by Ramy Vance
“I will have you know that I follow all of the Buddha’s teachings.”
Sandy slapped Stew on the back of the head. “Then you would know that nothing in Buddhist teachings prohibits you from associating with people of other faiths. Even if that person is the God of another faith.”
“You seem pretty well-versed in what Buddhists are allowed and not allowed to do. So you’re a Buddhist now too, huh? Can’t let me have anything to myself.”
“I’m not a fucking Buddhist.”
“Are you sure? You’re always drinking green tea and doing yoga and shit. And, you know…”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Stew. She took a step toward him and looked him straight in the eye so close that their noses were almost touching. “Don’t you fucking say it…”
Stew smiled devilishly as if he were savoring every word. “You know,” he repeated, “cause you’re Chinese.”
“God damn it, Stew, I’m Taiwanese,” she shouted, as she grabbed Stew by his collar and dragged him out of his seat. “Lead the way, oh fearless leader,” she said.
Suzuki nodded and marched ahead of the Mundanes, toward the Horsemen’s table.
The Horsemen were quietly drinking. The Chipmaster, a young elf woman wearing a blacksmith’s uniform and safety goggles, was tinkering with a HUD that was splayed out in front of her. She puffed on a cigarette while she was working.
It was the first cigarette Suzuki had seen in Middang3ard. Everyone else almost exclusively smoked from long, ornate pipes.
Diana was sitting next to the Chipmaster. She was a human mage. Her robes were magically adorned, and ancient runes shimmered in and out of sight. The skin around her neck was cracked, and blue energy could be seen coursing beneath her epidermis.
Across from Diana was José, a powerful man with deep, brown eyes that looked as if they had seen across the course of time. His face was covered in scars, and he had a long scraggly beard that looked as if it hadn’t been cut in ages.
The Horsemen weren’t alone in their booth. Their familiars all sat beside them, stretching their legs after being inside them for so long.
Diana’s familiar was a sleek black cat with bright green eyes that were nearly human. The cat was curled up on the table, lazily pawing at a tarot deck that was spread out on the table. Diana picked up the cards and shuffled them, cutting the deck to make a new tarot spread, without bothering to look up at the Mundanes.
The Chipmaster’s familiar was a floating mass of spiritual energy that shifted between foggy white and bright red named Boo. Boo dipped in and out of sight as it meandered above the heads of the Horsemen. An odd humming sound came from his direction.
Suzuki stepped up to the Horsemen’s table and tried to clear his throat, only to sound like a congested frog. His neck was burning, and he knew he must have the complexion of a ripe beet. “Uh, excuse me.”
“And who exactly is asking?” came a syrupy sweet voice.
Suzuki looked down at José’s side. A small lamb with a pure white fleece sat next to José, its head resting in his lap. The lamb looked like it had been plucked straight out of an old pastoral painting. It had soft brown eyes and a nearly cherubic face.
Suzuki raised his eyebrow at the curly, adorable, hooved familiar. “Uh, who are you?”
The lamb got to its feet and spat. “Nines. Now, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Suzuki. I’m from the new recruit party, the Mundanes. We just—”
Nines pranced closer as if he were frolicking in a meadow. “Holy fucking shit. You just draw so many of these losers in, don’t you, José? I’m guessing you pissants want a miracle or a blessing, or some other dumb shit like that? Well, you can kindly just go ahead and fuck off. We’re busy. The Chipmaster thinks that I got another quart of beer before I need to piss in someone’s mouth, and I think that I can do another five, but if you’re willing to sit around, keep that stupid mouth of yours open and see when I need a urinal. You’re more than welcome to.”
The Chipmaster looked up from the pile of chips and colored wires she was working on. “I’m telling you, you foul-mouthed walking sweater, that the tinkling of piss is gonna be creeping up on that tiny bladder of yours before I get a chance to throw you down and shear you myself.”
Nines looked up at Suzuki, its innocent face filled with a heavy dose of malice. “What the fuck are you still doing here? You can’t be that interested in a golden shower?”
