At Large

by Andrew Seiple

  Uh-oh, she thought, and ran to get behind the Wizaard.

  The Wizaard, covered in blood, let the limp werewolf he’d been strangling fall, and turned to face her. “Oooh yeah! Time for my signature move! Are! You! Ready?”

  “Do it!” Chase said, diving and sliding between his massive legs, fetching up in a pile of chips behind him.

  The big man spread his arms wide and roared in joy! “Signature Move! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”

  The entire battle paused.

  Everyone looked to him.

  Then the werewolves shrugged as one, and surged out from their cover, howling as they came.

  Chase just grinned, and whispered “Lesser Healing,” a dozen times or so, healing her Wizaard as best she could.

  WIS+1

  She watched her skill rise and rise, and threw in Foresight between her spells, making sure everyone else was all right as she healed.

  Everyone was. Renny was hovering in midair, directing a man-sized column of whirling air against one of the man-wolves, keeping it busy and unable to do much against an elemental.

  Enrico Rossi was darting and dodging between tables, flipping over them with a grace that belied his age, throwing silvery cards at the stout werewolf and a tall, thin one. The former runt, Chase realized. Now the packleader.

  One werewolf was unconscious, lying in the remnants of a slot machine, choked out by the Muscle Wizaard.

  The remaining three were trying to tag-team the Muscle Wizaard, or get around him to go after Chase, it was hard to tell. They weren’t having much luck against his signature move, and the big man was managing to control the battle pretty well... at the cost of blood and skin, whenever one got too near. He’d given up on grappling and was yelling about casting fist... which didn’t seem to involve a skill, but just a lot of punching.

  Wait, Chase said, realizing that something was missing. I count seven werewolves. But there were eight people struck by Enrico’s ante up! Where’s the last one?

  INT+1

  She whipped her head around, looking for the last werewolf...

  Wait.

  Who said it was a werewolf?

  “The cloaked man! Do you see him?” She called up to Renny. He had the best vantage point, and wasn’t currently threatened, so it seemed safe to interrupt him.

  “No!”

  She gnawed her lip, looking around. He could be hiding, he could be magically concealed... the lighting was spotty anyway, Renny’s torches didn’t entirely cover the whole of the darkness. No, her perception wasn’t good enough to find the last one.

  Her instincts told her this was important. Very, very important.

  And as she wracked her brain for a solution, she came up with an answer. “Renny! My pack! I need my pack!”

  “On it!” The little fox zipped up, back into the hole in the ceiling. “Oh! Uh, hi there,” Renny said, as unknown people shouted.

  Oh. Right. Enrico’s enforcers. “Your boss needs help!” Chase shouted, “Look at the wolves! Shoot the wolves!”

  Renny shouted back. “Yeah they’re down there! Excuse me, excuse me. Here, catch!”

  Then Chase’s pack dropped out of the heavens like a meteor, landing on her and exploding in a shower of gold.

  “OW!” she said, tumbling down, feeling pain on her back and knowing something was broken, searching frantically...

  ...and realizing that she’d be fine, as her fingers touched the stiffened leather of the corset’s backing. Score one for the armor, she thought, and rose, clutching the pack. She spared the Muscle Wizaard a glance and caught him beating a werewolf with another werewolf... but the third one had taken some nasty slashes out of him, and red numbers were floating up. He’s bleeding. I need to be quick, here.

  Then her fingers caught the edge of a disc of cloth and she shouted in triumph and snapped open Thomasi’s hat. “Here we go!” She put it on her head, and cried out, “Activate Direct Attention to the cloaked skulker!”

  Once more, the battle paused. Once more, everyone snapped their heads around to look at a single point.

  A single figure, sitting alone in the player area.

  IN the player area.

  Oh gods. Another one! Chase’s breath hissed from between her teeth as the figure rose, and flipped his cloak over his shoulder, exposing bandoliers full of glass and metal crisscrossing his chest.

  “No!” The squat werewolf roared...

  ...and then he was hurling himself toward the figure.

