Well Done

by Andrew Seiple

  “I thought I did!” The catgirl— Carmina, hissed back. “But it’s a really, really freaking big building! It’s not my fault it’s built stupidly!”

  From somewhere back the way they’d come, Sir Barriano bellowed in an authoritative voice. Chase couldn’t make out the words, but she knew what this meant. Somebody competent had taken charge of the search.

  “We can’t stay here,” Chase decided.

  “Well no cazza!” Carmina said. “Keep quiet and follow my lead.”

  “Unless we need to talk,” Chase whispered in one furry ear, as Carmina opened the door. “Then you leave that to me.”

  “Fine, fine, whatever.” Carmina said and tried to walk confidently.

  She moved through the kitchens, checking every window they came to, but their luck had apparently run out. Every window was either barred or face an interior courtyard that had tents set up in it and several very alert soldiers looking around for trouble.

  “The illusion’s not perfect,” Renny warned from under Carmina’s arm. “The more people that see it, the greater the chance they’ll see through it.”

  “Ugh! Damn it,” Carmina cursed as doors started slamming open behind them in rapid succession. “I need to think outside the box.”

  Chase blinked. She didn’t see any boxes around here. “What?”

  “Something my boss says all the time,” Carmina said, looking around the kitchen. At the ingredients being converted into soup, the cutlery and tools lying around, and the large, simmering pot in the fireplace. “Aha!”

  “Aha?”

  “Hang on tight and hold your breath,” Carmina said, and slammed the pot over. “Wallwalker.”

  The pot fell with a clang and a splash of hot soup as Chase saw what was coming and tucked herself low.

  And the next moment they were up the chimney.

  The smell of burning fur and flesh seeped into Chase’s nose nonetheless, and she fought to keep her breath held, fought to keep from sneezing.

  A low whine, and Chase realized it was Carmina. It was her fingers burning, her fur cooking.

  Well.

  Chase could help with that, at least.

  “Silent Activation, Lesser Healing,” she mouthed, then repeated the process again.

  Your Lesser Healing skill is now level 49!

  A grunt of thanks was her only answer, and then Carmina swore. “There’s a cap. Don’t look up, and scrape it off if any falls on you.”

  Any? Any what? Chase wondered.

  A pop, a hiss, and a flash above. Abruptly Carmina shoved back, grabbing onto the wall as a weird chemical odor drowned out the smoke.

  Then a pattering of liquid misted Chase’s hand, and it was all she could do to keep from screaming as it itched.

  You have been afflicted with the Irritated condition!

  Frantically she grabbed on tight with her other hand, and rubbed the itching, burning skin against Carmina’s jumpsuit. “Not on me! It’ll stink for days! Agh, you stupid little—”

  Chase ignored the insults. Her hand throbbed, only moderately improved by her actions. She’d be tempted to pass the condition on to Carmina, but the fact was that the catgirl was her best and only chance of escaping, and they were about thirty or forty feet above a raging cookfire.

  Then she was clinging on for dear life as Carmina abruptly swung up and slammed her palm into the cap. Once, twice, thrice... and the metal gave with a groan, stone and smoking goo and solder falling past them and down into the flames. Shouts from below, but Carmina was pushing through, hissing as acid-burned metal tore at her suit, gouged her fur...

  ...and gave Chase a good raking too, for that matter.

  Chase winced as a red ‘33’ floated up above her, pain tracing a line down her back to the accompaniment of ripping cloth. “Lesser Healing, Lesser Healing,”

  You have healed yourself for 44 points!

  You have healed Carmina for 45 points!

  Your Lesser Healing skill is now level 50!

  Then she coughed, long and deep as smoke burst past them. Drawn up the chimney by the cap’s destruction, it expanded into a huge cloud in a matter of seconds.

  “Great,” Renny said, smudging ash from his plush hide. “Now we’re blind!”

  “Okay, okay, let me think,” Carmina called back over her shoulder. “It looks like we were on the west side, so this must be the dealy-bopper that sticks out from the square bit. The dome is... that way? Maybe. If we take it slow and move forward until we hit a downward slope—”

  Ssssss-thunk.