“Seriously,” Suzuki asked, “Who the hell are you?”
José finally looked up from his beer. He stared at Suzuki with a divinely compassionate countenance, sighed, and smiled. “This is my lamb and my companion. We all have our familiars. The Horsemen’s familiars just like to spend more time in the bar than others.”
Nines muttered as he jumped onto the table and started lapping beer from a tankard. “It’s the only way I can deal with these needy-ass humans.”
Suzuki laughed and crossed his arms. This pairing was unbelievable! “Your traveling companion is a lamb. Kinda cliché, but I guess it makes sense. How come you didn’t go with anything more badass from the Bible? Like a lion or a leviathan or something?”
Nine tipped over his beer on Suzuki’s feet. Suzuki stepped back as he glared at Nines. It was starting to dawn on him that José’s familiar was one badass son of a bitch—well, son of a sheep—that he probably shouldn’t insult.
Nines bared his perfectly white teeth and growled as ferociously as a lamb could manage. “First off, a lion doesn’t have shit on me. Because this guy, this tough, bearded son of a bitch I’m hanging out with? This guy isn’t Jesus Fucking Christ. Fuck, you humans have so little imagination. One guy doesn’t die as easily as the rest of you walking deathbags and you assume that he’s your Lord and Savior. So you can just forget about the whole lion of Judah shit. Does this mean, orc-killing machine look like a carpenter to you? He’s got soft hands for Christ’s sake. And a leviathan? Seriously? I’m not even going to go into how fucking stupid you sound suggesting that anyone get a huge ass whale as a familiar. Like we all want to have a fucking two hundred ton mass of blubber taking up the whole bar. And just so you know, no one is giving you extra points for picking obscure biblical creatures. This isn’t a fan club to impress anyone with your weird-ass nerd knowledge. So will you please, fuck off. Unless you really want a mouth full of my percolating gold. Cliché. Fucking cliché. You want me to show you a cliché? A cliché is me prancing on your face while I bash your fucking teeth in your stupid ass-eating son of a—”
José raised his arms in a gesture of peace. It was reminiscent of the Last Supper. “Nines. Please calm yourself.”
“Me? I am calm. I’m calm as shit. He’s the fucker who walked up and started insulting our relationship. Calling it cliché and shit. He’s the rude ass mutha—”
“Nines. Please. Just turn the other cheek.”
Nines walked the length of the table to sit next to the Chipmaster, who pushed a beer in his direction. “The only cheek I’m turning is my ass.”
The Chipmaster went back to working on the dismantled HUD. “I’m telling you, you wee little fucker. One more of those beers and you’re gonna be like a Billy goat looking for the potty.”
José turned to Suzuki and motioned for him to sit. “You would think Nines was funny if you were a pixie. Pixies think everything is funny though. Anyways, what brings you to me?”
Suzuki launched into the pitch he’d been working through in his head. He tried to explain everything that had happened to the Mundanes up to this point: the trials they had faced and how they had proven themselves, how one of their team had been captured and held prisoner by Orcs even though the military said that she was dead. The Horsemen listened without interrupting. The Chipmaster even stopped working on her HUD to give Suzuki her full attention. Nines was the exception. He snorted derisively throughout the story. When Suzuki was finally finished, Nines jumped onto the table and stamped his back legs excitedly.
Nines c
hided Suzuki. “You’re saying that one of the best intelligence agencies in the seven realms is wrong about your friend? Do you know how fucking egotistical and self-involved that sounds?”
Suzuki’s voice raised and cracked slightly when he spoke. “What are you talking about?”
“You know how many people die out there every day? And it just so happens that your friend, out of all of Middang3ard, your one friend who you love so dearly, isn’t dead? And you need us to go save her.”
“First off, Nines, fuck you. Secondly, I’m not asking anyone to go save Beth.”
José leaned forward while the Chipmaster and Diana returned to what they were doing. He didn’t seem remotely interested in the story Suzuki had told. “Well, what exactly are you asking for?”
