Chapter 29.4 Tom (Book II)
For the duration of Walter's pendulous ride through the camp at Këyvf's side, he could not stop grinning, so excited was he by the prospect of Thoolia's work. He only half noticed when Këyvf set him on his feet outside the command tent and, with a nod, sent the two guards back to their previous posts. Këyvf then pulled back one tent flap far enough to lean in. Through the open flap, Walter could hear her say, "Sir, I have Walter, father of Reeve."After a moment, she pulled her head back out, tied back first one flap and then the other, and waved Walter in, stepping in herself after him.
Walter hadn't noticed while outside the tent, but once inside, he quickly realized that the structure had been erected around a large pine tree, the bottom half dozen or so limbs of which had been sawed off. Circling the tree's trunk were tables and chairs standing upon heavy rugs that served as a makeshift floor. Striding toward Walter from a far table was Tom. His braided beard was tucked into his belt, from which hung the smithing hammer Walter associated so closely with the dwarf. Tom's solid-red eyes were fixed upon Walter, who happily felt none of the terror that had so unnerved him during their first meeting.
"The Wurmslayer," Thomanji'yheri said as he reached Walter and cuffed him on the shoulder hard enough to cause Walter to sidestep. "Well met. We did not know you had returned to Thhia. And during times most troubling. Come, sit. Let us compare reckonings." Thomanji'yheri turned to gesture toward a pair of chairs flanking a small table, next to which sat a large flat-topped chest. To Këyvf he said, "After speaking with Walter, I'll need Yorrin. It's urgent, so fetch him for me yourself. And the guards of yours outside, they've been at station after a long day's march. Send them to fetch their replacements. I can look after myself for the few minutes you're all gone. Close the flaps on your way out."
Settling into the chair to which Tom had directed him, Walter looked at Tom and then Këyvf, registering on the latter's scarred face a fleeting look Walter found hard to decipher. Maybe frustration? Or something else? Këyvf glanced at Walter, and Walter realized he'd overlooked the most obvious explanation. Charisma like mine is hard to walk away from, he thought.
After a silent moment, Këyvf did manage to walk away, first giving Thomanji'yheri a curt "Sir," then turning and leaving the tent. When she was just outside, Walter could hear her bark a command to her guards before disappearing from view as the flaps fell shut once more.
"Very good," Thomanji'yheri said, taking the seat across from Walter and leaning forward. He gestured to a wide goblet that sat on the table. "Drink. And tell me of your travels. I take it Reavyr is with you?"
Concluding with some regret that no food would be accompanying the drink being offered, Walter nodded gratefully at Tom, took up the goblet, and took a long drink. Walter was pleased, and somewhat relieved, to find that the fruity beverage paired reasonably with the various organic aromas wafting up from his still uncleaned duster. After a long draft that nearly downed the entire serving, Walter wiped his lips on his forearm and returned the goblet to the table. "Quite delicious, Tom. Many thanks for that."
When Walter's focus shifted from the deposited goblet back to the dwarf sitting across from him, Thomanji'yheri was sitting unusually far back in his chair.
Trying to remember what exactly Tom had asked of him, Walter said, "We haven't been here all that long, at least not in comparison to our last visit." Walter chuckled. "That was a longer stay than anyone had planned, of course." Walter shook his head. "I don't think Reeve or I ever told you about all that happened before we met you, did we? Some, I'm sure. But all of it?"
Thomanji'yheri shook his head stiffly. His hands gripped the ends of the armrests with white knuckles.
Sensing that Tom wasn't entirely at ease, Walter leaned back in his own chair to match his host's body language, but he found the chair too deep for his halfling character. He took a moment to scoot himself farther back in the chair until he could lean comfortably against the backrest, his legs straight in front of him along the cushion.
"It was quite the adventure," Walter said. "And I was thrown in at the deep end, you know. I had a little tussle with a…a Goblin I think it was, only a few minutes after our arrival." Walter shook his head again, somewhat incredulous at all that had happened to him during that very first adventure. When he stopped shaking his head, he was surprised to find that the room kept moving before him. Frowning, he gripped his head in both hands as Reeve would sometimes do to steady his exploration of his UI, but the room around him kept moving. "Oh, dear," Walter said. "I…I think I shouldn't have had that much juice on an empty stomach."
