Not wanting them to have a chance to get their pants on I Blinked, moving across the room in a mad rush. When I reached the bed I turned my blade and ducked under Theo’s outstretched hand to slam the grip of it against his head. The loud thunk of the sword hitting his skull reverberated around us. Tanya screamed as she tumbled out of the bed, taking the sheet with her. Theo’s eyes rolled back in his head revealing far too much red-veined white before he crumpled back against the pillows.
Satisfied that for now, he was not a threat I went after Tanya. Chasing her down and tying her up as I had done the scientist in the growing room by Ryan’s bed chamber. I was kind enough to make sure the sheet was securely wrapped around her. It wasn’t her fault she’d gotten in my way and I wouldn’t punish her more than necessary.
Well, so long as Theo behaved that is.
Once I had finished securing the gag around Tanya’s mouth I moved away. Frank was pacing along the pipe overhead, muttering and squawking but otherwise staying out of the way. I could feel the little Tentarat quivering in the pocket on my chest that he decided to call home. He would learn soon enough that this kind of activity was not entirely unusual. If he chose to come with me after all this that is.
Dragging Theo's ridiculous bulk off the bed was harder than I thought it would be, even if my strength ability was boosted to a respectable level eight. I wrestled his dead weight into a chair, threw a scratchy blanket over his privates so I wouldn’t have to keep looking at them, and tied him to the chair facing Tanya.
His chin rested on his chest as I finished the task, adding far more straps than I had with Tanya. He was a champion warrior, after all, I couldn’t risk his no doubt outstanding strength stat making short work of my restraints. I left his mouth ungagged though. He was no good to me unless he could tell me everything I needed to know.
My job done I hopped up on the bench beside the pair. I sheathed my sword and took out a few bolts, dumping poison on them and lining them up beside me aside from the singular one I loaded into my crossbow.
I kicked my dangling feet as I waited for Theo to wake up. I was a little impressed with how long it seemed to be taking. I was stronger than I thought.
Frank screeched and dropped down from his pipe, jumping around on the table as he pecked at my moving pocket.
“Lay off Frank,” I said over the Tentarat’s terrified squeaking. “Don’t scare the thing.”
“Shut the hell up!”
“This is a very serious moment you idiot, can you behave for just a little while? Besides, you wouldn’t be so surprised by my new friend if you hadn’t waltzed on through those bars and abandoned me,” I snapped.
“Frank shut the hell up!”
“Yes. Good idea.”
The Tentarat stuck its head out of my pocket, hissing at Frank before ducking back to safety. I just shook my head. I had better things to do than to listen to the pair of them argue.
Finally, after what felt like an hour, Theo's eyes began to flutter as he groaned and shook his head. Tanya started to rock and scream in her seat. Her cry was muffled but the chair legs smacking against the ground was almost painfully loud. It was enough to draw Theo right out of his stupor. His head flew up, his eyes suddenly clear as they swept the room, finally landing on me.
I smiled wickedly at him and waved, much like an old friend of mine had done to me in the past. I was starting to see why he did these things. They were awfully fun.
“Joe, what is this?” Theo asked, his voice lacking its usual timbre.
“Oh, just a friendly catch-up. It feels like forever since we’ve had a proper talk,” I said.
“Have you lost your fucking mind? Let us out of this, now!” Theo boomed.
“No I don’t think I will,” I said. “You know, I went a little further than the Old Mill and caught up with an old friend of ours. Do you want to hear what he had to say?”
Theo’s face remained stoic but it was impossible to miss his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed. Frank broke the silence, screeching as he flapped up to my shoulder, shamelessly smacking me in the face with a wing. I ground my teeth together, trying not to get distracted.
Theo turned away from me, his eyes falling on Tanya instead. “It’s alright. Don’t be afraid. I’ll get us out of this, I swear.”
“That’s not really up to you, is it, Theo?”
He screwed up his face, baring his teeth and wrinkling his nose as his head snapped back toward me. “Let her go, Joe. This has nothing to do with her.”
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I kept his eyes on me as I extended my arm, aiming the poisoned bolt in my crossbow directly at Tanya’s heart. Theo bellowed and rocked in his chair and Tanya began to whimper, her face turning bright red as streams of tears rolled down her face.
“She stays, Theo. If you lie to me one more time, I’ll shoot this through her heart and you can watch as she wastes from the inside out.”
“I never lied to you!” he bellowed, his face suddenly as red as Tanya’s was.
“But you did, and from the very first time we met in tunnels outside this place. You said Nigel gave you nothing. That isn’t quite true now is it?”
“I said he gave us a name that meant nothing,” Theo snarled. He was desperately avoiding eye contact with me.
