'A Hunter and His Prey' Chapter Six- It's Nothing Personal

Jonah watched in disgust as Portenda drained an entire pot of coffee in the span of four minutes. The Bounty Hunter had requested that the pot be left on the table, and the Half-Elf waitress had smiled and obliged.

The moment she had turned her back, Portenda began draining the pot of its contents. Jonah, meanwhile, had barely taken a sip of his own beverage, something called a ‘cuppa,’ whatever that meant.

Whatever it was, it tasted good, and he nursed it as the shocked waitress returned with another pot of coffee.

“How can you do that,” he asked incredulously as Portenda drained the second pot. “Doesn’t that burn your throat? Do you even taste it?”

“Tasting it isn’t important, I find,” Portenda grimaced. “I need whatever it is that’s in the stuff to keep me alert.”

“It’s called caffeine,” Jonah offered as he took another sip of his cuppa. “And it can be very addicting, which I think is half your problem.”

Portenda drew out a piece of parchment and a pencil, and wrote something in very small lettering on it before sliding it across the table to Jonah.

The Human Alchemist read the words, ‘We’re being watched,’ and almost looked around before realizing that that course of action would give them away. He wrote back, ‘by who?’

‘Not certain,’ was the reply he got. ‘A lycanthrope, I’m sure. Cuyotai or Werewolf, from the smell of it’.

Jonah made like he was cracking his back, and took a quick look around the cafe. He, Portenda, and two Dwarves were the only customers, and the staff of the cafe was all Human or Half-Elven. He looked back at Portenda as Nareena snuck up behind the Bounty Hunter.

She was half-crouched, apparently trying to surprise him, Jonah thought, and that might not be a good idea.

Before he could warn her, Nareena moved forward to put her hands over Portenda’s eyes. Before she reached him, though, the Simpa grabbed her wrists and spun her round, wrapping his own thick arm around her throat.

“Hey, easy big guy,” she croaked.

Portenda flexed his arm a little, and released her.

“What the Hells was that for?” She rubbed her throat, sat next to Jonah, and drained half his cup without asking.

Jonah glared at her, and she simply said, “What? I needed something after Mr. ‘I’m gonna make like I’m going to kill you’ over there choked me. You’re awfully aggressive for a guy who doesn’t talk much.”

“And you’re very sneaky for an Alchemist,” he countered. He raised his hand to catch the waitress’s attention, and she came to take his empty pot away. “A cuppa for the lady, nothing more for me, thank you.”

“Humph. Half-breeds,” Nareena snorted disdainfully.

“What about half-breeds,” Portenda said, his voice slightly edged.

Nareena suddenly felt trapped. “N-nothing. Look, I just went back to grab some things from the hotel. I’ve also decided to put Talonz up with a Beastmaster for a while.  If we need him, I have ways of calling him back.  I brought my maps as well,” she offered, changing the subject quickly as she rolled out a crude map of Tamalaria. “That Kobold fellow, what’s his name?”

“Upton,” Jonah said, looking at the map. Nareena, while a skilled poison maker, he mused, had little in the way of artistic talent. He had seen children draw better maps. Still, he mused, it would probably serve its purpose.

“Right. Well, Upton said that this other Kobold, Kobuchi, said something about living east of here, right? Well, if we follow the main roads,” she traced her finger along the map, “the nearest town is Satory. It’s mostly a Lizardman encampment, but there are Dwarves and Jafts there too. They might be able to point us in the right direction.”

Portenda paid the waitress the money owed, and Jonah took the last of his cuppa, asking for another one.

“Agreed,” Portenda said. “Time is a factor, though, so we’ll need to find some way to get there quickly. And I believe horses are out of the question,” he said coldly, stopping Jonah’s question in its tracks. The Alchemist hadn’t enjoyed his Teleportation experience, and didn’t want to have another one.

“Trust me, Jonah. Horses are quick, but we need to be there tomorrow. We have no way of knowing how long your sister’s abductor will keep her alive.”

Jonah’s heart sank: he hadn’t honestly considered the possibility that his sister might already be dead, or that she didn’t have very long before she was killed.

Nareena pulled one of Jonah’s Focus Site tomes from her own rucksack, and he slapped his hand on the table. “When did you take that from me,” he demanded.

