by Ramy Vance
Fred hissed loudly as he rolled onto his ass. He scooted back against a rock so he could support himself. “How can I assure you that your friend is not lost in the vast complexities of my subconscious?” Fred asked.
Stew drew his sword and pressed it to Fred’s throat. “Don’t fucking play dumb,” Stew growled. “We know you get how these things work. Show us Suzuki is still alive or I’m going to take your head off. Got it?”
Fred smiled, a sick, vindictive show of teeth dripping with aggression. “And just how is that going to help your situation?” Fred asked. “If you take my head off, Suzuki goes along with me.”
“It helps our situation because I’m not a naïve idiot who came on a rescue mission without being aware of what we are actually trying to do. We’re here to get Beth. Suzuki knew that before he took a gamble on you. That means if you try to keep that from happening in any way, you’re expendable.”
“You would sacrifice one friend for another?”
Sandy crouched next to Stew, resting her wand against Fred’s temple. “Suzuki would want us to get Beth,” she said. “And he’d want us to kill anything or anyone who tried to keep that from happening.”
Fred nodded as his tongue flickered out from behind his snout. “Noted,” he finally said. He closed his eyes as if he were concentrating.
The voice that came out of Fred’s mouth was not his own. It was softer, more confused, and slightly frightened. “Uh, guys? What’s going on?” the voice asked.
Sandy pressed her wand deeper into Fred’s temple. “Okay, you can mimic voices. How the fuck do I know this is Suzuki?” Sandy asked.
Fred’s voice changed back to his own. “You could ask him a question. One that is specific to him and no one else.”
Stew clapped his hands together as his face grew serious. “All right. I got one,” he exclaimed. “What’s the first thing you masturbated to?”
Sandy raised her eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?” she shouted. “This isn’t the time to be fucking around. We need to—”
Fred’s voice jumped back up a couple of registers. His eyes went a little soft and he sighed. “Are you fucking serious, Stew?” he asked. “You could’ve picked anything to ask me, and this is the one you went with?”
“Dude, I got to know. Is this you? Tell me now! What did you rub your first one out to?”
“An encyclopedia.”
“Be more specific.”
“Fuck, are you serious?”
“What?”
“A diagram of the female reproductive system.”
“What encyclopedia?”
“Seriously, dude?”
“I’m not joking.”
“Ugh. I told you, the blue ones that used to come in the mail. With the gold tree on the cover. I jerked off to one of the pictures of reproductive systems. And I guess it wasn’t really the reproductive system. I was mostly jerking off to the description of how bodies respond to different kinds of arousal, and what’s happening—”
“Yeah, that’s Suzy.”
José didn’t look convinced. He leaned forward and looked at the imp, who squirmed uncomfortably. “He told you what he used to jerk off to?” José asked.
Stew shrugged as he stood up and walked away from Fred. “Yeah, dude,” he said. “We’re best friends. Of course, I know about the first time he jerked off.”
“You’re kidding me. Aren’t you all supposed to be best friends? You all know the first time each of you jerked off?”
Sandy helped Fred to his feet and brushed off his shoulders as the imp looked around cautiously. “Of course we do,” she said. “Stew jerked off to She-Ra. I came while I was watching some time-lapse decomposition videos. I guess you’d have to talk to Beth. It’s not really cool to be telling you. Party privacy, you know.”
The Horsemen grouped together as if trying to show their solidarity. It could have been confused for insecurity if they hadn’t been smiling so widely.
Fred sat in the middle of them, his eyes darting awkwardly, trying to see where he stood in the situation.
Suzuki saw all of this happening.
It was as if he were behind a waterfall, watching the world from behind a pillar of water. He could hear and he could see, yet all the images and words were distorted. If he focused, shut his eyes tight (what were his eyes in this black place of nothing?), he could make sense of what was happening. He had been speaking to Sandy and Stew only a few moments ago, yet if felt like it had been hours and hours. This wasn’t going to work.
He needed to be present.
