When we last left our troupe, they’d come face to face with the Sands Dragon at last. And he knew more about their quest, it seemed, than they did …

“Yes. I am not sure who hired them or why, but it’s in my best interests to control this situation. I want you to finish your work and find the Flush for me.”

“Then why send a squidiom after us?” Lester asked.

“I didn’t. I sent it after the Brothers. You didn’t know they were behind you in the Golem?”

The questers looked ashamedly at each other. “I see not,” the Dragon continued. “Before you ask, why pick you over them? Simple. You possess four of the Flush. You stole one from their grasp, the one they must have been gifted years ago and guarded jealously.”

He paused. “I’m not sure how or why they received it, and yet, they never followed through with their own quest to collect the rest of the Flush in all that time. Instead, they used the scrunchie to further their careers. I suspect whoever bankrolled them isn’t too happy.”

“You five, on the other hand,” the Dragon said, as the screen slid up into the ceiling. “Appear far more motivated. Thanks to Optima, my people have had a chance to review your contracts. Personally, I’d not have signed away so much. However, I offer you this deal. Find the remaining items for me. I’ll buy out your existing contracts, provide legal representation should your current backer attempt to sue, and I’ll provide a 15% bonus treasure structure and a matching annuity.”

The ghost stood. “Discuss and my lawyers will be down in 15 minutes.” He drifted towards the wall.

“WAIT,” Valkane said. The ghost stopped and looked over his shoulder. From the portion of his face that was visible, Valkane thought he saw him smiling.

“Yes?”

The Dragon was a legendary figure in the business world. Valkane felt a trifle awed he was able to get the man’s attention. Valkane sighed. He never felt comfortable with negotiations or dealing with authority figures. He wasn’t even a fan of confrontation in general. But the rage had proven something to him. He had to be himself. “THIS DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT.”

The Dragon turned, a slight scowl on his features. “‘Doesn’t feel right’? I’ve made my terms perfectly clear.”

“YES. YOU HAVE. BUT BREAKING A QUEST AGREEMENT … THERE ARE SEVERE PENALTIES FOR THAT. HOW DO WE KNOW YOU WON’T WANT US TO DO SOMETHING ELSE HORRIFIC?”

The Dragon laughed. “Like what?”

Valkane could think of only one thing. “KILLING A PUPPY OR SOMETHING.” He could feel Renisha’s eyes rolling behind him.

“Killing a puppy? What on Quarth …Can you imagine how many legal teams I employ, just to deal with the goblin unions at my properties? Contracts, like promises, are made to be broken. If I assure you there will be no repercussions, then there will be none.”

“NO LEGAL ONES, PERHAPS.” Renisha looked at him with an odd expression. Had it been anyone else, Valkane might have thought her expression suggested respect, but he couldn’t allow that to derail him at the moment. “WORD GETS AROUND. WE’D BE UNEMPLOYABLE.”

“Hence the annuities. You never need quest again.” The Dragon turned to float into the wall.

“AND YOU JUST TOLD US CONTRACTS ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN. HOW CAN WE TRUST YOU?”

The Dragon stiffened. Valkane felt the others at the table also tense up. Even as he marveled at his own boldness, Valkane realized they may be about to see firsthand why so many people who requested an audience with the Dragon never reappeared. The Dragon laughed, and kept on laughing. It didn’t sound like maniacal or evil laughter. It wasn’t the giddy laughter of friends sharing a private joke. It sounded like the laughter of someone surprised at how amused he found something.

Without turning around, the Dragon headed into the wall. “You can’t. Fifteen minutes,” he said, and disappeared.

“Forsooth, he shall make us rich,” Optima said.

Lester shook his head. “No way. It’s career suicide.”

“Ahh, but we’d not need careers after this. Thou heard his offer.”

Renisha said, “It’s too risky, Optima.”

“But fair cleric, the risk is all mine, not thine!”

“HOW SO?”

“In truth, ’twas I who hath subcontracted thee. ‘Tis my neck mine employer would seek to forcibly detach from my body in the case of such a breakage of contract. However, in our brief discussions, the Dragon doth assure me he can pay out what my compact be worth.”

Renisha leaned back, rubbing one eyebrow as she often did when she was unsure of something. “That does let us off the hook. If word gets out, we disavow him.”

Valkane grumbled. “THAT DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT.”

“Right? Don’t talk to me about right!” she shouted. The others stared at her in surprise. “There’s little ‘right’ in the world. It wouldn’t matter what levels I get to. I’ll never be moved up in the hierarchy. Sure, barbarian women get treated as equals, but the clergy is still an old boys’ network. Swanee is female, for kitchen’s sake, yet there’s not a priestess above level eight.”

She stood up, her hands on the table. “How can you ever become a magic-user, no matter what money you throw at spells or training?” Valkane’s eyes opened wide. Yes, Optima knew, but Pendajo wasn’t privy to his secret wish. While the ex-paladin seemed uninterested in anything but his flask and cigarette holder, Valkane was shocked that Renisha would verbalize it in front of him.

She swung around to Lester before he spoke. “And you! Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on with you and Narbeth. She Scryed me the night before we left, aghast at what you’d said. How is anything ‘right,’ when we have little to no chance at ever getting the things we want? Aren’t we as good as the next people? Don’t we deserve the same chances as anyone else? Aren’t you tired of people like the Crockery Brothers benefitting from the inherent unfairness of the world? Why shouldn’t we take whatever deal we get offered and help ourselves?”

The room was quiet. Even Pendajo stopped the near-constant slurping from his flask. Renisha sat down, her face glistening with righteous anger and a sheen of sweat from her outburst. Valkane looked at Lester. As always, his face was hard to read. Valkane suspected that Renisha’s knowledge of his love for Narbeth was fricasseeing his half-human side and perhaps crisping part of his elf side, as well. Optima looked smugly satisfied. Valkane had to admit, as harsh and judgmental as Renisha’s words were, they rang true.

What path of destiny or fate would ever lead to him being a magic-user? To Narbeth falling in love with Lester? To Renisha, the most capable and competent person he’d ever known, rising up to a legitimately meritocracy-based position in her church? For Pendajo to wipe away his past and re-paladinize? For Optima to …

TO WHAT? he wondered. That was what none of them knew. Did everyone on Quarth have these types of unattainable goals? Was that simply life — to go through it knowing there was just one, two, or seventy things you simply could never have or be? Depression pulled his limbs downward more fully and completely than any gravity pool could.

“Should we put it to a vote?” Optima asked. His grin suggested he knew the outcome or that the outcome didn’t matter. He would get his way.

“NO,” Valkane said. He stood, and for once, was glad of his impressively large frame. Years of squeezing into chariots and non-barbarian-sized benches in school, staying at Lester or Renisha’s relatively fragile homes always inhibited him, but not today. ‘THERE IS NOTHING TO VOTE ON. WE ARE NOT DOING THIS.”

“Maybe you’re not,” Renisha said.

Valkane shrugged. “DO AS YOU SEE FIT.”

“I will,” she said, with the tartness of a medusa-hair-infused lemon gum drop.

Valkane looked to Lester. “YOU?”

Lester’s face remained impassive. Valkane guessed he was torn between going along with Renisha, as thieves didn’t typically have the moral compass that humans did, and anger over what she’d revealed. He stood. “Let’s get out of here.”

“PENDAJO?” Valkane asked. The ex-paladin inhaled the last of his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the tabletop.

“That guy’s a dick, he’s dead, and he has crappy vodka,” Pendajo said. “Let’s roll.”

Valkane looked to Optima. If he joined them, he knew Renisha would relent. Valkane tried to summon every erg of sensitivity he could to access the M Power. There was nothing. He stared deep into Optima’s eyes, flashes of their prior activities racing through his mind like the lights from a constable chariot’s siren.

Though Valkane knew it was most likely fruitless, he tried to convey in a single glance to Optima that this was the right way. Only together did they stand the best chance to find the rest of the Flush and, for Kloord’s sake, didn’t the other night mean anything?

Optima turned to Renisha and bowed his head. “I’m at thy command, milady.”

Valkane turned quickly, knowing that if Renisha saw the liquid burning in his eye, she’d never let him live it down … if they ever spoke again. He stomped out of the room, Lester by his side, and Pendajo trailing behind.

Study Questions

1. Name two of the three life-ruining penalties for breaking a quest agreement.

2. What elf/human romance did the famed Swanee playwright, Frederico de Pastille, write that notoriously closed three days into its run?

3. Explain the theory of magical mental communication using the M-Power method.

The tunnel led well past the outskirts of the city. It took them most of the night to traverse its length. As it finally upended, the first rays of dawn were shining down its exit portal. After a quick consensus, the group decided to keep going. The Los Tropes constables or even the Serif National Guardians might be called in to investigate the incident. Their Scryes got no reception in the tunnel, so they couldn’t confirm anything, but the destruction of a major landmark had to be big news.

Once again, Corky was the only one who could traverse vertically, and Valkane, rather than get inside the sour, woven stomach, allowed them to make it to the surface first, then send ropes down for him. He climbed up, weary from the whole night, and stopped for a moment at the rim before heaving himself up.

He stood and looked around in amazement. The meadow they stood in was lush and tropical. It felt as though they’d travelled to the rainforests of Ligaturus. The dawn sun sparkled through drops of dew on broad orangeleaf ferns, squared-off brick palms, and wizardfingers, each of the plants’ five green stalks wiggling with tiny, multicolored blooms that shook off like the glitter from a magic-user’s digits.

“This doesn’t look like the outskirts of Los Tropes,” Pendajo said. There were murmurs of agreement; Lester held his Scrye up to see if it received any signal. There was none.

A bemused voice from behind them spoke. “It’s usually considered at least an outskirt.” They turned to see a handsome older man in a plain black tunic and simple ebon trousers. The clothing was of a cut, style, and material that proclaimed that the wearer spent more money on the one outfit than Swanee, Kloord and Xhall’s temples combined took in over a decade’s time. The unpleated slacks fit with military precision into the tops of his glossy, dark boots. His salt-and-pepper hair was combed neatly back, and he had piercing blue eyes, the color of the sky reflected through thick icicles. Two guards, also clad in simple black tunics, which also probably cost the equivalent of two to three quests’ salary, stood at attention, though not aggressively so.

Valkane recognized the man instantly, though there’d been no paintings, drawings, or Scrye images of him in years. His simultaneous disdain for publicity and his ruthless notoriety made him iconic to all of Quarth. In his living days, he’d been a bon vivant and society playboy. After he became a recluse and then a ghost, he remained a go-to figure for the gossip tabloids. Almost any action he took was scrutinized, evaluated, mimicked, or simulated.

“YOU’RE THE SANDS DRAGON,” Valkane said.

The man bowed his head slightly. “I have been called that. I also answer to Chad.” As he said it, Valkane remembered that was the Dragon’s real name. “Chad Harringstone. A pleasure to meet you all.”

“You didn’t happen to send that squidiom after us, did you?” Renisha asked.

His ghostly eyes twinkled. “Not exactly. I imagine you all have a lot of questions. But now isn’t the time.” A few exotic birds chirped and squawked as the morning sun inched its way over the mountains like an exhausted climber. “You’ve been travelling all night in the squidiom’s tunnel, no? Some sleep and then we can chat. Vincent?” The guard on his left nodded curtly and extended his hand, indicating they should follow him.

Lester, Renisha and Valkane looked at each other. Valkane shrugged. They were where they meant to come. The man could have killed them by now. Plus, he thought as he stifled a yawn, I NEED SOME SLEEP.

Vincent led them to a row of guest suites around a man-made lake. Valkane gratefully entered, ducking his head against the low ceiling. He saw the bed and fell on it, face down, and was asleep almost instantly.

The only good thing Valkane could say about waking up later was, at least, he didn’t wake with a kraken-sized hangover again. However, every other part of his body hurt almost as bad. He lay blinking in the unfamiliar surroundings, his thoughts trying to push through the groggy fog that blanketed his mind like the setting of a low-budget horror play.

Gray sunlight peeked around the corners of the drawn blinds. Valkane couldn’t gauge what time it was from the weak color of the rays. The light could belong to mid-morning or mid-afternoon, or it could already be the following Kloordsday. He felt achy, extremely sore, and his breath could incapacitate a platoon of brownies (the living kind). The cuts on his legs and arms had scabbed over, and the deep one on his outer thigh stuck to the bedsheet. He had to rip it off, leaving congealed blood on the sheet. Valkane tried to rinse it out in the sink, but the stain wouldn’t disappear. He imagined the Dragon could afford premium cleaning spells, or simply some new sheets, for that matter.

He gargled some from a travel-sized bottle of mint water conveniently placed next to the sink, which helped prepare his breath for his next foray into polite society. He splashed his face and used water to tame the worst of his bedhead. He left the cottage and looked around. The day was cloudy, which he’d not expected in the desert. The effect was somewhat melancholic as he looked around the lush grounds. The main house lay to the north, past the lake, so he headed towards that.

Near the lake, he saw Renisha and Lester sitting on a bench, Corky romping a few lengths away with some multicolored margarineflies. He headed toward them.

“’ Bout time you got up, rage monster,” Lester said. “How you feeling?”

Valkane stretched. “OKAY. STIFF.”

“I’ve never seen a berserker rage up close,” Lester said. “Impressive. Especially coming from you.”

“WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?”

Renisha snorted. “Val, come on. You’re as mild-mannered as … a pixie scout. I never thought I’d see that come out of you.”

“Me either.”

“I AM A BARBARIAN,” Valkane said. Now that he’d achieved a true rage, he didn’t like the implication that he’d never been able to, or suffered from berserker rage dysfunction, which usually only happened to barbarians at the end of their careers.

“No one’s saying you aren’t,” Renisha said. “It’s only that you never did it before. Why now, I wonder?”

He didn’t want to get into that with her. Bad enough that Lester probably had some idea. “MAINLY THE PAIN OF FALLING OUT A COUPLE OF STORIES.” She nodded, accepting that as the reason. “WHEN DO WE TALK TO THE DRAGON?”

“Optima and Pendajo are up in the big house, already. We were waiting on you. It’s almost three of the clock. C’mon,” Lester said. They left Corky behind, snapping his jaws in vain at the slippery, yellow-winged insects.

The main house was minimal in design and décor, but impressive. Solid concrete buttresses jutted out at intriguing angles, yet achieved an aesthetic balance with the rolling hills the estate compound was situated on. Large glass panels allowed in a maximum of light, creating rectangular patterns on the mostly bare floors and walls. Wood planks were set into the polished concrete floors at certain points, delineating the start of a separate room or area.

Next to a three-story-high study, filled with perfectly-shelved books and one painting done with architectural precision of the first of the Sands Dragon’s hotels, was a rectangular, polished concrete table, ringed with luxurious but sturdy dragon hide-covered chairs. Optima and Pendajo sat opposite each other. Pendajo waved with his stein, which sloshed a bit of an unidentifiable purple liquid onto the tabletop. Valkane and the others sat among them. Valkane chose to sit between Pendajo and Renisha, and as far away from Optima as he could politely manage. Optima seemed to take no notice.

“Well met, my savage soldier! How art thou?”

“GOOD,” Valkane rumbled.

“Hell of a thing,” Pendajo said, slapping Valkane’s back. “Knew a barbarian back in my Glyph days, he could throw an impressive rage, but nothing like yours.”

“THANK YOU,” Valkane said. He felt embarrassed now. “WHERE IS OUR HOST?”

Thanks to the subtle power of Quarth’s Narrative Coincidence (and the fact that the Dragon was an extremely wealthy ghost, who had the time to lurk invisibly in places in his own home), the Dragon said, “Right here, my friends,” as he emanated from the wall. He seemed solid enough, far more so than the ghosts they’d encountered in Doornail. Perhaps it was his black, non-reflective attire. The Dragon passed through the table and sat in the chair at the head of the table.

Valkane wondered briefly about that. How did he not fall through to the floor? For that matter, how did any ghost not simply fall through the floor and substrata of Quarth, passing through the molten core and out into the stars? Did ghosts have to essentially hover in place? Valkane shook his head slightly.

“I’ll get right to business. You may know, I’m not a fan of having living beings around.”

“In truth, we appreciate thy audience, my most —” Optima began, but the Dragon waved a hand to cut him off.

“I have certain spells in place to protect me from any germs spread by the living, but I do need the sanitizing service in here as quickly as possible, so please do me the courtesy of allowing me to talk and send you on your way,” the Dragon said. “Now. You asked about the squid. It’s come to my attention that you are questing for the Flush Royale. No, don’t protest. My sources are unimpeachable, even if they are alive.”

The ghost waved, and a small screen slid down in front of the wall at the far end of the table. Valkane was closest to that end, and he had to shift his chair noisily around to see it without getting a crick in his already sore neck. Magical images projected on it.

“As you can see in this presentation, the Flush Royale is indeed quite real. I congratulate you on getting four of the items already.” Valkane felt a compulsion to speak up and say they only had three and a half, but decided against it. “The last will not be so easy, but I can tell you where it is.” The image changed to an old, sun-beaten Pyramid with a dazzle sign explaining it was the Pyramid Resort and Gambling Den.

“You may ask why I aided you — no, don’t interrupt, that was rhetorical. And aid you, I did. It was nothing to contact the tavern and ask for a change of music. Or send a discreet message to the State Lion or the Arch Chancellor, saying how grateful I could be if your band of Adventure Capitalists … I do approve of the name, by the way, could be assisted in small ways.”

“Here’s what you may not have realized yet.” The image changed to a flow-chart, which then split into two flow charts. “There are two simultaneous quests for the Flush Royale going on.”

Valkane was surprised. Despite not wanting to interrupt the Dragon, he couldn’t help himself. “WHO ELSE?”

The Dragon glanced at him. “I’ll allow that one. I believe you’ve met them several times already.” The image changed to a publicity photo of …

“The Crockery Brothers!” Renisha said.

Study Questions

1. At the time of his death, how many hotels did the Sands Dragon own?

2. In the five-year period after his death, how many hotels did the Sands Dragon acquire?

3. How many hotels are currently controlled by Dragonsands LLC?

Multi-colored tentacles, dozens of dragon lengths long, adorned with vile, discolored suckers, wrapped the building from a gaping hole in the sand. Rows of suckers pulled off chunks of the building façade with pops and slurps, then re-stuck slightly higher apart with a squishing hiss. Each slap of another tentacle shook the hotel more. Valkane guessed this was embodying the phrase “a squid loose in a glass smith’s shop,” or “squid thrashing on the desert floor.” Either seemed entirely too on the nostril to be the type of existential threat a squidiom should embody. Still, squidioms could morph in battle, if they started feeding off an opponent’s own idioms or metaphors.

“TESTICLES OF KORRD! HOW DO WE GET DOWN?” Valkane asked. Lester could probably shimmy down. “RENISHA!” Valkane turned toward the door, intent on saving her.

“Val! She’s with Optima! He’ll have spells. And the dragon! We don’t! I can make it, but how do we get you down?” The elven equivalent of anxiety flashed through Lester’s dark eyes.

Valkane assessed. He was tough and strong, but they were stories high. If he survived, he’d break a leg or arm and have no way to continue the quest. He had to figure something out. There was nothing in the room that seemed like it could help. Only his sword and …

His sword. “JUMP,” Valkane said, holding onto the window frame as he pointed.

“I’m not leaving you,” Lester said.

“I’M RIGHT BEHIND YOU,” Valkane said, hoping he wasn’t lying. In theory, his plan SHOULD work. He’d seen some stunt barbarians do similar things on his Scrye. Still … it would take a huge degree of coordination. AND LUCK, he thought.

Lester perched, then seemed to drift downwards. Lightly, he hopped from parapet to parapet. He grabbed a window ledge and looked back at Valkane.

On the ledge, Valkane tensed. Every thew was ready. This would save him or kill him. He chose not to imagine his cold body, squashed onto the pebbled parking lot below. “KLOORD BE WITH ME,” he said to himself. AT LEAST I CAME ONE LAST TIME BEFORE I TRIED THIS, he added.

He leapt. Kloord or sheer luck was with him. His descent seemed to unfold in slow motion. He pulled his new broadsword out from the scabbard with both hands. The stalk of the tentacle was as large around as one of the red, papyrus cups that littered the Gill Sands beaches after a group of teen giants’ bonfire parties. The thick mass angled away from him slightly, but Valkane stabbed it perfectly.

The flesh was tough but not armored. With all his strength, Valkane pushed the sword deeper, almost to the hilt. Even with his mass and momentum, the meaty gristle of the creature held him up. The sword sliced downward jaggedly, and Valkane hung on, falling rapidly, but in a somewhat controlled manner, to the ground. He passed Lester, whose eyes fairly bugged out with surprise or from the stench of the sword combined with the opened wounds of the creature.

However, the pain from the wound travelled faster than the barbarian. Valkane was only 30 or so feet from the ground when the hole in the sand bellowed. Green ichor sprayed as another tentacle slapped against the ragged, long slit Valkane’s sword created. The wounded tentacle wiggled and began to thrash.

DAMN, Valkane thought. SO CLOSE. He held onto his sword and looked for options. The hurt tentacle seemed to be waving back and forth in the same two directions - one closer to the parking lot and one towards a series of dunes. He was still high, but Valkane decided to risk it.

Valkane yanked the sword out and kicked off the rounded tentacle with all the force he could muster. He plummeted towards the dunes. He let his sword fall, and he curled up as much as he could. He hit with terrific impact, but as he rolled down the dune, sand pouring into his still-loosened thong, he could tell he hadn’t broken anything.

When Valkane stood, he wished he had broken something. He roared with pain. His knee and shoulder burned with sharp, nearly unbearable agony. He suspected he’d pinched some major nerves. He roared again, this time with an anger and frustration like none he’d ever known. Truly, this was the acorn that broke the fairy’s back, a phrase that had never made sense to him, as the fae didn’t like acorns. The unfairness of the past day, past week, month, year … an entire lifetime welled up, crystallizing like a Scrye in front of him. He had, quite simply, had it.

Lester embarrassing him, his shame at losing money and hope at the Bodini University of On-Scrye Learning and Dramatic Entrances, Optima’s smirking face after they’d woken up, Pendajo’s constant and annoying pipe smoke … and of course the shameful reliving of the confrontation with his father. All those emotions hung in the air around Valkane like obsessively detailed portraits, thankfully visible to no one else. This quest was supposed to be fun, with his friends. He was supposed to get what he wanted. He wasn’t supposed to be plummeting out of abandoned hotels with nothing more than a sword.

How had everything gone so wrong? Had he made such poor life choices? Forever striving to be something else, yet faithfully honing his body and skills to be what he didn’t want to be … that was the clear disconnect. He knew his friends were staring at him, so he forced himself to stop roaring in anguish. Even Pendajo stared, uncomfortable at the sudden change in the mild-mannered barbarian. MILD-MANNERED, he thought, and roared again. His throat was raw and drying in the desert heat, but he couldn’t seem to stop.

Blood-red pools in his mind bubbled and steamed. Pain and anger, embarrassment, shame, and even frustration all swirled together. Instead of blinding him, it lent a crystal (if reddened) clarity to wherever he looked. He felt every heartbeat pump sparkling-hot anger through his blood. He felt every blood vessel throb with its impact. His skin seethed with vitality and awareness. He was beyond pain. The nerves hurt, but they didn’t impede. They fueled.

And all was as it should be.

A sudden thrill of elation surged through him. FINALLY, he thought, before even that thought swirled into the emotional mixture erupting spastically from the blood-red pool.

There was only sensation. The dust in the air seemed to hang motionless, as though his slow-motion fall out the window suddenly extended to the rest of the world. Every sense worked overtime. Valkane felt the indentations and nubbed leather of his sword grip, and each undulation of the sand dune through his boots. He tasted the fine spray of ichor suffusing the air, smelled the sand and the dry friction of the squid’s thrashing against the sand. He saw the veins under the squid’s skin with the same clarity that newer Scrye models’ 1080 PPI (Pixiedust Per Inch) faceted screens boasted would revolutionize the medium. He heard the screech of the injured squid overlaid on top of the background noise of his friends and a siren of a constable chariot far in the distance.

On a subconscious level, he knew that as the president and CEO (Chancellor and Executive Overseer) of his physical form, every sense and body part would be demanding bonuses and comp time for what they were about to do. Out of nowhere, a poster that hung in his brother’s room above his bed for years flashed through Valkane’s mind - “GLASS, PEGASUS, OR ASS, NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.” It was the last conscious thought he had.

Suddenly, he was in bloody flashing motion, aware of nothing but tentacles, masses of color, and of blade. The sword nearly sang as it cut through the air, clouds of utterly disgusting, garbage-like smells whooshing about with each slash. For a brief moment, he felt a sense of incompleteness from the sword, before that too was subsumed in the tidal pull of his berserker rage. The word “rage,” however, no longer adequately described the emotion. The mix of forge-hot emotion and pain fused and powered his anger and frustration to heights that mere words from any dimension could no longer adequately describe.

The squidiom’s screams got shriller and louder. Blade flashing, arms grasping and pummeling, Valkane advanced on the towering creature. It was though he were the fabled Kernian Devil, a creature of multiple limbs, which spun like a miniature tornado during its mating rituals so it could impregnate as many partners as it could during its furious mating dance.

If they could see his face, Valkane’s friends would have trouble recognizing him. Wide, unfocused eyes and an angry scowl masked his usually gentle face. The shaggy eyebrows, hair, and unkempt beard that usually read to strangers as “surf bum that just woke up” waved wildly and lividly. Now the strands read more like “psychopath free from a correctional facility” as he got closer to the squid’s maw.

No thought crossed his mind, only pure instinct. Instinct urged him closer, hacking and thrusting, slamming and punching. If he could think, the only legible thought would be, DO DAMAGE. Valkane bounded and leapt, nearly as gracefully as Lester, from dune to patch of abandoned asphalt to dune, ever closer to the bulk of the thrashing squid.

This blank-mindedness prevented the squidiom from feeding off any of Valkane’s thoughts. The long, greenish-gray hood of the squidiom jerked backwards into its hole. Normally, the creature’s analytical skills were on par with Valkane’s current level of comprehension. They had to be, in order to consume words and concepts and utilize them. However, Valkane’s assumption had been incorrect. This squidiom’s core meal had been The Acorn That Broke The Fairy’s Back.

After a lifetime of consuming those words and concepts whenever it could, it embodied what other dimensions might call “the last straw.” While that made it perfect for attacking non-mobile targets like a crumbling hotel (which, upon pained reflection, the squidiom realized was why he got hired so often by these wizards, government bureaucrats, and unethical Scrye developers), it wasn’t great against a target that could move and also had no rational thoughts to feed on. The squidiom racked its brain to find some counter maneuvers. It could manifest acorns and fairies, and when it tried, a fairy back (which never seemed to do much in a combat situation), but it didn’t think any of those would stop this small, rampaging sword-thing.

