Threadbare Volume 2

by Andrew Seiple

  Garon told them.

  For a second, there was stunned silence in the basement. Then Mads whistled. “You ain’t afraid ta go big, Gar.”

  “Zuula forgive you,” his Mom decided. “Not half-orc, but... eh, close second. She tink she see one in de toy store. Let’s go get it.”

  Twenty minutes and one salvaged toy later, Garon stirred, and opened plush eyes as the world came into focus. Again.

  He was immediately met by a prompt.

  You have unlocked the High Dragon Hatchling job!

  Would you like to become a High Dragon Hatchling at this time?

  “Hells yes!” Garon whooped.

  And then he was a dragon.

  “Newborn’s Mercy!” Shouted Zuula.

  “Yorgum’s Blessing of luck upon Garon!” Fluffbear chorused, happy at the skill ups she was getting for this one. Each one upped the cost a bit, but increased the effectiveness of the buff. Still, she was getting a bit loopy from the sanity cost.

  “Oh boy... this feels...” Garon twisted his stuffed head on his long neck, and opened and shut a mouth full of newly-hardened cloth teeth. “This feels GOOD.” He stretched his wings, feeling the power of his new frame. “Status.”

  He was silent for a long minute.

  “Is everything all right?” Asked Threadbare.

  “You’re looking at my stats, right? With that eye for detail thing?”

  “And other things, yes.”

  “Tell me you’re seeing that eighty-three in strength.”

  Zuula jumped up. “Whaaat? Zuula be stuck wit’ piddly forty-seven!”

  “I see it,” Threadbare said. “It looks like some of your numbers are pretty high. Except for dexterity.”

  “Yeah... I mean, the strength and constitution aren’t up to my old stats from when I was living, but it’s close, it’s close. And the rest is... yeah, I can live with this.” The three-foot-long green plush dragon strutted around the room, stretching and testing its legs and muscles. “Ooh, seven skills.... Two of which look like trouble. I get ‘No Thumbs’ and ‘Limited Equipment.’ Let me... Yeah, yeah, they suck. No weapons for me.” The dragon grinned. “But I’m a mercenary, so whatever! Fighting is fighting. And with a basic armor rating this high, I should be fine. For now, anyway.”

  “What are the othah skills?” Mads asked.

  “Let’s see... Scaly Wings, Dragonseye, Chomp, Draconic Tongue, and Burninate. Oooh! I gotta try this. Threadbare, can I get the loudest mouth you can give me?”

  “I’ll see what I can do. You’re bigger so I can put in a bigger air bladder.”

  It used up most of his remaining leather, but finally he got one installed that Garon was happy with.

  “Yes,” the little dragon said, in a voice that had been carefully crafted for yelling at thieving halfens and arrogant dwarves. “Yes, this’ll do. Okay, stand back. Burninate!”

  That was actually a pretty poor decision, as it turned out.

  Burninate, which dragons usually roar in the draconic language so as to avoid mockery by younger races, is a costly and exhausting skill. It also calls up the fire directly from the dragon’s mouth.

  And at the time, the little plush toy golem who’d activated it had absolutely no resistance to fire.

  Fortunately, with much credit owed to Yorgum’s blessing and the quickness of his colleagues, they managed to get him put out before he was destroyed. A few mends, plus Zuula’s test of shamanic Slow Regeneration (which worked perfectly), put him to rights.

  “So unclever!” Zuula stood over the chastened dragon, shaking her plush finger at it. “What you t’ink happen! Showing off! Foolish boy! You not too big Zuula can’t spank you!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry Mom.”

  “Yeah, you know, ya burned up about half my dresses theah too, kiddo. Not too happy about that,” Mads chipped in.

  “Meh, you couldn’t wear them now anyway.”

  “Ain’t the point, Gar. Ain’t. The. Point.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “But hey, I’ve got a powerful skill! That fire did amazing damage!”

  “Yeah, to you.” Mads snickered.

  “Okay, so it wasn’t made for plushie mouths. We can work on that. Ah... maybe an asbestos tongue? I don’t know. I’ll think on it. What gives fire resistance?”

  “Fire elementalists, mostly,” Zuula said. “Easy skill for dem.”

