Homebrew

by Xavier P. Hunter

  Beldrak nodded curtly. “Then let us onward.” He took one long stride to lead the way.

  “No! Wait!” a voice cried from behind them. All of them whirled to find Nethel clad all in white, including a hooded cloak, and wearing a mask. But the voice was unmistakable.

  “You!” Braeleigh snarled, drawing her bow.

  d20: 16 + (DEX -1) = 15

  To his utter shock, Gary’s 15 had come out on top of the Initiative. He stumbled into the path of Braeleigh’s arrow and threw his arms wide. “Hear him out! He didn’t have to reveal himself.”

  Gary didn’t know what was going on. None of their interactions with the thief had gone exactly according to plan, and this was out of scope of his notes back home. But something told him that there was more to gain from parlay than collecting a belated bounty.

  Especially since there was a good chance Nethel had an escape already plotted.

  “You can’t go in there,” Nethel said. “You’ll all be killed.”

  Braeleigh stepped aside to clear her shot but didn’t take it. “Why would you care? We were trying to capture you.”

  “You’re not bad people,” Nethel said, keeping his hands where everyone could see them. Though, for a level 7 thief, there was only so far a dagger would ever be from his reach. “Some of the stuff I heard in Sillimar gave me second thoughts about picking you all off in your sleep, so I tailed you.”

  “All the way from S-s-sillimar?” Zeeto asked dubiously.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Sira asked bluntly. “What’s the cost of a few deaths to a selfish thief like you?”

  “He killed my friends,” Nethel said. He pulled back his mask. Tears welled in his eyes. “We were adventurers. Like you. We came here to rob the place, and I was the only survivor.”

  Zeeto snorted. “That’s wh-wh-what you get robbing a w-w-wizard.”

  The sudden fury on Nethel’s face had Braeleigh pulling her bowstring back even farther. “He’s not a wizard, you chatter-tongued little oaf, he’s a—”

  “Dragon,” Gary said softly. But every eye turned toward him.

  “You knew?” Nethel asked. “And you came anyway?”

  Beldrak gaped. “I knew not.”

  “Me either,” Sira replied.

  “Um, no clue here,” Braeleigh said. “Why didn’t you tell us if you suspected, Gary?”

  “I don’t suspect. I know. I know a lot, and I can’t explain how in any way you guys would accept. I don’t know everything, but I know that Kurgath is a guise he puts on to leave this place. Nothing changes our plan though. We go in, grab Miriasa, and get out without raising the alarm.”

  “Um, nothing changes until an angry dragon flies down from the mountain and torches the house at 14 Zephyr Street like he did Club Talis,” Zeeto said, his anger warming his words, so they flowed from his tongue without chattering.

  “Miriasa will be strong enough to give him pause, once she fully recovers,” Gary swore. They all stared at him as if a stranger had donned his skin. “What?”

  “Who the ever-loving hell are you?” Zeeto asked. “And I don’t want to hear an answer that involves being a quirky foreigner from mythical Palo Alto.”

  “Where’s that?” Nethel asked. “Never heard of it? And I’ve traveled.” Then he added in an undertone. “Being on the run from a dragon incentivizes wanderlust.”

  “None of us have heard of it before,” Zeeto said. “Beginning to think it doesn’t exist at all.”

  Gary sighed in the face of the anger and distrust suddenly turned his way. “I’m beginning to as well,” he admitted. “I’ve been here far longer than I imagined possible. Let me just say that I see and experience this world just a little bit differently than all of you. It’s like seeing a puppet show from around the back. I can see the hands at work sometimes.”

  “What do we do now?” Braeleigh asked Sira. “Miriasa still needs our help.”

  “Nab this clown and make the trade,” Zeeto said. “Screw Gary’s plan, whatever it really was.”

  Nethel backed up a step. “Wait! Don’t do it. I’m willing to help rescue your friend. It maybe a little bit my fault she’s in this mess, and I wouldn’t sleep well for weeks if something happened to her.”

  “Whole weeks?” Sira asked dryly.

