Necrodruid

by Adam Witcher

  At some point, I noticed a strange woman mulling about the inn. She seemed young, but it was hard to tell under her black cloak. She took turns approaching various patrons and saying something to them, which they all shook their heads to. Despite her conservative clothing, I took her for a local prostitute, thinking all the men had simply spent all their coin on ales and had none left for carnal pleasures. But I noticed that her hands were shaking too. And when I looked again at the faces of the men she approached, they did not seem to have sexual prospects on the mind. I pointed her out to Lily, and we kept an eye on her.

  She made her way around to us. I could see some of her face a little bit more clearly. She was indeed young, about Lily’s age. She had full red lips and blue eyes, and was rather tall for a woman, but still most of her was concealed.

  “Excuse… Excuse me,” she said with a manic confusion. “I’m looking for… do you have any… um… krokum. I have coin.”

  Lily and I looked at each other.

  “No,” Lily said, her words slurring a little, “but we’re lookin’. And we’re new around here. Maybe we could, uh, help you look.”

  “New around here?” Her confusion turned to suspicion. She seemed distracted from her withdrawals. “Who are you?”

  I was debating how best to answer when an old man with a moustache tapped the woman’s shoulder. She jolted and swung around. The old man whispered something into her ear that made her hands shake even more. It was like we no longer existed, and she’d forgotten that she’d ever spoken to us. The man gestured to the door and she followed him out.

  “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Lily said.

  “Believe it or not, I’m actually better at sneaking around when I’m drunk,” I boasted and waved a finger at her.

  We watched through the window as the man led the woman down an alleyway behind the building. We swallowed the last of our ales and left the same way. It took us a moment to see their silhouettes in the lamplight.

  At first, they led us through some deserted back alleys, and we struggled to stay far enough behind so that they wouldn’t notice, but not so far that we would lose them. Eventually, more and more people were present, but it still did not seem like we were on the main city paths. Many of these folks were merchants, but their stock wasn’t the typical tools and food that we saw when we’d first come in. It was hard not to get distracted.

  “Toad mucus!” said a man as he stepped in front of us. His eyes were bloodshot and bugged out, his hair disheveled. He opened an overcoat to reveal many rows of flowing vials. “Freshly squeezed this afternoon. The best aphrodisiac in town.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Come on, man,” he said as I tried to shove past him. “Five pence. I’ll even throw in the dried up toad carcass. This stuff will get your cock bigger and harder than an obsidian greatsword.”

  “It gets hard enough, thanks,” I said, peeking over the heads of the crowd and looking for the girl and the mustachioed man. The booze was making my vision swim a little. To my side, Lily was being harassed by another tout, an old woman with a wart on her massive nose.

  “Bugbear brains, miss, you simply must try some. When I was your age, I was just as pretty as you. But I’ve become old and ugly simply because I didn’t eat bugbear brains. One bowl of bugbear brains for breakfast each day will keep those pesky wrinkles off your face. Bugbear brains will keep you busty and beautiful for years to come. Some say you’ll never die at all!”

  “Interesting,” Lily laughed and hiccupped, “but isn’t it true that the more bugbear brains I eat, the more I’ll start to become an actual bugbear?”

  “Well, yes, but don’t let that bother you. Bugbear beauty is believed to be the best…”

  It was making my head hurt. I grabbed Lily by the arm and pulled her away.

  “Let’s try to stay focused, alright?” I said.

  I peeked into an alleyway and something strange caught my eye. It was a small animal of some kind, but I couldn’t make it out in the shadows. It moved in front of a lamp and I got a better glimpse. It had the head of a chicken but what looked like the body of a dog. Yet it still had feathered chicken wings coming out of its back. It looked at me with a strange mix of fury and curiosity.

  “Lily, look!” I pointed at the thing. “What the hell is that?”

  When it saw me point, it ran off and ducked into a storm drain.

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “It was some kind of weird chicken dog thing.”

