Chapter Text
Let’s give a round of applause for the wonderful narrator who’s taken you this far. I’m quite serious. I am, whatever else you might say about me, a consummate professional, and I would be a fool if I didn’t recognize skill in my own craft. Truly, there’s something to be said for the idea that every person has their own unique voice that they bring to the same story when they tell it, and I’m sure your experience is all the richer for it. I don’t need to tell you this. But it bears repeating.
Well, enough of that. This part of the story is where I must insist I step back in. To really understand the mind of a villain, you’ve got to hear it from someone truly despicable, and despite what they may think of themself, the Witness ain’t that. It’s finally time for the moment you’ve no doubt been anticipating for far longer than that last cliffhanger. Macy’s going to have to come face to face with this story’s true villain, and by the end of the chapter, that villain will have no choice but to know who she is.
Hoho! I can see you’re not fooled for a second. Yes, this is still too early in the show for the true big bad to make their move. You remember the lurking threat of the Hecatoncheires, and the frequent allusions to certain forces even more powerful, and you wouldn’t be satisfied if a mere murderer was this story’s final obstacle. Have faith; this will all tie together in the end.
But enough empty promises. There’s a spectacle about to start.
Let’s back it up a week. The place: the west gate of the Goblin Kingdom, née Yaktopia. The time: around seven-ish, before the morning mists evaporated. An unassuming carriage driver hauled in an ordinary load of produce from the outlying farms — pears, wheat, and of course walnuts. There were supposed to be 27 crates in the day’s load. They could be forgiven for not noticing there were 28.
Most of these barrels were to be delivered to various grocers and restaurants in the city. A few of them, however, had a special mark saying they were paid for by the royal treasury and should be sent straight to the palace as soon as possible. Whisper Dan, in contrast to his predecessor, was a calm and benevolent king, but he was still a king. One did not keep a king waiting.
The carriage came to a stop just outside the palace, and before the driver even had a chance to turn off the heavy metal blaring from their donkey, a tall goblin in the palace staff uniform augmented with a clashing brown felt cap walked out from the shadow of a lamppost pushing an empty box cart. “I’ll take it from here,” he shouted.
The carriage driver flipped a lever and the donkey stopped, then flipped another to open up the back of the carriage before leaning out of the window. “You’re not the usual guy,” they said. “Is Braksk sckicksk? Uh, sick?”
The worker flinched for a moment, then breathed and answered. “Yeah. I’m new; I normally do food prep but I’m covering for Braksk. I’m Rilliyasche.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Rilliyasche. I’m Iza Lefould.”
“I know,” said Rillyasche, who had somehow loaded four whole barrels onto the box cart while Iza was talking, despite the fact that it wasn’t a barrel cart.
Iza quirked a brow. “Huh. The King usually only has three barrels of whatever. Is it a special occasion or something?”
Rilliyasche froze. “Um. Yes.”
“Cool, cool. What’s the occasion?”
“…special.”
“Nice. Well, I’ll let you to it, then.”
As he drove off, Rilliyasche finally moved. He rolled the box cart up a winding ramp, through a hand-cranked metal grate, and into a service elevator. When it opened a floor below into a refrigerated basement, however, there was no goblin in there. Rilliyasche, you see, was — but you knew that already, so I won’t say it. He was holding a brown felt cap in one hand.
Ash secured one of the barrels with his hat-holding hand as he tipped the cart, causing the other three to fall onto the floor and roll away. He opened up the barrel he’d held onto, then frowned and picked up a radish. “This you?” he asked.
A loud smash came from one of the other barrels, now sideways and nudged against a wire wine rack, as something kicked the lid open and caused the barrel to skid back toward Ash. Bandit Princess stepped smoothly out of the barrel, a dizzy and staggering Masse Yvoire following behind with a crumpled backpack.
“That was the wrong barrel, you idiot,” she said, yanking the radish out of Ash’s hand before taking a large bite out of it and chewing without breaking eye contact. “We’ve been pshlanning thish operation for weeksh. Do not shcrew it up.” She swallowed.
Masse, finally balanced, slung off his backpack and unzipped it. “I had to pack light,” he said, reaching in and pulling out two items: the spider wand and lightning dagger from the dungeon train. “Which one of you wants—”
Bandit Princess swiped the lightning dagger from his hand immediately. Ash, grumbling, accepted the spider wand, which Masse took a bit to let go of. He wasn’t trying to hold onto it; it was just sticky.
“I don’t know why I bothered to ask,” sighed Masse. He reached into the backpack one last time, and when he pulled his hand up, it was wearing a silver-and-red gauntlet with a black circle across several of the fingers.
He flexed those fingers as he zipped up the backpack with his other hand, then tossed the pack onto the ground and punched it with the gauntlet. With a woosh, a hole appeared in the ground beneath where he had punched, swallowing up the backpack, before the hole curled up and left an undisturbed cement floor behind.
BP, who had somehow acquired Ash’s felt cap, put it on, instantly transforming into an elderly goblin with pale green-gray skin and unchanged eyes. She held up her dagger in front of her face, and as it crackled, she cackled. “Well then, boys, it’s on to phase two.”
One week later. The same place the last chapter left off. Between a lake and rolling hills, on a beach where converging forces meet. There is where these enemies’ enemies gathered to discuss what was to be done.
Macy, who had been on the phone, hung up and addressed the rest of the group with a steely determination. “I’ve called my father, Princess Bubblegum, Cragg, Tiffany, Leaf Man, Banana Man, King Man, and the taquería down the river. Turns out literally everyone is busy, or at least doesn’t have a fast way to get here, except the taco place.”
“Then if we die, we die with spiced meat and shredded cheese in our stomachs,” said the mergoblin, ever the optimist, head poking out of the lake. “If what you say about this Bandit Princess’s character is true, we cannot afford to wait.”
“Do we have a fast way there?” asked Huntress Wizard. “I can’t razzamafoo there because I haven’t visited the kingdom since I was a kid, and it’s more than a stem out of walking distance.”
“That’s why I brought this,” the mergoblin assured her, producing a device resembling a fishing pole. The bob and line flew up into the sky, and then after a few moments, they yanked it down. They’d hooked a roc, a massive bird with blood-red plumage, talons that could crush boulders, and wings as wide as a gyro shop.
“Oh, this is beautiful,” said Razz, staring it in the eye and gently placing a hand on its head as the others got on its back. “Aren’t those endangered?”
“This is just catch-and-release,” the mergoblin assured her. “I don’t want to lose my birding license over this. You coming?”
“No, I’m not the kicking-butt type. Take care!”
“I always do,” HW assured her, and then with a thunderous flap, the roc took off.
Ah, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh? Back again a week, in a grand foyer where murals depicting the history of the goblin people flutter red and green above a gray stone path, the automaton king Whisper Dan worked behind a standing desk doing something or other that it was frankly a waste of time for a king to do. He did have a throne, in the next room over, but standing was more comfortable for him, and working was more relaxing than being idle. The goblins looked up to his devotion, but ‘twas all convenient self-interest. They mostly liked that he was very different from Xergiok.
