by M Helbig
I gave her a deep bow. The rest of the group repeated my action and we left.
“What do we need to kill fifty of again?” Alizia asked. “And what secret was it she told us?”
Ohhhh. You Wanted Him Not Dead
After a lengthy bath in the first stream we came across, Alizia spent the rest of the journey back to Grimrag trying to convince us that she was suffering from amnesia and that the only cure was all our healing potions. She managed to coax two of them from Yary before I put a stop to it. Alizia then pretended she forgot who I was and hit me with her scepter. Olaf grabbed the weapon when it got close to the ground, and the two of us wrestled it away from her. When I threatened to have the group camp early, so she’d miss out on a night at Grimrag’s tavern, her memory miraculously returned to her. With Alizia finally settled down, Olaf drifted back from the group and waved me toward him.
“About what happened in the hylf village . . .” Olaf said.
I gritted my teeth. I’d been hoping this topic wouldn’t come up but figured it would. Perhaps it was better to just get it over with. “Which part? The one where I wasn’t sure what to do, or the part where I lost track of the mayor and he got eaten? I told you I was hopeless, so I guess there was one thing I was right about.”
Olaf rubbed his mustache like he always did when he was unsure of himself. “You are being ridiculous. None of us could’ve done anything to stop that giant carnivorous rabbit from doing whatever he wanted. You, however, did well in the fights inside the village. And I think you might have done even better if you hadn’t hesitated.”
I knew exactly the part he was talking about. It was the part where I’d asked the opinion of the group in the middle of the fight, though I’d been specifically targeting him. He was the older, wiser one. And he was a father too—a great one, from everything he’d told me. Dads are supposed to nurture and support the younger generation. “Lovely pep talk, coach. But I think it’s time you got off your butt and came out of retirement. I clearly can’t do this alone. Probably at all.” I found myself kneeling down and an inch from his face.
Olaf held his ground. His brows bent up in anger for a split second before returning to their previous level state. “You are correct that it was in the group’s best interest for me to help—the best short-term interest. In the long term, it was better for me to let you be. I know you have the ability to be a great leader, you only need to trust yourself. And you cannot do that if you are always waiting for me or Alizia or Yary to give you answers . . . And by the way, if you are looking to Alizia for counsel on anything but which alcohol will get you drunk fastest, you should probably put all your points into Wisdom and Intelligence for the next twenty or thirty levels.”
I stood, determined not to back away. “I don’t think Wisdom or Intelligence really work that way. You’re not going to change this subject, Olaf. I clearly need your help.”
“And the best help I can give you is none at all. It is time to pull the safety net away and let you succeed or fail completely on your own. It is the fastest way to learn and what I should have done for my son, but never had the heart to. Besides, my head is not in the right place now. Getting to him as fast as possible is the only thing I can think about lately.” Olaf turned away a bit too slowly. I barely caught the first tear as it disappeared into his moustache. “If I had taught him this lesson, he would not have come in here and gotten lost.”
As much as I wanted to offer a retort, I couldn’t after seeing him like that. I had a feeling he’d only brought up his son because he knew it’d stop the argument cold. “You’re still going to help us with your blade, aren’t you?”
Olaf wiped his face and turned back around. “Naturally, as long as you continue to tell me where to stick it.”
My head immediately shot toward Alizia. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was too far away to hear what Olaf had said. If she had, there was no doubt we’d be hearing filthy suggestions as to where Olaf could stick things for days.
Half an hour later, the town appeared in the distance. Two identical guards greeted us by tilting their eyes slightly and otherwise not moving. On Alizia’s insistence, we went to the bar. (In her exuberant desire to get a drink, she missed my saying we were going there as soon as possible to let the owner know her husband had passed.)
The place was packed, apparently containing more dwarves than could possibly live in the town of only fortyish houses. We were quite surprised to not find it almost empty like we had before, but we shouldn’t have been. Before, we’d arrived around one in the afternoon, and this time it was evening, probably just after everyone had finished their day’s work.
