Elsewhere

Chapter 38

Chris

I should have felt excited about the fun about to unfold in the stone maze. Instead I felt something nagging at the back of my mind. 42 had sent a weird message earlier and I was still trying to sort out what exactly her intentions were.

Chris,

Would you please be Andrea’s training partner? I feel like you two might get along.

Let me know what you think when you can.

-42

It wasn’t a long or complicated message. 42 was aware of my dismal level of literacy as she’d been the one teaching me. Normally I was quick on the uptake, but letters did funny things when I looked at them which made me dislike learning. Something I was reluctant to admit. Given this and everything else about me, I didn’t understand where the idea I’d get along with a noble lady came from.

My mistress's thought process was a mystery to most everyone, but this just seemed to be a lack of basic sense. It was like saying a butcher and a sailor would have plenty to discuss professionally. Even so, I hadn’t refused and tried to consult Henry, which hadn’t been helpful. He’d just advised me to do as I wanted and accept or refuse. He’d also pointed out if it wasn’t to my liking, 42 wouldn’t force me to keep doing it.

Walking up from the boneyard I realized almost everyone was up in the valley. Between our new guests and the incoming hostile forces, they were all excited, and with reason. 42 had already let us know it would be a few hours until the soldiers in the maze were split up to a manageable level. Even so, most everyone was either playing good town folk for the Lepusan’s benefit or vying for choice ambush spots in the maze.

That meant a certain suite with a valley view wasn’t likely to be watched. Knowing the whole of the dungeon as well as anyone, I headed up using the needed teleport circles with mischief on my mind. I arrived in a spacious alcove but wasn’t concealed in any sense. At least not from anyone paying any attention to their surroundings.

Just ahead of me, the long stone training hall echoed with the sound of light footsteps. Predictably the girl was there, practicing her forms with restless energy. I could only smile, the rest of the skeletons had been interested if not outright concerned for her. It hadn’t been strange in the initial days for those who’d obtained illusions of life to try and approach her and chat.

She’d rebuffed them with equal disdain as those who approached her without hiding their nature. I’d found it a bit hilarious, since she hadn’t known they were all skeletons underneath. She seemed to hate everything around her with a rare degree of equality, even going so far as to reject Henry’s goodwill.

A rare thing, as even those skeletons who didn’t necessarily like him usually found themselves pulled into his pace and being uncharacteristically polite. Even I found myself stepping a bit gingerly around him. Though I liked to think that was less his charms and more respect for his skills at play. Lots of folks ascribed to a school of thought that certain classes were strong or weak against each other. Henry was one of the few who thrashed that argument to bloody tatters with ease. Just the sort I’d have avoided like the plague when it came to choosing contracts when I was alive.

That he couldn’t sort the girl didn’t leave me feeling inclined to try my hand, despite going to find her. Instead I was taking my time casing the training hall. 42 had designed the training hall to resemble something like a feast hall, even giving it needless stone rafters. Her aesthetic sense trumping minimal structural requirements by leagues.

Jumping up, I caught hold of a light stone sconce, then pulled myself up and into the rafters quietly. My feet made soft scuffing noises on the wall as I hauled myself up. I could have been absolutely silent, but without incentive or a fear of death, I was inclined to be playful. Andrea didn’t seem to notice anything as I shadowed her from above.

Watching her move through her rapier drills, I settled on the beam in a comfortable position. Her auburn hair was tied up in a messy bun and her armor was a combination of leather and light plates designed to allow free and fast movement. Seeing her economical movements someone else might have been impressed, I was more interested in her expression.

Dull eyed and desperate, sweat ran down in rivulets. It wasn’t the sort of meditative expression someone in the midst of practice should have. Even most men in a fight didn’t look quite so harried, but I half expected to peek behind her and find someone chasing her. Watching her more, I took in how smooth her skin looked and straight her limbs. She probably had a full set of pearly teeth in her mouth too.

I didn’t bother hiding myself and even swung my legs as I continued to watch her with a growing sense of unrest. Fifth level wasn’t easy to reach for most and those who made it generally didn’t look pretty by the time they did. Yet I could imagine just how soft her hands would feel, with only the lightest of callouses from her previous training.

