by Neven Iliev
The sixteenth day, to be precise.
The sixteenth day after being broken out of Edward’s custody.
The sixteenth day since she had effectively become Boxxy’s thing.
“Good,” the Mimic in question commented from somewhere behind Fizzy, its gruff voice sending chills down her spine as usual.
She stopped what she was doing and sheepishly turned to face the monster that she knew could snap her in half at a moment’s notice.
“Ah!” she exclaimed with a start. “Aaaah!”
Followed by a wide-eyed scream as realisation struck her.
“I… I… I wrecked its head! I’m so sorry Boxxy! I di-didn’t mean to! Honest!”
She started apologising on reflex, as she knew that Boxxy needed the beast’s brain intact in order to ‘drink up’ the corpse. How could she not? By now the murderous box had absorbed nearly seventy corpses right in front of her.
She was at least a little bit glad that this procedure was what the monster had referred to when it claimed to have ‘eaten’ her father and brother. The bodies were left as piles of ash and dust, almost as though they’d been cremated. While not a particularly popular funeral rite, nor the one she would have chosen for them, it was nonetheless better than the alternatives. Admittedly that wasn’t entirely true since the creature had devoured one of them to check the flavor of gnomes, but its memory of the past had been rather dodgy ever since it lost its Jobs.
Fizzy not knowing exactly what happened was probably for the best. Her new, more pragmatic worldview understood that something would have come along and eaten them eventually. It was much easier for her to cope with their deaths if she imagined it as Boxxy sending her deceased family off in her stead. It helped, of course, that both their murderers and the ones who had failed to protect them had paid for their respective crimes against her family.
Overall, it probably wasn’t the healthiest way to deal with the loss of her loved ones, but it was all she had given her current situation.
“Please don’t hit me!” she pleaded.
“Okay,” Boxxy replied.
“R-really?”
“Yes.”
The gnome had become a splendidly dirty fighter, in the Mimic’s expert opinion. She attacked mostly from blind spots and used her small stature and ability to predict her opponent’s movements to her advantage by confusing her target. This was the first time she had managed to bring down such a large creature without taking a single hit, and Boxxy was quite pleased with her progress. She would surely prove herself most useful in the coming battle against the lich if she kept this up.
“Good kill,” it added.
“Th-thanks!”
She chanced a weak smile. This was the first bit of actual praise it had given her, so she couldn’t help herself.
“Any gains?” Boxxy asked.
“Mace Mastery and D-D-Divine Wrath went up.”
“Paladin Level?”
“Still 23.”
Fizzy’s growth was really quite rapid, but it still felt too slow to the Mimic. It wanted the gnome to reach Level 25 so that it would have the option of learning the Paladin Job via her Mentor Skill. However, Boxxy was admittedly apprehensive about going through with this. It wasn’t sure whether that particular Job was necessarily a good idea.
Its biggest worry was whether or not it would be able to properly raise its Level. After all, both Paladins and Mimics gained Levels by hitting things up close, so it wasn’t sure which Job the XP would go to. It wasn’t as clear a divide as the Warlock Job had been, since there was a huge difference between blasting stuff with eldritch magic and stabbing it to death.
It therefore decided – at least for the time being – that it would hold off on becoming a box-shaped Paladin. If it needed to amass Attributes, the Cadaver Absorption Skill would provide plenty. Of the seventy-three corpses that it had absorbed since its escape, a total of four had been minor successes, resulting in a combined boost of 39 AGI and 35 END.
But even if Boxxy didn’t intend to become a Paladin right away, it still wanted to have the option available. While at the moment it wanted to focus on training its Mimic Job, which had finally reached Level 44, it did intend to look into the Paladin Job later on. After all, the Skills these non-monster Jobs granted their holders were extremely tasty. Like, for example, the latest addition to Fizzy’s repertoire:
[Divine Wrath]
Empowers the Paladin with holy might so that they may bring down God’s judgement on the deserving.
