One might ask why we went to so much trouble. It’s all about the rules of this particular engagement. Fizzbarren had stacked the deck against me with the following rules. One, the Nemesis Engine requires an epic defeat. Two, the church would resurrect anyone we just killed outright. Three, someone convicted of a crime would have their resurrection services denied by the church. Four, we didn’t want to take on Fizzbarren, at least not while he was in his god form. The fourth variable is what forced us into these dramatic machinations instead of an upfront fight. We’d needed to get several key college personnel convicted of crimes so that we were free to kill or defeat them without church involvement. Could we have broken into the church to steal or break the resurrection stones? No! Fizzbarren would have had a free hand to punish us for blasphemy. When Fizzbarren finally became my last nemesis, we needed him be forced to fight us as a fellow player, not a god.
Intelligence +2
The first domino, Alma Greyn, was the key to the rest. In the pandemonium of the trial, we’d kidnapped Alma and hidden her in the sewer, a part we hadn’t cleaned. Once the king declared her a fugitive and criminal, the church had been happy to dissolve her resurrection stone. The instant Cumbers sent word that the resurrection stone for Alma Greyn had been destroyed, we’d slit her throat in a quick death. What? Without magic, but more importantly without the power of her position at the college, Alma Greyn was a very easy kill, not even worth detailing.
The trick of Alma Greyn was that we needed her body. When Dom and I killed things, the bodies dissolved but only upon looting them. I didn’t figure Alma had much on her, but the rest of that problem was that anyone could loot her body if they waited twenty-four hours, so even if we didn’t loot it, the body could easily be dissolved if not used fast enough. I was a little peeved that I hadn’t been the one to figure out this tangle, but Dom was so proud of himself that I couldn’t deny him his victory. We’d tested it on a random mob weeks ago, and I’d been giddy with our cleverness as this last piece fell into the plan. We’d preserved the body.
Preserve +1
Exp +10 (6,150/788,209)
Alma Greyn’s body was now in several useful pieces. Once I’d practiced my anatomy skills by dissecting her corpse, we had heart and liver in separate containers, as well as the torso separated from her head and limbs. Gruesome, yes. Also, just a little fun. They had done away with cadavers in our pre-med anatomy class, so this was my first time using these skills on a real body instead of a computer simulation. Nothing beats hands-on experience.
Skill Learned: Anatomy
Exp +20 (6,170/788,209)
“Remind me not to piss you off,” Dom stepped back to admire my work. The torso had been flayed and redressed in her bloody nightgown, the one she’d been wearing at the trial. I suppose, without CSI to make sure, it would be hard to discern this torso from any other, but we’d used the real one just in case.
“Back at ya, babe,” I winked at Dom, careful to direct my clean spell only to my sticky hands and not on the huge pike where the torso was stuck like a giant skewer.
Flirting +1
Exp +10 (6,180/788,209)
Don’t worry. The old Alma Greyn would be returned to our old world, none the wiser for her experience here. Maybe she’d be left with a bad dream to remember us by, but unfortunately her attitude was no better for it all. I might be capable of bloodthirsty displays that probably would have shocked your favorite horror author, but it wasn’t in me to stand as judge, jury, and executioner in any real sense outside the game world. I will admit that knowing I could undo it all once I defeated Fizzbarren made me capable of despicable feats this time around. Between that knowledge and Dom’s lack of guilt over any of it, I was able to shrug off any disgust at myself or my deeds.
The stake was smack dab in the middle of Alma Greyn’s front yard, so we could only admire our work from the shadows of midnight wanderings. Dom’s crows barely managed to resist pecking at the drooling meat, so he’d sent them to watch the residences of our other victims. Terra, in her alley cat form, was keeping watch for a passing patrol and I could feel her lazily cleaning herself in the shadows down the street.
“I do still have class in the morning,” I gave my mouth a twist. “I want to watch the fireworks, but I should be at Alma’s class when they announce all this.”
“Relax,” Dom draped an arm over my shoulder. “I have a present for you.”
“What?” I perked up like a kid.
Dom just smiled and handed me a scroll. I unrolled it eagerly. It was new magic for me.
Spell Learned: Cup of Joe
Exp +30 (6,210/788,209)
“Where did you find this?” I focused on the unfamiliar magic and let the spell soak into me and my spell book. I wasn’t used to using scrolls to find new spells. After all the scrolls and magic I’d made and distributed into the market, I hadn’t found anything to expand my spells that I didn’t create myself by squishing my previous spells together.
