James A. Hunter
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Wasteland Warlords Episode 2 - 13 Mission Accomplished
🕑 Added 2022-10-18 17:00:14 +0000 UTCIn spite of its collision with the Gearhead, the dune buggy was still in working order. Mostly. But Joe fixed everything that was wrong with a little elbow grease, a bucketful of Magick, and his handy-dandy, all-purpose screwdriver.
In next to no time, their little party covered the distance between Smilerfax’s dungeon and the Sooq, though they had to skirt around the outside edges of cities to avoid streets clogged with abandoned cars and falling in with neglected potholes. It was just coming on true night when they pulled into the traveling market’s campground.
Most of the dungeon retirees were busy unrolling tarps and putting security curses over their stalls and tables for the night. The place looked like a city-wide garage sale from a fairy tale village. Clay just wished he’d been in time to find the grumpy old man with the magical equivalent of the dogeared paperback collection.
The sentries weren’t happy at the late hour they’d come calling. Begrudgingly, they directed Clay, Alex, and Joe to wait at the tiki bar lit with strings of pineapple shaped lights while they notified the Great Lady Tajira.
“Where do you think they’re holding Griff?” Joe wondered out loud, casting an eye down the rows of RVs and campers. He bent over and scratched absently at one leg. He’d swapped out his fancy new armor for his jorts, tin pants, and flannel. He loved his new armor to pieces, but Clay also suspected that armor was hotter than hell in the California heat. “I admit I was a little jealous about the whole drinking thing, but I didn’t actually want the old guy to be suffering while we were gone.”
“Ten to one all the old lady monsters were fighting over who got to keep him,” Clay said.
“Looks like Tajira’s been holding him personally,” Alex said, nodding over Clay’s shoulder. “And like he enjoyed himself just fine.”
The elderly cat woman and the old weed had come around the corner of the massive battle wagon. Griff was slightly disheveled, but definitely not in a tortured-prisoner way. His wiry white hair was sticking up on one side, his eye patch was off-center, and he’d missed one shirt button. It was as if somebody had woken him from a sound sleep in a luxurious bed and he’d thrown on his clothes as fast as he could.
Tajira, on the other hand, was as cool and composed as if she were headed to a lady’s luncheon. Not a whisker was out of place, and she didn’t have a wrinkle in her cotton capris or pastel shirt.
“Oh, I get it—holding-holding.” Joe grinned and elbowed Alex. “Doing the walk of shame, Griff ol’ buddy?”
“You want to keep a hold on that tongue, boy.” Griff fixed his piercing blue eye on Joe. “It’s a mite late to shoot a fool down for impugnin’ a lady’s honor.”
“See,” Joe said, “I told you guys that was how he talked.”
“Glad to see y’all came back in one piece.” Tajira took her place behind the bar, propping her elbows languidly on the top. “Am I to assume this means you brought me a shiny new quest item?”
Clay dug the saltshaker out of his ruck.
“One Greater Saltshaker of the Troll Gourmet.” He unrolled it from the shirt he’d wound it in for safekeeping and held it up, but didn’t hand it over. “It’s yours—as soon as we get the Camera Obscura.” They might not need the Camera Obscura for the Gearhead anymore, but it would definitely come in handy as extra security when they snuck into Bacon Bits’s dungeon. There was only one rule in the Wasteland, ‘You keep what you kill,’ but if there was a second rule, it was never look a gift horse in the mouth. They’d earned that damned trinket and Clay intended to make sure they got what was theirs.
“This is not your first handover.” Tajira’s face stretched into a feline smile. “All righty.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out an old fashioned lens and box-style camera the size of a wallet, steampunked out with brass gears and shining cherry wood. “One magical spy-jammer, the promised partnership of the Sooq, and the return of one handsome silver fox”—she winked at Griff—“in as good or better shape than you left him.”
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Congratulations! You have completed the quest Trading Rights!
By hook or by crook, you have successfully managed to secure the Greater Saltshaker of the Troll Gourmet. As a reward, your party has received Camera Obscura and the ability to trade for goods and services at the Sooq. Additionally, buying and selling prices within the Sooq are improved by 15%. Your travelling companion Griff has also been returned to your care, seemingly no worse for the wear…
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Griff colored slightly. He plopped his hat on his head and cleared his throat, studying the bar top.
Clay took pity on the old weed and initiated the swap. The Camera was lighter than he’d expected given the construction materials and seemed to pulse with a mystical energy.
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Camera Obscura
Durability: 27/49
Properties: Grants a 30-ft circle of invisibility, hiding user and all allies from enemy spy engines, scrying technology, and underlings for up to 20 minutes per charge.
To activate Camera Obscura, press the shutter button.
