All hell was breaking loose. From the corner of her eye she saw Brand lunge for the hideous ogre and lay his Death’s Hand spell on him. The bastard died in agony, distracting the stocky dwarven thug Tasha fenced with. The little fireplug of an assailant stared open-mouthed at his dying leader, his red mouth a round O of disbelief inside his grotesque, vermin-infested black beard. That open mouth was a perfect target for Tasha’s rapier. She lunged, her slender whippet of a blade fully extended, and pierced him in the mouth through the back of his head. His death was truly satisfying to her, but she had little time to savor it, falling back and looking for her next foe, wondering which of her companions still lived.
To her surprise, she saw that they all did. Misha and Brand stood back-to-back over Kat’s prone body. She was down, but not out, fingering her harp as she hummed a simple healing spell, doing what she could to help.
And Orlando. He too was there, and he too was alive. He sat astride winged Pegasus, a mighty bow in his hands, firing one arrow after another like some god out of Greek myth. The criminals, fleeing though they were, found themselves target practice for her handsome lover as the flying steed bore him to her.
……….
Everybody was talking all at once. Misha was trying to apologize to Orlando, and Brand was hovering over Kat, holding her closely and murmuring solicitous words. Tasha was questioning Orlando, asking him how he had gotten the flying horse, and where he had learned to shoot a bow like that while mounted and moving, but after giving her a heartfelt kiss he had gotten to work looting the bodies. “I need all the booty I can get,” he said, grinning up at her. “I borrowed money from a shylock in Elsinore to rent that Pegasus, and buy this magic bow, and if I don’t pay another 200 plat within a week I’ll be spending the next two years working a silver mine he owns.”
Misha approached him, looking chagrined. “I can get fifty plat to you immediately,” he said, taking coins from his purse.
Orlando gave him a hard look, but nodded finally and took the money.
“I can come up with the rest next time I log off,” Brand said.
Orlando nodded. “Accepted.” He turned to Misha. “You had something you wanted to say to me?”
Misha’s apology came out, slow and stumbling at first, but finally he looked Orlando squarely in the eye as he said, “It was unforgiveable, killing you like that. The anti-NPC bias in me is strong, but I’ll work to overcome that.”
“Fine,” Orlando said. “Apology accepted. I will never understand the belittling attitude you…foreigners have toward us…you visitors…but I of course realize you’re not the only one with this attitude.” He moved next to Tasha and put an arm around her. “But I love this woman, and she too is an off-worlder, or was, at any rate, and I understand that she once had feelings for you and that you are trying to help her during a difficult time. I accept that, and I honor your attempt to help her. I think as long as we all pledge ourselves to that, to getting Tasha and Kat out of the predicament they are in, then we can all get along.”
“Hear hear, mate,” Brand chipped in. “And to that end, let’s get a move on. We can make it to Dway-un’s within the hour.”
……….
The game designers had gone all out on the underground dwarven kingdom. Eldritch fires of ghost light illuminated a ceiling of jewels, emeralds and rubies flashing in the flickering luminescence. Pillars of alabaster and pink marble led down toward infinity, seemingly, in the vaulted land of the dwarven lords. Tasha felt her breath continuously jerked from her chest as she gaped and gawked.
Kat too stared slack-jawed at the impressive beauty surrounding her as they traipsed toward their destination. Orlando was also suitably impressed, confiding once to Tasha that he had actually never been out of Elsinore before. Only Brand seemed aloof from the beauty, simply saying, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool looking, but I’ve spent a fair amount of game time here. Dway-un is up that way.”
They took a side lane through a bazaar and tried to avoid the aggressive vendors. They were all short, squat, and smelly, and with their in-your-face sales techniques, Tasha was reminded of those dorky little aliens on Star Trek Something-Or-Other, the Ferengi. One of them even had the gall to pinch her ass while he was shoving some cheap beaded jewelry in her face. Without even thinking about it, she had her parrying dagger out and pressed against the little fella’s throat.