Thankfully for squidioms, each one has the most primitive survival idiom of all built into it. Under the assault of pain the hairy, slashing thing was incurring, the deeper parts of its primordial brain activated. “Fight” wasn’t working, so it was ready to give “flight” a try. It used its uninjured tentacles (only three of them still worked properly, according to its internal diagnostics and owner’s manual) to grip the ridges of its tunnel and pull itself backwards.

Valkane’s attacking sword seemed to be everywhere, and yet nowhere. The weapon was a blur. Suddenly, a vaguely hammer-shaped piece of door frame from the Golem was in Valkane’s hand, pounding a large section of tentacle flat onto the asphalt. It took the squid’s brain a good thirty seconds to receive that flood of pain messages (after all, its tentacles were quite long) and then kick the retreat signal into high gear for the rest of its body.

The monster yanked backwards and then stopped suddenly. Its enormous eye blinked through its transparent lid. It looked in all the directions it could (basically northwest and five degrees northeast), trying to find what obstructed it. From its position, it couldn’t see below.

If it could, it would have seen why it couldn’t move. Valkane had leapt into the tunnel and slammed into the side of the squid’s hooded head. Like the ancient stories of Glargoth the Immense holding the world up for a week when Quarth, the God of Holding Up The World, took a mental health day, and then didn’t come back on time, Valkane used all his strength to pin the squid against the farther side of the wall. His feet planted firmly on one side and his powerful arms and torso pumping with adrenaline and berserkanine (a naturally occurring chemical only in barbarians - Valkane once investigated synthetic substitutes, but that sort of thing can’t be replicated, especially from those disreputable companies on the Scrye feeds that claim they can also improve a barbarian’s sex life), the squid had no leverage to retract itself.

Valkane’s rage subsided as the creature’s struggles lessened. It was weakening from his attack. Valkane blinked his eyes. The carnage from his sword was impressive. The uneven ridges and sand surrounding the tunnel were covered in bloody bits of tentacle. While the creature had striations of numerous green and gray colors in its skin, all of its bits on the ground were a uniform blood red. Valkane yelled to the others. “GET IN!”

Renisha, her mouth agape, couldn’t speak. Lester, too, was dumbfounded. Optima spoke for them. “What?”

“IT CAME – UHN — FROM SOMEWHERE. SOMEONE. WE FOLLOW — OOF— THE TUNNEL TO THEM.” Aside from the dry rawness of his throat, it was hard to keep the dying creature pinned. Sirens were growing closer.

“The Constables —” Renisha said. She and Pendajo had ridden Corky down the side of the building, and he was still astride the wine dragon. Both had expressions of disbelief on their faces.

“NO … URHG … NO TIME!” Valkane yelled. “NOW!” He shoved harder, and the squid let out a piteous squeal like a scared kitten.

“Verily, he’s right,” Optima said. “Prithee, make haste!”

“No way! Go inside a squidiom tunnel?” Pendajo said. Pendajo was right to be concerned. Squidiom tunnels had a way of leading into lost, forgotten, or even untried idioms. It could lead them to a promised land, a pot of gold, or simply an agonizing annihilation by paper cut.

And sometimes, a tunnel was just a tunnel.

“NOW!” Valkane roared. As the squid bled, its bulk drained and gave Valkane less purchase. He only had about a minute before he wouldn’t be able to pin the thing any longer. Lester slapped Corky’s tail, and it galloped forward. The rest of the party followed. Once they were in and braced against the ledge, Valkane pushed forward and repelled himself back as well. The corpse of the not completely-dead-yet squid slithered down the smooth tunnel with an appalling and nearly-deafening slurp. The tunnel walls were fused to a glass-like texture, and the light from both moons reflected in it for the first few lengths, then it spiraled into darkness. The tunnel appeared to be vertical for only another two or so squid lengths, and then turned at a perpendicular angle.

Valkane huffed as he caught his breath. Torches flared to life around him, courtesy of Lester and Optima. Pendajo was the first to speak. “That was completely badass, barbarian.”

Optima smirked. “Indeed, my brutal brawler. It seems thy class’s berserker rage is nothing to be trifled with.”

Lester pounded Valkane on the back. Only Renisha refrained from saying anything or touching him. She folded her cloak around everything but the hand holding her spoon. She used its glow to peer into the darkness. “What makes you think this is the way we need to go?”

Valkane inhaled deeply. Yes, he would be paying for this rage for a good day or so. He needed food and a quick thirteen-hour nap. “CAN’T BE A COINCIDENCE. FIRST CREATURE ATTACK IN LOS TROPES IN DECADES WHILE WE ARE IN THE GOLEM? PLUS, THE CONSTABLES ARE COMING, AND WE WERE QUESTING ILLEGALLY. CAN’T GO BACK IN THERE.”

She nodded, appreciative of his logic. They climbed aboard Corky, whose viney claws Pendajo assured them could provide the traction needed on the slick surface. Valkane declined to get in the dragon’s stomach again. Despite the smell, he might fall asleep. Walking was better. He pushed himself off the ledge and slid down to the bend in the tunnel, waiting for the others.

As he waited, he reviewed what happened. It both felt exactly as he thought it should and nothing like he thought it would. Part of him couldn’t deny it felt … fairly amazing. He’d never felt so confident or alive. Yet, he knew from the long, bloody and cephalopod-entwined history of his people that in the middle of an unthinking berserker rage was where 87% of all barbarian deaths occurred. The feeling of invincibility was a lie. Every barbarian knew this; it was drilled into you from kinderquest school on.

The activation of chemicals in the brain gave you both a euphoria and an almost holy sense of righteousness. But as Professor Manticlaw used to say, “JUST BECAUSE A THING FEELS RIGHT, IT DOESN’T MEAN IT IS.”

Corky and the others joined him, and they headed into the passageway. “DID ANYONE SAVE ANY FOOD?” Renisha withdrew a small sack that expanded into a hearty loaf of bread. He gnawed at it greedily, nearly choking when he stuffed too much of it into his mouth. As he swallowed some wine (a Corky vintage, he could tell from the smell, but any sort of liquid was needed at that point), he realized that this was exactly why barbecued gryphon wings and slabs of juicy dragonsteak, and not bread, were the after-rage choice of gluttony for barbarians.

What if, going forward, he had to re-think his stance on eating processed meats and/or opposing the sale and consumption of endangered (but high in protein) creatures? Would the rage be worth it if he had to give up all his convictions? This quest continued to stir up things in himself he never anticipated. Valkane longed for a hot bath and some relaxing, aromatic hair potions to wash his anxieties away.

Study Questions:

1. What phylum are metaboars classified as?

2. How many tentacles does a squidiom thinking of infinite monkeys typing Shakespeare have?

3. Name three of the popular condiments used for BBQ gryphon wings?

They trudged back to their camp. With the fearful emanations of dread minimized by the Mirror’s new size, all the Adventurers felt was mild unease, almost indistinguishable from any other quest. As the others lay down to rest, Valkane tossed and turned. He wanted some fresh air.

He suspected one of the nearby rooms on the top (or left, depending on how you looked at the fallen Golem’s layout) had windows. Quietly, he got up and went into the hall.

Valkane was right. Ahead, he saw a soft patch of moonlight from an open door. Cautiously, he peered into the room. The door was long gone from its hinges, and the room was bare. Only a broken entranceway to a now-sideways balcony remained. He hauled himself up and out.

The desert sky was spectacular. Small wisps of cumulus clouds drifted at the edge of the enormous bowl of desert, OR ARE THEY CIRRUS, he wondered. He couldn’t remember. Cloud types hadn’t formed any lasting or appreciable part of his questing education. Barbarians learned to fight regardless of whatever weather there was. You did your best to afford helmets with anti-fog or rain-repellent charms for better vision. The moon wasn’t full, but close enough, and the sands stretching beyond the Concourse were still and silvery. Stars littered the sky like splatters of mud off a wet dragon.

Valkane inhaled deeply. Gill Sands’ air always smelled salty. That scent would always be the odor that spelled home to him. This crisp and dusty air here in Los Tropes felt like being on a different planet. He leaned against the wall and wondered why anger came on so suddenly when he was being teased by his best friends, and never in the heat of battle. He sighed. Perhaps it was exactly that. They knew him better than anything and, consciously or not, knew exactly how to penetrate every layer of his armor.

This quest kept stirring up things, like poking a nest of meat wasps. He wanted to be done with it and go home. The mirrored prison shook him. He was overcome with the desire to run home. Only home was where the problems lay. No, he was better here.

The stars blinked in no particular pattern, and for long minutes, Valkane was content to watch. He breathed deeply. The sound and feeling of the air swelling in and out soothed him. Usually, in times of stress, he retreated to masturbation. He looked around. He was certainly alone. But if Lester, or Kloord forbid, Renisha woke up and caught him, he wasn’t sure how his life would go on. Embarrassment was a disease barbarians often died from, especially if those barbarians had a fewer number of quests under their belt than they had times they pleasured themselves.

Something not at all related to quests under his belt stirred. It dawned on Valkane that if Optima caught him, he wouldn’t care. In fact, as his loincloth shifted slightly, Valkane admitted to himself, he sort of wanted Optima to catch him. The magic-user was a show-off, but Valkane had assets of his own he wasn’t afraid to display.

Valkane noticed his hands were rubbing his chest of their own volition. His throat felt tight and hungry. There was no one around, and he was out of sight of the open door. They would call his name, as well; he was certain before entering a dark room. He reached under his loincloth and found the head of his member sticky from anticipation.

He leaned against a stone pillar. He began stroking and murmuring softly, “YOU’VE NEVER SEEN A WAND THIS BIG, HAVE YOU?” He said to the imaginary Optima in his fantasy. The fantasy Optima was suitably impressed. So impressed, he dropped to his knees. Just as Valkane groaned and murmured that he was about to trigger an explosion of magic into Optima’s waiting mouth, Lester said, “Really, Barb?”

Valkane came explosively and then shuddered from embarrassment. “HOW DID - WHY DIDN’T YOU KNOCK OR SOMETHING?”

Lester flipped down from the overhang. His smirk was unbearable. “Shouldn’t you tie a sock to the door if you don’t want to be disturbed?”

“KLOORDDAMMIT, LEAVE ME BE,” he said. His hand was filled with dripping remnants of his fantasy. He wiped it on the threadworn carpet. Lester smiled. Elves had no sexual inhibitions.

“Hey, you all do it,” Lester said. “I mean, I have plenty of elves to take care of my needs for me, so I never have to abuse myself. But I understand. It has to be tough to be you.” He pulled a tiny pipe from his belt, and from somewhere, a goblet filled with ale appeared. Valkane gratefully drank from it. “Were you saying Optima’s name?” Lester asked before inhaling.

Valkane looked out the window. Now that he was done, the overwhelming desire and almost-barbarian aggression left him frozen in the throbbing heat of shame. Moments ago, he thought he’d be thrilled if Optima caught him. Now, he saw clearly that would have been a mistake worse than any he’d made to date. Gravel (and hopefully magical relic prisons made of mirrors) would not be something he did again.

“Great view up here,” Lester said. He sprawled out on the remains of a kitchenette island, leaning against a supporting wall. “You know I’m not going to say anything, Barb.”

Valkane grunted. This is why barbarians could die of shame, he realized. There was simply no path forward from this. How did he go forward and live, knowing that anytime he looked at Lester in the eye, he might be thinking about this?

“Anyway. I’ve been meaning to ask you ... where have you been?”

“WHAT? I’VE BEEN HERE.”

“I mean the last couple of months. I know you weren’t at that Broadsword Bootcamp in Zapf Province like you told Renisha and your mom.”

Valkane mistakenly assumed getting caught, as he had been, was the worst thing that had ever happened between him and Lester. Now, the sudden yawning in his stomach, as though he were the victim of a Plummet Rapidly Down an Endless Tunnel spell, made him feel actual fear.

“WHAT … I … HOW DO YOU KNOW WHERE I WAS?”

“I don’t. I only know where you weren’t. I showed up to surprise you one weekend. Little embarrassing to ask for your buddy, only to find he’s never enrolled.”

Valkane squirmed. “I ... I DECIDED TO GO TO A DIFFERENT BOOTCAMP.”

“Val. No, you didn’t.” The statement hung there, heavier than the embarrassment suffocating Valkane. “Where were you?’

Lester didn’t look angry. His large elfin eyes had a concerned expression. Images of them swimming together as kids, going on trips together with their families, and sitting in the bakery temple with Renisha, all flashed through Valkane’s mind. Lester was more of a brother than Valthane ever was. And he did want to tell someone.

“MAGIC-USER SCHOOL,” he said, in barely more than a whisper.

Lester’s eyes widened. “What? Where? How did you even have the scores to get in?’

“SCORES WEREN’T THE … DECIDING FACTOR.”

“Was it even accredited? You didn’t enroll in Daemonicus Academy, did you? Or Matchibellus Community? Those aren’t the most reputable —”

“IT WASN’T THOSE,” Valkane said, sighing. “IT WAS BODINI UNIVERSITY.” Lester sighed as well. Bodini had a reputation for being very conservative, but they took any student that could pay their rather exorbitant fee. They taught anyone; consequently, their degrees were hardly worth the papyrus they were inked on.

“Bodini.”

“YES. AND I FAILED THERE, AS WELL. I COULDN’T EVEN GET PAST GESTICULATION 101.” Valkane swigged from his goblet, nearly draining it. His humiliation had been complete that day, as well as this one. It had been a crisp fall day. The cool air made his cheeks feel like lava flowed under them as the rector, a kindly dwarf, gently told him he was wasting his gold pieces.

“I AM A BARBARIAN, AND THAT’S ALL I WILL EVER BE,” Valkane muttered and took another gulp.

Lester shook his head, about to say something comforting, or as comforting as he could. Elves knew other species were never able to loosen up and enjoy life to the fullest, which was a pity, since they were so short-lived. Lester knew factually he would outlive Valkane and Renisha. The elves had a saying, “You always miss your first mortals the most.” Until that moment, Lester hadn’t truly felt the weight of the old adage, and he didn’t know what to say to his best friend.

Suddenly, the entire hotel shook.

Spiders rained from the ceiling, their cobwebs dancing jerkily in the moonlight. Furniture slid and crashed into the walls. Lester leapt to the window and propped his hands between the window jamb and the ceiling, steadying himself with a grace snakes would envy. Valkane gripped the stone pillar he’d leaned against. “WH-WH-WHAT IS HAPPENING?” he asked.

“Dunno! Hang on!” Lester yelled. The landscape outside the window seemed to rise and fall. A horrific sound, like a hundred dinosaur bones cracking longways in unison, filled the chamber.

A circle of light whirled into view. Optima’s head appeared, stable amidst the spinning globe. “Get thee outside! Now!” The light blinked out, as final as death. Lester strained his neck to peer out the shuddering window. His jaw dropped slightly.

“Squidiom,” he said, his eyes wide.

“A SQUIDIOM?” Valkane clambered towards the window in between the building’s violent shakes. He followed Lester’s gaze with his own. “IN LOS TROPES?” ^[1]

^[1] Supposedly, Valkane knew, the Concourse and the outskirts of Los Tropes were all heavily fortified by anti-monster and anti-threat spells. After the Fae Wars, all parties involved agreed to make the city neutral territory, at least physically. Wars still raged through capitalism and politics, of course, but monsters, unregistered deities, and automated Scrye solicitations weren’t supposed to be able to get through the magical limits of the city, much less the heart of the tourism district.

Valkane dimly remembered reading about squidioms in the Compendium Monstrositous: Tips and Tricks for Facing the Top 100 Monsters While Questing. Squidioms are a breed of monster almost as subtle as the magic that originally produced them. The giant creatures usually live only in the Seas of the Unconscious, as they are supposed to. They drift around the Seas, feeding off of daydreams, impulses, and habits like stress eating. As with any creature that lives off such an intangible diet, the creature literally becomes what it eats. Most squidioms are content to sample a variety of mental fodder. However, some get addicted to the tastes of certain phrases or concepts. They seek them out, which does ostracize them from their fellow squidioms. These addicts rationalize that those old squidioms are stuck in the past and don’t know how to live life to the fullest anymore.

After enough of the same phrases or concepts are consumed, the squidiom starts to feel more solid … more real. Even if the phrases are complete and utter nonsense to start with (such as “the clue is in the gelatinous cube”), the more the squidiom consumes of its core words, the more it embodies the meaning of the phrase

The more solid a squidiom, they are more easily they are glimpsed, in either contemplation or a sudden spark of inspiration. In this case, famed quest detective Longus Reitchse stated of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend’s disappearance, the “clue was in the cube,” and so it was. She had been feeding her new boyfriend lantana seed for weeks to “improve his hairline.” Gelatinous cubes, of course, are like manticores to manticore nip when it comes to lantana seeds. Over the next month, after she handcuffed the man to his bed to “help the hair regrowth process,” a cube attracted by the smell oozed into the bedroom and slowly digested the man. The only thing left were the handcuffs, his liver (even cubes don’t like the taste), and a few partially-digested lantana seeds.

Thus, the idiom became widely popular, even as the squidiom who inspired it died of total solidification. This happens when everyone starts using the term now and the squidiom overdoses. This leads to total petrification, and in this one’s case, it fell out of the Seas of the Unconscious and smashed into a million lantana seed-sized pieces.

Study Questions

1. Which is the most accredited magic-user school in San Serif?

2. What omnivorous dungeon-dwelling creatures to lantana seeds repel?

3. What is the average lifespan of a half-elf/ half-human?

Smoke roiled in front of Valkane, and he felt off-kilter. He thought he might be falling, yet he knew he was standing on solid ground. It was the same disconcerting feeling as when you were starting your chariot and about to back out of a parking space, and someone pulled in next to you. Your peripheral vision made you think you were already moving, so you yank on the reins to keep your chariot from backing out over an aged pixie, only to realize you weren’t moving at all.

Suddenly, the feeling stopped.

And he was at home.

Not his apartment. His mother’s cottage in Gill Sands. He stood in the backyard, his shoulders drooping as his adrenaline evaporated. His limbs felt shaky, as though he’d done a hundred bicep curls in under a minute. He sagged against the picnic table.

The house looked enormous. How had it grown so large? Things felt off. He felt dread creeping through him. He heard Valthane and someone in the living room laughing heartily. The voice was familiar, but the words even more so. NO, he thought. NO NO NO. NOT THIS.

Valkane listened to the soft gush of the surf, audible from several streets over. The scratching of the breeze through the stiff leaves and stalks of the palm trees, and the heavy scent of salt in the air did nothing to calm Valkane’s nerves.

He couldn’t face this.

Not again.

After a few minutes, Valkane trudged inside. He walked slowly along the flagstones. Each bore chunks missing or boot scuffs from a short lifetime of him and Valthane chasing and fighting one another. He pushed open the door (the far too-tall, the far too-wide door) to the kitchen. He stepped inside. He heard Kyria’s voice as well.

Valkane glanced at his hands. His wrists and forearms were thinner, uncovered by the growth of puberty. FLANGING HELLS, he thought. He knew exactly when he was. He would walk into the living room and live it all again. Could he go through with it? Could he change it?

He had to try.

His father and mother played Rummy Skull on the coffee table while Valthane practiced with a broadsword on the stuffed target ogre in the corner. Kyria got four bones in a row and snatched up the winning skull. “BEST THREE OUT OF FIVE,” Valkane’s father suggested. Kyria gloated and shook the skull with its nearly dead imps in it with a victory “no.”

Valthane saw him first. “OOOHHH, YOU’RE IN TROUBLE!” His sword cleaved the ogre’s shoulder, sawdust and small seeds spilling out onto the floor.

Kyria’s face lost its happy glow. “YOUNG MAN, I GOT A SCRYE FROM THE PRINCIPAL TODAY.” Valkane didn’t even look at her. He stared at his father. He glowered, looking away from his son.

Kyria stood up and grabbed Valkane by the arm. I’M SO LITTLE, he thought fleetingly. She hadn’t been able to put her whole hand around him in over a decade.

“HE SAID YOUR TEACHER CAUGHT YOU IN THE PLAYGROUND TRYING TO CAST SPELLS! WHY ON QUARTH WOULD A BARBARIAN … ESPECIALLY ONE FROM A PROUD FAMILY LINE LIKE THIS ONE … TRY TO USE MAGIC? IN PUBLIC? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND? BARBARIANS CAN’T DO MAGIC!”

Valkane mumbled something. It didn’t matter that he didn’t remember what excuses he’d mumbled the first time. What he remembered with supernatural clarity was what he said next.

“WHAT’S THAT, YOUNG MAN?”

“I DON’T WANT TO BE A BARBARIAN!”

He said it, as he had before, without hesitation. With defiance and rebellion. Those fires seemed so cold in him these days, but as a young barbarian, he’d been brave enough to defy everything.

If Kyria or his father made a sound, it was no longer audible. The room was as silent as a banshee’s self-help group, as banshees were as loathe to hear each other as mortals were.

Kane, his father, stood up, his eyes blazing. THAT RAGE, Valkane thought. HE HAD IT INSTANTLY, ANY TIME HE NEEDED IT. Valkane had worked and worked at it until it exhausted him to even think about trying. Kane was years from his demise, and in the prime of life. Sure, his temples had strands of gray, and his taut muscles moved under the thinnest blankets of extra flesh. But he was still a force to be reckoned with. No one antagonized him unduly. No one would even utter the word “unduly” to him, as he would take it as a reason to smite them.

“YOU DON’T WANT WHAT?” he said. He towered over Valkane, an invincible opponent. “WHAT DID YOU SAY, BOY?”

The words were only a quarter of the way out of Valkane’s mouth a second time, before he was against the wall, lying in puffs of sawdust and seed beside the now armless ogre. The side of Valkane’s face burned and ached. His father had fractured his cheekbone, but he’d not known it at the time. It was weeks before it felt normal eating again.

His father yelled, working his rage into a verbal tirade unlike anything Valkane had ever seen before. Valthane drew back, smart enough to know he might be collateral damage while Kane was in this state. Valkane could barely hear or process what his father was saying; the pain was so great.

Still. This time, he would be different. By Kloord, he would make it different. The first time, he’d lay there, using all his strength not to let tears stream hotly down his cheeks. He’d been afraid Kane would kick him out of the house then and there if he’d cried.

This time, he let the tears flow. He didn’t sob, but the tears flowed, and he paid them no attention. His father was now mocking him, making mincing motions with his hands as though he was casting spell after spell. His father turned to him, glowering and shocked to see Valkane struggle to stand.

It was a struggle. The pain in his face wouldn’t die down, and Valkane felt nauseous. Another backhand would knock him out, if not break his jaw. But he had to do it. He gripped the ogre dummy as hard as he could to steady himself. Inch by inch, he stood, tears mingling with blood as they dripped down his face. Kyria’s unicorn pelt rug (which Valkane knew was imitation) absorbed the salty red mess.

And then, Valkane laughed.

Whatever his father had been saying, he stopped mid-sentence. Kyria’s expression showed her surprise. Valthane let his battle axe tip scrape along the hallway tile as his grip loosened.

“YOU THINK …” Valkane started. He clutched his stomach, afraid he would spew. The feeling passed. “YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME WITH RAGE?” He stood, feeling his adult height. “WITH RAGE?”

Valkane barked out a short, rueful laugh. “ALL I HAVE IS RAGE! A LIFETIME OF IT! I FOUGHT IT ALL MY LIFE! BUT HERE! HAVE SOME OF WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE ME!” In a fluid motion, he pulled the Sword from its scabbard and sliced through the ogre’s reinforced torso. The metal skeleton inside was no match for the pungent and micro-honed blade. The dummy’s top half slid neatly to the floor, the sawdust and seed filling on the bottom undisturbed by the cut.

Valkane advanced on Kane, whose own blade was suddenly in hand. “BELITTLE ME. FAVOR HIM OVER ME. TRY TO KILL ME IF YOU CAN.” Valkane’s own rage was supernally calm. The blood-red pools churned underneath an icy burgundy exterior. “BUT YOU WON’T STOP ME. I WILL LEARN MAGIC, OR DIE TRYING.”

Sheathing the Sword, he turned and walked toward the kitchen. His mother called out, “YOU WON’T BRING SHAME ON THIS FAMILY!”

“I WON’T LET YOU SHAME ME INTO NOT BEING MYSELF.”

Valthane laughed, mouthing mock spells and waving his hands as their father had, trying to intimidate his brother. “I’M VALKANE, I’M A MAGIC-USER!”

Valkane walked on. Their voices faded, far faster than they should have. The house seemed to shrink as he walked through the yard, onto the street, back to where he’d appeared. The house became indistinct, the jeers and laughter blurring.

The blue sky and the house blurred as well. The trees bled white into an eggshell-colored sky that bordered a pale sea and an opal beach. Everything lost form and coalesced into white. Valkane felt no fear, however. He felt calm, calmer than he could ever remember. It was okay. Even the tears that simply wouldn’t stop falling, as he walked into the world of blank whiteness, the tears too, were okay.

Smoke billowed around him, and he heard a hacking cough. He felt the violent whooshing vibration again, only that he was falling upwards while standing still. It halted, and he was surrounded by Renisha and Lester. And Optima. And Corky. Pendajo stood to the side, lighting one of his cigarettes, but smiled.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” he asked.

Renisha was crying, and Lester couldn’t seem to let go of Valkane’s shoulders. Valkane soaked in their affection and felt glad that they were together, no matter what had happened. Eventually, they disengaged.

“’Tis one of the Flush Royale. The Smoky Mirror.”

“HOW DID YOU GET ME OUT?” Valkane felt the tracks of his tears still drying on his cheeks, but didn’t bother wiping them.

Renisha’s voice caught as she explained. “It was Lester.” She hugged Lester tightly. “He figured it out.”

Lester smiled and shrugged. “Hey, no lock I can’t pick!”

“WHAT DID IT … IT MADE ME …” Valkane realized he wasn’t ready to talk about that yet.

“Trap of any mirror,” Optima said, as he sidled behind the mirror frame, searching for something. “Whilst we look in the mirror for any number of reason, ‘tis a truth that if thou look long enough, thou seest the darkness.”

Optima found a trigger and suddenly, the mirror shrank to the size a lady-in-waiting at Kaiju’s court could discreetly use to apply lip-enhancing potions before commencing a new game of sexual politics. “It has to have something living in it at all times. To disgorge thee, we needed to give it another life to reflect upon.”

As Optima carefully packed the mirror away, the group headed back to their makeshift camp. “It caught me because it only had a roach in it. I couldn’t see it, and when I stirred up some dust, it sneezed,” Lester said. “Next thing I knew I was inside and the roach was outside.”

