by Eric Ugland
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A little present for you.”
“For me?”
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my smile contained like I was bored.
“Why?”
“Why? What kind of thing is that to say to a present?”
“Because it’s unlike you.”
“You barely know me.”
“You have yet to be nice to me, and now there’s a wagon full of a present for me?”
“Okay, first of all, I have been nice to you, I saved you from a big monster. B, it’s nothing that nice, okay? It’s just something you seem to like, and I had to get rid of it anyway, so I figured I’d give it to you.”
She frowned, and put her hands on her hips, shooting all the attitude my way that she could, and I think she thought I’d brought a wagon’s worth of poop over to her. But, she lifted up the corner of the canvas and peeked underneath, then put it down very quickly. Her head snapped around, her wavy dark hair whipping around every which way.
“What is this?” she asked, but not in a bad way, in a way where she was trying very hard to contain her excitement.
“Uh,” I promptly stammered in response while I frantically tried to recall the name of the creature, “Robeachon’s Gargoyle.”
“Where is it from?”
“I don’t really know. I think it’s an earth elemental of some kind, so—”
“I meant where did you find this one.”
“Outside my apartment last night.”
“It was dead?”
“No, I killed it.”
“You killed this?”
“Yeah.”
“Last night?”
“Yes.”
“You killed a gargoyle last night and had it delivered here for me.”
“Good summary of events, yes. And there’s also, uh,” I pointed at the madarial wrapped up.
Like it was Christmas morning, she darted to the end of the wagon and unrolled the canvas wrap. There were some rather sickening liquid-ish noises, and then a really unfortunate waft of stink. Nadya’s face didn’t change from sheer joy.
“A madarial?” Nadya said. “This is incredible!”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Did the gargoyle kill this?”
“No, just me. Again. I was walking home from, uh, well, not here, and I came across this asshole trying to get into some kid’s room, so I shoved him back out the window and, in case you’re wondering, it turns out flying is not one of its skills.”
She put the canvas back onto the madarial and stepped away from the cart. Slowly she turned around, and I couldn’t quite make out her emotions. I think, and this is mostly in retrospect, she wasn’t sure how to feel herself at that moment.
“No one has ever gotten me something like this,” she said.
“I hope not,” I replied, “it’s gross.”
“I wasn’t finished, Clyde. It is gross. But its something I am very interested in. It is a passion of mine, and it has always been,” she paused, then continued, “it has always been something I have been mocked for. I have been belittled and called many vile things because I dare to be interested in something outside the boundaries of what is proper. Anything I have gotten, anything I have worked on or studied, it has been at great expense to me, in time, in money, and in social standing. This, what you have done, this gift, it is amazing. Thank you.”
I think she wanted to hug me. Or kiss me. Or do something. But instead, she stood where she was, nodded once, then walked over to the front of the cart, and did something near the seat.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Arranging for this cart to be delivered to my house,” she said.
“How?”
Once again, she was back to looking me as if I was the country bumpkin.
“There’s a note here,” she said, pointing at a piece of paper attached to the wagon. “You write the address you want this to go to, and they come out with horses or oxen or whatever, and take it to the address you wrote down.”
“How do they see what you write?”
“Partnered pages.”
“What are those?”
“Seriously?”
“Small town.”
“Ugh. Partnered pages are where you can write on one page, and it shows up on the other page, wherever it is.”
“That is so cool!”
“Sure,” she said. “So cool.”
Matthew, thankfully, came along then, and I had to go through the whole shpiel about the killings and the whatnot, and Nadya came clean about her own involvement with and passion for monsters, and Matthew was elated because he had something similar going on. He loved dissection and figuring out how things worked and why they worked. I let them geek out over the gargoyle for a minute, and Matthew made Nadya promise to make some detailed drawings of what she found. Nerds are everywhere.
Then it was finally time to see the new pit.
Chapter 60
New pit.
Same as the old pit.
Little bit bigger, little bit worse. By a little bit, I mean a lot a bit. It was disgusting. In a new and different way. The pit was bigger around, by about half again, but not as deep. At least at first appearance. The layer of scunge and poop was only about twenty feet below ground level. But then I wondered if it was, perhaps, just as deep, but there was like 80 feet worth of muck. Flying insects buzzed around, things roughly the size of mice or rats, but with wings. Matthew beat them out of the air with an open hand, then squished them with his boots.
“Bad sign,” he said.
There was refuse and garbage all over the upper area, including a ton of stuff piled up against the stone cottage sitting in the corner of the lot. It was a similar cottage to the first pit, though like the pit itself, this one was larger. The door was open, and I could see trash on the floor inside.
“This place is gross,” I said.
“It’s a pit,” Matthew said. “Only reason you didn’t walk into this sort of mess the first time is I cleaned it up before you got there. That’s what day one always is. Clean up the surface. Clean up the cottage. Figure out what’s in the pit. Set up your workspace. Basics.”
