Pocket Dungeon 3, page 31
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “We’ll deal with you later.”
I yanked the man’s tie off, just like I had all of the others, but instead of wrapping it around his eyes, I shoved it into his mouth so he could give us like, five minutes of peace before we started asking him questions.
His shouts and protests were muffled around the fabric, but his eyes burned with hatred in my direction.
He could get in fucking line. Right now, I had captured women to save.
“Watch him,” I said to Iris and Yasha. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“Gladly,” Iris said. Her gun was trained on Bellamy’s head, and despite the fact she was still practicing proper trigger discipline and just general gun caution, it really looked like she wanted to flick off the safety.
Elaene had crouched down on the ground next to the closest bed and was working diligently with nimble fingers to try and work the cuff off of the blue woman’s ankle.
“Hang on,” I said to her as I came over toward the pair of them.
The blue woman shifted a little uncomfortably as I approached, and now that I wasn’t looking at her from a few yards away and through a tiny window, I saw her eyes were such a pale blue they were nearly entirely white. It was just as beautiful as it was entirely disconcerting.
“This is Wes,” Elaene told her in a soft, soothing tone. “He won’t hurt you, Liva. He freed me from the death trap Black arranged for me in a dungeon. He’s the reason I’m here now and able to free you all.”
The woman, Liva, looked at me a little dubiously, but it was obvious she trusted Elaene just from the way she was leaning into her touch, so she gave a slight nod of her head.
“Thank you,” she said to me. Her voice was the sound of ice cracking underfoot. It was sharp and crystal clear, and a little cold around the edges, but it sort of fit her whole winter fairy vibe.
“You have no need to thank me,” I told her as I crouched down next to Elaene. “But you need to sit very still for a second. I don’t want to accidentally hurt you.”
She nodded and seemed to freeze in place. I wasn’t sure if she actually was frozen or if she was just really good at holding still, but I carefully took the sharpened edge of the Talon Blade and pressed it into the side of the cuff wrapped around her ankle.
The metal all but melted under the blade’s tongue and the cuff fell away with a loud clatter.
Liva gasped as soon as it was removed, and in an instant, she seemed to become about ten times more alive. She was still very blue, but suddenly there was a little more color in her cheeks and her wings started to shimmer, almost as if they were glowing from within.
She gave them a few little flaps and seemed overwrought with joy when they actually lifted her an inch or so off the bed. She quickly dropped back down onto the uncomfortable-looking mattress with a slight grimace on her face, however.
“Rest,” Elaene said and reached out to steady her. “It will take you some time to regain your strength. The cuffs drain us. You know this.”
“I never thought I would fly again,” Liva said. Her eyes welled with tears that froze instantly against her skin. They dropped down from her eyes like tiny little glass beads as she threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around Elaene’s neck.
The Atlantean woman leaned into her and hugged her in return as I quickly moved over to the next bed. The woman with the impossibly long, impossibly dark hair studied me carefully, as if despite what she’d just seen, she wasn’t sure she could trust me. She inched backward just a little on the bed and pulled at her hair to drag it up into her lap as if it were some sort of comfort item.
“Here,” I told her in a soft, gentle tone. I extended the Talon Blade toward her and flipped it in my hand so she could take it by the handle. I was putting a lot of trust in the fact she wouldn’t immediately try to stab me with it.
Thankfully, it panned out.
The woman took the blade, and in one clean motion, she sliced the cuff from her ankle.
When it fell away, her ink-black hair began to grow rapidly. Her braid didn’t just extend and grow longer, but all her hair seemed to develop a life of its own as it writhed in the air. It was even darker up close, and the longer I stared at it, the more convinced I was that it wasn’t even really hair at all, but some sort of strange magic.
“I’m Wes,” I told her. “Can I have my blade back so I can free the others?”
She clutched the hilt of the blade a little tighter and studied me with her dark eyes. I felt a little naked under her intense gaze, but finally, she mimicked the move I’d just done and flipped the weapon so the handle was in my direction.
“Melluna,” she introduced herself.
“Nice to meet you,” I told her as I took back my knife. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”
Her hair reacted to what I said by curling around her. It had managed to loosen itself from her long braid and now floated nebulously around her porcelain-pale frame like a cloud.
I moved over toward the demon-looking woman next, and I couldn’t help but ask her what I’d been wondering since I’d seen her through the doorway.
“This is going to be a really weird question,” I said as I dropped down onto the ground at the foot of the bed.
She didn’t hesitate to extend her ankle toward me as she cocked her head to the side.
“I think I might know someone from your world,” I explained as I started to cut away at the ankle cuff binding her to the wall. “His name is Trog’thukaz the Academic. I don’t really expect you to know him but--”
“TROG’THUKAZ?” Her face brightened as she smiled at me. It was sort of hard to tell how it brightened considering she was made of some sort of dark, rock-like material, but I just knew it did. “HE WAS ONE OF MY TUTORS. HE IS A HIGHLY INTELLIGENT PROFESSOR. YOU HAVE MET HIM?”
Well, wasn’t it a weird, small multiverse after all.
