Heartworm

A carriage. It looked to hold about four people inside, with one man outside of the carriage leading the horses. Simple enough, I’d use the same routine that I always did, it was the fastest way to get in and out while checking each of the people in the group. I wasn’t exactly the best actor around, but I didn’t need to be that good if I was done in a minute or two.

“EXCUSE ME!” I yelled as I emerged from the brush on the side of the main road. I waved both of my hands back and forth as I ran towards the carriage, I knew that if I ran directly in the path of the horses, the group would be forced to stop. Sure enough, the man pulled back on the reins and looked down at me with a beautiful blend of frustration and concern. It looked like he was swirling the two emotions around in his mouth to decide upon one of them before he spoke.

“My pet sqor just jumped into your carriage! Please, you gotta let me get him back. He's the last gift my parents gave to me before they died!” Crocodile tears usually made short work of a group. There was only so much you could do to deny a crying 16 year old girl looking for her pet rodent.

“A SQOR IN THE CARRIAGE?!” I heard a scream from inside of the carriage, followed by the immediate evacuation of the people inside. Four screaming women nearly tumbled out of the carriage in their hurry. They looked to be some kind of noble women based on the eccentric dresses of all sorts of vibrant colors they were adorned with. What noble women were doing on their way to Thrieve, I had no idea. It didn’t matter much to me as long as they weren’t monsters in disguise. I moved towards the women, my mouth already opening to speak.

“It’s okay! I just-”

“NOT TO WORRY, MY LADIES!!!”

That voice. There’s no fucking way. From out of the bushes, the same woman who had stolen my bread this very morning walked towards me, giving all sorts of pleasantries to the noblewomen as she did so.

“No need to fret about the loose sqor out and about! Brenda and I here have to deal with the little rodent escaping all the time, he’s quite harmless, trust me!”

I stiffened as the woman placed an arm around my shoulder. My eyes twitched in annoyance as I looked down at her with a blazing fury in my eyes. Brenda? The audacity that this woman had to interrupt my plan to act like we were some kind of team, on top of giving me a fake name to fit her story. A stupid fake name, as well. The curly haired girl looked to me as if to ask me to lean into her story. With how the noblewomen were now staring at me in leveled amazement, it didn’t give me much options other than to play along for the moment. Once I had confirmed that none of these people were a Deathless, I could drop the act and beat the shit out of this little thief.

“Yep. That’s me… Brenda. I just need to find my pet sqor and I’ll be out of your hair. He’s only a baby, so he’s hard to keep track of.” I gave a weak smile and turned to look at the man who sat at the front of the carriage. He did not look happy, but rather than being outright aggressive, he looked more defensive. Maybe he was waiting for us to give him a reason to attack?

“I don’t care about your fucking rodent just get him out of our carriage!” One of the women, who I believe was the first one to scream inside of the carriage earlier, was wiping her hands on her dress, like even the idea of a small furry rodent being around her was already making her dirty.

“I’ll check out here, you can check in the carriage, stump.” I lazily dismissed the woman to work on something else, hoping I could keep her out of my way as long as possible. “Oh but of course, Brenda!” The curly haired girl emphasized the name as a jab back towards me, clearly upset about the name that I had chosen for her. Nonetheless, she hopped into the carriage happily, which begged the question of why this troublemaker had intervened in this in the first place.

Whatever it was, I wanted nothing to do with it. I walked up to the first of the four women, pulling out a small treat from my bag. It was just a prop, of course, I wasn’t actually strange enough to keep a tree climbing rodent as some kind of pet. But it allowed me to keep up the act easier as I moved around the woman. “Here, buddy! Sorry, sometimes he finds his way into clothing because he thinks it’s safer. He’s just scared, that’s all!” The woman was essentially paralyzed with fear at the idea of a small sqor latched somewhere onto her dress. Thankfully, she had short enough hair that when I moved behind her I could see her upper back clearly. I hadn’t thought about it at first, but the women wearing these expensive dresses made my job a lot easier as each of them had open backs in some kind of unified style. The first woman was clear, so I began to move on to the next.

