Big Trouble

by Andrew Seiple

  “What? Who? Who is this?” Speranza asked. “Wait. You’re the halven?”

  “Yes. I’m Chase. I’ve talked with the other halven, and they have a way to save you. But in return you need to get them out of your cells and bring them to your dumbwaiter, right now. And...” she bit her lip, as she remembered that she wasn’t the only one with people at stake. “The adventurer, the fox can help, too. But you need to un-charm his friends.”

  “I can’t give them up!” Speranza shouted. “They’re the only things keeping Zenobia out of the failsafe room! They’ll break through and kill me!”

  “She’s not going to activate the dead drop,” Chase said, shouting back. “That’s a fake-out! She’s going for the pump room, to drown you in your cell!”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I overheard her mention it,” Chase said. “I’m sneaky that way. Look, you’re out of options. I don’t want to have to be the one to go back to Thomasi and tell him you’re dead. It’ll devastate him!”

  “I should convert you. It’s the only way I can trust you—”

  “You have no choice!” Chase screamed. “She’s at your door, and you’re turning on your allies! If you don’t trust me, you’ll die here, and my fa— my people will die with you! I’m offering you hope, and you’re throwing it back in my face!”

  Silence, for a moment. Then Speranza’s voice shook, raw with emotion. “If you betray me, they all die. I’ll let your people go, but I’m holding onto the adventurers until I’m certain you’ll do your part. And if you try to run or hurt me, they’ll have orders to kill all the halvens first. Do you understand?”

  “I do. Get the halvens from their cell and have your guards show them to the kitchen, and the dumbwaiter. They’ll take it from there. Then I’ll go get the fox and meet up with you for the final fight against Zenobia.”

  “Oh, how lucky, I’ll have my own healer for the boss fight,” Speranza muttered. “All right. I agree.”

  “Good. I’ll see you there.”

  “Wait, what are you—”

  Chase shut the tube, and before the guard could move toward her, she was out the door and running.

  But it was a long way back through the tunnels, and midway there, she felt her legs cramping. She slowed, and then the exertion caught up to her. She fell to her knees, breathing hard.

  CON+1

  “Status,” Chase whispered, then blanched. Her stamina was low. VERY low. And she had no food left on her.

  Closing her eyes, she almost despaired. To have her plan fail, here on the threshold, because she was out of stamina... no, it was torment. It was horrible, and she wouldn’t let that stand.

  But she had a way to recharge her stamina instantly, now didn’t she?

  With a few muttered words, she took the least-painful of the three options left to her. “Yes,” she confirmed, to whatever mysterious force was behind the words.

  You are now a level 1 Teacher!

  INT+1

  WILL+1

  You have learned the Smartypants skill!

  You have learned the Lecture skill!

  Your Lecture skill is now level 1!

  And, feeling a bit sharper and a little more determined, Chase enjoyed the surge of energy that followed... including the rapid refill of her much-depleted stamina.

  It was either that or farmer or herbalist, Chase thought, as she beat feet down the corridor again. And I’ll be damned before I take either of those.

  Chase had all of one crafting job slot left to her. Whatever she chose for her next job, she’d have to be careful about it... although, now that she thought of it, this last job made her an outlaw four times over. The Camerlengo had shown the depths of her sympathy in the earlier meeting, and they were as shallow as a mud puddle in the height of summer.

  Fortunately, her much-boosted luck gave her a clear path to her destination... or perhaps it was the fact that the final battles were ongoing down in the depths of the prison, and the part she was aiming for was empty.

  Mostly empty.

  Chase splashed to a stop at the edge of the underground lake, and looked out to the island, and the figure standing there. “Dijornos!”

  “Welcome back, kid.” White teeth flashed in the torchlight. “Did you get the pumps working?”

  Chase waded through the lake. Blood washed from her stained and ragged dress as she went, until swirls of darkness peeled away from her, flowing out like tentacles. The big man’s eyebrows lifted as he took in her crimson-marked form. “You been grinding?”

