I think my body was doing its best violin bow impression.
It certainly was screaming.
Yoctoerg Surgewave took that as his cue to enter.
And when I say cue, I mean like an actor entering the stage with full dramatic flair before an expectant audience, under silent—although, to his internal monologue, full volume—stage direction.
Yocto somehow managed to balance two heaping piles of food, probably just enough to keep Kordeun from eating the furniture, while twirling around on blazing, rocket-propelled roller-skates.
And that was the least dramatic piece of Yocto’s Paratechnological ensemble.
If you imagine a mad scientist taking all her spare parts for an interstellar rocket, dismantling them and reassembling the pieces at random, and then covering them in Heaven’s own glitter, then the barest suggestion of Yoctoerg’s glory begins to emerge.
He was a Paratechnologist extraordinaire, which also meant he was a terrible dresser.
On the bright side, all that glimmer and glamor kept people’s attention away from me, which was always a plus.
“Glad to see you’re up and almost around, Grak!” He skated over next to Kordeun and began to dish out piles of food.
Neither up nor around, I grumbled, “Getting there.”
I was about as hungry as Kordeun, but I was afraid to mention it. For all I knew, if I did, some giant feeding tube would descend from the ceiling and start pumping me full of victuals. Such were the horrors of this place of ‘healing’.
“We’ll get you out of here within the day, don’t you worry.” Yocto’s smile lit up the room without needing to rely on Doctor Ilnyea’s empyrean corona.
“Grak was just about ta tell us about his adventures.” Kordeun somehow managed to speak coherently around several mouthfuls of food taken in a single bite.
“Great! I can’t wait to hear straight from the source! The news has been full of conjecture. The Construct’s simulations have been enlightening, but I prefer to get my information directly.”
Who needed to deal with reporters when I had two friends eager to rake me over the coals for information?
Knowing there would be no delay to my tale, I sighed, accepting defeat and the inevitability of reliving the joys of the past few days, and said, “It all started when I tried to use the bathroom at the King’s Crown…”
4
Unlike the last time I had visited the hospital, I waited for the orderlies to release me from the cast instead of breaking out in a rage.
I should have stuck with old habits.
There were no orderlies, however, no matter how long I waited. Instead, when I was finally deemed ready, an iridescent beam, mottled with rainbow colors swirling slowly in random patterns like an oil film wavering on water, passed over me several times, originating from a central point in the ceiling. The reinforced chitinous shell dissolved like smoke.
After the bands holding me in place had retracted, I was left lying on a flat tabletop in a hospital gown that was probably large enough to use as a tablecloth for the table’s cool surface. The once-shredded remnants of my clothes, now repaired, were folded carefully on a crystalline countertop in the corner. Below the clothes, my magical chain belt, reconstructed from the manacles ANGST had first used to hold me in their dungeon, rested weightily on the glass. On top of the clothes, the magic pouch holding my brother and his pocket dimension home waited for attachment to my breeches or belt.
Gruke, my Chaos-gifted little brother who had single-handedly wiped most of ANGST from their lair like last month’s unwelcome bathroom mildew, had not emerged to check on me even once during the entire time of my hospital stay.
That was probably better for everyone involved.
If he had come out, there might be many more people who needed to visit the hospital.
Even if we were already here.
“You are fully recovered and free to go, Citizen Grak.” The soothing voice of an Abstract filled the room with a whisper. “When you are ready, follow the illuminated lights to leave the building.”
This was a clever ploy. There were so many lights and symbols floating in the air down the hallways of the hospital that keeping track of anything was well-nigh impossible.
I think most were intended to lure patients deeper into the maze, perhaps to be digested and reprocessed like fluids in a pitcher plant.
“If you have any questions regarding your recuperation, you have but to ask.”
I had lots of questions, but I did not want to stay here any longer. Questions like, ‘Is this how you treat all your guests?’, ‘Were these tortures specifically designed for me?’, and ‘Who in their right mind would come here of their own free will?’ were among them.
Wary of a trap, I kept my questions to myself.
This hospital had a sneaky way of readmitting patients.
It lurked in wait until you were most vulnerable, then sucked you in when you were unable to defend yourself or object.
“Thank you for your stay. We hope that we have surpassed all your expectations.”
The hospital and its staff surpassed my expectations every time.
But not in a good way.
I wondered how many criminals were locked away inside this place ‘healing’ even as I donned my clothes and left.
We might never know.
Disoriented, confused, and famished, I emerged some hours later into the light of mid-day outside the hospital.
I finally made it out by sheer dumb luck, tagging along behind a family with a young child. Using my investigative intuition, I rightly assumed that no parents would keep their healthy children in a hospital like this for too long. After a few failed attempts, I happened upon a family taking their child to the relative safety of the lobby gift shop. From there, even I could figure the way out.