Fred was in the process of standing up when his body started convulsing. He fell to the ground and started kicking as he coughed up little balls of fire. Words came flowing out of his mouth, a language that was unidentifiable; it was deep and old, mixed with a childish form of English.
The MERCs swarmed around the imp. Diana was the first to reach his side, trying to prop him up as if she could help. Slowly, the imp’s convulsions stopped. Diana stared into the imp’s eyes. “Suzuki?” she asked.
Fred twitched to the side, his jaw going slack. “You guys can’t tell anyone what I told you, all right?” Suzuki’s voice said, speaking through Fred’s mouth.
“Whoa,” Stew said. “This is getting weird.”
Fred’s face went stony and he picked himself off of the ground, obviously in more control of his body than he had been before. “Silent, human,” Fred spat. “This is my body for now. You cannot—”
Fred’s voice trailed off as he tripped over his feet, his left eye twitching manically. “No, no, no,” Suzuki interrupted, speaking through Fred’s body. “I’m coming along for the entire ride.”
“This is no different than me being in your body!”
“Huge difference! I’m not used to this kind of shit.”
“Then I expect you to at least, how do you humans say it? Chill out? If you continue interrupting me and trying to take control of my body, I will not be able to pass as one of the Dark One’s servants.”
“All right, you got me there. But I don’t want to be in the dark, Fred. That shit is weird. I feel like I’m losing myself.”
“Then keep yourself awake. Do not let yourself fade. If you maintain your focus, you will not disappear. It’ll be like riding in the front seat of a car.”
“What the hell do you know about cars?”
“Enough to make an analogy. Now, are we going to do this?”
“Yeah. We’re doing this.”
Fred made his way through the last of the thicket of the forest. The Mundanes and the Horsemen had allowed him to go forward with the plan. They were going to be sticking to the shadows and the trees to watch. No one had mentioned that they didn’t think that Fred was going to be able to pull this off. Suzuki felt the doubt, though. As Fred had walked through the forest, slowly regaining control and comfort in his own body, Suzuki had been concentrating on keeping himself anchored and aware of what was going on.
It was easier said than done. Suzuki would see the world through Fred’s eyes and then within seconds be thrust into an onslaught of both his and Fred’s memories. They washed over him, and there were times he wasn’t certain whose memories were whose. He didn’t understand how Fred had existed within him for so long, tossed to and fro with the memories of a person he’d never really met. Suzuki was starting to get the hang of the process, though. When he felt himself slipping away, it only took a little bit of concentration to reel himself back in.
The trees thinned out, and Fred approached the outer section of the first ring. From where he was, Suzuki couldn’t tell whether or not the defenses were actually rings. He also couldn’t tell where his perceptions ended and Fred’s began. Was he feeling apprehensive, or was it Fred? Either way, it didn’t matter who was feeling what. This was the situation he was in, and he had to keep his wits together. He guessed Fred had to as well.
Most of the outskirts of the camp were tents, hundreds of them for as far as Fred and Suzuki could see. If this was i
n fact a ring, neither of them wanted to consider just how many of the Dark One’s forces were stationed here. The camp that lay before them already easily outnumbered the MERC encampment only a few days’ ride away. If this was the sheer volume of forces the Dark One had at his disposal, then an all-out war was impossible. Fear washed over Suzuki, so thick and sticky that it drenched him and he felt as if he were drowning. He realized this was Fred’s fear.
What the hell did Fred have to be so afraid of? What was his stake in all this? These were questions that Suzuki couldn’t answer at the moment, but he made a mental note to come back to them. He needed to know why Fred harbored these fears.
The camp Fred was wandering into was a mix of different races. Orcs and goblins intermingled, talking briefly or helping each other with various tasks. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about this to Suzuki. He’d seen orcs and goblins working together since he’d come to Middang3ard. Fred had told him that it was uncommon for the two races to be able to tolerate each other, but it was all that Suzuki had seen so far. It seemed as normal as dwarves working alongside Elves.
