by V. Moody
“Why?” said Half-hair.
“Why? That’s what you want to know? Why?” So much for playing it nice and cool. I had intended to make up some bullshit about Gullen sending us here and get across the bridge and we done. Instead I was getting attitude from some git with a ridiculous haircut. And even more galling, it actually looked quite good on him. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because we’re the only human beings here from Planet Earth, trapped in a relentless cycle of fighting for survival in a world full of actual fucking monsters, and I thought it would be nice to say ‘Hi’. But if you can’t even show basic good manners or a little common courtesy, I guess I was wrong. My mistake. Please accept my apologies for interrupting your extremely important game of Ultimate Frisbee, you pair of surly fuckshits.”
I don’t think ‘fuckshit’ is an actual word, but I was too worked up to care.
They both looked somewhat shocked by my tirade. There was also quite a confused atmosphere emanating from behind me. This wasn’t part of the plan.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Half-hair in a slightly wavering voice. “I was just surprised to see you in the middle of nowhere and wondered why you were here.” He appeared to be on the verge of tears.
The other one closed in and put his arm around him, while giving me a disapproving glare. “You wanna take a chill pill, dude. We ain’t your enemy.”
Personally, I consider any white person with dreadlocks to be my enemy, but perhaps I had overreacted.
I turned around to find my party edging away, like they were embarrassed to be seen with me. Even the trolls were decidedly unimpressed. Fuck the lot of them.
“Let’s try this again. My name is Colin.” I patted myself on the chest like I was identifying myself to mentally-challenged children, which was neither polite or courteous but fully justified as far as I was concerned (reasons: see above). “What is your name?”
“I’m Marc, with a C,” said Dreads, which really didn’t improve my opinion of him. Did he want to make sure I spelled his name correctly in case I wanted to put him down as my emergency contact?
“Zane,” said the other one, wiping his nose with a sniffle.
My lot introduced themselves one by one. The trolls said nothing.
“Okay, good,” I said. “Do you think you could call the others? It would be easier to tell you why we’re here all together.”
Marc put his fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. I’d always wanted to be able to do that. And it wasn’t a tuneless blast; it pitched up and down in a pleasing skirl. The mere existence of these people infuriated me.
A window opened on the upper storey of the main building and a head poked out. “What’s up?”
“Visitors,” Marc shouted back, pointing at us like we weren’t the only other people within ten miles of the place.
“I’ll be right down.” The head disappeared.
A few seconds later, he came out of the main building. He was the one who had got into an argument with Tin back in Probet. The tattoo completely covering his right arm was hard to miss, but it was his face I couldn’t stop staring at, or rather, his facial hair. Back in Probet he had a goatee, but it had evolved into something far more prominent—a handlebar moustache.
“Hey now, I’m Gideon.” He stood with his arms crossed, sleeve-tattoo nicely positioned for full visibility, and looked us over. “Did Gullen send you?”
“Yes,” I said. “He wants you to wait for reinforcements. They should be here any time now. Anyway, he sent us on a special mission, so we’ll be on our way.”
If only it were that simple.
“You’re headed into Monsterland?” asked Gideon, grabbing the curled tip of his ‘tash and stretching it out.
“That’s right. Can’t talk about it. Gullen’s orders—you know how he is, right?”
Gideon let go of the elongated lick of hair and it rolled back up. “And you won’t be needing any weapons?”
He had a point. None of us were armed, not even the soldiers.
“Ah, yes. We lost our gear in a krimpers attack. Big herd of krimpers. Do you know about krimpers?”
“Of course,” said Gideon.
Now, I had planned to go into an elaborate explanation of how we lost our gear and weapons, but Gideon’s response threw me. Of course?! He knew all about krimpers, the creature that I had just invented?
“Right… so, you know how hard it is too outrun them. We ditched everything that would weigh us down and just pegged it.”
Gideon continued nodding like this was all old news to him.
“And, as you know, they’re obsessed with shiny objects, so we tossed our weapons to distract them. Best way to avoid them swarming us and picking the flesh off our bones.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s the best way, but not a bad move.”
Not the best way? Really? He knew a better way to deal with my imaginary monsters that didn’t actually exist? Pretentious fuck.
“Yeah, well, we did the best we could,” I said through gritted teeth. The important thing was to keep things moving and get out of there. “I don’t suppose there’s an armoury around here we could resupply ourselves from?”
“There is,” said Gideon. “You can help yourselves. Plenty of everything.”
I looked over at Keezy who nodded. It would obviously be quicker for him to just kill Gideon and the Gidiots—and I wasn’t totally against that line of thinking—but Keezy was a roleplayer at heart and leaving here without being detected was a matter of pride.