“WHAT’S IN IT NOW?”

Lester smiled. “That’s going to be one unhappy giant roach when it switches places with the next person.”

Study Questions

1. Besides warrior, what are three other socially acceptable careers for barbarians?

2. How many of the Flush Royale has Valkane not touched at this point?

3. How long a term can one person serve as king in San Serif?

Lester and Optima returned, unable to go further than he and Valkane had ventured forth. Dinner was a light meal of store-bought rations, supplemented by a few jellied rat tails. Valkane wasn’t the most discerning eater, but Renisha refused her portion of rodent. “Not that the rations couldn’t use the spice, but I just can’t,” she said. Her color was better in the dim firelight, but she’d yet to do more than chew listlessly at her food. Valkane wondered if the dread was seeping backwards toward them. Lester tossed his used skewer into the fire and said, “Gravel, anyone?”

“LESTER!” Valkane was shocked. In all the years they’d been friends, Lester had never mentioned smoking ogrethorn. He was more shocked when Renisha said, “Yes, please.”

“RENISHA!” His mind reeled. “I AM SHOCKED AND APPALLED.”

“Which is why I’ve never invited you to do any. It’s natural, you know,” she said. Lester grinned and handed her a tiny cigarette. Optima waved his hand and wrinkled his nose when Lester offered one to him. Pendajo waved his hand no.

“You don’t smoke gravel?” Lester asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Pfft. That’s kid stuff.” Pendajo pulled a long pipe from his backpack and packed it with a pungent herb. “This’ll put hair on your chest and any other body parts that need it.” He inhaled and coughed harshly. Lester and Renisha inhaled as well.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT.”

“Val! Come on. Your brother has been my dealer since middle school.”

This was the one thing so far that did not surprise Valkane. He looked at Renisha. “YOU’RE A CLERIC!”

She smiled. “Lots of clerics use it in communion rituals.”

“NOT SWANEE!”

“No, not her. She should, though. In fact – it’s the whole High Priestess’s stance on gravel-infused pastries that has been making me think about quitting.”

“QUITTING ... BEING A CLERIC?”

“Quitting Swanee, at least. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while. The last few decrees have been so strident, I’m like, ‘Don’t they have anything else to worry about?’ So, yeah. I haven’t been to a service in around three months.”

“DID YOU KNOW ALL THIS?” Valkane turned to Lester.

Lester toked and inhaled deeply. “Most of it. Didn’t know you’d stopped going to services.”

“Just seems ... pointless.”

Valkane sat back against the gently curving wall. “ARE YOU GOING TO STOP THIEVING, TOO?”

Lester laughed. “Hells, no. I like what I do. But there’s other stuff I might do. Or stop doing.”

“I FEEL SO OUT OF THE LOOP.” He took a healthy swig of ale. Still, he thought, he understood. His struggles with his own destiny weighed on him. He wanted to help, but felt somewhat useless. He hoped there would be something for him to slay. And soon.

Lester and Renisha puffed on their rolled cigarettes. “ARE YOU GRAVELLED, YET?” Valkane asked.

Renisha laughed, “It doesn’t work quite that quickly.”

“This might,” Lester added with a chuckle.

Optima scanned a book of spells, paying little attention. “YOU DON’T SMOKE?” Valkane asked him.

“Ogrethorn? Nay, it doth affect thy short-term memory. In the case of magic-use, that be too large a detriment. Now, wizardrobe ... on the other hand …” The purple flower was toxic to most, though Valkane read that magic-users could metabolize the poison and gained insightful benefits from it.

“It’s better for you than all that ale,” Lester said.

His barbarian tolerance for ale was one part of his heritage Valkane enjoyed. “HUH. I AM NOT SURE HOW THAT CAN BE.”

“It’s not a depressant,” Renisha said.

“Try it,” Lester said.

“NO WAY!” Valkane said immediately. Lester shrugged.

“This isn’t an afterquest school special play. I’m not gonna force you. I just think it would chill you out a little bit.”

Valkane, Lester, and Renisha used to laugh and make fun of the plays they were forced to watch in school about the evils of ogrethorn, appropriating experience levels, or wearing pastel colors in public. Now, he wondered if Lester and Renisha had also been laughing at him during that time as well. He reached out, took the rolled cigarette from Lester, and inhaled deeply.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, explosive coughs wracked his lungs. He could barely draw in a breath; he was coughing so hard. Lester and Renisha doubled over in laughter. Optima stood up and pounded the barbarian on the back.

“I (WHEEZE) DON’T (GASP) FEEL ANY (UHHHH) DIFFERENT.” Valkane gasped.

Lester’s eyes brimmed with tears as he shook with laughter. Renisha waved her fingers ineffectively, but couldn’t speak. Finally, Lester said, “Dude! Easy does it. You haven’t smoked ANYTHING since we were like 16 and snuck that pipe from your uncle. You can’t just take a huge toke like that.”

Valkane threw the cigarette into the fire. Pendajo scrambled to save it. “That’s perfectly good gravel, you big galoot!”

Lester stood up and stretched. “I want to take a peek at that corridor again.”

Valkane got up, but Lester gestured. “Stay here. I think I can get past it on my own.”

“YOU FELT THE SAME DREAD I DID,” Valkane said.

“Yeah,” he said. “But I might have been anxioused.”

“ANXIOUSED?”

“Having anxiety? What’s that other word … warty?”

“Worry,” Renisha said.

“That’s it! I think I was worry about you.”

“ME?”

Lester shrugged. “It happens. But part of the reason I wanted to get rocked up was to see if it could keep a hold of me when I’m so relaxed.” Lester paused at the door. “Pendajo, you come with me.”

“Aww, man. I just got comfortable.” The ex-paladin struggled to his feet, tapping the contents of his pipe out. “We need that Shield, Optima.”

“Prithee, how wouldst that help?” His voice was the soul of reason, and the steel of “No way art thou getting my shield.”

“Clearly, it’s got emotional avoidance components to its perimeter. What better offense than self-justification?” Optima could not dispute the logic, and reluctantly pulled the Shield out.

“Give us 30 ticks. If we’re not back, then come after us,” Lester said. He and Pendajo disappeared into the gloom.

The rest of them made small talk, and Corky whined uneasily. Valkane looped on his scabbard at 25 ticks. It was hard to separate normal dread from this artificially-induced dread. Either demanded some kind of action.

Just as the Scrye countdown was about to hit 30, Pendajo rushed into the room. It took him a moment to catch his breath. DAMN HIM FOR BEING SO OUT OF SHAPE, Valkane thought. Lester could be injured, or worse.

It was worse. “Mir-huh-huh. Mir-uh,” the ex-paladin wheezed. Frustratingly, the man simply could not speak.

Renisha rolled her eyes. She snatched a pouch from Pendajo’s belt and rolled a tiny ball of leaves. She lit it, and the flashbacco smoke poured forth. Soundlessly, Pendajo and Lester came across a large mirror. The images faltered, but it looked as though Lester had been captured in some blank, empty room.

They charged out of the room. Valkane looked inside himself. A berserker rage might be out of reach, but a berserker concern for friends was already in play. As he walked down the corridor, the dread suffused him. He thought of Lester’s surprisingly vulnerable admission that he loved Narbeth and of the years of playing together. No mere feeling would stop him.

A few meters later, Valkane thought he might have to retract that vow. The anxiety in his guts threatened to loose more than stools. He couldn’t admit it, even to himself, but the feeling he felt was terror. However, it felt oddly … familiar. It was as though it was a terror he’d somehow lived through, or faced. He couldn’t understand it.

Renisha seemed only a little better. Clerical Resolve was a potent divination spell, but even it struggled against this existential terror. Optima, too, was fighting the effects. How had Pendajo managed to get away from whatever was causing this? Valkane gripped the wall for support and then saw it.

A floor-length mirror, placed by the hotel design team to both allow more light and provide the illusion the ornate hallway was even longer than it was, stood by the long-broken roc-vator. Smoke burbled forth from its edges, providing an entrancing and foreboding feeling. Yet, it seemed to say, “All the cool magical relics are doing it,” and puffed a bit more smoke out from its frame.

Inside the mirror was Lester.

Smoke roiled inside it as well as outside. Lester seemed frozen, but there was no expression on his face. He didn’t react to Valkane and Renisha pounding on the glass.

Renisha’s cool demeanor slipped. “What do we do?” she asked Valkane. The fact that she said it so plaintively terrified Valkane more than the feeling emanating from the mirror. He couldn’t let her feel this way and he couldn’t let his other best friend remain trapped. He closed his eyes, desperate to find some course of action.

“HOW DID HE GET IN THE MIRROR?” he asked Pendajo.

“I don’t know! One minute we’re scouting and the next he was sucked into it.”

“SUCKED? LIKE … INHALED?”

Pendajo shrugged his shoulders. A roach chittered in the corner and skittered away as Renisha kicked at it.

Valkane thought. If the mirror was smoking, then it conceivably could have inhaled Lester. What then would make it exhale him? He rubbed his temples, trying to break through the pulsing headache that started …

PULSING … he thought. It wasn’t his head … it was the Sword. He unholstered it with a whoosh of foul air.

“You can’t just break it!” Renisha said.

“I’M NOT GOING TO,” he replied. He waved it near the bottom of the mirror, wafting smoke from side to side.

Suddenly, Lester reacted. He placed his hands on the mirror and soundlessly mouthed words at Valkane. He seemed to be saying “No,” but it was too late. There was a sudden inhalation of smoke and what sounded like a tremendous sneeze.

Valkane blinked. Something was different. He saw Renisha hugging Lester, who then pointed at Valkane. Valkane reached out to touch Lester and touched glass.

Renisha’s mouth opened wide, and she looked horrified.

Now Valkane was trapped behind the mirror.

Study Questions:

1. What is the penalty in Los Tropes for possessing more than one dram of ogrethorn?

2. What is the savory ingredient used in gravel-infused buttermilk tarts?

3. Flashbacco has been linked to what types of diseases among paladins:

   1. Heart disease

   2. Alignment dysfunction

   3. Respiratory issues

   4. All of the above.

Renisha slumped against a wall. Manacles dangled from the wall, and she pushed one aside as she closed her eyes. “I’m exhausted.”

“Truly a valiant effort, most captivating cleric.” Optima conjured his flask, and it poured a fortifying wine. “Take some rest.”

Valkane wanted to say she was fine, but a glance at Renisha showed she needed at least an hour of rest. “LESTER AND I COULD RECONNOITER. PENDAJO, CORKY STAY HERE AND GUARD THEM.”

“Stray not too far. Further than 100 meters and I shan’t hear any calls for help.” Optima tapped his overlarge gold hoop earring. It must be a Ring of Resounding, able to amplify and clarify in both directions. Or in this case, an Earring of Resounding.

Lester smirked, and he beckoned Valkane to follow. They walked briskly but carefully past the 100-meter range. “Help, more beetles,” Lester whispered, testing to see if Optima could hear. There was no movement of torches behind them. They walked on.

Valkane lumbered on, waves of depression swirling in his head. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the feeling, but he had hoped an actual quest might dispel those gray tides that were all too familiar visitors to his emotional shores.

Valkane kicked open a door to another part of the hotel. The hallways were wider, and they must be deep into the golem’s solar plexus by now. “Get any information out of him?” Lester asked

“NOT REALLY. I DON’T THINK … SEDUCING HIM IS THE RIGHT WAY TO GET ANSWERS OUT OF HIM.”

“Why? What happened?”

Cracks in the ceiling let uneven shafts of sunshine into the hallway. Valkane turned over a bench and sat down heavily. Dust mites, nearly the size of hummingbirds, swam weightlessly from one shaft of light to the next, feeding on photons, then plummeting to their deaths and the spontaneous fissions of new dust mites. Lester perched on a table, his keen eyes darting and keeping watch.

“HE’S OFFERED TO TEACH ME SOME MAGIC.”

“Okay, that’s what you want, right?”

“YES. BUT IT’S CHURNING UP ALL THESE … FEELINGS.”
“About magic? Or about him?”

“BOTH. HE SAID IT’S A QUEST CRUSH.”

“Happens all the time. You know that.”

“I DON’T THINK … I DON’T WANT IT TO BE THAT.”

“Barb … don’t think I’m not … what’s the word humans use … considering? Respecting? I’m something of your feelings. I am. But we need info from him. Our lives may depend on it.” Lester sharpened his knife in the sunlight. “ And I wouldn’t necessarily tell ‘Nish this. She’d have a cow over it. Quest crushes aren’t in her wheelhouse and what she doesn’t approve of …” The statement remained unspoken. They’d seen many of Renisha’s (and their) former friends all but vanish from their circle once she’d censured them.

“WHY IS SHE SO SCARY? WE’RE HER OLDEST FRIENDS AND HER DISAPPROVAL STILL TERRIFIES ME.”

“Ha! I’d wager her disapproval scares her own deity! Don’t think her tricks work for half of Swanee’s clerics! Come on, let’s go up another couple of floors.” They trudged on, finding nothing of interest. Dust, chitters from a few hiding beetles, and nothing more. Valkane supposed the rumors were fact. Everything of value in the Golem had long since been ransacked, or simply had nothing left in it from its initial animation. Still, as they walked further on, the hotel seemed less ... distinct.

The hallways, floor and ceiling seemed to merge into a grayish tunnel. There was little detail; even the walls and doors seemed to be fuzzy, as though looking through dirty glass.

“THIS FEELS WRONG.”

Lester nodded. He blew out his torch, dipped it in a canister, and re-coated it with oil. It relit even stronger, but he held it nearly perpendicular to the floor and still everything seemed gray.

“WE SHOULD GO FURTHER,” Valkane said, while in his heart, the idea of taking another step terrified him. “BUT I CAN’T.”

Lester looked at him. “Me either. This is weird. Let’s go back. We also need to talk to Renisha ... away from Optima.” They hastened back, and the dread lessened. Valkane looked back once and still quickened his steps.

Renisha was sitting up and sipping more fortified wine from Corky. Valkane felt the dragon’s wine was not so much a healing balm as it was an acidic tonic to brave for its ultimately healthy effects. Still, Renisha seemed comforted by it. She patted the fur spread out under her and indicated Valkane should sit next to her. That scared him almost as much as the indistinct hallways ahead of them. She lay her head on his shoulder and whispered. “I’ll kill you if you say anything out loud, but I’ve never had that much taken out of me. I’m a little scared.”

Every muscle in his mighty-thewed body froze up in conflict. Part of him fought against his instinct to stand up and swing a sword at something, as useless as that might be against something as formless as dread. The other part longed to comfort her. Renisha ... afraid? Quests scarcely seemed worth going on, if they could causally toss aside every constant in life. Lester invited Optima and his Ring of Spying Resonately to explore a bit further. As they trudged off, Val leaned his arm over and encircled Renisha.

Valkane flashed back to third grade. School had just let out. He and Renisha were on the playground, and she was dirty, sweating and her robes torn. Her skinny fist had blood on it from where she’d punched Gragoth, a goblin exchange student. Gragoth had been picking on Elias, a frail little magic-user’s son. Elias’ cauldron was shattered, it had been a gift from someone in his family. Valkane hadn’t thought of Elias in years and wondered how life had turned out for him.

Almost the instant that the cauldron hit the pavement, Renisha used her staff to leap over and kick Gragoth soundly in the stomach. The goblin boy doubled over in pain. He swung at Renisha with a small pick, which grazed her arm, as she punched him.

Valkane had been playing rugby with some of the other barbarian boys. The moment was etched in his memory. As soon as Renisha yelled and he saw the blood begin to bloom like ooze from the scratch, time stopped. He ran towards her, seeing only blood and, out of the corner of his eye, a papyrus shopping bag floating lazily in the beach winds.

Even at nine, the strength of barbarian children is nothing to sneeze at. His punch sent Gragoth flying into the swing set. The goblin struggled to his feet, and Renisha was suddenly kneeling on top of him, kneading his face with a flurry of punches. Gragoth, whether he was really hurt or not, had the sense to stay down.

Valkane went to Renisha, who, stunningly, had tears in her eyes. He wasn’t sure why, until he followed her outstretched finger. Elias’s father placed his arm around his son, but couldn’t stop the boy’s plaintive wails. Not only was the cauldron destroyed, Renisha and Valkane learned, in between the boy’s hiccups and sobs, that it was the last thing his grandmother had given him before she passed.

Valkane and Renisha both got a week’s in-school suspension. She’d been afraid to tell her father, who the school counselor was happy to notify for her. Watching her father’s facial expression slide into a ravine of resigned disappointment made both of them feel ashamed ... even though they knew they’d been completely in the right. The Goblin superintendent pulled Gragoth out of school and sent Trevor, their own exchange student, back. Trevor never talked about his time at Goblin Acres Elementary, but he was afraid to sleep with the lights off until well into high school.

Valkane cradled Renisha and hoped they ran into some goblins to slay during this quest.

Study Questions:

1. Wine dragon acidity can be countered by adding what type of sweetener?

2. Aside from photons, what other nourishment sources are acceptabel for dust mites?

3. How many extra internal organs do goblins possess?

They trudged forward. The curved walls were covered in a musty mold that made the going treacherous at times. The ochre light from Renisha’s staff made the lichenous carpet (or was it the wallpaper, Valkane wondered) look like an exposed internal organ. The soft slish-slish sound as they walked made the experience worse.

Lester, like all elves, was so light on his feet that he made no contribution to the off-putting sounds of their travel. Corky sloshed and gurgled so much as he walked across the moldy floor that Valkane felt bile beginning to surge at the back of his throat. He quickly tried to think of anything besides the concept of “throat,” as it felt all-too throatlike in the ruins.

Optima provided a running commentary now that they were out of any immediate danger. A tiny ball of his own magic light hovered above the guide pamphlet he’d received from the mermaid ticket-seller. “The Golem, of course, used perspective magic to house the VIP suites in the gambling den.”

“WHAT IS PROSPECTIVE MAGIC?”

“PERspective, my husky hero,” Optima said. Valkane rolled his eyes, though the effect was lost in the beige-tinted darkness. “Tis an unusual and fascinating branch of magic. Quite powerful. Depends on the user and the subject seeing things the same way ... or in exactly opposite ways.”

Valkane was intrigued. It sounded like subtle magic. A dog-sized tunnel beetle skittered past his boot. He kicked at it, but was too slow. He could hear others. “HOW DOES IT WORK?”

“Hast thou ever been in a bad mood and a cheerful ballad plays? Or laugh with friends and thy problems seem lessened suddenly? Same principle, really. Nothing physically has changed. Thou hast just ... shifted.”

Valkane heard another beetle and swiped at it. It squealed as Valkane’s blade separated it from its legs. What Optima said made sense. Lester made him laugh. Renisha usually intimidated him. But he felt better around them.

They could be waiting in line for a concert, or hanging out in front of a local shopkeeper’s window ... something that should be boring - yet, with the two of them by his side, the most mundane things became adventures. Another beetle skittered past him and he heard Corky snap at it with his jaws. Since the dragon’s mouth was made of entangled vines, the beetle escaped completely unharmed and only a tad inconvenienced. ALBEIT LESS BUG-INFESTED THAN THIS ADVENTURE, he mused.

“If the user and subject can agree ... totally and completely in their beliefs - you can hide a whole suite in the shoulder of a giant golem.”

“I don’t believe it,” Renisha said. “No two people ever agree on their beliefs totally.”

“Hence the division in thine own religion’s stance on fondant,” Optima said. “Yet, one thing often levels that playing field.”

“DEATH?” Valkane asked. He swung idly at another beetle, but it dodged. The things were glossy black, and when curious, their heads extended from their shells on long, unprotected necks. They were tough to kill unless you sliced through their mucousy necks. Valkane knew some cross-country questers used them to supplement their rations if they ran out of food. He was determined not to go on those types of quests.

“Money,” Lester said, kicking at another beetle. This one reared at him and hissed before heading off into the darkness.

“Exactly. Money. Thou might not believe many things, but in sooth, money standardizes all. If thou pay 125 gold coins a night, thou hast the belief thy suite is worth it.”

Another beetle, nearly as big as his torso, hissed and clacked at Valkane. Guard beetles only grew to this size when baby ones were around. But the ultimate protector was always a Mother Beetle. “WE MUST BE NEAR A NEST.”

Lester cocked an ear. “No more than six meters. Probably in a room.”

“Or a 125 gold coin a night suite,” Renisha added.

“CAN WE BE THAT HIGH UP YET?” Valkane didn’t think they’d travelled past the golem’s waist.

“Suites could be anywhere,” Lester said. “And in the groin area would be ...”

“No … you’ve got to be kidding me!” Renisha said.

“The Suites Private,” Optima clapped his hands. “Oh, well done. You are the right group for this!”

Among Los Tropes resorts, the Golem Hotel’s specified area for guests’ more carnal pleasures was legend. Most of the resorts offered such areas, of course, and they were usually themed to reflect the resort’s motif. Each resort offered props, costuming, and even additional staff as needed. But the Golem was known for having the largest club (in all senses). For a long time, a trip to Los Tropes without purchasing a “I Clubbed the Golem” or “The Golem Clubbed Me” tee tunic was hardly worth the expense of going.

In an ironic show of belief among all of the adventurers, as they stepped over the next ridge of sideways crown molding, a half-opened door appeared to their left. A chorus of soft sucking sounds and the occasional screech emanated from the suite. It was the Mother Beetle. And …

“It’s nursing,” Renisha hissed. She doused the light from her staff and withdrew a pouch. Its grains gleamed even in the darkness. “Sunflower seeds - great for breads, nutritional snacking, and ... dawnus!” She tossed the seeds into the air, where they swirled into a hovering, rotating disc.

Sunlight flared. Everything in the room was suddenly etched in the brilliant, highly-defined light of a noon sun. Every shadow seemed even blacker against the radiance of the seeds. The effect on the nocturnal beetles was instantaneous. Dozens of squeals, clicks, clacks, and hisses preceded a rustling scurry toward every corner. A slow, ponderous shape arched backwards to stare at them. The Mother Beetle stared at them, dull and corpulent hatred in its glassy black eye stalks.

The youngest beetle children scattered, though some were clearly reluctant to leave the now freed-up dozens of beetle teats. These in and of themselves boggled Valkane’s eyes, and he looked away. The Mother Beetle shook, and the tiniest ones raced off to huddle in the small amount of darkness left in the suite. Once she felt the last beetle child scurry away, the Mother Beetle’s bulk rolled over and rose to its spindly and long-haired legs. It was easily 30 feet long and 10 feet high at the shoulder. It spat a hiss at them, then almost delicately wiped its mouth with a relatively tiny foreleg. Renisha threw more seeds up, murmuring them into more miniature suns.

“VILE CREATURE OF THE SEWERS! TASTE MY BLADE!” Valkane swung his sword, and it clattered against the creature’s shell. “WHAT IN KLOORD’S TESTICLES?”

Optima stepped from behind him. “Verily, I should hath warned you ... Mother Beetles are ... well, a mother to kill. Their metallic hide acts like a –“ Optima grunted as he dodged a tarsus swipe, “an enchanted +2 shield.”

“THANKS FOR THE INFO,” Valkane murmured.

The children cowered in the corners of the room, hidden behind large objects Valkane hoped were not designed for sexual purposes. Renisha’s discs of light whirled faster as she murmured. Lester threw small dart-like daggers at any guard beetle or beetle child that came to the Mother’s aid.

Optima gestured, but nothing seemed to be happening. Suddenly, the Mother reared on its hind legs and screamed a terrible screech. Valkane thought he could feel his blood actually curdling like overheated milk. Unless Valkane misread things, Optima was actually doing something for a change. It sounded as though he cast Brambles of Pain. Valkane had read about some of the common defense spells of magic-users, and that one stuck out to him. Not only did the spell make one feel they were walking through a thicket of thorny brush, it also lowered one’s armor class’s resistance to the spell to -1 … or, essentially naked.

Valkane yelled over the roar, eager to do anything other than listen to the horrid screeches of pain. After all, the beetle mother was just doing what nature intended … raising thousands of baby tunnel beetles to scavenge ruins, find leftover food, and raise beetle families of their own to complete the cycle of life. It was their group that was trespassing. Questing, he decided that instant, had philosophical issues as thorny as the bramble spell. “HOW DO WE KILL IT?”

“If we do, those guards won’t hesitate to come after us,” Lester yelled over the squeals. Guard beetles skittered around the front door, frothing at the pincers with frustration. They wanted in, but their inbred and cultural taboos about disturbing a Mother Beetle’s private sanctum inhibited them.

That, and Lester’s flurry of stinging darts, made the decision to wait outside easier for the guard beetles. Only one ... a scarred, one-eyed beetle, seemed to not chitter in frustration. Instead, he peeked in when there was an opening in the crowded doorway. Pendajo held the doorway, blowing foul pipe smoke and wielding some sort of gas-propelled six-cylindered device that sent projectiles into the guard beetle’s vulnerable necks.

Corky, in the meantime, was huddled in a corner, the wine in his stomach sloshing from the dragon’s fearful trembling. Valkane shook his head. The wine dragon didn’t seem to have much use, but what could they do? They couldn’t leave him in the hotel, not with the Brothers after them. Perhaps they could find a pet day care when this was over.

Renisha’s discs hovered in front of the Mother. The edges of the discs were starting to dim. The congealed seeds were not meant for continuous light emissions, and several darker ones spun outward and dropped to the floor.

Optima gestured, and the Mother screamed again, lashing out, nearly hitting the rotating discs of light and seeds. “Val! I need you!” Renisha yelled. He bounded over. “Right pocket, third seam ... sesame seeds!”

Valkane struggled to comprehend. Was she hungry? No, of course not. They were for a spell. His plate-sized hands fumbled as he tried to count seams. At one point, he brushed against her thigh and, embarrassed, he quickly withdrew his hand. “VAL!” She yelled. “Get them!”

More of the seeds in the light disc spun out of the circle like burnt kernels of corn. The light, which moments ago mimicked bright sunlight, now generated only a candlelight dimness that would be romantic if they weren’t fighting or their lives against a hoard of beetles. Valkane plunged his hand back into her cloak and yanked. A small bag with seeds came out, pinched between his thumb and index finger.

“Open it!” she yelled. Both her hands continued to gesture and turn as she continued mumbling the incantation. The whizzing sound of Lester’s daggers became more frequent. Valkane knew their team was more than a match for any number of beetles, but in total darkness, with unknown numbers skittering about ... he shook his head and slit open the pouch. Tan seeds fell into his hand.

“Outline a hole,” she hissed. Valkane looked at her quizzically, and she glanced at the floor. “Outline a hole” ... but there was no hole. It hit him - make a hole out of them. He scattered them in a rough round shape. Renisha glanced and mumbled, “Uhpeen sezzammay.” Nothing happened.

