“Ha, told you who was boss!” gloated the little shaman, feathered headdress shaking in triumph. “Bisquik is the biggest boss of all goblins, and going to be boss of all Triport soon, too!”
“How do you figure that?” I bantered back, going into full defensive mode while I looked for an opening in the advancing army of bones. “You think you can steal a throne like you stole your little scepter?”
[-9 Hit Points, Slashing damage]
[Hit Points: 16/25]
“Bisquik didn’t steal scepter, Bisquik buy it! With shiny coins, from stupid squishy-skin! Squishy-skins want all the bones, but Bisquik clever, only sell some!”
“What? No one would buy bones from you!”
“Ha, that how much you know. Squishy-skins want slaves too!”
[-6 Hit Points, Slashing damage]
[Hit Points: 10/25]
I began to get a bad feeling that was only partly due to the surrounding mob of clawing skeletons. I need to get out of here. Taking a deep breath and a risk, I bounced off my heels and rocketed upwards... only to be interrupted as a flailing arm caught me in the stomach and snagged on my wraps, sending me crashing back to earth.
[-5 Hit Points, Falling (Bludgeoning) damage]
[Hit Points: 5/25]
I gasped for breath as I tried to roll over, but above me the skeletons swarmed in.
“Hehe, Bisquik gonna eat well tonight! Feast on halfling eyeball soup!”
“Yeah?” challenged a voice from behind him. “Then eat this!” I pushed my goggles up and craned my vision over to see Ramsey, standing on the vacated stone slab, hurl a potion down on us. Bisquik dodged, but my friend wasn’t aiming for the goblin.
He was aiming for me.
[Cure Serious Wounds bestowed: 28 Hit Points]
[Hit Points: 25/25]
I leapt to my feet and slashed at the skeletons around me in a whirling arc. Ramsey heaved another Cure Serious Wounds Potion and exploded it on the ribcage of the skeleton next to me. The dry, burning bone wicked in the potion like dust in a drought... and then melted into mushy white mud. The skeleton collapsed with it.
[Race for the Cure: Quest Update!]
[Wipe out MORE walking dead: 14/18]
“Take that!” Ramsey yelled, splatting potions left and right. “And that, and that, and that! And—uh oh...”
Shaman Bisquik turned around and raised the Gloves of the Ossian Puppetmaster, then very deliberately made two clawed fists, and Ramsey doubled over in pain, dropping the last few potions like eggs at his feet. He screamed, once, before his head snapped back and he went silent.
“Ramsey!” I screamed back. “Ramsey!”
He didn’t answer.
I exploded at the last of the skeletons. They swarmed me, trying to drown me in a sea of hostile bones. I yelled like a mad thing and fought back, clawing a flaming tunnel out from beneath them. Tumbling Pebbles and Autumn Leaf and Sea Kata all flowed into one form that was nothing but rage personified. When I at last emerged, Shaman Bisquik had Ramsey on his back on the altar, the gleaming garnet once again alight.
[Race for the Cure: Quest Update!]
[Wipe out MORE walking dead: 18/18]
“No!” I jumped again, aware that I was bleeding but not able to care, and whatever Shaman Bisquik saw in my eyes, he finally decided I meant it.
He snarled at me. “Stupid squishies! One day, you all bow down to me!”
And then he ran out the main door, yelling for backup.
My legs twitched to chase after him, but my attention was on the body on the altar.
“Ramsey?” I said again, in a small voice. It was all I could think of. “Ramsey?” I reached out with my hands and very gently shook him. “Ramsey, you have to say something. Anything!” My voice started to hiccup as I fought down the sobs. He was much too still. “There’s no more healing potions. You have to be ok, you have to, just, oh three gods don’t be dead because you can’t be, you can’t!” I shook him again, harder. “Ramsey!”
Underneath my hands, he groaned.
My hiccups turned to sobs of relief. “Ok!” I told him, wiping away tears. “Ok, we’re going to go find you that easy chair, right, and you’re going to sit in it and prop your feet up and gloat at us all until you’re better!”
[Race for the Cure: Quest update!]
[Optional objective: Rest for Ramsey]
As carefully as I could I got him down off the altar and onto the float pallet, already heavily loaded with a hundred carefully stacked potions of Cure Disease. You did it. I thought at him. I can’t believe you did it!
[Race for the Cure: Quest Update!]
[Final objective: Delivery]
Chapter Fifteen
I pushed the heavy pallet through the door. It had a lot of momentum, and without wheels to guide it, wanted to continue in whatever direction it was going. I dug in my heels and got it slowed down enough to turn left once we exited the doorway, while from the right I heard the distant sounds of Shaman Bisquik rallying some more troops.
With no scabbard to hold the flaming daggers, I had had to pop out the rubies and stash them in my belt sash. I stabbed my dagger with the Light spell on it into the front of the pallet as a crude headlamp, and it guided our way as I ran back along the tunnels, pushing the pallet as fast as I dared. I talked to Ramsey the whole way, saying nothing, saying everything... just babbling, really. Anything to keep him anchored in the here and now.
