Rule 6

Treasure Is Relative & Monsters Are Vendors?

Statement: It should be noted that I’ve been given lots of advice. One of the first bits had given to me by an inhuman stewardess. She’d said cowards, the brave, and clever people all die in equal measure. They told me, instead, to be a little bit of each. Be a little wise. Be a little brave. Be a bit of a coward.

There have been many different versions of this advice over the years, well before these changes. Each one speaks to the same universal truth. Fortune favors the bold. Know when to walk away. These sayings encapsulate what we’ve always known; our choices walk a fine line between death and survival.

The duo babbled at each other while my body healed. It took me the better part of a day to grow legs. This was notably faster than when I’d lost my hand. Either having more money on my debt card, the orbs from killing monsters, or lots of practice getting hurt had increased my regenerative powers.

I needed to test it to figure out what allowed me to heal quickly. If money, as measured by the debt card’s text, impacted my regeneration, then spending it on a prize might be counterproductive.

The others weren’t at the rally point. I’d succeeded in my main mission. Little Shade confirmed that Callisto and friends had left on a cart north. Of course, she hadn’t bothered to talk to any of them or drop a note. So far, Little Shade only talked to me.

Midge and Little Shade talked the entire trip to my safe house. A flock of morning birds made less noise. There were dozens in the forest park that Mayor Kent claimed ownership over. Each morning they babbled their secret language. I would have had a better time not understanding the girls. They spoke English, but they didn’t. Perhaps women were the only unchanged aspect of this new world. They still made zero sense.

I smiled as we reached the driveway to a small apartment complex.

The apartments consisted of four narrow buildings with eight homes each. Thirty-two homes that held supplies. Supplies in this world still confused me. Canned goods had expiration dates but those were hard to use when no one had been sure of the exact date. I tested them. Either I healed from food poisoning before noticing it, or they were still good.

Bars, bottles of water, bandages, and so on, were all stored in safe houses. Being sneaky meant no mini-orcs had noticed me gathering supplies. Putting them up high ensured no lesser creatures would be able to steal them. I checked weekly anyway. Roaming the city through all six supply locations took the better part of a day.

“You hid stuff here? This is a bad place to hide. Those gobbys are everywhere, poking into everything. That they do. Poke with their pokers, that is.” Little Shade’s commentary shook me out of the memories. My legs were weak and barely held any weight. I’d lost mass, leaving me at nearly a hundred pounds if I were to guess. Lance should weigh more than Hawthorn.

“They do not notice attics. They only see ground floor and where the stairs are. You can use the roof access, there.” I pointed at a hatch right under the slanted roof. The access went into a crawlspace with about six feet of overhead at the highest point. I’d piled slats of supplies inside.

“All the way up there?” Little Shade sounded upset. She might not like heights. She’d shown no signs of healing like I could, so maybe the fear of falling mattered.

“Correct. It is safer.” We’d walked over three miles to get here. I wanted to sleep but pushed myself.

“How did you get up there without a ladder?”

The grooves on the wall were obvious to me. They were spread far apart, too far for mini-orcs. I’d gone up with a stolen pick in each hand, pulled up a few ropes, then used those to lift supplies. The summoned blades only lasted ten minutes and it had taken almost an hour to make the handholds. Mountain climbing might be easier.

“Daggers, time, and desire.” I shrugged weakly.

Midge flew off toward the small square.

“You got goods up there?”

“Food. Water. I expected trouble and prepared. After last time. I set up places to…” ‘Crawl away weakly’ would be a pathetic finish to that sentence so I simply stopped talking. Little Shade had stabbed me. Healing had taken days.

I don’t like relying on other people. Having my hand missing had made me weak. Not as weak as now. Without Little Shade’s help I would have died to the Ogre King. I’d prepared enough to have safe points but not for crushing damage that would have outright killed me.

Getting away the prior two times had blinded me to the possibility of irrevocable failure.

Little Shade did not climb the wall to the roof. Instead, she marched up to the top set of apartments, picked the lock, and went inside. I followed after, much slower, and thankful for being gifted with stealth abilities. The stairs creaked. Mini-orcs prowled the neighborhood but didn’t notice our travels.

“Come on! Get some pep in your step. Acting the wounded warrior coming home from battle you are. It init attractive. Not that you’re a sight for any eyes like this. Those pants are falling off you and it looks like the wind might blow you down the street like a kite.”

