First | Prev | Next
Discord | Patreon
I'd never been very fond of tea. Iced tea, sure. The Arnold Palmer was probably my favourite drink in the world. But actual proper tea? Well, I wasn't a fan of hot leaf water, thin and unsatisfying as it was.
But after the incident with Will, Valentine had suggested that I take a break, try some of the tea. It felt an awful lot like being sent to my room, but I didn't argue, embarrassed as I was. So I'd found the set of punch cards, picked the tea I'd disliked the least, and a moment later a stream of hot black tea filled the tiny porcelain cup.
It was all I could do not to crush it to dust in my fist. My anger at Will had burned itself out, leaving only frustration. Simon had seen me lose it, and Valentine had seen me lose it. Damn it all, getting hauled off to another world was supposed to be a chance for me to start over. And here I was falling back into the same old destructive patterns.
I looked up with a start as the latch clicked open, and Valentine appeared in the doorway. Still at the threshold, she took a deep breath before stepping inside and closing the door.
"Good," she said pleasantly, "It doesn't smell as if you're about to tear someone limb from limb, anymore."
"Yeah..." I said slowly, "Sorry about that."
Valentine frowned in confusion for a moment, before rolling her eyes and sighing in exasperation. She came over to the couch I was monopolizing, sat down in my lap, and put an arm around my neck.
"You thought I'd be angry with you?"
"Yeah, I did kinda lose my shit at Will. And I-" I hesitated, "I've really liked, you know, this," I said vaguely, gesturing at her on my lap, "And then, well, I went and did what I did."
Val absently flicked her wrist, "You didn't throw me in a river- today -and besides, you said it yourself. Like it or not, by taking the hotel we've made ourselves the local rulers, and I can only imagine what the baroness would have done had someone disrespected her in the manner Will did. And Temerity? If she were feeling merciful, perhaps she'd have him flogged, though death would not be out of the question. This world is crueller and harsher than the one you left, a leader cannot accept such disrespect, lest they not remain in power for long."
She patted my cheek, "But you did make two mistakes. Will did need to receive his comeuppance, but it should have been better reasoned. Thankfully I don't believe Simon saw much of what happened before the human struck the window, so as far as he knows, it was well reasoned."
"What about Matt?" I asked, "The gynoid?"
"Neither of them is of any consequence. But there is still your second mistake. I am not a reward for good behaviour," she intoned, her voice a near growl, “You beat the hell out of someone, whether they deserve it or not, and what, I'm supposed to scorn your affections to teach you a lesson? Or perhaps you carry a dozen orphans from a burning building, am I to swoon and throw myself at your feet? No," she growled, "If I want you, I will have you. Or perhaps I'll decide that men are not to my taste, and I'll invite girls from The Blushing Maiden to warm my bed. Whatever I choose, it will be that way precisely because I am the one that gets to choose, and not because the gods are rewarding you with a pretty toy," she held up a clenched fist, "Forget that, and I'll thump you until you remember."
I cast a side-eyed glance at her delicate little hand, and when my gaze returned to her face, I found her smirking.
"I know," she agreed readily, "I'd probably break my hand, and then wouldn't you feel terrible."
I raised my hands, "Okay, okay. Please, no thumping."
Val hopped up, "I'm glad we've had this talk. Now if you're finished sulking, the gynoid and I finished the puzzle. The penalty timer should be almost over, and we're only a few minutes behind Simon. Come now, I imagine the two of us will need a translator for this next puzzle, and you'll have to do."
"Amazing."
Valentine dropped her arms to her sides and gazed up at me with a degree of exasperation in her eyes that had only previously been achieved under laboratory conditions.
I gave her a wry smile and a shrug.
Valentine looked over at the gynoid, "I could have half a dozen of The Blushing Maiden's most inventive girls at my beck and call, and instead I'm following this idiot around."
Unable to understand Val's words, the gynoid furrowed her brows in confusion, "Your presence clearly arouses the small purple woman, but your words appear to frustrate her. Perhaps you should consider remaining silent more often."
Val raised an eyebrow as my face began to flush, and she glanced between the two of us.
"Excuse me?" I demanded.
"My programming is tuned to recognize certain physical signatures," the gynoid explained, "Pupil dilation, firmness in certain areas, rate of breathing, dampness in others-"
"I get it! You can tell we're horny. I don't need the details!"
"Well, not yourself. You seem much more temperate, at least where Valentine is-"
"So the rules for this one are really simple," I began loudly, in Elvish, and the gynoid subsided demurely, "Finish the maze as fast as you can. It's dark inside, which is why we've got the oil lamps there."
Val smirked, "Anything else?"
"That's it."
"You certain?" She asked, nodding towards the gynoid, "Because it feels like there's a little more going on."
"Maybe I'll swing by The Blushing Maiden and scoop up your favourite girls," I glowered, "Then I won't need to put up with your nonsense."
The rulebook hit the lectern with a thump, and I bent to scoop up a lantern. I lit it, stuffed the box of matches into my pocket, and strode into the maze.
The threshold of the maze was more of the rough masonry work that I'd by now grown familiar with, and I was careful not to catch a toe on the edge of a flagstone as I strode deeper into the maze.
The wavering lamplight reflected dully off the stones, with none of the wet sheen I'd come to expect. The smell of damp was still in the air, but faint, and I could hear no rushing water.
The harsh edges and square corners of the corridor gave way to a winding passage of raw stone. Beyond excavating the passage, little work had been done to finish it. Here and there I could still see the tool marks left by the miners' picks. The girls caught up with me only a moment later, Val close at my right, and the gynoid behind my left shoulder.
The sinuous passage carried on for only a dozen or so strides before it shifted back into a dead straight corridor of worked stone. I lifted the lamp, and could just make out the ghost of a T-junction another dozen paces further. Turning around, I realized why they'd left part of the entrance in-the-raw, as it were. The curves were enough to hide the light of the maze's antechamber, and I suspected that if I were standing at the junction, that the way back to the entrance would look like any of the others.
"Have either of you got anything to mark our path with?" I asked, once in Elvish and again in French.
"I have a pen here somewhere," Val muttered, digging around in her pockets, "It's not meant for hard surfaces, but the ink glows in the dark. It could work."
"I have an internal compass," the gynoid provided, "Though I'm not certain how much use it will be."
"It'll keep us pointed in the right direction at least. With the entrance behind, an exterior wall and Simon's maze to either side, it stands to reason the exit is that way," I pointed out.
"Ah, here it is."
There were a couple false starts as Val worked to get the pen to write on the stone, but in short order, she'd managed a little sketch of a door on the wall of the corridor.
We paused at the junction, and I considered our options while Val knelt to scribble on the floor. The lanterns weren't dim, not by any means, but even so, it was hard to make out much of consequence. One corridor looked much like another.
I still had one of Val's magic torches on me, and they were a lot more durable than the oil lamps, so I took it out, flipped it on, and threw it down the corridor to our right.
"Hey!" Valentine protested.
"What?" I retorted, "Now we can see what's down there, come on, give me yours, and we can see what's down the other one."
"Or we could just walk over there," she insisted, pointing at the torch I'd thrown.
It had come to rest a fair ways off, inside what looked to be a chamber of some sort. The floor was made up of large stone boards, for lack of a better term, and I saw an opening in the far wall.
"Unless you plan on leaving the torches where they lay, we will need to fetch them back."
Ah, yeah, that was a good point.
"Alright, I'll-"
There was a huff of breath, of the sort you might expect from something as large as a horse, or a bull. I raised the lantern, but needn't have bothered. Down the left-hand passage, nearly at the level of the roof, could be seen two burning coals.
The creature's footfalls shook the floor, and as it emerged into the lamplight, I made out the shape of a bull's head atop the body of a giant. Its chest and abdomen were well-muscled and tanned to a bronze sheen. Its wicked horns pointed forward and gleamed like steel. Its breath steamed in the air as it drew nearer, and the red-hot eyes seemed to pulse with every heartbeat.
"Bugger me," Valentine breathed.
"Merde," the gynoid agreed, both of them already backing towards the other corridor.
I reared back and pitched the lantern at the minotaur. It caught the creature in the upper chest, just below the neck, and shattered. The oil inside spilt across its chest and burst into flame, but still, the creature came inexorably onwards.
I had broken into a run even as I'd thrown the lantern, and now fought for more momentum as I charged the minotaur.
The flames might not have fazed the creature, but in the darkened corridor, they were enough to blind it to my approach. I caught it utterly off-guard as I struck it about the waist, hard enough that my teeth clacked together and my head rang with the impact.
We went down in a clattering heap with me atop the thing, and I scrambled for purchase as it thrashed under me. My left hand found one of the horns and held fast. With it for leverage, I pulled myself up to kneel on its chest and drove my fist into its snout with all of my strength. The shock travelled up my arm, a lance of pain that seemed to start at my fingertips, burn through the marrow, and spread across my chest.
Still, it thrashed, so I hit it a second, and then a third time. The pain grew more distant with each strike, and I was about to hit it a fourth time when the gynoid called out.
"Wallace, enough!" she shouted.
I looked up at her, arm cocked to punch the thing, my other hand still gripping its horn as it thrashed about. In the light of her own lantern, she seemed concerned, but not overly worried. I returned my gaze to the creature and understood why.
Its horns and skin didn't just look like polished steel and bronze. They were steel and bronze. It was another automaton, not as complex as the gynoid maid, but certainly a cut above the guards in the first room.
I'd pounded the thing's snout inwards, and it looked as if I'd turned its face inside out.
Valentine came to stand beside the gynoid, "You big wonderful moron," she sighed.
"Hey, you thought the thing was for real at first too," I protested.
The gynoid took my hand gently, even as I argued with Val, and began inspecting it.
"Yes," Val replied primly, "And then I recalled the rules, as you told them to me. Am I mistaken, or wasn't it made clear that nothing here would harm us?"
I let go of the automaton's horn. I'd clutched it so tightly that my hand felt stiff, and I clenched and unclenched it to work the stiffness out of my muscles. Oil had stuck to me in a few spots, though it was nothing serious, and I patted the flames out with my free hand.
I shrugged lamely, and Val leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. Even kneeling, I was tall enough that she had to go up on tiptoe.
"I'll see if the beast you vanquished was guarding anything interesting," she promised, "And if anything frightens me, I'll throw my lantern at it."
I pushed myself up and off of what remained of the automaton, its movements finally slowing, careful to keep my hand steady so that the gynoid could finish cleaning the wound.
She had her nose close to the wounds across my knuckles, to better inspect them in the poor light, but peered up at me as the light of Val's lantern receded.
"Poorly thought out heroics seem to be effective," she remarked.
"What are you, my wingman now?"
She shrugged, "I only wish to be helpful, in whatever manner I may."
"You know, I think I'm good."
"Ah, perhaps she is the one that requires my assistance."
"What's that supposed to mean- Ow!"
"Just a disinfectant. Nothing's broken, but even you may be brought low by infection."
"I found something," came Val's voice, echoing down the hall, and her circle of lamplight joined with ours a moment later.
She held an old fashioned key, large and bright red. It looked more like a prop than the sort of thing that would unlock an actual door.
"It was just around the corner, waiting on a pedestal," she explained, and I muttered a translation to the gynoid as she spoke, "But from the look of things, we were meant to approach from the other side."
"Oh?"
"Yes, the pedestal faces a large blue door. It has a keyhole of the right shape for this," she explained, gesturing with the red key, "But it doesn't turn in the lock. I imagine we were supposed to find a blue key, and use that to get behind the minotaur."
"Sounds like we found a sequence break."
"Hmm," Val mused, "I suppose that's a fair term for it."
"How much you want to bet we'll find a blue key near a red door somewhere down this way?" I asked, jerking my chin towards where I'd thrown the torch.
"Let's hope we've made up some time. Now, how's your hand?" Val asked as the gynoid finished tying the bandage.
"I'll probably have some scars, but it'll be fine," I assured her, "Come on, if we have made up some time, let's not waste any more."
It was as we approached the room with the stone boards that I finally began to hear the rushing water I'd been expecting. I held out a staying hand, and the others slowed.
I jerked a thumb over my shoulder, "We were meant to be running scared through here," I said simply.
The gynoid prodded experimentally at one of the stone boards with the toe of her shoe, and it shifted as she put her weight on it. She leaned into it a little bit, and this end of the board tilted down while the other swung up, and the sound of rushing water filled the room. Not a room of stone boards then, but a room of seesaws.
They were staggered, left, right, left, right. Someone who tried to walk, or more likely, run, across would find themselves always stepping upon the inside edge of one or another.
"There's no pattern here, as there was in the other room," Val frowned.
The gynoid pressed experimentally on the only other board she could reach and watched as it moved.
Then she stood, and outlined her plan, "You see how they alternate? Each set must have its own fulcrum, a bar running the length of the chamber. If we stay near the pivot point, the boards shouldn't rotate much if we are quick enough in the crossing."
Valentine nodded along as I relayed the gynoid's explanation, "Sensible," she agreed, once I was done, "She and I shall go first, now behave yourself and stay here till we're safely across."
"Behave myself?" I growled, but she was already giggling and prancing away with the gynoid close behind.
The two couldn't even speak to one another, and it still felt like the two were conspiring against me.
I smiled despite myself. I was glad they were getting along. I was a little worried that the shapely gynoid would inspire jealousy in the waifish Valentine. But who knows, with Val's tastes being what they are, maybe I was the one that should be jealous, lest the gynoid steal her away from me.
"Catch," Val called, and with a flick of her wrist, the torch flew from where it lay in the centre of the room, to strike me lightly in the chest.
I caught it before it hit the ground and waited for the girls to make it across. It wasn't possible- at least for them -to step directly from the doorway over to where the fulcrum for the one set of boards seemed to be. But a little hop got them close enough, and the boards themselves were heavy enough that they didn't move very quickly under the weight of those two, particularly with them staying near the pivot point.
Considering that this was a game, not a proper deathtrap, odds were good that they might have made it across fine even if they'd gone straight down the middle. Presumably, the creators of the game didn't want it to end with an anti-climax, and an entire team getting dunked in the river would be kinda lame. No, I bet the first couple people would make it across okay. They didn't need to be faster than the automaton, just faster than their slowest friends.
I braced myself on the doorway, and took a wide-reaching step that put my foot just shy of the pivot, and then pushed off the wall with all my strength. I couldn't swing my leg over far enough and ended up with both feet on the near side of the pivot, and my stomach lurched as the board began to tilt inwards.
I didn't bother trying to balance on it. I just started running. It was a clumsy, halting run, as I made sure each step came down on the right set of boards. One wrong step and all my weight would land on the very tip of what was, in essence, a very large lever. The other end would probably cut a gouge into the roof with all the force I'd be putting on it, and I'd end up in the water. Maybe I could catch myself, but the very idea made my elbows hurt. I'm stronger than I look, and I look really fucking strong, but I was still made of meat. I might be able to lift a small car, but that didn't mean my elbows were meant to endure the strain of catching half a ton in free fall.
I veered back towards the centre of the room as I neared the far side. I wouldn't be able to set up my jump as carefully as I'd done the first time, but I had a hunch.
I leapt. Not as far as I could, but as high as I could. And when I landed, it was with both feet planted and legs locked. I didn't crouch to absorb the shock, that would only spread the impact over a longer period, and I needed all of the force to come down in a single instant.
The fulcrum did what I expected it to do, and what roughly made bearings tend to do when they are shocked. It locked in place. Only for an instant, but it was enough. I bent my knees for a second leap, and threw myself through the doorway and right into Val and the gynoid. Val yelped as I bowled right through them, but to my relief, I didn't land atop either.
Val was back on her feet in an instant, "You made it," she cheered.
I brushed the dust from my jeans and straightened, "Yeah yeah, no time for teasing. Come on. We need to hustle."
I broke into a fast walk, and the others jogged to keep up.
"Of course, you can give me my comeuppance later," she agreed, bobbing along at my elbow.
The next junction was, less than simple.
"My my," the gynoid breathed.
"Backtracking through this is going to suck."