“I might have led a small group to raid the vaults of the college,” Dom admitted, a smug smile on his lips that made my stomach slide in a funny but good way.
“They burned the vaults rather than let me take them over,” I whispered in awe, a tiny part of me a little disappointed that this was all he’d found that I didn’t have. It was a good spell, and I’d take advantage of it, but only one spell was unique enough to add to my list? That just wasn’t satisfying. “I’d thought there would be more.”
“There was,” Dom’s lips twitched. “But you’ll have to wait for the rest.”
“What?” I said a bit too loud, and Dom cast a quick Silence spell in a nice donut shape around us so that the sound wouldn’t echo down the street.
“One a day,” Dom raised his eyebrows over dancing eyes.
“You’re kidding,” I shrugged off his arm and turned to face him, hands on my hips, my temper rising in a way I felt only he could really get to.
“Yeah,” he bopped my nose as my eyes widened. “I’m kidding.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Dom produced a small crate of spell scrolls between us, and my anger sputtered abruptly to a stop. I would have dug into the whole crate right then, but Terra gave a signal that had me dumping the crate into my inventory with a giddy huff. There were dozens of spell scrolls. It was the repository of the college’s spell collection, something they doled out in miserly handfuls for piles of gold a piece. I’d never had access to it. Somehow or another Fizzbarren had always managed to destroy it before I could get my hands on it. That didn’t mean I didn’t elbow Dom in the ribs for the teasing as the guards strolled around the corner with Terra on their heels.
“Holy gods,” Mack, one of my favorite guards, breathed out at the horrific scene in front of him. His partner for the night turned to wretch into a nearby shrub, making me itch to cast a Clean on it. I resisted, scanning our handiwork again.
“Maybe we overdid it?” I whispered to Dom, who was just grinning maliciously.
There are a little over fifteen feet of intestines in the human body. That was plenty to hack into huge letters that spelled out the word “traitor.” That’s over two feet per letter! It helped that we’d used blood to plaster it up diagonally over the front door and nearby windows. I’d just looked at it as a chance to decorate for Halloween, something I had missed in my years in the game world. The letter i was dotted with a single eyeball. Terra’s idea. The great kabob of torso was like an exclamation point if you were looking at it from the correct angle. The rest of the house was painted with “demonic” symbols, and it was all lit by a pair of bonfires that were fueled by Alma’s furniture. Don’t worry. I doused the nearby houses with enough water to resist the flame of the bonfires. The bonfires were just lighting.
Mischief +10
Exp +100 (6,310/788,209)
Dom shook his head at me and stepped out of the shadows. He stood there only long enough to make sure the guards saw his face and then dashed off into the night. Well, it wasn’t Dom’s face. It was Burnt’s face. I stepped out wearing Hammock’s face and ran in another direction. We kept the guards just behind us until we rounded the corners of Burnt and Hammock’s houses, then dropped our Disguises and blended right back into the shadows.
Mischief +3
Exp +30 (6,340/788,209)
“What is the meaning of this?!” Hammock’s shrill voice broke the peace of halfway to dawn almost more competently than Alma’s collie.
It was dark. She’d just been woken from a pretty deep sleep and, considering that it was the first night in a long while that we’d allowed the cat urine smell to remain cleaned up, it was understandable that she was too tired to notice what she looked like standing there in her own doorway. Angel Hammock was drenched in blood that was sprinkled liberally with soot and ashes. The lamplight near her home lit her up like she was center stage.
Mischief +1
Exp +10 (6,350/788,209)
Whistles cut the night air, waking neighbors who rubbed sleep out of their eyes to goggle at the college administrators who were being held by several guards. When I stepped out of the shadows again, it was as a very respectably dressed merchant noble that was favored by the guards. I offered my magical services to the guards before it even occurred to Angel Hammock that she should fight all this. Using the same spells they’d used on me, I stole her spell book and bound her magic.
“Thanks,” Mack told me, slapping shackles on Angel as she stood in frozen shock, staring at me.
“The Underground is happy to lend a hand,” I tipped Beau’s old hat at Mack. Dom was having a similar conversation with Tommy at Burnt’s house. “I’m just glad our sources at the college were able to root out the truth from the rumors.”
