Chapter Sixty-nine

‘I don’t want to go for this dinner, boss,’ Kitala Iwani complained, her normally pale, white face reddening rapidly.

‘Well, you’re my bodyguard, apparently, and you’re coming,’ Krissy stated in a matter of fact tone.

‘Do you realise who that man is? I’ve just realised who that man is,’ Kiwa whispered.

It was uncharacteristic of her to be this rattled. Apart from our first meeting when she’d been completely out of her mind over temporarily losing Tilry, she had always been calm and pragmatic. Now she was fidgeting in her chair, while Krissy was scowling at her, sitting on her bed. Well, it was still early afternoon, so she had some time to convince her newly appointed bodyguard to attend the dinner. Although, the way Kiwa said she’d just realized who Fenar was, was weird. We knew who Fenar was: Master of Third Rangers, stalwart defender of the realm and full time rude elf. Wasn’t he?

‘What do you mean?’ Krissy inquired.

‘He is Fenirig Arte. The Hellspawn himself,’ Kiwa stated, looking around as if searching for eavesdroppers.

‘Yes, that’s not new,’ Krissy said, looking as baffled by her answer as I was.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ she nearly screeched. ‘It’s not an uncommon name, plenty of families have the name Fenirig. Here and in Fayr-Sitan.’

That was probably true. Fenirig Rina — or Ferin — from the galley was one example of that, and I was sure there were many others.

‘So?’

‘But this one is “the” Fenirig Arte,’ Kiwa whispered conspiratorially. ‘The Hellspawn who killed an evil god. That’s why they called him The Hellspawn. He’s a legend.’

‘I’m sorry, what?’ Krissy tried to stand up, forgetting her injured ankle, and fell back onto the bed, hissing.

‘I haven’t realised. He looks nothing like his statue in Fayral. I thought people called him Hellspawn because … I don’t know. To mess with him?’ she wailed. ‘But the way the masters fought, especially him. No-one can fight like that. Except the Hellspawn and those who were there.’

I couldn’t decide whether Kiwa was genuinely distressed or she was just fangirling, but this was getting interesting. Our good old Fenar had killed a god? An evil god no less? I didn’t know Wensah had had a sister.

Wait!

On second thought, this wasn’t getting interesting. More like terrifying. Fenar had killed a god? How? I knew he used to be a spiritualist, and after the insane display we’d just seen, I couldn’t even imagine what he’d be able to do if he had Mana available to him. Should I be worried about Fenar being able to kill me, like I was worried about gods and other spirits? No, that couldn’t be. Kiwa must have been mistaken. Still …

‘Krissy, remind me to never ever never piss the guy off ever again!’ I blurted the words out.

‘Same,’ Tilry agreed.

Kiwa looked up at the ceiling where she probably guessed Tilry would be — she wasn’t wrong, the familiar was hovering above her.

‘Same? What do you mean?’ she asked the spirit.

It seemed they still weren’t talking on a daily basis — likely due to Tilry’s reluctance to break the unwritten rules of familiarhood — but the woman wasn’t as surprised to hear the spirit’s voice as she had been before, so I guessed they had been making some progress.

‘Kevin expressed it would be wise not to anger Master Fenirig Arte in any way.’ Tilry paraphrased my words nicely.

‘Anger him? I say we stay clear of him altogether,’ Kiwa mumbled.

‘Well, I say I’m going to have a nap, and then we’ll all go for dinner,’ Krissy interjected, her tone making it clear she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. There was a lesson to be learned there for the average pushover. Krissy looked Kiwa up and down. ‘Do you have a dress?’

‘No.’ Kiwa shook her head, looking down on her simple and practical fighting gear she had been wearing ever since I’d known her.

‘Neither do I. Wake me up at least two hours before sunset,’ Krissy instructed the elf. We’ll go shopping.’

Kiwa groaned as if she was facing torture, but she nodded. Neither Tilry nor I had anything to add to this conversation, and I watched quietly as Kiwa left the room, and Krissy laid down on her bed.

***

Becoming a spirit and living in this world — a world I was slowly learning more about — had changed me. It had changed me a lot, and was continuously changing me. I no longer missed Earth as much as I had before. I had killed people and spirits, which had been a horrifying prospect three years ago, but I couldn’t be truly bothered about it now. I had accepted the nature of my existence as a soul-hungry discount-cthulhu who relied on a host to move around. However, if there was one thing that had not changed at all, and would probably not change regardless of how many lifetimes I’d spend here, it was my absolute dislike for clothes-shopping. Especially when women were involved. The fact that said shopping was taking place in the elven city of Sek Artem, located in a world other than mine, didn’t change that.