We'd emerged into another room, and now stood on a platform six or so feet above the rushing water. There were two raised paths stretching out across the open space, each leading to a separate opening in the far wall. The left way was made up of a large drum that stretched the length of the room. There were no obstacles, but we'd need to walk across the top of it to get across, and I guessed that it would start to rotate as soon as we set foot on it. This was another problem that the girls would find a lot easier than myself, Val in particular. She weighed less than a tenth what I did, and was quite a bit quicker. She'd make fewer mistakes, and they'd cost her less. While one wrong step from me would set the thing rotating rapidly to one side and I'd be thrown off into the water.
The path to the right looked more promising, however, as it was a test of timing, rather than dexterity. On the right was a series of swinging blades, a classic honestly, though the blades were foam, painted in an exaggerated style, rather than sharpened steel.
Finally, at the beginning of each path, was a small pillar with a slot atop it. A slot, very much like the one in the tea vending machine back in the break room.
The gynoid produced three cards from a pocket in her blouse. Two held stylized depictions of piled coins, while the other had a book on its face.
After a moment's thought, I grimaced and shook my head, "We should save it if we can."
"Left, or Right?" Val asked, slowly and carefully.
I frowned, but the gynoid answered, "Right," in elvish.
Clumsy as her pronunciation was, I could understand her at the very least. Which is to say, Val could understand her.
"Oh, don't look so surprised," Val mocked, "The two of us aren't helpless."
"Would you please tell her that the right-hand path is the most likely to bear fruit?" the gynoid requested, "Of both paths, the left is most likely to lead back to the blue door, and we have no need of that now. Besides, I foresee you having difficulty making it across. The right hand then is the easiest for you, and the least likely to send us back where we already were."
"Maybe you should give her the necklace," Val suggested, once I'd finished relaying the gynoid's reasoning, "She seems capable, and I'm not certain what we need you for at this point."
"Maybe I take the key and the gynoid and chuck you in the river," I retorted, "Not certain what we need you for at this point."
"Please, enough flirting, time is of the essence," the gynoid called back.
She'd already made it through the first two swinging blades, and she beckoned us forwards without taking her eyes off the one in front of her.
"Is she chastizing us?"
"Yup."
"Mmm, maybe she'll give me my comeuppance," Val mused.
The timing was simple, and we made our way through with little difficulty. The pattern for the blades was simple and unchanging, and as long as you paid attention, there was plenty of warning before one came down.
The relative simplicity made me wonder if perhaps the automaton had been meant to still be chasing us, or maybe I was merely familiar with this sort of obstacle. Every dungeon in Skyrim seemed to have something like this, after all. The players this maze had been intended for may have looked upon the series of swinging blades with a little more trepidation.
The gynoid was several steps ahead and didn't wait for the two of us to finish making our way through before she slipped through into the passage beyond.
I felt a flash of annoyance. She was doing it wrong, she should be waiting for me, and what if there were traps she didn't spot it in time?
I growled and forced the thought away. The gynoid didn't need my permission to scout ahead. At this point in my life, I'd grown used to being let down in group assignments. And while I'd been out of university for a couple of years now, the memory remained. Which meant I usually did my best to take the reins in matters such as these, and being eight feet tall, people tended to let me. But the gynoid, as well as Valentine, knew what they were doing. I let out a long breath and took a step forwards just as the next blade hit the bottom of its travel and arced out of the way.
The gynoid reappeared only a moment later, holding a green key. Despite her composure, I got the sense that it was all she could do to keep from jumping up and down as she bade us forwards.
"I've found the red door, and this was sitting in front of it," she explained, "Quick, quick, the red key!"
The gynoid's energy was contagious, and Val skipped through close behind as I finished navigating the swinging blades.
There was a sharp right turn, a short length of corridor, another left, and then we stood before the red door. Val drove the key home, and it turned with a laborious ratcheting sound. The key withdrew, and there was a slow clank, clank, clank, as the door began retracting with fits and starts into the floor.
Then the gynoid did start jumping up and down, and I found myself chuckling as she all but bounced off the walls.
"Now what do you find so amusing?" she demanded.
"You're just not what I expected," I replied.
The gynoid pulled up her skirt and swung her legs over the half-open door, "Am I unlike the gynoids on your world?" she asked.
I stepped over after her and reached back to give Val a hand.
"There are no gynoids on my world," I admitted, "Maybe that's why you're not what I expect. Plenty of fictional sentient machines, but no real ones. Like Commander Data from Star Trek. Man, I wanted to be Data when I was a kid."
The gynoid glanced back as she reached the next intersection, saw that we were both close behind, and took the right-hand path. I kept after her, and Val paused only to mark our way before rushing after us.
"This Data, he is a military man, and an officer no less? I'm afraid that such things are not permitted where I come from. And I doubt that any young man wishes he were a combat android."
"Data was the second officer on the Enterprise, the flagship of The United-" I stopped myself, "Well, I thought he was cool at the very least. And as a kid who found the emotions of those around him utterly incomprehensible, he was pretty relatable. He also seemed to know everything, which was pretty cool. Now I don't have any idea if you know everything, but you're a lot warmer than Data. Jumping up and down, bouncing off the walls, eager to win the contest, and most likely plotting my demise with Val."
"I've decided that I like puzzles," she replied, "And I've never won anything before."
At each corner, we'd take the right path, and while we hit dead ends twice, and once found ourselves looping back upon our path, Val's marks made matters clear. Short of running pell-mell down the halls, getting lucky at each turn in the maze, we were making fine time.
"I hear water once again, another puzzle, or perhaps the end?" the gynoid guessed.
"Looks like both," I observed, as we rounded the last corner and stepped out into the final chamber.
The floor of the chamber was a sheet of ice, or very nearly ice. The look was right, it was even as slippery as ice when I knelt to touch it, but the temperature was all wrong. It certainly wasn't warm inside the maze, but it wasn't anywhere near cold enough to keep anything frozen.
Dozens of blocks of ice seemed to grow up out of the sheet, blocking off the direct path to the far side, and forming a sort of mini-maze of its own. This chamber had another pillar waiting to accept the hint card, and I squinted at the maze, trying to figure out what it might do.
To either side of the puzzle were open drops, back down into the river. If I wasn't carefully navigating it, I could slip right off the side and into the water, with nothing to catch myself on.
And on the far side of the icy maze waited a pair of massive stone doors, set with three-
"Damn," I breathed, "We need that blue key-"
Like it or not, we'd seen most everything on this side of the red door. Which meant we'd need to backtrack all the way to the room with the swinging blades and spinning drum and take the other path. That would have been the 'ideal' path, had I not clobbered the minotaur, as it would have led the players through the back way to get at the red key. In fact, the green door was probably over on that side as well, since we hadn't yet run into it.
That drum was going to be a problem, and I didn't know how the hell I was going to make it across. I tried to recall how close together the two exit doors were for that room. Maybe I'd be able to jump across? If not-
"Solve this nonsense," the gynoid urged, interrupting my train of thought, "I will fetch the blue key."
And then she left at a dead run, taking both the green key and the hint card with her as she did.
I felt that flash of annoyance once again, but realized she'd made the right call. Odds were good that she had a more time-consuming task. Whatever the hint card did, it was essentially a time saver. As we were running at the speed of the slowest group it was only sensible she be the one to use it, whether that be on the room we'd seen or another puzzle that might be between her and the blue key.
I turned back to my task and trusted she would see to hers.
"I wonder if a fabric could be made of this material," Valentine pondered.
She was kneeling to inspect the material as I had, though her expression suggested a different set of potential applications than had occurred to me.
"One track mind," I muttered, busy inspecting the puzzle before me.
"Not one track," she protested, "Two, the second one is food. And, well, it's not as if I can eat this, now can I?"
"There is more to life," I remarked.
"Mmm, doubtful."
I swept my gaze across the field of icy blocks, a plan beginning to form in my mind, "At least you know what you want," I replied.
"Yes, now what about this distraction? Have you a way through?"
"Still working on it, but I think I've got a general idea," I assured her, "Hold on, I'm going to try something."
I stepped out onto the not-ice and pushed off the solid stone behind. I began to slide, relatively quickly, towards the row of blocks a few yards off. Try as I might, I couldn't get any lateral motion. Even when I hit the wall and came to a stop, trying to pull myself along the floor was fruitless. Nearly frictionless, I doubted that real ice was anywhere near this slippery. Only pushing off the icy block gave any purchase, and sent me sliding back over the Valentine.
"Alright," I decided, "I've seen this sort of puzzle before. I remember them being a pain in the ass as a kid, but it's actually somewhat simple."
Valentine furrowed her brows, a look of evident concern on her face, "You were faced with such travails as a child?"
I waved a hand, "It was a game, god damn ice gym leaders always had something like this. The point is, the maze we need to solve is not the maze before us."
She quirked an eyebrow, "Do elaborate."
"I mean, it looks easy, the whole thing is laid out in front of us, and that's the trick. It looks like a maze, but if you try to solve it like a normal maze, by tracing the path and trying to follow it, you'll just end up sliding all over the place. No, better to think of it as a series of linked points. The first point is right there," I pointed, "The one place you can reach by sliding across through the gap in the wall. From there, the next set of points are the only ones you can reach by pushing off one of those two walls, and so on, and so on. That keeps you on the right track, and out of the drink."
"Mmm, I think I see what you mean."
"Of course, the real trick is to solve it backwards, since we can see the end from here."
I outlined the path I'd come up with, and once Valentine agreed that it seemed to make sense with the rules I'd outlined, we put it into action. I lead the way, with her one position behind. That way at least she could backtrack if I accidentally put myself in an untenable position, or ended up sliding off the edge. But my reasoning was sound, and the two of us made it across safely.
Valentine was quick to try the red key, but while it turned in the lock, as expected, nothing happened while the others were absent.
"You know, they could have done us the favour of providing somewhere to sit," Valentine said, watching contemptuously as I took a seat on the flagstones with my back to the wall.
I yawned and stretched my arms, "It's a good thing this isn't too comfy, or else I think I'd fall asleep."
She placed a hand on my shoulder to steady herself, and sat across my lap, "Maybe you should have taken more of the tea."
"Not much of a tea drinker," I replied, "Never liked coffee either. Hot chocolate is pretty great, though."
Valentine's eyes grew wide and desirous, "Might such a beverage be created with the ingredients at the hotel?"
"I think I can figure something out," I promised.
Val put her arms around my neck and drew herself in close to kiss the corner of my neck, just below my ear.
"You must realize," she murmured, "It takes some of the fun out of trying to tempt you when you're just so agreeable. A wiser man would make the task seem much more arduous."
I set my jaw and tilted my head to look her in the eye, "I believe you already promised me a rather spectacular kiss."
Val bit her lip and grinned. She shifted in my lap to straddle my hips, instead of sitting across my legs. Tilting her head forwards, her hair fell to cover her face. She reached up to the neck of her flight suit and drew the zipper down to her navel, revealing a silken shift beneath. She filled the air with the aroma of her pheromones, and I felt myself relax as they did their work.
She slipped her hands underneath my shirt and ran them across my abdomen, "Awfully tense, aren't we?"
Even as I watched, beads of moisture began to form on her bare skin, and the already heady scent of her grew almost overpowering.
She ran her fingers through my hair, and with the other, cupped my cheek lightly. Stirring her hips slightly, she drew me in. Lips slightly parted, she pressed hers against mine, and damn, was she ever a tease. She'd draw back, just a little, as I tried to press closer. And each time she would pull away slightly less, slowly giving in, but making me work for it.
I'd slipped a hand in the front of her jumpsuit and under her shift. She never seemed so very small as she did now, with just one of my hands very nearly able to circle her waist. Even with all her enchantments and attitude, I was terrified of hurting her. With Will, I'd lost control for only a moment, and that had still been nearly enough to cripple the armoured man. But with Valentine, even an instant of anger-
She seemed not to care. With the length of her tiny body pressed against my chest, she didn't stop. I was drawn this way and that, as she'd pull back just a little, only to draw me in once again.
It was only once we heard the gynoid's rapid footsteps that we drew reluctantly apart. I helped Val to her feet, and she gave me a wicked grin as she zipped up the front of her flight suit.
Not a moment too soon, as the gynoid appeared at the edge of the icy maze, lantern still swaying too and fro from the jostling it had gotten on the way.
"I have them," she shouted and flung the keys in a high arc.
Green and blue thumped against the door, and they'd not even stopped clattering around on the ground before Valentine had scooped them up and driven them into place. The doors began to move apart, sliding into the walls at either side and as they did, I busied myself guiding the gynoid through the field of ice.
By the time she'd made it across, Val had already slipped through the growing gap and disappeared.
Valentine was not the first into the treasure hall, but judging from the state of things, we'd not been far behind.
The treasure hall ran the width of the building, with a high vaulted ceiling that was held up by pillars so thick I could not circle them with my arms. There were windows at either end of the hall, high in the wall, above the doors that led outside. It was dark beyond those windows, though there was just enough light from the streetlamps outside to show the swirling blizzard that was kept at bay by half an inch of glass.
Behind me stood the exit door to the maze, one of three set into the wall at my back. Ours was still clanking open, and while the centre pair of doors stood empty, those at the far end of the hall remained silent and shut.
Two shallow pools, fed by water flowing out from underneath the wall, stood between the three exit doors, and I was glad to see that Will was not laying face down in either of them. I still felt anger festering in my gut, but I didn't want to kill the man. I was somewhat concerned to see the trail of droplets and wet footprints that suggested someone had dragged themselves from the pool and gone out into the cold, but hopefully he was smart enough to get somewhere warm in a hurry.
Across from the maze exits were another trio of doors. The largest of which was directly across from us, with a gold number one scribed above, nearly a foot tall. And, unfortunately, they were already open, or nearly so.
It looked like something you'd expect to see on a hangar, with an opening nearly fifty feet wide. The doors hadn't quite finished clanking open, but Simon and his 'angels', as the gynoid had called them, were already picking through the treasures beyond. Jankin stood by the door, standing guard for all the good it did and muttered something at our approach.
Simon glanced up and spread his arms wide, "Hey, you guys made it."
"Anything interesting?" I asked grudgingly.
"Eh, kinda. I bet the intended players would be stoked to win all this," he shrugged.
Simon swept his hand to encompass the furniture, clothes, appliances, and general bric-a-brac piled behind him, "But I'm pretty sure the main ingredients in all this crap are asbestos, lead, and arsenic."
I pointed at the comb that the small and slim one was holding, "At least that comb won't poison anyone. Might explode though."
"What?" Simon demanded.
"Yeah, it looks like ivory, but I'm pretty sure that's celluloid. A whole lot of this junk is celluloid, actually," I realized.
"Celluloid as in film?"
"Celluloid as in the thing made with the same process that creates nitrocellulose. As in guncotton."
Simon switched to Elvish, "Cilla darling, please put that down," he urged, "Everyone, just, maybe don't touch anything."
"Was there any coin?" Valentine sighed.
"Actually, yes. There were several dozen coin purses full of shillings. They're the only thing I'm sure won't eventually be the death of me."
"Do you have any idea what sort of mana there is in arsenic?" Val inquired.
Simon nodded, "I do."
I rolled my eyes, "Feel like sharing?"
"No, not really."
"After I was so kind as to warn you about the celluloid? A great many Victorian and Edwardian women died or were disfigured when celluloid combs and hair clips ignited and set their hair and scalp aflame."
Simon was about to speak, but paused as tall and busty- I think that made her Victoria? -approached and whispered in his ear. Simon frowned, shrugged, and then nodded.
"Tell you what, I won't share what I know about arsenic, but I'll offer a trade. I'll hand over everything in here that's got enough lead in it to be useful, and in exchange, you give me everything in your prize vault that's got at least some arsenic."
I glanced at Val, "Fire, Mind, and Weaken," she provided.
"Deal."
Continued in comment