“Did we get Burnt too?” Mack asked me, handing a magically silent Hammock off to Simon, another guard I’d gotten to know by name over poker and hot wings. Yep, our Silence spells had leveled up with all this use and we could apply them to larger or smaller areas, like someone’s foul mouth.
“Sure did,” I told him, ignoring Hammock. “Dom’s wrapped him up for the king as well. I heard Tommy lost his dinner? Was it really that bad?”
“Tommy was holding it together until he saw one of the rats poke a head out of the chest cavity,” Mack murmured to me, giving an involuntary shudder. What? They’d volunteered, and while Dom’s crows might have been too conspicuous, a few rats wouldn’t have been identified as our minions’ familiars.
“Poor Tommy,” I commiserated in a conspiratorial tone.
Acting +1
Exp +10 (6,360/788,209)
“The king is grateful for your and Dom’s help in unearthing this whole thing,” Mack waved a hand around.
“Mack!” came a call from inside the house where Simon had gone to look around.
“Yeah!” Mack called back, as Simon poked his head out the front door.
“We got more body parts!” Simon hollered and I could have kissed him as I noticed the growing crowd wince. “In the kitchen!”
“No kidding?” Mack turned to follow Simon back inside.
An hour later, as dawn cracked the night open to the gore of our Halloween celebration, the king himself rode up on horseback. He’d been prepared for the early morning, but he played his part as well as we did, hurriedly sliding off his mount near Mack and me. Several guards held back a decent crowd that had gathered from many areas as rumors were hot enough to wake curious drones. King Douglas was dressed in what looked like a hastily-thrown-on overcoat, half-buckled boots, and tilted crown on a mop of unruly black hair. The king’s appearance brought more of a crowd, several guards and nobles on horseback, all a little green around the gills.
“I’ve just come from the main house,” the king stated, as if the star of the show had finally arrived. I didn’t begrudge him his spotlight, but I had to press my lips together not to smile. “Alma’s house is a disgrace! We want that cleaned up immediately!”
“Yes, sire,” I stepped up to him, dipping a brief bow that he waved off. “I can have my people clean it up within the hour.”
Acting +2
Exp +20 (6,380/788,209)
“Send whomever you need, but I want you here, Karma,” the king commanded, and it was done. I sent Terra to tell Dom to send in the cleaners. “Explain to me what I’m seeing!” The king knew, but this was to spread the tale with the spin we wanted. There was plenty of crowd to seed the newest scandal to every corner of the Capital by the time folks finished their morning juice.
“It is as foul as we could have expected from these fiends, sire,” I projected my voice over the king and crowd as I’d been taught to do in theater class. “In a fury at being exposed, Fillibuster Burnt, Angel Hammock, and several other college officials murdered the fake and real Alma Greyns. The macabre message to others who might betray them is what you saw at Alma’s residence, and here within their walls, there is more evidence of body parts being cut up in kitchens for what we believe to be a cannibalistic demon-summoning ring.”
Acting +2
Exp +20 (6,400/788,209)
Yeah, it’s a little cliché. I mean really, the satanic panic went out of style in the eighties in our old world, but this world hadn’t seen it. By making it just a tiny bit trite, I’d hoped to deny Fizzbarren just a few author mana points as the story hit its epic climax. I just resented the idea that Fizzbarren was benefiting in any way from all these machinations.
“Do we think there are more of these ringleaders in the college?” the king demanded, doing a bang-up job of pretentious posing.
“I would be sure of it, sire,” I scratched my head pretending to think. “We could mobilize the Underground with the city guard to search the homes of college nobles. It’ll be a long night, but even the Underground cannot stand by while satanists are plaguing our city. I’m just glad we could steal enough spells to negate their magic.”
Acting +1
Exp +10 (6,410/788,209)
“The city and the crown are both glad that we could cooperate to break the monopoly on magic that the college used to think themselves above the law,” the king placed a hand on my shoulder. “It is good to know that the Underground is ready to serve the crown when the chips are down.”
“The Underground is grateful to the crown for trusting our sources and letting us infiltrate the college,” I replied, trying for a modest look. “We may not always be on the right side of the letter of the law, but when push comes to shove, we serve the crown as loyally as the next citizen.”
Acting +1
Exp +10 (6,420/788,209)
“You’ve served us better this night than the college,” the king allowed his concern to be seen by turning in a full circle.
“No one is above treason,” I bowed to him again and we ended our performance so that the king could do an encore at Dom’s location.
Subtlety +1
Exp +10 (6,430/788,209)