by Stone Thomas
“Cockroaches!” Vix yelled. We turned tail (literally, in her case) and ran back the way we had come. As we neared the light from our collapsed hole, we saw hundreds of cockroaches scurrying along the walls, floor, and ceiling. Thankfully, they stopped following us once we got closer to the sun’s protective rays.
“Hello?” called a woman’s voice. It could have been a ghost for all I knew, trapped in an abandoned quarry or mine or whatever this was, for gods only knew how long, seeking revenge on the living for discarding her here.
The hole in the ground above us was too high to climb toward. The only other options were to run down another dark tunnel or to stay put.
Gradually, the voice got louder as it called to us. Then the woman herself emerged from the darkness.
Her skin, if one could call it that, was green and semitransparent. Her body was made of improbable curves, like a body of water in constant motion. Her hips we wide, her waist extremely narrow, and her bust was enormous. A black evening gown hugged her body in ways that made me blush.
“I haven’t seen anyone here in years,” she said. Her face was as full as her figure. Thick lips pouted when her face came to rest. Long eyelashes batted from twinkling green eyes. And her hair wasn’t hair at all, but an extension of her green body, shaped in an elegant, short style.
“You’ve been trapped in this underground tunnel for years?” Vix asked.
“Well, I didn’t stay for the ambience,” the green woman said.
“How do you tolerate all of those cockroaches?” I asked.
“They are pests when I’m sleeping, but at least I can reason with them when I’m awake. The name is Cindra,” she held her hand out as if I would kiss it. I reached forward and took her hand, shaking it at that awkward angle.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Vix said. “I hope that’s not rude to say.”
“The feeling is mutual,” she said.
“I’m Vixette Volpia, a builder and a fox lady from the beastkin territory of Denvillia,” she said. “You can call me Vix.”
“I’m Arden Hochbright, a skillmeister from the human free city of Meadowdale,” I said.
“I am a slime gal, conjured in this very cavern,” she said.
“Conjured?” I asked.
“A great and wise mage crafted me from the ether,” she replied, “but I must have done something wrong because he abandoned me here and sealed the earth so I couldn’t leave. I never did figure out what I did to displease him. I hope one day I do.”
“That’s awful,” I said. “He doesn’t sound great or wise if he did that to you.”
“He gifted me with a rare ability for which I am grateful, even if his departure still breaks my soul. I am a negotiatrix. You may have heard me chatting with the resident roaches.”
“Yes,” Vix said. “We didn’t know how many there were until they charged toward us.”
“Oh?” Cindra said. “I suppose you don’t see in the dark then, like I do.”
“No,” I said.
“Then it’s a good thing you made it here where the light is,” she said. “I’m afraid all the ruckus will attract a brockerball, and you don’t want to fight one of those in the dark.”
“I’m not sure what a brockerball is,” I said.
The ground vibrated beneath my feet. “Oh, honey, you will be,” Cindra said.
A boulder as high as my waist rolled toward us from the tunnel ahead. It was a darker brown than the surrounding rock, and it had a series of small protrusions from its spherical body like pincers. It bent them against the floor and the walls to propel itself toward us. We all dodged in different directions to avoid being bowled over.
When the rock monster reached the light filtering in from overhead, it unfurled. Two thick legs supported its bulbous body, and four burly arms extended toward us.
“Hey Vix,” I yelled. “How about giving Wallop a try?”
She and I converged on the rock creature as it spread its limbs out from its body. She swung her hammer behind her, then forward with full force. It exploded in orange light as her skill activated, whacking the fiend backward a dozen feet.
I stood ready with my polearm, which was still just a wooden pole with a knife on the end of it. It was pathetic, and not at all the type of weapon someone should bring to a brockerball match. Nonetheless, when the thing came closer, I speared with all my might.
The monster winced, so I knew we were having an effect. Cindra didn’t have any weapons on hand, but she did have the power to negotiate. “Cindra, can you convince this thing to leave us alone?”
“Oh, Mr. Brockerball?” she asked. The monster looked at her. Vix tried to hammer at it while Cindra conversed, but the monster swatted Vix away. She landed on her ass and banged her elbow against a rock wall.
“Look at you,” Cindra continued, “with your big bulging muscles and a nice hard rock for a face. Be a dear and protect a girl like me from the deep dark tunnels.”
The monster shook its head. Then it charged at her. I ran into its path to protect her. My back made a terrible crunching sound as the monster rolled over me, but I had slowed it down enough to let Cindra get out of harm’s way.
“You’re being a bad, bad boy, Brocky,” Cindra said. Her tone had gone from pleading and weak to stern in no time. She was trying a different strategy. It wasn’t working.
“We need to destroy this thing,” Vix said.
“Agreed!” I said.
The brockerball rolled itself up again and tumbled toward me. Vix stuck her hammer in the monster’s path, forcing it off trajectory. It slammed into a wall.
Cindra ran, into the tunnel she had come from and away from the light. Vix and I couldn’t follow her there. Only Cindra could see in the dark.
When the brockerball unfurled again, it was angry. It started stomping on the ground, shaking rocks loose from the ceiling and crashing them into me and Vix. They started to bury us before we could even get back to our feet.