“Back at the Kobolds’ place,” she replied. “I was just, you know, looking through it back at my place. There’s a Focus Site that will let us travel to anyplace we’ve ever been before, and I’ve been to Satory, so we have our quick transport. You’ve been a lot of places, Jonah,” she said as he snatched the tome from her hands. “That Focus will come in handy.”

“You barely had time enough to look through this at your place,” Jonah said accusingly. “What did you do?”

“It’s a talent of mine,” she said, drinking from her own mug of cuppa. “I can speed read. I miss some information sometimes, but most of what’s in there is fairly forgettable anyway. Like I said though, the transport will be handy. How many of those books do you have, Jonah?”

“Six or so,” he replied, still fuming.

“Our transportation problem is solved,” Portenda cut in, stopping the two from a potential argument. “When we’re done here, we’ll head to Satory. Provided the both of you have everything you’ll be needing,” he amended.

With these Alchemists, he’d noticed, preparation could take hours while they whipped up some sort of potion or powder. Jonah opened his rucksack after knocking the clasp, and rummaged through his ingredients and supplies.

“I want to set up a few tinctures. Just in case the locals aren’t friendly. Lizardmen, in my limited experience, tend not to trust folks like myself and Nareena.”

“Agreed.”

“Will two hours be sufficient,” Portenda asked as he ordered a cuppa for himself. He hadn’t tried the stuff, and now, having smelled it for a few minutes, decided he would chance it.

Both the Human and Elven Alchemists nodded.

“Good. Meet me back here in two hours’ time. I probably won’t move, but just in case I’m not here when you return, stay put.”

Jonah closed his rucksack and headed for the door, while Nareena stayed in her seat, Portenda’s heavy foot pinning her own to the floor. When Jonah was out of eyesight and earshot, she gave the Bounty Hunter a scowl.

“What was that all about,” she asked.

“I feel compelled to make myself absolutely clear with you,” he grumbled low in his throat. “If you do anything, and I mean anything, that might compromise this mission, including taking things from myself or Jonah without our permission, I will see to it that your grave need be no deeper than two feet. After all,” he whispered, leaning forward and giving her a toothy smile as his eyes flashed wide open. “A dismembered body takes up very little space.” Nareena, heart beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings, thought she saw the eternal rictus of the Grim Reaper in his gray, ashen eyes. She darted out of the cafe like a streak of cloaked lightning.

The waitress approached slowly, setting his cuppa down in front of him, looking out after Nareena. “What got into her?”

“Not entirely certain.” He took a sip of the sweet beverage. Beneath the scent of the mug, he could still make out the odor of a Werewolf. Whoever it was, he mused, they were going to suffer a quick case of ‘where’d they go’ in a couple of hours.

* * * *

As he worked in a corner of an Alchemy shop, Jonah wondered why Nareena had stayed behind. He was very careful not to cross the ingredients between his healing potion and a paralysis tincture, as that could spell disaster later on. Portenda might not require a healing potion, but he himself could very well need a handful of them by the time this business was through. And Nareena might need one or two as well.

Jonah had only a basic grasp of melee combat, and Nareena had no training whatsoever in hand-to-hand situations. She would be at risk through this ordeal.

He knew that she would prepare poisons and explosive chemicals, instead of anything defensive. Nareena’s take on Alchemy again stung his heart. She was always offensive and destructive with the arts of chemicals. Her only attempt at a healing potion had sent her into a coma for a week.

Jonah had heard about it from a constable, in Palen, and had cared for her for the whole week. When she had shown signs of consciousness, he had left her in the hotel room he’d rented out for the two of them, and she still didn’t know it had been him who had taken care of her. Despite their budding rivalry at that time, he cared about her.

“Do you need anything else, good customer?” the Gnome behind the counter asked.

“No, thank you,” he mumbled, finishing up the potions on the table before starting on a third concoction: a powder which, when blown on, would turn into a cone of flames fifteen feet in length. These flames, unlike the tincture he had used on the half-Orc brute, would burn everything they touched. He ground rat’s tail and Fairy wings with his mortar and pestle, adding small drops of salamander’s blood into the mix, and grinding it into a fine paste. He then poured the contents onto the left arm of his alembic, applying a small flame from a tube attached to the device under the holding plate.

Rancid smoke filled the air around him, but he put his breather mask on and watched the paste bubble and congeal.

He was about to place the solidified muck in the calcinator when a broad Werewolf with tan fur and a single streak of black along the right side of his face entered the shop.

