Bad to the Throne, page 32
part #15 of The Good Guys Series
“Do you think we’re stuck here?” Clyde asked suddenly.
“No — the gate’s right over there.” I said, pointing over my shoulder.
“I meant in Vuldranni.”
I sighed. “Not really something I like to think about.”
“Because you’re sure we’re stuck?”
“No — from what I’ve figured, it’s not impossible.”
He stopped walking. I took a step or two before I paused and looked back at him.
“What?” I said.
“You know about a way home?”
“Maybe. I have a theory about it.”
“Should we say it at the same time?”
“You know a way too?”
“A theory.”
“Feedoheem?”
He nodded, excited. Maybe a little too excited.
“You think it’s possible?”
“I haven’t really thought about it beyond realizing there’s a possibility.”
“What, you don’t miss anything from back home?”
“I just don’t want to think about it.”
He nodded, and took a step toward me. “I thought I’d care more about it. That I’d maybe go back.”
“But something keeps you here? Or maybe someone?”
“Someones.”
“Ah.”
“You?”
“Yeah, something along those lines.”
“I’ve been thinking about home more lately,” Clyde said. “Not, like, all the time, but there’s something, I mean, something’s making me think about it. And this is the first time in a while where I’ve been able to talk to someone about, well, there.”
“True.”
“And I think it’s probably safe to talk about it here. Well, at least in some fashion. The things listening in aren’t going to talk to anyone else, and probably can’t understand what we’re saying.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. “Although there could be someone talking to the, what did you name them? Morlocks?”
“Morlocks, yeah. HG Wells?”
“Don’t get the reference.”
“The Time Machine?”
“Is that a movie?”
“A book first. Then a movie. Movies, plural, actually, I think.”
“Got it. And the morlocks are things in it? I feel like they’re in some other, um, property.”
“Probably. It’s a good name. Oddly descriptive. But it really fits these, well, morlocks.”
“I’ve yet to have the pleasure of meeting them.”
“I’ve seen them twice. Played with them once.”
“By played with—”
“We got in a scuffle.”
“And you made it away clean?”
“I did. But then again, it was a quick exit.”
“What happened?”
“I have some kobold friends–”
“Same.”
“And they have some knowledge of the underground—”
“I saw.”
“From the Underwatch map?”
“Yep.”
“There’s a lot not on that map.”
“It’s a little slow with the updates.”
“Yeah. Anyway, we had to move some of their young, and it meant passing by a section of these ruins. Up top though — kind of like a section of their tunnel had fallen away into the ruins below, so you could see the ruins, but not really get to them. The kobolds were, naturally, afraid of the ruins and those in it. I wanted to stay and watch the morlocks do their thing, but the kobolds weren’t so keen on it. But it just so happened that there was another of our kind who made it down into here, and she needed to be rescued. I jumped down, helped her out. Had to throw down a little against the morlocks. Turns out they’re not particularly keen on fire.”
“Are you?”
“I have found it rather useful, yeah.”
“So you’re a mancer?”
“Not exactly.”
“What’s your Choice?”
“It’s a weird one.”
“Is this a show you mine if you show me yours? Mine is definitely boring. Burgmann. Mainly about protecting people who have joined your town or whatever.”
“Makes sense for a duke.”
“I guess.”
“Or should I say, makes sense for a duke, your grace.”
“Please stop.”
“Mine is The Lost King.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
“That’s a bit dramatic. How’d you pull that off?”
“I accidentally became a king.”
“And then gave it up?”
“Yup.”
“So you could become an Emperor?”
Clyde smirked. “Isn’t that what you’re gunning for?”
“I will kill myself if that happens.”
“But then you’ll just respawn.”
“True. But if that happens, I’m not coming back to sit on the throne.”
“Noted. I’ll change my vote.”
“You get a vote?”
“No. Just a joke.”
“You want mine?”
“Nah, I’ve got too much going on with the election already, thank you.”
“Just from knowing Valamir?”
“And Nadya.”
“That’s right. I think I saw you with her at a party.”
“Probably.”
“Tollenfuck. You were there.”
“You saw me? I thought I was pretty well-hidden.”
“Hidden? You were looking over the dance floor. Staring at everyone.”
“Oh, then, yeah–”
“When might I have seen you hidden?”
“I was hidden, so you wouldn’t.”
“Where did we overlap, then?”
“I might have accidentally caught a bit of a conversation between you and Tollendahl.”
“What a fucking twerp.”
“Sure, that’s one way to describe him.”
“Means you know I’m the Stranger.”
“It was sort of already something I’d considered.”
“Me being the Stranger?”
“Yep. I saw you fight in the arena. Impressive stuff.”
“Thanks, I think. You make a habit of that?”
