Brick slayed the gnome with one sweep of his mighty axe, Ravager, and we were left standing on the other side of the gate with no idea where to go next. Each spire of twisted metal rose at an angle that was far too steep to scale and yet there didn’t appear to be any doors either.
“Any idea where to go from here?” I asked, looking to my companions for guidance.
“None of us have ever been in Necromancer Heights before,” Bruiser said grimly. “Even in the town outside. The most I know is what the birds have told me: in one of these large spires, there is a necromancer base. At least two necromancers are fighting over it, but I do not know where the second necromancer dwells, or even if there are more enemies in wait.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have killed the gnome,” I muttered, looking at his decapitated head in disdain. I could have used my Persuasion ability to get some directions before we killed him.
“There must be a way in,” Nightfall said, looking around. “Even if the necromancers have some kind of ability to fly, their servants would not. There will be more hidden doors.”
“I can try shouting again,” Jackal offered. “The wall was impenetrable, but the other doors might not be.”
“Maybe Emma could try flirting her way in,” Bastion gave me a petulant look.
“You’re welcome to go back and wait outside if you don’t want to make use of my talents,” I snapped at him. “Maybe I’ll go up to the guard’s window and blow raspberries at you while you try. I didn’t see you with any better ideas.”
“Emma, please,” Brick said, stepping in front of me. “Arguing isn’t going to get us in. If I can hold my tongue with Bruiser, you and Bastion can make a truce until this is over.”
“Fine,” I huffed. “Let’s do Jackal’s idea. We can see if we can find any doors and bust them in.”
“My idea was good?” Jackal asked, looking both surprised and delighted.
“Best idea we’ve got,” I shrugged. “Come on, we’ll look for weak points.”
We split into groups of two: Bastion and Brick, Bruiser and Nightfall, and me and Jackal. I ran my fingers over the wall, looking for ridges as Jackal followed close behind.
“I think maybe I like these,” Jackal said, his tone cautious.
I looked over my shoulder at him. He was fingering his glasses again, adjusting them on the bridge of his nose.
“The glasses? You can keep them if you want, but if you want a permanent boost, you could go to university.”
“I can’t read books,” Jackal shook his head. “Minotaurs don’t go to school. But I like coming up with plans that work. You must like me better now. If I was smarter, like the others, would you fall in love with me then?”
I turned to him and took a step closer to him, taking his hands in mine. He was still wearing extra rings and a wrist cuff to boost his charisma and it struck me this was something that brought him great pain. Nightfall had told me he was abandoned by both parents, and his adoptive family had perished when one of his destructive shouts had caused their house to collapse on top of them. There was a deep loneliness in his eyes that was heartbreaking.
“Jackal, you don’t need me to fall in love with you to be my friend. You were a part of this team before I even got here, and that’s not going to change. You don’t have to be smarter or more charismatic or anything else. If you want to improve your stats, it should be for you,” I squeezed his fingers. “Now, it’s not a great time to be having this conversation, right as we’re trying to find and murder some necromancers, but if it’s something you want to do, I’ll help you get there. But it’s got to be your decision. If you want to remain the same, that’s fine too.”
“Jackal!” Bastion called. “I found a crack!”
Jackal didn’t respond, instead pulling me into a hug. “You’re my friend? We’re friends now?”
“Of course. But you’re crushing me.” His intelligence stats may be low, but his strength was through the roof.
“Sorry,” he released me immediately. “Let’s go smash a wall?”
I nodded. “Let’s go smash a wall.”
The rest of us stood back as Jackal prepared himself and screamed at the wall. Unlike the gate, the door into the spire bent and then crumbled under the power of his vibrations, revealing a spiral staircase.
Bruiser, Brick and Jackal took the lead as the warriors, with Bastion, Nightfall and me trailing close behind.
“Everything okay?” Nightfall asked me quietly as I tried to keep up with his long gait. “I saw what happened with Jackal.”
“Yeah, we just cleared up some things. That we’re friends, not lovers,” I said. “Conversations that would be great to have during peacetime, not when we’re riding into war, but it was bothering him.”
“It was… good of you to give him those glasses,” Bastion added, though he sounded like the compliment was being drawn from him with a pair of pliers against his will. “A lot of people would take advantage of his simplicity.”
