“So, pie stands at the pyres or marshmallows and hotdogs on a stick?” I asked Dom as we peeked out at the square from our shadows.
“Our staff is all Underground,” Dom answered.
“I know but if we were going to set up food stands.” I guess I was bored. I was pretty sure this was going to fubar in a major way and we were going to have to hit the reset button, so I wasn’t all that invested in this cycle.
“Sausages and kabobs,” Dom humored me, but his focus was on the pyres. Nothing had happened over the past hour except that more firewood had been piled up. I couldn’t imagine what he was watching so carefully.
“Like a Brazilian buffet?” I snapped my fingers as inspiration came.
“Sure,” Dom replied. I peered out the cellar window again to try to see what he was seeing.
“Maybe we could fry up some okra and possum?” I tried again.
“That’s disgusting.” At least he was paying attention to what I was saying, not that what I was saying had a lot of merit. “Do they even have possum here?” That was better. There is just something in a woman’s nature that needs to have her husband pay attention even when she isn’t making a lot of sense. We’d been married long enough that Dom knew not to “Yes, dear” me.
“I think so, but they are probably some type of winged snake,” I mused, recasting the silence spell around our hidey hole.
Dead Silence +1
Exp +10 (3,154,295/5,985,462)
“Are you trying to say that dragons are going to taste like possum?” Dom turned to look at me with one of those quirked eyebrows he thought made him look like Spock. I was a Trekkie too so I thought it was cute.
“I don’t think it’ll taste like chicken,” I shrugged, now turning my attention to the pyres outside. What was Fizzie doing? I almost expected him to post banners for an archery competition in an attempt to lure me out of hiding. Trite and overdone as it was, that was about what Fizzie’s writing was like. “Though the chickens here are little dragons that breathe fire.”
“So maybe it’ll taste like turkey?” I was gratified that I’d caught him up in my silliness.
“Ostrich?” I suggested. “I hear an ostrich egg can make an omelet that would feed ten people.”
“If you cook a dragon egg, you’ll lose your geek card forever,” Dom warned me.
“True,” I pretended to consider it seriously. “I wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Not when you’d much rather hatch yourself a dragon pet,” Dom turned back to watching the pyres, thinking the conversation was over. Silly man. I was bored and that didn’t happen a lot nowadays so I wasn’t as good at it as I used to be in English 102.
“What makes people think that a baby dragon hatched out of an egg would be a pet?” I asked.
“What?”
“It’s in a lot of fiction, but aside from the gosling effect of it considering you its mommy for a while, I’d think it would be quite a task to deal with the teen years of a dragon,” I argued. While I would love to ride a dragon, have a dragon as a pet, and enjoy the nerd-romance of dragon love, it never made a lot of sense to me that a dragon could be a pet. I’d had a large dog as a pet for many years and I couldn’t keep her out of the trash. Butterscotch had even managed to swipe half a cake off my kitchen counter and then puked it up in the back yard. “I’m just saying that if Scotchy could get on the counters and eat Kat’s birthday cake, what do you think a dragon would do?”
Intelligence +1
“Anything it wants,” Dom replied, distracted again. “It’s a dragon.”
“That’s my point,” I insisted. “If it’s hard to control a big dog, imagine how unruly a dragon that is twenty times my size would be. They’d eat the neighbor or something and what? People would shrug and say, hey, what do you expect? It’s a dragon?”
“I can think of a neighbor I wouldn’t miss,” Dom muttered. “Or a few ex-roommates?”
“Huh,” I chewed on that thought.
“Like Cliff’s kids,” Dom turned from the window to look at me. “Ungrateful bastards every one of them.”
That’s the great thing about the idea that none of my relatives read my writing. I post it on Facebook like I’m supposed to, and it might get a heart here and there, but none of them read it, including both friends and relatives. You should have seen the face of one of my church friends when I said that the book was up to over five hundred pages. Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head, and she whispered to me in a sincere attempt to help me out, “You should consider writing a shorter book.” There is no amount of Fizzbarren magic that can even get your friends to read your books. Not even when you’re trying to save a world and some real people who are stuck in it.
Warning: Shameless Plug Incoming (hey, if Marvel can charge tons of money for product placement…)
That’s why I’m so grateful for Royal Road and serial punishing publishing. As the engine and I are writing this, there are thirty whole people following the book and twelve of them have marked it as a favorite. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that my own mother won’t read it? It’s a lot. That’s why I’m just so in love with you.
