Mogworld

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  “Look, I can see how deeply entrenched in denial you are,” said Barry. “But if you make any attempt to ignore what I’m about to tell you, I will rip off your arms. Clear?”

  “If you would address me, you may unhand me, my brother,” said Thaddeus obliviously. “We live for the same goal.”

  Barry’s expression didn’t change for a few moments, although he reddened somewhat and his head appeared to be quivering. He pursed his lips, took a deep breath and carefully tucked a single stray hair behind his ear. “I have communed with the omnipotent Si-Mon—SHUT UP—and he has provided me with a schedule. A schedule for the creation of His perfect world. And there’s been one particular item that’s been on it since the beginning. One that is becoming very irksome, especially for me. There are three people who live on after death in a state that is unnatural and unpleasing to Him. A girl, a smartarse mage with one leg, and a priest. Do you see where this is leading?”

  Thaddeus could only move his eyes, but I could tell he was trying his damnedest to shoot a dirty look in my direction. “I hope you’re listening to this,” he called.

  Barry snapped his fingers. There was a grisly sound akin to a man pulling his boots out of thick quagmire and Thaddeus crumpled to the ground, oozing black slime from the ragged stumps of his shoulders. His arms followed a moment later, adding insult to injury by slapping him on the back of the head as they landed.

  Barry descended and savagely stamped on the back of Thaddeus’s unmoving skull. “You’re listening now, aren’t you, you sanctimonious prick! This isn’t something you can just ignore anymore! Si-Mon hates you and all your repulsive little friends!”

  The devotees hadn’t echoed his last use of Si-Mon. Benjamin and the other non-murderous members of the cult were watching with terrified eyes and their hands covering their mouths. Noticing this, Barry wiped the sweat off his brow with his sleeves and counted ten deep breaths. Then he knelt beside Thaddeus and spoke to him calmly. “What were the words you used to describe me? ‘An aberration in God’s perfect vision for the world?’ It’s ironic that you would say that, because that’s pretty much exactly what you are, and God himself told me so. Do you see?”

  “Barry!” boomed a voice. All heads turned to Baron Civious, who took a step forward and flung back his hood. “Cease your bullying.”

  Barry floated back up to his previous position. “What is it now?! Can’t I get through a single item without being interrupted?”

  “Your power is indeed great,” said Civious. “Perhaps you would prefer to challenge one who can match it.”

  The Baron extended his arms towards the ground, palms flat. Black and red energy crackled between his fingers, and he began to levitate. An aura of black fog surrounded him, dotted with black sigils and the faces of agonized souls. A grim chorus of hellish wails drifted across the city.

  “Took him ages to get the wails right,” whispered Mrs. Civious to Meryl and me. “Used to sound like a bunch of cats with their tails trapped in drawers.”

  He ascended until he had matched Barry’s altitude. The two auras, one black, one white, extended tendrils into each other, teasing and testing. The glow from Civious’s eyes intensified until they burned like the red fires of a dying sun. When he spoke, his voice hissed like the wind that whistles through the branches of a dead tree right outside your window on the night your girlfriend broke up with you.

  “I am Baron Civious of the Malevolands,” he boomed. The sky was clouding over rather quickly. “All the suffocating powers of darkness are willing slaves to—”

  “Will you stop prattling!” Barry extended a hand and a horizontal cylinder of white light about ten feet wide burst across the square. The wailing of tortured souls became a little bit more desperate before fading altogether under an angelic chorus.

  Where Civious had been, there was now nothing but a spreading cloud of black smoke and a sprinkling of red grit upon the floor.

  “Winchester!” cried Mrs. Civious, running out. She prepared a purple-black ball of dark magic between her hands as she ran, but she was atomized by yet another musical blast of holiness before she could release it.

  “Anyone else?!” yelled Barry. The plaza was silent. He sighed with irritation and dusted his hands with a sound like a church organ being slapped. “Right then. Item one: I declare myself absolute ruler of Lolede. Item two: Get some reliable men around the churches in case Civious shows up again, assuming he’s even allowed to set foot in one. Item three: Someone round up those three undead freaks.”