  Sssss-thunk.

  “Uh,” Chase said, spitting ashey phlegm from a mouth that tasted like the chimney they’d just been in. “What is that noise?”

  “Oh oh oh no, no, you have GOT to be kidding me, Carmina sighed. “Why? WHY?”

  SSSSS-THUNK!

  Chase blinked as the smoke cleared for a second, revealing a stick poking straight up from the chimney.

  No, not a stick.

  An arrow.

  “They’re shooting at us now?” Chase shrieked.

  “THANK YOU FOR STATING THE OBVIOUS!” Carmina shrieked back. “Hang on tight we are leaving!”

  “I thought you were supposed to be a Burglar!” Chase screamed. “How are you so very bad at this?”

  “It’s a side-job!” Carmina screamed back, as she darted forward and leaped out of the smoke. “I’m mostly an Acrobat!”

  She ran for the nearest roof edge, fumbling with one hand as she went, tugging something loose.

  And hurled herself over the edge without hesitation.

  Chase saw no reason to stop screaming, as the arrows hissed up from below, and the ground rose with them...

  ...then there was a snap of a different kind, a sharp tug, and Chase hung on for dear life as the Acrobat swung across the gap between buildings on her grapple line.

  “Make yourself as small as possible!” Carmina called back.

  “What?”

  Then Chase realized what was happening.

  They were crossing over a courtyard, passing above pale faces under helmets, coming within dozens of feet of the crowd below, but the arc was almost done and they were heading upwards again.

  Up towards a large, stained-glass window on the other side of the courtyard.

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Chase shrieked one last shriek, and buried her face in Carmina’s shoulder. She couldn’t watch. She just couldn’t watch.

  Glass broke, as loud as the world ending, and then they were bumping, rolling across a dusty, tiled floor. Rotten wood gave and splinters flew, until finally they were all left gasping in the remnants of whatever obstacle had just given way.

  Well, all except for Renny. Renny didn’t gasp. One of the many benefits of not really having lungs.

  “Phantasmal Picture,” he said, and lanterns flared in the darkness.

  Once it had been something. A chapel, a small church to one god or the other. Now it was a storeroom, and the rotten wood they’d smashed through was a crate full of dirty cloth.

  One door stood open at the end, leading deeper into the halls. A cot nearby, a fragrant chamberpot, and a half-eaten dinner attested to the fact that someone had been here not long ago...

  ...and as Chase blinked, she realized just who had been here.

  “Renny,” she whispered, not daring to trust her eyes. “The tiles! Look at the tiles!”

  “They’re pretty grimy,” he said, mopping at one. “Huh. Lots of naked babies with wings. Hey, wait a minute!”

  “He’s here! Thomasi is here!” Chase jumped to her feet.

  LUCK+1

  A door crashed open below, and the thunder of mailed feet filled the air.

  “Yeah, whatever, we need to go now!” Carmina said.

  “Not without Thomasi!” Chase said. “Renny, you can do some illusions, Carmina, try to sneak, follow my lead and—”

  “Does this look like a sack to you?” Carmina asked, pulling some dusty cloth from the wreckage of the c
rate.

  “Yes, I suppose so, why—”

  Carmina grinned ear to ear. “Great! Lootbag!”

  Chase stared at her. “Oh you are not—”

  And then it was too late.

  Chase lay back in the interior of the big cloth-covered room and sighed. After a second, Renny fell out of nowhere and plopped down next to her.

  “I’m beginning to think she’s not a very nice person,” Renny confided.

  “I think I’m done,” Chase said. “Wake me up when she gets us caught again.” Then she rolled over and went to sleep.

  It seemed like only seconds later that Renny nudged her awake. Chase lay there, blinking. This time the giant hand that was reaching for them was furry and clawed. Carmina’s? Yes, probably.

  She debated biting the hand, decided against it. With a sigh she rubbed her eyes, grabbed ahold of Renny, then reached out toward the hand.

  It shrunk as she did so, some weird trick of perspective as the magic scaled things. And then fur tickled against her palm, and she was out of the sack.

  “All right, who caught us this time?” she asked.

