Larissa Bloodwort hacked an imp’s head off with her axe. The little gargoyle-like creature ducked at the last second, but too slow. Larissa hit him above the ear. Blood and brain splattered across her.

“Ew.” She tried to wipe off the flecks, but they soaked into her white shirt. She settled for wiping the axe on the imp’s back.

“Aiiiiii.” A gray, bat-winged mass of claws and teeth dove from the ceiling. Larissa threw a ball of hellfire up, intercepting and incinerating the demon. It landed in a screaming heap at her feet.

A giant came at her. Its two squat legs were mostly bone. It stood fifteen feet tall. It appeared to have no neck, rather its head was sunk into a mass of tough, leathery flesh rising from its shoulders. It had irregular plates of black iron bolted to its ashy flesh, two lopsided eyes, and a jaw filled with broken teeth. It held a rusty maul longer than Larissa was tall.

Larissa grabbed the base of her weapon’s handle and pulled. The handle telescoped out, turning her simple axe into a halberd. The giant blinked. It gaped at her weapon’s embiggening.

Larissa swung in a wide arc. The giant shielded its face. Larissa’s weapon bounced off the demon’s scales. Too late, she saw a shadow rush her from the side. A spear intercepted and impaled the shadow. The spear’s owner pulled it free.

“Thank me later,” Hyene Blackwing giggled. He dashed around her to stab his spear at the giant’s side three times in rapid succession. The giant swung an arm, too slow. Hyene danced backward, laughing.

Larissa noted the giant had a gender. It was a captain or higher, giving it access to Noble Skills. One of them gave the ability to reproduce. This giant had chosen male genitals, but it hadn’t lived long enough to realize testicles required protecting. Larissa swung her halberd’s edge up from below. The giant howled. Hyene and all the other men present winced.

As the giant clutched its mutilated crotch, Larissa half-decapitated it. The giant’s scales and spine were too thick and her axe not sharp enough. Her weapon lodged. Another demon, a bald, overweight drone with a barbed whip, grinned.

He came at Larissa. He was already undoing his pants. As the giant’s body fell, it wrenched her weapon out of her hands. She was out of iliaster for hellfire. She went for her knife.

A lithe ball of feline fluff soared over her head. A female crossbreed demon, an unusual mix between a beast and a succubus, landed on the approaching drone with claws outstretched. The crossbreed sank her claws into the drone’s chest. Rolls of fat protected its organs, but the crossbreed did not stop. The drone’s death was prolonged, violent, and horrible.

“Everyone all right?” a mortal shouted.

Larissa looked around. The battle was over. Four captains lay dead or dying. A score of imps and fiends covered the ground. Well, pieces of them did. She put a boot on the giant’s chest and pried her weapon free. She collapsed the handle. After wiping the blade, she hung the axe from a carabiner on her belt.

“Larissa, you all right?” the mortal demanded.

“I’m fine,” Larissa chirped. “Kat and Hye had my back. Right guys?”

Kat, the crossbreed demon, stood. Ichor covered her front and face. None of it was hers. Her [Armored Hide] did a good job blunting the effect of most weapons. She sheathed her claws. She licked her paw and used it to clean her face.

“I got you.” Hyene struggled to keep a straight face.

“Doofy?”

“He’s fine,” the giant grunted. Wider and dumber than most other giants, which was saying something, he bent over and vomited.

“I’m fine too, by the way.” A machinist rose from the sick. Its appearance was a cyborg-gnome, complete with toolbelt, portable guns, and an iliaster-powered engine in a backpack. It wiped off as much vomit as it could with a rag. At some point it realized the rag was filthier than its cybernetic body. Thus, it threw away the scrap. It picked through the discarded bits the defenders used. It stowed a single choice piece inside its pack.

“Thanks, Wrench.” The mortal woman reloaded her carbine.

“Doo st’ll hun-ree,” the giant grunted. It picked up a leg from the floor and popped the whole thing into its mouth. It chewed with tombstone-like teeth. Horrible crunching sounds filled the room. Not satisfied with its snack, it roamed the room looking for more.

“Wormwood?”

“The defenders attacked us with their strongest right at the entrance. We must assume these are smarter than the common Blood Well enemies.” An overweight drone with a tie pattern tattooed on its chest made a note on a clipboard. It jerked a chain, causing the damned and slave gladiators at the other end to stumble forward.

