“Yes, I want a drink. No, I don’t care what it tastes like, and the entire fucking point of it is the alcohol content!” Arne snapped and rapped the bar counter, which he had to haul himself up on to be able to see the barman. “And you can take your bottle of berry flavoured piss and shove it so far up your rectum it sticks out your ear, you hear me? I’ve had a shitty night! Just hand over the godsdamned bottle!” He scowled angrily, and the big barman just broke into a grin.
“Kid, you are adorable!” he laughed. “Does you mum know where you are?”
Arne fought the urge to jump up on the bar and punch the man.
For a short moment.
Then he jumped up on the bar and punched the man.
o-0-o
“You know, normally, I wouldn’t actually pay any particular attention to him, but now that he’s a little girl and it really bothers him, I feel like keeping an eye on him is a lot more giving,” Dia told Toog as Arne walked back into the taproom of the new tavern they’d had to go to in the early hours of the morning after the Queen left. It would make their new identities useless if they continued staying in their old rooms.
The people they used to be were now gone.
Arne shimmied onto the bench in the booth the others occupied. “You are getting me a beer,” he stated.
“Of course, cutie rat. You’re a growing girl. You need your beer,” Toog said, giving him a fatherly smile and getting up.
“Never ever refer to me as cutie rat again,” Arne said. “Please,” he added, seeing as Toog was getting him a beer.
Arne leaned back and made himself comfortable as he began rifling through the day’s acquisitions. Extra weapons of a length that could be worn by someone his height without scraping along the ground, a new leather armour from a gnomish store, a beltful of vials of healing tinctures, some extra clothes and the pink shoulder bag with a blue flower embroidered on it which the sweet old lady at the gnomish clothing store had insisted on giving him as a gift.
He was a little girl now. It was a ruse. It was a damned ruse. He had not chosen it himself and would not ever have chosen it himself. But Arne was determined to make it a good choice once they got to the ship. He had nothing and nobody. It didn’t matter what he looked like. He would be a crime pariah in Arabesk for ages anyway, until he had enough power behind him to pummel his old contacts into submission and force them to deal with him again.
Not that it was likely he would be able to go back anytime soon. Least of all with a small army.
“Here you go, sweetie poops,” Toog said, putting a mug of beer in front of him.
Arne took a generous gulp while Dia sniggered.
“So where have you been all day without telling anyone?” Toog asked.
“Yeah…” Dia added. “Ehm… Huggie buns, whatever. We were… so worried.”
“Rasheed has a fight bar. I bet on myself. I had to shank several people with broken bottles to get in but here we are. I went to the gnomish quarter and bought clothe–“
“What! They are everywhere!” Toog exclaimed, clearly disturbed.
“…And bought clothes. I checked our travel options, and we can in fact get to where we are going by direct route. Or semi direct. I know the ship, but you two will have to go buy tickets because I’m nine years old and can’t be relied upon to do grownup things. The ship sails in a few days, and we have a bit of preparation to do.”
Dia groaned. “I swear, if you want to have us write another list, I will–“
“Fuck the lists,” Arne stated. “It’s useless trying to get anyone else to follow a plan, anyway. I want to know how to acidproof my weapons and I want to know how to murder vampires.”
o-0-o
The toy was truly horrific. How the flat button eyes actually managed to seem bulging and awful, Arne couldn’t determine, but they did. And the smell… he wasn’t sure where it had been, where Toog had gotten the grotty, greyish brown fabric, but it was somewhere between a dead dog that had lain in the sun in Arabesk’s slums for a day and blue turnip juice, unreasonably sweet and sticky.
He had named it Sir Nanners and its inside was a pouch for storing holy lube of Debauchery and a dagger, which he could draw easily, and which was well hidden up the nasty toy’s backside.
Sir Nanners was his faithful companion on the journey by ship to far off Uldran Underwaves. The majority of the passengers were merchants who were going to Handel Island, the island before the descend into the underwater city of Uldran itself.