  By then I was already running for the perimeter. A tall, Syndrome-afflicted barbarian blocked my path, gripping the shaft of a warhammer menacingly, but I didn’t even slow down. I fell to my knees before him, slid between his massive legs, smoothly got back on my feet and ran without a backward glance.

  Somewhere behind me I thought I heard Meryl call out my name. I clamped my hands around my ears and kept running.

  THIRTEEN

  The city had been occupied for barely two days, but life for the general public was almost back to whatever passed for normal. Guild thugs and Church of Si-Mon devotees patrolled the streets looking for dissent to stamp out, but they found very little. Most of the people were already back at work, and the suicide rate had almost leveled out.

  The call had gone out for the renegade undeads whose capture was demanded by the great god Si-Mon Himself. An absurd bounty had been posted and several competing mobs of thugs and adventurers were on the loose, challenging everyone they could find with the slightest hint of pale skin and body odor. I could hear their booted feet tramping back and forth along the streets. Fortunately none of them had thus far had the presence of mind to search the dumpster where I had spent the last day or so.

  I’d pulled the lid down tightly and settled myself among a few bags of rotten leftovers, but it was impossible to relax. My hopes for getting myself deleted were dust. My only lead in my pursuit of the Deleters had vowed to destroy me, then been evaporated. The rest of my allies were missing, and anyway, most of them were about as reliable as a rice paper suspension bridge. I couldn’t even see the Deleter communication anymore. I’d visualized badgers to the point of nausea but hadn’t squeezed out so much as a single apostrophe.

  “Where have you gone?” I muttered. “Are you afraid of me now?”

  “Of course not,” said a voice from around the potato peelings. “Slippery John knows no fear. He does sometimes make strategic retreats. Any stains you might occasionally find on Slippery John’s laundry are easily explained away by his terrible stomach infection.”

  I sat up. There was a particularly dark section of the darkness just across from me, and if I squinted, I could make out a stupid mustache. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “Same as you, Slippery John suspects. It’s not a great time to be a known Magic Resistance associate. Slippery John currently embodies a few weeks’ fish suppers in the eyes of would-be bounty hunters.”

  “Yeah, they put a bounty on me, too,” I said.

  “Pah!” Droplets of saliva pattered across my face. “Tourist. Slippery John’s had more bounties on his head than hats. Slippery John was hiding in dumpsters before you even popped your coffin lid. You picked the fairly obvious one. Good size, right off a main thoroughfare, near the back door of a restaurant . . . Slippery John’s hidden out in this one three times. Lived here for six months once. You’d be surprised how homey a place gets once you put some wallpaper up.”

  I felt at the walls. “Oh yeah, didn’t notice that.”

  “So, picking a topic of conversation completely out of the blue, Slippery John admits he was pretty surprised by your act of filthy underhanded betrayal. Slippery John appreciates that it’s natural behavior for minions of evil, but Slippery John was sort of under the impression that the Magic Resistance were the key to everything you were looking for, and now they’ve been utterly destroyed, so maybe you can enlighten Slippery John. What was the plan, dead man?”

  I w
as getting a bit sick of getting called out on that by everyone I knew, including my own conscience. “I didn’t really think it through.” I admitted. “Not like it matters. Barry’s too powerful now. He conquered the city in an hour; he would’ve steamrolled right over the Resistance no matter what.”

  “If you say so, creature. Slippery John reckons Mr. and Mrs. Civious being pulled out of hiding and made to walk around in open streets might have sped things up, but Slippery John wouldn’t worry if Slippery John were you. Barry can invade all right but he’s got zero public appeal. Wait a few years and he’ll probably get voted out before his second term.”

  “I can’t really hang on that long without Meryl. She was the only thing holding me together.”

  “You know, that’s exactly how Slippery John sees his relationship with Drylda. You probably meant it slightly more literally, though. What did happen to your lady friend?”

  “I left her in the city center when Barry took over. I didn’t even think. He probably blew her into dust or something.”

