by David Morgan
Chapter 10
Dex opened his eyes to find himself in a place he did not recognize. The sun shone in through wide windows, opening up to an inner yard with lush grass, thick trees, and a swimming pool.
He felt weak—weaker than he’d ever been. His pills. Where were they?
He stood up, catching himself on the coffee table—his clothes and hat sat in a pile on the adjacent sofa. He dug through the pile, stopping when he found his belt. He reached into the small leather pouch and took a couple of the pills. The red pill is a hard pill to swallow, but missing a dosage could be lethal.
A tall, powerful man walked into the room.
“You’re awake.” He said, “Welcome to the land of the living.”
“How did you find me?” Dex sat up in the bed of a strange house. “You’re the blacksmith,” he remembered the chain mail stand near the entrance to the tavern.
“We’re a guild,” answered the blacksmith. “And I’m just one member. I go by Cruxx,”
“You rescued me.”
“I saw you go in with Edwin, and then I saw Jiggles—those two are bad medicine. I thought you might need some help, and we’ve kind of got a knack for raids, so I sent someone to follow you.”
“Who?”
“Me.” A beautiful girl with a bright blue streak in her hair popped into the room carrying a tray with a teapot and some small cups. She placed the tray on the table, poured a steaming liquid into each of the cups, and handed one to Dex and to the Blacksmith.
“This is Fantasia—the other two raiders—are Mickey and Jaxxon5—you’ll meet them in a minute.”
Dex looked to the girl, “The waitress?” remembering the beautiful girl and the warning in the mug.
“The waitress,” she nodded. “I take it you didn’t see my warning?”
“No I did—why did you…”
She tilted her head and clicked her tongue. “I always do that,” she said, pretending to be mad at herself, “I drew the mark too low, didn’t I?”
“Well I don’t know—I passed out long enough for them to take me down to that torture chamber.”
“You weren’t supposed to pass out---it would have been good to have you in the fight,” she said. “Oh well—one day I’ll learn.” She said, shrugging her shoulders.
“You’ve done this more than once?” Dex was wondering just whom he’d met up with here.
“We like raids,” Cruxx said, “only usually it’s in WoW. But raids against psychos like those guys can be promising. Never trust the furries.”
“Who are they exactly?”
“More like ‘what are they?’…” Fantasia corrected.
“They’re freaks, that’s what they are,” said a third person—now joining them in the room. “They started out tolerable—they kept to themselves and we had a sort of live-and-let-live attitude at the Faire. After all, we’re all freaks. But you’ve gotta draw a line somewhere—when you don’t, you get Furries.”
“So they’re...”
“…people. At least they were once—underneath of those costumes. Most of them never come out of them and it’s rare you’ll see one with their mask off. But it gets weirder,” the man explained, “they’re not attracted to humans…sexually.”
“They’re evil, and they’re well-funded.” Cruxx summed it up.
“Well-funded?” Dex was confused. “How?”
“As weird as they are,” Fantasia answered the question, “they’re good with business. They’ve got a few sex shop operations around the deep web—selling (and making) porn to cater for their particular fetish…and they’re everywhere.”
“They’re weak on their own, but their strength is in numbers,” Cruxx added. “They’ve got doctors, lawyers, I’ve even heard that the owner of a major hotel chain is a furry. Hell, they’ve even got police on their side. But the ones with influence, of course, don’t advertise—they’re stay-at-home furries.” He concluded.
“Anyhow,” he continued, “they’ll be looking for you—and us, if any of them recognized our faces. I’ve got protection with my contacts at the Ren Faire—but--”
“What does that mean?” Dex cut him off.
“It means that I can go where I want, even right into their nest and they can’t touch me.” The tone of his voice signaled no need to dig further.
“…but the rest of the guild needs to watch out. Jiggles—there’s a reason they call him the Palantir. He’ll be watching, no doubt.”
Dex thought about the twisted appetite of those tortured souls and remembered the poor, surgically mutilated Edwin, “Where is Edwin?” he asked.
Cruxx and Fantasia looked at him in a way that, without words, said everything he needed to know— Jaxxon5 just looked at the floor.
“He’s…” the girl started.
“He’s gone.” The blacksmith finished for her. “He didn’t want to go on…and we couldn’t let him live…not like that. The summabitch put up a good fight against those weirdos though, I gotta say.”
Jaxxon5 kicked a chair and swore, “Those guys are sick, man—this can’t have been the first time they’ve pulled this shit. Edwin was a douche—but even he didn’t deserve that…it’s a crime against nature!” He shook his head as though it might somehow heal them from their perversion.
He turned to the girl and the blacksmith and sighed, suppressing his righteous anger, “Guys, Mickey and I have to head to the shop—we have a huge shipment coming in, ordered from Japan.” He turned to Dex, “Stay safe.”
“What’s the shipment about, did you get a sudden influx of body-pillows? Fantasia was relieved to change the subject to something a bit more lighthearted.
“Hah—something like that,” he laughed, “We’ve actually got a few of those coming in—but mostly a whole lot of Japanese language Manga.”
“Seriously? Who speaks Japanese around here?”
“I don’t know—some fat kid came in and ordered a whole bunch. He was funny looking and funny sounding—but I learned a long time to not ask questions from these dweebs. I care only about the cash. Then some girl came in the next night and ordered another couple hundred as well.”
Dex sat up. “What? A girl? What did she order?”
“I can’t even tell you,” he said, “A few I knew and a lot I didn’t—but it was all in Japanese. She looked like a native.”
Dex took to his feet, but fell back down, wrapping his arms tightly around his stomach and grunting in pain, breathing heavy.
“You need to take it easy—Manga’s not your problem at the moment.”
“No. It’s not the…” Dex keeled over.
“Cruxx?! What’s happening…?” Fantasia asked.
“I don’t know. Dex!” Cruxx called out, trying to wrestle him from the floor.
“Dex!!”
“Mickey!!” Fantasia yelled, and he came running in.
Again Dex regained consciousness, weaker than ever after throwing up all over the floor.
“What’s this?” Mickey, the fourth member of the guild, asked, holding up one of the red pills.
“It’s…mine.” Dex said.
“Well, whatever it is—you can’t take it anymore.”
“What?! No! I need it!”
“Look at that thing on your ass, Dex.” Look at what they did to you. That’s no ordinary tattoo, you realize. That’s the mark of a Brony. It’s having adverse reactions to whatever this is.” And he tossed the pill to Dex.
“But I need the red pill—or…beta…” Dex didn’t know if he could trust these people, he decided it best to not say too much.
“Well take them again—and you may not live to take another.” Mickey responded. “It’s having an adverse reaction with the Brony Mark.”
“I need the red pill.”
“You don’t get it, Dex. They marked you. You’ve got to bear that scar now--forever.”
Dex sighed deeply as ‘forever’ sunk in. The Red Pills were the source of his strength—his
resistance to her influences, without them…he didn’t want to find out what might happen. He couldn’t bear the thought.
“I’m going to leave Jaxxon5 to handle the shipment—I know an apothecary at the Faire that might be able to treat this. I’ll see what I can dig up and I’ll be back. Hang tight and don’t take any of those pills. It could mean death, your body can’t handle both the Brony baptism and the red pill.”