The Fifth Ranger’s compound was less than half a mile from the city’s edge, and even with Krissy limping along with a crutch, it didn’t take too long to reach the centre of town. Kiwa was a patient bodyguard and she made sure she kept pace with her.

The city was nice enough; less trees than in Gal Themar, more open spaces and wider streets, similarly constructed and ornamented buildings, and a main square that was so large a crowd of thousands could gather there it they cleared it of statues and market-stalls.

Being late afternoon, the place was busy. Just like in Gal Themar, the main square and the surrounding streets were where all the shops, markets, restaurants and of course offices were concentrated.

People were out in force. Hundreds upon hundreds of elves — men, women and even some children — buying and selling, eating out, chatting or arguing, playing, as if there wasn’t an ork crisis going on nearby. Well, I supposed bigger towns were safe from the relatively small raiding parties, unlike those living in farmsteads, fishing villages and such. The people of Sek Artem didn’t have a thing to worry about, and it showed. I wasn’t even sure if they were aware of the threat or not. Well, it didn’t matter — on a little street just off the square, Krissy and Kiwa found the perfect place to fill up their wardrobes and to make me a bored and unhappy Tentacle Horror.

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How much money do we have? Krissy asked me as we entered the shop

‘We have … the two-hundred Kyns from Third Rangers, and we have the four-hundred Deni gave us.’ I reported our financial situation after taking a quick peek into Jack’s Room where I had stored all our stuff, including our money.

‘Do you have money?’ Krissy then asked Kiwa.

She nodded and tapped the money-pouch next to her sheathed dagger on her belt, the coins in it jingling nicely.

The shop was more like a tailor’s workshop. Rolls of fabric occupied a number of shelves along the walls, wooden mannequins wore partially completed dresses for women as well as trousers and coats for men, and I even saw a few, small outfits for children.

The three women who were hunching over their workbenches, measuring or cutting fabric, looked up as we entered. They almost dismissed us and went back to their work, but then their eyes became fixed on Krissy.

The oldest of them — although it was a difficult judgment to make — waved the other two back to their work and came up to greet us.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said in perfect Treini, looking Krissy up and down and ignoring Kiwa for the moment. ‘Not every day I see a human wearing Fifth Ranger’s garb.’

‘I’m a guest at the ranger’s compound, and … they lent me the clothes,’ Krissy half lied. In Elvish. ‘Until I get a replacement for my dress, that is.’

The woman grinned and almost patted Krissy on the shoulder, but looked at the cast on her left arm and the crutch in her right, and decided not to. I could see the gears turning in her head as she put the picture — or a picture — together.

‘I see. I didn’t know those cursed greens tried to take some humans, too,’ she said in Elvish this time, a sad look of sympathy replacing the smile on her face. ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’

‘Oh, I’m … fine,’ Krissy said. ‘But I need a new dress. And my friend needs one, too.’

The shopkeep finally turned her attention to Kiwa.

‘You’re a pretty one,’ she commented, looking her up and down just as she’d done with Krissy. Her eyes stopped at the dagger on her belt.

‘I’m her bodyguard,’ Kiwa stated coldly, almost glaring at the woman.

I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but maybe, just maybe, Kiwa disliked clothes-shopping, too. And it seemed she had accepted her new, unofficial job-title as well. What a day.

‘Well, you are in the right place, so let’s get you dressed as nicely as a girl for her first dance,’ the woman said, almost singing really, and spun around to show us in so we could inspect the goods.

It was a boring affair for a spirit to watch two women trying to decide what colour, what fabric or what style should their new dresses have. Actually, it was just one woman. Kiwa had quickly let the shopkeep know she was fine with anything. Krissy, on the other hand, seemed to have dredged up her inner noblewoman — because despite everything she was a noblewoman — and took her time inspecting the dresses the shopkeep claimed would fit her right away or with some minor alterations. Luckily there weren’t too many of them.

And that’s when I remembered something important, something crucial to our continued survival in fact.

‘Krissy! Deni’s dress! We need to have it fixed if we want to live!’

Krissy paled and her breathing fastened as if she had found herself in imminent danger. I asked Tilry to tell Kiwa about the dress we wanted fixed, and I took it out from Jack’s Room, behind Krissy’s back so no-one could see it except Kiwa. The elf grabbed the abused garment, and pretended she had always had it in her hands. When the shopkeeper lady came back with the fourth dress to show off, I didn’t think she was fooled, but she didn’t say anything either — she took it, examined it, then declared that it was made of a cheap and common fabric she happened to have in stock, and for the measly price of ninety Kyns it would be ready in two days. We of course agreed to the deal.

