of my agony. “One fox. Two foxes. And three.” He was touching me as he spoke, touching the scar on my chest, and then identical ones that had appeared on my forearms, all three in the shape of foxes. “Shush,” the blurred man told the howling foxes at our feet, kneeling to pet one of them. It gave a sound like a sigh, a grunt, and then went silent. The others went quiet in turn. All that was left was my breath. My whimpers. “Give me what Salena gave you,” the man said, staring in my eyes. “You have one month. Do you understand?” “I don’t understand a fucking thing!” I told him. “I have to leave now,” he said. “And you have one month to give me what is mine. If not, then… I’m quite sorry, but you’d leave me no choice. The three foxes will meet. And you will burn, as Salena burned before you.” © 2020: Paul Tobin 61 With that, he simply vanished. The foxes darted away, lost in the traffic and the crowds. The colors returned to the world. The sounds returned to my ears. I couldn’t catch my breath and I still felt numb. My bike fell over and I began to puke.

I woke that night to a knife at my throat. “Don’t move,” a man’s voice said. The voice was nothing like the voice of the blurred man, the one that had haunted me all day, a voice that my memory salted with the pitter patter of fox feet on concrete. Whoever was holding the knife at my throat, it wasn’t the blurred man. That was a relief, I suppose, but I still had a knife at my throat. My room was incredibly dark. Much darker than it should’ve been. My throat felt like it was sweating. The knife was cold and sharp. The voice was something like a large insect speaking from the bottom of a well. “I’m a friend,” the voice said. “Hate to point out the obvious, but you have an unfriendly knife at my throat.” It was a lot of talking for a man with a knife at his throat, but I hadn’t been asleep for more than a couple hours, meaning that I was still well under the arrogant influence of the bourbon I’d been drinking all night, acting like a burning throttle for my mood. After I’d come home from helping my sister with her mattresses and then getting tattooed by a supernatural blur, I’d stared in horror at the mirror for a couple hours, looking to myself and those tattoos or scars or whatever the fuck they were. I’d poked at them with the point of a paring knife, trying to disbelieve them. I showered at length, idiotically hoping they’d wash away. In the silence of my apartment, staring in my bathroom mirror, I tried to pretend that the little yips and howls I was hearing were only in my mind. Maybe they were. Anyway, there’d been nothing to do but run for the bourbon. I’d stood naked in my kitchen, holding the bottle, taking almost two full minutes to decide that, no, I didn’t need a glass. After I was dressed, I wrote out all my memories of the stories Salena had told me, with the rapidly diminishing bottle of bourbon acting as my constant companion during this literary outburst. I wrote and I drank. The tapping of the computer keys was calming. The sounds felt real. The bourbon was a flame inside me. Maybe it would burn away my new tattoos at the roots. After I’d written down everything I could remember, I didn’t know what to do. I’d stood with the dagger from Goncourt clutched in my hand for almost ten minutes, staring at the section of the wall in my old bedroom, where I now knew I could open a door and step into another world to begin my search for a blurred murderer. Luckily, I wasn’t quite that drunk, or at least not drunk enough to go it alone, though I did open the door and call out into the meadow, yelling Molly’s name, but getting no answer. So I’d closed the door and put down the dagger and picked up the bottle and started drinking again while looking at internet porn, which was maybe not the antics of any epic hero but I was in a mood. Afterward, I’d showered again, keeping my eyes closed so that I couldn’t see the tattoos. Then I thanked the bourbon for spending the night with me, finally sprawling into bed for what turned out to be a short nap before waking with the blade at my throat.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 63 My bed shifted. Someone was moving around. But the knife was still at my throat, unmoving. It was unthinkably dark in my room. It had never been that dark before. Whenever the bed shifted, I could see some sort of figure above me, but it was no more than the shadow of a shadow. I could feel sweat beading up on my forehead. Had the guards from the Leaky Centaur found me? What were the rules for people sneaking in through the magic doorway in my old bedroom? I should’ve barricaded the room. I should’ve put out bear traps. I should’ve been smarter, but I’d been dumb, and now it looked like I wasn’t getting a second chance. “This is where Salena used to live?” the grave-like voice asked. “No. Next door. I’m the one who used to live here.” “If you used to live here, why are you here now?” “Ahh. I still live here. I mean, no. I used to live here and now I live here again.” “Why are you so nervous?” “Because you have a goddamn knife at my throat, asshole.” “Oh. Do I? Shit. I shouldn’t. Sorry.” The blade was removed. I remained motionless, waiting to see if it would return and wondering if I should leap to the attack. Maybe this was my only chance. The darkness receded into normal darkness. I could make out the figure of a man. “You’re Josh Hester, right?” the voice asked. “Yes. No. Maybe. I’m not supposed to give my name.” I was doing really well. Hardly flailing at all. “Wise,” the voice said. “When you give your true name, the spectral tendrils of Fate reach out for you, and her iron grasp shall be your bane.” “Yeah. That’s what I always say, too. Listen, you mind if I turn on a light? Also, would you mind leaving?” “I’ll get the light. But I won’t leave until I’ve had my say.” The bed shifted. I expected the lamp on my bedside table to flick on, but instead there was the flare of a match. The man held it up to his face. He was a short man, grizzled and wiry, but with evident muscle. He was wearing leather armor. His eyes were sunken into recesses. His lips were a thin line. He had bushy sideburns and scars on his face, dotted burns that had long since healed, and two cuts in one cheek that looked far more recent. The dancing light of the match played over his sharp features. He was marked with dirt, grime, and with what looked like blood. “I’m Gerik,” he said. “I can’t give you my last name. I wouldn’t if I could, but it doesn’t matter because I can’t. I’m an unknown child, found in the ruins of a charred cart outside the village of Tavenstott. The bones of the horses were exposed, as wolves had been eating at their bellies, and the birds had been at their eyes and tongues. The bodies of my family were in a similar state. But not from wolves, this time. Not those beasts. Because a wolf won’t eat where a ghoul has been feeding. The marks on the bones of my family were from human teeth. Or from creatures that had been human, once. I myself was alive, bathed in the dried blood of my family, having been tucked inside a wooden chest at some point, with the cheap wood so thin that the blood of my kin had soaked through and stained my face.” “Jesus fucking Christ,” I whispered. “I was raised by nothing and no one,” the man continued, sheathing the knife he’d held to my throat. “One house to another. Always hungry. Searching. Remembering © 2020: Paul Tobin 64 the howls of the wolves and the grunting gnashing of the ghouls. I killed my first ghoul when I was eleven, Josh Hester. Do you know what I used?” “Uh. A knife?” It seemed a fair guess. “My teeth,” he said. That hung there for a bit. “These very teeth,” he said, tapping on them, his lips pulled back. “Okay,” I said. “I just kept ripping at his flesh. I didn’t swallow, of course. They’re poisonous.” “Holy shit,” I said. “I can still feel the moment when its life force faded, with his foul festering body pitching and heaving in my hands, my face buried in his neck, and my left hand plunging up through the cavity of his leathery stomach, reaching inside to grab his black heart and yank the cursed thing from where it was moored.” “God damn,” I said. “You have anything to eat?” Gerik said. “Some chips or something? Nothing too salty?”

Twenty-four minutes later I was fully dressed and walking with Gerik through the vast meadow in Goncourt. I was as tired as I’ve ever been in my life and mostly wondering if I was being led to an open grave. Gerik was munching on a bag of Buster’s Bar-B-Q Chips, somehow managing to do so without making the slightest noise. The chips did not crunch. The bag didn’t even crackle in his hands. “How do you do that?” I asked. “What?” “Make no noise? Eating chips? That’s ranked number one on the ‘Impossible Tasks’ category, even ahead of grinning while filling out an income tax return.” “I can dampen noise,” Gerik said. “And summon darkness. Not sure why. I’ve just been this way ever since I was, oh, about fifteen years old, and I escaped the lair of the Mystery Worms that’d been torturing me with the Black Obelisk.” “I was at summer camp when I was fifteen,” I said, for no other reason than I’m terrible at conversations. We continued our trek across the meadow in silence. Or, rather, Gerik was in silence, while I was managing to make it sound like I was a rampaging herd of Josh Hesters tromping across the meadow, bulling my way through the long grass, finding every possible stray branch to step on, causing them to snap in two with sounds like a rifle shot. The moon was high above us. The nearby forest looked like a squat black mountain in the night. It was bright enough to see for a long ways, but not bright enough to see anything very well. “What are we doing again?” I asked Gerik. “And when I say ‘again,’ I mean what are we doing in the first place, because you haven’t told me yet.” “We’re testing your mettle, Josh of Apartment 3B. If you’re going to adventure with us, with Molly and Fridu and Pristilline, I’ll need to have your measure. I’ll need to know that if, by chance, we’re attacked by a bull demon, you’ll have my back.” “I won’t. I’ll run. A bull demon? That sounds terrible. You should run, too. And who’s Pristilline?” It was the first time I’d heard the name. “Pristilline Silver the Golden,” Gerik said. “But we mostly call her Tilly the Spoiler. A paladin. You’ll like her. She’s terrible.” “Why would I like her if she’s terrible?” “It’s a good question,” Gerik said. “Now be quiet a bit. There’s a ghoul in the forest, and I claim him for myself. I’ll be right back.” Suddenly the darkness swirled and gathered around us, or I suppose mostly around Gerik. It was as if he was cloaked in shadows. Even the moonlight was sliding away from him. The man was only two or three feet away, but my eyes couldn’t focus on him. I knew he was there, but it was as if he was gone. The deep shadow moved off and away from me, lost to other shadows. Within moments, I knew I was alone. Which wasn’t great. I was dressed in a pair of ratty blue jeans and an equally ratty t-shirt with an

© 2020: Paul Tobin 66 image of a whiskey bottle saying, “Y, tho?” With them, I wore a pair of old combat boots that an ex-girlfriend had left behind, but that fit me very well. I’d also found the belt that Molly had bought me my first time in Goncourt, and I had my dagger hanging from it, and my phone stashed in one of the belt’s pouches, more as a security blanket than anything else, since I very much doubted my carrier had service in another world. The night air was cool but not unpleasant. The darkness was dark and definitely unpleasant. I could hear various noises of various creatures moving about. I had no idea what they were but I could only assume they were all large and hungry and could see quite well in the dark. “I’m a warrior,” I said to myself, drawing my dagger, well aware it was likely I’d accidentally stab myself in any dangerous situation. My voice hadn’t been very convincing, either, especially since I’d whispered my declaration very softly, not wanting to draw any attention The night smelled of water. I knew the river was somewhere nearby, but the sounds of the night were playing tricks with me, and I wasn’t sure of the direction. I wasn’t even sure where Whitewater was at. Now and then the wind would shift and I could smell the city, an indefinable aroma that had mixtures of old bricks and sweat and cooked meat. I could hear crickets doing their incessant chirp, and the calls of what I assumed to be birds. I could hear occasional animal grunts along with snippets of snuffling. At one point I heard the baying of a wolf, far away, and the answering barks of dogs from miles all around, warning the beast to stay away. I wasn’t good at barking, so I just kept silent. A bird landed on my shoulder. I suppressed a squeal, mostly, and managed to avoid pissing myself, for the most part. The bird let out a little trill in the night, constantly changing its footing, shifting, singing out in musical tones that reminded me of a high, thin, reedy flute. “Hey little buddy,” I said. It trilled in response. “Come to keep me company?” I asked. I had to turn my head all the way to the side in order to face the bird. It was difficult to see, being so close. The bird was barely larger than a sparrow, with dark black feathers, or possibly blue. It was hard to tell in the night. The bird’s head and beak were both a brilliant red. “I’m Josh,” I said. Gerik had told me that there was little problem telling anyone my first name, and I very much doubted that a bird was going to tattle on me, anyway. “I’ll call you Reddy,” I told the bird. “On account of your head.” The bird fluttered its wings like it was considering taking flight, but then settled down again, always with the shifting feet that felt like the tiniest of pinpricks on my shoulder. It let out that trill again. From somewhere in the woods I heard an answering trill. I wondered if the bird was lost and calling to its friends. Or maybe Reddy was sending out a mating call, looking for a little action? I could understand that well enough. I’d done much the same for the past few years in various bars. So while I didn’t actually have wings, if my new friend needed a wingman, I was there for him. Or her. I had no idea. Reddy let out that call again. A sharper trill, this time. And this time there were a © 2020: Paul Tobin 67 pair of answering calls. “Whoa,” I said, grinning. “We got us a player!” Reddy hopped closer, right up against my neck, then let out that call again, just below my ear. “Ouch,” I said. “Small bird. Loud mouth.” From all around in the darkness, there were answering calls. Some came from the darkened smudge of the nearby forest. Others were from points in the air above. There was apparently a whole flock of Reddy-birds out there, and they were organizing an orgy. “I hope you brought protection,” I said, and then there was a whispering noise and a small spray of hot wetness on my neck. An object popped up into view. It was Reddy’s head. He’d been decapitated. His body, now headless, tried to take flight, as if responding to a last desperate command before death. The headless bird leapt forward, but the wings quit beating, and Reddy’s body went into a death spiral and disappeared into the meadow grass. “Brave man, Josh of Apartment 3B,” I heard Gerik say. “I’ll admit I’m impressed.” He was suddenly right in front of me. I was too surprised to say anything. Or move. Or breathe. “I’ve seen soldiers piss themselves when a Deathshrike perches on their shoulder,” he said, cleaning the knife that he’d earlier held to my throat. From down in the grass there was a small glow. It was letters. Numbers. Words.

+132 Experience Points

The message soon faded. “I had a friend killed by shrikes once,” Gerik said. He’d drawn out a handkerchief and was cleaning my neck. “Sorry about getting the blood on you. Not a problem unless it gets inside you, of course. The poison and all.” “The poison?” I said. Gerik nodded, putting away his handkerchief. “Right,” he said. “The poison.” He was walking away. I was following. What else could I do? Beyond clutching my dagger with white knuckles, of course. “That’s what got my friend,” Gerik said. “Heggers was his name. Strapping fighter. Married to a brown bear, if you can believe it. Lost a drunken bet. Named her Linda. Don’t think they ever slept together.” “The poison?” I said. “Bird poison?” “Yer right. I should keep to the topic. Killing ghouls always makes me overly talkative. Gets in my blood. Like fire. But me and Heggers, that day he died, we were in the Volbad Forests. The dark ones. Not the good ones.” “Okay,” I said. He seemed to be leading me into the forest. I hoped it was a good one. “Hunted by the Abyss Assassins,” Gerik said. “Which meant that we had to be quiet. And then a Deathshrike landed on Heggers’ shoulder, like that one did with you.” “Deathshrike?” “That it was, Josh of Apartment 3B. That it was. But Heggers, strong man that he was, couldn’t keep his nerve the way you did. He managed to stay still at first, right enough, but when the first trill of that hell-bird’s call went out, he shivered. And then the second trill. The third. All those answering calls. That shrike kept trilling away © 2020: Paul Tobin 68 on his shoulders, calling out the location of the meat, and Heggers knew that at any second the shrike might drive its poisonous beak into his neck, paralyzing him so that the other shrikes, alerted to his presence, could come and feed on his unmoving body, so that he’d be eaten alive without even being able to scream.” “Oh, I said, mentally considering if it was too late to piss myself. “By then I was fighting a pack of the Abyss Assassins,” Gerik said. “Difficult to stab a spectre. But I could track Heggers from the corners of my eyes. The man broke. Started running. Didn’t make it four steps. The bird plunged its beak through his eye. Froze his brain. Heggers crumpled. I maybe could’ve still saved him, but I had a Ghostblade rammed into my side and three of the assassins’ netherhounds tearing at my limbs. By the time I was free, too much time had passed. Heggers wasn’t anything but bones by then. Nothing I could do. I don’t blame myself.” “Of course not,” I said, trying to sound supportive and consoling, rather than on the verge of whimpering or puking. “The point is,” Gerik said. “I’m impressed, Josh of Apartment 3B, at how confident you were when the shrike was on your shoulders. Nary a twitch! Brave man. That gave me a chance to pop the little bird’s top. Now, mind your step. There were three ghouls.” Even as he spoke, I became aware of how I’d been smelling a dirty, rank, foul odor. It was as if someone had added feces and roadkill to a jar of pickles. We’d just entered the edges of the forest. There were a few scattered trees, and also a few scattered body parts. Two men and a woman. All three of them had been nude. Their bodies were taut, thin, and seemed to be made of sickly white pastry dough rather than flesh. They were also bloodless. Two of the bodies still had their heads. Their faces were horrible, and Gerik wasn’t to blame. They had red eyes even in the night, even in death, and red mouths full of shark-like teeth. “The ghouls,” Gerik said, nudging an arm with his foot. “God damn these things are ugly,” I told him. “Ugly in flesh. Ugly in their hearts. That’s what you get, when you exist only to eat human flesh. Now, prepare yourself. We’re almost at the dungeon. If you have any potions to drink or chants to chant, I’d suggest now’s the time.” He knelt on one knee and slid a faintly curved sword out of its sheath, then produced a whetstone and began sharpening the blade. “God damn do these things stink,” I said, gesturing to the corpses of the ghouls. “They do,” Gerik agreed. “It’s the brine of sin.” “I kind of meant that, maybe we could move farther away from them?” “Ah. Eager to wet your dagger’s blade, Josh of Apartment 3B? Ripe to plunge yourself into the dungeon? I admire that.” He flicked the pad of his thumb across the edge of his sword, nodded in satisfaction, and stood. “Dungeon?” I said. “Molly told me that under no circumstances should I go into a dungeon with you.” “Oh I agree,” Gerik said, with the closest I’d heard to humor in his voice. “Let’s go.” He was moving deeper into the forest and I was following behind, making sure I didn’t become lost and also trying to make sure I didn’t step on his heels, which would’ve been embarrassing. It only took twenty or thirty seconds before we stood at the mouth of a cave at the bottom of a small cliff face, looming some thirty feet above us. The cliff was of exposed rocks, some thick veiny stone, with roots © 2020: Paul Tobin 69 intertwining near the top, and massive trees perched precariously above. There were burning torches set to either side of a cave entrance that descended quickly into unknowable depths. The entrance was large enough to drive a cement truck through, if you happened to own a cement truck and weren’t very smart. “Do you know what a dungeon is?” Gerik asked as we near the entrance, where the fallen leaves and the forest loam gave way to broken rocks and hard ground. I saw a broken sword amidst the rocks. A few bones. There was a length of frayed rope and a rotting crate. Other things. “Molly and Fridu said something about dungeons,” I offered. Gerik was about to say something in reply, but then more of those neon words appeared, floating in the cave’s entrance.

Cordvale Dungeon Levels 1-5 (Dungeon Boss 8) Giant Beetles: Kobolds: Ghouls Fangflies: Baneticks: Sprites: Skeletons: Curseworms: Beekeeper Spirits Treasure type: Low

“How the hell?” Gerik asked, looking to the words and then to me. “What?” I asked. “Something wrong?” This was the most disturbed I’d seen Gerik. “The dungeon listing?” he said, a question in his voice. He was poking at the words with his sword. I couldn’t help but notice how steady he could hold his sword. He had strong wrists. But I was nervous about his confusion. What was wrong with the dungeon? Well, other than all the weird monsters it listed. Were we really going to fight all of those? What the hell was a fangfly, anyway? A Curseworm? A Beekeeper Spirit? “Do you have Cedric’s See-All Stone with you?” Gerik asked. “Did Molly let you borrow it? Ah, that must be it.” He calmed down. “No,” I said. Gerik became anxious again. “Then how are you making it do that?” he asked. Once again he slowly sliced his sword though the words, this time in a more accusatory manner. “I’m the one making it do that?” I asked. “Well it isn’t me!” Gerik said. “Do I look like I could do that?” As he spoke, I really studied him, looking to him in the light cast by the torches to either side of the cave, and then suddenly there were more of the floating words, this time hovering almost over his head.

Gerik of the Darkness Class: Rogue Level: 9 Health points: 97 Race: Human Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Strength: 14 Intelligence: 14 Dexterity: 16 Charisma: 10 Constitution: 16 Languages: Common, Thieves Cant, Elven, English, Special Abilities: +2 against ghouls, Collect Darkness, Absorb Sound, Intimidate (3x per day) © 2020: Paul Tobin 70 Magic Items: +2 ring, Bag of Consumables, Cheese Hunk, +1 Sword of Blood (becomes +3 when stained with fresh blood of two or more foes)

“The hell?” Gerik said. “You’ve read me, too? This is more than odd, Josh of Apartment 3B. This is steep magics, boy. You must have some innate ability to divine the stats of people and objects. No wonder Molly thinks you’d be useful. Why, if nothing else, you’ll be handy in taverns and towns. People’ll pay a coin or two to have their stats exposed. Or, like as not, to avoid having them exposed. Hmm. Can you do yourself?” “Do… myself? You mean… masturbate?” “What?” Gerik took a step back. “Sorry! Uh, my sister Binsa. That’s what she calls masturbating. Doing yourself. I, uh, thought that was what you meant. Not thinking real straight, here. You meant, can I bring up my own stats, right? I don’t think so.” “Try.” “Uh. Okay.” I concentrated, but I didn’t know how to concentrate, so I mostly just felt stupid. Until my stats appeared.

“There!” Gerik said, pointing his sword to my stats. “Stat Divination? I’ve never seen that ability before.” “It wasn’t there before,” I said. “This is new.” Together, Gerik and I fell into silence, staring at the various floating stats, lost in our own thoughts. There was a wind swirling in mouth of the cave, picking up dust and several old scraps of parchment. There was a hollow, moaning sound that came from deeper inside the cave. I hoped it was just the echo of the wind. There were noises from the woods. Something large was moving through the brush, and I shivered when I heard the high trilling of what I now knew to be a Deathshrike. The cave smelled of broken stone, and of wetness, and of the scent of a recent campfire somebody had built just inside the mouth of the cave and never properly extinguished. In the skies above, a storm was building. If it really broke loose, the cave would be our only shelter. It was not a prospect that pleased me. “This is strange,” Gerik said, looking at my stats, but his unnerving calm had returned. He nodded as if strange things were proper. “The only way anyone’s ever been able to uncover stats is with high magics, the spells from the masters of witchcraft or sorcery, or with rare objects such as Molly’s stone.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Another mystery, then,” Gerik said. “Like your ‘open’ class, there.” He slid his © 2020: Paul Tobin 71 sword through my stats again. The words were like smoke, reforming once the blade had passed. Gerik gave a shrug of his own and turned to the mouth of the cave. “Ahh, let’s go kill things,” he said, walking into the cave. “Or get killed, ourselves,” he added, with his voice echoing lively from the darkness, and his boots silent on the broken stones.

Much of the dungeon was of rough-hewn rock, as if somebody had chiseled their way through the mountain. Other tunnels were clearly natural formations, opening into irregular caverns. There were also stretches of dusty hallways with finely worked stone, so that I could almost believe I was in a castle, complete with ancient tapestries hanging from the walls. And there were always lights, but never enough of them. Whether they were glowing stones, torches set into the walls with sconces, or the flickering flames of oil lamps hanging from chains, I was always straining to see. Regardless of what type of hall or tunnel where we found ourselves, the air smelled of dust, rock, and rotted wood. At one point we crossed an underground stream, navigating it with the aid of stalactites that hung from the cavern’s roof, low enough that they were nearly touching the water, making our crossing not unlike slipping through an irregularly spaced fence. We had our first fight when a skeleton stepped out from a recess and brandished an ancient copper sword. Bits of cloth hung from its bones, which were broken in areas, missing in others, and caked with dust that spilled away with each of the skeleton’s tremoring steps. Its teeth were chattering like an old typewriter. Beetles scurried all over the skull, both inside and out. “All yours,” Gerik said, stepping back. “What? Fuck no.” “Now’s the time for valor,” Gerik assured me. “It’s not,” I argued. The skeleton was advancing, closing the thirty foot gap between us. It swung the sword in an experimental fashion, slashing at the air. A rib broke away and fell to the floor with a sound like rolling dice. The skeleton’s bones were yellow and cracked, with bits of meat adhered like ancient patches of leather. “Sometimes they bite,” Gerik said, in a helpful voice. “Fucking kill it, please?” I asked Gerik, in a hopeful voice. “Try your ability where you read its stats,” Gerik said. “I’m curious.” The skeleton was now no more than ten feet away, and advancing, and the man wanted me to do parlor tricks. “I’m busy!” I shouted, but the thought had gotten into my head, so I found myself wondering about the skeleton’s stats, and they appeared.

Skeleton (lower) Level: 1 Health points: 5 Attack Class: 1 Defense Class: 1 (brittle against bludgeon) Attack Damage: 1d4-1

“Good,” Gerik said. “Your spell worked.” He was calmly dodging the skeleton as it

© 2020: Paul Tobin 73 swung its sword for his face, stepping just far enough back for the blade to pass inches from his unconcerned nose. “I can’t cast spells!” I argued like an idiot, because I should’ve been more focused on the issue at hand, namely the undead creature trying to murder me. “Are you carrying a mace?” Gerik asked. “What? No! Where do you think I could be hiding a mace?” “Ah, too bad. A weak skeleton like this, one good crack on his skull and he’d be nothing but broken pottery.” I had to do something quick. The skeleton was pressing its attack on Gerik, but Gerik was easily dodging the sweeps of the blade, and though I doubted there was much intelligence in the pinpricks of light coming from the skeleton’s eye sockets, I could tell it was getting frustrated and thinking about easier prey, meaning me, Josh “Easy Prey” Hester. I had a sudden image of myself as that stumbling newborn antelope you always see in nature documentaries, the one being cut from the herd by a pack of hungry lions. “Shit shit shit,” I said, stepping forward to slash at the skeleton’s sword arm. To my surprise, my attack connected. A crack appeared in the forearm. The skeleton swiveled to face me, with a brighter flare of light from its eye sockets. “Ahh shit shit shit,” I said. The skeleton brought its sword sharply up over its head and then, just as it reversed directions for a slash that would’ve lopped off my head, the bones of its forearm snapped in two, bursting apart in a spray of dust, cracking in half where I’d struck. The arm and the sword fell to the hallway floor. The skeleton and I considered this for a moment. Gerik laughed. The skeleton went to pick up his sword, wrapping its skeletal fingers around the hilt, and I panicked and kicked out with my combat boot, smashing the skeleton’s head against the side of the wall, crushing it between hard stone and the very finest “Made In China” boot that my ex girlfriend had been able to afford. The skeleton shuddered, then turned to a pile of dust with a few scattered splinters of bone. “Well done!” Gerik said, sifting through the skeleton’s scant remains with the tip of his sword. He uncovered a sparkle of light that floated up into the air like a miniature fireworks display, and became words.

+32 Experience Points

I felt a warm tingle flood through my body. I heard a loud buzzing. The tingling sensation was like walking from cool shade into warm sunlight, combined with that feeling of drinking something and then tracking its course through your body, but in this case it started in my chest and spread everywhere. The buzzing sound was actually kind of irritating. I wondered if it was something that happened every time a monster was defeated, and with that thought I realized that I’d now beaten two monsters, and didn’t that mean something? Didn’t that mean that— “Fangflies,” Gerik said. “What?” “Can’t you hear them? That damn buzz. Get ready. Hopefully it’s not a full swarm.” “Fangflies?” I said, still trying to process what he was saying, but then the buzzing © 2020: Paul Tobin 74 grew louder and the concept of fangflies was explained when a group of maybe ten fat insects soared around the corner of the tunnel. We were in a section of finished stone, complete with decorative tables along the sides of the hall, many of which had long ago collapsed from age or been broken in battle. The fangflies were the size of soccer balls and looked like the result of a housefly mating with a vampire walrus. Their wings were beating madly as they spotted us, and then they all, oddly, began flying against the walls, scraping along them with their tusk-like fangs. “They do that to sharpen them,” Gerik said, helpfully. “Oh,” I said. “They want them sharp enough to kill us,” Gerik said, being helpful again. “Oh,” I said, and then “Oh shit,” as the flies collectively decided their fangs were sharp and the time was ripe, and they buzzed down the hall toward us. I could tell they were making even Gerik nervous, which meant they were making me absolutely terrified. How could we fight something like this? I have a hard enough time batting an ordinary housefly; it was worse when the flies could legitimately fight back. And with so many of the fangflies, it would be impossible to fend them all off. I saw Gerik’s form fade as he gathered shadows around him and began moving closer to the fangflies. I didn’t know what to do. They were almost on us. My dagger seemed insufficient for any attack, and my t-shirt would provide little protection. I looked in desperation for anything I could use as a weapon, but there were only the decorative tables and ancient vases. I did spot a tapestry on the wall, next to me, though. It was frayed and terribly threadbare, but if I wrapped it around me, then maybe it could provide some level of protection? I grabbed the edge of it and yanked it as hard as I could, desperate to gain some measure of defense before the flies arrived. The tapestry was attached to the wall by a series of hooks, all of which ripped free from the rotten cloth, excepting the far one, which heroically held tight despite my increasingly frantic tugs. Finally, it tore free. But even as the tapestry ripped away from the hook, the fangflies arrived, barreling into the tapestry just as it fluttered away from the wall. The insects slammed into the ancient cloth with a repeated series of thumps, like a catcher snagging a fastball. Then, as the tapestry crumpled around the fangflies, one edge of the cloth trailed against a hanging oil lamp, which spilled its contents all over the brittle tapestry and set it aflame. And suddenly there was a crumpled and burning tapestry on the hallway floor, one now shaped into what amounted to a bag containing all the fangflies. In seconds it was a roaring conflagration. I could hear, through the crackling of the flames, curious popping noises mixed with furious sizzlings. The high drone of the insects’ wings immediately vanished. Flames were reaching halfway to the ceiling. Floating words appeared, glowing neon blue amidst the dark reds and bright orange of the fire.

+38 Experience Points. +42 Experience Points. +27 Experience Points.

There were more of the neon announcements, often immediately following one of the louder popping noises. A pair of fangflies, encased in flames and now wingless, © 2020: Paul Tobin 75 crawled out from the burning tapestry. Devoid of flight, they were ungainly and stumbling, dragging their outsized fangs. I quickly stomped them and was rewarded with two more announcements of experience points, along with a squishy coating of goo on my shoes and the thrill of momentarily setting my pants on fire. The flaming tapestry was soon spent. The fangflies were dead. That tingling sensation was pulsing through me with every new appearance of the floating neon letters, letting me know that I’d gained additional experience points. Gerik had fallen onto his ass, laughing, with his voice coming from a blur of darkness that even the flames couldn’t touch. “Hah! Well done, Josh of Apartment 3B! You fucking torched them! I’ll be telling this tale in taverns all across Goncourt!” My heart was hammering in my chest. I felt dizzy. Clammy. I was sweating from the sensations pulsing through me, and from the sudden heat in the hallway. I put a hand against the wall for support, then decided to sit on one of the decorative tables, which immediately cracked in half and sent me thumping to the hallway floor in a burst of billowing dust and renewed laughter from Gerik. At first it pissed me off, but in moments I was laughing along with him, laughing at the absurdity of what I was doing when I should’ve been at home, in my apartment, in my bed, in another world, safe and warm in my blankets. And I was also laughing at a release of my tension, too. I might’ve possibly laughed until I was legitimately insane instead of merely bordering on it, but we were interrupted by a bell. “Ding!” it sounded. “Ah,” Gerik said. “Treasure.” The shadows around him faded as he used the tip of his sword to search through the charred fragments of the tapestry, and the equally charred remains of the fangflies. He quickly found a pair of small leather pouches, untouched by the flames. “A few coins,” he said in disdainful fashion, peering into the first pouch. “Maybe ten gold, all told.” He tossed the bag to me and opened the second one. “Hmm,” he said. “Now, this is interesting. A ring.” He took it out of the pouch. It was made of silver, and not of particularly fine quality. A small black stone was embedded in the metal. “Wonder what this does?” he said. “What it does?” I asked. “Why would it do anything?” “Doesn’t need to, I suppose. Could just be normal treasure. But even in this dungeon, it would be odd for a purse to contain a worthless ring.” He handed the ring to me. And then, almost even as I touched it, stats appeared in floating blue letters.

