Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  “Which one represents the New God?”

  The invisible man shrugged. “Take your pick. The effort alone should be enough to stick.”

  “You’re just selling randomly designed holy symbols?”

  “Little is known of the New God but his name.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “The temple leaders call him Jesus Christ.”

  “Fuck me,” said Tim, mentally profiling the patrons of the Whore’s Head Inn, trying to narrow down a list of potential Mormons.

  “It’s caused quite the uproar, as you might imagine,” said the invisible man. “With so little to go on, the common folk have started filling in the gaps with their own wishful thinking. See for yourselves.” He nodded across the street.

  Tim and Cooper turned around. On the other side of the street, a kobold was having a heated argument with a goblin.

  “He was born under a full moon,” shouted the kobold. That symbolizes the egg from which he hatched!”

  “And you think it’s just a coincidence,” retorted the goblin, “that the moon was at the center of the Great Gobloid constellation at the time of the announcement?”

  “It’s the Great Gobloid to you. To everyone else, it’s the head of Rapha’s staff.”

  “How many reptilian deities do you know?”

  “Just the new one,” said the kobold. “How many filthy gobber deities do you know?”

  “Your mother!”

  From there the conversation continued in fists.

  “You see?” said the invisible man. “It’s all a bloody mess. No one knows what to do.”

  “No,” said Tim. “It looks like they’ve pretty much got the gist of it.”

  The invisible man looked down at Tim, curiosity showing through his empty goggles. “How do you mean?”

  Tim let out a shallow laugh. “Good luck selling your crap. We’ve got to be on our way. Come on, Cooper.”

  As Tim and Cooper continued toward the Whore’s Head Inn, they witnessed several more fights break out in the name of Jesus. What did he look like? Was he male or female? How many arms/legs/fins/tentacles/wings/heads did he have? Did he favor Good or Evil? Was he inclined toward Law or Chaos? That last question seemed easy enough to answer at least.

  “Has everybody lost their goddamn minds?” Cooper wondered aloud.

  “What do you expect?” said Tim. “We’re bearing witness to a socio-political revolution. Polytheism is turning into monotheism right in front of our eyes.”

  “Doesn’t that usually happen a little more gradually? We went from zero to shitstorm in the space of a few hours.”

  “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. There’s a group of Jesus freaks at the Whore’s Head who have been going around trying to convert locals.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t either until just now, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Cooper scratched his head. “That still doesn’t explain how it happened so suddenly.”

  “That’s easy,” said Tim. “They’ve been at this a long time, but everyone’s ignored them.”

  “As you do.”

  “Right. But tonight they got lucky. They reeled in a big fish. Maybe an influential nobleman. Maybe a famous bard. Think Tom Cruise and Scientology.”

  “Okay.”

  Tim couldn’t tell if Cooper was processing this or just nodding while thinking about tits, but he didn’t care. He was fleshing out this theory more for himself than for Cooper.

  “So this gullible yet charismatic asshole makes a big announcement about how he’s just come to know the One True God or whatever, and all of those people who ignored our little band of proselytizers before start to wonder if maybe there was something to all of that fire and brimstone talk after all. Your old gods are false! Convert now, or burn in the fires of Hell for all eternity! Throw in a little mob mentality, and this is what you get?” He thrust his hands in front of him to display the chaos unfolding.

  Most of the action centered around temples, and the fighting was largely limited to shouting matches. But the city patrolmen had their hands full breaking up fistfights, swordfights, and the occasional magic duel.

  The confusion was understandable. It had to be close to two in the morning, which is a lousy time for a new religion to manifest. The entire population of the city fell into two groups. Those who were far into the process of getting shitfaced, and those who had just been jolted out of bed by thousands of clanging bells. When Tim thought about how this kind of shit would go down in a major U.S. city, he deemed it a testament to the king’s peacekeeping abilities that the whole city wasn’t on fire by now.

  The chaos lessened as they crossed into the Collapsed Sewer District, where the citizens stayed true to their reputation for having no fucks to give about anything.

