Into The Mystic

INTO THE MYSTIC, A BALLAD OF NOVAGROVE

Verse 1: THE TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD

By SJ-Chan


In all the infinite realms, in all the galaxies that exist on every possible plane of existence, there are four constants: Spirit, Matter, Energy… and Poker. Naturally, what passes for poker in one realm might bear little resemblance to what the denizens of a neighboring reality would recognize. Nevertheless, the basics remain essentially the same: a group of players congregate to place bets on who among them has the best… let’s say cards. The players may not have actual cards, or even hands with which to hold them, but the congregation, the bets, and the relative ranking of possible outcomes are always part of the game.

So it was that when, on a balmy summer night at the Greenhill Tavern, T'Lexigar Machallo, Licensed Minstrel of the New Traditionalist Guild [Local 366, City of Yorvadan in the Imperius Province of Drigala, on Kal: innermost of the Inner Worlds of Novagrove, Aspect Reality 000001], sat down to play a friendly game of poker with two Forest Trolls, a Captain of the Imperius Dragoons, and an Alchemist, he became part of a vast continuum of similarly situated poker players, stretching farther than any sane mind can safely comprehend. T'Lexigar was completely oblivious to his current place in the Great Design, and rightly so.

On the other hand, T'Lexigar was a firm believer in the wisdom of his mentor, the venerable Bard Roberlein, who had, on more than one occasion, remarked, "T'Lexigar, m'lad, it does not pay to have too great a sense of your place in the grand scheme of things. At best it would only confuse you, at worst… drive you mad. And rare is the customer who will pay to hear a mad Minstrel."

T'Lexigar was, however, all too painfully aware of three things; he had a piss-poor hand, a scant 42 copper rits (a decent week's pay) left with which to bet, and everyone else at the table was waiting on him to put up or shut up.

"I fold," he sighed, tossing his cards down on the table in disgust.

"Mine!" rumbled the taller of the Forest Trolls as it gathered up the pot with one massive, leaf-covered branch, its knot-like eyes unreadable pools. The Trolls were named something or other, no doubt, but learning the names of Forest Trolls was never worth the effort, since a) their names all sound alike to Weren ears (even ears as sharp and discerning as T'Lexigar's) and b) those names are virtually indistinguishable from the sound an axe makes chopping through an upholstered footstool. Throughout the evening, the Minstrel had come to think of the pair as Loud and Annoying, in no particular order.

The Dragoon, whose name was – thankfully – no harder to pronounce than Polglase, gathered the cards in her hands and began shuffling.

"Did you hear about Shim Po?" the Alchemist asked as Polglase shuffled with military efficiency.

"Shim Po?" the Dragoon repeated. "Cannot say I recognize the name. Then again, I’m only here on leave."

"He’s the geezer who lives in that tower just over the Greenhill," the Alchemist, whose name was Herold, explained. "You must have seen it. It's a prominent local eyesore."

Polglase snorted. "You mean the edifice of such stark and clichéd malevolence that it might as well bear on its tallest parapet a banner proclaiming 'Bwa-Ha-Haaaa!'?"

"The very same," T'Lexigar replied. "Actually, I think that is exactly what the Visitor's Guide to Yorvadan says about it."

"As you say," Herold the Alchemist concurred. "Rumor has it dear old Shimmy was drummed out of the Guild of Mystics earlier today."

"Really?" T'Lexigar was surprised. He knew Shim Po, at least in passing, since the gaunt Mystic was wont to visit the Greenhill Tavern on occasion, where he habitually drank great quantities of fruitifed brandy and inflicted his opinions on those too polite to ignore him or too inebriated to move away. They’d even played poker on two unmemorable occasions, although they were more unmemorable because T'Lexigar had done his level best to forget they had ever happened than for any other reason. Shim Po possessed three characteristics that make for poor poker companions: body odor, boring conversation, and dumb luck. "From the way the old blowhard talked, you would have thought he practically ran the Guild," the Minstrel commented.

"Apparently not," observed Polglase, offering the deck for T'Lexigar to cut, which he dutifully did, even though he knew Polglase to be both an officer and a lady. ("Everyone’s innocent until proved guilty, but always cut the cards," was another from Roberlein's endless store of maxims.) "The game is Five-Card Stud. Ante up," she announced and began to deal. Anteing a rit, T'Lexigar watched the cards hit the table with crisp cadence, a round face down followed by another face up. Polglase provided the traditional card-by-card commentary, as if the players could not see what lay before them.

"Ten to friend Minstrel, six to the Troll, Empress to the, hmmm, other Troll, five to the potionmaker, and the dealer gets The Sword. Sword bets two," she said without bothering to look at her hole card. "It’s to you, lad." The Minstrel prudently peeked at his down card before proceeding. It was, of all things, another ten. Perhaps his luck was changing at last.

"Call," he responded. He spoke the single word with just a touch of feigned nonchalance, sufficient to make the non-Fae players think he was holding garbage but too proud to fold only two cards in. Such subtleties were, of course, wasted on the Trolls. He could have burst into tears and threatened to fling himself from a cliff in despair and they would scarcely have noticed. The others called as well.

Polglase continued with the next round. "Five for the Minstrel, no help. Seven to the Troll, possible straight. Another lovely lady for its cousin. Assassin for the Alchemist, possible flush. Dealer gets a three, also no help. Pair of Empresses bets," she reminded the second Troll helpfully.

"Bet five," grated Loud.

Herold, whose flush evidently did not strike him as all that possible, folded. Polglase finally took a look at her hole card. She considered for a minute, refilling her pipe. The Alchemist, taking advantage of the lull, continued his story. "Anyway, getting back to Shim Po; I have few details but scuttlebutt says the windbag was tossed out on his astral manifestation 'cause he'd not come up with a novel idea in the last century. Guess they finally got fed up with all the pointless blather… and the incessant abuse."

Polglase snapped her fingers, thereby lighting her pipe. "One can hardly blame them. Dealer calls."

"It's all pointless blather to me," T'Lexigar observed, playing absently with his coins and deliberating over his next move. "The Guild of Mystics might know what they're talking about, but everything I've heard from that crowd about theoretical magic has been as clear as cheese, and not half as tasty. You ever hear two or more of them argue? It’s like listening to a Ghan-Tazyr describe his rock collection."

"You here pollinate or play cards?" Annoying grumbled. "Call."

"Keep your bark on," snapped the Dragoon.

"I call," T'Lexigar decided, carefully counting five more from his dwindling stack.

The Captain resumed dealing. "Pair of fives to T'Lexigar, Adept of Wizards to Grumpy the Troll, no straight. Grumpy's eight for Troll Two, and dealer gets… cold rations," she concluded with disgust as she dealt herself the deuce of Warriors. "Empresses bet again."

"Bet five," Loud announced with authority.

"That’s enough for me," declared Polglase, turning her cards over.

T'Lexigar pondered. It was clear to him that the Forest Troll had no better than a pair of Empresses. If it had three, it would have bet more in the previous round, since it could certainly afford to do so. Forest Trolls were, to put it delicately, too straightforward to undersell their cards. If Loud had two pair, it would undoubtedly have bet more than five this time. No, it could have no better than what was plainly showing.
Loud began to "sing".

"I'm a happy troll, a happy, happy troll.
Happy happy,
Happy happy,
Happy happy troll,
I'm a happy troll, a happy, happy troll,
Troll, troll, happy troll…"

Clearly, Loud was bored. For reasons beyond the ken of mortalkind, Forest Trolls and their even dimmer cousins the Swamp Trolls, always sang that particular ditty when bored, although calling it a "song" stretched the term to the breaking point. It barely had a tune. The timbre (if one will pardon the obvious and unfortunate, if appropriate, pun) of a Forest Troll's voice is ill-suited for music of any kind; even at its most pleasantly modulated their vocalizations sound like a lathe turning a chunk of oak into a table leg. Moreover, the vocal range of an adult Forest Troll is barely three notes.

"Raise five." T'Lexigar hastened to throw in ten coins, as much to shut the Troll up as a strategic move.

Annoying, who had taken up its comrade's drone, stopped abruptly. "Too rich my sap. Fold."

Loud continued singing for another three seconds, then stared at the Minstrel with all five of its eyes. It lifted its hole card as if to make sure it had not changed, then looked at T'Lexigar's fives, then at its own Empresses. It was quite clearly doing the math in its head, a process that could conceivably last long enough to accommodate a change of seasons.

"I'm a happy troll, a happy happy troll," T'Lexigar murmured softly, sure that the Troll – whose language had no word for "irony" – would totally miss the point.

"Call," Loud decided at last. "Elf bluff."

