Petty Squabble [ROUND 3] [Goldhenge]

It had been a difficult month for Parsley.

Everything had started out well enough. Brother Alfonso had told him of the Order's plight and how Mayor Elmwood, deceived by illusions, refused to let them rebuild their cathedral. After dealing with that problem, the Order was free to aid Parsley in battling the demon.

The only problem was that the demon was still taking the place of the village smith, but once the COFCACo guild started up, that was taken care of. And so Parsley marched right into the smithy and confronted "John Smith".

It wasn't much of a battle, in the end. A brief exchange of insults, a few shots from Parsley's crossbow, and a splash of holy water were enough to make Smith vanish in a flash of light, leaving not a trace behind.

And yet, ever since then, it seemed as though the village's troubles had only grown.

The most immediate problem, for Parsley, was that nothing seemed to change. He had expected the illusion to melt away, but the town looked identical - down to the strange golden structure in the middle.

Yet the mirror shard showed the same images. The illusion was truly gone. That seemed odd at first, but hardly inexplicable; Parsley had already noticed the familiarity of the town.

It was clear enough, then, that the so-called Goldhenge must have been created during the demon's reign of terror. But when Parsley began asking of it, everyone in town said it had been there for as long as they could recall.

They must have been under the demon's influence so long that they forgot the times when they knew better. No one recognized any town Parsley could name; and he, in turn, had never heard of the places they spoke of.

And then there was the body.

Parsley had heard of the blood-drained bodies before vanquishing "Smith", but then another turned up after his defeat. It could not have been his work.

Parsley's first thought was simply that there had been another demon, perhaps in league with the first, or perhaps by chance. But then he recalled the abandoned workshop, where he had found the mirror shard, and a more disturbing scenario struck him.

The old alchemist might still be around. Perhaps he was looking for blood for some gruesome ritual. Or perhaps it was another twisted effort to lure Parsley into a trap, with no concern for anyone else who might get caught up in it.

Parsley wanted nothing more than to track the killer down. But the alchemist had outwitted him once before - he and his mentor both, in fact. If he was the culprit, Parsley would need aid, and so he asked the Holy Order first.

He was told very graciously by the new Mayor that yes, they would be delighted to assist him in tracking down the murderer, but sadly there was much to be taken care of in rebuilding the town's faith, and surely Parsley could see the importance of that.

And he could. But after three weeks of aiding them, and two more murders, he was beginning to wonder if the Holy Order was really doing all it could.

Finally, one night Parsley decided that was less important than whether he was doing all he could.

---

After the unveiling of the streetlights, Envoy had no particular need to leave its office at night. There was nothing else to show off in the night hours, and it didn't need to sleep.

It wasn't even an issue for COFCA as far as keeping track of the battle, because the engineers had worked out some "asynchronous transfer protocol" or similar mostly-meaningless jargon. What it meant, essentially, was that they wouldn't receive any transmissions from Envoy until there was already a meeting, and no matter how long they took agreeing on what to say, the reply would be close to immediate from Envoy's perspective.

Because of this system, COFCA's engineers would explain, if a demon hunter burst into the office in the middle of the night and said something along the lines of,

"Evening, Guildmaster. Sorry fer the trouble, but I need aid and the Order isn't available. I'm headed to the Wizard Castle to search for a killer, and I'd prefer not to face its dangers alone. Can any of yer men aid me?"

then the message would be received by the council in the morning meeting and they could spend the entire meeting discussing the pros and cons of the proposal before sending a carefully-worded response, probably along the lines of "What's in it for us?"

The message would not be received by a lone janitor in the middle of the night, desperate enough for something to do besides sweeping the floors that he would respond with something like,

"Yeah, sure, why not? Sounds like a way to kill some time."

But if the above scenario were to happen somehow, COFCA's engineers would be quick to assure you that it was in no way their fault.

So the problem, she figured, was this:

The luck powers gave her what she wanted. But they got snippity, maybe, if she wanted too many things at once.

Or maybe it was that the luck powers only let her win at cards so she could get here and get the pictures on her phone (which she hadn’t yet), so it wouldn’t really be lucky for her to keep winning.

Or maybe she was just losing big now so that the luck powers would let her win bigger later. That one was called the “Gambler’s Fallacy,” she knew, but hey, she had a full Vetruvian in her hand right now with, what, eight hundred gold coins in the pot?