I stepped out into the sunlight as the weight of mountains, and remembered mountains, lifted off my chest. It was good to be alive. It was even better to be alive and free.
King’s Crown, here I come!
“Grak, what can you tell us of your ordeal in ANGST’s secret lair?”
“How are you feeling? Have you fully recovered after your battle with the terrorist cell?”
“What are your plans after defeating one of the city’s greatest adversaries?”
“Will you attend any of the celebrations in your honor?”
“Is the city truly safe, or are there more cells lying in wait?”
As soon as I stepped outside, questions came like blows from all corners. Hovering drones buzzed around me thicker than flies around a fresh corpse, recording my every move. Reporters lay in wait behind the first wave of the news infantry, plotting their next moves.
Dazed, I slowly spun in a circle as I got my bearings.
Only a few short paces beyond the reporters, the wide tree-shaded lanes and parklands of the Center City awaited. If only I could reach them.
I took a deep breath, remembering Kordeun’s admonition.
Before I could flee, I needed to justify the city’s faith in me.
Not much of a conversationalist, I did my best to answer the questions I heard, those I had heard, and those I anticipated hearing. “It was a world of suck.”
Could I say that on the news?
Had I offended the listeners?
Oh, well. I could only be me.
I am, after all, an orc.
They would cut me a little slack for my failings…I hoped.
“The gnomes teleported me to their lair to try to kill me twice. First to the dungeon of one of their homes, and then to their lair on the moon when I was trying to go to the bathroom.
“They were a sneaky lot. I’ll give ’em that.
“At least for the transmutagen I found, combinations of common household ingredients created the agent responsible for the monstrous transformations.
“While the Construct and Yoctoerg sorted out how to neutralize the mutagen’s effects, Gruke—that’s my brother�
�and I smashed the faces of most of the antinegentropy gnomes in their lair.
“Well, Gruke did most of the face-smashing. I smashed their central power core, which blew the whole place up.
“Then the mountain fell on me, and I thought I was dead.
“When I woke up in the hospital after my rescue, I wished I was dead.”
I refrained from saying why.
The hospital, after all, was paying me to use the healing factor in my blood and cells to heal patients. I did not want to hurt my primary source of income by damaging theirs.
“Are there more out there?”
“Will they strike again?”
“Do you know what, if anything, is or was targeted?”
More questions flew at me faster than I could answer.
I needed to find a way out.
I could charge through the drones, smash my way through the reporters, and be home free.
But then I might put these relative innocents back in the hospital I had just managed to escape.
I could not do that to them.
At least, not yet.
“I do not know. ANGST could be anywhere, strike anytime, and do most anything.”
There.
That should answer most of their questions.
At the expense of raising their fears.
“Grak!”
“Grak!”
Unsatisfied, reporters were calling my name from every direction.
I was starting to get desperate.
Just then, my salvation swooped down on the ragged, decaying wings of an angel.
Well, maybe not an angel, but a giant decomposing undead monster bat.
Quicker than the reporters could say, “Would you grant an exclusive interview?”, Cretus had thrown a net over me and started hauling me skyward.
Normally, I would greet such an arrival with all the joy of another visit to the hospital, but this time was different. Cretus was actually coming to my aid.
Or he was just looking for a fare and hoping for a nice tip.
“I gotcha, Grak! Jes lemme know where ye’re off ta, and I’ll get ya there!”
His sweeping fauxhawk bobbing in the wind, Cretus clung to the back of his undead bat like a barnacle resisting the movement of the tides.
Cretus is an aerial goblin taxi driver who nabs unsuspecting passengers and threatens them with rides across the city.
In desperation, Citizens threw money at him to be free of his clutches.
Since I had saved him several times in the past, Cretus felt duty-bound to track me down almost everywhere I went to take me wherever I needed to go.
Or anywhere he felt like dropping me off.
Generally from a high place.
The city is riddled with the impact craters of my failed landings from Cretus’s aborted rides.
Of course, he makes these journeys as harrowingly fear-inducing and dangerous to me as possible even when he isn’t dumping me from the sky.
“Home, Cretus! Take me home!”
5
You haven’t lived until you’ve been trussed up in a net by a mad goblin flying a monstrous undead bat.
Believe me.
I speak from experience.
Whether you live through the experience is a different matter entirely.
Wind whistled past my ears as I swung back and forth with each beat of the bat’s skeletal wings.
I knew the thing did not need to flap its wings—it flew by magic, and its wings were in tatters—but the bat did not know that.
Old habits die hard.
Especially for the dead.
Those wing flaps did have the desired effect, however.
They made me lurch and tumble, sway and swing, as uncomfortably and violently as was possible, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground as Cretus flew me home.
If I could have actually paid much attention to the view, I would say that the city of Alyon, nestled gloriously between two formidable ridges of the Dwimmer Mounts, was a true sight to behold.