  “Oh, Slippery John doubts that. Barry’s working for the Deleters now and the Deleters wanted you undead chaps brought to them in an interviewable state. He probably took her to their Nexus thing.”

  I blinked. “How do you know?”

  “Slippery John hung with Barry’s crew for a while back in Garethy, remember? And Slippery John nicked some of Civious’s intel. Also, Slippery John’s natural detective cunning.” He stroked his mustache thoughtfully. “Slippery John is thinking he should have mentioned that last one first.”

  “So where is the Nexus?”

  “That’s where Slippery John’s natural detective cunning breaks down. Civious knew, though. You might want to look through his old lab. Slippery John was just heading down there himself to pick up the missus. Want to tag along? We’ll rescue Slippery John’s damsel, then move onto yours. Fair?”

  “I’m just going to the Nexus to find a Deleter who will erase me,” I said firmly.

  “Fair enough, but if, y’know, you happen to be passing, you could rescue Meryl anyway. It’d be the heroic thing to do.”

  An involuntary twitch ran through my face. “I am not a hero. I kept telling her. It’s a stupid thing to be.”

  “That’s a smart philosophy,” he replied. I wished he would get angry at me, rather than just sit there among the binbags being cheerfully reasonable. “Slippery John knows no fear, o’course, but Slippery John could see how it wouldn’t appeal these days, with the Guild and the Syndrome and everything. Slippery John has too much heroism in the blood to do anything else, but it might get a bit too much positive press, if you ask Slippery John.”

  “Right,” I said, doubtfully.

  “’Course, Slippery John reckons there’s a difference between ‘hero’ and ‘protagonist.’”

  I stared at him.

  Something clanged heavily against the outside of the dumpster, and we both jumped, scattering food wrappers and used nappies.

  “Don’t panic,” said Slippery John. “Probably just a womblin.”

  There was another clang. It didn’t sound much like a womblin, which is a small urban-adapted cousin to the goblin that feeds on insects and sweet wrappers. It sounded more like, say, the angry fist of a massively-built bounty hunting adventurer with arm muscles the size of giant sea turtles smashing against the dumpster as they attempted to figure out how lids work.

  “Is it bounty hunters?” asked Slippery John.

  “How am I supposed to know?” I hissed.

  “ARE YOU BOUNTY HUNTERS?!” he yelled.

  “Open,” commanded a voice from outside. It didn’t exactly flood me with relief.

  “Isn’t that your priest friend?” asked Slippery John.

  “Dunno. Sounded like him, but he didn’t insult me.” I opened the lid a crack and peered out.

  It was sometime around mid-afternoon, and the streets were strangely deserted. Thaddeus was still missing his arms and there seemed to be several dents in his face, which made sense, because he didn’t seem to have anything else to bang against the dumpster.

  “So you’re still around, then,” I said.

  “Cower no longer from the light, wretches.” he replied. “The streets are near deserted. Barry preaches in the main square to win the hearts of the populace, and his army is occupied with keeping the congregation intact.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Aren’t you going to call me the putrescent scrotum of a cosmic horror or something?” I said.

  He blinked as if mentally filing that one away. “I have been awakened by the teachings of the LORD, Si-Mon,” he announced, while Slippery John and I climbed out of the amassed filth. “So long was I blind to the truth.”

  “The Truth-truth?” I asked.

  “No, a different truth. Only the words of the LORD from the mouth of his avatar could have made me come to such a realization.”

  “That and the whole ripping off arms thing.”

  “I am the aberration,” he continued solemnly. “I could not see it for my own denial, but now I see that since my resurrection in dark magic it is I who has been the monstrous unclean thing in the eyes of God.” He was standing stiff and upright, staring straight ahead. Occasional droplets of the goo we used for blood spurted out of his arm stumps.

  “Is this going to take long? Slippery John’s got a wife to rescue.”

