Chapter Text
It had been eleven years. Eleven years since I met him… Since I lost him… That summer though, where I learned who he really was. I had been on my own for a long time, but I had just begun my adventuring career, heading east into Kylandria, where everything felt wholesome and rustic. I had stumbled into the capitol and immediately went to the notice board, where this woman, a lady by the name of Erina Zuccarini was looking for a bundle of yellow roses, since the florist in town did not have any. I took it upon myself to go out and find some, and indeed I did.
After days of searching, I had picked enough to form a little bouquet, and I set out in search of this woman, and I asked around, and the general consensus was that she had been headed to the local cemetery. I roamed around until I finally asked a guard to tell me where the cemetery was, and afterward I rushed to the cemetery to complete my quest.
I had come up on a hill, where I saw her. The most beautiful woman ever, some twelve or so years older than I was, her head topped with such pretty, thick pink hair, with the most youthful look I’d ever seen. She looked as old as I was, except for a few wrinkles around the eyes.
“Hello, are you Erina Zuccarini? I have your flowers,” I said, holding the bouquet out with my hands as she sat at the ground, wiping the dirt off an old cenotaph.
“Oh? Thank you sweetie, that’s really nice of you,” she said, her eyes tearing up.
“Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Yes… I’m fine. Don’t worry about me,” she said, getting up, and turning to face me.
Unzipping her purse, she took out a few platinum pieces and handed them to me, “Here, take them. I appreciate the trouble you went to to get these… Wait a second… That bracelet,” she said, looking at the golden bracelet I had on my right wrist.
“Oh? This? What about it?”
“It’s familiar… an old friend of mine had a bracelet almost exactly like that.”
“Oh? Who was he?”
“Nobody you would know, I’m sure… Just a bitter old circus monkey named Sips,” she said, letting out a soft, hurting chuckle.
It was then that I began to tear up.
“You knew him?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. He was one of my best friends until he died.”
The shock came, passed like an arrow through my heart and soul… I feared the worst for years, never knowing what happened to the monkey who told me I was a true hero… The monkey who saved me was dead. It hit me so hard that my eyes immediately began to well with tears.
“He’s dead? ”
“You never got the chance to know… Listen, me and my wife are planning on getting together in a little bit at this one cafe. You should come and join us, and we can tell you about what happened to him.”
Tearing up, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, but I did respond with a faint nod.
“What’s your name?”
Holding back from just absolutely bawling, I muttered “Vicky…”
“Well Vicky, there’s a little place in town called the Fire & Ice Cafe, me and my wife Abbey are going to meet up there in about an hour, so I am going to go and get some business taken care of, and I’ll see you there, okay?” she said, patting me on my shoulder before walking away.
I was so distraught. I couldn’t stand it. How could he have died? He was my best, and for a long time, my only real friend. It didn’t feel right. The pit was rising in my heart, as I just collapsed to the ground and began crying. Through the tears, I looked up at the cenotaph… It read his name… He was only fourteen? I couldn’t imagine that… He was only 6 years older than me? He was just a kid…
For what felt like an eternity, I sat there at his grave, and just bawled my freaking eyes out. I was no stranger to pain, but this was something else entirely… It was like a piece of my heart was gone.
Eventually, I gathered my strength and got up and wiped the tears away from my face. As I stood, I looked down at the stone marker, and just caressed the top of it.
“I’m so sorry Sips… All these years, and you never told me where you were going or what you were doing. All you said was that you were going to try to do hero stuff… Why did you have to leave…”
Swallowing back the flood of emotions, I headed out into town, looking for the cafe Erina had said to meet her at. Eventually, I did find it, and I headed inside, where at a booth sat Erina and her wife, Abbey. I approached them as Erina introduced me.
“Abbey, this is Vicky. I met her while I was tending to Sips’ stone.”
“Nice to meet you…. Abbey,” I said confusingly as I sat, bowing my head down towards the table.
“So, how exactly did you know Sips?” Erina asked me.