In the end, Krissy chose the outfits both for herself and for Kiwa. She then decided it would be a waste of time to go back to the ranger’s barrack, and after paying three-hundred Kyns for the dresses, the lady of the shop let them use a back-room to change into their new dresses.

I had to admit, Krissy had chosen well. Even with the cast on her arm and leg, she looked really good in her new, pale-yellow dress. And with Kiwa standing next to her in her light purple dress, they looked like they had just stepped out of a Pride and Prejudice movie adaptation. It was a sight for sore eyes, if there ever was one.

With that nonsense done, and with plenty of money left in the coffers, it was time for my kind of shopping.

Carrying their old clothes in a canvas bag — which I took into Jack’s Room as soon as we left the shop — Krissy and Kiwa agreed to a detour. I stretched out my tentacles in all directions as they walked back to the main square, looking for the shops and market-stalls I wanted to check.

It didn’t take long to find them. One stall sold flour, so I made Krissy buy a small sack of it that was … hm … maybe ten kilograms. It cost only five Kyns. I wasn’t sure if it was a good price or not, but we paid, and went on to another stall that sold eggs.

The eggs here were slightly larger than chicken eggs, and they had brown, mottled shells. I didn’t know what bird they had come from, but eggs were eggs, and we bought thirty of them for ten Kyns.

A little bit of walking around later we got a jar of some sort of vegetable oil the stall-keeper said was good for cooking, and all that was left to find was some kitchenware.

Krissy was becoming a little impatient, complaining that we might be late for dinner. My counter was that the restaurant Mrs Hellspawn had specified was somewhere around the square, and the sun was still up, so we had time. I wasn’t going to give up on a frying pan and mixing bowl — the mere thought of them filled me with the kind of nostalgia that had the potential to turn into pleasant reminiscing or devastating depression. I went with the pleasant reminiscing.

To find a shop that sold what I needed took some time, but when one of my tentacles brushed through the walls of a shop we were going to pass by, letting me see the contents, I stopped Krissy.

‘This is it!’ I cried out with joy.

‘This is what?’ she demanded, saying the words out loud.

‘The shop I need,’ I informed her.

She grumbled something I didn’t quite catch, but she limped up the three stairs leading to the door, and we went inside.

Now this was a shop. Pots, pans, cauldrons, knives, cutlery, plates, bowls, chopping boards, cups, mugs, jugs, bottles, entire tea-sets … this was where I had to be. No. This was where I was fated to be. Yes.

Krissy and Kiwa pretended to look around, just to keep the sour-looking man — presumably the owner, or maybe an employee — happy, while I did the actual looking around, flinging my tentacles around to see every shelf, every box, and even through the walls into the storage rooms, just to check if they had a secret stash of treasure they had not put on display on the shop floor.

The only thing they didn’t have was a green mug with white zig-zag lines. Or was it a white mug with green lines? Damn. I was sure that mug had gone down with the Graal’s Enourmous Pride, and in the absence of a replacement, I needed to come up with a plausible lie to tell Toven if he ever questioned me about his favourite, missing mug.

That reminded me that I didn’t have Krissy’s mask in Jack’s Room, and I hadn’t seen it in her room either. It was probably keeping Toven’s mug company in the dark depths of the sea, so that was another thing I needed to find a replacement for. I knew Krissy could and would do without a mask, but I liked that mask. Nonetheless, this wasn’t the shop for masks and such, so I focused on the kitchenware.

Half an hour and seventy-four Kyns later, Jack’s Room had the pleasure to host a metal frying pan, a pot I could more or less call a sauce pan, a large, six-pronged, metal fork that would be a good substitute for a whisk, a couple of wooden, spatula-like implements, two, wooden mixing bowls and a variety of kitchen knives.

Despite Krissy’s vehement disagreement, this was what I called a successful shopping trip.

‘Why do you need all this … junk?’ she asked, shaking her head as we left the shop behind us.

‘Junk? You take that back, Missy! These are tools of the trade,’ I growled at her. Not angrily, I wasn’t angry at all, but there were certain things she wasn’t supposed to say, and I needed to let her know that.

‘Fine. Tools of the trade. But … why? What trade?’

‘Listen, Krissintha Arlonet Dar Ghelain,’ I said to her, slowly, so she would understand the gravity of this discussion.

‘Uhm … yes?’

‘You said I promised you pancakes. Well, I am a spirit of my word, and I. Shall. Deliver.’