The Issing Bargain

"Thank you very much!" Larya chirped, leaping off the barge and onto dry land. "We appreciate you being so understanding."

"Lady, they don't pay me to keep people off the continent. Here, steady now—" The ferryman tugged on the netting, preventing the barge catfish from immediately leading his boat back out into the gulf. "If y'all really wanna head

toward

the Emerald Forest, y'all are welcome to. Can't say I endorse it, though." He gave Snatch a questioning look. "Hey, you gonna get off anytime this year, boy?"

Snatch rose slowly, clutching his stomach, and staggered towards the end of the barge. The contents of his stomach seemed to slosh with every step he took.

"Need any help, Snatch?" Lim asked, prancing up behind him. The red-haired catgirl patted him on the shoulder. "You look a bit peaked, what?"

"'m fine," he grumbled, slowly making his way toward the edge of the barge. "Don't touch me or I'll throw up again."

"Not on the boat, boy!"

~ ~ ~ ~

"... and all things settled, turned out the dog had

eaten

the rutting shoe."

"Damn." Larya whistled. "I guess we got off lucky on our visit."

"Or unlucky." Lim winked. "We all had a good time of it, naturally. No revel like a Standing Stones revel."

"Our visit took two hours," Snatch grumbled, scythe out as he watched a curious purple bush nearby, "and at least one and a half hours were spent wasting time instead of getting our questions answered."

Larya giggled, twirling her staff in her hand. She watched the purple bush, too. "All that matters is, they think they can help me with my, um,

problems

. After that whole mess with the Celestials, I pretty much thought I'd be a bimbo forever!"

"And we wouldn't want that," Lim said with a wide grin. Larya rolled her eyes and shoved the catgirl lightly away from her.

Snatch's eyes darted from side to side. "Can we cut back on the chatter? I've got to be able to focus. This whole area gives me a bad feeling."

"Yes, well, a Verdant Cataclysm will do that to you." Lim grimaced, looking towards a vast field of pink poppies to the right of the dusty road. "I've been into the Southern Evergreen once. Ten feet in. Never going back, and this place can't be much better."

"What even caused the Southern Evergreen?" Larya glanced at Lim, ignoring Snatch as he began methodically slaughtering a clump of suspicious ivy.

Lim caught her eye, looking unsure. "I wasn't born then. All I know is one day the Southern Evergreen became the Deep Evergreen, and now the only fey that come out of there are pipers and... well, nasty things." She set her jaw and looked up towards what lay ahead. "No demons, though. That's Emerald Incident stuff."

Behind the sparse trees ahead of them stood a great wall of thorns stretching twenty feet up and off into the eastern and western horizons. The Woven Wall. One of the two mighty defenses constructed with the sole purpose of keeping the Emerald Incident as isolated as possible.

Larya considered Lim's words, pursing her lips. She wasn't entirely certain what a piper was—only that they were objects of awful terror back home. If a piper showed up, it was known, no man or woman or grown person in general would be safe from her intoxicating music. A village would be emptied in days, lost to her power.

With pipers as comparison, Larya certainly didn't want to know what would be classified as 'nasty things'. She swallowed.

Up ahead, Snatch cocked his head.

He whirled around. His eyes were wild.

"The birds have gone quie—"

"

Drop the sickle, boy

!"

Larya and Lim jumped.

Snatch's shoulders slumped slightly as an arrow thudded into the ground next to his boot.

"It's a scythe," he muttered, turning halfway. He lowered the scythe, but did not drop it.

Four people—all seemingly human—emerged from the brush. A woman held a longbow trained on Snatch, while two men carried curved scimitars. A third man leaned on a spear—unlike the other three, he did not wear the cloak and armor of the Rift Rangers, but simple traveling clothes. He could easily be mistaken for a wandering beggar, in fact. Larya instantly felt wary towards the man.

One of the scimitar-carrying men turned to the archer with a scowl. "Yala, you were supposed to stay in the bushes."

"Whoops." Yala adjusted her grip on the arrow. "I know, I got caught up."

"So it's just the four of you?" snatch asked, with a very unconvincing air of idle curiosity.

They glared at him.

"Hey, hey, hey." Larya waved a hand. "We come in peace. We wish to pass through the Woven Wall."

The two male Rangers exchanged unsure looks. The archer kept her eyes trained on Snatch's scythe.

"We can't let just anyone through the Wall," one of the Rangers said, rolling his eyes. "Do you have any idea how dangerous the Emerald Forest is? We just dealt with an incubus two days ago."