“They have to touch,” she said. The disc was down to the dimness of a seedy tavern candelabra’s worth of light. Valkane bent down, hurriedly trying to make sure each seed touched another one. It was harder than it should be. The Mother Beetle’s thrashing legs would disturb them, and there simply didn’t seem to be enough seeds, no matter how small a circle he arranged.

It was a bizarre moment. Optima kept chanting, and invisible lines of pain seemed to wrap around the Mother Beetle. Lester’s dagger supply couldn’t be inexhaustible, and sure enough, the whizzing slowed down to one every five to ten seconds. Renisha looked exhausted. Valkane was on his hands and knees arranging seeds in a circle. His mother would be mortified to see his role in this quest.

“DONE!” he yelled. Renisha dropped the light spell and yelled “Uhpeen sezzamay!” again. The floor seemed to shift, and a giant hole shimmered into existence.

“Val! With me!” Lester yelled as he raced to the opposite side of the giant insect and shoved. Its own weight enlarged the hole in the floor, and it fell, squealing shrilly, down several floors. The last dimming seed light showed a flurry of motion as the beetles scurried over into the hole to follow the Mother. Outside, the guard beetles bounded down the corridors to help their queen.

Valkane brushed his hands off. Several seeds clung to his sweaty hands. No wonder he’d had trouble connecting them; they were sticking to his skin. He felt a slight tingle, but again, this had not been his victory. Renisha gained the most experience in this battle.

Study Questions:

1. Sesame seeds have what other magical, teeth-annoying properties besides opening portals?

2. A Mother Beetle can have a litter of over:

   1. 100 grubs

   2. 2,500 grubs

   3. 4,000 grubs

   4. You really don’t want to know.

3. How many verified feats of perspective magic have been recorded in Los Tropes?

“The Golem,” Optima puffed, catching his breath as he caught up with Valkane’s long strides.

Originally, the cornerstone building of the Concourse stood ten stories high, small compared to the magically augmented towering resorts built after it. Most of its stories had compacted together during its fall, so that now, only a mere three and a half of them rose above street level. Its original shape had been humanoid. Now it resembled an enormous, split-open head resting vertically between two knees. Supportive scaffolding converted the outstretched arm into the entrance to the tour. Signs notified visitors they had to be at least goblin-height to ride in one of the trolleys and under cave troll height to actually enter the building. Valkane stood next to the cartoonish drawing of a cave troll holding a ruler that went to seven and a half feet tall. It would be tight quarters, he gauged, rubbing his neck, but there was little choice.

The team scrambled up the metal and wood stairs to the entrance. “IT’S PURCHASE ONE, GET ONE HALF PRICE IF WE WAIT UNTIL THREE OF THE CLOCK,” Valkane said, reading the sign above the ticketing window.

“You just sliced open a troll assassin; we don’t have time to wait for a tourist deal!” Renisha said, shouting the last part. Valkane knew that, but years of Kyria always shopping for deals imprinted a love for couponing in him. He held his hands up and nodded, hoping to appease her. Optima paid for the entire group, which Valkane felt was more than fair, given he got them into this whole mess in the first place.

The mermaid ticket seller sat on a stool inside a large tank of salt water. She wore the same short-sleeved, knitted tunic as the other employees, though hers had a ring of wet fabric where it dipped into her tank as she adjusted her seating. “You’re in luck; there’s a tour starting in one minute. Head over to the group next to the Crumbling Toe part of the façade, and Derek will be your guide. Enjoy the Golem, part of Las Tropes’ colorful history. I can help the next group right here,” she said, dismissing them.

The team hurried to the Crumbling Toe, which looked exactly as it sounded. Once the grand entrance to the Golem’s gambling hall, the open toe was now supported by a number of beams and lit by a plethora of covered candles. There were 14 other people in the tour group, clustered around Derek, a Draconian in the short-sleeved, knitted tunics with logos all the staff wore. A name tag saying “Hi, I’m Derek!” was affixed to his tunic, slightly obscuring the stylized “The Golem” logo.

Valkane was always a tad uneasy around Draconians. He didn’t like to admit to prejudice, but serpents and serpentine-like creatures creeped him out. Humanoid muscles shouldn’t be covered in the shiny, wet-looking scales of a dragon. The way they moved simply looked … wrong. Valkane supposed the roots of his prejudice lay with his father (MAY HE SCOUR THE HEAVENS OF ALL HIS ENEMIES BEFORE RELAXING WITH A TANKARD OF ALE). He used to make ugly jokes about how a human rarely survived a mating with a dragon and had a host of fire-related puns that would make the family laugh uproariously. It wasn’t until a Draconian hit on Valkane in a bar one night, and he found himself nearly bolting for the exit, that he realized how ingrained his prejudice was. He forced himself to lead the group and stand close to Derek to subtly prove he had no problems with Draconians. Derek’s features were handsome, if reptilian, and he was extremely fit.

“If everyone’ll gather round … perfect, sir, if you can just make room for some of the young questers, perfect, perfect. Hi, I’m Derek and today, instead of losing your hard-earned gold in the gambling halls, you’re going to be learning about one of the most important parts of Las Tropes’ history … the rise and fall of the Golem,” Derek said.

“There’s just a couple of ground rules. One, stay within the torch-lit areas at all times. These are the only safety-guaranteed areas in the ruins, and we want to make sure you get back out alive to see some of the other great attractions Las Tropes is known for. And the shows, am I right?” Dereke pattered on, winking first his inner eyelid and then his secondary eyelid. Valkane felt his shoulders hunch up with tension. He breathed and ordered his shoulders to resume their normal position. Body and brain compromised at a halfway point between “stationary posture” and “poised to flee.”

“Two, if for some reason you do get separated, please remain calm and stay as close to a lighted path area as possible. There are magic call buttons every hundred feet or so, and those are visible to most wavelengths. Find a call button and ring for help. Do not try to find your own way out. Two years ago, a party of dark elves went into the closed-off kitchen area, and we’re still looking for them. That’s a joke, ma’am, I haven’t lost anyone in over a decade. If you’ll follow me through here,” Derek led the way in, and Valkane’s group made sure they were the last ones to follow.

The gloomy interior of the abandoned and ruined gambling hall felt oppressive. A tremendous chandelier had crashed into the center ring of card tables. The rubble around the tables flickered in Derek’s torchlight. The splintery white debris suggested that much of the rubble might be the crushed bones of the unlucky gamblers who’d been betting even as the Golem suddenly came to unexpected life and crashed down on top of them. Or they could be the remains of poker chips. It was hard to say in the gloom.

Derek’s voice took on a sepulchral quality as he matched the mood of the dramatic entrance. “Built over three and a half centuries ago by the fabled fairy developer, Samuel von Cowherd, the Golem once stood at over one-quarter of a league high and was visible as far away as Quarry City, native home to the Boulderian dwarf tribes.”

A couple of tinny voices cheered, and Derek smiled. His wide mouth made the smile stretch almost to his ear slits. “Ah, we have some Boulderians in the group today. Congrats on the Trebuchet Bowl win this year. It took two years to build and enchant the frameworks of the Golem, and the opening day ceremonies made national news. The President of San Serif herself cut the ribbon.” Derek pointed his torch towards a glass-encased section of the wall, where papyrus clippings and pre-Scrye news magazine articles covered the opening day ceremonies in depth.

Valkane found the tour fascinating. Like most people, he’d seen some of the ancient news image strips of the day in history class. Image strip technology was no longer used in quest classes, as Scryes made projecting images more efficient. Still, the days when one of the teachers would pull down the blinds and set up the complicated system of contained candles and pixie dust, then slowly wind the strip of images around the projector rods, were fond memories of Valkane’s younger days. He could still picture pixie dust softly drifting through the strong beam of light as he sat at his desk, absorbed by the jerky images of the past.

Renisha shook him and put her finger to her lips. She beckoned him to follow. Derek’s voice began to fade away as the tour moved onto the next chamber. “It was when the famous Drench Mob moved into town and began operating The Dragon’s Belly across the street that the fae queen, Snaab, started what would become known as Drench Wars …”

Valkane followed Renisha back to the main gambling hall. The others were still there. Lester smirked. “Were you going to take the whole tour?”

“IT WAS INTERESTING,” Valkane said. “WHERE DO WE GO FIRST?”

Optima’s map floated in front of him. Again, Valkane wondered why he wasted so much energy all the time. Despite their … he hesitated to call it a “tryst,” so he settled on “bedding arrangement”; he didn’t trust the magic-user.

“The kitchens,” Optima said. “Through that door and underground.” He floated around the giant, broken chandelier and towards an opening with a broken door hanging on one hinge.

Renisha took the lead, chanting a quick spell and setting her spoon staff to “Oven Light.” The spoon sent the diffused spotlight ahead in the dim kitchens, a light which only an advanced baking cleric of Swanee could use to tell if a pastry had achieved golden brownness or not. Lester’s eyes softly reflected the light from Renisha’s staff, and Valkane knew he was at home in the darkness. Optima’s head shimmered in the darkness. He’d cast a vision spell that granted him perfect sight for 20 lengths. Corky’s purple-red eyes seemed to shift and catch the dim light and reflect it. Apparently any sort of dragon was at home in the darkness. Pendajo placed a pair of dragonhide goggles over his shaded glasses. He tapped them, and they glowed slightly green. “Infra-green cave vision goggles. Got ‘em from a dwarven warsmith couple of years back,” he said.

Valkane, once again, was at a disadvantage. It didn’t matter, he rationalized. He was used to that. He could rely on the light from the staff. His sword slapped against the small of his back as he hunched instinctively to avoid grazing the pots and pans that hung from the ceiling. They walked almost noiselessly, only the tap-tap-tap of his scabbard on his back making any noise.

After the kitchens, they passed through large double doors into the area Valkane knew resort and restaurant workers called the back of house. The hallways seemed endless and exactly the same. Renisha and Optima conferred wordlessly on a map, with some pointing and angry gestures, then decided on a path. The group continued onward.

They trudged on for 45 minutes. Each set of double doors opened onto another hallway exactly like the previous one. There was the slightest sense of moving upward, but otherwise, it was silent and the same.

Boredom set in. THIS IS WHY, Valkane suddenly remembered, I DON’T LIKE QUESTING. The equation always seemed off-balance. The ratio of walking around in dank corridors or trackless wastes far overshadowed the amount of fights or cool displays of magic use. Only the promise that he would score something, preferably a way to do magic, truly motivated him. Endless walks like this only made him scrutinize his life choices, which he didn’t like doing on a good day. Doing it while trudging through dark corridors, stepping on rat (and Kloord only knew what other types of) droppings, still hungover and feeling disappointed with himself for sleeping with Optima, well, that was a recipe for existential despair. Voices swirled in his head, made more painful with the added zest of his mother’s disapproval layered in.

Overall, Valkane enjoyed his life in East Zapfino. From day to day, he ... well, to be honest, he drifted. He didn’t have much of a plan, or a goal, other than the vague hope he would wake up a magic-user. He’d work out in the morning, work out, masturbate, eat, have a cup of java with friends, and masturbate before going to dinner or seeing a play or balladeer. And quaff mead. His friends joked that he was a quaffing machine. It helped him loosen up, especially among his trendier friends, who he suspected made snarky comments about his choice of loincloth, the shagginess of his haircut, or the moves he had on the dance floor when he was out of earshot.

Frustration gnawed at him, but to most people, it would seem a fairly idyllic life. However, his share of the treasure he inherited after his father’s death was running low. He needed to beef up his own revenue stream, and questing was … well, it was simply what barbarians were good at. That or build huts. He didn’t see himself as a construction worker, and as his uncle would sneer, where was the glory in that?

Lester held up his hand. All four of them grasped hands, and Renisha dimmed the light, which left her and Valkane all but blind. The tapping code most questers used was simple and effective in situations like this. Lester tapped “Smell/Monster/ Ahead/ 10 lengths or less”

Optima tapped “Barbarian lead. Cleric. Thief. Paladin. Magic.” Each person repeated the code until Valkane received it. Valkane was used to being fodder in these things, but for Optima to put himself after a thief made little sense.

Valkane tapped back. “MAGIC CLOSER?” As the message was relayed from him to Optima, precious seconds elapsed. More precious seconds elapsed as the question “Who is tragically closeted?” Valkane rolled his eyes at his own ineptitude with the tapping code. He let go of Pendajo and headed for the front of the line.

Their positions adjusted, Valkane slowly withdrew his sword. He bent down, aware the ceiling was as much a hindrance as whatever faced them.

A soft sucking sound and a putrid smell wafted towards them. Valkane’s nose scrunched up. “PHEWWW,” he whispered. It smelled like a giant mollusk carcass rotting after days in the sun.

Renisha tapped “Quiet!” on his shoulder, digging her fingernail in for emphasis. Valkane pushed her hand off him. He was going to need room. The slithering, sucking sound grew louder and the smell wafted from side to side, as though the source was titling wildly from side to side.

Renisha, presumably at a tap from Lester (relaying it from the hiding-in-the-back Optima), shifted her staff and its full oven light flared on. The mystic spoon flooded the next 30 lengths of the tunnel with oven light - and wobbling to the left side of the tunnel was a six-foot gelatinous cube.

The cube was mostly translucent, with only a few bleached rat skeletons, rocks, and a few ogre toothpicks hovering embedded in its jelly-like mass. Valkane briefly wondered if at the End Of All Things, the apocalyptic prophecy that most religions shared in common, the only things left in the world would be ogre toothpicks, hell roaches, and the gods themselves. There appeared to be no place in San Serif that didn’t have ogre toothpicks carelessly discarded and strewn about.

The vaguely tan-colored cube slurped across the floor (or was it the wall of the tilted, former hotel, Valkane wondered), its clearish bulk slowly grasping its way forward and its rear corners tilting from side to side.

Valkane swung, the blade of his sword cleaving the mass in two. It emitted a keening cry that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The sound pierced his ears, and he covered his ears the best he could with a broadsword in one hand.

He turned and could see Optima mouthing something at him. Renisha had a sour look on her face. She pointed. The two halves of the cube shivered and shook. And re-formed. Valkane stepped back. The thing was bigger. Mercifully, the cry stopped.

“Val!” Renisha said. “Kinetic energy makes it grow!”

FRACK, he remembered with an angry flush of embarrassment. Valkane hadn’t encountered gelatinous cubes, spheres, or pyramids his whole life, and his gut reaction had been to swing. Luckily, if he remembered his physics class at all, the sword swing hadn’t generated that much kinetic energy.

Lester darted out of the range of the oven light, which gave the cube an even more beige tint. Renisha struggled to steady her light-projecting staff and still pull something from one of the endless pouches of her robe. Optima hung back, a small smirk on his face. Valkane struggled to remember the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy ... not that he was certain the difference would be constructive.

Renisha managed to get a pouch out. Her staff dipped as she attempted to untie the pouch. “You could help, Val!”

Valkane ran to her, and his meaty fingers fumbled with the knot. “WHY IS IT SO TIGHT?” Valkane felt like the bag was colder than it should be for only being out of the warm summery air of Las Tropes for less than an hour.

“Because I don’t want the Chill Pills rubbing up against anything else!”

AHHH, Valkane understood. No matter what protected them, Chill Pills were aggressive in their freezing capabilities. Only the strongest magic or penguin skin could contain them. The Cube would be an Iced Gelatinous Cube in moments ... if he could untie the bag, which he now noticed sported a light layer of frost on the knotted strings.

The creature moved toward them, as threateningly as a half-ton cube of gelatin could. They all shuffled back a few steps. Now, it would be another minute before the slow-moving beast could traverse another foot.

Suddenly, it screamed. The newly fused seam down the middle seemed to dissolve. Ragged drops of gelatinous mass bled and spewed as the creature shook from pain. The outer skin shriveled towards one side like fast-cooking bacon. Within moments, the cube was dead, and Lester’s torso dropped down from the ceiling. His feet were hooked onto a railing, and he smiled and waved at them.

“HOW DID YOU GET UP THERE?”

“And how did you kill it?” Renisha asked.

Lester flipped and dropped to his feet. “Val. I’m a thief. Hanging upside down in the dark ‘tis as mother’s milk to a thief. And this is how I defeated our cubic pal.” He held out an empty pouch. A few white grains trickled out.

“Bravo!” Optima clapped. “Salt - the nemesis of anything gelatinous. Shall we move on?”

“Not big on experience, is it?” Lester remarked, staring at his hands. Valkane hoped his assist also might have gained him something, but he felt no tingle whatsoever. While every quester intellectually understood the rules of gaining experience, that didn’t mean they all necessarily thought the rules through logically, especially in the aftermath of battle. That’s how Experience Adjudicators became a profession, though it was about as preferred a career as the Department of Magical Vehicles, despite the attractive pension.

WITH MY LUCK, THAT’S WHAT I’LL HAVE TO BECOME IF THIS QUESTING THING DOESN’T WORK OUT THIS TIME, Valkane thought.

Study Question:

1. How many years of graduate quest school do you need to become an Experience Adjuticator?

2. Name three methods of disposing of a gelatinous cube without damaging the contents held inside it.

3. Which team won the Trebuchet Bowl four times running?

Pendajo exhaled noisily, and his flashbacco smoke faded. The others shook their heads and rubbed their eyes. “After an hour of the big guy belting out “It’s Storming Magic-Users” five times in a row, yelling that ‘Adventure’ was his capital, you all thought stealing the valet sign was a good idea, so I headed back here.”

“YOU WEREN’T EVEN THERE FOR MY FIGHT IN THE ARENA. HOW COULD YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED THEN?”

Pendajo shrugged. “The miracle of flashbacco.”

Renisha felt in her pocket. “I don’t have the Scrunchie.”

“I think you do, Your Blendedness.” He pointed an elbow at her head as he drank from his mug. She felt through her hairline and tugged. The slender platinum band changed back into the Scrunchie as she pulled it off her head. “I’m not saying we don’t have winning personalities,” he continued, “but every single place we went, people wanted to buy us drinks. I’d wager that had something to do with it.”

Lester sipped his drink and said, “Still doesn’t make sense. Elf tolerance — even half-elf — is stronger than that. And for all of us to forget from a certain point on … that’s nigh-impossible.”

Optima nodded, then smiled. He reached by his side, where, unnoticed, the Shield of Self-Justification appeared as he grasped it. “Perhaps not. Perhaps the Shield was shielding us from more than the wrath of the Brothers or the constabulary.”

“YOU MEAN IT WIPED OUR MEMORIES?”

“Perhaps not wiped … but justified. Perhaps by loudly not knowing what we were doing, we were able to get back here safely, unnoticed and —” he looked at Valkane, “uninhibited.”

This explanation did not mollify Valkane. In fact, it creeped him out thoroughly. He’d studied magic as much as he could and he’d only found passing glances of the branch they called subtle magic. The subtle thaumologies dealt in things less flashy than bolts of power and transmuting harpies into hats. They dealt with the mind. What on Quarth was one supposed to do with a Shield whose powers ranged from mere defense to erasing memories you suspected you didn’t want to have? That came perilously close to the old fables about The Gryphon’s Paw, and everyone knew how that ended up. The subtle magics were not something to mess around with.

A saying of his old swordmistress came to mind. “IF YOU CAN’T CUT THROUGH THE CONFUSION, YOU CAN’T CUT THROUGH AN ARM.” He’d not quite grasped the full weight of it at the time, and he’d piled it up in his memory along with other things she said like “RESPECT YOUR OPPONENT, BUT DISRESPECT HIS WORDS,” “A STRONG ARM LIFTS MORE THAN A MUG OF ALE,” and “THE DREGS OF THIS TEA SMELL PURPLE.” This last she’d said just before she was placed in the Olde Barbarian Home, so Valkane had started mentally disregarding all her other sayings, assuming she’d been senile the whole time. However, she’d claimed many lives with her uncanny sense of incisiveness and an extremely sharp blade.

“WHAT DO WE DO NOW?”

“Finish the quest, of course. By the Thirteen Heavens, we are almost halfway there,” Optima said.

“You said that meant an audience with the Sands Dragon,” Renisha reminded him.

“True, true. And we be most well positioned to do that now.” He yawned, his open shirt slipping to one side. Valkane had been jackhammering at the paved-over trove of his memories, but still nothing concrete surfaced of their time in the bed. Was that due to the Shield? Was that good or bad?

“WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GO NOW THEN, OPTIMA?”

Optima smiled, the smile of someone who was riding the wave of getting everything they felt entitled to. Valkane wanted to punch him at that moment. He couldn’t believe he’d slept with the magic-user and tried to remember he was offering to share his knowledge. He forced his fingers to uncurl.

“The Golem Hotel, of course.”

Investment Infrastructure

The questers took turns showering in the master suite, as no one had a good plan for removing the now-stuck owlbear without totally destroying it. Cleaned and fully outfitted, they left the inn and strode towards the Concourse.

It appeared to Valkane that they were moving in slowed-down motion as they left the resort. Slowed-down motion was a filter effect some Scrye users added to their moving images to heighten the dramatic effect. However, this felt as though he truly was walking through transparent molasses. Perhaps it was Optima’s doing. The overall effect, Valkane had to admit, made him feel … badass. It felt good to project so much confidence visually. As they passed other pedestrians, he slowly nodded at them, his long mane wafting side to side, gently yet manfully. He and his posse (ADVENTURE CAPITALISTS DOES HAVE A CERTAIN RING TO IT, he thought) owned the Concourse in this moment.

People were waving and pumping their fists in the air as they walked by. At first, this seemed like a normal byproduct of this slowed-motion badassery feeling. Yet, as the effect faded and they walked more normally, it felt odd. Valkane wondered, WHY ARE THEY CHEERING US? HOW MUCH OF A SPECTACLE DID WE MAKE LAST NIGHT?

Lester and Renisha tentatively waved at people and exchanged glances. What was going on? Only Optima seemed not to notice. Valkane wondered if it was related to the missing hours of the prior evening. Valkane took out his Scrye and scrolled through his feed images. As they waited at the pedestrian crossing, his own eyebrows raised in surprise. “GUYS,” he said. “LOOK.”

Image after image of them in cheaply printed tunics proclaiming themselves the “Adventure Capitalists” living what appeared to be quite the baller lifestyle in Las Tropes. Images of Valkane and Jack Diablo, a famed headliner Concourse magician, doing body shots of trollquila off of Optima’s bare stomach. Images of Renisha open-mouth kissing two shirtless Chimeradale dancers at the same time. Optima floating them all past the Maab Monument and snapping lewd images of themselves in front of her unfortunately open-mouthed sculpture. Corky, (WHEN DID WE PICK HIM UP? Valkane wondered) perched on top of the famed replica of the Ravenbeak State Building, spewing wine into the mouths of tourists as they rumbled under him on the rolling coaster chariot ride.

“IS THIS WHY PEOPLE ARE CHEERING US?” he asked.

The traffic signaler, an imp with green, yellow, and red-burning candles, switched colors and impatiently blew a silver whistle to make the crowd on the curb move across quickly. The newly-christened Adventurers scurried across. Several people held up their hands, paws or retractable appendages to exchange fist or tentacle bumps with Lester or Optima. Renisha’s terrifying smile shielded her from any physical contact. “I think we were a little too high-profile last night,” she said.

Behind them, the unmistakable sound of a small crossbow pistol clicked. “I’d say youse was,” a gruff troll voice said. “Keep walkin’. The Crockery Bros wants some words wit youse about the you-know-what.”

Renisha’s smile shone like a bent dagger, stained with thin lines of blood. She turned the smile on the troll. “We’re a little busy at the moment.” For a second, the troll froze, cowed by her ferocious expression, then he aimed the gun at her face.

If speed actually could blind, instead of merely being an impressive simile, all within seeing distance of Valkane would have their visual acuity suddenly and permanently impaired. He slid his broadsword out of its scabbard and raised it above his head so quickly, the troll had no time to react to the sudden movement. The troll was only five feet tall, so its bloated and pale purple features barely had time to register the shock it felt as it saw the sword coming down for the cleaving blow. The sword cut easily through the top layers of hair, skin, and granular layers of cartilage before hitting the rock-like skull with a solid clang. The troll’s expression flashed through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, then a resigned acceptance that his afterlife had indeed arrived sooner than anticipated. Valkane used the mighty thews of both arms to lift the sword back up. The blade stuck in the skull enough to lift the bleeding troll six inches off the sidewalk.

The sword wrenched free, and the injured troll dropped back to the ground. He swayed, unsteady from the fatal blow. Valkane roared and brought the sword down, cleanly cleaving the creature in two from head to crotch.

The troll’s crossbow pistol fell to the ground, its bolt grazing the backside of a centaur taking a Scrye image next to the outdoor topiary of the Hanging Gardens Resort and Tree Fort. The centaur whinnied with pain and looked angrily around for his assailant.

Valkane wiped the troll gore from his blade. “Others will be coming,” Optima said. “Let’s hurry.” Bystanders were clapping and cheering, as the Adventurers raced across the street against the imp’s flag. They dodged chariots and wove across the expansive boulevard to the ruins of the Golem in the center.

Study Questions:

1. How many layers of cartilage does the average troll have above its skull?

2. Healers advise not smoking flashbacco when:

   1. Pregnant

   2. Drinking trollquila

   3. Around a failed paladin

   4. All of the Above

3. How many chapters more before the Sands Dragon shwos up?

The desperately dancing Brother yelled in abject terror as he locked eyes with the Brother that Valkane kissed. The beejay was so stunned, he stopped spinning his tarry discs, and the pounding thump of the music died with a half-hearted last plonk.

Since barbarians, due to their lack of dance skills and more sensitive ears than baseline humanoid stock, rarely go to nightclubs, it was clear who the only barbarian in the club was. The only other one that night was a bouncer who was off-duty at the moment and out behind the dumpsters smoking a pipe. Heads swiveled between the two Brothers and Valkane, and he pushed Pendajo into the corridor. “OH, BOY,” he said.

Neither Brother seemed the least bit attractive anymore. Instead, both looked like middle-aged men making complete fools of themselves attempting to wear age-inappropriate clothing and showing up at a nightclub that no one over the age of 25 (or 220, in elven years) should set foot in. Valkane’s keen eyesight noted that both men’s chins were far more jowly than he’d noticed before. Both of their hairlines receded like the waves on the beach after a parasailing giant would splash down into the shallows.

Valkane pulled his new sword out, brandishing it with the subtle flourish of a trained warrior. Anyone familiar with fencing would have interpreted the signal clearly as, “I was trying to settle things peacefully, but take another step and my brand-new sword will taste its first cocktail of bone, blood and gristle.” That last part was a traditional challenge of the ancient Glyphians, and while Valkane didn’t relish cleaning his sword of anyone’s gristle, much less these pretentious brothers, he hoped it looked intimidating enough to stall them.