I repeated the same tactic on two more of the women, leaving just the last one, the one that seemed most concerned about the loose rodent. As I approached her, she made her feelings oh so clear. “If you find that fucking tree rat on me I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!” Her defensiveness was starting to make me nervous. Was she trying to make it hard for me to check her back? The woman wore her long wavy hair down, meaning that I would need to find a way to move it to the side to check underneath.

“Not to worry! Our little baby Burger has a gentle heart!” I stifled a groan as the thief stepped out of the carriage to comfort the woman. She moved towards the women, kneeling chivalrously in front of the woman and offering her hand out towards the woman. With a deep confusion that I sympathized with, the woman extended her hand towards the short woman, revealing an elegant golden bracelet that was matched by a golden ring on the woman’s ring finger. “Burger?” The noblewoman asked with her eyebrows raised about as far as humanly possible.

“It’s our pet’s name! I swear to you m’lady that Burger will not bring you any harm if we find him hiding in your dress.” I shot a glare at the freckled menace, watching as the woman deftly palmed the woman’s bracelet that she had unlatched while ‘heroically’ kissing the top of her hand. It dawned on me like an anvil to the skull. She was robbing the carriage! I clenched my mouth shut to avoid yelling at the woman. If I outed her as a thief, my own credentials would come crumbling down with hers. I doubted the man at the front of the carriage, who was clearly their guard, would take well to that. I widened my eyes at the woman to warn her that I saw her tricks. She just stuck her tongue out at me in return.

I moved around towards the back of the woman, moving the treat around in my hand like a kind of pseudo-radar for the non-existent animal. As I did so, I saw the gluten gremlin follow me behind the woman. I gently brushed aside the woman’s hair to look at her upper back. I was relieved to see it was blank, but that relief was immediately replaced by even more concern as I saw the little klepto reach for the necklace around the woman’s neck. I knew that I needed to act quickly to stop her from stealing even more jewelry, so I slammed my foot down onto hers before she was able to unlatch the necklace.

“Pebblestink!” The woman squeaked, causing the woman we were examining to scream in response. “OH MY GOD IT'S IN MY DRESS!” Before I could tell her that everything was, in fact, fine, she had already started freaking out. It was like watching a limbless human trapped in the center of a tornado. She was attracting quite a bit of attention. Not to mention that the guard on the carriage had now stepped down onto the ground and drawn his sword, like the thief and I had attacked her. Gods this was falling apart quickly.

“I got him! I got Burger it’s okay lady!” The short woman yelled loud enough for the screaming woman to hear and freeze. I, on the other hand, was now one second away from hitting the bread thief. Why would she say that?! We didn’t have a fucking sqor to explain ourselves.

The guard walked up to the two of us, his sword still drawn but resting at his side. In a gruff tone, he said “show me that fucking Burger! You had better have a good reason to cause such distress to a duchess!” A duchess, huh? I couldn’t believe I was about to be cut down because of a fake fucking sqor named Burger made up by a woman who couldn’t mind her own business.

“Here he is!” The kleptomaniac said, opening her palms to reveal… a small brown furry rodent with a proportionately huge tail that was as big as him despite still fitting in the palm of a hand. How the fuck did she have a sqor with her?! “Aren’t you a good Burger, yes you are!” I watched in complete shock as she tickled the chin of the rodent and planted a sweet kiss on his wet nose. Was that some kind of illusion? Had she had a fucking sqor stuffed in her sleeve this whole time?!

“I-I…fine. You’ve got your pet back. Ladies, back in the carriage.” I could tell that the man was just as shocked as I was, but it was hard to deny the proof that was currently squeaking in the woman’s hands. I was so confused, that I sat in amazement as the women loaded back into the carriage and started off down the main road once more. Once they had gotten far enough down the road, the woman let the rodent go, and I watched as it scampered back into the bushes and up a distant tree.