“Watching things in the arena, judging, fighting, or eavesdropping?”
“Any of those.”
“Just eavesdropping, really. That was my first time at the arena. I’m not exactly keen to return.”
“Me neither. You mind keeping that Stranger thing quiet?”
“Sure. And I’m pretty sure we’re in the midst of tying ourselves together, so we might as well be honest with each other.”
“I have been.”
“I meant totally.”
“I have been.”
“You haven’t lied to me? Or omitted things?”
“I’m a pretty simple fellow. I suck at lying — I forget what I said. Easier to say the truth, that way, when I forget, other people remember.”
“That’s right, you have people.”
“A few. But you seem to have at least one very important person.”
“Maybe.”
I gave him an eyebrow raise. “Is that an honest answer?”
He just looked away.
I had the sense the dude was younger than he looked, just like I was older. There was an immaturity to him that I couldn’t really line up with his appearance. Because, frankly, given his height and his elfness, I’d have guessed him much older. But just talking with him about a girl got him blushing and tongue-tied.
We continued down a street in a moderately awkward silence. I didn’t mind too much, since it let me pay closer attention to what was happening around us.
Things were following us.
A lot of things. Large groups on either side of what had once been buildings along the street. They were moving in a clump, keeping pace with us. But things had to come to head, and soon.
“Hey, so,” I said, speaking as conversationally as I could, “let’s just save the smoochy-smoochy talk for later. I think that our new friends are going to introduce themselves soon.”
Clyde, to his credit, didn’t look around at all. He just glanced over at me, as if he wasn’t concerned with the creatures about to attack.
“What makes you say that?”
“Junction.”
“You’re thinking they’ll need to either come out and cross the street in view, or attack us as we come up to that open space?”
“I am, yeah.”
“Unless they’re just going to let us go along our way.”
“You think that’s likely?”
“I don’t know — how many of them are there and how confident are you in that estimate?”
“I can count heartbeats. I stopped after twenty.”
“On either side?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a lot of introductions.”
“I think it depends on how much of a stink you’d like to make about things.”
“Are we talking in code because you think they might understand Imperial Common?”
“More just because I’m used to it.”
“Can we stop?”
“You feel like speaking English?” I asked, in English.
“If it makes you feel better.”
I shrugged. “Either way. I can’t see them not ambushing us. We’re past the ten-minute mark and into new territory, at least as far as the current map goes. If there’s going to be an attack by this group, it’s happening now. I’m asking how hard you want to hit back.”
“I don’t see a reason to hold back.”
“Depends who you want to be paying attention.”
“You think we can stealth this?”
“No. But I would imagine we can make a tactical retreat. Turn back and take a different route, that sort of a thing.”
“You don’t strike me as the tactical retreat type,” Clyde said.
“Depends on who I’m fighting with.”
“Me.”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of, and–”
“I can hold my own.”
“How far do you think you’d have gotten as the Stranger?”
“I’d’ve kept up,” Clyde said, with enough confidence to make me consider it somewhere in the neighborhood of the truth. “Bigger question, I think, is if the Morlocks are the only thing to worry about down here?”
“There’s always a bigger monster.”
“Yeah, but what if that bigger monster is just us?”
As if on cue, the morlocks struck.
82
Morlocks are ugly. I know that’s a generalization across species, but I’m pretty sure it stands. They were a foul group of creatures, aesthetically speaking. Hell, from most any sense, they were awful. Smelled bad, looked bad, probably felt bad.
Their pale skin looked clammy, with sparse hair sticking out at odd angles. Except the hair was more the size of a thick whisker. Their skin was more like hide, tight in some spots and in folds at others, a strange blend that looked somewhere in the neighborhood of wrong. They had big, yellow teeth, and I didn’t see a single mouth where at least one tooth wasn’t broken or missing. They had thick claws on the end of fat fingers. And they all sported really rudimentary coverings that were reasonably color-coordinated, so I decided to consider them clothing. They had a blend of crude weaponry. Most went with something from the club family, though a few had pointy sticks, and two had sharp rocks tied to pointy sticks. I’d been in enough weird fights on Vuldranni to understand that pointy sticks were a perfectly valid weapon type, and as likely a source of death as anything I’d consider fancy.
Clyde turned to the left, hands already wreathed in fire.
I was tempted to watch, but the charging morlocks on the right were more of a pressing issue.
They came on, teeth bared, slavering at the mouth, clubs and pointy sticks in battle position.
I unsheathed my sword — technically Valamir’s sword — and noticed a twinkly glow around the blade. It was the sword equivalent of Edward the sparkly vampire, in that it took what should have been a nasty piece of work designed to maim and kill and turned it into a bad YA fantasy. Although, without the weird age issues related to a decades-old vampire hanging out with a 17-year-old girl.