  “If your friend has inside info, you’d be fools not to use it,” Nethel added. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  “Perchance explain how our wizard plan transformeth into a trick fit for dragons? ’Twas a weak and mewling plan from the first and only shows itself weaker against more formidable opposition.”

  Gary looked down at Nethel’s boots, the ones he knew to contain a short-range teleportation enchantment. He stepped nose to nose as the thief held his ground. “You’re about my height. Those magic boots will resize, but I bet mine would fit you just fine.”

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Nethel warned, resuming his backward retreat. “This is my insurance against betrayal.”

  “Your insurance against betrayal is the fact that we need you,” Gary said. He looked to his friends. “Whether you believe me or not, think back on all that we’ve been through and all the times I’ve been of aid. I’m at my best when words and knowledge are my weapons.

  “So… if any one of you want to be the one to walk alone into the dragon’s lair to buy time for a rescue mission, step forward. Otherwise, hand over those boots before I come to my senses.”

  56

  Nethel’s feet fit easily into Gary’s work boots. The trade felt lopsided. Gary might have consoled himself if he’d come to Pellar in tennis shoes. Any self-respecting thief with access to Earth footwear would have preferred rubber soles over even the softest of leather.

  Acquired Farjump Boots: Teleport up to 1,000 feet. Cooldown 5 minutes.

  He wondered if he ought to warn their borrowed thief about the squeaking noise they made when scuffed. But Gary had bigger problems right now.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said, making eye contact with everyone in turn. “The five of you are going to work your way through the lair without raising the alarm for as long as possible. Nethel’s been here before, so he’s going to lead the way.”

  d20: 7 + (Perception +4) + (He’s Hoping Someone Overhears +10) = 21

  “Into a trap,” Zeeto muttered.

  Gary dropped a scolding finger into line with the halfling’s face. “Knock it off. Don’t start it back up. You two are going to be working in tandem. Stealth Attacks should be taking out as many targets as possible unaware. I want things dead before they can even roll for Initiative.”

  Nethel cocked his head. “Roll for what, now?”

  Gary held up his palms to forestall questions. “Hands up the puppets’ backsides. Forget it. Just kill before anyone can react. Braeleigh, I need you to work with Caspian to sniff ahead and make sure no one gets the drop on you.”

  Braeleigh scowled at her companion. The wolf sat beside her, tongue lolling, oblivious to her displeasure. “He didn’t tell us Nethel was following us.”

  “To be fair, I was sneaking him pork jerky as a reward for his silence,” Nethel replied.

  “Sira, your main role, assuming nothing’s gone wrong by then, is to focus on healing any injury Miriasa has suffered in captivity. She hasn’t contacted Braeleigh again, so who knows what Kurgath did to her to prevent another attempt.”

  With a nod, Sira acknowledged.

  “Beldrak, this whole mission really isn’t playing to your strengths,” Gary said.

  “My all and my every be yours to command,” Beldrak replied. “Thy strangeness excuseth not thy omissions, but thy worthy deeds tip Makoy’s balance in thy favor. A rope can but be pulled in one direction, and I pulleth on thy mark.”

  “Hang back. Stay as quiet as that armor allows. Once you reach Miriasa and Sira gives the all clear to move her, it’s very likely she’ll need to be carried from the lair. On the way out, you’re the key to this rescue plan. Until then, you’re a liabilit
y.”

  “What’s your plan, Gary?” Braeleigh asked. “I don’t like that you’re going in there alone to talk to him. If he’s really a dragon, he might just eat you.”

  “He might,” Gary admitted, trying to project nonchalance.

  d20: 9 + (Persuade +8) = 17

  He cleared his throat, unable to tell who was buying the act. Faced with the prospect of delivering himself empty-handed to a dragon intent on hunted bounties was a recipe for adventurer flambé. “Look. Your part’s plenty dangerous. I’ve got Nethel’s boots. If things go to shit, I’ve got a good chance of getting away. Nethel’s done it once already. But if I fail, he’ll come for the rest of you.”

  Braeleigh came over and wrapped Gary in a hug. “Please don’t fail. I don’t want your poor reflexes standing between you and getting eaten.” She squeezed a little tighter. “Or us getting eaten.”