Not being able to behold much other than the ropes holding me in place, I missed the soaring trees, verdant dells, sparkling waters, and hidden ways of the Center City, where the homes and businesses of Alyon’s earthbound Citizens blended seamlessly with the natural landscape.
Further, other than indistinct gray blurs, I could not describe the formidable graven slopes and entries to the Undermount, home of dwarves and gnomes beneath the mountain, or the untouched splendor of the wooded slopes sheltering the Undercity, home to monsters and me, under the valley’s opposite range.
If I had not been struggling to hold on for dear life, for I knew Cretus could cut me loose at any moment, I could have described the celestial gem that is Alyon, cityship in the sky, sheltered by the glassine branches of Alldrassil, the world tree, as she hovers protectively above the city, shielding us from potential outside dangers.
I can, however, say with absolute certainty that the ropes holding me aloft were coarse, splintered, and dark gray. If the ropes could be mended, they should have been several times over, for they were frayed in many places. Further, they squeaked terribly as the rough fibers shifted and rubbed against each other in protest of their poor treatment and the travesty of carrying my great weight.
Being a compassionate passenger, I wished for my release from their bonds as fervently as the ropes wished for my departure.
We got our wish far sooner than I would have liked.
“We’re here!”
I looked around desperately, trying to get my bearings.
Here?
Where was here?
To the best of my addled assessment, we were still in the sky, well above my home in the Undercity.
“Wait!
“Cretus! We’re nowhere near home!” I screamed urgently, trying to get Cretus’s attention.
“Bomb’s away!”
It was in that moment, as I felt the support holding me aloft in the heavens fall away, that I realized why Cretus had used such a cheap net.
They were disposable.
Like his passengers.
6
I refused to scream.
Screaming did not help.
This, too, I knew from experience.
I plummeted earthward like a meteorite realizing its destiny.
The ropes of the net whipped around me more frantically than the beating of my beleaguered heart. I could have tried to get out of the ropes, but that would have just made something else fall from the heavens to potentially land on someone. This way, only one identified falling object would smash into the rapidly approaching cliffside.
As I watched the jagged cliffs of home approach far too quickly, I vowed to ask the Construct to install an AEGIS for the city. The Anti-Expulsion Grak Impact System would do wonders for Citizen safety as well as my own. As an added bonus, it would make a nice acronym for Paratechnologists who were always looking for new abbreviations to use at the most inopportune moments.
Yes, AEGIS had a nice ring to it.
Unlike the impending sound of my impact.
Luckily, the forgiving granite slopes below me were clear of Citizens I could squash with the impact of my crash landing.
I smashed into the earth with a terrific thud and a massive plume of dust. Rocks exploded, showering the mountainside with a cascade of mineral rain.
I groaned.
The wind had been knocked out of me.
I did not bother to try standing; that would come with time. I decided it was better to recover, so I nestled down in the fissure created by my impact and took a nap.
That way, any pedestrians unfortunate enough to watch my precipitous fall would get bored and would leave before I woke up.
It would also save me the embarrassment of explaining how my taxi had dumped me from the sky, abandoning me to my fate yet again.
Something had gotten me!
Something terrible!
It was pulling me under.
There was nothing
I could do to get it off me.
Wherever I turned, the amorphous thing had me in its clutches—sharp, scratchy, and itchy.
I started awake, flailing my arms and legs wildly.
The net refused to budge.
Stupid net.
It gave me nightmares when I was asleep and when I was awake.
With a growling groan, I disentangled myself from the net and threw its ropey clutches away as I stood and stepped stiffly out of the impact crater my fall had left on the mountainside.
The mountain slope here was steep but manageable.
Scattered leaves and a few branches on the ground told me I had narrowly missed the trunk of one of the trees growing overhead during my plummet.
Although I could see no entrances to the Undercity, I knew which way to go to get there.
Cursing Cretus, the parents who had given him birth, and my luck for having helped save him long ago, I began the long scramble down the mountain to one of the many entrances to the Undercity and my home.
7
While the entrances to the Undermount are grand, marked by carven images of idealized heroes and champions of yore, the entries to the Undercity are just entrances.
They are nondescript and unadorned.
Some are natural cave openings, while others are cut simply from the natural rock.
I like to think that the folk living in the Undercity, generally considered monsters, are interesting enough without unneeded extra decoration.
So, while a gnome Paratechnologist may adorn herself with glamors and technobaubles, and a dwarf Baera’Dur may be festooned with honor-signifying kazzak, most monsters of the Undercity come as we are.
Our presence carries enough weight without our resorting to distraction.
And the ingresses to our lair are similarly understated.
Besides, we receive enough attention without needing to draw more.
We are, more often than not, happy to be safely included in a place without persecution or ridicule.
Grak_Orc on Vacation Page 2