by Ramy Vance
Sandy squealed and grabbed Stew’s arm. “Oh, Babe, we could be like the Fellowship,” she joked. “I call dibs on holding it. Stew, you can be my Sam. Because you are obviously my bitch.”
Stew spat out his beer and stood up, waving his hands, his face beet red. “No fucking way,” he disagreed. “I am way too badass to be Sam. All he does is run around like, ‘Oh, Mr. Frodo, oh, your burden, oh, let me hold you. So not me. Besides, you’re a mage. You should obviously be Gandalf.”
“But you are so devoted to me. That’s so badass.”
“Sam is so not the badass I am. I’m ax-throwing murder-machine badass. Sam’s only cool because he’s got so many feelings.”
Sandy stood and kissed Stew on the forehead before drawing him close to her. Stew stopped arguing and went very quiet, almost like when you throw a curtain over a bird’s cage. “Babe, you have so many feelings, though,” Sandy cooed. “And you would totally hold the ring for me if it was too heavy on my emotional state, right?”
“Yeah, of course. Ain’t nobody fucking with my girl. Not even a magical fucking ring.”
Suzuki slammed his hands on the table. “You two both know we aren’t talking about a literal ring, right?” he shouted as the Horsemen erupted into laughter. “It’s a ringtone. You can’t—”
Sandy raised her hand and put a finger to Suzuki’s lips. “Hush, hush,” she condescendingly whispered. “Haven’t you ever heard of roleplay?”
“I’ve told you both that I DO NOT WANT ANY PART IN YOUR WEIRD SEX GAMES!”
Beth looked at her former party members with a look of bemusement mixed with mild disgust. “Jesus Christ, have you two always been like this?” she asked.
Suzuki hung his head while he poked at his food. “Honestly, they’ve gotten so bad since they actually got together,” he said. “It’s like Middang3ard turned them into teenagers. They’ve sexualized things that I’ve never even heard of before. Every fucking thing is an innuendo. I can’t even eat around them anymore.”
“I can see why.” Beth giggled as she pointed over Suzuki’s shoulders.
Suzuki turned to see what was going on and wished he hadn’t. Sandy was bumping and grinding on Stew, reciting elvish poetry as Chip pounded a drumbeat on the table, while Stew rowdily downed his beer. José and Diana were trying their best to keep their shit together, but after a few more seconds of the gross display of affections, they burst out laughing, José falling to the floor, laughing so hard that he had to hold his guts. Suzuki sighed and chuckled. “Welcome back to the Mundanes,” he said to Beth. “As you can see, we’ve really grown up.”
“It’s good to be back. I’ve really missed you guys.”
José raised his tankard and shouted loud enough for the entire hall to hear him, “Tomorrow, we take the Dark One’s ring!”
The military soldiers looked around, obviously confused by what was going on. Beth laughed when she saw their faces. “The military kids know how to have a good time, but this is on a whole other level.” She chuckled.
Suzuki poured Beth another glass of ale. “This is nothing,” he said. “Imagine an entire bar of this shit. And this is just the first hour.”
“I fucked up when I chose the military over the MERCs.”
“Well, you’re here now. The party’s back together.”
“We’re never splitting it again.”
“No. Never again.”
“Never.”
Suzuki leaned back in his chair as he started to relax. Beth was talking to a soldier at her side. José and the rest of the Horsemen were mingling with the soldiers as well. Sandy and Stew had finally remembered that they were in public and started to introduce themselves to the soldiers around them. Suzuki was at peace. He had done it. They had all done it. The Mundanes were back together, and they had pulled something off with the Horsemen that had never been done. They had stormed the Dark One’s defenses.
And now they were going back for more.
Chapter Fifteen
It was some time in the middle of the night by now, and most of the soldiers had retired to the makeshift tents the Mundanes and the Horsemen had managed to cobble together for them.
