Really?
We needed a drink or three to celebrate!
“We will continue to monitor for aberrant behavior and respond accordingly. If you learn aught else of interest, whether actionable or speculative, let us know.”
Although it was appreciated, Dragonboy’s speech had the flavor of a recording.
Maybe public speaking wasn’t his strong suit.
Or, more likely, saying anything positive was a stretch requiring much practice.
While my mind rambled, Dragonboy continued. “You will all be rewarded for your efforts.
“Many thanks for everything you have done and all the lives you have helped save.
“May the Light guide and keep you.”
I looked over to where Kordeun and Yocto were grinning like young boys given their first puppy.
“Ya think they got ’em all?” Kordeun’s smile faded as he considered his own question thoughtfully.
“Odds are slim,” replied Yocto. “My simulations show that even a complete neutralization of ANGST within Alyon will not halt their plans.
“However, it may be some time before ANGST is able to marshal their forces and return to Alyon in strength.”
My initial excitement dimmed. “This all sounds a bit too easy, everything all tied up at once.
“I don’t feel like I’ve been dragged through the mud long enough.”
Not to be a downer, but it was true.
You don’t squash a few bugs and think your cave is rid of cockroaches.
You light the walls on fire and let them turn to molten slag.
After you let the magical fires cool (for normal fires would not do) and the walls resolidify, then you can move back in with some confidence that no roaches will be in your house. At least until your roommate leaves the door open after forgetting to dispose of the trash.
Then the incinerations have to begin again.
“We can keep lookin’, but we’ll have ta change how we’re doin’ it and what we’re lookin fer.”
“You’re right,” I said, trying to feel positive. After all, we had just helped take out a major hidden terrorist element in the city.
I should be feeling great!
We should be drinking!
“Let’s celebrate with something to drink,” I offered, hoping that enjoying some spirits would buoy my mood.
“Know anything nearby?”
Since I seldom crawled out from under my rock, I didn’t know where to go for refreshments around here.
And I did not want to rely on the Construct’s recommendations.
37
“I know just the place,” offered Yocto. “There’s a small hole in the fourth wall bar not too far from here. You’ll enjoy it.”
I had no idea what Yocto was talking about, but if they served alcohol, I would put up with just about anything.
“Sounds good to me,” I said with a sweep of my arm indicating he should lead on. The manacles fastened around my wrists clanked with the gesture.
Yocto struck off down the lane toward who knew what random structure that would house a bar in the Center City.
I loped behind Kordeun down the trail, the manacles on my ankles jangling as I walked.
I sounded like a bad ghost trying to make an impression.
The time had come to update my attire.
I did not need to be dragging chains behind me everywhere, especially in a bar.
I might risk breaking a glass.
Something spilling there would be a tragedy.
I stopped, waiting for Yocto and Kordeun to face me. “Hold on a minute. Is there any way you can get me out of these chains?”
“You want to keep them, correct?” asked Yocto. “Not that I could easily damage them…”
I nodded.
I did not want Yocto to try to destroy the chains to get them off, but I did not want to sound like a poor imitation of a revenant, either.
“I’d like to keep them intact for the belt,” I offered by way of clarification.
“Who has a chain belt?” I added for emphasis.
An orc had to have some sense of style, after all.
And a chain belt!
It didn’t get any better.
Yocto nodded, seeing an easy solution to the problem where I saw none. “What if I just teleport the chains off you?”
I pursed my lips and nodded in appreciation of his solution. I would get to keep my wrists and ankles and the chains.
A win-win!
“Great!”
Yocto began mumbling as though he was talking himself through a particularly difficult problem, drawing complex symbols in the air all the while. Sigils glimmered momentarily around the chains and then exploded into sparkling incandescence.
My skin tingled.
The chains disappeared and then reappeared floating in the air, surrounded by swirling energies.
Except now the chains were different.
The four chain fragments that had been around my wrists and ankles, each ending in a manacle, had been looped together to form a single chain through a multi-part teleportation. The chains had been connected partway along their length, leaving the manacles to hang down from the links that had been connected above. The hanging manacles left four loops that I could easily hang things through.
Exciting, pretty things.
I gleefully imagined outfitting myself with an axe, a mace, a sword, and a warhammer in each slot.
Yocto beamed proudly, taking in his creation, as he explained, “The metamagics describing chain motion are rather complex, especially when coupled with multiple simultaneous translocations.”
Kordeun reached out and took the newly interlinked chain from the air, examining it with an expert eye. “Ya’ll need somethin’ ta hold it together if ya want ta use it as a belt. Unless ya want ta try and tie a knot with it ta hold it on?”
Kordeun looked at me quizzically for the answer.
A knot would be nice and dramatic, but it would also risk the belt falling off on the slight chance I ever had to move quickly. “Something to hold it on would be nice.”