She’d brought over a broken stool, stood on it, and started hacking away at the ceiling. Powder came down from the plaster. It went all over the minimally furnished apartment.

I winced and went into a coughing fit. My fist weakly pounded on my chest to get junk out of my lungs. She ignored my plight and continued to carve. I flipped her off. Midge tittered and wagged her diminutive finger at me.

Her knife sawed the drywall with ease. Little Shade continued until she’d dug apart a good portion of the ceiling. I’d never expected anyone to simply demolish the layer between here and the attic.

It seemed like she should have run into boards or nails. I hadn’t explored the makeup of houses too much during my time. I’d only ransacked them for supplies. Little Shade clearly had done both. I made a mental note to figure out what construction went into the places where my goodies were hidden. Any number of monsters could have easily torn up the wall with time and a little effort.

I drifted in and out of consciousness. Being Hawthorn had drained me. Being Lance sedated me. Regrowing body parts made it that much worse.

A heavy bottle of water smacked me in the lap. “Ow,” I said then coughed.

Little Shade stuck her hand out from the unnatural darkness. I drifted and wondered why I could make out any of her shapes when the apartment had no lights. The reason hit me a moment later. One of my runes or gained abilities included darkness vision. Midge also cast a soft glow.

This world frequently confused me. I couldn’t easily reconcile being able to see in the dark, but not being able to pierce her shade. It couldn’t be any different than me going into some stealth mode to people like Leon but noticing absolutely no change in myself.

I ate food. The girls ransacked my stockpile and brought down nearly everything. The bandages were useless to me in terms of healing but I’d imagined binding up an arm or creating a sling until the healing kicked in. The important parts were food and water which gave me material to replenish my body. A healing potion would have been better but I still hadn’t found a vending machine to purchase one from. Plus those glass bottles were fragile.

By the end of a few hours I’d grown even more exasperated with their endless yammering. Little Shade and Midge disappeared, frequently, to explore the nearby buildings. They probably sought treasures or more artifacts. I’d searched too, hoping to stumble across an item like her hat, but came up empty.

“You ready? Ready to go? To the place where I know a person who might have things. They collect all sorts of things to sell for moneys. You gave me moneys. You can give him moneys. Fairness for fareness.”

I swallowed the remaining food bar and drank my bottle of water in a single breath, and said, “Descriptive. A person. With things.”

“Very much so. But your words are too hard to use. Narrow. Straight. Not at all useful for getting around corners.”

I ignored her nonsense and nodded.

Little Shade stood at the bottom of the apartment stairs. I felt better going down than I had coming up. My legs were far thicker than they had been.

We were weighed down with food and I found myself eating a fifth protein bar. Little Shade had stockpiled food herself and walked, oblivious of any dangers, while eating a package of dried noodles like a savage. Her teeth crunched loudly and it seemed likely that Little Shade chewed with her mouth open. The spices smelled delicious but if I were Hawthorn I’d be thinking rather lewd thoughts about how to make that irritating chewing stop.

I managed to put the flash of thought out of my mind and pulled my T-shirt out a little to see how my body was doing. My abs were filling in. Chest muscles had almost returned to normal.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The newspaper stand by the bus depot,” Little Shade answered while chewing.

“That is a strange location.”

“No, uh uh,” Midge cut off Little Shade. “We not going to the depot. We’re going to the pot. Des Pit. Despite the pot. For Mister Yuck Yuck. He’s a collector of items.”

“And they’re gross. That they are.”

They were confusing. Midge had enough issues since she constantly babbled a stream of short sentences containing maybe half a nugget of useful information in them. Little Shade had clearly gone around the bend because she actually knew what Midge was talking about.

Midge continued, “He collects things other people throw away. But all the things he collects have power. Maybe you can use them with your artifact book of infinity mirrors to make a new face. Or a better leg. Ones you can’t blow up. Or whatever it is you want to buy. But don’t buy the same face twice. That’s free advice.”

Most of that went completely over my head. “Okay.”

Little Shade snorted and threw her wrapper onto the street. It joined all the other litter lying about. In a few weeks it would be matted to the ground by rain and covered with dirt. The action irritated me.