“It is not fitting for the just and honorable to keep slaves,” a knight complained. “Sir Rickard, is there not a force with whom we mayst work in keeping with the principles of God?”

“We-self art h’re don th’ presencae ophe Hes Holiness, initiatae Willian. We-self must toleratae th’ presencae ophe hell’ legion cause he art payende us. We-self art better fighter than them.”

“What?” Everyone stopped what they were doing. They stared at the paladin in confusion.

“We are here on the presence of His Holiness, Initiate William,” the paladin explained. He still spoke with a heavy Medieval English accent, but it was clear he tried to modulate it. “We must tolerate the presence of Hell’s legions because they are paying us. We are better fighters than them.”

“Oh,” everyone said. A great argument followed over whether the demons or humans were better. Both groups almost came to blows. The one individual who stopped it was the mortal captain, Kourtnie Ferg.

“Enough,” she roared. A US Army Reserve officer who enlisted at eighteen, climbed to Captain by thirty, she came to Hell in a Hellgout quite by accident. Five feet, zero inches tall, with experience in leadership and managing crises, she joined the first group of demons she found—by killing their leader and making the rest kneel. A few months later she’d spilled more blood than a charnel house and ascended to a Captaincy in a demonic mercenary outfit. She had been lucky with her Corruption Skills. While random, they supported her lifestyle. New mob, same job.

“Ferg, they insulted us,” Kat yelled.

“Th’ opinion ophe daemon art non-ohther consequencae bihofpe Christian.”

“Huh?”

“Dude, if you’re going to be here,” Larissa pleaded. “Please speak modern English. No one can understand you.”

“I can understand him,” Initiate William raised his hand. “He said eff off.”

“Will,” Ferg warned.

“Sorry, not sorry.”

“DOO SM’SH HIT POIN.”

“No, doofus,” William laughed, mocking. “They’re not called hit points. They’re called bodies.”

“DOO SM’SH BOD-EEZ.”

“No, doofus. Not bod-eez.” Willaim laughed harder. “Bodies. Plural.”

“Shut up, mortal.” Kat glared. Her claws extended.

“Ooo, what? Whatcha gunna do?” William taunted. He jammed his thumbs in his ears, wiggled his fingers, and stuck out his tongue.

“Sir Rickard, control him,” Ferg ordered.

“Enough, lad.” Sir Rickard slapped William upside the head. “We are English. Show some manners.”

“You might be English.” William jabbed his thumb at his chest. “I’m American. You don’t control me. We kicked you out a long time ago.”

“Hey guys,” Larissa asked, conversational. “You ever think about hit points? Like why are they even called that? They don’t have anything to do with being hit. When I think of a hit, I think of whatever new single debuted on the Billboard Top 200.

“None o’ those words are in the Books o’ th’ D’mn’d, lass,” Sir Rickard told her. “The soul-shaped books the Necromancer Corp made that have the rules o’ the Maelstrom. Ar’ call’d da… Program Guidebooks,” he enunciated.

“Written and recorded by the Holder of Myths,” Larissa said. “Yes. All denizens of Maelstrom know this tale. It still doesn’t explain why the Holder called them hit points.”

“Cause it’s how many times ya kin’ git back up b’fore goin’ down.”

“You should switch back to the Old English, Sir,” Hyene told him. “Scottish and Uneducated African American Chicagoan don’t suit you.”

Sir Rickard hesitated. “Thee art one ta talk. Hit points is how many times thou can get up shart being killed.”

“Hee hee,” William snorted. “He said shart.”

“But most people can get hit a lot fewer times than they have hit points,” Larissa pointed out. “Getting them back is hard. We don’t have dedicated healers, unless you count [Faustians], and they’re not any kind of mage relating to the regular Myths, like [Clerics]. We must rest or use health pots. Health returns too slow to be conducive to a real dungeon crawl.

“Thou maketh the best of it, fair lady.” Sir Rickard bowed to the demoness. William looked scandalized at the gesture. The other demons blinked. Sir Rickard continued, “Thus the importance of thine armor. Come. Let us be off. Staying in one place too long set’s one’s tongue to waggling.”