  Thaddeus directed his permanent angry gaze at his own shoes for a few meditative moments before looking up. His eyes blazed as they met mine, and I spontaneously blinked. “You have known this all along,” he said. “You have sought your own deletion from the world since the moment Satan’s fiery anus spat us from the realms of the dead. I have returned now to join your quest and finally rub out the black stain that is our mutual existence.”

  “Incidentally, how did you get away from Ba—”

  I stopped, startled, when he suddenly took a step forward until he and I were chest to chest. Cold black goo ran down my front, joining forces with the dumpster residue to continue ruining my new robe. “We are BOTH the putrescent scrotum of a cosmic horror,” he announced. “We are brothers, jostling together in our thorny sack. I praise the LORD for the removal of my arms, for now I can truly slither upon the ground with you, and with the worms we have always been.” He immediately dropped to the ground and began wriggling back and forth to illustrate his point. “I am a worm,” he reiterated, his voice filled with self-loathing. “Slither slither.”

  “Look, will you just stop . . .” I began.

  He stopped slithering back and forth and glared up at me. “Let us journey together to the edge of the world. Let us escort our unworthy bodies to the realms of annihilation.”

  “The more the merrier,” said Slippery John, levering up a manhole. “Were we going to Civious’s lab now, or did you chaps want to make out for a while first?”

  The Baron’s workshop was still as ransacked as it had been when we left. It had never been tidy, since the ruined cathedral had spent thousands of years gathering dust and bits of fallen ceiling. Mrs. Civious had clearly made an effort to cheer the place up a bit, but now the potted ferns and throw pillows had been cast aside, buried under broken furniture and crushed beneath the hooves of gnolls with no appreciation for interior design.

  Filing cabinets had vomited their drawers and Civious’s beloved scrolls were pulled from their filing system and scattered randomly over floor and furniture. It was like some stationery-themed ticker-tape parade had rolled through the area.

  I inspected a single random scroll. Unrolled it would probably go right across the cathedral, and the handwriting was tiny. Civious was the kind of person who documented his breakfast every morning. “It’ll take days to go through all this,” I muttered, hand on hip.

  “To hasten our disposal, I will make any sacrifice,” announced Thaddeus, before flinging himself into the pile to start reading.

  I sighed and started searching Mrs. Civious’s old dresser, adding a
nything vaguely paper-like to the pile on the floor. “I don’t see why you think Drylda’d still be here,” I said, poking a broken porcelain milkmaid with my toe. “Looks like they took everything that could be of any immediate use.”

  “Slippery John can’t be certain, but Slippery John’s pretty sure you just called Slippery John’s wife a slut.”

  “She’s got to be pretty easy if she married you,” I pointed out.

  “Slippery John wouldn’t call it ‘easy.’ Carrying her up and down the aisle was a nightmare. Anyway, look.” Slippery John flung aside a few scrolls to reveal Drylda lying upon the same slab we’d left her on. Most of the ornate jeweled bits of her armor were missing, though, leaving only a leather bikini and a few pieces of jewelry in places too delicate for meaty gnoll paws to go. In a stroke, her look had gone from “exotic adventurer” to “severely lost swimwear model.” “Shows how much you know.”

  I tried to ignore him, and made an effort to skim-read the scroll I was holding, but couldn’t penetrate Civious’s thick technical wording. Also, Thaddeus was applying himself to his task with such gusto it seemed a shame to deprive him. I had to face the fact that I was being forced to make conversation. “What will you do now?”

  “Well, not much left for us here in Lolede,” said Slippery John. “Perhaps it’s time for Slippery John to leave adventuring to the younger folk.”

  “You don’t age.”

  “Yes, but now that Slippery John’s a married man, settling down seems like the healthy, natural thing to do.”

  “There is nothing healthy or natural about the things you do with that poor woman’s corpse.”

  “She’s not a corpse. You’re probably projecting. Anyway, what’s unhealthy about devoting Slippery John’s life to assisting his poor handicapped spouse? Slippery John’s got it all planned out. We’re going to buy a little cottage in the Garethy countryside somewhere and Slippery John’s going to rig up some kind of pulley arrangement in the bedroom.”