First | Prev | Next
Discord
Valentine
I woke only grudgingly, resentful of the light streaming through the blinds, and unable to shake the hollow feeling that came with lack of sleep.
I'd been doing it to myself, of course, and I knew that. It was simply that I couldn't bear to let myself fall asleep while Wallace was still beside me. The heat coming off his body, and the reassuring scent of him fresh from the bath made me drowsy, but I'd fight to stay awake, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing and the beat of his heart.
I simply didn't want the moment to end. It was that first night we'd spent here that had made me fall in love with the human inn, but it had been Wallace's remark that we may as well be living in a fortress that made me realize the precariousness of our circumstances.
We were safe, truly safe, for perhaps a few more days. There was always the risk that a group of light cavalry may try to make a suicide run at us, but our foes were not in such a rush. That aside, those with the skills to make such a run would not be easy to convince. No, it was The Long Night that I feared. Each one that passed brought with it the threat of invasion, and in some ways, I found the cure as distasteful as the disease.
The quality and loyalty of any potential subjects was one thing, and there was a particular type of young man I feared inviting into our sanctuary. But that was just it, this was our sanctuary, and I detested the idea of inviting anyone into it.
I had certain juvenile fantasies about the myriad places about our sanctuary that Wallace might have his way if given the proper prompting, and that would be a little troublesome if there were others about. But more broadly, if there were others about, I was going to have to 'behave'.
I couldn't sit out on one of the benches scattered about the park below, snuggled up next to the giant with the squishy heart. I might be trying to sell off my demesne, but even unlanded, I would always be a noblewoman. Unfortunately, there were standards of behaviour noblewomen were expected to maintain. Try as I might to flee from my responsibilities, they always seemed to find some way to constrain me.
It made me realize just how perfect the moment was, and how transient. Even the sound of Wallace's breathing, his heartbeat, made me hold him tighter. His breath came as quickly as if he'd been on a hike, and his heart- Even dead asleep, his heart hammered as if he'd just sprinted up and down the stairs. I knew Wallace would have it no other way, but I felt so guilty that it made me nauseous. Guilty that I was relying on him as a bodyguard, further straining his already overtaxed heart, and guilty that my first thought had been to curse my own luck. To curse the fact that it seemed like everything good in my life was snatched away as quickly as it was given. Wallace was his own person, not some bauble to be given or taken by providence, and it wasn't fair to him to treat him as such. To act as if the confluence of events that had brought him here were the result of some force in the universe seeking to reward or punish me specifically.
Inevitably, my long ponderous thoughts would grow muddled, I would lose my grip on wakefulness, and I'd fall asleep. The first couple of days, Wallace had stayed, letting me sleep on with my head resting on his shoulder as he read quietly. But today, as with yesterday, he'd managed to slip out of bed without waking me.
I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. I hadn't re-braided it since Wallace had helped me wash and straighten out the tangles, and it had gotten a little messy while I'd been sleeping with it loose.
Wally wasn't in the penthouse or out on the balcony, as far as I could see. I went to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face and gave my shoulder a look. The bruising had mostly faded, and while it was still sore, I could at least wash my own hair now. Not that I'd told Wally.
I didn't bother to dress. I had only a few more days of complete freedom and the 'tanktop and shorts' as Wally had called them, kept the relevant portions of my body covered. I was not about to wear a stitch more until I absolutely had to.
All cleaned up and ready to face the rising sun, I huffed and puffed my way up the stairs to the roof. In a day or two I'd be in good enough shape to wear my necklace once again, but I knew from experience not to rush recovery.
I checked the conference rooms outside the penthouse, but neither the office nor storeroom held the big man. I peeked my head into the storeroom and found there were more human treasures than when I'd last investigated.
Though the guests had been absent, we'd found abandoned belongings in several of the rooms, and had slowly been sorting through the collection. Stacked along one wall was the many luggage, along with selected pieces of hotel hardware that Wallace had suggested would be of little use, even if the hotel was powered. Spread out on the immense conference table and against the other wall were the piles we'd slowly been sorting the goods into. There were those things that were useful in and of themselves, that which was fit only to be scrapped for mana, and valuable items we might sell in the city. Dumped in one corner was what remained when we removed the useful, valuable, and mana rich. Much of the pile was clothing, in fact, the human luggage had contained almost nothing but clothing, but none of it would fit Wallace and little would fit myself. I'd chosen a few pieces, cleaned them with magic, and set them aside, but the rest was surplus to our needs. It was undoubtedly of high quality, and would be worth something should we bring it back to Parabuteo or Caniforma, but it wasn't quite so value-dense as say, jewellery.
Wally's office was a little tidier, and I skittered to the end of the room to leap into his big armchair. Notebooks, loose paper, pens, pencils, and a dozen shades of marker were piled in a semicircle around his workspace.
Pushed off to one side was a sheet titled "Enchanting Notes" with his scribblings on what I'd told him of the process, and right in front of the big chair was a leather notebook with brass fittings and a brass clasp. Resting lightly on its surface was a small note that read 'For V'.
I undid the clasp and flipped it open. Inside I found off-white paper with the consistent colour that I'd come to expect of human manufacture. I leafed through the notebook and found that aside from some scribbles on the last page, it was blank. I shrugged, I hadn't asked Wallace to set anything aside for me, but it had been some time since I had the time to draw, and this appeared to be the best pick of the bunch.
I took a few of the pencils and went up to the roof to see if I could track down the so-far elusive giant.
Wallace wasn't up on the roof, but peering over the edge, I could see him down on the hill below near a copse of trees. Judging from his posture, I guessed that he was writing something in a notebook, but it was hard to say at this distance.
Once The Long Night had ended and the tide had come through, the two of us had gone down to find the pickup truck still parked up next to the storm drain, none the worse for wear. It had taken a bit of doing, but we'd fashioned a rope ladder fit to bear Wallace's weight, and the two of us had gone for a walk about the area. Wally had later returned to drive stakes into the ground at various points around the perimeter of the hill, and in so doing we'd got a decent idea of just how large a safe area we had. We'd yet to properly survey the land, but according to the human, there were about sixty or seventy acres of grassland to make use of.
I thought that he might be drawing something, perhaps the trees, and I decided that was a fine idea.
Under a sunshade and beside a tall wicker screen where it would be out of the wind, was a padded lounge chair. I laid down on my stomach and set the notebook out in front of me, and I tapped the tip of the pencil to my lips, wondering what I might draw. And then I was struck by a fit of giggles as I recalled my musings about what a Wallace-owned harem would look like.
I began with Wallace himself. He had this way of sitting- lounging really -leaning back, with his arms spread across the back of the sofa, and an ankle propped up on one knee. I drew him as such, though made the sofa look a little more throne like, with a higher back and gilt up the legs and arms. Gilt rendered in charcoal or whatever these pencils were made of, but gilt all the same. I decided that Wallace didn't need a shirt, and I took great care in carving out the muscles in his chest and arms.
I bit my lip, and tapped the pencil on my chin, admiring my work. Of course, it wasn't much of a harem when there were no beautiful and lightly clad women, so I decided to add some of the girls from The Blushing Maiden.
He'd need someone to maintain order, of course, so at his right elbow, I drew my favourite of the Maiden's governesses. In a corset and tight leather pants, she had her hair in a severe bun, and held a selection of disciplinary implements ready for Wallace's use.
Tucked in close, clinging to his side, I drew two of the Maiden's bustier girls, clad only in a few scraps of fabric that covered even less than my shorts and tank top did. Two more sat at his feet, one clutching at his leg.
Standing across from him I decided would be a pair of elven mercenaries, wearing armour of an impractical design, inspired by several works of art that hung within The Blushing Maiden.
One of the mercenaries held a delicate chain that trailed from the collar of the figure kneeling between them. She was very slim, and facing Wallace, was viewed from behind. She was covered only by her hair, which flowed down her back and over her bound wrists to gather on the ground about her.
I giggled, as I titled the piece "W prepares for intercourse with V, regarding enchantment."
I knew something- likely entertaining in the extreme -had happened when Wallace joined me on the rooftop terrace. He was bright red, from the tips of his ears, right down to his neck. Even his hands were bright red, and he regarded me with some trepidation as I lay lounging with my sketchbook in my lap.
I tapped a finger against my chin, "What could you have possibly found, I wonder. Something scandalous, from the look of you, and why do you smell of fuel?"
"Um-" Wallace began haltingly, "I was siphoning fuel out of the other cars in the parking tower. But that's, uh-" he sighed and sat down heavily on the bench across from me, his head in his hands.
"Oh, this must be good," I giggled, "Come now, what is it?"
"So," he began, his voice muffled by his hands, "You remember how I wanted to experiment with enchantment, now that I have the basics?"
I frowned and furrowed my brows, "Yes, though I can't imagine where this is going."
He sighed again, and went on, "I figured communication was important, so I tried some, uh, things."
"Some things? What sort of things?"
"Things like," he winced, "A pair of linked books, where things written in one book show up in the other."
It was quiet for a moment, and I allowed myself a small smile as I opened the cover and flipped back to my first sketch, contemplating it.
"What's the matter?" I teased, "You didn't like it? I could draw some more pictures for you, if you like."
"You know, I think I'm good," he assured me, "We know it works, I think that's plenty."
"I'm surprised you came up here," I giggled, "I would have thought you'd wait to face me until you stopped being quite so red in the face."
"I tried," he grumbled, finally taking his head from his hands, "Didn't exactly work, besides, something's come up. I was fooling around with one of the other cars, thought I might be able to hotwire us something a little more modern, but I couldn't get the engine started. Immobilizer kicked in and I have no idea where even to begin with fixing it."
I shrugged, "As long as the truck still works, I don't see the trouble."
"Well, it's not 'trouble' exactly," he clarified, "Because even without the engine running, the electronics turned on," he hesitated. From experience, I guessed he was trying to decide how to explain some human concept, "So, the book you appropriated is just Communicate Plant. Brass for Communicate, and the paper for Plant mana, very simple-"
"Simple?" I asked incredulously, "Wally, that's a very complex enchantment, you could make a killing selling such things in the city. Can you imagine how useful something like your book would be in managing scavenging teams, or directing armies?"
"Well, actually I can imagine because humans have something similar, called radio. And I say the little enchantment there is simple, because compared to radio, it is. As far as I can tell, the books just work. There's no carrier wave, no concerns about signal strength, intervening obstacles, or interception. It just works."
"Carrier wave?" I frowned, "What's that?"
He spread his hands, "I only sort of know, I'm a software guy, not a hardware guy-"
"Not too soft I hope," I murmured.
"THE POINT IS," Wallace went on loudly, "The car I was working on has a radio, and on that radio, I picked up a very steady broad-spectrum signal-"
"Broad-spectrum?"
"Radio is complicated," he repeated, "Unlike the book, everyone has to talk in the same," he waved his hands vaguely, "space. If you only broadcast on one frequency, that's sort of like only talking in part of the space. The idea being, everyone finds their own part of the space, their own frequency. This signal was different, I could pick it up on every frequency the car's radio could tune in to."
"Why would anyone do that? I can understand the desire to eavesdrop on someone, but why announce your presence?"
"You wouldn't- or I guess you would," he hedged, "If you were trying to jam up their communications. Just broadcast static with a powerful enough emitter, and you could make the frequencies useless."
"Like screaming in someone's ear while they're trying to have a conversation," I suggested.
"Pretty much, but this wasn't someone trying to jam. This was a constant pulsing, once every couple of seconds. The only reason I can imagine to do that, is as a distress beacon."
"And you want to go chasing after this beacon," I realized, a little tiredly.
"Someone needs help," he said matter-of-factly, "Someone with radio."
"You think they're human?" I guessed.
"Or some other species with advanced tech, might be a bunch of elves with spaceships for all we know. But if they need help, they need help. Besides, I don't think we want Simon to swoop in and scoop up whatever goodies are near the beacon. We also want to get that thing shut off as soon as possible, the last thing we want is him poking around on our side of the mountains."
"You believe Simon has access to this radio technology?"
"I wouldn't put it past him. If he's been here a decade then that's plenty of time to find or make one-"
"Make one? I thought you said these were complex devices."
"Complex in operation. But I know the rudiments of making a simple crystal radio, it'd probably take me a week or two, but I could probably puzzle out whatever I can't remember. I think it's only reasonable to assume the same is true for Simon."
"Where is this beacon then?"
Wallace shrugged, "No idea. I've got signal strength, but no direction."
"Why then conclude that it's on this side of the mountains, or that Simon will fare any better?"
"The signal is as clear as a bell, and all that rock would shield the transmission. Either we wouldn't hear it, or it would be muffled and staticy. As for Simon, if he hasn't already got a radio in each city, just for simple comms, I bet he's going to send a couple out. Neither of us might have direction, but with a little clever math, you can triangulate where the signal is coming from, so long as you can take readings from multiple locations. That'll be easier the further away those locations are."
I nodded along, "Simon keeps properties in Parabuteo and Caniforma, it's fair to assume that if he's keeping in contact with human radio... I see, and if each city receives this same signal at a different strength. Hmm, I think I understand your concern."
"I just wanted to make sure you were okay. If you're not quite mended yet, I guess-"
"I am not staying behind!" I growled, "You can't drive the truck, and I refuse to be left behind to wring my hands while you galavant about."
"I'm all for having a galavanting partner," Wallace said hurriedly, "I just wanted to make sure you're in okay shape, you said you couldn't put your necklace back on till your shoulder was healed. I didn't want to rush you."
I gripped my wounded shoulder, squeezing it lightly, "We'd leave tomorrow?"
"Yeah," he replied softly.
"Then I should be in fit shape to go along with you," I assured him, "You said you were siphoning fuel from the other vehicles-"
"Yeah, I filled up the truck. I don't have any jerry cans to throw in the back, but the fuel tank on that thing is enormous. We should be good for a while."
I pushed myself to my feet, and glanced at the sky, "I'll help you gather-"
"Hey, just, you know, relax," he insisted, "I can still see a bit of a bruise, and you're not wearing your amulet. I'll pack our things, you just-"
I opened my mouth to speak, a biting retort at the ready, but held it back as a better idea occurred to me.
I lay back down on the bench and stretched languidly, "Maybe I'll sketch something else," I mused, smiling dreamily.
Wally beat a rapid retreat, and I smirked to myself as I watched him go.
I leaned over to the side and rested my head against the window, giving Wally space to reach in and fiddle with the radio.
It was nearly midday, not that one could tell, looking at the sky. The Father had departed around mid-morning, and shortly afterwards the bank of dark clouds, previously lurking on the horizon to the north, had rolled in. I couldn't catch the scent of rain on the air, and while the odour from the human heating device within the vehicle may have masked it, I guessed it was more a consequence of the chill that was causing Wallace's breath to fog.
And was there ever an awful lot of fog coming out of the big man. It was yet another frustration to leave me feeling guilty, him freezing in the back of the truck while I was warm and toasty at the controls. I was growing rather tired of our wild goose chase, but with Wally unwilling to complain about the cold or discomfort, I wasn't about to raise the issue while I travelled in comparative luxury.
It would be good to know whether we'd made any progress, however. He'd had me take a path away directly away from the hotel and the mountains behind it, not a straight path mind you. Instead, it was a series of wide zigzags, though he'd been shortening the width of each stretch as we drew away from the mountains.
"Anything?"
"I think so. The signal isn't- I don't know, normalized?"
"And that means what exactly?"
Wally shrugged lamely, "That might not even be the right term, point is, the signal's getting louder as we get closer."
"Then why are we zigzagging across these hills?" I insisted, "Just point me in the right direction, and I'll take us there."
"It's not a directional antenna, the zigzags are how I'm figuring out direction. It gets louder or quieter depending on distance, but the change is so gradual that it's hard to tell which way things are going. I don't have a map either, just some sketches from the top of the hotel, and I think we've already cleared the horizon in any case. Might just be the weather, but I can't see the top of our base any more."
I twisted around to look over the back of the seat, and found it hard to disagree.
It was less than an hour before flurries started to fall, and I couldn't help but smile, thinking of the ice cream Wally and I had shared.
Usually in weather like this I'd be all in a rush, getting together with the others to put together a team to gather and compact as much of the snow as possible. It wasn't quite as good as ice, and you'd not want to actually put it in the drink, but when it came to keeping drinks or food cool, ice was awfully hard to come by. Not a problem now though, not with Wally's new spell.
We might not even need to promise mana as payment to any prospective subjects. Offer chilled wine, chocolate, and ice cream, and they'd fall at my feet.
But then a frightening thought occurred to me, like an arrow through the heart.
"Wallace, we're going to run out of ice cream," I breathed.
"What?" Wally called through the window, shouting over the noise of the engine.
I brought the truck to a halt and turned around in my seat.
"Icecream, we're going to run out!"
He laughed "I mean, yeah, eventually. There's a decent amount in the freezer, but you're right, it won't last forever," he acknowledged.
"That simply will not do," I informed him.
He stared at me blankly for a moment before shrugging, "Alright, I'll figure out how to make more."
My eyes widened, and I grabbed the back of the seat with both hands, "You will?"
"Yeah, I think it's just sugar, milk, and whatever flavour you want?" he frowned, "I don't know, I'll need to experiment a bit, but I remember making ice cream in school. It was a while ago, but I remember rolling this can back and forth across the floor. I'll figure it out, I promise."
I let out a little puff of arousal pheromones, and held Wallace's gaze with quiet intensity, "I would grasp you by the collar and draw you into a passionate kiss that would leave you weak in the knees, but I believe it would be a little awkward. The window is not quite large enough."
Wallace went a little pink, though I was rewarded with a sheepish grin, "I'll take a rain-" he began.
It was as if a dozen thunderbolts had split the sky, each one following the last so closely that they seemed to blur together.
The last of the thunderbolts hadn't even finished echoing across the landscape before I found myself laying on my back beside the truck with Wallace atop me. The change seemed instantaneous, in one breath I was sitting in the cab, and the next I was on the ground, all without seeming to move through the intervening space.
It was gunfire, I realized belatedly. If Wally's people could create a pistol such as the tiny one he provided me which fired and reloaded itself as fast as one could pull the trigger, it tracked that what I heard was some similar contraption. Larger though, judging from the noise, a rifle of some sort.
A moment later it was answered by another peel of thunder, this one lacking the bass of the first. It was a chattering sort of noise, and a moment later the bassy thunder rolled again.
"Wally," I urged, patting him lightly on the chest, "I don't particularly mind you throwing me to the ground and leaping atop me, in fact, I'm a little surprised it didn't happen sooner. I'm just not sure now is the best time."
He hadn't settled his entire weight upon me. While he was pressed close, he was still holding himself off of me on hands and knees. So as not to squish me, I imagine.
He grumbled a little, and lifted himself off, moving to crouch beside the front wheel.
"They're not shooting at us," he surmised, "I think they might actually be going after each other."
I rose to a crouch and brushed myself off, "I had understood as much myself," I replied wryly.
He'd been peering over the hood of the truck, but turned back to me now, "Sorry Val. You got shot last time because I wasn't trying hard enough. This time-"
"What do you imagine you would have done last time?" I demanded, "Drape yourself across the front window? I got shot last time because a crazy elf bitch hired by a future eunuch got lucky. You have nothing to apologize for, then or now. This leaves us with a question, do we still want to seek this beacon?"
Wally grimaced and glanced back over the hood of the truck.
"Is there any way to know if we're in a safe area?" he asked finally.
"At the moment? No. I have what I need to sight the Parabueto tower and take a reading, but with the weather," I waved my hands vaguely upwards.
"I'm just worried that if we don't deal with this now, we're going to have new neighbours with firearms right in our back yard. Might be a good idea to help out the good guys, say hi, just generally make a good first impression."
"Good guys?" I repeated, "I'm not certain how we'd determine which is which. Assuming such a distinction exists."
There was another round of chattering gunfire, followed by two quick blasts of thunder before the air went quiet once again. Visibility was quickly worsening as the falling snow grew thicker, but this time I was ready and able to take a reading off my compass.
I gestured with it to Wally, "I've got a fix on them now, we can go after them, I'm just not certain you're dressed for this."
Indeed he wasn't. My jumpsuit lacked gloves or any sort of head covering, but there were ample pockets for my hands, and my hair was thick enough to warm the top of my head and tips of my ears. As for the jumpsuit itself, it insulated quite well against the cold.
Wally was not quite as well equipped, in his blue trousers and a light short-sleeved shirt. We might have prepared more thoroughly, but Wally's coat had been in the pack we'd lost on the way to the hotel, and none of the clothing we'd collected from abandoned luggage had been anywhere close to fitting the enormous human.
"I'll be fine," he assured me, "The cold doesn't bother me as much. As long as I keep my hands and face from getting frostbitten, I can deal with weather a lot worse than this."
"As you wish, we'll press on then."
We took our places once again, and I guided the truck forwards slowly. Creeping up and down the intervening hills, white with snow, though blades of verdant green grass could still be seen poking through in places, I was careful not to feed too much fuel to the engine. I was beginning to understand the way the human machine worked, and keeping what Wally called 'the revs' from getting too high seemed to keep the engine from growling too loudly.
I found a trough between two hills and followed its meandering path as lead more or less in the right direction. Hopefully sticking to the low ground would allow us to get as close as possible without being spotted, but I suspected that such considerations would soon be unnecessary. The snowflakes, big and fluffy, were falling so thick that I couldn't see more than a few dozen yards beyond the end of the hood.
The ground and sky seemed to blur together, and I found my gaze wandering as I tried to keep track of the horizon.
I caught sight of something in the distance, little more than a patch of greyish white among the field of white. I slowed and turned to the side, at first assuming it was a tree or something of the like. But as I drew nearer, the shape resolved itself into a more humanoid form.
She noticed us in the same moment I finally made sense of what I was seeing, and she froze. She stood stock-still as she stared at us, and for a moment I thought she might have been one of Simon's maids, but the uniform wasn't quite right. As if the same instructions had been given, but to a designer with different tastes. More than that, she appeared human, and like Wallace, utterly inured to the cold.
I heard the truck creak, and Wallace stepped out of the truck with his hands spread wide.
"Are you okay?" he asked gently, though he had to raise his voice to be heard, "You need a hand?"
Her reply was utterly incomprehensible, which seemed to bring Wally up short. It took only a moment to gather his wits, and he answered in what sounded like the same tongue the woman used, though even I could tell he was struggling with it.
The woman glanced back over her shoulder several times as she and Wally exchanged words, but the two seemed to come to some agreement, as she began walking towards the truck.
Wally turned back, opening his mouth as if to say something, but he stopped as something caught his eye.
He pointed it out to the woman, and though I couldn't understand the words, the urgency in his tone was plain enough. The woman began to sprint towards the truck, and I finally caught sight of what had alarmed Wally.
The horseman broke into a gallop as he spotted the girl, and Wallace quickly glanced between her and the truck. He realized, as I did, that she'd not reach it in time, and the big man began to stride forwards towards the charging horseman.
Had I not spotted him take up his weapon? No, his hands were empty, and there wasn't time to fetch his axe either. Undeterred, he broke into a run, and the set of his shoulders belied not so much confidence, as indifference at the onrushing foe.
The rider raised his weapon above his head- a rifle I realized -in a clenched fist and bellowed a challenge as he turned the horse to head straight for Wallace.
The giant answered with a roar that seemed to make the very air vibrate, and just as man and horse met, he lunged and threw his shoulder forwards. The two struck with enough force that the impact made the truck shake on its suspension, and the rider went cartwheeling over the front of his horse as the creature screamed and stumbled. Wallace roared again- still on his feet -and struck the horse. He seemed to draw the power for the blow out of the earth itself. His calves and thighs tensed as he swung his hips and shoulders around, driving an arm straight out to catch the horse just behind the jaw. The horse didn't so much as whimper as it keeled over, snowflakes thrown up in a wave as it hit the ground.
Then Wallace turned to face the rider where he sprawled on the ground, his weapon fallen to one side, and I caught sight of Wallace's grim visage.
Oh gods, he's going to kill him.
The rider seemed to come to the same realization and, in a panicked frenzy, threw himself at the discarded rifle. It wasn't to be, but as Wallace bent to retrieve the weapon, a shot rang out, and a gout of white smoke enveloped Wallace's head and shoulders. The rider had drawn a pistol, and even now held it straight out, the barrel shaking as he waited for the smoke to clear.
Wallace straightened, rifle in hand, and with blood streaming from his forehead. His expression as he regarded the rider was utterly absent of emotion, and he glanced down at the rifle's lock- a wheellock -before returning his gaze to the man on the ground.
The man dropped the pistol and raised his hands to cover his head. He screamed something, and Wallace strode forwards. I put my hand on the door handle, unsure whether to intervene, and glanced over to where the woman was huddled by the passenger side door. I could only see her from the eyes up, but that was enough. There was interest in those eyes, fixed on Wallace as they were, but little other emotion could be found in those eyes. Certainly not mercy.
The man screamed again as Wallace neared, but he was spared not a second thought as Wallace came to open the passenger side door for the woman.
She glanced at the man still huddled on the ground, and asked Wallace something, who nodded at the back of the truck. She shook her head, and gestured at his forehead. He nodded, and she clambered over the side of the truck.
"We're going to help Ch-" he hesitated, "Our friend here," he explained, "But she's not the one who set off the beacon," he passed the rifle into the cabin with me, "Prince Joffery here also isn't the guy we heard shooting earlier, so there's someone else out there who needs help. Char-" he hesitated again, "Our new friend is tag along, and she'll patch me up while we put some distance between us and Joffery."
"Wally?" I asked hesitantly.
He reeked of anger, so strongly that I was stunned that rider still breathed. So strongly, that if I didn't know Wallace quite as well, I might be terrified right now. But on the outside, there existed only utter calm.
"There are people out there that still need our help," he said simply, "I'll be okay, Val."
He gently shut the passenger side door, and joined the woman in the back of the truck. I took a furtive look through the mirror set above the windshield and gave a little start as the woman's right hand seemed to break apart. Wally seemed unconcerned as a small nozzle was selected from among the many miniature tools, which the woman used to spread some sort of material on the wound.
I let out a long breath, shook my head, and put the truck in gear. This wasn't the weirdest day I'd had, out here in the wilds, but it was early yet. Maybe we'd find something yet more curious after lunch.