-

“Do those guys seem a little off?” Lily asked. “They’ve been acting like fools since they got here. They spent an hour outside trying to cut the knot. That was ingenious, by the way. ‘Speak friend and enter.’ Literally just say the word ‘friend’ with a raised voice like they’re saying a password, and the door would open. They tried ripping the non-existent hinges off. They tried picking the non-existent lock. They rigged up a battering ram. They used their precious dynamite.”

“Adventurers are wonderful for solving complicated puzzles with imaginative not-solutions, but they can be complete fools when confronted with riddles,” Lawrence stated. “Or references to popular literature. We can assume they have high Knowledge but low Mental scores.”

“And low common sense. They haven’t even made it out of the first room. It’s like that time I agreed to play that game with you. We spent the whole hour going over the rules.”

“Yeah, that’s why I told lord what’s-his-name to dogpile his captains on them right at the start,” Lawrence murmured. “If they fight room by room, they’ll bleed our resources killing rabble while clearing the fort. This way we get to see what they can do and how tough they are, without committing all of our men. Tell the boss to activate all the traps. And get ready to haul me out of danger.”

“There are no traps,” Lily replied. “Minor fort, remember? We should be glad he—ow! Don’t hit me!”

Lawrence heard a scuffle as someone wrestled the Styrofoam cup away from her. A deep, gravelly voice spoke.

“Boy. Just because I promoted you to captain does not give you permission to deviate from the task at hand. Cut the chatter. Stay on target. And remember, I out-rank you. My name is—”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Shut up, dude. The adventurers are coming. And don’t hit Lily,” he added.

Lawrence took the cup away from his ear before he said something he’d regret. He could still hear the lord’s thunderous teeth-gnashing. Just to rub it in, he held the phone up to his butt. He farted. Loudly. The teeth-gnashing ended.

“Did you hear that?” A group of misfits strode into view. “Woah. Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better,” Lawrence said. He tried to keep a straight face. He sat in a narrow cage. A thick chain ran from it up to the ceiling. “Who are you guys?”

“We’re Parasol Parade,” a blue-skinned fiend proclaimed. She twirled her pink umbrella. “I’m Larissa, half-infiltrator half-fiend. This is Kat.”

“Mmph.” A cat-like beastwoman jerked her chin. She had a tail. Dried blood caked her jaw and neck. Spots of green decorated her brown fur, which Lawrence supposed let her blend in with terrain.

“Crossbreed between a beast and a succubus,” Larissa continued. She pointed to each person. “This is Hyene, a fiend. Wrench, our machinist. Doofy, our giant. Wormwood, a drone who Ranked Up to supervisor, is our iliaster-extractor. And the mortals, Captain Ferg, our fearless [Mercenary Captain], and Sir Rickard and Initiate William, Crusader mercenaries we’ve hired.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Lawrence smiled. He took the time to meet each individual’s eye. All the demons carried colorful parasols, even the masculine ones. “My name is Lawrence. I’m a faustian. The, uh, demons want me to ask if there’s any way they can convince you to just leave.”

“They don’t want to fight?” Ferg frowned. The demons looked confused. The young and dumb mortal slowly smiled. The elder mortal had a guarded expression. The mortal woman, Captain Ferg asked, “Why not?”

“Too much bloodshed,” Lawrence grimaced. “Supplies are running low. We don’t have anything to plunder. The treasure vault’s open, if you want in, but it’s empty. I’ve got some crowns I’m supposed to give you if you’ll give a Contract you’ll leave.”

“He’s saying we have an easy win,” the initiate crowed. “Hey kid, where’s the dungeon’s seat? I want to claim it.”

“Um.” Lawrence did not have an answer prepared.

“We can’t leave,” the captain said. She was shorter than Lawrence by almost a foot. She wore combat fatigues and carried a rifle almost as big as she was. No helmet, but a beret and pauldrons. “We were hired to clear out this fort by the Gluttons. Now, if Blood Well wants to pay us to leave…”

“The crowns I’ve got aren’t good enough?” Lawrence held up a tiny little pouch holding a handful of change. He noted the two knights wore helmets but the demons either had nothing or colorful hats.

“No.” Ferg had the grace to look apologetic. “Sorry kid. We’re coming in. Doofy? Get him out of there.”