It didn’t. The Brother he kissed (they really should wear nametags in public, Valkane thought) charged forward. His brother, his stomach now bulging slightly over his many-pocketed hauler shorts, ran towards Valkane as well. Neither wielded a weapon, which made Valkane uneasy. He couldn’t just slaughter two celebrities in front of an entire nightclub, could he?

As the pair continued towards him (their charge eroding slowly into a fast walk as they ran, then trotted, then walked quickly as they coughed for breath), it looked as though he might have to. From the corner of his eye, it appeared the others made it through the corridor and out onto the street. Valkane wasn’t sure he could get by the minotaur bouncer without an altercation. Unsure of his best course of action, Valkane braced himself. Hopefully, he could pummel each of them with the flat of his blade and hilt. If he could knock them out, then maybe talk his way past the bouncer …

Suddenly, the room lit up with an interior brightness Valkane had only ever experienced at the Olde Barbarians Home, where his grand-uncle, Stanes, finally passed1.

Patrons of the now-intensely bright club shielded their eyes. Music emanated from somewhere, and for a change, it was a song Valkane knew. In fact, he’d heard it earlier that evening. It was a Crème and Brulée song - “Harpy Love,” one of Crème’s more popular ballads about falling for a bad girl, only to be heartbroken until a more suitable (and more Swanee-approved) girl came along to make things right.

A hand from behind grabbed his bicep. “Come on, Val!” It was Renisha. He followed along, as the nightclub crowd booed at the sudden shift in musical tastes. As Valkane glanced back, he saw the Brothers staggering near the railings separating the bar area, unable to see and disoriented by the loud music. A small crowd of younger nightclubbers stormed the beejay booth, demanding better music be played, though the hapless man was unable to do anything about the song choice.

The bouncer was nowhere to be seen until Valkane and Renisha got outside. He was unconscious, and Lester knelt over him, trussing him up. The queue of people aching to get into the club took advantage of the bouncer’s incapacitation. Ignoring Lester and any possible assault charges that could be filed, patrons streamed past them, unaware the music and lightshow inside would not be the one they expected. Lester finished with a razor knot and smiled up at Valkane. “Barbarian thief, huh? You are definitely trying to cut into my gig, now.”

“VERY FUNNY,” Valkane rumbled. Numerous people streamed by them, decidedly not paying attention to the bouncer tied up and unconscious on the ground. “WHAT DO WE DO NOW?”

“Prithee tell us why he accused you?” Optima sounded unconcerned at the chaos that had been wreaked inside or outside the club. “Methinks barbarians steal more hearts than goods,” he added with a sly smile. Valkane grimaced. That kiss was going to haunt him the rest of this quest. Still, the warmth of the object in his pocket made him smile. He was rather proud of his accomplishment. He drew out the thin object.

“I DID MANAGE TO, AHEM, ACQUIRE THIS. WHATEVER IT IS.” The thin cloth object seemed fuller now, and didn’t shine any longer. It was a small circlet of nondescript tan-colored, bunched-up fabric, with a piece of stretchable material inside. In fact, it looked like one of the things Renisha and other girls used to wear sometimes to hold their hair back in junior quest school … what did they call it?

“It’s a scrunchie,” Renisha said, taking it from him. “He wasn’t wearing this, though …”

Optima held out his hand, and Renisha handed it to him. He pulled the shield that had been hanging from his side unnoticed for most of the questers’ time together. Both glowed brighter when in proximity to each other. Optima withdrew the shield, where it quickly became unnoticeable again. He tilted his head quickly, indicating they should leave the very public area in front of the club. The group headed towards the main floor of the casino.

“’Tis the fabled circlet of the Flush Royale,” he said, magically erecting a toroidal shape of Obnoxious Distraction around them. The group could see and hear each other normally. To anyone else outside the shape, they appeared to be obnoxious graduate quest school bros. Each bro appeared extremely drunk and made sexist innuendos that only they found funny, to each serving wench that passed. “And he was indeed wearing it?” Valkane nodded. “Thou all didst see that their followers abandoned them as our hulking hero removed it, yes?” The others, save Pendajo, who was grabbing half-drunk cups of alcohol as they passed people playing slot mechanisms agreed. “Methinks it doth enhance charisma. To a nigh ultimate degree.”

“Makes sense,” Lester said. “I never quite understood their popularity. I figured it was a human thing.”

“Hey, you’re half-human,” Renisha said.

“Making me only half as susceptible to those kinds of messed-up trends,” he grinned, awakening an old argument Valkane had heard throughout their lives. He often suspected Renisha wished she wasn’t human. Barbarians sprang from baseline human stock, to be sure, but the Department of Classifications, Genealogy and Non-Human Derivations had long ago decreed Barbarians a distinctly separate status.

“SO, IT’S A WHAT? A SCRUNCHIE OF ULTIMATE CHARISMA?” Valkane asked.

“Aye, perhaps. One way to test it.” Optima said. He put the scrunchie on. His hair was long enough to make a passable centaurtail with the thin fabric. Suddenly, the item changed. The fabric morphed into a small hair clip, possibly made of a tasteful tornadowood backing with an ornate sliver of inlaid gold filigree. It fit his shoulder-length hair perfectly.

Renisha’s annoyed expression softened. Pendajo looked over at Optima. He nodded so approvingly, he missed grabbing a nearly-full papyrus container of a rum drink with fruit in it. Optima smiled beatifically, and a nearby waitress offered him an extravagant smoking cocktail that a high-rolling player in the VIP section was waiting for impatiently.

“TAKE IT OFF, OPTIMA,” Valkane said. Already, memories of Optima’s lips pressed against his had cannonballed into the pool of his memory, splashing his mind with wildly distracting and inappropriate thoughts. Charisma was one thing Optima did not need any more of.

Optima removed the scrunchie and handed it to Renisha. “Five of us, five parts to the Flush Royale. Mayhap it best we only keep one each.”

“Three … well, two and a half parts of our goal and we’ve only gotten here,” Lester said. “It feels … disconcerting.”

Renisha nodded. “Agreed. It’s too easy.”

Valkane opened his mouth to speak and then decided not to comment. Maybe it seemed easy to them, but he was the one who’d faced the sandsquatch. And the demons. And the barbarian in the rat race. And here he was with only half of the object he was supposed to have. “WHERE DID THAT MUSIC COME FROM?”

Lester looked at Optima, who shook his head. “Nay, t’was not my doing.”

“Someone helped us,” Renisha said. The party reached the carpeted edge of the casino floor. A half mile of scuff-resistant tile formed a double square boundary around the carpet and then led to the automagic glass doors that opened as they approached. They stood on the Concourse side of the building. Beyond the line of taxi chariots and serpent-share rides dropping people off, they saw the bright dazzle lights of the rest of the Concourse. “Where do we go from here? Is our hotel safe?”

“Nobody told the Brothers where we were staying, right?” Lester asked.

Everyone shook their heads. “EASY ENOUGH TO FIND OUT, I WOULD THINK. WE TEND TO STAND OUT.”

Lester shook his head again. “I don’t think so. Los Tropes on a Winesday night? We’re not as remarkable as you may think, big guy.” Lester gestured around them.

Valkane took in the assorted populace. Lester was right. A harpy bachelorette party swooped around the high ceiling of the lobby, cackling and dropping penis-shaped beads onto people. A vampire and a dwarf wheeled a merman up to the counter and checked into the hotel. The cover balladeers in the lounge next to the high rollers’ suite consisted of a barbarian drummer, human pianist, and a ghoul lead singer. Humans, elves, halflings, bristle slugs, eagle men, swamp shamblers, shrouds, witches, Anubisheads, dwarves, Draconians, coral deamons … almost every sentient species on Quarth seemed to sift in and out through the door like salt through a sufficiently large-holed sieve.

“SO, WHAT DO WE DO?”

Pendajo, who, unknown to the rest of them, had exited the Shape of Obnoxious Distraction, suddenly popped his head back in. He had a tray full of drinks. “It’s time for some serious partying. There’s a whole karaoke suite back here that’s state of the art and free drinks for anyone who sings a whole song blindfolded. They also take a wide variety of currency. Come on.”

Several taverns and numerous drinks later, Valkane still felt sulky. The Brothers were effusively arrogant and yet, everywhere they went, everyone loved them. The group had drinks brought to them at each stop, as gifts from fans of the Brothers. Still, he longed to break off from them and just party with his friends. And Optima. And Pendajo.

The chariot rolled to another stop. The Brothers powered the entire group into the Corpus Colloseum, a resort themed after the ancient Italusian civilization. The primitive Italusians ran around in togas and believed there was only one god who was coming back one day to smite everyone. Thus, their philosophy evolved into a simple one. Everyone should indulge in as much hedonistic activity as possible before they all got damned to an afterlife that consisted of uncomfortable structured pants and watered-down drinks.

The Brothers ignored the hubbub their presence caused as they paraded through the casino towards an extremely trendy nightclub known as Expluvius. The club’s volcano motif extended far past its boundaries, as hopeful patrons waited in a line, knee-deep in illusory lava flows. While people pointed, stared, and took indiscreet Scrye images, Valkane again noticed a curious phenomenon. No one looked surprised or questioned their appearance alongside the brothers. It was as though they were invisible. He knew celebrities had entourages, but never expected to be part of one. He assumed people would at least question why this particular motley crew were the Brothers’ chosen ones for the evening. But all attention was on the Brothers, with none left to spare for those who weren’t at all Scyre-famous.

Despite the Brothers’ age being twice the median age of the average clubgoer, the thick-hided minotaur bouncer waved them in. They were seated, and a barrel of Italusian wyrmwine was brought out and tapped into. Scantily-clad wenches and swains went from table to table, offering specialty cocktails, goblets, and magically-glowing party favors and, from what Valkane could overhear, other favors as well.

The square magentawood dance floor surrounded a bard jockey set-up in its center. Coruscating lights pumped down from the stand and snaked across shallow grooves in the dance floor. The bard jockey, or beejay, magically spun discs of flattened tar, which somehow allowed music to be recorded and stored on the discs in a series of pin-like holes. The beejay waved his hands over one disc to increase its volume and over another to repeat its looping rhythm. The effect, to Valkane, was as magical as the discs themselves. The beat remained the same, even though the music and lyrics of the song had completely changed.

Thurston (or David) held out his chalice. “To good friends!” the other one added, “And the completely random coincidences that bring them together!” The first one looked a bit askew at the other, but then recomposed their smile. Valkane was struck again by how blandly handsome they were. On the street, they wouldn’t necessarily catch the eye. He couldn’t imagine epic ballads being composed about someone’s intense longing for one or the other brother. Still, their charisma was magnetic, and he found himself wanting to impress them.

Their eyes, however, remained … distant. As though they were not truly part of the world. It was as though they saw and interacted with the world, but in the same way ghosts did. No, that wasn’t right, either, Valkane thought. The ghosts he’d encountered so far were still firmly part of the world. Their eyes still had a spark of — he searched his brain for the right word. CARING, he decided. Ghosts still maintained a semblance of caring. Perhaps it was more for their own ghostly skins, but they felt the effects of consequence. The Brothers simply didn’t appear to care. Their fates appeared to be far beyond the ability of the whole of Quarth to disturb in any way.

The team clinked goblets and chalices, depending on the type of drink each had. The beejay spun a new disc, and the volume rose higher than before. The loud music made it nigh-impossible for Valkane to hear anything else. The Brothers yelled conversationally at Renisha, and then Pendajo. David (or Thurston) stood and held a hand out for Renisha. They trotted off to the dance floor, her cloak swirling incongruously against the skimpier and more slatternly wear of the club’s patrons. Lester and Pendajo sat back and shouted in each other’s ears, then ordered elfschlager shots from a passing wench. Thurston (or David) leaned over to Valkane. Though he shouted, the background noise suddenly cut out, like the excess paper surrounding one of Renisha’s old paper Famous Cooks of Swanee paper dolls. “Nice sword.”

Valkane’s skin crawled. Had it been unattached to his hypodermis layer, it might have taken that moment to excuse itself, head to a bathroom stall, and flush itself into the septic system in an attempt to get as far away as possible. The tone and sudden clarity of the voice and its sensual innuendo startled the barbarian. “THANKS.”

“New, isn’t it?” The man leaned closer, and Valkane felt a pulsing of anticipation. Was this Brother going to touch him inappropriately? How was one supposed to react when a famous person made unwanted advances on one in public like this? Slicing the man’s head off felt extreme, but Valkane’s hand suddenly ached for its weapon.

He laid a hand on his sword and was shocked to feel it was the source of the pulsing. It was reacting to something. He glanced at Optima, who, from the look of it, also felt something pulsing. Optima had said something about harmonics or alignment back in the shop. Valkane, a half mug into his mead, struggled to remember and parse what Optima meant. With Optima, everything was hard to parse. Still, he had a theory. The sword was reacting to something on the Brother … and if his sword was, as they suspected, half of a part of the Flush … then whatever it was reacting to could be another part of the Flush …

Optima leaned over, his arm moving companionably onto Valkane’s broad shoulders. “Might thou deign to tell us … how you be back in Los Tropes again, so soon? Verily, we thought thee long gone after thy last kindness to us.” Optima’s smile looked sincere, and Valkane noted this for future reference.

The Brother, either David or Thurston, leaned back, his subtle oblong of silence spell moving with him. Valkane could hear and feel the muffled thump of the beat all around them. The brother’s smile, which had slipped off his face, like so much rotted shiplap wood, pasted itself back together. It looked rougher, though on their Scrye channel, no doubt he would call the repair job “rustic.” “We travel back and forth a lot. Clients in both states.”

Optima nodded understandingly. Lester and the paladin came back from the bar with shots for them all. “We need to get this party started!” Pendajo yelled. The Brother nodded and waved at his twin, who guided Renisha off the dance floor.

Renisha saw the tray of shots and pushed her way through. She seemed a bit clumsy to Valkane as she grabbed four of the small glasses. Her fingers seemed shaky, not at all like the confident woman who’d been dancing a moment ago. Was she already tipsy? They had been through a lot in their first evening in Los Tropes, he thought. Perhaps they should head back to the hotel after these shots. Renisha handed the glasses to her companions. Pendajo already had one in hand, and the last two from the tray went to the Brothers. “Bottoms up!” she cried with relish.

Valkane downed the shot and though the sparkling liquid burned on the way down, something seemed missing. His bulk could tolerate a lot of mead, and thanks to Lester, over the years he’d done his fair share of elfschlager. However, this time he felt nothing. In fact, he felt more sober than he had all day.

The shots had the exact opposite effect on the Brothers. One swung his head back and forth. His oblong of silence had slid down his torso, and now only protected the two foot by one foot area around his navel from deafening levels of music. The other nodded his head up and down in time to a song that wasn’t currently playing and would probably not be played in the club anytime soon. “Mighty tasty, that!” he affirmed. He looked at the flashing dazzle lights and bright wallpaper with an appreciation he’d not had before.

Renisha had sobered the drinks, Valkane realized. She didn’t trust the Brothers either, and had used her clerical abilities to transfer all the inebriative properties of four drinks into the Brothers’ two. Pendajo suffered no appreciable difference either way. The Brothers pulled themselves out of the booth and, egged on by a group of fans who had wandered past the table seven times already, started making jerky, mechanical dance motions. Lester’s father, a portly human, often leaned into his own uncoolness and danced for his wife and son, making them laugh uproariously. Of course, elves considered everyone beside themselves to be supremely ungraceful and would prefer no one dance in public but them.

Fans passed more shots to the Brothers, who gulped them effortlessly as they danced. Then, Valkane saw it. It was almost indistinguishable from the one Brother’s hair, but as he moved counterpoint to the beat and then tried to catch up, there was a tiny sliver of a half-circlet of platinum in his perfectly-coiffed mane.

Optima saw it as well, and nudged him. He tapped Valkane’s shoulder in code that made the barbarian’s head swing around. THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT, he thought. Optima had spelled “dance.” Valkane blocked his large hand from view of the dancing hovel remodelers and made tiny motions with his fingers. His fingers kicked like Vertexian dancers, stiff-legged and formal, like the militaristic people they were. He was no dancer, even with his fingers.

Optima shook his head and pushed halfway out of the booth. Valkane almost knocked one of the Brother’s fans out of the way as he exited the rest of the way somewhat clumsily. Optima mouthed at him, “Dance.” Valkane began doing the sabre, an old dance that mainly consisted of swishing and slashing the air with one hand at a time. Optima rolled his eyes and whispered into his hands. He blew a puff of air at Valkane, and suddenly Valkane heard Optima’s voice clearly. “With the one that likes you!”

That did make more sense. What was to be gained by Valkane thumping around the dance floor by himself? Only, Valkane wasn’t sure which Brother was which. The strobing dazzle lights and the smoky air (he was certain he smelled gravelthorn, which had just been made legal in Los Tropes, thanks to a ballot initiative) made him even more uncertain.

The tiniest of glints in David (or Thurston’s) hair made the choice for him. He lumbered over to the Brother, who threw his hands up in excitement, as though Valkane was a long-lost third brother he’d not seen in decades. They danced.

It was a sight most of the clubgoers would not soon forget. Not merely because a drunken Scrye star was dancing with a barbarian nearly twice his length and width, but because it was so bad. Valkane only knew the steps to the sabre, and freestyling anything was not in his nature. The Brother kept doing mechanical moves, as though he were a golem that had been hit with a spasmodic limbs spell.

Valkane attempted to make the sabre moves into something more seductive. Due to the strident nature of the dance, and the drunken Brother’s lack of coordination, this quickly became problematic. After Valkane inadvertently punched the Brother in the jaw twice, the Brother rubbed his jaw and motioned with his head towards the outdoor patio.

The Brother snatched two flagons of ale from a serving wench’s tray as they stepped outdoors. The night air was crisp, and they drank a toast. The Concourse lay before them, a thin haze of light suffusing the night sky above the busy avenue. A human couple smoked on the far end of the terrace, and a trio of halflings in designer hoods sipped a fiery concoction in clear glasses. The brother leaned against the rail. “You certainly put on a show out there.”

“HMMMM,” Valkane responded, sipping his ale. It had quite a bite. “YOU TOO.” Inwardly, Valkane cursed. He was never good at this and wished he had a wingman. He struggled to say something innocuous that still had subtle sexual undertones. “ON YOUR SHOW, I LIKE HOW YOU … DEMO WALLS SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY.”

The man looked at him blankly. “You don’t know which one I am, do you?”

“NO. I’M SORRY. I’M NOT GOOD WITH FACES ANYWAY, AND THE WHOLE TWIN THING, IT SORT OF BLOWS MY GASKETS.”

“The demo expert is my brother. I’m the listing agent.”

“RIGHT. I LIKE HOW YOU … LIST THINGS. SO … ENTHUSIASTICALLY.”

The man turned away. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one cares about that. He gets to go unshaven, he gets to wear leather pants, and he gets to break walls with his big hammer. But when it comes to breaking the bad news about zoning regulations, or supply-chain issues with baseboard, who has to tell the client? Not him, I’ll tell you.” He sipped his ale with a force that could possibly demo a small wall, if it were made of cardboard.

“I … I BET YOU LOOK GOOD IN LEATHER PANTS.”

“I do! I look bloody amazing! But no one ever gets to see me in them! It’s all about him and his knocking down walls and getting dirty. He gets to unbutton his tunic and look as though he’s been working. Working - ha! He can barely lift that sledgehammer! The show’s real workers pound on the walls from the other side until it’s cracked. Then, he comes in with his hammer and a half-flagon of pre-applied dust all over his flannel clothing.” The Brother looked up into Valkane’s eyes. “Bet your hammer would knock right through any wall.”

Valkane knew there must be some double entendre he could mention about hammers, walls, or even perhaps something about flannel at this point. But his mind was as empty as the Dessert Wastes they’d recently trudged through. The situation was, to Valkane’s mind, spiraling out of control. While it was intriguing to hear some of the secrets that went on behind the scenes, he felt uncomfortable hearing such things come out of a brother’s mouth. Especially a twin brother. He’d never want a stranger to know what he really thought of his own brother. The fact that he’d misidentified the twin was so awkward; he knew there was no polite way to ask who was named what at this point. Even as the man ranted, he didn’t call his brother by name, so Valkane had no context clues to determine who was who.

Valkane needed to get his hands on whatever was in the Brother’s hair. And he couldn’t think of any other options. He grabbed the man and kissed him.

The Brother, surprised at first, melted quickly into the barbarian’s arms. Valkane slid his arms up and down the man’s back. He didn’t feel anything like the passion he’d felt with Optima, but then, he had a more defined goal this time. The Brother also kissed rather limply. It was like a warm fish flopping in a net, rather than the dazzle-like sparks touching Optima’s tongue had produced.

The man leaned backwards over the railing, and Valkane seized the opportunity. He caressed upwards, to the Brother’s neck, then briefly lingering on an earlobe. He pushed his own tongue in further and waggled it around to distract the man. He needn’t have bothered. The Brother moaned in ecstasy, so Valkane wrapped one arm around the man’s slender waist tightly.

“The first rule of picking pockets,” a teenage Lester lectured him as they hung out at the convenience shopping stall parking area, “is distraction. And when you’re trying to lift a wallet or bauble, it helps to apply pressure or some other physical sensation. Watch.” They stood and walked towards each other. As Lester passed him, he appeared to stumble and grabbed Valkane’s shoulder for support. That was all Valkane felt, but from his other hand, Lester suddenly brandished Valkane’s KloordFest 1684 Commemorative Edition Gauntlet from his far hand.

Valkane gauged the pressure to be enough and swept his fingers through the man’s hair, giving him even more tongue play as he did. Something tin and fabric-y came loose in his hand. Valkane pulled back as though to catch his breath, and pocketed the item.

“Wow,” the Brother said. “We should find a place to ahhh, finish our conversation in private.” Valkane wasn’t sure if it was the dim lighting on the patio or the unsatisfactory kissing skills the man displayed, but now, he looked … less attractive. Valkane knew he himself claimed no beauty. His nose splayed fairly permanently to one side after the last break it suffered a quest or two prior. His eyes were muddy brown, and his beard was patchy on the cheek sides, whereas his brother had inherited their father’s full and lustrously wild beard. He knew he was no one to judge, but the Brother looked physically different than when they came out to the balcony. Valkane certainly didn’t want to finish anything with him, privately or publicly.

“I NEED TO TELL MY FRIENDS WHERE I’M GOING.”

“Why? The way you kiss, we’ll be back before you know it.” The man’s sly grin now had travelled into full-on creepy territory. Valkane’s instincts screamed for him to stop talking and run.

“WE’RE …” There was no good reason in normal circumstances that Valkane felt he would have to check in with the others. The man’s demeanor was now repelling him in a way that didn’t make sense to him. “TRUE. LET ME JUST RELIEVE MYSELF.”

“I’ll be right here. Don’t say anything to my brother.”

“I WON’T.” Valkane had to force his legs to walk slowly and normally, and not run as though some sort of soul-sucking ghoul were chasing him. The hairpiece in his pocket felt oddly warm through his fur loincloth.

Once inside, he veered towards their table. The other Brother was dancing with some fans, and the rest of his party was contentedly watching. “WE HAVE TO GO. NOW.” Valkane said as he got to the booth.

“Dude! This is hilarious!” Pendajo said, swinging his goblet.

Renisha and Lester were already up and out of the booth, and Lester grabbed Pendajo by the shoulder. Optima followed quickly. Valkane glanced at the dancing Brother. He was far more attractive, which didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t they look exactly the same? Though at a second glance, his charm also seemed to be fading. Suddenly, the supply of free drinks from fans stopped being handed to him. Fans with drinks in their hands took the shots intended for the Brother. He reached for one, and no one had one to give him. He looked surprised for a moment, then danced harder. The dance grew more ungainly with each move.

Fans on the edge of the circle around him drifted away, looking bored. Valkane pushed Pendajo along. “FASTER,” he said, as they headed for the exit. Whatever was happening was happening now. The crowd of Brother admirers drifted back into the normal patterns of club patron behavior — impressing one’s friends with the amount of alcohol drunk, hitting on potential coupling partners, and trying to remember the order the beejay played the songs in to later make a mix ballad list on one’s Scyre. It became harder for Valkane to politely push through the crowd without raising suspicion.

Valkane steered the unwilling Pendajo as fast as he could, but the inebriated ex-paladin kept bumping into females of every race and species. Valkane suspected it was on purpose. For every murmured, “SO SORRY. TAKING HIM BACK TO THE HOTEL,” he uttered, another squeal of disgust ahead of him alerted him to more of Pendajo’s lechery.

Not that the others were doing much better. Optima was nowhere to be seen. While Lester could weave in and out better than a spider in a field of fractal tulips. Renisha’s cloak slowed her down. The press of bodies queuing to the bar to order ales seemed to be the largest subset of beings in the club. The whole exit was taking too long. Valkane knew the amount of time he could reasonably spend in the bathroom before getting back to the patio had elapsed.

The small dark corridor with a dimly-lit EXITUS sign was only 30 or so sentients away. Unfortunately, a small herd of centaurs clustered between them and the door. One centaur wore a tee-tunic that said “Last Night Without A Saddle. His buddies wore similar ones, denoting they were all Chad’s groomscentaurs. The sheer mass of the group forced Renisha and Valkane to veer an additional 20 or so people to the left and then fight the current of people entering the club to get to the exit.

He saw Optima and Lester at the exit, waiting for them. He waved at them to get outside, and they complied. Renisha was almost to the door when a mermaid slapped Pendajo. He’d tripped over her wheelchariot and the only place he thought to grab to steady himself was her seashell-covered torso. Valkane pulled Pendajo up and over to the side before he could assault her again and was mid-apology to the woman, when chaos erupted.

All evening, the lights of the club erratically converged on certain points, etching a couple kissing, gnomes dancing, or bros chugging, in a combined spotlight nearly as bright as the two moons combined. Now, due to narrative convenience, they landed on Valkane and Pendajo, just as the beejay was mid-mix between two slightly lower-tempo songs. The glaring light and least amount of magically amplified music converged, even as the Brother from the patio stepped inside and screamed “Barbarian thief!^[1]”

^[1] Those from dimensions where strict classification rules aren’t enforced, don’t apply, or simply haven’t evolved yet to the point where the population needs rigorous clarification of its societal roles may not understand how impactful a statement like this was, especially when yelled out in a crowded nightclub. There were long-standing cultural mores that forced Valkane to keep his wish to be a magic-user secret.