“Thanks for the help with that score! Bummer I didn’t get that necklace, but the bracelet was a big win.” The woman happily chirped as she sat next to me, turning to flash me a bright smile.

“You’re fucking crazy! You pulled me into a Gods damned robbery!”

“Gosh, I thought you’d be happy! You did half the work with that excellent distraction! It’s only fair you get half the rewards, Brenda!” She reached into her bag and dumped a small pile of ornate jewelry onto the ground in front of me. The gears in my mind ground to a halt with a screeching sound.

“What?”

“It’s your half, silly!”

“This is… you robbed them! I’m not taking this!”

“Ew, are you a Headriss bootlicker?”

“A- What? No! What does that-”

“Oh my gosh you didn’t know!” She squealed and rolled onto her back in the center of the main road. She began laughing with a kind of fervor that made an embarrassed blush burn onto my cheeks. Why was she laughing at me?

“That was the Duchess of Headriss! She’s a cunt to all of her people, so I thought it would be funny to rob her! I thought that’s what you were doing as well, no?”

I just stared at her. That was the Duchess of Headriss? I had never been there myself, but it wasn’t a closely held secret that she was a good example of rich people being… not great. Far too much money, yet a crippling amount of poverty within her citizens. Not something that seemed to make a lot of sense.

“No! I was checking for Deathless! I’m not a criminal!”

“...so you don’t want your half? It could get you a lot of food! I’m planning on using this to buy some food since my loaf of bread was so unceremoniously dropped in the mud this morning.”

The audacity.

“You mean my loaf of bread! It’s not like I don’t want money to afford food, but stealing for that money isn’t okay!”

“Yeah, okay Brenda. You can lecture me about morals on an empty stomach then. If you feel so inclined you can take your half back to the carriage and give them an amount of money that’s life changing for you, and pocket change for them.”

“My name is Cecelia, and I’m-” I was going to do exactly what she said. I wanted to grab all of the jewelry she had dropped on the ground to run it back towards the carriage. But I was also really hungry feeding off berries in the bushes. I heard nothing but bad things about the Duchess and her exorbitant wealth. Maybe she wouldn’t mind losing a little bit of it?

“You’re what?” She replied blankly, waiting for the end of my sentence that hadn’t arrived. I looked down at the pile of stolen jewelry. It was easily enough to continue paying for my hotel room for another month or two, on top of paying for the food to keep me fed during that time. Without it, I’d be on the street in just under a week.

Ugh, fuck it.

“I’ll take it.”

“Pleasure doing business with ya then, Cecelia. I’m Phern.”

* * * * *

I awoke with a start, the memories of my first meeting with Phern taking the place of a peaceful sleep. The memories themselves were fond when I looked back on them. Two young adults that didn’t have much place within the world they found themselves in. But remembering those days now only served to twist the knife in my gut. I needed to find them.

I nudged Sebil awake, and gave a quick slap to Lucas to wake the two of them up.

“Ow, fuck!”

“Wakey-wakey boys. Time to start looking for Phern and Bandit again.”

The two of them sluggishly pulled themselves out of their sleep, whatever dreams they were having had been cut abruptly short. I moved towards the bathroom of the room to check my armor. I saw Lucas roll out of bed and onto the floor while Sebil twisted himself to hang his legs off of the edge.

“Gods damnnit!”

“Still wet, love?” Sebil’s voice drifted into the bathroom from the bedroom. I groaned and walked back to my bed, a dark cloud of aggravation floating above me. I never responded to Sebil, but he seemed to understand that he was right based on the fact that I hadn’t put on my armor.

“It’s fine. It’s fine. I’ll just go without it.” I grabbed my bag and strapped it around my waist. I hooked my Dahlia’s onto my belt and moved towards the door to the room. “I want the both of you to go to the northern side of the city. I’ll check the south. We’ll cover more distance that way.” Theoretically, we could cover a lot more if Lucas and Sebil searched separately, but I wasn’t willing to let that happen just yet. If Lucas were to find Bandit in captivity, he would most likely just leave her in the cell and not tell us. I heard an affirmative noise from Sebil, and swung the door open to begin my search for the day.