“DOO SM’SH.” The giant marched forward. Lawrence swallowed as the monster looked down on him. The monster grabbed the top of the cage with one great hand. It grabbed the bars of the cage with its other hand. It pinned the bottom of the cage with the edge of a toe on its elephantine foot. It flexed.

Metal rent. Iron tore. Lawrence hunched his shoulders. He covered his head. The giant ripped the cage apart. Iron bars fell on and around Lawrence. He got smacked in the head a few times. The giant moved the bars out of the way.

“DOO DO WOK,” the giant beamed. It threw its chest out.

“Hi Doofy,” Lawrence peered up from under his fingers. “Nice to meet you.”

“DOO HAPPEE TOO MEET YOO TOO.”

Lawrence winced. This demon was like a squat, upright rhinoceros with the wide head and mouth of Jabba the Hutt. Intelligence had evidently been sacrificed in its creation. Lawrence knew the giants were living siege weapons. Intelligent giants were rare and feared. The giants in the fort were smart, but they did not rise through promotions like the smaller demons. This specimen appeared to be a textbook example of the species.

“Do you want to join our party?” Larissa asked. She walked around Doofy. As a half-infiltrator, she had a human-like face and physique. She had chosen to embrace her demon side with an unusual coloration: alien-blue skin and hair, and violet eyes. Fiend heritage gave her hellfire. Her smile disarmed.

“Um.” Lawrence almost said yes. She was a girl. She was pretty. She smiled at him. She seemed nice. But he could tell she was in her mid-thirties. An old lady. “Well, the thing is—”

“You’re contracted to serve the dungeon lord,” Larissa finished. “I get it. Don’t worry. We’ll kill him for you. Then you can join us? Mister [Faustian]?”

“Unless you have something better to do?” Hyene asked. He squinted at Lawrence as if suspicious. He was a similar age to Larissa. Though a fiend, he had modeled his body after a gnoll. He had desert-colored fur, a long muzzle, stubby tail, claws, digitigrade legs, dog-ears, and amber eyes.

“Can I bring a friend?” Lawrence deflected.

“Can they fight?” Ferg asked.

“Better. They have underworld contacts. They’re a Face.”

“We’ve already got one of those,” Ferg said. “Larissa’s pretty good.”

“BLOO GIRL NICE.”

“Yeah. I can see,” Lawrence said. He hunched his shoulders. Doofy the giant still stood right in front of him. The demon had a huge grin with teeth like the ivory keys of a piano. Lawrence could not look away from its face.

“If you’re going to hang out with us, you’re going to need to loosen up,” Larissa told him. She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Come on. How old are you?”

“Watch for traps, everyone,” Ferg said. She and Kat led the way down the hall. The first with her carbine pointed at the ground. The second on all fours, sniffing.

“There are no traps.” Lawrence fell into step next to Doofy.

“You’re sure?” William asked. “Don’t be lying, kid. If you are, I’ll gut you like a fish.” For emphasis, he drew his knife and waved the blade near Lawrence’s face.

“Initiate,” Sir Rickard shouted. He grabbed William’s wrist. He pried the knife from William’s fingers. “Never wave a knife in someone else’s direction. Apologies, my child.”

Lawrence went around to Doofy’s other side. This put him in the soul-devouring demons’ midst. He looked at the catgirl. She was not a cute fuzzball. She reminded him of an anthropomorphized lioness with an unhealthy attraction to the sight of blood.

“See something you like, kid?” She eyeballed him like a cat deciding whether he was prey.

“Have you ever heard the tale of The Ghost and The Darkness?”

“No.”

“It’s about two lions after they develop a taste for human flesh? They start eating lots of people?”

“Sounds like a good time.” Kat flicked her ears. “Tell me the story.”

“Well…” And Lawrence did. There were few traps in the fort. They came across some wall darts, some of them rusted in place. Others had extended and then rusted. Once, there was a pit trap. The floor was missing. They could tell it was coming because the bodies rotted and stank.

“How old are you, [Faustian]?” the blue lady asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Really?” She looked shocked. “So young. What are you doing out here? Where did you come from? Where are your parents?”

“Um.” Thus, Lawrence told them, though he was vague about the school’s location. He had nothing better to do. He kept looking around for a way to escape. Several of the human-sized demons had taken Size Up Skills, making them giants. The actual giant, Doofy, who had also taken Size Up, thus making him a giant among giants, filled half the tunnel by himself.

