Someone had decided to walk their pet capybaras in the market and that simple action hoarded the stares of both sellers and buyers. I was looking for the potion man to give him a piece of my mind, but, more important, we were tasked with the task of acquiring fabric suitable for Mariana’s dress. That was the word used by Florencia: Acquiring. This revealed what she thought about our methods, and the fact that stolen silk is as valuable as bought one.
Behind me, Mariana had to be hauled along the stalls and among the busy townspeople. I held her by the tail, and she was deadweight. She had walked for some minutes when we arrived, but, eventually, she made a decision, and declared the dirt road her comfy bed.
“Mariana, do you plan on being a potato bag for the whole trip?”
“My paw smells weird, and I have to lick it back to normalcy, okay? I cannot do that and walk at the same time,” she argued, and it was a better point than those she usually made. Besides, with my strength stat, dragging her around was the easiest of tasks.
“Hey, handsome, want to have a good time?” called to me a fairly stacked lady that waited in the mouth of a not-suspicious-at-all alley. I considered the possibilities: She was in the low tens, level wise—basically worth no XP, and I had no driving license. Nor a car, for that matter. The lack of a car implied the lack of a suitable trunk.
“How much for killing your closest family member, bringing me their head and swearing upon their blood to stop exploiting the nigh-pathological male drive for sex and affection?” I asked, inclining my head with haughtiness.
“My friend is F-cup, sir. Only 600 gold an hour,” she said, almost mechanically.
“And I am a hypocritical fantasy-erotica writer. I could cleanse the world from your kind. With Mariana’s power I could rebuild humanity in my image, a cleaner humanity, a more honest humanity, a humanity full of cunts.”
“She does butt stuff.”
I desisted and revived her very expensive leather pants to make her kick her own ankles.
“Necromancer! You are a necromancer!”
“Yes, rental hole.”
“I have a dead friend who is E-cup!”
I dispelled the pants and sent her a trade request. “Let’s do this: I will give you 200 gold to act like a lapdog for five minutes. Right here, right now.”
She accepted the trade, got on all fours and started yapping. Mariana turned, eyes open wide.
“Cast Banish Demon and/or Lapdog,” I muttered.
A thunder deflowered the skies and impacted in a divine flash of light, delivering us from the hooker.
A pop up label embroidered in silver appeared above both our heads. Golden letters inside read “Achievement Unlocked: skank squasher.”
“It worked?” Mariana said, turning her head.
“The rules of this place seem to be easy to bend as long as the result is a funny, alternative application of the concept. The gods must value the word and laughter over the very things said words define.”
“Like your belts being revived as if they were proper cows?”
“Exactly. Necromancy seems to live and unlive on that principle.”
My belts began mumbling something about being oppressed.
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Mariana finished her body-odor-restauration program and her legs sprung back to life. She followed me across the stalls of the biggest market on Planet, and I scanned each corner, each stall with potions. If I happened to find that son of a bitch of Pedrissimo, hell would break loose. I’d stab him so many times his body would become a binary sequence of vertical and horizontal wounds with enough computing power to run Doom in it.
But the fat motherfucker wasn’t anywhere to be found, and we were nearing a sector where several clothiers showcased their goods. Silk, cotton or linen; blue, yellow or violet, beauty could soon be in the finery of the beholders.
“Which color will you use for my dress, Walter?”
“We will see. We are walking economy-ruining machines, we could acquire all the cloth and leave you to decide later.”
A man froze in place, and seconds started laughing like a maniac. “I am a millionaire! thanks XxXxGooder_GirlerxXxX!” he shouted as he ran from side to side.
“Are you randomly injecting monetary mass into the system?”
“Yup yup,” Mariana deadpanned.
“I bow before your vileness, my queen.”
We stopped in front of the stall of a tall and slender woman. She had short, dark hair, and probably was related to the things you see in the corner of your eye at night.
“Are you looking for something in particular, gentleman and… dog?” the despisal was tangible on her last word. Of course the two-meter-tall girl would be into cats. Of course.
“Green cloth adequate for a comfortable and hypoallergenic dress.”
“Beg your pardon? Whatgenic?”
I grabbed the bridge of my nose.
“Give us silk, linen and cotton and let our tailor sort it out.”
“I see you are not a man versed in the fine details of sewing. For what kind of girl is the dress?”
I pointed at Mariana, and the woman grabbed her forehead with those frail, nightmarish hands.
“Gods of haberdashery, people nowadays, I swear,” she mumbled, ignoring I had a very keen ear, developed from years of practicing the furtive masturbatory arts.
The woman moved around her stall, crouching to grab the material from behind the counter. I stared at her arched back and liked to imagine her tapping her long, skeletal fingers on the wood, hearing intently, with eyes wide open, waiting for the resonance to be right, the one that would tell her to dig and fish out a succulent larva that had decided to make its house in the wrong tree. But it was daytime, and she was fully awake: that simple fact was a fatal flaw in my hypothesis.
“Look at this.” She placed a pile of cloth in front of me. It was properly ironed and folded.
“Walter, I don’t want a gray dress,” protested Mariana.
“The pest… communicates,” said the woman.
“Yes, Mariana can talk, big deal.” I turned towards my bitch. “It’s not gray, Mariana, It’s green.”
“Green is a shade of gray.”
“We have been over this, you dichromatic sausage disposal plant.”
The woman cleared her throat to redirect our attention, and then placed a finger over the mound of cloth.
“This is the finest silk I have, mister. Not even some nobles can afford… How does the vermin have three million gold to spare?”
“She is a walking inflationary superweapon developed by the central bank. Thrives on destroying the wealth of the middle class.”
“I eat the poor for breakfast,” she added, knowing I would reward her loyalty with a threat.
“And she enjoys only seven breakfasts a day, eight if you count the first brunch.”
“I take you are part of some noble house, then?” she asked, raising an elegant eyebrow.
“No. We are just a weirdo and his Golden Retriever.”
“Then what is your problem with poor people?”
I looked at Mariana and Mariana looked at me.
“The rich may be cockroaches, snakes and child predators, but the poor are worse because they cannot afford the suits and have no reason to pretend they aren’t cockroaches, snakes and child predators. Middle class is a mixed bag of different but uncreative kinds of scum. Jani Liimatainen is okay, though.”
“Ah, hatred for humanity as a whole. I know your kind. Wouldn’t black fit your dog better?”
“No. Give me green.”
Mariana sang the classics of whistling kettles and rusted hinges.
“I want blue!”
“You are getting blue, it just comes with free yellow.”
Mariana kept on complaining as the woman packaged the cloth lumps into paper bags and handed them to me.
Then, a mass scream broke off among the populace.
“A demon comes!” said one of the girls that were running away.
“We angered the gods with abortion, the end is nigh!” preached another escaping fellow.
Turning, I beheld him: he was covered in a crimson, bloody, pulsing mass of fetuses and embryos. His macabre suit only revealed his deep, almond eyes. He carried a whip made out of umbilical cords, and left a trail of blood behind his step.
“Come and play, dog of the emperor!” he called with certain anxiety and anger.
I added the cloth to my inventory and grabbed Mariana by the tail.
“Come out, herald of the end, face Kinslayer!”
Mariana did not comment about the name: she was too busy being grumpy about the color green.
As for me. I was pondering if we would need to face the madman. He had probably been sent by Phaela, so running away would just mean postponing the encounter. I buckled up and prepared to fight. Mariana kept on complaining about the line purity of the color blue.