T'Lexigar was not an Elf, but since the Imperial Weren race did have some Alfaen ancestry (hence the ear-points) the Minstrel took no offense.

Polglase looked at each of the remaining players in turn. "Right then… last cards," she said, shifting slightly in her seat, surreptitiously verifying that her scabbard was not caught on anything. It wasn’t that she expected trouble per se, but she hadn’t achieved her high rank, let alone her relatively advanced age, by being caught off guard. She knew the Minstrel was up to something, and she had a strong suspicion that the Trolls did, too.

"Ten of warriors to the, um, Elf," she smiled. "Two pair showing." She flipped over the next card, which landed with a resounding snap in front of Loud. "The Merry Man, a wild card. Three Empresses. Your bet, my good Troll."

Then Loud did the last thing T'Lexigar expected. "Check to pairs," it said. This was strategic thinking on a level almost unheard of for such creatures. The Minstrel had expected Loud to bet ten, perhaps twenty, which he would have called. If by some miracle, Loud actually had a fourth Empress or another eight, T'Lexigar would still have four rits left, enough pocket money to last him until his next engagement. By checking, however, the Troll had taken that option away. Loud was laying an obvious ambush. Whatever T'Lexigar bet, the Troll would certainly raise beyond the Minstrel's apparent ability to match. In a table stakes game, that would put T'Lexigar squarely 'twixt archer and target. Naturally, he could check as well, but the very idea stuck in the Minstrel's craw. If word got out that he'd let a Forest Troll scare him off, his reputation as a card player would be lower than a Dwarf's underthings.

Throwing all caution to the West Wind, T'Lexigar pushed his entire stack forward. "All in," he declared. "That's twenty-four," he added for emphasis.

"See twenty-four," screeched the Troll in what was either great pain or glee. "Raise one, two, three, four..." Loud laboriously counted his remaining coins. "…forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. Raise forty-three," it repeated with an unmistakable air of triumph.

All eyes – not only those of the players but also those of several onlookers who possessed that uncanny instinct common to dogs and Necromancers that alerts them to something potentially dangerous in the offing – shifted to T'Lexigar. He willed himself not to sweat. Reaching behind his head, he slid the heavy platinum guild badge from where it kept his long, thick, blue-black hair in a ponytail. From within the badge's recesses, his dexterous fingers tripped the secret catch, releasing a hexagonal talen from its hiding place.

"For emergencies only," Rhadavatra, his mother, had advised as she’d pressed the coin upon him more than thirty years earlier, the day he'd left home to begin his apprenticeship. His father, Hussak, on the other hand, had spared him not even a parting glance. Well, this most definitely qualifies, he mused, certain his mother would not have agreed. He laid the coin, its flawless silver circuitry winding through clear smooth diamond, dazzlingly bright, on the table by the dull coppers.

"Three short," growled Loud.

T'Lexigar removed his belt knife from its sheath and laid it on the table. It was a fine blade, a gift from a generous – and flexible – female admirer. "Who will advance me three rits against this dagger?" he asked.

Several onlookers chorused their willingness, but Polglase quickly tossed three of her own coppers into the pot. "Done and done," she said with no-nonsense finality. "Time to showdown."

Loud flipped over its hole card – a pretty but pointless Magister. "Beat that," it dared the Minstrel, who sighed inwardly in great relief.

"Very well," the Minstrel agreed, keeping all trace of gloating from his voice. "Castle, tens over fives."

"HA!" Loud barked. "Troll win!"

"No," Polglase countered calmly. "Troll lose. You have three Empresses. He has a Castle." She spoke slowly, using clipped syllables. "Castle beats three Empresses. Minstrel Win."

"Have FOUR Empress!" the Forest Troll protested. "One. Two. Three. FOUR!"

"No." Polglase spoke even slower, tapping each card in turn with her pipe. "One Empress. Two Empress. Three Empress… and one Magister. Magister, not Empress."

"Pretty like Empress!" Loud insisted.

"That is as may be," the Dragoon retorted mildly. "You lose,Minstrel win."

"Not four?" Annoying wondered, sounding almost plaintive.

"No." affirmed the Dragoon. "Better luck next time."

T'Lexigar retrieved his dagger first, slid it back into place, and repaid the three rits loaned against it. He then raked in the pot with swift but not rushed movements, all the while keeping one eye on the Trolls, now staring at the space where, moments before, all of Loud's money had been. As the last of the coins entered his pouch, T'Lexigar slipped it into his purse and rose from the table.

"Good friends," he said, "I have a long journey ahead of me on the morrow, so I reluctantly bid you all good fortune and good…"

But before he could finish his gracious exit line, Loud interrupted with the very last words in all creation that T'Lexigar wished to hear.

"Elf cheat," Loud declared.

An almost theatrical hush fell over the vicinity and rippled outwards until it filled the room. Loud was not really accusing T'Lexigar of trickery. In essence, and to the Trollish mind, "Elf cheat" was shorthand for "You won the hand that I should have won, and I want my money back."

T'Lexigar, failing to understand such subtleties of Trollish thought, tried appealing to both logic and forbearance, two commodities not well-stocked in a Forest Troll's mental larder. Using his most calming tone of voice, and as a Licensed Minstrel T'Lexigar had a voice that could make charging wild boars halt in their tracks and have a nice lie-down, he made a good faith attempt at placating Loud. "Now that is just not true, noble Troll. T’was merely the turn of the cards. As I am sure you remember, this worthy officer dealt the hand." T'Lexigar indicated Polglase. "I am a much less trustworthy fellow, to be sure, but I had no opportunity to influence the cards. Besides, I would never dream of cheating such a stout and, um, upstanding” (the aggrieved Forest Troll had risen to its roots and drawn itself up to its full six spans, half again as tall as the Minstrel) “example of Trollkind as yourself. Next time, perhaps the soothing kiss of Kativa, Goddess of Good Fortune, be placed sweetly on your backside."

"Elf cheat!" repeated Loud. [Translation: "You are talking when you should be giving me my money back and then beating yourself over the head with a cudgel for daring to have a better hand than I did."]

"Elf cheat!" agreed Annoying [Translation: "What it said!]. The other Troll, too, rose from its crouch. Polglase and the Alchemist also stood. The latter took a few steps back, trying to blend in with the retreating crowd of onlookers, but Polglase stood her ground, resting one hand on the hilt of her sword.

"Let's keep this peaceful," the Dragoon warned quietly, but with as much hard steel in her voice as in her scabbard.
"I'm sure we can…" began T'Lexigar, as he took the nine-stringed mandojo from where he'd slung it over the back of his chair.

But before he could sling the instrument across his back, thereby freeing a hand with which to pick up his rapier, both Trolls roared in unison with sufficient volume to knock three fleeing patrons off their feet, "ELF CHEAT!!"

Loud took a mighty swing with one of its five grasping branches, hitting Polglase squarely across both breasts, the impact propelling the Dragoon backwards over an adjacent table, in the process sending a pitcher and two glasses clattering to the floor and somehow spinning a plate of sausages right into an ogre's gaping shark-toothed maw, where it lodged tightly.

Then all hell broke loose.

Copyright 2001-2020. All Rights and all that.

 

INTO THE MYSTIC, A BALLAD OF NOVAGROVE

Verse 2: GLORIA

By SJ-Chan

"Michael, I just don't have the time or inclination to argue with you right now," Gloria Robinette said with more than a trace of exasperation. "Just cover the bar for another half hour. If Buzz doesn't show by then, we'll discuss overtime."

Michael St. John glared, but left Gloria's office without further complaint. Tuesday night was far from the busiest at Gilda's Tavern, even during the summer, but with a bartender running an hour late and possibly a no-show, that left her only one person behind the bar to handle the late shift. Michael had clocked in at 11:30 a.m. and was entitled to relief, but Zoot couldn't handle things all by herself. Even a slow Tuesday night in July required two bartenders and four waitresses just to keep the tourists, locals, and day sailors in Sam Adams and free snacks.

Buzz Kochanski's absenteeism was just one item on Gloria's all too lengthy “Resolve Pronto” list. The distributor had shorted her half the vodka she’d ordered and supplied three cases of Cointreau instead of three bottles. The brand new digital jukebox was acting up, one of the pool tables was out of commission until the felt could be replaced, and there was a recurring problem with the lights in the Ladies' Room. And, topping her list, number one with a bullet, the weekend's entertainment had canceled. That gave her three days to find a replacement, an impossible task during high season. Still, she could always press Uncle Tully into service, although his repertoire relied a little too heavily on material that had been cutting edge when vinyl was a relatively new recording medium.