The lycanthrope approached the counter and whispered to the Gnome.

Jonah knew that the lighting in the shop was too dim for anyone to immediately see him. The Gnome, however, pointed a single finger in his direction, and the Werewolf smiled at the Gnome and thanked him.

Jonah returned his gaze to his work, placing the muck into the calcinator for the final step in making the flame powder.

The Werewolf sat directly across from him, and filled the background of Jonah’s field of vision. He peered up from the calcinator, which was quaking slightly.

Good, he mused. It should be done in a minute or so.

Jonah attached a small leather pouch to the end of the shoot tube on the device, in order to catch the powder as it was spit out of the calcinator. He kept the breather mask over his face and raised an eyebrow at the Werewolf. “Something I can help you with?”

The Werewolf gave Jonah a lopsided grin, and pointed at the healing potion, which was still emitting bubbles in its tube. The green liquid, Jonah realized, might look like a poison to an uneducated individual. He realized he might need to keep that in mind with someone so clearly unfriendly.

“What’s in this,” the Werewolf asked as he waggled his finger once again at the healing potion.

“Tegra poison,” Jonah lied smoothly, giving the vial a quick glance. “For killing snakes. Lots of folks back home need the stuff, farmers and the like.” That, at least, was a half-truth, as his former employer had often sent Jonah away to gather ingredients to make tegra poison. The man hated the serpents that roamed his fields, and Jonah wasn’t too keen on them himself.

“And this,” the Werewolf asked, pointing to the paralysis tincture.

“Paralysis tincture,” Jonah replied, watching the small pouch fill with powder. Come on, he thought, come on! I might need to use that stuff right away.

“Very good.” The Werewolf got up and approached the Gnome shopkeeper again.

They exchanged whispered words, and the Gnome handed him a set of six vials.

Healing potions, Jonah thought. Why in the world would the man buy healing potions? Jonah watched the Werewolf open a window on the opposite side of the store and throw the vials out the window. What in the Hells is he doing? Jonah wondered. He began putting the tools away, and noticed the Werewolf slap two huge, roughly shaped coins on the counter. Ryo, Jonah thought. That’s two hundred gold he just paid. Jonah’s heart sank as the Gnome took the coins and ducked through a door into the back room.

Jonah had a feeling that the Werewolf hadn’t just paid for the healing potions—he had paid the Gnome for silence.

Jonah ripped the breather mask off of his face but found himself pressed against the wall.

The Werewolf’s long knife flashed as he drew it from its sheath. “You must understand, mister Staples. This is just business.” The tan Werewolf leaned in close, his jaw next to Jonah’s ear. “Nothing personal.” He rammed the long knife home, squarely into Jonah’s stomach.

The Human Alchemist gasped as muscle, bone and organs gave way.

The Werewolf jerked the weapon from Jonah’s body, soaked in his blood.

As Jonah slumped against the wall, he watched the Werewolf wipe the blade clean and toss it to the floor. His vision blurred and quivered as the Werewolf sprinted out of the store and into the streets.

Jonah used what strength he had left to snatch his healing potion off of the table and immediately drank its contents. He flopped to the floor as the potion took hold.

The healing effect was instantaneous. Though drained, Jonah’s abdomen was unscathed, except for a scar.

He grabbed the discarded knife, then got groggily to his feet, and pulled a pinch of his flame powder out of his pouch.

The werewolf was gone, but Jonah, normally a peaceful man, hungered for revenge and the traitor-Gnome would pay the price.

The Gnome shopkeeper opened the door in a rush, his own knife ready as he prepared to finish anything the werewolf left undone.

Jonah blew on the powder, sending a rampaging cone of blistering flames at his face, burning his entire upper body as he writhed on the floor behind the counter.

* * * *

The werewolf scent had drifted away a full minute after Nareena had left, and Portenda wondered about his elusive adversary. Hired help, most likely, he mused as he drained his cuppa.

The Bounty Hunter took another mug, and paid his tab, asking the waitress if he might seat himself on the patio outside.

“Of course,” she had replied with a perky smile.

Portenda hunkered down in one of the wicker chairs on the patio, and looked down the street, taking in the sights, sounds, and scents of Desanadron. He had resolved to purchase an apartment building here and move his tenants from Ja-Wen when he had the opportunity. He would even convince the Kobolds he had met earlier to move into the building.