As is typical for most players, we’d assumed our little world of fighting monsters was the only thing going on. It was easy to forget these NPCs had their own lives and their own stories. While the person who built your house or grew your food probably didn’t have a story anyone wanted to read about, no world would work without them. It was with that on my mind that I forgave the raucous dwarves as they repeatedly bumped and occasionally splashed their drinks on me as we pushed through.
Though Alizia was too crushed in that space to use her long limbs effectively, her towering presence did manage to get the crowd, or at least those who were slightly paying attention, to move out of our way. It still took us a good ten minutes to navigate to the bar and almost another half an hour to get what we needed (and then several more attempts to be able to hear the response). The owner, Lagereyes, was off for the night, getting ready to celebrate her anniversary tomorrow. The pit of my stomach dropped, and this time, it wasn’t because Alizia was drinking.
“Did anyone hear where the barkeep said Lagereyes lives?” I asked in group chat.
“She lives in here!” Alizia held up her beer, bright green after she’d added something from one of her potions to it.
“This probably goes without saying, but ignore her,” Olaf said. “He said 13 Stoney Hill Lane.”
“I didn’t see any street signs out there,” Yary said. “But maybe I missed them. Can we go look, like now? I don’t like it in here.” If she hadn’t put so many points into Agility, I doubted Yary could have stayed on her barstool, the way the dwarves on either side of her were squeezing her together.
“I’m pretty sure there weren’t any signs, but yeah, getting out of here is a great idea,” I said. “At the very least, it’ll be quiet enough for us to think.”
Alizia held up her second green drink. “Who needs to think when you have this?”
I grabbed one side of her as Olaf and Yary grabbed the other. She still managed to finish her glass, but we eventually got her away from the bar. It helped that as soon as we moved her six inches away, the dwarves almost magically filled in the gap with their wide bodies. With the way blocked, she cursed a few times in group chat before eventually agreeing to leave.
After confirming that there were no street signs, and also determining that the dwarves hadn’t discovered the concept of the intersection (or that they’d overdone it and made everything one), we decided to just knock on every door we saw.
Seven doors with no answer later, Yary came up with a better idea. “Why don’t we go to the one with the light on?”
“Could you be more specific?” Alizia asked. “They all have their lights on.”
Olaf pointed at one, four houses over diagonally. “There is only one and I told you it was a bad idea to mix beer and Fishy Substance. You’re supposed to use that to gain underwater breathing.”
“When Lagereyes goes all berserk with grief and tries to drown us in beer, I’ll be the one laughing if I’m the only one who can breathe in it—That won’t make me unable to drink it, will it?”
“Once again, you have stumbled—quite literally in your case—into a great scientific question,” Olaf said. “By the way, could you stand back a little? I would much appreciate it if you didn’t collapse on top of me.”
Alizia bounced off a crate and moved toward the back of the group
.
Sure enough, we could see the familiar bar owner through the window of the house from ten feet away, though even if she hadn’t been near it, we could easily hear her from twice that distance. She was currently arguing with another dwarf we couldn’t see. We decided to wait until the argument died down, as it seemed rather personal.
“Why can’t I get this passed now? Me bar needs more room. They’ll have to start hanging from the rafters soon enough,” the first voice said.
“All new permits require the mayor’s signature before they can go into effect. It’s the law. Are ye questioning the code set down by our town’s most noble founder, Grimbeard?” the second one asked.
“Nay. Of course not. May Grimbeard continue to look over us. But this be extenuating circumstances, me husband’s been gone for three months. Ye know he’s going to sign it as soon as he returns.”
“Well, it be a good thing Tinkerbeard and me convinced a bunch of them adventurers to go off to find him, so ye shouldn’t have to wait much longer. They seemed like they knew which way to point their . . . Well, that they could take on a few of them mangy hylves anyway. Patience be the way of the fist. If ye come by me studio, I can teach ye the virtues of that and punchin’ things real hard.”