“Touch my ass again and I’ll stick you like a pig,” she told him. She found that she was getting more comfortable about the whole killing thing. This world – Brutalia – seemed to be correctly named.
The dwarf removed his hand, though. Glaring up at her, he exhaled what smelled like decaying, plague-ridden rats and rubbing alcohol. “You wouldn’t last long if you did, girlie, surrounded as you are.”
She glanced around at the other merchants and customers, almost all dwarves. They were going about their business buying and selling, oblivious to the altercation between the human and the vendor of cheap jewelry. Suddenly Orlando was at her side, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “From what I know of dwarves, none of them will much care if you get a dagger stuck in your throat. They’ll be fighting over your customers and that’s about it.”
The bearded merchant made a noise of growling dismissal and turned away from them.
“You two about ready back there?” Brand called out. They followed him down a small lane to a shop set off by itself, a series of rooms carved out of the inside of the mountain, from which she could see the flash of fire and glitter of sparks. She heard clanging and the guttural dwarven tongue as they approached the smithy.
“Wait out here,” Brand said, “while I talk to him.”
He disappeared inside the building and left them, Orlando with a hand on Tasha’s arm, Misha studiously ignoring the gesture, and Kat watching Brand scamper off with a look of girlish infatuation on her face. Tasha had a sudden moment of odd lucidity, a self-awareness that informed her of how ludicrous her situation was, trapped in an artificial world, inhabiting a fictitious being that existed only as data translating itself directly into her brain. Then she had another moment of lucidity, that perhaps – most likely, actually – the real world was the same thing, a mass of information interpreted by the brain as reality. On some level she suddenly believed that the so-called “real world” was an equally fictitious mass of data, that everybody, every person in the world, was a little packet of data slipping around in some superior being’s version of a simulated video game. The Sims, Planet Earth Edition, or something like that. It comforted her in a way. If this seemed to be reality, then it was reality, at least for the moment. She would try to make the best of her time here, and if she ever made it back to what her normie self referred to as “real life,” she would try to make the best of it there, too. And somewhere along the way she would extract a measure of revenge from the bastard who was toying with her.
And she would take what pleasure she could, too. She raised her hand to Orlando’s, which clutched her arm protectively, and felt his strong fingers, his hard, calloused palm, remembering how he felt elsewhere, his powerful chest, scarred from battle wounds, his slim, muscular hips, and his equally hard maleness.
Whatever. If this was a fiction, so what. It felt real. It was real enough. And her friends were real, too, real egos trapped in a strange universe, whether termed Brutalia or Earth, reaching out to help other trapped egos and find the solace of comfort and caring. Tasha felt a sudden tenderness then for all things human, the frailty and courage both of the fragile creatures they all were, and looked upon her friends with a tear in her eye and a flutter in her chest, Kat’s tender look as she thought about Brand, Misha’s sorrow and jealousy at not having a chance with her, now that she was in love with someone else, and Orlando, late of the City Guard of Elsinore, as good a man as she had ever known, even if he wasn’t “real.”
Brand returned, followed by a stocky, older dwarf, gray shot through his bushy black beard, dressed in a leather apron and heavy work g
loves, holding a hefty hammer in one hand. The blacksmith was grinning as he looked Tasha and Kat up and down. Brand looked a bit…concerned.
“Everything okay?” Tasha asked.
“Dway-un, uh…he says he’ll do it, he’ll remove the collars, but he, uh…”
“What?” spat out Orlando.
“He says he wants to, as he put it, he wants to have sex with one of you first.”
……….
A dozen conflicting emotions ran through Tasha in only a few seconds. Disgust that the little smelly dwarf wanted to bang her – or Kat – then anger at him for using his presumed power over her to demand that which he desired. Fear that she might never get the slave collar off her, that she would be doomed to wander Brutalia for as long as her earthly body lingered at Yuri’s wish. Resignation swamped over her then, and she found herself wondering how bad it could be, and how quickly it would be over, and the virtual body she inhabited in this world wasn’t her real body anyway…and then anger engulfed her again.
