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Chapter 16: A Foot in the Door
Benjamin… I have to run away… I need to get away… I can’t sleep at night… I’ve lost my light…
Vector opens his eyes.
A slab of soft olive-drab color hits him first, and then he remembers where he is: a canvas tent, on a sandbar in the Altilluvia highlands. He sits up and cradles his head in his hands.
Next to him, on a separate bedroll, Phyr stirs. “Hmph… no ice cream… bedtime… go sleepies,” he mumbles.
“Hey,” Vector says, shaking Phyr’s shoulder. “Wake up, dude.”
Phyr snorts, and wakes with a start. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m awake,” he says. “What’s up?”
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“Huh. Yeah, I had a dream I was outside,” he says. “Everything OK?”
“Everything’s fine,” Vector says. “But I dreamed about that chick again. I think she quoted Soft Cell, this time.”
“Who?”
“One-hit wonder. Tainted Love©. You know.”
“Oh, right,” Phyr says, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. He smacks his lips a couple times to flex his jaw and work the morning out of his mouth. “Anything new?”
“Just different words,” Vector says. “Still the same old ‘damsel in distress’ vibe, though.”
Phyr nods and leans forward to unbutton the tent flap. They step out into the pale blue morning, and stretch their limbs in the crisp, thin air. To the East, upstream, they see the Sun half-risen over the misty horizon, dew evaporating in the dawn’s light. On a large rock overlooking a lively cascade, they see Alice, taut threads trailing from one hand. Without lifting her face from the river, she hoists a net into the air with a splash. Two large fish, each nearly the size of her forearm, thrash about inside. “Morning, boys,” she calls. “Breakfast!”
She hops nimbly from stone to stone until she reaches the South bank, then crosses back over to their sandbar by walking along a fallen tree. As the boys watch from their seats next to the campfire, she fillets the fish with a sturdy pocket knife, and then starts roasting the meat on a pair of stripped green sticks she had evidently prepared for the purpose. Sharp crackles erupt in the air as liquid drips down on the red-hot coals, startling the boys into action. They break camp and pack up as Alice finishes cooking.
As the boys eat, Alice douses the fire and double-checks her pack. Then they shoulder their bags and head out.
They reach a small village in the late afternoon, called Riverside for the obvious rivers it nestles between, and pay a man named Shillelagh thirty dollars to break bread and bed down in his thatched-roof hut. The next few days pass in similar fashion, each easier than the last as they acclimate to the lower oxygen content nearly two miles above sea level, and on their fifth day of hiking they arrive in Thousand Bridges. The name is an exaggeration, but not by much: cobblestone paths run up to stout wooden bridges criss-crossing the numerous rivers and streams that course through the city. Tudoresque architecture dominates at the outskirts, but brutalist concrete slabs and floor-to-ceiling windows make appearances here and there, growing more common near the city’s center along with tiered office buildings that contour the rivers in a way that would turn Frank Lloyd Wright green. Gondolas, water wheels, and the occasional small dam give a bustle to the waterways below to complement that of the streets above. Here and there, they spot advertisements on banners and boards that only entirely disrupt the rustic charm:
Big Money goes around the world! Join the Merchant Marine, and see it all!
Coming September 2015: the Big Money Underground, a unique travel experience!
Big Money has a mighty voice! Our advertisements reach millions - and so can you!
With Big Money Sonic Sinks, even the most powerful engines make no sound!
There are other ads, for big chains like the Olden Targes and smaller businesses like the Screwy Rooster, but fully half of them are hawking Big Money’s products, services, and subsidiaries.
At the center of it all, surrounded by lesser buildings strewn like pebbles, sits Big Money Industries itself: a quartz gem in a concrete geode, it gleams in the noonday Sun. Frosted glass streaks from cloudy crystal bursts at the corners, into perfectly transparent windows that look out from spacious offices. Half office park and half castle town, its Western edge is rimmed by aqueducts that serve as wide bridges for some fairly heavy foot traffic atop them. The adventurers are stopped right as they set foot on one such bridge, directly overlooking Long Fall Lake.
“Name and business, please,” a woman says, stepping out from a small hut all but concealed in an alcove. Phyr stops in his tracks, equal parts startled and affronted. As he looks the woman up and down in her snappy green uniform - half business, half military in cut and function - he notices that traffic is flowing around them, and feels a presence from behind.
Vector risks a glance back, provoking a sharp elbow to his hip from Alice, and sees that other guards with plasma rifles have stepped into the street behind them. Phyr says, “You’re not stopping any of them. What’s so special about me?”
“I know their names and business,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’re new in town, and knowing the name and business of everyone who enters HQ is my job. So state your name and business.”
“DJ Ragnarok,” he says, drawing up to his full height to look down on the half-elf. She half-sighs at his half-assed attempt at intimidation, and he continues undaunted, “And I’m here to see Edric.”
“Mister Nadab has a busy schedule, and you’re not on it. Ragnarok, you said? Aren’t you a bit late for that?”
Phyr narrows his eyes and says, “How so?”
“Twilight of the gods. They’re all dead.”
“News to me,” he says flatly. As the two lock eyes, Phyr silently dials up the Etherwing and Mana Armor spells he had been keeping almost flatlined. Rising into the air on spreading green wings, clad in sparkling translucent armor like emerald plates over his black trench coat, he draws Usher to reveal its veridian flames. “Far as I know,” he says, reaching deep in his register for the burliest baritone he can manage, “Gods walk the Earth again, and one of them stands before you to see Edric. Now, I don’t like to be stopped, and I hear your boss doesn’t like to wait, so maybe you just wave us on through - and I continue doing you the favor of walking right up to the front door. How does that sound, mortal?”
She pauses, paled but unshaken, and waves off the guards who have readied their plasma rifles. At no point does she so much as twitch toward the pistol at her hip. “Got it. Big, swingin’ dick. Way above my paygrade, and Mr. Nadab will see you when he can.” Phyr sinks smoothly back to ground, dials down the magic, and the guards withdraw to their posts with a few unmistakable grumbles of Fuckin’ Christ and the like. “Head on over to the Gilded Lily,” she continues, after the tension has comfortably abated. “It’s the VIP lounge, just over the bridge here. You can’t miss it. Mister Nadab will cover your tab while you wait - should be just an hour or so for him to clear his schedule and shuffle things around. Your patience is appreciated.” She steps aside and bows with crisp deference as she gestures for them to proceed across the bridge.
Phyr narrows his eyes for a moment, then shrugs and beckons his companions to follow.
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