Arne had heard from several traders he had talked to on the journey that it was much easier to just sell your wares on Handel to the dwarves that came above than to deal with the customs in Uldran Underwaves city. From what he could tell, the dwarves were protective of their ways at best, raging speciesist at worst. He just hoped they would be charmed by a little girl, who, granted, was about their own height, and the cover they had decided to travel under. ‘They’ being mostly Toog who somehow found the idea of a family-owned lube business perfectly sensible and Dia consenting absentmindedly when she realised Arne disagreed vehemently.
He was past the point of caring. If they thought a family-owned personal use lube business was the ticket into the city, he wasn’t going to argue and had just made sure to buy several fresh kegs of laurel scented lube from the temple of Debauchery in Rasheed.
Maybe being ridiculously different would actually be a boon to their stay.
There really was only one way to find out…
o-0-o
Nine-year-old Arne had been severely challenged emotionally when they arrived on Handel Island. They had to book a room for the night since the next ship didn’t leave until the day after and in their room, a spectacularly inappropriate and downright slutty white silk dress awaited them. The card said, ‘Finally, I can repay you for all your thoughtful gifts’. The dress fit a nine-year-old perfectly and had disturbed him to his core. When he was done screaming into a pillow and forcefully burning the offending piece of silk he went and stole a bottle of booze that turned out to be stronger than he had anticipated when he sneaked off to drink in peace below one of the jetties on the docks. He hoped the tin donkey amulet was enough to keep The Vampire’s gaze averted and avoid being seen if she scryed on the other two. He got tipsy and then drunk while reading the book on vampires he had stolen at the university of Rasheed.
In the end, he threw it into the ocean, since the contents could be summarised as ‘sunlight does not agree with vampires’.
o-0-o
If there was a more spectacular way of transporting a vessel below the waves, Arne couldn’t imagine it. He hadn’t been able to imagine what happened either, however, so maybe his transport imagination had just never had occasion to flex its muscles.
They had been told to simply board a ship that left from Handel Island a day after they arrived. It was a smaller vessel with a spacious cargo hold and benches on the deck for the passengers.
“Don’t be afraid… bread… nugget,” Dia said as they took a seat, Arne in the middle.
“I will throw up on you if something shitty happens!” Arne whispered through clenched teeth. He smiled innocently at a dwarven woman on the bench in front of them who turned to look when Dia laughed, and he tightened his grip on the grotty Sir Nanners, fingers resting on the hilt of the dagger hidden in the bear’s luby depths.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Most of the passengers were dwarves and they kept drawing looks from them as the ship set sail out on the open ocean, the island of Handel vanishing in the distance.
Sir Nanners released a small lube fart when the absolutely enormous metal contraption surfaced on the horizon, gleaming in the rays of the setting sun. It was shaped like an enormous fish with sharp teeth locking seamlessly together. The fish made its way to the ship, driven forward on rotating scoops along the sides, and its maw opened unto a huge hollow half filled with sea water, easily large enough to accommodate the ship. They were swallowed, bobbing gently in the water inside the creature, and along the inner sides of the mechanical fish were sturdy balconies with access to workstations and treadmills that seemed to power the rotating scoops outside. Many dwarves were running back and forth, receiving the heavy cables being hauled up from the ship to secure them along the sides.
When all was in place, the enormous maw sealed, their departure felt like a punch to the stomach and the hull of the giant fish lowered itself into the ocean depths. The ship held itself steady in the middle and the people manning the astounding contraption had fastened themselves to the walkways’ walls. The fish creaked and groaned in the lantern lit darkness and the passengers who had not taken the trip before looked around apprehensively. The majority of the dwarves onboard, however, were singularly unfaced, some even taking a nap during the trip.
It took roughly half an hour before the metal beast stopped creaking. Then the staff got to work again unhooking the cables from their fasteners along the inner hull and the maw began to open.
Arne had no idea what to think or expect, but the brightly lit and clearly busy harbour in the distance was not it. The ship inside the giant fish was given a sturdy cable that had been hauled into the maw and then dragged out of the artificial fish and into a lagoon. There were several small fishing vessels on the lagoon and another ship was waiting to be brought aboard, passengers waiting patiently on the benches on the deck.