From the very dawn of questing society, the elders of each class guild understood the necessity of people staying in their own lanes. If you had magic-users picking locks and barbarians healing people, things would A) get confusing and B) get messy when divvying up treasure based on who’d done what. Additionally, what if someone got enough experience to bump up to a third-level thief, but somehow, that translated into suddenly also being able to handle a third-level Summon Ancestral Guilt Curse? The elders of the guilds knew being able to switch classes willy-nilly would cause problems. They spoke to the elders of the various religions, who taught them a lot (if not all) about Shepherding Through Intimidation, Archaic Practices That Can Be Interpreted For Modern Coercion, and, of course, Central Idolization for Manipulation and Profit.

Over time, crossing classes (except in the most extreme or politically expedient cases) became as taboo as minotaurs mating with hubovines (a common form of cow with human heads that provide a variety of milks in low-fat, 2% fat, nonfat, and chocolate). This type of pairing, of course, resulted in either wildly mutated beasts that ultimately it was simply kinder to put down, or ordinary cows, which only provided boring whole milk and were isolated from others until their udders exploded from nonmilking.

Cross-classification simply wasn’t done on Quarth. Accusing someone of such a thing generally resulted in a duel to the death, or in extreme cases, Scrye banishment, which younger questers would say was the worse of the two fates. Death or banishment usually lent credence to the accused’s guilt, though in some high-profile legal cases, like Axehole v. Glasspetal the Transparent, while it seemed obvious the higher-level magic-user was going to defeat the first-level barbarian accused of attempting clerical healing, the magic-user lost. His legal team’s overreach and Glasspetal’s own unlikability contributed to the jury decision. While this set off some sticky legal precedents, overall public sentiment runs towards the end of the spectrum that says they may not have been fully guilty, but they must have done something wrong.

Study Questions

1. What type of milk is forbidden from being used in Aunt Tiamat’s Jewel Pie by the Fourth Baking Stricture of Swanee?

2. What is a key component to cast the Oblong of Silence spell?

3. How many load-bearing columns are generally in a 2-dragon-length floorplan?

He held it out to the knoll, who lifted the lid.

He slammed it down suddenly. “Are you Los Tropes Metropolitan Constabulary? If so, you have to disclose that.” He pushed the box back at Valkane.

“NO,” the barbarian said. “WE PROCURED THAT FAIR AND SQUARE, UNDER QUESTING ARTICLE 17, SUB-SECTION EIGHT.” He didn’t actually know questing regulations in that sort of detail, but he’d heard Renisha use that type of line on people. It usually worked in intimidating them into giving her what she wanted.

“This isn’t worth my license. Take it back!” the knoll said insistently. Valkane realized he’d not looked in the box to see what was in it. Neither had anyone. Except maybe ...

Pendajo walked over, a holster filled with exotic bullets slung over one shoulder and holding a contraption that looked like a large screwdriver attached to a pole attached to a rifle with a crossbow on top of it, with an axe head hanging awkwardly from the side. He took the box and his eyes opened wide for a second, then closed. “We’re not Metro. Though, a smart knoll like you, I’m guessing you know where you can ... peddle this. In fact, I’d be willing to take some of it off your hands. Who doesn’t want that kind of hit?” He turned to his companions. “Imagine me, feeling and looking 20 years younger!” He laughed oddly, a self-deprecating laugh that seemed at odds with the man’s high opinion of himself.

His comment also stirred something in Valkane’s memory. There were rumors of ... substances, was the most polite word, that truly youthened. Aside from magical cosmetics, or the Elfborough diet (which promised you could live half as long as elves if you followed it and cut out any foods that had any semblance of taste), there was a drug that claimed it brought nigh- immortality ... but at a steep price.

“Pendajo, what are you —” Renisha began, but Lester laid a hand on her shoulder gently. “For what’s in here, imagine what kind of profit you could make!” Pendajo encouraged. “Or the dungeon time,” the knoll replied.

“Dungeon time? No, no, my friend. What you have here is a mere delivery error. It was supposed to go to someone at the Palms, and it accidentally came here.” Valkane recognized that the truth was being stretched thinner than kneaded dough, but something in the knoll’s eyes suddenly changed. Sentients of all types loved what Renisha called plausible deniability.

“The box came here; you assumed it was from a client who wanted you to sell it. It certainly looks collectible.” This stretched the dough of truth past the point of shredding and into the realm of unusability. The box had no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. The only collector who might want something like this was someone who collected boxes with no discernible attributes that were as plain and boring as possible.

“So you sold it, contents sight unseen.”

“It’s ... it’s too risky. The constables in this town —”

Pendaejo embodied the confident and assured legal consultant. “Sure, sure. But what if there were nothing in it?”
The knoll tilted his head in confusion. “We could hold the merchandise for you until such time as you had purchasers lined up. Then you contact us, and we make the drop for you.”

The knoll’s mind whirred. Everything about this made sense, at least from the perspective of avoiding legal entanglements. This was a prime driver in many Los Tropes citizens’ motivations.

In a city where in fact almost everything could, did, or was waiting to happen, avoiding responsibility for 98% of those happenings was simply common sense. If these people took all the risk, he reasoned, he’d be rich, in the clear, and no one could trace any transactions back to him, which, of course, were the best transactions possible to make. The business part of his knoll brain, however, the last few neurons unimpaired by a decade of heading in and out of the blistering sunshine of this desert wasteland, had questions.

Those questions, such as “Who does this guy think he is? How could I possibly trust this? It’s too good to be true. Is that really what I think is in that box? I would have to try it to see ...” raced through the critical thinking part of his medulla knollongata, which was smaller than most bat droppings. The larger portion of his brain, which was concerned with embodying the equation of getting rich as soon as possible with the least amount of effort, promptly beat those questions into a pulp and stood at the ready in case any more off-brand neurons fired through their domain.

The knoll (whose name was Joel, at this point, we’ve learned so much about him, we might as well reveal his name) longed to retire deep underground. There were several gated cave communities in the northern regions of San Serif that what little sun got through its magically sustained perpetually wintry skies didn’t burn like this. His knoll brain throbbed from processing so much.

“It would take time to make enough ... discreet inquiries.”

Valkane watched in amazement. Pendajo fascinated him. He could see how the man was once a paladin. His core sense of righteousness, perverted as it was, shone through as he slowly evangelized to the knoll. Pendajo kept talking and the knoll’s arm slowly dropped to its side. The shopkeeper nodded without awareness of it, seeing only a future where he never had to waste his hours in this boring shop, punctuated by the need to cover himself up each time he left it to brave the harsh, hateful sunlight. Suddenly, a better life seemed possible.

Pendajo was the soul of affability. “We’re here all week.” Pendajo subtly removed a small package from the nondescript box, then closed its lid. He pushed the knoll’s hands holding the box back towards the knoll, who this time didn’t resist.

“How do I contact you?” Joel the knoll, said. Now that the dealing was done, he felt slightly deflated, but lists of the less-savory sentients he knew in Los Tropes were scrolling through his mind. He had messages to send.

“Oh, here’s my Scrye,” Pendajo said, handing him a tiny piece of parchment. “Of course, we’ll have limited access where we’re going. Plus, it’s a burner. If we don’t hear from you in, say, five days, we’ll swing by and see where things stand.”

The knoll nodded, moving to his desk behind the register and his mind busily sorting out details. Failflopp the Ogre dealt in these types of things regularly, and would be the first person he contacted.

“See anything else we need in here?” Pendajo said to Lester and Renisha. They both shook their heads. “All right. We’ll be in touch! Let’s go, big guy. Grab your sword and let’s party.” He led the way out of the store. Valkane grabbed the sword and looked back at the knoll. He appeared to be in shock, but not a wholly unpleasant shock. More of a daze, but one that might bite him in the ass in the light of day ... or dark of night, as that was how knolls rolled.

In the parking lot, Pendajo led them towards the corner and waved his hand for a taxi chariot. Lester caught up to him first. “What was in there, man? From what you said, it sounded like phoenixvane.”

“Spoons of Swanee! The Arch-Cardinal wouldn’t have us transport something like that!” “Nay, more like he’d not trust anyone but his own minions to transport such a substance.” Pendajo laughed. “Phoenixvane! Ha! No one leaves that kind of stuff in the hands of some ragtag bunch of side-questers.”

Valkane felt some indignation at the description. “ALTERNATIVELY, THAT MIGHT BE THE BEST HIDING PLACE FOR IT.”

Pendajo looked up at the barbarian. “The big guy’s brain works pretty well for a barbarian. Must not have been concussed enough by enough enemies yet.”

“I HAVE BEEN CONCUSSED PLENTY,” Valkane said, even as he wondered why he was defending that point.

“Anyway, it’s not ‘vane. It’s aromatic platinum. Still rare and the only way to make things like Aunt Tiamet’s Jewel Pie.”

“THAT KNOLL IS GOING TO LINE UP BUYERS FOR IT, AND THEY MIGHT KILL HIM WHEN THEY FIND OUT IT’S NOT PHOENIXVANE.”

“Not our problem,” Pendajo said. “Plus, side-quest achieved! You got a new sword.”

As they strolled down the back street, searching for a chariot, Valkane rubbed it with one of the longer strips of smooth leather from his loincloth. “Hell of a blade, for sure,” Lester said. “Smells like dung, though.”

“YEAH. STILL ... IT FEELS ... RIGHT.”

“We’re all thinking the same thing, aren’t we?” Renisha stopped walking and faced the others. “It’s one of the Flush.”

Optima nodded. “In truth, the Shield is reacting to its presence. It both be trying to get away and get closer to it.” He cut his eyes to Valkane, who had to appreciate the irony.

“So we suddenly find one of the Flush — ”
“One half of one of the Flush.”

“We find one-half of one of the most legendary objects in history in a pawn shop? Does that sound right to you?”

Valkane looked around. “IT SEEMS NO LESS WEIRD THAN YOU MEETING CRÉME AND BRULEE.”

“That kind of stuff happens all the time! Especially in Zapfino! You’ve said yourself you see celebrities at the coffee shop all the time.”

“I DON’T GET INVITED BACKSTAGE WITH THEM, THOUGH.”

“It IS Los Tropes, Your Cocoa Powderness. What happens in Los Tropes ...” Renisha grunted and stalked off ahead.

“I STILL FEEL BAD FOR THAT PAWN SHOP GUY.”

Renisha hailed a covered chariot cab, and it slowed to a halt near the curb. Pendajo bowed and gestured for Lester and Optima to precede him. “Better him than us, right?” He followed the others as Valkane shook his head. He hadn’t expected so many ethical issues to raise their heads during this quest, like a swarm of hydra-squitos.

“Where to?” the driver asked. Almost immediately, twin voices from the back of the cab yelled in unison.

“The questers!” Sitting in the back of the cab were (to no one’s real surprise, as collectively, the group only knew one set of twin brothers, and throughout our narrative, we’ve seen them show up as almost deus ex machina-type guides to “lead” the questers into their next thrilling chapter) were the Crockery Brothers.

Lester hung back with Renisha. “I don’t think there’s enough room for all of us. We can grab the next cab.”

“Nonsense,” either Thurston or David said. Both wore matching suits in shades of amber, with no ties and extremely expensive-looking shoes. “We’ll make room! What a treat to run into you here. I’d bet if the barbarian rode on top with the driver, we can all squeeze in, as cozy as pixie muffs!”1

Valkane resigned himself to sitting apart from his group again. He’d never been unhappy with his size, but on this quest, he felt a pattern of discrimination forming. He was as neglected as Corky. He briefly wondered what the dragon was doing back at the resort. He heard laughter and small talk leaking out of the chariot windows as the cab driver urged his horses on with the reins.

The driver, a middle-aged goblin with an incredible shock of eggplant-colored hair, snorted as the chariot made a U-turn. “IS IT ALWAYS THIS WARM DURING THE TREBUCHET SEASON IN LOS TROPES?” Valkane asked. The goblin snorted again. Valkane gave up trying to be polite and sulked as the vehicle moved onto one of the main arteries leading to the Concourse.

Leveraged Buyout

As perhaps Valkane should have expected, a late-night pawnbroker’s shop in the sandy outskirts of the Los Tropes Concourse was not the place where he would find the choicest in pawned weaponry. In the shop’s somewhat smeared window, a mace dented on one side, hung from a dusty hook. A glaive with a slightly off-center pole stood awkwardly against the side of the recessed storefront. It didn’t bode well for the store’s potential inventory and Valkane hesitated. He always felt awkward walking into small specialty shops that clearly didn’t get much business. He didn’t like to leave without buying at least one small item. Not that his tiny purchases could stave off a shopowner’s impending bankruptcy, but he felt guilty if he didn’t contribute in some way.

His only defense against this was to have extremely specific items in mind that no retail outlet could possibly have. Then, if a pushy sales clerk asked what he was looking for, it was all but guaranteed they wouldn’t have a HydraFang-3000 Series, double-bladed cutlass with an eye-of-pegasus pommel and the sapphire dragon-scale scabbard. Valkane could then say thanks and leave without committing to ordering one that could be here next Swansday. He’d not come up with an item for this store, but as they were so close, they couldn’t back away now. He felt it would look awkward to the shop clerk or anyone passing by when the five of them walked to the door and then turned back. He steeled himself and pulled open the door. A small bell tinkled.

The inside was a cluttered mess that a draconic or goblin hoarder would be proud to have featured on Stockpilers. That was a popular Scrye feed where people who couldn’t seem to throw away even price tags showed off the giant junk drawers their dwellings became. Valkane looked around, certain this store could become a highly-rated episode of Stockpilers.

Tomes so dusty even rats avoided them were stacked here and there with no discernible purpose or organizational structure. Ogre children’s toys, always in demand due to their nigh- unbreakability and ugly-cuteness, served as paperweights and doorstops. Ale flasks of every shape, size, and color might be for sale or could have simply been tossed aside after a recent party.

The overwhelming impression for everyone was the sheer amount of square footage taken up by collectibles and knick-knacks. Valkane’s mother wasn’t a big collector of anything (she did appreciate new cookware and silverware each Trebuchet Day, to replace anything she’d thrown too many times). However, Valkane knew Renisha’s mother treasured her collections of Born Fighters© figurines. The Fighters released wave after wave of tiny porcelain figures each year. Valkane had seen grown women get into blouse-ripping, hair-pulling fights over them at gift stores. The statuettes of tiny children with insanely disproportionate eyes, sculpted in various everyday poses like fighting a dragon, stabbing a lich through its skeletal ribcage, and smiting an unbeliever, were constantly popular, though he didn’t understand why. He did acknowledge the tiny baby lich getting stabbed would be kind of cute, if the baby paladin doing the stabbing hadn’t been painted to look quite so smug.

The shop had dozens of Born Fighters, Shambling Orchard Moss Babies©, and Blue Dragon Plate© painted platters, either hanging, leaning against, or lying on top of other things. Rhyme and reason had been banned from the store since its opening, and neither attempted to appeal the decision. There was no sense of order to the layout of the store or its contents. Used blouses and jerkins hung from a small metal rack with a price tag on it, but none of the garments had tags. Used clothes also rested over mid-century household appliances, many of them coated in impenetrable layers of rust. Cheap artwork (in cheaper frames that would be available at any discount retailer), was priced expensively, apparently due to the addition of collectible dust now coating them.

Valkane decided this shopping expedition was a mistake. He was ready to leave regardless of the flush of embarrassment he would feel when a voice creaked from the side room. “Looking for anything in particular?” The knoll in a faded Escronesian shirt shuffled into the main showroom. Like all knolls, he had a pale green tint to his vinyl-like skin. He was young, if Valkane judged correctly, bald with no appreciable jowls. As knolls reached middle age (around 120 years, give or take), hair sprouted from their heads and various other areas of the body, and their necks thickened into the almost stereotypical rounds of flab. There weren’t a lot of knolls in Gill Sands, as they tended to shun the brighter areas of the globe, preferring to work night shifts or teach dark yoga classes.

Renisha and Lester were holding in laughter as they mocked some of the Joyful Bundles on display. Optima floated contentedly, and Pendajo rummaged through a small case of empty flasks, sniffing each one. “I DON’T SUPPOSE YOU HAVE ANY BROADSWORDS? IN PARTICULAR, I’M LOOKING FOR A HYDRA FANG 3000-SERIES, DOUBLE-BLADED —”

Valkane’s sentence died as the proprietor pulled back a curtain to reveal a large room filled with weapons of every description. Pendajo whistled appreciatively and rummaged through some of the more esoteric-looking devices. Valkane stared at the array of bladed weapons. A large assortment of them were pointed tip down in a large brass cannister embossed with flowers and

happily-trotting unicorns on the side. Optima floated to Valkane’s side, as Pendajo murmured happily, “An actual razor-nade? This can’t still work, can it?”

Optima’s fingers twitched purposefully, and Valkane felt a shimmer of energy cascade over him. Optima floated towards him and leaned in. “Prithee, a word in private. The fuzz spell twill make our conversation undistinguished. The shield doth resonate with an energy I’ve not felt before. I suspect it betokens a harmony of alignment.”

It took Valkane a long moment to understand what Optima was talking about, and not simply because of his affected speech patterns. “WHAT SHE— OH. THAT SHIELD. SO, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?”

Optima pointed and pretended to make a comment about a long rifle encased in mer-scales that Pendajo was admiring. “I doth suspect one of these items be a part of the Flush.”

“IN A PAWN SHOP?” This seemed unlikely. How could a legendary magical object end up in a pawn shop? He’d heard of vultures, of course. They were all over the Scrye feeds ... a sub-class of questers who pillaged only thrift stores, moat sales, and vintage stores. They often posted images of themselves with some incredible find they boasted would sell for an inordinate amount of gold coins. Valkane had one friend in East Zapfino who speculated in old mead bottles and chariot license plates. However, he never seemed to earn much money from selling those items on the Scrye threads. Certainly not enough to let him quit his job as a security guard at the open-stall mall in the trendy Grenadine District.

Optima’s spell faded, and Valkane felt it trickling off his skin. “What blade appeals to thee, O gargantuan gladiator?” Valkane made a show of hefting each weapon, testing its weight and peering down the blade for levelness. Indicating Optima should hover backwards, Valkane took a few practice swings with one, and then replaced it in the canister. A glint, as well as a foul odor, caught his eye.

He withdrew the sword. It was a single-blade, but looked to have the pommel weight for a second blade. In fact, Valkane would swear it once held a second blade, and when it was lost, an armorer had simply reset the remaining one in the center of the cross guard. It smelled faintly of sulfur and sewage, and reminded him of the demons he’d encountered outside Doornail. He swung it and its balance was exquisite. The hilt felt warm and fit exactly in his palm. In fact, the longer he held it, the more it seemed to mold to his grip. It felt part of him, and that sudden feeling of connectedness made him abruptly slide it back into the container.

“Nay?” Optima asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise.

“IT’S BEEN TEMPERED - TAMPERED WITH,” he said.

The knoll came forward, bowing his head at Optima. “As your large friend suggests, it was once more. A double-blade. Some catastrophe befell it, and it was altered. Not by magical means, I can assure you. All our items are audited thoroughly. Feel free to inspect on your own,” bowing his head again.

Optima beckoned to Renisha. Her nose wrinkled. “What is that smell?” Optima pointed at the blade. They both placed a hand on the hilt, Renisha almost immediately pulling back. “That does not want to be touched,” she exclaimed. Optima nodded in agreement, his feet drifting to the floor so he could concentrate. Renisha grabbed the hilt as best she could and murmured a few words to Swanee. A soft red-orange glow, like the light of an oven, came from her hands. Optima produced a silvery blue light, and the two merged into a violet color that shimmied up and down the blade. After several moments, the lights separated and dissolved.

Renisha wiped her brow. “I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary,” she said. “You?” Optima shook his head. “It’s not what it once was. I feel the echoes of power. It must have been something in its day.”

Optima’s eyebrow didn’t go down, and Valkane felt certain this was a signal from the magic-user. “HOW MUCH?” he asked.

The knoll bobbed his head, and Valkane wondered if the man had some sort of tic that made him nod as he talked. “Sixteen gold pieces standard, or six elven. We also offer a layaway program.”

“SIXTEEN?” Valkane repeated in shock. He had only two to last the whole quest and still buy extra Trebuchet presents to forestall his mother’s irritation with him when he returned. “I’LL PASS, THANKS.”

Optima was not dissuaded. “Perhaps a trade of goods, my fine shopkeep?” He nudged Valkane, who belatedly remembered the box he’d appropriated from Fawcette.

Study Questions

1. Before the HydraFang-3000 was introduced, what was the best-selling blade for ten years running in San Serif?

2. How many series of Born Fighters® have been released to date?

3. What part of Los Tropes is known as Little Knollville?

After briefly outlining a plan, they went back in the door. The song was almost over. Valkane spotted more guards than had been in evidence prior to the encore. Optima was right, then. He saw Optima subtly gesture, then stop. He was looking up at the criss-crossed metal beams of the pantherwalk. There was still one lighting technician up there, bouncing a spot dazzle off a mirror placed in the wall opposite the stage. He beamed it with expert precision onto Crème and Brulée equally as they took their bows. His former boss had once shifted the beam too much onto Cream and had been unceremoniously fired the before the singers had gotten back to their dressing rooms. The spotlight faded as the pair walked off stage. Optima waited for the lighting tech to climb off the pantherwalk.

Valkane stepped behind Lester, who sat next to Fawcette. He tapped Lester on the shoulder with the three taps that meant “Danger. Run.” Lester, still clapping as the singing duo walked past them, gave Valkane the slightest of nods. Renisha jumped up and down, the monochromatic gray weight of her late teen and early twenties’ goth years forgotten in the joy of seeing her childhood idols. There was no way to give Pendao a heads up, but Valkane assumed he would follow their lead.

Crème and Brulée waved patronizingly at their guests and headed towards a corridor. Fawcette stood and gave his own set of complex signals to the crowd of Briner security guards, now ten strong, that encircled the VIP seating area. The guards edged closer.

Valkane looked down and noticed that Fawcette had stuffed the small box of Zestus’ spices under his chair. Fawcette was so busy performing his hand gestures and the guards so busy interpreting them, neither paid attention to the box. Valkane subtly used his foot to bring it towards him. He thought the scrape of the box against the splintered wooden floor would attract attention, but it was louder in his head than in reality.

In an instant, Valkane grabbed both the box and Renisha. Optima hurled his spell at the pantherwalk. The structure’s two legs closest to the VIP area buckled with a metallic screech. Fawcette and the guards scrambled out of the way as the mass of steel piping and wood planks toppled. Lester bounded over to Pendajo and grabbed his arm, propelling him towards the exit. Renisha, confused and angry, pounded at every part of Valkane she could reach, which was primarily his stomach. “What are you doing, you big galoot?” she screamed. He didn’t answer. Instead, he charged through the door, followed by Lester and the others.

They were halfway down one of the winding and confusing corridors before Valkane realized he had no idea which way to go. He put Renisha down, who slapped his arm so hard a red handprint lingered. “What was that all about? We’re his guests!” she yelled.

Pendajo jogged past them, huffing with exertion, his cigarette holder firmly clenched between his teeth. “Later, Your Meringueiness,” he said as he moved past them. “Exit should be this way,” he puffed and pointed haphazardly in the direction he was running.

“He’s gonna have a heart attack before this is over,” Lester said, pulling Renisha’s shoulder as he bounded past them. “Run now, you can yell later.” She grimaced and joined him in running. The unencumbered Valkane sprinted forward, his tread echoing loudly in the empty halls. Optima floated beside him, his brow wrinkled with exertion. Valkane saw no reason to say anything, and conserved his breath for running.

Pendajo turned one way, then another. He turned again. To Valkane, it felt like the world was shrinking into an endless maze of beige walls and the pale green pattern of the Scale-oleum flooring. The monotony was broken only by Optima floating beside him. Valkane suspected they were winding inward, rather than outward, and he remained suspicious that Pendajo was more lost than he was. None of this quest had gone as planned, and Valkane wondered if a day or two in Fawcette’s dungeon might not be akin to a vacation at this point.

Ahead, Pendajo was bent over, heaving, in front of a door. He tried to lift one arm to point at it, but he could barely breathe. Lester easily loped around him and fiddled with the lock. After mere seconds, the lock clicked, and Lester pulled the door open. Foul, garbage-scented air wafted in. The door opened into the parking deck’s lowest level, near the dumpsters. The group hurried through the door, holding their breath (save Pendajo, who couldn’t catch enough breath to smell the rancid odors).

They slowed to a walk and found themselves on a little-used sidewalk on the opposite side of the resort’s Concourse-facing facade. The street was deserted, save for a couple of taxi chariots cruising up and down, hoping to be hailed by the desperate, the inebriated, or even better, the desperately inebriated. Only one streetlamp lit the block, and it sputtered, its luminescence spell close to the end of its journey of life.

The cobbled road perpendicular to the Pomegranate Palms led to a strip mall that had long since gone to seed (literally, as most strip malls were grown by enchanting mature concrete timber strands and excavating them into ready-made storefronts and service venues) and a sickly-glowing red dazzle sign that said “CASH FOR ITEMS.”

Optima looked at Valkane and grinned. “Fortune smiles upon us again!”

“Again?” Renisha said. “I’m sorry, when did it smile the first time? Did I miss it?”

“Ahh, sweet cleric, it has indeed. From the first! But behold! Our barbarian continues to surprise!” Optima gestured. Valkane, rather sheepishly, held out the box.

“Sacred apron of Swanee! You didn’t steal that, did you?”

Even Lester’s mouth gaped open. “Dude! You trying to take my job?”

“I SAW AN OPPORTUNITY TO STE— PILLAGE SOMETHING. I LOST MY SWORD FIGHTING THAT BLOODY SANDSQUATCH. I OUGHT TO GET SOMETHING IN RETURN.”

Lester patted him on the back. “My man! You’re gonna make MVP of this whole quest!” Pendajo, still struggling to breathe, gave Valkane a weak thumbs-up.

“This is ... I don’t know. Stealing something after we delivered it ... the consequences ...” Renisha stuttered.

“IT IS FAIR GAME. WE HONORED OUR BARGAIN. THROWING ME IN THE ARENA WAS NOT COOL.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t. But he said we could discuss it after the show.”

“Forsooth, he was never going to discuss it with thee,” Optima said. “His own agenda, though I know it not for certain, was never aligned with letting us go freely. You, most of all. In truth, I doth suspect you were Zestus’ intended target.”

“Me? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I think ... I think he’s right,” Pendajo said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling. As if by magic, his breathing returned to normal. “Look, we both know Swanee isn’t the most unresentful goddess. If She thinks you’re not playing by the recipe book, word gets around.”

Renisha opened her mouth to speak, then said nothing. Valkane took the opportunity to say, “ANYWAY. I NEED A NEW SWORD.”

“Tis doubtful we’ll engage in any more combat tonight,” Optima said. “Our side-quest is acquitted, and we can relax and enjoy the more libidinous side of Los Tropes.”