"But we've got business in the Forest!" Lim said insistently, leaning familiarly on Larya's shoulder. "We're sent to collect an artifact lost in the Verdant Tower! The Heart of Light!"

"The Heart of Light? Sounds familiar. And also unlikely." The Ranger gave a cold chuckle. "You'll never make it to the Tower. That's at least a quarter-mile in, by our measurements, and the forest expands inches every year no matter how hard we try to keep it down."

"Well, it's our task." Larya folded her arms. "A task set forth by the druids of the Standing Stones."

"Standing Stones?" The spearman blinked. "Say, that's interesting."

"Hush, knight." The archer gave her bow a twitch downwards. "

He

still hasn't dropped his scythe!"

"Yeah, I'm not gonna do that." Snatch snorted. "We're coming from the south, you're coming from the north. Seems to me like

you're

more likely to be a danger to us than the other way around."

"Why you—you could be Knights of Yoric!"

"Knights of who?" Lim's tail twitched.

Larya leaned over. "A corrupted knighthood," she whispered. "They fell to the demons during the, um, Horny War, but unlike the demons, a lot of 'em are still around."

"Hey! Stop that whispering!" snarled one of the scimitar-wielding rangers. "What are you scheming?"

"Oh, let up, Maple," said the spearman, who Larya was beginning to guess was a vagrant knight. He yawned. "You ever heard of a catgirl or a druidess working for the Knights?"

With a broad smile, Lim casually twirled a finger, causing flowers to sprout out of her hair. Larya giggled, rolling her eyes. Lim

really

needed a bath.

The spearman pointed a lazy finger towards Snatch. "Plus, that guy's definitely an adventure. Smell that adventurer musk?"

Snatch smirked. "That's vomit, not musk."

Larya winced. He probably thought that sounded clever and wry.

"Okay, okay." 'Maple' pinched the bridge of his nose. "We don't have time for this. You can come through the wall, but we'll escort you. And... get you a change of clothes."

"Thank you," Larya said, genuinely surprised.

"Thank nothing," the archer said, slowly lowering her bow. "We just don't want to have to worry about your smell leaving a trail so that whatever eats the three of you decides to follow it back to our hideout."

Larya grimaced.

Well,

she thought, as they approached the great wall of thorns,

this can only get much, much worse from here.

~ ~ ~ ~

One week later...

Snatch—Alrek to his friends—gritted his teeth as he tried to focus on wrapping the bandages around his wrist. He looked up angrily at the cause of this minor injury.

Directly outside the room, a mass of rose vines stood, as solid as a wall. They twitched and spiraled, as if trying to beckon him back towards them, but there was no way in hell he was falling for that.

The worst part was, he was pretty sure they hadn't even meant to scratch him. He'd just been a bit too squirmy when those roses had come towards his face and he'd caught a whiff of their sweet scent. Snatch didn't trust anything sweet. At leas they seemed unable to follow him into this room, and he was

pretty

sure the scent wasn't strong enough to leave him more than mildly tipsy at worst.

Of course, if the roses had some way to amp up the speed at which they pumped out that scent...

"Snatch!" called a voice from behind the stone wall he was leaning against. "Shit, Snatch, are you okay?"

"Fine!" he yelled, glowering. "One of the

fucking vines

slowed me down."

"I saw." Larya sounded extremely stressed. "Do you see any way to get this door open?"

"It's not a door. It's a wall now." He looked over the featureless gray stone bitterly. "The only way to open it would be to use the key on the fountain again—"

"And we have the key."

"Yeah, and the fountain is packed behind a wall of demonic roses." He kicked the floor angrily. "It's the way of it."

"The ways of what?" he heard Lim ask.

Snatch thought about explaining just how high the fatality numbers were on dungeon crawls like this, but he decided it probably wasn't a good idea. Larya was too interested in playing hero—she'd probably try to rescue him, or something, and then it would be on him if she died trying. Or got captured and turned into a brainwashed slave. He didn't want either outcome.

"I'll have to find another way in," he said, trying to conceal his lack of conviction. He wasn't a very good liar, but the three-foot stone wall between them helped. "Maybe get this door open somehow. I've been in worse scrapes."

"Have you really?" Larya sounded extremely skeptical.

"Well, there was the time I went into a..." He bit off the exposition. "Point is, I'll find a way after you, or make my way out otherwise. If I don't catch up, it means I've shipped out for the hideout."

"You shouldn't try to get back on your own!"

