by Ramy Vance
Sandy screamed as she rolled on the floor. Diana reached out for her, and an energy ripple burst from Sandy and sent Diana skidding across the floor.
The skin around the amulet started to crisp and burn away. Sandy screamed in pain as her skin turned to ash, floating away until she was only bone. The ash swirled around her bones until it formed a black cloak that covered her body as the mask of Elroz appeared over her grinning skull.
When Sandy rose, it was as a wraith of some sort. Her body was immaterial, and she appeared to be composed of fine sand. She held her hand out to look at, and it wavered as if wind were passing through each molecule. “Holy shit,” she whispered. Even her voice had changed. It sounded as if it were the air itself. “This is so fucking sick.”
Sandy glided forward, through Diana, her body breaking apart for a second and then reforming past Diana. “I remember so much. This is amazing. Thank you.”
Stew came up to Sandy’s side. He tried to hold her hand, and his fingers slipped through the dust and firmly grasped bone. “Uh…babe, you’re kind of a ghost. How are we going to…you know…”
Sandy laughed. It sounded like Death. “Can we marvel at how fucking badass I just became?” She chuckled. “Can you imagine seeing this coming at you, throwing lightning and shit? And this…spell, I guess? It only lasts as long as I’m wearing the amulet, which I can take off at any time. Don’t get me wrong; I’m going to be wearing it all the fucking time.” Then she leaned and whispered in Stew’s ear, “Maybe even during sexy time.” She slapped Stew’s butt as she floated past him.
Stew stood in mild bewilderment before turning to face Suzuki. He had that familiar grin on his face. “Boning the bones,” he quipped.
Suzuki could only hang his head. Sometimes, his party was like hanging out with a bunch of high schoolers. The upgrade Sandy had gotten was very impressive, though, as Stew’s had been. Suzuki couldn’t wait to see what Ashegoreth was going to give him.
The dragon reached into the treasure hoard one last time. She withdrew her paw and opened it in front of Suzuki. A long, hawk feather rested in her hand. “This is my gift to you, Suzuki,” she whispered.
Suzuki took the feather and tried to hide his initial disappointment. It didn’t look as if it were useful for anything. It was just a feather. “Uh…thank you,” he said.
“You do not have to try and obscure your disappointment. No, this feather will not bestow you with new powers or armor. What I have given you is so much more important. I have given you my heart. I was once in love as well. Married, actually. A hawk held my heart. We spent hundreds of years together. There was a time that I could not imagine existence without him by my side. The Dark One took him from me—before we knew what the Dark One was. He robbed me of my love, of my happiness. This is all that I have of my love. This is what I give to you. My heart, my grief, my rage and guilt. Do you accept it?”
Suzuki reached down and plucked a thin gold chain from the treasure pile. He tied it around the end of the feather and hung it on his neck as a necklace. “I gladly accept your heart,” Suzuki said.
“It is not a light thing to have a dragon’s heart. Take care of it.”
Ashegoreth spread her wings and looked at the sky shown through the hole in the top of the cavern. “Come. Let me show you the way to the camps.” The dragon stepped over the humans and headed toward the right side of the cavern.
A large rock lay against the cavern wall, far too large to be moved by anything other than a giant. The dragon leaned against the rock and effortlessly rolled it out of the way.
A deep tunnel stretched out into the heart of the cave.
“Take this until it ends. You will find yourself at the edge of a forest near the first circle of the orcs’ camps. I wish you a speedy and safe journey. Beth is lucky to be able to call you friends.”
Suzuki and the rest of the Mundanes thanked Ashegoreth for her gifts. They packed up the last of the supplies and mounted their axbeaks. Once everyone was ready, they entered the tunnel, which was wide enough for a dragon to easily worm through. Even though there was no light from above or within, the tunnel wasn’t dark. Suzuki could easily see ahead of himself.