“Good afternoon,” said a familiar voice.

Portenda turned in shock and saw his uncle, Tiberious Amon, standing at the top of the patio steps, his wooden leg planted beside his real one, his re-attached arm extended toward his nephew. Portenda spared his relative a brief smile and took the outstretched hand, shaking it firmly.

“Please, have a seat, Uncle Amon,” Portenda offered.

The hulking Khan did so.

“I’m mildly surprised that Lee isn’t with you,” the Bounty Hunter commented, his voice flat and emotionless. Though he liked and appreciated his uncle, he felt distant with him. His mother, after all, was the shared bond between the two men. Try though they might, their conversations almost always fell on her, and they would quickly part ways to avoid the pain of remembering.

“Yes, we’re usually attached at the hip, it seems,” Amon declared. “But since Bael gave me my arm back,” he said, flexing his right arm. “We sometimes part ways for our own excursions. Besides, he can be rather trying sometimes. I’ll be right out. I’m just going to pop in for a tea.”

Portenda waited patiently and watched as an Elven girl and a Dwarven boy, children both, chased after a red ball down the middle of the street. A Lizardman boy, his short legs rushing him along, followed closely behind, despite the protestations of his father, who was wheezing terribly as he chased after.

“Children,” Portenda whispered, shaking his head. “They don’t know.”

“They don’t know what?” Amon came around in front of Portenda and took a seat across from him. He sipped at his tea and looked at the scene on the street below, howling with laughter as the elder Lizardman tripped over the Dwarf boy’s outstretched foot.

The trio of children scampered away, the father of the Lizardman youth still chasing doggedly behind.

“Oh, that,” Amon commented with a smile as he wiped spurted tea from his cup and his facial fur. “They’ll learn,” he said, taking another sip of his tea.

“But should they? Do they absolutely have to?” Portenda raised an eyebrow at his uncle. “I mean, look at us. A Khan and a Simpa, sharing a drink and conversation, perfectly at ease with one another.”

Amon stopped his cup halfway to his lips, and set his drink down on its saucer.

“We’re, different, Portenda. We have common ties to one another. And you’re not a pure breed, so it changes things a little. But I do see your point.” He watched as the trio of youths kicked the ball to one another in a triangle around the older Lizardman, who had given up trying to stop this nonsense, and decided to play monkey in the middle. He clearly wasn’t trying, just letting the kids have their fun at his expense. “They’re having a wonderful time, just being young and energetic. And here we sit,” he said, taking a sip of his tea. “Me, a tired old veteran, and you, a relentless, restless Bounty Hunter. We’ve seen and done things that neither of us is very proud of. And then again, we’ve also both done what I’d like to think are some very noble deeds. Just remember, my boy,” Amon said as he stood and adjusted his chain shirt. “With the right events, and the right people,” he indicated the children with his snout, “that can become daily life for all of us.”

“I just wish it could happen sooner rather than later.” Portenda gave his uncle a brief smile, then quashed it. “Where are you heading now?”

The proud Khan looked back over his shoulder at his nephew.

“Wherever the wind blows me, my boy,” he said. “Wherever the wind blows me.” He joined the circle of children, who made way without a word to add him into the game. How he does it, I’ll never know, Portenda thought.

He had only a moment to watch the game before an all too familiar smell came charging his way—Jonah’s blood!

* * * *

Jonah Staples charged through throngs of late afternoon gatherings and merchant wagon customers, bumping and shoving when he needed to. He didn’t enjoy being pushy, but he needed to get to the Bounty Hunter and warn him before he too came under attack. Together, the two of them could then track down Nareena and get out of Desanadron as quickly as possible.

Several constables, familiar with Jonah and his family, stood approximately fifty feet ahead, all joking and joshing with one another. One of them, a stalwart Jaft who had helped Jacob train Jonah in the use of a short sword, saw him barreling at the group. He took a few steps forward and stooped low, swinging his arms around Jonah and lifting him up, placing him then in the middle of the group of guards. “By the gods Jonah, are you all right,” he exclaimed as he looked at Jonah’s torn and bloodied shirt.

“I’m fine, really,” Jonah gushed, breathing heavily. “I got myself a healing potion right after, don’t worry about me,” he said, trying to break free of the circle. The Elf across from him, however, put his arms out at his sides, blocking Jonah’s escape. The Corporal gave him a worried look.