I nodded to Bastion, accepting the statement but not knowing how to respond. I knew he’d had trouble with his ex, Lily, and the way she ran her harem. Bastion had fallen for her head over heels and had been heartbroken when he’d realized she only saw him as a bonus-boyfriend, not as a partner. It was why I understood his mistrust of my abilities, because he’d been on the receiving end of them himself and had been crushed as a result.
I was glad he was at least coming around to the fact I wasn’t Lily.
I wasn’t going to sleep with Jackal or adopt him into my growing harem just because I could. Sure, he was handsome and he was useful, but I felt like it would be unethical to have a relationship with a guy who couldn’t understand what was going on half the time. He kind of reminded me of Ken from the Barbie movie, a bit of a ‘himbo’ who needed to find his own identity if he wanted to find true happiness – although if he tried finding it with a musical number, with his talents it’d probably result in a pile of corpses.
We approached the top of the staircase and positioned ourselves around the door as Jackal shouted it to pieces. Then Bruiser and Brick barreled through while Jackal caught his breath, the rest of us filtering into the large room behind them.
Bright lights temporarily blinded me, a stark contrast from the grim palette of the town below. When my eyes began to adjust, I realized the room was covered wall-to-wall with large monitors. I blinked several times, clearing my vision. This was the first piece of actual technology I’d seen in this world. Most of the world had a distinctly medieval vibe. Even the gnomish lawnmower thing had looked like some crazy steampunk contraption, but this was modern.
“Who are you and how did you get past my impenetrable wall?” a figure robed in black approached, his pale skinny hands rising threateningly from his sleeves.
“The necromancer,” Nightfall inhaled sharply and took a similar position, small fireballs appearing an inch above his hands.
I noticed with a start that all of my companions were in their battle stances while I’d been standing around gawping at the screens.
“Fuck,” I swore, looking back at the necromancer, who had paused and was looking at me beneath his hood.
“That word is not from this world. Who are you? Who sent you?” he asked menacingly. “Did Dave bring you here?”
“Dave?” I repeated, my eyebrows lifting in surprise. That was about the least fantasy name I could think of. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see his face beneath his hood, but it was cast in shadows.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, pushing to the front of my group and directed all the Charm I could possess at the necromancer. “Hey hot stuff, lower your hood and show me your pretty face.”
I felt my pheromone pores activate like a plug-in air freshener and watched as the necromancer’s hands shook and lifted to his hood.
“Wh-what’s happening?” His voice was tinged with fear as he lowered his hood and my jaw dropped.
“James?” I gasped. “You’re the necromancer?”
“E-Emma?” James hesitated. “Is that you?”
A white-hot rage took over my body as I stared at him up here in this tower like the godforsaken Wizard of Oz, pulling his strings behind his impenetrable-wall-curtain. All the terrible things I’d been imagining doing to him since I fell into this world, into this ridiculous body, welled up within me and I just wanted to throw something at him.
I shoved my hand in my bag and pulled out the first thing that I reached, and pelted him with it, then another and another. The cinnamon rolls splatted against his body, one hitting him in the eye.
“Ow!” He swatted at them. “Emma! Stop! Ouch! That’s annoying! Ack! That one hurt!”
“You!” I yelled, throwing another roll between every word. “You! Asshole! I! Hate! You! You! Are! So! Dumped! You! Total! Loser!”
“This is the necromancer?” Nightfall said, his hands having fallen to his sides. “And the creator of our world? This is the one who made me?”
The reminder that James had made my favourite things in this world as well took some of the anger out of me and I paused my cinnamon barrage.
“What the hell are you doing, James?” I demanded. “What the hell is this place?”
“You didn’t come here on purpose then? I thought you would have found my letter, the one I left in case I didn’t make it back this time.”
“Is he the necromancer or not?” Bruiser asked, glowering. “I came here seeking revenge, but this is not what I thought I would find.”
“Who are these guys?” James said, looking at the line-up behind me. “Did you make an army of NPCs to get past the wall? Smart. Where did you find them?”
“We’re her boyfriends,” Brick said grimly, taking a step towards him as he heaved his axe menacingly. “Well, most of us.”
“That’s… that’s the half-orc! Brick, that’s right! And that must be his half-brother, the elf,” James said, running his eyes over my companions with interest, before snapping back to me. “Wait, what does he mean by boyfriends?”