  “You’re drunk. Just keep looking for that girl.”

  We pressed on through the crowd, trying to ignore the beckons of the other touts. I tried to keep an ear out for any mention of krokum, but I didn’t hear anything. The two we were following didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. Lily wasn’t much help. I was almost ready to give up. I leaned up against a wall and tried to think. In front of me were two stalls, where, despite both lacking customers, a heated argument was taking place. Two men shouted from behind their wares, each apparently selling bowls of glittering dust.

  “Well maybe your wife wouldn’t go searching for another man’s sex dust if her own husband showered her with his every night,” one man shouted and wagged his finger at the other. “A woman has needs, Dante!”

  The other looked on the verge of tears then shot back, “I sprayed it all on you, Cornelius, and you know it!” He pointed at the other man angrily, then ran off, leaving his stock abandoned.

  With him out of the way, I was able to see down a narrow alleyway behind the stall. Two familiar figures were walking down it. The girl fidgeted, as if trying to urge the man to walk faster, but he paid no mind. I pointed them out to Lily, who looked ready to run after them, but I stuck my arm out. I put a finger to my lips. We crept down the alley behind them, and they didn’t turn back. They reached the end and turned a corner, so we hurried up behind them. When we reached the end of the alley, I listened.

  “Two grams is all I can afford,” the girl said. Another voice sighed.

  “You bother me here with this chump change?” a man said. “Why didn’t you take her to Bernhardt?”

  “She told me she wanted twenty grams, sir!” a second man said defensively. “You did, didn’t you?”

  “Well, I…” She stopped there.

  I turned to Lily.

  “One of these guys seems important,” I whispered.

  “Let’s get him!” Lily slurred. In our drunken minds, this seemed like a fantastic idea.

  We leapt out, startling all three of them. The man with the moustache looked terrified. Beside him was a short, fat man with thick jowls and sideburns who looked more amused than anything. He was smoking a cigar. The girl just seemed annoyed at our presence. We stood in a small square where four alleys met, but the five of us were the only ones there. I realized that I had no idea what to say. Neither did Lily apparently.

  “Who the hell are you two?” asked Jowls.

  “We are… here to stop you!” I lost my balance for a moment but recovered.

  “Where’s your operation?” Lily lurched forward. She pointed a frost tipped finger at Jowls. “Who you workin’ for?”

  “These drunks followed you?” Jowls asked Moustache.

  “I’ve never seen them before,” he replied. He eyed us for a moment. “Wait a minute. You were at the inn! You followed us all the way here?”

  “Fuck this, man.” Jowls said. He tossed his cigar butt onto the ground. “Ain’t worth my time.”

  Jowls waddled over to a doorway behind him that led into a long building. Before I had a chance to react, he was through the door. Moustache ran after him. I followed, but the moment I had my hand on the knob, I heard the lock click. I knocked on the door, and it was solid steel.

  “You drunk idiots!” The girl threw off her hood and yelled at us. Her curly black hair escaped in all directions around her caramel face. “You have no idea what you just did. That was Cosmo. The Cosmo. As in, the guy in charge o
f distribution for the entire krokum supply in this district. I finally found him, and you fuckers ruined it!”

  Lily and I gave each other oh shit looks.

  “We were just trying to help,” Lily muttered. “Sorry. We were going to…”

  “Gonna what?” she said. “Vomit on them?”

  She huffed and put a hand to her temple. “I just hope you didn’t blow my cover.”

  “Okay,” I said, suddenly feeling sobered by the situation. “I know we may have messed this one up. But we really did come to help. We’ve been on a journey trying to hunt down the source of this stuff, too. The trail led us here.”

  She looked at us back and forth for a moment.

  “Who are you two, anyway?”

  We told her our story. She listened carefully, stroking her chin.

  “So it’s true,” she said when we finished. “People have been talking about you, you know. We heard about what happened at that estate. Crazy stuff. Necrodruid, huh?” She gave me a mischievous smile. “That’s got a pretty cool ring to it.”