As was now usual, Stew and José had paired off, as well as Sandy and Diana: apprentices with their masters. Suzuki tried to push down the wave of jealousy that rolled through him. It was difficult. If anyone should have been his mentor, it should have been José. Leadership was something that could be taught. Suzuki knew that he would have benefited from having José giving him pointers. Even Diana would have made more sense. At least Diana could have helped him with his battle magic.
Chip took up the rear of the pack. She looked at the sides of the tunnels as they walked. Suzuki cast a glance back toward her. He knew he should talk to her, try to find out what he was supposed to be learning from her. At the moment, though, talking to Chip sounded more like a hassle than anything else. He could hardly understand half of what she said, and he felt something close to disgust with her. He knew it was unfair to have those feelings about Chip.
It was childish even, but his heart had been set on José, even before he had realized he would be mentored at all.
The dragon had failed to mention how long the tunnels went on. They could be walking for days for all Suzuki knew. He really didn’t want to spend it walking in silence while everyone else was getting chummy. Suzuki forced his judgment about Chip down deep in himself. He wasn’t going to be a child about this.
Suzuki slowed his axbeak until he fell in at Chip’s side. “So, I’m supposed to be your apprentice, right?” Suzuki asked.
Chip turned away from the rocks and beamed up at Suzuki, who, when he saw Chip smile, couldn’t understand how he had been so angry before. When Chip smiled, it was like her whole face changed. You could see curiosity and wonder in her eyes, a certain playfulness that was infectious. “Oh, yeah,” she cooed. “You’re my one and only. The kid I’m going to be looking out for while we find something cool, big, and evil to get murderous with. How you feeling about this intimate endeavor that you and I are about to embark on?”
“Intimate?”
“Oh, intimate as all hell, young squire. But professional. Don’t get your hopes up, you’re not exactly the type that gets the geyser going.”
Suzuki chuckled at Chip’s frankness. “What exactly is your type?”
“Skinny, ratty, and covered in grease of a sort. Any kind of natural lubrication is an acceptable stand-in as well.”
“Sounds gross.”
“The grosser, the better.”
“So, what exactly am I supposed to learn from you?”
“Oh, the pressure is on, ain’t it? You’re just dying to learn what I got up my sleeves, aren’t ya? Well, full disclosure, I ain’t got nothing hidden. Everything that I got to show you is in plain sight. Just don’t be a dingus and miss it, all right?”
“Sounds easy enough.”
“So this damsel in distress…she was the one who used to play with you and your pals in the old world, right?”
“The old world?”
“Earth. That’s what it feels like to me. It’s been a long time since we have seen it. Feels ancient to me, a crisp memory fighting the tides of time to stay pretty. That’s where you knew her from, right?”
“Yeah, we used to play Middang3ard together. That’s how we met. If it weren’t for Beth, I don’t know if I would be a MERC at all. She’s the one who pulled some strings for me to get in.”
“Oh, no, she hardly had a finger on a string.”
“Wait, what do you mean? Beth was the one who sent the recruiter over to me.”
“Yes, yes, that she did. But why she did it never crossed your mind, eh? That was all us. We passed the information on to Beth to get to you. Figured it would go over better hearing it from a friend. We saw a good time of murder when we watched you guys.”
“Shit, I didn’t know you guys had been watching for so long.”
“Oh yeah, fresh tal
ent is important. We got a lot of killing to take care of.”
Chip put her arm around Suzuki’s shoulder and ruffled his hair, causing him to instantly stiffen up. “So, like I said, stick close to ol’ Chip, and you’ll find yourself in interesting situations, to say the least.”
It took the Mundanes and the Horsemen the better part of the day to get to a point where they believed they could stop comfortably. The tunnel had only widened the farther they had gone. It must have stretched for miles.
The two parties decided to take a break once they came to another underground cavern. Suzuki and José walked the length of the cavern to see if there were any other pathways. There was only one, and José suggested that the cavern would be an ideal place to stop and set up camp for the night. It made more sense to rest for the evening in case there was still a considerable way to go. He didn’t want to end up hitting the orc camp after an exhausting day.