Her poker face certainly wasn’t very good right now, but the wizard guy kept putting more money in. Which had to be a luck powers thing, right?

She took a deep breath and laid down her hand. Four male arms, four male legs, one male torso, one male head. “Full Vetruvian,” she said, her eyes squarely on the wizard.

“Hmm.” The wizard looked at his own hand. “Well, then.” He placed three male torsos and six male legs down on the table.

And then surrounded each torso with fifty male arms, fifty female arms, twenty-five male heads and twenty-five female heads. The cards crowded the table, arranged in formations that looked almost floral. “Triple Hecatoncheires,” he proclaimed. With a wave of his wand and a jingle he dropped the gold into his coinpurse and reshuffled the deck for good measure. “Care to front your champion another few hundred, mister mayor?” he asked Benny, fuming in the corner. “Things could turn around at any moment.”

Benny Diccio Giacomo Honorope Pontiff X, mayor of Goldhenge, ignored the wizard and instead dragged Alison out of her chair, holding her up by the collar. “Thou stealing little shrew!” he growled. “My boys claimed my money to be in good hands with you! I oughta—”

“Boss, boss, mister mayor, take it easy maybe, huh?” suggested Jack “Innocent” VIII, casino regular and Alison’s usual bank. “Allie’s always brought the goods against marks who weren’t wizards.”

“Always!” Alison agreed. “That guy’s obviously cheating! He pulled three hundred arms out of his sleeves!”

“You mean these sleeves?” asked the wizard, raising his arms. His sleeves were indeed quite spacious around the wrists. “I can’t fit any cards in here. This is where I keep all my confetti!”

Showers of pastel-colored confetti rocketed out of the wizard’s arms and coated the walls of the casino. Benny brushed some out of his mustache. “And so, if he cheats? If he cheats, cheat also! Such is the game, and for such are we here convened!”

“I don’t know how to cheat!” protested Alison. “I’m just lucky!”

“Oh, lucky, is she?” Benny dropped Alison to the floor and clasped his hands to his head. “Eight hundred coins we waste on lucky. Youth, that is taxpayer money! One does not gamble that away! Does your father on the student council propose foreign aid to Wizard Castle that I ain’t heard about it yet? Huh?”

“All due respect, Mister Mayor,” barked Innocent. “Benny. She’s a kid. These last couple’a weeks she musta netted me three, four times the eight hundred just running her ‘lucky’ game against some’a the drunks come here.”

Benny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Making… three thousand? Good money, that.” He adjusted his pointy hat. “Good money is good. That’s what I always say.”

“You do always say that, Ben,” Innocent affirmed. “Good money keeps the demons at bay.”

“It most certainly does not,” grumbled the wizard. “Unless, say, that money toward hiring the services of a practitioner of white magic.” White confetti sprayed out of his sleeves in spurts.

“Cork it, heathen,” grumbled Benny. Alison pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened up the camera function. “You’re to bar magic-types from entering this joint,” the mayor told Innocent. “Their ways are mysterious and they may be packing demons. As a matter of fact,” he added, turning to the wizard. “I may well make a mayoral proclamation, barring your wizardly ilk from Goldhenge altogether.”

The wizard sneered. “Mister mayor, the monument in our town is a holy site for many of my associates in Wizard Castle. We will come calling now and then. We’d prefer to do so under respectful terms, but—”

“The monument?” Benny rolled his eyes. “Some primordial work of modern art pretension. You can have it. For its weight in real gold, of course.”

“You’ll find it’s not so easy to relocate, else we would have done so centuries ago.”

Click click click. The mayor himself, unfortunately, had never touched a card. Everyone at the other tables was too distracted by the scene with the wizard to notice their “lucky charm” shooting pictures. “Listen up!” growled Benny. “There is but one true religion in Goldhenge, and it’s my one. I make no accommodations for demon worshippers, wizards white or otherwise, COFCAn empirical neo-pantheism, none of that new thing, what’sit, Jack.”

“It’s, uh, the Lock & Key cult, boss.”

“Yeah, none’a them.” Benny cleared his throat. “And so from the mouth of the Order, so shall it be… so.”