The monster stepped forward. My leg was jammed between rocks now and I wasn’t strong enough to lift them off of me. I would break my ankle trying too hard to get free.
It stepped closer again. The various pincers on its body pinched and fiddled, eager to get their grippers on me. I held my spear up. The best I could do was hope to push the monster away. Unless… I activated Piercing Blow and aimed at the rocks by my foot.
The spearhead smashed into the pile of rocks. The rocks, however, didn’t budge. Instead, they snapped my knife blade from the wooden pole it was tied to. My weapon was done for.
Then the familiar hissing and clicking of a bajillion creepy cockroaches started up, coming closer at a terrifying speed. Not only was I about to be flattened by a brockerball, but cockroaches would be here to peel my remains off the cavern floor and eat me for lunch.
“Arden,” Vix called. “Look!”
I didn’t want to look, but I did. A wave of disgusting, chittering cockroaches stormed toward me as the brockerball leapt. Its massive body was about to crush me into a bloody pulp. The cockroaches got to me first though. They covered my body and the rocks that I was buried beneath like a blanket made of scratchy, twitching legs and bodies.
When the rock creature landed, the roaches absorbed the impact. It still didn’t feel good when the monster made contact with my chest, but it was a dull thud compared to what it would have been. Then the roaches pooled under the fiend and carried it into the dark.
“I didn’t know what that monster would find convincing,” Cindra said. Her hips swayed as she walked back into the light, “but I am quite used to talking those little roaches into doing what I say.”
“Bravo,” Vix said.
“Seriously,” I said, “thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Cindra said. “Thanks to you I think I can finally leave this cave.”
“About that,” I said. “We need to figure out a way to get back to the surface before that creature returns. I take it there’s no other entrance or ex
it?”
“None that I’ve found,” Cindra said.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“Time is tight,” Vix said. “My first thought was to wait for it to rain, then the water fills the cave and we swim free.”
“No,” I said, “there has to be another way.”
“Why don’t—” Cindra said.
Vix cut her off. Her eyes darted wildly from side to side, as if her imagination worked quicker than she could voice her thoughts. “There were rail carts that we passed along the way. That means there are metal rails. If we pull them up from the ground and drag them over here, we could build a ramp, and with enough effort we could heave one of the carts hard enough that we’d fly right out of here.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
“And impossible,” Cindra said. “Maybe you—”
“Oh! Oh!” Vix yelped. We can dig horizontally. We’re inside a hill. Eventually we’d come out the other side. It wouldn’t take more than a week if we all work together, and skip sleeping until we make it out of here. We’d still have to stave off that rock monster…”
“You’re a builder, sweetie,” Cindra said. “Can’t you just build a thing?”
“Oh,” Vix said. “I can do that. Would stairs work?”
“Yes, Vix. Stairs would work,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll have that done in a jiffy actually.”
+6
I felt guilty, sitting around while Vix carried large stones toward the entrance to make a set of stairs from, but every time I carried a rock to her she would frown and set it aside. She selected her building components carefully, making piles of them as if cataloguing their shapes and sizes. She tapped them with her hammer and a chisel to whittle away the sections she didn’t like, and then built them together like the pieces of a puzzle. Chunk by chunk, she piled those rocks until they led us straight up to the hole in the ground, two stories high, in a set of actual stairs that felt stable underfoot.
When we stepped outside again, I said, “That was remarkable, Vix.”
“Why thank you,” she said. “It’s always nice to be appreciated.”
The three of us climbed Vix’s stairs out of the imploded quarry cave. It took a long time to drag a series of large brown stones up the steps with us, but we did, and we dragged them all the way back to the entrance to Nola’s temple.
We were silenced by the exhaustion of hard work until we finally collapsed in the center of Nola’s sanctuary.
That took longer than expected, she thought at me.
You sent me toward a fault in the ground that collapsed and landed us two stories under with no way out, I said. I lay on the floor, staring at the roof of the temple. It was nothing like Laranj’s. Hers was full of paint and mosaic tile, all in hues of pink and purple. We’d get Nola a proper temple eventually, but first thing’s first: a front door.
But you have a spear, she said. Did you try pole vaulting your way out?
I did not, I thought. Though we certainly did consider a lot of options. Anyway, my spear is broken now, so I doubt that would have worked.
Maybe Vix can make you a new one, Nola thought. Now there was a good idea.
I sat up from the floor, expecting Vix and Cindra to be similarly exhausted. Instead, they had both made their way to the altar. They knelt before it, staring up at Nola’s serene face.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Kneeling,” Vix said. “She’s a goddess, I want to show my respect.”
I like her!, Nola thought aloud.
“And I’m just doing what she’s doing,” Cindra said. “I don’t know a thing about your customs.”
Tell them who I am!, Nola insisted. I’m the deity that puts the word you were about to lose back on the tip of your tongue before you could forget it. Tell them!
“This is Nola,” I said. “She’s in the process of evolving while Duul’s war gets closer and stronger.”
Hmmph.
“She’s beautiful,” Vix said, “and her breasts are perfect.”