The surprise came when Suzuki saw centaurs walking among the goblins and orcs. It seemed as if they were doing business with each other. Most of the camp was separated into smaller camps. In the middle of these, a group of centaurs was sitting with a small group of goblins. Fred couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other; he had never been any good at reading lips. But Suzuki knew that centaur should not be in the Dark One’s camp. At most, centaurs were morally neutral, from everything Suzuki knew about them.
That being said, all he knew was from books. Suzuki could tell that, even from afar, centaurs might be completely different from what he had imagined.
There were at least fifteen centaurs grouped together near the outskirts of the camp, speaking with what appeared to be an orc leader. The centaurs were wild-looking creatures. From the waist down, they had the legs of brawny stallions, made of pure muscle, twitching as they stamped their legs in what looked like impatience. The rest of their body was human and almost equally as muscular. Their hair was long and tangled; their faces scrunched a little bit as if some of their equine nature had tried to move North.
The orc was covered in tattoos and rested on a large cleaver. He would occasionally walk away from the pack of centaurs to some of the goblins, who were fiddling with a grinding stone. One of the orc’s eyes had been gouged out, and he was missing multiple teeth. This made it difficult for Suzuki to tell that the orc was actually smiling while it conversed.
Fred stepped out of the forest and walked slowly on all fours up to the camp of the Dark One’s forces. At first, no one paid any attention to the imp, but once the first orc turned his attention to Fred, all eyes trained on him.
One of the smaller centaurs stepped away from his pack and stamped his feet loudly in the dirt. “Who goes there?” the centaur asked.
Fred spat a little ball of fire on the ground and hissed slightly under his breath. “Who are you to question me?” Fred countered.
Suzuki had managed to keep himself present enough to see how bad of an idea this was. There was nothing stealthy about Fred’s tactics. If anything, it seemed like Fred was gearing up to start a fight. Even though Fred and Suzuki had been sharing a body for the last few weeks, he hadn’t assumed that Fred had anything but a calm temperament.
Maybe eldritch creatures were just bullies, and for a second, Suzuki didn’t know whose side he was on.
The centaur reared up on its hind legs and smacked its chest with a heavy thud. “Alzor the Swift,” the centaur boasted. “Regional scout of the Hinterlands. I am to convey recon information to the Dark One. Now, who the fuck are you?”
Suzuki could feel Fred scrambling for an answer, and it was like Fred’s mind was momentarily exposed in all of its fear. He obviously hadn’t thought this far ahead. Why had he been so eager to volunteer himself without having anything remotely resembling a plan? It seemed odd that Fred would have been so overcome with a desire to help the Mundanes that he would have placed himself in danger. The imp had a different stake in the game, and Suzuki just wished he could figure it out.
Fred reared up on his hind legs as well. “I do not answer to you, Alzor,” Fred spat. “I lived a thousand lives while your people were still trying to figure out if they wanted to fuck horses or people.”
It was obvious that Fred had hit a nerve because all of the centaurs started shouting. They looked as if they were ready to stampede and trample Fred beneath their hooves.
The scales on Fred’s back bristled. “Oh, did I upset you?” Fred sneered. “Do you have the temperament of an idiot animal or an idiot human? Do your legends recall whether it was your horse god who had the balls to jump a human bitch, or was it some sad old man who could only get it up for his mares?”
Alzor lost it.
He pulled off the bow resting on his shoulders and nocked the arrow before Suzuki fully registered what was happening. The arrow went flying toward Fred, who leapt toward the arrow, spitting a short stream of fire, instantly reducing the arrow to ashes. Then he whipped his tail at the centaur, the end splitting into three sharp edges that shredded the earth directly in front of the creature.
The two creatures circled each other, the centaur towering over Fred as it stamped its feet and continued to fire arrows, Fred spitting thin streams of flame that nullified the centaur’s arrows.
