Rule 5

Safe Houses Aren’t & Honor Old Allegiances

Statement: I find myself wondering about something Midge spoke of. That there are multiple types of secrets. She never told me what those types were—but I believe there may be secret locations, or hidden prizes. Then the best kind of all, secrets people keep about themselves. My hand shakes as I write this, for I’ve started to believe there’s really something to this idea.

Now, at the time of this story, I hadn’t fully dawned upon the realization. Here is where it truly started. When I resolved myself to learn secrets about my companions. Simply the idea had me smiling. Imagine, that I finally understood why being around Callisto, knowing who she was before the change, made me giddy. I relished the idea of telling her, because the stewardess might be right, a secret only we two would know, could be delightfully delicious.

Seeing my body in pieces broke me. I screamed louder and longer than I’d ever thought possible. Every hurt since the event had gone away when I’d wished it, but this stuck with me. It carried me like a tidal wave. It crashed me upon the shore and swept me out again. Pain slammed me down again and again like a toy at the mercy of some great uncaring force of nature.

It wouldn’t turn off.

The wall beneath me shook. Pigs squealed and the sound simply wouldn’t stop. My eyes fluttered and cognitive thinking skittered sideways with more violence than the homeless puppet. Nonsense ideas came to mind. A fervent prayer that I’d wake and be in the real world went with flashes of the car wreck.

My friends. My asshole friends stared at me like they couldn’t comprehend. Their drunken stupor outweighed any sensible concern or urgency to help. They’d laughed in the same confused idiotic manner as the Ogre King.

“What’s wrong, little smiling killer? Point bits not pointy enough?” He laughed like a dog attempting to speak.

Post Note: I do not understand how I could hear him over my own screaming. In truth, during most fights I remained able to compartmentalize pain and do what needed to be done. Right then, in this moment, I could barely keep myself from passing out.

Readers may wonder how it’s possible to be in so much pain that they pass out. Especially when certain death stalks below. If they don’t understand how this can happen, they’re fortunate.

“I’ll kill you!” My declaration came out wet and garbled. The tone probably conveyed my feelings. One of my eyes lost vision.

“Submit! I’ll give you all the things to kill!” The Ogre King mocked me with his offer. He disregarded my obvious stance on the situation.

I fumbled for an explosive rune. My body jerked violently instead of doing what I demanded. Every effort to force my will upon the broken flesh failed. My ears clicked off.

Darkness swallowed the landscape. I felt only cold. My remaining fingers could be crushed to a pulp. Someone could be grabbing me right now. My body wanted to move. It might have. It might still be moving.

The black engulfed landscape returned to normal. There were four dead ogres. Their bodies cleanly cleaved by an attack I hadn’t been able to see during the bout of lightlessness.

The Ogre King didn’t wear a smile anymore. I completed a throwing motion. Nothing impressive happened.

“Not a good look for you. No it isn’t. Come on, half-an-Adonis, we need to get far, far away from here.” The voice startled me.

“Shade?” Her full name I’d never learned. It might be Charlotte. Coach Madison had complained about a Charlotte. My eyes were losing focus.

We fell. The sudden shifting sensation pulled my neck and caused a fresh wave of pain. I wondered if she’d gutted me once more. My mind drifted and fingers hopefully worked toward my stomach. I couldn’t see straight or tell what I’d been touching.

Little Shade threw a large bottle at the far wall. It cracked and thick pink mist spread in the air. She hefted me away. I glanced behind us as the liquid she’d thrown worked its magic. I retained enough awareness to watch in wonder.

We were on the bottom floor. Pigs everywhere. Ogres ran in. Pigs ran away with disturbingly cheery oinks. The wall she’d tossed her potion at was outright melting.

“Me gives!” an ogre shouted.

The creature’s large body came running around the corner and slammed into Little Shade’s pink cloud. Two more ogres slammed into the wall along with the first. Their loincloth covered asses flopped from unholy attempts to mate with inanimate objects.