Charges: 4/6
To charge Camera Obscura, user must kill an elemental chimera of at least level 1, attach a rune of power, or plug in to a 110-volt electrical outlet.
“What you see isn’t always what you get.”
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“Pleasure doing business with you,” Clay said, nodding at the cat lady and tucking the Camera Obscura into a pouch on his pocket.
Bacon Bits clapped her tiny hooves. “Finally, we can return to my dungeon and show that fool he had no idea who he was cursing!”
“Y’all aren’t going to run off and leave a lady to test her new acquisition all by her lonesome, now are you?” Tajira dragged out a bottle of tequila and her blender from under the bar. “At least stay long enough for a salty margarita.”
Joe slapped his hand on the bar. “Sold.”
“But I want to show Alex the treasure hoard and all of my favorite dungeon passages,” Bacon Bits said.
“We just completed a quest,” Joe said. “This is the prime time to rehydrate. If we don’t take a second to wet our whistles, we could all die.” His eyes widened to convey the seriousness of the threat. “We’ve got to refill our electrolytes.”
Alex snorted. “Not sure margaritas are the best way to do that.”
“Are you kidding me?” Joe said. “All that salt and lime? They’re a wasteland miracle drink.”
Clay glanced over his shoulder at the campers.
“It wouldn’t hurt to rest up a little while and hit it hard tomorrow,” he said. This would be the first time in weeks they wouldn’t have the possibility of an attack from Gearhead hanging over their heads like an executioner’s ax. A full nights’ rest sounded like paradise. “We’ve been going so hard lately, a break is probably in order. Besides, if Tajira wouldn’t mind, I’d like a chance to look around tomorrow when the Sooq opens back up.”
“I don’t mind at all” She dumped a load of ice into her blender, then dropped in a whole lime. “It’s never too early to use your Official Trading Partner discount.”
“Oh, and maybe I can find some good deals on lawnmower parts,” Joe said.
Bacon Bits’s tiny pig shoulders slumped with defeat.
“Hey, I am really looking forward to seeing your dungeon,” Alex said, rubbing the teacup pig’s back. “But Clay’s right, we’ll be a lot stronger and ready to kick major rival dungeon lord ass if we take some down time now. Besides, if you liked the Blue Lagoon, you’re going to love a margarita.”
The pig grunted. “Though I despise the delay, it would be quite rude to leave without tasting the revelry of Dungeon Lord Tajira’s salty margaritas.”
“Thank you for the concession—” Tarija graced her with a catlike grin that seemed strangely amused. “—Dungeon Lord Bacon Bits.”
“Hot dog!” Joe whooped. “Mix ’em up, bartender, and I’ll regale you guys with the latest exploits of the wasteland-renowned Jaeger Squad. We begin our story with a chapter I like to call, ‘How to Kill an Incant in Seventeen Simple Steps.’”
Clay shook his head. So much for keeping a lid on that particular route to becoming an Incant.
After a few rounds of the best margaritas any of them had ever had—no doubt thanks to the Saltshaker’s powers of perfect seasoning—and several of Joe’s increasingly elaborate versions of their triumph over Lynes, Tajira allowed them to set up camp in the shadow of the battlewagon. As exhausted and eager to get a full night’s sleep as they all were, however, the Jaeger Squad didn’t immediately disperse and hit the sack.
Instead, they stayed up a while after the cat woman retired, hanging around the little fire at the center of their tents. Clay and Alex leaned against one another, not talking, but staring companionably into the flames. Griff drew a whetstone along the notched blade of a battle-worn short sword. Now and then, Chonk used his hedge trimmer to cut pieces from a dead creosote bush and handed them to Joe to toss into the fire.
Bacon Bits sat half-asleep on Alex’s lap, slurring boozily about her dungeon.
“And the yard and street surrounding it are overgrown with stinging vines that bite and paralyze low-level mobs. So many pretty flowers that give off the most delightful scent of charred flesh…” The little pig’s blinks slowly became longer and longer. “And the roof has what I believe your people call a widow’s walk, where I was sometimes allowed to fly up and look at the stars.” She stretched out her chipped hoof and nestled her head on it like a pillow. A trickle of drool formed at the corner of her mouth. Dreamily she grunted, “I shall be such a mighty dungeon lord someday.”
Clay felt like somebody had thrown a bucket of ice water on him.
“Shall?” he said. Alex and Joe both looked at him like he was crazy. “She said she shall become a mighty dungeon lord someday. As in she’s not now.”
Bacon Bits squeaked and sat bolt upright. “What? No! I would never have said—”
“Dude, you totally did!” Joe gasped. Chonk stopped cutting another branch midway to chitter in agreement. “Clay never mishears that grammar police stuff.”
“And what was that about ‘allowed to fly up and look at the stars?’” Clay asked.