Her cuff fell away and the magma beneath her armored plates flared up so brightly that for a moment it was hard to look at, but I nodded nonetheless.
“I met him in one of my first dungeons,” I explained as I stood. “He and I fought our way through together, and we’ve fought in another dungeon together since. He’s been incredibly useful when it comes to the nuances of the dungeons.”
The woman clapped her hands together in delight. “IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I HAVE HEARD ANY NAMES OF MY PEOPLE, EVEN BUTCHERED ON YOUR HUMAN TONGUE.”
“What’s your name, as you probably heard, I’m Wes. Oh, and the blonde holding the gun is Iris, and the woman with the tail is Yasha.” I nodded back over my shoulder to where my two women were still glowering down at a frantic Bellamy.
“RIKIL’VERAZ,” she said. “BUT YOU MAY CALL ME RIKIL. THANK YOU.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. “As soon as Elaene told us about you all, the three of us knew we had to help.”
“It is still unheard of,” Liva spoke up. She, Elaene, and Melluna were all huddled together by Melluna’s cot in the midst of an obviously heartfelt reunion. “To break into Black’s home just to free women you have never met.”
I made my way over to the other side of the room where the flaming woman sat. At first I’d thought maybe her flames burned cold, but the nearer to her I got, the more I felt the heat pouring off her. It made the air shimmer around her and beads of sweat broke out on my forehead.
“You’ve never met Wes,” Iris said without taking her eyes off of Bellamy. “He’s just that sort of guy.”
“Yes,” Yasha agreed. “He is very noble. It is one of the many things I love about him.”
“He is,” Elaene agreed. “I did not think I would ever be able to trust a man again, much less so quickly, but he has been nothing but respectful and willing to help me get my revenge on Archibald Black.”
The women continued to chat among themselves about me, apparently, as well as things Elaene had missed in her absence, but I was still trying to figure out how exactly I was going to free the final woman.
“Can you… can you make the flames a little less hot?” I asked her. “I need to get your cuff off.”
She stared at me with her blazing eyes and nodded her head exactly once. It was like someone turned down a gas burner on the stove, because suddenly, the heat was about a thousand times more bearable, and she no longer looked like she would melt the flesh from my bones.
In fact, she looked almost as if she wasn’t on fire at all now. Her body still held the same incandescent, whitish-yellow glow, and her hair was made of the same flaming red curtain, but the sparks and fire shooting off of her had dulled down into nothing more than the idea of fire.
“Thank you,” I breathed and cleared the remaining distance between me and her cuffed ankle. “I didn’t want to get burned to a crisp.”
“It isn’t so bad,” she said lightly, and it took me a moment to realize she was making a joke.
My lips quirked as I sliced off her ankle cuff, and it hit the ground with a clatter.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you?” I said. “I’m a human, though I’m guessing it was obvious.”
“A phoenix,” she said, as if that was also obvious. “This is simply my humanoid form.”
I blinked a few times as I tried and failed to process all of that.
“Cool,” I managed. “Well, as you probably know by now, I’m Wes.”
“Kal,” she said. When she moved to stand up from her cot, I was surprised to see she had feathers. Well, maybe feathers wasn’t the right word, but some of the fire that had minutes before been jetting out from her body seemed to have come from feather-like things along her back and arms.
This was definitely really trippy.
“What do we do now?” Liva asked. She seemed to be the most talkative of the bunch, at least now that Elaene had calmed her down.
“Are we just meant to leave here?” Melluna asked. She glanced from Elaene to me like the answer was suspended somewhere between us in the air.
“If you want to do that and rejoin the human world,” I said a little skeptically. “You’re more than welcome, but I have another suggestion.”
I tucked the Talon Blade back into my belt and pulled out the Well to New Worlds from the inner pocket of my tux jacket. All four of the newly freed women, as well as Bellamy stared at me in confusion as I shook out the black silk handkerchief and draped it down onto an open space on the floor.
It was only when the fabric was entirely flush with the ground anything changed. The black, inky depths of the fabric started to shimmer, and while I knew the magic was impossible to see, I could feel it in the air around the Well.
“What is it?” Kal gasped. She had made her way over to Elaene and the other freed captives, but now she was leaning over and gawking at the portal on the ground.
“Is that a--” Liva began.
“A portal,” Elaene finished. “Yes. It is called A Well To New Worlds, and it allows you to go wherever you wish. Wes has offered it to me as well, so I may return home to Atlantis.”
The four freed women looked at each other like they could hardly believe it.
“The thing is,” I said. “It takes a couple days to recharge before it can go anywhere new. So we’d have to stagger sending all of you back home to your own worlds, but I would give you a safe place to stay until then. The last thing I’d want to do would be to leave you entirely unprotected after setting you free. It does mean you’d have to wait even longer to go home though, Elaene, but I don’t think we’re that bad.”
It was a joke, but I knew my smile probably didn’t meet my eyes. I had really grown to care about Elaene, and the idea of losing her was definitely a sore spot.
But to my surprise, the Atlantean woman laughed.
“I may wish to visit Atlantis once again someday, but my home is with you, Iris, and Yasha,” she said.