  “I’ve been called worse things.” I said, smiling back.

  “Anyway,” she glanced over her shoulder before continuing, “I’m Camilla.” Having given up on her cover, she removed the black cloak that covered her head to toe. I tried to keep from staring. She still wore all black, but a lot less of it. A tight blouse was held up only by her ample breasts, its ruffled sleeves slouching off her shoulders, and its bottom hem ending at her tiny waist. Beneath that, she wore thin, sheer harem pants which exposed her dark toned legs and a black thong sitting on her hips. Her supple ass was scarcely shrouded under the fabric.

  “I suppose we should team up, then, huh?” she said. “We lost a lead, but this stuff is all over the city. And I could use your help with another one.”

  “We’re listening.”

  “A year ago, Gragos looked a lot different than this. It was a beautiful city, clean and happy. Then that tower went up.” We looked in the direction of the thing. Even looking at it from the dense city, it stood out dramatically in the sky. “Nobody knew who built it. Rumors spread about a new factory opening up, but nobody knew what it was going to make. People tried to approach it, but there’s some kind of magical barrier that keeps us out. And we couldn’t get close enough to even see who was constructing it. So we just watched the figures in the distance put black brick over black brick until it looked like it does now.

  Soon after, krokum showed up. At first, we didn’t think much of it. I was living with my lover at the time. Zantho is a boxer, so he never took much to drugs. I was his manager and promoter, so I supported him. He had always been obsessed with staying clean. But people started to talk the stuff up. Said it gave them this crazy focused energy, that it made them feel like they could conquer the whole realm. One day when he was training, I tried some. A friend of mine had it and she was so convinced that it was a good thing. And I loved it. It was just pure power and energy with no anxiety or paranoia.

  “Soon everyone was taking it. Even the other boxers. And a sober fighter didn’t stand a chance against one who was on it. Zantho kept losing. Eventually he started in on it, too. Boy, then he couldn’t lose. He won ten straight fights.”

  “You sure we’re talking about the same stuff?” I asked. “The shit we’ve been seeing is not like that at all.”

  “Unfortunately, I am. It changed. The supply running through the city got worse and worse once we are all hooked on it. It became chalky and foul smelling, then the effects started to intensify. The energy and the power remained, but it brought with it anxiety and rage. People started to lose their minds snorting the stuff, but they couldn’t stop. I managed to quit before it got to be at its worst. But Zantho… He couldn’t stop. I told him it was dangerous, but he just kept saying he couldn’t win without it. He wasn’t wrong, but… but how could it be worth it? He was acting erratic and crazy. Wouldn’t even talk to me anymore, and I was afraid to talk to him anyway.

  “Then the hobgoblins and the bugbears started showing up on fight nights. First it was just one or two, but then most of the roster started dropping out as the fighters either quit using or lost their minds from it. But Zantho never quit. He’s still there, every night. Now the arena just seems like an excuse to watch him beat the hell out of monsters.”

  We stood there for a moment taking in her story.

  “So how can we help?” Lily asked.

  “Well… Zantho is one of the biggest consumers of krokum in this city. If there’s anyone who knows inside information, it’s him. Everyone knows that its being produced at the tower, but nobody knows how to get to it. But someone is running it, and whoever it is, Zantho is their best customer. The problem is that I can’t show my face at that arena. Crazy though he is, Zantho was my lover for a long time. There’s no way he’ll help me. But nobody is willing to do it. He’s the most feared man in Gragos. So… I guess I’m resigned to begging for dealers to help me, pretending to be an addict. It almost worked, but thanks to you two, it’s time for plan B.”

  “So you want us to infiltrate the fighting ring?” I said, looking at Lily with a smirk and ignoring Camilla’s jab.

  “I know this city like the back of my hand,” Camilla said. “If you can get a lead from him, anything at all. I can help you follow it.”

  “Deal,” I said. “You said the fights are every night, right? Let’s go get him right now!” I felt my liquid courage welling up in me again.