The fort’s tunnels were tall, wide, and dark, all inadequate adjectives. Lawrence had measured the width as twenty-five feet on average and thirty high. Light came from carried torches. Lawrence was certain none of the demons needed it.

“OW. Comet’s antlers,” Larissa complained after banging her shin on a tripped bear trap. The metal teeth faced inward. She ran into the outer, blunt edge. Her leather pants did little to lessen impact damage. She rubbed her leg.

“There’s a broken trap there, honey,” Initiate William pointed. “Hey dumbass. Why are all the traps broken?”

Lawrence ignored him.

“Hey. Dumbass.” William came around Doofy to shove Lawrence’s shoulder. “Answer me when I’m talking to you.”

Lawrence glared. William smiled with his teeth showing and eyes glittering, looking for an excuse to fight.

“I told you. There’s no treasure here. It’s a military fort, not a bank.”

“If there’s no treasure, we’ll take it from your corpses,” William warned. “I didn’t come all this way just to go home empty-handed.”

Lawrence shook his head. He walked away. Inside, he felt sick with anger. He thought of the dean’s red face, spitting with fury when Lawrence had dared to fight back.

‘This is stopping. No more fighting. If he’s ever mean to you again, you need to come find me. Now shake hands,’ the dean had ordered. Lawrence had shaken hands with his bully, while the bully refused to look at him. The mocking and the taunting increased. Reporting it did nothing.

Something shoved him hard from behind. Lawrence tripped. He banged his knee on something.

“Kid,” William ordered. “Stop walking into things and watch where you’re going.”

Hyene turned his head. He frowned at the initiate, as if trying to decide context.

“There’s a split here,” Kat called. “Two rooms and a hallway. I smell gold in this one.”

“Dibs,” William yelled. Sound travels far underground. He cupped his hands around his mouth. The whole fort heard him shout.

Lawrence winced, as did Kat.

“Let’s explore this one,” Ferg said. “Sir Rickard, be out in ten?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Doofy? Why don’t you stay out here with Wormwood?” She asked. “This’ll just be a minute.”

“DOOF STAY.”

“Come along, [Faustian],” the mortal captain said.

Lawrence followed the diminutive human woman and the demons. The woman raised her torch. She illuminated rotting boxes and empty, stone beds.

“This is a barracks used by the lower-ranked demons,” Lawrence murmured.

“Yeah. I don’t care about that.” The captain rounded on him. “Why are you antagonizing them?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then why would that guy tell you to watch where you’re going?”

“If you were paying attention, you’d have seen him hit me.” It felt like confessing a sin. Lawrence couldn’t meet her eyes. She looked furious. She was attractive, despite being much older. Even though he didn’t work for these people, he didn’t want to appear weak in front of her. In another life, he could have been assigned to her unit.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I shouldn’t have to say anything. No one cares.”

“We can’t do anything about it unless you come to us,” the blue lady murmured.

“When did that ever solve anything?” Lawrence glared at a spot on the wall. Bitterly, he said, “All it’s ever done is make it worse. You people—” he spat the words. “—You’re all the same. You put it on me to report it then wonder why they don’t. If I ignore it, they do it more. If I fight back, I’m the one who gets it. If you really cared, you’d put a stop to it.”

“No.” The captain shook her head. “I’ve worked with kids before. It’s all horseplay. Like I’ve literally yelled at boys for hitting each other and they’re all like ‘naw, it’s cool. He’s my friend.’”

“He has to say that,” Lawrence said coldly. “If he doesn’t, he loses face for getting the teacher involved. Like I said captain. If you really cared, you’d have done your job.” He turned away to leave.

He knew he was overstepping the line. Turning to leave was a dismissal, and giving a clear I’m-done-with-this-conversation-and-that’s-the-end-of-it to a superior was a career-ending mistake. But Lawrence was furious. The authority figure he thought he could count on had failed him. Yet again. He gathered up his balls and said one more thing.

“And you military types are all full of shit. I was in line to be an officer and I hated it. Got treated like a child and expected to act like an adult. They made me an LT for a day and you know what happened? Got mocked constantly. We won the War Games because of my plan. Didn’t matter. You know how old I am? I’m a sophomore. You want people to act like adults you better treat them like adults. But I see you’re just like all the rest.”