My heart leaped up in my throat. Did that mean she planned to stay? I wanted to ask her right away, but there were definitely more pressing issues at hand than our living situation.
Elaene smiled and it lit up her entire, gorgeous face. “So who wishes to go first?”
It was an impossible sort of question, but the women all looked among one another and began speaking in low tones at a rapid-fire clip. After a few seconds, they looked up at me.
“We have decided, but first, we must ask,” Kal said. “What is to happen to him?”
The word “him” rolled off her tongue like a slur as she looked over at Bellamy still seated on the ground.
“That’s also up to you all,” I said. “He isn’t going to make it out of this exchange alive, but–”
The words had only barely left my throat when Liva lunged.
The blue woman moved even faster than I could have imagined. Her wings had fluttered through the air so quickly they’d barely looked like they moved at all. One second she was near one of the cots with the other women, and the next, she was directly in front of Bellamy.
For a split second, the cruel man’s eyes were wide with fear, and then they were wide with absolutely nothing at all as Liva slammed something directly into the hollow of his throat.
It looked like a blade made of ice protruding straight from the center of her palm. She dug it in harder, and Bellamy gasped and choked on the tie in his mouth and his own blood. He writhed in pain and jerked violently as his body shook with terrified death rattling tremors. Blood poured from around the fabric shoved in his mouth and around the ice in his throat.
Liva yanked her hand back, now devoid of the ice blade, and Bellamy dropped lifelessly down onto the ground. The blood from his body trailed toward the drain embedded in the center of the floor.
The delicate little woman spat on his corpse.
“Uh.” I cleared my throat. “We were going to ask him a few questions, but…”
Yasha grinned and reached out to lightly touch Liva’s shoulder. “Good job.”
Liva’s eyes flashed in delight before she looked at me and tilted her head down in a clear apology.
“Whatever you wish to do to me now, I understand, but I am unrepentant.” She kept her head bowed, as if she was waiting for the blade of a guillotine to fall.
“What?” I probably looked as stunned as I sounded. “No. We aren’t going to punish you for that. We just wanted to know how Black reacts to power outages, but unless he had any earth-shattering information, our plan remains the same.”
“You’re going to kill him,” Kal said, and even though I’d only just met her, I could tell just how pleased she was. Her fiery feathers sparked and ruffled along the backs of her arms.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to kill him and put a stop to the black market ring he’s started, that way no one else can be taken or hurt by people like him again. We don’t want what happened to all of you to happen to anyone else.”
“Good,” Liva said before spitting on Bellamy’s corpse again.
“Black will come through the entrance in this wing of the home,” Melluna said. “It has happened a handful of times before.”
“Melluna has been here the longest,” Elaene explained. “She has seen more than many of us.”
“I once lived in the section of the house not designed to be a prison,” she explained. “Before Black corrupted himself further. When this wing of the house was not a prison. But that was a long time ago. He will enter through the door on this side of the home. He will send his guards in first, and one will remain with him.”
“That’s what we thought would happen,” I said. “I’m glad to have the confirmation.”
“He is paranoid, even without what I am sure is added paranoia due to however you succeeded in entering this place,” Melluna continued. “He will never enter through the front door at a time like this. He has thought for years someone will try to kill him.”
“And this time, his fears will come true,” I said with a pleased smile. “Thank you, Melluna. That was incredibly helpful information.”
The pale woman nodded once.
“And now, the next order of business then. You said you figured out who’s going home first?” I looked at the four newly freed women.
“THREE OF US SHALL GO TOGETHER,” Rikil announced. “WE ARE BONDED AND DO NOT WISH TO PART FROM ONE ANOTHER. WE WILL RETURN HOME TO MY WORLD, WHERE CRYSTALS ARE ABUNDANT AND SOCIETY IS PEACEFUL.”
It was hard to imagine Rikil’s society as peaceful, considering what she looked like, but then again, Trog was a pretty peaceful guy, all things considered.
“If that’s what you want,” I said. “Whichever of you are going now, come here.”
I gestured for the trio returning to Rikil’s world to step forward to the edge of the portal.
Melluna, Kal, and Rikil all moved forward after embracing Liva and Elaene in a large, bone-crushing group hug. There was clearly nothing but love between these five women, despite the fact they’d been held captive together. It was presumably the sort of thing that kind of bonded you for life.
“What do we do?” Kal asked as she peered down into the darkness.
“You just think of where you want to go, and it’ll take you there,” I said. “But I do have a strange request. Can you take Bellamy’s body with you? I don’t want it here to be found if it can at all be helped.”
“WE CAN DO THAT,” Rikil announced. She moved away from the other two women only for a moment to heft the dead man’s corpse up into her arms. Her nose wrinkled, which was a really weird thing to watch given the composition of her skin, but she made her way back over to the edge of the portal and stood between the two other women.
They reached out and grabbed her on either side, and then, with one final look over their shoulders to a smiling Liva and Elaene, the three of them stepped forward into the darkness of the portal and simply disappeared.
Chapter 21
The portal on the ground dulled and the magic died away once the three women and the corpse disappeared. Suddenly, it was just a black handkerchief on the ground.