“Well, you made me a succubus, so I did what succubi do and built a harem,” I said defensively. “I’m just following the stupid sexist rules of this stupid sexist place you’ve built.”
“You? Oh…” his eyes widened, looking me over with more trepidation. “Emma, I’m so sorry, but this… uh… Whatever you think this place is, it’s not. I don’t have as much control over it as you probably think I do.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then start explaining.”
“Right, well… uh, this world is kind of the fanfiction world I’ve been writing in since I was twelve.”
“Explains why a lot of it’s stupid as hell. Continue.”
“Right, well, you remember Dave from my AI modeling class?” he hesitated.
I wracked my brain until the name connected. “The guy that died?”
“Well, he’s not dead. He built the AI model this place is generated from, and it used my source material. All my sketches and notes and fanfics and whatever. I didn’t realize it would make something this immersive, make people real, I thought it’d just be like… like a game,” he said, his eyes dancing again over the characters behind me who had been borne from this accident. “We found a way to build bodies for ourselves here. It scanned us and gave us versions of ourselves that fit with what our stats would be, but Dave… he wanted to unlock a Godmode so he could rule this world, debug it and make it fit his ideas. He wanted to rule it. He hacked his stats and maxed everything to 20/20. It… the change drove him mad, and he’s now the biggest threat to this world. If he gets back into this room, he’ll have access to the computer and will be able to do whatever he wants. I’ve been trying to fix things, but I just don’t know how.”
I crossed my arms, disgusted at how he was cowering under the very idea of Dave returning.
“Figures,” I said grimly. “You never did learn how to clean up your own messes.
“How did you get in, Emma? Could Dave follow you?” James asked desperately.
“Well, yeah probably,” I shrugged. “We left the gate open and smashed your doors down, so I don’t imagine it’ll be hard.”
“So, are we killing this Dave guy now and not James?” Bruiser asked.
But James had snatched up the laptop and was clutching it against his chest. “He can’t get this!”
I walked over to him and held my hands out. “Give it here.”
“No, I…” he seemed to be struggling against his will to keep it crushed to his chest. Apparently, my Persuasion ability itself wasn’t strong enough to convince him, but my Seduction skills were way higher, so I tried again.
“Hey, sexy legs, gimme the laptop.”
He whimpered as he handed it over. I slid it into my bag, and it disappeared from sight into my limitless inventory.
“What did you do?” James asked, horrified. “What did you do? It was like with my hood, I couldn’t control myself.”
“That,” I said sharply, “is one of the many messed up things about this world we need to talk about. Seduction powers? Charm pheromones? I’m going to buy you a book on free will and ethics and force feed you every single page, you asshole.”
“That’s kind of an ironic threat,” James hedged, backing up as I advanced on him until he bumped into his chair and stumbled.
“And while I’m at it, would you like to explain to me what the hell you were thinking when you wrote succubus slime into this world?”
Stolen story; please report.
“Succubus… slime…?”
I snarled at him, and he fell backwards into his chair. “How it’s made? Or is that one of the stupid ideas you came up with when you were a teenager and didn’t think twice about before handing it over to an AI engine to make into your kinky little game?”
He responded to my fury with such honest confusion that my anger started to lose its heat.
“I… let me look it up,” he turned and typed ‘succubus slime’ into his keyboard, and a file popped up on the screen in front of him.
SUCCUBUS SLIME – A mysterious slime produced by succubus that can heal any wound. Incredibly rare and valuable in apothecaries.
“This it?” James asked me, turning to look at me. “What’s the problem?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “You really don’t know? How it’s harvested?”
He stared at me uncomprehendingly, so I waved my hand in the general area of my groin.
“I don’t… oh! Oh!”
“Yes, ‘oh!’ You know how demeaning it is? You know how awkward it is to save someone’s life in a dungeon if you happen to run out of a bottled supply? You know how dangerous it would be if it was public knowledge, how that could be abused?”
“Oh, shit,” James paled. “I… look, the descriptions are what I wrote, but… the AI would have just looked for a… um… feasible fluid and attributed that. It could have just as easily been spit or sweat. I honestly never thought any of this through because I never expected it to be real. I’ll fix it now…”
He turned around and started tapping on his keyboard.