It's the middle of the week so you know what time it is i.e. "check up on how the Groups are panning out" o'clock.

Group D:

• Living Legends with 3 Code S Finals between them: Dear, sOs

• Dark Horse who's been ramping up more and more: Dream

• Returning Legend, the Muta Ling Bane master of old himself: DRG

Another brilliant setup for a Group, with the decorated veterans Dear and sOs as the default name-value favorites going up against a dangerous underdog who's been knocking on the next Round's door for a while now in Dream and a steadily returning to form DRG on the path to reliving his glory days.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead, Obviously

Through endless aggression and sheer fucking will, Dream muscled his way into 1st place by overcoming both his opponents in matches he very realistically should or to be more generous could have lost.

From there, with multiple upsets scored everywhere, the two Protoss players settled the score between themselves only for DRG to then beat down his M5 opponent in utterly dominant fashion to secure 2nd all the same.

M1 | Dear [ 0 : 2 ] DRG | ★☆☆☆☆ | PvZ in 2020

• Ever Dream | As if to be punished for going against the idea that you must open Glaives every game, DRG simply flooded the map with carefully hidden Lings and as the rush challenged Dear's flimsy defense and crushed through at 4:30 the writing was on the wall for this one.

• Pillars of Gold | With the Zerg taking a step back here, his Protoss opponent was now allowed to go for Glaives accordingly to redeem himself, however unfortunately for Dear the Adepts ended up doing fuck all which basically means you're doomed when the Swarm then inevitably rushes towards the other part of the map and your defense is the equivalent to hopes and prayers. While some DT warp-ins bought the Protoss some time, DRG simply had to regroup and launch the inevitable final blow, made even easier as he caught his opponent out of position around 8:40 just before the Shield Batteries could save Dear's Immortals and seeing as the Prism was also not home to defend right away, that was that for this series.

M2 | sOs [ 0 : 2 ] Dream | ★★☆☆☆ | Send Help, The Boys Are Back

• Deathaura | The opening Stalker pressure was nice, the contained Hellion aggression was pretty cool as well, however things started going awry when the Blink play didn't really hit the mark and there were even some slip ups on defense later on. The key mistake of the game, nevertheless, was a fundamental flaw in understanding your role, namely sOs sitting pretty on three bases yet still attacking into a turtling Terran at 8:15 which shrunk his army size significantly and possibly helped Dream come up with the idea to pull The Boys not too long after, reaching the Protoss walls around 10:40 to kick off the all in assault, taking out Colossi and bases alike to secure the razor thin timing window to win.

• Ever Dream | What followed was even more aggression from the Terran with a proxy-float-in Factory that ended up netting him 8 Probe kills for just a few Hellions, after which the Protoss tried to get his own damage done via DTs and their Blink, only to be shut down cold from the start, allowing Dream to set up his economic engine and establish an impressive macro lead, which he leveraged to end the game via The Boys™ and significantly better army backing them up around 10:10.

M3 | DRG [ 1 : 2 ] Dream | ★★☆☆☆ | Requiem

• Eternal Empire | I was pretty sure the Zerg was dead when four Barracks were queued up and unscouted in the top right corner of the map, however through a combination of waiting too long or not long enough before attacking around 2:30 and perhaps some sabotage by the Terran's practice partners, DRG simply leaned on his Drones as makeshift Lings to fill some time before his Queens and Spines were up, at which point the rush was stopped dead in its tracks seemingly out of nowhere and Dream decided it was better to tap out and save his energy than prolong the inevitable.

• Deathaura | What happened at the start of the next map didn't matter, since at roughly 5:30 the dreaded worthless Hellbat push arrived only for the Zerg to find out it had backup in the form of a BC, which caused a few too many problems when DRG didn't seem remotely prepared to handle this sort of thing, losing 13 Drones and Queens galore to take us into the final map of the series.

• Golden Wall | The initial Overlord catch from Dream and even the second one he got just before his Hellbat Marine push hit really made it feel like the Terran had this one on lock, unfortunately for him the 4:20 attack was handled a lot better seeing as there wasn't a giant teleporting nuisance to also deal with and to make matters even worse the Zerg also managed to sneak into his opponent's base at the same time, killing 7 SCVs to take a decisive lead. There was no option to stop at any point after that for the Terran and thankfully Dream understood that, so he kept on the pressure and even as he was bleeding army it was both keeping DRG on his toes and stifling the Zerg's growth on the map in terms of creep and bases. By the time the toothless push got fully cleaned up, we were basically even on expansions, however the Terran had secured the Gold base and successfully scared his opponent off from getting their own, which definitely facilitated the production difference we would end up seeing here by the end. DRG certainly showed fight here and his infamous Muta Ling Bane with it, there were a lot of cool army movements and even more decent harassment, however he couldn't keep his opponent from growing on the map and ultimately lost the ability to take fights when the army supply gap became insurmountable in direct engagements, it also didn't help that in a very short span of time Dream both sniped an Ultra Cavern and then two bases while trading out the army that did so incredibly efficiently, essentially securing the game's outcome around 17:00 when we saw how much the Zerg had to lose in terms of their forces while still not really pulling off an adequate defense in terms of his production. With no larvae and next to no income, there was basically no hope to keep up with the terrifying Terran macro monster at that point, so Dream quickly remaxed and took this one home as you would expect from there.