“He was… Well… When I was little, around eight or so, he came to town, and lived in the abandoned cabin that I would use whenever I would transform…”
“Transform?”
“I used to be a werewolf. Until he saved me. ”
“He did?”
“Yeah… He found out, and he cured me. He saved me from dying. I lived in an orc village near the border which had been quite occupied with werewolf hunting. I was able to keep it secret for a long time, and then he came along and fixed everything…”
“Oh?” exclaimed both Abbey and Erina.
“What?”
“That is extremely surprising,” Erina said, sipping her coffee.
“What?”
“The Sips we knew… He was an extremely angry, angsty asshole for the time that we knew him. He was more than willing to do harm to an innocent. He did a lot of things. Killed a lot of people who did him wrong, and he paid the price for it, but that isn’t to say he deserved to die.”
“I mean… I can see that. He was not the best, but I loved him. He was my special monkey man…”
“I never knew Sips to be good to a kid. Shit… I watched him eat the heart of one…”
“He told me about that. It’s still pretty cool.”
“That’s not cool!”
“Pfft… That’s what you think.”
“Erina, tell her about how he died,” Abbey said, placing a paw on her shoulder.
“Yes… I… Tell me what happened to him… Please...”
“Well, it’s a really long story. You knew he was cursed, and had a cursed arm that was the same as a crocodile hand, correct?”
Stifling my tears, I responded with a meek, “Yes.”
“Well, when the evil bitch who made him into a sentient being made him sentient, she packaged him with a fragment of an artificial god and a soul consuming curse. The curse was that crocodile arm.”
“The same woman who did that was the same woman who made me into a red panda… It’s a sore subject. Sips and I are in a way related, but in truth, we could not be further apart,” Abbey added.
“Wait, who was this woman?”
“A voodoo witch named Quinn-Ora. Seductive as a motherfucker and a totalitarian, psycho bitch.”
“Woah…”
“She wanted a powerful minion, but instead created the most conflicted, hurting living being to have ever lived. If only you could’ve seen the things he went through.”
As we spoke, the waitress came up and asked if I had wanted anything. I was too ingrained in the story of Sips to even devote any mental energy to the question.
“She’ll have a caramel macchiato and an eclair, please. We’re discussing something heavy, and she needs something comforting,” Erina said, gesturing to the waitress.
“Thanks…”
“It’s no trouble, Vicky.”
“So, what happened to Quinn-Ora?”
“Well, when we were on a quest for Jack, our employer, and we ended up in Alchemist’s Quarry, a magical city nestled in the middle of the Bellowing Wilds. The town is still filled with animal people like Abbey and Sips. Quinn-Ora was the total ruler of the city, who had created each and every resident by fusing them with a voodoo body part, which allowed her the ability to control those she had afflicted. When we were in town, the Druid of our group, Gothi, got Sips drunk-” Erina stopped, her eyes tearing up and struggling to get words out.
“Gods… That night… It all went downhill after that fucking night…”
“It’s okay, Erina. It’s okay. It’s in the past now.”
“It just…” she swallowed, holding back her pain, “That night ruined everything. Everything bad happened after that night.”
“What happened?”
“Gothi convinced Sips to get drunk and sing karaoke to take away the stress… He reluctantly did it, and well… He tried to cast dancing lights, and to put it simply, it backfired and it released the Tarrasque from the magical bindings under the city. and the entire city got depowered.”
“Wait… What’s a tarrasque?”
“It is the most horrifying beast you will ever lay eyes on,” Abbey said.
“As big as a mountain, and covered in impenetrable scales and spines the size of wizard’s towers. I wouldn’t wish for anyone to see that world-eating monstrosity.”
“Oh… Well, keep going... Please.”
“After the chaos, we ran into Quinn-Ora, and we tracked her down, and while Sips was unconscious during the fighting, I killed her by sending her to the elemental plane of fire.”
“Really? He wasn’t upset by that?”
“He probably would be if we told him haha... But, like anything in that poor guy’s life… Nothing was ever easy.”