We made it almost to the clock room before the sounds of pursuit behind us grew serious.
“They went this way!” yelled Shaman Bisquik.
“And there goes our head start.” I muttered. “Must go faster...”
I went faster. It wasn’t hard to build up the momentum on the pallet; it was hard to steer it once I did. “Left!” I implored it at one turn. “Left left left! Ahh! Too much left! Go right!” Ahead of me was a seventy foot drop off—I pulled back on the handle, and my arms about got jerked out of their sockets for my trouble. The potions slid forward all together, unconstrained by the flat, rimless surface of the pallet. A few of them went right over the edge, tumbling gently into oblivion.
“Who wouldn’t be?” I growled, turning the pallet and getting up to speed again.
I ignored Voice and concentrated on looking for a place to hide. I’m not going to be able to outrun those goblins while pushing this thing. And I couldn’t carry Ramsey without it (stupid dumped Strength), ergo, I needed a hidey hole to park in right now.
In the dim light, it almost looked like an alcove, but it wasn’t. “It’s the ramp leading down the giant clockwork. But the float pallet won’t stay put on an incline.”
I had long suspected Voice was insane, but here I finally had proof. I stared down the spiraling ramp into the dark, the sounds of hunting goblins growing steadily behind me, and utterly failed to come up with a better plan.
I guess I’m insane too. On his bed of potions, Ramsey groaned again and tried to get up. “No,” I whispered to him, so the imminent goblins wouldn’t hear me, “stay put, and stay quiet.”
Giving the pallet a shove and jogging start, I jumped up on it and grabbed Ramsey, watching as the incline approached. “Here goes nothing...”
The pallet hit the incline, tipped forward with a click of glassware, and began to accelerate. My little lit dagger did not illuminate very far ahead of us, creating an ever narrowing event horizon as the darkness rushed up and past us. I closed my mouth and didn’t scream.
On the streets of Triport, crews steered floating palanquins with long poles, like barges. I didn’t have a long pole. Looking desperately around me as my hair fluttered in my face, I finally grabbed hold of the horizontal pallet handle and tried to break it off.
[Strength check: Failed]
Gritting my teeth, I took out my dagger, felt around for the slight join between handle and post, and levered until I heard a snap. The air rushed by faster, the wall steadily pushing inwards, while I repeated the process on the other side, then, as soon as I heard the second snap, I rolled over and shoved the improvised rod at the wall.
The pallet jerked and swayed, throwing another ten potions off the side with a series of pops.
The flying pallet changed course. I had to keep angling us off the curving wall, but I got better at it with some practice, and we didn’t lose any more potions.
[Dexterity check: Success]
“What’s what?” My hair was really flapping against my head now as we gained speed.
“I don’t see anything!”
I tried to focus my eyes, but then they went wide as I saw what Voice was talking about. There was nothing up ahead. As in, a break in the ramp where it had collapsed long ago, leaving only a pitfall into the geared doom below us.
Incredulous understanding dawned. “We can’t jump this thing!”
Nope. Gritting my teeth, I set myself, waited, and then pushed off the wall at what I hoped was exactly the right moment. The pallet swung left, towards the ramp, closer... closer...
[Dexterity check: Partial success]
...and ever so slightly past it. The pallet tipped as it launched into the air, while I grabbed at Ramsey once more and tried to roll the other way, compensating for our tilt. For a moment we were weightless, and then the ever accelerating pallet landed—sort of.
The float mechanism cushioned what otherwise could only have been labeled as a crash, but the magic turned it into more of a bounce. Ramsey and I managed to stay onboard, but potions launched in all directions, falling off the edges.
<71 of a hundred!? Arghh, I do not GET C minuses!>
And then the ramp emptied onto a floor, if you could call it that. I kept us off the curving wall with my pole, but what lay below us was not a flat, even surface, but rather an intricate mechanism of gears and pulleys interlocking springs. Once such giant toothed gear, the size of La Baleine’s dining room, was what we were floating over now, but beyond it was...
I jammed the pole down into the gears, but our momentum only snapped it in half. I stared stupidly at the short half I was still holding. The edge was fast approaching. I threw the useless broken stick away, and then did the only thing I could think of.
I jumped off the front of the pallet, braced my back against it, and set my heels into the floor.
The pallet continued forward. The Talarian Sandals heated up from the friction, and I blessed the craftsmanship that had gone into them that they didn’t catch on fire. Ahead of me, the edge approached, closer and closer, and we weren’t slowing down fast enough. Must go slower! I thought. For the first time ever, I want to glow SLOWER!
I gritted my teeth and set my heels into the metal floor... and the sandals responded. They did their best to bounce up and back, shoving me into the pallet. My back felt like a giant just kicked it, but we slowed. Yes! I stomped again, and then again, and the edge was almost here, and again...
...and, inches away from the black pit in front of me, we finally came to a halt.
With a sigh, I let out my breath and sagged to the floor.