Trip Ring Wearer can cause people / animals to trip 3x per day

“A trip ring?” I said. “How’s that work?” “I’d assume that, when you’re wearing it, you simply concentrate and make the person or animal trip. Fairly self-explanatory.” “Doesn’t seem that powerful,” I said, slipping the ring on. At first it wouldn’t fit, © 2020: Paul Tobin 76 but it seemed to adjust to my size. I guess it was magic, after all. “Nothing ever seems powerful until it does,” Gerik said. “I remember one time, me and a dwarven fighter named Kallisto were in the Underfollows, those ghostly caverns near the Blackmark Mountains. We were terribly lost, the rest of our party having been eviscerated by Burning Spirits with their cold black fingers. We were navigating the edge of a deep pool of abyss waters, a lake made of endless sorrow and pain.” “Damn, Gerik. I just never enjoy your stories.” He clapped my shoulder, nodding in agreement. “Kallisto slipped,” he said. “His boots were worn from our days on the run. And here’s the thing. He’d been just about to throw away a length of rope. He said it was too short to be of any use. Not more than four feet of frayed hemp. But as luck would have it, as he slipped, and as I was frantically trying to grab him, my fingers closed over the other end of the rope, and that rope saved him from going under the water.” “Oh, that’s good.” “That it is, Josh. That it is. What I’m trying to tell you is, we never know when the littlest objects may save our lives, so you should treasure that ring.” “I suppose you’re right,” I told him. “Whatever happened to Kallisto? Did he make it out of the, uh, Underfollows?” “Unfortunately, no. Perhaps two seconds after that rope saved him from going under the abyss waters, a Deathwhale surfaced. The sudden waves splashing on the shore chilled us both, freezing Kallisto and I for several moments, with the damp of the abyss waters sinking into our souls and leaving stains that I carry to this day. In the tumultuous moments of that great beast’s surfacing, we failed to heave Kallisto to safety, and the Deathwhale bit him in two. My friend died with his eyes staring into mine, the light fading away. His pain lasted several moments longer than his life, twisting his face into anguish. Then, his fingers released the rope, and he was gone.” “Jesus fuck.” “It was a good thing he didn’t drown, though,” Gerik said, looking nowhere in particular, lost in thought. “Drowning’s a bad way to go.” * * * I fought two more giant beetles, similar to the ones Molly had killed in my apartment. This time I did less screaming and I heroically avoided stabbing myself. We were in an open cavern, and Gerik heaved one of the beetles up off the ground, using his shoulder to block the powerful pincher attack while slamming the insect down over a stalagmite, skewering it while the insect emitted a shrill, almost human shriek, even as Gerik continued pressing down with his whole of his weight, driving the beetle down, down, with a horrible crackling noise. Meanwhile, I managed to kill the beetle that was chasing me by leaping onto its back and plunging my dagger into it again and again like I used to see Tarzan do with fierce lions in the comics, except that Tarzan wasn’t yelling “Oh shit!” on endless repeat, even after the lion was dead. * * * I fought another skeleton. This time I picked up one of the decorative tables from © 2020: Paul Tobin 77 the side of the hall and held it out in front of me like a battering ram in an attempt to crush the skeleton against a wall, but I tripped while ducking the sweep of his sword, and the table and I barreled through the skeleton’s moss-covered leg bones, snapping them into fragments. After I scrambled to my feet, I simply tossed heavy rocks at the disabled skeleton as the legless horror struggled to pull itself along the floor. It was a gallant fight. * * * “It’s unknown how dungeons form,” Gerik told me. We’d found an open cavern the size of a small house, lit by glowing stones set in the ceiling, banishing maybe half the shadows. Trickles of water came from several locations, echoing throughout the cavern like chamber music. None of the water ever seemed to pool up on the floor, but I couldn’t tell where it was going. “Dungeons are always filled with monsters and treasure,” Gerik said. “If you and I were to scour every single level of Cordvale Dungeon, if we carried out every last coin after killing every single monster, we could come back tomorrow and other treasures will have taken their place, and other creatures would roam the halls. More, there’d be no evidence of our passing, and the treasures and the monsters would both seem as if they’d always been here, waiting undisturbed for ages.” The two of us were drinking water Gerik had collected from a stream, and we were sharing a rich dark cheese that he was using a dagger to slice free from a circle of cheese no larger than a hockey puck. But that hockey puck never seemed to grow smaller. There was always more cheese. The taste had nuances of almonds with hints of dark chocolate, both of these flavors overpowered by an almost stinging cheddar. All in all, it was delicious. “Every day?” I asked. “The caverns refill every day?” “It’s complicated. We could be down here for weeks and it wouldn’t refill. Not until we left. But a separate adventuring party would need to fight their way to reach us, battling through monsters we’d already killed and traps we’d already triggered, but the moment they reached us then they’d be in our dungeon, with the monsters we’d killed as dead to them as they were to us. And don’t give me that look. It’s useless to try to understand these things. The world is as it is. Magic will do what magic will do. A man can only accept what he sees as true. Questioning magic is as useless as stabbing a ghost.” “Unless you have a magic dagger.” “Hah! Good and wise, Josh of Apartment 3B.” He stood and stowed away his cheese, then clapped me on my back and helped me to my feet. “You’re learning.” * * * Ten minutes later I was learning that a Beekeeper Spirit is a ghost that commands supernatural bees and that… as education goes… Cordvale Dungeon was an elective class I should’ve skipped. By then I was monstrously tired and clad not only in my jeans and t-shirt, but with the addition of a cloak that looked heavy but felt weightless, and a buckle of leather armor around my right forearm, armor that we’d taken from a kobold’s knapsack after Gerik had done me the favor of running the little bastard through with his sword. Even the act of holding my dagger was exhausting. My arm was tired from all the stabbing. I was frantically trying to stay © 2020: Paul Tobin 78 behind Gerik even while he himself was twisting and turning, because I had absolutely no way to harm either the Beekeeper Spirit or his bees, but Gerik had used his Intimidate ability and they were wary of him, keeping their distance, although that distance was steadily shrinking. “Hold out your dagger!” he ordered me. I held it out, even while we continued our strange dance, trying to keep the bees from circling behind me. Gerik had produced a vial of some glowing red liquid and he poured it all over my dagger and part of my hand, then lit everything on fire, with the red liquid bursting into flames all along my dagger and arm, and also a few places where it’d dripped onto my clothes. “God damn shit!” I yelled, trying to snuff out the flames, managing to almost cut my own throat. “It’s spirit flame!” Gerik laughed. “Can’t harm you! Just stab the ghosts!” Even before he was finished speaking I’d noticed how the flames weren’t burning me, and that in fact that I could hardly feel them at all, though I was struck with a sudden sense of extreme loneliness. Despite my newfound loneliness I didn’t want the Beekeeper Spirit’s company, so I lunged forward and ran my dagger through its chest. The spirit had been appearing as a stocky elderly woman in homespun clothes, blurry at the edges and mostly transparent, but as my flaming dagger rammed through her chest she momentarily lit up from within, like a paper lamp, and I could see demonic features flickering across her shocked expression. Then I felt a fierce wind all along my arm, and the ghost screamed shockingly loud in my face, resulting in me pulling abruptly back, which in turn caused my dagger to rip upward, slicing the spirit in half. The smoky flesh made a valiant effort to merge back together, but then came a burst of cold and the spirit vanished with a girlish sob. The ghostly bees fluttered toward the floor, but disappeared before impact, glowing blue in their last moments as they reflected the light from the proclamation that appeared in midair.

+195 Experience Points

“Not bad,” Gerik said. “Though I was hoping there’d be treasure.” He was looking around, disappointed. “These spirits often drop jewels. Do you know why?” “I literally feel like I don’t know anything right now.” “It’s because of the structure of gemstones. They’re similar, gems and ghosts. They’re almost kinfolk. The presence of an emerald or a diamond can help strengthen a ghost. They feed off them. That’s why so many of the larger gemstones are haunted.” “That’s fascinating,” I said, not feeling fascinated, because the only thing I felt was tired. But then I felt something happening. The hair along my arms went prickly. My skin buzzed. My heart was raced. I worried that I’d been poisoned. Maybe one of the spirit bees had stung me, and I had supernatural poison racing through my veins, attacking me at my very core, my entire existence? Light flickered around me. Tiny explosions. “Oh!” Gerik said. “You made a level!” “I did what?” The flickering lights were fading. “Made a level. I was wondering if that would happen. When you gain enough © 2020: Paul Tobin 79 experience points you accrue greater powers. But, you were zero level. Sometimes zero level people never level up. You should bring up your stats again, see what’s changed.” “Okay.” I concentrated, and it didn’t take long before my stats appeared. The floating blue letters seemed brighter, this time.

Josh Hester Class: Open Level: 1 Health points: 13 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good Strength: 11 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 11 Charisma: 11 Constitution: 12 Languages: English Special Abilities: Stat Divination, Poison Resistance (25% chance no damage: half damage otherwise) Heal Light Wounds (1d4+1: 1x day) Special Attack: Precision 3x day: attack ignores opponent’s armor class Known Spells: Lightning Bolt (2x day) Magic Items: Trip Ring, +1 Cloak

“This is amazing,” Gerik said. “But also, absurd.” He was almost glaring at the floating words, as if daring them to continue saying what they were saying. “Absurd, how?” “Well, your class is still listing as ‘open,’ but that can’t be right. It was marginally acceptable when you were zero level, but now that you’re first level you have to be categorized. And, you’ve accrued a fine number of health points, there. More than I would’ve thought, but even stranger is that several of your attribute points went up. Your strength went from ten to eleven, for instance. That will happen over time, but… so soon?” “Oh.” I was flexing my arm, trying to decide if I felt any stronger. I certainly didn’t feel tired anymore. I felt rejuvenated. I actually wanted to go deeper into the dungeon. “And now you have more special abilities, including a spell, which would lead me to assume you’re a magic user or some related class, but then why do you get a special attack?” “I… don’t know?” “And you have another spell, too. You can not only heal, but also shoot lightning bolts.” “I can?” I didn’t feel like a man who could shoot lightning bolts, but then I didn’t have any good idea what that man would feel like, either. I was pacing up and down the corridor, which was a wide stone tunnel covered by relief carvings depicting warriors battling wolves and elephants. The carvings were badly chipped and largely covered in moss or with stalactites that hung from above, merging with the walls. The hall was huge, as if we were in a corridor made for giants. The air smelled of static electricity and dust, as well as urine, since Gerik was taking the opportunity for a bathroom break, pissing against the wall. “I want to go deeper into the dungeon,” I said. Gerik’s gaze swiveled to me. I was © 2020: Paul Tobin 80 surprised I’d spoken, and wishing I’d waited until after he was finished pissing. “Of course you do,” he said. “Gets in your blood, doesn’t it? Always curious what’s next? Matching yourself against men and monsters? Finding treasures? Discovering new stories to tell in taverns, regaling women whose clothes always seem to slip away with the hours? This is the life for me. I’m well pleased to be here, with you, Josh of Apartment 3B. I always enjoy life the most when I’m in a dungeon with my friends.” “I look forward to meeting your other friends,” I told him. “Oh, they’re dead now. All dead.” He gave a satisfied nod, tucked his penis back in his pants, and off we went down the dusty corridor.

“We’ll have to climb down,” Gerik said. We’d come to a ledge of sorts, a rough balcony of rock at the end of a tunnel, hanging out over a void in a cavern the size of a football stadium. A river rushed through the cavern, with waters so cold I could feel them from where we were, fifty feet above the rapids. The cavern was sparsely lit by torches stationed on the cavern floor, or set into sconces at intervals along the walls. With the exception of the river’s edge, where stretches of glowing moss worked in tandem with the torches, the lights were inadequate to illuminate of the cavern, so that only pockets of light existed. There could have been armies hiding in the shadows. If there were, we couldn’t have heard them; the river was too loud, too echoing. Gerik and I needed to shout at each other in order to be heard. “Climb down?” I asked, peering over the edge. That didn’t seem like the wisest thing to do, because while the cliff did look like it had some foot and hand holds, there were also stretches of sheer stone, and many of the rocks looked risky as far as supporting any weight. The river’s edge was littered with fallen, broken stones. Plus, there were only a couple of feet between the river’s edge and the base of the cliff. If we fell into the water we’d be swept along in the raging current, carried along by the river until it disappeared into a gaping pit, swirling with a whirlpool. We stood looking at the drop for a couple minutes, during which time there were four surges in the river, each of them sending waves slapping against the base of the cliff. A basketball-sized boulder rolled free at one point, tumbling into the water. “It’s the only way forward,” Gerik said, producing a length of coiled rope. Just where he’d been storing it, I had no idea. But at least we weren’t going to be climbing down freehand. Of course, the best idea was not to climb down at all. Gerik said, “I can see hesitation in your eyes, Josh of Apartment 3B.” “You could see it in my ears and nostrils and balls, too, if you looked.” Gerik considered this, glancing to me even as he tied one end of the rope to a stalagmite rising up from the floor, a feature that he’d kicked several times in order to make certain it was sturdy, likely weakening it as he did. When the rope was tied off, he walked to the edge of the dropoff and stood there with me, looking out into the vastness and down to the river, unspooling the rope to allow it to drop below, where the fierce waters toyed with the end, tugging on it in playful fashion. “Salena was my friend,” he finally said. I could barely hear him. He was speaking soft, and the water below us was surging, echoing throughout the cavern like a drumbeat that never ended. “I didn’t know that.” “I have few friends,” Gerik said. “I’ve had many companions, but few friends. Salena was one of the latter. The first time I met her, she was leaving the Great Tooth Dungeon. I was heading inside. This was years ago, of course. I wasn’t the man I am now. Far worse in some ways, I admit.” He was testing the rope, but in

© 2020: Paul Tobin 82 ridiculous fashion. He had his boots on the very edge of the dropoff and was leaning back into the void, holding onto the rope, seeing if it would support him. But, what if it didn’t? He said, “The Great Tooth Dungeon has a cavern at the beginning, lit by sunlight from above, thanks to a partial ceiling collapse. That’s how I first saw Salena. She was scuffed and bloodied and stumbling out of the dungeon, barely upright, bleeding from a gaping wound in her side, half her hair burnt away, and she still looked beautiful. She always had that nature about her. A presence. A draw.” I nodded, thinking about how I’d seen her naked that time in the bathroom mirror, but then my mind replaced that memory with the countless times I’d seen her smile. Despite the allure of what I’d seen in the bathroom mirror, my memories of her smiles were fonder. But, to think of her being wounded, hurt? When had that happened? What was she doing… in those days when she’d been my babysitter… with the rest of her time? “The other members of her party had been obliterated,” Gerik said. “A Mine Troll. Nasty bastards. Sulfur and coal. Molly’s father had died that day. Hogarth was his name. Ripped near in half by a dull stone axe.” I thought of those nights Salena had been crying in her room, me listening in mine. Could it have been over Hogarth’s death? But, no. The timing wasn’t right. It was something else. I wondered if I would ever know. Gerik was satisfied with the rope, and began wrapping it around his waist. He said, “That woman, coming out of the dungeon, was carrying a baby bulljaw. You know what those are?” “No.” “Picture a bulldog crossed with a bull.” “Bulldogs already look like bulls. That’s why they call them bulldogs.” “They call them bulldogs because they were used to attack bulls as a sport. But, regardless, a bulljaw has a great deal more ‘bull’ to it. Far larger size. Muscle. Formidable teeth. They’re carnivores. Voracious. The babies are cute, though. Salena had been forced to flee the caverns, leaving all the dead, including Hogarth, behind. The Mine Troll was coming after her. At one point she would’ve died, but a mother bulljaw had thrown herself at the Mine Troll, rightfully believing it was a danger to her baby. The Mine Troll slaughtered her. The battle took only ten, maybe twenty seconds, but it was enough time for Salena to gain some distance. She used part of that time to rescue the baby bulljaw, knowing full well that it was about to be orphaned. She hugged it to her bloodied body, using magics to support its weight as she ran through the caverns, full of rage and sorrow, and fear as well, for Mine Trolls are single-minded creatures of pure destruction, and it was still in pursuit.” “Fuck,” I said. A scintillating addition to the conversation. “It wasn’t until just before the dungeon’s entrance that she was safe. There’s a long bridge of rope and wood that crosses an abyss. Withered wood. Frayed rope. Certainly nothing to support a Mine Troll. The monster was forced to stop at the edge of the chasm, lobbing stones the size of pumpkins at Salena as she stumbled her way across.” “Shit,” I said. “Salena raised that bulljaw. You have to understand, Josh of Apartment 3B, that © 2020: Paul Tobin 83 bulljaws are terrible things. Always full of rage. Always vicious. Their tempers are like constant explosions. But when I would visit Salena, in the years after, I watched as Biscuit, the baby bulljaw, grew into the sweetest creature I’ve ever known. They grow amazingly fast, bulljaws. Blink your eyes and they’ll double in size, as the saying goes. Picture this, my friend; Biscuit was a beast with twice the bulk of the largest bull, with six times the muscle, and with teeth like that of a wolf, set in a jaw the size of whale’s, but all she wanted to do was nuzzle and play. Biscuit loved music, she did. I swear she could dance. And all because of the love from that witch. All because of Salena. All because of the woman I first met on the day she stumbled out of that dungeon, leaving bloody footprints and a dead husband behind. You think on that. You think of how even then, even at that moment, Salena had love in her heart.” “I—” “But then you think of how someone murdered that woman. You think on that as well. And you think on how if you want to find that person, if you want to do something about how your babysitter was murdered, then your only choice is to climb down this cliff face, to press on through this dungeon, and to earn the strength and the skill necessary to slam a blade through the eye socket of whoever it was that burned Salena alive.” I swear even the river had quieted. The walls refused to echo anything but Gerik’s words. I could even hear the reverberations of the way he was gritting his teeth. I thought of the blurred man and everything he’d told me. I thought of the foxes he’d burned into my flesh. “Show me how to use the rope when I climb,” I told Gerik. He stared at me for some moments, and then his face broke into a grin. Well, a grimace with the merest traces of humor, but that was pretty good for him. He said, “Good. You’re starting to understand something. The little people, the ones on the sidelines, they believe that a hero is a man so brave that he never shits his pants in the face of danger. But the truth of the matter is, a hero is a man who still fights, even when his pants are full of shit.” “That’s gross praise,” I told Gerik, and then he climbed down the side of the cliff, shouting up to me the whole time, instructing me on how to best use the rope in order to secure my weight during the climb. It only took him a minute and then he was standing by the river’s edge, holding the rope not only to keep it steady for me but also so that he himself wouldn’t get swept away by the surging water. I couldn’t hear him anymore over the roar of the river and the echoes from the cavern, but I could see him gesture that it was my turn, beckoning me down. I wrapped the rope around my waist and clenched it in my hands. While I’d been watching Gerik descend I’d promised myself I wouldn’t hesitate when it was my turn. That would be key. If I hesitated, then my fear of falling to the rocks below would only grow. Gravity wasn’t going to lessen while I waited to build up my nerve. I took a breath, thought of Salena, and swung my foot out over the edge. * * * I did fairly well. I was over the side, holding the rope with my hands and using my feet on the slippery rocks, before I really even realized it was happening. It felt like a dream. It felt like I was watching a documentary about trained professionals © 2020: Paul Tobin 84 spelunking in caves. I did my best not to look down, because I didn’t want to see those eager rocks or the hungry waters. I didn’t look up either, because I didn’t want to see how far down I’d gone, because if it wasn’t very far then that meant I still had a long ways to go, and I didn’t want to think about it. I only wanted to let the rope play through my hands, inches at a time. I only wanted to make sure of my footing on the rocks, to find the driest areas, the solidest protrusions. I also wanted to avoid any of the insects and the other things clinging to the walls. The slugs and the snails were even slipperier than the water or the moss. Strange dragonflies came buzzing around my head, along with gnats that seemed intent on my eyes, and at one point I saw a scorpion, but it scuttled away into a darkened recess the size of a mailbox. I was recovering from the shock of seeing the scorpion when my rope gave a sudden jerk, so violent that I almost lost my grip. I looked down and Gerik was waving madly, gesturing at something above me. I looked up and there was a man grinning down over the edge, some fifteen feet above me. It was one of the Whitewater guards I’d seen in the Leaky Centaur. He was white, with a thick bush of a mustache that looked like a toupee glued beneath his nose. He’d wedged a torch into a crack in the rocks, giving him some light so that he could go about his work, which was to use his dagger to cut my rope loose. “Oh son of a bitch,” I said. “How do you like this, you fuck?” the man yelled down at me. There was such anger in his voice. What had I done to earn that hatred? I mean, maybe he’d been paid to kill me or something, but to hate me? Where was that coming from? But right now, the only thing that mattered is that I didn’t want to fall. Around me, there was nowhere to grab, nothing that could hold me. The rope was my only chance, and I could see it starting to fray where the bastard was slicing at it with his dagger. He was cutting where the rope was pulled taut between the stalagmite and the edge of the drop, the drop that I’d be taking if I didn’t find some way to avoid falling. I found a loose rock about the size of my fist and yanked it free from the cliff, then tried to hold on with one hand while pitching the rock at the man above me. It didn’t work. I almost lost my grip on the rope and saved him the trouble of cutting me loose. The rock went straight up in the air no more than ten feet, then arced back down behind me. I could hear it splash into the raging waters. “Shit!” I yelled. There wasn’t anything I could do. I was helplessly hanging, and soon to be helplessly falling. “Why are you doing this?” I yelled up at the man, but he just glanced down with a mixture of a grimace and a smile, flicked a thumb over the edge of his blade as a way of telling me that it was very, very sharp, then once more began cutting at the rope. One of my feet slid free and I almost fell again. It was nearly impossible to hold the rope in my panic. I could feel it sliding through my fingers. I knew my only chance was to scramble the rest of the way down before he could cut the rope. I began finding footholds as best as I could, not looking for the choicest footholds but instead the quickest ones. But then the man looked down over the drop and smiled at me, and I knew that I wouldn’t prove able to climb down fast enough. That grin said it all. He had me. So I put all of my prayers and my strength into another rock, wrenching it free from the cliff and readying my throw, thinking of Salena and thinking stupidly of the © 2020: Paul Tobin 85 night she’d taught me how to make the tastiest grilled cheese sandwiches. I clutched at the sharp stone in my fist, the rock fresh from the cliff face, knowing it was my last hope, and then I held as tight to the rope with one hand as I could, and I pitched the rock with all my strength. It missed entirely. It was worse than my first try. The man and his goddamn stupid murderous mustache glanced down at me, with him standing on the edge and laughing at the man he was going to murder. I almost fell from the rope again, clutching at it with one hand, and it took a frantic grab with my other hand to keep me alive, or at least alive for the next three or four seconds, the time it would take for him to cut the rope. It was when I clutched back at the rope with my other hand that I noticed the ring on my finger, the treasure I’d found after I’d torched the fangflies. The Trip Ring. “Oh yeah!” I all but screeched. “My ring! Trip, you motherfucker!” I was staring up at my probable murderer with all the fear and hatred I could muster, picturing him tripping. He was turning away from me, heading back to the rope, but even from my terrible angle I could see him trip. He jerked as he stumbled, then for one moment he disappeared, only to fall backward into view, his feet scrambling for purchase, but all he did was propel himself off the edge of the cliff. He fell. “Yes!” I yelled out. “Oh shit!” I yelled next, because he was flailing his way right toward me, his arms and legs kicking wildly as he screamed, and I hugged to the side of the rocks as hard as I could. It seemed impossible that he’d miss me, but as I braced for impact there was a quick moment of wind, the sensation of something brushing only lightly against my back, and the next moment I heard a terrible thud below me, an impact that only momentarily stilled his scream, because when I looked down I saw his broken body, both legs twisted into unnatural positions, just as he bounced into the water. He sank. Then surfaced. Then he screamed as the churning waters sent him speeding along toward the whirlpool, which swallowed him only moments later. And just like that, I’d killed a man. I was no longer Josh Hester. I was Josh Hester Who Had Killed A Man. It was impossible to believe he’d survived. Especially after “+132 Experience Points” came rising up out of the whirlpool and floated all the way over to me. I waited for the guilt and the horror over killing a man to settle into my stomach, but it didn’t happen. I felt numb, but at the same time I was bursting with relief at having found a way to survive. There wasn’t enough room to allow any guilt to take hold. He’d been trying to kill me. That meant I hadn’t murdered him. Instead, I’d killed him. There was a difference. I was surprised to find the rocks of the river’s edge beneath my feet. I’d been climbing down the rope all without paying attention. Gerik helped to steady me, even as we clung against the rocks during one of the smaller surges of the river. It was too loud, there at the river’s edge, to have any sort of conversation. Gerik clasped my shoulder, though, as a way of telling me that I’d survived. It was a truth that I needed to hold tight. It was a far saner focus than the sound of the man’s © 2020: Paul Tobin 86 screams or that terrible thud of his impact. I’d survived. That’s all there was to it. Gerik gestured past me, pointing out a tunnel entrance some ten feet away, maybe ten feet up. We navigated the broken rocks and the pools of water, clinging to face of the cliff like leeches whenever the river surged and the waves slapped at us. At one point, clutching a pommel-shaped protrusion of stone and waiting for the waters to subside enough for us to make any more progress, I stared in horrified wonder at the cheap-looking ring on my finger. Three times a day, it could trip someone. Three times a day, I could kill a man. I knew that the thoughts racing through my head didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t stop them. I was almost glad for the adjacent chaos of the river and our desperate scramble along the wet rocks. It was distracting. When we entered the tunnel, it wasn’t long before the huge cavern was behind us. I found that I missed the overpowering roar of the water.

As we walked, I told Gerik about the blurred man. I spoke of how he’d appeared in a buried memory of mine, guiding and goading my father to his death. I talked about seeing the foxes while riding my bike. I talked about the tattoos on my arms and chest. “Foxes?” Gerik asked in his voice like a cheese grater on gravel. “And this man’s face was blurred? Did you use your divination ability on him?” “Didn’t even think about that. Not sure I had the ability then?” “Well, you have it now. What’s it say about the tattoos?” “Oh. I didn’t think of that, either.” “Lots of people have died not thinking about things, Josh of Apartment 3B. You need to start.” So we stopped for a time. We were in a hallway carved from living stone, but chiseled with immaculate care, with a line of throne-like chairs carved into the walls. I sat in one of the chairs after Gerik had thoroughly checked it for traps. “Chairs are often trapped,” he explained, his fingers tracing the lines of stone, his eyes narrowed as he studied each speck of dust. “Traps?” I asked, taking off my shirt so that I could see the foxes on my arms and chest. It made me feel a ridiculous, sitting there shirtless, but wearing a cloak. It reminded me of my sister’s roommate Valentine with his fetish clubs. “Oh yes,” Gerik said, tapping his finger lightly on the carved arm of the chair. “Chairs can have a wide range of traps. Sometimes it’s fire from a hidden spigot. Or poison darts. Pressure traps that trigger explosions. A few years back, I was in the Horsedrawn Dungeon, you know that one?” “I do not.” “An amazing thing. An entire dungeon, near to big as this one, but the entrance is in a moving carriage. Only appears on certain days. A noiseless horse. No sound from the wheels, either. You have to know where to look. There’s a blood sacrifice involved.” “You mean… human sacrifice?” I’d been studying my tattoos, but stopped, realizing how very little I knew about this heavily armed man who was standing next to me far beneath the surface of the earth. “Not the type you mean. Just a cut across your palm, then hold it up to the horse like you’re feeding it oats. That thing’s tongue feels like silk. The carriage only stops once the horse is fed.” “Goncourt is one fucked up place,” I said. I meant it in a bad way. “That it is,” Gerik agreed. He meant it in a good way. “The point is, we were sitting in the back of the carriage, Daylin and I. Big bear of a man. Likely some orc in his ancestry. Maybe even some giant. The two of us were some measure of bored. Sometimes it takes a bit for the dungeon’s entrance to appear in the carriage. We

© 2020: Paul Tobin 88 were passing time by talking of Daylin’s ex wives. They number enough that we could’ve been there all night. Daylin’s a good man, but not a cleanly one, and that can wear.” “That can wear,” I agreed, trying to decide if the foxes on my arms had changed. Were they faced in a different direction? Gerik said, “Daylin shifted at one point to peer out a window. Sat down in a different spot. Thing is, we hadn’t even thought to check the carriage seats for traps.” “Oh god. Is this another one of your stories that goes bad?” “What?” Gerik made a face as if he couldn’t understand what I meant. There was a wind picking up in the hallway. A sound of rattling windows. It was disconcerting because there weren’t any windows. Gerik said, “So, he sits down, and there’s this sound. Like, a click. And then an iron spike exploded out of the seat exactly where Daylin had been sitting! Would’ve gone up right through his balls, for sure!” “Wow. That sounds like a close call that could’ve—” “And I know it would’ve gone through his balls, because the next one did. Came up right where he was sitting. Slammed up through his groin. He’s got nothing left down there, these days. Walks a bit odd.” “God damn it. Never tell me a story again.” “Hmm, so these are the tattoos, then? The scars?” He was looking me over, lifting my cloak to stare at my back and see if there were any more foxes. “Yeah. Hurt like hell. You ever seen anything like this?” “No. Use your divination. See what it says.” I concentrated, and in not long there were glowing letters floating a couple feet out from my chest.

Fox Geas Cursed Spell The victim must perform a designated task within a set time limit. During the spell’s duration the foxes slowly merge, gathering into one creature that will then burst into the Fires of the Abyss, claiming and consuming the victim from within if the task is not performed.

