Chapter 4- Crazy, on you
Part 1
By the time Oliver and I had cleaned up all the new blood stains, the sun was hanging low in the sky. We had time to eat and set the scene behind the house, where Oliver's fence allowed us to work without as many prying eyes. We were hurrying, as it looked like a storm was moving in. We had moved the devil-free vessel into the back yard, then tipped it over. Finally we had pulled the bodies of the two thugs from under the porch and laid them around the thing. Oliver had dispatched the ginger man earlier, so all we really needed to do was to make a bit of a ruckus and burn the bodies.
"I was planning on heading over to Gleaming Street to work with the Thief-catchers," I said. We had moved into the kitchen and I was giving Oliver some superficial cuts around his head. "I should do well there until I decide on my next move. What do you think of Warden Corvis?" I asked, poking at my work to prompt more blood flow into the dog man's fur."Ow, easy!" Oliver winced, and pulled away, "that's good enough, I don't need to actually be bleeding out!" He had changed back into the clothes I had originally found him in. He wasn't exactly thrilled about being dressed up like this, covered in his own blood, but it seemed best that he be seen in a state similar to how he was when that boss guy left."Corvis seems like as decent a man as you could expect for a Warden," he told me, "the fact that he's trying to make people's lives better will get him killed though. The other Wardens aren't going to stand for the new guy coming in and gaining popularity with the people." He shrugged, "other than that, he's still an unknown. No one had heard of him even a year ago. He just showed up at the docks with a crew one day and started doing very well for himself. He shot straight to the top after getting in good with his predecessor." We walked through the house arranging furniture and stuff, like Oliver had gotten his ass kicked all over the place."Most people still see him as an outsider," he went on, "and, for some, it doesn't sit right that Warden Delgado chose him as successor over people who had been around longer." Oliver shook his head, "the timing of him showing up and ingratiating himself so close to Delgado's death, is an unfortunate coincidence, at the very least.. But I like him. He's been doing a lot of work to make sure people have legitimate opportunities to make a life, and the 9th ward is thriving. I'd like to move there if he survives the year.""That does sound pretty good," I said, "I can always get behind people who try to make their communities better." I looked around, and nodded to myself, "everything looks ready, you go ahead to the main hall and lay in the floor at the bottom of the stairs. I'll get the fire going."
Once Oliver was in position, I went out back and set fire to the corpses. I quickly torched the ground around the area in a rough circle, shot a huge gout of flames into the darkening sky, then took my place under the porch, listening. In all likelihood, I didn't have to be there, but I wanted to make sure no one tried to kill Oliver. He wasn't exactly helpless, but two or three against one wouldn't be a fair fight, and leaving him alone wouldn't sit right with me. While I waited, I started wondering about what I was doing there. It didn't feel like a dream anymore, it felt more like a different life. Maybe it was a side effect of coming back to the same dream multiple times? I still wasn't sure how that was happening, maybe it was occupying my thoughts enough to keep drawing me back in? And the inconsistent Game Master version of me; with me actually walking around here, there really wasn't a need for descriptions or commentary, and yet they'd come through all the same, but only sometimes. I thought about that last comment, like it was surprised by what I had done. Was it me, or not? It sounded like me, and we seemed to know the same things about the world...but apparently we didn't share everything. It was definitely weird, but not dream weird, if that makes sense. There was too much consistency in the inconsistent.
It didn't take long before I started hearing pounding from the front of the house. The ground in the back was scorched and the bodies blackened. It looked pretty convincing to me. When the rain had started, the addition of sizzling sounds and steam clinging low to the ground was the masterstroke. I couldn't have manufactured a more ominous atmosphere. I heard the sound of the door getting kicked in, angry voices rose, then faded, sounding muffled. A couple of minutes later I heard the back door opening. And then just the sound of the rain. I don't know how long they stood at the door above me, apparently looking out at the gruesome display in horror, but eventually a shout from inside prompted them into action. Two men appeared in the yard, carefully walking around the remains of their colleagues to collect the devil's former prison. I imagine these guys were terrified, probably shitting themselves at the idea that the devil might return. Or worse, that it had never left. That thought gave me pause for a moment, and I tried not to think too deeply about the fact that I had just used corpses as props without a second thought. Killing was worse, and anyway, they were the bad guys. I listened to the newcomers walk up the stairs with the vessel, back inside and through the house. They didn't come back. I heard the muffled speech from inside the house for a few more minutes, and then all was quiet.