  “Knock knock,” said Tim as he entered the Whore’s Head through the gap in the wall. “Do you have a minute to talk about Jesus?”

  “Tim!” said Frank. “Did you find anything? Did you find Mordred? Where is everyone else?”

  “One thing at a time, Frank.” Tim climbed on top of a table and glared accusingly around the room. “I’d like to know which one of you born-again, bible-thumping morons, –”

  “Excuse me, Tim?” said Frank, but Tim was not going to be interrupted.

  “They are literally rioting in the streets, Frank! You know where this leads. Holy wars! Inquisitions!” He picked up a half-drunk glass of beer, ignoring the objection of its owner and raised it above his head. “Fucking prohibition!”

  As he necked back the beer, Frank tried to squeeze some more words in. “Actually, it was –”

  “You can’t just dump a monotheistic god into a polytheistic society like that. Which one of youmouth-breathing, holy-rolling rednecks thought it was the right time to bring Jesus to C&C?”

  Frank chimed in again as Tim swiped someone else’s beer and sucked it back.

  “That’s getting just a little bit out of –”

  “Which one of you toothless, tongue-speaking, snake-fondling motherfuckers thought that now was the time, with Mordred out there gathering an army to come kick our asses, to start preaching the Good Word on the streets of –”

  “TIM!” Frank shouted.

  “WHAT?”

  “It wasn’t any of us,” said Frank. “It was the new guy that you brought back with you. The paladin.”

  “Randy?”

  “When he was looking over his character sheet, he asked if Jesus could be the deity he followed. The game accepted it.”

  “Oh.” Tim looked around the room. The faces looking back at him showed little in the way of warmth. “You can forget everything I just said. Where is Randy?”

  “He took off after the new dwarf girl,” said Frank.“I think she’s having a hard time adjusting.”

  “Harder than you know.”

  “Now if you’re done insulting us all, how about a little news? Where the hell is everyone? Did you find Mordred?”

  “No… well, maybe. It’s complicated. Cooper and I came back to get everyone’s character sheets. You mind opening the safebox?”

  “Fine,” said Frank. “Follow me.”

  As Tim and Cooper followed Frank down the cellar stairs, Tim started recounting to him the highlights of the night’s events. The fire, the arm-wrestling, Julian suddenly losing his shit about Ravenus.

  “So they sent me and Cooper back here to get our character sheets while they tried to track down Stacy, Julian, and his goddamn bird.” As he talked, Tim dug through a crate of miscellaneous pieces of armor. “Where the fuck is it?”

  “Your character sheets are here,” said Frank.

  “Grab those, would you, Coop?” Tim tossed a dented helmet out of the crate and shoved a pauldron to one side, revealing nothing.

  “Dude,” said Cooper. “What are you looking for?”

  “I hid a spare flask of stonepiss down here, just in case there was an emergency and we had to
go on lockdown.”

  “You must have been an Eagle Scout,” said Frank.

  Tim had no time for Frank’s sarcasm. He tossed out gauntlets and leg pieces until enough of the bottom of the crate was exposed so that he knew the flask wasn’t in there. “Where the hell could it have gone? Nobody uses any of this shit.”

  “The new dwarf girl spent a while down here,” said Frank. “She had a flask when she finally resurfaced.”

  Tim turned to Frank. “That fucking prick swiped my booze.”

  “Hey hey. That’s no way to talk about a lady.”

  “Sorry,” said Tim. “That fucking bitch.”

  Frank looked at Tim with his weary, I’ve-had-enough-of-your-shit face. “Shouldn’t you two be on your way now?”

  Tim considered the long walk back to the Horsemen’s house. Sticking around for a quick drink here was out of the question, given the current temperament of the crowd upstairs. He could hold out until they reached their destination, but the flask he’d left there was running low. No general stores were open at this time of night. He looked at the floor and saw the dented helmet. He could turn it upside-down and fill it with enough stonepiss to fill up his flask, but he wasn’t quite ready to reach that new depth just yet, not in front of all those judging eyes, anyway.