“We’re out of here,” she said, gesturing to Orlando, who looked as angry as she did. Good man, she thought. He would die at her side fighting this damned dwarf, if necessary, even though the game’s conning bar showed that Dway-un was several levels his superior.
Orlando took her hand and was about to lead her away when the dwarf abruptly burst into laughter. “Fine!” he guffawed. “Fine, mistress, remain. Please.” She turned and watched him attempt a courtly bow, the end of his long beard scraping the ground. “I was mistaken, obviously.”
She spun on her heels and shot daggers at him, metaphorically. She actually felt her eyes grow hot from the glare of anger she gave him. She wondered if there was some harlot/rogue hybrid ability at play, Throwing Knives of Anger, or something. “Mistaken?”
He bowed again, and showed a smile inside his round face that softened her mood a bit. “I don’t get out from under this mountain much, m’lady. It has always been my understanding that those of the harlot class provide their, uh, charms to whomever might offer a reasonable price. As I say, I was obviously mistaken.”
Tasha thought about that for a moment, then realized that she was being a bit hard on the fellow. “Fine,” she said. “I understand your confusion. I will say only that my friend and I are unwilling harlots, hence the slave collars, to keep us in line. That is why we would have them removed.”
He stepped toward her. She forced herself not to flinch, even as his hand reached toward her throat. Behind the stocky blacksmith, she noticed, where a pair of his workers, one old, one young, both of whom held tools of their trade that looked as though they could easily double as weapons.
“Please allow me to examine your collar,” he politely said.
She lowered her head to make his inspection easier. After a half-minute or so he said, “Very skilled workmanship, and the lock is protected by a tampering spell. The spell can be overcome, of course, but I will have to pay a mage for his services. If we agree on a price, I will dispatch my boy to fetch him.”
Orlando spoke up then. He had relaxed visibly at Dway-un’s apology. “What is your price, Sir Smith?”
The dwarf laughed heartily. “Dway-un, please. Sir Smith was my father. Call me Dway-un. Twenty pieces of platinum apiece, and it will take approximately one hour per collar.”
Glances were exchanged all around among the group of travelers, then Brand said, “That seems a bit much for two hours – “
Dway-un cut him off with a raised hand. “I have to pay my mage, and I am running a risk performing such a task. Whoever put the collars on these two ladies is quite resourceful, judging by the work. And such creatures as deal in lovely ladies, well. They are not to be trifled with. I fear no being in this world, but I do expect to be adequately recompensed for placing myself in danger.”
Tasha nodded, then, in general to her companions, said, “Can we spare that much?”
Both Orlando and Misha answered quickly, almost in unison: “Yes.”
Tasha turned to the dwarf. “We’ll pay what you wish, Dway-un.” She decided it would be best to make peace with the dwarf who would soon have blacksmith tools right next to her throat. “It is an honor having you do work for us. Your fame is widespread.” She assumed it was, anyway, considering Brand knew of the dwarf and vouched for him.
The dwarf bowed again and gestured to the entrance of his smithy. “As soon as the mage is summoned, we will begin. My place of work is hardly as comfortable as an inn, but we will try to find somewhere you sit, and we’ll scare up some clean flagons for ale.”
“Lead on, good Smith,” Tasha said, excited at the prospect of seeing her slave collar removed.
……….
The mage was a high elf, a rather elderly NPC named Canador who actually seemed to be a bit high. As in stoned. He and Dway-un exchanged churlish greetings concerning the nature of each other’s race and sexual proclivities, a level of rudeness that either indicated a longstanding annoyance with one another, or a longstanding friendship. Perhaps both. The mage asked immediately for a plate of chocolate muffins and milk to wash it down. He devoured the “muffins,” which looked more like brownies to Tasha, and from the mage’s vacant eyes suggested they might be hashish brownies, then he belched loudly and asked for some music. Dway-un scowled at him and gestured to Kat. “If the bard is so inclined.” Kat shrugged and began playing a song that obviously wasn’t a spell-casting piece of music, just a song. It sounded a bit like a Beyonce tune, though Tasha wasn’t certain. Leaning toward Orlando from where they sat on benches at the edge of Dway-un’s workspace, she asked, “Is he high?”