  “Yo,” a vaguely familiar voice called. “How you been, shawty?”

  Chase turned away from Carmina, taking in the rows of bottles and alembics and chemicals on the walls, looking past knives and crossbows and a cluttered workbench full of metal scraps and components.

  But it wasn’t until she saw the rows of bombs sitting neatly lined up on a bookshelf that she knew.

  And as she completed the turn, she looked up to the player’s grinning face with dread filling her heart.

  “Hello Pwner.” she said, the words dropping like lead from her lips. “I was wondering when you would turn up again.”

  .

  CHAPTER 17: INTERVIEW WITH A PK

  “Like a bad shazzing penny.” Pwner grinned. “Don’t ask me what a penny is. Never got around to askin’ gramps that ’fore I ended up here.”

  He had white, white teeth that contrasted beautifully against his deep brown face. A neatly trimmed black beard ran up full sideburns to a just-as-neatly-trimmed head of curly hair. One gold earring glinted in his right ear, and a tattoo of faintly glowing lines sat above one soft brown eye like a spider’s web caught mid-collapse.

  The player looked happy and carefree... but Chase followed the lines of his posture down. One gloved hand was resting on the table next to him. The other was on the butt of what looked like a pretty large pistol.

  “Pennies are the furthest thing from my mind,” Chase said slowly, trying to regain her mental balance. She was tired, low on stamina. The rest hadn’t done much for her. She looked back around the workshop, marked the two closed doors and the short, pull-down ladder up to a hatch in the ceiling. No windows...

  Carmina stood behind her, arms crossed, looking away. But every now and then her nearest eye would glitter in the light, as she examined Chase through her peripheral vision. The halven had no illusions as to what would happen if she tried anything violent.

  Renny regained his voice first. “Where’s Cagna? You better not have hurt her!”

  “You are so damn cute,” Pwner said, shaking his head. Chase watched his fingers ease away from the pistol... then he frowned and grabbed it again, tucking it into his belt. “She’s fine. You wanna see her?”

  Chase nodded. “Yes. Please.”

  He turned his back on her, cloak whispering over his form as he stood. Tall, taller than Chase remembered, tall and slim and measured as he opened the door and bowed, holding it for them. Chase trooped through first, with Renny close behind.

  And what she saw tore at her heart.

  “What did you do to her?” Chase gasped.

  Cagna lay on a cot, chained to a toilet. Her mouth was coated with green froth, and her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

  “Shazz! She barfed again. Hang on,” Pwner said, rushing by Chase so quickly she thought she’d gone blind when he moved between her and the light. “Naw, we got a pulse. Just a bad reaction. Gonna have to lower the dosage.”

  “Start talking!” Renny said. “What did you do?”

  “Get me some rags, help clean this up,” Pwner said, calling back to Carmina. He pulled a flask from one pocket of his cloak and rinsed off Cagna’s muzzle. She stirred and muttered, and he nodded absently. “Okay. No harm done.” Only then did he glance over to Chase. “I’m keeping her drugged an’ out of it. Safer for both of us.”

  “Drugs? That’s your thing then?”

  Something ugly flashed in Pwner’s eyes, and his gaze went from soft to hard in a heartbeat. Chase held her tongue until it passed. “No,” Pwner said, finally. “But they the best tools for the job, so far. Drugs to knock her out when we grabbed her, truth serum to get answers after, an’ some sleepy juice to keep her from tryin’ to escape. When you leave with her, I’ll give you the antidote. She gonna have a hangover for a while, but thass all.”

  When you leave, Chase realized.

  A good deal of tension melted from her. She had thought he’d seek them out for revenge, at some point.

  Perhaps he hadn’t yet realized how Thomasi had tricked him?

  Thinking about it, Chase thought it possible. Thomasi had traded him counterfeit tokens, she was sure of it. But the tokens weren’t kept in any sort of physical pouch. Maybe their falsity didn’t register until they were used?

  In that case, he wanted something else here. But what?

  “Now,” Pwner said, straightening up. “Carmina, you clean her up, make sure she uses the john an’ all. Young lady an’ mister fox, if you’ll come with me we got bidness to discuss.”