“Beth is in a zone that we’re too weak to deal with. We’re not asking for any handouts. I don’t expect anyone to risk his life based on a theory I have.”
“Yet you are willing to risk yours?”
“It’s not just a hunch. I know she’s still alive.”
“So what is that you want?”
“We need to get better gear so that we have a chance to survive out there. We’ve been trying to get other MERCs to give us some quests so that we can get the gear, but everyone we’ve talked to is just jerking us around.”
“Maybe it’s because they don’t think that you’re ready yet. Maybe they’re trying to protect you from your own ambitions.”
“I just want to help my friend. She needs us.”
José crossed his arms and leaned forward as he spoke. “There are many trials we are given. The trials of Middang3ard are exceptionally difficult. I am afraid this is your cross, and your cross alone to bear.”
“What does that mean?”
Nines pranced over to the edge of the table and spit on Suzuki’s boots. “It means get the fuck out of here! That’s what it means.”
José shrugged and turned to talk to Diana. Suzuki stood there for a few moments, trying to find something to say to convince José to give them a chance. Nothing came to him.
So he sucked in his pride and left. The Mundanes followed after him. The Chipmaster and Diana looked up from their work as the Mundanes walked off.
“You didn’t need to be such a prick,” Diana said.
Nines stuck his head into one of the tankards on the table. He whipped his head back when he pulled out and shook his glossy coat. “Eh, you can fuck off too.”
Chapter Six
A few days had passed since the Mundanes first tried to convince José and the Four Horsemen to give them a chance. Suzuki was under all his blankets, pretending that he wasn’t moping, his HUD resting next to his head on the pillow.
He sighed, thought about why people sigh, and sighed again, twice as loud as before. It was obvious he was going to have to get up at some point to try and figure things out, but, for the moment, it seemed that all of his problems could be solved by staying in bed.
Besides, there wasn’t much else to do other than stay in his room. He was tired of going down to the Red Lion to kill time, and he wondered how all of the MERCs weren’t raging alcoholics by now.
I wonder why I’m not a raging alcoholic by now, he mused, but then he remembered the key difference between him and the MERCs. They were coming back from quests and blowing off steam with their friends. As for him? When he got back from whatever meaningless mission he was on, he would sit at a bar, wishing he had a way to achieve his real objective: save Beth.
Getting José to help had seemed like a solid bet to that end. Now? He had no idea what he’d do.
Suzuki rolled over and groaned theatrically, stood up, stretched, and paced around the room determined to leave this time, only to have his bed call to him again.
His body felt as if it had been drained of all of its blood which had been replaced by concrete. Every small movement took a massive amount of effort. Suzuki worm wiggled his way to his other side, grabbed his HUD lying on the pillow, and placed it over his eyes. He scrolled through his messages and pulled up a screenshot of Beth.
This wasn’t helping. Looking at Beth just reminded Suzuki that he was lying in bed, too depressed to even get dressed, and not doing anything to help her. Suzuki couldn’t even remember how long it had been since he had received that last message from Beth. Whatever was happening seemed to have cut the loop, and message repeat sending was no longer happening.
Anything could have happened by now. Even if Beth had been alive when she sent this message, it was best not to think about it.
There was a loud scratching from the right side of Suzuki’s bed, and he sat up to check on what the noise could be. A hole had been dug in the wall to the left of the foot of his bed that was large enough for a rat to fit through. What walked out of the hole was not a rat, though.
It was the spider-woman.
The tiny spider-woman gingerly stepped out of the hole and walked into the room. She gave Suzuki a sympathetic look when she saw him moping before going about her business. It had been a couple of days since Suzuki had last seen her. Initially, Suzuki thought the spider-woman was stalking him since she seemed to be everywhere. But over the last few days, he’d noticed that she was just going on with her life. She seemed to have a very busy life, but Suzuki wasn’t sure what spider-women did. Catch bugs? Mice? Stalk humans?