I nearly choked.
“What?” Vix said. “I can appreciate another woman’s breasts.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “It’s just that I hadn’t taken the time to notice whether her… um, that is whether she…”
“Liar,” Vix said. “Is that a human thing, denying when you’re attracted to someone?”
“It must be,” I said. “Meanwhile, you said you were from Denvillia, right? How come you’re way out here in the human lands then?”
“That’s my problem. If I say I’m starting over,” Vix said, “but then I dredge up all of the nonsense I’m trying to get away from, that would destroy the purpose.”
Defeat the purpose, Nola corrected.
I’m not correcting her, I thought. I got the point. She doesn’t want me to pry. I’m still curious though.
“Arden, sweetheart,” Cindra said, walking over to me. I still lay on the floor, and by the time she got close I was staring right up at her buxom, green body. She smiled at me. “I’ve been cooped up in that cave for a long, long time. There’s something I’ve been longing for, but I’m afraid it may be a bit impolite to come right out and ask for it.”
I was getting nervous. “Really?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “I so very, very badly want it. Food. Do you by any chance have some? I don’t find that I need to eat, but I would really enjoy it.”
A wave of relief washed over me. Of course my first thought was sex – Cindra may be a magically conjured slime woman, but she had curves for days. I should know better than to think a woman would want sex from me though. I may be a head priest now, but I was sure I still carried myself like a lowly temple servant.
“I don’t,” I said, “but we could try to hunt something down.”
“Oh,” Cindra said, “are you a hunter?”
I sat up. “I’m becoming a lot of things I never thought I‘d be,” I said. “Vix, is there any way you could make me a spearhead for this wooden pole? My old knife broke off in the quarry.”
“Sure,” she said. I heard her start chipping away at a stone. “If you want a good weapon though, you’ll want metal. Stone chips too easily and won’t stand up against enemies with armor. You could buy a solid spear in any nearby city.”
“If they haven’t all been overrun by Duul’s forces,” I said. “And if I had any money.”
“Right,” Vix said. “I forgot you were broke. Here.” She walked over and took my pole in one hand, then used the other to affix a new piece to the head. The spearhead was longer and came to a sharper point than the small knife I had used before.
“I suppose you aren’t allowed to trade the temple’s jewels?” Cindra asked.
“Jewels,” I said. “That would be nice. Wish we could get our hands on some of those.”
“There’s a small pile of them over there,” she said, pointing into the darkness behind Nola’s floating crystal.
You have jewels?, I asked.
I don’t know what those are, Nola said. My first head priest collected those before he mysteriously disappeared. If you have a use for them, take them.
“Cindra, since you know your way around in the dark, would you mind exploring the rest of the temple? Vix and I can handle dinner.”
“We can?” Vix asked.
“I’m not asking you to cook,” I said. “I need a hunting partner.”
“Oh,” Vix said. “That sounds like fun actually. What do we do, dig a hole and learn how to make bird calls and slowly lure something into a pit to capture and kill?”
“I was thinking we would just use our weapons and find something edible to sneak up on.”
“That works,” she said.
“So you two will go look for food, and I’ll stay here?” Cindra asked.
“That’s the plan,” I said.
Nola?, I asked.
Cindra has good vibes, Nola said, but she’s still just a visitor here. Stay close so I ca
n call out if I need you.
Vix and I left the temple through the gaping cave mouth that she would soon make a door for. Again we walked the flat path between the ridge of two hills that led back into the forest.
“Are you really going to stay here?” Vix asked. “I know you said you were head priest, but this place is just an empty shell of a temple. It’s nothing like the ones in the cities.”
“I’ll stay,” I said. “I’ve been a weakling all my life. Now I have this amazing ability, but it comes with a price. Protecting Nola. And I’m happy to do that, because she has no one else on her team. I know what that’s like.”
“Me too,” Vix said.
“Really?”
She sighed. “I’m not running from some shady past. I’m not a murderess or a thief. I’m just one of the last few purebred foxkin. My family insisted on betrothing me to a rotten, ugly, contemptable man just because we’d have a beautiful litter of foxkin children one day.
“I don’t want that. I want to form the kinds of relationships I want, when I want them, without living by everyone else’s rules. I have rules too, ya know. And I think they’re pretty good ones.”
“Rules like what?” I asked.
“Like, for starters, not being ashamed of what I want from life. Other people aren’t, why should I be? Oh, and always striving to be the best version of myself that I can, no matter how difficult or exhausting it is. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad I met you. You’re not stingy with the skillmeistering.”
She gave me a playful punch in the arm. “And what,” I asked, “are the other reasons you’re glad you met me?”
“That brings me to rule number three,” she said. “Never show your cards all at once.”
A squawking sound up ahead caught our attention. A large bird with white feathers pecked at the ground under a bush. It wandered toward another bush, hopping along the way. Despite the violent thrashing of its wings as it made that short jump, it was too fat and round to fly.
I held a finger up to my mouth, then pointed to the bird. She understood. We stalked closer to the animal, and closer. The sun was setting, and soon it would be dark, but for now there was light enough for that bird to see us coming if we made the slightest—