Diana and Sandy set up magical traps throughout the cavern just in case something snuck up on them. It didn’t seem likely with how certain Ashegoreth had been about safely using the tunnel, but it made sense to prep for the worst scenario. This was something Suzuki realized the Horsemen were constantly doing. It was probably why they had survived in Middang3ard for so long: constant preparation.
After the traps were set, the group set about making a fire and pitching their tents. Diana supplied everyone with food again, rich cakes and salted meats that transported Suzuki to memories he had never had. By the time she had poured ales, Suzuki felt like he had lived an entirely separate, content life. He made a mental note that he wanted to find the store Diana purchased her food from.
There was no way to tell what time it was outside, but it seemed like everyone was starting to get tired. Sandy and Stew had cuddled up to each other, Stew leaning against a rock, playing with his new bracelet by conjuring throwing knives and tossing them at a rock, while Sandy, who had yet to remove her amulet, was resting her masked head on Stew’s lap while she read through a massive tome floating in front of her. Chip and Diana had retired to their tents. José was sitting on a boulder, reading from a small notebook.
Since Suzuki had heard about José mentoring Stew, he had wanted to catch a moment with José. Even if José wasn’t his mentor, there wasn’t some unspoken rule about not talking to him.
Suzuki walked up and took a seat next to José.
José had been drawing in his notebook. There was a detailed drawing of Ashegoreth in elaborate pen strokes. José nibbled on the end of his pen as he closed his notebook. “What’s up, kid?” he asked.
“I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
“Well, seeing as how we don’t really know each other, there’s probably a lot that you don’t know.”
Suzuki had forgotten how prickly José could be. Sometimes it seemed like he was an open book, and the next moment, he was reminding Suzuki that a newb was a newb. “You said you’ve seen a dragon before,” Suzuki tentatively said. “Was it like her?”
José shook his head as he opened his notebook and flipped through the pages. When he was finished searching, he handed the notebook to Suzuki. The page was filled with drawings of a dragon graveyard. There, bones stretched to the sky. In the middle was one dead dragon, partially decomposing.
Suzuki handed the notebook back to José. “It was one of my first quests,” José said. “Pretty simple. Just a simple drop-off for some guy who thought he was a lord or some shit. We found this along the way. I didn’t think dragons were real. You know, you hear dwarves talking about them a lot, but you know how dwarves are, always exaggerating the ancient shit that they’ve seen. You’d think that every dwarf was raised in a king’s hall or some shit when they start telling stories.”
“Milos didn’t seem like that.”
“That’s because you’ve never gotten drunk with the asshole.” José laughed. “Trust me, you’d get stories. Anyways, the dragon graveyard was something. I never thought that they were really that big. And I never thought I’d actually see one in the flesh. You did good, kid. That whole thing could have been a fucking bloodbath.”
“You don’t think we could have taken it?”
“You? Probably not. I think the Horsemen and I would have probably gotten through it, but we wouldn’t have been in any shape to sneak into the Dark One’s territory. We probably would have had to turn back for a bit. However, you handled the situation well. I thought that I was going to have to watch you like a hawk. Glad that’s not the case.”
“What do you mean?”
“Tactical thinking isn’t restricted to the battlefield. Don’t get me wrong, for a lot of people, that’s where it ends. I’ve lost track of how many MERCs I know who can lead a small army, but put them in a situation where you can’t stab your problems, well, they’re fucked. That doesn’t seem like you. I’ve never heard of a human wooing a dragon before but, hell, you get to see something new every day.”
“What do you mean, wooing?” Suzuki asked.
José gave him a coy smile. “Ashegoreth gave you her heart.”
“Yeah. I mean, she gave me a hawk feather.”
“Dragons are elegant creatures. They speak in metaphor and riddles, although, granted, sincere riddles. If a dragon says she gave you her heart, that means that she gave you her heart.”