* * * * *

The sound of a door opening riled me from my sleep. Someone had entered the cell? I blinked up towards the figure only to see that it was just a standard guard this time. I suppose that’s good. It meant I wouldn’t be beaten by Markus first thing in the morning. The trays of food were dropped haphazardly onto the ground before the guard slammed the door shut and walked back down the hallway, not even a single word uttered.

I looked towards Phern, who was just waking up from her position curled up at my side. I’m sure it must have been slightly warmer to sleep near someone as opposed to in the corner of the cell where she had been previously. Waking up meant I had fallen asleep, however. Her story time must have done its job well enough if I had drifted off. The last part of the story I remembered her telling me about was when she split jewelry from their improvised heist with Cecelia, and how she had reluctantly agreed to take it after some convincing. It was strange to hear about a time where the two of them didn’t get along. They had this kind of bond that felt like they had just always gotten along, from the birth of the universe.

“You feelin’ better, Bandit?”

“About as comfortable as a flaming tumbleweed.”

“Better than yesterday, at least?”

“A little, yeah.” While I was hesitant to say that I was going good, I was certainly better than last night. It was a struggle to even think straight with the exposed nerves and muscles scattered about my body. This morning, it seemed that most of the exposed injuries had healed enough to provide scar tissue as opposed to open wounds, a definitive improvement.

“How are you doing?”

Phern seemed perplexed by my question, looking me up and down before shooting me a look that said ‘really’? Okay, maybe it was a little strange to focus on her when I was a mangled mess of a Deathless, but it made sense in my head. Once I was out of these restraints I could heal up. If she had any injuries that were left unattended during the fight at the estate, we would have to deal with those.

“I’m fine, bandit. I’m far more worried about you, silly! You’re gonna be in a lot more pain when we melt those chains.”

“Right. Speaking of the chains. Did you do any more thinking about the last ingredient?”

Phern let out a defeated sigh, telling me the answer before she even uttered it. “Not yet, no. We don’t have a lot to work with here.” The curly haired woman reached out towards one of the trays of food. It scraped across the ground with a scintillating symphony of metal on stone. The two of us looked at the gruesome slop of ‘food’ that painted the metal tray. Phern let out a sad laugh at the sight, while my stomach curled in resentment towards the plate of food. I was starving. But the mixture of food contained no meat from what I could smell, meaning it was an inedible slap to the face. Intentional, no doubt. Markus knew that a Deathless's diet was exclusively carnivorous, and he seemed to want to use that against me to mock me. What a funny man. I’d get a good laugh out of threading his spine out through his neck.

“Want me to feed you?” Phern asked quietly, already picking up the tray to motion it towards me. The offer was kind, but I don’t think she had made the realization about the contents of the slop just yet.

“I can’t. None of it is meat.”

“Oh, silly me.” Those words would usually come out much brighter from Phern, it felt somewhat strange to hear her utter such a common phrase with leveled regret. Before I could try to cut in and reassure her that I’d be fine, she was already speaking. “Are you going to go feral again?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Of course I wanted to say I would be fine. But the last time I went feral, I certainly didn’t have much control of myself. Was it worth lying to her to make her feel better?

‘The magical restraint are the only reason you’ve been spared from your hunger, little morsel.’

What do you mean, Lilith?

‘Your hunger is directly tied to your mana, fledgling. Eating replenishing your mana, while regenerating your wounds drains. That is the balance that a Deathless must manage. The more you are wounded without sustenance, the closer you get to becoming feral until you eat again.’

That made sense based on my experiences so far, but it didn’t explain my current situation. I had suffered extensive injuries from Markus, as well as the wounds Lilith accumulated in the fight at the estate. With that amount of injuries, I should have gone feral this morning without having eaten recently.

