Whatever was going on out there, it was the kind of shit that drew the kind of attention I probably didn’t want considering I’d just been in the middle of a fight with a couple of frat bro orc looking motherfuckers.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up to the girl standing there with that faint glow still surrounding her. Also? Her dress went from looking grimy, like she’d been dragged through the muck back here, to looking pristine like she’d just had the thing cleaned.
I stared in amazement. It was like the dirt picked up off of the dress and then fell to the ground with a little pitter patter.
Add to that the pointy ears were back again, and you had a situation where clearly the universe was showing me something that shouldn’t be. Needless to say my brain was having some trouble wrapping itself around the very thought that this woman existed!
“Um, you’ll maybe forgive me for being a little rude here, but what the fuck are you?”
The girl looked down to the end of the alley. Like she was expecting nothing good to be coming from that direction. Judging from the screams coming from out there, this time they sounded like some sort of supernatural creature that definitely shouldn’t exist in this world bellowing after getting hit by a modern vehicle that ended up being a little too much for old myth butt, she was right.
This was one of those situations where it was a good idea to get the fuck out of here sooner rather than later.
“We need to move,” she said. “There’s a lot I have to explain, but I’d rather not do it from one of the jails on this world.”
“Um, sure,” I said, figuring it’d be a good idea to gloss over that ‘on this world’ bit until we were somewhere she could do some of that explaining. “What were you thinking?”
She fixed me with a smile that was both enigmatic and alluring at the same time. I found myself wondering if those pointy ears would still be standing straight up if she was lying back on, say, the bed back at my apartment while I climbed on top of her and…
She blushed and a little glow surrounded her. It’d happened as soon as I started thinking about some of the interesting things I wouldn’t mind doing to her given half the chance. I blushed too. Could she somehow sense what I was thinking?
I mean beyond seeing the way I was looking at her, that is. I guess a lot of guys were pretty fucking obvious with the way they stared at girls. Maybe that’s what it was.
“Come on,” she said, taking my hand.
She lifted me with a surprising strength. We’re talking the kind of strength that would’ve made her one of the star pupils back at Master Kenny’s dojo. The kind of strength that would’ve meant she shouldn’t have had all that much trouble taking on those big muscly motherfuckers, but what the fuck did I know?
It didn’t occur to me until after my hand was firmly in hers, no chance of escape with the way she was gripping it, that it might not be the greatest idea to let this girl drag me to wherever it was she was taking me when she could clearly wipe the floor with me.
I wondered what the hell I was getting myself into, but by the time that thought occurred to me it was already too fucking late for me to back out. Great.
4
Drink the Night Away
We stepped out of the back alley right before the fuzz pulled up with lights blazing. A crowd had gathered, but luckily it was gathering around the giant orc creature that was holding its leg wailing in pain with an inhuman touch to its voice, and none of that magic to make it look like a frat bro.
People surrounded it taking pictures and video like they weren’t in serious danger from being near something like that. I rolled my eyes. Idiots. Though on the bright side everyone was so focused on the orc that they weren’t looking at us.
Well, there was at least one person who saw us slipping out of the back alley, but I knew he wasn’t going to say anything.
Tom stood there with his phone to his ear. Clearly he’d been making good on his promise to get the cavalry over here as quickly as possible so they could save my ass when the fight I was about to get myself in inevitably went south, and clearly he was still on the line with the fuzz.
He locked eyes with me, and then his eyes went to the girl. He raised his eyebrows in an obvious question. Was I in trouble? Did I need him to step in and do something about my current predicament?
The only problem being I wasn’t sure whether or not I was in trouble. I mean sure the girl was a hell of a lot hotter than these orc creatures, but I also got a feeling I was in the middle of something that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Though if reading some of the finest fantasy ever created over the years had taught me anything, it was that the most dangerous magical creatures weren’t always ugly and twisted.
Sauron’s ass had supposedly filled out a set of robes quite nicely back before he pissed off the Valar and got that nice ass, and the rest of Numenor, tossed into the ocean.
But I was curious about where this was going. Not to mention the lower brain was going on and on about how nice this was, and why don’t we give things a chance? See where they go with the nice hot elf girl who was clearly into me if all that blushing and glowing back in the alley was anything to go on?
So I grinned at Tom. That was enough for him to grin at me and give me a thumbs up.
I glanced at the car that’d hit the orc looking motherfucker and grimaced. The car had a worse time of it than the orc, and that was saying something. Sure it was one of those compact cars that had a bunch of crumple zones, like if that was some classic Detroit chrome from fifty years ago then the orc would’ve looked a hell of a lot worse, but still.
“We need to go,” the girl said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was talking with my friend over there.”
She turned and stared at me, her eyes wide. She glanced between me and Tom, and she almost looked panicked. Panicked and impressed.