The goblin Bandit Princess had just turned into walked in from the far end and was briefly stopped by one of the guards. She needed an audience with the king, and quickly, she insisted. The guard said the king was busy. The king said he was not.
“I beseech your pardon,” she said as she hobbled forward, a shabby cloak helping to disguise her bulging backpack as a hunching back. “I am but a humble candleshmaker, and I shmakes my candles down in the shmakery district. I always do my best to give candles to the light-deprived, because of goodness and charity and cetera, and I’ve always been loved and admired by weaklings, but recently things have gone wrong.”
She stopped talking then, so Whisper Dan nodded, and a faint “Go on.” echoed throughout the hall in a low, bassy tone just at the limit of perception.
One of the guards muttered to another, “Wait, did that old lady just say ‘weaklings’?”
After a brief glare back at the guards to make it clear that talking behind an old goblin lady’s back, even if she isn’t really an old goblin lady, is incredibly improper behavior, she loudly cleared her throat. “I said, recently, things have gone wrong.”
Dead air, then the low voice picked back up. “No, I heard you, I—”
Whisper Dan was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a magical explosion of green fire making its way up the shaft of a service elevator and escaping into a properly-ventilated kitchen.
The guards ran out to deal with the situation, to assess the damage and try to catch whoever was responsible. One of them stayed back, the closest one to the king. It didn’t matter, though. With the bright flash and electric crackle that inundated the room in the next moment, he had no idea what was happening.
When it faded, both the old woman and the king were gone. Where the old woman had been was a smoldering scorch mark, like an indoor lightning strike; where the king had been standing, a disappearing shadow, like a hole being swallowed up by the hard floor beneath.
Then his voice echoed from the ceiling once more. It was more warbling, as if coming through a megaphone, and faintly distorted. “Do not worry,” the voice said. “I am dealing with this problem. Go and help the others with theirs.”
After a brief pause, the guard nodded and ran out. And then, when he was gone, Masse jumped down from the rafters, pistachio microphone in hand. “That was almost too easy,” he said into the mic, his voice coming out almost just like Whisper Dan’s.
“No such thing as too easy,” answered Bandit Princess, climbing out from a drawer of the desk, holding several spare parts that Whisper Dan kept in there for emergencies. She began roughly assembling them into the shape of the king. “Now, it’s time for the masquerade.”
The roc came to a stop alongside a pond, just on the far side of which lay the endangered Goblin Kingdom. Macy, Huntress Wizard, and the mergoblin all hopped off; then Robin fell off the back, whimpering. The roc screeched and took off, circling above the pond, as its passengers collected themselves.
“So, what’s the plan?” Macy asked, taking out Shark’s Tooth and inspecting it for no particular reason.
“Oh, uh,” said the mergoblin. “I thought you might have some insight into that, considering you seemed to know who this Bandit Princess was.”
“No, not really. She once killed a man in front of me, and I think she’s mentoring one of my friends down the path of evil, but I don’t know much about her personally other than that she’s a bandit, and also that she’s a princess.”
“That’s not true,” interjected Robin, who had pulled zhirself together. “Remember the slam-o-rama in Wizard City? Your friend was kidnapping wizards and yoinking their magic items, so we know that BP probably has some of those.”
“Right,” said Macy, a tremble entering her voice. She, rightly, could never stop wondering whether she could have helped Masse Yvoire get out of his current situation if she’d acted differently that day, though she was wrong in thinking it would have been her place to do so. “Um, and wasn’t there someone else too? Someone helping them?”
“I don’t remember,” said Robin. “But with me here, you don’t need to worry about any of that magic hoo-haw getting out of hand.”
“You have personally caused magic to get out of hand back home on at least two separate occasions.”
“Right, I have experience.”
Huntress Wizard plucked a leaf out of her hair and folded it into a paper crane, which fluttered up into the air and flew toward the walled city across the pond. “I’ll scout out the city,” she said. “I’ve never met Bandit Princess myself, but I know she’s ruthless, and not above taking hostages. We don’t want her to know we’re coming for her. Speaking of which, does she know we’re coming for her?”
“She shouldn’t,” came a shaky voice from behind the group, “as long as she thinks I’m dead.”
Huntress Wizard and Macy spun around to see a goblin tucked away behind a boulder, wearing a gown made of seaweed and with a cast over his face. He waved a hand weakly, calloused and cracked, and as he did, he let out a pitiful cough.
“I suspected something was off,” he continued, “so I convinced Fred to come with me as backup and confronted our supposéd king. But it wasn’t Fred at all. It was some sort of imposter, a false Fred. I managed to knock off the disguise and get a good look at the person who was pretending to be the king, but that fake Fred grabbed me before I could do anything else, and then there was a bright flash, and now I can’t see. I managed to jump out a nearby window and only broke my bones, and after I rolled out of the city, Kutci Xerbn here found me.”
“That’s me,” said the mergoblin, just in case it wasn’t clear.
HW took a step back. “No.”
“Yes, I am,” Kutci insisted. “Wait, is this about my dad? Okay, I didn’t want to get into it, but my long and tragic backstory is—”
She shoved them backward into the pond. “Shut up. No, I’m talking to you.” She pointed an accusatory finger at the injured goblin behind the rock. “What are you doing here?”
“Sorry,” he replied, “but I’m a little indisposed at the moment, and also completely blind. Should I… remember you from somewhere?”
“I’m only the girl you used to torment as a schoolchild. I can’t say it’s been too long, Qhneevix.”
Hearing his name, he perked up a little, then winced. Whether that wince was a result of the physical pain his ill-conceived heroism had put him in, or the emotional kind that his sudden recollection of his past inflicted upon him with the cudgel of empathy, only he could say. “Oh. Sorry about that, Lány. I take it you’ve done well for yourself.”
She turned around. “It’s Huntress Wizard, now,” she said, “not that you’ll need to talk to me again.”
Dead air. “Sorry, what was that?”
“She said it’s Huntress Wizard now,” Macy repeated.
“Cool. And I didn’t catch your name, either.”
Macy thought for a moment. “Call me… Eagle-Eyed Macy.”
Robin, who had been collecting stones along the pond, suddenly keyed into the conversation. “Seriously, Macy?” zhe asked. “You’re trying to make that a thing?”
“What? It fits. And anyway, it’s already starting to catch on.”
“If you insist. Anyway, HW just stormed off, so she’s probably about to call us over to brainstorm as a distraction.”
“Macy! Robin!” HW called. “Come over here, we need to brainstorm.”
Bandit Princess leaned against the wall behind the royal standing desk, sweating up a storm in her cardboard disguise. What she wouldn’t give to have her old throne, back from when she ruled Thief City, at least before the throne was stolen! But no, she had to keep up appearances as that ascetic fool, King Dan, at least during the long process of getting these people more and more acclimated to tyranny. Eventually she would be able to step into the spotlight, and then the goblins would break their backs to appease her. Until then, she had to be patient. Never let it be said she never sacrificed anything for the greater ill.