“Well, shit,” Gerik said. “Shit,” I agreed, truly meaning every word. “So, I’m like a Molotov cocktail waiting to happen?” “This blurred man said you had a month? And, what was it he wanted?” “A month, yeah. And he didn’t say what I was supposed to have. Just that it was something Salena gave me. I can’t think she ever gave me anything, unless you count grilled cheese sandwiches.” “I can’t see this blurred man going through all this for a grilled cheese sandwich, no.” “Gerik, he made it sound like he was the one who killed Salena. That this,” I © 2020: Paul Tobin 89 touched one of the fox tattoos, “is what he did to her.” Gerik nodded, leaning back against one of the finely carved walls. His eyes closed. His breathing slowed. Now and then a whirl of wind would speed through the tunnel, sweeping billows of dust up from the floor. The air smelled of candle wax. I put my shirt back on. Finally, Gerik opened his eyes and stood away from the wall. “We have to find this man before your time is up,” he said. “If we kill this bastard, it should cause his geas to fade. It’s sad, though, that we only have the one month.” “Right? I hope that’s enough time to find him.” “There’s that, but there are other factors. The first is that we must strengthen you. Make you stronger. We need to continue through this dungeon, get you some more experience, raise your levels for the coming fight.” Gerik was walking away with long strides, heading deeper into the dungeon and the waiting monsters. I hurried after him. He was right. I had to be stronger. When I caught up to him, I could see that he was seething. His nostrils were flared. Eyes wide. He reminded me of a hunting dog. He said, “The other reason I wish we had more time is simple. Salena’s friendship was a period of calm in my life. To be honest, most of my years are nothing but scars and screams. That witch was a time of laughter. Of peace. If this blurred man is the one who killed Salena, then I want his death to be painfully hard, and for it to take far longer than any month.” He kept walking with those long strides of his. It was difficult to keep pace. I could hear something howling from somewhere in the tunnels ahead. I could hear something howling from inside Gerik, too. * * * We fought other creatures on our way to what Gerik said was the dungeon’s lowest level. There were ghouls in a cavern of death, horrible semi-humans gnawing on an assortment of shattered bones as we watched from hiding, their teeth cracking the bones or else scraping over them with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. The cavern was so full of a rancid scent that I could feel it clinging to me like fishhooks and almost see hanging in the air like a fog. The bones were from a mixture of various animals and unfortunate people whose lives had ended in this cavern. A fair percentage still had remnants of tattered flesh clinging to them. Some of the flesh was withered and dry, like leather. On other bones the meat was fresh enough to bleed. Bits of broken armor were littered amongst the bones. There were fallen weapons. A helmet. Hints of gold. The sour taste in the air was getting into my throat. It was difficult to avoid gagging, and even harder to block out the realization of what we were smelling. The whole cavern was suffused with death. Gerik and I hid at the edge of the tunnel, looking out to the terrible scene, to the pale white flesh of the ghouls, the reds of their eyes and teeth, their long fingers with nails like claws, the soft plop plop of the way their feet sounded whenever they shambled across the stone floor. I felt my stomach turn with every crunch of their teeth on bones, or the smacking of their blubbery lips. “I want these abominations for myself,” Gerik whispered as he slid away from me and went into darkness, barely visible despite how I knew he was there. He reached the first of the ghouls and had its head lopped away before any of the others noticed. There were six more of them. It didn’t seem like Gerik would stand a chance. But © 2020: Paul Tobin 90 then two more were dead, and then another, and the dim outline of Gerik was dancing through the cavern, all grace and speed, nearly impossible to see even though the torches were casting his shadow against the walls. It was only moments before the ghouls were dead and we were hurrying on through the tunnels. We didn’t stop to search for any treasure. The scents were too overpowering, and it would have seemed like grave-robbing, anyway. It would have made us into ghouls of a different sort. Perhaps another five hundred feet down the slowly descending tunnel, I killed a curse worm with a lightning bolt. The creature came burrowing out of the floor twenty feet in front of us, just as Gerik and I were finally broaching the topic of how I’d killed a man back at the cliff. Gerik tried to console me, and I appreciated that, but I honestly wasn’t sure if it was necessary. I was still furious beyond belief at the mustachioed man, and though parts of me were cringing at the memories of his scream as he’d fallen and that terrible sound of his impact, most parts of me were overjoyed that the fucker had died. Most parts of me were remembering his smug smile when he’d been cutting my rope. Then, just before the curse worm attacked, my conversation with Gerik had diverted into a discussion of my Trip Ring, and then into my own abilities, especially how my stats had implied that I could cast lightning bolts. Was that even possible? How would I do it? Those were the questions running through my head when suddenly the ground shifted and the worm reared up from below. It was monstrous. Thick as a tree trunk, dripping some sort of gooey fluid from everywhere on its undulating body. Its flesh was a mottled dark pink with patches of thick hair. It had multiple eyes, like an assortment of jewels shining from its terrible flesh. Smaller versions of the worm burrowed up from all around, and even smaller examples were burrowing within the larger worm itself. The smell was like an intense coal fire. I screamed and then, perhaps because of the discussion Gerik and I’d been having, I fired a lightning bolt. It shot out from the fingertips of my left hand and slammed into the curse worm, blasting a hole in its tree trunk body with such force that the entire worm was ripped free from the floor and blasted nearly twenty feet down the tunnel, bouncing three times against the sidewalls before coming to a tumbling rest, dead and leaking. The smaller worms all died in the explosion. The tunnel’s roof rumbled a warning against anyone firing off any more explosives. A pair of supporting beams shifted. There was a crater in the floor, a pocket of charred stones strewn with meaty hunks from the smaller worms. Strands of electricity still sizzled across the largest worm, burning along with the fires lining the hole I’d blasted in its body, lending the tunnel an eerie light. “You cast a lightning bolt?” Gerik said with such wonder in his voice that it surprised me. After all, he’d been friends with Salena, and was currently friends with Fridu of Stone Wood. They were witches. Certainly they’d cast lightning bolts before? “I’ve seen lightning bolts before,” Gerik said, clearing that up. But then why was he still so confused? “That wasn’t any first level Lightning Bolt,” he explained. “That was far more powerful than it should’ve been, from someone of your level.” He strode to the largest worm’s corpse and used his hands to measure the size of the hole I’d blasted. © 2020: Paul Tobin 91 He turned to me and held out his hands, nearly a yard apart. I shrugged, then picked up a small pouch that had appeared on the floor. It contained a few gold coins and also an ample collection of silver coins well tarnished with age. There were also two jewels. I wondered what they were worth. I pictured me back home, in the city, at a jewelry store, trying to sell them and facing the inevitable question of how they’d chanced into my possession. What the hell would I tell them? I didn’t know. Gerik and I moved on. A hundred feet down the tunnel, we saw another giant beetle. This one was crawling down the left-hand wall of the tunnel, which by then had become a well- kept hallway. The air felt fresher. The beetle considered us for a moment and then scuttled away, with its clawed feet ripping out small pieces of stone and knocking a tapestry to the floor. On a whim I concentrated on making the beetle trip, mostly to see if I could do it. As soon as the thought flashed through my head, the beetle skidded on the wall, its back feet sliding free while its front feet scrabbled for purchase, but it was too late and it thudded to the floor. Immediately afterward, maybe because the beetle understood I was the one who’d made it trip, it went on the attack, spreading its wings and flying madly at my face. Gerik shoved me to one side and leapt forward, hitting the floor in a somersault and drawing his sword as he rolled, with the blade arcing upward and cleaving the beetle in half. Gerik’s momentum carried him past the resulting shower of blood and goop, which was good because it was tacky and smelled like radioactive weasel shit. “Nice work,” I said, but Gerik held a finger to lips for silence. I tried to listen for whatever he was hearing. There wasn’t much. There was the sloshing noise of the bisected beetle settling into a widening pool of gore. There were the fluttering sounds of the flames in the oil lamps against the walls, like tiny bat wings. There was the constant hum, almost a moan, of being underground, of all the stone breathing around us. Occasionally a slight breeze would make its way down the hall. There was an old frame on the wall near me, the painting long since cut away, and whenever the breeze made its way down the hall the frame would tap and rattle against the stone. Gerik walked closer to me, avoiding the spilled beetle. “You hear that?” he whispered. “We’re being followed.” “Followed?” I whispered back. “I didn’t hear anything. Who’s following us?” “Too far back to tell. This isn’t a good defensive position. We’ll have to move on.” “You think it’s Pig-Face?” I asked as we began walking. “Pig-Face?” “Oh. Back at the Leaky Centaur in Whitewater. There were three guards. Pig-Face was their leader. They tried to… arrest me, or something? One of the guards is the man I killed back at the river.” “That could be it, then. When you see one rat, there’s usually a nest.” “What the hell do these guys have against me?” “Did you sleep with anyone in Whitewater? Kill anyone?” “Uh, no.” “Then it’s likely something to do with how you knew Salena. She was a controversial woman. Had a lot of enemies.” “What? Salena? How’s that even possible?” This was news to me. I’d just figured that everyone loved her. © 2020: Paul Tobin 92 “Because of Hogarth,” Gerik told me. “Her husband. The man who died. He was the son of Holden Sengar.” Gerik spoke the name as if it had great importance. He looked to me for a reaction. All I had was confusion. “Who?” I said. “Ah. I forget you’re not from these lands. Holden Sengar is the head of Sengar family, the entire family, not just his blood relatives but the entire band of assassins. Perhaps three hundred of the lot. They wield enormous influence in Whitewater and beyond. Not just this influence,” he tapped his dagger, “but also political in nature. Sengar is brother to the king.” “An assassin is the king’s brother? How’s the king feel about having a man like that in his family?” “Don’t be naïve. King Istvan feels it’s wonderful. His enemies fear they could be cut down from the darkness. It makes it easier to impose your will when there’s death hanging from your every word.” “Where’s Salena come into this? The problem with her, I mean.” “Salena, in the minds of some, used her witch’s powers to steal Hogarth from his rightful path. She led him astray, and then to his death in the Great Tooth Dungeon. For that crime, she had to pay. But even worse, she stole the honor of the Sengar assassins.” “How’s so?” “I can’t be sure. There was some object. An item. A sacred artifact stolen from the Sengar treasure-house. Hogarth took it with him when he decided his life was with Salena, rather than his family. Since then, the cult of the assassins has been fading. Their influence is waning.” “Wait. The blurred man. Could he be one of the assassins? Do they think I have this thing? Why the hell would I have it?” “Someone has it,” Gerik said. “Might be you.” “I think I’d know if I had a magic item.” “Would you? You didn’t know Salena was a witch, even though she told you. You didn’t know the world of Goncourt existed. You had a door to another world in your bedroom, but remained ignorant of its presence. And now suddenly you’re an expert on the existence of magic items?” I didn’t have any response. We walked on in silence. My adrenalin was well into fading away, and my body was nudging me for attention, reminding me that I should’ve been home, asleep in bed, warm and safe. Instead, we were fighting increasingly more powerful monsters while likely being tracked by a cult of assassins. The hallway grew gradually larger. It was still immaculate, like we’d walked into a castle staffed by dedicated servants. But while the tunnel had started out as a hall perhaps ten feet across, now it was easily twenty feet across, and the ceiling was progressively higher. There were occasional doors of fifteen or even twenty feet tall, with doorknobs as large as basketballs. The scale of everything was immense. “Are we in a hallway for giants?” I finally asked. “That we are, Josh of Apartment 3B. That we are.” “Really? Honestly? Does that mean there are giants here?” There was barely a tremor in my voice. © 2020: Paul Tobin 93 “Likely not. The giants of old have passed. Even in these dungeons, their steps have faded. There could be one of their lesser kin, I suppose. Fifteen feet tall at the most.” “I think it’s fair to say that if someone’s fifteen feet tall, they can rightfully be called a giant.” “True. But it’s also fair to say that you wouldn’t feel the same if you ever saw one of the true giants.” Ahead of us, the hallway was coming to an end. There was a brick wall, with each of the bricks the size of a car, most of them covered with an ancient tapestry of a naval battle between a large armada and a giant squid. There were open doors to either side of the hall. We peered into one to discover a storage room with shattered wooden crates the size of houses. It looked like a tornado had destroyed them. The other side of the hall had a vast library, a den of sorts, with a roaring fireplace over twenty feet tall. The heat was incredible. The irregular winds were heavier in the doorway. “Whoever’s following us,” Gerik said, “we’ll meet them in here.” “Okay,” I said, trying not to stutter, feeling small in the giant’s doorway. “Ready your wits,” Gerik said, clapping me on the back. “And also your blade, your prowess, and any last words, if needed.” “Okay,” I told him, most assuredly stuttering, feeling lost in the world.

We hurried inside the room, looking to the monstrous table and chairs, and a bookcase full of books, with each book itself the size of the bookcases in my apartment. My mind was swimming. I felt like an ant crawling across someone’s floor, hoping not to be caught out in the open and squashed. There were portraits on the walls. Some of them were paintings. Others were charcoal illustrations. They were of men and women who looked oddly normal, but the paintings were ten or fifteen feet square, and the stuffy looking people would’ve been giants. Everything felt off. Everything was the wrong perspective. I wondered what these people had eaten. How many apples would it take to make a pie? There were plants in the room. Trees in pots. None of them had been watered for ages. They were all dead. I wondered who tended the fire. “You’ll be the bait,” Gerik said. I realized he’d been talking to me while I was lost in wonder. “I’ll be the… what now?” “Bait. You stand, hmm, about here.” He was gesturing to a spot just in front of one of the massive legs for the monstrous table. He said, “Whoever’s following us, they’ll see you immediately. When they do, you hurry behind the chair leg.” He demonstrated hurrying behind the chair leg, as if I were a simpleton who’d need visuals to grasp the concept. “And… what will you be doing?” “I’ll be in darkness. That way, if and when there’s trouble, we should be able to ambush them. It’s a simple plan. Draw them in. Take them out. Simple plans are best, because fights always descend into chaos. Something always goes wrong.” “This is encouraging. Great pep talk.” By then I was speaking to nothing but shadow, as Gerik had activated his powers. Just as he faded into darkness I could see that he was arming himself with a bow. Where he’d been hiding it the whole time, I had no idea. And then, the waiting began. At first I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the open door, which was some fifty feet away from me. I kept waiting for someone to peek around the corner, or for someone to rush inside. My ears strained to hear any voices or footsteps, but the roaring crackle of fire in the gargantuan fireplace was covering anything else there was to hear, if indeed there was anything else to hear, which I knew there was. I could feel it on the back of my neck. I felt like I was being watched. While at first I couldn’t look away from the door, after a couple minutes I found myself looking behind me, sometimes turning as quickly as possible, wanting to catch whoever was watching me by surprise. I couldn’t decide if I should have my back against the table leg or not. If I did, then nobody could stab me in the back. But what they could do, in that case, was to easily sneak around from behind and stab me in the stomach.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 95 The wait continued. The heat from the fireplace contributed to at least sixty percent of the sweat on my forehead and to the ongoing trickle down my back. I was clutching my dagger, thinking of my Trip Ring and also remembering that I was a man who could cast lightning bolts. I was a threat. I kept repeating the truth of that in my head. I was a threat. I was dangerous. And despite what it looked like, I wasn’t alone. When Pig-Face first poked his head around the corner, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining him or not. It was just a quick flicker. One moment there was nothing in the doorway. Then his face peered out from around the corner. Then he was gone. “Pig-Face?” I whispered. He peeked out again. Longer this time. A full second. And then he pulled his head back. I tried to act like good bait. A vulnerable lamb. Oblivious. Then everything turned to shit. Instead of Pig-Face poking his head back out around the corner, this time three mastiffs raced into the room, their claws skittering and scraping on the stone floor, all three of them with a full head of steam and apparently having trained all their lives to kill anything named Josh Hester. “What the fuck?” I hissed out, and apparently that was enough for my Stat Divination skill, which set about answering my question, by having the dogs’ stats appear over their head.

Mastiff Level: 2 Health points: 18 Attack Class: 3 Defense Class: 2 Attack: 1d4+2 (bite) Special Attacks: Lockjaw (if bite lands, next round is an automatic hit unless victim rolls a strength check: upon a successful hit, the mastiff can Shake for an additional 1d4 points of damage)

I froze and failed. Precious moments passed in foolish indecision. My first thought was to cast Lightning Bolt, but I didn’t want to hurt a dog. So I used my Trip Ring, resulting in one of the mastiffs falling flat on his face and tumbling along the floor, robbing him of the sight of the lead mastiff reaching me as I backed up against the immense chair leg, with the dog leaping to the attack, going for my throat, latching onto my shoulder as I turned. His teeth sank deep. I panicked and hit him with a lightning bolt after all. It ripped through him and turned him into little more than shredded fragments of flesh, but it was as if I’d tossed a grenade at an enemy position only inches away, so the resulting blast picked me off my feet and tossed me to one side after a short encounter with the chair leg, which wasn’t interested in moving. I felt my ribs snap and my flesh sear. I got myself a serious case of road rash as I bounced along the floor, skidding to a stop just in time to see the dog I’d tripped regain his feet and come charging forward. I couldn’t hear shit. My eardrums had burst. I tried to stand but found that my left hand was flopping in useless fashion. When I tried to brace my hand on the floor, I could feel moving parts where there weren’t supposed to be any. I screamed, but it came out muffled to my ears, like a scream beneath water. © 2020: Paul Tobin 96 Halfway through a leap, the charging mastiff grew an arrow from one of its eyes. The dog crumpled in midair, jerking and thrashing, dead before it hit the floor. The mastiff still knocked me over, sweeping my feet out from under me. My head collided with the floor and I almost passed out. Pig-Face and five others came racing into the room. Two of them were women. Both in robes. One rather revealing. I wondered if I was hallucinating her. She cast a spell that sent a basketball-sized fireball soaring toward my face. I was caught out in the open and didn’t have any shelter excepting a mastiff with an arrow in its eye. I heaved the dog’s carcass up in front of me and it took the brunt of the blast, which was powerful enough to rip the dead beast from my hands and flip it up and over my head, looking more like a flaming blanket than a dog. I rolled behind the massive chair leg and yelled, “Fuck!” It still came out muffled. I couldn’t hear shit. I risked a peek from behind the chair leg and saw two arrows come to a sudden mid-air stop no more than a yard in front of the woman who’d tried to barbeque me. The arrows glowed for a bit, burst into flames, and fell to ash. She barely had time to smile before another arrow slammed through her forehead. A man in leather armor let out a scream as he watched her die, an anguished bellow that even my damaged ears could hear. Pig-Face grabbed him by the shoulder and the two of them scrambled forward, along with the other woman and two other men, spreading out in an attack position. One of the other men made a gesture and then beams of sunlight began impossibly shining down from above, centering on Gerik, picking out his position, tracking him as he moved. It was then that I felt the floor jar. I felt a shockwave. Everybody came to a sudden, wondering stop. Pig-Face and the others seemed to be hearing something I wasn’t. The floor trembled again. Gerik was madly waving for me to get back, to find cover. He was casting shadows across the floor, thanks to the beams of sunlight that were following him around. The shadows were elongated, twisted, monstrous. But not as monstrous as the man who came through the door. He was a good twenty-five feet tall. Maybe thirty. It turns out that I’m not a good judge of distance or height when I’m absolutely terrified. If I’d thought the scale of the room was wrong, the scale of the man who fit the room was worse. He was an instant headache, as my eyes and my brain tried desperately to whittle him down to a size that made sense, but he just wouldn’t do it. He remained a giant. His every step rattled the room. I’d have had to jump to touch his knees. The giant was dressed in fine leather armor and carrying a dagger that would’ve stood taller than any of us. Even his finely made leather armor was disconcerting. I’d been led, in all my life and in all the tales of giants I’d ever read, to believe they wore primitive rags, or loincloths like Tarzan. Plus they were supposed to carry gnarled clubs, not ornate daggers. This man had a finely trimmed mustache. He wore glasses. Leather boots. A hat. His voice was cultured. But deafening. “Gnats in my room?” he asked. “What intrusion is this?” “I’m an officer of Whitewater!” Pig-Face yelled. “Here to apprehend—” But at that moment the giant’s leather boot kicked forward. There was a sickening crunch and then Pig-Face was a broken thing, launched as if by a catapult, a dead man in the air, arching over Gerik’s head and passing through the beams of © 2020: Paul Tobin 97 sunlight before landing in the fireplace. “Gnats don’t speak,” the giant said. It was calmly delivered. A man stating a fact. Despite this, his voice felt like a series of explosions in the room. I could feel the breeze of his heartbeats. “No!” one of Pig-Face’s men yelled, and he charged at the giant with insanity in his eyes and in every footstep. The giant flicked him away with the side of his blade, catching him with a glancing blow that still crushed the man’s head and sent him sprawling along the floor. The giant strode forward and poked down into the fallen man’s chest with his dagger, and then twisted. By then one of the remaining men was peppering the giant with what seemed to be an automatic crossbow. Every time he pulled the trigger, a new bolt appeared, cocked and ready to fire. Several of them slammed into the giant, none of them penetrating the leather armor. The giant wiped them away as if they were crumbs from an untidy meal, then reached down and grabbed the man and flung him away. The man smashed into one of the paintings on the wall. “Shit,” the giant said. “Dumb. Should’ve thrown him into the fireplace. Damn it.” There was a smear on the painting. The dead man had crashed to the floor, leaving a line of blood all down the wall. The rest of the Pig-Face’s group died quickly. I yelled a warning at the woman, because of chivalry, I guess. Just foolishness, in this case. She died while casting some sort of repeated fireballs at the giant, balls of fire each no bigger than an orange, though ten times as brightly colored. Together, they bounced off the giant’s face, causing no damage past that of setting the monster’s mustache on fire. He rubbed at it with the back of his hand, muttering a curse. Then he picked up a log from near the fireplace, a log that was at least a quarter of an entire tree, and simply dropped it on the woman. It made a thud when it hit the floor. There was some squish involved, but mostly it was just the thud. The woman hadn’t mattered much at all. The sunlight tracking Gerik vanished when the giant stepped on two more of the men. It was all over in seconds. The giant wasn’t even breathing hard. Despite his calm, he felt like a tornado in the room. He felt like an earthquake. He felt like death. Gerik was yelling at me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Everything was happening in chunks. Fragments. My ears were still ringing from my idiocy with the lightning bolt. There was a furious hiss in my head, a crackle of noise that was like all the pieces of everything that was happening jumbled together and snarling inside my ears. I wondered if there was anywhere safe in the room, and found myself thinking of all the roaches that’d scurried away from me whenever I’d found them in the kitchen of my last apartment. But, for me, there wasn’t any refrigerator to dive beneath. There weren’t any cracks in the floorboards or loose bits of linoleum at the edges of the counter where I could hunker down and hide until the big bad man was gone. Gerik ran for cover. He wanted to hide behind one of the big bookcases. The giant took steps that ate up the room and Gerik, who I’d thought had plenty of time, barely had a chance to dive behind a bookcase as the giant’s hand slapped against the wall, trying to crush him. The giant cursed and began tugging books from the bookcase, tossing them to the floor and then growing impatient before he just heaved the © 2020: Paul Tobin 98 entire bookcase down, so that it toppled to the floor with a resounding crash that knocked me off my feet and caused a sandstorm of dust to wash across me. The concussion seemed to clear my ears, so that I could hear Grimslade singing a bawdy tune at the top of his lungs. He interrupted his musical tale of a waitress who delivered more than ale to tell me to run for cover while he had the giant distracted. It seemed like a fine idea, so I began running for the door and I’d made it a good twenty feet, perhaps the length of a single stride from the giant, before I realized I was essentially letting Gerik sacrifice his life for mine. “This is shit,” I said before foolishly stopping, and then being stupid enough to turn around and charge the giant, with my heart screaming in my chest and with both hands clutching my dagger so hard that it hurt, but with my legs moving quickly, pounding and churning across the floor, hoping that I could reach the giant before he smashed Gerik into a broken red puddle. I ran staring at the mountain of flesh in front of me, and trying to ignore the impressive stats that were hovering in large, and in fact giant, letters above his head.

Dungeon Giant Level: 9 Health points: 142 Attack Class: 7 Defense Class: 7 (thick skin) Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Strength: 20 Intelligence: 13 Dexterity: 9 Charisma: 10 Constitution: 22 Languages: Common, Giant, Elder One Attack (2 per round): 4d6 (punch) 5d6 (stomp) 8d6 (weapon) Special Abilities: Bellow (once every three rounds, a Dungeon Giant can Bellow as an additional attack: all those within 100 feet must save vs. Constitution or be stricken with Fear, unable to act that round. Those stricken with Fear are subject to the effects until and Unless rolling a successful save at the start of the next round.)

“This is shit!” I yelled again, a real-world battle cry. I came up behind the giant just as he was peering behind the fallen bookcase and saying, “There you are, little man.” He was squatting as he reached for Gerik. I drove my dagger into his ass. Stabbed him right behind his balls. He let out a horrible screech and tried to leap to his feet, but in his scrambling shock he lost his footing, with his leather boots sliding out from under him, and he began to fall backward onto the floor. Which was a major fucking problem for me. I had the blink of an eye to make a vital decision. Which way to run? My body wanted to outdistance the falling giant, but my mind was shrieking that it wasn’t possible. I had twenty thousand pounds of incoming weight, and too far to run. So instead of running I dove forward in what seemed like an insensible manner, but it saved my life. I was able to hunker myself against the side of the fallen bookcase. It still felt like an earthquake when the giant fell, though. And even though he didn’t © 2020: Paul Tobin 99 touch me, the sheer force of his impact was like a tornado. I was pounded down onto the floor. My nose smashed to one side. I could feel my cheek fracture. But I lived. I scrambled to my feet only to knock my head into the back of the giant’s upper leg, thumping into his leather armor. The giant smelled like dust, broken rocks, and a pig farm. Little lights were popping all over in my eyesight, mixing with an occasional larger flare as my head tried to clear. I ran out from beneath the giant and was wondering where to hide, and wondering where Gerik was at, and what the hell I should do, when I heard the giant make a very definite sort of exhale. A gust of breath. With meaning. Before even turning, I could decipher that grunt of his. I’d been spotted. I’d been seen. I looked back. And met eyes with the giant. With the lights of the fireplace dancing over his face, I could even see a reflection of me there in his glasses. I looked terribly small. The giant twisted with a sudden lurch and tried to flatten me with a slap against the floor. He’d probably have done it, too, if it wasn’t for how a few books shifted beneath him, spoiling his aim. He frowned, and then spotted the dagger he’d dropped during his fall. He reached for it. I knew I couldn’t let him have it, so I raced for the dagger myself, determined to pick it up first, getting almost two steps into the race before realizing I was acting like a fucking idiot. The dagger was easily my own size and it would be heavy as shit. There was no way I could pick it up. What the hell had I been expecting to do? I turned and ran, racing away from the terrible scraping noise I could hear behind me, the sound of the dagger dragging over the stone floor as the giant grabbed it up. A moment later I found myself leaping in the air, guided by instinct, and the blade passed beneath me with a rumbling whoosh of a noise that was nearly the last thing I ever heard. Landing with a stumbling stride, I chanced a look back just in time to see the giant’s balled fist on an incoming route. I dove to the side. Another whooshing rumble as it passed. I left a smear of blood along the floor as I rolled to a stop. My nose was a fountain. “Fuck off!” I yelled at the giant. I felt like one of those tiny dogs with their inevitably jeweled collars, the dogs that always have the worst attitudes, the Chihuahuas of the world, the ones that never reach any taller than your ankles but are still aching for a fight. “Human,” the giant said in a voice of disgust and dismissal. He picked up a book and began swatting down with it, seeking to end my life in a literary fashion. “Fuck fuck fuck,” I chanted, staring at my oncoming death. But, just before the giant struck, an arrow sped into the cavern of his ear. He gasped in pain and his whole body shivered. He dropped the book, which toppled to the floor, a leather tome the size of my couch crashing to the floor next to me, catching me with a glancing blow that drove me down to my knees and then onto my back. I ended up with both legs and one arm trapped beneath the book, and was just yanking them free when there was a flash of speed, a glimpse of naked skin as someone leapt up onto the book, raced up a toppled pile of other books, reached the summit of the bookcase, and then leapt across a void to land atop the giant’s head. © 2020: Paul Tobin 100 It was Molly. “Fucking COMBAT!” she yelled. “Hell yeah!” She brought her axe down on the giant’s skull. It bit deep. His entire body quaked and Molly hurriedly grabbed a lock of his hair in order to avoid falling. Then, with one foot on the giant’s shoulder and another kicking his nose, she chopped his glasses in half, swinging her axe into the bridge of the giant’s nose. The blade bit so deep that it became wedged. The giant batted her away with his hand. Molly was flung through the air and looked destined for a painful landing before a huge plant sprouted beneath her, growing in the blink of an eye, a strange plant with bamboo- like tentacles that caught the scantily clad barbarian in mid-air, and which then rolled her to one side to avoid the giant’s dagger as it came stabbing down. The blade bit into the plant, cleaving the center in half and then clinking into the stone floor, the blade skritching to one side as the giant lost his grip with the impact and slid his hand down along the blade, losing a finger in the process. “Well fuck!” he yelled, and in his eyes I saw indecision for the first time. He realized he might lose this fight. “Shit!” he roared, standing up to his full height, which froze me for another moment. It was too obscene. This giant. An abomination. His very presence was chilling. I’d crawled out from under the book and was trying for a defensible position beneath the table, but was once again caught out in the open. The giant spotted me, and although he’d clearly decided to abandon the battle, he saw a chance to do a little more damage before leaving the room. He raised a foot that was as large as me and was about to stomp down, but then Molly yelled, “Hells Axe! Flare!” The axe, still wedged between the giant’s eyes, burst into heavy flames with an explosive puff that charred his surrounding flesh. The giant let out a wail of agony and again fell backward, crashing to the floor with another resounding impact that toppled a coffee cup from the table. It smashed to the floor next to me, nearly braining me, because even that damn cup was the size of a garbage can. It spilled tepid coffee in a drenching wave. Molly made a gesture and her axe pulled free from the giant and sped through the air to her hands. She caught it in mid-stride, running for both it and the giant at full speed, and before the monster could right himself on the floor and recover from the flames around his eyes, Molly brought her axe down on the back of his neck, chopping into the bone and then pulling it free to chop once more, this time on the front of his neck, severing his jugular and creating a spray of blood so powerful that it was like a fire hydrant. Molly was caught in the spray and knocked backward, like rioters being hit by a police hose, except in this case she was laughing fiercely, thumping along the floor until she was finally sprawled on her back in what amounted to a steadily growing pond of blood. “Fuck!” she yelled. That’s better than sex!” I stumbled out from underneath the table, one hand on a chair leg for support, heaving in shock, watching a veritable stream of blood still pumping from the dead giant’s neck, and then I gasped as it suddenly felt like my left ear had been caught in a vice. The air wavered next to me and then Fridu of Stone Wood appeared, my ear pinched between two of her fingers. “I thought we told you never to go into a dungeon with Gerik,” she said in scolding © 2020: Paul Tobin 101 tones. “I thought that was something you promised?” She tightened her grip. Molly was splashing in the puddle.

So I gained another level. The four of us, me and Molly and Gerik and Fridu, all gathered in my living room discussing my changes and our revelations about Selena. Well, three of us did. Molly immediately stripped off her clothes next to my couch and left them there in an untidy heap, striding naked to my bathroom. I could hear the shower running for a few moments, and then the tub. Fridu sorted through Molly’s discarded clothes as we talked, making a gesture over each of them in turn, banishing the blood and mending any damage. “Handy thing, that,” I said. “Magic is the handiest thing there is,” Fridu said. “Swords are better!” Molly called out from the bathroom. “Or a willing man!” “Something as commonplace as a willing man has little value,” Fridu called back. “You can say the same thing about air,” Molly said. “But it’s only worthless until you’re suffocating.” “I’m surprised you haven’t suffocated under all your willing men,” Fridu laughed. That was followed by a stretch of silence from the bathroom. We could hear Molly splashing a little. Shifting about. Finally, she answered. “Good one,” she admitted. And all the while, Gerik and I were studying my new status display, which was hovering in the living room, slowly revolving. I didn’t know how to stop the revolutions so Gerik and I were walking in a slow circle, reading.

Josh Hester Class: Open Level: 2 Health points: 24 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good Strength: 12 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 12 Charisma: 12 Constitution: 13 Languages: English Special Abilities: Stat Divination, Poison Resistance (30% chance no damage: half damage otherwise) Heal Light Wounds (1d4+5: 3x day) Special Attack: Precision 3x day: attack ignores opponent’s armor class Known Spells: Lightning Bolt (2x day), Fireball (1x day) Magic Items: Trip Ring, +1 Cloak, Blameless Dagger

“You gained more points in your personal attributes,” Gerik said. “Why is that happening? That’s definitely something you should have to work harder for.” He was nursing a grape soda. We’d ordered from a deli. The delivery girl hadn’t blinked when she’d seen us. I wondered how jaded she was, and what else she’d seen in her