It was at times like this that she missed her father the most. Gilda's had been Bertram Robinette's pride and joy, and he thrived on the challenges of running a seaside watering hole. His death the previous November had left the bar and all its hassles to his eldest child, who loved the place almost as much as he had, but hadn’t figured on taking command of the good ship Gilda's for another decade or two, if ever.

Bert had been diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer linked to asbestos, ten months before his death. In the late 1960s, he'd worked the New London shipyards, where he had been exposed to large quantities of the stuff, then used to insulate boilers and pipes on naval vessels. In his last few coherent days, he'd told Gloria that he bore the asbestos no ill will.

"It may be killing me now, but working in the shipyards kept me out of Nam, so it probably saved my life, too. Karma. ‘Sides, if I hadn't worked the yards, I’d never met your mum, never had you, Red. So on the whole, I got no complaints."

Bert met and married Gilda O'Leary in 1968, and seven years later founded the tavern that still bore her name twenty-two years after her death. Gloria had barely known her mother, victim of a hit-and-run when Gloria was barely able to talk. Raised single-handedly by her father, she had come to rely on him for just about everything, and he had lavished all the considerable love he had to offer on her. Even after his remarriage (which had seemed like such a good idea at the time) and the birth of his other two children, Bert Robinette lived for the red-haired daughter who so resembled his beloved Gilda, and she loved him back just as deeply and unreservedly. So when illness grew too much for him, she had – over his objections – dropped out of med-school and come home to care for him and the bar. She had, after all, worked there every summer since high school, and knew all the tricks of the trade. However, knowing something and doing it were two different kettles of chowder, as Grandma Robinette would have said.

Gloria called the last agent in her Rolodex and got voice mail, so she left a suitably desperate voice-mail message, then turned her attention to the never-ending paperwork. She was interrupted by a knock on the open door. An African-American woman with purple racing stripes in her close-cropped hair stood there, looking apologetic.

"Hey, Zoot? Whassup?"

"I have some classic good news/bad news for you," her friend and employee reported.

Gloria's heart sank. "Let me guess. The good news is that Buzz is here."

"Right. The bad news –"

"Is that Buzz is here," Gloria finished. "How bad is he?"

Zoot looked uncomfortable as she weighed her next words. Finally, she said, "Bad."

"Have him to come on back. Let's try and keep this as private as possible"

"I'll try, G, but frankly I don't think he'll listen to me."

"Do your best. That's all I can ask."

Zoot left, returning alone minutes later. Gloria gave her a questioning look but Zoot just shrugged. Pushing herself to her feet, Gloria suddenly felt twice her twenty-five years. This, she sensed, was going to get ugly.
Gilda's Tavern was located at the junction of West Main and Water Streets in Mystic, Connecticut [part of the United States of America, situated on a world designated Earth, third planet of the Sol stellar system, an unaffiliated world of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Virgo Supercluster of the Higgs Expanse of the Fief of Storms in Aspect Reality 823,543]. The Tavern, formerly Rafterty's, dated back to the Depression, but when Bert Robinette purchased it in 1975, his very first act had been to change the name to “Gilda's”. The kitchen provided a limited menu of burgers, chicken wings, nachos, deli sandwiches, soups, and deep-fried things, and was closed Monday through Friday between 7 and 7:30 pm so Uncle Tully could watch Jeopardy. For its patrons' enjoyment, it offered three pool tables (two currently operational), a jukebox (currently wonky) with a small dance floor (currently unoccupied), and live music (God willing) on weekend nights. Happy "Hour" from 4:30 'til 7, M-F. The décor was eclectic, to say the least, but consisted mainly of vintage movie posters from the forties and fifties. The most prominent decorations were the two pictures behind the bar: a large black and white framed photograph of Rita Hayworth in her most famous film role on one side and a similarly sized oil portrait of the late Gilda Robinette dressed and coifed in the exact same fashion on the other. On the night in question, there were perhaps thirty-five patrons consuming beer and various mixed drinks at the tables and six more at the bar itself (well below the capacity set by local ordinance), but it was just before 9:00 pm on a Tuesday night in July, and things would pick up soon, as they always did once the sun set.

Gloria Robinette (like T'Lexigar Machallo) was also an equally unwitting part of a vast continuum stretching farther than any sane mind can safely comprehend. In her case, owners of businesses whose primary reason for existence is to allow sentient beings to gather together and trade items of value for the right to ingest things that are not all that good for their health. Gloria was also completely oblivious of her place in the Great Design. She had problems that were shared by billions of lifeforms, true enough, but knowing that would have given her scant solace.

In one way, however, she was unique. At that precise moment in time, across the full spectrum of such business owners, there were 6,787,900,461,282,995 who faced the task of terminating an underling's employment. Of that number, 42.6% were choosing that option because the employee had become habitually unreliable. The reason for such unreliability in almost a full third of such instances was the too-frequent consumption of (among other things) the very substances the establishment sold. In just over 25,000 of that limited subset did the employer have a history with the employee that extended beyond the purely professional to the (for lack of a more graphically accurate term) "romantic." But in only one of those billions of interactions had that history involved the owner being so emotionally drained and totally snockered as to have engaged in a quickie on a pool table with an egotistical jerk of a bartender one night after closing, the same pool table now in need of felt replacement (although not for that reason).

Gloria, generally not that kind of girl, had immediately regretted the moment of weakness which had come a scant two weeks after her father's death. Buzz had had the right body parts to satisfy her needs: ears to listen, hands to pour tequila shots, lips to feign sympathy, a shoulder to cry on, and a yin to her yang. In retrospect, Gloria sensed she would have done far better to unburden herself to Zoot, who was probably as much a sexual opportunist as Buzz, but at least had the scruples not to take advantage of a drunken woman who had just been left with the full responsibility of caring for two adolescent siblings and a bar named after her dead mother. Zoot would, doubtless, have been a better choice in terms of gratification, too, truth be told.

Most important, Zoot would have seen the occasion for what it was, and had the decency not to try to initiate a repeat performance several times a day, every day, for the next seven weeks. It had taken Buzz that long to realize that "Not if you looked like Brad Pitt and were dipped in chocolate" did indeed mean "No." After that, Buzz's work ethic – never exemplary to begin with – had begun a steady spiral downward. He started showing up late, at first once a week, then more often. His breaks got progressively longer. He called in "sick", usually on weekdays when his tips would be comparatively meager. He spent more time flirting with the female patrons, especially when Gloria was in the room. He was never brazenly rude to her, but there was an undercurrent of hostility. And it was clear he was drinking on the job, and probably smoking something a bit harder as well, if his jagged demeanor after breaks was any indication. Gloria had no proof, just gut feeling, but she trusted her instincts. Most of the time.

As she walked down the hall from her office to the steady thrum of the jukebox's speakers, she saw Buzz standing behind the bar, looking as wasted as a vote for a third-party candidate. He was unshaven, his hair uncombed, and his shirt sweat-stained under both armpits. Sunglasses perched jauntily atop of his head, he was talking to three men and a woman, all – including Buzz – drinking shooters and laughing way too loud.

"Gloria?" Michael St. John was suddenly standing beside her.

"Stick around, Michael," she instructed him. "You'll get your overtime."

"You need any help?" he asked, obviously ill at ease.

She shook her head. "I hope not. We'll see."

Gloria strode up to the bar and tried to edge her way through the small crowd between her and Buzz. When they didn't respond to her calm "Excuse me, please," she tapped the young woman – a bottle blonde with a halter-top and cut-offs – on the shoulder, and repeated her request with a little more emphasis.

"I'm stan’in' e'ar, grandma," the blonde sneered.

"Very good," Gloria replied. "The ability to stand upright when clearly blind drunk is quite the useful talent. Now shall we see if the legs work well enough for you to move two steps to the left? That would be in that direction," she pointed. The blonde blew smoke in Gloria's face, staring defiantly. Gloria stared right back and it was the blonde who grudgingly gave way. Gloria moved two steps closer to her objective. "Buzz?"

He glanced briefly at his employer, then returned to his conversation with the three men. They were apparently talking about the Red Sox, who had beaten the Twins earlier that day.

"Buzz, can I see you in my office, please?" Gloria struggled to keep her voice calm, but could not keep the edge out of it.

"You're interrupting, Gloria," he drawled without looking at her. "I'll stop by when I get a chance."

"Now, Buzz!" she snapped.

He turned and looked in her direction. "I – said – when – I – get – a – chance! What's the matter? Don't you understand English? Or do you just understand Icelandic, you frigid bitch?"

"Icelandic!" one of the men snorted. "Good one, Buzz."