“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.
“I just deleted it. No more slime.”
He had the gall to look pleased with himself.
“You what?”
“All the slime in the world, gone.”
I hurriedly looked into my bag, noticing the empty space where my supply of potion bottles had disappeared.
“You… you fucking moron!”
I leaped on him, tipping him out of his chair and wrapping my hands around his throat.
“Emma! What?” he croaked.
“You seriously just deleted the fastest way I’ve got to heal people right as we’re about to face down a necromancer? Not to mention you just… you made me dry, you asshole! And you just made that decision about altering my body without even asking!”
“I’m sorry,” he spluttered, his hands pulling at mine. “I’ll fix it! I’ll put it back!”
I slammed him against the ground one more time angrily before getting off him. “You better fix it!”
“It’ll take a while. It’s not like just clicking Control-Z,” he muttered, rubbing his neck. “And for the record, I never made you a succubus, okay? If you weren’t scanned in and given a body based on your real self, you would have just… uh… landed in a spare character that hadn’t been spawned yet.”
I glared at him.
“So, who else have you got with you?” James asked. “I don’t know faces; those were all the AI. I just know the stories behind the names, although some of them were just patchy notes.”
“Bruiser, Nightfall and Jackal,” I said. “Anything prudent I should know about them?”
“Oh, you found Jackal?” James eyed him warily, but I punched his shoulder, and he got back to his typing. “He’s a bit dangerous. Stupid, too. Doesn’t know his own strength. I wrote him as kind of a joke, but he’s accident prone and ends up smashing stuff a lot. People possibly included.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You mean to say you killed his adoptive parents as a joke? You’ve made him suffer all this time to be some punchline to make you giggle?”
James winced. “I didn’t know that specifically would happen. He was a character sheet I drew. I never wrote him a story. Look.”
He typed in his name and pulled up an image of a muscular man with long hair. It looked like a child’s drawing, with a few notes around the edges, but that was it.
“The AI took this and fleshed it out,” he explained. “Filled in the gaps. Same as with the slime and everything else. If I’d known it would result in real people, I never would have let it go live. I promise I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“All of that stuff that happened to him,” I frowned. “That’s because you put the words ‘accident prone’ on that piece of paper?”
“It’s probably why his intelligence stats are low, too. I never filled those in. But what would make a person accident prone? Being stupid.”
“Stop calling him stupid,” I snapped. “He’s not the one who caused this mess.”
James wilted. “Fair… I just don’t want you to get hurt by him. I could take it out?”
I nodded, and he deleted the offending words.
“It is dangerous messing with people’s base stats, so I can’t change those. After seeing what it did to Dave…”
“What did happen with Dave?” I asked.
“Well, you can’t have a person with abs without that person being a person who likes to work out, right? Giving someone 20/20 Strength kind of messes with their code, makes them the kind of person who would fit those stats. And when he maxed out every stat he had, it kind of turned him into a megalomaniac. No one could beat him unless they had like, 21/20 Strength which is just impossible. He’s unbeatable. He’s got armour that makes him immune to magic and every kind of attack I could possibly think of. I’ve been trying to hack a gun that would get past his defenses and just kill him straight away – a plasma rifle – but it’s not ready yet.”
“A plasma rifle! Are you serious? You think adding plasma rifles to this messed up world is going to solve anything?”
“I have to use some kind of force that isn’t known in this world, otherwise it won’t get through his defenses! I don’t know what else to try!”
“What about accessories?” I asked, pointing at my tiara. “Can accessories push you over your max stat?”
“Yeah,” James said thoughtfully. “I mean, I could try build some armour that would push my Strength stat up, but that kind of thing takes a while, especially if I want to make an exclusive item that he can’t replicate. I don’t think we have enough time for that. If you were blasting down doors, we might only have minutes.”
“Can you… look me up?” Bastion asked, appearing at my side so quickly it made me jump.
James looked at him in surprise, like he had forgotten he existed.
“Uh, sure,” James said, giving me a sidelong look. “If Emma doesn’t mind a slight delay on the whole slime issue.”
“Do it, James,” I snapped. “It’ll only take a minute, and you owe him. You owe all of them for all the shit you’ve put them through.”
James typed in Bastion’s name and his profile came up. This one was a lot more fleshed out than Jackals, with character notes and a family tree.