"Tell…me…," Thomanji'yheri said with significant effort to form each word, "where is…Reeve."
"Reeve?" Walter said, opening his eyes wide and then squinting in an attempt to reset his malfunctioning senses. "Reeve…"
"Where…is…she," Thomanji'yheri said.
Through his confusion, Walter managed to register the strain in Tom's voice.
"Tom? Tommy? Tommy-tom? Tom-ben-jerry?" Walter said. The room wasn't settling into place. If anything, it was moving with increasing vigor.
"Reeve," Thomanji'yheri said forcefully, pulling himself forward in his chair despite what appeared to be physical discomfort caused by the action.
"Reeve?" Walter said. Where was Reeve? He couldn't remember, which caused a feeling of panic. He activated his UI and nearly fell out of his chair as it expanded to blanket his field of view. Reeve, he thought. She must be there somewhere among the text that swirled before him. "Why on Earth is there so much swiling? Swiling? Sirling? Swirling." Walter said out loud. It suddenly struck him as a very important question.
From within a palm-sized leather case on his belt, Thomanji'yheri pulled something small, thin, and shiny. Walter thought it looked like a pushpin or a straightened paper clip. Or needle.
"I do not like needlels, Tom," Walter said, before leaning over the armrest next to him to expel the contents of his stomach onto the floor. So much juice, he thought. The juice is loose.
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The juice.
Walter sat erect so quickly that he nearly threw himself against the opposing armrest.
Thomanji'yheri stood from his chair and, with effort that suggested boots of lead, took one slow step around the table toward Walter.
"Tom! I think there's something wrong with your juice, Tom. Tasted OK, but maybe it's gone off? May want to have it checked out." Within the swimming panels of Walter's UI, a line of text appeared. Walter squinted his eyes, which did nothing to improve his view of the virtual overlay, and tried to find the new addition. Pantry Log. No, that's Party Log. Stats panel. Combat Log. Combat Log? I haven't been in combat this visit, Walter thought.
You are drugged with Vero Serum. If left untreated, the affliction will last for ten minutes.
Thomanji'yheri took another step toward Walter.
Drugged? Walter felt a new level of dizziness as his swimming vision was joined by a feeling of dread in the region of his just emptied stomach. Drugged? All he'd had was the juice, and Tom had given him that. Walter saw another change in his UI, this one more subtle. His eyes searched wildly through the information in front of him. Again he found the Combat Log. Its single entry had been updated.
Thomanji'yheri drugs you with Vero Serum. If left untreated, the affliction will last for ten minutes.
Thomanji'yheri. Tom. Walter's focus shifted from the Combat Log to the grimacing dwarf taking another forced step toward him. Two more and he'd be standing over Walter.
Tom would never drug Walter, he thought. Tom had risked his life for them. It couldn't have been Tom.
The text in the Combat Log updated.
A Level 18 Doppelgänger (Thomanji'yheri) drugs you with Vero Serum. If left untreated, the affliction will last for ten minutes.
The doppelgänger took another step toward Walter.
Walter saw that what Tom was holding might not be a needle, but it could serve the same purpose. A droplet of silver liquid hung from its tip.
Walter screamed a high-pitched scream that, perhaps because of the story he'd been recounting only seconds before, caused a flashback to his first moments in the game.
The doppelgänger paused, midstep.
"Tom! Stop! Right there!"
The dwarf's grimace twisted into pain. "I must…"
"No!" Walter shouted. "You mustn't, whatever it is!"
The doppelgänger raised the needlelike object as though he might throw it at Walter like a dart.
The black and green hummingbird appeared between Walter and the doppelgänger. It tilted its head and looked intently at Walter in the way hummingbirds could, which had always unnerved Walter. Its long, thin bill reminded him of the needle held aloft just behind it.
"Ehhhh," Walter said through a new wave of nausea, "little flying things are not my thing…"
The hummingbird darted toward the ceiling. Ignoring the brief, odd interruption, the doppelgänger finished his half-completed step and aimed the silver object at Walter's chest. Walter's eyes, meanwhile, had followed the flight of the hummingbird toward the ceiling. And so, unlike the doppelgänger, Walter saw the hummingbird explode in size, sprouting gangly legs and tail as it did, and then, gripping its question-mark-shaped stick, plummet, wingless, toward the doppelgänger's head.