The tents were made from anything that the two parties could spare from their inventory: old leather armor that they had outclassed; extra tents that Wendy, the matron of the Red Lion, had sent with them just in case something happened; tents pitched from broken spears (out of the seven MERCs, none of them had any use for spears) and metal from shattered swords and axes.
Not one of the soldiers went unfed or unsheltered that night.
The soldiers would talk of the hospitality of the MERCs for years to come. They would tell their fellow soldiers in the military. They would tell their friends they wrote home to. Their children would be raised on tales of the night they were rescued by a MERC in the body of an imp and a MERC who looked like the walking embodiment of Jesus Christ himself, how they were brought to a cavern filled with the burning bodies of the MERC’s enemies, how they had been greeted like old friends in a banquet hall that would have made Valhalla look like a steaming pile of shit.
Finally, the only ones still awake were the Horsemen and the Mundanes. The night had grown quiet with the rest happily sleeping, their bellies full of food and drink. The MERCs, however, weren’t ready to dismiss themselves yet. There was too much energy, too much to revel in.
Suzuki had seen this at the Red Lion more than a couple of times. MERCs who had been out for weeks, months even, refused to rest after a night of heavy drinking. Suzuki was never one to want to stay up past his last drink. He usually excused himself early in the night to go shower and think—to meditate, as he had taken to calling it, for he was not merely obsessing. He was tearing through his thoughts, potential war situations, and battle tactics with the viciousness of an ogre. It was a battle meditation. Yet beneath him, the Red Lion raged. Dwarves, elves, humans, and halflings drank themselves merry, they gambled, they danced, and they lived.
Suzuki could see why now. They were celebrating life. Life was an abstract concept that philosophers spent their entire lives trying to understand. Suzuki had read their books, along with every fantasy novel that he could get his hands on. They were both about life, and, more importantly, they were concerned with death. Death was the reason that the MERCs celebrated into the early hours of the dawn, the time when the sun is just making itself known to a world swallowed in darkness.
He had experienced life.
Whatever he had felt after the missions he and the Mundanes had completed before paled in comparison to this feeling. It could not be said to be happiness, nor relief. It was a deeper feeling that seemed to grow in his heart and flow all the way down to his feet, to flow through his hands and up to his neck, settling in the back of his neck, where his hair stood up on end. It was a feeling that only came from having your life plunged into the depths of impossibility, then to have it ripped away from the greedy claws of death and to have that life dropped back into your ignorant palms, to stare dumbfounded at all the glorious details of life that you had forgotten to pay notice to, all of the beautiful memories that now danced in front of your life with razor clarity, even though you hadn’t thought of them in years. It was life. Amazing, glorious life.
The Mundanes and Horsemen had packed up the chairs, whatever had remained after they had been broken down for wood. All that remained of the hall they had created were the banners and the small campfires that filled the cavern with the smell of meat and wood. Sandy was adamant that they leave the banners hanging. It was a testimony of their victories, those past and those to come. She said that it was a proper spit in the face of the Dark One, to have robbed him of prisoners and sit beneath his mountain, feasting. Everyone agreed with her.
It was a pretty good “fuck you.”
The fires burned brightly as if they were trying to catch up to how bright Suzuki’s heart felt. He sat with the Mundanes and Horsemen around the fire.
They passed around a la
rge plate of exotic fruits, savory meats, and stinky cheeses. A large bottle of ale was also being passed around. It felt like a small magical ritual to Suzuki. Most everyone was quiet, even Chip had been lulled into a deep, thoughtful silence, slowly smoking her loosely-wrapped cigarettes. Diana sat next to her, leaning her head on Chip’s shoulder while she used her wand to draw pictures with the floating smoke: a dragon sitting atop a mountain, stars glittering above, the moon, huge and frightful with a face carved into it that looked ready to devour the world underneath.
José sat a little away from his party. He was staring into the fire, his dark brown eyes reflecting the intensity of the fire as he tended a few wounds Diana’s magic had not been able to heal. He’d been struck by a magical arrow during his prison raid, and he wanted to make sure the wound would not become infected. The arrow had been suffused with magic to counter any healing magic.
