“Magic we have and magic we need,

To cure the shiftless, drunken lush,

Chase now the rabbit down in its hole,

The girl didn’t jump, she was pushed.”

— The Ballad of Sir Joe, by “Golden-Voiced” Garbeaux.

“It’s gone! This is my components case. If it’s not in here … someone must have taken it!” Aimee shouted, beside herself.

“What?” asked McGrue, “C’mon. We have our whole lives in this carriage. Surely we should search the other bags before we assume anything.”

“Oh, no, you’re right. Silly, stupid elf girl’s just paranoid, right? Not like there’s nothing else missing from in here!” and she gestured at the piles of luggage that had pinned the dead, thrashing body of Sir Joe the Bold in place, now dilapidated and absent a dead body.

“He’s swimming! Swimming in heads,” I shouted, having just returned from seeing Joe’s body being tossed about by a hard-partying crowd. Obviously I was still hallucinating but at least the euphoria of my orglespink overdose was finally setting in.

“Crowd surfing. Terrific. Yeah … we’re gonna have to deal with this. Since the little man here couldn’t keep track of the big bastard,” said McGrue, unfairly.

“Sargon! Enough. I know you’re angry that we … were unable to do what we wanted today but we should’ve known Garbeaux was incapable of correcting, yes, my mistake. I shouldn't have … we should have stayed with him. Okay?” She set her component case down and exited the carriage.

“Yeh, fine,” grumbled the half-orc, “but we gotta split up for this one I’m afraid. I don’t even know how Gabbo got Joe in the first time, and now he’s seein’ pink elephants, so I’ll grab Joe. Just gotta intercept him before somebody figures out he ain’t breathin’. Luckily these people have been drinkin’ nearly three days without sleep so his stink isn’t gonna stand out to them. You used the focus, Aimee, can you track it?”

“Absolutely. Gladly. When I find that piece of trash–” she growled.

“You’ll get me! And maybe Gabbo if he’s regular by then. Gabbo, buddy, you with me?”

“Yes, golden one! What do you need!? Anything, just don’t eat my pale, supple flesh for your monster’s roast!” I shamefully shouted. Unfortunately, orglespink, if anything, sharpened my memory of this time instead of letting me forget.

“Okay, so, you got some coin now, go use it. Take the pack of copper. It’s less likely to get stolen, bein’ so heavy, and we need to get rid of it.” He handed me the pack, which weighed as much as, if not me, perhaps as much as Aimee.

I heaved it up on the carriage floor, turned, and struggled into it, “Aye-aye! I know just the place!” and I headed off, moving straight for the music shop, then hit the wall with my face, painfully, “Ow!”

“Gar, buddy?” began Aimee, “If you can see the place you’re going make sure there aren’t walls in the way. The stuff you ate is probably giving you a directional sense but it won’t let you walk through walls, okay?”

“Okay, lady!” I shouted, ignoring my bloody nose, before taking the roads like a normal, non-hallucinating person.

—

My face found only a few more walls before I finally arrived at the Sonique Boutique. The bell rang as I entered and the old owner perked up, “Ah!” he cried. In my haze he looked to have a halo as well as a radiance behind his shoulders, “What has happened to you, lad!?”

He snatched up a cloth, dampened it, and charged me. I recoiled but, then, realized he was merely cleaning my wounds, “I ate the crab’s nasty crab food ‘cause it was a-yum and then the people all changed shape and now my guts glow!”

“And you came here!?” he asked, incredulous, “You need a cleric or an apothecary, maybe an alchemist!”

“Nope!” the room lit up so intensely that I knew it couldn’t be real, “Need a focus! Gotta siphon!” I turned my back to the old man and pulled the release for the pack. It crashed loudly to the floor.

“What’s this?” he asked, “About a hundred pounds in copper coins? For … ah, you wish to buy a focus. Well I can let you just use one if that’s the cure though, if you don’t own one, maybe you should buy it…”

“Yup! Got any slide whistles!?” He said. No, wait, I said. Things were getting garbled towards the end.

“Slide whistles? Is that what you really want?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Nope! But my master kept me poor while whippin’ me unmerciful so this is all I can spend!” I cackled like a lunatic.

“Yes … well, uh, let’s see…” He moved among his shelves, “A slide whistle is fine for a jester or a clown, son, but … ah! Here we are. I’ll count the copper to be certain but you have at least enough for this.” He came back bearing a golden triangle that sparkled without light. It really did, that wasn’t hallucination.

“What’s it?” I belched.

“A Pick of Air Guitar! An arcane magic focus for only one gold. Here.” and he pressed it against my upper chest, direct on the skin, through the opening in my collar. The bizarre began to fade from view; a count of ten, and it was all gone. “There we are; how do you feel?”

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“Better,” I said, eyes wide open and feeling better than I ever had in my life. ”The orglespink is, well, I still feel it but everything else is normal. I think I could fistfight an ogre, actually!”

“Orglespink? Now I’m especially glad I stayed away from the square, and it was sold by a crab? When motes of magic started drifting from your chest to the pick, luckily, I thought to touch it to your skin. You certainly didn’t seem ready to take over for yourself.”

“Yes, well, I won’t make that mistake again.” I chuckled.

“Good, good, well, here’s the documentation for your new focus. I’ll count out ten-thousand copper. Woof, ten-thousand. This much it might make more sense to have smelted into brass for horns.” He dragged the pack towards his counter, “Obviously this will take a few minutes!”

“Right! That’s fine,” I said, drifting towards the window display, pocketing the tiny scroll he’d handed me and holding up my new magical focus. I compared it to the Hurdy Gurdy, my dream instrument. Say, old-timer–”

“Please, call me Ignus!” he called.