On closer examination she recognized the men as Billy Thurber, Nick Torkelson, and Nick's kid brother Dell, three of Buzz's old high school cronies. Buzz, Billy, and Nick had all played varsity football together. In the years since, they had not noticeably matured past the butt-slapping camaraderie of the locker room. They were all-too-regular habitués of the bar during the low season, and she had had to cut them off on more than one occasion. The girl was a stranger, but she didn't look old enough to be drinking here legally. In fact, she didn't even look old enough to drive legally.

"Buzz, you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?" she asked, making one last effort to salvage a situation that was zipping from bad right past worse to calamitous.

"I do everything the hard way," Buzz bragged. "Ain't that right, Ashley?" He leered at the blonde, who giggled. "Of course, you and the pool table already know that, right, Red?" His use of her father's pet name with such contemptuous familiarity was the match that lit her fuse. Gloria had worked hard all her life to belie the cliché regarding redheads and their tempers, but there were times you simply had to give rein to your inner warrior princess.

"Okay, Aloysius," she snarled, giving each syllable of Buzz's given name equal emphasis. "I want you, your sidekicks, and your pimply-assed, jailbait, mall-trash skank out of here in sixty seconds, or I'm gonna kick your limp-dick, crackhead, Rayban knock-off wearing ass all the way to the state line! "

"Who you calling skank, you…" the blonde began, but Buzz shushed her.

"You firing me, Red?" he said, smirking.

"I'm doing more than just firing you!" she yelled. "I'm banning you AND your posse from Gilda's. Forever. You show your butt-ugly face in my place ever again, and as God is my witness, you'll be singing soprano."

"Oh, I'll leave, all right. And wait 'til you see the sexual harassment suit I'm gonna file! In six months, I'll own this joint and you'll be the one who's banned. And you want to know the first thing I'll do after I take over? I'll get rid of this stupid, cheesy painting!" With that, Buzz snatched a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue from the bar and threw it with all his might at the portrait of the late Gilda Robinette, where the three hundred dollar bottle of whiskey tore a hole just under her hairline before shattering on the brick wall behind it.

Then all hell broke loose.

Copyright 2001-2020. All Rights and all that.

 

INTO THE MYSTIC, A BALLAD OF NOVAGROVE

Verse 3: 19th NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

by SJ-Chan

"Addle-pated fools!" Shim Po bellowed for the twentieth time in as many minutes. "They wouldn't know an original idea if it climbed up their beards and kissed them on the lips!"

"Yes, Master," Rogi hastened to agree. Hastened agreement was 70% of the manservant's responsibilities, and Rogi was a proudly humble member of the Guild of Toadies, Sycophants, Lackeys, and Minions (Local 8561), where he taught a post-graduate seminar once a month on Advanced Sniveling and Back-Handed Compliments. He had been employed by Shim Po for just over eight hundred years, although he'd actually worked perhaps an eighteenth of that time.

Shim Po, Magnus and former Chancellor of the Guild of Mystics, paced around the study which occupied the entire top floor of the dark and brooding tower, his face indigo with outrage. He had never been so humiliated in his life, and that was saying something. He had borne thousands of insults from his peers over the past millennia, ranging from gentle ribbing to acerbic jokes to pointed barbs to outright name-calling. Maybe he had not borne it all that well, but he had contented himself with muttering, shouting, excessive drinking, and a few random acts of cruelty directed against people and property wholly unconnected to the insults in question. Generally, he had left the other Mystics alone, more out of craven fear of reprisal than any sense of morality, although he had arranged (anonymously) to have 400,000 copies of An Utter Berk’s Guide to Space and Time delivered to the Guildhall after one particularly galling session where his monograph "Sensory Input as a Basis for Rational Acceptance" had been denied publication in the Journal of the Allaq'Myran Mystical Association by every single member of the Editorial Committee.

"Seeing is Believing," sniffed Editor-in-Excelsis Lafcadio Hyssop, "is hardly a novel concept."

"Addle-pated fools!" Shim Po repeated, sweeping a stack of Journals off the table with a brush of his mind.

"Yes, Master," Rogi once again hastened to agree as the cordbound digests fluttered to the ground.

"They. Will. Be. Sorry. Rogi. By Vara, Midra, and Pala, they will pay for their arrogance. Somehow, someday, they will know the pain they have inflicted upon me a million-fold. Nay, a million-million fold!"

"That would be a trillion, Master," Rogi offered helpfully, beginning to pick up the scattered folios.

"I know that, dolt!" Shim Po sneered. "I was striving for dramatic effect through repetition, but such nuances of rhetoric are obviously wasted on a dimwitted slumgullion such as you!”

"Yes, Master," Rogi replied dutifully.

Shim Po gazed skyward, or more exactly, ceiling-ward, since in order to literally gaze skyward he would have had to descend two levels and stick his head out a window. Since Shim Po believed that fresh air had a negative effect on higher thought processes, his study had no windows. When thinking, he preferred things stuffy.

"Why must I constantly be surrounded by morons?" he moaned, apparently addressing a nest of spiders that had taken up residence directly above his head. If he had meant his question for the Gods, they were as unconcerned with his complaints – and existence – as were the spiders.

"I don’t know, Master," Rogi commiserated, although he had a suspicion that Shim Po was often in the company of morons because he spent so much time alone. Shim Po, Mystic of Yorvadan, did not often seek out the company of strangers, and they gladly returned the favor. He was a stoop-shouldered, pigeon-chested, bowlegged git with a scraggly beard, watery eyes, and red teeth. He had no friends, having alienated every single wizard of any standing in a ten-thousand wing radius at one time or another over the course of his long life. The only folk who spoke well of him were local tradespeople, for Shim Po was stupefyingly wealthy, always paid his accounts promptly, and felt that haggling was beneath his dignity.

Ultimately, Shim Po was surrounded by morons because he considered every other person, fae creature, and spirit his intellectual inferior by several orders of magnitude. Unlike T'Lexigar Machallo and Gloria Robinette, Shim Po had a very clear idea of his place in the Great Design: he was at the very center of it.

This is not to say that Shim Po was wholly without good qualities. He was, for example, extremely punctual and cared for his aged mother quite generously, if by proxy. On the whole, however, his faults far outweighed his virtues. At one time he had been a bright young man and his treatise regarding the relationship between Truth and Essence was still regarded as a seminal work in the field of Trans-Dimensional Philosophy. Unfortunately, like so many prodigies, he had been so spoiled by an overabundance of praise that the well of his inspiration had been tainted thereby. His later works had never matched that early accomplishment, in either scope or brilliance. He had shot his intellectual bolt far too early, and it was about all he had to offer. By the time anyone realized this, it was too late to change his mindset. Accustomed at an early age to being considered brilliant, Shim Po clung to that rock long after all others had abandoned it and swum ashore.

Having never learned humility, Shim Po was a prime target for humiliation. Totally without humor, he was an easy butt for jokes. Most of all, he was convinced he knew everything, so he rarely bothered to learn. He read voraciously, primarily so he could write long scathing letters to the authors explaining how intellectually bankrupt they were. He had accumulated an impressive library in that fashion, consisting almost wholly of books he despised. At times like these, feeling especially aggrieved by the opinions of other, lesser minds, he had a standard response. He would choose one of the many volumes he had not yet gotten around to reading and write a vitriolic review of its contents. After that, he usually felt better.

"Rogi, fetch my correspondence file!" he commanded. "There must be something here by one of those imbecilic has-beens that I have not yet read. I shall give them a taste of the hell they have put me through!" As Rogi scurried away, Shim Po bent over and regarded three shelves of relatively new purchases with a critical eye, all the while continuing his rant. "Hell is too good for that lot, with their stupid Journal, and their tiny little brains, and their neatly pressed robes. Hyssop's latest must be here somewhere. I shall write a letter that will make him feel like seven devils had made his degradation their life's work…."

He trailed off, as something just beyond his consciousness knocked at the back door of his mind. All at once, a brilliant light appeared above Shim Po's head.

"Here, Master," said Rogi, holding a light globe. "Does this make it easier for you to see the titles?"

Shim Po waved a dismissive hand at his lackey without looking at him. Instead, he plucked a slim volume from the bottom shelf, then creakily returned to an upright position. Clutching the book to his chest, the Mystic ordered Rogi to brew some yeg-sai-bok. "Lots of it, Rogi. You see, I am evolving a plan."

"Is it a cunning plan, Master?" Rogi asked eagerly.

"Oh, do shut up. Just get the damn tea!" Shim Po sank into his favorite chair as Rogi headed to the kitchen. "I have reading to do."