  Left alone, against Enrico, the Alpha glanced between the distant figure and the white-suited Gambler.

  “I’d run if I were you. I’ve got a good hand,” the older man said, fanning his cards. “Sweet, Suit Sorcery!” The cards burst into flames and crackling lightning.

  But Chase couldn’t spare it any attention, as she watched the musclebound werewolf charge the cloaked stranger. Watched him stand patiently, knowing as well as she did what would happen when four hundred pounds of charging beastman hit the immovable barrier.

  Except...

  Except it didn’t happen.

  Chase gasped as the werewolf passed right through into the player’s area... and stopped cold, five feet away from the stranger.

  The werewolf could get onto the player dais? That could mean only one thing.

  “Run! We need to run!” Chase shouted.

  “Okay.” The cloaked figure’s voice was metallic, scarcely human. Male? Perhaps. Hard to tell. “This is a surprise.”

  “You know what you have to do if you want my hide!” The werewolf barked, clawing at the air only a few feet in front of him. “Turn your switch on! Let’s settle this!”

  “So your transformation hides your name and status? Well thass cute,” the figure said, drawing out something from his cloak. Something that burst into flame, wicks of it tracing down toward red sticks.

  “Oh no, run!” Renny yelled.

  Chase was ahead of him, grabbing the Wizaard’s loincloth and tugging until he followed. The werewolves on him were distracted, at least, their attention as fixated from the hat as everyone else... everyone save for Chase.

  “Options,” she heard the cloaked figure say. Then, as the werewolf grabbed him and opened its mouth to bite his head off, he spoke once more. “Activate Teleport.”

  He disappeared.

  The bundle of burning sticks fell to the ground.

  “NO!” The squat werewolf yelled, hurling itself backward...

  The world turned white.

  You have been afflicted with blindness!

  You have been afflicted with deafness!

  Chase screamed or thought she did. She hurt, and she couldn’t tell how bad it was.

  Groping, searching around, she found a broad chest. Feeling up it, knowing that it had to be the Muscle Wizaard, she was relieved to find that it was still moving. But there was blood, so much blood.

  “Silent Activation, Diagnose,” she mouthed.

  The words appeared, giving her hope, hope that she could still do something, even without her sight.

  Your Silent Activation skill is now level 10!

  Muscle Wizaard (Bastien)

  Debuffs: Bleeding, Blindness, Deafness

  Conditions: Curse of Obscurity, Curse of Poverty, Unconscious

  Curses? What were those doing there? That was unexpected.

  “Silent Activation, Lesser Healing,” she said, first for the Wizaard, then for herself. And when she checked again, he wasn’t bleeding. That was good, because her head was aching, full of static and pain and it was so hard to focus. My sanity’s low. I spent most of that fight healing, Chase thought and it was like thinking through cotton.

  Now what?

  Renny and Enrico, she thought. Did they survive?

  She had to help them. And she thought she maybe had a way to do it. “Status,” she whispered, and winced. Twenty-seven sanity left. She could do it, but she’d have barely enough sanity left for a single healing spell.

  But then I can’t heal Renny
anyway. Which means that Enrico’s the only one I have to worry about. This is the only way.

  “Sorry Wizaard. This is temporary,” she told him, even though she couldn’t hear herself say it, and she knew he couldn’t, either. “Transfer Condition.”

  You are no longer deaf!

  Your Transfer Condition skill is now level 5!

  “Transfer Condition,” she said again, and this time she heard herself say it.

  You are no longer blind!

  Your Transfer Condition skill is now level 6!

  Now blessed with sight once more, she stared around at the room... what was left of it.

  There was a massive hole in the ceiling above, and sunlight streamed through down onto the shattered remnants of the hall. Stone and bricks and wood and dust settling in the light. The player’s area had been completely obliterated, as had every table within fifty feet of it. The remaining debris had been blown outward, and Chase heard people screaming and groaning in the wreckage...

  But her eyes were glued to the white-suited figure of Enrico Rossi.