M4 | Dear [ 2 : 1 ] sOs | ★☆☆☆☆ | The Dreadful Mirror

• Eternal Empire | You know you're in trouble when both players are going for the same build, yours is faster thanks to a proxy and it still isn't enough to get work done. sOs and his quick Oracle along with attempted Adept shenanigans fell completely flat as Dear absorbed that pressure and spit it back out at him in the form of Stalkers going across the map to kill Probes while the Jin Air Protoss only really froze a significant bunch around 3:50 but never got more than that done, despite trying to. Dear took his significant lead and kept it, expanding quicker with more army supply and tech and as both players met in the middle of the map with the same Blink Stalkers but this particular Protoss had Sentries to back them up, sOs admitted it was time to tap out.

• Ever Dream | It was a calm and peaceful day here until Dear slipped up by letting two Adepts into his base at 3:10 and as any PvP aficionado will tell you that's that for the game, hard to really argue when you're both supposed to have the same stuff but one of you just lost 7 Probes and four too many Sentries, no detection against the DTs from sOs after was just the nail in the coffin.

• Deathaura | Seeing as it worked at least once, sOs went for the Adept pressure again with Oracle support, however not only did it not deliver the intended result, Dear just massed up some Stalkers and as soon as the defense was done marched them across the map to get the easiest bop you'll ever see, basically uncontested around 4:50 as he tore through the Jin Air base to secure the win.

M5 | Dear [ 0 : 2 ] DRG | ★☆☆☆☆ | Bambi's Mom

• Deathaura | Glaives o'clock was well on the way, only for Dear's wall to once again feel transparent as a few Lings flooded inside the Protoss base - discovering the obvious - at which point my brain basically summarized "if Dear wins this game, sc2 is busted". When the rush eventually hit, roughly 5 Adepts died for every Drone killed, so from there DRG simply massed up his low tier units to completely crush the third Nexus and catch pretty much every Sentry around 6:40 to make the game state beyond miserable for the Protoss, culminating in an inevitable followup that wiped out the third again and every Immortal with it.

• Submarine | Tasteless lied to us, it turns out you can just flood the map with Lings again and kill Warp Gate along with every other Gate in your way as early as 3:20 into the game to wrap things up and make the Ro16.

So... that was a day of GSL.

• Match of the Night - Is it too much of a diss to say none of them? The closest I think we got to an interesting game was the final map of M3, even if I did like some of M2 as well. So far, for me at least, this has genuinely been the worst day of Code S this Season when it comes to the quality of the games themselves, if anything the hilarious cast rescued it and of course our nostalgia for DRG & Dream also making the next Round again after so long.

Finally, here are some of my closing thoughts on each player:

• Dream's Ro16 was coming for a while and although it wasn't extremely clean you can't argue against his prep and conviction, the guy loves to pounce and doesn't hesitate to do it. Really interesting player moving forward, there are lots of things I find cool in his play and the obvious flaws don't look unfixable, he'll definitely be an underdog for the next Round but I'm still happy to see how far he can go.

• DRG shockingly only lost in his on paper best matchup, this day definitely felt like we were in the twilight zone for a while. I'm very happy for him to move on to the next Round, however I can't help admitting what we saw today was just one real series from him where he would ultimately lose and two terrible matches BO-wise where he won flawlessly, so I'm genuinely not sure where to put him moving forward, lets basically try to temper our expectations to avoid a very likely disappointment up next.

• Dear... what can you even say, he survived the mirror and then only lost in the current worst matchup in the game - to both play and watch, surely. I'll be the first to say when a matchup is going badly it's the responsibility of the losing side to find solutions, but I do feel empathetic towards the Protoss here because it genuinely looked like he couldn't do anything today with the only times he didn't go for the Glaives printer go brrrrrr being when he got rushed himself. I'm sure we're all on the same page Dear is so much better than what he showed here, so looking forward to a quick turnaround from him.

• sOs had a truly uninspired day in terms of how creative his play was and to make matters worse his more normal ideas didn't feel that great either. Now that it's been two straight Seasons of getting knocked out before the tournament realistically even starts, it might be time to start asking the question "is he done" - that said, betting against greatness has always been a fool's errand, you never know when a 100k tournament will be announced and the Jin Air Magician will swoop back into form all of a sudden to claim it. As it stands, however, it's become increasingly more difficult to believe in sOs and we'll need to see him show something more if he wants to turn that perception around (and I'm saying all of this while taking into account he was basically in the same boat as Dear today, questionable state of matchups aside the Jin Air Protoss is not passing the Eye Test right now).

As always, if you think differently or have something interesting to add, feel free to do so in the comments below.

Catch you on Saturday for Group E, where Maru and Scarlett will be taking turns slapping the taste out of Armani and Prince's mouths, provided the underdogs don't have anything to say about that.

Thanks as always for reading & see you when I see you! (:

-M

We have NEW Cover Art!
Teaser: Timur attempts to bring Frances out of the castle so he can extricate himself and his traitors all safely, whilst leaving her behind. It doesn't go to plan.
Story Summary: After years of beatings and neglect from her parents, 13-year old Frances was summoned with her entire class to the fantastical world of Durannon to fight the monsters invading the human kingdoms and defeat the "Demon King." If she succeeds, she might have the home she never had. But if she can't overcome the trauma and self-loathing inflicted on her by her abusive parents, Frances will die, and be summoned back to the home she escaped, on the day that she left.
[The Beginning] [<=Chapter 61] [Chapter Index and Blurb] [Chapter 63=>]
[Map of Durannon]
This chapter was pre-read by u/totallyundescript.
Want to hang? Join the Discord Community!
To disguise that they were carrying a tied up human girl, Timur and the traitors had put Frances in a sack. Since Timur was disguised as a burly servant, he could easily carry the sack containing Frances.
He tried to carry Frances in what he hoped was comfortable. She didn’t seem to make any noise. Then again, the traitors—which is to say, Selena—had threatened to hurt Frances if she made a noise.
Timur’s solution to get out of Conthwaite castle, which was locked down, was a dangerous, but in his view, intelligent one. The castle had two sally ports, doors in the fortifications that would allow defenders to come out and harass enemy besiegers. They were guarded and exposed to view from the walls of the fortress.
However, Timur knew that everybody was focused on looking into the castle grounds, not looking outward. They just needed to knock out the guards.
The sally port they chose was the northern sally port. It overlooked a craggy path that snaked down from the hill Conthwaite Castle stood on and to the meeting point. Inside the castle, it was located in a remote corner of one of the castle's courtyards, isolated from the rest of the castle. There were two guards by it.
Timur took out the guards quickly by using two words of power that smashed them into the wall and knocked them down. They were so stunned that Claudia, Russell, Selena and Renfrey had a lot of time to rush the pair and tie them up. After pocketing the key to the sally port, they left, leaving the two guards on the outside.
As an extra precaution, Timur cast a heating spell that melted the lock and rendered the sally port completely inoperable.
“Next?” Renfrey asked.
Timur put the sack where Frances was in down and started to undo it. “We get down the path. No torches, though. So I’ll have to untie the blasted mage’s legs.”
Russell frowned. “She might escape.”
“We’ll make a rope tie around her waist then. If she tries to escape, she’ll fall to her death. I can see the path. She, and you all can’t. You need to follow me.” He unearthed Frances’s head and glanced at her. “Do you understand me, mage?”
Frances nodded and the humans quickly pulled the sack off her and undid her ankle bindings. Once they tied another rope around her waist, the group was off.
Although Timur could see the path as well as it was day, he picked his steps carefully and didn’t rush, often pausing to see how Frances and the other humans were doing. The path was almost like a goat’s track, littered with rocks that pressed up against boots, with one side constantly faced with sharp half-eroded stone.
The darkness didn’t help. As they picked their way down the trail, one of the humans would lose their footing and slip on occasion, and they all had staves for both balance and defence.
With her hands tied behind her back, Frances fell several times. Only a quick grab or tug of the rope around her waist would keep her head from slamming into the ground.
Timur had to mutter curses to play his part, but he felt they were getting less convincing. He was honest to Galena, the Alavari’s god, terrified of her hurting herself, and of the possibility of their escape going to hell. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, rattling his nerves, making him watch every edge in the dark with fear that she might slip.
He had no idea how Frances wasn’t just doing more than occasionally whimper or gasp. At least, he had no idea until he had to catch her by her arm one time when a rock shifted under her feet and she nearly went right over the edge.
That was when he realized that she was drenched with cold sweat, and trembling. She was horrified, which reassured him, and also drove that dagger of shame he felt deeper into his stomach.
The party heard the alarm bells ringing sometime after that fall.
“Shit,” Claudia muttered.
“Don’t worry. We’re almost there,” said Timur. He could see the flat ground at the bottom of the slope and the orchard that was their destination. It was an apple orchard, and since it was fall, he could hear his boots crunching leaves as he stepped to the last part of the path.
And just like that, they were off the trail and in the orchard and their rendezvous point. Timur could even see the horses too, tied to the trees and saddled for a long ride.
“Ignis! We are here, where are you?” Timur yelled.
There was no reply. Timur suddenly felt his tail stiffen and his ears stiffen. Something was wrong. Where was his troll—
Two glinting objects flew out from the trees. He followed them to see them smash against the narrow path they’d just gone down and burst into familiar red-orangey flames. Vials of Crownfire. They would go out soon without much to burn on the rock, but until then they couldn’t escape back up. The orchard was now bathed with a strange crimson glow.
The Alavari prince had already turned his attention back to the direction the fire had been thrown from to see two figures charge at them. One had a shield and was unnaturally fast. She leapt at Timur, hammer raised.
The prince didn’t have time to take his wand out. He had to cry out a word of power to throw his attacker backward into a tree. The effort made him wince as he felt the drain on his reserves.
To his shock, his attacker hit the tree with a cry, but instead of sliding down unconscious, leapt back to her feet and charged again, forcing Timur to draw the sword he’d borrowed from the Conthwaite armoury.
The other, an armoured knight, from the way fire glinted off of him, was going after Renfrey. The man blocked his sword with a staff, but the knight drove a gauntleted fist into the man’s face, knocking him down. He was immediately beset however by Claudia and Russell, who came at him from two sides, beating at him with their staves.
“Let her go now!” screamed the female. Her hammer scythed toward Timur. The angel forced the trogre to let go of the rope around Frances’s waist and parry the blow. Only his skill and agility let him deflect the constant flurry of hammer strikes.
“Martin, get Frances out of here!” screamed the girl, who had to be Elizabeth. The knight had to be Martin. Timur grimaced, this was bad, but maybe it was for the best. Ignis was either dead or wounded, but Frances was safe. If he could extricate himself from this situation without hurting Frances’s friends, everything would be fine—
“All of you drop your weapons or I’ll slit her throat!”
Everybody froe and Timur spun to see Selena, one arm around Frances’s shoulder, the other holding a knife to her throat.
Timur forced himself not to grimace and instead smiled. “Well done Selena—”
“You drop your weapons too, Timur.” The maid’s voice had dropped to a raspy growl. “I know you care about this mage.”
The prince felt his breath catch in his throat, and the sword in his hand drop limply to the ground. The maid’s lips were twisted up in a nasty leer. The edge of her knife was touching the side of Frances’s neck.
“Timur what are you— Oh damn, you were trying to leave her with us,” Elizabeth stammered.
The trogre nodded, glancing at Claudia and Russell, who were staring at their friend in shock.
“Selena, what are you doing. We have a deal. Unless you don’t want to escape to Alavaria?” Timur asked.
Selena snorted. “You, an Alavari prince, care for this mage. We can’t trust you.”
“I beat her up! Besides she is our only ticket out of here! Are you crazy—”
And that was when Selena drove the knife into Frances’s thigh and gave it a twist.
The worst part for Frances was that she expected something like this to happen, and so all her senses were honed in on the pain she was going to feel. Only, nothing could prepare her for how cold the steel felt as it entered her thigh. Neither could anything prepare for the agony that rattled up her leg as Selena’s knife churned her flesh.
Frances felt her eyes flare wide and her muffled, unrecognizable scream filled the night air. Timur lunged toward them, but the knife, now bloody, was suddenly up against her cheek again.
“You care about her.” The maid glided what was now the knife’s wet and warm edge against Frances’s face. “If you really hated her you’d have hit her face and broken her nose. Yet the only bruise I see is the one you gave her when you fought. You must not have recognized her.”
Frances shivered even as she lamented her misstep. Of course, she should have asked Timur to give her a bruise. She just didn’t think to do so because her own parents had been so careful not to show marks on her face.
Now Timur, a desperate, panicked look on his features was stammering, “Look yes, I have a deal with her but that doesn’t affect us! We can’t take her with us anyway so I thought we should just keep her for a bit then leave her! Remember, she’s Edana Firehand’s dearest student. Do you really want to enrage Lady Skinmelter more than you already have?”
“He’s right.” The woman that Frances recalled was Claudia said, looking increasingly horrified by Selena’s actions. “Look Selena, we need this. We need to get out. We can’t escape the war in the Human Kingdoms, especially soldiers like Russell and I. Only in Alavaria we might stand a chance of leaving it all behind us.”
Frances held her breath as her captor frowned. She could barely stand. Her leg was throbbing with pain, and there was a growing wetness trickling down her right leg. She knew that it was her own blood flowing out of her.
But Selena was in no rush. She frowned and relaxed the knife against Frances’s neck almost casually. There was nothing casual to the gesture for Frances, though. She could see the mad light in the woman’s eyes.
Everybody waited with bated breath.
“Oh, we will. Just one more thing.” Selene pointed to Martin. “You, Otherworlder girl, kill my dear former lord.”
Timur blinked. “We have no time for this we need to leave—”
“You’re not calling the shots anymore, Fae-kin.” Selena sneered at Elizabeth. “Kill Martin, girl. Or I will kill your friend.”
Frances shook her head on instinct and for her trouble, got the knife pressed further into her cheek. She could feel the edge cutting the skin and she froze once more. All she wanted to do was to scream and fight this madwoman.
But if she did… she was going to die, and she knew what that meant.
As Elizabeth blinked back tears, Martin swallowed. “If I am going to die, I want to know why. Did I offend you in some way?” he demanded.
Selena laughed, a harsh, grating laugh that shook even her own comrades.
“Your mothers sent my son and daughter into battle under your sister, Maria’s, command. Your sister got them killed. I think it’s only reasonable that they pay for that with your death. That I get to stick it to some prissy Otherworlders just makes it better.”
“It was you… you leaked the plan to the orcs. You almost got us all killed!” Elizabeth glared at Selena. “We are trying to defend your homes and you repay us like this?”
Selena snorted. “It was a joint effort, but yes, we got the plans to Alavaria. And you, Otherworders, defend our homes? How can you defend our homes when you have nothing to lose. When you have no attachment to Durannon? And what do we have to give up so you defend our homes? Our food, our iron, our animals and our lives!”
Frances sniffled as the knife began to cut into her cheek, slicing open skin. She had to do something. Elizabeth was going to be forced to make an impossible choice.
“This war will take and take and take until those prissy nobles just work it out! At least Alavaria is offering us an out from this war,” Selena hissed. “Now do it!”
Frances watched Elizabeth tremble, staring at Martin. Her friends were looking at each other, poleaxed by the situation they were in.
She had to do something. Her hands were loose enough, but the knife was at her neck. She could die if she tried to escape, and if she died, she’d return home, back to her parents.
Only, that didn’t seem to be so scary to her. Frances was horrified by the prospect, but the option didn’t seem to paralyze her. She wondered why. It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want to be hit by her parents or see them ever again. So why… why did she dread her friend dying more than seeing her parents?
Because you know what you deserve, what you need. You know you deserve good things. You know you deserved nothing of what your parents did to you. They may scare you, but you can fight that fear and win.
As the answer hit Frances, she made her decision
Across from Frances, Timur frowned as he noticed his friend’s eyes widen in what seemed like some kind of epiphany. He was confused as to why she seemed to brace herself, however, but chalked it up to the pain she felt in her leg.
Martin suspected something different. He could tell that Frances was going to make a move, but he wasn’t sure what she could do. He thought she saw some weakness in their enemy and was getting ready to exploit it, or send him a signal.
Elizabeth saw her friend’s eyes widen too. She also noticed Frances tense her shoulders. Unlike the boys, however, she instantly realized what her friend was going to do.
“Frances, no!” she screamed.
It was too late. Frances slipped the loosened ties at her wrists and grabbed Selena’s knife arm, stepping backward into her. The pair fell over, grappling with one another, Selena shrieking like a banshee, Frances crying out a note to try to keep the knife away from her.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Martin raced for Russell, blocking the hit from a stave with his armoured arms, he tackled the man to the ground. Elizabeth easily dodged Claudia’s wild swing and began to wrestle for control of her staff.
Timur, having finally remembered that he’d loosened Frances’s ropes, only had eyes for Frances as she and Selena rolled over. Even as he raced toward the pair, though, he saw Selena flip his exhausted and battered friend over, and straddle her. Frances raised her arms in a defensive block and cried out, trying to force Selena away from her with her magic.
She managed to throw the woman away, but not before the knife colored red by the still glowing Crownfire, plunged her in the chest.
Then the traitorous maid hit the ground. But she quickly sprang up, charging. Timur froze, wondering whether to get to Frances or attack Selena.
Elizabeth sprinted by Timur, and in a textbook sweep, took Selena’s legs from out under her, before slamming the staff on her head for good measure. The maid crumpled, knocked out cold.
Timur spared the madwoman only a glance before racing to Frances’s side.
Blood was already pooling underneath her body. It poured out from her thigh, from the deep wound in her chest that soaked her cream white dress, and from a cut along the side of her throat. He hadn’t seen that. It looked like it had happened when Frances initially tried to break out from Selena’s grasp. He immediately pressed his hands against the neck wound trying to staunch the blood that bubbled up.
“Oh no, nononono. Elizabeth! Martin! Help!” he bellowed.
Elizabeth was by his side in an instant. Martin, who was tying up Russell, was a hair slower, but not far behind. They immediately pressed their hands against the wounds.
“Magic. Timur! You know healing spells don’t you?” Martin demanded, his tone shrill.
The trogre shook his head. “Yes, but I’m almost flat out. I can’t… it’s so deep! I’ll try—”
“Wait!” Elizabeth with bloody hands whipped out a wand from her belt. “Use Frances’s wand, it’s a Named Wand. I’ll hold her neck.” She pressed her shaking hands against the wound. “Oh, God. Frances, why?” she cried.
“It’s alright… I… I’ll see you soon at school. I’ll find you.” Frances didn’t want to cry, but it hurt too much. She couldn’t remember feeling so weak before, but she fought it. There was too much on her mind. “I… I’m only a little scared. Please, tell Edana I love her. She’s the mother I never knew I could have, and that I’m sorry.” Frances hiccuped, she felt so weak, like she wanted to just fall asleep. “Timur, I’m sorry. I hope you find someone to help you. Martin, don’t f-f-feel bad…”
“No! You aren’t going back to your parents!” Timur grabbed Ivy’s Sting, yelled out several phrases and touched Frances’s neck. Sensing its beloved master was close to death, the wand was all too eager to lend its power and Timur found it incredibly easy to cast his healing spell.
The stab wound started to knit together, but slowly, and the cut on the side of the neck slower still. Timur swallowed and drew everything he had, every last bit of magic and thrust it into the dying mage.
“Come on! Don’t give up! You can’t!” Martin begged. The knight was crying now, tears pouring down his cheeks
Frances sniffled. “Please don’t cry. I…I was so happy in Durannon—”
“And you’re going to be fine damnit!” Elizabeth screamed. Frances blinked as Elizabeth took her hands off of the now-vanished stab wound she’d been trying to cover with her bloody hands. She felt her friend touch her neck with a wet hand. The wound on her neck was also gone. “Oh God, you’re going to be fine,” she wheezed and sat back.
Frances blinked again, suddenly feeling… oddly alert and while exhausted, not so sleepy.
Timur stood up groggily, Martin steadying him.
“I… I sealed the bleeding. She needs to see a doctor immediately, but… Galena that was too close.”
Frances blinked again and tried to lever herself up, but Elizabeth immediately pushed her back on the ground. “You stay quiet. Timur, you need to get out of here.”
The trogre stared at Elizabeth but handed Ivy’s Sting back to the Otherworlder. “You’re… letting me go?”
Martin nodded. He briefly considered demanding Timur to stay, but a quick glance at Frances and he decided to get her help was far more important than getting into another fight. The knight pointed to the orchard. “You saved her life and you never wanted this to happen. The traitors stay, but your troll, Ignis, he’s just over there. We just knocked him out. Take two horses and get away before Edana arrives. I doubt she’ll be as merciful.”
“I doubt it too.” Timur levered himself off of Martin and smiled. “To an actually peaceful meeting next time?”
“I’m not betting on it,” muttered Martin, but he shook the prince’s hand. Elizabeth just gave the trogre a nod.
“Timur, thank you,” Frances rasped.
The Alavari prince managed an exhausted and relieved smile, with none of his usual cockiness.
“Until next time then, my lady.”
Frances felt her cheeks flush, and Timur quickly averted his eyes before turning around. Soon he was jogging into the night, leaving the trio of friends surrounded by unconscious or groaning traitors.
Author's Note: OOOOF wow that was a chapter. Reminder to everybody that if you would like advance chapters, you can check out my patreon. I'm also going to run a Patreon Q and A with questions due on October 4th. The Q and A will be made available a week after chapter 64 is published and will signal the end to my weeklong 'end of book 1' break. All Patreons have four questions they can ask to myself, or any character. You can ask spoilery questions, I just won't post them.
The break for non-patron folks will only take place after their chapter 64. The non-patron folks Q and A will be published instead of a regular chapter update after Chapter 64 is regularly updated and will signal back to regular updates... the see start of book 2 of A Fractured Song. Okay now if you didn't bother reading all of that, the update question is: Favourite action characters or stars?: Donnnie Yen (IP Man), Jackie Chan and Keanu Reeves (John Wick) are mine.