© 2020: Paul Tobin 103 days of delivering meals, revealed when the doors were opened. I also wondered how much “harder” Gerik thought I should have to work. I’d almost fallen to my death when a murderer tried to cut my rope. I’d quite nearly been eaten by a ghost. I’d come very close to getting stomped flat by a giant. It felt like I was working pretty damn hard. “He didn’t gain any more intelligence,” Fridu noted, gesturing to my status, emphatically chomping on some chips to put a period on her statement. “No,” Gerik said, slurping on a pickle. It was like he didn’t know how to eat one. I said, “I got smart enough to never go down into any more dungeons with Gerik.” Fridu laughed at that, and even Gerik gave a smile. We all looked to my status display to see if my intelligence would raise. It didn’t. “That’s a lot of health points for only second level,” Fridu noted. “Most people would be happy with half that.” “And he gained another spell,” Gerik said. “Why’s he getting spells?” “I feel like he’s cheating. I need to see him cast that Lightning Bolt you described. If it’s as powerful as you made it sound, well…” She trailed off, shook her head, then returned to the turkey and avocado sandwich she’d been nibbling. “Can I see that dagger?” Gerik asked. I knew the one he meant. My new dagger. The one we’d found in a treasure pile that appeared after Molly had killed the giant. She’d claimed a sizable amount of gold coins for herself, as well as several jewels and a non-magical ring with a blatantly vulgar design, but she’d given the dagger to me. It was finely made. Long and sleek. The handle had a slight curve that fit well in my hand. The pommel and the blade were black. The handle was wrapped leather. The dagger had a noticeable scent, one that reminded me of the subtle smell of icicles hanging from eaves, early in the morning, after snow has been falling all night. Gerik took the dagger and sat on the couch, on the opposite side from Fridu, perched like he might need to spring up for battle at a moment’s notice. Fridu was slumped like she was ready to binge watch twelve seasons of her favorite show. “An interesting magic,” Gerik said, tapping a fingernail on the flat of the blade, holding it near his ear, as if daggers were musical instruments in need of fine-tuning. “It seems… strategic,” I said. I’d used my Divination ability to understand what the dagger could do. We’d still been down in the dungeon. Fridu had healed the worst of my injuries, but not all of them, because… according to her… if she healed all of my injuries right away, then I wouldn’t pay proper attention to the lecture she and Molly were giving me, the one that lasted nearly an hour and included Molly boxing my head a couple times when I was falling asleep, and a couple other times when she was getting sleepy herself, just as an exercise to keep herself awake. We’d discovered that, whenever I stabbed or cut anyone with the Blameless Dagger, I could plant a mental suggestion in my victim’s mind, making them believe they’d actually been attacked by anyone I wished. So, if two men attacked me, I could cut one and make the other believe his friend had sliced him open. I watched Gerik checking the weight of my new dagger, inspecting the plain scabbard, and found myself listing to one side, like a boat about to capsize. It’d been a long time since I’d slept, and even though I’d felt revitalized both times I’d made a level, I was reaching my limit. The room was growing blurry. Fridu was humming a song, eating potato chips. The crunching sounds mixed with her hums. It felt like a © 2020: Paul Tobin 104 lullaby. Everything felt like a lullaby. The room was warm. My eyes were heavy. I could hear the subtle thrum of traffic outside. The rumble of big trucks. Fridu with those potato chips. The silence of Gerik, a void with a life of its own. And then I could hear something else. Molly was crying. In the bathroom. Fridu’s head came up. Her expression fell. She looked to the bathroom, then away. Gerik winced and redoubled his examination of my dagger. The sobs from the bathroom continued. I looked to Gerik and Fridu. “Isn’t… shouldn’t one of you do something?” I whispered. “See if she’s okay?” Gerik shrugged as Fridu told me, “There’s nothing to be done. Sometimes she’s like this. She gets mad if anyone sees her cry. Consider it a sudden storm, Josh. Just find a cave and wait it out.” So we sat there. It was impossible to hold a conversation. There were too many interruptions from the bathroom. Sniffles. Murmured curses. Inaudible words. Always the sobs. I was as nervous as when we’d been fighting the giant. The sound of Molly crying was more monstrous than any of the creatures we’d fought in the dungeon. The weight of doing nothing was unbearable. Finally, I stood. Fridu sensed what I was doing and shook her head, with a trace of panic in her eyes. “Don’t,” she said. “Think wisely, lad,” Gerik added. But I was already moving. Already headed to the bathroom. Maybe it was because of all the times in the past when I could remember my sister Binsa crying in her bedroom, or in the hall closet where she sometimes liked to hide. Often it was because some girl in school had been mean to her. Never a boy. Boys weren’t worth crying over. But sometimes Binsa cried because she was scared of graduating and going out into the world alone. During one week it was because her favorite teacher at school, Dave Strong, the art teacher, had been diagnosed with spinal cancer and didn’t have long to live. I could never stand it when Binsa cried. Couldn’t let it go. Shouldn’t let it go, in my mind. So I’d knock on the door to her bedroom and then go in to talk with her. Sometimes she wouldn’t want to talk. She wouldn’t want to explain what was making her cry. During those times, I’d just talk about the latest comic books I’d read, or tv shows I’d watched, or I’d talk at length about dinosaurs. I don’t remember how the thing with the dinosaurs started. Binsa and I never talked about dinosaurs except when she was crying. I don’t know what that was all about, but it helped. If Binsa was in the hall closet, I’d just open the door and then sit scrunched up and huddled on the floor next to her. We wouldn’t talk at all. I don’t know why talking was forbidden in the closet, but it was. Rules develop in any relationship, and must be followed. I never wanted to go into that closet when Binsa was crying. I never wanted to knock on her bedroom door. But to do anything else was an act of cowardice. I felt the same way about Molly, so I walked into the bathroom. She was slumped in the tub. There wasn’t enough water. She looked more like a kid that’d fallen into a puddle than a woman taking a bath. Her eyes were red. Her tears were disguised by the water. Her teeth clenched when she saw me. Her eyes © 2020: Paul Tobin 105 flared. It was almost as if she was emitting a physical force that was pushing me back to the door, out of the bathroom. I ignored it completely. I’d had a sister. I closed the door behind me and sat on the closed toilet lid, taking care not to look at Molly. I knew she wouldn’t want that. “Leave,” she said. There was more than a tinge of threat in her voice. “You know much about dinosaurs?” I asked. “What the hell are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?” “Oh fuck yes. Absolutely. How about you?” “I don’t want you in here. Fuck off.” “A brontosaurus is maybe my favorite,” I said. “They didn’t exist for a while. Got reclassified out of existence. Grouped in with a different dinosaur. But the public outcry was huge. We missed our brontos. Then the scientists, the dinosaur experts, they admitted they’d maybe been a bit too hasty. There was still distinct evidence of separation in the fossil samples. And, boom, the brontosaurus is back, now.” “Josh. Leave.” “You want to talk about it?” “About you leaving? Or about you coming in here just to leer at me?” “Neither. I meant the other thing. The one that’s making you cry. There’s no sense in talking about me leaving, because… why talk about imaginary events? And I certainly didn’t come in here to leer at you. We both know that’s ridiculous. You look like a mess right now. Anyway, if I wanted to see you naked, I could just wait until the next fight breaks out. Plus, if you were worried about me seeing you naked, you wouldn’t have stripped in the middle of my living room. Here’s my guess, you left the living room because you didn’t want to think about your mother’s final month, or final week, or whatever duration she’d had that fox geas tattooed on her body. You didn’t want to think about her days and her hours ticking away. About her knowing everything was slipping away. Maybe you have some memories from your own side. Maybe you can remember your mother acting strange. Maybe you can remember seeing the tattoos. Maybe you can remember her becoming more and more frantic, every day, every hour. Maybe you’re remembering being a little girl, watching it, not understanding anything.” “Maybe you should fucking leave me alone,” Molly said. There were ripples in the water all around her body. I reached over and turned the water back on. All the way warm. Hot, even. I had to lean over her to reach the faucet. She didn’t stop me. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it, but it felt right. We didn’t talk while the water was running. That felt right, too. Another one of those rules that just develops, unspoken. The problem was, the water couldn’t run forever. Molly seemed like she would let it. The surface of the water was only inches from the lip of the tub. I reached over and turned it off. Molly tried, somewhat, to stop me. Her toes were against the faucet. She nudged my hand aside, several times. I put a hand around her ankle and held her in place, turned off the water. She gave a grunt of amusement. I didn’t know what to talk about. Whenever Molly shifted, tiny waves of water would ripple over the edge of the tub. I’d have to mop, later. I thought about putting some towels down on the floor, but for some reason I thought that might be insulting to Molly, so I just let the water do what it needed to do. I told Molly all about my dad. I just… found myself talking. There was some of my © 2020: Paul Tobin 106 mother, too, mostly some moments of how I remember her, which is admittedly an accumulation of false memories I’ve built up over the years, moments based on half- truths that had then billowed outward, growing on their own as I built new stories in my mind. I told Molly about the day I found out my mother had died in the gas station explosion. Commander Bellwood had come to get me out of class. I’d been in school. My last period of the day. Commander Bellwood was actually Principal Bellwood, but we all called her Commander. Not sure why. It was established before my time. She was a taut but cheery woman that I remember as being in her sixties or seventies, but who was likely only in her forties. Just a trick of kid perspective. I’d been in English class, writing an essay about whales. Commander Bellwood had knocked on the door. She’d talked to the teacher, Ms. Penn. The two of them had looked at me, sitting at my desk, with the sorts of expressions that let you know your life is about to change. “How old were you?” Molly asked. She seemed irritated to be asking a question. As if I’d trapped her “Six,” I said. “Almost seven.” Molly didn’t answer in any way, or even show that she’d heard. The water faucet in the tub was dripping, making a pok pok ploop sound in the water. I wanted to lean over and adjust it, to do a better job of turning it off, but I didn’t want to lean over Molly again. It felt like it would be a transgression this time. So I just talked about my dad. About him being shot in the bar. About how the blurred man had been there. About how I’d gone into the bar a few times as an adult, and how the first time I’d been there I’d ordered a gin and tonic and the bartender had refused any money when I’d tried to pay. I’d refused her offer of the free drink, though, in turn. I knew what she was trying to do, that it was in some ways an apology or at least an acknowledgement of regret, but getting drinks for free would’ve felt like blood money in the form of a cocktail. I’d put some cash on the bar and said, “He was trying to rob you.” I guess I meant it as an apology from my side. She’d taken it that way. We’ve been cordial, if not warm, ever since. I’d have probably never gone into that bar ever, in the first place, but I’d been with a lanky brunette named Tabby who’d wanted to watch a friend sing at an open mic night. He hadn’t been very good. Tabby enjoyed him. They later married. “Hold on,” I told Molly, as if I was interrupting her rather than myself. “Are there dinosaurs in Goncourt?” “Some,” Molly answered. “Holy shit. I could see a dinosaur. I’ll have to tell Binsa. My sister.” “That’s the woman who walked in on me when I was taking a bath?” “That’s her.” “Your family enjoys walking in on me while I’m in the bathtub.” “We do. It’s a family tradition. I have a large number of aunts and uncles you’ll be meeting. About… fifteen cousins, too. Plus Grandpa, of course.” “You looked terrified fighting that giant. You looked stupid.” “If I looked terrified when fighting a giant, then I must have looked smart. It’s terrifying to fight a giant.” Conversation halted as the door squeaked open. I must not have closed it the whole way. I wondered if it was Gerik or more likely Fridu that was coming inside, but it turned out to be Charles, the cat. The door only opened a few inches before he slinked inside, then he did that thing that cats do, stopping and © 2020: Paul Tobin 107 considering the room and its ramifications. He sauntered over to the tub. Leapt up onto the edge. Pawed at the surface of the water. Made a mewl of displeasure and then climbed back down, backward, keeping an eye on the water. The cat glanced at me and then left. “Close the door,” Molly said. “Okay,” I told her. I stood and began pushing the door shut, looking to the barbarian woman’s eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was being allowed to stay. She gave a little nod. I closed the door. Sat back down on the toilet. Silence stretched for a bit. I was patient. Some things take time. “I’m not sure why I enjoy fighting giants,” Molly finally said. I stayed silent. There wasn’t anything to say and it was the wrong time for speaking nonsense. She wasn’t crying anymore. The room was warm. The mirror was steamed over. My skin was dappled with moisture. “I was fifteen years old the first time I killed a giant,” Molly said. She wasn’t looking at me. She was trailing her fingers through the water, looking at the ripples. “I mean, I’d fought giant bugs before. Fuck those things, incidentally. And I’d fought some giant animals. But never, you know, a giant… giant.” I nodded. She wasn’t looking at me. But I did it anyway. “I was a rookie at the guild. The Adventuring Guild. We’re taking you there tomorrow.” I wanted to ask what she was talking about, but… I’d had a sister, and I knew that there are times for interruptions, and that this wasn’t one of them. Molly said, “We were exploring a cave. Not a dungeon. Just a cave. A caravan had gone missing. Six or seven people. The horses. Wasn’t hard to track the culprit. He had big fucking feet. Big fucking footprints.” Molly lifted her leg from the water and wiggled a foot at me. Water dripped on the floor. Her foot went back under the water with a satisfying sploosh. “So we were ready for a giant. Or thought we were. Like, you can be ready for something, but not at all prepared, you know?” “Kind of?” “Well, I’d thought I was ready. But then we were in that cave with the giant. And he was like, some force of nature. It was like being faced with the personification of a storm. That man was akin to an avalanche. Three of us dead in his first attack. And do you know what I was doing?” “Hiding?” “No. Laughing. I couldn’t help myself. I had a sword and I was cutting at him, using my longsword like an axe. Like some lumberjack felling a tree. And he was kicking at me, swiping his hands at me, grabbing for me, and I was rolling and dodging, always another chop with my sword, biting into his legs, and there was this magic-user who’d come along with us. A woman named Trella, barely older than me, and the giant accidentally stepped on her. Didn’t matter to her. She was already dead by then. He’d crushed her skull. But the giant was backpedaling from me and then, when his foot came down on Trella’s dead body, he slipped. Slid. Toppled. I jumped on him. Rode his face. Nothing sexual. Better than sex. I had half my leg plunged down into his mouth. He tried to bite me but I was choking him. I was just… fucking slamming my foot down into his throat. He was coughing and thrashing when I drove my sword deep down through his eye. He let out this bellow that spat © 2020: Paul Tobin 108 me out from his mouth and then he died. I was still laughing.” “God damn holy shit,” I said. “Can you take your shirt off?” Molly asked. There was a tremble in her voice. “Molly?” I said. I wasn’t sure what she was asking. “Not… I don’t want you naked, Josh. That’s never going to happen. The… your tattoos. The fox geas. Can I see it?” “Oh. Yes.” I took off my shirt. I admit that I sucked in my gut. Flexed. “Closer,” Molly said. Her hand rose out of the water, beckoned. I moved closer, even knelt next to the tub. It was impossible not to look at her, so I closed my eyes. It still felt impossible. I felt a light touch on my chest. Her fingers on the fox. “My mother had this?” Molly asked. I could hear her shifting in the water. “I think so. Yes. She did.” “She must have been so scared. Are… are you scared, Josh?” “I’m fucking terrified.” Her fingers left my chest. Then her touch was on my arm. Her whole hand was wet. I swallowed deeply. I thought of Gerik and Fridu outside that door, and I wondered what they were thinking. “You did pretty good getting to the bottom of that dungeon,” Molly said. Her words were as gentle as the sounds of the water whenever she shifted. In the near silence of the bathroom, her every move caused trickles and waves, with tiny splashes against the hand I had braced on the side of the tub. Molly’s fingers were tracing the edges of my fox tattoos. She was sniffling. But it was moist in the bathroom. Maybe it was nothing more than that. “That dungeon already feels like a dream,” I told Molly. I was still keeping my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want this talk to become about a naked woman in a bathtub. I didn’t come into the bathroom for that. It was nothing more than an obstacle. “Everything feels like a dream at some point,” Molly said. “It felt like a dream that first day I saw you, carrying those boxes up the stairs. I knew it was you. The boy my mother had always told me about. I wanted to say something, but I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Of course. The truth is, I’ve spent most of my life thinking of teaming up with you. I built you into some incredible warrior. Why else would Mom have spent so much time with you? And then I saw you and, I suppose I was worried that I’d be disappointed. That you’d be some, uh…” Her words trailed away. “Zero level dweeb?” I said. “Shit,” Molly answered. “Yes. Okay?” “Okay.” I didn’t want to be in the bathroom anymore. The air was hot and moist and it felt wrong in my lungs. “You need to understand something, Josh,” Molly said. I didn’t say anything. I just waited. I wanted to open my eyes. I wanted to look at her. I wanted to leave. She said, “I meant what I said. It was a good job you did, making it to the bottom of that dungeon. I wouldn’t have thought you could do it. I wouldn’t have thought any zero level person could walk into that dungeon and then make it back out. You did it. And you know what else you did?” “Just about shit myself thirty times?” “Don’t joke. You walked inside this bathroom while I was crying and you made me © 2020: Paul Tobin 109 feel better. That’s not a small thing.” “Well… I had to. Because when you cry, that’s not a small thing, either.” Her fingers were on my arm again. Tracing the fox tattoo. Around and around. I heard the water shifting again and then Molly’s lips were on my cheek. A simple kiss. Nothing more. I could hear her slipping back into the water. I could feel the ripples of the overflowing water breaching the side of the tub, minuscule waves against my fingers, a few splashes against the knee I had on the floor. “Go away, now, Josh Hester,” she said. There was no anger in her voice, but we were done. I nodded, eyes closed, and stood. I opened my eyes and looked down at her. She was an incredible woman. She frightened me in many ways. Some of them bad. Some of them good. She raised an eyebrow at what she probably assumed was my leer, but she was only a little bit right. She laughed and gestured to the door with a flick of her fingers that splashed water on my chest. I went to the door and had my hand on the knob. I even turned it a little before I stopped and looked back over my shoulder. “I know why you like fighting giants,” I said. “Oh?” “Yeah. It’s because for once, the looming horror is tangible. I think you’ve lived a fair piece of your life with an invisible mountain of tension and fear, with that feeling that something monstrous is going to crush you. Like a mountain that moves a little closer every time you close your eyes or turn your back. And that first time you fought a giant, that first time you saw one, you thought ‘Aha, now here’s that fucker I’ve been waiting for, and I can finally ram my fucking sword through his eyes and be done with him.’ I think you feel the same way most people do, that the feeling of waiting for something terrible is much worse than actually fighting something terrible, because when you’re waiting, you’re helpless, but when you’re fighting, you’re taking control again.” Molly stared at me the whole time I was speaking. Her expression never changed. She barely moved. There were only one or two ripples in the water, caused by nothing more than the rise and fall of her breath, or even the beating of her heart. I could feel my own heart beating, too. I wondered if it was sending ripples in the air around me, unseen waves, swirling with emotion. Finally, Molly said, “Go away now, Josh Hester.” This time, I did.

The building was immense. A near-castle sized monolith that combined Swedish architecture with the set designs of 1960’s vampire films. And it was teeming with life, with people coming and going, milling about, talking to friends, buying and selling in what looked to be permanent market in the building’s grand courtyard. There were men and women and others of seemingly infinite races, some of them skulking about, with others striding in grand fashion. They were dressed in the common clothes of Whitewater, or in robes ranging from patched to grand. Many were in armor, either creaking in leather or clanking with metal. Some of it was scuffed and mismatched while other sets of armor looked more suitable for Mardi Gras than a dungeon. Magic hummed in the air. “The Adventurers’ Guild,” Fridu told me, gesturing not only to the building but to the grand expanse of the courtyard. A young boy ran past me, stuffing a paper into my hands, darting from person to person like a bee pollinating flowers, leaving the paper behind with each person in turn. It was an advertisement for a fighter named Black Boots, a man willing to join any adventuring party for a fee of twenty five gold and a share of all treasures obtained. I was already holding several other slips with drawings of men and women who would hunt monsters or explore dungeons for similar fees, and still others with requests to eradicate irksome creatures, or in two cases tame them for a baron’s menagerie. Men and women were loudly calling out job opportunities, while others strolled forward, offering their services. Whenever a deal was struck, an officer of the Adventurers’ Guild, dressed in bright green livery, would cement the deal by writing it out on paper and ratifying it with a stamp. The market had food, of course. All markets have food. And drinks. But largely the vendors were selling an incredible range of weapons and armor. There were several stalls filled with magic items. Booths with maps. Tables full of scrolls. A loud man was proclaiming that his Whitewater Finishing School was the best in the kingdom for teaching your children the adventuring life. There were artists illustrating your likeness for a single silver coin, or your entire adventuring party for a bargain price of three. There were hardy men and women offering their services as pack bearers, or cooks, or any of an innumerable amount of support services. There were crows and other birds, pigeons of course, all of them scouring the cobblestones for any bits of dropped food. I saw a crow make off with a coin a young boy had dropped, with the boy’s mother offering sympathy while the father laughed and spoke of life lessons. There was a costumed band playing flutes and drums, their outfits crafted from cloth made to appear as if they were in full armor. A topless woman danced in front of them, kissing the cheeks of anyone who donated coins to the troupe. There was a man offering rides on any of his animals. For three copper you could ride a goat the size of a horse, his jaws caged in an iron muzzle to keep him from nibbling. For three silver, a unicorn, though only women were allowed, and you had to be a

© 2020: Paul Tobin 111 virgin. For ten gold pieces you could soar into the air atop a griffin. The beast was monstrous. The size of a car, and much larger when its wings were spread. The creature had the rear body of a gargantuan lion, but its front feet were the talons of an eagle, as were its wings and its head. It smelled like a marijuana hay bale. Every flap of its wings sent dust billowing and capes flapping. Its eyes were full of intelligence. I stayed well away, my skin puckering with unease, wary to the creature’s slightest movement. I did wonder what it would be like to soar through the clouds while riding such a creature, though. It reminded me of when some friends and I had gone cliff-jumping at a water-filled quarry. The edge of the jump had been frightening. But alluring, too. “C’mon,” Fridu said, taking my hand, leading me through the crowds. We were followed by a small line of cats, several dogs, and a long-legged spider that was as large as any of them. “Familiars,” Fridu explained. “They’re drawn to witches. They don’t have any masters right now. In a way, they’re advertising their wares as much as any of these magicians trying to find nobles to serve, or the fighters offering their blades for coins.” “Do you have a familiar?” I asked. “I had one,” she answered, in a tone that let me know the topic was closed. We soon arrived at the building’s massive front doors. Fridu flashed a badge and we were admitted past the guards. Molly was waiting inside. “Appointment in five minutes,” she said, taking my other hand. “Hurry.” Soon, the two women were leading me like a child through the throngs of people waiting in one line or another, for what purpose I couldn’t tell. Some of them were carrying pelts. Others held a wide array of other items, arms and armor, antlers, a jar full of eyes. Molly and Fridu often pulled me in opposite directions, fighting like estranged parents for custody of a child. “I can walk all by myself,” I noted. “Not really,” Fridu said. Molly simply said, “No.” Soon, we reached a hallway, and hurried down it to the last doorway, a large open arch of fitted stones, carved with softly glowing sigils. “The Evaluation Room,” Fridu told me. “I’ve been eager for this. Should be interesting!” With that, both women released my hands. I was momentarily grateful to be allowed the grace to walk on my own, but then the barbarian and the witch both shoved me in the back with such strength that I stumbled through the doorway with a distinct lack of that grace, nearly sprawling flat on my face. “Hello?” a man said. His voice was ancient, so I was surprised when I looked up to find someone no older than me. He looked like he could’ve been sitting in any of my college classes, although the fitted robes he was wearing might’ve seemed a little odd. Probably not any worse than the dude who always comes to Astronomy in his pajamas, though. “Uh,” I said. “I’m Josh Hester. I think I have an appointment?” “Oh yes. Indeed.” He stared at me. Expressionless. He was maybe a touch under six feet. Dark curly hair. A nose with a distinct bend. “I’m not actually sure what the appointment’s for,” I said. “They didn’t tell me.” I © 2020: Paul Tobin 112 gestured back to Molly and Fridu, both of whom were still standing outside the open doorway, peering inside like children not allowed in the adults’ room during a party. “Evaluation,” the man said. “That’s why you’d come to the Evaluation Room, isn’t it?” “I’m… pretty new at this.” I was looking around to the room, which had a high, vaulted ceiling. The stone floor was carved with intricate circles, like the summoning circles I’ve seen depicted in stories about demons called to mortal soil. “Of course you’re new to this,” the man said. He reached out and plucked one of my hairs. “Ow! Shit! The hell?” I said. He was staring at my hair, holding it with fingers I now noticed were longer than normal. They each had an extra joint. The man’s eyes grew larger. He stared closer, making a clucking noise with his tongue. “A sample,” the man explained. “Part of the tests. Now, spit in my hand, please.” “Excuse me?” “My hand. Spit in it.” He was holding out his hand, palm up, slightly cupped. “On a first date?” I said. “What?” He was puzzled. “Nothing,” I said, looking to the hand, and looking back to my friends, the witch and the barbarian, both of whom were gesturing for me to get on with it. So I spit in the guy’s hand. Instead of being outraged, he nodded as if I’d done the right thing. Carrying my spit in his hand, he strolled over to a desk that had a huge glass globe suspended above. The desk was covered with scrolls and trinkets, several plates of half-eaten food, a parakeet that was bounding about with great purpose while making chattering noises, and several anatomical models of men, women, dwarves, elves, and some sort of lizard person. Rummaging through the historical layers of his desk, the man found what looked to be a solitary golden chopstick, which he then used to stir the spittle in his palm. “What are you doing?” I asked. It seemed like I had a right to know. “Evaluating your stats,” he said. “Oh. I can help you with that.” I concentrated and brought up my status report.

Josh Hester Class: Open Level: 2 Health points: 24 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good Strength: 12 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 12 Charisma: 12 Constitution: 13 Languages: English Special Abilities: Stat Divination, Poison Resistance (30% chance no damage: half damage otherwise) Heal Light Wounds (1d4+5: 1x day) Special Attack: Precision 3x day: attack ignores opponent’s armor class Known Spells: Lightning Bolt (2x day), Fireball (1x day) Magic Items: Trip Ring, +1 Cloak, Blameless Dagger

“What’s this?” the man said. He blurted it, to be honest. © 2020: Paul Tobin 113 “Oh. I can make my stats appear. It’s an ability. Stat Divination.” “How interesting.” His brow furrowed as he stared at me, as if he was more disturbed than interested. He looked me deep in my eyes, coming closer, then abruptly walked away and stared at my stats floating in the air. The parakeet was chattering like mad from his desk. Then the man licked my spit from his palm and rolled it around in his mouth. “What?” I gasped. “No. Ahh, man. Yuck. Don’t do that.” “You’re not quite right, Josh Hester,” he said. “You’re the one who’s not quite right. You just licked my spit from your hand. That’s like, something I’d only see behind the paywalls on certain websites.” “I’m not sure what walls you’re talking about, but I assure you, I’m qualified at what I do, and what I’m doing right now is being confused. You’re not a fighter. You’re not a magic-user. You’re not a thief. You’re not really anything. And yet, you are all of them.” “Look, if you’re asking me to explain it, I can’t. I have almost zero percent knowledge of what’s been going on in my life, lately.” “Hmm. Well, while I’m not sure of what you are, what I can say is that you’re qualified to join the Guild. My job isn’t to solve you, it’s only to weed out the pretenders, and… you are not one.” He ruffled through some papers on his desk and uncovered a pile of certificates. He wrote his name on it, then picked up his parakeet, dipped its feet in an inkwell, and pressed the bird’s feet to the bottom of my certificate. “Yours,” he said, handing me the paper. It stated that I was a fully recognized member of the Adventurer’s Guild, listed as a “Recruit” level associate, eligible for entry-level missions and also discounts at several supply stores, several choice restaurants, and taverns of somewhat lesser choice. “At this point,” the man said, “I usually recite a litany of things you should remember, rules and regulations, the next steps for you to take, and so on, but I notice you’re with Fridu and Molly, and Fridu will make sure you know what’s going on and Molly will likely make sure you break all the rules and regulations anyway, so there seems to be little use. May I make a request?” He had a hand on my shoulder, ushering me to the door. His parakeet fluttered to the floor near my feet and bopped along with us, leaving a trail of tiny ink footprints. “I… suppose?” I said. “Come back and visit me. Often. I’m rarely intrigued. Hundreds of men and women and others have passed through my door, but you are unique. My name is Thomas. My parakeet is named Squabble. Come see us again.” “Sure.” “Fine. Good. Oh, one last thing. Since you seem to be associating with Molly and Fridu, that likely means you’ll be forming an adventuring party with a man named Gerik. A word of advice. Do not go down into dungeons with him alone.” “Oh, I already did that,” I said. “Hmm,” Thomas said. His mouth formed a line of displeasure. The parakeet, on the floor at my feet, squawked. * * * “Well, that was disappointing,” Fridu said as we were walking away from the © 2020: Paul Tobin 114 Evaluation Room. “I thought Thomas would be able to tell us why your class is open, but he seemed as puzzled as we are.” “Is it really that unusual?” I asked. We were headed in a different direction than how we’d come through the guildhall in the first place. I wondered where we were going. “Yes,” Molly said. “It’s unheard of. It’s like if, hmm, how do I put this? It’s like if you saw something and couldn’t say if it was a bird, or a fish, or a bumblebee, or a sword, or a plank of wood, or a sex toy, or a mug of ale.” “You’re saying I’m part sex toy, part beer?” “You wish!” Molly laughed. “The perfect man!” Fridu said, “We’re saying we don’t know what you are. It’s fun, though. It’s a mystery.” “Whatever you are,” Molly said, “you need to be stronger. Let’s take some missions.” We’d entered through an open doorway into a sizeable hall featuring a posting board nearly as large as a movie theater’s screen. Adventurers of all types were gathered around the board, which was covered with hundreds of pieces of paper. “Available missions,” Fridu explained, gesturing to where people were reading the papers, occasionally taking one down, at which point they’d go to a table staffed by a pair of Adventurer’s Guild workers in their green livery to have their missions certified. Other staff members were hurrying in and out of a different door in an almost constant stream, carrying more papers, adding them to the board. They used ladders to reach the uppermost sections, or else simply flew. “The harder missions go to the top,” Fridu said. “And only the guild staff are allowed to use the ladders. That way, it helps weed out the pretenders for the more difficult missions. If you can’t even fly up to look at the missions, you’re likely not qualified to take them.” We shouldered our way to the front. Molly and Fridu managed to reach the board but I was stuck behind a man with wings. I just couldn’t get past him. Every time I tried to move around him, his wings would flutter outward and I’d be blocked. He was nervously reading missions, almost taking them off the board but then muttering and changing his mind. By the time I was able to get past him, Molly and Fridu were ready to go, with three papers in hand. “We’ll start small,” Molly said. “I don’t want to overwhelm you. That said, we’ll have to build quickly. We only have… well, you only have a month.” She reached out and touched my arm where the fox was in view. It now appeared entirely like a tattoo rather than a scar. Strangely, the fox was now standing, rather than how it’d been sitting at first. The other two tattoos were the same. Soon, they would begin moving closer, looking to join together. Then, when they did, I’d burn from within, like Salena had done in her apartment, back when I was seven years old. “Missions with training wheels,” Fridu told me, handing me the papers. The first was an assignment to eradicate a giant fox that was bothering a farmer, gobbling up swaths of chickens at a time. The second was to escort a noblewoman’s mistress to a secret ball, and the third was to guide a caravan through a territory overrun with gilliands, which Molly explained were small misshapen humanoids. All three missions were of the lowest rank possible. © 2020: Paul Tobin 115 We stood in line to get our missions certified. Molly and Fridu displayed their badges. I had to show my certificate, with the parakeet’s inky footprints barely dry. The workers were quick and efficient, and we were soon walking off with our names written in the mission ledgers and with our papers fully stamped. “Let’s get to work, shall we?” Molly said, and we all agreed it was time. Once we were outside, though, we stopped for ice cream and to feed frozen bananas to the gathered familiars, the cats and the dogs and the giant spider, which joyfully danced in an almost human fashion and shook our hands in turn, making Fridu laugh. The hairs tickled her, I suppose. * * * The giant fox was no trouble. It came loping across a stretch of open farmland the next night, leaving the cover of the woods just before nightfall, as slinky and as sneaky as a fox can be, which is decidedly less than normal if the fox in question is the size of a pickup truck. I hit it with a lightning bolt that nearly separated its head from its body. The fox died instantly, crumbling to the ground, but sheer momentum made the carcass tumble and slide almost thirty feet through the recently harvested beans, pushing up soil and stalks, coming to a rest only a few feet from where we were standing. Letters and numbers rose up, shining in the gathering darkness.