Yeg-sai-bok was a tea, an extremely expensive blend reputed to expand the consciousness and bring greater scope and efficiency to the mind. Rogi had tasted some once; it made his sinuses ache and stained his teeth pink. By the time he returned with the tea service, Shim Po had relocated to his desk and was using the vellum he had intended for his indictment of Hyssop's limited imagination for an entirely different purpose. The Mystic had covered half a dozen pages with runes, dimensional and astrophysical symbols, and myriad arcane diagrams. Rogi set the self-heating tea service next to the Mystic, poured him a cup, and then retired to a corner to await his master's next command. Shim Po paid his minion scant heed. The mage muttered to himself, cackled a few times, scowled quite a bit, and occasionally crumpled a sheet of paper and threw it to the floor. Each one was dutifully retrieved, smoothed out, and placed neatly in a file drawer labeled ‘Rejected Ideas’ by the faithful manservant. Shim Po had an ironclad rule: "Never Throw Anything I Write Away." Rogi's collection of more than eight centuries’ worth of shopping lists, for example, filled an entire chamber on the tower's seventh floor. The less said about the Mystic's brief flirtation with lyric poetry, the better.

When Shim Po finished the first pot of tea, he demanded another. "Oh, and some oatmeal cookies," the wizard called over his shoulder.

"Yes, Master!" Rogi replied.

"With raisins!"

"Yes, Master!"

"But no nuts."

"Yes, Master, I mean no, Master!"

"And a grilled cheese sandwich!"

"Yes, Master!" Rogi called as he continued down the stairs, "May it give you pimples," he grumbled.

"What was that, Rogi?" Shim Po demanded.

"I said 'Good to keep things simple,' Master!"

By the time the sun set, Shim Po had finished three pots of tea and had a pretty good buzz going. He checked and re-checked his figures, but could find no flaw in his plan. To be sure, the book that had inspired him was written in Ganta, a language he’d only studied for three years in his youth thousands of years earlier, and thus the going was a little slow, but it laid everything out for him quite neatly. Entitled From Here to There, it was written by a renowned Tazyr Wizard named Thorgrim Karschild.

The Tazyr are an Elder race, of the standard configuration, and sometimes called Dwarves, though there is nothing dwarfish about them. Yes, they are shorter than the average Wer or Elf, but not by much and they are by no means stunted in either appearance or intellect. They are well-muscled, quite nimble, extremely industrious, and more inventive than is entirely safe. They excel at mining, sculpture, carpentry, and scholarship. Tazyr opera is among the most moving and emotional theatrical experiences one can have. Mist of the Mountains, by the Rafesh-Tazyr Moldon Voxgluuv, for example, is widely regarded as an opus of jaw-dropping greatness; primarily due to the sheer mind-blasting beauty of the infra-bass music, but also because keeping one's mouth closed during a performance can loosen the teeth of most listeners. Tazyr are notoriously bad at only three things: farming, baking (their bread is so hard and gritty that even they don't like it, they just eat it to prove how tough they are), and getting things off the top shelf without an axe.

On the other hand, if there is one thing the Tazyr understand better than almost anyone else it’s tunnels. It is therefore hardly surprising that few wizards outshine them in the study and implementation of Interdimensional Travel. After all, once one has mastered the difficult task of boring through solid rock, how much more difficult can it be to drill through the Manifolds, those insubstantial and largely theoretical barriers that separate one Reality from another?

Actually, it proved to be quite difficult. Before the Tazyr had set their collective minds to the problem, nearly all interdimensional travel not accomplished by means draconic, deamonic, fae, or divine had been purely accidental. The vast majority of interdimensional rifts occur naturally in the wake of Chaos Storms, unpredictable events attributable to high concentrations of free-floating magical residue. Such rifts are, by their very nature, short lived and erratic, connecting realities pretty much at random. Wizards such as Karschild had devoted themselves wholeheartedly over the last 10 eons to the goal of crafting and improving controlled gateways between different planes, and if the book was to be believed, Karschild had achieved some measure of success in the areas of simplification and targeting.

Shim Po's original plan was to open an interdimensional tunnel between the Mystic Guildhall and Hell, fitting punishment for what they had put him through. However, there were several drawbacks to that idea. First, it would require his actual presence at either one terminus or the other when the tunnel was created. Since part of his dismissal from the Guild was a ward effectively barring him from the guildhall, the only other option appeared to be going to Hell himself, an option best left for never.

The second problem, even if he overcame the first, was there was nothing in the nature of such a passage that would force the Mystics into the aperture to be deposited in Hell. He might have a low opinion of their collective intelligence, but he didn't think they were dim enough to say "Ooooh, look at the big hole in the space/time continuum! Let's all go and see where it leads!" The infernal denizens on the other end might prove more adventuresome but he simply could not count on that either.

The fact that he really did not understand Ganta all that well he dismissed as inconsequential.

He’d wrestled long and hard with these problems, though, taking them in order. After an hour, he decided what he really needed was two tunnels, one to the guildhall and one to Hell, both originating from the very room where he now labored, thus saving him having to actually go outside… or anywhere else. He was so pleased with his own cleverness that he rewarded himself with a double shot of purple flavored brandy, savoring the citrusy warmth as he worked. Keeping Mystics and devils alike out of his study was relatively simple; he’d create a Sphere of Protection that overlapped the ends of both tunnels, much like sticking two crystal tubes into a hollow rubber ball.

Eventually, he came up with a solution to the second problem, and that brainstorm clearly merited another slug of brandy, which relaxed him so much he could no longer feel his toes. He would simply combine the tunnel spell with a unidirectional chaos vortex, which would suck anything approaching the entrance into the tunnel and shoot it through to the terminus, while preventing its return by dint of the hyperdynamic winds that would be a by-product of the vortex.

There was only one more problem, the ultimate problem in fact: should he even do this thing at all?

Shim Po was many unsavory things, but he had never been a villain. He had never crossed the line from petty vindictiveness to outright evil, a line he knew once crossed would create a one-way moral vortex as powerful as the magical one he envisioned for his instrument of revenge. But what else did he have to live for? Word of his disgrace was already spreading, and soon there would not be a Mystic, Mage, or Sorcerer anywhere who wouldn't consider him beneath notice. One act of villainy, especially on this grand a scale, would perhaps place him on a slippery slope to eventual arrest or worse, but wouldn't he rather be hated than ignored?

He stood from his desk at last, straightened his robe (which had gotten all bunched up in the back from where he had been sitting on it), and strode to the center of the room.

"The die is cast…" he began, then – sensing no reaction – cleared his throat loudly. Rogi came awake with a start, leapt to his feet, then stood at attention. Once he was sure of his audience, Shim Po began again. "The die is cast. There is no other option. I have been wronged, and those who have wronged me must answer for their transgression."

He steeled himself for his next pronouncement, which would contain a word that would indelibly delineate the point at which his future path toward villainy would surely begin. He took a deep breath, then proclaimed "As Shaverak, Lord of Revenge, is my witness, those addle-pated fools will RUE the day they incurred the wrath of Shim Po!"

"No, Master! Not RUE!" Rogi pleaded, outwardly aghast but inwardly thinking: Give it a rest, you old blowhard.

"Yes, I said RUE, and I meant RUE! Now come, Rogi. We have preparations to make."

The preparations consisted mainly of moving heavy furniture (Rogi's job) and explaining the brilliance of the Master Plan (Shim Po's). Once a sufficiently large open space had been cleared, Shim Po directed his assistant to use a mixture of ground dragon eggshells (for strength), Hibernia root (for indelibility and toughness), yellow paint (for high visibility) and cinnamon (to hide the smell of the Hibernia root) to draw a perfect circle eight spans in diameter on the floor. In that circle, Rogi then inscribed an eleven-pointed star to establish the Sphere of Protection. In the center of the star, Shim Po himself added the symbol for Chaos, which he would use to anchor the Seed which would serve as a focus for his Vortex spell. The Chaos Seed, of course, was the key to the whole operation. Without it, he would produce nothing more dangerous than the typical Wizardpark ride. With the Seed (which had come into his possession through a series of highly questionable business dealings), however, he could harness primal forces that were in some ways as powerful as the gods themselves. The fact that in so doing he would be breaking the law, violating several dozen local safety ordinances, and tampering with the very fabric of reality gave him barely a moment’s pause. He stood back, surveyed his work, then – as an afterthought – added two arrows, so he would remember which tunnel went to which location.

Shim Po struggled to his feet, shrugging off Rogi's attempts to aid him. Fists on hips, he inspected the groundwork they had laid with a critical eye. Satisfied with the results, he took another long pull at the brandy bottle. Spell preparation, he reasoned, was thirsty work.

Rogi busied himself lighting eleven blackcurrant tapers around the room, corresponding to the eleven points of the star in the circle, while Shim Po wrestled with one last dilemma before beginning the series of incantations that would set his grand scheme in motion: which direction would the vortex point? After due consideration, during which time he polished off the rest of the brandy, he concluded that the passage should be one-way from Hell to the Guild.