  “I don’t think so. Mainly I’ve been not dying,” she said, stopping a good twenty feet out from shore. The big man was unchanged, staring at her with that fierce intensity in his gaze. “I found out how to set you free. But I’ve got a bigger problem now.”

  “I told you how to set me free.”

  “And I can’t get to the pump room. Zenobia’s almost there.”

  The name struck him like a hurler stone to the forehead. He jerked back, and for a moment she saw something new in his eyes.

  Fear.

  Then it was gone, and he was cursing, blistering the air with language as he roared invectives into the dark. Chase gave him a few moments, then said, “I know who you were. I know what you did.”

  He kept cursing, falling to his knees and literally pounding the sand in a tantrum of violence.

  “I know who you were!” Chase shouted again.

  Dijornos looked up then, snarling. “You know nothing!”

  “The Butcher of Barvigga!” She shouted. “The leader of the most feared mercenaries in Laraggiungere; the Warring Pizzas!”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, gaping. She continued. “They say you never forgave a slight, that you killed everyone who ever did you wrong. That you killed their families, their friends, everyone even remotely connected to them. You were feared, Dijornos. People had a reason to fear you. Do they still have reason to fear you now?”

  “They’d damn well better,” Dijornos said, his voice rasping like rocks crumbling, sliding together. “You’d damn well better.”

  She stepped toward the shore, one foot in front of the other until she was on dry land. “I do. But I need your help now. I can’t handle Zenobia on my own.”

  Dijornos took a long breath, straightening up and moving to her, looming over her. “I can’t do much against her, while I’m stuck here, now can I?”

  “I can get you free. I’m higher level now. I can remove your fear of water. But... you’ll need to carry me back to shore.”

  “I already told you I’m fine with that.”

  “Whether you’re fine or not, it doesn’t matter. Zenobia’s almost won. I can show you where she is. You can ambush her and take your vengeance. They said you were one of the best tacticians in the land. You can do ambushes, right?”

  “Oh yeah, I can do ambushes, all right,” he said. “All right, short stuff. Do your thing. Let’s get our gank on, here.”

  “Sure.” Chase reached out towards him again. “Foresight.”

  Your Foresight skill is now level 16!

  And this time, she saw what she was hoping to see. Ending the vision, she put her hand firmly on his knee, and said, “Absorb Condition.”

  It was like someone had put a straw into her brain and blown a bubble. She blinked, feeling the inside of her skull rattle. Her stomach did a slow crawl, and words blurred in front of her.

  You have been afflicted with madness: Hydrophobia!

  And then she screamed, as she realized her feet were damp! Scrabbling them in the sand, she got them free of the... of the...

  “Hahahhhaha!” Then strong hands grabbed her, and before she could react, her viewpoint swirled, her neck snapping painfully around before she was planted, piggyback style, on a very smelly set of shoulders. She blinked into the mane of dark hair, then grabbed it as Dijornos lurched into motion, threatening to dump her into the water.

  Oh gods.

  Chase buried her face in his smelly
hair and wept.

  It was all around her!

  Her nerve broke then, and she tried to stand up, tried to leap off his back to shore, but his hand was gripping her arm, and no matter how she tried to wriggle free or battered his head with her free hand, he wouldn’t let go. Dimly she became aware that she was screaming, but none of that mattered because the black depths were all around her, oozing, flowing, reaching up for her...

  ...until they weren’t. And once they were to shore, she clung to his head with all her might, shaking like a leaf in a gale.

  “Hahaha!” Dijornos roared, breaking her grip easily, and swinging her down under one arm. “Yeah, it gets ya, doesn’t it? I’m impressed you didn’t lose your bladder control. I would have tossed you in if you’d done that.”

  “How did you live with this?” Chase whispered, aware that her skirts were still damp where she’d waded through the... through the... She shoved the thought away and hugged her arms around his forearm. The stuff was all around her. It’d be a long time before she got dry.

