We arrived to the town a few hours after dusk, Mariana gnawing and licking on a femur, and me chewing the flesh out of an expertly cooked set of ribs. The meat was tender, it dissolved in your mouth. It almost made you forget the fact that you had to eviscerate someone’s waifu to get it.
“Don’t take another step towards my people, pair of psychopaths,” warned Phaela, that was pointing at me with an accusatory finger. She had come out of one of the building’s shadows. Unsettling, to say the least.
Under the soft moonlight she looked slightly younger than under the tyrannical sun. If that made her more or less of a cunt, I would not know. I’d need an Excel spreadsheet and the cuntiness formula to calculate it.
I swallowed the meat I was chewing on and politely flipped her the bird.
“Tell us where to find the library, bitch, here’s your water.”
The waterskin had been kept afloat and well closed on the head of the newfie, so I just took it and offered it to her, holding it by the leash.
“You were supposed to die,” she said, her grimace communicating the absolute disdain she had for my person. It was a lovely sight.
“What can I say: I am not good at dying. I lack practice.”
“Walter, you don’t know what Lord Mateo intends to do with the moon’s core, do you?” she asked, her eye prying into mine, begging for an answer.
“Power a bomb to open a portal back home?” I ventured, unmounting the newfie and walking towards her.
“He wants to destroy the universe.”
I opened my eyes wide and stared into the dunes.
“That’s just… brutal,” was the only word that came to me.
“Indeed, it is, and that’s just the abridged version. Let me break it down for a being of your… capabilities. Lord Matu seeks to destabilize all of creation to call forth the last of demiurges. Once it manifests, he will try to kill it, and if he succeeds, existence will collapse, sending all foreign souls back to their dimensions of origin, and erasing everyone else,” her tone was severe, as the situation probably merited.
“Absolutely metal,” I murmured, still amazed by what I was hearing. I didn’t know Mateo was capable of being so cool.
“Pardon me?”
“Sorry, sorry. It is a cool plan, but genuinely sick. I didn’t think he had it in him.”
I realized that meant Sabrina (and maybe some of her siblings too) was actively seeking her own destruction. It couldn’t be. I was finding a speck of respect for half-elves. No…
“Is it so bad to be erased? Does it hurt?” asked Mariana.
“How do you expect me to know if it hurts, Mariana?” she spoke to my bitch like one does to a toddler.
“Then why do you complain?”
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“Just a dog, don’t get mad, she is just a dog, just… a dog…” she mumbled as a mantra.
A foreboding sensation surged from the deepest crevices of my being. Something terrible, fluffy and mellow. Goddamned empathy, and it did come with a side of compassion.
“Ignore her. Maybe we could find a way to stop Mateo by peeking around in the library?”
“You are lying. You are going to go along with his plan and damn us all.” She spat on my face. I used Mariana’s paw as a wet towel to clean it off.
“I find that statement insulting.” I threw the waterskin at her feet, expecting it to break. It didn’t. The universe hated me just as much as I hated it back.
“Truth harms nothing but lies and those who host them.”
“I said insulting, not harming. What sort of chromosomically-advantaged mooncalf thinks of them as synonyms?” I made a second-long pause. “Don’t answer, it was a rhetorical question.”
“So you don’t deny that it is a lie.”
“I find that secondary to remarking how much your bloodline is deprived of brain activity. Tell me where to find the library, cunt.”
She tore the patch off, revealing an eye whose pupil seemed to be a tunnel with walls made of mirrors.
“Gaze into all angles, nook and crannies of reality, Walter Gallardo, gaze into them, and see if you come out of this still being a man.”
I got closer, took her by the cheeks, closed my left eye and stared into the thing with my right one.
“I can see every single woman who is bathing right now. Do you happen to be selling this thing?” I said softly, trying to not breathe a lot into her face.
“You are supposed to go mad from the revelation,” she whined between teeth.
“Lady, all the terrible deeds this shows is nothing compared to the early days of the chans. Oh, look, a nice rape by the sea.”
I could see her face from all angles thanks to the anomaly in her eyes. She looked like was about to tear my throat out. I found it endearing, and even saw myself smiling at the thought.
I also made sure to search for the library among the sands.
“Why isn’t your sanity crumbling? You are seeing every point of the universe at the same time!” she expressed with something that wasn’t exactly an indoor voice. My poor ears.
“I am good at ignoring uninteresting visual information. This is why some men cannot find things in the fridge even when they are in front of us.”
I could see her eyepatch, the one she hid in her hand. It had a mirror on the inner side.
I peeked into the most desolate place on the universe, and what I found there was nigh traumatizing.
I turned to Mariana, bewildered by the finding.
“You aren’t going to believe this, Mar.”
“What?” she asked, panting without a worry.
“There is a brain inside your skull.”
“Yay!”
Phaela sighed and gently pushed me away.
“I sometimes don’t know if you are evil or just a pair of hopeless morons. Whatever you do with the knowledge you just gleaned, please, do not let Mateo get his way.”
I crossed my arms and gave her a smile of reassurance.
“I now know enough about the man to try and blackmail him. You can now have a good night rest.”
“Thanks, the doubt has been dispelled now,” she said with a wide smile, and then walked with firm step, back into the shadow she came out of.
“Wouldn’t you be better off going home?”
She turned after a few paces. “I like cold nights. Wouldn’t you be better not riding a dog made of water?”
“Mariana’s collar has a thermostat parameter for call forths.”
By her expression, I noticed Mariana had sent a snapshot of her collar into her mind. Delightful agony.
She regained her composure and cleared her throat “You should be trembling from being wet in this climate.”
“Oh God, you are right,” I exclaimed, slight panic slowly trying to take control of my being just to find the members of the guild of not giving a fuck blocking the road and demanding a pay increase.
I looked around, for anything that may have been heating me. I wasn’t in danger; my HP bar was full. Yet, I had felt no cold since beating Del Poodlón. And, given he was a fan of CARP, I could see a connection there.
“I think it’s the baculum. It contains the essence of a frozen-chested individual, and maybe wards me against cold from outside sources.”
She snorted and retreated further into the darkness with her characteristic strut.
“Well Mariana, we set sail—”
“Tail,” she promptly corrected me.
“Hell, we will just teleport. To Mateo’s castle. I need to have a talk with our benefactor,” I ordered with determination and the most serious of my expressions.