"After all," he explained to Rogi, "It is one thing to unleash a few infernal creatures on a gaggle of doddering old Mystics. That is admittedly the act of a villain, but only an arch-villain would be so heartless as to inflict that assemblage of nincompoops on a realm of unsuspecting devils."

"Dark Angels," Rogi corrected.

"What?"

"Dark Angels, not devils, Master. The Nine Cities of Hell are populated by Dark Angels, since they are cognate to the Heavenly Reaches where Light Angels dwell. Devils are actually from Abadoon, which is counterpoised to both Heaven and Hell, and is a wholly separate…." Rogi finally took note of the frosty gaze which his master had fixed on him, and trailed off. After an uncomfortable pause, he rushed to continue. "Um, I probably have that wrong, Master. Please forgive my impertinence; I spoke without thinking."

"It is a good thing I need you to hold the book, you know. Otherwise there would be nothing left of you but your molars," Shim Po glowered.

"Yes, Master!"

"Now, if you are done interrupting me, may we begin?"

"Of course, Master!" Rogi sniveled. "At your command!"

"Fetch my Chaos Seed!" the Mystic commanded, pointing in the general direction of a stuffed owl perched atop the nearest bookcase.

Rogi looked in that direction. "Up there, Master?" he inquired.

"Of course not, you buffoon!" Shim Po thundered. "From the Vault!"

"The Vault is in the basement, Master. Why are you pointing upwards?"

"For effect!"

"Should have known," Rogi muttered, as he scurried away. Minutes later he returned, holding a rather shabby wooden casket at arms' length and looking afraid it would explode at any second. "Here, Master."

"Do not give it to me!" Shim Po snapped. "Put it in the center of the Circle. And whatever you do, don't drop it."

Rogi gulped, gently lowered the box to the rune marked floor, setting it directly over the symbol of Chaos, then slunk back away from it as if afraid any sudden move might awaken the slumbering seed and cause it to pounce upon him.

"Very good. Now what?" Shim Po was feeling a trifle dizzy and was having some trouble concentrating. Rogi gaped at him, fighting the urge to turn and flee. "Wait – I remember! First, the Sphere of Protection." This was relatively simple, and soon a twelve-span sphere of force, impenetrable to all physical and all but the most potent magical forces, sprang into existence, shimmering and pulsing in the flickering candlelight. With a casual (and unnecessary) wave of the hand, he disintegrated the wooden container within, leaving what looked for all the world like an extremely desiccated prune in its place. That done he focused his will into the Chaos Rune, and the Seed rose into the air, rotating slowly. Deprived of the residue which it needed to blossom, the Seed would lie dormant until the leakage from Hell augmented the minuscule amount within the sphere.

"Which of the myriad Hells are you going to tap, Master?" Rogi inquired.

The question caught Shim Po off guard. Since the Dimensional Tunnel spell was written in Ganta, the incantation had to be spoken in that language, and he could not, for the life of him, recall the Ganta name of any one of the Hells.

"One is just as good – or bad – as another, I suppose," he declared. "I shall just pick the nearest one."

"Very good, Master," said Rogi, but he sounded far less than convinced. Shim Po looked decidedly unsteady on his feet and his speech was definitely slurred.

"Rogi, hold the book where I can see it. No, closer. Wait, farther away… no, no, closer. Yes, that is it. All right, let us do this!" He waggled his fingers, cracked his neck, and took a deep breath. Gathering his titanic will and much of the nearby mana supply, he then began reading the incantation from the page in halting and appallingly accented Ganta.

What he meant to say was "From here to there, from there to here, the road is long, the way is clear. I sent it hence, from far to near, from here to there, from there to here."

Unfortunately, what he actually said was, "fom her toe thar fom thar toe her, ta rood es lung, ta wee es cler. I sind et hins fom far toe ner fom her toe thar fom thar toe CHOOOO!"

A few moments earlier, one of the room's other occupants, attracted by the flickering lights, had decided to investigate what these strange four-limbed creatures were doing. The curious spider'd descended from its nest, loosing a gossamer strand of silk from its spinnerets. Its downward progress had gone completely unnoticed by Shim Po, even when it landed on his mustache and decided to check out the inside of the Mystic's nose.

The resulting sneeze had three effects. First, it sent the spider flying across the room where it landed safely on the remains of a cookie. Next, it made Shim Po's head ring like a carillon bell. The last, and most significant, would not become apparent until some time elapsed.

Magic is a fairly exacting discipline, requiring keen mental focus and precise use of symbolic guides, in this spell's case, the diagram and the incantation. Rogi, who'd had quite a lot of practice, had made no mistakes in the former, but Shim Po's sneeze had been a significant deviation from the later. Meaning and intent can make up for quite a lot when it comes to pronunciation, of course, but since "CHOOOO!" does not sound even remotely like "Here," no matter what heathen dialect one might speak, at that point the incantation was irrevocably tainted. If Thorgrim Karschild himself had been casting the spell, as soon as he sneezed he would have thrown himself out the nearest non-existent window. Shim Po, however, chose to muddle onward.

He pointed at the left-hand arrow, and said "Fom-her – ta closest Hill!" then to the right and said, "Toe-Thar – Ta gilda mystic!"

Amazingly, two tunnels through the very fabric of the universe appeared where he had indicated. In a matter of seconds, the Chaos Seed, fed by the ambient chaos floating in from the left, had created a swirling, raging storm spinning the air into a turbulent stream from left to right. Everything had, as far as Shim Po could see, gone exactly to plan. Yet aside from some twigs and clumps of sod, nothing came through the tunnel. After three minutes, not a single devil (or dark angel) had been sucked through and sent flying towards the guildhall where, confused and enraged, it would have by all rights turned the very first creature it saw into Wizard Tartare.

"I don't understand," Shim Po whined. "Why didn't all Hell break loose?"

Copyright 2001-2020. All Rights and all that.

 

INTO THE MYSTIC, A BALLAD OF NOVAGROVE
Verse 4: THE GAMBLER

by SJ-Chan
While Forest Trolls undoubtedly inspired the popular saying "dumb as a stump," they are actually quite wily. Loud's first blow was directed at Polglase rather than the actual object of its wrath, most likely because it recognized the Dragoon as the greater threat and decided to take her out of the equation. Then again, maybe it hit Polglase simply because she was closer. One never knows.

Trolls are among the most respected of the universe's countless sentient races; amortal beings, all but immune to physical damage, noble, stalwart guardians, adept at dealing with disasters natural and un. Widely sought as allies in conflict, they are fierce and tireless combatants who will only join a cause if convinced it is just. Highly intelligent, well read and erudite, True Trolls are honored members of their respective Faerie Courts.

Forest Trolls are not, however, True Trolls, and share virtually none of their antecedents' finer qualities. There is some pardonable confusion between Forest Trolls and the Braganthi (Tree Troll), but only to the casual observer. Adults of both breeds loom anywhere from six to nine spans tall and are covered in hard bark and leaves. The easiest way to tell them apart, though, is by the eyes: Braganthi eyes glow a deep, soulful green, while the eyes of a Forest Troll are sometimes hard to distinguish from knotholes. Other clues: the symmetry of Braganthi limbs and the beauty of their foliage, as opposed to Forest Trolls' misshapen, haphazardly arranged branches and leaves that are often off-color and plagued with split veins.

Forest Trolls are the bastard offspring of Braganthi and the brutish Swamp Orku, a race best known for smacking each other with blunt instruments, yodeling, and standing around waist deep in muck, staring vacantly into space for days on end. Moreover, they are offspring only in a purely genetic sense, since a Braganthi would no sooner mate with a Swamp Orku than a dragon would mate with a pile of manure. Forest (and the other Lesser) Trolls were long ago bred in laboratories by white-robed industrial Taskmages with receding hairlines and no social lives whatsoever, in an effort to produce cheap labor for an ever-expanding market. Forest Trolls are one of their most noteworthy success stories, and are valued for their strength, diligence and durability; albeit not by True Trolls, who view them with disdain and disgust. Put into common terms, in the Great Family of Trollkind, Forest Trolls are the barely tolerated cousins given camp cots in the basement and forced to pay rent. The kind of relative who would be seated at the children's table at reunions.The less said about some of the other Troll / Orku crossbreeds, such as the (shudder!) Fungus Troll, the better. Still, though they are not the equal of their great and noble fore-bearers, Forest Trolls are not to be taken lightly.