The desk in front of her rattled and shook; she reached out and held it in place through clunky mechanical gauntlets. “Quiet, you,” she whispered. “You’re lucky you have possible value as a hostage.” She held the desk in place for half a minute more, until whatever was inside stopped shaking. (I won’t insult your intelligence. You already guessed it was Whisper Dan.)
Just then, two guards ran into the hall, panting. “King Dan,” one of them said between breaths, “we have important news you need to hear immediately.”
“We saw a weird bird,” said the other. “It looked like it was made of origami, instead of feathers or chocolate like normal birds are.”
The first one looked askance at their companion, a sneer replacing the exhaustion on their face. “Birds aren’t made of feathers, idiot. They’re made of bird meat.”
“Wait, meat comes from birds‽”
“Why are you—” The disguised BP cut herself off, then resumed; when she did, her voice echoed throughout the room through the tinny distortion of a hidden loudspeaker. “Why are you bringing this to my attention?” she asked. “Is the bird some kind of enemy spy?”
The guards looked at each other, then back at their pretender-king. “Well, no,” said the first guard, “that would be silly. We just thought that you’d want to look at it.”
“Yeah, you always look at weird birds,” the second continued. “Who wouldn’t?”
Bandit Princess let out a staticky sigh. “I really would love to,” she lied through her serrated teeth, “but I have to hold things down at the moment.” The desk started to rattle, so she slapped a hand across it to keep it mostly still. “You know how it is. Was that all you had to say?”
“No, my liege,” said the first guard. “There have also been some enforcement problems with the new tax policy. People are refusing to hand over their silver. The protocol for tax evasion forbids us to—”
“Imprison them?” she demanded, cutting in like a shiv through spleen. “I understand that we have always done things a certain way, but as I am your king, my word is stronger than law. I’m just looking to change up how we do things around here.”
The guards exchanged a nervous glance, before the second one spoke up. “You know we don’t take change easily,” they said, “but we’ll do our best.”
BP waited until they were out of the room, then took off the headpiece of her disguise and let out a guttural sigh. She was out of her element. It had been so long since she was a princess in anything but name that she had nearly forgotten what a hassle it truly was. At the end of the day, she was a thief, not a tyrant; she got her kicks from taking people’s stuff, not telling them what to do. The only reason she wanted this throne was — what was it, again? She could hardly remember. Hopefully it was worth this headache.
Suddenly, Ash appeared in the middle of the room in a puff of stardust, coughing and weezing. One hand was doing some wibbly magical finger motion; the other held a silver lantern upside-down by the base. “Oh, glob, I can never get that spell right,” he choked out. “Sorry, boss. I’m back.”
“I can see that,” said Bandit Princess. “Do try to be less bumbling in the future, okay?”
“I’m not bumbling. I just bumble occasionally. Anyway, here.” He flipped the lantern into the air, and after spinning several times, it landed on top of the desk with a too-loud thud. The impact made a red birdcall with an ornate H on the side nearly fall off its precarious perch on the edge of the desk, until BP caught it with a finger. “That should be heavy enough to stop the shaking. It’s got the weight of memories on account of it’s some kind of priceless family heirloom.”
“Well done, peon.” She walked out from behind the desk, still holding the helmet tucked under her arm, and approached the wizard. “I don’t mean to sound grateful, but excepting the miserable failure at Wizard City, you’ve performed your job mostly adequately. Keep it up, and I might think about promoting you to traitorous vizier.”
Ash smiled a wicked grin, which was one of two types of grin he was capable of (the other being smug). “Tempting as that is,” he said, “I’m not one for a desk job. All I want is the opportunity to take my revenge on that pink tranch Bonnibel.”
“And you shall have it,” promised Bandit Princess. “It shouldn’t take long to whip these goblins into proper pawns, and then the lands around it will follow. Once we’ve consolidated our power, the Candy Kingdom will be ours for the taking, and Bubblegum at your… what’s that thing people have? Murky?”
“I know you know what mercy is, ya tryhard. Razzamafoo.” He poofed away in another cloud of stardust, this time making Bandit Princess cough. And without saying goodbye!
The desk behind her rattled only slightly, making the metal handles on the drawers jingle like bells. The lantern was doing its job, at least, but she still needed to do something about that noise. She’d have loved to just stuff the prisoner in an actual prison, but that would blow her cover the instant any guard saw him, so instead she was stuck with this.
She whipped out one of the items from the dungeon train — a gold Motorola Razr V3i from the 2006 Dolce & Gabanna collaboration — and rang someone up, then quickly put her disguise helmet on in case someone walked in while she was distracted with the call. By the time she picked the phone up, whoever was on the other end was already talking.
“Listen up, Masse,” she hissed, “forget bug diplomacy. I have a very critical task for you. There is a certain reagent I need you to procure for me that is absolutely critical to the success of our plans here, and I need you to get it and then immediately report here.”
“On it, boss,” Masse Yvoire responded from the other end of the crisp 48 kbit/s cellular connection. He hung up.
Dead air.
He called back, and BP answered immediately. “Right, I should have asked what the reagent is,” he said.
She let out an exasperated breath. “Get me some masking tape. Not duct tape.”
“But duct tape is the—”
“No! If you give me duct tape I’ll take your spleen.”
“Okay, okay, I hear ya.” He hung up again, for real that time.
“For real this time,” said Robin, “what’s the plan?”
“As long as the goblins believe Bandit Princess to be Whisper Dan, they’ll follow her orders,” said Huntress Wizard, “and if they get in our way we might not be able to avoid hurting them. Our top priority, then, is unmasking her, and ideally locating where she’s keeping him, if he’s still alive.”
Macy, who had been meditating bow-legged on a nearby rock, snapped her eyes open. “He’s definitely alive,” she said. “I can feel his distressed mind somewhere in the palace whenever the crane gets close. I don’t know any more than that.”
“Wait, how exactly did you pull that off?” asked Robin. “I know you’re a bit of an empath, but that seems like a feat.”
“It’s a lot of distress,” Macy admitted. “And some claustrophobia, I think. Wherever he’s being held, it’s cramped.”
“And how do you know it’s Dan?” asked HW.
“His energy feels like a Dan.”
“Ah, it must be him then.” She whistled; the origami bird divebombed, then alighted on her shoulder. “My guess is Merriweather won’t stray far from there, so if we can move undetected through—”
“Merriweather?”
“Yeah. That’s Bandit Princess’s real name. Did I not say that already?”
Robin’s jaw dropped all the way. “She has a real name?”
“…yes. Everyone has a real name, Robin.”
“You don’t,” Macy pointed out.
“That’s because I’m exceptional. Now.” She pointed at the surface of the water and started drawing a shape with her finger; as she did, Robin filled it in with glowing green lines, creating a map. “As I was saying, if we can get to the palace itself without raising alarms, we’ll be able to engage Merriweather and Masse before they have a chance to hide behind the guards. I’ll take Qhneevix’s uniform, but if anyone takes a second glance they’ll know me for a sneaky Susan lickety-like, and we don’t want anyone to bust my face until I bust Merriweather’s.”
“Get there quiet, then win quick,” Robin summarized. “So if you’re on BP duty, I’ll take care of the others. I’ve got lots of zoning options, so I can keep Masse out of the way.”