“ALL THE SAME, I FEEL NAKED WITHOUT A WEAPON.”

Optima gazed at Valkane in a manner that made him feel as though Optima were dressing him with his imagination, only to then undress him in the same manner, though he didn’t stop at leaving his underthong on. “Tisn’t as though thou’rt wearing much now.”

Valkane looked toward the pawnbroker. “I’M GOING TO SEE WHAT THEY HAVE.”

“In there?” Renisha said. “That doesn’t look like the most reputable place, even for this town.”

Pendajo laughed. “Who do you think gets the best stuff, Your Muffin Topness? ‘Reputable’ brokers?”

Renisha supplied him with a gesture that invited him to make love to himself with one or more heated implements and stalked off in the direction of the shop. Pendajo laughed and followed.

Study Questions

1. What is the proper form of address for an Arch Cardinal of Swanee:

   1. “Your Leavenedness”

   2. “Your Fillingness”

   3. “Your Custard Toppingness”

   4. All of the above

2. What pastry is the national dish of the Brine?

3. Where can one find a chariotaxi on the Los Tropes Concourse for less than 20 marks?

They stopped in the grandiose hallway to the left of the bar. The whole theater was decorated in the Gnome Moderne style that was so popular four or five decades ago. Scalloped brocade drapery hung from any vertical surface that the designer could feasibly stick it to. Lamps bore delicate and multiple layers of fringing. Mirrors were framed by geometric shapes so sharp they could slice the wings off a pixie, and the walls and floor were carpeted in thick blue velvet.

The effect was gaudily plush, and Valkane assumed it would be like watching the performance from inside a sofa cushion. Valkane scouted the hallway and found what he was looking for — a door with a tufted blue velvet diamond pattern on it, with the most unnoticeable of signs saying “Colleagues Only.” It looked as though it would open into the same corridor that the plain door outside the theater did.

“CAN YOU WALK?” Valkane asked.

Pendajo scoffed. “Come on, sunshine! That was all for show! You know I can handle my liquor better than that.”

“YOU SAID THE SHOTS WERE —”

“Pffttt! Giving you a heads up. ‘Can I walk?’ Ha! Come on.” Pendajo pushed the door open, and they entered the corridor. The plain beige walls, luminescent lighting and slick, Scale-oleum brand flooring were a stark contrast from the opulent theater interior. Valkane followed Pendajo.

There were numerous windings and turns. As none of the walls were distinguishable from one another, and there were so many branching tunnels with plain white signs pointing to colleague kitchens, colleague lounges, colleague lavatories, colleague storage, colleague wardrobe rooms, and the colleague first aid and leech chamber, Valkane didn’t think they would find their way back out again. Time seemed to stop in that hallway, until he heard applause. The show must be starting.

While Valkane felt lost, however, Pendajo walked unerringly towards the back of the theater. “DO YOU IN FACT, KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING?”

Pendajo snorted. “I’ve been in the back of a few theaters in my life, if you catch my drift, sunshine.” Valkane stayed quiet, as it didn’t sound like a drift he cared to catch. As they neared what must be close to the backstage area, Valkane heard music. Even through the cement walls, he could hear the orchestra. He knew it was a Crème and Brulée tune; he’d heard them often enough, though he couldn’t place which one.

Pendajo stuck out an arm and pushed Valkane back against the wall. He made a shushing sound. He motioned that there were two armed Brine guards at the double doors. He attempted to motion a few more things, but whether Valkane’s limited signing vocabulary was to blame, or Pendajo was actually too inebriated or sloppy to sign properly, Valkane couldn’t tell.

His motion that Valkane stay put, however, was clear. Pendajo walked out boldly, and in a matter of seconds, there were two thumps. Valkane peeked around his corner. The two guards were knocked out on the floor. Pendajo patted something in his hands.

“HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

“This little baby,” he said, holding out his weapon. “Stun bun. Fires high-velocity sesame seeds at your opponent. Got it off a less-than-reputable baker in Chafetown.” Pendajo took a bite of the bun. “Little chewy, but after it’s discharged, it’s a great snack.” A muffled bang sounded from inside his mouth. His stubbled cheek seemed to bulge slightly, then return to normal. “Ouch. Yeah, you gotta make sure they’re completely shot before you eat them. Want some?”

Valkane shook his head no. They pushed the guards’ bodies out of the way and carefully opened the doors. Valkane’s mouth opened in shock.

Fawcette, Lester, Optima, and Renisha sat in what clearly was a VIP section off to the side of the stage. Renisha’s smile was radiant as she clapped her hands and swayed to the music. Valkane felt a stab of anger. “WHERE WERE YOU?” he demanded.

Fawcette turned and shushed him, pointing at the stage, where Crème and Brulée were moving in what Valkane considered an approximation of dancing. In fairness, due to their advanced age and the limits of magical surgery, their shuffling along to the beat in a faint echo of the choreography of decades ago was likely the best they could do. But it was enough for the audience to judge by their claps and yells. Fawcette gestured for them to join them.

“A shocking triumph over our sandsquatch, my boy! We may have to make you the star of the arena! And you found your friend! Delightful, we’ll offer him up to the judgment of Swanee after the show,” Fawcette said in a stage whisper. Valkane’s mind whirled at the sudden change of attitude. A maxim he’d heard years ago flashed in his brain, and while it wasn’t directly tied to Los Tropes, it did seem to apply. “Everyone loves a vanquisher.”

Renisha, now standing up and snapping her fingers, half-hugged Valkane. He whispered in her ear, “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

“Val, you were amazing! The show was starting, so we had to hurry. I can’t believe I’m seeing Crème and Brulée from backstage!”

Renisha, invested in the performance of her former popular ballad idols, lost herself in the music. Optima merely raised an approving eyebrow at him, and Lester shrugged. Valkane folded his arms and leaned against a metal framework that supported the pantherwalk above the stage, where technicians scurried back and forth, changing dazzle lights to match the musical cues.

Pendajo leaned against the opposite column and sipped from his flask. The man had to be 70% pure alcohol, Valkane marveled. Pendajo could be well over a hundred years old and simply so pickled he looked only 60. Valkane inhaled and turned his attention to the show.

Crème and Brulée’s music had never been to his liking. His irritation at being abandoned by his best friends after defeating the sandsquatch left him stewing for the next eighty-nine minutes. He hoped his stony demeanor and refusal to enjoy even one bar of the musical performance simply came across to anyone who saw him as stoic and not pouty.

Crème and Brulée performed all their biggest hits, save “Henbane Love,” before saying goodnight and trotting off the stage. This irritated Valkane, as it was the only song he even remotely liked.

Crème and Brulée gulped down the beverages their assistants provided, as more assistants patted the sweat off their too-smooth and overly-powdered brows. The drummer stood off to the side, a beer in two of his four arms, and wiped his own brow with another. Renisha turned to Valkane, excitedly grabbing his arm. “They have to play ‘Henbane Love!’ They will, won’t they?”

Unhappy with himself for even having a centaur in this race, he replied in a monotone, “THEY KIND OF HAVE TO.”

The elderly audience’s applause and calls for an encore died down, though Valkane supposed some of the audience, given their age, might have simply died, as well.

Crème asked for one more pat on the brow, then grabbed his sister’s hand. Stiff smiles overcompensated for the stiffness of their faces. They headed back on stage. The distinctive opening snare beats of “Henbane Love,” sounded and Renisha squealed and danced with her head bobbing up and down.

Valkane’s toe tapped along in time. Optima seemed to materialize beside him. “A moment alone, my sandsquatchian samurai?” Valkane wanted to hear the song, but decided he was over the whole situation and could always listen to it on his Scrye anyway. He followed Optima into the hallway. The thump of the music was loud enough to be heard in the hallway, but they could converse normally. Optima looked at the guards on the floor. “Ah, I see sandsquatches are not thine only casualty tonight.”

“THAT WAS PENDAJO.”

“He doth continue to surprise. We need to separate from this cleric as soon as possible.”

“WHY? I AGREE COMPLETELY, BUT YOU DID LEAVE ME IN A FLOODING ARENA WHILE YOU ALL WENT TO ENJOY A SHOW.”

“Ahhhh, my begrudging barbarian! Canst thou not see? Renisha be entranced. They art trying to enfold her back into the batter, if thy take my meaning.”

“OPTIMA, I CAN BARELY UNDERSTAND YOU HALF THE TIME ON A GOOD DAY. WHAT ART — I MEAN ARE YOU SAYING?”

“Just this ... they attempt to use her clerical heritage to sway her from completing the quest.”

“WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT? SHE HAS TO TITHE PART OF ANY TREASURE TO THE CHURCH ANYWAY.”

Optima looked around. “More be at stake here. ‘Tis all I can say at this point.”

“WHEN WILL THERE BE A POINT YOU ARE COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT WITH US, OPTIMA?” Valkane growled. He stepped closer to the magician, ignoring everything but the irritation and frustration Optima continued to ferment in him. “IT’S ALL VAGUE HINTS AND VEILED PORTENTS.” Valkane’s fists clenched unconsciously, and he exhaled angrily. “WHAT IS GOING ON?”

Optima could only press back against the closed door and widen his eyes. Valkane saw that Optima was surprised by his sudden fit of pique. It satisfied Valkane nearly as much as his triumph over the sandsquatch. It also caused a sudden surge in a body part he’d not anticipated. The body part urged him to keep menacing the magic-user, get closer to him, right up in his face.

All of this flustered him. Bringing sexuality into combat was ... well, it was sort of the unspoken truth of the barbarian race, he had to admit. Valkane knew he looked good in combat, even though most of his combat experience was that one quest with the trolls and a lot of sparring in the gym.

Valkane avoided thinking of himself in this way, as it felt too vain. Still, his body part was urging him to run with it. His body part suggested he force Optima down on his knees, so he’d look up adoringly at Valkane and maybe even rub some oil on his thews as Valkane posed under different light sources to see which made his muscle groups stand out the best.

Valkane shook his head. He stepped back from Optima. The magic-user made the smallest of gulps, and Valkane’s body part screamed for him to grab Optima by the hair and start pillaging him right there in the hallway. “Thou art most unusual, barbarian. More clever by far than any I’ve met. I promise thee, I’ll explain all, but assuming even the worst of me, you do recognize they art in danger.”

“THIS IS BY NO MEANS OVER, OPTIMA.”

Optima smiled, his smirk slowly regaining its confidence. “I hope not.”

Study Questions

1. How many rounds can legal stun buns fire per minute?

2. Barbarians tend to mate for life, except in the rare cases of ______?

   1. Infidelity

   2. Sexually-transmitted polyps

   3. They just don’t want to

3. What is the maximum number of limbs a humanoid can have before it becomes so cumbersome it is no longer feasible and has to be put down out of mercy?

Valkane held up the sandsquatch’s opal eye. Its shiny, inky surface reflected his face back at him. It shimmered, and Valkane had a sudden image in his mind of himself slashing and hacking something that emanated cute and innocent vibes. He shook his head. The ebony stone returned to a placid state that could not have possibly given him visions in some foreshadowy way at all. Shoving the eye in his pouch, thinking it would be a good trophy, he headed back to the portcullis he’d entered from. One side of it dangled at an angle when its gatekeepers fled the flood.

The bowels of the arena were no less chaotic. Water rushed everywhere, sometimes at knee level, sometimes at waist level. Fighters, handlers, first-aid healers, arena babes (one with her scorecard still clutched frantically in her hand), magical lighting and sound technicians, all scrambled to get out of the underground tunnels. Since the crew contained a much smaller subset of people currently in the resort than the crowd in the arena, they cleared the exits much faster. Valkane followed a healer as he climbed stairs to a left-turning tunnel. The healer hurried to a door and went through. Valkane reached it and opened it.

He was back in the casino. None of the patrons were panicking or looking for exits. The constant jingle and clanging of the slot mechanisms and calls for last bets from the dealers drowned out the panic outside. The water wouldn’t reach to this level, and Valkane looked around, attempting to chart the best course.

“Big guy!” a familiar voice said, and burped.

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Valkane looked down at the ex-paladin. He held two drinks, and his cigarette holder hung, gripped by his teeth, at a vulgar angle. It teetered up and down as he sucked rum from one glass, followed by a slurp of ale in the other.

“Winning!” Pendajo smiled. Looped in the crook of his elbow was a small pail emblazoned with the Pomegranate Palms logo on it. It was filled with gold coins. “I have a system,” Pendajo whispered loudly to Valkane. Then, the paladin noticed his companion’s drenched appearance. “Did you fall in the pool?”

“NOT EXACTLY. WE HAVE TO FIND THE OTHERS. THIS ARCH-CARDINAL … I DON’T THINK HE IS ON THE UP AND UP.”

“Ha!” Pendajo barked. “None of them are!” They headed towards the concierge desk. Valkane wasn’t sure if the hotel staff would help him, and he lacked a weapon, but he didn’t know where else to go.

There was a different concierge behind the bright pink seashell desk, a skinny, young Briner, who suffered from polyps. Most Briners grew out of the undersea skin affliction when they hit their late teens. However, this young man, his wavy hair pulled too tightly back and wearing a uniform that even if it was two sizes smaller would still be ill-fitting, had a rash of coral polyps on his forehead and a larger one on his neck.

“WE’RE LOOKING FOR –“Valkane stopped and thought a moment. Asking for Fawcette might tip the cleric off. He glanced around and saw a poster on the wall. “THE CRÈME AND BRULÉE THEATER.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man gulped. “The Ramiken Theater is straight back that way, beyond the room lifts and before you get to the high-schilling poker room. You already have your tickets? I can check you in —”

“WE’RE GOING TO EAT FIRST.”

The lad gulped again. “The show starts in ten minutes, sir. Are you sure I can’t …”

“OH. NO, WE’RE FINE, THANK YOU.” Propelling the still-drinking Pendajo around by the shoulder, Valkane hurried towards the theater.

“I thought we were looking for the gang. The crew. The Dream Team!” Pendajo toasted the air with one of his glasses.

“THEY WERE WITH FAWCETTE, AND HE WAS WITH THESE TWO. I THINK THEY WILL BE BACKSTAGE.”

“I think I actually should eat, though. I had some Elfschlager shots, and those are murder on your stomach.”

“AFTER WE FIND THEM. NOW. HOW DO WE GET BACKSTAGE?”

Valkane doubted Pendajo had any useful ideas in his more inebriated-than-usual state, but he hoped the paladin might have something useful to contribute. A line of elderly patrons stood, leaned, or slumped in wheelchair-iots, pushed by attendants, in front of the theater. A nondescript gray door in the corridor leading up to the powder blue and roc’s beak orange theater entrance caught the barbarian’s eye.

Nonchalantly, he tested the knob. It was locked. “DO YOU HAVE ANY WAY TO OPEN IT?” he asked Pendajo.

“Me? I’m not a thief. Or even a paladin. Paladin charms wouldn’t get you in a locked door anyway.”

Valkane knew he was right, and sighed. Valkane considered. He had no sword, and the dexterity needed to pick locks did not reside in his meaty, sword-gripping hands. Lester could have it open in a few seconds. Optima probably had a variety of lock-picking, portal-opening, or door-blasting spells at his disposal. Renisha would …

He thought, idly staring at patrons in line. What would Renisha do? She would brazen her way in, counting on her standing as a Swanee cleric and her own intimidating style to brashly override any who stood in her way. Valkane watched as several elderly merwomen showed their tickets to the bored usher, who waved them through. Their companions wheeled their chair-iots into the darkened theater. Two of the merwomen chattered excitedly to each other and clutched each other’s hands. “COME ON,” Valkane said, grabbing Pendajo by the arm.

A quick trip to the concierge’s desk later, and Valkane pushed Pendajo towards the usher in a complimentary wheelchair-iot. One wheel was off-balance, and Valkane had to fight it to move forward in a straight line. He walked quickly, and Pendajo, his legs covered by his ratty paladin cloak, goggled at the speed. “You’re gonna make me hurl!”

“QUIET.” He slowed down as he came to a halt in front of the usher, “MY GRANDFATHER AND I CHECKED IN AT THE CONCIERGE DESK.”

“Wristband?” the bored man asked. Valkane grimaced. He should have expected that. Most of the nightclubs in East Zapfino stamped your hand or placed sticky papyrus wristbands on you to designate your in-and-out privileges. They could also be used at an all-ages club to prove you were old enough to order alcohol.

“WE DIDN’T GET - HE DIDN’T GIVE US ONE.”

“Need a wristband or a ticket.” A few stragglers came up to stand or slump in line behind Valkane. Pendajo coughed noisily. Valkane wondered that the man wasn’t actually already at death’s door due to his constant smoking. Still, it would help his ploy.

“MY GRANDFATHER WON A … MEET AND GREET WITH CRÉME AND BRULÉE ON A SCRYE CONTEST. WELL, I WON IT FOR HIM, OBVIOUSLY HE’S TOO FEEBLE IN THE MIND TO USE A SCRYE.” Pendajo held his stomach gingerly and shifted his head back and forth.

“Still need a wristband.” Now, there were eleven people behind Valkane. Normally, this kind of confrontation would embarrass him, but he needed to find the others.

“HE’S GOT CONGESTIVE BILE DISEASE. THIS COULD BE HIS LAST CHANCE TO MEET HIS IDOLS AND HEAR THEM PERFORM HIS FAVORITE OLD BALLAD, ‘HENBANE LOVE.’”

Pendajo obligingly squawked a few unintelligible syllables to a tuneless melody. If anyone had never heard the Creme and Brulée hit, “Henbane Love” 20 years prior, they might assume it was that song. The usher was unmoved. “Go to th’ concierge desk, ask for a wristband or —”

“BUT THE SHOW IS STARTING. I CAN’T WHEEL HIM ALL THE WAY THERE AND BACK … THEY MIGHT PLAY IT BEFORE WE GET BACK. AT THIS ADVANCED STAGE OF HIS DISEASE, HE MIGHT NOT EVEN MAKE IT TO THE LATER SHOW.”

The usher was flustered by the unwillingness of the hulking barbarian to move or comply with the instructions drilled into him during usher training. His instructors assured him that the week-long training would allow him to handle any situation in the appropriate Pomegranate Palms team member manner. The usher dug in deeper. “If you’ll let me handle these people’s tickets first, then I can —”

“NO.” Valkane surprised himself. He’d never been so publicly aggressive, even when that merchant refused to refund him for that faulty anti-itch harness. “WE WON FAIR AND SQUARE.” An idea struck him. “I’M SURE I HAVE THE SCRYE THREAD HERE SOMEWHERE …” He pulled out his Scrye and made a fuss of searching through it. “EXTREMELY POOR RECEPTION IN HERE,” Valkane announced to the people in line behind him, as he flipped through his messages for one that didn’t exist.

Valkane’s bulk and several blue velvet stanchions prevented the other patrons from going around him. The usher wondered if he should move the stanchions but suspected such a move would work against him. He knew he held only a tenuous grasp on this situation. The main thrust of his Pomegranate Colleague Training involved the various ways to avoid the resort guests from dictating the terms of any conflict resolution.

“Once other guests see you falter,” his Pomegranate Success Instructor said, “You can no longer keep any of them in line.” Unfortunately for the usher, there hadn’t been any lessons on how to deal with someone so massive and yet infuriatingly calm. Had the barbarian waved his sword around, threatened to send his soul to one of the 36 hells, or even clenched a fist, the usher would have reasonable cause to summon a bouncer and have him thrown out, solving his immediate problem. However, he couldn’t do that when all the barbarian did was look for tickets he didn’t have. The usher struggled to think of a way out of the awkward situation, as the barbarian calmly kept scrolling. “I’M SURE IT WAS LAST MONTH WHEN I GOT THE NOTIFICATION …”

Behind Valkane, guests and their caretakers murmured in irritation. Valkane heard snatches of their comments — “For Swanee’s sake, get them out of the way.” “Just let them in!” “I’ll give them one of my tickets if we move this line.” Pendajo hacked his way into another coughing fit. It sounded as though his lungs, tired of a lifetime of smoky abuse, were taking their chance to escape. Even if they got shredded by his clenched teeth in the process, they were still going out in a blaze of wet glory.

The tension between Valkane, the usher, the others in line, and the endless scrolling of Valkane’s Scrye spread tangibly, like an anxious spreading of the holes in a melted Stress cheese on toast sandwich. Gamblers at nearby tables looked up as their senses subliminally told them some sort of drama was unfolding, and a fight could erupt at any minute. This, of course, would be a welcome interruption to their slow, steady losses to the house. But ultimately, they’d still be out of money by the end of the evening. The usher wished one of his three supervisors would come out and help him, but ever since they’d hired him, they all took cigarette breaks during the admission process.

From Pendajo, something gurgled. His sallow face blanched whiter. “Uh-oh … those shots …” Suddenly, the contents of his stomach were all over his blanket, the floor in front of the usher, and splattering a good portion of the usher’s pants. The putrid smell reminded Valkane of rotten manticore eggs, garbage on a hot day, and overly-perfumed wigs. He wondered what on Quarth Pendajo could have eaten.

“YOU SEE? HIS MEDICINE MAKES HIM NAUSEOUS AND STRESS ADDS TO IT. IT CAN ALSO TRIGGER EXPLOSIVE DYSENTERY. I DEMAND TO SEE YOUR MANAGER.” He’d heard Renisha ask for a manager numerous times. It always worked more efficiently than any divination spell.

The usher stepped back, averting his face and nostrils as best he could. He knew he’d lost and might not have a job on the morrow, but nothing was worth this. He waved Valkane and Pendajo in, and the rest of the line followed. The gamblers, let down by mere vomit when they’d hoped for some sort of vicarious clash between a patron and resort employee, turned back to their games of chance.

An elated Valkane tried not to smirk triumphantly. “MAY YOUR DOUGH RISE TOWARDS THE KITCHEN CEILING FANS,” Valkane said, echoing one of Renisha’s favorite sayings. She claimed that it was sarcastic, but the Swanee devotees she used it on always took it as a sincere blessing. He wheeled Pendajo in, avoiding another usher by taking a sharp left turn. The sudden movement threatened to make Pendajo hurl again, but Valkane wanted to get out of sight of any more ushers.

Study Questions

1. How many Top Five hits did Crème and Brulee have in the past two decades?

2. What are the initial symptoms of congestive bile disease in humanoids?

3. What other oceanic species can suffer from polyps during adolescence?

Half an hour later, Valkane stood behind the portcullis of the Palms Arena. It was a small venue, no more than 1500 seats. While still decorated in the nautical colors and themes, the structure was not underwater, but on the surface level. It bordered the pool and wet tavern area of the resort. In fact, one wall of the arena was made of transparent concrete, so that pool patrons and the mer-staff serving them had a clear view of the fights.

Valkane was glad to be out of the thinnair helmet. After a half-hour or so, its air scrubbing enchantments couldn’t keep up with the amount of carbon dioxide released, and smelled stale. Valkane heard cheering as another gladiator fought a troll. He peeked through the portcullis bars at the warm-up match.

The slightly-built troll was young and aggressive, and wore tight, compression shorts emblazoned with a logo Valkane didn’t recognize. It was probably some Trollish business that paid a lot to be worn on fighters’ rear ends, where large audiences who liked to purchase the same brands as their favorite fighters could see it. The gladiator was human and well-built, but still could barely be considered in the same weight class as the lean troll. During puberty, trolls got their growth spurt. They shot up to seven or eight feet tall, acquired the rank, earthy smell they were known for, and usually added between 400 to 500 pounds to their weight. Despite this troll’s leaner mass, the human was outweighed by at least 175 pounds of warty, troll muscle.

The troll utilized its long legs, leapt and spun slightly, connecting foot to jaw. Blood and spittle flew from the human’s mouth, and he staggered back. The human countered with his own kick, but he didn’t have nearly the reach. The troll crouched and then leapt forward with a hoarse yell. Its fist connected, and the gladiator seemed to waver as though he was underwater, then crumpled to the ground. A roar went up from the crowd as the ring announcer magically appeared and proclaimed the troll the winner. The young creature pumped the air with both fists and flexed his torso in triumph. A group of kobolds scurried out to the sandy arena floor and lifted up the unconscious fighter and bore him off.

Fawcette had been vague about who (or what) Valkane would face in the arena. Renisha had protested, but Valkane felt confident. None of the others had a chance against any sort of opponent like a troll (well, perhaps Optima had some spells, but he certainly didn’t rush to offer to take Valkane’s place in the trial by combat). In fact, Valkane often sparred and won against a troll named Muthklamp at the gymnasium. Muthklamp refused to admit that he was extremely nearsighted. Valkane discreetly left his magioptometrist’s business card on the bench in the locker room after their last bout.

Even if this next troll (or whatever opponent Fawcette had in mind) had perfect clarity of vision, Valkane was at the top of his game as a fighter. He may not enjoy it (or be able to summon the rage he suspected would make him a truly invincible fighter), but he felt sure he could handle whatever these people threw at him.

The gate opened, and he heard the announcer. “Weighing in at over 15 lead ingots, from Gill Sands, Valkane the Barbarian!” Valkane bounded out, waving his broadsword in an attempt to generate enthusiastic applause. He heard an almost complete silence, broken only by what had to be Lester and Renisha’s cheers, which sounded embarrassingly singular in the large amphitheater.

“And, weighing in at approximately the density of the Grain Hills Mountain Range, Seb-a-a-a-stian the S-a-a-a-a-andsquatch!”

The audience roared to life. The portcullis opposite Valkane opened, and a whirl of dust and grit spun out. It coalesced into a vaguely ape-like figure that towered over him. It had to be at least one and a half dragon-lengths tall. The creature roared and beat its chest. Each strike of its fist caused sand to puff out, which drifted into the audience and choked those in the front rows. The constantly falling sand from the creature’s joints and areas that, on a human, would be hair, gave it a shaggy, if oddly undulating, appearance of being furry. Its eyes were solid black spheres of onyx, the only non-shifting thing in its entire body. It stalked around the gate it entered from, roaring and flexing for the crowd, which roared and coughed with appreciative yet irritated throats.

The tip of Valkane’s sword tapped the ground as his arm went limp with surprise. A SANDSQUATCH? he thought. THEY’RE OUTLAWED AS GLADIATORIAL COMBATANTS, SINCE YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM BY ANY NON-MAGICAL MEANS. An unwelcome memory surfaced, reminding him that the laws of the 42 contiguous states in San Serif often had no applicable legal recourse in Los Tropes. FIGURES THEY’RE LEGAL HERE.

Even a berserker rage wouldn’t help him here. Nor would his sword. How did you slice or stab a creature composed of sand? Valkane rummaged through the trunks of combat instructions, berserker self-help tomes, and gladiator class notes he’d stored in his brain since childhood. There was little of any use. Fighting magical beings was a part of everyday quest life, to be sure. Barbarians learned the usual tricks, like holding mirrors up to basilisks or seductive women with serpentine hair. But how did one fight a living sandbox?