Still, there is a freedom in knowing that the very people I’m making fun of won’t read this far. I can say what I want. Even if they knew the page that their dishonorable mention was on, they wouldn’t go find it. Even if I copied and pasted the chapter and page number, they’d be too busy to read it. That’s an author’s life for you. I can prove it. Look in the comments at the end of this chapter and you will see ZERO from any of my friends. Dom posts. Which is nice, but almost against the rules. Kat and Cliff are just as supportive, but that’s because I read the chapters to them as they come off the presses. Otherwise, they’d rather be out chasing dragon eggs to bring home pets in our new world; a world that wouldn’t exist without my writing and posting all the time so that we have enough author mana to keep…
Pontifcation +2
Exp +20 (3,154,315/5,985,462)
Hm. Getting ahead of myself or off on a tangent. If I were writing in the real world, all that would be cut out of the story, but because the Quill and typewriter have full editing power as autonomous entities, you’ll get to read all that. What was I thinking? It’s almost like thinking that I could keep a dragon from shitting on the carpet.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Pontifcation -2
So, just to make this irrefutable. My mother is too busy playing Animal Crossing to read fifteen minutes of my book twice a week but wants me to call and keep in touch because she gave up the best years of her life raising me, which was the worst experience of her life. I ghostwrote Frank’s book, but he’ll never read any of mine. Dom’s whole family considers this kind of writing undignified and looks down their noses at Dom’s idiot wife. My mother-in-law once reviewed one of my books. I won’t ask again. When she found out I was autistic, she ignored it and then threw a hissy fit about me asking a question she found insulting like whether she’d help get Kat into Brown if she got a 4.0 GPA in pre-law. We set our sights on medical school instead because I never did get an answer.
Maryann, from church, is the one who thinks I should write fewer than a hundred pages in a book. I’ve read three of five of my pastor’s books, but Nadia and her whole church are too busy to read the first chapter of mine. My book was free. Her books were not. Then again, she didn’t even know how reviews worked on Amazon, so maybe she doesn’t know how to read a book on Royal Road. That whole church only wants my butt in their pews and tends to look at me like I’m the white freak at the black church.
I’ve told all my old philosophy professors about the book and they’re the ones who made me buy their books and were happy to critique my work when it was not up to scholastic standards, but who can’t read the fiction I might actually be good at. And if I receive even ONE comment from any of these people at this point, I’ll delete their contribution from the paragraphs of shame.
I have yet to make a single deletion and I’ve barely changed the names of people at the actual college who tortured me with Code of Conduct violations, but I did make cards to put up all over campus. The cards have the book, a link, a QR code and a blatant reference to the college fight starting and what chapter to skip to. Cliff, Kat, Dom and I find the whole thing hilarious. I was worried when I first started, but now I’m like… yeah, right. None of them will read it anyway. Even if I shove it in their faces. So, expose it is.
I know, I just need better friends. That’s the point. That’s why I’m not inviting them. I figure the way to really know if someone is worth becoming friends is if they read our book. If they like that, then maybe they’re the friends I really wanted all along. I’m inviting people like me and you. The ones who read this book through the time-loop insanity and understand how screwed up this world was when it was run by Fizzbarren. People who will appreciate how much better it is now and help us make it a place that is our Atlantis. If I am your John Galt, then this world that we remade from Fizzbarren’s shithole is your world too. Those are the people, like you, that I want in our world. So, keep reading, huh? Because there is a button at the end of the book, and that end is coming soon.
Pontifcation +10
Storytelling +10
Exp +200 (3,154,515/5,985,462)
“Guards,” Dom whispered unnecessarily. I saw them. It wasn’t like you could hide an army of knights marching into and around the pyres.
“Who’s in the carts?” I asked, eagerly. “I can’t see them around the guards.”
“What the hell?” Dom answered with a few choice sailor words. Obviously one of his crows had a good view. “Lily and Chester.”
“Dammit,” I leaned my back against the wall to catch my breath. He had picked the few people that could actually make a difference. If Lily and Chester died, they died in the real world too. They had come from our old world. They were half the reason I’d fought so hard to beat Fizzbarren. I felt stupid for not teleporting out there to get them before Fizzbarren could get his filthy hands on them.
“They’re in one cart,” Dom said, “but Spite doesn’t recognize the three in the other cart.”
My mind raced only for a moment. “Probably Beau and his family. His wife and kid. I’ll fix it next time,” I swore, thinking I needed to hit the restart button.
“Can’t we let him barbeque Beau first?” Dom gave me a telling look. He was only half joking. Okay, he wasn’t joking.
“Then Beau would remember all the reboots,” I shook my head in mock sternness.
“True,” Dom gave a signature heavy sigh. “I guess we’ll have to save them.”
I was ready to hit reboot and put them all in hiding before Fizzbarren could get his hands on them, but Dom was right. We should try to see what we could do.