I grumbled, but it made sense.
And we got to work. Matthew sent me into the cottage with a shovel, and I got to work shoveling all the crap outside.
It was a basic one-room building, big square structure with a tile roof. The walls were kind of high, and that made the roof high, and it looked to me like there was enough room to put a ladder up to the beams and store things up there if we needed. With the door open, somehow that meant a layer of muck got inside the place, an inch or two deep, no biggie. No bugs in the cottage, though. Nothing living, in fact. No moss or mold or anything of the ilk. There was no furniture in the place, at least nothing whole, except a chest. Rounded top, iron bands on it. Oddly clean around it. No dust, no dirt, no nothin’.
I’m not usually one for paranoia, but obvious trap was obvious.
“Matthew,” I called out.
“What?” he shouted from the outside.
“Something weird in here.”
“It’s a Pit. Something weird everywhere.”
“Okay, but, can you come take a look?”
There was some muttering, and then Nadya laughing. But, a second later, Matthew stomped inside.
I pointed at the chest.
Matthew looked at the chest. Then he looked around the rest of the cottage, and grabbed my shoulder, pulling me out fast enough that I lost my footing, and tumbled down the small set of stairs leading up to the cottage from ground level.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Needed to get you out in a hurry,” he said, pulling his mace off his belt and giving it a quick swing.
Nadya was over in a second, a short sword in her hand.
I got up and brushed my pants off before getting my sword out.
“Nice sword,” Matthew said, eyeing the shining silv
er blade. “New?”
“Yeah,” I said, “kind of lost that bronze one.”
“That’s right.”
“Anyway, why are we standing here with our weapons out?”
“Watch this,” he said.
Matthew took a step towards the stone cottage, and he swung hard like he was going for the fences. His mace hit the stone with a dull bong, and Matthew dropped the weapon and grabbed his arm. Credit, though, he didn’t make a noise, he just hopped up and down and gritted his teeth.
“What, exactly, was I looking for?” I asked. “I missed it.”
“Not… a…. mimic…” he said through his clenched jaw.
“You thought the cottage was a mimic?” I asked.
“There’s a mimic here?” Nadya asked, eyes alight with hope.
“It’s definitely not the house,” I said. “But there’s a suspicious chest inside.”
She pushed Matthew and me out of the way to get into the cottage.
I ran after her, hoping she wasn’t going to do something stupid like offer herself to the mimic so she could see its internal systems.
She wasn’t. Nadya stood in the middle of the room, sword sheathed, notebook out. She was scribbling furiously, but it was hard to tell if she was drawing or writing.
“I’ve heard of mimics in mimics,” Matthew said. “Got nervous.”
“Is that really a mimic?” I asked.
“There are a few ways to tell for sure, none of which involve looking at it. If it is a mimic, then this Pit just got very strange.”
“Lucrative?”
“Potentially? I don’t really know. The muck is pretty deep, and that’s usually an indication that you’ll find less useful parasites. Doubt it’s something as vile as trollspawn, but it could be grimelings. They’re a pain in the ass to deal with, and they have little to nothing of use harvest-wise. Pits like this are often food waste and sewage, so little chance of finding gold or useful metals on the bottom. There’s always the outside chance someone might, you know, toss a noble’s body in, and we could find another signet ring on the bottom, but that was a one-in-a-thousand chance the first time. Twice in a row? Probably not.”
“What are grimelings?”
“Where did you come from that you don’t know of grimelings?”
“Just weren’t a thing in my town.”
“Hrmph,” he said, looking me up and down as if he was trying to figure me out for the first time. “Grimelings are a bit like squirrels. Do you know what a squirrel is?”
“Yes, I know what a squirrel is.”
“Always have to check with you. Similar size of a squirrel. No tail. Head is huge, big ears—”
“Like a bunny?”
“Somewhere between a rabbit and a bat. You know—”
“I know what bats and rabbits are.”
“Hands have thumbs, some people think they might be intelligent to an extent. But they also like to swarm and bite and carry disease.”
“Do you kill them?”
“It’s usually them or you. They are aggressive.”
“Don’t you think we’d have seen them by now?”
“They can swim very well, hold their breaths for some time. Basic builders, like a beaver—”
“I know what beavers are.”
“They build homes under the surface of the muck with the bits they find.”
“Industrious little guys.”
“You seem to think they might be nice, or worth keeping around in some capacity. When you finally see them face to face, you will understand the problem with that view.”
Matthew took a step forward and threw his mace at the chest.
It hit with a deep thud, and then the chest opened. It was not a chest, it was a mimic. Its mouth was, in effect, where a normal chest would open up, but instead of being empty, this chest was filled with teeth and a massive purple prehensile tongue. And the tongue came out, reaching and grasping around. I saw two beady little eyes on the top of the chest’s lid, squinting at all of us.