  “Fine,” said Tim. “We’ll be on our way.” He and Cooper started up the stairs.

  “You do that,” said Frank. “I’ll just clean up all this junk you threw everywhere.”

  Tim didn’t know whether to apologize or give him the finger. Which one of them was being the bigger asshole right now? He wasn’t thinking straight. He needed to get the hell out of there. Reaching the top of the stairs, he swung the cellar door open harder than he’d meant to. Everyone was staring at him. Every single person in there thought he was a complete dickhole, a Grade-A fuckup.

  As he staggered between tables, their gazes converged on him like walls closing in. They moved their feet out of the way and held their drinks in their hands as he stumbled from table to table like a pinball. Finally spotting a clear path between himself and the gap in the wall, he made a break for it.

  Crossing the threshold, Tim stepped down hard on the loose board in the floor, which smacked him in the back of the head. He should have heard laughter coming from inside. The silence was far worse.

  Chapter 13

  Stacy lay on her back for a moment and caught her breath. She was still breathing. That was a good thing. The force of the impact upon hitting the ground had knocked the air out of her lungs, and it had really hurt. But oddly enough, the collision pain was the only pain she felt.

  She raised her hands in front of her face to confirm that they weren’t on fire. No sign of even the slightest burn. The carpet must have absorbed the fire damage like she was hoping it would. Upon impact, it had unrolled and spat her out like a watermelon seed.

  Aside from being a bit banged and bruised, Stacy felt like she had made it through the ordeal completely unscathed. It could have been a lot worse. What the hell was Julian thinking to go charging full throttle at –Julian!

  Stacy sat bolt upright and looked back up the road. The carpet was charred and smoking, as was Julian’s body ten yards beyond it. Ignoring her minor aches, she sprang like a cat over to Julian’s side.

  The first thing she noticed was two hoof prints just in front of where Julian lay. The blast had left a perfect black circle of char on the road. Perfect, that is, except for these two prints, which were the road’s natural color. From what she could deduce, it looked like the horse had reared up on its hind legs shortly before being completely vaporized by the explosion. It seemed unlikely that anything short of a nuclear bomb would be powerful enough to vaporize a horse, but then she thought back to the horse Julian had summoned back inside the Poison Control Center, and how it had rapidly starved to death until it winked out of existence, and the current lack of a roasted horse body made some kind of sense.

  Julian’s face and hands were splotched with second and third degree burns, but his chest was the hardest part to look at. The fabric of his robes had fused with his flesh.Stacy forced herself to look. His chest was moving, as were his eyelids, as if he were in REM sleep. He was alive.

  Stacy ran back to the carpet and retrieved her bag. She dumped it out on the ground next to Julian, looking for anything she could use to help treat his wounds. A first aid kit being too much to hope for, she picked up a canteen and a small cloth pouch. She unscrewed the canteen’s cap, poured just a drop of the contents onto the back of her hand, then tasted it. Water. Good.

  She’d only picked up the pouch for the clean fabric, so she spilled the contents on the ground. A pile of four-pronged metal doo-dads fell out. She would have compared them to jacks, but somehow she knew they were called caltrops. She also knew that, instead of being used in a game played by six-year-old girls, they were meant to impale the feet of the owner’s pursuers. Where this knowledge came from, she had no idea, as she’d never heard of any such thing before. She cringed at the thought.

  Having soaked the pouch with water, Stacy patted the burns on Julian’s face. He twitched and moaned a little, but didn’t wake up.

  “Come on, Julian. Wake up.” She poured a little water on his forehead. “Please say something.”

  “Rrrrr…” Julian groaned.

  “There you go!” said Stacy. “Talk to me!”

  “Rrrrravenus…”

  Stacy sighed. “Seriously? The fucking bird again?”

  She continued applying water to his face and hands until the canteen was empty. He seemed stable enough, but his burns were just begging for infection. He needed some serious medical attention, and soon.

  Somehow, Stacy already knew that the magic had burnt out entirely from the carpet, but she still had to test it, just to make sure. She sat on the scorched fabric and willed it up. It didn’t comply. She pulled up on the burnt nubs of what used to be tassels, and the carpet lay still.