Thus, T'Lexigar harbored few illusions regarding his chances in a one-on-one fight with Loud. He had none. Yes, as a Minstrel he had been schooled in magical self-defense, and the sword he habitually wore was no mere showpiece. T'Lexigar was deceptively strong, despite his willowy appearance, yet here his strength was overmatched by at least an order of magnitude. Nor was he exactly a pushover, having a working knowledge of pressure points that, when pinched, struck, or kicked, could temporarily incapacitate the hardiest of jealous boyfriends or self-appointed music critics. Alas, a Forest Troll – enraged or otherwise – has no pressure points at all.

In times like these, T'Lexigar often recalled another bit of advice his mentor Roberlein had given him: "Always have an escape route." There were two possible candidates. Unfortunately, the window was closed and almost certainly unbreakable, and there were thirty assorted humans and two Forest Trolls between him and the tavern's double doors.

Guess I'll have to play this one by ear, he told himself.

As Loud swung both of its left branches at him, the Minstrel flung himself backwards. The upper branch missed his face by a feather's width, but the longer lower one clipped his hipbone, spinning him violently around. Losing his footing, he wound up on the floor halfway under a table. After a moment's consideration, he decided this was as good a place as any for the time being and snatched at his sword belt. Using a rapier against a Forest Troll would, he suspected, be as useful as smacking a mountain cat with a paper fan. Still, it was a better choice than the other weapons at his disposal: a laughably puny dagger, his hands, and his mandojo.

His fingers had barely snagged the swordbelt when the table above him shattered. The Troll limb that had done such an effective job of furniture distressing continued unimpeded towards its target, namely his face. Twisting to the right just as the wooden fist slammed into the floorboards hard enough to send splinters flying, he tried to scuttle away, only to have Loud catch his left ankle and hoist him into the air, his mandojo thunking resoundingly against the back of his head. With his free leg, the Minstrel kicked into a backwards flip, in the process breaking the Troll's hold and nearly breaking his ankle. Landing gracelessly but upright on an adjacent table, he drew his rapier and brandished it at his irate foe.

"You want a piece of me, ash-hole?" T'Lexigar taunted.

"Not ash… yew!" Loud roared.

"Gods bless you," the Minstrel replied automatically.

Captain Polglase had momentarily had the wind knocked out of her by the surprise attack, but she recovered almost at once. She sprang to her feet behind the overturned table and, with practiced eye, surveyed the melee in terms of terrain, traffic, and threat assessment. Fully half of the tavern's occupants were crowding around the door, climbing over each other in their haste to attend to urgent matters elsewhere, creating quite the bottleneck. Ten patrons were watching the fight with varying degrees of interest, but she discounted them as mere animate furniture. There were two ogres in the room: one apparently intent on ignoring a situation that was none of his business, the other happily chewing an order of sausages – plate and all.So they did not count either.

However, there were two potential sources of trouble. Across the room, three Men and a Sand Troll were rising from their seats and encouraging the rampaging foliage. It was not uncommon for Lesser Trolls to work as landscapers, and from the presence of a Sand Troll, Polglase surmised that the crew had been engaged in building the new whackem course a wing or so down the road. If they decided to stop giving moral support and become participants, things could get dicey fast.

The other potential threat was cowering in the corner. Her bright red-and-yellow robes proclaimed her to be a Pyroclast, and if her relative youth and obvious anxiety hadn't marked her as a Junior Apprentice, the single solid black band of felt on her sleeves and hem clearly did. The girl was spooked, and a powder keg in more ways than one.

"Get out of here, kid!" Polglase growled at the terrified young woman. The Dragoon drew her banded sword from its sheath and pointed at the throng by the door. "That way! Now!" The apprentice's head jerked in Polglase's direction, and she tentatively moved to comply. Polglase turned her attention to the fight already in progress and moved to help the Minstrel. The boy had some chops, she noted, and was agile enough, but his stance lacked balance, his weapon was a joke, and he was not thinking beyond the moment. He was clearly improvising, which might be fine in music but was no substitute for a battleplan.

"Civilians!" Captain Polglase muttered with a wry grin. That single word said it all.

Loud and Annoying took up positions on either side of the table on which their chosen prey was standing and, at some unspoken signal, brought all eleven arm-limbs crashing down, reducing it to so many flying splinters. Their target however, was already gone.

At the last possible instant, T’Lexigar had jumped, grabbing desperately at a light fixture floating overhead. Swinging from it, he managed to land on top of the bar, skidding a bit on the ale soaked surface, then dropped behind the bar, twisting his already sore ankle in the process.

The Trolls looked down at the floor, figured out that their prey’s pulverized body was missing, and looked about, trying to determine where he had gone. Annoying, whose uppermost eyehole was situated farther up its trunk than its cousin, caught sight of a blue-black head crouching behind the bar and, pointing one limb towards the Minstrel’s hiding place, thwacked Loud with another to gain its attention. As one, the Trolls charged.

Polglase, with all the experience of a seasoned campaigner, swung her sword – actually more of a 2.5-span truncheon – in a precise arc that caught Annoying as it past, right in what, on a being of flesh and bone would have been the knees. The impact felled the not so mighty woodman, knocking it off its roots and sending it to the floor with a crash. The Dragoon quickly turned her attention to Loud, but before she could reach it a sandstone fist hit her in the small of her back, sending her sprawling onto her victim. The fallen Troll, who had been using three of its limbs in an attempt to regain its roots, crossed the fourth and fifth over Polglase's chest and squeezed. The Sand Troll that had blindsided her loomed menacingly over them both, looking for an opening.

T'Lexigar was crawling towards the end of the bar, hoping to dash for the slowly thinning crowd at the door when he found himself face-to-roots with Loud. Troll towering above him, T'Lexigar scrambled away, just barely staying out of reach of the grasping branches. A backwards glance told the retreating Minstrel he was rapidly running out of bar. Once it was gone, Loud would be upon him.

As the wooden limbs closed round her chest, seeking to squeeze the life (and possibly the lungs) out of her, Polglase focused her will and Summoned Armor. Armor is a complex and altogether fascinating thing. The apex of several million years of military research and development, it protects its wearer from nearly every conceivable threat… as long as it is actually being worn. Unfortunately, armor is heavy, bulky, and not really suited to such activities as sleeping, bathing, or spending a night in a public house enjoying a smoke, a drink, and a few relaxing hands of poker for small stakes. Realizing this limitation, the Dragoon's had, in their nigh infinite paranoia, equipped their defensive paraphernalia with the latest in auto-equipping enchantments. Thus, Polglase’s breastplate, which had been sitting in her room at the Festival Inn some six wings distant, was transported– in less than a heartbeat –across the intervening space, and instantly coalesced around its master who exhaled gratefully, then cast Electrify.

Annoying, who barely had time to register the changed situation, continued to squeeze with all its considerable might, albeit against suddenly greater resistance. Then a jolt of liquid fire shot through its limbs, flashed across its trunk, and into its heartstone. Its leaves and branches suffused with jagged blue-grey incandescence and, with a shriek, it shuddered once then lapsed into unconsciousness. The limbs holding Polglase convulsed, crackled, burst into flame, then snapped free of Annoying’s torso.

Grunting at the smoke, she easily regained her footing, then ducked as the Sand Troll lunged for her. With a smooth twist and flourish she plunged her left hand into its midsection up to the wrist and cast Fuse. Nothing happened for half a second. Then the area around her hand metamorphosed from tan to grey to crystal white, spreading outward like wildfire. In seconds, the Sand Troll was an immobile glass statue with a look of confused disbelief on its face. Polglase wrenched her hand free, taking a chunk of glass with it. She shook her fist, shards braking free to rain down on the floor.

"Who wants to be next?" she snarled.

The Weren landscapers looked at the still smoking Forest Troll on the floor and at the gaping hole in the Sand Troll's midriff. None said a word. In fact, they looked incapable of speech altogether.

T'Lexigar's back was literally against the wall, and all he could see was bark, bar supplies, and impending doom. His rapier, stuck in Loud's trunk, smacked uselessly against a bag of pistachios as the Troll closed the gap. T'Lexigar tried desperately to think of a spell that would get him out of this pickle jar, but at the moment the only one he could dredge up was Mood Lighting, hardly apt under the circumstances. Then he spied a dark brown earthenware jug, clearly labeled "DOG'S PISS: Absolutely Unmalted Whiskey" and below that, in even smaller letters that he couldn't make out but knew, from unfortunate experience, it stated "95% Alcohol by Mass." He grabbed the bottle and, shielding his eyes from the fumes, smashed it against Loud's roots. The pool of liquid spread at first, but receded quickly as it was absorbed into the Forest Troll's nether limbs.

"What elf dooooo?" Loud rumbled, swaying in a breeze that was not there.