Requirements: Level 20 Paladin, Strength of Faith, STR 60
Type: Active
Activation Time: Instant
Cost: 50 MP
Range: Self
[Effects]
Increases the effectiveness of Holy Spells and melee attacks by 50% for 2 seconds.
Increases the duration of this Skill by 2 seconds per Level of this Skill.
This Skill may not be activated more than once every 2 hours.
It was a straight-up power boost with no downsides or penalties, aside from the fact that, much like Power Overwhelming, it was a very flashy Skill. Using it in conjunction with Stealth and Assassination was probably impossible, especially since it was a close-range technique.
It was still an undeniably tasty Skill that the monster would love to get its tentacles on, but unfortunately it came with a caveat: the Champion of Chaos Skill. Limited precognition was nice and all, but that Skill clearly had some sort of external impact on the gnome’s behaviour by forcing her to do and say things against her will. Boxxy had already had its mind manipulated once by the dungeon in which it had been born. It had no desire to go through anything like that again.
This Hero business aside, the Mimic enjoyed its free will far too much to give any of it up in exchange for power it didn’t technically need.
“S-s-so, what about the, uh, the body?” Fizzy asked meekly.
Had someone been watching, they’d have found it hard to believe that this was the same person who had just killed an opponent many times larger than herself without batting an eye. However, the gnome hadn’t remained steadfast during the fight because she wasn’t afraid. In truth, she’d been terrified the entire time. Not of some oversized puppy with two tails, but of the mass of violence and teeth that was Boxxy T. Morningwood.
*Crack*
And, as it turned out, someone had indeed been watching, but had failed to remain silent whilst trying to sneak away. The branch the person had stepped on had produced a weak, barely audible sound some twenty-odd metres away, but Boxxy’s Perception (PER)-boosted senses heard it nonetheless. The Mimic dashed off in the direction of the noise, leaving Fizzy momentarily alone as it hurried into the foliage. The gnome dared not move from her spot as she stared at the rustling leaves. Then she heard the screaming.
The very human screaming.
Boxxy reappeared several seconds later, its tongue-tentacles wrapped around someone slung over its lid like a bag of turnips. They’d been gagged by a fleshy tendril, but Fizzy could still make out the person’s face. It was a very young woman in brown leather armour who couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. She kicked, groaned and sobbed as she tried to get away, but her efforts weren’t enough to even budge, let alone break, the Mimic’s hold. The only thing she succeeded in doing was making tears run in rivulets down her cheeks.
Fizzy steeled herself. This was the first person they’d run into, the first sign of civilisation since their escape from the Spymaster. The poor gnome already knew what was about to happen. The pattern had repeated itself dozens of times already, and it was foolish to think it would stop now. Boxxy brought the human girl before her and pinned her to the ground like it was the most natural thing in the world. Mud stuck to the girl’s short brown hair as she flailed, the look of sheer terror on her face one that Fizzy was intimately familiar with.
“Kill.”
The order came. Just as she’d known it would. The gnome brought out he
r oversized wrench, steadying her grip.
“Mmmmph!”
The captive struggled in vain, tears welling in her green eyes as she realised what was about to happen. She stared pleadingly at the pink-haired gnome in front of her. ‘Please, save me,’ her gaze seemed to say. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ her eyes screamed without words.
The gnome hesitated for a moment. What right did she have to just murder someone? This was someone’s daughter. Maybe someone’s sister, or perhaps even a wife or a mother. What sort of monster would spread sadness by taking away other people’s loved ones? Had this girl done anything to deserve such a cruel fate?
“…”
On the other hand… had her own father and brother deserved to have their lives stolen from them? And whose fault was it they had been taken from her? Who had been responsible for her unjust imprisonment? Had humans ever done anything for her or her family besides ridicule them and make their lives harder for no Gilligan-damned reason?
No, that wasn’t fair to the girl before her. She was a total stranger, not at all to blame for what Fizzy had endured. For what she was still enduring. However, that also meant that the gnome didn’t owe her a single damned thing, and she wasn’t about to suffer Boxxy’s wrath on some stranger’s account.