  Stacy assessed her situation. “Shit.”

  As stupidly strong as she was, she didn’t think she’d be able to carry Julian all the way back to the city, and he might not survive all the jostling. The next best alternative was to place him on the carpet and drag him toward civilization. In its current condition, she dared not hope the carpet would survive being dragged all the way back to the city, but she had to work with what was available until the thing finally wore away to a useless burnt rag.

  As gently as she could, Stacy ran her arms under Julian’s neck and knees, and raised him forklift style. He let out a labored groan but remained asleep. His head lolled back and his arms hung limp.

  His body was so light. Stacy reasoned that elves have a more slender body style, and that she was much stronger than she was accustomed to being, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dying right there in her arms.

  “Come on, Stacy,” she said to herself, willing the tears to hold their ground. “It probably looks worse than it is. You just need to keep your shit together, and get him to a healer. He’ll be good as new in no time.” She wished she sounded more convincing.

  She laid him gently on the carpet and took a few deep breaths. When she felt she had her emotions in check, she lifted the front of the carpet by both corners and started to pull. The carpet moved about six inches before the tassels of both corners ripped off in her hands. Julian grunted as his torso landed with a thud.

  Her emotions were suddenly no longer under her control. Her cheeks became warm with tears as she began to sob.

  No, no NO!

  More deepbreaths.Get a hold of yourself, Stacy. He’s counting on you. You can do this, because you’re awesome. Of course the tassels came off. Why the hell were you dragging it by the tassels anyway? She nodded, calmed herself, and grabbed the front of the carpet proper.

  She stayed hunched over at first, keeping the edge of the carpet low to the ground in case it ripped. But she wasn’t going to be able to keep going like that for long, and the carpet f
elt like it was holding together okay, so she stood a little straighter.

  “Hang in there, Julian,” she said. “You just rest easy. We’re gonna get you all fixed up.” She knew he couldn’t hear her, but talking kept her distracted. “We’ll find a wizard or something, brew you up a magic potion. You’ll be back to your old self in –”

  Somewhere in the distance, in the direction she was headed, a dog barked.

  Shit!

  Stacy had been so caught up in Julian’s survival that it only now occurred to her that her own was by no means guaranteed. She was alone in the hostile wilderness of an unfamiliar world. What if she ran into another Sweetums?

  Not likely. The bark sounded like it came from a domestic breed, and Sweetums didn’t strike her as a pet lover. That other elf guy they’d been traveling with had had a dog with him. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to think they might have come looking for her and Julian.

  But then, that wasn’t something she was going to bet their lives on. It might just as easily be bandits, rapists, or squid people for all she knew. She dragged Julian off the road, back near the site of the explosion, hoping that the overwhelming smell of char in the area would mask the scent of barbequed elf.

  It was a much bumpier ride once she went off road. She cringed to herself as Julian’s head bounced over roots and rocks. When he started groaning again, she knew she couldn’t drag him any further into the woods. If he woke up now, he’d give away their position for sure.

  It wasn’t a great hiding place by any stretch of imagination, but a few strategically placed dead branches would be enough to shield Julian’s body from a casual glance at least.

  Once Stacy was done with Julian, she set to work choosing the best tree for her to hide behind based on concealment, observability, and ease of climbing. This final criterion was more for her hypothetical attackers than for herself. She was confident that she could scurry up any tree in the forest with one arm tied behind her back, but wanted to make it easy for her pursuers to follow her. She reasoned that if a person was really hell-bent over getting another person out of a tree, they had three options. Chop it down, set it on fire, or climb up after them. By making the third option preferable to the time and effort involved with the first two, she would increase her odds of surviving the hypothetical battle. She’d have the advantage of higher ground, and the probable advantage of a higher Dexterity, which would likely count for more in a tree branch-based battle than it would on the ground. Additionally, she would negate the possibility of being surrounded by multiple attackers, forcing her adversaries to confront her one at a time.