T'Lexigar had taken advantage of a commonly known fact about Forest Trolls. Every so often, they must take root and draw nutrients and water from soil. Since they don't want to stay stationary for very long, attracting pesky squirrels, birds, and woodcutters, their roots are quite efficient at drawing what they need from the ground in a timely fashion. To Loud's chagrin, the same roots proved equally efficient at soaking up some of the most potent Tazyr whiskey in all of creation. The bottle, in fact, had been kept on the lowest shelf to minimize the chances of an explosion if it accidentally fell. Loud had met the fate he intended for T'Lexigar: he was well and truly smashed.

This did not make Loud any less dangerous, but reduced its reaction time sufficiently to give T'Lexigar a chance to vault over the bar and head for the small throng still trying to elbow their way out the front doors.

"Coming through! Hot soup! Lady with a baby!" he called, bumping into a short blonde woman in bright red-and-yellow robes.

Makasha Donshiffre, Junior Apprentice Pyroclast, had nothing more exciting planned when she set out to the Greenhill than the prospect of getting mellow enough to justify succumbing to the advances of a total stranger. All such randy thoughts evaporated as she tried to escape the bedlam around her. She was probably not really cut out to be a Pyroclast if noise and destruction made her so uneasy, she realized on some level; after all, Pyroclasts essentially live to blow shit up. She was still in the earliest stages of her apprenticeship, though, and hoped she would eventually get used to it. Just not tonight.

She felt someone bump into her and reflex made her look to see who it was. What she saw was a handsome, if shallow, Minstrel, his long dark hair flailing wildly, and behind him a Forest Troll, awkwardly turning around so it could continue the chase.

"Eep!" Makasha screamed like a boy, and the first thought that popped into her mind was Forest Troll = Wood. The second was Wood + Fire = Ashes. The third was "Cast Firebolt!"

So she did.

As Firebolts go, it was fairly puny, a sphere about the size of a smash'em ball. As trajectories go, it only missed Loud by a span, and might have come closer if the soused Troll hadn't been tipping like a palm tree in a hurricane. In terms of results, however, it was pretty impressive. The sphere struck a crock of Wild Muskrat, which blew apart and ignited several more adjacent bottles. Moments later the Greenhill’s liquor wall exploded, setting the entire bar area merrily ablaze. The force of the blast also shoved Loud right into the washroom door, where it stuck.

Polglase assessed the situation with a somewhat jaded air. Spotting the tavern owner, she grabbed him by the shirtfront and demanded, "Fire extinguisher!"

"Th-there," he stammered, pointing at the wall by the washroom door, from which Loud was in the process of clumsily extricating itself. Polglase dashed past the struggling Troll and grabbed the red wand. She aimed the business end at the conflagration, then bellowed the activation word "Extinguish!" (The bellowing wasn't strictly necessary; a whisper would have done just as well, but Polglase had found that shouting at inanimate objects helped her maintain her inner calm when life was being more than a little irritating.) A thick cloud of fire suppressant foam totally failed to emerge from the device. Puzzled, she examined the wand more closely; its charge, she noted, had expired two years previously.

The Captain gave the owner a withering glare. "You are in so much trouble," she told him, then addressed the room entire. "Everybody down!" she yelled in her best Command Voice, then turned her attention back to the fire. Without checking to see if she had been obeyed, she cast Implosion.

The effect was instantaneous. The bottles, shelves, mirror, back wall, and a good two-thirds of the bar collapsed inward. The fire, deprived of oxygen, went out – or rather "in" – with a loud pop! and soon all that remained was a smoldering sphere of debris illuminated by the moonlight pouring through the hole where a wall had been.

T'Lexigar dropped like a stone upon hearing Polglase's Command, as did every other non-troll occupant of the Greenhill. Loud (still wedged in its doorframe prison), Annoying (still crackling), and the Sand Troll stayed where they were, although the later shattered into several dozen pieces, the largest resembling a glass ostrich egg. Once he was certain the immediate danger had passed, the Minstrel got gingerly to his feet.

"You hurt, lad?" Polglase demanded. T'Lexigar checked himself, his mandojo and his purse, then shook his head. "Then get out of here! I shall attend to the wounded." With that, Polglase bent over a grey-bearded man bleeding from a scalp laceration.

The Minstrel did not need further encouragement. He leaped over the rubble and out through the new egress into the night, intent on putting as much space between himself and the Trolls as possible. They would be after him soon, he knew, and were tireless, single-minded trackers. Loud would not stay trapped in a doorway forever, and Annoying would eventually come to its senses and join the hunt. T'Lexigar took to his heels, heading for the most obvious landmark, the stark tower that stood silhouetted against the night sky. He had covered a fair distance when he heard a thunderous crash behind him. Looking back over his shoulder, his hair whipping in the breeze, he saw a Forest Troll.Putting on a burst of speed, the Minstrel fled up a rise and Loud followed, stumbling, behind him.

As he started up the hill, the Minstrel noticed the breeze growing to a gust, but he paid it scant heed, his long legs carrying him ever upward as the gathering wind lent him speed. He was in sight of the crest before he realized that he was less running and more being dragged along ever faster by the now gale-force winds. Looking up he saw a gaping hole of swirling energy, directly in his path, drawing him ever closer to its maelstrom maw. Deciding he’d rather take his chances with the Troll instead, he turned round in his tracks and made to escape. Still, despite his intentions and efforts to the contrary, he found himself being sucked inexorably backwards. Then the slick turf betrayed him and, all at once, the wind snatched his legs out from under him, planting him face first in the grass. This lowered profile did nothing to impede his involuntary progress, nor did his desperate attempts to anchor himself by clawing at the dirt. Clumps of sod flew back behind him as he failed to gain purchase in the soft soil. In seconds, the suction lifted him off the ground and – with a panic he had not felt since his childhood – T'Lexigar Machallo flew into what looked to him like a vertical pit full of liquid oblivion. Before he could even open his mouth to cry out, the Minstrel was gone.

= = =

In his study, Shim Po was just about to recheck the spell book when a large object came shooting out of the left-hand tunnel and into the Protective Sphere. It hung suspended beneath the spinning Chaos Seed for a split second, barely long enough for the Mystic to make eye contact with the cartwheeling figure, and then whooshed out the other conduit for the remainder of its journey.

"What kind of infernal creature was that, Master?" Rogi asked with a straight face and a barely stifled giggle.

"I don't know," Shim Po admitted. "It looked vaguely like a Minstrel I once bested at poker."

As master and minion continued to stare at the sphere, wondering what would happen next, the tunnels began showing disturbing signs of destabilization. They changed color, started getting fuzzy around the edges, and there was a noticeable hum that wavered between 60 and 325 cycles in pitch but was definitely getting louder. Shim Po was about to give up the whole plot as a miserable failure and flee for his very life, when another, much larger creature – about six spans tall and covered in hard bark – caromed through the tunnels and disappeared after the first.

"Now that is more like it," Shim Po cackled, rubbing his gnarled hands together.

"Forest Troll," Rogi observed.

"What?"

"What you were so delighted to see was nothing more than a common garden-variety Forest Troll" Rogi sneered, "In fact, I think it was one of the crew working on your new whackem course. Face it, Master. You are a lamentable excuse for a villain. You just sent a harmless Minstrel and a Forest Troll gods knows where, but if it was within 500 wings of the Mystic Guildhall, I will cheerful eat my own stool and call it chocolate pudding! That's it! Consider this my notice. I am taking that job as an assistant embalmer at the Yorvadan Municipal Morgue. The conversation – not to mention the smell – is bound to be an improvement, and… what are you staring at?"

The look of stunned amazement on Shim Po's face brought Rogi's rant to a screeching halt, and he turned around to see what the Mystic was seeing. The tunnels were vibrating. They changed color several times a second. The danger was palpable, yet neither man could wrench his gaze from the sight. It was like watching a skin shed its snake. The hum passed beyond the range of hearing, but could still be felt in the very marrow of their larger bones. Books flew off the shelves and began to shred themselves. The Protective Sphere was definitely more oblate now, being stretched beyond all tolerances. Something had to give, and with a flash of turquoise light and a huge "Kablam!" the Sphere winked out of existence. The tunnels shrank away to nothingness and then every magical object in the room – the floating light orbs, the plate which kept the tea warm, the revolving award for public service Shim Po had browbeaten the City Council into giving him, and the fifteen self-cleaning plaques which the Mercantile Association of Yorvadan had given him over the centuries for Meritorious Service to the Economic Community (i.e., buying lots of stuff and paying for it on time) – exploded into fragments, plunging the room into sudden (not to mention stuffy) darkness. Shim Po and Rogi were flung to the floor. The echoes gradually died away, and all was very, very still.

Finally, after an extremely uncomfortable silence, Shim Po said, in a voice not quite strong enough to be a whisper, "Actually, I meant for that to happen."

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