“Did something bad happen to him?”
“Well, yeah, but not at this point. During the fight, his closest friend Sneeze had sacrificed his life for him. Quinn-Ora decapitated him…”
With a slight tapping at Erina’s arm, Abbey interjected, “Erina, don’t you think you are upsetting her?”
“I want to tell her what Sips had going on. I’m coming to terms with what happened, and I think she needs to be able to as well. It may be eleven years, but… It’s still a fresh wound for her.”
I sat there in silence. I didn’t know what to say. I was just… I was curious, but it didn’t sit right with me. He couldn’t be dead. These were all old stories, not even really related to what happened, but in my mind, I was trying to keep it together, to keep my heart still surrounded by the buzzing chaos running around inside me. He seemed fine when he left. Besides, resurrection exists. People come back from the dead…
“He would stop at nothing to bring his friend back. We went and purchased some several thousand gold worth of scrolls to fix his body up and revive him. After some significant worry and having to find his soul, he brought him back.”
My head jolted up and I looked at Erina, "If- If you could buy a scroll for Sips' friend, then why can't you get one for Sips? If you had the money then he should be okay right now, right?"
Erina sighed. "We had the money, and we could have easily gotten one, but... The way he died, his soul was gone. Replaced by his curse. Even if we were to revive him, it wouldn't be him."
I looked down again, dejected. "Oh, I- I think you mentioned about the soul curse. Sorry."
"No no, its okay! Don't feel bad for asking a question. Honestly, it's kinda nice to have someone asking about him after all these years, caring about him..." Erina smiled, then her eyes opened wide "N- Not that I think you being upset is good or anything no no I just meant-"
"Haha- It's fine Miss Erina. I know what you mean."
With a heavy sigh, Erina said, “With everyone so far apart, we can’t really talk about him. Gothi is with the Foreclaimers, I’m here with Abbey, Julian and Gorthan are out in Bundariko, Sneeze is somewhere, Jack is god-knows-where. It’s good to be able to honor his memory in words rather than epitaphs and memorials.”
Silently, I just nodded my head. I wasn’t processing everything right. It just hurt.
Placing her hand on my shoulder, Erina began to comfort me, “It’s okay to be upset. How were you supposed to know? You know… You should go and meet up with the others. They could probably tell you more about him than I could… Besides, it might help you process all of this.”
“I… Thank you miss…”
“It’s no trouble, honest. It’s not easy to deal with what happened to him…”
“I… Just…” I couldn’t make the words come out, I was choking on my own sadness, slugging my arms up trying to hold Erina’s, but I didn’t have the strength to.
“It’s okay… It’s okay. Just breathe… Take your time.”
The waitress came finally, bringing my drink and food. While barely containing the apocalyptic flood of tears from leaving my eyes and heart, I ate and drank slowly and weakly. I couldn’t really keep myself together. I was struggling to keep myself from breaking down. I was still fighting every single thought I had. I was fighting the urge to just reject all reality. I couldn’t bear it. My grip was beginning to weaken. I managed to fight through it, and finished my coffee, which was wonderful, and my eclair, which was just as good.
“Thank you so much, both of you.”
“You’re welcome… Feel free to stay with us as long as you like, today’s a nice day,” Abbey said, smiling softly at me, her little eyes covered by the big round glasses she wore on her snout.
“If you want to go visit the others, you should visit Julian and Gorthan first. They’re the easiest to find. They’re in Bundariko, in the Bellowing Wilds, I think I still have the old map we used back in the day so I can give that to you.”
“Thank you so much for your kindness and your generosity, Miss Erina. I can see why Sips is your friend.”
“Well… We didn’t exactly get along the best,” she replied, releasing a slightly pained laugh.
“Oh?”
“Yeah… It’s… There was a lot of vitriol and sarcasm with us. I wouldn’t have given it up for the world though. He was family to me, he really was.”
“I bet,” I said, letting a few tears run down my cheeks as I smiled at her.