“Jonah, wait a minute,” he said.

Jonah recognized him as Elwyn Arrans, one of the finest archers the army of Desanadron had to offer. “Who did this to you? We need to know so we can make an arrest!”

“Big fellow, Werewolf, tan fur,” Jonah stammered, trying to keep his thoughts straight. He had just been stabbed, and he had to warn Portenda. He had to find Nareena, and make sure she was all right, but these guards were just getting in the way. He knew they meant well, so he tried to calm himself and tell them what he could. “He had this streak of black fur on his face, along the right side, from behind his ear to the tip of his snout."

“Sounds like one of the corporals over at the fifteenth,” muttered one of the other guards.

Jonah’s mind went blank for a moment: he had been attacked by a constable? Impossible! But then he recalled the young corporal, the one who had gotten them the copies of the reports. Oh, gods, Jonah thought as he realized what he was dealing with.

“I’ve got to go.” He ducked under the Elf’s arms and darted away.

Five minutes later, he stood before Portenda, off of the patio fronting the cafe.

The big Bounty Hunter put his hands on Jonah’s shoulders as he examined the scar. “We’ve got trouble,” Jonah wheezed. “Do you remember that corporal who gave us the reports?”

“The Werewolf, yes, I remember him,” Portenda said calmly. “He attacked you?”

“Yes.” Jonah related the whole event to Portenda in detail, from the moment he had seen the Werewolf enter the shop, sans uniform, to the part where he took the healing potion. He left out the little bit where he injured the shopkeeper, already wondering how he could have handled that better.

“We have to find Nareena,” he said. “She’s in trouble as long as he’s still out there!”

Portenda took his hands off of Jonah’s shoulders, and nodded. Then he put his nose to the air, and took a couple of quick sniffs.

“That way.” Hoisting Jonah on his back, like a second rucksack, Portenda charged through the streets, leaping over dazzled on-lookers as he practically flew through the city.

Jonah felt like he was about to hurl on several occasions as buildings and people flash past him in a blur of colors and vague shapes.

Portenda set Jonah wobbling on the ground, as they stood before the city’s largest library. A wooden sign out front designated it the ‘Byron Aixler memorial Library’, and the two men went inside, Jonah rebounding off of the doorframe as stepped past it.

The building itself was vacant with the exception of three people. The librarian, a bespectacled Sidalis with four arms and four eyes, each set holding and reading a separate book, sat at his desk. At a table in the far left corner of the library Nareena had her nose buried in a red, leather-bound tome. And as Portenda rushed ahead toward her, Jonah saw, the Werewolf, broadsword in hand, poised to jump from atop a rolling ladder.

“Nareena, move,” he shouted.

The Elven girl looked up just as Portenda barreled her over. The two of them crashed into a bookshelf as the Werewolf cleaved her seat and the table she had been sitting at in half.

The librarian, apparently no stranger to this sort of thing, pulled an inkwell on his desk. The desk immediately flipped over, presumably depositing him in a safe room beneath the floor.

For a moment, Jonah marveled at how cowardly some people could be, then he remembered that he himself had been that yellow at one time.

He collected his thoughts as Portenda looped around the debris of the table with Nareena in his arms. The Simpa leapt once, landing heavily next to Jonah, where he deposited the Elf girl. He spun around, teeth barred, his broadsword in hand.

The two lycanthropes glared at one another, weapons held aloft. “Jonah,” Portenda whispered out of the corner of his mouth. The Alchemist stepped forward and listened intently. “Get that Focus Site readied. We can leave this puppet here, while we make good our escape.”

“Um, can’t you take him down,” Jonah asked innocently.

“We’d wind up destroying half of the building, and he might get past me to one of you two before I kill him. We can’t have that,” Portenda said.

Jonah pulled out his piece of chalk and started inscribing the Transport Focus Site. He broke the chalk in half, and handed one half to Nareena, who gave a start when he pressed it into her hand.

“You have to write the name of the city in symbols,” he told her. “You’re the one who’s been there, so you have to mark the indicated destination.”

Nareena nodded, and went to work thinking through the precise words and symbols to use to get them to Satory in one piece. Both Alchemists tried to concentrate as the tan furred Werewolf charged at Portenda, screaming bloody blue murder.