“Oh, that’s an unfortunate coincidence,” I muttered, remembering the dead Necromancer of the same name, “You never said. What’s the enchantment cost to make a Hurdy Gurdy crank itself.”

He paused his counting, pushing aside twenty piles of ten coins each to keep his place, “Ah, well, I would have to curate the oils, reagents, components and the automated mechanism must be outsourced, you see, so it’s quite expensive. I wouldn’t keep one around here, rather, it would be a special build for a client who pays in advance.”

Normally, I would deflate at this moment, but the drug in my system buoyed my mood, “I see. Well, still, I’m saving for it. How much?”

“I haven’t priced the ingredients in a few months but something like a hundred and fifty gold on top of the instrument itself,” he said, confidently. Damn it.

“Good to know,” I muttered, pocketing my pick. At least now I could play the air guitar! I had magic again. And I’d still have most of my money when this was done. Of course that would actually lead to a fight over money I don’t intend on recounting. It was very unpleasant with much name calling and, for the first time in memory, Aimee hit me! In the end I was on the hook for about twelve-hundred copper from my own pocket, as the copper was to be split but was, instead, spent only on me. For a brief moment, however, I was hopeful, and I was happy. It seemed like everything was going my way…

—

Unfortunately mine was only one-third of the drama that evening. McGrue had to tell me afterwards what happened during his battle to reclaim the body of Sir Joe from the mob of revelers. As he expressed it, he tried hovering at the edge of the crowd, hoping to grab a boot, but he would never reach. “What the fuck, Joe?”

The problem was that he was contending with the population of a city combined with folks from all over Fereal. Many well-fed, upper-class gadabouts were in the crowd, the locals didn’t care for them, because of that and who knows how many other factors there were brawls taking place continuously. Even this wouldn’t be so bad, but the guards were snatching every one of the men fighting, imprisoning them, then “Fining” them. This was, apparently, how the Grain Monger padded his coffers; by extorting the nobles who came to Grainfest.

Certainly Joe was no help; the corpse wiggled and shook like he was having a wonderful time. Finally, McGrue struck upon a plan.

McGrue had first moved the carriage from the square to a remote alley before taking Grizzly to the other side which was, coincidentally, the least lit part of the square. Grizzly was brown, though his muzzle, mane, and the hair hanging over his hoovers were all of a cream color, so he would either be invisible when it all went down or look like some sort of apparition.

“Alright, Grizzly, don’t fuck with me, okay?” McGrue said as he untethered the horse from the carriage. He didn’t, at least not until McGrue started to remove the feed bag, “What? The damned thing doesn’t even have anything left in it!” But the big beast did begin to cooperate, though it was never clear if this was because he was full or because he didn’t want to be battered again by McGrue. Fitting him with a bit and bridle,

From there, he merely waited. Hemp rope, strung together in a one-hundred foot length, tied to Grizzly’s saddle horn, and with a hook at the end, was the tool he’d use. All the guards were humans, terrible night vision, while McGrue saw as well as a wolf or a cat. He knew what alleys to take and, when he reached his destination, where he’d moved the carriage, he’d simply tow the thing back with no one being the wiser.

The fights were so frequent, with more partygoers showing up all the time, that the gaps between brawls were shorter than the fights themselves. Moreover, McGrue realized at one point that he’d seen the same local start more than one fight. That became the man to watch. Tracking him visually, he watched Joe slide back and forth, the local started another fight, but it was directly in the path between him and Joe. No good.

Finally, Joe was nearby, and the local, a red-bearded runt that any noble ruffian would love to pummel, went far afield, towards a corner. The guards were moving with the first counter-punch from the noble, and there was the corpse in question.

The half-orc let fly his grappling hook, nothing. It caught on a partygoer, tearing a small hole in him. Now someone was bleeding. People might start asking questions, people with truncheons and badges. Breathing hard, he let fly again; hooking in the eye slit of Joe’s helmet, “Bull’s eye. No. Asshole’s eye. Yeah…”

Running, he kept the line tight on Joe, making sure Grizzly didn’t get pulled, didn’t move back towards the crowd. Leaping on top of the great beast, he slapped it on the rump, “Yah!” he shouted.

Dragging the invulnerably-armored, indestructible knight’s gyrating corpse through the city at a full gallop was clearly a bad idea. Probably four-hundred pounds in his armor he acted as a wrecking ball. He bounced off houses, businesses, killed several wild and domesticated animals and all without taking any visible damage.

“You! You there! Stop!” shouted a guard, running into the dark intersection. He’d been drawn by the loud metal-on-stone dragging noise as well as the violent crashing that had left a body count in the streets and leveled multiple buildings.

To stop meant that McGrue would be arrested, caught with the body of the “Greatest Hero” of Fereal, and summarily hung, but not before torture forced him to give up his co-conspirators. So, to protect us, he did what he had to do. He ran straight over that guard.

Unlike Joe, the guard was not invulnerable, so his breastplate malformed under the force of hooves, Joe’s bizarre dance-step like movements thrashed him about as he caught beneath the corpse, and he wound up being dragged until his armor flew apart and he was dashed, bodily against the corner of a smithy, exploding like a blood sausage.

There, in the dark, where he could see, and no one else could, McGrue set about his grisly task. There, atop the carriage, strapped in place, was the giant barrel. Within the barrel he placed the man for whom it was purchased, whose body was falling still again at last, and for a few hours after, he would bring water from troughs, gutters and rain barrels, before pouring the pouch of salt and spices in on top. He used his palms to pound the top back into place for fear of making too much noise. Finally, the work was done and, he reasoned, they would not have to worry about this happening again. Finally, Joseph Mulfinger had been pickled.