“You know you’re a Persian cat, right?” I said.
“What is that supposed to mean, Carl?”
“Don’t worry,” I muttered. “He doesn’t look like he wants to join our party anyway.”
“Hey there,” I said as he came to a stop before us. The man paused, looking me up and down. I felt my eyebrow raise as he examined me for an extended period.
Crawler #2,165,570. “Daniel Bautista 2”
Level 18.
Race: Tigran.
Class: Swashbuckler.
He looked like a rejected character from Thundercats. He was a well-muscled, shirtless man, about six feet tall. He was furry and orange. Very furry. Very orange. He had the head of a human/big cat hybrid, with the orange, white, and black markings of a Siberian tiger. But unlike a tiger, his eyes had the vertical slits of a housecat. His nose and mouth were human, though covered with wisps of the orange fur. He also had a long, absurdly shaggy, tail. The effect would be comical if the dude didn’t look as if he could rip me in half. He held nine neighborhood boss markers. He wore a belt with a curved sword hanging in a scabbard. The sword also glowed orange.
“Were you the ones who killed Miss Quill?” he finally asked. He had an Asian accent. I remembered the three corpses we’d run across several days earlier. Grace, Nica, and Lea. They all had the same last name. I assumed this guy was part of that family. They’d had someone with them who’d looted most of their gear. Donut had picked up that fallen oak anklet, and I’d looted two generic strength rings. If the man knew we had them, would he want the items back? That would be too bad for him if he did. I figured it would be for the best if we didn’t broach the subject at all.
“Yes,” I said. “I take it you’re the guy whose quest we fucked over?”
“I am,” he said. “I was supposed to break into her home and kill her. It would get me access to the Desperado Club. But when I went to her home, she rushed off. I tried to follow, but she can fly. She went straight to that building there, and a few minutes later came your explosion and her death.”
“Did she have more of the stuffed creatures in her house?” Donut asked.
Bautista grunted. “Yes. Her entire apartment was filled with them. Over a thousand of them. I have taken them all.”
I shrugged. “Well, sorry about that. Like I said, we also have a quest that involved her. It’s not quite done yet, either.”
He nodded slowly. He wanted to say something, but he was hesitating.
“A few nights back, I saw you on the news program,” he finally added.
“We’re on almost every night,” said Donut proudly.
“You fought at that circus. You killed the lemurs. Is there nothing left?”
He was trying to ask about his family, but he was having trouble getting it out. “No. They’re all gone. There’s a stairwell there now.”
He nodded appreciatively. “There is another three kilometers due east from this village. Crawlers have been writing notes with the stairwell locations and leaving them in the bars.”
“Good,” I said. I paused. “And yes, we saw them. The other Bautistas. We killed the lemurs responsible.”
His tail whisked back and forth. “Thank you,” he said. “They were my sisters and cousin. All five of them died in seconds. It happened so fast. I was with my other cousin, and we barely got away.”
I swallowed. There had only been three bodies, but I remembered thinking at the time that there’d been enough blood for more.
Bautista continued. “He died the next day. My cousin, I mean. He’d given up. I’m all that’s left of my entire family. I had four brothers and sisters. Fifteen cousins.” He looked off into the distance. “I don’t know why I go on. I wish I hadn’t chosen this body. I should’ve remained true to myself. We all die anyway. How can we make it to heaven if god doesn’t recognize us?”
I had no answer for that.
An awkward silence followed. I shifted uneasily. “Well I’m sorry for your loss. And I am sorry about screwing up your quest.”
He nodded. “It is no problem. I am happy knowing they have been avenged. I owe you a debt. Call me if you need me, and I will come.” He held out his fist, initiating the chat transfer. I hesitated, then reciprocated the gesture. His name appeared on my chat list. Then he turned and disappeared into the night.
“That dude is very intense,” I said.
“I would be too if I looked like that,” said Donut. “Their game guide let him pick that race. And one of his sisters or cousins had been that weird tree thing, remember? It’s like their guide wanted them to look stupid. And Katia’s game guide won’t help her. And remember that floating brain thing we saw in the recap episode? The one for Frank Q and Maggie My? That thing was talking them into murdering people. I think most of these guides don’t like their jobs very much, and they take it out on the crawlers.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “Let me tell you a secret, Donut. Back before all this happened, it was considered a rare thing for somebody to find a job they truly loved.”
“You don’t like fixing boats? Or being in the Navy?”
“Not really. And I was in the Coast Guard. Not the Navy. They’re different,” I said.
“Are you sure? Miss Beatrice always told people you were in the Navy.”
“I’m sure, Donut.”
“Well, what would you have done if you could do anything?” she asked.
I thought about that for a long moment. I thought of the college applications I started to fill out, but never finished. “I would work for the forestry service as a forester.”
“Doing what? Looking at trees all day?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen enough ocean to last a lifetime. I’d be happy alone in the woods, watching for forest fires. God, I would give anything. That would be beautiful.”
Donut grunted. “I know what I would do. I would write TV shows. Zev and I are going to start a television show writing team when we get out of here. We’re going to remake Gossip Girl but with an intergalactic slant.”
I chuckled. “Is that right?”
“Zev says the shows on Earth are better than anything she’s ever seen. We could make new ones and bring them to the universe. Maybe if the television shows are good enough, people wouldn’t be so interested in watching real-life people kill each other,” she said.
I didn’t say anything for several moments. “You surprise me every day, Donut.”
She didn’t give me the snarky response I was expecting.
“So,” she said, “we calling it a night or are we going to fight a lich?”
I sighed. We had about three hours until sunrise. “What do you think?”
The massive door to the Swordsmen depot was not locked. It sat ajar, and I kept a wary eye on it as I climbed the ladder up the exterior side of the building. I was ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. I was more worried about the suits of armor than the lich. If those guys in there woke up, we were fucked. Even though I was now the town’s magistrate, nobody seemed to acknowledge that fact. Before, Featherfall—or I guess Miss Quill—had a very small amount of control over the guardians. I remembered when she tried to have them arrest me, and it hadn’t worked. Something told me I was going to be chased out of my own town the moment they woke up no matter what I did.
Remex the lich had been quiet this whole time. Donut braved jumping to the roof, and she managed to get a hit on her map. She said it was something regular sized, like a normal skyfowl. She said it hadn’t been moving, and she didn’t see anything else in the room. Her map’s ability to sense mobs was better than my own, but it was also famously unreliable when it came to hidden mobs, so I was cautious.