+167 Experience Points

“Damn,” Molly whispered as hundreds of tiny electrical arcs dispersed across the fur of the carcass. “We have us another giant killer.” “That spell was… more powerful than it should’ve been,” Fridu said. She was glancing back and forth between the dead fox and my hands, as if looking for answers. The fox was silent. Steam was rising from my fingers. By then, Gerik was skinning the fox. * * * Her name was Findrell and she was not as beautiful as I’d expected from a professional mistress, but within minutes of meeting her I was almost in love myself. She was one of those people who remind me of dogs, not in any visual sense, but in that manner of simply feeling better when they’re around, like some unknown weight has been lifted from your chest and replaced with helium instead. The mission was simple. Fridu and I rode in an ornate carriage with Findrell, while Molly walked alongside with her axe in one hand, protecting against any attacks. Gerik was… somewhere. Likely the rooftops. We could hear his breathing. Fridu had linked our minds so that we could all talk in that strange mental manner, hearing each other’s voices in our minds while remaining silent to all others. It meant that I was not only being treated to the soft sounds of Gerik’s sporadic comments, but occasionally a swirling miasma of his hatred toward ghouls, like flashes of lightning searing through his thoughts, burning hot for the briefest of moments before dispersing as if they’d never been there in the first place. It was a jarring juxtaposition against Molly’s thoughts, which were nothing but a series of nursery rhymes she was reciting in her head, liberally sprinkled with vulgar lyrics for good measure. She was also keeping a running commentary of everyone we passed by on the streets, rating their level of threat. © 2020: Paul Tobin 116 Inside the carriage, Findrell was telling Fridu and I a story about discovering and exploring a library of pressed flowers in a nobleman’s private quarters. A collection of seven bookshelves, three of them quite large. The smell of a magically-tinged incense that banished all manners of pesky bugs that would’ve otherwise dined on the pages of the books. Findrell had been left purposefully alone in the room. She’d browsed through the books. They’d each had tree leaves or flower petals pressed between their pages. Every single page. The books bulged. One book she discovered was an anomaly, with butterfly wings between its pages. It was a copy of Jalaad’s Book of Sailing the Master Castle Sea. An odd choice of book for butterfly wings. Findrell had just been putting the book back on the shelves when a bell sounded. “My cue,” she said. “Your cue?” I asked. “I’d been left in the room alone for a reason. My patron was a voyeur. At the sound of the bell, I pretended… not too hastily… to chance upon a book of lurid illustrations. Flipping through its pages, I disrobed and masturbated, taking care to change positions and angles. I wasn’t sure where he was watching from. Likely several observation points, I suppose.” She spoke as if recounting a recipe. I found myself blushing. Fridu used a spell to light the carriage’s interior brighter, so that the two women could be amused by my reactions to Findrell’s story. The carriage rode smoothly. Magically so. Not once a bounce. Without the jarring of the cobblestones, the sound of the wheels was almost soporific. Findrell smelled like bourbon. She wouldn’t tell us why she needed bodyguards for a trip to a secret ball. The ride was uneventful. Nobody attacked. The most action we encountered was a large brown dog that barked several times at our carriage as we passed by, until Molly told the dog to shut the fuck up. “Thank you for your guidance,” Findrell told us as we stood outside a darkened mansion. A door, a servant’s entrance to the rear, then opened. She went inside. Our job was done. We were twenty gold richer. * * * With Findrell, I gained a fair amount of experience points for a mission that was honestly delightful. We had much less fun with the caravan and the dirty little gilliands, who did indeed turn out to be small, misshapen humans. They also turned out to wield miniature spears, to be very accurate with them, and to stink like a bucket full of flaming shit. The caravan had eight wagons in all, carrying a variety of spices, furs, and one wagon full of intricate glassware packed in crates stuffed with straw. The first day was cloudy, with threatening rain and a wind that felt twenty degrees cooler than the surrounding air, which likely meant a storm was strapping on its boots and preparing to stomp across the lands. Molly and I walked in front of the caravan, keeping to a good but none too hurried pace, as the wagons were so overloaded that they’d have broken if the horses notched it up to a mere trot, which the horses were clearly not inclined to consider. Fridu and Gerik were to the rear of the wagons. Pristilline, who I still hadn’t met, had sent word that she’d been summoned to guard duty on the western frontier. Some sort of orc uprising. She’d be gone for days, or possibly weeks. The caravan’s route stretched well over a hundred miles, but our part in the play © 2020: Paul Tobin 117 was only to escort them through gilliand territory, a span of some forty miles. We averaged possibly four miles an hour through the plains, then somewhat less when the terrain evolved into small hills. Fridu often scouted ahead through the air, looking for any and all possible threats. Just because you’ve been hired to defend against gilliands doesn’t mean you turn a blind eye to brigands or stray bears. The first day was uneventful, which Molly and I discussed with notes of both pleasure and irritation. It was pleasant to walk unmolested with nothing more serious than keeping our weapons at the ready whenever other caravans, possible brigands in disguise, passed us in the opposite direction, but at the same time I could hardly prepare myself to face the threat of the blurred man by taking a leisurely stroll across the countryside, unless he was going to challenge me to a contest of power- walking, in which case my mighty calf muscles would win the day. As we walked, Molly taught me how to be alert to dangers. When we passed through fields of long grass, entire armies could be hidden, hunkered down low. When we passed through open fields I felt the safest, though Molly said to look for any signs of fresh earth, signifying that the gilliands could’ve built trenches, waiting until our guards were down before swarming to the attack. When we passed through wooded areas, anything at all could’ve been hiding within. And all the while the storm was brewing, which annoyed Molly because the winds could hide any stray sounds that might’ve otherwise alerted us to an attack, though she added that those same winds could betray the enemy’s position by carrying their scent. “You scout with all your senses,” she said. “Don’t only rely on sight. Your ears and your nose are important.” I joked, “But I’m thinking that if I can taste the enemy, it’s too late.” “Not really,” Fridu told me. We were camping for the night. She was lighting a fire. Gerik had collected wood. The wagons were gathered in a circle. The witch lit the fire by magic, surrounding her fingers with flame and then simply holding a few pieces of wood until they lit on fire. “Nature is a terrible gossip. She’ll tell you everything. Pay attention with your senses, and your sense of taste will expand.” “Ah, shit,” Gerik grunted. “She’s going to get philosophical. I’m out.” He walked off from the fire, leaving the circle of wagons. We’d camped on a small rise. It meant that anyone could see us for miles around, with our campfire acting as a beacon in the night, but it also meant we had good sight of anyone who approached. The rest of the night was filled with talk, mostly between me and Molly and Fridu, though at one point two members of the caravan, a married couple named Starks and Lyssa, came and sat with us, and we all told stories of our past, except me, because I didn’t think anybody, especially people who’d just been telling grand tales of wagons swept away in flash floods or of learning how to best decapitate a lizard man, would be overly impressed by the three times I’ve talked myself out of being marked as tardy for class. In the morning, the tempest finally broke, and the gilliands used the cover of the storm for an attack. The storm swept over the surrounding hills like a charging army. The winds arrived first, dropping the temperature by at least ten degrees. The lightning was close behind. The rains seemed to teleport in, so that we were dry one moment and then drenched the next. The raindrops were hard and pelting. It was darker than it © 2020: Paul Tobin 118 had been in the night. The lightning seemed like guillotines slicing deep into the soil. Several of the sturdy horses, only just then freed from where they’d been tethered for the night, bolted. The rains were so fierce that we could barely see each other. The frantic horses disappeared into the storm before they’d gone fifty feet. The rains were bitterly cold, one step short of hailstones. Fridu linked our minds so that we could hear each other during the thunderstorm. It was unsettling to have such a calm and clear connection in the midst of the chaos. “Molly,” I heard Fridu’s voice in my mind. “See if you can find those dumbass horses. The rest of you, don’t get involved with the caravan. They’ve seen storms before. They know what they need to do. Our job is to watch out for anything or anyone who uses the cover of the storm to—” “Gilliands.” It was Gerik’s voice. “Yes,” Molly said. “Of course we watch out for gilliands. But stay alert to—” “I meant I see some of the little fuckers. Maybe a hundred. Almost here. Coming from the east. About two hundred feet away now.” “Shit,” Fridu said. “Molly, get back here! Now!” “I’m on my… FUCK!” “What just happened?” Fridu asked. “One of the little bastards stabbed my leg. Not bad. And now I’ve just kicked his ass. At least these rains will wash him off my boot. I’m on my way back.” “Everyone, report,” Fridu said. I said, “I’m near the wagons. I’ll let everyone know the gilliands are attacking.” Gerik said, “I’m one hill over. The little army is between us. Might take me some time getting back.” Because we were in his thoughts, we could feel extra meaning in his words. He might never make it back. Alone, the gilliands weren’t terribly dangerous. But as an army? A different story. I struggled my way to the caravan master, bulling my way through the winds, trying to find him in the terrible storm. It was odd having two groups of voices in my hearing, the pure communication of Fridu’s magic and the frantic shouts of those in the caravan, muffled by the storm, coming from unseen places, because in the brutal winds and the fierce rain nearly everything was unseen. Then someone grabbed my hand. I gasped and pivoted and almost stabbed Starks, the man we’d been talking with the night before. I don’t think he noticed. “Josh!” he said. “Can you help me with some tarps? We need to—” “Gilliand attack!” I blurted. “Maybe a hundred of them. Coming from the east!” “Ah hell,” he shouted. There were more words, lost to a crack of lightning and a rumble of thunder so strong I thought it was going to knock me over. I heard Starks say something about letting the rest of the caravan know. His wife appeared, and he and Lyssa began the process of alerting the others. By then Fridu had reached me. “No time to explain,” she said, and then punched my forehead. “The fuck?” I said, and then my vision went woozy. It was already difficult to see, what with the rain and the wind, but now I lost all color. Everything went black and white. The world was flattened, and then abruptly it was as if I was being swept up into the air. There was a good reason for this. I was being swept up into the air. Fridu’s voice, in my mind, said, “Gerik. Molly. Stay back from the gilliands. Josh is © 2020: Paul Tobin 119 going to fry some tiny assholes.” “Get a lightning bolt ready,” she then told me, aloud, shouting to me over the storm, which we’d suddenly joined. We were easily two hundred feet above the ground, tossed about by the winds, like being both on a rollercoaster and caught in a raging surf at the same time. “Fuck!” I shouted. It probably sounded like thunder to anyone below. My scream likely made the hills shudder. “Calm down,” Fridu said in my mind. “I’m going to need you to cast Lightning Bolt on the gilliands. Best to be up in the air for that, to get a better angle. And in a moment I’m going to change your vision, okay? You’re going to see the gilliands glow. So quit moving around so much. I can only change your vision if I’m in contact with you. Plus, if I’m not in contact with you, you’ll fall.” “Fuck,” I said, as an all-inclusive statement. The winds were battering us. I was fucking cold. My balls had shrunk so tight that they hurt. And I couldn’t help but think of all those public service announcements about staying well clear of high points whenever there’s lightning around, and right now there was lightning All The Fuck Around, because Fridu had soared us both up into the air. I felt a twinge of hot warmth in my eyes, and then suddenly I could see the gilliands moving around on the ground so far below us. They were like pink hazes, ghostly figures on the ground. Glowing, but indistinct. “There!” Fridu said. “Can you see them?” “Yes.” “Then fry them up!” I’d like to say that I acted instantly out of some sense of heroism, or doing the right thing, especially considering that I could see the mass of gilliands moving toward the glowing figures of the caravan, but mostly I acted quickly because I felt like the sooner I got it all done with, the sooner I could get back on the ground. So I cast Lightning Bolt at the gilliands. It ripped a huge section of them to shreds. I could see the hazily glowing figures tossed into the air like a bomb had gone off. I could see several figures, the glowing pink ghosts, go suddenly black and then disappear. I could hear Fridu in my mind telling me that the sight she’d lent me could detect living objects, and that’s why so many of the gilliands had disappeared. But all of these realizations lasted for only moments, because there was an interruption. There was something about my lightning bolt that all of the other lightning bolts, the real ones slicing jagged lines through the sky, found appealing. Seductive, even. Definitely attractive. It was as if all the other lightning bolts collectively decided to play Follow the Leader. The sky lit up. Everything turned fierce yellow and blinding white, tinged with specks of red and blue. Fridu started screaming in my head and I could feel her focusing all her powers into a protective spell, a bubble that encased us. Her other magics faded. I could no longer see the gilliands. And we could no longer fly. Together, we fell, even as what seemed like an army of lightning bolts charged past us, racing us to the ground. Soil erupted. Fires found footholds even in the rain. I could hear the terrified cries of the gilliands. A fucking horse rushed past us, blown up into the air, a terrified whinny and a look of utter incomprehension in its dying eyes. The bubble shield that encased Fridu and I was being battered by the winds, by © 2020: Paul Tobin 120 the rain, the lightning, and we were splattered with charred soil and flaming body parts as the remains from several gilliands struck us like bugs on a windshield. “Jesus fucking Christ!” I screamed, barely aware of all that was happening, and then we struck the ground. At the last moment Fridu caused one of her instantly sprouting trees to slow our descent, grabbing us like a hand with ten thousand wooden fingers, but before we could settle, before our descent was truly over, the tree was struck by a stray strand of lightning that not only obliterated the wood but bounced Fridu and I away like a rubber ball. We slammed into the ground maybe twenty feet away, bouncing once and twice and then a third time. Our protective bubble disintegrated on the first bounce. Everything hurt after that. Well, everything had hurt before that, but it hurt worse after. “Fuck,” I managed to blurt out, sprawled on the ground. It was a weak blurt. I felt like a bowl of spaghetti. My eyes were full of large white spots, dancing about. The rain was insistent, wanting me to be colder, wetter, more miserable. “Fridu?” I asked. “You okay?” I couldn’t see her. My eyes weren’t working very well. The wind and the rain and the darkness were too absolute, and each time my eyes adjusted to the darkness there was always another dagger of lightning to banish my sight. I thought I heard groaning to my left and was just turning in that direction when I caught a wave of a sudden stench that smelled like deep-fried turds and then a gilliand stabbed me in the back, driving his spear deep. I screamed. Molly’s voice erupted in my mind, asking if I was okay, where I was, what was happening. The gilliand smelled so vile that it hurt as bad as the spear he’d driven into me. When I turned, my movements swept the spear out of his hands, sending him tumbling. He was a terrible looking caricature of a man. Three feet tall. Hairless. Puckered. Gangly legs with a tiny dick swinging free. Up top he was broader, with a thicker chest perched atop his spindly legs. I yanked the spear from my side and knocked him upside the head with it, screaming, “How can you stink so bad when it’s raining this hard?” His scent was making me gag. I wondered if it was one way that gilliands attacked, smelling so ghastly that they stunned their opponents. I was gushing blood. The spear had entered through my back and burst out from my side. The shaft of the spear was maybe a half inch in diameter. The point of the spear was simply sharpened wood. The rain was washing my blood away, but the wound was bad enough that there was always more blood. “Josh!” Molly was yelling in my mind. “What’s happening?” “I got fucking stabbed!” I yelled back, both through my mind and also screaming into the rain. “Heal yourself!” Molly said, from somewhere. “Oh. Yeah.” In the daze of the storm and the battle I’d forgotten that I could use healing magic. I moved a hand over my side and concentrated on thoughts of my wound knitting together, almost praying to myself for salvation, and meanwhile terrified that I would accidentally let loose with another of my lightning bolts and inadvertently cut myself in half. But everything went well, this time, in the middle of the storm. My hand felt warm, even in the rain. My wounds closed. I could feel a release of the pain that my adrenalin had been struggling to suppress. © 2020: Paul Tobin 121 “It worked,” I said out loud and also in my mind, hoping to let the others know. My mind cleared as the healing took place. I realized I was still holding the spear in one hand. The dazed gilliand was struggling to his feet, and he lunged for me, trying to sink his teeth into my upper leg or maybe my balls. I drove the spear down through his back. He bounced off my legs, squealing with the pain of his injury. I grabbed the back of his head, which felt like the inside of a melon. As hard as I could, I rammed my knee up at his face, but he slid from my grasp at the last instant and my knee took him in the neck, snapping it in half with a sound that was both terrible and satisfying. “That worked, too,” I said, dropping the corpse. After that, things became a haze. The rains were blurring the world and the battle was blurring my mind. I remember straggling around, darting here and there, calling out for Fridu with both mind and mouth. I found her slumped and bleeding against an old tree stump. There was blood pumping from a wound on her forehead. She couldn’t speak. The witch’s thoughts, whirling in my own mind thanks to our magical connection, were nothing but chaos. I used another healing spell on her, and it roused her enough that she could further the process by healing herself. Together, we stumbled through the storm and wobbled closer to the caravan, where we found Molly standing atop the hill and a mountain of dead gilliands. The gilliands, the ones who’d survived the lightning strikes, were swarming her. It was like watching an army of rats try to take down a bull. Molly was wounded in a hundred places. Several spears were sticking out of her, most of them with broken shafts. She was covered in bite marks, claw marks, and blood. Her legs were marked with cuts from primitive daggers clutched in misshapen hands. But she was standing tall, her double-bladed axe swinging in arcs, cutting through the swarming ranks of the gilliands, loping off arms and legs and heads, body parts trailing along the path of the axe like a comet’s tail of debris. Down near the base of the hill, a shadow was moving. Arrows kept bursting forth from the shadow, finding their targets in the backs of the gilliands clawing their way toward Molly. Fridu gestured and the hill erupted with grass growing thick as tentacles, grabbing and twisting and snapping the little gilliand bodies. I leapt into battle with my brand new Dagger of Confusion, but I didn’t use any of its tricks. There was no time for tricks. There was nothing but stabbing and being stabbed. Blood everywhere. So many screams. Grunts. Howls. And the fucking stench of those creatures. I think I would’ve lost my mind, but Molly was laughing into the darkness and the storm, roaring out with laughter that became an insane type of anchor in my mind. It gave me a harbor of sanity. It kept my feet planted. I kept being stabbed. I kept stabbing. In time, it was over. The aftermath was that three of the horses were dead, and one wagon had been tipped and much of the spices spilled onto the ground. Lyssa, the woman we’d spoken with the night before, had been speared through her stomach and was dying amidst the spilled spices, trying to speak but only coughing blood, her life quickly fading. I used a healing spell on her, and Fridu added a potion, and soon Lyssa was as healthy as before the storm had cut loose and the battle had begun. Starks hugged me, thanking me for his wife’s life, his callused hands holding me tight while he cried into my neck, the warmth of his tears noticeable even in the cold of the rain. All © 2020: Paul Tobin 122 around, people were congratulating each other on surviving the fight. The stink of the gilliands was blowing in the wind. Holy shit it was so terrible. But we’d survived. I didn’t tell anybody about how, hugging Starks back, I was looking over his shoulder at the top of a nearby hill, where three foxes had gathered, watching me.

Binsa loved my tattoos. Absolutely adored them. “They’re so cute!” she told me, carrying a bowl of freshly cooked spaghetti out of my kitchen. Instead of putting it on my coffee table, she put it in my lap, because during the first month of living with her, after I’d been adopted by the Hesters, I’d put my face over a bowl of steaming fresh spaghetti during one supper to enjoy the smell and the warm feel of the steam. I gave her a look, this time, and a sigh. “I was twelve years old back then,” I told her. “Still are,” she said, and went back into the kitchen. The moment she turned around I held the bowl of spaghetti beneath my face and inhaled the steam. It felt good. I’d definitely go to a spaghetti-based sauna. That would be nice. “Is this cat yours now?” Binsa asked from the kitchen. “Cat?” I asked. What was she talking about? I put the bowl of noodles on my coffee table, next to a small dish of black olives that Binsa had sliced and warmed on the oven, and a bowl of Parmesan cheese that was far too much for two people to eat, but Binsa and I were up to the challenge. Binsa was warming two sauces on the stove. A white sauce with copious amounts of alcohol mixed in, and then a tomato based sauce with an array of spices. I hadn’t decided which direction I’d lean, yet. It was likely I’d have some of each. Charles the cat was on my kitchen floor. There’s a window in my kitchen. It has a fire escape outside of it. Cats have no sense of trespass. “Oh,” I told Binsa. “Not my cat. That’s Charles.” “One of your neighbor’s cats, right?” Binsa dipped a finger in the white sauce, and then the tomato sauce, testing for heat and taste. She sucked her fingers and looked at the cat. “Not a neighbor’s cat,” I said. “Charles is… hmm. I don’t really know. Maybe he is a neighbor’s cat. I’ve never really thought of it before. He’s like… a general populace cat. He belongs to the people.” Charles was sitting on the floor, doing that thing that cats do, curling into position. Binsa reached down and scritched him behind his ears. Charles leaned into it and purred. “I think you should adopt him,” Binsa declared. “Isn’t this the one that watched us moving you into the apartment?” “That’s him.” “Well, he’s yours, then. That’s how the law works.” “There are no laws when it comes to cats. They’re illegal. Every cat is a criminal conspiracy.” “Well, at least keep him away from your foxes,” Binsa said, reaching out to tap the fox on my arm. “Foxes and cats are natural enemies. I think. Maybe? I don’t know. Maybe they’re friends. What do foxes eat?” “Rodents,” I said, which was a good answer. A correct one, I mean. What I didn’t

© 2020: Paul Tobin 124 say was, “Foxes eat your brother’s life, and also the life of a witch that used to live next door. Foxes stalk their victims over time and devour them with snapping jaws and inescapable flames.” That would’ve also been a correct answer. “Just rodents?” Binsa asked. “Like, mice and rats and stuff? Eww.” “I think they eat other things, too. Berries. Vegetables.” “Better.” “Frogs and snakes.” “Again, eww. Why’d you decide on the tattoos?” The sauces were done and Binsa carried them out to my coffee table, arranging them on a dishtowel so the heat of the pots wouldn’t damage the wood of my coffee table. Burns are a horrible thing. “They just came to me,” I said. “Women will probably adore them. I like them. Foxes are both predatory and charming. That’s exactly the way women like their men to be.” “You wouldn’t know. No context for you. And I still think you’re reading too many men’s magazines. It’s skewing your world view.” I was wondering how, in the future, I’d explain it to Binsa when my tattoos changed, when the foxes moved closer together, slowly preparing to join as one and turn me to ash. “Everyone’s world view is skewed,” Binsa said, using a pair of forks to grab decadent amounts of spaghetti for her plate. “Any time an individual has a world view, it’s wrong, because no single person can have a perspective on the rest of the world and how other people live their lives.” “I suppose that’s true.” I doubly supposed it was true now that there were two worlds in my view. “Did they hurt?” Binsa asked. “Your tattoos?” “Yes,” I said. “Especially the one on my chest.” It was the full truth, this time, barring a bit of omission and context. “I wish I could get tattoos,” she said, holding out her arm. Her dark skin would obliterate any tattoo. I’ve seen a few white tattoos, but they never seem to work. They look more like blotches. Like those Rorschach inkblot tests. “You wouldn’t like tattoos like these,” I said. More truth. “Well, fuck no. Brother and sister with matching tattoos? That would be weird. Like, some sort of artistic incest.” She was smiling at her joke. I was trying to smile along with her, but I was picturing my sister, in my mind, with the Fox Geas tattoos. The way she’d be watching the clocks and the calendars, watching her time ticking away, the foxes gathering closer, dragging the end of her life along with them. I was picturing the agony on her face when the flames first started. The moment her life was gone. The way the fires would keep burning her corpse. I was trying to avoid any thoughts of how Salena had actually endured those ticks of the clocks and the heat of those flames. I was desperately avoiding any thoughts of how my own clock was ticking. It was impossible to function if I dwelled too much on how the foxes and the heat were gathering. Charles jumped up into my lap. “It’s cute how cats get so affectionate whenever there’s food around,” Binsa said. “Cynic.” “Realist.” She was pouring sauce on her spaghetti. One side of the plate had tomato sauce, and the other had white sauce. There was a thick stripe of virgin © 2020: Paul Tobin 125 territory in the middle, because my sister has always enjoyed the taste of cooked spaghetti, alone, with no additives. Often, back when we’d lived together at home, she would eat entire bowls of spaghetti without any sauce at all. “Close your eyes,” she said. “Huh? Why?” “Because I’m going to put an embarrassing amount of Parmesan cheese on my spaghetti. You’ll think I’m a glutton. That’s one of the seven deadly sins.” “I’m a fellow sinner, though. On Judgment Day, we can make excuses and alibis for each other.” “I like you, Fellow Sinner,” Binsa said. “Our pact of silence is now sealed.” She began sprinkling the cheese on her spaghetti. Pouring, actually. When she was only halfway finished, it was already too much. I made my own plate of spaghetti, using the tomato sauce and being just as liberal with the cheese. I added the black olives as well. It was a chore to prepare the spaghetti because I had to do everything with a cat on my lap. Charles was of absolutely no help, not shifting at all. If I moved too far to one direction, or stood up too much, the cat would’ve fallen off. Good luck on Judgment Day if you’ve made a cat fall off your lap. No excuses accepted on that one. I’d gotten sauce on my fingers. I let Charles lick it off. He cleaned my finger and then gave me a look as if he wasn’t sure he was grateful for the treat or ready to condemn me. Binsa puts a fair amount of spices in her tomato sauce. We were halfway through our meal… and about halfway drunk on some bourbon that Binsa had claimed would go well with the spaghetti but didn’t… when I remembered the bread we had warming in the oven. Luckily, it wasn’t too burnt, just a little dry. When I came back out with the bread, Charles had moved to Binsa’s lap. “I’ve adopted him,” she said. “He’s mine now.” “You’re the one that’s been adopted,” I countered. “You’re his.” I was settling back onto the couch, ready to resume watching the World Cup climbing competition in Meiringen, Switzerland, when I heard a bump in my old bedroom. The door was closed, of course. I looked nervously over my shoulder. Binsa hadn’t heard. Charles sat up in her lap, concerned. “Bourbon makes me think of women I should call,” Binsa said. Her attention was on her phone. Charles leapt up onto the back of the couch, stared at my bedroom door, and then dismissed everything and curled back up on my sister’s lap. I decided that if the cat hadn’t cared, maybe there was nothing to care about? It’s possible the bourbon was influencing my decision. “Isn’t it weird how alcohol makes people more interesting?” Binsa said, still flipping through her phone. “It’s like, we spend our lives not caring about things, or holding back, and then with a few glasses of booze we’re suddenly open to trying new things and seeing people in new lights.” “You just want to see girls in your bedroom,” I told her. “You’re not all that interested in the lighting.” “Oh, but I am! I like the lights on.” “I like less information about my sister’s sexual proclivities.” “Trade me in for a new sister, then. But the exchange rate is shit. Now here, help me.” She handed me her phone. Just as she did, there was a solid thud from my old © 2020: Paul Tobin 126 bedroom. There was something or someone inside the room. Something had come through the door. Binsa ignored it completely but Charles stood quickly from her lap and then climbed up onto the back of the couch, at one point using my sister’s phone, which I was holding in my hand, as a base for his foot. It swiped through a couple of photos. “Oh god!” Binsa shrieked. “Cat! No! Who did you just message?” She grabbed her phone back. I wasn’t paying much attention to my sister, though. Charles had leapt off the back of the couch and hurried to my old bedroom door. He was sitting there, repeatedly looking up to the doorknob, and then back to me. “Fuck,” I said. “Right?” Binsa said, caught up in her own problems. “The fucking cat just rang the bells of two women on my dating app! Oh, she’s not so bad. Hmm. Okay, I can live with this. Sleep with this, I mean.” “Be right back,” I told her. I stood and started walking toward my old bedroom, but what was I supposed to do? What was waiting behind the door? If it was a monster, I didn’t want it out in the living room with my sister. If it was the blurred man, I didn’t want him anywhere at all. If it was Molly or Gerik or Fridu, how would I explain them, and what did they want? And if I needed to cut loose with a Lighting Bolt I could totally forget about getting my deposit back on the apartment, and I’d be out two thousand bucks. “Fine,” Binsa said. “Break time. I’d need to take a pisser anyway. When I get back from the bathroom, you and the cat are required to help me compose a couple messages. Charles, it’s your fault I need to write these two women, so I expect some utter genius on your part.” She’d reached the bathroom. As soon as she went in, as soon as the door closed behind her, I planned on opening my old bedroom door and confronting whatever problem was waiting. Binsa was almost in the bathroom. I was reaching for the bedroom door. “Josh,” Binsa said, stopping. I moved my hand from the doorknob, nervous, waiting. “Yeah?” “Are there any nymphs in your bathtub I should know about?” “If there are, just close the shower curtain and do you business.” “Fair enough!” She turned to go into the bathroom. “Binsa?” I said. She stopped. “Yes?” She was giving me a look. I supposed I deserved one for the way I’d said her name, the emotion behind it, owing to how it had suddenly occurred to me that if something happened to me in my old bedroom, this would be the last time I ever saw my sister. “I love you.” “Because I’m taking a piss? That overwhelms you emotionally? How much bourbon have you had? You’re a strange brother, Josh.” She went into the bathroom. I heard the click of the door closing. The clack of the lock. Charles let out a mewl of impatience at my feet. A small growl of warning. “Hold on,” I whispered to the cat, and then raced to my bedroom for my dagger. I also threw my cloak over my shoulders, because you never know when a +1 advantage will save your life. Then I hurried back to my old bedroom, moved © 2020: Paul Tobin 127 Charles out of the way with a nudge of my foot, and opened the door. Molly was inside. With a rhinoceros. She was just standing there. It was just standing there. I was just standing there. “Fuck,” I said. “Molly. What the fuck? That’s a rhinoceros. My sister’s in the bathroom. I don’t want her to see a fucking rhinoceros in my apartment. She’ll think I’m weird.” “His name is Baubles,” Molly said. “It refers to his balls.” “God damn it,” I said. “Why’s there a testicle-named rhinoceros in my apartment? What the fuck are you doing?” “Keep your voice down. Your sister will hear you. Also, you could scare Baubles and he shits when he’s frightened.” “Get him out of my apartment,” I whispered. “To be honest, he shits when he’s not frightened, too. It’s not like he’s standing around with his colon on speed-dial, waiting to be frightened. He shits all the time. He shits and he shits. Mountains of shit, from this one.” “I’m going absolutely fucking crazy here, Molly. I seriously need to get back on my couch and resume drinking bourbon, but before that can happen we need to deal with the elephant in the room, which in this case is a rhinoceros in the room.” “I had to hide him.” “Go on.” I was standing in the doorway, with the door half open, my eyes flickering back and forth between the rhino and the bathroom door. Charles had gotten bored, as cats do, and wandered off. Nothing to see, here. Just a fucking rhinoceros. Molly said, “There’s this group called the Cult of Piccold, and they were going to sacrifice Baubles. Some big ceremony. I chanced across it when I was coming to visit you, and then Baubles looked at me with a ‘save me’ expression and I thought, ‘yeah, what the hell,’ and then before I really realized what was happening I’d killed a few of the cultists. Which, before you say anything, is fine, because they’re into human sacrifice. And rhinoceros sacrifice.” “Okay. But what—” “Thing is, there were at least fifty cultists, and some of them were pretty high level, and I didn’t want to get murdered and end up sacrificed along with Baubles, who they stole from the Bale of Whitewater’s private zoo. Oh, bales are basically the equivalent of dukes, in your world. The bale is enormously rich. We need him on our side. And I used to go to his zoo when I was a kid. I met Baubles when I was no more than five years old. He had those big fascinating balls.” She moved to his side and gestured to his balls in grand fashion. I had to admit it was fitting, since they were grand balls. “So you and a rhino ran from the cultists, and you ended up here? Why here?” “Closest escape route. Didn’t have much choice. Did you just say you had bourbon?” Molly took hold of a leash around the rhino’s neck, a leash made of interworked chains and leather straps, and began leading him to the door. “Fuck no,” I said, standing in front of them and holding up my hand in the “stop” © 2020: Paul Tobin 128 position, which I was fairly certain that Molly would ignore, but I couldn’t possibly let the two of them out into the living room. “You want him to shit in here?” Molly said. “I don’t want him to shit anywhere! I just don’t want you out in the living room with him. This isn’t about shitting! Plus, what the fuck do you mean, anyway? Did you plan on taking him into the bathroom? Are you trying to tell me that Baubles is potty-trained?” “You’re raising your voice again.” “You have a fucking rhinoceros in my fucking apartment!” I said, with a voice that was, indeed, raised. The rhino had toppled one of my new plants. I’d been buying more and more, ferrying them from the hardware store every couple of days. It was a veritable jungle in the room, at least compared to the lifeless way it used to look. I didn’t need a bull in my china shop, or a rhino in my jungle. “Just for a couple hours,” Molly said in that voice that crazy people use when they believe they’re saying something reasonable. “Go. Now.” I was pointing to the wall, where the magic door was waiting. “Can’t. I’d get murdered. Besides, you need to help me with Baubles.” “I don’t.” “You do. I told you, he belongs to the Bale of Whitewater. Damian Tass. A good man. Fighting for good causes. And, I think he knows the blurred man.” “Shit,” I said. My heart was hammering. Molly was pacing. I was sweating. Charles the cat peeked in the room and made a look of bored displeasure, like, “Oh, you’re still dealing with that rhino problem?” I wanted to kick the cat. I could hear the sink running in the bathroom. Binsa was washing her hands and would be out in moments. I needed to think. I also needed air freshener, because rhinos are majestic creatures with non-majestic scents. And the way Molly was pacing back and forth in her own nervousness was driving me crazy. The thump thump thump of her hard leather boots was like a clock, ticking down the moments until the situation got worse. Molly tripped and fell flat on her face. “The fuck?” she said, sprawled on the floor. Baubles leaned down and nudged her with a “you humans are supposed to be upright, so get up” message. There was some spittle involved. Molly’s side was smeared with rhino spit, all the way from her armpit to her waist. Charles got bored and left again. Molly was staring at the floor where she’d stumbled. Then she was staring at me. “Did you do that?” she asked. There was menace involved. “What? No! How could I have done that? I’m way over here.” Her face started to harden and then it hit me. My ring. I held up my hand. Gave a weak smile. “Oh. Yeah. Trip Ring. Maybe I did it. Sorry. But this ‘Bale’ guy. How does he know the blurred man?” “That’s what we need to find out. The other night I was sleeping with this guy, one of Ball Tass’ guard captains, and he mentioned that he and his people have been cautioned to be on the lookout for a man with a blurred face. The guys I was sleeping with, Thomas and Other Thomas, they didn’t know anything more than that.” “Jesus that was a lot of information to take in,” I said. © 2020: Paul Tobin 129 “Bale Tass, you mean? Or the blurred man?” “Yes. Both. But also the fact that you were sleeping with two men.” “Well, there were more than two. But the other one wasn’t named Thomas.” “It, uh, what? Fuck it. No. Okay, so we need to talk to Bale Tass, and in order to have him on our side, we have to save his rhino. Is that what you’re telling me?” “That’s what I’m telling you,” Molly said, just as the bathroom door opened and Binsa came striding out, staring at her phone. I firmly closed my old bedroom door and stood away from it as if the entire room might bite me. “Ready to help?” Binsa said, looking up from her phone. “No. Help? What? Did you hear? Oh! Your phone! The messages. Yes. Ready. Let’s do that. No, wait. Maybe some other time.” “Holy shit,” Binsa said, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “You fall into a pit of drugs while I was pissing? And what’s with the cloak? Are we going to a costume party?” Charles was curling around her feet and let out a mewl that clearly had some message to it, and I was glad we couldn’t understand him because obviously if cats could talk they would only be insulting and sarcastic. I was struggling for something to say when Molly walked out of my old bedroom. “Hi,” she said, waving at Binsa. “Oh shit,” Binsa said. “Hi.” She smiled an uncertain smile. “Oh shit,” I whimpered. Molly was dressed… as Molly. Soft leather boots with hard soles. Leather pants. A bra that was part leather and part chainmail. A bare midriff. A wide belt bristling with pouches and assorted small weaponry. A cloak. Bits of jewelry. And a barbarian’s attitude. Binsa said, “You’re Molly, right? Josh told me about you. The girl in the bathtub. Sorry about walking in on you that time. Didn’t know you were in there. Josh doesn’t tell me things.” She glared at me in a “You Don’t Tell Me Things” manner. “Right,” Molly said. “That’s me. Molly Fenriskicker. And you must be Binsa. Sorry to barge in on you like this, but I’ve decided to have sex with Josh tonight, so here I am.” “Here you are,” Binsa said. “You what?” I asked Molly. She waved me off. “Would you mind if me and your brother had some time alone?” Molly asked, again using her “I am perfectly reasonable” voice. My old bedroom door started to creak open. Unreasonably, Molly hadn’t closed it all the way. From my angle, I could see the rhinoceros in the room. Charles mewled from the floor and looked up to me. I gestured for him to go shut the bedroom door. He did not. I had to do it myself, all without seemingly removing myself from the conversation, but as luck would have it Binsa and Molly were doing that thing where two women have a conversation to decide a man’s fate, all without consulting him. “Shhh,” I told Baubles, holding a finger to my lips as I closed the bedroom door. He let out a derisive snort that I had to cover with a pretend cough. “You and Josh into dressing up, then?” my sister asked Molly, pleased and amused. “Bit of roleplay? What are you? Some barbarian woman?” “That’s exactly right,” Molly said, with all the undercurrents of a woman who is pretending to tell the truth, and actually telling the truth, at the same time. © 2020: Paul Tobin 130 “What’s Josh do, then?” Binsa laughed. “Wave a sword around?” She pantomimed waving a sword. But at crotch level. “It’s more of a dagger,” Molly said. “Zing!” my sister laughed, and Molly joined in, the both of them reduced almost to giggles. I was hoping the rhinoceros would burst out from my bedroom and trample everyone to death. Binsa said, “Well, the two of you obviously need to slay a dragon or something. And I have my own mess to clean up.” She held up her phone, then gestured to Charles with her foot. “That idiot there accidentally paw-dialed a couple of women, and they’ll think it means I want to have sex with them. Only one thing to do, now.” “Have sex with them,” Molly said. “Obvious.” “Right?” Binsa agreed. I was staying quiet, playing along with the etiquette guidelines spelled out in the Book of Knowing You’d Only Make Things Worse. My sister and the barbarian woman chatted a bit more, with Binsa prepping her spaghetti as a take-out meal and claiming the remainder of the bottle of bourbon as the price for vacating my apartment. Before she left, she gave me a hug and whispered, “you’re doing something right!” in my ear, and I did not tell her how wrong everything was, not even when she gave the fox tattoo on my arm a squeeze and added, “See? Good choice with your tattoos! Things are looking great!” And then it was just Molly and I in my apartment. Except for the rhinoceros in the bedroom, which wasn’t some sort of innuendo but instead an actual rhinoceros in the bedroom. “Your sister is nice,” Molly said. “Now get your pants off.” “Huh? What? Were you serious about that thing with you and me having sex?” “You wish. That’s never going to happen. Probably. What I meant was, we need to take Baubles back home to Bale Tass. So get dressed properly. It’s time for an adventure.” She plopped onto my couch to wait, making a tick-tock noise. It took me approximately ten minutes to prepare. It took Molly precisely nine minutes to eat all the rest of my spaghetti.