  Zeeto’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Gary’s gonna be fine. Just fine. He’s full of enough shit to choke a dragon. Sure he is.”

  Swallowing back his pride, Gary knew the halfling felt betrayed. All through their adventures, he’d been making everyone’s life a little easier—but not as easy as he could have. Gary had allowed them to struggle through puzzles, wander through underground cities, and pull a certain landscape-altering level… all without providing the answers he possessed.

  How long would it be before a reckoning? How much would they piece together for themselves? Would they even believe him now if he tried to explain it in terms they could comprehend?

  “Look, if we’re going to do this, let’s do it,” Sira said, pulling her cloak close around her. “It’s freezing out here, and night is falling. At least inside the lair, it’ll be warmer.”

  “Right,” Gary said. “I’ll be sneaking around to a secret passage Nethel used his last time here.”

  “But I—” Nethel began before Gary cut him off with a glare.

  They hadn’t discussed any secret escape routes. Gary knew how Nethel had escaped because he’d annotated it on the map of this dungeon. The human-sized secret back route directly to the treasure horde was marked “Nethel’s escape route.” It was in there that the thief had hastily donned every bit of stolen magic he’d grabbed from the treasure pile in the hope that something had the power to save him.

  As Gary watched his bone-chilled friends depart into the dragon’s lair, he didn’t envy them the warmth they were about to experience. Despite having a twenty-minute hike through snow ahead of him, Gary knew that the next open flame he felt might roast his flesh from the bone.

  57

  Gary stomped to knock off the snow from his Farjump Boots. It had taken him longer than he hoped to find the entrance. Strange how different a snowy mountaintop looked compared to a sheet of gridded blue lines and black gel pen describing it on a map. Nowhere had he documented the deplorable lighting, the wind-driven snow reducing visibility, or the treacherous footing.

  But to serve as an effective hidden entrance, he supposed it couldn’t have been easy or obvious.

  The passageway was rough-cut, almost natural-looking in its absence of straight lines or plumb floors. Hacked gouges in the rock told a tale of fear-driven slaves working under a deadline whose ominous euphemism had no doubt turned literal the moment they completed the tunnel. Gary backtracked it, feeling the warmth of the mountain seeping in to return feeling to his extremities. He muttered to himself to make sure his lips and tongue were loose enough for the task they shortly faced.

  Scale was another matter that graph paper failed to adequately convey. Even his enhanced intellect struggled to parse one grid being fifty feet and what that came to represent in footsteps.

  Luckily, the extra walking gave Gary time to collect his thoughts. It slipped from the fore of his mind that he needed to get to Kurgath quickly so as to occupy the dragon’s attention. All would be for naught if the tale he spun came across transparently. A slip of the tongue and he might as well announce that he was there as a distraction.

  As the tunnel twisted and turned, Gary came to a wider section with a row of mannequins. Each was different. All were in disrepair. There were dummies made of wood and ones of wire. Some had arms while others had limbs that were nothing but stumps. Only a few had heads. One was merely a cruciform pair of bars that hung its garments like a scarecrow. For that was the function of each mannequin in Kurgath’s secret exit; each held one human-sized outfit.

  Every garment in the lot showed some sign of dishevelment or damage. Some were in better shape than others, notably the ensemble that Kurgath had recently worn to visit 14 Zephyr Street and kidnap Miriasa. But there were others there as well. A noblemen’s finery. A black jumpsuit fit for skulking in the shadows. There was a lady’s ball gown as well among the finer pieces.

  Several articles of clothing had been stained with blood.

  Gary swallowed. Details. Sometimes the little details of the world struck him with the casual horror of the things he’d written offhandedly as scribbled notes. He’d designed this corridor with the most barebones of descriptions: “two dozen mannequins with plundered clothing to wear in human disguise.” The rest was filled in with details that made that all work.

  Kurgath had stripped victims of his attacks and the corpses of dead adventurers he no doubt ate shortly thereafter. How many tailors had he killed over the centuries to have collected so many display racks for all his attire? How many fates had Gary sealed with an arbitrary number on a page?