She swallowed and moved a hand up toward her face. I assumed she was wiping away drool. “When we see him, don’t look in its eyes. In fact, it’s best if you don’t look at all. Just tell it what you want and Midge can read the price. She can.”

That confused me. When I’d first met Midge, she’d been chained to a desk writing words. The words she wrote were in the same gibberish scrawl that everything in the world turned to.

Post Note: It’s the same nonsense this journal is turning into. If you can read this, you’re doing better than I am—so far. I’ll learn, somehow.

“Why can she read it?”

“Midge don’t think like us anymore. She hasn’t since she…”

“Shut uuuup!” Midge shouted. “You talk all the time. Just because your brain drips between your legs while he’s here, wait, is there a word for that? When a human stops thinking with their brain and thinks with their reproductive organs and eyes but they ignore taste buds.” The faerie rambled on listing details of the word she wanted and moved onto, “He probably tastes like sour lemon drops. Worse than fireballs.”

Little Shade snarled. “You shut your trap, or no more roses.”

Midge shut up. Our path continued toward the bus depot. Before the collapse there had been a parking garage filled with city buses. It sat on the outskirts of town next to a sewage factory. Both places smelled foul and I expected there to be some twisted slime monsters in their depths. Still, Little Shade clearly found it safe enough.

She also had a super move that cleaved ogres to pieces. I’d seen it used twice now and both times left me in awe. One day I might catch up in terms of ability.

Their silence continued for longer than I could ever expect. It was blissful. I didn’t smile or frown or even groan. I simply enjoyed not thinking at all. It didn’t help that my legs were close to giving out and my ribs still partially outlined due to emaciation. I’d been healthy and whole almost two days ago.

Two days was a lot of time in this apocalyptic fantasy world. Callisto and the others must be at Crown State Park by now. The women resumed chattering over my head as we got closer to the depot. I ignored them while trying to nail down all the different ways to catch up with my dungeon delving group. They’d surely need all the help they could get to survive and return home safely.

It wasn’t that I cared if they survived. Their lives were simply useful. Keeping them around meant that Stella had more people to keep her safe.

Eventually I wound back to the conversation they’d been having before telling each other to shut up. “It is the form.”

“What is the what?” Little Shade asked. “You’ve been quieter than a church mouse. Almost forgot you were with us, I did.”

“The reason you have a hard time thinking straight. It’s my other body. It came from a woman whose skin was like the earth…” My words trailed off as I worked through exhaustion. Healing took a lot out of me on a normal day. Growing limbs this quickly left me in need of a nap. “She swayed. I could almost taste her lips. They would have been like honeysuckles.” Soft, a hint of natural sugar, more than enough to take a second lick.

Recalling my interaction with the sultry woman had my brain dizzy with need. It was sad since the only thing she’d actually done was drunkenly scream and order her giant—literally—husband to kill me. That reminded me of other stuff she’d yelled. I should have checked for their wedding rings. Based on her babbling, there had been magic in them.

“Sounds like a nymph to me. My daddy used to go on about them. He said nymphs were wild women hidden away in bars. He did. Said that a man might take one home at night. Then the next day poor man would wake up with a hangover and no wallet. Told him it was a lesson, I did. He agreed and went back the next weekend for another lesson, that he did.”

She stood on one side of me. I blinked in confusion multiple times before nodding. I didn’t know how to process any of the babble coming out of Little Shade’s mouth. That might have been the first fact she shared about her life, but it still wasn’t about her directly. I found it interesting that the young woman felt free to talk about anything except important stuff.

Post Note: It’s weird to think of her as a young woman. I hardly thought of myself as old. It was simply what we’d done and been through. In a month my mind had aged. There’s something about mental cynicism that makes everyone else seem naïve and young. That is, of course, an illusion of the mind.

“Not a nymph. A dryad,” Midge said. Her voice dragged into a high-pitched squeak. “Take a man’s seed and make it into a forest. Old magic. Scary magic. Made of dreams and dirt and sunshine topped with sadness and want and moss. But mostly lots and lots of want. Wants to listen. Wants to do. Wants to be done.”

Midge circled around us at high speeds. Her bright wings distracted me and I found my path veering to the side. She opened her mouth and asked, “Is there a—”

“There’s no word for all of those things at once,” Little Shade said before she could finish asking.

“You should invent one. Something with a kay sound. Kay’s are strong letters. Not like eyes. They’re squishy and slant if you put too much on them. It’s sad.”