Molly and I’d gone maybe ten miles through Goncourt when the foxes began to howl. At first it was nothing more than yips in the distance. High pitched barks. “Probably nothing,” Molly said. We were at a rest area along a forest road that was barely more than a wide path with deep wagon ruts. We’d been taking turns riding Baubles. Molly was better at it than I was. She was able to sit up straight like some noble queen, while the lack of a saddle meant that I kept nearly falling off one side or the other, and I’ll state for the record that it’s uncomfortable to repeatedly slam your balls into a rhino’s back with every step it takes. I was just starting to learn how to balance myself, and to have my balls become numb to the pain, when we heard the first yip. “Fox,” Molly said. Nothing more than that. We made eye contact, and she gave a grim smile and we began moving faster. Hearing a fox probably meant nothing. Not all foxes are a mixture of magic and the supernatural. Better foxes exist. Regular foxes, I mean. Charming and mischievous and harmless. The growing sounds of foxes in the distance probably meant nothing. Molly was holding Baubles’ leash, urging him along. We’d earlier found some sort of sweet fruit, halfway between apples and peaches, and the rhino was proving agreeable to being ridden as long as he got a few of the fruit every mile or so. When the sounds of the foxes first began, Baubles perked up, his ears twitching in almost cat-like manner. I have no idea what kind of senses rhinos have. Was he seeing things we weren’t? Smelling the location of the foxes? Hearing the soft crunch of their paws in the fallen leaves? His ears were swiveling like radar dishes, honing in on the sounds. I slid off the rhino and Molly took my place. My ears strained for the sounds of the foxes. My balls strained to recover from the ride. Molly urged Baubles into a soft trot. The sound of his feet echoed like drums. I had to hurry, jogging alongside, to keep up. The forest smelled like fresh earth with an undercurrent of water. Molly smelled like sweat. Baubles smelled like the inside of a barn. I probably smelled like fear. The trees around us were thick, with dense oaks and a type of tree I’d never seen before, possibly native only to Goncourt. They were like overfed willows. Leaves likes dangling vines. The forest floor was rife with the fallen leaves, like coiled ropes strewn all over the thorny bushes and forest loam. We’d seen all manner of wildlife, including a herd of deer that’d slipped through the thick trees in an almost supernatural manner, barely a snap of a twig or a rustle of leaves. We’d also seen a dead man, with half his skull caved in and three arrows in his back. He was in light armor, with pieces missing. The forest animals and insects had both considered him as a resource. He had a piece of paper clutched in one hand, but he’d been dead for weeks at the very least, and the paper had faded into nothing. He was a story we would never know.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 132 We had to hope we wouldn’t become similar mysteries. “You have to slow down,” I told Molly. “I can’t keep up.” “We can’t slow down,” she said, reaching out a hand for mine. She pulled me up onto Baubles, putting me in front of her. I almost slid off seven or eight times during the process, and Molly kept hauling me back, like I was some sort of whimpering yo- yo. “You watch the front and the left,” Molly said. “I’ve got the right and the rear. If you see anything, any movement or anything out of the ordinary, let me know. And don’t forget to look up.” I nodded with a movement that was likely lost on her, since my head was bouncing going up and down with every step Baubles took, along with my liver and my lungs and my nuts. Baubles was trotting at good pace. Not quite a full jog, but a speed he could sustain for a long while. Birds chattered their complaints at our intrusion. Squirrels raced across the path. A badger held ground for almost two seconds, and then made way. “Shit,” Molly said, and then an arrow whooshed past us. It came from the right and slammed into a tree on the other side of the path. “What the fuck?” I blurted. “Keep your head down!” Molly hissed. She pushed me down, her hand on the back of my head, a thumb digging into my ear. At the same time, she kicked with her legs and the rhino sped up, a sudden battering ram as we moved our way through the forest. I was hunched all the way forward, like one of those Tour de France riders on their bicycles, except instead of trying to lessen wind resistance I was trying to present a smaller target for whoever was in the woods. Even over the beating thumps of the rhino’s feet on the hard dirt path, I could hear men’s voices in the forest. Fierce shouts. Orders being given. It sounded like a small army. There was also the barking of foxes, less distant than before. I was bleeding from my mouth, having taken a blow from the rhino’s back as I hunched over and tried to hold tight, like I was riding a living, armor-plated barrel. I heard the hiss of more arrows, and then a clang. I turned enough to see that Molly had drawn out her double-bladed axe and was holding it behind her to act as a shield. Another arrow clanged off the steel, with enough power that the axe twisted in her grip. A following arrow struck through her shoulder, passing wholly through. Impact thrust her forward, so that she slammed down into me, her hand grabbing at my cloak for purchase. “Fuck,” she hissed. I felt her wobble for a moment, nearly tumbling off, and then she was laughing. But there was a hollow bubble in the laughter that I didn’t like at all. “Fine,” she said. “I’m fine. We need a Lightning Bolt, though.” “Okay. Where?” My fingers were already sizzling with arcs of electricity. I was clutching the chains around Baubles’ neck with one hand, holding my other hand out, like the cowboys in those bull-riding competitions, except those guys only need to stay in place for eight seconds, and nobody shoots fucking arrows at them. “Doesn’t matter!” Molly yelled. “Just blast the shit out of something behind us! We need them to back off!” I turned, leaning as far as I could to one side in order to see past Molly. She leaned in the other direction so I’d have a better view. I decided to target a couple trees on one side of the road, but just before I gave the mental command for my Lightning Bolt to fire, two archers stepped out into the wide path, © 2020: Paul Tobin 133 maybe fifty feet behind us, preparing to fire. They had the look of forest bandits. Men who would be astonished at the existence of shaving razors or showers. Patched leather armor. They were halfway between men and ragdolls. If I’d had an entire second to make a decision, I’d have likely aimed to one side or the other, but in the moment they appeared, pulling back their bowstrings to loose arrows, I reflexively targeted on them. I hit the man on the right. He burst like a burning meat balloon. His friend, beside him, was caught by a thick lashing arc of the bolt that’d almost atomized his companion. It sliced him apart. There was the crack of the lightning but also a terrible sound like when you drop a large rock into deep water, played at a lower pitch. Even during the following crack of thunder I could hear the surrounding forest being splattered with meat and blood. Baubles stumbled for a moment, with shit spraying from his ass and his little tail whipping around. There were two arrows stuck in his rump. The surrounding voices from the woods were uncertain for a moment. Then they redoubled, full of rage. “Shit,” Molly said. “Hardasses. I was hoping they’d back off, but they’ll be out for blood, now. Well, fuck it. They were out for blood before. We have to get off the road.” “Go into the woods? But, the bandits are in the woods.” It didn’t seem like a smart idea to me. “They’re trying to herd us. Something’s waiting down the road. Likely an ambush. If we stay on the road, we’ll die.” “We should definitely go into the woods,” I said, now seeing the genius of her plan. But I was also seeing the problem of navigating a rhinoceros through a forest. I was thinking of the deer we’d seen and of how they’d almost magically made their way through the trees, like ghosts. We would not be like ghosts. We’d be like cannonballs. There was no hope of evading pursuit. The men could track us by noise alone, and we couldn’t move fast enough to lose them, not without leaving Baubles behind, and that wasn’t an option. Molly nudged the rhino and he turned off the road and we plunged into the trees, with branches whipping at us from all sides, as if punishing our decision. We crashed through the underbrush, leaving an unmistakable path that could be easily followed. Molly, I realized, was smart enough to understand we couldn’t lose the bandits. She was doing something else. “We’re choosing a place to fight, aren’t we?” I asked. I was ducking low, not because of arrows, but because of branches. “We’re choosing a place to fight,” Molly admitted, guiding Baubles. We were veering to the left. I couldn’t see any difference in where we were going. Everything was just trees. The ground was flat. Baubles was ramming himself through bushes. My legs were scraped and bleeding. Branches slapped and whipped at us from every direction. Everything was chaos. I could hear the men in pursuit. A chorus of whoops. Shouts. Rallying cries. “When I start to sing,” Molly said, “stay well back.” “What?” She reached around to grab my chin, twisting me to look at her. Her face was inches from mine, and with the galloping romp of the rhinoceros we were repeatedly touching, almost like kisses, but instead more like our heads were being © 2020: Paul Tobin 134 knocked together. “When I start… to sing… stay well back.” Molly put extra emphasis in her words. “Okay?” I said, not meaning it to sound like a question, but what the hell was she talking about? I began catching glimpses of rock through the trees. Flashes of gray stone. I barely registered them before we burst into an odd sort of clearing, one that wasn’t very clear. There weren’t many trees, but only because there were several boulders strewn around, ranging from the sizes of cars to a pair of them as large as houses. Wide sections of the boulders were covered in moss, and smaller trees dotted the tops of the larger boulders. A flock of birds left their shit-covered roosts on the nearest boulder, exploding into the air in a flurry of wings as we ourselves exploded from the forest in a burst of broken branches and trampled bushes. There was a pool of water between two of the boulders, burbling up from a fresh spring, creating a stream that ran off into the forest, following the path of least resistance, which seemed like a good trait that I should acquire. Molly jumped down from Baubles and carefully backed him between two of the larger boulders, like she was parking a car in an alley between houses. An alley with only one exit. “Remember what I told you,” Molly ordered me. “Stay well back when I sing.” I nodded, and then began to ask what the hell she was talking about, but at that moment the men were on us. It was impossible to tell their numbers, because so many of them stayed in the woods, hidden by the trees. I could see at least seven or eight, but the forest was alive with movement. As they appeared, everything seemed to go still. The birds we’d scared up had been circling, but now they sped away. The wind died down. The men were scruffy. Outcasts. Their weapons were notched and battered, their dagger and sword hilts wrapped with tattered cloths, heavily stained. There was only one woman, a thin creature who barely seemed human, and perhaps wasn’t. She wore deep blue robes that’d once belonged to someone of wealth, but they’d seen months in the forest. The bandits themselves appeared almost as a part of that forest, with twigs and leaves stuck to their beards and clothes, and knotted on purpose into their scraggly hair. A conscientious dentist would’ve burst into tears looking at these men, as would’ve anyone with an aversion to overpowering aromas. Frankly, collectively, the bandits smelled like an outhouse carved from onions. “Fuck you fuckers stink,” Molly said. We’d backed somewhat behind one of the boulders, forcing them to charge us. There was no way to shoot us through the stone. Molly reached over, grabbed my ass, and said, “Fireball. Right there.” She pointed to the largest of the men, a towering creature with a bare chest covered in dirt and grime and what seemed to be a summoning circle. He had branches tied into his hair in a manner to appear like he was horned. He stood next to the woman in the blue robes. They were, at most, thirty feet distant. “Fucking do it!” Molly yelled at me. I hadn’t realized I’d been hesitating. I hadn’t been realizing much at all, really. Baubles snorted behind me. Maybe it was encouragement. Maybe it was fear. Maybe he just had to shit. I’d never let loose with a fireball. To be honest, I was afraid. My Lightning Bolts were terrifying, to think of such force gathering inside me, and then being released. But fire was worse. Fire was what had killed my mother in the gas station explosion. © 2020: Paul Tobin 135 A blasting wave of terrible flame. And with the Fox Geas on my arms and chest, it was fire that was waiting for me, gathering inevitably inside me, waiting to kill me in the same way the flames had murdered Molly’s mother, Salena, my babysitter. It seemed the work of an absolute idiot to encourage those flames. Still, Molly needed me to act, and I needed me to act, and the dark-toothed grin of the bare-chested man was something I’d only ever seen in horror movies and the death row photographs of serial killers. I let loose with a fireball. It was huge. A thing twice the size of a beachball. It flew from my hand at breath- taking speeds and brow-burning heat. The woman in the robes looked shocked for one moment, and then her hand came up in a warding gesture. The oncoming flames parted around her and the bare-chested man, mostly. They were still badly singed. Licks of flame landed all over their bodies. Her robe caught fire. The man’s hair partially melted. Impact drove them back off their feet. Despite this, they still fared better than their surrounding bandits or the forest behind them. The other men were charred in an instant. Burnt to their bones. The trees literally exploded in the heat. Several toppled. The forest caught fire. The air was alive with flames and screams. For several moments I froze, trapped in horror, not for the men who’d been trying to kill us, but in thoughts of me dying in the manner I was now witnessing, the melting charred meat, the exposed white bones, turning gray and black. The blurred man had stuck the Fox Geas on my body, and I could feel the foxes twitching on my flesh, quivering on my arms and on my chest, aching for the moment when they would join together and incinerate me. I stumbled backward, watching the flames devour what they touched, several men dropping dead, panicked birds in flight, the shriek of animals, a snort of terror from Baubles, a grunt of satisfaction from Molly. A wave of heat pressed against me. I fell into the stream. The chill of the waters, bubbling up from so far below, slapped across my entire body. It was a heavy blow, a shock that brought me somewhat back to my senses, at least enough to understand some of what was going on around me. Molly was singing. Her voice would trill high like a bird’s, then slide lower into animalistic grunts. I could feel the vibrations of her song in my chest. I could feel swirls of emotion. Sadness. Rage. Loss. Desire. There was a story in her song. A message. A tale of blood, and death, and blades. She was holding her axe with one hand, the blades slowly twirling in her grasp. More men were coming from the woods. The two leaders had recovered from the Fireball and were moving forward. I stepped closer to Molly, wanting to protect her. She was vulnerable, hopelessly lost in the song she was singing. I clutched at my dagger and was readying to cast Lightning Bolt when my gut clenched and my mind seized on how intense the barbarian woman had been, only moments earlier, when she’d told me that… when she started to sing… I should stay well back. So I stayed back. Sloshing in my sopping wet clothes, I backed against Baubles, putting a hand on the side of his head, letting him know that everything was fine, everything was okay, everything was under control. A lie, of course. Nothing was under control. Not with the men streaming from the forest, yelling for blood and vengeance, with despair © 2020: Paul Tobin 136 and rage in their voices as they yelled the names of those who’d already died, and yelling my name as well, making “Josh Hester” into a curse. Nothing was okay. Not with the way the bare-chested leader was striding forward, a hatchet in one hand and a short sword in the other, his skin steaming in the heat of the fires. Nothing was fine, not with the way Molly suddenly shouted in the middle of her song. It gave everyone pause. The men all lost a step in their advance, hesitant. And then Molly was singing again. She raced forward. There was a flick of her battleaxe. It was moving as quickly as a dagger. A man’s head was sent flying through the air. There was a splash of blood against not only the nearest trees but also the decapitated man’s astonished friend, a man with a myriad of long braids in his hair and a look of terror on his face. Molly, still singing, gave a shoulder twitch that changed the arc of her axe and cleaved a deep line through the man’s throat, slicing him open and even cutting through several of his hanging braids, which flopped to the forest floor only a moment before the man himself, with his eyes riding the realization of his death all the way down. The flames were roaring. The men were screaming. Arrows were seeking out Molly, but never finding her, always deflected by the blood-soaked steel of her double-bladed axe, always whistling inches past her chest, snagging for the briefest of moments in her hair as they passed, never finding her arms or legs, which were forever in motion, always carrying her to the next victim, cleaving a man in half at the waist, ramming backward with the shaft of the axe to catch a man in his throat, another man with his right eye pierced so deeply that the shaft cracked out through the back of his skull. Men dropped dead wherever she passed. Molly was singing all the while. Her voice was unwavering. Her song unchecked by the brutality of her efforts. The bandit leader tackled Molly from behind, and even that didn’t stop her song. There wasn’t the merest break of her voice. She fell onto her back and he slammed a forearm against her throat, causing the first waver of her song. By then there were as many as ten men dead by her axe. Others had fallen to my fireball. The woman in the blue robes was readying a spell and the bare-chested man was about to bring his short sword down on Molly, moments from plunging it through her chest. Then Molly was singing again and she slashed a dagger up through the man’s armpit, severing muscle and tendons. He dropped the short sword and Molly grabbed it by the hilt, placed the butt of the weapon on the ground next to her, and then… with her song reaching a fever pitch… reached up with her free arm and grabbed the bare-chested man into an embrace, pulling him down like a lover. His own short sword slid through his chest. He settled slowly onto Molly’s stomach, between her legs, with the point of the weapon erupting up from his back. Molly was somehow laughing and screaming and singing at the same time. The flames were biting at the trees. I saw two men readying for shots at Molly, pulling back their bowstrings as she heaved the dead leader from her fatal embrace and began to stand. “Duck,” I told her. She did. My Lightning Bolt cut through the air maybe two feet above her, slamming into the men some thirty feet behind her, cracking and crashing back and forth between © 2020: Paul Tobin 137 them, a thousand times in one second, a burst of meat and blood. It startled the woman in the blue robes and her spell flickered uncertainly for some moments, with waves of black light dripping from her momentarily slack hands. Baubles charged out from behind me and trampled her. It wasn’t something that was over in moments. It took longer. Beneath his feet, the woman snapped and cracked and broke. The rhino flattened her chest. Her head. She was a mess. Baubles was muddy with her. When the rhino was satisfied he paused for a moment, then snorted in terror at the surrounding flames and tromped and stamped his way into the deepest part of the stream. The rest of the men ran. Molly stared at me for a moment, then fell unconscious. I pulled her farther away from the fires, pulling her close to the boulder, letting her legs rest in the stream. There in the water, I washed the blood away from her, with me breathing heavy from the fight, feeling drained from casting the spells, and with the resonations of Molly’s song still hammering through my head. I was waiting, tense, for any arrows to whistle their way toward me, out from the forest of burning trees, but they never came. As I cleaned the barbarian woman, scouring the blood from her body and using a healing spell to close several wounds, a trio of foxes stood atop the largest of the boulders, watching my every move, not making a sound.

There was money. While waiting for Molly to wake up, I walked carefully through the area that had played the part of our battlefield. The fires had sputtered away, thanks to the chubby trees with the rope-like leaves. The leaves themselves had burnt well enough, but the trunks were so full of water that they were essentially sponges. The fires had met their match with these wooden buckets, unable to overcome their wetness. The ground around was burnt and slushy. I walked through the muck of water and blood. There were more dead than I’d first thought. I was looking for survivors, but didn’t exactly know why. What would I do if I found any? Would I heal them? Watch them die? Would I… kill them? Walking through the devastation, I was somehow both dispassionate but also enraged. They’d tried to kill us. And it wasn’t some random attack. They’d known me. I stared at the dead leader, thinking of how he’d spoken my name. His short sword, poking up through his chest, had “Kill” etched into the blade. “Aptly named,” I told the dead man. “You got stabbed by irony.” I drew back a foot to kick him, but thought better of it and only nudged him with the point of my toes. I was ready for, and almost expecting, his eyes to snap open. They didn’t. My tension was slowly draining away. I barely whimpered when a little bell rang out. It was the treasure bell. Other bells began ringing all around. The forest held an impromptu concert. The noises didn’t disturb the squirrels, which had gathered in the nearest trees to wonder at the aftermath of human stupidity, and the bells didn’t bother any of the birds in the trees, either. Fridu had once mentioned that treasure bells can only be heard by the ones who’d earned them. I’d asked her how it was possible that sounds could only be heard by a specific few, and she’d told me that the world of Goncourt never answered such questions, and that only children asked them. A leather pouch appeared on the ground next to the dead leader, nestled against his chest and its tattoo of what appeared to be a summoning circle. There was another bag near the trampled woman in the blue robes. Several more across the battlefield. As I gathered them all up I peeked in a few of them. They held various amounts of coins. Handfuls of copper coins. A wealth of silver and a few scattered pieces of gold. One pouch contained several gemstones and a ring. I piled all the bags and pouches next to Molly, checking to see if she was still breathing. She was. I wondered what else I could do for her. “Keep watch,” I told Baubles, patting his side. He snorted. Maybe it meant something. He curled up next to the barbarian woman, lowering his mass with care. His ass ended up in the stream. Nature’s toilet paper. I was going back for any more of the leather pouches, worried about archers in

© 2020: Paul Tobin 139 the trees, waiting for the whistling of an arrow that was destined for my heart and wondering how I could strap Molly to the rhino’s back and get us the hell out of there, when the tattoo on the dead leader’s chest began to smolder. “The fuck?” I said, looking down to him. His flesh was smoking around the edges of the tattoo. Sizzling. It looked mighty fucking uncomfortable. My own tattoos felt warm. Sympathy pains. “The fuck?” I said, looking to the dead man and then up to Molly and Baubles to see if they had any comment, but Molly was unconscious and Baubles was a rhino. Light came from the tattoo, and I realized it had more than the appearance of a summoning circle; it had that function as well. The flesh was turning a hazy gray, like soiled fog drifting over his dead skin. “Seriously?” I said, kneeling to take a closer look. “What the fuck is this?” A tiny hand emerged from his chest, pushing up through the dead man’s skin. His flesh ripped. Folded back. Blood spilled in lazy fashion. The hand was clawed, with long fingers. The arm was thin, full of muscle, tendon, and hair. A creature was emerging. Some sort of werewolf-looking demon, slashing at the surrounding flesh. There was an odor of rotten eggs. Stale milk. Spilled beer. “The fuck?” I said. The small creature squatted on the dead man’s chest, staring intensely at me. Mist and smoke rolled off an abomination no more than five inches tall. “Seed?” the creature said. “The fuck?” I answered. “Not the seed,” the creature said, looking around, taking in the surrounding forest, the dead men, the boulders, and me. “You stab?” the creature asked me. He kicked at the sword through the dead man’s chest, nodding to it with a question. “No.” I was going to answer that Molly had been the one to kill the man, but decided against bringing her name into it. It could be dangerous. What the fuck was this little thing? It looked like a demon. A werewolf. A scarecrow made of meat. I couldn’t decide on its appearance. The mist around him was either playing tricks with the way he appeared, or with my mind. “Cleave the circle, the gnat breaks free!” the creature said. It had a grating voice that was louder than should have been possible for his size. “Jagar is free now. He can serve another. You? Jagar serve you?” “The fuck?” I asked. “Jagar makes contract. You give soul. I help murder. Kill. Riches. We fuck things. All the things. We kill and we fuck and we feast and they die.” The little demon was prancing on the dead man’s chest. “Holy shit,” I said. “What?” “Servant. Master. Just roles. Both of us are both. We make deal?” “No,” I said, and slapped down on the creature with my hand. It felt like high- fiving a porcupine. But his legs broke. “No kill!” he screeched. I stabbed him with my dagger as he crawled across the dead man’s stomach, driving my dagger down through him and the corpse, both. The hairy little demon screeched in horror, nearly sliced in half. His body spasmed for several moments © 2020: Paul Tobin 140 and then he went still. There was another ding of a treasure bell. The hair on my arms went prickly. My skin buzzed. My heart raced. Tiny lights exploded all around me. I was gaining another level. From all around, notifications of experience points popped up. A hundred experience points each from some of the dead men. Three hundred from the leader, even though Molly had been the one to kill him, but I knew that each of the deaths in the battle would count, because Molly and I were part of a team. Then, from the little dead hairy demon thing, I saw a floating announcement of more experience points.

Binding Gnat + 402 Experience Points

“That much?” I said. “It didn’t seem that hard to kill?” I used the tip of my dagger to nudge the little dead bastard. Then, because four hundred and two experience points seemed like a lot, I suddenly panicked and sliced off its head. Can’t be too careful. “Smart!” Molly said from behind me, which meant she quite nearly got a splendid view of me shitting myself. “Jesus FUCK!” I screamed, whirling around with my dagger, going on the attack. She parried my blade with an almost insolent gesture. “Just me,” she said. “Someone a little jumpy?” “Fuck yes,” I admitted. “Standing here with all these dead people? You know, the ones tried to kill us? And they knew my name! Fuck yes I’m jumpy. Are you okay? You fainted.” “I didn’t faint. I passed out. It’s different. It’s because of Murder Ballad.” “Say again?” “Murder Ballad,” Molly said, kneeling to inspect the dead Binding Gnat. She picked up his head and rolled it around in her fingers like a booger. “It’s one of my abilities. It puts me into a killing trance. I slaughter anything that’s near. It makes me damn near unstoppable, but I can’t really tell friend from foe. Also it drains the shit out of me. It’s like a five day orgy.” “Yeah,” I said, because as so often when Molly was speaking, I didn’t know what else to say. “I’d have probably stayed unconscious for several days. Even a week. Murder Ballad really drains the fuck out of me. But I must have gained a level. When that happens, it heals you completely. Restores you.” “Pretty damn handy,” I said. “Pretty damn handy,” she agreed. “You take any liberties when I was out cold?” She tapped on her stomach. “What? No. Fuck no!” “You washed me, though?” She ran a finger along her arm. “I must’ve been covered in blood. But I’m not, now. And I’m all wet. You washed me?” “It seemed like the thing to do, yeah. Honestly, I didn’t know what else to do.” “Thanks. And I was just giving you shit. I knew you wouldn’t do anything totally © 2020: Paul Tobin 141 perverted.” “Well, I do like to do totally perverted things, but there’s a time and place.” The words just came out of my mouth. Molly had cast the little demon’s head far into the woods and she’d been walking away, heading back to Baubles, but when I spoke she stopped in mid-stride. She didn’t turn around. She was just standing there. I was wondering if I should apologize, but at the same time couldn’t really think of anything I should apologize for. Baubles, in the stream, shifted. The splashes seemed loud in the silence. Molly looked at me over her shoulder. She had a smile that told me no apologies were necessary. “Little tiger roars,” she said. She turned fully around. “What?” I asked. She gave me a look of consideration, then walked closer. “Faint wolves howl,” she said. The husk of her voice made my stomach do funny things. The stalk of her hips made it worse. Better. “What?” I said, because I am a master of the moment. “A bull snorts low,” Molly said. She was standing in front of me. Either too close or too far away. I couldn’t decide. The water was still drying on her skin. The smile was not drying on her lips, despite the heat it was emitting. “It’s a fine thing to hear you growl, Josh Hester,” she told me. “Now and then, I like to see your fangs.” She stepped closer. There was contact. It felt like being bludgeoned with silk. “Want to look at me?” she asked. Her eyes met mine. Her gaze, leading my own, swept down. “You mean…?” I asked. My words left me. But they weren’t necessary. The meaning was clear. “Oh, I do mean,” Molly said. “And I am mean, too. I growl, and I bite, and I leave marks. That’s what Molly does.” She was talking to my ear. To my neck. To my cheek. Her lips brushed each place in turn, leaving no trace, but still leaving marks. “Do you want to look?” she asked. “I do.” Her wet hair was trailing against me. A thousand touches. “Good,” she said, stepping back. Her hand went to the laces of her leather jerkin. The fingers traced over the belt loops, and all the other places that held her clothes together, with her fingers dancing over their surface and her eyes dancing over mine. “Because…” she said. “Because…?” I asked. “Because I made a level,” she said, speaking in an entirely different tone of voice. Her fingers left the buckles behind. “Do that magic thing of yours. Stat Divination. Take a look at me.” There was a different smile on her lips. “Oh shit you are so cruel,” I said. She stuck out her tongue and laughed. “You should’ve seen your face!” she said, coming as near to giggling as a barbarian can. “You should’ve seen yours,” I told her. She blushed, suddenly, and came as close to stammering as a barbarian can. “Oh, yeah. Well, I’m a good actress. I was just joking, Josh. I just meant that, can you use your Stat Divination to look at me?” © 2020: Paul Tobin 142 “Sure.” I was trying to laugh things off, but something in my chest was remembering the husk of Molly’s voice, and my fingers and lips were aching to touch her. I had to physically shake my head clear. I felt my shoulders tense and shiver, then relax. “We both gained levels,” I told her. “So we should take a look at both of us.” “Me first,” Molly said. “A gentleman always takes care of a lady first.” “Don’t start up with that again. I’ve never spanked a barbarian before, but I’m right on the edge.” Molly started to say something, some words that were never quite formed, but then she bit her lip closed and looked slowly away. Baubles shifted in the stream again. More splashes. I wondered about all the little fish in the stream. Could they comprehend what had joined them in the water? Could they possibly have the slightest comprehension? Did anyone, anywhere, know what the hell was going on? “Here,” I told Molly, concentrating, and then her stats appeared in the air.

Molly Fenriskicker Barbarian Level: 9 Health points: 120 Race: Elven Alignment: Chaotic Neutral Strength: 16 Intelligence: 13 Dexterity: 17 Charisma: 14 Constitution: 16 Languages: Elven, English, Dwarf, Spectral, Feline Special Abilities: Double attack every other round, +6 against all giants, Murder Ballad, Animal Kinship, immunity to poison, immunity to debilitating inebriation, -3 against insects, weapons / armor will not deteriorate or break in combat, +3 to attack / defense in unarmed combat, +5 to all Bedroom Games, Double-Axe-Tornado Magic Items: Cup of Jester, Handcuffs of the Night, +2 ring of Cat Summoning, Cedric’s See-All Stone, Veil of Increased Bowel Movements, Hell’s Axe, Barrette of Illicit Excuses

“Oh,” she said. “Double attack every other round? That’s new. Awesome! Fuck yeah! Molly’s more dangerous now, boys!” She flexed an arm, patting her bicep. “I didn’t think you could be any more dangerous. And someday you’ll have to tell me about this stat of yours for ‘Bedroom Games.’ I notice it went up another notch.” “Oh!” she said, staring at her stats. “You’re right! Molly’s more dangerous in every way now, boys!” She wiggled her rump, giving it a spank. The slap sent a sharp retort throughout the boulder-filled clearing. A few squirrels chattered in reply. My whole body felt like it was humming, bristling from the combination of having made a level and also the dwindling adrenalin from the fight. Molly was again flexing her arms, showing off her muscles. “C’mon, big boy,” she said. “Show me yours. Let’s see those stats.” I frowned at her. Then concentrated. My stats appeared in the air.