The cable attached to their ship was stretched taut and they were hauled into harbour. As they approached, the crew hauling and winding the cable up, the pier became visible and soon they docked and three dwarven men with black beards and blue caps and tabards approached and came up the gangplank to process the passengers. The staff onboard put three desks and chairs out on the deck and everyone queued up.
Arne gave Dia and Toog sideways glances, hoping they were sufficiently aware enough to do the talking.
When it was their turn, the man looked at them. He had a large book open in front of him and looked at them expectantly without the slightest hint of curiosity.
“Names,” the official stated.
“I am Tweeg,” Toog stated.
Dia and Arne exchanged glances.
“And this is my lovely wife, Snorkel, and our daughter Mimsipoops,” Toog continued, completely calm and unfazed.
Dia drew in a breath through gritted teeth and Arne kicked her ankle as he stepped forward, holding out the nasty bear. “And this is Sir Nanners. He is very wise,” Arne stated and offered a smile.
The customs official looked at the bear and a small tic appeared near his eye. “Very well, thank you …young Mimsipoops,” he said. “Where are you from?” he asked in a tone of voice that made it abundantly clear he has asked this question many thousands of times and was not about to be impressed or surprised at any answer.
“Arabesk originally, but we traded in Rasheed and then came here.”
“Where is your business registered?” the official asked.
“Oh, Arabesk,” Toog said with casual conviction.
“And what is your business here?”
…And here we go, Arne thought.
“We are a family-owned lube business,” Toog stated calmly.
“Oh,” the official said, a hint of interest lurking in his voice all of a sudden. “Industrial lube?”
“Personal use,” Toog corrected. “Laurel scented.”
The official looked at each of them in turn, slowly and deliberately. “I see,” he finally said, clearly lying.
“Would you like a sample?” ‘Tweeg’ asked.
“No thank you. I really wouldn’t,” the official said firmly.
“I’m sure you’ll run into our product next time you visit a brothe–“
“I have to pee!” Arne stated loudly before the not quite disastrous conversation descended into madness.
He was quite surprised to learn that the distraction actually worked, and the rest of the conversation was concluded quickly. They were told to report for a ‘fitting’ when they got off the pier and then they were let go with a roll of papers that possibly detailed the information they had given. It was hard to tell since it was written in the language of the Uldran dwarves and though they spoke it because of the magical amulets they had bought before leaving, as the Queen had suggested, none of them could read the sharp, angled script.
At the end of the pier, however, they were met with yet another three desks with officials in blue hats and a crew of craftspeople of some sort, or possibly torturers, the toolkits they had made Arne unsure.
The majority of the other passengers had all lined up at the desks and had metallic armbands inspected after which they were let go. When it was their turn, Toog handed over their papers and after a lengthy inspection, many ink stamps and new papers signed and handed back and forth, they were told to go to the station of the craftspeople who were going to fit them with their bracelets.
If Arne actually had needed to pee, he would have been hard pressed before they got their metal bracelets smithed onto their wrists. They were told they were for finding them if they got lost in a mine or committed a crime, for paying for everything once they had ‘put funds on them’, which would happen at the temple of the goddess of Commerce, and in extreme cases for blowing them up in case they murdered someone or committed treason.
“I don’t want to be blown up!” Arne whined. “What about my personal freedom?”
“You are perfectly free to do whatever you want, sweetie,” the woman fitting his bracelet around his thin child wrist said. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s right to do the same. I’m sure a big girl like you can manage not to murder anyone while you are here,” she smiled.
Well, I will fucking have to now, won’t I… Arne thought, frustrated and resentful about the prospects of having to function in the city under these restrictions. Out loud he said, “Sir Nanners is a terrible criminal,” and wiggled the bears grotty arm at the woman. “He should have a bracelet too. To keep him honest.”
The craftswoman grinned at the small nine-year-old girl standing as tall as she was. “Unfortunately, the bracelets only work on people with a pulse. I’m afraid you will just have to keep an extra good eye out, so your friend doesn’t go running out to impede other people’s freedom.”
o-0-o
“So they slap a murder bracelet on you, which you cannot remove, and they call that a safeguard of their freedom? What the actual assferret is wrong with this place!” Arne grumbled under his breath on the way to the tavern they had been told took physical money and often dealt with travellers.