  “Wasn’t easy,” he admitted. “Drinking the stuff’s the worst part. Which is why I had to play nice with them or they’d shut off my beer ration. Hope you can handle your whiskey, kid.” He jogged her up and down a few times, laughing as she fought to keep steady. “Stop squirming. You tickle me, and I might accidentally drop you down some stairs.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “We need to get to Zenobia. You’ll want to take a left at this next junction...”

  The mountain shook. Rocks pattered down from above, but Dijornos was a tower of muscle and armor. He laughed and didn’t even break stride, legs eating up the distance far faster than she ever could. The halls blurred by, and she knew they were on the right track once they started hitting barricades full of corpses. Mostly ones wearing guard uniforms. Dijornos slowed at one of them, grabbed a pair of swords, and shoved them into his belt. “How close?” he barked.

  “Not far,” Chase said. “Through that hallway.” She pointed towards the entryway, the one with a shattered, smoking door and scorch marks around it. “That must have been where they blew up the—” She stopped talking. A keen, keen blade was at her throat, and her ears furled back as she lifted her chin, just slightly, to stare at Dijornos.

  “I could kill you now,” he said, musingly. His smile was crooked, and his eyes were calm. It seemed wrong somehow, that he was so calm about it.

  It took every bit of control Chase had, to stay calm.

  WILL+1

  “You could. But I’m not sure if the condition goes back to you when I die. And I can’t heal you if I’m dead.”

  “You’re crap at healing.”

  “I’ve been... practicing.” She gestured to her bloodstained dress.

  Dijornos laughed, then he leaned down, and met her gaze from inches away. Chase felt herself shake, felt her ears go down and curl back like a cat’s, cowed in the face of a threat. “That’s called grinding. Grinding through mobs. Through living creatures. Grinding them down to bones and bits,” he whispered, putting his mouth to her ear, moving his hand to keep the blade at her neck. “Turning them into sweet, sweet experience. Because that’s what they are. Walking sacks of experience. That’s what you are, to me.”

  Then the blade was gone, and Chase felt at her neck, half-expecting to find a gaping wound there.

  “So, you better heal me well, kid. And you better not even think of betraying me. Because if you do? You’re a few hundred experience that I can collect at any. Time. I. Want.”

  She sobbed an inarticulate cry, and that seemed to satisfy the giant human. He straightened up, ruffled her hair like someone would pet a dog. “C’mon. It’s killing time. Time to Fight the Battles, Take the Hits, and Ambush some meat!” And with that, he pulled his swords out, one in each hand. So armed, the monstrous human turned and charged down the smoky hall.

  Chase ran with him, weeping, feeling herself shake. But even in the depths of her fear, she felt hope starting to rise up. This had been the most dangerous part of the plan, the part she couldn’t predict. But he hadn’t left her on the island, like last time. The Butcher hadn’t killed her out of hand.

  But the plan wasn’t done yet. She hadn’t gotten what she needed to out of this whole machination. Chase picked up her damp… eugh… skirts, dropped them back down, and picked them up again, shuddering at the way the water had insidiously seeped into the fabric. Then she followed her monster at a run.

  Fortunately, there were a lot of distractions to take her mind off her soaked skirts.

  Unfortunately, they were dead men, and she stepped gingerly among them. More guards, caps knocked off, lying on the ground where they’d fallen. Some weren’t dead yet, gasping and clutching at her as she went. Her nerve wavered then, but her halven mental fortitude kept her on track. She had to see this through or it was all for naught.

  She did almost lose it when she came to one of the Camerlengo’s escorts. He sat in a corner, slumped over his shield, eyes staring down at his stomach and the wound that had killed him. Messily, Chase noted, and felt the twinge in her stomach that she’d felt so often today. The halven girl looked away, and tried to keep from thinking about the smell of the battlefield she was navigating.

  Then, finally, she was at the doorway of the pump room. Two massive bellows-like apparatuses flanked a metal podium that itself sat on an elevated dais, with grated metal staircases twisting up to it. Pipes, far thicker than the voice tubes, lined the walls. The podium was festooned with glass and metal gewgaws, quite beyond Chase’s experience… but she didn’t have time to study it. The people in the room demanded her full attention.