“Here ya go!” From a pouch at his waist, a magician revealing his prize trick, Kordeun pulled out a silver metal loop. On one side was a movable bar that he used to snap over one of the chain’s end links.
“Ya open and close it like this,” he said, pushing up and down on the movable bar that sprang back in place whenever he let go to reestablish the closed loop.
“Ya fasten it over tha other chain link like this.” He demonstrated, snapping the loop on the other of the end chain links. The bar moved, allowing the loop to clamp around the chain link.
“Now ya have a chain belt ya can take on and off easily enough.”
“What is that thing?” I asked, almost as impressed with the link connector as Yocto’s intricate metamagics.
“It’s a carabiner. We use ’em fer climbin’. They come in handy fer holdin’ stuff. I like usin’ ’em fer flasks.” He reached into his pouch again and gave me a handful. “I’m guessing ya’ll need more.”
I guessed he was right.
38
We approached a crystalline column wider than my apartment at the base. It reached skyward taller than the surrounding trees, splitting the afternoon sunlight into luminous beams that flowed across the forest floor as clouds moved overhead.
Unconcerned with the crystal’s apparent solidity, Yocto walked right through.
Kordeun followed.
I walked confidently right into the solid stone surface.
The crystal was smooth and cool to the touch where it had smashed against my face.
I bounced backward dramatically, although there was no acting in my rebound. Staggering backward, I managed to catch myself before I fell to the ground.
I bet everyone in the bar was watching avidly my misadventures in entering.
I now knew with certainty what happened when a stoppable force met an immovable object.
Poking his
head back out of the pillar, Yocto said, “You have to visualize the crystal opening before you, like a door.”
“You could have told me that before,” I grumbled.
“But then we would have missed watching you try to walk in,” he laughed, then ducked back inside with a smile before I could wring his neck.
With friends like mine, why did I try to get rid of my enemies?
I avoided crushing my face the second time I tried. When I emerged on the other side, everyone was clapping. Glasses were raised in my honor.
I could not help but smile.
Initiations are great.
The bar interior was a study in glass. Everything was crystalline, from the walls to the ceiling.
Patterns pulsed and danced within the reflective surfaces, adding both a sense of otherworldliness and an intimate privacy to the space.
The room was filled with occupants, mostly gnomes, whose outfits made the dancing lights seem tame by comparison.
Losing the chains had been a good idea.
I would have been a dragon in an apothecary in here.
A particularly unwelcome, glass-shattering dragon.
And right now, I was the center of attention.
I raised my hand and offered a timid wave.
Everyone cheered.
It was good to be the new guy.
Now.
Grinning, I walked over to the bar to rejoin Yocto and Kordeun as everyone resumed their normal conversations.
“Quite the place,” I said as I sat down, my anger forgotten after the unexpectedly warm welcome.
“It is,” replied Yocto, already holding something that bubbled and shimmered warmly in the soft light.
In fact, everyone’s drinks seemed to glow in here.
“What’s with the lights?” I asked.
“The patterns have been shown to encourage conversation and relax guests.”
Apparently, Yocto knew this place well. Or, more likely, an internal Abstract or some other data source made the difference nil.
“And drink more, I’d imagine!” laughed Kordeun.
“There is that, as well,” replied Yocto, sharing his jest.
I gestured to the barkeep, a glassy humanoid who could have been carved from the walls, and said, “I’ll take the house specialty.”
Whatever they served here had to be interesting.
I was rewarded with a flashing decanter of liquid crystal that cavorted in tune with the bar’s walls.
Bringing the glass to my lips, I took a tentative sip.
Taste splashed through my mouth, a glacial melt of unsullied snows, the wash of clear rain, and the openness of unbounded skies. Emboldened, I took another draught.
Taste recrystallized, solidifying over my palate in a wave of soothing emotions and sensations.
Why in the multiverse didn’t Orthanq serve this?
Why hadn’t I ever tried it before?
I might need to move in.
An island of stability amidst the flowing, mutable patterns shifting along the walls, a projection of the evening Alyon news held everyone’s attention.
The reverie from my first sip starting to fade, I realized everyone was watching the broadcast with bated breath.
I could not imagine being this captivated by a projection unless it was a Wizarding match.
The new broadcaster spoke while I came back to myself. “Pulleywedge, what’s the latest word on the street?”
The news anchor talking was a well-dressed gnome in a three-piece repair suit. His rich brown eyebrows were curled into a distinguished bouffant that refused to let the viewer’s attention wander from his beaming face.
The scene switched from the anchor in the studio—an eclectic workshop filled with found Paratechnological objects—to a streetside view of a building billowing smoke and virulent multicolored sparks.
“Thanks, Nailwidget. Things are not as grim as they appear here and at similar locations around the city.” The reporter was a female gnome floating in a coruscating bubble. She rotated and spun, moving without apparent gravity, entirely independent of her surroundings.