“Maybe we can find some way to shut it off,” Toog said.
“Sure, we just need to not have a pulse…” Arne snapped.
Dia giggled. “She’s adorable when he’s angry,” she stated.
“Gods! Shouldn’t you be furious you can’t murder these little fuckers in droves?” Arne whisper-hissed.
“I can’t anyway,” Dia said with a tight smile that showed her teeth. “Remember the ropes of Justice? If I don’t want Chuckles back, I’m stuck only draining people to the brink of death. Ri-diculous!”
“I will get us a room,” Toog said serenely as they came to the tavern on the docks that apparently doubled as a brothel and fight bar judging from the scantily clad dwarven bar staff and the small ring at the back where two dwarven combatants were going toe to toe. The place reeked of stale beer, vomit and sweat and a greasy cloud of fishy food smell wafted in from a kitchen behind the bar.
“At least I can fight for money,” Arne said softly, mostly to himself.
“But you aren’t going to,” Dia smiled tightly. “It will just make us stand out and you said we should try to avoid that. If I can’t have fun, neither can you.”
Arne tightened his grip on Sir Nanners and bit his teeth so hard his jaw ached. “That’s a subpar parenting methodology, I’m pretty sure,” he finally said.
“You’d be so much more efficient if I were in fact your parent,” Dia muttered.
“Efficient?” the nine-year-old girl growled, following after Toog who had gotten the key from the tavernkeeper and apparently accepted a suggestion from a female prostitute who was following them up the narrow wooden staircase. “Gods! Sure, if efficient equals unhinged lunacy and living day to day with no hopes or plans for the future, then yes, I’d be more efficient.”
“Shut up. Your voice sickens me!” Dia said calmly and then demanded, “Where is my key?” when they got upstairs to a narrow corridor with doors on either side.
“We are all in the same room, sweetie, just as always, because we are a family,” Toog said, while the stout prostitute unlocked the door to their room, which featured a large bed and a sofa with stains that were certainly of a personal fluid variety. In the corner, a swing-like contraption hung from the ceiling. A large wardrobe was built into one wall.
The window opened up over the harbour, giving a view of the lagoon where the metal fish had deposited their ship. The entire view was impressive. The lagoon was in a massive, massive underground cavern. The ceiling high above should be lost in shadows, but an unknown and indeterminate light source permeated the enormous cavern and cast a faint but perceivable light over everything.
In addition to the strange preternatural glow that seemed to permeate the huge cavern, the street along the docks had been lit with numerous lanterns and braziers and a large open plaza roughly in the middle of the docks was decorated with ropes extended above head on which hung hundreds of coloured lamps.
“Well, I will just go into the wardrobe with this lovely lady,” Toog stated, gesturing for the prostitute.
The dwarven woman looked around and shrugged. “Good thing I'm not judgemental,” she stated, shrugged, and followed Toog into the wardrobe.
Dia rolled her eyes and Imp appeared in the air as she flung herself on the bed. She removed the necklace with the language comprehension spell and said, “As soon as anyone emerges from that cupboard, you have to go invisible again. But tell me about the Hells, will you?”
Arne sighed and surveyed the madness. There was a certain type of casualness that came of having been at an orgy together within a few hours of meeting, he supposed, and that casualness now manifested in the sound coming from the wardrobe and the fact that he was perfectly calm sitting on the sex swing with the nasty bear and listening to Imp talk about how the Hells functioned.
He sighed. This was life now. It couldn’t get dumber once you hit the bottom, at least.
There was a knock at the door.
Dia sighed and commanded Imp to go invisible and Arne went to open, hand on the dagger up Sir Nanners’ secret compartment. Outside, the tavernkeeper stood with a large white box.
“This just came for you, little lady,” he said.
“Thanks,” Arne said and grabbed the package, slamming the door with his foot before the man began to expect a tip. He flung it on the bed next to Dia and flipped the lid open, mind full of dreadful expectations.
Sure enough, the dress was even sluttier this time.