  “Woo. Okay, so... well, maybe I can get that job once we figure out how to raise our job limits. It’s an easy one, especially with this breath. All you have to do is kill something with fire, and the job unlocks.”

  Madeline sighed from her soulstone. “Right, whaddeva. Now that we got Garon outta the way, it’s my turn.”

  “Oh, sure.” Threadbare said. “I think I’ve got about one more left in me. Then I’ll need a few hours to recharge my sanity. Maybe a few days. I’ve got a lot of sanity now. It takes a very long time to recharge.”

  “What you talking about?” Zuula turned to scowl at him. “You just go to sleep, and when you... wake... up... oh.”

  “Oh,” Garon agreed. “That’s a problem. Betting we can’t eat or drink like this, either.”

  “No.”

  Zuula considered. “You smell?”

  Threadbare sniffed himself, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Everything smells like burned Garon now though, so it’s hard to tell.”

  “No, you sniff! You have sense of smell! Maybe herbs work.”

  “Herbs?”

  “Like in hut.”

  “Mom.”

  “Yes, we try burning some later, and—”

  “Mom!”

  “What?”

  “You are NOT getting him hooked on that stuff.”

  “Bah. It not work dat way for him. Probably not. Most likely not.” She rubbed her cloth chin. “Hopefully not.”

  “Yeah, no. Or we wait until Fluffbear levels up cleric and learns curative... which we don’t know will work on him, either.”

  “Hm.”

  “Yeah, hm.”

  “Yeah, can I have my bahdy now?” Madeline said.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Threadbare lifted up the doll she’d chosen. “You’re sure?”

  “Pahsitive.”

  It had been a marionette once, of a pretty lady with long black hair. Her face had been painted with exquisite care, and her red dress was made of velvet, as were her elbow-length gloves.

  “Once we give her teeth, she’ll be a perfect vampaiah,” Madeline said with satisfaction. “Whaddaya think, Mistah Beah?”

  “Well it should work, even if she’s not plush. Appraisal reads her as a toy, so the golem animation should take. But I don’t know how to give her a mouth so you’d be stuck mute, unless we’ve got speak with dead going. It’s just that I don’t know how to work with wood,” he shook his head. “Tailoring I can do. Wood’s trickier.”

  “I can learn,” Fluffbear offered.

  There was a bit of silence. “You’d do that for me?” Madeline sounded surprised.

  “Sure! I like learning new jobs, and I’ve got two more crafting ones open! Yorgum likes building and crafting! This will let me make wood things like houses, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Garon said.

  “If you’re sure. Um...” Threadbare thought. “I don’t know how to unlock that job.”

  “I do,” Garon said. “Hey Mads, Grimble’s workroom is behind the bar, yeah?”

  They ventured upstairs, and after some digging, found his tools. Grimble had been the one to repair the tavern, after all, and he had plenty of wood and nails left over. Some quick carving and whittling, and Missus Fluffbear whooped. “Got it! Oooh, Strength and Dexterity. Yay!” She started happily whittling, and skilling up. “Straighten wood? Okay, I guess that’s useful. But hey, new job! More power! Better attributes!”

  “Ah...” Garon said, “You might want to be careful there. You don’t want to fill up your jobs too fast.”

  “Bah, not dis again,” Zuula grumped.
<
br />   “Why?” Missus Fluffbear asked.

  “If you leap on the first unlocks available, you might seal yourself off from a job that really suits you when it comes up. You don’t want to just choose the first things available. Especially before you’ve had a chance to develop your attributes while they’re low.”

  Zuula snorted. “Pssht. So afraid of fast paths to power...”

  “Says the woman who stuck with Shaman and let her other adventuring jobs rot.”

  “Bah, she only need Shaman. Shaman awesome.”

  “Garon has a point,” Threadbare put his paw on Missus Fluffbear’s shoulder, as she whittled busily at scraps of wood. “I just found out a very good job that probably would have helped my friends, but I can’t learn it. Unless I find my guild. Oh! Does anyone know anything about that?”

  Silence for a bit. Then Zuula sighed. “No. Dat part of de problem.” The little half-orc doll leaned against the counter, and shook her head. “Ain’t no one know what guild de words talking about. People first t’ought maybe it meant dem old trade guilds dat ain’t around no more.”