Suzuki could feel wave after wave of Fred’s emotions rocking him. The imp was annoyed and invigorated. Suzuki felt the dance of a fight, and it had woken something up within him; he could see why Fred had wanted to bond with someone who was actually going to do some fighting.
It felt like Suzuki was out there getting his hands dirty. There was almost no distinction between what Fred felt and he felt at that moment.
Fred’s anger, his bloodlust, and his insecurities blended with Suzuki’s, and they were inseparable.
Alzor shouted as he tossed his bow to the side and pulled out a broadsword. Two more centaurs stepped out with their swords as well. The orcs, goblins, and remaining centaurs made a ring around the three centaurs and the eldritch imp.
“Are you so weak that you must team up on a shrimpy imp?” a goblin shouted from the outskirts of the ring.
Alzor swung his sword at Fred, who dodged the attack and scampered up the centaur’s arm, spitting fire as he ran. He sank his teeth into the centaur’s throat, finding the large, pulsing artery and tearing it out in a smooth, clean jerk, then gobbling it down before spewing a jet of flame that incinerated Alzor’s body.
Alzor’s charred skeleton hit the ground. The other two centaurs backed off but didn’t leave the circle as Fred turned to face them. The imp hissed again and sent out a cautionary spurt of fire as he flicked his tongue. “This is the part where you leave,” Fred gloated. “Unless you don’t value your life. Please remain if you have no fear of death. I will gladly remind your friends why the eldritch ones are not to be mocked.”
The centaurs both galloped toward Fred. Suzuki could feel the demon’s heart jumping. He’d never seen Fred this excited before, and something about Fred clicked.
He wasn’t just an ornery imp with delusions of grandeur; he was something that enjoyed fighting and killing, and not out of any sense of malice.
Suzuki could feel the excitement of being challenged, of testing yourself against odds that could possibly blow up in your face.
Fred was loving it.
So was Suzuki.
Fred dodged the first centaur’s blade, skidding across the dirt. He hardly lost any speed before he jumped, flapped his wings a couple of times, and sailed through the air, landing on the first centaur’s face. He opened his mouth, his small jaws stretching to an unnatural size, and poured a slow, seeping slush of magma onto the centaur’s face.
The centaur fell to the ground, screaming, clutching at its face, which had been reduced to a gel of skin on top of a bone-white skull. He lay there, convul
sing and whimpering in pain as Fred jumped off of his body and walked toward the last opposing centaur, who threw his sword on the ground and retreated from the circle. “Fuck this,” the centaur shouted. “You win, you win. All right?”
Fred reared up on his hind legs and looked down at the two centaurs he had killed. “Are you certain? You don’t think you can end me?”
“I’m done. You win, all right?”
The orcs and goblins booed as they broke up the circle and returned to their business. Fred stood near the bodies of the dead centaurs, collecting himself, and Suzuki could feel him planning his next move. A rush of Fred’s thoughts washed over Suzuki. He understood what Fred had been doing.
Orcs and goblins loved a good fight, and something about it caused their brains to lose interest in everything else. By starting a fight, Fred had caused the goblins and orcs to lose interest in him, while ensuring that the centaurs were too intimidated to question him any further.
It had been a good idea.
Fred walked past the main outer orc camp and ventured farther into the first defense ring. There were small camps set up sporadically. Most of the camps were of one race, but Suzuki could see different races speaking and talking together, just as he had seen earlier. Most of the races were speaking amicably with each other or were working on projects together.
Fred and Suzuki passed a group of goblins building a tower. Orcs helped move some of the larger pieces of lumber.
One of the orcs bumped into a goblin. The orc dropped the large piece of wood it had been lugging around and snapped at the goblin, and they both drew their swords. They circled each other for a moment before the orc cut the goblin down. None of the goblins seemed to notice, other than picking up the goblin’s body and dragging it away from the construction zone afterward.
Suzuki reached out to Fred, trying to bridge the small gap between their minds. Fred, that’s not normal, is it? Suzuki asked.
Fred walked through the construction zone, listening to the orcs and goblins chatter to each other.