“This way,” said Gideon, and he led us towards a building away from the main structure. He opened the heavy door to reveal a room stuffed full of weapons.
We took what we wanted and even found a bunch of useful tools and bags.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any spare spoons lying about?” I asked.
“Zane,” said Gideon, “go get them some cutlery from the mess. And bring Stella back with you. She should be in the meditation room.”
Had the fort been built with a meditation room, or had they renamed one of the rooms like only true hipster douchebags would?
Zane went off to get us some cutlery.
Everyone grabbed some stuff. Dudley found a nice bow, Claire loaded up with all the daggers she could find, and I decided to try using a shield along with the sword I picked up. It was fairly pointless as I was sure the trolls would make us dump the weapons once we got across the bridge, but we all did our part in maintaining the charade.
It would have been nice to spend the night, have something to eat, maybe a bath, but I couldn’t see Keezy allowing it, and the sooner we left, the less chance of someone saying the wrong thing and giving the game away.
When I looked around to see if the others were done, I noticed we were alone in the armoury. Gideon and Marc had been in the room with us a moment ago, but now they weren’t. I went to the door, half expecting it to be locked, but it opened without any trouble.
I walked out and found Gideon and his guys, now joined by a girl, waiting for us. They had changed and were wearing armour and carrying swords. Everything was polished gold and silver, which made it hard to look at them.
It wasn’t clear what had happened. Had we been sussed? Did they have orders from Gullen to kill us? If they wanted a fight, I had no problem setting the trolls on them. Have at it!
I turned to give Keezy the nod, but two things immediately seemed off. First, the trolls were at the back of the group—not the best place from which to launch an attack—and second, they looked terrified.
“This is Stella,” said Gideon. “She’s our secret weapon.”
And they had a secret weapon. Great.
“Didn’t you have one more member in your group,” said Claire. “I think there was another girl.
“Yeah,” said Stella. She was a tall girl with black hair piled up in a beehive and heavy mascara around her eyes. “Roona. She’s back in Dargot. Gullen’s keeping her to make sure we do what he says.”
&
nbsp; “Sounds like him,” I said, trying to act like I wasn’t bricking myself. “So, why are you guys all dressed up? Going somewhere nice?”
“Gullen’s sending you on an important mission, isn’t he?” said Gideon. “Probably quite dangerous.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “He wants us to find the Archfiend and negotiate a peace with him.”
Gideon turned to Stella, who nodded. “He’s telling the truth.”
Shit. She was a truth teller like God. Our whole plan was built on a giant stack of lies, and they had the perfect counter. We were fucked.
“How about this...” said Gideon. “How about you stay here and wait for the reinforcements, and we go on this mission for you?”
Wait, what?
5. A Bridge Too Near
It shouldn’t really have been a surprise that the other groups would have developed special abilities. It was possible Stella wasn’t the only one. The way they seemed unfazed by the prospect of facing off against the Archfiend more than likely meant they had other tricks up their sleeves. Probably best if I didn’t aggravate them. Hey, first time for everything.
“You want to go into Monsterland instead of us?” I felt like I should check he meant what I thought he meant.
“Yah, man,” said Gideon. “It sounds like the sort of thing we’ve been looking for. Most of the monsters here are too easy. We could use a challenge. Just give us any info or equipment Gullen gave you and we’ll take care of it.”
On the one hand, I felt a sense of relief—they didn’t want to fight us. On the other hand, they thought we were being sent on some cool quest to save the world, and decided they would just take over.
It irked me.
“Gullen didn’t give us anything,” I said.
Gideon turned to look at Stella. She was standing with her hands clasped, fingers interlocked, and sweating slightly which made her mascara run. I didn’t know if her ability was exactly the same as God’s, but it seemed to take more effort for her than it did for him.
“He’s telling the truth.”
“Are you sure?” said Gideon.
“No, I’m not sure,” said Stella, sounding peeved. “And my head’s starting to hurt, so if you want to ask him anything else you better hurry up.”
As annoying as my group could be, at least I didn’t have to deal with bickering hipsters.
Gideon took a deep breath, slicked back his quiffy hair, and returned his attention to me. “So you’re saying Gullen wants you to defeat the Archfiend without giving you any kind of magic item or even a piece of advice? How does he expect you to do that?”
It was a fair question. I would have liked an answer to it myself. I shrugged. “Any way we can.”
“Truth,” said Stella.
“And you’re not hiding anything from us?”
I was expecting this kind of question. “I’m hiding a lot of things from you.” I turned to Stella and smiled.