“You have mastered the ability to speak using just your mind?” she asked.
“Actually we were just looking at each other,” I said. “We’ve known each other a long time. Kinda easy for us to have entire conversations without actually saying anything.”
I left out the part where a lot of those conversations we had without actually saying anything ultimately boiled down to the two of us flipping each other the bird.
“Amazing,” she said.
“Not really,” I said. “I mean I learned all about it in an anthropology class. One of the things that probably allowed early humans to be such good hunters was expressive faces that let them communicate without speaking while hunting big game way back in the day.”
She frowned. “And allowed them to gain the upper hand in the war. That is why we need you. Come.”
I wasn’t sure what to think about that. I was no idiot. I’d read enough fantasy books over the years to know that when someone started talking about ancient wars and how humans were somehow the key to whatever the fuck issues were still lingering tens of thousands of years later because of that war, at least I was assuming tens of thousands of years since I’d been talking about humans hunting megafauna with the power of their facial expressions, then it usually meant life was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated for the poor bastard who was being led along by the person talking about all that stuff.
I wasn’t sure if I’d had enough to drink tonight to become the latest chosen one in some great ancient battle between forces beyond the comprehension of man.
“Pardon me for maybe seeming a touch ungrateful, but I can’t help but notice that you’re talking about ancient wars and humans coming along to help you. That wouldn’t happen to be me you’re talking about, would it?” I asked.
Again she turned to stare at me, and again she seemed just a touch surprised that I would even be asking these kinds of questions.
“How do you know?”
I figured it would take too long to explain some of the doorstoppers I’d read over the years that contained situation
s surprisingly similar to the one I found myself in now. So much so that it was almost enough to make me wonder if my friends had set this up as some elaborate joke.
“Let’s just say I know a thing or two,” I said.
“We do need your help,” she said.
“To the point that I’m not going to get a choice as to whether or not I help?” I asked, glancing down to where she still held my hand in a tight grip I wasn’t getting out of any time soon.
Sure Master Kenny had taught us how to get out of grips like this, but none of those lessons had involved going up against a beautiful woman with pointy ears and the kind of wrist strength that would probably let her hold Arnold down. We’re talking back when he was in his prime, and not these days when honestly he could probably still kick my ass.
Hell, she felt strong enough that she probably would’ve been able to hold down the Terminator in his prime too. If I was living in a world where all of a sudden orcs and elves were real then why not also throw in a world where Terminators were real?
She eyed my wrist like she was seriously considering dragging me along and not giving me a choice about whether or not I had to do the whole chosen one thing. Finally she released my wrist, though reluctantly.
“Of course you have a choice,” she said. “You can come with me and see a world like nothing you’ve ever imagined, or you can stay behind in this world and live your life. I could understand why someone would want to stay in this world. It is safe, for now. It’ll probably stay safe for at least the duration of your life.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said, thinking about all the interesting ways humanity had come up with to fuck up the biosphere that we depended on to live.
“Um, right,” I said, reaching down and running a hand around my wrist. Like I know I keep harping on this, but that girl seriously was strong.
I thought about what was being offered here. I’d seen it play out often enough in books and movies, but I never thought it was a situation I’d face.
There’d been a time when I would’ve jumped at the chance. We’re talking back in middle school when I was so annoyed at the world that I would’ve given anything to be able to piss off to Narnia or Middle Earth or Randland or wherever the fuck else I was reading about at the moment.
I was older now, though. I had a life here. Though the more I thought about it the more I realized the life I’d built for myself was very shortly about to come crashing down around me because I’d been spending so much time enjoying the life I’d built for myself here that I’d neglected the important shit I needed to do in order to keep that life going.
Yeah, when I thought about things in those terms there wasn’t much of a choice ahead of me at all. Whatever this girl was offering, it had to be a hell of a lot better than what was in front of me otherwise. So I smiled at her and reached out to take her hand.
“Why don’t we have that drink and at least talk about what’s going on here?”
That was nice and tentative. I wasn’t promising her the world, but I could get some information about whatever the fuck was going on in her world that I was her only hope.
Her face split into a wide grin, and a small but steady glow appeared all around her. A glow that had a tingle running through me. I got the feeling this was a good glow, though, and not like the angry glow that’d surrounded her back when we were fighting those orc motherfuckers.
“I’d hoped you’d say that,” she said. “Now come. We don’t have much time. The convergence will only last for so long!”
I decided to go with it. I could figure out what was going on from context. Two worlds. There was probably some gateway or something between them and it was only open for a certain amount of time on certain nights of the year. Or maybe certain nights of the century. This was her only chance to get someone from earth to come along and fix all their problems and blah, blah, blah.
Tale as old as time and all that.
