The Accidental God (A Pygmalion Fail Book 1)

by Casey Matthews

  Dak shrugged. “Culture-wide misogyny does not proceed from one drawing. To be honest, I’m not convinced art ever causes bad behavior. Usually when it’s asserted that ‘art x’ causes ‘evil behavior y,’ it’s a shoddy argument fired off by would-be censors.”

  I frowned. “But you hate video-game armor.”

  “I just hate tawdry, cheap art aimed at my dick, and I hate it more when my best friend makes it. It’s not evil. It’s shallow. It takes my eyes off the woman’s face and puts it on her boobs, and if I wanted it on her boobs, I’d be looking at porn. Anyway, accepting for a moment the questionable premise that your pencil and subconscious are oppressing people, I’m still behind the evil-Dracon hypothesis. Between the two of you, he’s got the women in chains—you’ve just got them wielding magic and swords while wearing impractical shoes. And the evil-Dracon hypothesis makes your next move obvious. Go head to head with Dracon. Beat him at his own game and it’ll make it easier to move Rune closer to women’s lib.”

  Dread squeezed my heart when I thought about facing Dracon. I had hoped to let Ronin and the Queen wage a war against him and help from a nice, safe compound somewhere, but I sensed now it would not be so easy. We were on a collision course. I had ruined his world and he was keeping me from mine. And he’d been alive for thousands of years. I couldn’t imagine how much experience that afforded him. Nor, for that matter, how much four thousand years could twist a man. He’d been a normal guy like me, except time and power had made him a god—and then a devil. I shuddered.

  “The ninja’s important,” Dak said. “Guarantee it.”

  “Ronin? I don’t know. He’s just taking me to the Queen.”

  “Masked and highly skilled. Sounds like a player character.”

  “It’s not a game to me, remember?”

  “It is for me,” Dak said. “Which means I can meta-game. Besides, you created this world—or parts of it, anyway. That makes it a story world. People with Ronin’s skills are going to be important. I know you; you wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Dak was right. “He’s so familiar, but I can’t place him in my work.”

  “Maybe it’s the mask. Did you draw anyone with his skills?”

  “I’ve got a metric ton of swordsmen between writing, role-playing, and drawing. But his style is too Eastern for Rune. He sticks out here.”

  Dak stroked his chin. “Another artist might have created him. Someone with a hard-on for Rurouni Kenshin. Anyone from Anime Club could be under that mask. Except Oscar.” He scowled. “If you invited Oscar but not me, I’ll end you.”

  He was back to treating it like a game. But he had a point—there could be artists besides me who’d peeked at the paintings in Old 88 and added to them. “Oscar’s not playing. And no one we know is that good with a sword. It’s not an artist. I guess another artist could have drawn him.”

  “Do you know the limits of your power?” Dak asked. “Maybe you can draw yourself as a better warrior.”

  “My luck, I’d end up in evil-clone territory.”

  “I am the font of all advice, both good and bad. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you draw me a ride down to your pirate ship and I’ll help. You could draw some accessories for the wheelchair. Add some fantasy flamethrowers. Fly-by-wire rockets that run on crystal balls or something. How about it?”

  “Dak…” I couldn’t meet his gaze. “It’s real. It’s real and I’m terrified and no, you can’t come here.”

  “Seriously. You won’t even break character to tell me why I can’t play?” He scoffed. “So did you book it someplace without ramps, like fucking Kevin at last year’s campout, or did he tell you I couldn’t come? I mean, you want to go play with that jackass, fine, but calling me and letting me be Computer Hacker Wheelchair Guy? Fuck that guy. I wanted to be a pirate. Dak out.”

  He cut transmission.

  His voice had been edged with real anger. Dak was brusque and always fired with both barrels, preferring honest confrontation over any other approach. He chased most people off; those who remained got to know him better. At bottom, I believed Dak valued loyalty. His personality culled anyone only interested in surface niceties and left just a few real friends. But I was one of those friends, and his closest, so abandoning him must have cut deep. I couldn’t imagine how much worse getting left behind must feel for someone with a physical disability.

  Nor did it help my guilt that he was in a wheelchair because of me.

  I could summon Dak, but I never would. I’d never put him in that kind of danger, no matter how much I wished he could see Rune firsthand. Though, really, if he ever arrived, he’d probably just declare it shabbily rendered.