The main square sat outside the castle gates, so it was only natural for Fizzie to have his throne situated on the battlements, but he hadn’t really thought about how narrow the battlements were. Even as I noticed Fizzbarren’s short form climbing over the side of his throne, it wobbled precariously. I let my mind try to figure out what he was saying as a guard grabbed one side of the throne and nearly toppled Fizzbarren and throne right onto the courtyard below.
“What’s wrong with you idiots?” I mimicked Fizzbarren’s voice like we were watching an old movie with the sound off.
“Sorry, sire,” Dom filled in the guard’s voice.
“I must have more room for my fat ass,” I continued with a stifled chuckle.
“Of course, sire,” Dom shook his head but kept up his side from long years of practice at Rocky Horror.
“Are you saying I have a fat ass?”
“Yes, sire?”
“Steady the throne or you’ll join the fools on the pyres!” The throne wobbled precariously.
Comedy +2
Exp +20 (3,154,535/5,985,462)
“Yes, sire!”
I couldn’t keep it up as Fizzbarren backhanded the guard like he was a bad dog in a bad movie. I identified Fizzbarren for stats and wasn’t happy with how he’d leveled so fast. He didn’t have a ton of health or mana points, but what did he really need with an OP Smite spell. Then again, I wasn’t one to complain about OP with my health and mana more than double Fizzie’s.
As the guards in the courtyard surrounded the pyres, I cast my new and improved Thunderstorm spell. Each pyre’s conic structure was about ten feet in diameter and there were three of them set side by side in the hundred foot wide main square. If you asked me, which Fizzbarren didn’t, they were set too close to the castle wall, but I supposed that Fizzie was more interested in how much of a crowd he could force into the rest of the area than he was the fact that those pyres were likely to burn high enough to singe his tootsies if he hung them off the throne the way he was doing now. There’s just no telling some people things though. Even if I had told him, he’d have ignored me as cleanly as my philosophy professors.
I give you the picture only to explain that it took both Dom and I casting the Thunderstorm spells to cover all three pyres. Each thunderstorm covered a good fifty square feet when we dual-wielded them. It was just enough to soak Fizzbarren’s feet, and his throne, and his pristine white robes, and his pompous head of wiry hair that did not respond well to the humidity our spells provided. I was intent on soaking the wood, not the crowd that was reluctantly filing into the square at the pokes and prodding of guards.
“He looks angry,” I pouted dramatically. “Doesn’t he know I just saved him from toasty toes?”
Acting +1
Exp +10 (3,154,545/5,985,462)
“A decided lack of appreciation,” Dom nodded, tipping his nose into the air in a horrible reminder of his mom’s influential family.
“Ugh, don’t do that,” I shuddered.
Dom just laughed, but he reached out to stroke my arm by way of apology.
We refreshed the Thunderstorm spell two times before Fizzbarren managed to dim down his temper tantrum. I hadn’t realized that I could compound the spells with a couple casts of the lower-level Rain spells, but we had to dial it back when I realized where all that water would drain into our hidey hole. I bid my time trying to reverse my Rain spell into a dehydration kind of thing that would keep our hideout and sewers from flooding. It wouldn’t come to that any more than the smoke from my underground fireplace went anywhere. Game mechanics.
The sewers were fine, according to Terra’s communication with Kat’s Shadow, but our hiding place was wet enough for me to try to figure out that spell. It could come in handy for the general store if we could quickly dehydrate our monster meat into rations. What? Waiting for Fizzbarren to calm down was boring without something to do. Haven’t you tried that new monster meat jerky stuff, Mythical Meats? It’s overpriced but I splurged for Christmas stocking stuffers last year, or whenever ago that was in the old world.
Dom nudged me and I turned my attention away from the non-evaporating puddle near our feet just in time to hear Fizzbarren’s voice carry out over the thunderstorms, “I knew you would show up to save your friends!”
“I’m in Scooby Doo,” I rolled my eyes.
“Scooby Doo was better,” Dom muttered under another peal of thunder.
“My spells can ignite even wet wood!” Fizzbarren bellowed, obviously impressed with himself. “Your rain means nothing to me.”
Fizzbarren made a motion toward the cart with Lily and Chester in it and I watched Dom snarl. He was probably upset that Fizzbarren wasn’t doing Beau first. I didn’t need revenge against Beau anymore. I’d barely needed it before I’d done a bunch of reboots to experience a dozen scenarios. Dom wasn’t as satisfied with my dramatic renditions of the times Beau had died. Still, I wasn’t any more eager to see Beau, Lane, or their kid Little Jonnie die in flames than I was for Lily and Chester to be the first victims. In any case, if their health dropped below half, I was rebooting. I identified Lily and Chester and cringed. How were they still so low leveled? It would barely take a match to kill them.