She pulled me down a couple of side streets. We went through so many twists and turns that I lost track of where we were. The turns we were taking should’ve had us out in student housing and not still among clubs and bars.
Only as I looked around it was also becoming apparent that there was more going on here than simply going through twists and turns in parts of campus I’d never seen before despite being here for three fucking years. No, there was a faint glow that surrounded her and me as we walked, and the more I looked closely at the places around us the more I realized they looked like something slightly out of time.
Like someone from the set design of some ‘80s sword and sorcery flick had been given carte blanche to design this part of campus. Or maybe a Disney Imagineer had been tasked with setting up a new area of the park that would bring to mind a slightly medieval flavor or something.
The point was it was getting pretty clear we weren’t in Kansas anymore. For all that I didn’t live in Kansas. I might’ve wanted to get far away from my parents when I went to college, but I wasn’t crazy.
“Here we are,” she finally said as we came to a door that look all that different from any of the others we’d passed.
“Here we are,” I said, giving the place a once over.
Light spilled out of the place and into the night, illuminating honest-to-God cobblestones underfoot. I’d thought the street felt weird. The windows looked old and slightly grimy which gave an odd tint to the light spilling out of them.
I could hear sounds coming from inside, but it was nothing like the sounds I was used to hearing from bars on campus. There was the sound of laughter and the occasional glass breaking, but there was none of the usual pumping or thumping that would indicate a modern sound system was being used to give a bunch of college kids the kind of hearing loss they wouldn’t think to worry about until well after they’d graduated and moved on with their lives.
“This is the place?” I asked, looking it up and down and wondering if she was serious.
“This is the place,” she said.
I stared intently at the windows for so long that the girl came up next to me and put a hand on my arm. When I glanced at her she had the kind of look in her eyes that said she was trying to figure out whether or not I’d lost it.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I was waiting for someone to come sailing through one of those windows,” I said. “Usually when you’re standing in front of a tavern like this someone comes flying through one of the windows to let anyone reading the story know that the place is ready for a bit of the rough and tumble.”
She frowned, and I wondered if my genre-savvy description of everything I expected to go down here was messing with her head.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand much of what you’re saying,” she said. “You expect someone to come busting through the window because you think someone is watching this?”
“Everyone thinks they’re the hero in their own story,” I said with a shrug. “What if it turns out I’m the hero in someone else’s story? What if they’re watching us right now?”
I thought back to The Neverending Story when Atreyu started to realize there’d been someone watching him the entire time, and I looked around even though I knew it’s not like that would actually reveal some literary voyeur’s eyes creeping on me.
There was certainly no child empress coming along with a speck of dust that’d let me create a scene that would be used over and over again in memes twenty to thirty years in the future.
“Right,” she said. “I clearly don’t know nearly as much about your world as I thought, but it has been some time since we’ve been able to select a Core for our people.”
“Sure, whatever,” I said. “So are we going in or what?”
I pulled the door open. Light spilled out around us. I looked around the tavern and saw something straight out of the opening of an unoriginal D&D campaign.
“So much for shit like this not existing in the real world,” I muttered under my breath.
&nbs
p; “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “The shock of seeing things that shouldn’t be on your world is often too much for the Cores.”
“Wouldn’t be much of a chosen one on your world if I didn’t know how to deal with shit on your world,” I said, looking around the room and taking in all the mythological creatures that weren’t supposed to exist.
Elf girl came up beside me, again looking at me like I’d lost it.
“You’re taking this remarkably well for one of your people,” she said.
“Well no shit,” I said. “I’m imagining the pointy-eared hottie over there in the corner is a fellow elf and not a Vulcan, right?”
“What does a god have to do with anything?” the girl asked.
“Exactly what I thought. That shadowy thing in the corner with the bones all around him looks like a lich. We have some goblins sitting at the bar next to some dwarves giving each other the side-eye. That thing sticking its top half through a door on the other side is a centaur if I don’t miss my guess, and I’m guessing those tiny things without wings that are sitting at a bar on top of a bar are brownies or something like that,” I said.
I turned to see if I’d gotten anything close to right, and again I was treated to elf girl staring at me. I was also treated to a view of her chest heaving in a most distracting way that seemed like it was tailor-made to keep me from focusing on anything but what it would feel like to dive between those babies and…
I shook my head. I was being confronted with something straight out of mythology, or the supernatural, and the last thing I should be thinking about was how nice her tits looked as she stared up at me.
I was not going to concentrate on that, damn it. I got the feeling they’d sent an insane hottie after me precisely because they were trying to distract me with the sexy, and if I’d learned anything about dealing with the fae by reading some of the best fantasy, and some of the most pulpy for that matter, then it was you always needed to be on your guard when dealing with the fae and their tricks.
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