“It’s troubling,” José said softly to Beth, who was sitting at his side, drinking liberally from the bottle of ale. “Orcs don’t really do this kind of magic. They’ve never had the knack for it. Even being controlled by the Dark One shouldn’t give them this kind of…talent. Maybe they’re getting other people to curse their weapons for them.”
Beth nodded, her eyes looking sleepy. Her hair had grown a little since Suzuki had last seen her. She had to keep moving her bangs out of her eyes while she talked to José. “Yeah, we noticed a lot of shit like that too. There were orcs with weapons that were far better than they should have had. I didn’t get much of the clan distinctions when I was in training, there were too many to pay attention to, but I got the gist. There were red orcs invading villages that had weapons that were way too good for their tribes.”
“It seems that under the Dark One, their tribal squabbles have fallen to the wayside. I’ve never seen that many orcs working together. It’s still hard to wrap my mind around having to deal with red orcs and gray orcs at the same time.”
Beth poked at the fire. “Tradition couldn’t have been completely tossed out the window. I was captured by red orcs. They didn’t kill us. It was almost like red orcs were sent just because they have a tendency to take prisoners instead of killing them. We had seen whole villages on the other part of the country completely decimated by gray orcs. Then we had a couple of our outposts destroyed by gray orcs, our more important outposts, the magical research outposts and shit like that, shit that the Dark One obviously would rather have destroyed than risk having used on him.”
“It would seem that they still do have their traditions then. It’s hard shit to make sense of, the Dark One controlling them and all. It seems he has so much control over them, yet not completely, and it’s working toward his advantage.”
“Yeah, having a loyal army that gives you the best parts of each race without any of their drawbacks seems to be working wonders for the guy. It almost makes you wish that we had something like that on our side.”
Beth handed the bottle of ale to Stew and Sandy, who were sitting by her side, both of them leaning back on their hands. Sandy shifted forward, took the bottle, and took a long draught. She wiped her lips and handed the bottle to Stew as she took a couple of pieces of cheese and meat from the plate.
“I’m glad that we don’t,” Sandy chimed in. “It would be disgusting. Fuck that. I don’t want to be fighting for the side that has to use fucking microchips to get anyone to do anything.”
“Yeah,” Stew echoed. “Fuck that. Where’s the honor?”
Beth laughed sarcastically. Suzuki couldn’t remember ever hearing Beth laugh like that before. It was a new sound coming from her. When she spoke, her eyes looked tired and heavy as if they weighed enough to fall right out of their sockets.
“Where’s the fucking honor in war?” Beth asked. “War is people learning how to be terrible so that they can kill each other.”
“Bullshit,” Stew growled. “We aren’t learning to be terrible. The only thing I’ve learned is how strong I can be, how strongly my friends love me.”
“Is that what you’re fighting for, Stew? A feel-good anime lesson?”
Stew looked hurt for a second. Then he smiled and took another swig of the ale. “Fuck, yeah, that’s what I’m fighting for,” he exclaimed. “The power of friendship winning out over a psychotic fuck who wants to enslave all of existence. That’s exactly what I’m fighting for. That’s honor as far as I’m concerned, being willing to stick your head out for everyone else. I’m not just some fucking meathead, you know. I remember why we all came to Middang3ard. We heard the whole lecture on how evil the Dark One is and shit, but none of us really got it. We came because we’d been playing a video game for seven years and this sounded like a fun, real-life adventure. Right?”
The Mundanes all avoided each other’s eyes, but they nodded their heads in agreement.
Stew cleared his throat and went on. “So what? I don’t think that’s a shitty thing to admit. It sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Which nerd wouldn’t have fucking gone for it? Then it was amazing at first. Boot camp was fucking ridiculous. Getting to do magic? Or watching you guys do magic at least.” He laughed, pure and genuine, no edge or malice. “All that was fucking sick. When we first started to get out there, it was still sick and fun—the first few times, until we started to come up against some real life-or-death shit. That’s when it clicked. This isn’t a game. We joke and shit, but this isn’t a fucking game. Sandy and Suzuki have pulled my ass out of the fire more times than I can fucking count. So, yeah, I’m totally gonna stick with being honorable. I’m not becoming a terrible person for the sake of a fucked-up war. I sacked up with the rest of my friends to come save your ass because you’re our friend.”