“Don’t blame me for this,” she said coldly, tightening her grip on the wrench’s handle. “You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
*THWACK*
*THWACK*
A swing to either side of the girl’s neck ended her barely-adult life mercifully quickly. A twisted smile spread across Fizzy’s face and her eyes opened so wide one would think they were trying to escape their sockets. She shrieked, “I have the shiniest meat bicycle!” then reverted to her previous state of fearful misery.
“Th-there, done,” she whimpered. “I m-made sure the h-head is st-st-st-still intact. D-d-did I do good?”
“Yes,” Boxxy replied simply. “Good.”
Fizzy looked on blankly as the Mimic set about absorbing the human as though she was just another piece of meat, but she couldn’t say anything. She was astonished by how… easy that had been. It wasn’t as though the gnome was trying to downplay or excuse her first act of murder. She knew full well what she’d done, and while she wasn’t going to apologise for it, she took no pride in the act, either. If anything, she was strangely indifferent to the whole affair.
This was entirely due to Boxxy’s tutelage. The Mimic thoroughly believed that notions like civility, decency and honour were more than simply unnecessary – they were outright detrimental. Such soft and silly concepts were weaknesses, things that dulled the blade and made one take idiotic risks. It couldn’t afford to have Fizzy subconsciously hold back at a crucial moment, so it had spent the past two weeks systematically beating those ideas out of her.
In many ways, the naive little tinkerer that the Mimic had met over a month ago was already dead. All that was left in her place was a broken murderer who felt not a single shred of sympathy, guilt, or remorse for her victim. The only feeling she could muster was a vague sense of pity, as if she’d just seen a stray dog get run over by a horse-drawn carriage. The girl’s life had been forfeit the moment Boxxy had had ahold of her. All Fizzy could have done was to make sure that her passing was as painless as possible. Which was precisely what she did, having learned her lesson with the satyrs.
This time she had had true conviction behind her blows.
The newbie Paladin vaguely understood that her own life hung by a thread, one that would snap the moment she was deemed too much of a hassle. A ruthless monster like Boxxy would never keep her around unless she was of some value to it, and she knew that it wouldn’t hesitate to cut her down should she try something stupid like escaping.
She probably could at least try to make a run for it. The Mimic was always around, always vigilant, but only when it was awake. It needed to sleep sometimes, and while it kept her chained with those MP-draining shackles during its rest time, getting them off would be simple enough. Boxxy had thoughtlessly given Fizzy access to her tools, and the simple locking mechanism wouldn’t stand a chance against a professional Artificer and her trusty screwdriver. She had both means and opportunity to run for the nearest settlement to seek shelter.
But even if she knew where she was going – and she didn’t – would she even make it that far? True, she was strong enough to take down a twin-tail wolf, but that was small fry around these parts. A group of satyrs or hobgoblins couldn’t possibly fail to kill her if they were to cross paths, which unfortunately seemed more likely than not. Not to mention that Boxxy could run much faster and much farther than her, making it impossible to escape should it give chase.
But the fear of death was not the only thing holding her back. Should a miracle occur and Fizzy finally find herself free of Boxxy, what would she even do? Her life in Erosa was over. There was nothing waiting for her back there but an empty house that had no doubt already been cleaned out by the Spymaster’s goons. She was most likely also a wanted criminal by now, with a bounty and a wanted poster and everything. Even if she were to defy death a dozen times over and reach civilisation, she’d only be thrown in prison again.
Bottom line, Boxxy was the only being on the planet who even remotely appeared to give a damn about her. True, the monster abused her constantly, but it wasn’t all bad. It had taught her how to defend herself, made sure that she was fed and clothed, and watched over her at night – even if she wasn’t allowed nearly as much sleep as she would have wanted. Besides, this was very much a temporary arrangement, though that in itself was hardly a fun thought.