“Right,” said Macy, looking down at the map. She was going to offer to face off against her old friend herself, but she really didn’t want to and was glad Robin had preempted that. “What should I do then?”
“Look for the king,” HW answered. “If the battle goes on too long, Merriweather could hold him at swordpoint to get her way, but not if you’ve freed him first.”
“Right, yeah. I can do that.”
Robin recalled the light from the map back into zhir horn. “Well, then, let’s not keep her waiting.”
Under normal circumstances, a macadamia nut, a rainicorn-dog, and a freakishly-tall goblin would stick out in a small kingdom like the once-called Yaktopia. We shall forgive the gentry for this failure, however, and not just on account of lowered expectations. This is because these three misfits were somewhat blurry and out of focus, obscured by a veil of distorting illusion thanks to that ability you forgot Robin had.
One unfortunate townie, just out for an afternoon stroll, happened to get a good glimpse at them in the moment where they were diving from one awning’s shadow to another. In that moment, confronted by the indistinct image of the tallest goblin they had ever seen, they suddenly thought they needed glasses. But this was the closest that Huntress Wizard and her posse came to having their cover blown, right up until it happened.
Enter Gedra. A newer member of the guard, she was spending her shift at the front gate peoplewatching and wondering why her good buddy Qhneevix hadn’t shown up to work that day. Qhneevix had been among a few of her colleagues who’d suggested that the king had been acting odd lately, but Gedra was too smart to get caught up in conspiracy. Still, she couldn’t help but be on edge, so when a goblin in a guard uniform walked out from a nearby alleyway and shouted a greeting, she stayed wary.
“Swell afternoon,” she said, narrowing her eyes as this person approached her, messy hair sticking out from under an ill-fitted helm. “Back from making the rounds, are ye?”
The disguised Huntress Wizard cleared her throat. “Aye, I… am.”
She tried to just walk up the stairs without elaborating, but Gedra held up a hand to stop her. “Hold, knave. I fancy myself a keen eye for a face, and I don’t know yours from the barracks. What’s your tale?”
HW gulped. She attempted to sidestep the guard, but Gedra moved her hand to match. “A keen eye, you say?” she asked as her own darted to the side, to where a figure barely perceptible amidst the midafternoon sun snuck past.
“Aye, an eye.”
Keeping her gaze locked on Huntress Wizard, Gedra brought down her falchion toward the blur. With a yelp and a spurt of blood, Robin suddenly became all too visible, along with Macy riding atop zhir back. The two of them fell over, smacking against the railing of the stairs.
HW sighed. So much for plans. With a single punch to the gut, she incapacitated Gedra, and then she grabbed Robin by the scruff and ran inside, Macy following behind.
The calls of alarum and pounding of footsteps set an appropriate mood for the invasion. The fear welling up in Huntress Wizard’s mind called back her old memories of the last time she’d been here, closer to four decades than to three. Even after all that time, she had no trouble following the path up to the throne room. No trouble but the guards attempting to arrest her by force, that was.
Macy got out her bow and prepared to nock one of her new arrows, but HW waved her down. “No collateral damage,” she warned. It might have seemed too late, but she still wanted to keep the situation from getting much worse before she reached Bandit Princess. “Robin, zone.”
Robin nodded, then shapeshifted into five dogs joined at the forepaws, each with their own fleshy rainicorn-like horns. Zhir real horn in the middle glowed, then sent energy to the four fake ones, and then five blasts of rainbow color emerged in all directions to harmlessly knock the guards up the stairs they were descending. Before they had a chance to regroup, Macy and Huntress Wizard ran past, and then Robin’s paws stretched up to barricade their would-be pursuers.
A sinking feeling shrouded Macy’s nut heart. She gestured back to Robin, then mimed a swashbuckle. Her message was clear. Don’t we need zhir for the fight ahead?
HW shook her head, then patted Macy on the head and moved ahead of her. She was unworried, having utter faith in Macy’s strength. For all that her huntress eyes could pierce the veil of the spirit world, she could not see that the hesitation entering her mentee’s footsteps came not from weakness of body, but from trepidation about fighting a friend. Huntress Wizard, you understand, would have no such qualms.
They reached the level of the royal hall, where two guards who had stayed back were hastily trying to close the giant doors leading in. Macy and HW fired arrows at the ground, sprouting sudden shrubbery that caught the doors, letting them leap through with ease, and suddenly they were in the presence of the apparent king.
“I don’t know how you got past my pathetic elite guard, intruders,” the voice from the rafters whispered as the ‘king’ rested their hands on their desk, “but you’ll take not one step farther.”
They snapped. Suddenly, more guards appeared at the sides of the room, crossbows pointed at the two of them. Another figure also appeared, appealing from a hole in the ground that wasn’t there before and disappeared after — Masse Yvoire.
Huntress Wizard whistled. “You’ve really stepped up security since the last time I was here. What was that, ten years ago? Fifteen?”
“Be quiet, my wayward subject,” said the voice. “What happened all those years ago is irrelevant. You’ve broken into my palace and assaulted my guards; you are in no position to chit-chat.”
She smirked. “Wrong.”
Masse punched his gloved hand with his bare fist as he smirked back. “Eh, you think you’re some sorta chit-chat savant? You can just chit-chat whenever you please?”
“Not about that. You’re wrong about all those years ago, because I’ve never actually met Whisper Dan. You’ve spoiled your own identity, imposter!”
Dead air. Some of the guards coughed. Macy looked up at her mentor and whispered, “Was that really the plan?”
Masse rolled his eyes. “What are you trying to pull? Pretending you know someone and then catching them off-guard when they play along to be polite, despite the incredible rudeness of committing a home invasion? You’re some kinda goofy, aren’tcha?”
“Yeah, I didn’t think that would work.” HW put her hands in the air. “I fold.”
The voice said, “The—”
An origami crane flew in out of nowhere and smacked into the king’s head, knocking the headpiece off and revealing the horned, sharp-toothed, gray-skinned head beneath. Bandit Princess had been smiling cruelly beneath the helmet, but that quickly changed to a frustrated scowl, as the amplifiers in the ceiling echoed the sound of it hitting the floor.
The guards in the room started murmuring and gasping incredulously. “So the rumors—” “—imposter? But—” “—I totally knew—”
Masse cleared his throat loudly enough to get everyone’s attention. “Uh, that’s just what Whisper Dan looks like…?”
The murmuring in the guards grew to shouting and bickering, and then the sounds of ranged weapons being put away in favor of melee. Masse’s noncommittal but technically plausible explanation had been just convincing enough to split the guards between belief and betrayal. They would now fight each other to the exclusion of both invader and impostor, conveniently letting the rest of this story be told with nary a mention of them.
Huntress Wizard raised a hand, conjuring several arrows to hover over her head at the ready, then noticed her apprentice beside her trembling. Too late, she realized what she had done wrong, and what it would take to make up for that error in judgment.
“Don’t worry about him,” she told Macy. “Focus on—”
Krakoom!