‘Which is why I said the magical restraints have spared you. Remember when I told you that it pinches the flow of your mana until it’s barely a trickle? It had unintentionally slowed the rate that you grow hungry by slowing the rate you’re consuming mana.’

But then- once they come off, what happens?

‘Your remaining mana will flood every inch of your body to repair itself and you’ll go feral. Unless you can feed before they come off, of course.’

I looked to Phern, the soft yellow eyes comforting me in a gentle concern. It was like she was attempting to hug me just by staring at me, a very Phern thing to do the more I thought about it.

“I’ll be fine, Phern. You don’t need to worry.”

“I know you’re lying. Give it to me straight, button-nose.”

One of these days I would get used to the fact that I couldn’t lie around Phern. I wasn’t even trying to be deceitful, either, I just hated that I would be adding yet another concern onto her plate of worries. I let loose a resigned sigh.

“When the restraints come off, there’s a good chance I’ll go feral if I don’t eat before then.”

“Oh. Okay, well then we give you something to eat, silly!” Phern declared as if with enough enthusiasm she could materialize a meaty meal out of thin air. I appreciate the sentiment, but in a cell without any food but the slop we were served, I doubted I could get my hands on any sustenance before we left.

“Thanks, Phern, but unless I missed the prison cell meat banquet, I don’t see how that’s gonna change anytime soon.”

“Well… I know this sounds kind of bad, but what if you ate yourself? Like… an arm?” She gave a weak smile to meet the horrified expression that flashed across my face. Eating my own fucking arm?! That’s insane!

‘And useless. You gain so sustenance from eating your own… meat. If you could cut off your own arm, eat it, and then grow another, Deathless would have no need to seek food. Tell Phern not to suggest such a foolish idea again.’

I had no intentions of relaying that last part. “Lilith says that it won’t work. I don’t get sustenance from my own body.” The frustrations of my current situation was really starting to cut into me. I was about one day away from being executed by the Council of the very city that I had grown up in, being tortured by the most disgusting excuse for a man, in a lose-lose situation with our breakout plan. I get the restraints off in order to heal my kaleidoscope of injuries across my body while going feral, or I practically limp out of the prison in a bloody heap to escape my execution. I could feel the frustration building hot tears in my eyes, but I refused to cry. In an effort to dispel the oncoming sorrow, I slammed the restraints around my wrists into the ground beneath me, hoping that I could spill my emotions out onto the cold floor.

“FUCK!”

I hadn’t expected there to be such an intense pain in my chest when I swung my arms. The pure surprise of the stabbing sensation ripped the expletive right from my lips like a greedy child. I moved my hands towards my chest to investigate the pain. My fingers trailed across a metallic shard that seemed to be embedded into my muscle, causing even the slight touch of my fingers to make me wince. Phern seemed to notice my pain and subsequent investigation and leaned in towards me to have a look for herself.

“Pebblestink! You’ve got a chunk of Markus’ baton stuck in you!”

“Fucker can’t even improvise a weapon well. Can you pull it out?”

“Isn’t it bad to pull it out? That’ll make you bleed more.”

“I promise you I won’t bleed out, Phern.”

It didn’t take much convincing for her to yank the metal shrapnel directly out of my chest where it lay somewhat hidden close to the armpit of my left arm. The dizzying pain that rocketed through my vision made me want to curl up into a ball and die, but once it passed I could see that Phern was smiling. Phern was grinning, in fact. Why was she so happy?

“You okay there, stump?”

“Intense fury!” She exclaimed, holding the metal shard above her head like it was a prized possession of a king. “It’s not enough for the kind of heat we need, but this is a start! It’s a plan! WE’RE GONNA BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND!” In my current hopeless state, I would take any good news. Phern’s excitement for this new plan gave me a little hope that my life wasn’t ending in 24 hours.

“Maybe don’t yell that in the prison, Phern.”

“Oh, right. JUST KIDDING!”