Suzuki was shocked. “Are you saying she’s in love with me?”
“Love is different for every species. Every person. Your two friends, they’re in love. Is it anything like you and Beth?”
“I’m not—”
“Don’t even try it, kid. I’m not stupid. I get the whole damsel-in-distress thing, but this seems a little more intense. But you see what I’m getting at. They don’t look the same at all. You won that dragon’s heart. Pretty impressive.”
“Hmm. Uh…have you, you know, ever been in love before?”
“Kid, I think this is a conversation you should be having with your dad.”
Suzuki blushed. “Fuck off. I’m just curious.”
“Of course. I’m in love now.”
“Really? Are you seeing someone or something?”
José put a hand over his heart. “Are you trying to ask me out?”
“No, I just… I don’t know. The only people I know who I could talk to are Stew and Sandy. And you’ve seen them.”
Suzuki gestured at his friends. Sandy had returned to her natural state, and she was currently ramming her tongue down Stew’s throat as Stew grabbed anything he could get his hands on.
José grimaced and shook his head. “Yeah, I can see what you mean,” he agreed. “They’re pretty gross. All right, kid, I’ll bite. Yeah. I’m in love. She’s sitting over there.”
José jerked his hand at Chipmaster, whose head was poking out of her tent, her HUD splayed out in front of her as she soldered it.
“Are you serious? You haven’t spoken to her since we left.”
“We’re working right now,” José said. “And like I said, love’s different for every person. Stew and Sandy might want to flirt and mess around every chance they get. Me and Chip, we know the difference between being dead or alive is paying attention. Sometimes you learn that the hard way.”
“Like your fourth?”
José’s face hardened and he leaned forward, his eyes boring into Suzuki’s.
“What the fuck are you trying to get at?” José growled.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to—”
José raised his hand and cut Suzuki off. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I just figured the Horsemen was a play on the whole ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’ thing. You know, another Christ joke. And you know, there’s four of them. I just assumed there were originally four.”
“Yeah, there were four of us.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m—”
“If you apologize one more time, I’m going to knock your fucking teeth out. Own it, kid.
You don’t have to back down every time you upset someone. That’s something that you’re gonna have to learn. You can’t make everyone happy. Don’t bother trying. If you say something, piss someone off for trying to figure shit out, stick to your guns. We don’t need MERCs who piss over themselves the first time someone actually pushes back.”
“What are you talking about?” Suzuki asked. “Every monster I’ve killed has pushed back. I haven’t backed down once.”
“It’s like with the leading. There are different kinds. Standing up to your friends or people you look up to, that’s an entirely different skill worth investing in.”
“Did they die?” Suzuki asked.
“Yeah. He died.”
The two warriors sat in silence for a long time. Suzuki had already thought about what it would be like to die in battle with his friends. He’d never really thought about what it would be like to lose one of them. Even the Mundanes’ decision to find Beth was motivated by their belief that she was still alive. The idea of losing any of the Mundanes was almost too heartbreaking to think about.
But it could happen.
Suzuki could see that on José’s face.
José rose and finished the beer he had been sipping. “You should get some sleep, kid.”
Suzuki didn’t get up for a while. He sat there thinking about what José had said. It had been a lot to take in: leadership, love, and loss. Sometimes Suzuki felt like he was growing up way too fast. Other times, he felt he should have thought about all of this before he had even set foot in Middang3ard. Yet here he was. This was his life now.
Across the cavern, Stew screamed. Suzuki jumped to his feet, running in Stew and Sandy’s direction as fast as he could.
Stew was fanning his legs. His leg hair was on fire and Sandy was giggling insanely. “That’s not funny, babe,” Stew shouted as he put out the small fire.
Sandy held her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh too loudly. “Shit, Stew, I’m sorry.” She giggled again. “I was just trying to kill that spider. I’m sorry.”