Eventually, Fizzy would cease to be useful to the creature. Maybe in an hour, maybe a week, a month, or a year, but it would definitely happen. And when it did, her life would be extinguished. It seemed like the most logical, the most inevitable, the most natural way that this twisted relationship could possibly end. The only way to delay that inescapable outcome was to keep making herself useful to the Mimic, convince it that there was value in keeping her around.
Initially, she’d clung to the foolish hope that if she held off on escaping long enough, something might happen. She dreamed that someone might kill the beast and save her, but now she knew better. Even if they came across an adventurer capable of taking it down, it would not end well for her. After all, Boxxy was exactly the type of spiteful asshole that would rather destroy its playthings than allow them to be stolen.
And so the gnome had largely accepted the fact that her life would end much sooner than she would’ve liked. She wasn’t about to expedite the process, but she saw no other way out.
At the very least, she refused to be like the girl she’d killed, flailing pathetically in ignorant terror. She refused to die by a random twist of fate, a bad roll of the die, or an unlucky coin toss. On the inevitable day when Boxxy finally decided to finish her off, she wanted to die knowing why.
Why she had to live.
Why she had to die.
At that moment, her solemn introspection was rudely interrupted by an annoyingly familiar voice. Not the one that whispered in the back of her mind, but one that spoke clearly and loudly as if it were giving a sermon.
The concept of luck, chance, chaos, whatever one wishes to call it, is a false one. A convenient lie that beings capable of thought use to comfort themselves in their ignorance. In truth, there are innumerable underlying circumstances and factors behind every seemingly random act. Each outcome, both hypothetical and actual, can be traced back to a singular point of origin, a simple decision or event that set things into motion. Yet at the same time, free will sees to it that no model, no matter how complex or accurate, is truly flawless. That no matter how hard one tries to predict the future, the most anyone can ever hope to produce is an educated guess.
But it is only through such understanding that one can hope to bend fate to their will, to bring about the outcomes they desire and avoid those they deem unacceptable. To understand and un
ravel the threads of causality is the duty and privilege of all who seek to comprehend this wonderful puzzle that we call a world. For it is only once we can see the strings that we may ask to have a word with the puppeteer.
I have high hopes that you will be more than just another doll dancing to a tune you cannot even hear, Champion Fizzlesprocket.
P.S. You will find the lich if you go north-by-northwest along the mountain foothills. Look for a whole lot of dead and/or dying trees and you’ll know you’re in the right place.
P.P.S. You should really dye your outfit something else if you get the chance; rust isn’t really your colour. Something in green, perhaps.
[You have received a divine revelation from the Goddess of Gambling. FTH +10.]
Boxxy continued to rummage through the girl’s belongings, unaware of the lengthy message that had just been delivered. As for Fizzy, she wasn’t particularly pleased to have had her all-too-rare moment of contemplation ruined, though she had at least gotten something useful in exchange. She and Boxxy finally had a direction, and she’d even received a bit of extra FTH to boost her magic. While she didn’t much care for that flowery, needlessly cryptic speech, she did have to admit that the God of Coincidences had raised a very good point:
She would look pretty damned good in green.
Part Three
A monster and its pet gnome trudged along the old dirt path. They’d been heading northwest along the Sawblade Mountains, following the latter’s divine revelation. Boxxy had naturally refused to blindly believe that Fizzy would suddenly know where their target was, mostly because it wasn’t aware of what oracles were or whether they were tasty. To avoid incurring the monster’s wrath, she had invented a vague excuse about being able to smell the undead from afar. She had no idea whether Boxxy believed her or not, but it had nevertheless decided to follow her suggested direction. It was marginally better than aimlessly wandering around hoping to get lucky, after all.
However, that had been several days ago, and Boxxy was starting to seriously doubt whether the pint-sized Paladin was telling the truth. While mimics were by and large a patient species, it was still irritated that they’d wasted so much time on this little adventure. The obscure time limit on its all-important Quest was a serious concern, as there was no telling when Clarice might get bored and decide to terminate their arrangement. The Goddess of Probability seemed like an exceptionally fickle deity, so the Mimic couldn’t help but feel agitated by all this blasted walking.