“We have confirmed that the Home Guard have performed sweeping raids across the city, gathering up or eliminating terrorist cells of ANGST—a gnomish antieverything extremist group—in a coordinated assault.”
The image cut to several simultaneous scenes of Home Guard in shimmering armor flying, charging, and blasting their way into buildings, caves, and other assorted structures across the city.
“This, coupled with the discovery by the Construct of a broad-spectrum antidote for the transmutagen variants, means ANGST’s latest threat to the city appears to have been neutralized.
“Inside sources attribute the success of these missions and associated efforts to three eminent Citizens of Alyon—Grak P. I., Kordeun, and Yoctoerg.”
The screen flashed briefly to a smoke-filled scene with a team of Home Guard retrieving a hulking green orc from a dusty pit in the ground.
That would be me.
On my failed attempt at reentry after the explosion at ANGST’s not-HQ.
Yocto and Kordeun were spared the not-so-silver screen.
“Alyon is in your debt, champions of the city!
“Back to you, Nailwidget!”
The image shifted away from the gnome reporter drifting aimlessly in her protective bubble in front of the building being subdued by Home Guard.
She looked as out of place as a jellyfish floating through the air in the bar.
On second thought, a jellyfish would fit right in here.
I was too embarrassed to pay the broadcast any more attention.
All I’d wanted was some free booze.
Hardly the stuff heroes are made of.
But now I might get free drinks across the city!
“Well,” I mumbled, “that certainly is unexpected.”
“And ill-advised,” clucked Yocto.
Kordeun nodded. “Aside from makin’ me mum proud, all that did was put targets on our backs.”
I sighed.
Being a hero didn’t feel all that heroic.
But it certainly bolstered one’s thirst.
I raised my glass while I still could. “To no more adventures to come!”
“I’ll drink ta that!” snorted Kordeun as he smacked me on the back.
“To no more adventures!” echoed Yocto.
If ANGST could be anti-negentropy, I could be anti-adventure.
Being an anti-adventurer wasn’t all bad, I decided.
Especially when drinks were involved.
Epilogue
I said my goodbyes—at least I think I managed to say my goodbyes—sometime later.
I would see Yocto and Kordeun again soon, but first I had business to attend to.
Although I was in no condition to drink more, I decided the time had come to get Orthanq to begin paying up on his obligation.
The city was saved, at least for now, so Orthanq’s bar should have clients able to drink, and, although not exactly thirsty, I was always ready to drink.
I stumbled out into the evening air—had I been inside that long? Surely, I would have seen the sun set through the walls of a giant crystal—doing my best to pretend I had not been drinking these past few hours.
I decided two things as I meandered unsteadily homeward.
First, this trail needed rails. I was about to fall off with every step.
Second, whoever was making the trail undulate should make it stop. Otherwise, I would be sick.
And also fall off the trail, since it didn’t have rails.
The woods were strangely still as I dragged and scraped my feet along the path, holding my arms out protectively lest the world jump toward me unexpectedly. In retrospect, this was probably just the good Citizens of Alyon giving me a wide, respectful berth.
Unused to respect, I did not notice.
“Need a ride, Grak?”
I was no longer alone.
Cretus!
My alcohol-induced brain fog dropped like a hot pan picked up without oven mitts.
My bumbling, stumbling advance had not gone unnoticed.
“Do not make eye contact! Do not make eye contact!” I urged to any self that might be listening.
I certainly wouldn’t.
I made eye contact.
Cretus was hovering overhead solicitously, his undead bat and fauxhawk aflutter in the moonlit evening air.
“Jus’ headin’ home,” I garbled, ducking my head and trudging onward determinedly, my cause already lost.
“I’ll help!” offered Cretus.
Oh no!
Help!
Help!
After Epilogue
I sobered up really quickly, bobbing through the air in the giant net Cretus had used to capture me as I tried to run—read, stagger—away.
Where did he get these things, anyway?
As many times as he had caught me in a net, he had to have a factory making nets just for him.
Unless, of course, he summoned them, which would make more sense.
But what ever truly made sense with Cretus?
What other public transport driver stalked his clients like a hunter in search of big game?
Who else targeted the unsuspecting and defenseless in order to get an evening fare?
I could think of no other.
But I really couldn’t think right now.
At least not very well.
Which, I hate to admit, was not much different than usual.
Sadly, my body itself, not Cretus’s unwelcome flight, had sloughed off the barrels of alcohol I had consumed far too quickly.
A magical, regenerative metabolism has its downsides.
The plus is that I can always drink more.
I try to look on the bright side.
As the ropes cut into my flesh and I had no option to do anything but look around, I took in the valley’s sculpted sweep, the city an irregular patch of phosphorescence below, spreading up the mountainsides and jumping to Alyon proper above.
Home is grand.
Especially when I’m in it.
“Almost there!” yelled Cretus.
Grak: Private Instigator (Orc PI Book 1) Page 16