"Yeah, I'm not hanging around this place on my own, either. It's harder to hit a moving target." He chewed his upper lip. "If you don't see me outside the tower, the best thing to do is meet back at the hideout."

"And if you can't make it out?"

Snatch rolled his eyes. Always with the questions. "Then the best thing to do is go back to the hideout. Unless you're suddenly able to control these vines or burrow through spelled stone?"

"... no."

"I'll meet you at the hideout, druid."

There was a pause.

"Good luck, Snatch."

"Yeah, best of luck, guy." Lim's voice was uncharacteristically restrained.

"Sure. You too. Remember to check the ceiling."

There was a longer silence, and Snatch concluded that Larya and Lim had moved on. He was left alone with his thoughts.

He let out a long breath. The breath became a growl of frustration. "This is

dragonshit

," he snarled, kicking the floor again. "I'm a fucking adventure, not some bumbling rookie. Fuck off, Verdant Tower!"

Snatch normally tried not to be too noisy in dungeons, but what did it matter? He walked over and kicked a glass bottle into the wall, where it shattered. The lamp he'd left in the center of the room cast brilliant green reflections on the broken shards from the several dozen emeralds embedded into the floor.

This was beneath him. He knew that the Verdant Tower was infamous, he

knew

that the Emerald Forest was known as one of the most dangerous areas on the continent (at least, until they'd blown up the land bridge connecting it to them). But it was still beneath him.

"Fuck you, druids," he muttered, pacing rapidly. He felt like a beast in the zoo, trapped in a cage, longing to escape and devour the passersby gawking at it. "'Larya must prove her commitment to the druidic path'. Bullshit. You just wanted this thing and decided to make her get it for you. Dragon.

Shit

."

He hadn't had to tag along. But the pay had been good, and... well, damn it, Larya never would have made it through this far into the Tower. Hell, he was worried she'd still get caught, even this close to the Heart of Light's vault. This place was one of the most advanced dungeons he'd ever been in, and it wasn't even a proper dungeon.

It just seemed like a goddamn waste of a perfectly decent person for her to die here, while he was helpless to give her any advice or to tell her to stay damn well away from the cool fountains and the glowy gold coins.

"It shouldn't have been me in here," he muttered darkly, kicking the wall. "After all the shit we went through to get through the forest, all I did in this tower, all the times I saved her ass in here, it should've been..."

Well, no, not Larya. Larya didn't deserve that, and besides, she'd been invaluable back in the jungle. "Should've been Lim," he said, and found he felt no significant compunctions there.

He let out another angry sigh, even as it hit him that taking deep breaths might not be a very good idea right now. This little room had no windows, and in fact, no ventilation save what the roses provided. Snatch had a will like iron, but poison... well, poison could break anyone.

Luckily, Snatch always came at least a little bit prepared. He reached into his pocket and drew out a set of plain bamboo panpipes. He took a shallow breath, then blew out three simple notes.

The panpipes vibrated in his hands, and cool, fresh air smelling strongly of reeds and marrsh entered his lungs. So, well, fairly fresh. But nontoxic.

The Moor Pipes were one of his most useful gadgets, and he'd gotten a lot of use out of them since acquiring them on the road to the Standing Stones. They, at least, would probably let him keep his senses, as long as he remembered to take a few breaths from them every minute or so. But no more deep breaths.

"

Ooh, what are those?

"

Snatch looked up sharply. Had he just heard something? Something like a wispy, breathy voice.

He paused, looking around. There was nothing in this room save a few colored glass bottles and the old remnants of a rug and a table. And, of course, the emeralds. And the vines trying in vain to snake into the room, held back by some sort of spell. An anti-demons spell? He probably wasn't so lucky.

He didn't hear anything else.

Probably the wind,

Snatch carefully did

not

think, because Snatch wasn't a complete dumbass.

Probably my imagination

, Snatch explicitly did

not

consider, because his mentor had taught him very strictly about what happened when an adventurer chalked up something suspicious to imagination. She'd been a lot of things, but reckless hadn't been one of them.

Eyes narrowing, he unhooked his scythe from his back and stalked towards where he'd thought the sound was coming from.

"

Hi!"

The voice was so faint, he could barely tell, but he was pretty sure it was coming from a small blue bottle at his feet. He stooped, examining it cautiously.

In the glint of the blue bottle, almost like a reflection, hung the face of a woman with long, dark hair. She had a cute heart-shaped face, plump, pouty lips, and very large eyes. She stared up at him. "Um, hello! Do you think you could help me, mister?"