Still, the two of them had become roommates. The only difference was Suzuki restricted his activities to living spaces, and the spider-woman went wherever she wanted. Sometimes she was spinning webs over Wendy’s cash register. Other times, she could be found collecting left-over soap from soap containers. Why? Suzuki couldn’t fathom. All Suzuki did know was that he was the only large creature she ever seemed to acknowledge, and usually, she would give him sympathetic looks before shuffling on.
She seemed to ignore everyone else as she went about her business, and that was that.
Suzuki tossed a crumb from the plate of food sitting on the dresser beside his bed. The crumb landed a few inches from the spider-woman and she jumped in surprise, pulling out two large scimitars from her backside and circling the crumb like an enemy.
Suzuki leaned over the side of the bed to watch what was happening. “That’s something new.”
The spider-woman stabbed the bread crumb. When she seemed satisfied that it was not going to attack, she chopped it up into smaller pieces and gathered them into her arms. She looked up at Suzuki, her eight eyes blinking irregularly. Then she curtsied, smiled, and scurried into her hole.
Suzuki sighed, his heaviest of the day, and lay back in bed, pulling the blankets over his head as he wished for something, anything to help him.
Fred chose then to make himself seen. There was a loud pop, and the entire room reeked of sulfur as Fred stretched out. He scratched at his goat-like horns with claws that ended in razor-sharp points, stretched his leathery wings, and ruffled his red scales like bird feathers as he flapped and perched on the foot post of the bed.
Suzuki poked his head out from beneath the covers so he could get a good look at Fred. “Go away. No one invited you.”
Fred played with his hand scales, moving each scale individually so that he could wedge his claw beneath them. “As there is no one here, human, and I am exceedingly bored, I do not require an invitation.”
“Fine, suit yourself. Join the slumber party.”
“Yes, it does indeed look like a party. Human, you—”
“I have a name, you know? I can at least—”
“You have been calling me Fred for months because your stupid tongue is incapable of expressing my eldritch regality. You are lucky that I only call you human. Now, human—”
“Name.”
Fred growled low under his breath and shot forth a small stream of fire from his nostrils. “Suzuki…”
From beneath the covers, Suzuki smiled. It always felt good to put Fred in his place. “I’m listening.”
“When you took me from the Garden of Familiars, there was much t
alk of glory. Is this what you dustlings believe is glory? Sitting in a smelly pile of blankets, stroking your wounded ego until you…expire?”
Suzuki pursed his lips. “Are you saying… What exactly are you—”
“I am saying that I am surprised that your blankets aren’t stiff by now. I have known teenagers who do a better job of keeping their hands off of themselves than you seem to be able to.”
“Fuck off, Fred. I’m not in the mood.”
The imp shrugged. “And what exactly are you in the mood for? Lying in bed doesn’t seem to be…how does the idiot say it? Your style.”
Suzuki tossed back his covers and sat bolt upright. He wasn’t trying to hide his grin from Fred anymore. He wanted Fred to see it. “Fred, are you checking in on me?”
“No! I am doing no such thing. I do not care about—”
“Are you checking to see if I’m okay?” Suzuki asked, circling his finger as he moved to poke Fred’s chest. “Like a friend does? Like someone who has a heart might do?”
“I assure you that I do have a heart, human, and it is not concerned with whether or not you are sad or in a bad mood.”
“It doesn’t look like it to me,” Suzuki said with a chuckle. Fred actually cared, and somehow knowing that went a long way to lifting his spirits. This was the best he’d felt all day. Hell, all week. “Looks like you might care a little—”
“If I care or not is hardly relevant to your problem. And much like sitting in bed, tugging on your meatstick isn’t going to solve anything.”
“No. You’re right.”
“Perhaps the spider abomination that obviously has a crush on you could help you with at least one of your problems.”
“Dude, I have no idea what you’re on about.”
Fred flapped his wings and left the bedpost. He flew over to the dresser that sat underneath the window looking out over the swamp. “When I was first born into the world, the cosmos was fresh. There was very little in existence. Only the Elder Ones. I was raised on stories of them. One I was told concerned Alehiiemsaseth, the Creeping Blackness.”