“Me gives it to it!” the third shouted.

The first two roared. “Take mine!” they said in unison.

Post Note: If it sounds like they were arguing over who got to—breed the wall—then you’re following correctly. I was missing parts of both legs, and an arm at this stage, but I couldn’t have imagined that.

A three-way fight ensued. Two more ogres showed up and the brawl grew out of hand. I vaguely registered that she’d found a perfume lure which worked on these oversized monsters. I’d tried that once. The ogres didn’t care about normal perfumes and soaps like the regular mini-orcs. In fact, using perfume had simply lured in mini-orcs, who were then constricted by the ogres for reasons I hadn’t figured out.

Heavier footsteps shook the ground. The ogre brawl behind us paused their actions. I tensed. Little Shade glanced around then kept on going.

“Enough! You give nothing. I give everything!”

The Ogre King eyed the wall. Little Shade continued dragging me away and around a corner. Thankfully, this meant the sight of an Ogre King beating the daylights out of his minions, before preparing to molest a wall, was un-viewed.

“They think with their little heads even more than you do. That they do,” Little Shade said happily.

She carried me onward. I wanted to take advantage of being so close to her and finally see what hid under the hat casting darkness. Instead, I blacked out.

I woke to darkness. My hand dove for the book. It didn’t work. Without a pause I used my other hand and reached to the page for a summon spell and a resulting dagger. It took all of three breaths to get my blade ready and light the explosive rune with the same hand. My other arm hadn’t healed yet.

Little Shade sat ten feet away. We were in a bedroom that had been picked over. The mattress stolen or repurposed and the headboard was in splinters. A cord tightened around my neck. My eyes widened. The pressure felt tight and made breathing difficult.

“Manners manners, Mister Knife Ears. Init right to be pointing a blade at a girl. No it init. Why the last man to do so got a bit too close to my new toy. Went all bug-eyed when I stopped his breathing. And he was less scary then you with your black pig sticker.”

I groaned weakly. The pressure at my neck increased. The hand with a dagger dropped down slowly in defeat. My explosive rune continued to glow red on my fingers. If this situation grew worse, I intended to blow anything dangerous to pieces.

“Knife Ears?” I asked.

Little Shade might be smiling. Her voice lifted and she snorted before answering. “Checked your card? It’s changed. Nicked it for a spell, read all about what you is and isn’t. That I did. Not that there’s a lot of words on them yet. You should see Midge’s card. Filled to the brim with gibberish. I think she wrote most of it in herself.”

“He’s scary. Smiling. Even now, look at him. All grins and ready to kill,” a second voice said.

“Midge?” I asked.

The pressure loosened a little as a tiny winged human no more than eight inches high floated into view. Her body glowed a soft yellow light that reminded me of Leon’s abilities.

Recap: Little Shade I’ve described already. That is, I’ve admitted knowing her and that she’s about my age. Her actual features are hard to pick out with the hat she wears. Pale white skin, maybe a hint of freckles. Maybe eighteen but seems younger, I can’t tell. I get the impression she’d been a loner in life before the event, and maybe a street kid.

Midge on the other hand, was a chatterbox of a flying faerie creature I could squish in my hand. She knew lots of secrets, but they were all “little” whatever that means. She was also incredibly pushy.

It was getting harder to think straight. Midge’s tiny dress fluttered loosely. It’d been made from who knew what and did nothing to hide miniature curves. I smiled, but not because I wanted to stab her, at least not with this dagger. Plus there was the mystery of what Little Shade felt like under that darkness. I wouldn’t mind not being able to see her, if I could explore with my hands.

My head shook in denial of the awkwardly budding thoughts. I needed to get out of this form. “Can you let me go?”

“Probably best for us not to.”

“He could give his word. He has to honor it if he does. That’s a rule. For him. For the game. Promises must be kept or else chaos. It’ll be like it was before. Liars, traitors, and unhappy killers.”