Ordinarily, Snatch would take one look at a suspicious happenstance like this and back far, far away. But he was sort of out of options, so he stowed the scythe and folded his arms. "Help you how?"

"Um, well..." She blinked rapidly. "My name is Starri. I used to be the Headmaestress of this tower! But I, um, got trapped in this room!"

"Yeah? In this bottle?"

"Yeah!" She beamed, then bit her lip. "I mean, no. In the emeralds! Do you think you could break some of those for me?" She batted her eyelashes. "I really, really wanna get out of here, so I can rest in peace and stuff."

"Uh-huh." Snatch leaned against the table, lifting the bottle to eye level."Right. Sure. You want me to release you."

"Uh. Yes!" She giggled. "Like, um... that'd be awesome if you could release Starri! I mean, release me! Who's Starri!" She giggled again, looking nervous. "Saved it," he heard her mumble under her breath.

"Why should I free you?" Snatch asked. He was playing along for now, but his patience was already getting very, very thin. He rather suspected this was one of those 'ancient evils seeks release'-type deals, and if their plan was to feign stupidity to get him to underestimate him, well, it wasn't going to work.

"Because... because I wanna be free?" She blinked rapidly. She actually had very thick eyelashes, Snatch had to admit. "Everyone wants to be free. Don't you wanna be free?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Sure you do. Everyone does!" She beamed. "I mean, y'know, except for... those." She seemed to shrug. "Y'know, those silly bimbos who just wanna feel good no matter what."

"Hm. I know the type." Snatch rolled his eyes. "Trust me."

"Ooh, you do?" The woman in the bottle tittered. "Yeah, see, some people, like, they don't wanna be free. It just feels so good for them to submit, I guess they don't feel like it's worth the effort. It's so hard to be free, to resist control."

"You mean keeping basic dignity?" Snatch remembered how Larya and Lim had acted throughout this trip with one another and scowled. "You mean keeping some basic sense?"

"Ooh, but it's so hard to keep sense!" she cooed. "Isn't it? So hard to keep your head sometimes. It just feels too good to submit, to obey."

He snorted. "If you say so."

"Yes." She smirked. "See, you know the type. But you, like, seem like the sort who doesn't like doing that. Doesn't like giving in, slipping into pleasure. Right?"

"Um, right." Why were they even talking about this? Snatch wanted to move on. Actually, he was distinctly considering putting the bottle right back where he'd found it and pretending he hadn't seen it.

The bottle glimmered in the lamplight as her coy, whispery voice rang intimately in his ear. "You don't want to be a dumb, happy little bimbo. You wanna be nice and free, even though sometimes it's exhausting, sometimes it's just so, so difficult... right?"

"R-Right." He needed to put the bottle down soon. She was definitely starting to move into hypnosis-mode.

"Sometimes it's just so much energy," she sang, and it almost seemed as though her eyes were getting wider, her face was getting bigger, her... she was getting closer... "So, so exhausting. You just need to rest sometimes, but you also need to keep resisting, don't you?"

Snatch blinked. Her tone was shifting, but it was hard for him to think clearly. Dimly, he registered he needed to take another breath from the panpipes, but her breath was so wet and breathy and sensual in his ear...

"That's right," she went on, not waiting for a response, "but you'll have to rest sometime. It's been such a long, long day of resisting... of swimming against the current..." The bottle shimmered. "Sooner or later, it's time to sleep, right?"

Snatch stared at her numbly. "Cut that out," he mumbled. He needed to look away. Very soon.

"Aw, but we're having so much fun!" she cooed in his ear. "Don't you want to relax? Don't you feel...

exhausted

?"

Snatch swayed slightly. Her face took up the whole bottle, now. Her voice filled his left ear, filled his thoughts...

Realizing he was being hypnotized, he fought fiercely.

Think of gray stone. Think of gray stone.

The former thief gritted his teeth.

Gray stone. Gray stone.

"Come on, silly," Starri breathed, her breath tickling his ear. "

It's time to sleeeeep

..."

He swayed. Time to sleep.

Time to sleep.

Time to... to...

He staggered forward and spun around.

A lovely young woman with violet skin and long dark hair stood before him, looking a bit off-balance from losing the shoulder she'd been leaning against. She was the spitting image of the woman—the

reflection

in the bottle. She blinked. "Um. Whoops. Um..." She spread her arms gleefully. "Free! Free at last! Oh, what joy to be, um, free. Yay!" She gave him a sly grin. "Oh,

however

shall I thank my

benefactor

?"