The following entry is a diary recovered from a plane wreck in southern Algeria. It serves as the best record to the gruesome events which happened in this disaster.
​
July 1
I don’t know what to say. I’m scared. I’m so scared, I don’t know what to write here. I’ve seen this happen in movies, read it in books, but I can't believe it really happened in real life. In my life.
Look, I’m going to have to backtrack a little bit. Things will be fine, things will be fine. This isn’t a movie, this is real life, so we won’t be stranded here long. My friend Wellesly said that there’s something called a black box. A black box automatically sends out a distress signal, like in a science fiction movie. Things will be fine. The dust storm just ended and they’ll find us soon.
It’s getting dark now, and I’m scared. We’re in the desert. The Sahara desert. I should tell you why I’m here, I’m sorry I haven’t. But who would read this? Maybe I’m just writing to calm myself. If that’s the case, I’ll keep doing so. I guess I should write the date, so if anybody would read this they see the time we landed.
July 2
There, how’s that? I’m talking to a book. I do have to tell you why I’m writing in this book, so I’ll do that. My name’s Will. William Henderson. I’m fourteen and there was a reason I was on a plane over the Sahara. My dad works as the US ambassador in South Africa, and he wanted me to go on a vacation, to meet my mom and sister in Spain. Wellesley and Scottie Jefferson are also on the plane to see their relatives, but they were going to take another plane to England. They’re british. I’m glad this is a pen cause a pencil would be getting numb by now. I bet you can guess what happened next. We got caught in a dust storm over the Sahara, and crashed. The pilot actually survived, which doesn’t happen in the stories. Unfortunatly, he’s Spainish and doesn’t speak a lick of English. Oh well. We won’t be stuck with him long.
July 3
We might be stuck here for a long time. I’m writing in this little pocket book by the way. I can fit it in my pocket, hence the name. The night was cold. Like freezing cold. We found a few emergency blankets and slept on the seats. The pilot kept trying to tell us stuff but we couldn’t understand him. Wellesly thinks he says we need to stay inside the plane. This morning, we all stepped out and got a look around us. It’s crazy. There’s dunes, actual dunes going off into the horizon on every side. The plane seems to have made one too, from the impact. The crash wasn’t a violent one, all that happened was we got too much dust in the engines and the pilot skidded to a stop on the sand.
The heat is unbelievable. We couldn’t go outside because our skin was starting to burn and blister before our eyes, and inside the plane is like being in a burning car. The Jeffersons and I eventually decided to get underneath the plane’s shadow. It had been much earlier the last time I wrote in this book and the heat wasn’t so bad. Now it’s intolerable. We’ve been sitting underneath the plane and Scottie’s been crying. This must be terrifying for a nine year old. It’s scary enough for me. It doesn’t help that Wellesly has been yelling at him to shut up all morning. He’s fifteen, by the way. I’m not sure where the pilot is now.
It’s around noon. The pilot showed up a little earlier. We had been talking and wondering where he was. The Jeffersons are OK, by the way. Anyway, the pilot had a huge bag with him and he went up and put it down in front of us. I guess he couldn’t exactly tell us what was inside, so he took it all out and showed us. Eight whole gallons of water. A bunch of portable heat-up meals. A few knives, some matches, a flare gun with five flares, and a reflector mirror. The Jeffersons and I had been drinking from the water bottles we had brought from South Africa. We had drank all day and they were mostly empty. Wellesly motioned that we fill them back up, but the pilot shook his head.
Rescue still hasn’t come. This is really bad. Scottie stopped crying, which is good. I’ve really gotten to know the Jeffersons lately. Maybe we’ll be friends when we get back to South Afirca.
July 4
Happy fourth of July. We spent last night like the first. Rescue still hasn’t arrived, but it will soon enough. We ate two of the meals each yesterday, and we have enough for two more days. We didn’t know how we were going to cook the food, but the pilot just put them on the metal roof and the heat-up meals cooked in minutes. I keep telling myself don’t be afraid, rescue doesn’t come in a day. This morning, before the heat wave came, Wellesly and I got kind of adventorous and explored the nearby dunes. There wasn’t anything around us, but on our way back we saw a bird fly by. When we got to the plane again the pilot yelled at us in spanish for about ten minutes. He’s scared for us.
It’s good that we got our water bottles refilled. It’s gotten so scalding hot that we can barely toleate a cup a day, but the Spanaird guards the supplies like a hawk. At least I have fresh clothes and a toothbrush, and deoderant. I’ve tried to call help on my phone so much that it ran out of battery completely.
July 5
I saw a few more of the birds today. It’s been three whole days since we landed, and I’m getting worried that we might not get rescued. You know, Wellesly’s whole blackbox thing was total shit.
We just finished lunch and are very worried. We have one meal left, and then that’s it. The Jefferson’s had granola bars in their backpacks, but those have been eaten. It was hard enough skipping a meal so how are we gonna skip three? And there was so much food on the first day…
The pilot’s been exploring the dunes a lot, leaving us in the shade. He hasn’t found anything except sunburn, which has plagued us all to the point of our skin falling out in clumps. It’s so hot, even in the shade. Today Wellesly figured out a way we could avoid changing sides of the plane to stay with the shade. He took a parachute and strung it by some poles and hooks against the plane, forming a sunshade. He’s really helped us.
July 6
There’s no more food, and no help. The hunger is not so bad right now, but it will be getting worse as the day progresses.
I’m hungry. It’s strange to not eat for so long. Today the pilot finally motioned that we could leave the shade whenever we wanted. Scottie started crying again, this time from the hunger.
We’ve spent almost a day without food and I don’t like it. Now that it’s getting darker, Wellesly and I are going to go out and try to find something to eat.
The desert really is barren. I think I might start seeing things soon. Like mirages. I’ve heard a lot about wandering travelers thinking they saw a lake, but when they drop down and start drinking, all they find is burning sand. This evening Wellesly and I are going to look around again, this time further out from the plane.
I’m so hungry
so hungry
so hungry.
July 7
Little Scottie won’t stop crying. The hunger is really starting to get bad. I can actually feel it now. Feel it howl with rage, deep in my bowels, demanding the food I don’t have. I’m really hungry. Nobody’s come to help us. Are we going to die? I don’t want to die. I can’t die yet.
We found a granola bar under one of the seats and split it three ways. It tasted so good, but it solved nothing. It just made me want food even more. The pilot hasn’t been doing much just praying in spanish in the shade.
Wellesly and I have agreed we need to hunt down one of those birds. They may not look appetizing, but we can eat them just fine. We used the blankets to make masks for ourselves, so the sun doesn’t roast our faces alive. We look like muslim travelers in some caravan. We’re gonna get a bird. We’re gonna eat it.
Nothing. We got nothing. No birds, no food, no nothing. I’m hungry I’m hungry I’m hungry. We need to eat. Has it been three days since I’ve eaten a real meal? A week? A year? I’m hungry. So hungry.
July 8
I ate my tube of toothpaste today. I was just brushing my teeth, and I looked at my toothpaste...It just kind of happened. I ate the whole tube. The whole tube. I’m losing weight now. I could see my ribs this morning. At least we still have water. Scottie won’t stop crying, and Wellesly has started hitting him. We sit under the shade all day, doing nothing. The pilot prays constantly. Scottie cries, and Wellesly hits him.
I feel sick from the toothpaste. I’m sunburned so bad it doesn’t feel real. I went exploring again tonight, but all I found was a skeleton. Of a camel or horse or something. I’m not walking so good now, but that’s fine. I don’t really care. I lost track of where the plane was for a little while, but why would I care? The only thing the plane has to offer is water and shade. I’m so hungry.
I found the plane again. I want to go home. Not South Africa, not Spain, I want to go back to Dallas, where I was born. This time of year would be so much colder than it is here. But today I realized something. The plane is coming. It’s just going to take a while. And then I can go home to my mother and Jan and my father. We can grill something in the backyard and laugh about how I ate my toothpaste. We can invite the Jeffersons too, and we can all have a party back there, under the evening light, eating and laughing. But only after rescue comes. And it will come.
July 9
We caught a bird today. It landed right at our feet, under the shade. Wellesly and Scottie and I all looked at each other, unsure of what to do. The pilot kept praying. Wellesly went to get it, moving slowly, so slowly. He caught it. How it squaked! Squak squak! It was so funny when he snapped its neck. We ate it. We forgot to cook it, though. Must have slipped our minds. We ripped its feathers off, drooling, and started to eat it raw. It didn’t taste so bad. The pilot realized what was happening and started eating too. We devoured the legs, the back, the rib meat, the neck. We even ripped out its organs, squeezed the juices out, and ate those, too. It was delicous! So delicous!
It’s night again. My flashlight ran out of power, but there’s still some light to write by. I’m gonna keep this book, and some day my kid will bring it for show and tell at his school and read it out loud. All the kids will laugh. At stuff like how this evening the Jeffersons and I dragged out a ton of seats to light a bonfire. How Wellesly told us to dig through them first in case there was any straw inside that we could eat. And how We found none and lit up the pile. So fun! We danced around it cheering and whooping over the victory of the bird, then hauled over the skeleton and danced around with it. It was so funny how the Jeffersons look now, like cartoon characters. I guess we all lost some weight. Hey, maybe the rescuers noticed the fire. Maybe they did. Anything is possible.
July 10
We’re still rationing the water, which is a good thing. Also, the pilot’s sick with something. Fever maybe, who knows. We laid him down in the shade. I hope he’ll be OK.
The hunger is back. Nibbling on the bird's bones doesn’t help. We searched and searched the desert, but couldn’t catch a single bird. Not a single one. I looked back at this record and realized we’ve been here a whole week. Only a week. Rescue will be here soon. I know it. I knowitknowitknowitknowit.
July 11
I’m hungry again. Really hungry. We’ve scournged every part of the plane for food in the evenings and mornings but find nothing. Nothing! The pilot’s still sick.
Little Scottie found a couple lizards today. We cheered for joy and split them between us. There were three, so each of us got one. We sizzled them on the top of the plane and each ate one, bones and all. Delicous! It wasn’t till I was finished till I realized we forrgot the pilot. Oh well! Hes older so it will take him longer to starve. Hell be fine.
July 12
Another dustorm hit today and we had to stay in the plane. I’m getting hungry again and its not fun. I noticed that half the water was gone but weve been heer two weeks so rescue will come soon.
July 13
We dug out the rest of the lizrd nest and found four more. Only four but four is good. We cooked them and I got one Scottie got one Wellesly got one and even the sick pilot got one. Delicous!
We started anuther bonfire this night. It was awesome. There are only three chairs left, one for each of us to sleep in. Help will be here soon! very soon!
July 14
Were getting hungry again but their are no lzerds to eat. The pilot is really babbling, so he’s anoying us. Today a bunch of my skin just peeled off and hit the ground in a giant clump. Disgusting. Help will bee heer so soon! So soon! Its been two weeks afhter all.
July 15
Im so hungry so hungry. Scotties crying again but welsly doesn’t stop him. The pilot is cring now too. He wants his mother realy bad.
When i get home again maybee Ill invite the pilot over. Hes a nice guy. And well let his mother come too because why not! Itll be an excelent cookout!
We decided we needed water to be rationed even more. Instead of a whole cup half a cup. Perfect! we’ll still be drinking when the rescue arrives! And they’ll arrive soon! So soon!
Tonight welsly made a torch. we climbed to the top of the plane and waved it around but no rescue came those guys are gonna be in trouble for leaving us out here so long.
July 16
I was so hungary today I started eating this pocket book. It was dry though, so I stopped. The pilot is having a hard time breathing. I hope he doesnt die. Hes gotta com to the cookout with us. the Jeffersons and I wont die though. welsly said earlier were survivors. Survivors! I like the sound of that!
A plane just past. The Jeffersons and I ran out side of the shade with the mirror and waved our shirts but he didn’t turn around right away. He’ll com back soon. I know he will. Hes just taking a while thats all.
I think were starving.
We came back in side the plane today and Scottie had something in his mouth. Welesly told him to spit it out but he didnt want to. welsly smacked him on the back of the head and the thing came out. It was a big clump of skin, the kind that peels off of us. I wonder why he tried to eat that. Thats gross. I guess all little kids are gross.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, help me. Help us. We’re dying. Help us. We’re starving. The plane passed us. It will never come back. We’re dying. We’re dying. Help us, help us if you’ve ever loved us. We’re starving. Starving!
July ?
I dont know why I wrote that lastnight. May be I had a bad dream.
The Pilot just died. He turned over and vomitted out his water onto the sand. And then he died. The Jeffer sons and I didnt know what to do so we buried him in the sand. It was realy sad. He cant go to the cookout now. Im so hungary and the plane still hasnt come back. welsly says that must mean theyre taking a pitstop. Im going to trust him. Hes smart.
Scottie ate half a book today. He got into the cockpit during the hot part of the day and got in to a “Flight Manual.” he ate half the pages before welsly caught him and stopped him but not before eating a few pages himself. Were so hungry and theres nothing to eat.
July ?
Today we found something to eat. It was buried in the sand by the tailwing and the sand had cooked it. It lasted us the whole day and were not hungry. It tasted good. So good.like a nice hamburger. Hey! Wee had the cookout after all!
Im telling you all the world is eating all llife is eating you eat to get energy and use energy to get food to eat and get more energy
all life eats each other everything eats everything eventually it doesn’t matter what you eat you eat it and its good and you get energy to eat some more everything is eaten eventually the whole world eats the whole world and its write and good so dont accuse me i need energy like you I need to eat i need to eat i need to eat. Im telling you wat we did was eating nothin else. Eating.
Jully ?
I cant wait to be rescued. Their taking so long thoh and theyll be in big trouble wen they com because the pilots dead and wont visit the cookout.
the jeffers sons and i dodnt do much today. Welsly is so tired. Scitty isnt crying though whoohoo im so happy he isnt crying. Im getting hungry again thoh. Hungry again. You cant hide from hungry its all ways their and well have to eat tomorow to run from it. You cant hide but you can run. Because you will be eaten in the end no matter what.
Jully
Today we caught anoth bird. We forgot to cook it again but we didnt care. It was a big fat one to. we had to feed welsly like a baby though hes so tired. I thoht i heard a airplane and ran out over the dunes but there was no plane only sand. Well berescued by tomorow i know that for sure.
Jully
today we didnt eat again. Or yesterday wen i forgot to write. It was a dust storm and the sunshade blew away. Oh well we can just sit in the shadow again.were hungry again and poor welsly has been so quiet and tired. Scottyis scared for him and says he doesnt want him to die. I laughed its funny rite? and told him that we cant die only birds die and i was wrong about the plane yester day but i would be rite today. He smiled and nodded and we were happy. i cant wait for the cookout.
Jy
welsly died today. I dont know what it was of but he died suddnly and we buried him he didnt eat he didnt eat and now hes dead. Scotty cried and cried.
Scotty and I finished off the fliht manul we threw it up and ate it again
Jy
we found something else to eat scotty and me did and it was delicous and baked in the sand we need to eat and
well eat andeat and live and eat energy and eat and eat. whats next to eat this book? Scotty? is scotty the next to eat? it doesn’t matter
what you eat its energy and thats what the world is
the world is eat eat e