  He was pinned under a massive crossbeam and his white suit was now slowly turning red, as a spreading dark puddle grew under him. The man coughed and coughed again, staring at her with desperate eyes.

  “Enrico!” she called out, hurrying towards him, pausing to scoop up Thomasi’s hat as she went.

  “Kid...” he wheezed. He’d been lucky enough to dodge the deafness, then. Lucky enough to dodge the blindness, too, by the way his eyes followed her as she drew close.

  But not lucky enough to dodge the roof. And as Chase knelt beside him, looking wildly for a way to fix this, she knew she couldn’t.

  “If I heal you, it’ll just... the beam will still be crushing... hang on. Renny! Renny!” She stood and yelled. “Help!”

  “Kid,” Rossi rasped. “Did... good. Thanks.”

  “It’s not over!”

  “It’s... listen. Gods told me... something else. Said... the Oracle would avenge me...”

  “I’m an Oracle,” she said, mind stuttering, a step behind. She was low on sanity, and it was hard to think.

  “Right. Here.” Enrico reached up, and silver-edged cards spilled from his hand. She grabbed them, hissing as the sharp, metal edges cut into her palm. They were metal, thin metal with paint, she saw.

  “What? No! What am I supposed to... Renny! Help! Get an elemental over here!”

  She heard a muffled response from farther back in the hall, and turned that way-

  “Listen,” Enrico rasped. “Gambler... is... an Archer and Grifter mix. Experiment. Mix... skills. Unlock it. Kill the... stugats... with my cards. Got it?”

  “I don’t... no, we can...”

  But Enrico Rossi didn’t hear her.

  He was dead.

  The house had lost, in the end. The Gambler hadn’t beaten the odds.

  “Chase!” Renny yelled again, and she paused, and closed Enrico’s eyes. It seemed the thing to do. Then, pushing the cards into her pockets, she hurried over to the fox.

  As she did so, rubble shifted, and something... no, several somethings fled further into the darkness. There was a yip, as if a dog had run into something in the dark, and then there was nothing.

  Nothing save for a cluster of words scrolling by so quickly that she had to stop, because she could barely see past them.

  You are now a level 2 Medium!

  CHA+5

  LUCK+5

  You are now a level 10 Oracle!

  CHA+3

  LUCK+3

  WIS+3

  You have learned the Influence Fate skill!

  Your Influence Fate skill is now level 1!

  You have learned the Short Vision skill!

  Your Short Vision skill is now level 1!

  You are now a level 11 Oracle!

  CHA+3

  LUCK+3

  WIS+3

  “There you are!” Renny said, and she gasped to see him. The stitches on his right side were burst, and stuffing spilled out, white and puffy. One arm was almost off, and he was cradling it, and it hurt to see him like this.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re hurt,” she whispered.

  “Oh. I’ll be fine once I get stitched up. Is the Wizaard okay?”

  “Yes. He’s unconscious, though. And he’ll be blind for a while until I can... wait, I can think again!” That was right, the levels had refilled her pools of energy. And with renewed sanity came the knowledge that they were in a bad position. “We... should probably get the heck out of here.”

  “Alright. Your pack’s over there. I’ll call up a new elemental to carry the Wizaard. Are we done here?”

  Chase looked around at the ruin. At Enrico’s corpse.

  I only knew him for a little bit, but I liked him. Damn it, he deserved better.

  She didn’t feel the urge for vengeance, or the drive to punish the werewolves for what they’d done. She didn’t hate them or have it in her heart to be driven like they were, or like Enrico had been in the end.

  But she rather thought she could find it in herself to honor Enrico’s dying wish, if the opportunity arose. And it WOULD arise, she knew that.

  The werewolves knew them, now.

  There was no doubt in her mind that they’d meet again, and the next confrontation would probably be just as ugly.

  CHAPTER 14: SCRYING TIME

  Bastien’s massive hand clenched hers, and she ground her teeth, ignoring the pain. “I’ve got you. Hang on just a little while longer,” she said, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her.

  A door slammed open behind her. “I’ve got them. You’re sure about this?” Cagna asked.