  It was time to turn that casual power into something with teeth.

  Or against something with teeth, he supposed.

  As he stepped out of the crack and into the dragon’s treasure room, he was greeted with a pair of slitted reptilian eyes narrowed directly at him.

  “I thought you’d be in there all day,” the dragon rumbled. Its voice was deeper, rougher, but still clearly the same being that had run roughshod over Durrotek’s underworld of late. “I was worried I’d have to transform to oust you manually.”

  The creature was magnificent. A work of natural art. One hundred feet long if he was a dozen, the long sinewy body snaked across a slapdash mountain of gold and silver coins. Two pairs of clawed feet on stubby legs broke up the serpentine uniformity at roughly a third of the way from either end. Its head was a trap-jaw of sword-sharp teeth and nostrils like the nozzles of flamethrowers. Tentacle-like whiskers writhed and twitched like a living mustache.

  Gary steeled his nerves. “Greeting, Zebaxkurgath. Yes, don’t look so surprised. I know your name.”

  The dragon slithered past and regarded Gary from a new angle, still looming. Still poised to strike. “The thief didn’t know it, far as I could tell. And you’ve met him, I see. You wear the boots he stole from me.”

  “And I know how to use them,” Gary warned, trying not to piss himself at how close he stood to being devoured. “I’m here to set the terms of a bargain you’ve kept intentionally vague.”

  “So… you have him?” The ground vibrated beneath Gary’s feet.

  “My friends have him,” Gary corrected. “They’ve sent me to strike the deal, since… frankly, I’m expendable.”

  The dragon’s laughter hit Gary’s chest like the bass at a dubstep show. It wasn’t Gary’s cup of coffee, but he liked to keep the local music scene friendly. And Zebaxkurgath could have blown out the speakers at any nightclub in town.

  “You’re a self-aware little piece of meat, now, aren’t you?” the dragon taunted. “Well, I’m willing to keep my bargain. The thief for the elf woman. That includes all that was stolen from me, as well.”

  Gary held up a finger, hoping the gesture wouldn’t be taken as one of those “sudden movements” that set off hair triggers. “There’s the problem, see? Nethel still had a couple trinkets on him, but he spent nearly all the cash and hawked a bunch of the less fungible treasures to fuel his partying and whoring. That’s actually how we finally tracked him down; we staked out his fences.”

  “I don’t care about
your methods! Bring him to me!”

  Gary backed up a step, but he’d ventured farther into the vast chamber than he’d realized. Something hypnotic in the dragon’s manner had lured him forward unwittingly. Now, the creature slithered past and encircled him with its bulk.

  “I’m… I’m not prepared to leave here without a deal,” Gary said, cursing himself for betraying his fear.

  “Leaving here is your reward for obedience and humility,” Zebaxkurgath growled. “Defy me, and I’ll swallow you whole, track down your friends, and vomit up your carcass as a promise of the fate that awaits them if they don’t give me what I desire.”

  “Hey, I’m not saying we won’t hand over Nethel,” Gary said, forcing himself to go through with playing hardball when he could so clearly envision the scene where the dragon barfed him at Braeleigh’s feet and the terrified shriek that would ensue. Zeeto would be equally horrified but find some dark humor in the matter. Beldrak would throw down a gauntlet along with all caution and reason and launch a suicidal attack. “We just need to agree on terms first.”

  “You try me,” the dragon grumbled, though some of the steam had vented from his teapot. “If not for the troubles catching the wearer of those infernal boots, I’d incinerate you where you stand. But rest assured, if you flee, I’ll hunt you down as well.”

  “Master,” a voice called from the main entrance. “We have—”

  “Silence!” the dragon bellowed. “Another word from you and I’ll eat your family while you watch.”

  Something snapped inside Gary. He was tired of the threats, the weakness, the fact that he was the butt of jokes and the anchor around the party’s neck. They needed him, and even if he didn’t care about the life of the lizardling guards who haunted the caverns, he needed the dragon to care about nothing but the conversation right in front of him.