Josh Hester Class: Open Level: 3 Health points: 37 Race: Human Alignment: Neutral Good © 2020: Paul Tobin 143 Strength: 12 Intelligence: 11 Dexterity: 13 Charisma: 13 Constitution: 13 Languages: English, Elven Special Abilities: Stat Divination, Poison Resistance (40% chance no damage: half damage otherwise) Heal Light Wounds (1d4+5: 4x day) Talk with Animals (1x day) Special Attack: Precision 3x day: attack ignores opponent’s armor class Known Spells: Lightning Bolt (2x day), Fireball (1x day) Booksmart (reveal weak point of enemies of equal or lesser level: 2x day) Magic Items: Trip Ring, +1 Cloak, Dagger of Confusion

“Holy fuck look at the way your health points are soaring!” Molly exclaimed, giving me a hard enough thump on my shoulder that I probably lost a couple of those points. “And, hmm, don’t get a swelled head, but I understand and agree with your charisma going up. You’ve seemed different lately. It’s strange, but in one way it’s like we haven’t known each other for very long.” “Well, we really haven’t. It’s only been—“ “I’m still talking. Don’t interrupt, Mr. Charisma. I was saying that in one way we haven’t known each other for very long, but in another way I feel like I’ve known you all my life, with the way Mom used to tell me stories. And then we finally met and you were, I’m trying to put this lightly, a scared little bitch of a chicken, but these days you’re more interesting.” “I feel like there was a compliment written somewhere on that dagger you just slammed into my heart,” I told her, looking at my stats floating in the air. “Hmm. My poison resistance went up. If that continues, maybe someday I’ll be immune to your insults.” “My words aren’t poison, Josh,” Molly said, grabbing my arm and bringing it to her mouth. She was baring her teeth, but having trouble suppressing a grin. “I’m only poison when I bite.” “Noted,” I said, pulling my arm back. “Oh. Look at that. I can heal wounds more often. That’ll come in handy. And what the fuck? I can talk with animals now?” I looked over to Baubles. “Animals never have anything interesting to say,” Molly told me, dismissing my world-changing ability. “I’m more focused on this new Booksmart skill of yours. You can sense weak points in your enemies? That’s fucking amazing, Josh. You’re gonna skewer people.” “It’s just what I’ve always wanted. Skewering people is all I live for.” “Stinks after you’re done, though,” Molly said, gesturing around us. The wafting scents from the surrounding dead were not pleasant. The men hadn’t smelled any too pleasant when they were alive, and death hadn’t improved them. “Let’s go somewhere else,” Molly said. She looked around. Considering things. “Deeper into the woods?” she asked. “Oh why the hell not,” I said, since, no matter what, I felt like I was getting deeper all the time anyway. * * * We camped in the woods for the night. Just me, the barbarian, and the rhino. Molly made a campfire that kept the night warm and the mosquitoes away, and I © 2020: Paul Tobin 144 wondered what those damn mosquitoes were normally eating whenever a banquet like me wasn’t rumbling through the forest. Did they all just hover around and bitch about being hungry? Fuck them. I hoped their entire families starved. I hate mosquitoes. Molly told me a story about her mother, Salena, my babysitter. We ate as she spoke, as Molly had, to my surprise, pizza with her. She’d been keeping it in one of the bags cinched around her waist. A tiny leather bag the size of the ones Binsa brings to dance clubs, those purses that hold her drivers license and a couple credit cards, a bit of cash, some makeup, and not much else. But Molly’s bag was literally magic. It was no more than five inches tall, but she reached her entire arm within, searching around. There was booze, too. Some sort of wine that felt heavy on my tongue, light in my throat, and ultimately like a sociable bomb in my stomach. I drank in moderation, but did it a lot. We’d camped fifty feet from a river, up a small rise. I watched the waters running past. I know it’s not true, but I always feel like rivers run slower at night. Molly was sitting next to me, with our shoulders touching. It would’ve seemed like she was sitting too close, except all of the rest of the room was reserved for a rhinoceros. “Have you ever met a vampire?” she asked. “No. Never. Wait. Honestly, I don’t know.” I was trying to remember that I didn’t know anything. “Mom had to fight some, once. They were preying on a town called Spelling. More of a village, really. Not more than five hundred people or so. But they’d lost over twenty to the vampires.” “Were they turning into vampires afterward? Is that how it really works?” “That’s how it really works,” Molly said. Her shoulder against me felt as warm as the fire. Her left foot had stretched out over my right foot, with her calf against my shin. “Well, sometimes. Depends on how the person is killed. There’s ways the vampire can make sure it happens. And, like sex, sometimes accidents happen.” She’d turned to look me in the eyes. The fire did its thing with the sparkles, reflecting in her eyes. She had half a slice of sausage pizza hanging from her mouth, backward, with the crust in her teeth. She was holding it that way so that she wouldn’t have to put it down in the dirt while she searched for the cork for the wine bottle. She couldn’t find it. Her shoulders hunched in a clear message of, “Well, now we’re going to have to drink the whole bottle. What a fucking shame.” She said, “It wasn’t much of a battle. Mom was powerful. The vampires weren’t.” “Aren’t vampires powerful?” To me, they were creatures of myth. They were collections of darkness with hands that could reach and fangs that could bite. “Oh, they can be. These ones weren’t. Vampires are like anyone else, really. It’s like asking if a person is powerful. Depends on the person, you know?” She licked tomato sauce off her lips while reaching over to give my bicep a squeeze. I don’t think she meant the two things to be connected, but they were. She said, “So the vampires were dead. Mom got them with fire. And she came home and brought me a present. It was a cape. A half cape. One of the vampires had been wearing it. It was embroidered with wolves. But, funny wolves. Cartoons. Children’s drawings. I loved that cape. I wore it around all the time. I pretended I © 2020: Paul Tobin 145 was a princess.” “A princess?” “Don’t say it that way. I can be a princess if I want. I mean, in my mind I was a princess of death. Of slaughter. I was a princess with a sword. But I still went to grand balls and wore pretty dresses and fucked the hell out of men and monsters.” “Just like a Disney film.” “Ought to be. The point of all this is, thanks for being at my back, today, in the fight. It felt good. You felt… you felt like my cape of cartoon wolves.” Molly was looking in my eyes with that particular expression people have when you Do Not Fucking Dare make fun of them. Instead, I found myself saying, “You were majestic. I mean, yeah, violent and bloody and terrifying, but… majestic.” “Flattery will get you almost nowhere,” Molly told me. “Yeah? How far will it get me?” “How about this?” she said. “I’ll put a hand on my butt.” She did as said. “Now, you can hold my hand. That’s an indirect butt touch.” Her hand slid into mine. Squeezed. And retreated. “Honored,” I said. “I guess I probably shouldn’t tell you where my own hand’s been.” “Let’s do keep it a secret, yeah. Do you think rhinos eat pizza?” “Everything eats pizza. Dogs. Sparrows. Goldfish. Chameleons and tardigrades. Not sure why a rhino would be any different.” “Good. Give Baubles some pizza while I get naked.” “Excuse me?” “Damn your face is adorable sometimes. You’re like a four year old boy trying to understand the world. What I mean is, despite the bath you gave me earlier, which I do appreciate, I’ve still got dried blood in places you weren’t authorized to scrub. Plus I need to take care of my equipment. So I’m going to go down to the river and wash everything. My armor. My clothes. My hair and toes and everything in between. You’re going to stay up here in the meantime, and I’m giving you a job to keep you busy while my taut and lush barbarian body is stripped bare and shimmering with droplets.” “Fair enough. But, just to be clear, I think my expression is easily that of a five year old boy. Don’t sell me short.” “I don’t anymore, Josh Hester,” Molly said. Her voice had grown more serious. She’d been just starting down the slope to the river but she stopped and came back. She circled behind me. I tried to look back but she put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me from turning. She didn’t say anything. A few heartbeats passed. I had the crackling fire in front of me, and the softer fire of Molly behind me. “It’s not going to happen,” she finally said. Her voice was low. She left without saying another word, moving down to the river, lost in the darkness.

“You can speak with animals?” Damian Tass, the Bale of Whitewater asked me. We were on the expansive lawns to the rear of his mansion, which was the size of those sprawling castle complexes the lords of France used to enjoy building, and it even had similarities of architecture. It struck me for the first time that I didn’t truly know the origins of the architecture, that I’d been thinking of how the city of Whitewater had been heavily influenced by Dutch architecture, but maybe I had it backward? Maybe the world I knew was only a reflection of this one. “I guess I can talk with animals?” I told Tass. “I mean, my stats list the ability, but I haven’t tried it yet.” Tass was an older man. Late seventies. But well kept in the way that rich people can be, because money acts as a shield against many things, even age. Damian was darkly black with a touch of elven in his ancestry, maybe a few generations back. He had deep green eyes and wore outfits that I can only describe as being precisely fitted pajamas. “Would you talk to my ostrich?” “I don’t even know how to respond to that. It sounds like something a guy texts a girl on a dating app.” “I’m not sure what you mean.” “Nothing. And, okay; are we really talking an ostrich, here?” “Yes. What else would I be talking about?” We were walking along a fenceline. Sort of. There were fenceposts, but no actual fence. We walked between them without problem, but I’d seen three horses and something that resembled a six- legged pig fail to do the same, rebuffed by an invisible barrier. Some sort of unseen magic was flittering back and forth, I assumed. There were sigils carved into the fenceposts. It was Goncourt’s version of an electric fence. I wondered what would happen if I peed between the fenceposts, the way I’d learned not to do back in my own world, when the shocking kickback of an electric fence made me swear off pissing or even masturbating for almost a whole day back when I was teenager, and me and Binsa had been at a summer camp. “Is there a reason you want me to talk to this ostrich?” Tass and I were walking across a field, keeping an eye out for the various kinds of shit that animals drop. There were cows. Horses. That pig-thing. Nothing very exotic. No griffins or dragons. I wondered what an ostrich’s shit looked like. It probably looked like most birdshit, except more of it. It’s a stroke of luck those things can’t fly. “You were asking about the blurred man,” Tass said. My heart clenched. My awareness grew. I felt like I could feel the breeze on every one of my hairs, all over my head and all across my arms and even the breeze moving over the grass we were walking through. The sunlight felt like a thousand crawling insects. And I could for damn sure feel the foxes tattooed on my skin. “I was,” I said. I didn’t mean to make it sound like a threat. I wished Molly was

© 2020: Paul Tobin 147 with me, but she’d stayed back at the house. Tass employed the usual range of servants, and then a few others past the usual range. One of them was a weapon’s master, a huge muscled chunk of a man named Roth. Molly obviously knew him. They were sparring in a fenced-off circle surrounded by a small section of bleachers. A few others had been gathering to watch when Tass had asked me to go for a walk. I could occasionally hear the ringing sounds of steel meeting steel. “He used to threaten me,” Tass said. “The blurred man? You know him?” I was still making my questions sound like threats. There was no reason for it and I wanted to stop. “This was back when I was pushing for reform in the Fireplace,” Tass said. Something in my expression told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. He added, “The Fireplace is the name of the more vice-ridden quarters of Whitewater. All but abandoned by the Guardians. Except for those taking bribes either to look the other way, or to escort the more decadent members of the so-called upper classes on a sight-seeing tour of the so-called lower classes.” A hundred yards ahead of us, an ostrich was strutting about. It was looking at something up in a tree, craning its head back, spreading its wings, fluttering in either a warning or a mating dance. I couldn’t be sure which way. Although, come to think of it, maybe I could ask the bird. Tass said, “There is a great deal of money to be made in vice, and a great many people willing to make it. To be clear, I don’t much care if someone indulges in most vices, but I do care about the living conditions in Fireplace. And I care that so often the poor are enslaved by the rich. Used. Discarded. I am considered something of a crusader.” “It’s easy to be a crusader when you’re filthy rich.” I hadn’t meant to say it. The words just spilled out. I expected Tass to be outraged. “It’s much easier, yes,” he said instead, not taking offense. “It’s also easy to be a monster. Easier, even. I honestly do care about people, but I’m also aware that having monstrous wealth is like being a giant. No matter how carefully you tread, you’re going to step on someone, some time.” I didn’t have any reply to that. It’s not often a rich guy agrees that rich people are pricks. We walked in silence, closer and closer to the ostrich. It was still focused on something up in a tree. I couldn’t see anything up in the branches, myself. It was an oak tree. Maybe the ostrich wanted some acorns? Maybe there was a predator in the tree, some six-legged panther to match the pasture’s six-legged pig, or perhaps a harpy perched in the branches? As we grew closer the ostrich noticed us. It ran in quick circles while keeping its gaze locked on us. “Her name is Samantha,” Tass said. “Okay. Speaking of names, do you know the blurred man’s real name?” “No. Back when I was pushing for reform in the Fireplace it angered many people, both those who lived in the district, angry over outsiders trying to change their lives, and then a selection of those who were making a great deal of money by exploiting all the vices that were there to be had.” “Where’s the blurred man come into this?” I was impatient. I didn’t want the background; I wanted the meat of the meal. “Sent to intimidate me. To let me know to drop all talk of reform. To mind my own © 2020: Paul Tobin 148 business.” “I’d guess it wasn’t a polite request?” “No. He visited over the course of three days. On the first day he killed every cat in my zoo. The panthers. The lions. The tigers. Even a griffin. He piled the dead in front of my door.” Tass gestured back to the mansion. “Fuck,” I said. “On the second day he killed eight of my workers. Four groundskeepers. Two maids. One of my cooks. And a woman who raised many of the baby animals. I have their names chiseled into the walls just inside my front door.” The ostrich, ahead of us, was hiding behind the tree as we approached. Tass’ voice sounded like it was hiding in his throat, loathe to emerge. “On the third day he made me watch as he cut off all of my daughter’s hair. He had her surrounded by foxes. Sleek and black. Almost like shadows. He told me that if anyone interfered, the foxes would tear her to pieces. So I only watched as my daughter sobbed and as her brown hairs fell away, and I listened to the blurred man wondering aloud if he’d need to come back the next day and kill her.” “Fuck,” I said, again. I meant it again, too. “I quit, Mr. Hester. I quit. I do care about the people of the Fireplace. I care for them a great deal. But I care more for my daughter.” “I understand.” “No. I’m afraid not. Nobody could understand what it felt like to watch the blurred man’s blade whisking over my daughter’s head, the edge so sharp it was like watching wool being sheared. He only nicked her a few times. A few little lines of blood. I don’t believe these minor wounds were mistakes. I believe they were an addition to his message.” I didn’t have anything to say to that, but we were only ten feet away from the ostrich, and there had to be a reason I was about to talk to a large, flightless bird. “The ostrich?” I asked. “Ah,” Tass said. “On the second day the blurred man, after killing my people along with two seasoned warlocks I’d hired to defend my property, sat down with Samantha.” “He sat down with an ostrich?” I tried not to sound skeptical. It was far more believable than most anything else that’d happened to me since finding the door in my old bedroom. “He did. For the better part of an hour. They seemed to be talking. Or, he was talking and Samantha was frozen. Paralyzed. Occasionally he would pet her. In the end he did her no harm, though he murdered Felne, the woman who’d raised Samantha from the moment she pecked out of her shell. Felne died running out to protect the ostrich. Brought down by foxes made of shadows that rose from the soil.” “Fuck.” “I don’t approve of the language, but I agree with the sentiment. The important thing, Mr. Hester, is that I believe the blurred man dropped his blur when he was talking with Samantha. I believe she’s seen his true face. I don’t know if that’s meaningful. I have no idea what information she could impart. But I thought you might ask.” © 2020: Paul Tobin 149 “Yeah,” I said. “I think I might.” We were only ten feet from the tree. Samantha was still hiding behind it. Now and then her head would poke out from one side or the other. “She’s been timid ever since the incident,” Tass said. “I guess anyone would be. Even a bird.” I stood wondering what to do. How to activate my ability. Did I just start talking? I heard a rustle in the leaves above us. Looking up, I met the eyes of a cat, looking down. Tass saw where I was looking and glanced up. “Oh, that’s Hindrance,” he said. “Hindrance?” “A markeen. Markeens are winged cats. Hindrance is, I suppose, a part of my menagerie. Though she comes and goes as she pleases. Mostly she pleases to spend her days stealing food from our kitchens.” “Is that where the name comes from?” “That’s where the name comes from, yes.” I stood below, looking up at the cat, well aware that I was emulating the earlier actions of Samantha. Now that I was looking, I could see the cat had wings folded along its sides. Hindrance was stalking along a branch, looking down at me, at Tass, at Samantha. The cat yawned. Expansively. Cats yawn very well, winged or not. “Hello,” I said to the cat. But I didn’t just speak; I was concentrating as I spoke. I was thinking of a link between us. Thinking of understanding. Communicating. “Hello,” Hindrance said. Her voice was a silken rasp. I felt my reality waver. Cats don’t have wings. Cats don’t talk. But, too bad. Here it all was. A thought hit me. “Can Hindrance talk?” I asked Tass. “Can you understand her?” “What? No. Markeens have no speech.” I nodded in reply. So it was definitely me. My ability. I looked back up to the cat. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Mischief.” “Wow. You are such a cat.” “Make her go away,” Samantha said, poking her head out from behind the tree. Her voice was watery, but with added ticks of her tongue. I shivered as she spoke. I’d spent the entire walk mentally preparing to talk with animals, but the reality still caught me by surprise. “Make her shut up,” Hindrance said, adding a very cat-like hiss. “Seriously?” I said. “I have the ability to talk with animals and I find out that you’re all as petty and lame as people? I’ve always thought animals would be full of wise advice.” “Why the hell would you think that?” Hindrance asked, mocking me. She flapped her wings and floated down from the tree, bouncing briefly off my head and shoulders before settling to the ground. “The wisest thing I can tell you is that nothing is wise.” “Cats stink,” Hindrance spat out. “Go away! No hunting! No hunting on the lawns!” “Wherever there is a cat,” Hindrance said, winding her way through my feet, “there is a hunt.” The cat looked up to see if I had a comment, but didn’t give me much of a chance before she flapped her wings and took to the sky, a cat in the air, © 2020: Paul Tobin 150 leaving behind a bird that couldn’t fly. Goncourt was a strange world. It would be easy to spend all my time amused or fascinated, but if I didn’t pay attention then I would end up dead, which would not be amusing. “I want to ask you some questions about… a man,” I told Samantha. She walked out from behind the tree. Circled me. Kicked the tree. “Hindrance was in the tree,” she said. “That’s wrong. That isn’t right. This is my tree. I won’t give it up.” “I understand,” I said. Maybe I even did. “But forget the cat. Do you remember the man that sat and talked to you?” “He was bad. Samantha remembers. I wanted to kick and rend. Could not. Stolen. Frozen. He told me stories about his time in a shell.” “A shell?” “Egg. Birth egg. He came from egg. You do not all come from eggs. You are the eggless.” Samantha bumped into me. A solid thwack. I was nearly bowled over. I couldn’t tell if she was mad. I don’t know anything about how ostriches interact socially. Maybe she was challenging me to a fight. Maybe it was a greeting between friends. I hoped it didn’t have anything to do with mating. “We don’t have eggs, no,” I told her. “Except the ones you steal. Upright thieves. Featherless wings that grab. No flight. That cruel cat laughs that I cannot fly.” Her voice held sorrow, and even what I think was a sob. “I cannot fly,” the ostrich whispered. “Me either,” I said. “No, Eggless, you cannot. The man from Farmhaven could not, either. He killed my eggless mother. Made shadows leak from soil. Chewed her. I miss her. My legs ache. I want to run to Farmhaven and kick at the man until the eggshell of his head crumples.” Samantha was racing around both Tass and I as she spoke. The circle widened as her anger grew, until she was racing around the tree as well, her little wings held out to her sides, pumping, flapping. “Go to Farmhaven?” I asked her. But it was Tass who answered, after grunting like he’d been struck. “Farmhaven,” he said. “Why did you mention Farmhaven?” He couldn’t understand anything of what Samantha and I were saying. Our language was a mystery to him. “Samantha was talking about, I think, the blurred man. She says he’s from Farmhaven. Where’s that?” “A small town west of here. A day’s travel, and for not much to see. A farming town, but the soil’s gone bad. There’s no more than fifty houses in Farmhaven, and less people than that. It’s a dying community.” “I guess that’s where I’m going next,” I said. “You’re stepping in my poop,” Samantha told me. With her watery voice, I couldn’t tell if she was sorry or amused. * * * I wanted to leave for Farmhaven immediately, but couldn’t find Molly. Asking around, I was eventually told that her sparring battle against Roth, the weapon’s master, had ended with Molly dazed and Roth unconscious. The crowd had vied for © 2020: Paul Tobin 151 the right to splash water on their faces, a celebration and a tradition in the sparring grounds. The honor had gone to a young man named Holdfast. He’d laughed when he’d splashed water in Roth’s face and was rewarded with effusive sputtering on the weapon’s master’s part. Everyone else had laughed when Holdfast had splashed water in Molly’s face and was rewarded by having her kick him in the dick. “Where’s Molly now?” I asked Holdfast, who was a strapping man of the type you see in pastoral scenes doing things like carrying hay bales or chopping down trees. He answered in a voice that was higher-pitched than I’d expected, but maybe Molly’s boot was still in effect. “I assume they’re fucking,” he said. “They do that. The battle always gets them going.” He pointed to a tower window. It was open. Three stories up. No glass. Just shutters. The shutters were thrown wide. Now that I was paying attention I could hear the sounds of a man grunting with a cadence that was almost a chant. I could hear Molly laughing. Both the grunt and the laughter were low and guttural. A collie dog with matted hair came and sat next to me. It leaned its head against my lap and looked at me with its big dog eyes as I listened to Molly’s laughter. I wasn’t sure if I was glad that I’d already used my Speak With Animals ability for the day. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear what the dog said.

Gerik chewed on a twig as we spied on the village of Farmhaven. There wasn’t much to see. The largest building was two stories tall, towering over the others and best described as a barn that couldn’t decide how to collapse. The rest of the buildings were squat, and not designed by master architects. They had grass roofs and resembled dirt-covered mushrooms. They each had attached pens for animals that needed closer watching. You could’ve made a case that it was a village for people with sheep, or that it was a village for sheep, with room for people. If anybody in the village specialized in building repair, they hadn’t reported for duty in at least twenty years. Gerik and I sat atop a hill, but beneath a monstrous tree similar to an oak, with acorns five times the proper size, covered in spikes. Now and then one would drop to the ground. Sometimes they stuck. Gerik had a leather helmet for protection but I didn’t have anything but luck. At one point a spindly sort of caravan went past, three wagons and one guard who looked like he’d shriek if a gopher ran across the road. The driver of the first wagon nodded as they passed. Nobody else did. I’d thought they’d stop in Farmhaven but they didn’t. They just rolled on through. “Doesn’t much seem like we’re hiding,” I told Gerik. We were supposed to be watching the town from hiding, seeing what there was to be seen. “Sometimes the best hiding is not hiding at all.” “Yeah. That doesn’t really mean anything.” “Not much ever does.” “I should’ve known better than to argue with a man that’s chewing on a stick.” “Time’s like those, only the stick wins,” Gerik said. “Philosophy is the sister of bullshit,” I told him. We went silent for a time. I scanned the village, looking for any signs that a homicidal maniac lived there. Molly and Fridu were down by the village well. Molly had stripped her chest half bare and was washing her arms and legs in the water, pouring cups of it over her hair, her arms, and over her chest and back, acting like a woman who didn’t favor either the heat or any sense of modesty. She was drawing all the attention in Farmhaven. All eyes on deck. Except Fridu’s. She was watching the rest of the town. Gazing. Calculating. Same as me and Gerik. “You see this?” Fridu asked. She was a couple hundred yards down the hill, standing next to the well in the tiny valley where Farmhaven had taken tenuous root, but we were connected by magic and it sounded so much like Fridu was whispering directly into my ear that I unconsciously pulled back. I covered up my idiocy by pretending to brush away a fly. “See what?” I asked. There was nothing to be seen. “Walk a little to the west,” Fridu said. I stood and walked a little to the west. The new angle revealed a few other things about the withering village. A couple more

© 2020: Paul Tobin 153 sheep pens. A pair of dogs fucking in a desultory manner. A couple boys playing catch with a ball made out of a doll’s head. And a pen filled with three ostriches. “Ostriches,” Gerik said. There was a lot in his statement. “Ostriches,” I said, with meaning to the word. We came back later, in the dark. * * * Coils of smoke followed Gerik as he moved silently to the front door of the house with ostriches. The birds themselves were slumbering in the back pen, looking like rounded hay bales in the darkness. The village of Farmhaven was asleep. Only one dog bothered to defend the territory. It was a stout mixed mongrel slipping out from between two of the squat houses, but when it started to growl at us, Molly hissed for it to be quiet and the dog rolled on its back in apology and then sat up and watched us from afar. Gerik reached the door. He was only partially clouded in his darkness, having said that we’d need to keep an eye on him in case anything went wrong. We were either about to invade the house of an incredibly dangerous and partially supernatural magic-wielding serial killer, or some simple country boy with a penchant for flightless birds. Best to be on our toes. The coils of smoke were Fridu’s. Magic. Sent to help the thief. It was the smoke that touched the door first, testing for hidden traps, magical defenses, or surprises of any kind. The smoke failed to find anything, but Gerik would be a better judge. The smoke coiled around his hands, coating him. I watched without breathing. The mongrel startled me by brushing up against my leg. I looked down at her. She was holding a doll’s head in her mouth, the same one we’d seen earlier when the boys were playing catch. The dog dropped the head and then looked meaningfully down at it, then up to me, nudging at the doll’s head in the dirt. “She wants to play ‘fetch,’” Molly whispered. “We’re busy,” I told the dog. “We’re criminals for justice.” “Don’t lie to dogs,” Fridu said, her voice low. “It’s bad luck.” “I didn’t lie,” I said. The dog pawed at the doll’s head again. I looked away and watched the thief running his hands over the door, all along the edges, over the frame, around the handle and the lock. He even inspected the hard-packed soil in front of the door. He looked back to us with a shrug, his hands still coated with smoke and his body half submerged in the darkness. He turned back and took out a set of lock picks, but then paused and tried the door. It opened. He put the lockpicks away. The dog picked up the doll’s head, circled around me once, then dropped it again. A small whine followed. Molly knelt down and petted the dog, staring in its eyes. “We can’t play, now,” she said. “We’re hoping to kill a man who murdered my mother, and to end a Fox Geas on my friend, and I’m personally hoping to torture a man for several days and then give you his head to play with, so that you can roll it in the foul dirt and the shit of this village.” Gerik was fully inside the house. The door was open. We all moved forward. The dog followed us as we went in through the door. There wasn’t much light, but © 2020: Paul Tobin 154 Fridu whispered some words and a new sense of vision flooded into my eyes and my awareness. Everything was muted, but I could see. The colors were dull and the air was full of tiny pinpricks of light. Fridu had already linked our minds, so I didn’t have to whisper to ask her what she’d done; all I had to do was think the question. “Starlight Eyes,” she answered. “A spell. I gave it to you.” “And the others?” I asked. “You’re the only one who needs it,” she said. “Molly and me, and Gerik as well, we can see in the dark.” “Oh.” It made me feel like an outsider. Lately, everything was making feel like an outsider. An intruder. We were breaking into a house in a land that I still couldn’t believe existed. The only thing that felt real was the dog, and maybe even she would sprout wings, like that cat in the tree. The interior of the house was small. The floor was hard-packed earth, with a couple areas of wood that was simply pressed down into the soil, like stepping stones. The walls were hung with plants on hooks. Some were doing well. Others were struggling. A couple needed a graveyard. There was a rough iron stove burning the last few cinders of a wooden log. A bed. A small table with a single chair. A wash basin and a few chests holding blankets and battered pots and pans. The air smelled like lard, soil, and smoke. There was one other door, presumably leading out back to the ostriches. I didn’t see anywhere to take a piss. I wanted to take a piss. There was nobody in the bed. Nobody sitting at the table. Nobody home. The dog sniffed at things. We all looked around. It didn’t take long. “Not here,” Molly said, looking at a rough bookcase that displayed maybe ten books with broken bindings and three bowls that reminded me of Aztec pottery. “Not unless he’s really good at hiding,” I said. I looked under the bed. Of course I did. That’s where the monsters hide. But there was nothing except a selection of stray sandals. It looked dirty under the bed, but I wasn’t sure if it counted. Does it matter if dirt gets on the floor, when the floor is made of dirt? “Something’s wrong,” Fridu said. I tensed up. I noticed Molly grip the shaft of her axe tighter. Gerik had been tapping at various sections of the floor, but looked up to the witch. “The plants aren’t aligned,” she said. “What’s that mean?” I asked. I was over by the rear door. Undoing the latch, I slid it slowly open, revealing that, yes; it opened to the pen with the ostriches. It wasn’t a magic portal. Not unless you were really into flightless birds. “It means they’re not speaking correctly,” Fridu said, holding the leaves of one of the plants in her fingers, rolling them back and forth. “You can speak to plants?” I asked. If I could speak to animals, then it didn’t sound absurd that she could speak to plants. Well, yes; it did sound absurd, but it no longer sounded impossible. “Not in the way you’re asking. It’s more like, I’m not sure how to explain it. A current? Maybe that’s the best way. I hear them like a current. Picture yourself standing in a river, feeling the rush of the water moving past you. It’s a familiar river. You’re there all the time. And then one day you step into the river and the water is flowing a different direction.” “That would be odd,” I said. © 2020: Paul Tobin 155 “That’s what these plants have,” Fridu said, touching another of them. “A current in the wrong direction.” “What do you think it means?” Molly asked. I found her question to be somewhat relaxing. I didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t understand. “I’m not sure. Let me try something.” Fridu raised her hand and a soft green light covered her fingers. The dog had jumped up onto the bed and curled itself for a slumber, but it raised its head with interest, staring at this new light. “Be yourselves,” Fridu said. She wasn’t talking to me or Molly or the thief; she was talking to the plants. She moved from plant to plant, touching them, whispering. The rest of us watched. Tension was rising in the small house with the dirt floor. Whatever Fridu was doing, it seemed to be a ritual in a religion I couldn’t comprehend. Gerik and Molly were motionless and silent, watching their friend. I was full of nervous energy, wanting something to happen and hoping nothing did. I petted the dog’s head, feeling uneasy and needing the comfort. I’d left to the door to the ostrich pen open, so I closed that, noticing that one of the ostriches had stood. It was watching me. “Private business,” I told it, closing the door. And then I turned around and almost stepped into a hole. There hadn’t been any sound I’d heard. No warning of any kind. No rumbling. No shifting dirt. But now there was a stairway leading down. The steps were of hard- packed earth at the start, but within a few steps they were stone. None of the others had noticed. Fridu was looking to the plants, and Molly and Gerik were looking to the witch. “Guys,” I said. They turned around. I pointed to the steps. “Okay,” Gerik said, in the tone of voice that means, “That’s odd.” “Well fuck me,” Molly said. She stepped closer to the stairway, peered down. “Ah,” Fridu said. “That explains it.” “Not to me it doesn’t,” I told her. “Green Door. A spell. It slivers reality. Magic, obviously. You hide a doorway or an object in… I guess… the life of something else. In this case plants. It’s often plants, because plants don’t wander off.” She touched one of the healthiest plants and said, “This is the stairway. Hidden here.” She touched one of the dead plants and said, “This is what we were seeing before. The dead earth.” “How important is it that I understand this?” “Not very. There weren’t stairs. Now there are. You got that part, right?” “I noticed them first,” I said. “So, yeah; I understand the stairs.” “Noticing them first gives you the right to go down them first,” Molly said. She meant it as a challenge. “Fuck no,” I said, failing her challenge. “Thieves should go first, to check for traps. Or maybe a barbarian should go first, to kick ass. College students should go last. Or, maybe at all.” “I was just teasing,” Molly said. “Of course I’m fucking going first. He killed my mother.” She was at the top step, looking down. The stairway descended for possibly thirty steps, terminating at an iron door. Molly put her sandaled foot on the second step down and then I found myself dropping down into the stairway from the side, getting in front of her. © 2020: Paul Tobin 156 “Fuck this day,” I said, and took the lead. “Get out of my way,” Molly ordered. She had a hand on my shoulder, pulling back. I felt something flare in me. The fox tattoos felt warm. Alive. Writhing. I could feel them moving closer. No more than an inch. A frightening distance. It felt like claws being slowly drawn across my flesh. “I’m going first,” I told Molly, shrugging her hand off my shoulder. I took another step down. The first few feet of the surrounding walls were dirt, then they changed into stone. The stairs weren’t wide. There was only room for one at a time. Molly tried to bull her way past me, pressing my shoulder against the wall. “I said I was first,” she told me. “I said you weren’t,” I said, pressing back against the wall, reestablishing my position. “Could you two either fuck or go down the stairs?” Gerik asked, looking down from above. “Try both,” Fridu said. “I bet you could do it.” The dog looked down over the edge. I wondered if it had a cute comment too. “It’s not going to happen,” Molly and I said at the exact same time. Gerik laughed. Molly took the time to curse him and I used it to my advantage, moving farther down the stairs, hurrying to the iron door. But then there was a rush of darkness and Gerik was standing next to me. “You had the right of it before,” he said. “Thieves should always go first. There could be a hundred traps. Especially on a door like this, hidden the way it was. It means somebody has secrets, and wants to keep them.” His grave-like voice was even lower than usual. He turned away from me and was reaching for the door, with Fridu’s magic smoke slinking down through the air to coat his hands once more, when I took his shoulder and moved him back. I’d seen the stairs first. This was my right. Then there was a knife at my throat. “What’s gotten into you, Josh of Apartment 3B?” Gerik said. His eyes looked like coal. “You do not touch me when I’m going about my work. You do not do that.” I barely heard his words. I was focused on the knife at my throat. I was wondering how to move it away. Lightning Bolts and Fireballs were out of the question in the small confines. Was I fast enough to knock the knife away and sink my teeth into his neck? I would have to check. I would have to— “Stop,” Fridu said. I didn’t like the sound of her voice. Did she think she could order me around? I knew better than she did. I could scent the sweat of her fear. I could smell the trap she presented. I could almost taste the blood in her throat. “Move back from Josh,” Fridu said. “He thinks he can—” Molly began. “Move back from Josh,” Fridu said again, much harsher this time. Gerik went into his shadows. It didn’t matter. I could still see him. Nothing could hide from me. I could feel Molly’s indecision. I could feel how her axe wanted to bite me. I could taste the scent of her sweat, the call to battle that shivered her skin. But I could also feel the trust she had for the witch. She moved back from me. She and Gerik hurried several quick steps back up the stairs. © 2020: Paul Tobin 157 “What’s happening?” Molly asked. “What’s happening?” I heard a voice echo. It was my voice. Mine. Frightened and weak. How was I speaking? And why? I didn’t want to be speaking. I wanted to be biting. I wanted to be running. “It’s the Fox Geas,” Fridu said. “It’s getting into his head. He’s dangerous right now.” “I’m dangerous all the time,” I thought to myself. I did not want to share these words. The others did not need to know about my cunning. They did not need to know how I could sneak behind them. Or sneak away. Sneak anywhere. Everywhere. I did not like the bottom of the stairs. I did not like the iron door. It was a thing of men. It was wrong. “What’s happening?” I heard again. My voice again. I shivered. Was there two of me? No. There were four of me. One single college student and three foxes, howling from within, building a fire. “You have the foxes working their will inside you,” Fridu said. “A Fox Geas burns in multiple ways. There’s the fire that consumes your body, but there’s also a fire that devours your brain.” I said, “But what can—” “Knock him out, Molly,” Fridu ordered. “With pleasure!” the barbarian said. She all but leapt down the stairs at me. “Huh?” I yelped. “Wait!” But Molly didn’t wait. Her axe flashed out. The flat of the blade. That cold, hard, magic steel. And it all went black.