“No, I’m afraid it shan’t,” said the wizard, raising his wand. “My ‘wizardly ilk,’ as you call us, have been watching the recent growth of your foul little religion with nothing more than bored disgust. But if you progress from mere usury to actual atrocity, I warn you—”

“You warn me nothing!” Benny pointed his cross to match the other’s wand. “Nobody talks to Benny Diccio Giacomo Honorope Pontiff X thus in his own house of sin and debauchery! My faith will protect me from your sorcery. As will my boys. Get ‘im!”

Innocent V and BonyFace III, Benny’s omnipresent muscle, drew knives and moved on the wizard, who yawned performatively. He pointed his wand at Innocent and began to intone a magic word…

…And then stopped. “Hold on,” said the wizard, stopping the Holy Order men in their tracks with a wave of his hand. “Trouble at the homestead. Let’s save this pissing contest for later, shall we?” And teleported away with some swirling yellow lines and a whoosh. Playing cards and confetti rose into the air and fluttered downwards.

“Gentlemen,” said Benny. “Our enemies grow in number by the day. Let us draft some legislation.”

The men deliberated over the bar, forgetting about Alison—and the coinpurse of holding left on the card table. She was graduating from gambling to stealing—but the luck powers must have wanted her to have it if they’d made it so easy to get. Right?

Trying not to think of Nancy, she wondered how far the powers’ influence spread. The luck powers must have caused the wizard to leave when he did, which means they must have caused whatever he was going back to attend to in Wizard’s Castle.

So that was probably going to turn out well, too.

* * * * *

Ethan was hungry.

Alison was out doing secret spy work. Dad was starting his new job at the government. He was pretty sure that made it Mom’s job to feed him. And to feed Emma, for that matter. She’d been crying all day, which usually either meant she was hungry or could feel something evil coming. Dumb baby that she was, Emma was pretty good with that sort of thing.

Ethan knew that he was expected to stay in his room and look after his sister, but Mom was expected to come feed them, so all bets were off. He went downstairs to the dining room, where the innkeep sold bacon and veggies and beer every day. The turkey smelled okay but Ethan didn’t have any money. “Hey, mister,” he asked the innkeep. “Can I have free lunch until my dad pays back later? He’s on the government now.”

The innkeep looked worried. “I think not, lad.” He pointed towards a door Ethan hadn’t gone through before. “Why not retrieve your mother from the cellar, she if she might provide some coin? She ran down there around sunrise and I’ve had half a mind to ask her her business m’self.”

“Okay! I’ll be back in a minute with bacon money!” Ethan scampered through the door. The basement was dark and the stairs were steep. He took them one at a time. “Mom?”

Mom’s voice from the bottom of the stairs sounded kind of sick. ”Ethan!”
she cried. ”Careful on the stairs!”

“I’m being so careful, Mom,” teased Ethan, jumping up and down on the top step. “Hey, can I have money for food? Plus you should feed Emma.”

”Oh, Ethan baby, I’m so sorry. Is it breakfast time already?”

”It’s lunchtime, Mom.”

“Lunchtime? Shit. I mean. Darn.” Mom had said a swear. Ethan remembered that so he could use it as an excuse to swear later. ”Ethan, could you do me a tiny favor? I’m going to be down here until it gets dark, I think.”

Ethan was way too smart than to fall for the “tiny favor” trick. ”What’s the favor?” he asked first.

”Can you, um. Can you find your Dad over at the town hall and tell him not to worry, but that I’m a vampire now? Say, ‘Mom says don’t worry, but she’s a vampire now.’ And that he should come home and feed Emma. Make sure you say the ‘Don’t worry’ part first.”

Ethan groaned. “Can’t I get some lunch first? I’m starving.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile Tom Broderburg, in the process of filling out a pertinent form, was trying to figure out what his date of birth would be by Goldhenge reckoning. He did a lot of complex-looking arithmetic with his fingers. “Hey!” he told the clerk. “It’s F—back where I come from, originally, today is Father’s Day.”

“That’s very nice,” replied the clerk.

“I’m a father.”

“So I gathered.”

"Three times over."Tom redid the math a third time. His fingernails were getting pretty long. He made a mental note to figure out a good way to take care of that. “Oh, wait, sorry,” Tom corrected. “I think Father’s Day was yesterday.” He sighed. “Passed me right by.”

There were a lot of things Jimmy Johnson didn't really understand about COFCA. Such as most of their projects, or why they called him the "Chief Custodial Officer for Nocturnal Affairs" instead of "the night janitor".