  Leonardo cheered me up by ramming my ankle. I picked him up. “How about you? Going to keep me company?” He licked my nose again, but when he gently gnawed on it, I realized he might be hungry.

  Surveying my cabin, I saw nothing turtles liked to eat. Ronin had ordered me to stay put, which was maybe thirty percent of the reason I instead wandered around looking for turtle snacks. I stuffed the computer stone and gyroscope into my backpack in case Dak called back. I would hear it chirp at me, I hoped, if that happened.

  There was a kitchen behind the galley with a walk-in icebox made from wood and dark insulation. I left Leo and my backpack on the table, found a head of lettuce, and had just turned back to Leo when I saw a hooded Akarri standing in the galley’s doorway.

  I froze, pilfered lettuce in hand. “It’s for the turtle. I swear.”

  The Akarri glided forward and drew back her hood, something sinuous in her motions. I didn’t recognize her. A sheet of black hair fell to her shoulders like water, her head tilted down but gaze fastened on me. “You look like a man with more sumptuous appetites.” Her voice was cool and dry.

  My fine hairs stood on end and I eased back a step, into a corner. I clutched the lettuce tighter. “Have we met? I’m Grawflefox.”

  “You feed your pet. Why nothing for me?” The closer she moved, the more her face seemed… wrong. Too long and thin.

  That’s not an Akarri, I realized.

  “Surely they aren’t the only reptiles you like.” She hissed her s’s now and stared with eyes yellow as backlit amber, the pupils two razor-thin slits. She rose above me one foot, two, and opened the Akarri robe. It pooled around legless, serpentine coils. Her hair withered into her bald scalp and a fleshy hood fanned from behind her head and neck, a forked tongue flicking between thin lips. Her body was dressed only in sleek scales and three breasts adorned her chest.

  The breasts distracted me from her eyes and I snapped out of it.

  “You like them?” she asked.

  “They kind of defeat the purpose of the hypnotic eyes, don’t they? I was all tranced out and then bam, 150 percent the normal number of boobs.” Once again my mouth was getting ahead of me, but the situation was so ludicrous I couldn’t stop. “So wait.” I pointed them out one at a time. “Whole, two-percent, skim?” I tried a smile, hoping adorable things were less edible.

  Her jaw rotated left, right, and unhinged. I caught a flash of pink as she snapped her entire maw around my head. As it turned out, the worst part about being swallowed whole by a giant snake was feeling the constriction in her throat suck me deeper into the gullet.

  So you’ve been eaten alive, my useless brain whispered. You have a college education. What now?

  I tried to scream.

  Chapter Eight: Indigestion

  The thing about declaring any one facet of being swallowed whole by a giant snake “the worst” is that, moment by moment, you’re forced to revise your expectations. The icky feeling of throat muscles pulling me deeper into the snake’s body would haunt me until I died—just for one example, I would most likely be turned off oral sex pretty much forever.

  Bad as this was, if I survived to write a short manual on getting eaten alive, rule number one would be this: don’t scream. Because three things happen when you do. You run out of air. No one hears, since you�
�re inside a damn snake. And you get a mouthful of the stuff that’s inside snakes—and that was the worst thing about getting eaten alive by one. That taste would never leave me.

  Her throat muscles squeezed me on all sides. I thrashed. The snake abruptly coiled in a way that folded me in half front-wise, nearly forehead to knees. Had she coiled the other way, she might have snapped my spine.

  A horrid shriek rang through me. The she-snake was screaming. Now I knew what it was like to hear something scream while inside that thing. It’s been a weird day.

  Fresh air hit my face and I saw light. I pushed out of a slit in the creature’s belly. Hands gripped my slippery forearms, dragging me clear of the innards. I tore sheets of mucus from my face and gasped for air, face to face with Elsie. “Thank the stars you’re alive,” she said.

  I coughed out snake juice. “What is that thing?”

  “I was going to say ‘giant snake with three tits,’ but now I’m not so sure.” She pointed.

  Elsie had severed the snake-woman in half just below where the lump of my body had been, before fashioning a slit to fish me out. Now both halves shriveled into human parts—the tail end splitting into bony legs the color of mayonnaise; the upper half transformed back into the dark-haired woman.