Oliver had waited to make sure they were gone before coming to get me. The ruse had worked. Oliver was back in Warden Rosa's good graces, and would, in fact, be well compensated for the "inconvenience and misunderstanding" over the whole "unfortunate situation.""They're going to send someone to fix the door and clean up the mess out back tomorrow," he told me, sounding relieved as we walked back inside, heading into the kitchen. "I can finally put all this behind me.""That's great n- AHhh-hmm- news," I said, yawning, suddenly very sleepy. "I am glad everything worked out.""I want you to check in with me regularly," switching gears, he started to sound excited, "we need to monitor..." He started, sounding like he was about to rattle off a list, "...well, basically everything!" He finished instead. "You're tapped into a kind of magic that only gods and devils have accessed until now..." He looked thoughtful for a moment, stroking his chin, "hmmm...if the...might even be a demigod..." He muttered to himself, then he pulled a bit of parchment and a quill from his robes and started making notes. He then casually produced a knife and threw it at me.
I wasn't even remotely prepared, didn't react, didn't flinch. I had been watching the wolf-man taking notes, and waiting for him to finish his thought. And then I just watched as the knife seemed to spin through the air in slow motion, sticking right in my leg, "AHHHHH WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE" I screamed, finally catching up, looking to Oliver and indicating the knife, "WHYYYY?!?! GODDAMNIT!!""SORRY! Shit, I'm Sorry, kid! Shit...," Oliver said, also freaking out, "I thought... I don't think you're a demigod," he said as he hastily retrieved the knife, which also sent me into a fresh fit of cursing, and he started to staunch the bleeding. "I was checking to see if you had any kind of invulnerability, and I thought it would be better if you didn't see it coming," he said the last bit as he ran out of the room to retrieve his wand. "It's one of the most common traits shared by deities, even the weakest demigods and devils usually have it... Unfortunately," he continued, reappearing in the kitchen, "you seem to be just as vulnerable to a knife as you were before... Sorry about that...again," he said as he healed me.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.I had just been holding my leg wound and glaring through the walls at him."I could have come up with like 10 better ways to check that!" I said, still glaring, "also my blood doesn't grow on trees, I've lost a lot today already.""Relax," he said, waving his hand dismissively, "the healing takes care of that for you. You should be as good as new by now." He started to seem excited, "besides, we just learned a couple of important things about your condition that you're better off knowing right away. First," he started ticking off fingers at me, "you're as vulnerable to getting stabbed as anyone else. Second, you didn't develop any preternatural sense of being in danger. Third," he concluded, "your reactions don't seem to be any better than they were before either."Thinking about it, I wasn't sure about the last one. The knife did seem to move in slow motion for a second, but I hadn't really been alert at all before that, so I didn't even try to react. I wasn't about to bring that up though; despite what he said, I had bled enough."Okay, point made," I said, "I'll check in regularly. You're not wrong. But I want to know about whatever test you conduct beforehand from now on." Still a little annoyed, I asked the old dog, "how did you learn about all that stuff anyway? You seem to know an awful lot about it. Something you've researched?"He nodded his wolfy head, "It's a fascinating subject," he said, motioning for me to follow. "I attended the Farhollow Universalist College of Kildare," he told me with pride. I coughed to stifle a laugh."Their library is probably the 3rd or 4th largest in the world, next to the grand magus' library in Skyview of course, and possibly that one in the West Baronies." I followed him into the office upstairs where he indicated a certificate on the wall, before carefully navigating around the stacks of books to access one of the bookcases. "Here it is," he said, "this is a good place to start, I think." He showed me an old leather-bound tome with yellowing pages, "this is a journal that was kept by 4 members of the Order of the Hell Raisers. They're crusading knights that go to the hells, on purpose," he emphasized, "they mostly kill devils to prevent incursions, but they also have extensive dealings with devils that are more... Commercially motivated." He went on, "I've read several volumes like this and they include every detail when they work with devils; especially where it concerns their identity, the specific threats they may pose, and their weaknesses." He droned on, "A lot of people consider the Encyclopedia Infernum to be the authority on the hells, but you can't beat the first hand accounts written by people who had their ego and personal ambition trained out of them from childhood. That makes these texts much more valuable than any academic work on the subject.""So you went to school in the magic kingdom to study the hells?" I asked, flipping through the tome."No," he barked a laugh, "I went to school in the 'magic kingdom' to study magic, in all its forms. I'm a universalist," he said, "but I excelled more with the theory side of things than the application. I am more than competent as a caster, but my hands were always a bit shaky, and that just gets worse with time."
