Ellison met up with Matilda again back at the Barley Mow Inn. And she immediately started in about the elephant. “It’s a smallish elephant, but no, I don’t know how they got it in there,” he said. “I didn’t ask, and I don’t care. For all I know they chopped it up into pieces and …
“Hey!” Just outside the doorway, Gus threw up his hands. “Warren already told you that he didn’t see who attacked him!” The chancellor grudgingly nodded. Or perhaps the chief assassin did see who attacked him, but was too embarrassed to admit that he’d been caught out. Saying so out loud, though, especially without any evidence …
Ellison had never been inside the Paladins of Death guild hall before. The entry hall was two stories high and was a museum of artifacts and successful assassinations. The focal point was a giant elephant. It’s glass eyes followed Ellison across the room. Was the elephant itself the target of an assassination, or its means? …
There were two guards on duty at the assassins’ guild house. They’d beefed up security a bit since the murder. Ellison didn’t recognize either of them, but figured that the one with the wooden leg had been on duty the previous night. “Nimble Wind?” he asked the female guard while the other went to fetch …
“Have you heard the latest?” Matilda Scarletstrike took one of Ellison’s greasy, overly-salted deep-fried skirrets. The skirret was a stringy, pale root vegetable about the size of a pinky finger. A bitter, anemic carrot. Or maybe a zombie pasnip. She pointed the skirret at Ellison. “The head of the assassin’s guild has been assassinated.” She …
Ellison teleported to Facepage’s Main Street. Eventually, everybody came through here. Even people who hated Facepage dropped by, because their friends lived here, or because it was the most convenient spot to meet. Technically, Facepage was just another virtual world, like Krim. But practically, it was more of an all-purpose platform. People who still had …
Back on Banking Street, Ellison shifted Bella’s framed portrait from one shoulder to another. He should have argued harder for removing the canvas from the frame. He checked the list Bob gave him. Bella’s gallery was off to the south. But Matilda’s favorite bar was to the north east, and the Barley Mow Inn was …
“Your wife is trapped inside the rug?” Ellison stepped away from Bob to get a better look at the man. He didn’t look crazy, but, on Krim, you never knew. “Why not? It’s a virtual world, isn’t it? Anything is possible.” “Krim doesn’t have magic,” said Ellison, slowly and carefully, to avoid setting Bob off …
Fried skirrets. Fried cabbage. Fried skirrets with cabbage. Cabbage soup. Ellison Davo stared at the chalkboard with the day’s menu. His stomach growled. Last night’s dinner was also cabbage. Breakfast had been leftover cabbage from the night before. “Sorry,” said Quimby Plummer, the proprietor of the Barley Mow Inn. “We’re still having problems with our …
“Well, I’ll leave you to do whatever it is you need to do. Let me know when we can move the body.” Rodge frowned at the corpse. The flies had found it, and were beginning to buzz around it. “Hold on, what do you expect us to do?” Ellison asked. “Well, you know,” Rodge waved …
Rodge Bannister led them to the other side of the room, where heavy curtains hung across the entire back wall, a guard at each corner. Rodge nodded at the guards to open the curtains.
“The man had me kidnapped and tortured.” Ellison tried to dig his heels in but Matilda easily dragged him out of the Barley Mow Inn and onto Leadenhall Street.
One benefit of dying, Ellison thought, was that he got a fresh new avatar. A washed avatar.
An avatar wearing new, clean clothes.
Ellison walked away, not glancing back. If Usman was going to stab him in the back, Ellison wanted it to be a surprise. He didn’t want to see it coming. It was the anticipation that was the worst.
“World of Battle doth have much to be admired.” The speaker raised his flagon of ale, spilling some on the bar patrons around him. “To the World of Battle!” Someone tossed a fried skirret at his head.
Mitchell rushed through the Krim main gate, through the central plaza, across the street, then paused in front of the King’s Arms to catch his breath.
It was Wednesday, so Mitchell had the day off. For a while, he puttered around in his garden, watching the dragonfly drones nibble at the grass. Once in a while one would spot a weed and dive bomb it. But after a while, even watching the grass grow got boring.
The door to the King’s Arms banged open and Donna, startled, dropped the stack of souvenir coasters she was in the process of distributing to all the tables. The woman who stepped in was tall, easily a head or two taller than Donna. Muscular. Her metal armor was dull and banged up. She was a real warrior, not a noob wannabe. And she looked familiar.
The coach rolled down one street, made a turn, and down another. Mitchell peered out the window as the gate faded from view. The gate that would have taken him off of Krim and back to civilization. “I’ve got the plague, you know,” he told his captor.
“I couldn’t be any clearer.” The tavern’s day manager slapped her hand on the table in front of Donna. “The salt goes into the white bowls. The pepper goes into the black ones.”
Michell crossed the street to the Dirty Apple. There were more bars further down, he was sure of it, but he was equally sure that he hadn’t walked that far on Saturday night.
“Well, hello miscreant!” Ellison Davo grinned as he looked backat the ID print in his document packet. Yup, it was the same guy. “Who, me?” The warrior turned towards Ellison, blood still dripping from his sword as the victim at his feet screamed in pain.
“I’m not a weirdo stalker,” Mitchell told the bartender at the Bouncing Octopus. The tavern was about twenty-minutes from Krim’s gate. That was about how long it had taken to walk to the bachelor party on Saturday. Wasn’t it?
Fried skirrets and egg, skirrets and cabbage, and slaughtered cow parts. Donna rattled off the lunch menu like an old pro. Her fourth day and she had it down cold.
Everyone was staring. The other party attendees. The wenches. The musicians. Charlie. And Harmon, of course.
Donna leaned over the bar to peer into the mirror on the back wall. One of her curls was starting to droop. She wet a finger and twirled the strand back into shape.
The four of them — Charlie, Mitchell, and two other guys — walked through the gate and into Krim proper. The rest of the bachelor party was already waiting for them at their destination, Charlie had said.
Donna looked at her reflection in the shop window. It was dark inside, so it was almost a perfect mirror.
Mitchell got to McMeaty’s the normal way. He walked out of his real house, through his very real gate in his real white picket fence and turned right.