Sandy took the ale back from Stew and took a sip. “We slaughtered our way to you, Beth, because you’re our friend. Our friendship is now built on the bones and blood of our enemies. And we’ll carve our friendship into the Dark One’s because it’s honorable. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still into death and carnage. It’s kind of my thing…” she muttered.
Stew pounded his fist into his open palm. “Yeah, dude, fuck that whole enslaving the universe bullshit. Let people live. Besides, we gotta kill him on principle now. He fucked with one of the Mundanes. That makes him good as dead as far as I’m concerned.”
Beth nodded and smiled. Her face had sharpened, and whatever pain had been floating in her eyes looked as if it had healed a bit. She wiped what could have been a tear from her eye and stared into the fire as she spoke. “I appreciate that. I didn’t get to tell you guys how much I appreciate what you did for me! I thought I was going to die in that pit.”
Sandy picked at the cheese and meat plate in front of her and shrugged her shoulders. “You’re welcome, but you don’t have to thank us. Never split the party, remember? We shouldn’t have been split up from the get-go.”
“How come we were? I know why Stew and Suzuki didn’t get into the military. What was up with you?”
Stew’s face went white, and he spat out his beer. “What do you mean, you know why I didn’t get accepted? Even I don’t know why!”
“Are you serious? José hasn’t told you?”
Stew’s face darkened as he glared at José. “No, José hasn’t mentioned it.”
José returned the glare, nearly as fierce as Stew’s. His face eventually softened, though, and he looked around uncomfortably, an emotion that Suzuki could only recall seeing on his face once before when he spoke about Chip. “I didn’t think that it was important to tell you. I thought you’d figure it out anyway.”
“Well, what the fuck is it?”
“You’re a berserker, and a pretty strong one from what I’ve been seeing. The military doesn’t like to take any because…well, you guys are a little bit hard to control and kind of unpredictable. I haven’t seen you go berserk—”
“Dude, I’m always berserking!”
“No, if you would shut up and let me explain, you—”
“Okay, okay, spit—”
Stew went quiet, but Suzuki could see Stew’s mouth twitching to speak again. Instead, it curled into a shit-eating grin as he leaned back and popped in another piece of meat before handing the plate to Suzuki.
José took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “It’s kind of a big deal. MERCs accept berserkers but usually match them up with a veteran. You didn’t get matched up with one. That’s why I’ve been spending so much time talking with you. I’ve been trying to figure out if it was a fluke or not. You do have a habit of rushing into a fight, but that isn’t going berserk. Like I said, I’ve been watching, and it’s true.”
“Okay, but you missed the most important part. How do I go berserk?” Stew asked, surprised there was more potential to his Leeroying.
“No one knows. It’s different for everyone. I just wanted to make sure that when it happened, you weren’t the kind of person to kill your friends in a blood rage.”
“Holy shit, that happens?”
José nodded. “All of the time.”
“Shit.” Stew turned to Sandy, grabbed her by the shoulders, and looked seriously into her eyes. “Babe, I’ll never Hulk out and kill you. I swear on whatever weird gods the elves worship.”
Sandy kissed Stew long, hard, and much longer than anyone at the fire thought was reasonable. “I know, Beef Cakes. I know.”
Beth cleared her throat and mimed looking at a watch. “You still haven’t answered the question, Sandy.”
Sandy pulled out the Amulet of Elroz and dangled it in front of her face like a hypnotist. “Personality test did me in,” Sandy explained.
“You’re gonna have to give us more than that.”
“It’s nothing you guys didn’t already know. My tests said I have intensely sociopathic tendencies and displayed a willingness to search for power above anything else.”