“Half-brother?” I inhaled sharply. “You mean Brick’s not actually adopted?”
“What?” Brick thundered to my side, slamming his hands down on the console.
“So, you didn’t know? Yeah, uh, well… Bastion’s mother died in childbirth, and then Septimius – their dad – got drunk this one time and slept with Brick’s mother. An orc who was on his team. But that’s kind of embarrassing for an elf, I suppose. Look, I wrote this a long time ago.”
“Were you stealing plots from daytime soap operas?” I asked dubiously.
“You’re really my brother!” Brick gasped, tears shining in his eyes as he scooped Bastion into a hug.
“Hey! I’m happy too, but put me down!”
I went back to reading his profile. “You actually wrote the whole thing with him and Lily? Oh my God, James! You made him a heartbroken alcoholic! No bloody wonder he can’t kick the habit. You’ve written it into the core of his character!”
“He what-now?” Bastion pulled himself out of Brick’s grasp and stared wide-eyed at the words. “I’m meant to be a depressed alcoholic?”
The description notes were right there: Alcoholic, gets in bar fights in every town, heartbroken over Lily.
“It was meant to be drama. Entertainment. Like… like in those old Western movies, bar fights always end up starting adventures. It was supposed to just be a bit of fun. It wasn’t meant to be real.”
“I’m this messed up because of you?” Bastion said bitterly, drawing his sword from his belt. Brick grabbed him by the back of his shirt and hauled him backwards and I held out my hands soothingly.
“We can’t kill him, brother,” Brick said. “Not yet anyway. We need him to fix things on this machine first.”
“I hate you!” Bastion shrieked. “You ruined my life!”
He struggled against Brick’s grip, but Brick was well experienced in holding him back. Changing tactics, he reached into my bag and grabbed my cinnamon rolls, flinging them at James with impressive aim.
“Ow! I can’t fix anything when you’re doing that!” James yelped, covering his face with his arms.
I let Bastion throw a few more just because I knew how therapeutic throwing stuff at James could be, before pulling myself out of reach and stepping over one of many cinnamon rolls which now littered the floor.
“First of all, you can edit that to recovered alcoholic, thank you very much,” I pointed at the note. “And occasionally gets into bar fights. Unless you can just delete it?”
“He’s already been generated, so I don’t think I can take that part of his personality away without causing some kind of damage. It’s kind of different to removing ‘accident prone’ which is more of a status than a personality thing. You can’t delete the past without consequences. But adding recovered should be okay. What about the heartbroken thing?”
“You can’t mess with people’s hearts,” I said firmly. “Especially not when we’re in a hurry. This isn’t over though; Bastion needs to be able to make those decisions for himself not because someone’s been using seduction powers on him or because someone felt like writing some crap into his backstory that didn’t need to be there.”
“Em, when Brick said they’re your boyfriends…” he trailed off, unable to finish the question under the heat of my glare.
“Get back to work.”
“I just want to know…”
“It’s none of your business, James. You’re not my boyfriend anymore. As far as I’m concerned, the second I dropped into this world, we were over. I can’t believe you did this.” I clenched my fists, holding back the desire to scream. “I can’t believe you kept this from me! You were working on this for months.”
“I… sorry,” James said, averting his eyes. “I was embarrassed, I guess.”
“Get back to work on putting my slime back where it belongs. And no changes to what it was without my permission. I want it exactly as it was before,” I cleared my throat. “It’ll be predictable, at least.”
As James started typing, a clanking noise came from the stairwell.
“Shit! He’s coming!” James hissed. “Keep your bag out of sight.”
“Hiding it would just be suspicious,” I hissed. “Brick, Bruiser, guard him so he can finish his work. Jackal, can I have any more of your Charisma boosting accessories?”
Jackal handed over a golden cuff, and I shoved it on my arm, closing my eyes for a moment to check my stats. Other than the Adorkable Glasses I’d given to Jackal, which only affected Intelligence, the Charisma accessories were the only hope I had of beating Dave at any of his stats.
Mitsy
Race: Succubus
Class: Healer
Level Nine
Health: 1200
Mana: 1200
Race: Succubus
Abilities: Healing Song, Succubus Slime, Persuasion, Seduction, Charm, Animal Taming, Mapmaking
Magic Abilities: Sleep LVL 5, Animal Speech LVL 1, Summon: Fish LVL 73.