  I stared, dumbfounded.

  Elsie seized my arm and snapped me out of it. She pushed me behind her, readying her single-edged blade between herself and the corpse. “Run for your bunk.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s a Magaran witch—should have known from the breasts. Go.” Elsie was tense with unsprung violence. “It’s not dead. It’s faking.”

  The witch’s upper torso lurched and both Elsie and I leaped back. Spindly arms propelled the top half around the table, trailing slime and guts but not an ounce of blood. Meanwhile, the lower half wobbled to its feet and tottered.

  Elsie’s sword flicked, its glittering edge slicing off one leg at the knee. The remaining leg wove around her blade, though, and rocketed off the floor. Its toes slammed into my groin. I felt the thud in my soul and buckled.

  “Can see you’re not into running,” Elsie growled.

  “Courage… was rebooting,” I wheezed, glaring at the leg that had kicked me. It hopped back and prepared for another blow, but the crotch shot had tapped into my anger. I pounced on the leg, grappled with it, and tossed it into the open freezer.

  Elsie scooped up the foot and calf she’d severed and followed suit. We slammed the freezer door on the witch’s lower body and I sucked in air, pain radiating from balls to belly.

  Elsie patted my shoulder in moral support.

  “What’s… a Magaran witch?” I asked between labored breaths.

  “They’re a coven loyal to Dracon. The third breast is filled with the only blood in their bodies. They use it to suckle their giant flying eels.”

  “There is nothing in those sentences I liked.”

  Elsie shrugged. “Any more than two breasts is kind of a waste anyway, if you asked me.” She made a honk, honk motion in the air with one hand.

  I snorted. “You’re my new best friend.” After Dak, of course.

  Above deck, people shouted and I heard a sadistic cackle. A lightning cannon boomed and the entire ship rumbled beneath my soles. “There’s more up there?” I asked.

  “Probably the whole coven. I’m taking you to your cabin.” Then she murmured, “Where we’ll tell Ronin you were the entire time.”

  “Good plan.”

  I threw on my backpack, snatched Leo and tucked him under one arm, and followed Elsie into the corridor. The snake-witch’s upper torso dropped from the steam pipes in the corridor ceiling. She dangled by her own innards, which she’d tied around herself like a harness, and in one claw-like hand she wielded a jagged branch wand. Tapping the wand on her opposite fingertips one by one, she chortled. “How’s a taste of witch magic, mm? Lo! War rains!” At the words, darkness hissed from the wand into the fingertips she tapped. Her nails elongated, sharpened, and sprouted barbs. The digits fattened like gleaming sausages, as if to burst.

  She pointed all four of those deadly nails my way.

  “No!” Elsie threw me to one side.

  The witch’s nails fired from each finger in a puff of yellow mist, leaving oozing holes behind. Elsie’s sword whirled and one nail sang off its mirrored surface, spinning off into a corner. The other three sank into her chest.

  Or rather, into her breastplate.

  Elsie stared in disbelief at three bone claws jutting from the skimpy band of molded steel on her bust. Somehow, all three projectiles had missed the expanse of naked skin on her torso. “Nifty,” she chirped.

  “Oh, come on!” the witch shouted, gesticulating angrily at Elsie’s unscathed midriff.

  Elsie’s grin went sinister and she flicked her sword straight overhead, nicking a steam pipe in the ceiling. The angle of her cut produced a geyser of superheated steam that flash-cooked the witch. Her shriek seemed to stab my eardrums.

  The enchanted pipe self-sealed after a moment, clearing the corridor. The misshapen lump of boiled sorceress twitched on the floor and Elsie decapitated it.

  But her blistered head screamed at us anyway and the torso scrounged for the head even as skin flaked off, revealing new pink flesh underneath. “They heal too quickly,” I said. “I think we need +1 magic weapons.”

  “I don’t think that’s standard issue,” Elsie said. “Grab the head and bring it. Tammagan will know how to kill them.”

  “You mean, like, touch it?”

  Elsie held up her sword. “My hands are full.”

  I picked up the sticky witch head, careful to avoid her snapping teeth and gripping her by the hair in one hand so I could still hold Leo under the other arm. The head cursed at me while I stepped over the wriggling torso. “I would like to lodge a formal complaint,” I said, holding the shrieking head at maximum extension from my body. “I am dissatisfied with my role in the party.”