Orlando raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“On drugs, I mean. The high elf. Canador.”
Brand had overhead and whispered to them, “Probably weed-spice. It’s a popular drug with player-characters. The effects are a bit like marijuana. I didn’t think it was used much by NPCs.”
Orlando scowled at him. “I don’t know why you people think that we are so radically different than you. I really don’t understand that.”
Brand shrugged. “Sorry, dude. You might not believe me, but we created all of you. People did, I mean. Humans.”
Orlando’s scowl intensified. “I’m a human, you know. I’m not a damned orc.” He shook his head at Brand as though the young man were crazy.
Brand gestured in a supplicating, hands-spread way. “Look, I don’t want to fight about it. Maybe I’ll be able to show you some of the literature about Brutalia, from the real world…my world, I guess you could say, about its background. Some other time, though.”
Tasha patted Orlando on his hard thigh, then rested her hand there. The thigh muscle was as hard as an oak tree. He might not be real, she thought for the hundredth time, but he’s sure a stud.
Canador the High Elf mage was swaying to Kat’s song and munching more brownies. Dway-un looked on, tapping his foot, ready to get to work. Abruptly the magician’s attention focused on Tasha. “The time is right. I am ready for you, beautiful woman.”
She stood next to the elf. He was short for his race, and she was tall for hers. The points of his ears were about even with her nose. He smelled of some kind of aftershave, a kind of mix between Old Spice and vanilla. Dway-un stood on the other side, a bit closer than she liked, but she had to trust that the blacksmith knew what he was doing. He held a little box like a jewelry box in one hand, though it was more functional than ornamental, dark and black with rusty hinges, and what looked like an olive fork in the other. A black, grimy olive fork. The high elf muttered something in his arcane language and waggled his fingers at the lock on the slave collar around her neck. Tasha suddenly felt something wiggling against the skin of her neck. Dway-un’s hands shot forward, jabbing with the olive fork. She heard a little squeal and saw a squirming, hairy creature on the end of the fork before it was shut up into the tiny box. Dway-un slammed the lid down and clicked its little lock.
“What in god’s name was that?” she asked, resisting the urg
e to shriek and bolt for the blacksmith’s entrance.
“A binding bug,” the mage said. “Common in these sorts of shackles.”
“I’ve been walking around with a thing that looks like a robot tarantula…against my neck? This whole time?”
“Eww,” Kat said. She clutched Brand’s hands. “I suppose I have one of those things at my throat, too?”
“Unfortunately yes,” Canador said. “But not for much longer.”
“A bit longer,” Dway-un said, gesturing to a bench near his forge. “Now we move on to more mundane work.”
“A binding bug is a sort of magical familiar,” the mage preened, enjoying the attention of two beautiful young harlots. “It channels the maker’s intent, which, in this case, is to keep the collar permanently in place on your beautiful neck.”
Dway-un positioned her as he wished on the workbench, then went about his business with the lock, muttering and grunting in his guttural tongue as he worked on the lock, first with picks, then something that looked like a large nail, which he struck against the metal with a ball-peen hammer. It was all a bit close for comfort for her, and she tried to focus on Canador removing the hideous binding bug from Katy’s collar. That was rather grotesque, though, so she finally just looked on the two men in her life, Orlando, her lover, and Misha, her erstwhile boyfriend. Both gazed with concern as the dwarven blacksmith plied his trade so near her slender throat.
“Canador!” the dwarf called out abruptly, backing away from Tasha.
“Yes?”
“Come here! I sense some other magic at work on this piece.”
The mage hurried over to him, gazing at the burnished metal collar as if he looked on some priceless, though miniature, work of art. “Yes, I see what you mean. Quite clever, really. I’ll see if I can break the spell.” He spoke a few words in what Tasha was sure Misha would identify as “High Elven” and rubbed a finger against the lock. Suddenly the metal around Tasha’s neck began to warm, then grow hot.
Bounty Harlot Page 10