What he did understand was that they never much cared for cleaning up after themselves. He didn't understand what they were doing well enough to realize this applied metaphorically as well as literally, but he wouldn't have been surprised to learn about it.

Tonight, like most nights, he was bored. Bored enough to wonder why exactly they had nights at all; they were in space, after all. But more importantly, bored enough to mess around with the fancy high-tech video game some executive had apparently been playing in the meeting room.

It took Jimmy a while to get his bearings. He was a robot called Envoy, and he was apparently helping this guy named Parsley sneak into a castle of wizards for some reason. Something about murders. A glance at a map Parsley shoved into his view suggested that the castle was a good distance away; Parsley muttered something about three days of walking.

Oh. It was one of those slow and probably grindy games. That sounded even more boring than sweeping the floors, and Jimmy might have stopped playing if he hadn't immediately stumbled onto the button that turned on Envoy's jet boosters.

Parsley had been more than a little surprised at the demonstration of the Guildmaster's flight capabilities, not least because the machine had chosen to demonstrate them by flying right into him.

It took a little effort to get himself securely on the Guildmaster's back instead of awkwardly hanging off its arms, but before long they were high up in the air, and the three-day trip to Wizard Castle was looking considerably shorter.

It wasn't even hard to spot the castle. There weren't many buildings that tall around, after all, and even fewer at the top of a small mountain.

Parsley actually found that odd. He'd seen dozens of ominous castles at the top of foreboding mountain trails in his time, yet this was the first one he'd spotted since the illusion dropped. Perhaps this territory simply hadn't had as many nobles over the years, he mused.

But it soon struck him that if he could see the wizards, they might be able to see him.

"Fly lower," he said. "Best not to draw attention to ourselves."

"Which button do I press for that?" Jimmy asked, staring at the control panel. Finally, with a shrug, he pressed one.

It was at this point that he discovered just how fast Envoy could fly.

"What are ye doin?" Parsley shrieked. "At this speed, ye'll take us far past the castle!"

"Well, on the plus side," Jimmy said into the microphone, "that'll make it harder for them to see us."

---

Being harder to see did not necessarily make you harder to detect.

Indeed, an object traveling through the skies of an underdeveloped planet at supersonic speeds was actually rather easy to detect if you had a spaceship scanning for anomalies. It was one of the first things the scans checked for.

"Mr. Smith, we may have a bit of a situation," Technically-Still-Captain M'Tikk said. "Seems to be an object circling the planet at a high velocity. It's moving too fast for the scanners to get many details, but it appears to be technological in nature."

John frowned.

"Can we get a teleporter lock on it?" he asked.

"Not at those speeds." M'Tikk didn't bother noting that they didn't really have a safe place to teleport it to even if they could. Minor details like that had long ago ceased to matter.

"It's a danger to the other contestants, and therefore to my fun," John said, pacing around the bridge. Then his face brightened.

"But I suppose it's only a danger while the others are still on the planet."

"We can't get a good teleporter signal on them," M'Tikk reminded him. "You'll recall that Goldhenge has been interfering with our tracking signals for a while now."

"Well, that just means an excuse for a little away mission," John said, breaking into a grin. "Why don't you come along, Captain? I'm sure you could use the exercise."

---

Jimmy's efforts to master the flight controls, or at least locate the manual, were not going well.

So far, he had not only managed to reactivate the asynchronous transfer protocol, he had somehow disabled all but a few of the scenarios that interupted it. The only ones remaining were high-level damage reports on Envoy and the imminent death of a contestant. The end result of this was that the images on the screen were going much faster than Jimmy's mere human eyes could process, a fact that he didn't notice because he was still messing with the settings menu.

His experimentation was only interrupted by an important notice over a still image of the screen.

ENVOY'S JET THRUSTERS NEED TO RECHARGE BEFORE FURTHER USE IS POSSIBLE.
CONTESTANT PARSLEY KROSE IS IN IMMINENT DANGER OF DEATH BY FALLING AND OR/BEING CRUSHED BY ENVOY.

"That's bad, isn't it?" Jimmy muttered. "Really wish I could find those instructions."

---

Jimmy wasn't the only one concerned by the situation, even without counting the fact that Parsley would likely be very concerned if he hadn't fallen unconscious from exhaustion and low oxygen levels several hours ago.