She scowled back at me. “Truth.”
“You know you don’t have to ask my permission, right? There’s the bridge, all you have to do is cross .” I pointed at the bridge just in case they hadn’t noticed it. “You look like you’re ready for a fight. Plenty of monsters for everyone.”
“We’ve got a bunch of cool gear we’ve been itching to try out,” said Zane excitedly. He had a bow with all sorts of extra bits attached to it and a quiver of arrows with different coloured feathers. They were very pretty.
“Dude,” said Marc, “we’re gonna tear it up.” He also had a tricked out bow, and a trident with multi-coloured prongs.
“Getting past the giant is the problem,” said Gideon. He had two swords. One blade was orange, the other was green.
“Have you tried hitting it?” I asked. “I mean, you know, with all those fancy weapons.”
“We’ve done some testing,” said Zane.
“What does that mean?”
“We used a range of different metals but it doesn’t seem to be reactive to any of the ones we tried. You wouldn’t have any rare alloys on you would you?”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” I looked over at Stella. “Feel free to confirm.”
Zane grabbed a handful of arrows out of the quiver on his back and pointed the tips at us, each of which had a different type of metal arrowhead. From the corner of my eye I saw the trolls flinch and take a step back.
“What we found,” said Zane enthusiastically, “is that monsters have a weakness to certain metals.”
“Like werewolves and silver,” said Maurice.
“Right,” said Zane. “Only we’ve never encountered a werewolf, so I don’t know if that particular myth holds true here. Anyway, it’s mainly trial and error. Goblins can’t handle copper. Lizardmen get totally fucked by bronze. Some of these have been known for a while, but others were only recently discovered. By us.” He grinned, clearly very pleased with himself.
This was certainly interesting information. The sort of thing it would have been useful to know back in Probet.
“Once you’ve got a bead on a particular monster’s vulnerability,” continued Zane, “game over.”
“Game over, man,” chimed in Marc.
This explained what had the trolls so freaked. Whatever their weakness was, it was probably in that quiver.
Zane put the arrows away and held out the bow. “We can hit the giant from this side, but nothing’s worked. Gold , silver, lead… It’s probably something rare. Or a mix.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a weakness,” I suggested.
“They all have a weakness,” said Gideon. “You just have to find it.”
“We’ve done experiments,” said Zane. He said it with the enthusiasm of a gleeful science geek, but it didn’t sound like he’d been working on how to make a clock out of a potato.
“You did experiments?” said Jenny.
“On living creatures?” said Claire.
“You’re fookin’ bastards,” said Flossie.
Self-righteous women, so great to have around when it’s not you they’re having a go at.
Even Maurice was moved to condemn them. “When I saw the Frisbee, I thought you guys were cool. You guys are not cool.”
When I saw the Frisbee I’d had the opposite reaction, but whatever.
“No, no,” said Zane. “It was for science.” Not helping.
“We are at war, you know?” said Gideon.
“Yes,” I said, “and who designs your outfits? Hugo Boss?”
I think they were a bit thrown by our reaction, but then they saw monsters as monsters, whereas we saw them as people.
“Anyway,” I said, “here’s what’s going to happen. We’ll be going over the bridge now, while you and Joseph Mengele stay here and work on the final solution or whatever it is you think you’re doing.” I love getting on my high horse. The view is awesome. “Once we’ve dealt with the giant, you can do what you want.” I took a good look at Stella to see how she was reacting to what I was saying. She looked upset. Sarcasm, it appeared, was neither true or false. Or maybe it was both. Either way, I was giving her a migraine.
“Wait,” said Gideon. “How are you going to get past the giant?”
“That’s their job,” I pointed at Keezy and his men, who were huddled together and shaking in their boots.
“T-true,” said Stella with a wince.
Gideon didn’t seem convinced, despite what Stella said. I didn’t blame him. They didn’t look like they could take care of a pot plant in their current condition.
“Fine,” said Gideon. “We’ll take them with us.”
Not a request, you understand. All your bases are belong to us.
“No,” said Keezy. I could tell he was fighting to keep his voice steady. “We are going with him,” he pointed back at me, “and no one else.”
Gideon looked annoyed. “Order him to come with us.”
“He doesn’t take orders from me,” I said.
“T-true,” said Stella. She
looked about ready to collapse.
“Look,” said Gideon, pushing past me and talking directly to Keezy. “Whatever’s on the other side of that bridge, you’ll find it a lot easier to deal with if it’s us next to you.”
“False,” said Stella.
Gideon spun around. “What the fuck do you mean ‘false’?”