The Simpa Bounty Hunter held his position as the Werewolf approached, shifting his shoulders and squatted slightly, reinforcing his posture as he easily brought his own weapon up to block the Werewolf’s broadsword.

The Werewolf pressed down hard, trying to force a move out of Portenda, who glared with his gray, ashen stare.

The Werewolf shoved his face closer to Portenda’s, and the Bounty Hunter spoke. “Your form is atrocious.” He leveled a back leg thrust kick into the Werewolf’s chest, sending him reeling.

The Werewolf’s feet and his right claw tearing the floorboards as he gripped the floor for balance.

As dust flew from his heels, the Werewolf Corporal stood up from his three-point stance. A lopsided grin spread across his black marked face, and he held the sword tucked against his right shoulder. “So, the stories are true, Portenda the Quiet. You really are very good at this. But what’s to stop me from striking your little friends, hmm?”

The Werewolf’s hand whipped to his belt, and came flashing forward with a shining, metal object.

Before he could release the throwing knife at Jonah or Nareena, a tremendous, terrible boom filled the air, accompanied by the clash of metal on metal, and smoke filled the air around Portenda’s outstretched right hand.

The Corporal stared in shock at his suddenly empty hand, and then at the Simpa. He pointed a strange, ancient mecha weapon right at his head.

His employer hadn’t warned him that the Bounty Hunter had a firearm.

Portenda cocked the hammer back once more, slowly, deliberately. “Your heart rate has increased. You’re starting to sweat. The bones and muscles in your legs are spasming. I believe your body is telling you to leave.”

The Corporal, a mercenary by the name of Wren Headsplitter, stood stock still as the Human and Elf pressed their palms to some sort of symbol they had drawn on the floor. He had been warned about their use of Alchemy, but he hadn’t known what that meant.

A brilliant flash of light filled the air. When he uncovered his eyes, Wren Headsplitter saw that a white oak door, about eight feet by four feet in size, had materialized.

The boy opened it and he and Nareena rushed through. Wren stepped in their direction, but a bullet pierced his left leg, spinning him to the ground as he howled in agony.

Clutching his injured leg, he saw Portenda the Quiet approach the door, his eyes still on Wren, the firearm still aimed at him.

“This isn’t over,” Wren growled deep in his throat. He attempted to sound menacing, but his natural reaction was to whimper like an injured puppy, so he sounded like an awkward adolescent trying to pick a fight with the school jock. “Not by a long shot,” he managed as he pressed his hands to the wound.

Why wasn’t it regenerating, he fumed mentally. Why doesn’t it heal?

“I didn’t figure it was,” the Bounty Hunter replied. “After all, you aren’t dead yet.” Without another word, the Simpa was through the door. With another flash of light only empty space remained where the door had been.

A minute later, Wren noticed that the bleeding had stopped, and the metal cylinder that the ancient mecha weapon had thrown popped out of his leg with a heavy thud. He picked the bullet up between two claws and examined it, turning it over as he got shakily to his feet. He had sorely underestimated his opponents.

He felt no ill will toward them, of course. This was simply how he made his living. Being a trooper in the Desanadron Standing Army paid well enough for the average man, but he could make a great deal more selling his unique services. Unlike Bounty Hunters, who accepted sanctioned contracts, a mercenary such as Wren often worked for one employer until they had no more need of them. In six years as a mercenary, Wren had worked under three employers. This third and latest employer had been somewhat of a mystery. The man had worn an ivory mask and a strange, black cloak that seemed almost alive.

This Mister Genma had approached him several months ago, ordering him to stay in Desanadron and carry on as a militiaman. When Genma needed to speak with him, he would contact Wren via a small mirror and give him further instructions.

When the Staples girl had been kidnapped, Wren had been contacted.

“Her family will most likely come looking for her,” the masked man had said from the other side of the mirror. “She has an older brother, by the name of Jonah. He may bring help. Make certain that they never reach my abode.”

It had seemed a simple task. A Human Alchemist, twenty-three years of age should be no threat. The Illusionist visual record showed the boy to be gangly and somewhat physically inept.

The Simpa had changed the equation. He had returned to the station to look for a record of any Simpa who would be that heavily armed. Only one name had caught his attention: Portenda the Quiet. Little was known about the Simpa Bounty Hunter, age unknown, origins unknown, had accepted a mile-long list of acquired and completed bounty contracts.