“Tony the cable snake man isn’t a nothing kind of name you moron. He is one of the keys to breaking this curse Melumek has put us under. Hell, he’s part of the main quest line. Something we should be focusing a little harder on. There are only five seals left intact.”
He wasn’t avoiding eye contact anymore, instead, he was looking at me like I was some sort of monster. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You get so obsessed with being a leader in these little clusters of humanity that you forget about what’s happening out there,” I roared. “You did it at Oliver’s Rest even though you knew the Elders had Nigel, and you did it here, even while all our friends were disappearing one by one. You’re the only one left. Even Gabby is gone. Your own daughter. Don’t you understand that running and hiding isn’t the way to get through this? It’s out there, in the real world, completing quests and building the strength to take on Melumek and his followers.”
“Like you can talk you bastard,” Theo howled, almost tipping over in his chair. “You left us all when we needed you. We did what we had to do to survive. Do you think it was easy joining the Outsiders? We didn’t just get to waltz on in like you did. We had to prove ourselves worthy and then we had to actually work hard to keep this small fragment of safety over our heads.
None of us wanted to die, alright? We’re all human. We should be with the other players. It’s where we belong. It’s where we’re safe. Don’t you dare judge our choices when you weren’t here to help us make them.”
I stood up, for the first time towering over Theo like he usually did to me. “You call this safety? Everyone is gone. They’re either kidnapped, dead, or something worse I don’t even want to think about. Was being here worth it?
You had the name, Theo. You had the location. You could have left with everyone and kept fucking going but no, fuck that right? Why give up the chance to be the big man’s number two and rule the masses, right?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, his voice a little weaker than it had been before.
“What was it then, if it wasn’t the power? What made you send us all to our doom?”
Theo stopped struggling against the ropes I’d used to tie him in place. His body went limp and his chin dropped as he looked at nothing but his own feet. I frowned, turning my eyes to Tanya and that’s when I saw it; the pain and the anger in her eyes. They weren’t aimed at Theo though, they were staring daggers into my soul.
“Wow,” I said finally understanding what was happening. “I thought she was just another plaything like those you had at Oliver’s Rest. She isn’t though, is she? You love her. That’s why you stayed despite everything that happened.”
Tanya’s eyes went wide at what I’d said and she whipped her head around to glare at Theo. I couldn’t help but smirk a little. Clearly, he had neglected to mention his past. Maybe she didn’t even know that he and Nora had been close once upon a time. I was cold-hearted sure but not so far gone that I would tell her that as well.
“Yes. That’s why.” He lifted his head and offered Tanya the smallest of smiles. “I love you, Tanya.”
“How very sweet. I hope your love lasts you a lifetime. However short that might be. Now tell me, where is Tony?” I jabbed my crossbow a little closer to Tanya’s chest to make my point.
“No, please, don’t hurt her,” Theo said. “Nigel told me Tony the cable snake man is at some place called the Ettamogah Pub, near Table Top Mountain.”
I frowned. I knew the place well enough. It wasn’t too far away from my boyhood home of Wangaratta all the way down near the border between New South Wales and Victoria. It was a hell of a distance from Deepwater though, where I’d found the diary fragment. I was only a few states and territories away from traveling the entirety of Australia. This was getting ridiculous. Besides, how was I supposed to get back to the eastern side of the country? I hadn’t seen a single goblin tavern since the moment we’d been dropped off by the carriage. The driver had said to give him a holler but how the hell was that supposed to work?
Brushing the glowing words floating in front of my face aside and shaking my head to escape the many thoughts flying around in there, I dug my notebook out of my bum bag and flipped to the page I wanted. I turned the little book around and shoved it into Theo's face.
“What does this symbol mean?”
Theo frowned as he eyed the skull and rose depiction over the page. “I have no idea, what is it?”
My hand holding the book shook a little as the wave of anger washed through me anew. It was clear he didn’t recognize it at all, and that meant only one thing; he’d never gone looking for Nora and Stella himself. He’d let others do it for him and had just accepted that as good enough.
I let out a wild roar. Frank screeched and flapped away from me as my hand swung around and smacked Theo clean across the face. The man cried out as he tumbled sideways, his body still strapped tightly to the chair hitting the ground with a loud bang.
I glowered at the bastard as I yanked my hand back, rubbing at the pain radiating along the underside of it. I didn’t care much that the strike had stolen a fragment of my health. It was more than worth it.
Tanya was flinging herself around wildly in her chair, her eyes locked on me and filled with desperation. I ignored her, bending down to snatch up my fallen notebook. She screamed around the gag in her mouth. I frowned and glared at her, ready to tell her to shut up. The older woman’s eyes were flickering between mine and the book I now held in my hand. Over and over she looked between the two until finally with a sigh I reached out and yanked the gag free.
She took a deep breath and cried, “I know that symbol!”