  At the top of the dais, a knot of strange folk stood; two humans so similar they could be sisters, with red hair and leather armor. One bore a thin sword, similar to the Camerlengo’s. The other held two knives, points down, and jabbed with them at the Camerlengo’s guards.

  A frog bigger than Chase stood behind them, wearing a mitre and casting spell after spell, waving webbed fingers as he chanted.

  A small, fuzzy plush pig in battered metal armor covered the other staircase, fighting with a shield and a morningstar sized for humans. He wielded it with odd strength, one-handed even though it was twice his height.

  On the floor below the dais, a dwarf lurked, cornered by the Camerlengo herself. He wore black clothes and wielded a hatchet in one hand and a chair in the other, desperately trying to keep her thin blade from hitting anything vital.

  All of them had sunken faces. All of these strangers seemed withered, in that familiar way that Chase had marked among the prison guards. These then, were the adventurers that Renny sought to free.

  The Camerlengo’s guards pressed them hard, with the exception of one who was watching another fight with caution. Towards the door, arms moving with terrible speed and force, Dijornos chopped and hacked and stabbed prison guards with gleeful abandon. He was facing eight of them— no, seven— make that six… Chase tore her eyes away from the slaughter, as a limb went flying.

  And as she swept her gaze over the far corner of the room, under the dais, she found the last group she was seeking. A dozen halvens, busy kicking a downed prison guard. Greta was with them, the pack still on her back, and Renny’s head poking out of it.

  “Greta!” Chase yelled, and ran forward…

  …skidding to a halt as Zenobia slashed the dwarf’s throat open and turned to face her. “You!”

  “Lesser Healing!” Chase shouted, glancing to the dwarf, and hoping, hoping she was in time.

  You heal “Dwarven Adventurer” for 16 points!

  Your Lesser Healing skill is now level 14!

  The Camerlengo stared, uncertain… until the dwarf managed to break the chair over her head. “Traitor!” the tall woman barked, whirling around and driving the adventurer back, as he dodged for his life.

  “You shouldn’t have left me to drown!” Chase said, unable to resist getting the last word in before she ran across the room, barely managing to ev
ade one of Dijornos’ backswings.

  Your Dodge skill is now level 11!

  ...that had been too close. Way, way too close. She caught a glimpse of the three digit number that tore from his opponent’s head as Dijornos’ swing intercepted the guard’s torso. That would have killed me, Chase knew, but then she was across the room and among the halvens.

  To her surprise, her father stepped up behind her, holding an oversize shield in one hand, and the guard’s dagger in the other. To her still-greater surprise, most of the halvens formed ranks with him, as he chanted “Fight the Battles, Take the Hits!”

  Dijornos had used those skills. “Dad?” Chase whispered.

  Then Greta threw her arms around her. “Chase! You’re alive!”

  “No time!” Chase winced as the dwarf went down for the second time, and Renny shouted, whirling a blast of air at Zenobia, just a second too late. She turned her attention to him, then glared up at the dais above her. And with an agility Chase couldn’t quite believe, the older woman grabbed ahold of the edge of it and flipped herself up, landing like a cat and jabbing at the pig knight.

  “Holy Smite!” Zenobia snarled, and her rapier glowed with an afterimage twice the weapon’s size, leaving sizzling wounds as she slashed and stabbed at the little toy’s side as two of her entourage kept it busy from the front.

  “Baconator!” Renny wriggled out of the pack, and Chase caught him.

  “Dad! The pack! Is Speranza in the pack?”

  Frantically, she watched as Dijornos mowed down the second-to-last guard he was facing and shot a glare back her way. “Heal me!” he roared. Then his eyes narrowed as he took in the other halvens.

  She caught all that in the space of a second, before he turned back and began the short and vicious process of finishing off his foe.

  I need to buy time, Chase knew. “Lesser Healing!”

  You have healed Dijornos 20 points!

  “She’s in the pack. Her guard tried to pull her out, but we stopped him,” Grummer Gar said, lifting up the large backpack that he’d enchanted, and turned into a magical container that could hold something far larger than its own size.