Milk soft and clean. The image of my own face came unbidden to my mind. Not the nice one I was wearing but the one I’d died with. The same age as this girl but in a state of ruin from the long years of learning my craft and hard living. How were we alike and why did 42 think I would want to help Andrea if I could? Those questions writhed in my mind as I kept watching.

A solid ten feet above her head and well out of her plane of view, she didn’t notice when her practice brought her under my hiding spot. Dropping down from above I landed on my own feet just behind Andrea, one arm snaking up and around her throat, while the other brought up a knife. I didn’t weigh enough to be more than annoying if I landed on her.

“AH!” she shrieked, only to go stiff at the feeling of the blade. Rather than comment, I stabbed her leg, letting go of the knife as I shoved her away. She hit the ground and rolled, but managed not to land on the handle out of luck. Her sword slid away in the process, out of her reach, but her eyes were on me instead.

Scrambling back in a panic and in the wrong direction, she tried to drink what I knew very well was a potion. With her hand closed around the bottle I couldn’t easily kick it away. I settled for stomping on her hand hard enough to shatter the bottle.

“CHRISTOPHER TRUMAN PHALANGES!” 42’s voice echoed through the training hall like a peel of thunder. I didn’t turn toward her, smiling instead at Andrea.

“That’s me. Want to train together?” I asked, tone mockingly polite as I offered her a hand up. Treating 42’s warning shout like fanfare was definitely adding oil to the fire, but I didn’t mind.

“DO NOT ignore me!” 42 followed up, probably heading over to grab me by the scruff. I’d counted on her being too busy to come so quickly. Belatedly, I realized I’d miscalculated, since she’d recently stopped traveling proper distances and started teleporting.

“Andrea-” 42 started, literally grabbing the back of my neck like I was a misbehaving kitten. I was so surprised that my eyes goggled, and I had to hold back a laugh.

“I want to train with it,” Andrea said flatly, catching us both by surprise. I kept my cool and smiled like it was all part of the plan. 42’s hand, which was literally encircling my spine, didn’t let up and I couldn’t easily escape her grip. I could only wonder if it felt weird for her to reach past my illusion of life and grab bone.

“It’s better than the other one,” Andrea added as she shook glass shards from her hand. Only the embedded fragments remained as her hand oozed blood freely from a multitude of cuts. Around my neck 42’s grip went slack and I smiled.

I took the opportunity to stop offering Andrea a hand up and grabbed my knife instead. She let out a fresh shriek as I withdrew it, the hooked tip adding injury to injury. 42 turned a glare on me that I ignored.

“Really?” I asked conversationally with an unfriendly smile. I wiped the knife free of blood before returning it to a sheath on my leg. Not because I was in a hurry, but because it would deter me from stabbing her again, for the moment. My mood had soured considerably. I wouldn’t have minded her calling me most anything from bastard on down. “It,” however, wasn’t on the list of insults I was willing to overlook.

42 was still glaring at me, but she turned away to refocus on Andrea. She wasn’t the indecisive type, but 42 didn’t rush to make decisions either. She probably needed a minute to figure out if she was going to boil me for broth or just bury me a mile deep under the dungeon.

“It's fifth level and hasn’t landed a real blow on me,” Andrea said, after drinking a new potion to heal her injuries. The glass shards fell from her flesh as magic forced them out. Handy. I’d seen injuries heal over or around shrapnel before, when magic wasn’t used cautiously.

“Why would he do that while sparring?” 42 asked, letting go of me finally. I didn’t move though, and resisted the urge to rub my spinal column where she’d been gripping me. Her touch wasn’t unpleasant, but ticklish in a way other things weren’t. Almost like a brush of velvet on skin, though I didn’t have any.

“She told Henry to treat it like a real fight, live blades and all,” I supplied cheerfully, which earned me a glare from the girl. 42’s orbs burned larger and brighter than usual as she stared at the girl. I thought Henry had told 42, but could see I was wrong. An interesting tidbit, since I’d thought he’d been all but falling over himself to ingratiate himself with 42.

“What did Henry say to you when you asked for that?” 42 asked Andrea flatly.