Walter screamed again. The black green monkey struck the top of Thomanji'yheri's head with its stick and then kicked against the dwarf's back to jump across the room toward a far table. The leadenness of his motions suddenly gone, Thomanji'yheri fell forward, his chin hitting the back of Walter's chair and his expansive chest crushing Walter against the seat, which temporarily silenced Walter's scream. Thomanji'yheri's fumbled to push himself up off the chair, unsilencing Walter's scream as he did, and spun to face the assailant he'd not yet seen. Upon completing his ungainly spin, Thomanji'yheri only had time to register that the monkey had jumped back toward him, and then its staff connected with his cheek, it kicked him in the chest, and he was knocked back onto Walter. Walter's scream was again silenced.
"Ye little—oiiff!" Thomanji'yheri's roar was interrupted by a carved wooden hippopotamus striking him on the bridge of the nose. He jumped to his feet.
"Hhhhhhuuuuuuuuu," Walter's desperate inhalation was, for a moment, the loudest sound in the room.
Tom barged his way directly toward the monkey, overturning the table as he went, and Walter saw that the silvery needly thing Tom had been holding had been left stuck into the armrest of Walter's chair. Walter plucked the object from the armrest, turned the sharp end forward, and, wide-eyed, vision still spinning, UI spread across his entire field of view, threw it at Tom's back. The projectile sailed toward the ceiling, well above the doppelgänger.
"Oh, shoot," Walter said.
Near the high point of its arcing flight, the hummingbird appeared and intercepted the dart, grasped it in its bill, and swooped down behind the doppelgänger, who was casting about for the now-missing monkey. Hearing a hum and feeling a gentle breeze on the back of its neck, the doppelgänger turned and felt a prick in its bearded cheek.
Alpine Capuchin (Huitzilopochtli Clan) pricks a Level 18 Doppelgänger (Thomanji'yheri) with a silver lancet (Dragə Venom laced) for 1 point of damage.
The doppelgänger slumped sideways onto the chair tha stood next to him, which tipped, sending both crashing to the rug beneath.
"That…that…," Walter said, panting between breaths. Aware that the serum would continue to affect him for several more minutes, he nevertheless tried to collect his thoughts. "OK, first, let's park the UI…" He tried to physically push the various components of the UI, realized that his thoughts were not nearly as well collected as he'd hoped, and gripped his head on either side with his hands. "Mentally…" The UI receded, and he groaned with a new wave of nausea. "Baby steps, Walter. Baby steps."
The hummingbird blurred in Walter's peripheral vision, and by the time Walter looked in its direction, the capuchin had materialized, squatting on the trunk next to where the table had originally stood.
"Uh, hey, fella," Walter said. "You're the one with the stick. Walter squinted at the oddly shaped purple patch of fur on the capuchin's otherwise green chest. "Ahhhh. That's a hummingbird shape! Well, that all makes more sense now."
The capuchin made eye contact with Walter, took two steps back so that its feet stood at the rear edge of the trunk, and reached forward to grasp the front edge of the lid. It then made a couple of grunting sounds and shifted its weight to hang off the rear of the trunk. The lid began to open slowly, then quickly as leverage and load shifted. Once momentum could be trusted to finish the job, the capuchin leaped free, waited for the lid to arrest itself in a nearly horizontal position behind the open trunk, and hopped into the interior of the lid. Looking at Walter, it made a trilling sound and banged its stick on the inside edge of the open trunk.
Walter sat in his chair, uncertain what to do and whether to engage with the capuchin whom he was fairly certain he'd previously rendered unconscious and left hanging in a tree in the woods.
The capucin again banged its stick on the inside edge of the open trunk.
"Well," Walter said under his breath, "I'm pretty sure I know what it wants me to do." He scooched his bottom forward until his legs could hang off the front of the chair and hopped down. He took an unsteady step toward the open trunk and began to swing one leg up so that he could step over and in.
The capuchin emitted a high-pitched call and pointed its stick at Walter. Walter froze. The capuchin leaned forward and looked into the trunk.
Raised leg resting on the lip of the trunk, Walter leaned forward awkwardly, feeling like he was executing the kind of maneuver he thought ballerinas might in rooms with mirrored walls along which ran bars, and looked in.
Almost completely shrouded by her soiled black cloak, Leaf's body lay crumpled and lifeless at the bottom of the trunk.