Salena and I were going for ice cream. My dad said he’d pay, but we both knew he wouldn’t. My babysitter and I had nodded when he spoke, like we believed him, but Salena hadn’t even glanced his way when we opened the door. As the door closed, I looked back to my dad. He was on the couch in his underwear. He hadn’t bothered to put on pants when Salena had knocked on our door. I’d urged him to get dressed, but he’d only winked and said that maybe Salena would like what she saw. But now the door was closed and we were outside and heading for ice cream. I could’ve put all thoughts of my dad behind me, except that Salena seemed distracted. Distant. And I felt like I knew the reason why. “Sorry about my dad,” I said. “Huh? Oh, he’s no problem. I ignore him. He’s not worth a single thought. Oops, that was rude. I’m sorry, Josh.” “Yeah.” Any answer beside that, anything more, would’ve been too much. I didn’t want to agree with her, because it would have felt too sad. I didn’t want to disagree with her because then I would’ve been wrong. We were almost all the way to Parlor Tricks, the ice cream store, when we saw the foxes. They came slinking out from behind cars on the street. They came down the sides of buildings, uncaring of gravity, not falling, but instead walking with that bouncy little jaunt of their kind. A few of them came up from within or below the street, like ghosts rising from graves. I saw at least one spill out of a person, a middle-age man with a picture of the Statue of Liberty on his shirt and an actual fox falling away from his back, not quite landing on its feet. There must have been a hundred foxes. “Fuck,” Salena said. “What the shit?” I said. “Foxes?” I wasn’t sure if I should be terrified or amazed. Then Salena’s hand tightened on mine in a way that gave me the answer. Her grip hurt. The foxes bared their teeth and moved closer. They all took steps at the exact same time. It was unnerving. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Salena said. “Shit.” I was looking to the other people. The man in the Statue of Liberty shirt. Two women passing a phone back and forth, laughing. The man who owned the strip club, walking carefully while carrying two bags from the Verdant Veggies burger store, and a tray of precariously-perched drinks. There were others as well. Not one of them noticed the foxes. They didn’t move around the foxes, and the foxes didn’t step out of the way. Whenever they met, they’d simply pass through each other, like one of them was a ghost. “I have to kill them,” Salena told me. “It’s going to be frightening for you. I’m going to howl.”

© 2020: Paul Tobin 159 “You’re what?” I asked. Everything was happening too fast. My mind couldn’t process the speed of how my world had changed. I was still thinking of ice cream. I could feel my heart shuddering with every combined step of the advancing tide of foxes. It felt like the concrete beneath my feet was cracking, and like my ribs were cracking, too. Salena started to howl. It began as a low sob in her throat. The sound someone makes when their heart is breaking. A wail of loss. But then it turned into a howl. A shuddering, booming, frightening howl. I wondered if she was turning into a werewolf. “Salena?” I asked. I felt like howling myself. But only in the frightened, timid manner of a lost child. Salena fell to her knees. Her head arched back. More howls. Nobody was watching. Nobody was paying any attention. Nobody but the foxes, padding closer. Salena slumped forward, catching herself with her palms flat on the concrete. I put a hand on her back and tugged at the shirt she was wearing. Drool spilled from her mouth. Her shirt tore away. I hadn’t thought I was pulling that hard. But, no; it wasn’t me. Her shirt was being ripped to shreds by invisible forces, turning to smoke and wisps of flame. In moments it was gone. Vanished. She was nude to the waist, wearing nothing but a pair of light yellow Capri pants and one sandal. The other sandal had fallen away. I picked it up and hugged it to my chest. I watched the contortions of the muscles on Salena’s back. I saw her small breasts sway and shiver when she coughed, and the stretch of them as she tilted her head far back and howled again. There were fox tattoos on her arms. I’d never seen them before. A single fox, high up on each of her shoulders. And then another on her chest, depicted as sitting. The ones on her shoulders were stalking toward the fox between my babysitter’s breasts. “Don’t run,” Salena said. The effort of speaking left her breathless. “They won’t care about you. Unless you run.” She tried to say something more but then a series of great shuddering heaves made it impossible for her to speak. She only curled to the sidewalk in a fetal position. The foxes were moving closer and I was at an absolute loss. I thought about running to get my dad but then the absurdity of him actually helping cleared my mind. I knew it was all up to me. I reached down and grabbed Salena’s arm, meaning to drag her into what I hoped was the safety of the ice cream store, but as my hands clamped around her forearm I felt something weird. Fur. Salena’s skin was quickly covering in fur. Her pants ripped away. Her body began changing. Muscles were heaving. Reforming. Her hands turned to paws. Claws extended. I was holding a tiger. A huge one. The size of a car. The massive head swiveled to me. There was eye contact. The beast’s eyes seemed a hundred million miles deep. “Let go of my leg, Josh,” the tiger said. The words were drumbeats. Hot and heavy. © 2020: Paul Tobin 160 But it was Salena’s voice. I let go of her leg. “Do not watch,” Salena said. “Keep hidden. I will protect you.” And then before I could make any comment, the tiger pounced. She crushed three foxes in her jaws. A swipe of her paw sent several more flying. The tiger was a flurry of movement. Sharp, quick moves, but fluid at the same time. A dance of blood. Her teeth sought foxes. Found them. A snap and a shake of her head. The foxes were falling to pieces, ripped to shreds. The tiger’s claws were peeling them open, spilling their blood, spilling their organs and their lives. The tiger’s fur became matted with patterns of blood and lumps of dying flesh. The foxes were overmatched. They tried to bite, but their jaws could never quite close on the target. They came at Salena from the rear, trying to take her from behind, but her rear legs would kick out and slice the foxes apart, or send them flying to abrupt stops against cars or the sides of buildings, or sometimes skipping along the pavement before coming to a very final rest. Several times Salena’s tail whipped out, slicing foxes into pieces, or gathering them up with her tail acting like a tentacle, squeezing the life from the foxes before casting them aside. The battle was over in less than a minute. The foxes were strewn about, severed and crushed. Their meat smoldered and turned to ash, or went ghostly white and faded away. Soon there was nothing left but me, a shaking trembling seven year old wreck of a boy, and an enormous tiger with one paw on the sidewalk and another on the back of a parked Chevy truck. The tiger turned to me, saw me, considered me, and let out a rumbling growl of a warning. “My head, Josh,” the tiger said. “Inside my head. More foxes. I couldn’t kill them all.” The words were strained. Choking. The tiger’s fangs were grinding together. “Salena?” I said. My voice was all over the place. My feet felt cemented to the sidewalk. The tiger took its paw off the back of the truck, with the Chevy’s suspension groaning in relief. The paw came down on the sidewalk, only ten feet away, the distance of a single pounce. My legs were made of lead. The air felt humid. Drool spilled from the beast’s mouth, and I remembered the way Salena had been bent over on the sidewalk at the beginning of this nightmare, spilling her saliva like a waterfall, like a faucet, like a tiger that had killed a hundred foxes and was still hunting for death. “Everything burns,” the tiger snarled. “Everything inside me is chewing.” The tiger moved closer. It was so large that a single shift of its body meant that it halved the distance between us. Her claws left marks in the sidewalk, raw lines in the concrete. I felt nauseous. I felt cold. I felt like I should run but that’s not what I was doing. It wasn’t within me. “I should kill you,” the tiger said, in Salena’s voice. “I should kill everything. I should even kill myself. Josh, my little boy; what should we do? How can we stop this? How does it end? All these nights? All this fear? Molly must never know. Molly must run. My little girl. My last spark. Josh, Josh, Josh, what’s hidden inside of you, here?” With the last she reached out a paw and extended the terrible sharpness of one single claw, a claw that raked across my shirt and stomach. The fabric of my shirt parted, but my skin was untouched. The heat of her breath was unthinkable. © 2020: Paul Tobin 161 “Salena?” I said. The tiger took a sudden step back. “Josh?” it said. The tiger’s eyes went wide and she convulsed like she’d been struck by a wrecking ball, but from all sides. She squished. She twisted. Her bones broke. The tiger’s body caved in upon itself, and then in a flash it was Salena on the sidewalk, looking like a broken thing. Her arms and legs were splayed out. She was on her side. Naked. Bruised. A puddle of urine formed around her. My babysitter’s eyes were closed. She was motionless. I thought she was dead. “Salena!” I shrieked. My voice was a mess. “Salena? Salena!” “Huh?” she said, in the voice of a woman waking from a dream. She sat up. I was worried everyone would see her, but nobody did. Nobody looked our way. They didn’t see the naked woman sitting in her own urine, or me in my terror, or even notice how everything seemed stained with blood. “Oh,” Salena said. “The Fox Geas.” She was standing up. Shaky. I tried to help her but was only in the way. “Did I hurt you?” my babysitter asked. I shook my head and told her I was okay, my words only whispers as I watched her getting dressed, moving a hand down over her body, with clothes covering her like she was pulling down a shade. It was the same clothes as before. The shirt. The light yellow Capri pants. Even both her sandals. “I’m being killed,” Salena told me. “But I’m fighting back. A spell from an old foe. Fector Candleman. What a dumb name. It scares me so bad.” She was straightening her hair. A wind had risen on the street and was acting like a janitor and a repairman both. All the blood was washed away. All the damage repaired. Everything was cleansed. The world didn’t know what had happened. But I did. I always would. It was seared into my brain. “What’s happening?’ I asked. I didn’t think there could possibly be any answer. “All those foxes? You turned into a tiger!” “I’m a witch, Josh. I’ve never lied to you about that. I’m a creature of magic. What’s happening is that I met a man and I fell in love. And he loved me. And he died. And his family, his organization, blames me. And Candleman is killing me for it. You saw the foxes tattooed on me? They’re real. They’re alive. They’re burning me.” She touched fingers to her shoulders, chest, and forehead. “They get inside my head and make me think the most horrible things. I want so much death, sometimes. I want to bite.” She barred her teeth. I think she meant it as a joke, but her jaw trembled and she shook her head, squeezing her eyes tight. “Sorry,” she said, opening her eyes. “What’s happening is that Candleman and his people believe I stole something from them.” “Why?” “Because I stole something from them.” “Oh. What?” “Something that I needed to hide. Something that I’m going to give to you, because I’m going to die.” “You’re not!” I yelled. Salena was not going to die. I wouldn’t allow it. I would grow up and become strong and save her. It had to be true. “I am, though. It’s not okay, but I’ve come to peace with it. I’m going to spend my last few days making sure I keep my mind intact, despite these damn foxes. And I’m © 2020: Paul Tobin 162 going to spend my last few days hiding what I stole, hiding it where I think, I hope, you will grow up to find it.” “Where? I asked her. “What is it?” “I’d tell you,” my babysitter said, “but you’d only forget.” “No I wouldn’t!” I promised, but Salena had already reached out and put a finger on my forehead, and it felt cool and smooth and soothing, even when it pushed inside my skin and past my skull, moving like the finger of a ghost, invading but not destroying, until her finger was firmly lodged inside my brain, where it wiggled. And I forgot the foxes. I forgot the tiger. I forgot everything that Salena had told me. I forgot the Candleman. I remembered the ice cream. “What flavor of ice cream are you getting?” I asked Salena. She was holding my hand. I liked it. It didn’t make me feel like a little boy. It made me feel like something more. Something special. “I’m thinking probably… chocolate chip cookie dough?” my babysitter said. “I’m feeling decadent.” She smiled at me with all the warmth and the wonder in the world as she opened the door to the ice cream store, but as I went inside, by chance, I looked to the door and saw her reflection in the glass. She wasn’t smiling. She looked sad. And haunted. I wondered why.

“Salena wanted to bite and kill,” I mumbled. My three friends were staring at me, their faces hovering above me. Coming to my senses, I realized I was still in the little shack, sprawled in the bed. My head was throbbing. I remembered Molly hitting me with her axe. “I hit you with my axe,” Molly said, in case I’d forgotten. “Yeah, no shit. I remember.” “You went, like, right down. I really clocked you.” She had all the pride of a good dog that’s done a fine thing. “What the fuck did you hit me for?” Before she could answer, I looked to Fridu, and to Gerik, and I asked, “What the fuck did she hit me for?” “What the fuck were you just saying about my mom?” Molly asked, brushing aside my “you attacked me with an axe” concerns. “I had a weird dream about her,” I said. “Probably because you caved in my head with your axe.” “Bullshit. I barely dented you. And did you seriously just have a wet dream about my mom?” “What the fuck? Who said that? No! I think it was another suppressed memory. I’ve been remembering times Salena did real magic and then made me forget.” “Maybe I should keep hitting you if it brings back your memories?” She gripped her axe tighter and loomed over the bed. “What happened in the dream?” Fridu asked, stepping in front of Molly. Gerik was by the stairs, impatiently gazing down them and then back to us. The dog was curled up on the bed on my feet, looking to whoever was talking at any given time, ready to bolt from the bed if she was scolded. I said, “Salena and I were going for ice cream. A shitload of foxes came out from nowhere. Salena turned into a massive tiger and destroyed the shit out of them. But she was having mental problems. Something about the Fox Geas. Her fox tattoos were alive and eating her brain. Destroying her sanity.” “That’s what a Fox Geas does,” the witch said. Her voice was low and she was trying to sound casual, but of course the elephant in the room was the foxes on my flesh. “That’s why I had Molly knock you out. Your mind was… shifting? You were losing it. I was afraid you were going to attack us.” “I think I was,” I admitted. “Something felt wrong in my head.” Fridu let out a sigh and put a hand of support on my shoulder. Molly surprised me by putting down her axe and sitting on the side of the bed. Her fingers moved through my hair in a gentle massage. The dog settled firmly on the bed, taking her social cues from Molly, who was clearly demonstrating that sitting on the bed was allowed. “I’ll have to always be ready to smack you upside the head until we solve all this,” Molly told me. But her voice was kind and her fingers kept moving through my hair.

© 2020: Paul Tobin 164 It felt soothing. “I remembered something,” I told the two women. Gerik was sitting on the edge of the stairs, his feet hanging over the side. “What?” Fridu asked. “In my dream. Salena said the blurred man’s name. Fector Candleman.” “Candleman?” Molly hissed. “Him? That’s… fucked up. He was my father’s friend. I’ve heard stories of them hunting together. Wild boars. Black Fanged Deer. I didn’t think he was very powerful?” “Maybe he’s hiding it,” Fridu said. “Assassins rarely reveal their secrets.” “We’ll just need to find him, then,” Molly said. “Pummel his nuts until he admits everything. And then I’ll decapitate him.” Molly, talking of chopping off a man’s head and definitely not kidding, kept her fingers running through my hair. She was unthinkably violent and wonderfully kind, all at the same time. I thought of Candleman and if he’d been the one to goad my father into death, and if he’d been the one to inspire the fear I’d seen in Salena’s eyes, and the one to curse me with the Fox Geas and burn my babysitter alive. If so, Molly would have to be quick with her axe, because I wanted his head for my own. So I guess there was an enormous amount of violence lurking inside me, too. Maybe Molly and I weren’t so different. “Your mother was talking about something she’d stolen,” I said. “Something she’d hidden where she hoped I’d grow up and find it.” “What was it?” Molly asked. “She wouldn’t say. Or at least didn’t.” “Mom did love her secrets,” Molly said. She leaned closer and parted the hair where she’d clocked me with her axe. “Ah,” she said. “There’s only a little blood.” “It’s okay,” I told her. I didn’t want her to feel bad. “I just actually thought there’d be more,” she said, then slapped my chest. “You’re being lazy, Josh. Get up. We need to break down that door.” “Pretty sure I can pick the lock,” Gerik said. He slid off the edge and down onto the steps, peering up over the edge at us. “More fun to break down,” Molly argued. “More smart to pick the lock,” Gerik said, and disappeared from view. I stood slowly, checking to see if I had my balance, worried I’d go dizzy. Everything seemed okay. “This thing with the weird rage?” I said, looking to Fridu. “How often is this going to happen?” “Hard to say. Maybe once every few days. But, increasing in severity and frequency until, the end I guess.” Her voice dwindled as she tried to talk about my impending death in the nicest way possible. There weren’t a lot of options for that. “Oh shit!” Gerik swore from down below, out of sight, in the staircase. His hand appeared on the edge and he vaulted up into view. “Ostriches!” he yelled. “What?” I said. “Say again?” Molly told him. “Excuse me?” Fridu said. But it was then that the first of the ostriches appeared. Or at least a head. A neck. It came rising up from below like a cobra. Maybe seven feet of ostrich neck, topped by a fanged ostrich head. The eyes glowed red. © 2020: Paul Tobin 165 “Fuck me!” I screamed, with my heart pounding. The dog started growling and barking and Molly leapt forward with her axe, swinging it with a strength and accuracy that would’ve certainly decapitated the demonic ostrich if the neck hadn’t dodged her in snakelike fashion. The miss overbalanced Molly and she stumbled, then tripped on the dog as it leapt from bed, and the barbarian girl fell flat on her face and stomach and then bounced over the edge of the stairs and disappeared from view. “Shit!” I yelled. I hurried toward the stairs but collided with the dog, the battle’s designated obstacle. I managed to keep my balance but dropped the dagger I hadn’t even known I was holding. I slid to a stop and snapped it back up as the dog dove under the bed for cover. When I turned back to the stairs there were several ostrich heads rising up from below, like kelp undulating in the surf. There were at least ten of them, waving in mesmerizing fashion. “What the fuck are those?” Fridu asked. “How the fuck am I suppose to know?” I yelled, but of course there was a way for me to know, and it was only a moment before the twisting necks were intermixed with glowing words, floating in mid air.

Dark Ostrich Level: 4 Health points: 26 Attack Class: 5 Defense Class: 2 Attack: 1d4-1 (peck) Special Attacks: Constrict. Dark Ostriches can forgo their attack to Constrict, wrapping their necks around a victim on a successful hit. Victims may save vs. Strength at a -4 to escape for no damage. A failed save leads to 1d4 of damage, and an automatic hit the next round unless victim makes a Strength check. Successive rounds of constriction stack an additional 1d4 to damage each round. Wing Buffet: Victims are buffeted by the Dark Ostrich’s wings, causing 1d4-1 of damage along with a Confusion spell. A successful save versus Intelligence negates the Confusion spell, with the roll receiving a -1 penalty for any additional Dark Ostriches within a ten foot radius.

It was a lot of information that I frankly had no time to read, because Molly had fallen down the stairs and could be in trouble, while the rest of us hadn’t fallen down the stairs and were certainly in trouble. One of the ostriches struck out at Fridu but she managed to block it with a glowing magical shield, though the impact still knocked the dwarf woman on her ass. Another of the heads lashed out at me and I jabbed out my dagger with both hands, closing my eyes and turning to the side, like the world’s worst warrior. However dubious my strategy, it worked, because the ostrich impaled its head on my dagger, with the point slamming through its eye and its brain, emerging from the back of the head. The neck went limp and fell to the floor like a long, thick rope. Dust puffed up. The dog whined. “Well struck!” Gerik called out. “Total accident!” I admitted, and then some dumbass lizard part of my brain decided I needed to save Molly in the most dramatic way possible, so I dove over the © 2020: Paul Tobin 166 side of the stairs like some dumbass hero and bounced down the stairs like a complete idiot. Luckily, there were ostrich bodies to break my fall. I stood up and stabbed one. It bled in my face, hard, like it was retaliation. I reached up and grabbed one of the necks, trying to strangle the bird. It responded by kicking me into the side of the wall in a very persuasive manner. I hit, slid down a couple feet, then was stuck to the side of the wall by the press of the birds. I was still holding one of the necks in my hands and still hadn’t spotted Molly. “Molly?” I yelled. “Josh?” “Where are you?” “Stuffed up some ostrich’s asshole!” she shouted. I wasn’t sure if she was serious. In a world of magic, who knew what might happen? But then one of the birds shivered and Molly’s axe came flashing a few inches in front of my nose, nicking the stone side of the stairs and sending sparks flying. One of the birds had been in the path of the axe, and the bird didn’t win the argument against the cold steel. It fell to the floor in a splash of slippery things, and the ostrich next to me moved back into the space, allowing me to fall to the stone steps, somehow managing to land both on my feet and also my face. “Shit!” I yelled. I still had a grip on the ostrich’s neck. It decided to argue the point. The head came swooping down to stare in my eyes, and then the neck began wrapping around me like a snake. The ostrich was making a sound like a blown tire. Molly was laughing. Something was on fire. The dog was barking and whining. There was a sudden black void next to me, and then the neck wrapped around me was cut into pieces by a blade that also cut shallowly into my chest. “Fuck,” Gerik said, speaking from the darkness. “Sorry. Close quarters.” Before I could respond another ostrich nabbed him up and slapped him against the wall. The ostriches’ necks were unthinkably long and their bodies were small, like boa constrictor heads on baby ostrich bodies. I hugged one of the ostriches against me, ignoring how the feathers were cutting into me, and I slammed it against the wall again and again, stopping now and then to do some stabbing. Tentacles of flames wrapped around another ostrich before turning into a multitude of hands that ripped the neck free from the bird’s body. I was being buffeted against the birds’ bodies, against the wall, and against the stairs. Everything was chaos. I think I was screaming. Everything was too compact. It was a mass melee in what amounted to a phone booth. The dog had moved to the side of the stairs and was barking down. I had half my mind focused on remembering not to unleash any lightning or fireballs, and another half of my attention concentrating on casting my Speak With Animals spell, specifically so that I could call the birds assholes, which I idiotically thought Needed To Be Done. “Assholes!” I screamed at them, knowing they could understand me, now. “Kill!” they yelled in unison. “Intruders die! All intruders die!” I was stabbing another of the ostriches, driving my dagger in its chest. It fell to the stairs and bounced down the steps to the iron door, nearly wiping me out. I had to grab another bird’s neck for balance, and still went to my knees. Two more ostriches rose magically up from the stairs like ghosts from below in a moment that indicated the birds were endless, wearing us down, intent on killing me and my friends. © 2020: Paul Tobin 167 “Kill!” the birds yelled. The voices were harsh. Guttural. The words were bubbling from their throats. “Kill! Kill! Strangle and break!” “This is so fucking funny!” the dog at the top of the stairs barked out. “Eh?” I said. “What fucking idiots!” the dog yelled. “Kill them all, my beautiful birds!” “What?” I said, looking to the dog. “Shit,” it said, looking down to me. “What the fuck did you just say?” I asked, dodging two necks and a clawed foot. “Aww, fuck,” the dog said. “Kill that fucking dog!” I yelled. “Huh?” Fridu said. “The dog! Kill it!” Gerik had ostrich necks wrapped around both his arms, holding him helpless, and another around his neck, choking the thief’s life away. Molly was on her back with three ostriches raking at her with their clawed feet, leaving lines of blood and what amounted to trenches in her flesh. Another ostrich kicked at me, sending me flying and knocking my head against the side of the stairs. “Kill that dog!” I tried to yell, but it came out muffled. The kick had dazed me. The wall had stunned me. My legs felt like water. Two ostrich heads appeared in my vision, their fanged mouths grinning and their eyes full of death. One latched onto me, biting and tearing and tugging my flesh aside. Molly couldn’t make it back to her feet. There was no room. Her struggles were fading. Gerik’s face was purple. And then the ostriches were gone. “Oh,” Fridu said. “That worked?” The dog’s body fell down the stairs, bumping and bouncing. There was a huge gash in the side of its head. A burning hole. Charred edges. A wicked, unfriendly smell. As the dog’s body bounced down the stairs, it began changing. By the time it hit the bottom and slumped against the iron door it was a young woman. Maybe my age. Early twenties. She had long black hair, somewhat charred on the side of her face that was destroyed. Her features had been elven, with pointed ears poking through her hair. Dark brown eyes were open in death. She’d been a frail thing. Spindle-stick limbs, wearing what amounted to a one- piece bathing suit made of fur. “How’d you know she was a sorceress?” Fridu asked from the top of the stairs. “I didn’t. I just thought she was an asshole dog. Molly’s hurt.” I was hurrying down the steps as I spoke. Molly was on her back, frowning, cursing, trying to hold her stomach in place. She’d been ripped open. Every time she moved, things tried to slide out. Blood welled up from her wounds. Her face was ashen. “Fucking birds?” she said. Her voice was weak. I was slipping on the stairs. Too much blood. I passed Gerik, giving him an accidental shoulder in the tight confines. He was leaned against the wall, gasping for breath, with a line of purple around his throat where the ostrich’s neck had been strangling him. His aura of darkness was fluctuating, as if he was lit by flickering light. “Those fucking birds?” Molly said. Her voice was getting even weaker. She was looking at her stomach in disbelief. It looked like freshly tilled soil. But bloodier. I stumbled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, slamming into the iron door in my haste, with one foot stepping momentarily on the leg of the dead elf. Her body shifted slightly, sliding in the puddle of blood. © 2020: Paul Tobin 168 “Heal!” I shouted, pressing my hand to Molly’s stomach. I could feel power surging in me, along with the fear that was welling up. Molly’s wounds started to knit together, but it was happening too slow. The color was draining from her face. She was shivering, complaining about being cold. Her limbs were going slack. The clawed feet of the murderous ostriches had dug deep, ripping gouges, deep holes, and terrible valleys. The barbarian woman was a mess. I had one hand held to her stomach, focusing all the healing I could give her, and another on the side of her face, whispering and shouting encouragement, telling her to hold on, to stay with us, to fight. It was mostly that last one. Molly knew how to fight. “Fight!” I told her. “Fight to stay conscious! Look at me! Stay with me! Fight! You have to stay with us! You have to avenge your mother! You’ve got to fight! Do you want to lose this fight? Do you?” And all the time I could feel the power surging through my chest, crashing into my shoulder and racing into my arm, blasting out from my palm and into Molly. There was movement at my shoulder and then Fridu was there, leaning over Molly, pressed up against me. Water spilled from a canteen in her hands. It just kept spilling and spilling, more water than possible, so that we were both soon kneeling in rising water, two or three inches at the bottom of the stairs, mixed with alarming amounts of blood. Fridu was pouring the water over Molly’s wounds, cleansing them of the blood so that we could see the progress of her healing. “C’mon, Molly! Fight!” I yelled. The wounds were still knitting together, closing, but there were so many of them. Molly’s breaths were low. Out of sync. I wanted to scream. Maybe I was already screaming. I didn’t know. I’m not sure how long it all lasted. It felt like forever. But after some time I became aware that Fridu was shaking my shoulder. Trying to pull me back. “Stop it!” I barked at her. “I need to save Molly!” “She’s fine, Josh!” Fridu said. “Molly’s fine.” “What?” I said, but realization was already dawning on me. I looked up from where I’d been healing Molly and gazed straight into her eyes. She looked strong. Amused. Mocking. She looked like Molly, in other words. “Why were you so scared?” she said. “There’s no way some dumb birds were going to kill Molly the Barbarian.” “They kinda did, though,” Fridu noted. “You were basically a pile of bloody confetti.” “Yeah I suppose,” Molly agreed, in a dismissive tone that made it clear the topic was boring. “Honestly,” Fridu said, “I’m not sure you would’ve made it if Josh hadn’t immediately jumped right on you.” “That’s the kind of guy I am,” I said. “Willing to jump on Molly at any time.” “I’ve noticed,” Molly said. “And I’m also noticing that your hand is disappointed I wasn’t grievously wounded on my ass.” She raised an eyebrow and looked down to where my hand was resting on her stomach, fingers splayed out, slightly rubbing. “No worries about that,” I told Molly. “Your ass in invulnerable. It looks hard as steel.” Molly started to say something, but then we were all just laughing, letting go of the tension in the stairway, because despite all the joking we knew that we’d almost lost Molly. Hell, we’d almost lost everyone. I took my hand from Molly’s © 2020: Paul Tobin 169 stomach and was starting to stand up when Molly reached out and pulled me closer. Her lips met my cheek. She gave me a kiss and whispered, “Thanks” in my ear. I stood up wobbly, but there might have been other reasons. “How you doing, Gerik?” I asked. He was leaned against the side of the stairs, rubbing his throat. “Like I was one step away from a death that would be laughed about in taverns,” he rasped out. “But otherwise fine. Does anybody recognize the woman?” “Not me,” I said. I didn’t look very close. I didn’t want to see her. She’d been beautiful. She was dead. I didn’t want to think about it. “Never seen her,” Molly said. “Me either,” Fridu said, but then, “Wait. Hold on.” She knelt in the shallow water and rolled the woman’s head back and forth, holding her chin, squinting. I watched from the corner of my eyes. “Yeah,” Fridu said, releasing the corpse’s chin. “This is Gaile. She used to come to a sort of informal coven meeting I had going on, a couple decades back. She specialized in shape-changing. A total bitch. We kicked her out.” “Why?” I asked. “She stole a spellbook. You just… don’t do that. And the book was my friend’s. A woman named Tonba. She had the book in her library, guarded, somewhat, by a trio of parrots. She’d had those parrots for something like thirty years. Gaile killed them. They were witnesses to her crime.” “She does sound like a bitch.” Gerik said. “All you did was kick her out of your meetings? I’d have done more.” Fridu shrugged and said, “We didn’t want to press the issue because, well, she’s the king’s mistress.” “Ahh,” Gerik sighed. “Well, shit,” Molly said. “We just killed the king’s mistress?” I asked. “Appears that way,” Fridu said. “Probably best if we don’t sign our work.” “What should we do with the body, then?” Molly asked. “Burn it?” “I don’t want to burn her body!” I said. “She tried to kill us,” Molly answered. “If she wasn’t a pretty woman you’d be all for burning the trash.” “That’s not true!” I told her. It was a little true. “Iron door,” Gerik said. “Huh?” I said. “We’re talking about doing something that’s, frankly, pretty secondary in importance to whatever’s behind this door we’re currently standing next to, and which could burst open at any moment to unleash a horde of people to stab us while we’re standing here like children with our wee-wees in our hands.” “Point taken,” Molly said. “But I don’t have a wee-wee; I have a medusa. One sight of her and men turn to stone. Parts of them, anyway.” She had her hand on the latch to the iron door. Gerik had managed to pick the lock before the long-necked cobra- ostriches appeared. Molly pulled and the door began opening, inch by inch, with Molly grinning, enjoying the squeak of the door and the tension of the moment. If I’d been her, I’d still be reliving the moments I’d almost died, and would likely be doing © 2020: Paul Tobin 170 so for several months or even years. Molly had moved past the memories in a manner of minutes. I looked to the door as it opened. I looked to the dead woman on the floor, the king’s mistress. I thought of the Fox Geas on my flesh. I thought of the cult of assassins who wanted me dead. I wondered what was behind the door and I hoped it wouldn’t make my life even more complicated. I could use a doorway that opened to some solutions, not problems. There was good light in the room behind the iron door. It looked like a medieval bedroom, but richly appointed. The bed was about an acre of space, and looked as soft as clouds. There were twin dressers and an open washing room and a writing table and a large open window that looked out, impossibly, on a meadow. Another window looked out, just as impossibly, on a section of Whitewater, the street in front of the Leaky Centaur bar, with the festival and market in full swing. There was a cat perched in that window, regarding us with the disdain of a cat that’s had some simpleton interrupt its nap. My gaze swept past the cat to the multitude of paintings on the wall, and the plants that were so numerous that they reminded me of the jungle of Salena’s apartment, back when I was a kid. There were a good many things to look at in the room, but only one of them truly grabbed my attention. In the middle of the room, facing the door as we stepped through, was a woman. She was dressed in loose-fitting clothes, like one of the characters from a period- piece martial arts movie, and the clothes seemed to be fashioned for just that purpose, because she was in a martial arts stance, with one fist glowing with some sort of magical or unearthly power. Her eyes were fierce. The clothes had bits of armor sewn into them, leather and even steel. The fabrics were light and of an array of colors, rich reds and greens and a shade of orange that seemed to throb in the light cast by the oil lamps. There was a fox emblem embroidered into the cloth on her chest, caught in the middle of a leap. The colorful clothes were in contrast to the woman. Her skin was incredibly dark. Her hair was short. Her eyes flickered to Gerik and his sword. They swept to Molly and the axe in her hands, and to Fridu with the wand that was swirling with power. And then the woman’s eyes slid to mine, briefly, before glancing down to the small tide of water and blood that was seeping in at our feet, but then the woman’s eyes widened and returned sharply to mine. Her fists wavered. The glow dimmed. “Josh?” she stammered out, confused. “Binsa?” I said to my sister. “What are you doing here?”

End Book One