The inexplicable sound of lightning distracted Robin. Zhe could easily tell based on the sound that it had come from within the castle, where lightning wasn’t supposed to be. Then again, zhe also wasn’t supposed to be here, so zhe couldn’t judge.
In that moment of distraction, zhe was hit with a blast of spiderweb that knocked zhir into the ceiling and stuck zhir there. Zhir limbs reflexively retreated, releasing the pinned guards, who all looked at the person who freed them. There stood another goblin, taller than Huntress Wizard, wearing a guard uniform and a brown felt cap and wielding a twitching spidery wand. “You should surrender,” they suggested. “You mess with the goblins, you get… goblins.”
One single fellow guard shouted an unconvincing, “Woo!”
With a flash of zhir horn, Robin light zhirself on fire, so that zhe could not be caught. The webs burned up, causing zhir to fall to the floor; as zhe did, zhir corundum eyes noticed something. A weak spot of swords. Zhe lifted the fire off zhir fur and launched it at the wand-carrying goblin.
Ash did not see this attack coming — he’d turned around after his flop of a one-liner, since he had a juvenile understanding of what being cool entailed. The attack hit him in the back of the head like a hacky-sack, knocking his hat off and causing his disguise to be immediately dismissed, to the audible shock of the guards around him.
“Impost—!”
That poor sod never got the chance to finish their sentence before they were positively cocooned in webbing. “Stay out of this,” Ash insisted, turning his focus back to Robin. “This is a casterfight.”
The two considered each other for a moment, each trying to size up their opponent. The air between them crackled with invisible energy as they did their best to build up their next attacks without showing their hands/paws. There is an aspect of showmanship to casterfights I can’t help but respect professionally.
Ash was the first to break the tension. With a waggle of his fingers and a shout of “Abra downcasta!” he cast a spell in Robin’s direction. Zhe blocked by morphing one of zhir paws into a copy of zhir, which immediately became gray and downtrodden.
Robin growled, “You-a make-a me so sad!” and punched at Ash with the affected paw. It flopped on top of him, vestigial limbs wrapping around him in a flaccid, mopey parody of a hug.
He grunted; several small shapes appeared behind his head, swirling in the air like buzzing flies or flying buzzards. The fake Robin glanced up in time to notice that they were, in fact, magical floating googly eyes — or, at least, it would have realized that, had it been a real Robin, or even a real robin.
As things stood, the actual Robin stood unawares until the eyes googled all over the unactual Robin, scrambling it back into a paw and freeing Ash. Zhe recoiled, shifting color from zhir tail back into that foreleg. Zhe could feel it stinging and twitching where the eyes had touched it. Zhir nerves were probably discombobulated.
Zhe stretched zhir other arm toward Ash, but he rolled to the side at the last moment and sprang up onto his hands. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, gray cheeks reddening as his white hair brushed the floor. “Now that all the blood’s rushing to my head, I’m going to be ten jabillion times smarter. This won’t turn out like the last time we fought.”
“Wait, have I met you before?” asked Robin, as zhir oustretched leg snaked back around to grab Ash from behind like the last time they fought.
Ash rolled his eyes as he reached his feet down to grab the spider wand from his belt. “Yeah, don’t you rem—” He cut himself off, taking a moment to recall whether or not he’d wiped Robin’s memory back then. He hadn’t. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned from our encounter, even if you haven’t.”
“Learn this!” The paw lunged forward like a snake, aimed at Ash’s airborne ankles.
Unfortunately for Robin, Ash had, in fact, learned that. With a “Razzamafoo,” he swapped places with Robin. He was now on the bottom of the stairs. Robin, on the top, wrapped zhir leg around the banister with such springlike force that zhe launched zhirself forward at incredible speed, right into the landing wall above.
Smack!
Macy hit her head against a brick wall, making her head ring. What had happened? One moment she’d been trying to get her bearings after that lightning strike blinded her, the next she felt herself colliding with the wall, but she hadn’t felt herself pushed or pulled by any force. In short, she didn’t know what hit her.
She did, however, have a good guess about who. She spun around and saw her old friend and enemy, Masse, gauntleted hand outstretched and shimmering. There had to be something about that gauntlet.
“Why’s it gotta be this way between us, Damy?” he asked, flexing the gauntlet. “Tell you what, in honor of our years of fr—”
With the skillful ignorance of a political commentator, Macy ignored his words. She ran past him, using his gauntlet as a handle to shove him aside, and enveloped herself in the smoke cloud where she and her master had just been standing. Only when she was out of sight did she let herself catch her breath and start to think.
Of course, on the battlefield, there was no time to think. A towering heck deer with foliaged antlers charged past her, nearly trampling her, on a direct line to the still-cackling Bandit Princess. In its wake, a simple brown cloak fluttered in the settling air. With a will of its own, it drifted over Macy, clasping itself around her waist with an acorn.
Like long ago, in the Evil Forest, Huntress Wizard was trusting her to do her part. She didn’t let her down then. She wasn’t going to now. Confidence is one of the few heroic qualities I’ll wholeheartedly endorse.
She felt Masse punch her from behind. “Huh?” he said, his voice cracking with something between the dismay of a villain whose superweapon had been stalled and mere puberty (or, at least, what passed for puberty among sentient confections). Whatever that gauntlet was supposed to do, HW’s cloak seemed to block it.
Instinct kicked in. Without turning around, Macy grabbed onto the gauntleted arm with both hands. She spun around, yanking her assailant into the air behind her, until she picked up enough speed to throw them across the room. Then she watched, rage tingeing with regret once again, as Masse Yvoire was sent flying toward the wall at the back of the room.
Bandit Princess, having been sent flying toward the wall by an angry and unexpected heck deer’s antlers, fought through the pain of the impact to catch herself just in time. She stabbed the lightning dagger into a tapestry to slow her slide down.
Where she had just been standing, the deer who’d attacked her had already transformed back into Huntress Wizard. The goblin braced against the standing desk as she reached into her quiver and took out some arrows. It seemed like she didn’t know what was being kept in the desk, since—
Oh! BP had expected her opponent to take out a bow for those arrows, but no, HW just magically launched them toward her. She closed her eyes and winced, preparing to fight through the pain. All she felt, though, was a trio of dull thuds as the arrows lodged in her disguising armor, spreading cracks throughout the chestpiece.
She realized what had happened and began to cackle. “Nice try, wizard,” she taunted as she yanked one of the arrows out of her fake torso, “but your magic arrows are useless against my magic-proof cloak!” The replica of Whisper Dan’s body finally fell apart, revealing the flowing black robe underneath, faintly glowing with golden light.
“That’s cheating!” Huntress Wizard showed no appreciation for the elegant craftsmanship of that mantle ex machina. She withdrew her bow, clearly figuring that if magic wasn’t going to get the job done, old-fashioned ballistics would have to do the trick.
She shouldn’t have taken her catlike eyes off the prize. Bandit Princess threw the arrow at the goblin. It didn’t make it all the way, but when it hit the ground at her feet, its stored spell finally released in a fiery explosion. It bloomed like a flower, reds and yellows and hints of blues bringing a much-needed warm tinge to the otherwise drab room and suffusing it with heat and the smell of sulfur.