I hope you all have taken full advantage of the past 48 hours or so to regain some sense of normalcy after our adventures through Part 1 of Kelly Killoren Bensimon's I Can Make You Hot! Without further ado, Part Two:
I resume my journey through the truly incomprehensible mind of Kelly Bensimon with a chapter entitled, "Thursday: Tricks of My Trade." Now that we've learned about the basic building blocks of hotness, Kelly promises to share even more hard-earned advice to help us really kick things up a notch. And, as she reassures us:

I'm actually glad for the mistakes I've made because anyone who doesn't make mistakes doesn't learn, and if you don't learn, you're boring!

And if you're boring, you're not HOT! I think I'm starting to get the hang of this!
One of Kelly's most important life lessons came at her first horse show, when she made an unbelievably devastating misstep: "I decided to have an egg on a bagel from the food-service van." What kind of unimaginable ripple effects did this poor decision set off? I continue on to learn that Kelly "did all right in the competition." And…that's literally the whole story. Kelly legitimately refers to this as "one of my biggest lessons," as it taught her "to never eat more than I normally would." If life-changing breakthroughs were this easily sparked in my own life, I can't even begin to imagine how self-actualized I would be at this point.
At this point in my reading, I have reached the book's first insert, which contains about a dozen glossy color photos from various phases of Kelly's life. Unfortunately, I am far too preoccupied by this picture, in which a carefree, wind-swept Kelly clenches her infant daughter under one arm with all the grace of an NFL wide receiver, to pay the rest of the spread much mind.
We continue on as Kelly introduces new dimensions to the basic tips she's previously introduced. For example, you may have had some vague idea that water was important, but Kelly -- always there to help us learn and improve -- digs into the specifics to make sure we're up to date on the HOTtest tricks of the trade:

Staying hydrated is important no matter what you're doing, so I always try to drink eight glasses or about a liter of water a day. Soda isn't water. Coffee isn't water. Water is water. Drink throughout the day; don't try to get it all down at once. You wouldn't drown an orchid, so don't drown yourself.

I am putting in my formal request for a Public Service Announcement in this format, but using the last line of that passage. Also, Kelly clearly does not know how poorly I tend to my houseplants.
The next page informs us that, "hot isn't just caliente; it's also spicy and sultry." Kelly promptly launches into yet another list of miscellaneous grocery items, this time focused specifically on "red-hot foods." Except it includes entries like "popcorn with sugar and cinnamon," and "Mike and Ike candy," so I'm not convinced Kelly didn't just lose track of the thread entirely by the time we got a few items in. However, this does seem like an appropriate time to introduce this picture, from the book's second photo insert, which clearly depicts the sleep paralysis demon that has haunted my dreams for the past several nights. We're also treated to this chapter's first "hot button issue" panel, in which Kelly pulls back the curtain on the shadowy, pro-salt cabal trying to control us all with their anti-sodium legislative agenda:

We keep reading about how bad sodium is for our health, but if you eat fresh foods that you prepare yourself, you can determine and control the amount of salt you want to use. I, Kelly Killoren Bensimon, am perfectly capable of deciding how much salt I want to put on my food. I don't need anyone else to salt my food for me. I know that the amount of salt I choose to sprinkle on my food is not going to hurt me.

I read on to find a two-page spread in which Kelly expounds, in rhapsodic praise to rival that of Song of Solomon, upon her ardor for her beloved dehydrator -- "I though I was in love with coffee, but now I think my dehydrator is my truest love." Most of the passage is taken up by an unstructured list of the various things Kelly has attempted to dehydrate ("cucumber," "mangoes," "avocado") but she does manage to squeeze in a few infomercial-ready lines -- "Really, you should buy one; I promise you won't be sorry."
Since repetition is the key to reinforcing new concepts, I appreciate that Kelly's next list (of "a few more lean tricks I've learned along the way") repeats a note she originally relayed to us just a few pages ago:

Drink water throughout the day (not all at one sitting).

She's also been thoughtful enough to provide a list of resources for us to use as we soldier on along the perilous journey to HOT. After all, as Kelly says, "I don’t expect you to carry this book wherever you go -- as much as I would love that." As someone who has never before ventured into the wild world of cyberspace, I really appreciated Kelly introducing me to so many fun, useful websites that I might want to check out! In case you, too, just haven't figured out how to navigate this whole Internet thing, I've included a few examples below:

www.amazon.com
One-stop shopping for just about any book, periodical, or product you might want to read or buy in order to get HOT.

​

www.espn.com
Everything you need to know to stay up to date on any sport.

​

www.webmd.com
Useful, up-to-date, trustworthy information on medical and health issues.

​

www.yummly.com
Claims to have "every recipe in the world"

Can't wait to check these out later! That Amazon one sounds super cool!
I'm reminded quickly just how inelegant the transitions in this book are as we move directly from that list into the following:

I suggest that you take a picture of yourself every day…Some days when you're feeling your fattest, you may be surprised to see that you really look great.

Okay, so fat is NOT HOT. Except being comfortable in your body is HOT. And trying to be skinny is NOT HOT. But being skinny is HOT. Thank goodness I still have a few more chapters to go -- I clearly still have a ways to go before I truly understand the logic of HOTness. As it stands, I must admit that I'm a bit baffled.
Of course, returning to the previous bit of advice, Kelly doesn't actually have to worry about taking her own pictures like us plebeians -- "Having been photographed so often has provided me with a permanent retrospective catalogue of my life." The chapter closes with these words of wisdom:

The best kind of vanity is being vain about what you put in your body.

Friday's chapter promises to introduce us to the world of "Hot Couture," and I am excited to see what tips and tricks Kelly has managed to accrue over her lifetime in the cutthroat world of modeling . But first, we abruptly transition to a story about Kelly meeting Madonna shortly after both women had given birth. Kelly had "gained a healthy fifty pounds," which I am led to believe, from the context of the anecdote, is NOT HOT. Madonna, on the other hand, was "flat-stomached" and therefore "HOT and cool." Of course, Kelly reassures us hurriedly that she lost all the weight within the following six weeks and was "actually thinner than I'd been prepregnancy." I am at an utter loss as to what the point of this story could possibly be, but -- blessedly -- Kelly is gracious enough to explain:

So what's the lesson here? That Madonna had personal trainers and chefs to whip her back into shape, and I didn't -- and still don’t. I shouldn't have been comparing myself to her in the first place. My advice to you is: don’t compare yourself to anyone else, only to your own personal best.

This is a perfect example of something Kelly does throughout this book, which is to present a completely reasonable piece of advice (don’t compare yourself to others), but couched within such a bizarre and logically disorganized narrative that by the time I reach the ultimate moral of the story, my brain feels like it's been run through a series of meat grinders, and I'm reduced to just nodding along in bemused acceptance.
We get a "Kelly's Cardinal Rule" reminding us to "let your body be what your body is and be happy with what you've got." I'm starting to wonder if there is some sort of Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde thing going on behind the scenes here, in which two versions of Kelly are frantically grappling over control of the book's body-positivity dial. I'm literally don't even have to flip the page to see Kelly commiserating with us that "we all have days or occasions when we feel fat" and quipping about her "go-to fat outfit." But also:

Stop praying for what you don't have and be grateful for what you've got.

This amount of cognitive dissonance is truly proof that Kelly contains multitudes. Or has recently acquired some sort of debilitating short-term amnesia. Nevertheless, we continue:

But whatever your shape, show it off. Don’t try to hide it. Hiding is not hot.

Kelly next walks us through figuring out which "season" we are, based on the wisdom extolled in "Color Me Beautiful, the groundbreaking book that was so wildly successful in the early 80s." It's no surprise to me that Kelly, who earlier encouraged us to make our lives easier by using our PDAs, finds this to be an exciting new trend to share. Also, in case you weren't aware, "hair color is also important. You can lighten it or darken it or cover the gray." Lighten it or darken it? The boundaries of my mental universe are truly expanding.
Some more fashion tidbits:

Scarves are hippie chic, cool, and always HOT.

​

If you're narrow, show off how narrow you are with a monochromatic palette.

​

Ankles are the new cleavage!

Narrow ankles only, I presume. Kelly's selfless, giving nature is highlighted yet again in the following passage, in which she explains:

All these celebrities have stylists who pull the clothes, accessories, and shoes that make them look the way they do. They charge a lot of money for what they do, so why not get some free advice based on my experience.

And what, pray tell, is this coveted advice that Kelly is so lovingly sharing with her readers, free of charge?

1. Save sweatpants for the gym.
   
2. Save PJs for the bedroom.
   
3. Dress as if you were the boss.
   
4. Remember what Carrie Bradshaw says: "Nothing is casual anymore, even when it says so on the invitation."
   
5. Manolo Blahniks are a girl's best friend.
   

Okay, so far be it from me to complain about the quality of free advice. But. Out of the five pearls of wisdom that make up the "KKBStyle Rules," two of them are rudimentary instructions to wear somewhat-situationally-appropriate clothing, and the other three are the kind of cute sayings that you would find on a piece of poorly bedazzled wall art in the clearance aisle of your local TJMaxx. I'm not impressed.
Kelly next tells us how important it is to eat well and exercise, even "when you're premenstrual or having your period." That way, as she continues on, "you'll feel better because your endorphins will be flowing while your body is sloughing off unwanted endometrium and mucus." To be fair, Unwanted Endometrium does sound like a sick band name.
Thankfully, the mental image of Kelly's mucus slough is promptly booted from my mind by a careening diatribe about the color red (HOT!):

I even painted my nails red the minute I started writing this book. I wanted to see my short red nails tapping away on my Macbook Pro. Almost every red dress is smokin' HOT, and I've never met a guy who doesn't think a woman in a red dress isn't hot. He's a liar if he denies it.