Intelligence: 20
Charisma: 18 (+4 = 22)
Stamina: 15
Strength: 5
Magic: 16
Dexterity: 15
Accessories: Elven Tiara +2 Charisma, Gilded Cuff +2 Charisma
Degrees: Healing, Potions, Animal Husbandry, Architecture, Cartography, Elemental Magic
Unless I could put him to sleep or summon a mermaid to slap him, flirting was going to be my best chance.
The clanking grew louder, and a man dressed head to toe in golden armour burst through the doors, flicking his visor open to look wildly around the room until he found James.
“I have you now, you bastard,” Dave growled. “You honestly didn’t think you could keep me out of here for long, did you? I told you, in this world I am a god! Now hand over the laptop and I may spare your worthless life.”
“Shit, you really are like a cartoon villain.”
Dave turned his stare at me, as though I’d been beneath his notice before.
“And who are you? That is not a Fantasy Dungeons swear word. You must be from the real world,” he stalked up to me. “Who has he brought here to aid him, I wonder? Alice, perhaps?”
I suddenly remembered I should be flirting with him and forced my expression from dubious to neutral. The ridiculousness of the situation had distracted me, but there was a lot on the line. I had to focus.
“My name’s Emma. I suppose you must be Dave, handsome?” I said, activating my pheromone pores again. “That’s nice armour you’ve got there. Care to tell me about it?”
His expression shifted as my Charm and Seduction abilities took effect. I saw Persuasion working on him too, bringing the words up out of his mouth as though they were being forced, which I suppose they were.
“It makes me immune from spells, projectiles and melee attacks,” he said, but then he shifted again, backing up in alarm. “What is this? Who are you?”
Damn. He’d probably be immune from my Sleep spell then too. He was like a coward, hiding behind his impenetrable wall of armour – much like James had been hiding behind his literal wall. If this was going to get us anywhere, I had to get him out of his armour.
It might prove difficult though, as he was already cocking a gun at me.
“Drop your weapon, sexy, and show me those beautiful hands,” I commanded in a panic, trying to channel every sleazebag who had ever hit on me.
It took effect immediately, and his weapon clattered to the floor, his hands shoved out in front of him. It made me feel dirty to have such control over another person, even if it was to save our lives. This power in the wrong hands would be dreadful, and I could only hope Dave would never have the opportunity to implement it.
“Come over here and give me some sugar, uh… honey butt,” I said, scrambling for another pet name. I’d never been fantastic at coming up with them.
He walked jerkily over to me and made to kiss me without even removing his helmet. But he was away from his gun, at least. Nightfall skirted around the edge of the room and picked it up, handling it carefully so as not to activate the foreign weapon.
“Show me your body, gorgeous. I want to see you naked,” I said as breathily as I could manage. It was about the most forward thing that had ever come out of my mouth – well, other than my requests to my actual boyfriends, but this was a total stranger.
Dave started removing his armour and casting it to the floor while the others watched, dumbfounded.
“Emma, what?” James yelped, falling out of his chair. “That… that works?”
“What’s happening?” Dave asked in a panic, dropping his chest plate on top of his armoured gloves. “How are you doing this?”
As his final piece of armour fell to the ground, I readied my spell, intending to put him to sleep, but he was too quick.
“Silence!” he shouted, and the spell died on my tongue.
I tried to throw a silent spell anyway, but it fell to nothing. The spell level must be too low.
I focused my energy on my hands, ready to throw a Goku-level Kamehameha type blast and thought two words as hard as I could: Summon Fish!
A shark erupted out of my outstretched hands and launched itself at Dave with impressive momentum.
“Argh!” The shark took a chunk out of his shoulder as Dave skidded away from me, giving me a look of absolute hatred and terror. “What are you, you witch?”
I snarled at him, then wiggled my eyebrows, winked and tried to make a kissy face. Anything I could think of to use my Seduction powers without a voice.
He lurched towards me unwillingly, but then managed to cover his eyes and look away.
“Poison bomb!” he shouted. “Shrapnel bomb!”
A green cloud of smog was followed by a blast and piercing pain ran through my body like lightning.