  “Complaint received,” Elsie said. “Someone will get back to you once it’s been processed.” She guided me toward the bunks and on our way, Kyra—the dark-eyed and olive-skinned Akarri from breakfast—popped from a side corridor.

  “You’re supposed to be in your bunk!” she shouted at me. “Ronin sent me to guard you.”

  “Let’s not tell him where you found me,” I suggested.

  “Agreed.” She glanced at Elsie. “I’ll lead; you take rear guard.” We worked our way down a corridor filled with echoing sounds of battle from above: screams, barked orders, clanging metal, the boom of lightning cannons.

  Beside my bunk, the corridor vibrated and an overhead hatch to the weather deck tore open. A witch built like a sweaty pumpkin squeezed through and wobbled down the stairs, meaty fist clutching a wand. “I smell delicious wizard boy,” she taunted.

  “I’ve got her,” Kyra said, advancing a deadly step at a time. The witch seemed a ripe target, wedged in sideways and almost immobile from her girth. But Kyra couldn’t maneuver either, and Elsie couldn’t do much to help her in such tight quarters.

  The witch sneered. Kyra danced forward and her sword pierced the witch, great rolls of her belly fat engulfing the blade. With a twist of her body, the sword lurched from Kyra’s hands and I watched in horror as she flicked her wand at a defenseless Akarri. “Writ in a shoe!” the plump creature shouted. Smoky black magic stuck to Kyra’s skin like cobwebs stretched from wand to body. She let out a cry that grew higher and higher pitched the more she shrank down to nothing.

  Not nothing, I realized. Kyra plopped to the floor. She was a shrew.

  The witch lifted her heel to squash it. I tossed Leo to the ground and kicked him Mario style, hoping my summoned critters would do my bidding. “Leo! Help her!” He skated directly beneath the witch’s boot and used his front feet to brake. She stomped his back. The floor cracked, but turtle and shrew remained intact. Leo took Kyra delicately in his beak and dragged her into his shell, which seemed roomier than a normal turtle�
�s. Armored lips folded at the edges and the witch stamped furiously on my impervious pet.

  “Good turtle!” I called.

  “Bastard,” the witch snarled. She leveled her wand at me. Elsie tensed. Black streaks fired from the wand and the witch screamed more freakish words: “Dips ’er tot in urns!”

  I flinched and—like that moment in gym class when you accidentally catch the dodge ball—reflexively blocked the ribbons of darkness with the other witch’s severed head.

  The head screamed curses. “You miserable toad, Gorfina, no, nooo!” The head melted into spiders in my hands.

  Gorfina laughed hysterically at her dead coven-mate while I did the covered-in-spiders dance.

  “Bunk!” Elsie bellowed. She thrust me through the door and strode down the hall to attack Gorfina. I realized my only friend in Rune was outgunned and I was out of tricks. Then I blinked down at the sketchpad on my pillow. Unless you count my giant freaking spellbook. I flipped through the pad, hunting for a weapon.

  Elsie flew past my door, hurled by the witch. I heard her bounce. Meaty footsteps heralded the witch’s fast approach. She snorted at the air. “I can smell ya, lad. Gonna cook yer tenders and enjoy the savory sweetbreads in yer belly.”

  My fingers found a page where I’d experimented with colored pencils. The illustrations featured vibrant butterflies, a rose in full bloom, and four stained-glass panels that—with some doodling—I’d transformed into the spread hoods of two golden cobras coiled together. While not enthused about handling a serpent after being eaten by one, I figured turnabout was fair play. I exhaled on the page.

  Gorfina squeezed through my door like cookie dough from the tube, wrapping her mitts around my shoulders and lifting me into the air. Her mouth displayed an array of shark’s teeth behind clown-red lips. “How’s about I suck the meat from your fingers?”

  “What are the odds this is a giant misunderstanding?” I asked. “Like maybe there’s a good person deep inside you who was just horribly bullied for her weight and became a witch to get back at the world. And with some affection, therapy, and a suitably uplifting montage, we’ll fix your life and prove to kids everywhere that they don’t have to let their weight define them.”