The wizards had noted the fast-moving object in the middle of the night, but as it had quickly passed them, they had not considered it a specific threat - merely a potential issue that they needed to be aware of.

However, now that it was plummeting towards the Chamber of the Grand Rite, it demanded an immediate response. Whether this was a direct assault, an infiltration attempt, or merely a coincidental fast-moving meteorite, the object could not be allowed into such an important room.

Which was why Ferdinand Fern, head of security, was called in from his lunch break and weekly gambling session. He was used to such unpleasant interruptions; usually they involved a summoning ritual that had either gone horribly wrong or had gone exactly as intended but had been a terrible idea in the first place.

He was about to ask just what manner of terrifying creature was running amok this time when the Third Archmagus grabbed him by the arm, pulled him to the nearest window, and pointed up.

"Oh, is that all," Ferdinand grumbled. "A novice chronomancer can deal with this nonsense, you just need to slow the thing down."

As if to demonstrate the point, Ferdinand waved his arm and the large object seemed to hang in the air.

"It'll take the thing at least an hour to come down now. Plenty of time to prepare for whatever it is. So who brought this wreck into being? I'll bet it was the alchemists again."

"It was not our work, Fern," the Third Archmagus said, her antennae drooping judgmentally. "We detected this anomaly last night. As I recall, we even brought it to your attention. Yet you still left the castle knowing the threat it might represent."

"What threat?" Ferdinand said, scowling. "I can tell you right now, this isn't a Unified Systems probe. Moves way too fast for that. If anything, it probably distracted them from us with the way it rocketed off."

"And now this anomaly that has drawn their attention will be hanging in the air in the immediate vicinity of the castle for at least an hour." The Archmagus unfurled her proboscis in annoyance. "Not to mention its trajectory. Do you not think it a concern that someone may have launched a high-velocity projectile directly at the Chamber of the Grand Rite?"

"Really?" Ferdinand chuckled. "I'd say they were doing us a favor. This Rite of yours sounds like exactly the sort of thing that will blow up in everyone's face, and that's if we're lucky."

The Third Archmagus glared at him.

"I've got a construct in storage that should be able to get that thing flying around again," Ferdinand sighed. "That will keep your precious Grand Rite safe, and get the Unified Systems off our trail. The most we might have to deal with out here is a science team trying to figure out what stopped the anomaly, but I doubt they'll bother us if we make sure there's an alternative explanation for them to find first."

"Acceptable. Perhaps when you are finished, you can explain why you have not displayed a similar level of competence with regard to your assignments in Goldhenge."

"I can explain that right now," Ferdinand grumbled, walking towards his office. "Our only problem in Goldhenge is Diccioni."

---

Parsley had the sort of job where waking up in mortal danger was far from unusual. Even so, waking up hundreds of feet in the air was a new experience.

"I'll be needing a long talk with Stein when this matter is dealt with," Parsley muttered, glancing around him. At least they were near the castle, and it seemed they weren't falling particularly fast. The Guildmaster seemed unresponsive, however; Parsley had no way of knowing that this was because Jimmy had stumbled his way into the settings menu again, and simply concluded it was some fool thing Stein had done.

But Parsley found himself less concerned with the altitude or the mechanical Guildmaster's odd behavior than with the fact that the sun was up. More than likely, the wizards had already spotted them, and there was no chance of making it in undetected.

If there was a chance, however, it lay in first reaching the ground. Parsley carefully untangled himself from the Guildmaster's four arms, and climbed on top of it. He reached into the folds of his coat and pulled out a rope. As he did, and noted the number of pockets that were now empty, he silently thanked his master for teaching him that a rope was one of the most important things to fasten securely.

He tied the rope to a dangling arm, and dropped it towards the ground. It was still a good distance above the nearest treetop, but Parsley had ways of dealing with that.

He climbed down the rope, swiftly but carefully, and made his way to the very tip. He looked down, and guessed that he could make the jump with another two feet of length.

"Best hope the wizards don't notice me for another five minutes," he muttered, touching his fingers to the bottom edge of the rope. In an instant, it was bread; and then, the air below it started changing form as well.

Five minutes of intense concentration later, Parsley climbed down a three-foot long loaf of bread and jumped into the upper branches of a tree.