The nearest morlock stumbled, caught up in the sight of the sparkles.
It was quickly overrun by those coming behind, who didn’t seem to care about the beauty of the blade.
I decided to let them have a closer view, and whipped the sword in a high slice. I cut through the chest of a tall morlock, into the neck of a shorter morlock, and then through the abdomen of a giant morlock, spilling a variety of morlock innards outtard.
Planting my foot, I torqued the blade back the other way, coming in low to lop off some legs.
Then I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out the Eater Shield. I slipped my arm into its waiting straps, which automatically tightened on my arm.
I took an attack on the shield side, and the Eater Shield took off an arm.
A pointy stick came around my far right side and jabbed into my kidney region.
I brought my elbow down on the stick, breaking it, while striking out with the back of my fist, breaking the snout of the nearest morlock.
There was a brilliant something fire-related happening behind me, an explosion I could see reflected in the fat eyes of the morlocks all around me. Something that caused shrieks all around.
So much for subtlety.
I jabbed out in quick stabs at the oncoming horde, using the blade for as efficient killing as I could. But I must have had their anatomy wrong, because while I figured I was hitting right where their heart would be, it wasn’t killing them the way a slice to the heart should’ve. Sure, there was a lot of blood coming out, but they were powering through the cuts. Not the ones that got cut in half, mind — that seemed to do the trick pretty well. Same with removing the head. Pretty much guaranteed death no matter the species.
But it meant I had to do more slicing and less stabbing, and that meant I had to force the morlocks back to give me room to work. And while the Eater Shield was definitely living up to its name, it wasn’t great at pushing back, what with the whole biting on and not really letting go.
I parried a bone club into a neighboring morlock, and took another club smash on the shoulder.
Brilliant green arrows of something smoking zipped through the air, nailing morlocks in their eyes.
Screams sounded from the big mouths, cries of confusion and intense pain.
The green arrows disappeared in wisps of smoke, but left behind iridescent globs of what I could only assume was acid, given the way it burned through the face of one morlock before dripping onto the back of another, and then burning into that poor fucker.
And with that foul bit of magic, the onrushing horde seemed to come to the conclusion that they had fucked around and found out. And now it was time to fuck off. They ran back the other way, not in any concerted retreat, just running for their fucking lives.
I thought about throwing the sword after them, seeing if I could bury the blade in one of the larger morlocks, but that didn’t seem necessary. And given my history with swords, I’d probably lose it.
Instead, I focused on a little mercy killing on the poor injured bastards around me.
83
As Clyde’s group was a mess of charred flesh and, well, whatever remains after acid has eaten through charred flesh, the attack had been an unmitigated disaster from the morlock’s perspective. Nearly all the morlocks from the left had died, as well as over half from the right. Which meant that, yes, Clyde had killed more than me. It’s a good thing we’re not keeping score.
“Looks like I killed more,” Clyde said.
“Are we keeping score?”
“We don’t have to…”
“It’s probably–”
“I have 31.”
“You killed 31?”
“I did.”
“Impressive.”
“You?”
I did a quick peek at my kill notifications.
GG! You’ve killed a Morlock (lvl 12 MeatScout).
You’ve earned 180 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
Twelve.
Well shit.
“Twelve,” I said. “So, not great.”
“It’s not a competition.”
“Seems a bit like you’re making it one.”
“I would never.”
“Okay then.”
I noticed he did a quick once-over of the morlocks, checking them for loot, I guess. I didn’t see the point of that — I couldn’t see them as having anything of use.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Not really. Some rocks. Something that might be food.” He held up a few strips of dried flesh. “Which is, uh, morlock flesh.”
“Cannibals. Lovely.”
He tossed the jerky to the side.
“How’d you know what it was made out of?” I asked.
“Identification spell.”
“That’s handy. Can you identify this?” I asked, holding out the sword.
“You’re using a magic item and you don’t know what it does?”
“Sadly, yes. But it came from a reasonably trusted source.”
“Who?”
“Valamir.”
“Ah.”
I felt the vague tingle of magic near me.
“That’s weird,” Clyde said.
“The sword is?”
“I mean, maybe. I’m not getting all the details filled out.”
“Like?”
“Like I can tell it’s a sword, made out of metal. But not what metal or what rarity or what it does.”
“Besides sparkle.”
“Right but, I mean, that much is obvious.”
I shrugged, wiped the morlock blood from the blade and got the sword back into its sheathe.
“I’ll figure it out at some point,” I said. “But it’s probably a good time to move along, being that we’ll likely be left alone for a spell.”
It was Clyde’s turn to shrug, and he looked at the four directions we could go.