“I’ll get to know you,” Wren said as his wound closed. “Before I kill you.” He stalked away from his pooled blood, and out onto the streets of his city. Someone had to know more about the man. He would have to find that someone.

* * * *

“It must be done,” Kobuchi said flatly to Eileen, who had tucked herself into the farthest corner of her sleeping chamber, her legs pulled tight against her body.

Blink growled and waved his stinger defensively in front of her. He was protecting her from the Kobold servant, who held an oblong instrument of measurement. “There’s nothing about this that should be misconstrued, Miss.” Kobuchi’s patience with the girl was wearing thin, and he wondered why he let the girl live. Surely the Master could find another, less capable girl than this. He had been blasted from the room by a Raybolt spell, and turned into a frog for fifteen minutes.

He inwardly prayed that the girl had run out of manna energy to cast more spells. It would certainly explain her sudden reliance on the Alchemical beast as her defender.

“You can’t honestly tell me this is just another measurement,” she shrieked, waving her hands in a threatening way.

Kobuchi tensed, hoping to avoid another spell. Q Magic had very quickly become his least favorite of the arcane arts, mostly because being a victim of it instead of a beneficiary of the enhancement spells, was terrible. “It’s a complete invasion of my being.”

“It’s nothing personal.” Kobuchi tried to keep his own temper in check—a monumental task. He had once been the leader of the most intelligent tribe of his peoples, and now he was reduced to this.

He thrust the cylindrical object toward her again, keeping well away from Blink. He couldn’t remember if the Master had imbued that stinger with poison or not. Kobuchi kept several vials of anti-venom and poison cures around just in case, as several of the guard beasts on the lower floors were venomous, and would strike at anything except their creator, including Kobuchi himself.

“Nothing personal? How the Hells can you say that? If you ask me, it’s very, very personal. Tell Genma I refuse to prod my womanhood with foreign objects! What is he, some kind of pervert?”

“He simply wants to make sure that you have the same, ah, fittings, as his late wife.” Kobuchi suddenly blushed uncontrollably. This was, after all, a rather delicate subject, and he didn’t truly want to read any measuring instrument that had to be inserted in any orifice on the body. “I could leave the room, and leave you to do it yourself,” he offered, almost stammering over his own words.

Eileen threw her shoe at him, striking him in the ear.

“Ow! You little bitch.” As he took a step forward, something sharp and raw pierced his thin left leg.

“Oh, shit!” He looked down to see Blink pull his stinger out of the Kobold’s leg, a trail of vile, emerald hued fluid dribbling down his leg and off of the stinger.

Poisoned again, he thought.

Blink scrambled up onto Eileen’s lap, and passed out.

Apparently the effort had worn him out, Kobuchi thought with a smile as he pulled an anti-venom out and drank it dry.

“As I said before,” he continued, clearing his throat and wincing as the anti-venom took hold and fought off the poison. “You can do it yourself. I’ll just, stand outside, and you can tell me the reading.”

“And what if I choose to lie to you,” the Human girl retorted, fury edging her voice. “Then what?”

“Then things might turn out rather uncomfortable the first time the Master beds you. I’ll just pop outside.” He put his back to the wall on the right hand side of the door in the hallway. Gods, he thought. This is humiliating. Forced to write down the measurements of a Human girl’s, erm, how to put it? Even in the privacy of his own mind, anything to do with reproduction made him ill at ease.

He heard grumbling from the girl, and a minute later, a sharp gasp. He wanted to vomit.

“Eight,” Eileen yelled from the room. She tossed the measurement device aside, feeling unclean. What she had just done constituted sin in her parents’ church doctrines. And she felt personally violated in ways she hadn’t thought possible.

Kobuchi scribbled the number down on a pad of paper he kept in his pants pocket, and shivered to his core.

“Thank you very much. Now you see? Was that so difficult?” He poked his head around the corner, and found that the Human girl was looming over him, the measuring device in hand. She thrust it in his face, and Kobuchi shrieked and flailed back helplessly, tripping over his own feet. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making you feel the same way I do,” she shouted, and reached down with amazing strength and speed, hoisting the Kobold up and ramming the device into his mouth.

He reflexively gagged and spat it out with a fountain of vomit.

“Now get out of my sight,” she howled after him as Kobuchi fled to the stairwell.

They both felt a little like laughing, and a little like crying.