“Me patience be in me fine drinks, Fistbeard, and I added a little extra incentive in that quest for them adventurers to be hurryin’ for. I know a drunk when I see one, and that shoulda hurried ‘em up real good.”
“Even she can see you have a problem, Laffy.” Alizia tried to elbow Olaf playfully but missed and landed face first in the ground.
“Did ye hear that?” the first voice asked.
“Aye,” Fistbeard, the second voice, said. “There been people listenin’ outside for a while now. I think yer saviors have arrived.”
The door to the house slammed open and Lagereyes came out with Fistbeard not far behind. Yary waved her shiny gloves at Fistbeard, and his massive beard parted to reveal a row of crooked teeth.
Lagereyes knocked the rising Alizia back down in her frantic efforts to look past us. “Where be he? Me anniversary’s tomorrow and I need me husband.”
“Well, about that . . .” Olaf said.
Fistbeard put his hand on Lagereyes’s shoulder. “It’s a big village and ye couldn’t get to him just yet. We understand. Ye’ll eventually get to him.”
“Did ye at least find him?” Lagereyes asked. “Confirm he’s still there?”
“Well, about that . . .” Olaf said.
“I knew it!” Lagereyes wailed. “He left me for that yelpin’ hussy.”
“Well, about that . . .” Olaf said as he summoned the remains of the mayor. “We got him out safely, but then there was a bit of an accident.”
Lagereyes stared in disbelief at the body.
Alizia sauntered up and pushed Olaf out of the way. “Don’t worry. He died quickly and I doubt he felt—how much do you guys think it hurts to have your head bitten off by a giant, dagger-toothed monster? Do you think his head was still conscious after?”
Lagereyes began wailing uncontrollably.
Alizia gently patted her on the back. “Hey, at least he’s not doing unthinkable things with that slutty queen anymore. Bright side, right?”
Olaf and Yary yanked Alizia back. Fistbeard moved between us, blocking the way in case Alizia tried to move forward again.
I directed the weeping widow away. “He died valiantly protecting us from that monster. With his dying breath he told us to tell you how much he loves you.”
Lagereyes wiped the tears from her eyes into her beard. “Did he give ye anything before he died, such as a piece of paper with his signature?”
Yary shook her head. “The only things he had on him are what you see before you.”
Lagereyes dropped down to her knees and inspected his pockets. Fortunately, all the blood had somehow dried while it’d been in the dimension inside Olaf’s backpack, though with the way she was frantically digging through them, I doubted she would’ve cared. With only a few places he could have hidden anything on his simple tunic and pants, it only took her a couple of minutes. When she finished, she stood and wailed even more loudly.
A door popped open behind us and out came a dwarf wearing an apron covered in pockets and flaps full of tiny tools. “Oy! Changed yer minds about me wares?” His excitement evaporated when he took in the shattered form of the mayor. “Oh.”
Lagereyes wailed again. “Leadbeard be dead and, worst of all, the bastard was cheatin’ on me.”
Tinkerbeard patted her on the back. “There. There.”
“Worst of all is now there be no one to sign me permit.” With a manic look in her eye, she turned to Tinkerbeard and Fistbeard. “Ye two are elders. Can one of you sign it?”
“Nay, lass,” Fistbeard said. “Only the mayor can sign it. Ye’ll have to wait for an emergency election to take place. For that we’d need two candidates.”
“I’ll run,” Tinkerbeard said.
Lagereyes tapped her foot and stared at Fistbeard.
“Nay,” Fistbeard said. “That’d cut into me meditatin’ time and me drinkin’ time.”
Lagereyes shrugged. “Then I’ll run.”
Fistbeard rolled his eyes. “Ta run for mayor, ye need to be head of yer household, and women can’t be heads o’ households, except under extenuating circumstances.”
“Like after a divorce,” Tinkerbeard said.
“Well, then I’d like a divorce,” Lagereyes said. “Leadbeard was cheatin’ on me with the hylf hussy. These adventurers can confirm it.”