Midge had nothing in her hands. The material around my neck operated independently of Midge or Little Shade. It was likely a spell. It might be an enchanted object. I assumed that Little Shade had found another toy to go with her hat and whatever caused that murderous darkness of hers. Midge must have helped her.

“Promise? He has to promise. But not just say it. He has to mean it. What’s the word for that? A promise that means more than life? A debt?”

“I don’t think there is a word for that. That there isn’t,” Little Shade responded.

Post Note: It’s awkward to recount a conversation like this, and think of sex. It’s really, really awkward to admit it. Perhaps it helps that this journal may never be read. It’s not like I’d been starved of female companionship. Callisto proved more than willing as long as there weren’t missions to go on.

Little Shade flipped her hand over and pointed at me. The upturned palm motion felt out of place for a girl her supposed age, but the hat made it work. “So, promise not to stab us?”

“Or blow us up. Or drown us. Or bash us. Or, what’s the word for putting someone in a blender and turning on the microwave?”

“Or those?” Little Shade added without missing a beat or responding to Midge.

“I promise not to hurt either of you, unless you ask for it, or wish to hurt me first.” The words popped out without so much as a second thought. That fact alone made me blink heavily. My mouth dried as I suddenly felt the need to find an escape.

“Don’t like it,” Midge answered. “What if he thinks we’re trying to hurt him if we’re trying to help? You bounced him all around. You did. With the jumping and running and screaming. Then those ogres. One of them got him. What if he thinks that you saving him was trying to hurt him?”

I understood their stance, I really did. My body count had already gotten unreasonably high in the last month. The number of monsters I’d felled on my own, not to mention those weird dungeon creatures, reached high enough to be a massacre in the old world. Here though, every creature killed only amounted to potential orbs. In that way, none of them were real.

The willingness to stick a knife in someone should bother me. It didn’t.

“There’s no way we could get him to promise perfectly and never have loopholes. You said it yourself. Everything has a loophole—” Little Shade’s words were cut off as Midge flew into her face with both hands stretched out. The faerie disappeared into Little Shade’s halo of darkness. The two girls scuffled, and Midge babbled at a high speed.

“Deal then, but I want don’t want to be murdered by him. He’s a crafted killer. Born and bred and made and paid,” Midge babbled.

“Deal,” I repeated. That felt final. The pressure at my neck loosened. My body felt weighed down but not uncomfortable. I drifted off for a moment, then reached up to grab my chest rune. It had to come off before I imagined them wrestling without clothes.

Too late—but at least I managed to remove the spell form.

The marking peeled off like a thick bandage. My body shuddered in a release of tension. The pain that had been distant traveled further away. Both girls squabbled about whatever secrets they’d betrayed in speaking to me while I felt relaxation equal to the best hospital drugs. My arm itched but that stopped being important. My legs weren’t responding but I couldn’t be bothered to care.

“I’ll heal from this,” I mumbled. My chest moved slowly up and down. “This will pass.”

I remembered sitting in my dad’s house, at the front window, and staring outside as the dark clouds formed overhead. This felt much like that. Detached, without a sense of place in the world. My body healed while my mind bided its time. I’d asked the short bearded man for an item to help me, and he’d delivered.

A changelings orb. Shape shifting spells. Healing from wounds. My body was no more than a vessel for my mind. These half-formed thoughts all tied together but didn’t make perfect sense. I needed more capabilities than simply being sneaky and having bombs. I had twice as much money now. The debt card sat there, waiting to be used.

My face twitched as ideas occurred to me. I’ll write them down here.

Little Shade had apparently looked at my card again. She said the title changed. Midge might have a secret I wanted for money, such as a place to spend my “bucks”. There had been no vending machines in that dungeon, and I had yet to find one around town. The Ogre King had absolutely thrashed me. The third time had not been a charm.

