The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [167]
I slither, sneak, and generally shimmy my monastic ass around the square, avoiding the quainte olde medieval gallows and the smoking hole in the ground that used to be the Alchemists’ Guild. On the east side of the square is the Wayfarer’s Tavern, and some distance to the southwest I can see the battlements and turrets of Castle Storm looming out of the early morning mists in a surge of gothic cheesecake. I enter the tavern, stepping on the blue rectangle and waiting while the world pauses, then head for the bar.
“Right, I’m in the bar,” I say aloud, pulling my Project Aurora laptop out of the Bag of Holding. (Is it my imagination, or does something snap at my fingertips as I pull my hand out?) “Has the target moved?”
N0 J0Y, B08.
I sigh, unfolding the screen. Laptops aren’t exactly native to NWN; this one’s made of two slabs of sapphire held together by scrolled mithril hinges. I stare into the glowing depths of its screen (tailored from a preexisting crystal ball) and load a copy of the pub. Looking in the back room I see a bunch of standard henchmen, -women, and -things waiting to be hired, but none of them are exactly optimal for taking on the twentieth-level lawful-evil chatelaine of Castle Storm. Hmm, better bump one of ’em, I decide. Let’s go for munchkin muscle. “Pinky? I’d like you to drop a quarter of a million experience points on Grondor the Red, then up-level him. Can you do that?” Grondor is the biggest bad-ass half-orc fighter-for-hire in Bosch. This ought to turn him into a one-man killing machine.
0|< D00D.
I can tell he’s really getting into the spirit of this. The barmaid sashays up to me and winks. “Hiya, cute thing. (1) Want to buy a drink? (2) Want to ask questions about the town and its surroundings? (3) Want to talk about anything else?”
I sigh. “Gimme (1).”
“Okay. (1) G’bye, big boy. (2) Anything else?”
“(1). Get me my beer then piss off.”
One of these days I’ll get around to wiring a real conversational ’bot into the non-player characters, but right now they’re still a bit—
There’s a huge sound from the back room, sort of a creaking graunching noise. I blink and look round, startled. After a moment I realize it’s the sound of a quarter of a million experience points landing on a—
“Pinky, what exactly did you up-level Grondor the Red to?”
LVL 15 C0RTE5AN. LOL!!!
“Oh, great,” I mutter. I’ll swear that’s not a real character class. A fat, manila envelope appears on the bar in front of me. It’s Grondor’s contract, and from the small print it looks like I’ve hired myself a fifteenth-level half-orc rent-boy for muscle. Which is annoying because I only get one henchthug per game. “One of these days your sense of humor is going to get me into really deep trouble, Pinky,” I say as Grondor flounces across the rough wooden floor towards me, a vision of ruffles, bows, pink satin, and upcurved tusks. He’s clutching a violet club in one gnarly, red-nailed hand, and he seems to be annoyed about something.
After a brief and uncomfortable interlude that involves running on the walls and ceiling, I manage to calm Grondor down, but by then half the denizens of the tavern are broken and bleeding. “Grondor pithed,” he lisps at me. “But Grondor thtill kickth ath. Whoth ath you wanting kicked?”
“The wicked witch of the west. You up for it?”
He blows me a kiss.
LOL!!! ROFL!!! whoops the peanut gallery.
“Okay, let’s go.”
NUMEROUS ALARUMS, EXCURSIONS, AND OPEN-PALM five-punch death attacks later, we arrive at Castle Storm. Sitting out in front of the cruel-looking portcullis, topped by the dismembered bodies of the sorceress’s enemies and not a few of her friends, I open up the laptop. A miniature thundercloud hovers overhead, raining on the turrets and bouncing lightning bolts off the (currently inanimate) gargoyles.
“Connect me to Lady Storm’s boudoir mirror.” I say. (I try to make it come out as an inscrutable monkish mutter rather than intoning, but it doesn’t work properly.)
“Hello? Who is this?” I see her face peering out of the depths of my screen, like an unholy cross between