“I—what I said was—that is—” Bacon Bits jumped to the ground, whirling back and forth so she could look at each of them. “Now see here, puny humans, what you must understand about dungeon lords is—”
“May as well come clean, lass,” Griff drawled, his single blue eye sparkling with the dying firelight. “Miss Tajira and me already figured it out. Earth folks take a little longer, but it’s only a matter of time ’fore they catch on, too.”
Bacon Bits hung her head, and a big tear dripped off her snout. “Yes, I can see that it is time. Please, Alex, do not be disappointed in me,” she snuffled. “I am still very powerful. You will see when I am returned to my form as a Great Blue Wyrm.”
Alex frowned down at the teacup pig. “I think you’d better start talking.”
“You must understand, In the world of dungeons, power and strength are everything; I thought it must be so with your people as well,” Bacon Bits said in a wavering voice. “I know now that I was mistaken. You are not only strong, but kind and discerning. Alex is my Great Blue Wyrm hatchling sister from another egg. Clay, you are so clever and yet so strangely altruistic that I cannot at all understand you. Even you, Joe, you gigantic dolt! You, too, have wormed your way into my cardiovascular tissue.”
The little pig took a shuddering breath. “You see, I am not the great and powerful dungeon lord you perceived me to be when first we met.”
“I didn’t perceive you like that.”
“Shut up, Joe.” Clay looked at Bacon Bits. “So you’re just a regular talking teacup pig?” Damn. Put that on the list of things he never thought he’d say before coming to the IZ.
“Hardly!” she snorted, puffing back up with draconic offense. “I am the Great Blue Wyrm. It is only that I have never run my own dungeon. I was the Floor Boss of the Haunt Topic, second only in the pecking order to the Voodoo Dungeon Lord himself.”
“So, if a rival didn’t depose you, what happened?”
“Creative differences,” she said with a sniff. “My vision for the dungeon was far better than that fool of a Lizardman’s, but rather than kill me when I challenged him, as is befitting and honorable, he cursed me into this humiliating body. All my powers, all my strengths and abilities, forced to waste away, locked inside this disgrace for the rest of my existence!”
“If you call that existing,” Joe said. “I don’t know how I’d live without my Incant powers.”
“Probably exactly like you did for the last thirty-odd years,” Alex said. She turned to Bacon Bits. “We have a rule in the Jaeger Squad—”
Joe crossed his arms. “If this is the inconclusive grammar rule, I want it on record that I still protest.”
“Not now, Joe!” she and Clay both said at the same time.
“Our main rule is that we’re completely transparent with each other.” Alex looked from Clay to Joe, then back at Bacon Bits. “What happened to you sounds like it sucks, and your dungeon lord seems like somebody we might be able to take down a notch or two. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we want to help for lots of reasons. But going forward, if you can’t be one hundred percent honest with us, you can’t be part of the team.”
Bacon Bits’s curly tail wagged and her ears perked up.
“Oh, Alex, I do so want to be part of the team!” She trotted over and hopped into Alex’s arms. “I have never been a part of a squad before! I vow I will not lie to any of you again!” She looked from Clay to Alex. “To tell the truth, it feels much better without the weight of this elaborate tale to keep track of. And as long as we are confessing things, it is important that I tell you all, my former Dungeon Lord is much more deadly than I at first let on.”
Clay frowned. “You lied about his level, too?”
“No, he was indeed a level 20 when I escaped,” Bacon Bits said. “However, as a Voodoo Shaman, his most fearsome ability allows him to capture the souls of his enemies and enslave them as his unwilling servants using odd little dolls he calls ZombiePops.” She snuffled contentedly as she snuggled deeper into Alex’s arms. “Well, good night and pleasant dreams, squadmates!”
For several seconds, there was nothing but stunned silence in their camp, broken only by the crackle of a branch Chonk hefted into the fire.
“Well, that settles it. We’re going to need a new plan of attack,” Clay said.
Griff nodded. “Always a good idea.”
Alex dragged her hand down her face. “And some sleep. All this honesty wore me out.”
“Don’t worry, guys,” Joe said as they broke up and headed for their tents. “No Voodoo Daddy is too big or bad for the Jaeger Squad.”
“If that was a 21st century classical music reference, you’re fired,” Clay muttered.
“Whatever, you know I’m hilarious. All I meant was whatever comes at us, we can handle it. We’ve got this.” With this, Joe ducked into his tent, humming an off-kilter version of Go Daddy-o.
As Clay climbed into the sleeping bag next to his wife, he hoped like hell his brother was right. Tomorrow they would lay their immortal souls on the line against the most dangerous creature the IZ had thrown at them yet. With any luck, Clay would get them all through it alive and come out an Incant himself… Without it, the Jaeger Squad would become more fertilizer for the wasteland.