Echoing down from the shaft above us came a familiar voice.
“I think they went this way.” opined Smart Mouth.
“Yeah? What you know about it? You were dead.”
“I’m feeling better now!”
“How you know they didn’t go that way?”
“’Cause I was dead, and I say so! Smart Mouth have special being-dead wisdom!”
“There no such thing as being-dead wisdom!”
“How would you know? You wanna find out?”
“No...”
The squabbling voices led away from the ramp we had taken. I smiled to myself. Good Smart Mouth!
I stood up, rubbing at the scar on my cheek. “Alright,” I told Ramsey, “we’ll give them a bit to clear out, and then start hauling this load back up.”
He groaned again, and finally sat up.
“Hey!” I rushed over to his side. “Are you feeling ok? Don’t sit up yet if you feel dizzy, we can wait a few minutes more...”
And then I saw his face. “No.” I said, backing away. It’s not true. “No, no, nonono...”
Ramsey lurched at me, still groaning, his limbs stiff and clumsy, his mouth slack jawed and empty, and his eyes an evil glowing garnet. His once proud, neat suit was rumpled and ruined, the tie askew over his shoulder. I stumbled over a cog and sat down, heavily, and he came forward off the pallet, swiping clawed hands mindlessly in my direction.
“Ramsey?” I asked, one last time, pulling down Cynric’s Goggles—finally, too late— and really looking at him. My voice was a feeble whisper, but the undead thing wearing his face didn’t answer. It lurched at me, leaning over me, blackened fingernails scratching at my eyes. For a moment I simply froze, unable to move, unable to defend myself, unable to do anything. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. Stop. Stop! But it didn’t, and finally something inside me hit rock-bottom, and rebounded.
“No!” I shouted, pushing the thing that had once been my friend away. “How dare you! You’re not Ramsey! You’re not!” Tears were streaming down my face, unchecked. I lifted one leg and kicked the zombie in the solar plexus, as hard as I possibly could. It staggered back against the pallet, which, very slowly, tilted over the edge, and vanished into the depths, taking my lit dagger with it.
The world went dark.
I reached into my sash and pulled out one of my fire rubies, and then fumbled it into the hilt of my other dagger. Flames lit up to reveal the zombie only inches away from me. I slashed out with Autumn Leaf and left a gash in its throat which would have would have killed anything not already dead, but only the flames did any kind of damage.
It was. I slashed and stabbed at Ram—at the thing, and it slashed and bit back. I kept messing up my katas and aiming for vital bits that weren’t vital anymore, and I was appalled at the unnatural strength which possessed his limbs now that he did not. The zombie landed another blow, clumsy, but hard, and grabbed at my hair.
[-11 Hit Points, Bludgeoning damage]
[Hit Points: 4/25]
I slashed at my hair with my dagger, trying to cut myself free and not caring if I set myself on fire, but the zombie batted at that hand too, and sent my dagger clattering to the floor. Balling up my fists, I beat on its chest.
“Ramsey!” I yelled, one last time. “I know they say you can’t resurrect undead, but I’m going to do it! I’ll find a way! I will, I promise! Because you invited me to go dancing, and you owe me a dance, and if there is anything left of you in there, the tiniest spark, I know it will be enough. It has to, because I will do whatever it takes to be with you again. I would give up everything, for a few minutes more with you.” I was sobbing again. “So just give me s
omething, to let me know you’re in there.”
Ramsey almost paused, for just a second, and then the nasally, imperative voice of Shaman Bisquik spoke up from behind him. “Told you I heard squishies down here! Stupid Smart Mouth, better watch your mouth, you trying to lead us all on wild boarox chase!” The feathered goblin stepped into the range of dagger light, and pointed his scepter at Ramsey’s back. Very deliberately, he said: “Kill her.”
The corpse holding onto me opened its jaw wide, then wider again, unhinging joints and ripping skin, and then leaned forward in a horrible parody of a kiss. I struggled again, this time not to get away—
[Sleight of Hand check: Success]
—but to get a hand inside his ruined coat, into the inner pockets.
“I’m sorry.” I told him, and set off the Lightning Bolt.
The blast blew us apart. It went right through Ramsey’s chest where his heart used to be—disintegrating the remnants of the necromantic magic and reducing his remains to ash—and continued on in a perfectly straight line through Shaman Bisquik’s scepter and into the astounded goblin. Rings and bracelets and feathers ionized, repelled each other, and exploded away from the witch-doctor in a spree of clinking adornments.
I dodged and rolled away from the worst of it—
[Evasion check: Success]
—and came to my feet still holding the lighting wand.
[Race for the Cure: Quest update!]
[Optional objective: Rest for Ramsey - COMPLETED]
I stared down at the wand in my hand, the ashes of my friend, and the scorched goblin, my beleaguered brain still trying to come to grips with things.
Around me, astonished goblins looked at me, at their leader, and at Smart Mouth, who shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I said we should go the other way.”
For A Few Minutes More Page 25