“That’s true, and by law it’s yer right to demand it.” The apron-clad dwarf turned to us. “Do ye confirm that Leadbeard was cheatin’ on her?”
We responded with several variations of “yes.”
“There ye be. Now can I have me divorce, Tinkerbeard?” she asked.
“By law, ye can’t divorce a dead man,” Tinkerbeard said. “Ye be a widow now.”
Fistbeard nodded sadly. “If he had come back alive from that hylf village and ye had killed him for his cheatin’ after, that woulda been an extenuating circumstance.”
“Which ye’d put me in jail for.”
Tinkerbeard shrugged. “Aye, but ye woulda been head of yer household.”
“And ye could run for mayor from in there too,” Fistbeard said. “Though I’d imagine, it be hard to campaign from behind bars.”
Lagereyes growled in frustration. She looked to be about to pounce on the other two dwarfs but caught herself at the last second. “This’s all ye and yer idiot group’s fault! He’d still be alive if ye hadn’t tried to save him.”
Yary was barely quick enough to backpedal away from the furious dwarf’s whirling fists.
“Not true,” Alizia said as she summoned her shield and moved to protect her friend. “He would’ve probably still died having the naughty fun with that OK-looking hylf queen if we . . . What was the story you made up to make her feel better, Yary?”
“Alizia, shut up,” I said. “Does anyone know how much Mute scrolls cost?”
Alizia crossed her arms. “They’re free if you ask me real nice, Horus, but I’m not letting you have any. Besides, they only stop you from casting anyway. Deccy wasted a lot of money when she tried what you’re thinking, you naughty boy.”
Fistbeard and Tinkerbeard finally restrained Lagereyes, though even with their prodigious weight and strength, they barely managed. “Ye and yer group killed him, ye red-headed elven hussy,” Lagereyes said. “And I don’t know what is was ye were looking for here, but if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make sure ye never get it!”
“Hey,” Alizia said. “I’m not an elf. I’m a green-haired forest giant. And my blood is the only thing red on or in me—stupid town with no healing potions.”
“She’s talking about Yary. You know, the person she’s pointing at and who’s currently standing in front of her,” I said. “Not everything is about you.”
“Agree to disagree, and just for
that, I’m not telling you my brilliant idea.” Alizia crossed her arms.
As Lagereyes steadily pushed forward the other two dwarves holding her, Yary retreated further and further until she bumped into me. “I don’t think we’re going to convince her,” Yary said. “I think we should leave before it gets any worse.”
“How could it possibly get any worse?” Alizia asked.
All three of us stared at her with knowing looks in our eyes.
Alizia reluctantly agreed. “You’re right. I am that good.”
“We should probably head to the inn now, if we want to sleep in beds for the night,” I said in group chat. “It’s the only one in town, and since Lagereyes owns it, we’ll need to check in under assumed names before she gets back.”
“No fair. Who told you my brilliant plan?” Alizia pouted. “Well, at least you missed part of it.”
“We’re not having a few drinks before we check in,” I said.
“Double no fair! Can we—”
Lagereyes let out a roar as she surged forward to get in range and barely missed catching Alizia in the side with a vicious haymaker.
Alizia spun around and ran. “Fine, but I get to pick the fake names we use to check in with. Yary, you’re gonna be Lady Caroline Fancybottom, Olaf’s Major Mustache, and Horus: Jerky von Jerkindinger IV.”
Well, I Didn’t Vote for Him
We managed to check into the inn without incident, and no one arrived throughout the night to throw us out. We didn’t take the free breakfast included with our bill, fully expecting to run into Lagereyes, and hastily made our exit from the inn early the next morning. We bought some stale biscuits called mine cakes from a street vendor and breakfasted on those.
“So we failed the ‘Save the Mayor’ quest and the only other one we have doesn’t give Grimrag faction.” Alizia made a different disgusted face with each jaw-crushing bite of her mine cake. “Now what?”
“Fistbeard said the mayor was the best source of quests for this town,” Olaf said.