  “Sure,” Chase said. Then her stomach growled, long and loud. “I don’t suppose...”

  Pwner laughed. “Sure. Least I can do is feed you.”

  “You better not drug her food!” Renny crossed his arms.

  “Naw. She knows the score. Y’all are guests. Think you can respeck that?”

  “I can,” Chase nodded. “If you can spare the food. It’s a bit scarce around the city of late. Although...” she shot Carmina a glance over her shoulder as they left the room, “I seem to recall a catgirl stealing some from our neighbors just before we arrived.”

  Carmina’s tail stiffened, and for a second Chase caught a guilty look on the woman’s face. But then Pwner shut the door and cleared off a crowded table. “Yeah, that was her. My instructions, though. Tryin’ to get them to move before the shazz hits the venter. Looks like they stubborn, though.”

  “Why do you want them gone?”

  “Maybe I jus’ don’t want to see them die when Barriano fights the dragon there.”

  “See, I might believe that, except that I know for a fact you don’t care about collateral damage,” Chase said, feeling boldness creep up on her. This was an opportunity, and he’d pretty much told her she’d live through this meeting. She could afford the risk of digging for information. “Why change your methods now?”

  He turned his back, and Chase took the opportunity to buff up. “Silent Activation, Silver Tongue.”

  Pwner didn’t answer for a second, opening cupboards and pulling dishes and food out in a haphazard mix. He scraped a bit of mold from some old bread, put a kettle on, and shook his head at the state of a withered joint of meat. “Gotta tell Carmy to go steal some more...”

  “You don’t have the coin to buy more?” Chase asked.

  “It ain’t coin. It’s transactions.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Buying food gets you noticed. Flashing too much coin gets you noticed. Lots of parasites using the dragon to loot the city and anyone they think is rich. We got the Inquisition out there right now, huntin’ your man Thomasi, the folks you let loose... and me.”

  “Ah,” Chase said. “Is that why you’re avoiding collateral, then?”

  “Nah. Did the locals you’re stayin’ with tell you about the Lightning Road?”

  It took Chase a moment to remember that yes, they had. “Ah! The old Gnomish eng
ine that throws metal around.”

  “Yep.” There was that white, white grin again. “What do you think would happen to that dragon if someone dropped a telephone pole sized spear of metal at one end of the road, an’ he was at the other?”

  “Like a big ballista!” Chase breathed.

  “Yep. I need the people out of there quietly and without damaging the place. Gotta get in there and fix up the old machines, prepare everything for one big bolt.”

  “Okay, that makes sense...” then she blinked. “He might not be the dragon we need to kill, though.”

  “Say what?”

  “Ah... Cagna wouldn’t have told you this, she didn’t know at the time you caught her. There’s another dragon in town. A female. And the other Oracle I spoke with was pretty certain she was going to end the world.”

  “No shazz?” Pwner tilted his head. “So I can go home, finally?”

  But his eyes narrowed, and his gaze drifted off into the distance.

  “Do you go home if the game ends?” Chase asked, taking the plate from his still hands while he was thinking.

  “I dunno,” he said, sitting down across from her. “Best case, yeah. Worst case... trapped forever in the world’s lousiest chatroom listenin’ to inbred mamajackas drop N-bombs and hate on women for all eternity.”

  “Hell, basically,” Chase said through a mouthful of dried squash.

  “Yeah.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “How certain are you ’bout this world ending thing?”

  “Pretty sure. One of the gods gave the Oracle her vision, and she wasn’t lying to me. The dragon’s shadow will grow and corrupt and destroy the world.”

  “Ooh. See, it’s that corrupt thing got me worried, shawty. Ain’t no use to go back home if my brain’s scrambled.” He frowned. “Mind you, that should be impossible. But then again, this whole shazz should be impossible. This game shouldn’t be able to do what it did to us.”

  “Tabita said something along those lines when I was her prisoner,” Chase “Do you have a better idea of what’s going on?”

  “Big picture? Naw. Nobody does.” He picked up a biscuit and took a bite, wincing as it crunched. “Figure I ain’t worrying ’bout it. Gonna play the game and live a life better’n the one I left behind.”