“He wouldn’t entertain my request because hurting me wouldn’t teach me anything useful yet. As if that gibbering bone pile had any right to-“ Andrea didn’t get to finish as 42 suddenly leaned down so they were nearly nose to nose.

“Andrea, you’ve been through a lot,” 42 said, her shoulders set with a degree of anger usually reserved for me. I shivered, standing in a vantage point that allowed me to see her toothy maw moving as she spoke. 42 didn’t use it a lot, but when she did it had some serious impact from the right angle. She also had the terror inducing habit of getting frigidly calm when she was well and truly upset.

“I respect that, and how this isn’t a place you’d have freely chosen to be,” 42 continued without moving. Andria stood her ground or was frozen in place. Either way she didn’t move, and I felt a very real urge to piss myself. I fucked about and intentionally provoked 42 at times, but this was different. The girl had touched a nerve somewhere and the air was electric with radiant anger.

“So, I’m going to be considerate. Christopher, she wants combat experience and there’s ample to be had in the maze. She can get her fill with the newcomers,” 42 said, looking toward me. That normally would have sounded like fun, but had me filled with a deep-seated sense of foreboding.

“T-the maze? Who is it?” Andrea asked as 42 backed away from her.

“I said, who is it?” Andrea followed up after being ignored.

“I didn’t catch your gibbering,” 42 responded frostily.

“Mistress,” I started, not liking where things were headed. 42 giving Andrea a hard time was fine, it was how she was doing it that bothered me. People’s personalities didn’t change wildly for no reason. That this might have been a yet unseen part of her nature wasn’t good. Less for what she was doing and more because it meant I’d misjudged her character, badly.

“Just tell me who it is!” Andrea shouted and 42 smiled viciously.

“What’s it matter who they are? From the start you’ve been plotting to murder anyone who stood between you and your targets. You even signed up to do anything I told you to without any such consideration. You should start getting used to killing indiscriminately. It’s not like only evil people will get in your way once you start,” 42 said then disappeared, teleporting from the room.

Andrea finally took a step back and it was to collapse to her knees and start crying. I let out a sigh of relief. Things had gone strangely, but I hadn’t been wrong. She’d regret being so ruthlessly blunt once she reigned in her temper.

Left alone in the aftermath I could have just walked away, and probably should have. I’d introduced myself by ambushing and stabbing the girl. She wasn’t likely to welcome my lingering. Even so I didn’t feel an urge to leave just yet.

“That wasn’t an order. 42 wouldn’t actually make you do anything like that, you just pissed her off,” I said after Andrea was done with the heaving portion of her cry and just sniffling. She didn’t look up at me, face pressed into her knees as she hugged them. That she didn’t call me a liar or keep crying was probably as close to an acceptance of my words as I would get.

Henry had done his best to mediate between her and the others since she’d arrived. Apologizing for her rudeness and asking for understanding on her behalf. Watching her, I didn’t see the ‘fragile’ state he’d been talking about, but something more familiar and bitter.

“Why are you still here!?” She demanded with swollen eyes. They would have been a lively green if not for their bloodshot state dulling them.

“Because I want to be,” I replied flatly. It earned me an angry snort, but I didn’t mind. I was curious about how ghastly this ‘fragile’ girl would end up.

“Why won’t she let me just go kill my father? I wouldn’t care how long I’d have to be her servant for after that,” Andrea asked in a weak voice after a while.

“Why do you want to kill him?” I asked, not really up on all the details. 42 had let certain things be known, but nothing too private.

“He sold me like a cow,” Andrea said miserably.

“My mum was sold to a brothel,” I countered, not certain what point she was making.

“What?” Andrea asked, eyes round in surprise and voice cracking after becoming thick from crying.

“People get sold, ya know? I was a slave briefly once myself,” I said, not certain what she found confusing. I’d first learned to fight when my owner started using me in back alley fighting rings. The sort where people wanted to be close enough for the blood to splatter them as they watched. I didn’t feel anything as I recalled the fact. My old life was like a story book I’d read so many times I knew it by heart.