I sighed heavily. Midge’s nonsense aside, her description of the dryad sounded right. There had been a lot of overgrown plants in the woman’s house. It had also been screwed up. Wanting, sadness, sunshine, dreams, and dirt sounded like a formula for craziness. Dryads, to the best of my limited knowledge, were not male. They were female. Implying the creature I transformed into might be similar but radically different.

My thoughts didn’t even touch on the fact that she’d gone nearly insane with need because her husband couldn’t get it up. It might happen to me if I wore Hawthorn for too long without some sort of release.

Tomorrow, after healing more, I’d fight monsters and drive all the nonsense these girls had been uttering straight from my head. Stabbing things always brought a simple clarity. If they weren’t stab-able, blowing them up would also serve. I could find a bird and use the net to bring it down, then pluck it and roast it. That might work.

No, any monster birds would turn into orbs. I wanted a warm meal. Stores were too often filled with monsters. There had to be an untouched home with a lantern sitting inside.

“Over here!” Midge yelled.

I jerked my head up and studied the area we’d wandered to.

Mini-orcs were all over. They weren’t moving and had dull gray coloring. I studied them for a few breaths before realizing they were statues.

“Don’t look at him,” Little Shade said. “No matter what happens don’t look.”

That made me want to look. Little Shade had all but put a red shiny button in front of me then labeled it ‘don’t push.’ I pondered using explosive spells, mirrors, and other tricks.

Midge shouted, “Over here. Here. He’s inside here.”

We were on an asphalt sidewalk overgrown by grass. Cement had broken from vague outlines of deep footprints. Something large and heavy roamed these roads. I glanced at Little Shade for any sign on what to do next. She kept her gaze averted.

“Come on. You paid. I almost showed you. A deal’s not done until I’ve actually showed you. So. Over here.”

She motioned me to a large building. Double doors framed the entryway and had fallen off their hinges. Moss lined the building’s rounded edges. The afternoon sun made the doorway even more foreboding. I felt colder and grosser simply looking at the run-down sewage plant.

Midge chattered the whole way inside. Little Shade stayed quiet and tiptoed along. We went around bends. I held a dagger in my hand, ready to stab anything that touched me wrong. Nothing came. The entire inside had the same eerie emptiness as the outside. The overgrown moss and damp muddy smells grew in intensity.

Little Shade moved slower than I did. She hung behind me, letting Midge lead the way. For some reason, the flying faerie didn’t care at all about this area but it clearly made Little Shade nervous. That bothered me.

“I’m going to wait over here,” Little Shade said.

I lifted an eyebrow. “This is not a trap, is it?”

I hoped she wouldn’t be able to lie to me. The curse of truthfulness could be bent or simply ignored, but so far no one had lied that I could tell.

“No,” Little Shade said. And that was all she said. That also bothered me. This entire situation felt dangerous. We’d walked into a place I hadn’t had time to scout. There was no sign of the normal monsters. No rabbit chickens or pint-sized fantasy orcs. Only moss and foreboding silence.

“Come on!” Midge shouted. “Oh you should turn around too. Twos. To the twos. Face away. Mister Yuck is bad for the eyes.”

They had both warned me to face away. It didn’t sit well with me. I pondered over our complicated past. We weren’t exactly allies, but we weren’t enemies either. Midge especially, she had been held captive by a gold chain the first time we’d met. She was scared of me, because of the item I owned.

I put one hand on the book and told myself there was no reason for Little Shade to rescue me from the Ogre King then get me killed here.

So, I turned to face away from the door where Midge stood. Little Shade turned to the side but kept her fingers on the hat’s brim.

Post Note: Okay, there is the possibility she might have been sacrificing me. It might be the standing there in that spot opened a secret door and she’d steal all the treasure. But, I’d paid Midge—and she seemed insistent upon the deal. Little Shade had given me the tip on how to kill the Ogre King, so she trusted me to an extent to use the weapon wisely—assuming she wouldn’t kill me with her ability.

But, I needed more power. The stewardesses had told me to be a little bit foolish, wise, and brave. This certainly counted as all three—and in doing so, I found a way to survive. Power, however, leads to more foolishness. A secret of mine that I’m sharing.

The door behind us opened and I felt a wave of terror like I haven’t felt in months.