  “They’ve already started, better make it tomorrow night. Besides,” she said with a laugh. “You two are too drunk for that tonight.”

  “In that case, we’d better get back to it,” I said.

  I led them both back to the inn, where we spent the rest of the night throwing back more ales and laughing near the fire. Eventually, Camilla offered us some bedrolls in her living quarters, and we stumbled there through the city streets in the early morning hours.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The women were already up the next morning and sitting at Camilla’s wooden table when I awoke. I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. They were wearing loose fitting robes and sipping on tea. I looked at them and they giggled. Lily bit her thumb and gazed at me playfully.

  “Morning, tiger,” she said.

  “I’ve got some tea for you,” Camilla said. “Giantsroot. The perfect hangover cure.”

  I wandered over to the table and joined them. Camilla passed me a steaming cup. I blew on it and took a sip. They both laughed when I spit it out. I had never tasted something so vile.

  “Tastes like death,” Camilla said, “but keeps you from feeling like death.”

  I forced another sip, and let the warmth move through me. The awful flavor lingered in my mouth, but the relief was almost immediate. My stomach settled and my headache faded. I took a few more sips, and suddenly I was bursting with energy and excitement. It was so absurd that I couldn’t help but laugh. I then realized that the tea no longer tasted so terrible. In fact, it was floral and refreshing.

  “Amazing stuff, isn’t it?” Lily said.

  “You can only find that in Gragos,” Camilla said. “A local alchemist makes it. He enchants it to have that property. As you drink it, the toxins cancel out with the ones in your body.”

  “What a genius,” I said. “I might have to take some of this with me.”

  My spirit rejuvenated, I turned my thoughts to the day ahead.

  “When’s the fight?” I asked.

  “They get started around twilight,” she said. “I wish I could tell you where to find Zantho during the daytime. I’ve tried looking. It’s like he holes up somewhere just waiting. His house seems abandoned. Nobody ever sees him coming or going.”

  “Have you tried sneaking in?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “Wouldn’t want to do it without a lookout, and like I said, everyone is terrified of this guy.”

  “Sounds like we should start there,” Lily said.

  “There’s no telli
ng what you might find in there,” Camilla said. “It may be nothing. As far as I know, he hasn’t been there for weeks, maybe months.”

  “Well, we might as well,” I said. “We have an entire afternoon to kill.”

  We finished our tea, dressed in our traveling clothes, and set out into the bustling streets. Camilla lived alone in a corner flat of a large boarding house, so it took time and patience to wade through the crowds into the wealthier part of Gragos. On the way, we stopped for bread and cheese. They were overpriced, as all food seemed to be in the city due to scarcity. I silently commended myself for looting all of those corpses.

  We strode onward, and I saw that even the wealthy in Gragos were suffering from the city’s degradation. The houses were bigger, but still dirty and not well maintained. The streets held residues of ash and grime. Still, it was a world above the alleyway we’d drunkenly traversed the night before. She led us further and the houses became even larger. Then she stopped abruptly.

  “There it is.” She nodded toward a two-story house at the end of the street. We were still quite far away from it, but Camilla seemed hesitant to get closer.

  “A little strange to see it again,” she said, “especially in this state.”

  She was right, it did seem seeming abandoned. Windows were cracked, the grass either overgrown or stripped bare. Some of the shutters hung loosely from nails. If it hadn’t been in such a busy area, it would have felt more ominous.

  “Did you live there too?” Lily asked.

  “Yes, for two years,” she said. “We bought the place together. But I haven’t been inside for nearly a year now. It used to be such a beautiful home.” She stared at it longingly.

  “I take it you don’t want to go inside?” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.

  “I’d sooner remain the lookout,” she said. “I’m afraid of what you might find. We might need two lookouts though, there is an entrance on both sides.”

  “You’re better than I am at sneaking,” Lily said. “Do you think you can handle it on your own?”