The sandsquatch roared and threw a punch from across the arena floor. His fist came loose, and it traveled across the arena floor. It lost only a minimal amount of sand and momentum before it hit Valkane squarely in the chest. The countless grains composing the fist abraded his skin as it knocked him off his feet. The crowd cheered, and a number of them in the higher bleacher sections gathered their personal belongings, ready to head for the exits and beat the rush for the chariot parking lot.

The sand creature charged towards Valkane as the barbarian struggled to get to his feet. Valkane looked at his chest. Whatever bare skin his harness didn’t cover was raw and chafed. Valkane inhaled angrily. As he assessed the embarrassing damage to his skin, the sandsquatch’s speed across the arena surprised him. Another blow landed, knocking Valkane into the wall. He shook his head to clear it and reached for his sword, which fell close by. ASSUMING I LIVE THROUGH THIS TO BE EMBARRASSED, he thought.

He staggered up, shaking sand from his hair and ears. He parried the beast’s next punch with his sword. Sand sprayed everywhere, much of it into Valkane’s eyes. The only damage it did was to Valkane’s ego as the crowd snickered with laughter. Even more of the audience, almost entire sections, headed to the exits, certain of his foregone defeat. As the sandsquatch reared back, lifting its leg to stamp down on Valkane, the barbarian remembered a key piece of advice his old instructor always gave him. “WHEN YOU’RE BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE, PICK WHICHEVER IS SOFTEST AND USE YOUR HEAD TO GET OUT.”

He was fairly certain she’d meant to use his intellect to find a weak spot, but in this case, he felt being literal might work. Coiling his leg thews, he sprang towards the sandsquatch and through its abdomen. The beast’s foot came down on the now-empty spot where Valkane had been. Nearly a goblin’s weight of sand shed from the beast, grains bouncing and scattering on the ground.

Even though he held his breath, Valkane had to spit and cough as he landed. He struggled to blink grains from his eyelids and lips. The sand appeared to be moving on his skin, dozens of wriggling ant-like grains tracing undecided paths. It felt worse than the punch. He suspected the sand was still connected to the creature itself and was trying to reattach itself. He’d assumed once it left the monster’s body, it reverted to pure mineral.

Behind him, the sandsquatch roared in frustration. No one had ever escaped one of its trampling attacks like that, and it was clearly not happy. The die-hard combat fans in the lower bleachers cheered. A few even jeered the sandsquatch. The monster charged towards Valkane again, and a few scattered fans chanted for him to mount some sort of defense. Valkane wasn’t sure there was any sort of defense to mount. The creature had no weak spots, and he suspected he wouldn’t be able surprise it like that again.

Valkane backed up until he hit the transparent concrete wall. Swimming both literally and in his peripheral vision, patrons behind him pointed and gurgled armchair coaching comments that he was thankful he couldn’t hear. The beast lumbered towards him at a fast clip. Valkane bolted to the left. He noticed a handsome blue bartender use a nail-like object to split open a coconut and pour powdered rum into it. The alcoholic water of the pool dissolved the rum quickly. The bartender covered the one shell with the other half and stuck a straw in it for the patron who ordered it.

An idea struck Valkane before the sandsquatch reached out to strike him with something more tangible. It would require incredibly precise timing. He grasped his sword and triggered its +2 Smiting Charm. This would ruin his sword, and Kloord knows, he didn’t have the gold to purchase a new one. He also didn’t have enough gold to purchase a new life. This, as he saw it, was the more economical option. The sword glowed so faintly, Valkane judged its smiting charm was pulling at its last dregs to activate.

The sand-colored sandsquatch’s heavy footsteps shook the arena as it hurtled forward like a grainy cannonball. There were nearly infinite ways Valkane’s hastily conceived plan could go wrong.

Thankfully for the barbarian, it worked. When the sandsquatch got close enough so that no matter which way Valkane might attempt to dodge, it lowered its head and pulled its arms to its side to make itself as solid as possible for a creature made of loose mineral composites could be. It obviously intended to ram Valkane into a bloody smear that would take the resort workers and a hired pressure-washing crew an entire day to clean up from the wall. Valkane allowed himself a small smile and a furtive prayer to Kloord.

Just as the creature was a mere dwarf’s length away, Valkane, in a stunning move of flashy swordplay, whirled his weapon like a baton and jammed it point-first into the transparent concrete wall. It went only a few inches in. Valkane hoped to Kloord it would be enough.

He allowed his legs to buckle, and he slid down to the ground. He had an extremely close-up view of the surprised creature’s face and torso as its momentum carried it directly over him. The monster rammed into the sword and the concrete wall. Transparent bits of concrete fell off the wall as the sandsquatch’s fury propelled it forward a few more inches, then came to a dead stop.

The impact stunned the beast, and its perfectly round opal eyes, not having any eyelids or eye sockets to contain them, wobbled nauseatingly in its skull. The audience seemed to gasp in unison, and Valkane briefly wondered if those people already unlocking their chariots would now regret it.

A tremendous crack echoed throughout the arena. Valkane couldn’t discern where it came from; he could only hope it was from the wall. As the sandsquatch struggled to free its head from the wall, Valkane rolled over. He scrambled away from the creature on his hands and knees until he was out of reach of the beast’s now-wildly grasping arms.

Another sound, like a giant’s beer stein crashing to a tile floor and splintering into uncountable pieces, shot through the arena. Valkane didn’t dare look back. Now that he could get to his feet, he ran, almost as blindly as the sandsquatch had. General physics had never been his strong suit in school. Still, Valkane knew something of points of pressure, as every swordsman did. And after a lifetime of living near the ocean, he had a healthy respect for the power of water unleashed.

As he closed in towards the stands, he could see Renisha, Lester, and Optima, as “guests” in Fawcette’s VIP box, along with Crème and Brulée. All looked rather stunned, but none more so than Fawcette. He shouted orders Valkane couldn’t hear. Minions clothed in the sugary-brown colors of Swanee headed towards the sandsquatch embedded in the wall.

NOT A GOOD IDEA, Valkane thought as he ran.

Valkane waved at his friends, trying to convey in a gesture that they should all take cover, preferably by leaving the arena entirely, forging some protective spells, or be prepared to hold their breaths for an indefinite time period. Valkane’s efforts were fairly ineffective. He was certain he’d signaled “cover” and “breathe,” but he wasn’t sure if he’d managed to signal “leave” or “leaf.” He hoped that in context, they’d know what he meant.

The sandsquatch gave a tremendous roar that was at first muffled by much of his face being stuck in the concrete wall. The roar was drowned out by the last, loud creak of the wall as it gave way. The Pomengranate Palms pool bar, as Valkane had noticed on one of the signs in the lobby, contained 60 metric tonnes of swimming, diving, undersea flirting, and fun. The sword had done its work and allowed the sandsquatch’s impact to drive it deep enough to weaken and split the wall. As the arena was slightly lower than the pool, the water ached to seek a lower level. Valkane gave it the opportunity to do just that.

Water blasted like a geyser onto the sandsquatch, spitting him backwards. The spray, now unhindered by a half-tonne of sandsquatch, began shooting indiscriminately into the arena and wedging the crack open wider. The entire wall was moments from giving way. As Valkane reached the farthest arena wall from the crack, he turned to see what was happening.

The pool bar patrons panicked and swam away from the wall as best they could. However, only the merpeople had the proper caudal fins and muscle strength therein to push effectively against the water’s draining suction. The equalizing pressure had already sucked through numerous drinking glasses, barware, and at least seven coconuts. The items lay forlornly on the arena floor.

The jets of water were no kinder to the sandsquatch. It roared in surprise and agony as the high-pressure streams blasted into him. First, a gush of water would saturate and mix with whatever portion of his grainy mass it hit, solidifying it for only a second. Then, the next gush would blast the soggy mess apart, dispersing the muddy grains so far apart that reformation would be difficult, if possible at all. The creature howled before a blast of water hit it in its mouth, knocking it and one opal eye dozens of feet away. The befuddled creature sat there, one arm and half its face gone, as spout after spout of water ate away at it.

Valkane looked away. He knew his actions had been necessary, but this seemed like a grisly, if bloodless, end for the creature. The arena patrons panicked around him. People, dwarves, elves, and sentients of every kind clustered around the exit doors, attempting to push their way ahead of the person in front of them. Resort workers yelled and gestured emphatically that everyone would get out quicker if they would simply leave in an orderly fashion. However, each patron’s innate and overwhelming sense of self-preservation were having none of that.

The sandsquatch roared silently, most of its gritty mouth already sprayed onto the arena floor. Its remaining opal eye jostled, then fell through the widening cavities of sand in its head and body. Dramatically, the eye rolled to a stop at Valkane’s feet. He picked it up as the last chunks of wet sand swirled away from the dissolving creature.

Suddenly, Valkane felt a prickle. A rush of renewed energy surged through his tired body. He looked down at his hands and, for a moment, he thought he saw his veins glowing. He blinked, and the effect vanished. Still, he flexed his forearm and felt … different. What had happened to him? There was no way the sandsquatch could have done lasting damage, even if it was a creature several levels above him …

“BY THE HEMORROIDAL BUTTOCKS OF KLOORD!” he exclaimed. EXPERIENCE … he realized. He’d never leveled up fully at one time before and didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. But this … unlike the demons … it had been all him. He’d defeated the sandsquatch — a nigh-unbeatable foe. He’d have to get tested when he got back home at the Level Adjudicator’s office to be certain, but he’d gone up at least a full level. Triumphantly, he looked towards his friends in Fawcette’s box.

It was empty.

THAT IS JUST GREAT, he thought. The thing about questing, he realized, was that it never seemed to end.

Study Questions

1. If a +2 smiting charm decays at the rate of .007 thaumens per month, how many months will it take to recharge it once it has slipped to -2?

2. Name three other creatures banned from gladiatorial combat in the contiguous San Serif states and what principal attack and/or defense they possess that causes them to be illegal.

3. Which Troll fightwear company licensed its own chain of combat arenas and offer the naming of the arenas to the highest bidder?

They sped down 13 floors. The lift doors opened, and they were surrounded by glass walls holding back tons of saltwater. Dozens of Briners swam among a multitude of fish, shocking eels, and other sea-dwelling creatures. Valkane saw a rare flake fish, constantly shedding its skin as a method of propulsion. The footman held out thinnair helmets to put on, as he wrestled with the sealock door handle that was clearly beyond his strength.

Growing up in Gill Sands, Valkane was no stranger to thinnair diving. It wasn’t his favorite beach activity. As a teen, it was a rite of passage to swim over to the shelf surrounding Lucidia Grande and steal some of the giant pocket change that fell out of giants’ swim trunks into the seabed. Most non-giant centric establishments in Gill Sands accepted giant coinage, but they didn’t like it. You needed a giant safe to keep it in, and transporting it to the bank after your shop closed for the day was no small task.

Valkane donned the wobbly helmet of compressed, solid air, quickly and politely pushed the struggling lad aside. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the others had secured their own magically pressure-treated bubbles over their heads. He wrenched the wheeled handle open. The lad nodded his thanks, and they entered the sealock. Once inside, Valkane closed the door, and the lad pressed a button, and the ceiling slid back. Water poured in, lifting them off the floor and into the enormous tank in various awkward swimming positions.

Valkane quickly righted himself and paddled gently. A school of quarreling devil fish, their pitchfork-shaped fins tangling and untangling as they darted at each other, scraped his right leg. A sinuous, yellow and black shocked eel glided past, its mouth permanently open in surprise. Below them, a school of sea bats swam, their screeches not audible through the thinnair helmets, but if you watched closely, you could see the ripples of their echolocative shrieks in the water.

The footman gestured, and they swam towards a small, eight-sided building composed of slabs in a muted and tasteful orange shell coral. The windows and entrance were trimmed with a pastel turquoise, and the roof cantilevered over half the sides. A wall surrounded the structure, enclosing the garden, which waved softly in the current. A crop of sunweed, carefully planted and maintained in five rows, bloomed slightly higher than the wall, giving off a bright, luminous glow.

The footman swam down, and Valkane noticed he had, at some point, ditched his hotel-issued shoes. His blue feet were almost twice as long as Valkane’s (which were size 19 in barbarian, and an elven size 59. Valkane had once fit a giant’s baby shoe on, and it was surprisingly comfortable. However, he couldn’t go questing in something with faded images of duckies on his shoes.) The Briners’ feet must ache after working their shift in the resort, given that their feet must almost fold on top of themselves in their shoes. The lad’s webbed feet and hands propelled him much faster than the surface-dwellers to the building.

The boy gracefully floated next to the wall’s portcullis. He spoke to a guard, who, if Valkane was right, was of Orkan stock. The guard’s skin was a sleek ebony black, with a wide, almost heart-shaped area of white masking her torso, neck, and part of her face. The woman’s face was slightly elongated, with a stunted nose and jaw that most likely had been broken several times. Valkane unconsciously rubbed his own nose. He was self-conscious enough about his looks. Valkane didn’t embrace scars and poorly-healed wounds, as his brother and most barbarians did. He was fairly certain he was the only barbarian patient his derma-mageologist had ever treated.

The guard nodded and opened the gate. She gripped her three-tined weapon at the ready, however. The group floated into the garden. Valkane looked around in wonder. A master gardener had planned this. There was no cheap “burn and churn” type lawn maintenance here. Surface plants, encased in thinnair planters, mingled aesthetically among the undersea foliage. Purple and yellow painted daggers sprouted from their brown stalks. White and gold peasant buttons provided a hardy and colorful ground cover between the flagstones in the path. Kyria’s favorite flower, the tricky-to-keep-alive, color-changing dragon jaws, grew effortlessly in the sandy soil next to the wall’s borders. Each thick, leafless stalk produced a single bulb of insect-eating petals shaped like the mandibles of a dragon. Goblin bonnets in rust, amber, pale gray, and splotchy pink dotted the edges of the larger planters. The arrangement created the desired effect that a tribe of goblins, dressed to kill, were climbing out of the ground for a high society party, something the richest goblins were known for, especially during wolf racing season.

The centerpiece of the garden was an enormous gryphonwort, which towered over even Valkane’s head. The burnished scarlet leaves and stems and the brilliant gold and orange petals jutting out like a roaring gryphon’s head and vestigial wings reflected the sunweed light brilliantly. As Valkane looked around in awe, the footman knocked reverently at the door. A moment later, it opened.

A balding, chubby Briner stepped out. He wore the traditional robes of Swanee, but they did not reach the floor. Instead, they ended at the waist, and the man sported what the local sailors in Gill Sands called “hauler” shorts. Made of a nondescript, khaki color, Valkane knew them to be a favorite of middle-aged humans who were not ready to shift into a wardrobe more suitable for seniors.

This man’s haulers were short. Almost indecently short. And tight. They had numerous pockets on the outside, and a thin chain hooked from the belted robe to one of the pockets, presumably keeping the wallet from being stolen, or more likely, floating away in this tank. Valkane glanced at Renisha and saw her eyes narrow in a look of disapproval. A printed undershirt with the Pomegranate Palms logo on it peeked out from the loosely tied robe.

“Ahh, you must be the group Zestus told me about! Come on in, come in, I’m jes settin’ down for a bugbear brandy! I’m ArchCardinal Fawcette, but ever’body usually calls me ‘padre.’” He gestured, and the group went inside.

The hallway was decorated in the “post-anteBrinum1” style. Ruffles predominated. The curtains, the tablecloths, even the lampshades waved softly in the flow of the water. Fawcette led them into a sitting room, and the whaleskin rug was bordered with tufted dark gray ruffles that Valkane had to admit, accented both the rug and the floor. Portraits of stately Brine men and women lined each wall, some in old-fashioned military uniforms.

Fawcette stood behind the ornate driftwood bar (topped by a delicate lacefish fin mat with intricate threaded ruffles wafting from side to side as the Arch Cardinal moved) and set out glasses. “Drinks all around? You have to crack the shell before you can enjoy the meat, I always say. Y’all have my … um, spices, correct?”

Optima floated towards him and pulled out the small box. “Verily, we do.” He set the box on the bar. Fawcette looked at it with the sort of greed in his eyes that was usually reserved for a less-than-reputable wizard looking over a town crowd to find the easiest marks for their cure-all potions.

Fawcette smiled. “Excellent! My guests are gonna be happier than an eel in a thunderstorm. “Come on in, y’all.” He clapped his hands, and two people in gaudy outfits and thinnair helmets stepped out from an adjoining chamber. Both wore matching pantsuits of loud orange, lined within an inch of the fabric’s life with the winking brilliance-of-wisp stones. Stones produced by will o’ the wisps weren’t hard to come by. Wisps were intensely curious but not all that intelligent, and could easily be captured once you had one.

Once you got one in a glass bottle, they all followed the bottle (however, you couldn’t keep two in the same bottle, since they would turn on each other in a vicious mid-air duel that usually left both dead). You then had to wait for them to lay their stone-like eggs and leave the eggs in a cold, damp place for a fortnight, in order to keep them from fertilizing and unexpectedly hatching. Valkane and Renisha used to capture wisps constantly. She would patiently hide their wisp stone eggs and then attach them to her cloak because she wanted to dress like her favorite musical act —

“Crème and Brulée!” Renisha exclaimed. “Swanee preserve my life essence as a jam!” Although she spent her teen years appreciating more gothic and depressing bards, her excitement at meeting her childhood idols was palpable.

Valkane saw Crème had aged (Valkane tried not to giggle when his brain flashed the word “CURDLED” in front of him) significantly. The man’s neck folds and skin were magically pulled back, but even the best cosmetic magic spells couldn’t fight forever against the tides of age. His hair had magic thickener in it, but the heavy application of the gel made it all the more obvious that the wispy strands on the side were a banshee’s whisper from floating off permanently. Crème smiled, and the skin of his face attempted to follow, but the movement wasn’t right. Valkane looked away from the unsettling sight.

Brulée looked better, or her spells were fresher. The faintest crinkle of raven’s feet lines extended from her eyes. She clearly used a moisturizing routine that Valkane decided he should emulate. Her hair, however, was overly-yellowed and extravagantly piled so high atop her head, stretching her thinnair bubble to its popping point.

“The toast of Los Tropes and personal friends. And of course, mighty important members of the Church. Sold-out performances every night, dontcha know, but we can always get a friend of a friend on the list,” Fawcette said and winked. The performers nodded vapidly to the group, then stood next to Fawcette at the bar. Their interest was on the box.

Valkane felt edgy. He considered himself fairly naïve, but something wasn’t clicking here for him. “THAT’S EXTREMELY KIND, BUT WE HAVE A QUEST TO GET BACK — OW!” Renisha had stomped on his foot. Since he’d taken his boots off to swim and hadn’t put them back on, her shoe, with its spiked, tenderizer-like heel, really hurt.

“Ah won’t hear of it! We’ll enjoy a beverage and then head to the stage. It’s all part of the —” Fawcette stopped and peered intently at the box lid. He looked back at Optima, and suddenly, his eyes echoed the fierce gaze of some of his Brinan ancestors on the wall in their impotent military uniforms. “Son, this box here has been opened.”

Optima leaned over to look. “I assure thee, none of us didst open it.”

“These are always sealed, and the lock’s been jimmied.”

Crème and Brulée lost any vestige of happy performers. Even Brulée’s stiff, magically-lightened hair looked as though it might leap off her head and bite at them.

“PENDAJO,” Valkane whispered.

“What?” the cardinal whirled to look at him.

“Our companion did suffer a mishap in the Dessert Wastes. It afflicted him with an earworm,” Optima explained.

All hospitality was gone, and Fawcette’s voice was colder than a yeti’s genitals. “That is the usual curse for someone who tampers with these boxes. Where is this heretic?”

“On the casino floor, Your Stirringness. Our thought at the time was mayhap it be triggered without his knowledge.”

Fawcette gave a cold laugh. “So, what are y’all sayin’? Zestus sabotaged his own delivery?” In fact, Valkane did suspect that, but decided now was not the time to say so. Brulée’s hair waved menacingly under her thinnair helmet. He was certain he could incapacitate both of them easily, but was unsure how the general public, much less Renisha, would react to the sudden battery of two sold-out performers.

Renisha, spoon out, pointed it at the box. “If you’ll just inspect it, Your Kneadiness, I’m sure you’ll find no inner locks were broken …” Light poured from her spoon and warmly bathed the box. While a tiny blue area glowed coldly at the lock, the orange-red suffusing the interior remained intact.

“Then I don’t have to kill all of you.”

“And, in the name of Swanee, we thank you for your mercy, Your Puddingness.”

“Only one of you.”

Lester, Renisha, and Optima all spoke at once, at least two of them pointing out Pendajo’s involvement (and the fact that he wasn’t here to be a potential target for Fawcette’s religious wrath). Fawcette waved them silent. “Quiet! Interference in a religious consignment … ah can’t even remember the last time I heard of such heresy. There must be a stiff penalty!”

Again, Valkane had to clamp down his facial muscles to avoid smirking or giggling. The pudgy priest clearly didn’t hear how his words came out.

“Since this ‘companion’ isn’t here and you are. My judgement is … the arena!” Crème and Brulée clapped their hands like excited children. The other three all spoke at once, but Valkane rolled his eyes.

He knew how this was going to play out.

Where the concierge of the Four Gryphons had been unconcerned about his levels of customer service, the female concierge at the Pomegranate was almost too perky. She wore the tiny lapel pin of a rolling pin that most Swanee devotees did. Valkane flicked his gaze to Renisha’s cloak and realized she’d removed hers. Lester took the lead instead of Optima this time. Valkane watched Optima carefully control his expression of surprise as he stepped back to let Lester handle things.

“Welcome to the Pomegranate Palms, y’all!” Her blue skin, iridescent scales and Low Tidal accent marked her as a native of Brine. The submerged state in the southernmost tip of San Serif was a popular destination for quest students on Mid-Solstice Break. The woman’s nametag read “Norina,” and she had lustrous, pulpy green hair tied back in a neat bun. “Can ah interest you in our dinner buffet show tonight? It’s a madcap comedy of errors called ‘Hook, Line and Drinker,’ featuring Los Tropes’ musical sensation, Xaviar Camus. Our buffet highlights include shrimp, skimpy, and all-you-can-eat black pudding. Tickets are 12 gold coins each, and you get one free slot spin! How many are in your party?” Her quill was suddenly poised over her notepad, ready and eager to write down the number in their party, which she clearly could see was four. Valkane blinked, suddenly wondering if they had a choice in seeing the show or not. The woman’s bubbly aggressiveness suggested that few people who approached her got away without tickets to the show.

Lester smiled. “That sounds amazing, but it probably is better when you have a date as sunami as yourself.” His elven charm radiated, ionizing the air between him and the concierge with a nearly audible crackle. Valkane remembered Lester almost majored in Swindling for the Suave and Debonair, but preferred a more action-oriented branch of thieving. However, like most thieves, he followed the usual curriculum and studied confidence artistry in his sophomore year. The woman’s quill faltered in her hand at his flawless use of the native undersea compliment, sunami. Most surface-dwellers never pronounced it right. Valkane suppressed a smile. Elves did know how to use their tongues.

“Ah appreciate that, but ah don’t get off until after the show is over. If you and your friends want to take a look at the picture menu of what our standard and deluxe buffet lines look like —”

“How much later? Once we’re done with our business here, I’d love to know what’s on the … deluxe menu.”

Valkane had to turn away, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Renisha do the same. Lester’s cheesy flirtation almost always worked, but they might spoil it if they giggled.

The woman flushed a deep shade of indigo. “Business? Are y’all not staying here? We have a state-of-the-ahrt business center …”

Lester leaned over the counter. His shirt and jerkin had suddenly become as unbuttoned as Optima’s. “We do have business, but I heard in Los Tropes it’s best to mix business with pleasure.” His deep green eyes stared into hers. Like most kids, Valkane and Lester sometimes had staring contests, and Valkane knew that you had to be careful looking into an elf’s eyes.

Even a half-elf’s gaze could mesmerize. You started seeing lush forests, sun-dappled trees, and thinking how great it would be to rip your clothes off and run naked and free, as the willow branches tickled your private parts … One day, when they were ten, Lester’s mom came home to a naked Valkane running around the back yard. She spanked Lester and sent him to bed without dinner. Valkane knew this poor woman didn’t have a chance.

“We do aim to please here at the Pahmegrante Pahlms …” She let her notepad and quill clatter to the desk as her accent got more pronounced.

“We’re here to deliver a small package to the Arch Cardinal.”

The woman’s demeanor changed instantly. She was all politely aggressive business again. “Ah see. Is His Excellency expecting y’all?”

Lester stepped back, slightly taken aback that his charm broke so easily. Renisha tried to bring her too-wide smile under control. Valkane noticed her Swanee rolling pin once again adorned her cloak. “Arch Cardinal Zestus asked a boon of us … to deliver some spices to His Ganacheness. We have His seal here.” She gestured to Optima, who whipped out the card.

All business now, Norina read the card and used the Scrye on her desk to summon a footman. The young, blue-skinned Briner dashed to the concierge desk and stood at attention, his forehead beading with sweat that couldn’t come from the magically temperature-controlled resort. “Yes, ma’am?”

“These gentlebeings have a delivery for Father Fawcette. Can you take them to Deacon Pipus’s rectory?” The boy nodded. “Thanks, hon.” Norina turned back to the group. “Y’all have a pleasant stay in Los Tropes, y’hear?” She answered a call on her Scrye and told the guest she’d be happy to make them a reservation at Undertow’s Turf and Surf Shack.

The sweaty footman gestured too widely and bowed his head so low that his cap nearly slid off. The lad looked extremely young to Valkane (though to him, anyone under 18 Human years or 53 in elven years looked like they should still be in junior quest school). After Renisha headed off in the direction he gestured, it occurred to the lad she couldn’t know where the offices were, so he held onto his cap and trotted ahead to lead them.

Valkane scanned the casino floor as they entered the bay of lifts. Among the rows of slot mechanisms, many were adorned with images of popular Scrye programs and plays. All of them incorporated some sort of dazzle lighting. He couldn’t spot Pendajo anywhere. He’d assumed that the (slightly) younger ex-paladin might stick out among the senor clientele, but he didn’t. The lift doors opened, and the footman ushered them in. Valkane assumed Pendajo would meet back up with them at some point. For now, he could tell they were sinking fast. He hoped it wasn’t a metaphor.

Study Questions

1. Dazzle lighting utilizes the rare element, dazzinium. How many lengths of dazzinium would it take to light a 15 cubic foot of signage for 1 year, if dazzinium retrogrades at .15 joules per day?

2. What is the original capital of Brine?

3. TRUE OR FALSE: Life is a metaphor.