“Bring me the laptop and I’ll let you have the hostage! You have until the poison kills him!” Dave’s voice cut through the smog.
“Ah! Let go of me!” Bastion’s voice shrieked through the haze.
“Bastion!” I called out, trying to dive towards the exit, but the pain in my legs made me stumble.
“Hang on, I can get rid of the poison,” James called out, his voice muffled.
Fans began to whirr, and the smog was sucked out through a vent system, revealing the chaos Dave had left behind. James seemed largely unharmed, as Brick and Bruiser had taken most of the damage, metal shards littering their skin with bloody wounds. Nightfall was likewise incapacitated, having done his best to keep the gun as far out of the conflict as possible. He was now hunched over it with his robes torn to ribbons. Jackal, who had been creeping behind me, was also largely unharmed.
“Sorry Emma, I was gonna try jump him, but I left it too late,” Jackal said, sounding dejected.
“It’s okay Jackal, it would have been a good plan if things had worked out slightly different,” I said, breathing heavily. “Could you take me over to the others? I’m struggling to walk.”
Jackal lifted me gently in his arms, and sat me down next to Bruiser and Brick, then went to retrieve Nightfall.
“Get rid of the shrapnel, then I’ll sing,” I instructed them. “I don’t want it fusing to your skin.”
We set about pulling out the shards of metal, the poison making me feel woozy.
“I should have a couple of antidotes in my bag,” I told Jackal. “The green ones. See if you can find them.”
James came and crouched by my side, and I noticed the gas mask in his hand. The asshole was the only one of us unaffected by the smog.
“Emma, what can I do to help?” he asked, looking as lost as a lamb.
“You’re asking me?” I snorted. “This is your messed up world.”
“But you were amazing back there. That was the best way that could have possibly ended.”
“Best? He got Bastion, you asshole,” I hissed.
“But he could have killed us all and gotten the laptop. He’s got the elf, sure, but he doesn’t have his armour anymore and he doesn’t have the ability to make more without the laptop. He’s limited to what he can find in the world. We’ve got the upper hand because of you.”
“How long until the poison kills Bastion?” I asked grimly.
“A while. You’ve got at least two days, I think.”
“Well, you better get back to work,” I glared at him, before turning back to my harem and checking they’d removed every piece of shrapnel before I started singing.
“Heal up my darlings,
I need you well,
So we can crack some skulls,
And send Dave to hell,
It’d be so much quicker,
If I had my slime,
But we’ll get back at James,
All in good time…”
“Emma,” James said, giving me a pathetically pleading look. “I’m trying.”
“You’ll try better,
You’ll try faster,
I’m still mad at you,
You walking disaster…”
James sighed, giving up and flicked the laptop open, getting back to work. The lacerations had healed, but the poison seemed to be draining them of their energy.
“Found the potions,” Jackal said, handing them over. “There’s not enough.”
I chewed my lip, looking at the three potions in my hands. How was I supposed to make a decision like this?
“You and Jackal take one each,” Nightfall said, folding his hands over mine. “He can go with you to save Bastion. The three of us will split the third potion. It won’t be enough to heal us completely, but it should spare our lives.”
I looked at James. “Can you restore my slime by the time I get to Bastion? It’s my only hope of saving him.”
James looked like he was going to say something, but swallowed it instead. “I… give me a few hours. Dave’s base is to the north in the abandoned mines. Take his armour. I’ll focus on getting the slime back ASAP.”
Brick grasped my hand tightly. “I’m sorry I can’t come with you. I feel so weak.”
“You’re not weak, darling. You’re sick. There’s a difference,” I said, planting a kiss on his forehead. “Rest easy here. I’ll go get your brother.”
“Emma,” Bruiser said softly. “You were amazing.”
“Thanks for noticing. Have you realized the errors of your ways, leaving me behind?”
“I wanted to keep you safe,” Bruiser said, looking at me mournfully. “But I should have known you would surprise us all. You always do. Be safe, my love.”
I nodded. “I will. Nightfall, look after them.”
Nightfall nodded seriously. As the only other person with a Healing ability, he was going to have to play nursemaid.
I clinked my antidote bottle against Jackal’s and we both downed it in one gulp.
Jackal grinned at me, a dangerous light in his eyes as he held out his hand for me to take. “Let’s go crack some skulls.”