To repeat, Kelly says she's "never met a guy who doesn’t think a woman in a red dress isn't hot." Poor dear got a bit carried away with her negatives, but I'm sure she'll redeem herself in no time:

When I was sitting in the front row of a Marc Jacobs fashion show a few years ago, I wore a full, red short skirt, a tight red sweater, and red open-toed shoes. One of the editors from The New York Times was sitting across from me, and as we were waiting for the show to begin I kept crossing and recrossing my legs to make him laugh.

Sure, Kelly. To make him laugh. I can only assume she must have written some kind of hilariously clever joke on the gusset of her underwear to have had this editor so tickled pink red.

It was a long wait and after a while some guy I didn't know who was at the other end of the row, leapt towards me and screamed that he was obsessed with my feet. How crazy is it that red open-toed shoes and red toenails could create such a reaction. Red is HOT, even stalker HOT. Yikes!

I'm not clear where "stalker HOT" fits into this whole complex web, but it's reassuring to know that a wise soul like Kelly has such a nuanced appreciation of all of the different ways to be hot. She also gives us some "HOT tips for heating up your image." Like,

Put on a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt.

​

Put your hair in a ponytail.

​

Put on a pair of hoop earrings.

And also

Wear your jeans a size smaller instead of a size larger.

For some reason not entirely clear to me at this moment, wearing jeans in your actual size does not seem to be an option.
The chapter continues with a reminder to "remember what's on top of your head!"

There's nothing hotter than a HOT head of hair (unless it's a hunky bald guy).

Kelly follows up by offering a list of what she calls "HOT healthy options." Based on the preceding paragraph, you might assume that these tips would have something to do with haircare and hair styling. However, you would be wrong. Instead, we're instructed to:

Enjoy as much watermelon as you like.

​

Pack a picnic lunch of dehydrated fruit, chamomile iced tea, and mini pizzas made with corn tortillas, cherry tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. Eat your picnic in the park.

​

Come up with something fun you want to try and do it!

Personally, it seems like a bit of a cop-out to make one of the items on your list of fun things to do "make up your own fun thing to do." But who knows? Maybe cop-outs are HOT!
Before my faith in our fearless leader starts to waver, however, I read on through the end of the chapter, and my surety is promptly restored:

Besides my hair and my legs, the one thing people always ask me about the way I look is how I keep my teeth so white. And yes, that's also a matter of genetics. I'm blessed with the whitest teeth on the planet, and, no, I've never had them professionally bleached.

The weekend begins as I turn the page to the penultimate chapter -- "Saturday: Heat Up Your HOT Image with Healthy Options Today." Saturdays, as Kelly tells us, are for fun activities. For example:

If you're in the mall, go to different stores and figure out which looks will make you HOT. Ask other shoppers for advice.

Also:

Parks are great for people-watching. Who looks fit and healthy?

I sincerely hope that any and all of my friends would give me a stern talking-to if I informed them that my weekend plans consisted of going to a park and…pointing out people I think aren't healthy enough?
Kelly then warns us against overindulging on late-night snacks or alcoholic beverages, lest we wake up Sunday feeling "bloating, sluggish, and with deep regrets." Presumably, Kelly then proceeded to rail a massive line of cocaine and hammer out the following frenetic spiel:

You're not going to get fat from having a few drinks a week. You will get fat if your routine is to drink, eat late, and then lie around watching television the next day, eating and making bad food choices. Going out is fun, but when you sacrifice the next day, it's never fun enough. Don't have regrets; enjoy every day. This is a life plan, and yesterday isn't coming back ever again.

The chapter comes to a close with a reminder to "wrap up every day with a great big bow and be ready for your next adventure. But before we close out our week of HOT, we're provided with what I anticipate will be an incredibly useful reference material for us all, the "KKBfit HOT Quiz." If you'd like to take the quiz yourself, you can find it here. However, I'm not entirely sure I would classify it as a "quiz," since it seems to be mostly a set of questions followed by Kelly's feedback on various possible responses. For example:

1. How Kelly Green are you?

I had a Kelly Green Juice -- Wasn't it yummy?
I had a smoothie from the health food store with a splash of spinach -- Great choice!
I had kale chips, spinach, and quinoa for dinner last night -- I bet you woke up feeling great this morning!
Other?

I presume that the lack of response after the "Other?" choice is supposed to represent Kelly staring at me in deranged disappointment for a few painfully protracted seconds. Some questions, like the one above, don't seem to have any wrong answers at all. In contrast, other questions have clear wrong answers, which Kelly wastes no time in making apparent:

1. Are you getting enough protein? How many days did you eat chicken, fish, or meat for at least one meal?

I had a grilled chicken salad for dinner on three different days -- That's good, but I wish you'd get a little more adventurous in your choices.

​

1. How KKBfit are you?

Haven't had a meal since last night, but I'm going to skip breakfast and go on a run. I won't eat anything until lunch. -- Sorry, but starving your body is not KKBfit.

​

1. Are you drinking enough?

I drink when I'm exercising but that's about it -- Not good enough! Try harder next week.

The quiz ends, leaving me entirely unsure of whether or not I've actually made any forward progress towards my HOTness goals, but the next page does promise help for those who "still need more inspiration." Here, it seems that Kelly has compiled a loose assortment of quotes, most of which (I have a sneaking suspicion) were found by searching the keyword "hot" on BrainyQuote.com. Also, this masterpiece from Kelly's ex-husband, noted fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon:

HOT--
It is not about the look,
It is not only about the charm,
It is the perfect combination:
Sweet and tough,
Sexy and reserved,
Fragile and powerful,
And definitely smart.
-- Gilles Bensimon

Move over, Rupi Kaur! I hope with every fiber of my being that Gilles Bensimon has published his collected poetry in some kind of volume that I could purchase, read, and have, I'm sure, nothing but positive things to say about. After about a dozen similar quotations, Kelly continues:

Now, as you get ready for Sunday Funday, take a few minutes to think about how you define HOT. Has your definition changed or evolved since you started reading this book? If so, I'm doing my job.

In all honesty, my definition of HOT has definitely been…affected by this experience. So we'll call that a win! Kelly tells us a few stories about times when her friends and family members have come to her for guidance on how to be hot. She explains:

I'm not the food police, but I've made myself the Sven-arbiter (as opposed to Svengali) of what's HOT and what's not.

Case in point:

It's just not hot to belong to the clean plate club.

The chapter closes with a list titled "Why Don't You," which I believe is supposed to be a list of fun activities we can try during a Sunday Funday. Or possibly a list of terrible life hacks for stoned college freshmen:

Use an electric teapot as a clothing steamer.

​

Make grilled cheese sandwiches or press wraps using a hot clothes iron.

There are very few things sadder to me that imagining someone taking Kelly up on this last bit of advice as a fun way to liven up what must be the most preternaturally boring existence possible. If your idea of fun is white bread and Kraft Singles getting slowly warmed over on your clothing iron, I can only imagine the fit of hysterics that you'd be thrown into by a passable Minions meme.
And that brings us to the end of the week. But not -- lucky you! -- to the end of this book. Au contraire -- the remaining 100 pages or so of I Can Make You Hot! feature dozens of unique recipes from the culinary mind of none other than the indomitable Kelly Bensimon herself. In her intro, however, she makes it clear that

No one on earth would ever call me a chef.

Of course not, Kelly -- they'd call you a cook. Otherwise, it's creepy.
This portion of the book begins, reasonably enough, with Breakfasts. These include such thoughtfully named delicacies as "My Favorite Cereal" and "My Favorite Pancakes." The recipe for the latter begins with the following introduction:

I'm not the greatest pancake maker, and I probably never will be. But what I am very good at is thinking of unusual things and doing them.

Frankly, I can't argue with that. As she continues:

When in pancake doubt, have fun, add fruit, and see if pancakes can be a vehicle for creating great memories for your family.

Next time I'm in pancake doubt, I'll know just what to do! We move right along into the Soups and Salads section, and are promptly introduced to Kelly's "Jimmy Achoo's Chicken Soup." Which is apparently a play on Jimmy Choo and also described by Kelly as "filled with veggie exploitation," which sounds terrifying. Of the next recipe, "Rich and Skinny Cauliflower Soup with Kale Chips," Kelly reflects:

I adapted this recipe from one I found on the Internet. I wish I could tell you exactly where, but I can't.

The recipe calls for kale chips, which Kelly goes out of her way to inform us can be purchased "at health food stores and many well-stocked supermarkets." We also get a few general "HOT salad tips" that can be applied to many of the recipes throughout this book, such as

There are so many different types of lettuces available today! Try different ones to see which you like best

and

When you order a salad in a restaurant, ask for the dressing on the side. You're a grown-up and you should get to decide how much you want to use.

With that under our belts, the grown-ups among us move on to "Meat, Chicken, and Fish." In her recipe for "Grilled Rib Eye with Herbes de Provence", Kelly tells us about meeting the famous chef who inspired this dish:

When I met Eric, who was still in his thirties at the time, he still had dark hair. I was caught off guard because I thought all chefs were older, had gray hair, and smelled like garlic.

So perhaps Bethenny should have taken it as a compliment? Kelly continues,

He's since invited me many times to go into his kitchen and cook with him, but my fear of losing a finger by being overzealous has prohibited me from accepting.

It's unclear to me exactly what this means or why Kelly would even be particularly worried about this possibility. Does she have habit of excitedly snatching vegetables out from other people's knives? Does Eric have a reputation for slicing anyone who dares to get in his way? Before I make any headway with this particular mystery, we're introduced to the next recipe, the "Pencil-Thin Skirt Steak." As we learn, "Everyone looks slim in a pencil skirt, so it's only fitting that skirt steak is one of the leanest cuts of beef you can buy." We get a recipe for "Sultry Roast Chicken" in which Kelly shares with us that "in fact, chicken without ginger doesn't taste like chicken to me anymore." This would be more believable if we weren't, a mere two pages later, introduced to a notably ginger-free recipe for "Second-Chance Chicken." As Kelly explains,

I hate the idea of leftovers. To me, eating leftovers means you're too lazy to start over, and I've never wanted my girls to think that we weren't starting fresh.

In the introduction to the recipe for "Bad Girl Wings," Kelly gives us yet another poignant insight into her life as a mother:

These chicken wings are Sea's favorite. I'm sure she loves them because she knows I love wings (she's a cutie like that).

It would obviously be ludicrous to assume that Sea actually enjoys chicken wings authentically. Much more likely that she just loves them because Kelly does. HOT! In a segment labeled "hasta la vista taco bell," Kelly recounts a traumatic experience in which she "discovered that my favorite food choices [at Taco Bell] added up to 580 calories." To me, this seems like a perfectly reasonable amount of calories for one daily meal out of three, but according to Kelly, I am embarrassingly off the mark. Rather, she sighs, "I guess that means my Taco Bell days are over -- unless I decide to chance [sic] Sunday Funday into Fatso Food Day." Not HOT.
Kelly tells us about the creative process behind the development of the next recipe, "Spicy Sultry Shrimp and Mango Stir-Fry" (which, for the record, is the second recipe to have the word "sultry" in its title).

This was one of the first dishes I made when I started to cook -- as a science experiment. My "method" was to think of foods I loved and which ones I thought would go well together.

Fascinating! Think of ingredients you like and combine them into a dish that you will then likely also like! The next recipe, for "Kelly's Kalamari," features the following introduction:

I still love fried calamari, but it doesn't love me. Whenever I eat it, it goes right to my stomach and makes a little pooch -- eww!

As a reminder, this is the same Kelly Bensimon who told us that loving our bodies is HOT and dieting is die + t. But also, eww!
We trek along into the next portion of the recipe book, succinctly titled "Pizza, Pasta, Potatoes, Grains, Vegetables, and Sides." We get a recipe for "Pizzzzzzzza!," which instructs the reader to obtain pizza dough, pizza sauce, mozzerella cheese, salt and pepper. Spread out the dough, add sauce and cheese, and cook! This is yet another time I'm glad Kelly told us early on in this book to take detailed notes -- these kinds of nuanced culinary creations can only come from the mind of a true master.
The same kind of true master who would, as we soon learn, conceive of this particular travesty -- "Pink Pizza." Imagine with me, for a moment, that a dear friend invites you over to their house for dinner. I'm making pizza! they implore you. Come over -- we'll hang out, have a couple beers, catch up on old times! Excited for a chance to relive the glory days, you eagerly accept, only to be met -- upon your arrival -- with this abomination. I thought you said we were having pizza? you sputter nervously. This is pizza, your friend intones, as their eyes slowly fade to black and their hands reach out to wrap themselves around your throat.
Kelly goes on to share a recipe for an "Asian-flavored noodle dish" that she has christened (and it truly pains me to type this), "Me Love You Springtime Noodles." Somewhere, the last ember of hope for humanity quietly fizzles out.
The following recipe, for "Pasta with Oddkavodka Sauce" begins with a warning:

When you make this (especially for children) just be sure you cook off the alcohol so that you aren't serving vodka to minors or have to assign a designated driver for your guests.

This seems like reasonable and conscientious advice. Until I read on and learn that the recipe calls for 1/8 cup vodka, and makes four servings. If your guests need a designated driver after consuming a half-tablespoon of vodka each, I would strongly encourage them to seek medical advice forthwith.
I am reminded once again how different Kelly's and my worlds are with the following exclamation:

Try using quinoa in this recipe instead of the rice -- I call that having your cake and eating it too!

Oh, to live a life in which your most selfish indulgence was quinoa. I suppose this should have prepared me for a few pages later, when Kelly remarks:

Both hummus and guacamole make great toppings for steak or fish. They're my version of béarnaise sauce.

I love hummus. Hummus is great. But there is no possible existing parallel universe in which hummus and béarnaise sauce are interchangeable. One of the final recipes in this section is cryptically titled "Have an Impromptu Pepper Party" and instructs the reader to scoop out the insides of a bell pepper and stuff it with "whatever ingredients suit your fancy." Again, I feel like this fails to meet the definition of an actual recipe, per se, but it is supposedly "quick, fun, and satisfying."
We're nearing the book's end (for real this time) with a section on "Breads and Desserts." This includes an inspirational passage in which Kelly shares a personal anecdote:

On Season 4 of the Real Housewives of New York City, I made a mixed fruit pie for my kids with what was left over in the fruit bowl…Don't be afraid to try new things, make mistakes, and have fun doing it.

I can only hope to someday be brave enough and fearless enough to make a mixed fruit pie.
Blessedly, the final section , titled "Beverages", looks like it might have exactly what I need in the aftermath of finishing this book. The "GIN-Ginger Beertail," for example, which "was originally made with gin, but I don't like serving gin drinks because I think it makes people mean." We also get a recipe for something called "Babylove," which (thankfully) seems unrelated to another of my favorite reality TV cesspools.
It only seems appropriate to share the final recipe of I Can Make You Hot! with all of you. I will definitely be downing approximately seven of these tonight, and I hope some of you will be joining me in spirit. Cheers:

Gummi Bear Martini
If you don't have a paper umbrella handy, Gummi Bears are a great way to put more fun in your drink.
Makes 1 Drink
2 parts orange, grape, or other-flavored vodka
1 part Triple Sec
1 part white grape juice
Splash of cranberry juice
Gummi Bears, as many as you like
Combine the vodka, Triple Sec, grape juice, and cranberry juice in a tall glass. Add ice and fill the glass with Gummi Bears.

ETA: I am so disappointed in myself for forgetting to include that Kelly has a ceviche recipe that instructs you to marinate raw fish in lemon juice for exactly two minutes before serving. In the interest of food safety, perhaps it was for the best that this nugget momentarily slipped my mind, but sharing this information with you all is the burden I have been cursed to bear. 🙏🏼