"What about you," he asked me, "where are you from?""Southgate, in the Western Baronies," I told him, ready to recite my character background, "my parents are hunters for the Viscount's estate, my brothers as well." I continued, making up the rest as I went, "my sister and I were both able to cast, and no one in the family knew where it came from or what to do. They sent us to a monastery to live with these monks who spend all their time meditating on the forces of nature. We were there for years. They did help with the control," I said, "but I got sick of seeing the same walls every day. So I came out here to see some of the world. A diviner I met on the road told me to come to the city and what I'd find here," I indicated my tattooed arm. "I've been on the road for months," I stifled a yawn, "and you know the rest.""Well, it's good that you have a loving family back home," Oliver said, stifling a yawn of his own, "sometimes it seems like every traveler I talk to has a tragic background. I don't know what the world is coming to."
Oliver gave me a purse with 50 gold coins and a couple of gemstones, each worth maybe twice that much. He also let me stay in his guest room for the night. I washed myself by the kitchen and went back upstairs to my room. I was weirdly feeling homesick. It felt like I hadn't seen my family in days, and I really just wanted to cuddle up with my girl and the gray boys and watch TV. I hadn't set an alarm or anything, but Amy should have gotten home around 11:30pm or Krom would have gotten hungry; one of them would have woken me up. I sat on the bed and tried to will myself awake. It didn't work. I kept trying and failing for a few minutes before it occurred to me that maybe, "...if I could go to sleep here, I might wake up at home." It hadn't worked like that so far, but that's how it had been working in the other direction, and things did seem to be changing, so why not? I lay on the bed, and closed my eyes, thinking about home.
I slept. I slept well, in fact. Dreamless, rejuvenating sleep, and when I woke up to the sun peeking through the East window, I knew it hadn't worked. I was still in Oliver's guest room. This sent me spiraling. Fuck me. Was I actually stuck there? I needed to get home to Amy, I couldn't leave her alone, I had to get back... This wasn't the first time that my dream-self had those kinds of thoughts, normally that would have been the queue for reality to start unraveling while I was chasing Amy. It didn't happen. I remained in the guest room, feeling as firmly anchored in place as I ever had in the real world. Uh oh...
I started going through various scenarios in my mind, attempting to conjure some rationale that explained my situation. I didn't think I was dead or dying, my brain seemed too alert and "reality" felt too solid for me to have been experiencing a flood of DMT...unless that thing about DMT releasing in the brain at the moment of death wasn't true. Was this the afterlife? "Yeahhhh, fuck that," I thought to myself, "I'll put a pin in the 'am I dead' thing for the moment, thank you very much." Maybe I'd had a stroke and was trapped inside my own mind? That might make sense, the brain will try to protect itself from emotional trauma by suppressing memories, maybe it could do something similar with creating scenarios to avoid something traumatic. I can't think of anything more terrifying than to be aware of my surroundings and trapped in my own helpless body. I couldn't think of a single good thing that would keep me there.
I was curled on the bed, trying to shake myself out of the dream and will myself to wake up.
"As you lay crying on Oliver's guest bed, feeling sorry for yourself and missing your family, you start remembering feeling ill and getting headaches when moving between worlds. You remember seeing a light retreating from you, back in the forest. It caused your first headache when you gazed upon it. Roll insight..."
Dice roll...Dice roll... ...Dice. Roll.
"Success! Okay... So, you are not going to believe this shit..."