Lawrence left without turning his back. He had butterflies from the expected impact, but it never came. He imagined the woman drawing her gun and shooting him dead for insubordination. Lawrence would hate her even more for it.

“Hey, big guy,” Lawrence looked up at the giant.

“DOOF HUN-REE. YOO FOOD?”

“No, I am not.” Lawrence lowered his eyes. Mentally ill people made him sad. “But I think I can find you some.” He walked past the giant. He walked into the darkness and found the wall. He leaned against it facing away. He crossed his arms. Bitterness filled him.

A mortal captain, a human woman, with good leadership skills and a military background, in a job Lawrence could enjoy. His specialized skillset could fill a niche this party needed filled. It was too bad she turned out to be like every other leader. Just when Lawrence thought he’d found someone to follow, they turned out to be a jerk.

“Hey.” The blue lady appeared behind him. “You may not be demon, but you are a [Faustian]. You’re counted among our kind. There’s no reason to suffer abuse.”

Lawrence did not answer. He didn’t know what to say. He put his hood up. He drew the sides of his poncho tighter, as if the material could mimic the llama lying on him.

“How many rituals do you know?”

Lawrence counted on his fingers.

“Over fifty. Maybe sixty. All the ones going up to rank fifteen in the Skill. There’s two I didn’t know until I got here, but I didn’t learn them. The… uh… the Program didn’t give them to me. I used iliaster… and somehow, they just happened.”

“You don’t know how you came to know them?”

“I didn’t know them. I thought about what I wanted to happen and then I used iliaster to do it.”

“Sounds like regular sorcery powered by your soul,” she commented. “Strange. Well. What are your plans after this?”

“Um.”

“You don’t have to answer,” she continued. “Just think about it. Our party, we’re not low-level demons. We’re pretty good. We’re profitable. And we take care of each other. I trust my teammates with my life. We have a spot open. We could use a good [Faustian]. We don’t mind supporting someone with artifacts until they get their own.”

“Thanks,” Lawrence replied, deadpan. “Can I bring a friend?”

“Well,” the blue lady inhaled. “I’ll have to ask the team. Is he another [Faustian]?”

“She’s the Face I mentioned. She has underworld connections. A talker.”

“Maybe,” the blue said. But she said it in a way Lawrence knew meant ‘no.’

Lawrence hated how irrational women were. Talkers required high charisma, or Face, as the Program called it. They needed to be charming, diplomatic, kind, sweet, and attractive. Increasing the Face stat increased attractiveness. Doing it once erased all of Lawrence’s acne. After weeks without bathing—the fort had barely drinkable water and not a large supply, and demons had no concept of personal hygiene—it had returned in force.

The blue lady was beautiful. In a mortal world, she’d be a [Beauty]. Here, she was a [Crossbreed Demon] and whatever class she used for fighting. Lawrence thought it was an [Axe Warrior] variant. Maybe a [Diplomat]. She would perceive Lily as a threat. Worse, the blue lady had real fighting ability. Lily did not. She would be a liability. And last, Lily was low-level, he was pretty sure.

The blue lady had taken the Physiology Skill at level one, like everyone else. But she’d also taken Tail and Horn variants, in addition to whatever under-the-hood things she might have. Physiology at level one, the other two at levels five and ten. If they had ‘good levels,’ it meant they had multiple Skills in both Species and Adventurer Classes.

On paper, the math checked out. They’d kill William sooner or later, or let Lawrence do it to prove he could survive. He’d abandon Lily and join a powerful, wealthy team of crossbreeds and misfits. As a half-demon half-something-else, he’d fit right in. It was picture perfect. He wouldn’t even be expected to lead.

He sighed. Emotions were difficult things. Lawrence had a ball of complicated feelings in his chest. He wanted to say yes, but…

“Just think about it,” the blue lady said.

Lawrence nodded. The gesture seemed appeasing, because she left him. He stood alone in the dark, cold. He missed his warm llama’s constant presence. It was strange. When Cosmic was alive, Lawrence hated being shackled to him. But his absence tore a hole in Lawrence. He wanted to fill it with something, but what would suffice?

“Gather up,” the captain lady with pauldrons and a hat announced. “We’re leaving.”