  “Yeah. Dad told me about that,” Garon said. “When instant crafting became a thing, it wrecked the trade guilds overnight,” Garon said. “Touched off some really nasty trade wars, and a lot of people died, as the bigger Guilds tried to scrabble to keep their power and influence, and mercenary work boomed. But those weren’t the guilds the messages were talking about.”

  “So no one know, and so we stuck with de jobs we got,” Zuula shrugged. “How many you got little black bear?”

  “Five left,” said Fluffbear, and they were all silent. “Adventuring, I mean. One crafting one left, now.”

  “Oh, you’re eight and four too,” Threadbare said. “Good to have that confirmed.”

  “How?” Garon finally managed. “Humans get SEVEN. Half-Orcs are stuck at six, for crying out loud. How’d you get such a big amount?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mff. So damned broken... Well, anyway, normally the path most people take is to level up their attributes associated with a job BEFORE they go into the job. That means that they train up their attributes while the training’s easier, so that the skill ups from leveling go farther. But you’ve kind of blown that away, I guess.”

  “I guess. I didn’t really know what I was doing through most of it.” Threadbare said. “My luck was pretty horrible for a lot of it, so things kept happening to me. I think...” He rubbed his head. “I think if I hadn’t taken all those jobs I wouldn’t have survived.”

  “So...” Missus Fluffbear turned her head back and forth. “Which way is better?”

  “No way’s bettah, really,” Madeline said. “Speaking as someone who’s eaten people who followed both paths, it really just depends on wheathah you want to have powahful focus in one or two things, or have a bunch of useful skills in a bunch of areas.”

  “I think the important thing is to figure out what you want to be, what you want to do to get to your goals, and find jobs that you like that support that,” Garon said. “Whether that’s all at once or waiting a bit to see if you change your mind later, or if you unlock something nifty, that’s up to you.”

  “No one can tell you how to live yah life, right?” Madeline sounded approving. “Kickass. So, uh, ya ready to make me a mouth yet?”

  Twenty carpenter skill ups and five levels later, Fluffbear was.

  It took Threadbare working in tandem with her for the leather and cloth components... the former of which they had to salvage from the curtains. This also gave him a Tailor level up, which refreshed his sanity. Ah yes, he’d forgotten he could do that!

  It was handy, but sooner or later the levels would be farther apart. It had gotten him through some tough instances, but he couldn’t count on being able to do that forever.

  And finally, the crowning touch. Missus Fluffbear notched the eighteen-inch-tall marionette’s flexible, jointed, cloth-and-wood mouth carefully, and slid in two tacks for fangs.

  “Does that look vampire enough?” She asked Madeline.

  The Soulstone pulsed red. “Oh yeah! She’s hot. I’d do me.”

  “Do what?” Threadbare asked, confused.

  “We’ll tell you LATER.” Garon shouted, then stopped, confused. “Huh. Sorry, I thought Mom was going to explain again.”

  Zuula sounded as confused as Threadbare. “What? Zuula not know what she talking about.”

  “Thank gods for small favors.” Garon muttered.

  Madeline chuckled. “Eh, fahgeddit. Let’s do this thing.”

  “Wait,” Garon said. “What about the daylight thing. And the wood thing?”

  “I thought of that. You know how many nights I spent staring at my status? Got those ‘skills’ memorized. The exact wahrding was my flesh burns at the touch of sunlight. My FLESH, Gar. So if all I got is wood, instead, I should be fine. And the wood thing don’t kick in till level five, and it says wood which pierces my skin will pain me, and wood through the haht will paralyze me. Guess what puppets don’t have! Skin or hahts!”

  “Sounds sketchy to me.”

  “Eh, if it don’t work out we go with anothah bahdy, and I just accept I can’t be a vampaiah.”

  “You sure you don’t want to be a dragon instead, Mads?”

  “I’ll stick with what I know. Like yer old lady, theah.”

  “Maybe a bit clever girl after all. For dead t’ing.”

  “Love you too, Zuu.”

  “Bah.”

  They returned to the relatively safe basement, Threadbare did his thing, Zuula laid her midwife’s blessing upon the puppet, Fluffbear blessed her as well, and she sat up.

  “Yes! I DO want to be a vampaiah. Bing! Theah we go. Awright. Moment of truth... Status.” The puppet read her screen, then jumped in place with a clatter. “You guys!”