Huntress Wizard was launched forcefully into the wall beneath an open window. The paper bird who had earlier flown through that window, circling overhead waiting for a chance to escape, was caught by a stray ember and incinerated. Macy gasped in horror. Bandit Princess smirked.
She tried to yank the dagger out of the tapestry, but it was tangled up something good, so she decided to leave it for the time being. She just charged across the room, elbow outstretched, to finish this decisively and knock her foe out the window. That had always worked for her in the past.
Unfortunately for her, she forgot she was fighting a wizard. At the last moment, HW recovered from her daze enough to transform into a squirrel, and where BP’s elbow was supposed to impact goblin face, it instead passed through empty space. Her momentum unarrested, she kept going, doubling over against the window and falling out.
As she tumbled to the ground, screaming in indignation, she couldn’t help but think about how much she didn’t deserve this.
As Robin stumbled down the stairs, mumbling, zhe couldn’t help but think that zhe recognized that wizard from somewhere. Zhe didn’t have time to figure that out, though, as he wasted no time muttering some sort of spell and hurling its dark energies toward zhir.
Zhe couldn’t make out what the spell was, but that didn’t matter. With but a thought, zhe lit up zhir horn like a beacon and caused the spell’s energy to swirl into it. Absorbing spell energy wasn’t like absorbing light; rather than empowering her, the foreign energy fought with her own like questionable street food. It was invigorating.
One more spell, and then another. Focusing purely on defense, Robin knew that her opponent would never find an opening, but zhe could feel the color start to drain from zhir fur. In this battle, just like in casual conversation, zhe needed to set the pace and start calling the shots.
Time to play to zhir strengths. “You call that a curse?” zhe asked after absorbing a hurled hex. “I’ve met dyslexics who can spell better than that!”
Ash scowled, then pointed the spider wand at Robin; it twitched uselessly, clearly still recharging. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he growled. “And it’s offensive, I think.”
“Offensive? Weren’t you in greenskin, like, thirty seconds ago?”
That got him. Feebleminded by rage, Ash gave up on the spider wand and ran toward Robin with a punch. This was something zhe had no trouble dodging. Zhe began to lead him back down the stairs, keeping one eye ahead and the other fixed on him. Zhe threw out a few insults to keep his ire up, disparaging his hat hair and his clumsy footwork and his foolishness for losing a fistfight to someone without fists.
Maybe zhe shouldn’t have said that last one, since when zhe did, Ash went back to magic. A cantrip here, a zap from a floating eye there — Robin could handle it, but not forever. Zhe had to figure out a way to really get under his skin, and for that, zhe’d need to figure out who he was.
“I bet you think you’ve got me on the back foot,” said Robin, on the back foot. “I’ll have you know that you’re not the only one who’s learned some new tricks since, ah, since the last time, at, or, you know, just after…”
“Wizard City,” Ash supplied helpfully, as he hurtfully supplied a kick. “You can’t have forgotten. It was a whole thing.”
“I’ll have you know, I’ve forgotten a lot of things, whole or otherwise.”
Ash paused, taking a moment to catch his breath rather than pursuing Robin into the hallway zhe’d just stepped into. “Oh my dank,” he said, “you’re serious. I mean, not serious, but the opposite of that. That settles it; I have to destroy you utterly.”
Robin drew into zhirself, compacting into zhir indoor form. “Hey, now that you mention it, there is something kinda familiar about you. Gray skin, generic magical ability, questionable hat… you’re Beau, right?”
Dead air. Ash blinked the confusion away, settling on a lie with admirable alacrity. “Yeah, sure,” he said, unsure who Beau was, as the eye orbitars swirled behind him with gathering energy. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that thing.”
“Of course not! We were on that submarine for years. Or maybe hours. I see you’ve made yourself taller.”
As a shapeshifter, Robin did not consider that to be unusual. Ash, however, was afraid his cover was about to be blown. “Oh, well, you know what they say.”
“You know I don’t, Beau.”
Panic set in. He was blowing it. His gig with Bandit Princess was his first long-term employment contract since his falling-out with that sky witch centuries ago. He couldn’t afford to screw it up and lose a confidence game to this mongrel after just seven months. “Uh, uh, that… sounds like a you problem?”
Robin narrowed zhir eyes for several harrowing seconds, then chuckled. “Classic Beau,” zhe said. “I really didn’t expect to run into you all the way out in the boonies. Say, have you heard from Denise about—?”
The bolt of energy from over Ash’s shoulder was fiery and red, with plasticine notes and a faint jitter, perfect for a casual obliteration. Robin nearly didn’t whip out zhir own rainbow-sprinkle beam in time to block. At the point where they intersected, microparticles of jimmies and googlies came into existence and vanished just as quick, filling the room with heat and Robin’s veins with gray sludge.
Zhe could feel zhirself pushed back, zhir paws losing traction on the floor. Zhe really hadn’t been in a solid stance, having let zhirself relax. Zhe couldn’t even shapeshift into a better one, lest zhe risk losing concentration on the beam struggle that was keeping zhir from being disassembled on a molecular level by the combined aura of several novelty eye decals. The best zhe could do was shift zhir paws into a more matte texture to hope zhe would stop losing ground. Zhe was beginning to think the person trying to kill her was not, in fact, Rhombeaufortchamp.
Zhe dug deep for any reserve of strength. Zhe started drawing color out of zhir eyes, the two gems that colored zhir whole world. Even if it would cripple zhir for a few days, winning this exchange could let her knock out this fake Beau and then rejoin the others in the throne room. Zhe could spare no effort, warrant no distraction.
Zhir sapphire eye twitched in its imperfectly-fitted socket. Zhir many-colored beam lost its blue, then was overtaken by blackness. Zhe was slammed into a wall, scrambled, jittered, and quite thoroughly googled. Zhir opponent stood in front of zhir, expended orbitars littering the ground, pallid from exertion but no worse for wear.
“My name is Ashton Rider,” he said, pointing the spider wand at the flat impression on the wall that Robin had become. “You’d do well to remember it the next time we meet.” He coated Robin in a much thicker layer of webbing than before, and then with a “Razzamafoo!” he teleported away.
Macy kept her eye on Masse as she walked over to retrieve the abandoned dagger in the wall. The boy was still dazed, picking himself up from the puddle he’d started to melt into; but it always paid to pay attention to the only remaining enemy in the room, or so Macy guessed. With whoever that goblin was busy fighting Robin and Bandit Princess falling out of a window, it was time to wrap up the fight now and find the king later.
She gripped the dagger and yanked, but she had no more luck than BP in freeing it from the tapestry. The blade was jagged, like Shark’s Tooth, and had gotten tangled on a very fine level. Perhaps if she could activate its lightning powers, it might burn itself free, but she had no idea how to do that.
A hand on her shoulder made her tense up, but when she turned around, she was relieved to see it was Huntress Wizard, looking no worse for wear despite having just been blown up. “You’ve done enough, kid,” she said. “Stand back, and I’ll take it from here.”