“Hey,” Nadya said. “He’s just being himself, no need to beat him up.”
“Were you sure it was a mimic?” Matthew asked.
“Not yet, but—”
“Now you know. Are you going to spend the rest of the day trying to understand the creature before giving up and—”
“I’m going to tame it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Do you mind?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’s possible, but as long as it doesn’t get in the way, do it.”
At which point, something chomped into my leg.
I looked down to see one of the giant flies biting me, so I swatted it.
It fell to the ground and was trying to right itself. I picked it up and threw it at the mimic.
Its tongue a blur, it snagged the insect out of the air and gulped it right down.
There was a small, but satisfied, burp from the mimic chest, and it seemed to settle down.
“At least we can get rid of the insects that way,” I said.
“Fine,” Matthew said like he was an overworked dad agreeing to a new puppy, “but you two are taking care of it.”
He stomped out of the building.
I put my hands up. “This is all you.”
Nadya smiled. “You’ll come around.”
Chapter 61
My cottage clean-up taken over, I went outside to help Matthew. For the moment, we were shoveling mud and/or poop into piles about the place, keeping them out of the way for now.
The bugs were everywhere, but weren’t smart, nor were they very powerful, so they weren’t able to bite through my pants or shirt. I started swatting them down and putting them in an overturned bucket. Food for the mimic.
“It’s going to be a short day today,” Matthew said softly when we were at the far side of the complex.
“Got a hot date?”
“You do.”
“What did you do?”
“I did some asking around.”
“And you asked someone out on a date for me?”
“No. You know when that party is, the one High Lord Fancypants is throwing?”
“Like next week sometime.”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit.”
“You seem calmer than I anticipated.”
“I mean, not much I can do now, can I? Come up with an alternate plan and figure out how to break into a vault.”
“While you might have a chance to make off with something from a party, there is no way you can get into a vault. Or escape.”
“Speaking of Lord Fancypants, I met this guard while I was scoping out the Fancypants estate. He said he’d prefer to do what I’m doing, and I said I’d ask you about it.”
“You want me to hire a guard?”
“Yeah, but to do what we’re doing.”
“Pit restoration.”
“Bingo. Figure we could use a little help, especially if he’s the type who can swing a sword.”
“You mean because I froze and Nadya ran away?”
“I wasn’t going to put it quite like that, but, you know, yeah.”
“Cuts into my profits some.”
“But it means your chances of getting home every night are better.”
That seemed to get to him, and he started nodding.
“Great,” I said, “we’re meeting him for dinner.”
“What?”
“Yeah, at this tavern near my apartment.”
“You work quickly, but,” he started, then he stopped. “Do you still have that signet ring?”
“Yeah, haven’t figured out what to do with it, though.”
“I have. Give it to me.”
I grabbed it out of my pouch and tossed it to him. He fumbled with it for a second, bobbling it from hand to hand until he managed to grab it firmly from the air.
“Now we have something to work with.”
He tossed his shovel so it banged against the side of the stone cottage.
Nadya stuck her head out.
“Hey! You scared it,” she shouted.
“Put the bucket of bugs in there,” Matthew said, “and then get out of here. Early day.”
“It’s not yet lunch,” she countered.
“Early day,” he repeated. “Go dig into your new prize corpses.”
She smiled, apparently having forgotten a bit about that.
It took mere minutes to lock up, and then we were on our way. Our meaning Matthew and myself, and we took a long walk north until we got to the estate of one Lord Fancypants himself, Tollendahl.
His house looked different in the day. Still massive, but I could see a bit more detail, as well as some of the inside. The eastern side, where the veranda and balcony where, looked to be a ballroom. It was pretty much wide open inside.
The other thing I could see, the place was definitely hosting a party that very night. There were deliveries being made, decorations being hung, furniture being placed and removed, banners being hung from windows, and several Mancers doing bits of magic under the watchful eye of their guards.
“That piece of crap,” I said. “Rowlands wants me to fail.”
“Likely,” Matthew said as we strolled along the boulevard, looking like we had the barest of cares in the world. “This guard I’m meeting with tonight, are you asking me to hire him because you think he will offer you a way into the place? That he will spill the secrets of this estate to you?”
“Mostly because he seemed like a nice guy in a bad situation and you seemed like a good guy who might need more muscle.”
Matthew nodded, hands behind his back.
“Have you had these?” I asked, pointing at the fruit above our head.
“No. Tasty?”
“Delicious.”
He raised his eyebrows ever so much, and I had the feeling he didn’t much care.
“If you did get access to this party,” he started, “what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t rush it. I have the feeling that events such as these last quite some time.”
He nodded. “Balls such as these would either have secure transport back home for guests, or rooms made up to allow them to sleep. I am glad you have been thinking.”