  “What?” said Garon.

  “Zuula not a guy.”

  “I’m not either! I think,” said Missus Fluffbear.

  “I suppose I’m a guy,” said Threadbare. “Celia thought so and she would know.”

  “You guys you guys you guys!” Madeline said, dancing a wooden jig with vampiric agility.

  “What?” Garon said. “C’mon, share.”

  “I have an open adventuring job slot! And a crafting one!”

  There was silence for a long moment. “What? How?” Garon asked.

  “Well I didn’t have an adventuring job befoah, right? And you all could carry one job ovah when you got turned into doll hauntahs, right?”

  “Right...”

  “So what if tha vessel opens up a slot regahdless, even if you don’t have one ta begin with? Like you tucked a baby in heah, he’d be able ta learn new jobs! Oooh, good idea. Let’s go find a baby.”

  “No.” Garon said.

  “What? Oh, right, what was I thinking!”

  Garon looked relieved.

  “There’s no babies around heah.”

  Garon looked less relieved.

  Oblivious, Madeline continued. “But the point is, I can learn something like an adventurah could. I’m kind of like people now. Wow. Didn’t expect this.” The vampire hopped up on her coffin, and drummed her heels on the lid with a staccato beat. “Man. What should I choose?”

  “It’s... tough to say. You’re still a vampire, right?”

  “Yeah, but my strength got a li’l nurphed. Most everything else too, but eh, level one, so whatcha gonna do? Only one way up.”

  “Unless you die. Then you gots to start all over,” Zuula said.

  “Yeesh. Buzzkill. Eh... well, good time to test it, before I try anything. Hey guys, wanna walk me upstairs to do the sunlight test thing?”

  They did, and the little puppet stared at the hole in the curtain where Threadbare had cut it for the leather, and the sunlight leaking through onto the ground. “Moment of truth,” Madeline whispered.

  Then she put her foot into the sun.

  “Tingles,” She said, shifting it back and forth. “Ya put ya
right leg in, ya take ya right leg out... yeah!” She whooped. “Left leg in, an’ you shake it all ABOUT!” The marionette, stringless, danced the hokey pokey through the sunlight. Because THAT was what it was all about.

  “Lucky, lucky day! Rules lawyerin’ for tha win!” She said, stepping back into the darkness. “Whew. Comfier. Good ta have dahkspawn bonuses back. Lucky...” She froze. “Hey. That ah, that blessing of luck?”

  “Yes?” Fluffbear asked.

  “It’s on me, right? And not Zuula? Who’s runnin’ on half-orc luck now?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s okay, because she has her Newborn’s Mercy... up...”

  They fell silent, and looked to Zuula.

  The little shaman never had put her midwife buff up. She’d tried it on herself, but she hadn’t had a mouth then, and in the joy of discovery they’d all forgotten completely about it. And once she had a mouth, she hadn’t cast it. She’d forgotten to.

  Zuula, oblivious, stared back. “What?”

  WHAM!

  The door flew down, as Pulsivar and a ragged wolf, frothing at the mouth and bloody, rolled through the room. Mopsy chased the screaming, brawling pair, slashing...

  ...and then her eyes fell on Zuula. Panicked, and spooked by the sinister little doll, she leaped—

  Half an hour later after they disposed of the wolf’s carcass, chastened the cats, yelled at Zuula until she Newborn’s Mercied herself, and finished mending themselves and the door, they settled into the basement for a nice long game of grindluck.

  “Best present I ever took off a corpse,” Madeline said, fondling the worn cards as best as she could with wooden hands. Fortunately the animus spell and some careful woodwork beforehand had given her usable, if stiff fingers.

  “Shut up and keep playing,” Zuula grumbled.

  “What ah you worried about? And... oh, I just unlocked necromancer. Guess we all still count as undead.”

  “Do you want to be one?” Garon asked.

  “Thinking. I dunno. Threadbare’s got us covahed on that front. Unless he dies.”

  “Oh gods, you’re right.” Garon said. “We’re effectively immortal unless he goes, so long as we die around him and he can soulstone us in time. But we’re boned if he dies. Unless we somehow find another friendly necromancer, and convince him to help. And even then I doubt we’d luck into another golemist—”