With herculean effort, Macy stopped herself from saying, “I’m not a kid.” Instead, she took a step away, always keeping one eye on Macy. He was starting to skulk his way over to the window, where—
—Huntress Wizard was standing, pulling herself up from the floor, and starting to call out a warning to Macy.
She whirled around on one foot just in time to take a dagger slash to the face, knocking her over. Macy watched in horror as her attacker loomed over her with the face of her mentor, smiling an uncharacteristically cruel grin. The blade in their hand started to glow white-hot, and Macy braced herself for what would come next.
“Ca-caw!”
An eagle dove at the fake HW’s face, scratching at their eyes and plucking a motley brown cap off their head. In a shimmer, they became Ash, whom Macy recognized from that harrowing incident under the gas station outside Wizard City. She felt like she was back there, the heated tile floor becoming cold and grimy concrete, the crisp mountain air blowing in through the window replaced with dusty breath from an old AC system.
The weight of her lucky coin amulet under her shirt was enough to bring her back to reality. The real Huntress Wizard, in bird form, was flying circles around Ash’s head as he swatted at her uselessly with that dagger. Awe swelled in Macy’s nut heart. Her master had fought and defeated more powerful wizards in the past, and she was certainly going to prevail now.
Then Ash fired off a bolt of lightning from the dagger, which struck the eagle right through the heart. She instantly turned back to goblin form and fell out of the air, slamming face-first onto the floor with a disquieting squelch. Electricity: the natural predator of birds.
Ash wasn’t done with his attack. After that, the arc of his strike carried the blade, like a spark jumping to its next conductor, right back toward Macadamia the Nut.
His blade caught on the jagged teeth of Shark’s Maw. Macy had drawn iron instinct and blocked the strike on reflex. Backed by all the strength of a cornered animal, she held off his blow and followed through on her own, forcing him to stumble backward and twist his arm around to avoid letting go of the dagger.
“Hii-yah!” Macy turned just in time to see Masse running toward the downed Huntress Wizard, readying his gauntlet for a punch. That wouldn’t work, Macy thought, as she sprinted over to intercept, hoping to block the blow with HW’s cloak again.
Instead, Masse punched the ground, opening a hole in the floor that master and apprentice fell into. Huntress Wizard moaned as Macy gripped her under one arm, thankfully alive but not fighting any time soon.
With her other hand, Macy rummaged through HW’s quiver. She didn’t see a bottom to this pit, but she wanted to get out of it before she learned otherwise, which meant she’d need something specific. She’d only just learned this; she had to be able to remember which arrows did what.
Panic started rising in her chest. The adrenaline was still coursing through her system, but it wasn’t doing as much. She felt the nonexistent walls of this impossible pit closing in on her, threatening to swallow her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think.
She heard Dr. Upe’s voice in her head, reminding her of what she already knew. She tried to focus on the sensations around her — the rushing of air past her ear slits, the pain from the scratch on her face, even the weight of her pendant as before — but in her tumbling state and bizarre environ, none of that helped to ground her. She was at risk of losing herself in a way she hadn’t since starting her meds.
For the briefest moment, she saw a flash of purple out of the corner of her eye and felt a scaly hand slow her fall from below. Glob, she was out of it.
Eyes shut. Fist clenched. Abandoning her senses for the moment, she focused inward. She could hear her heart pounding at an accelerated rhythm, feel her hormone-infused blood pulsing through her capillaries, taste a starchy bitterness in the back of her mouth. Even if the world around her was going crazy, she herself was real, and she could count on that.
She returned to the present. She opened her eyes. She remembered her lessons. She grabbed an arrow she’d fletched herself, and, thanking her lucky coin, she threw it.
The projectile sailed out of the hole and lodged itself into the ceiling, a sturdy vine trailing behind it. Confused, Masse leaned over the hole to get a look at what was going on down there. This put him just in range of Macy as she came up at the end of the vine, traveling at ludicrous speeds. She had HW under one arm, but she still held Shark’s Tooth in the other. She didn’t get a chance to see her old friend as she flew past him, but her blade bit his gauntlet in two.
“Seyv!” Ash cried out as the hole in the ground began to shrivel up. Sparks were coming from the gash in the Hole Puncher, little eddies not entirely unlike the beam his eye orbitars had fired. Masse was trying to pull it off, but it was stuck.
Ash leapt over the hole before it vanished, placing both his hands on the gauntlet and muttering a spell he barely knew. For a moment nothing happened, but then the sparks tied down and a wisp of smoke came from the Hole Puncher, before it slackened, now no more than a regular gauntlet. He and Masse both sighed in relief.
“Now,” said Ash, before an arrow hit him on the forehead and encased him in a block of ice.
Macy slid down along the vine, landing next to the Ash-cicle just as the hole in the floor disappeared. She let Huntress Wizard slump to the ground and unholstered the Nut Bow. The look she gave Masse was packed with enough hatred that it would have sent him cowering if he weren’t already scrambling toward the window in fear.
Counting him out, Macy closed her eyes again and began to meditate, casting out her mind. She still had her role to play. Besides, what was taking Robin so long?
Hey, Macy. Robin’s voice appeared in Macy’s head. Guess we lost this one, huh?
Any amazement over her own newfound powers of telepathy was overridden by annoyance at Robin’s comment. I’ll have you know I’m carrying the team up here. Did you really let yourself get jobbed by a miniboss?
They pretended to be Beau! Robin lied. Then, when I let my guard down, they webbed me up with that gross spider wand—
Eek!
—and teleported away. I probs won’t be able to catch up to you in time to help.
Macy mentally slapped her forehead. Robin, you can teleport.
Oh. The line went dead.
Macy heard Robin teleport into the room, but she wasn’t done. She searched around for the panic she’d felt before, and suddenly she was able to pinpoint the mind that felt it. No thoughts, so the telepathy seemed to be limited to Robin for now, but she had the location, and that was all she needed. She opened her eyes.
Masse hadn’t just gone to the window to flee. He was currently helping Bandit Princess pull herself up over it, evidently having spent the better part of the fight scaling it from the outside. Say what she wanted about her, Macy couldn’t deny her persistence.
She snapped off a piece of Shark’s Tooth and fired it at BP. She was stunned by her own alacrity, and moreso by the fact that she wasn’t stunned by fear. That adrenaline was still doing its work.
Unfortunately, Bandit Princess was equally unstunned. She grabbed the projectile out of the air and hurled it back at Macy. She — and Robin behind her — jumped out of the way, but it wasn’t aimed for either of them. Instead, it hit Macy’s own arrow in Ash’s forehead, splitting it, and then somehow causing the ice encasing him to shatter.
Ash wasted no time capitalizing on his one free attack. He pointed the lightning dagger at Macy and sent a bolt straight toward her. Robin’s horn glowed, and all that energy was redirected toward it, like your thoughts to the obvious analogy. Now this was an energy zhe could use.
Macy made eye contact with zhir and skilted slightly. Robin knew exactly what to do.
The bolt was unleashed, right at the standing desk. It exploded into splinters. Pieces of nothing flew every which way and evaporated into air. Standing there, amidst the scorched wood, was Whisper Dan. The real one.