A story that didn’t tell me how I felt, but included facts I hadn’t known when I was living. Like my mother’s name and profession, and which of her clients had been my father. A pair of names with no faces to go with them. I couldn’t make up my mind if it mattered or not. I preferred my other memories, like the smell of the ocean or the taste of bread from old nan’s kitchen the time I stole it.

Those felt more personal and real, unlike the random names rattling around in my head like I’d known them all along.

“That’s horrible,” Andrea said, sounding shocked still. I scratched the back of my skull awkwardly. She couldn’t have been doing it on purpose, but the way Andrea was looking at me was getting on my nerves. Being looked down on I could handle. Being pitied got under my bones.

“So, is that really all that’s got you so bent?” I asked, not interested in what she’d say next about me. She hesitated for a few moments, looking at my face searchingly for something I assumed she didn’t find. I wasn’t moved by her plight as things stood and wasn’t likely to be, nor would I pretend. Her expression wavered between anger and tears but finally settled somewhere in the middle as she took a deep breath.

“He put that mind control necklace on me himself. I was stupid enough to believe he’d finally accepted I wanted to be an adventurer,” Andrea started. Her voice caught, but steadied as she stubbornly fought to keep her voice even.

“That the conservative old man finally accepted I wasn’t a disgrace to the family. I felt fucking honored,” Andrea continued, her voice rising to a shrill crescendo at the end before she broke out into bitter laughter. I waited for her to work it out of her system again.

“What, nothing rude to say?” Andrea asked after I let her sit a bit in silence.

“Three things. What’s to say he wasn’t mind controlled or threatened too? Possibly with the rest of your family's lives,” I started, holding a non-middle finger aloft to start ticking off the points. A conscious courtesy. Andrea looked angry and probably wanted to cut me off in the middle, but I didn’t pause to let her. By the end she was looking at me numbly as the color drained from her face.

“Second off, if he was that against it, why would he willingly have you become a ‘hero’ if he felt it was disgraceful for you to fight? That’s parading dirty laundry in public. Something nobles usually don’t do,” I said as I raised the next finger. She was watching me, eyes bright with tears and a scowl, but I didn’t mind.

“Another tick in favor of it not being his choice. Third… What happens after you kill him?” I said as I raised the final finger. Knowing Henry and 42, they’d probably tiptoed around trying to bring up the same ideas to her. Looking at her, I felt certain it was part of why she’d been so closed off. She was already thinking about it, but it was confusing. Anger was simpler.

“What does it matter to you?” Andrea asked, angry but also clearly scared.

“Honestly, it doesn’t. I’m an assassin, love. I killed strangers professionally,” I informed her, producing a small throwing knife from my wrist holster and doing a few tricks with it for emphasis.

“The problem is you're worrying yourself to death over it,” I said honestly. Her training wasn’t going well because she was overworking herself on top of being anxious. It wouldn’t be long before she did something stupid and collapsed from injury or ill health.

“Which also wouldn’t be any of my business, but you're taking up attention I’d prefer to have,” I added and had to hold in a wince. That was more honest than I liked to be, but I was well and truly sick of 42 doting on the girl. To a lesser extent I also wasn’t particularly happy with how much time Henry spent with her either.

Andrea looked at me sullenly before giving a desolate little laugh. The smile that followed it, only to vanish as she wiped her forehead on a grimy sleeve, struck me and I forgot to prod her for a reply.

“If I still want to train with you, will you agree?” Andrea asked after a few moments of silence.

“Sure love,” I replied. She nodded while I felt a tingle run down my spine. I hadn’t realized I called her ‘love’ the first time, but did once I said it a second time. Hearing it made my shoulder blades itch. A sailor I’d known had called women that way and men lad. I’d taken up copying him in life, but I hadn’t used it since I’d woken up in the dungeon.

“Not today though, things to do,” I said, offering her a hand up again. She took it this time and gave me a nod before heading back to her room. I turned and headed toward the teleport ring, trying to shake off the disquiet I felt.

It was just a word I used to make girls giggle when I flirted. It just felt uncomfortable because I wasn’t accustomed to using it anymore. Settling my mind, I headed for the valley, wondering how much trouble I was in as I whistled a cheerful tune to myself.