  “No. But if it fails we’ll improvise.” Chase stuck out her hand.

  Without a further word, Cagna dropped her wriggling, slimy burden in Chase’s palm, and the halven closed her fist around a bunch of earthworms.

  “Absorb Condition.” She said, and the world went dark.

  You have been afflicted with Blindness!

  “I can see!” she heard The Muscle Wizaard roar.

  “Transfer Condition,” Chase intoned.

  You are no longer afflicted by Blindness!

  Your Transfer Condition skill is now level 7!

  In her hand, the worms wriggled on, uncaring about the fact that they were now blind.

  Another few seconds of work, and they were deaf as well, and then The Muscle Wizaard was hugging her and she couldn’t see anything save for massive biceps.

  “Easy!” She tapped his side with her free hand. “It worked. Good.”

  “What happened? What did I miss?” The Muscle Wizaard let her go and looked around the villa’s study. Dusty books filled shelves, moth-eaten animal heads lined the walls, and a bear reared in the corner, stuffed and revealing a few wooden ribs where the moths had eaten through to reveal that it was a taxidermied creature.

  “Can’t say much for the décor,” he wrinkled his nose.

  Cagna answered. “The Don’s fond of trophies. Used to hunt a lot in his youth. And I’ll second the big guy’s question, what DID he miss? For that matter, what the hell happened?”

  “I’ve got a big question for you first,” Chase said, narrowing her eyes as she considered the dog-woman. “Did you know that Enrico Rossi had faked his death, and was hiding in the casino?”

  “What? No!” Her ears perked. “Wait. WAS hiding?”

  “Dead now. The werewolves came for him. We were there at the time.”

  “You saw them...”

  “Saw them and fought them!” The Muscle Wizaard punched his palm again. “Though it wasn’t my finest hour. I fear I was unequal to the task.”

  “You survived and held off a bunch of them, you did your job just fine,” Chase reassured him. Then she shook her head, and glared at Cagna again. “So you didn’t know?”

  “No! But this explains why Raoul was reluctant to talk about a few things...” Cagna massaged her muzzle. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t
mean to send you into danger. Hell, if I’d known Enrico was alive I could have gone through Dona Tarantina, there used to be some connections there... except no, she died last night. Damn it all, they’re killing all the—” she shut up. “Okay, so we need to—”

  “They’re killing all the old hunting party. Everyone important who took down the werewolves the last time. Enrico told me all about that.” Chase held the woman’s eyes as Cagna tried to look away. “Is there anything else you’re not sharing?”

  “No. Nothing related to this, anyway. Can’t lie to you, huh?” Cagna considered her.

  “Not well. You’ve got a ton of tells.” Chase took a breath. “Okay, we’ll have to trust you on this.” Wiggling in her hand reminded her that she was holding a bunch of worms. “And can you get me a jar? With dirt and airholes? This earthworm trick was useful so I think I’ll keep them around.”

  “That’s gross, but all right.”

  “They’re earthworms. I’m a country mouse, remember? I’m not going to lose it over these friendly little guys.”

  “Point.” Cagna went to the door and spoke with a servant, returning to the table. “Now, please fill me in on everything that happened.”

  Chase did, holding nothing back.

  When she got to the part where the werewolves attacked, Cagna held up a hand. “You heard one of them say ‘quench light?’ You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes. It was a growly voice. It had to be one of them.”

  “That’s a Burglar trick. That’s a pretty high-level Burglar trick, too. Twentieth level, if I remember correctly.”

  “Twentieth level? Impossible!” The Muscle Wizaard said. “I’d be a smear on the ground if they were that strong! The ones that I fought weren’t anywhere near that effective.”

  Cagna held up two fingers, putting them down as she made her points. “First off, Burglars don’t have any real combat tricks that aren’t related to escaping and evading. A twentieth-level Burglar is no match for any kind of decent warrior in a straight fight. Second off, the pack is probably all different levels. We think the pack leader can only recruit when he bites people on a full moon. At least half the ones you faced are probably recent hires, so to speak.”