Bandit Princess knew a lost cause when she saw one. She would have loved to dig in her heels and keep fighting, but she hadn’t had time to browbeat these yokels into following her once her deception was revealed. She dug out a birdcall from under her cloak and blew it, then scooped up Masse and leapt backward out of the window she’d went through the trouble of climbing up to.
Seconds before she hit the ground, the circling roc summoned by her call swooped down to pick up her and her cargo. Setting him down, she leaned forward and whispered a promise in birdsong. She’d need to make good on that promise if she wanted to use the whistle again, which she wasn’t a fan of, but she could be flexible.
Ash teleported behind her, wrapping his arms around her torso; she slapped him, and he let go, nearly falling before digging his knees into the roc’s side. It cawed with pain, but it didn’t buck them yet.
“Well,” said Masse weakly, “that could have gone better.”
BP blew some hair out of her mouth. “That was only a test run,” she reassured him. “We can learn from this. There are plenty of other kingdoms ripe for the stealing.”
“Right, of course.” Was that shake in Masse’s voice just from exhaustion and pain? Surely so. “I didn’t expect Damy to be that much of a problem. I — we — keep running into her. Next time I’ll be ready.”
Bandit Princess realized her mistake. “You don’t need to worry about her,” she promised. “I know you two have some history, as that thing that other people are where they like hanging out with each other for purely non-transactional reasons.”
“Friends,” Masse agreed.
“Anyway, enough dwelling on the past. We need to get back to Thieves’ Reach and plan out our next… plan.”
Ash cleared his throat. BP turned around and glared at him, but by dint of not assaulting him or knocking him off the bird, she allowed him to speak his mind.
“If I’m not too out of line, I might have an idea. If we could liquidate some of our pilfered assets, there’s a chance we can get more people willing to fight for us before we invade.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I do have one friend-of-a-friend who’s got some money in the auctioneering business. He’s always looking for new capital ventures, and if we play our cards right, he might become quite the angel investor.”
“You mean devil investor,” said Bandit Princess, and then the three of them cackled maniacally for several evil minutes.
Thank you for that, Announcer, but I’d actually like to wrap this season up, if you don’t mind. And, now that you mention it, even if you do mind. This is my story, after all, not yours. And by mine, I mean Macy and Robin’s.
Macy, Robin, Huntress Wizard, and Whisper Dan stood at the near shore of the pond. Kutci Xerbn swam across to meet them, carrying behind him an inflatable pool chair on which lounged Qhneevix. Whisper Dan said something, but it was impossible to hear over the mountain wind, so nobody noticed.
“Oh, good,” exclaimed Kutci, “you guys did it! King Dan’s back!”
“Ah, I see,” said the newly blind Qhneevix. “I hope nobody else got hurt.”
HW shook her head. “Aside from the paper bird, nothing that won’t heal. The worst are some minor burns and lacerations that I can easily treat with the help of my girlfriend.”
“So I take it my fellow guards were able to aid in swiftly taking her down.”
“Nah,” said Robin, “they were all pretty much useless and didn’t do anything helpful.” Macy elbowed zhir right in the jowl and zhe shut up.
Huntress Wizard cleared her throat. “It was confusing for them, seeing the image of someone they looked up to as a guise for villainy most foul. I don’t blame them for holding back. To fight on through that would require a level of heroic resolve that’s not fair to demand of anyone. And by the same token, I must commend you for showing it.”
Macy knew her master was talking to Qhneevix, but all the same, when she heard those words, the weight of that acorn-clasped cloak still wrapped around her felt less like a burden and more like a hug.
“I know we have… unfortunate history,” HW continued, “but just as I’m not the girl I was when we knew each other, it’s clear you’re not that boy, either.”
“And I’m not my father,” interjected Kutci, although nobody cared.
Huntress Wizard could not let herself be interrupted so close to getting to the point. “Coming back here has unearthed some bad memories,” she admitted, “but I think I just need some good ones to replace them. I’d like to stay here for a while, in the kingdom, to reconnect with my culture. Maybe even reconnect with my parents, if I’ll find them here.”
Whisper Dan tried to speak again, but once again the wind drowned him out. He leaned down to Robin and whispered in zhir ear; zhe nodded.
Robin summoned a megaphone and spoke directly into it, the noise echoing so loud that the Mountain Men must have heard it. “He says you may, and you will,” zhe announced, accompanied by a feedback hum zhe was adding zhirself. “For your deeds for the kingdom and the world, and in repayment for what the kingdom has done to you in the past, you may even stay in the royal guest quarters, Meeg Yam Yak.”
She waved her hand through the illusory megaphone, dismissing it. “That’s not my name yet,” she said. “I’m still just Huntress Wizard. And I’d be more than honored to take you up on that, though I’d like to see if my parents will lodge me first. I’ll ask about it tonight, to give them time, but I won’t be staying here until tomorrow; I’ll use tonight to let my boyfriend and girlfriend know I’ll be taking a vacation.”
Macy furrowed her brow. “You never take a vacation. You’re always off on some ecological mission or another. Who’s gonna pick up your slack?”
HW pretended to think about that for a moment. “I dunno. I’d need to find someone strong, dependable, and with a powerful grasp on all the various wilderness magics I’ve mastered over the years. Preferably someone with a magic sword, an awesome bow, and lots of friends to help her when she needs support.”
Realizing what was going on, Macy pretended to look around in confusion. “Gee, teach,” she said, “it almost sounds like you’re talking about me.”
“Why not?” She booped Macy on the nonexistent snoot, then adjusted the acorn clasp of her cloak. “You’re even dressed for the part. You’ll make a great pro-body, Macadamia the Nut.”
With that, she picked up one end of Qhneevix’s chair as Whisper Dan grabbed the other, and they walked off toward the setting sun and toward the Goblin Kingdom, ready to not have any adventures for a change.
The coward’s sunset — Earth’s favorite star hiding behind jagged mountains before the true horizon could claim it — didn’t seem cowardly from this angle. With the air so clear, untouched by the mining operations that were the lifeblood of Jugland, Macy could see how breathtaking the sight of the sun’s rays coloring the snow-capped peaks and rugged greens truly was. It was not hiding, but stepping aside, bathing the land in golden hues one last time before its understudy the moon and the distant twinkling pinpricks of its brethren took over its role as celestial illuminator. They didn’t shine nearly as bright, but they didn’t need to. That was okay.
“Hey, uh,” asked Kutci, “what’s a pro-body?”
“I dunno,” answered Robin. “I think she meant antibody? She’s kinda stupid word-wise.”
Macy groaned. “Robin, you ruined the moment. And anyway, how can you be stupid and wise?”
“I’m just special that way. It’s why my teachers were always going on about my special needs.”
“Don’t even try to play the special needs card. You know full well…”
That went on as long as you’d like to imagine. Macy and Robin never settled their argument; they never met halfway, nor agreed to disagree. They didn’t need to. They were something closer than friends, yet fiercer than rivals: They were siblings. And so, when their destined doom arrived, and all the lesser dooms preceding it, they would face it as such.