“Look at him. He doesn’t care,” Little Shade said at last. “Lance ain’t after your secrets. I told you, I did. Your little life tips don’t mean anything to some people. Just like he doesn’t care about me or the artifacts. It’s why we can trust him. He doesn’t pry. A man that don’t pry is a rare thing, he is.”

“He cares,” Midge insisted. Her voice dipped and spiked to extremes that almost made me twitch. Euphoric sensations kept my lids heavy and thoughts foggy. I loved my abilities. Healing, from anything, drug addled mentality. Being foggy headed bothered me when there were things to be done, but right now I couldn’t think of any.

Post Note: This is, of course, stupid. There were things to be done. That included blowing up more buildings, meeting with the others, getting out to Crown State Park, finding the item Little Shade had told me would help us defeat the Ogre King, making sure Stella had proper food, and above all—survival.

“Maybe that’s not his kind of secret,” Midge the Tattletale said. “Maybe he’s collecting other kinds.”

“There are kinds?” Their speaking about me like I wasn’t in the room made my teeth grind. My free hand came up and cupped my mouth. I took in slow thick lungfuls of air as Midge answered.

“One hundred bucks.” Her hand came out and she darted around, making sure to stay in my line of sight.

Midge behaved exactly like last time. “Come on. I smell your moneys. Give it. I’ll give you a small secret. The kinds of secrets. If fits in a hand and a flower and a breadbox. But it won’t fit in an eye. Nope. Secrets don’t like eyes, that’s why they hide. And a secret in a mouth isn’t a secret for long.”

I stared at Midge. She babbled on almost as much as Little Shade. The idea of being trapped in this room with both of them while my body healed sounded unappealing. Maybe I couldn’t blow them up but take out the floor they stood on instead. Damage would be collateral at that stage.

“No deal,” I answered and pushed the destructive ideas away. My body needed time to heal and all this money would matter at some stage. I didn’t want to waste it on ideas I could figure out without their help. Their artifacts, life tips, spells, were all items that could be learned through observation.

Little Shade laughed loudly. Midge’s wings deflated and she flew back to Little Shade’s side.

Despite denial of that trade, Midge probably did have valuable information. Little Shade clearly had grown in the time we’d been separated. I didn’t believe in luck and believed she had killed monsters and spent money on secrets from Midge.

She’d been hiding out in town. We had to be someplace safe. A clear streak of smeared blood ran from here to the closed door. Blood, in this world didn’t mean anything special. Creatures killed each other all the time.

“Are we safe here?” I asked while reaching for the starlit knife.

“Until sunrise,” Little Shade said. Her halo bobbed as she, probably, shrugged. “But safe houses ain’t. Not for long. Plus that Ogre Grump is downright unhappy. Like you peed in his cereal and set his mom on fire. That’s what he’s acting like. He is.”

“That’s just ogres. Royals are mean. They care too much about their kind. Gain power from their followers. Like the Coach. His team gave him power. No team. No power. Too dangerous to anyone else. Be careful of royals. And spiders. Be really careful of spiders.”

There were probably all sorts of useful tidbits embedded in their speech but I’d grown exhausted. I needed food to replenish whatever this magic used to regrow limbs. By the time I had a whole body, I’d have to head to a stash in the city and find a meal. I had caches all over, mostly in attics.

But that brought up another point, one that Midge would be extremely helpful for. “I have another question, and if you can answer, I will pay.”

They both paused. Little Shade’s lantern of darkness tilted. I found myself staring distractedly at the headgear. How it could cast such a perfect circle of darkness, similar to a lamp but in reverse, still perplexed me. That wouldn’t be my question though.

“Where can I spend money on more spells?”

“Oh that’s easy,” Little Shade said.

Midge immediately rushed at her again, arms stretched outward to seal Little Shade’s mouth.

“Nothing is free. One hundred bucks!” the faerie screamed.

They tussled for a bit. I stared blankly and sighed.

“Deal,” I said.