A Gamer's Guide 414 (Patreon)

Maggie wasn’t backing down. Prop smoothly fell into a ready pose. 

And Rafiloe…

Shit. Shit. Shit. What do I do? What the hell do I do? Her eyes darted between the people in the room. Do they even know who they’re challenging to a fight? No, scratch that, do they even know who they’re trying to save?! This is ridiculous! Why did I choose to hang out with such bloodthirsty bastards, again? No, no, focus, Rafiloe! If they start fighting, and Garath takes them seriously, they’re gonna die. If he goes all dragon, then we’ll all die. That would be bad. Dying would suck. I don’t want to die, so—

“Um, Gecko?”

“Face me, then!”

“En garde!”

“Haah!”

Rafiloe grit her teeth. “Shut up!!” She roared. “Just shut up, and let me think, okay?”

Nobody was moving. Weapons raised, claws at the ready, wings splayed, mid-pose, nobody moved. Like a paused action movie. 

“Thank you,” Rafiloe said. “It’s nice for people to finally listen for once.” Now, back to spiralling…

“Whoa,” Kitty said, clearly failing to realize that her words had included him. “How’d you do that?”

Rafiloe would very much have liked to strangle Kitty, had such an action not been thoroughly redundant at the moment. Hissing a breath through clenched teeth, she ran her fingers through her hair and was disgusted to find that it was still perfectly silky smooth, with no knots or ties whatsoever even though she hadn’t brushed it all morning. “Kitty, I woke up like fifteen minutes ago, my head is killing me, and people shouting and trying to fight each other is not making it better. Clearly, aside from you, everyone in this room has understood that fact. Would you mind catching on, for once?”

On the other side of the room, dangling by Garath’s tight fist, Kitty tilted his head. “Oh. No, I don’t mean… Well, okay, I see what you trying to say, and what you want from me—to shut up, that is—but I think you should maybe undo whatever it is you did pretty soon, because I don’t think they’ve blinked yet.”

“You don’t…?” Rafiloe shook her head. “What are you even talking about? All I did—” Now she saw it. They were still unmoving. It had been at least a full minute, and none of them had so much as blinked. Prop’s arm, fully outstretched, his rapier mere inches from piercing Garath’s chest, was trembling, almost spasming in pain. Sweat dripped down Maggie’s forehead, rolling in a cohesive bead down the arch of her nose to drip to the floor. And still, she didn’t move. None of them did. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said. “So, um… But no hurry! This might be good, actually? Simon’s showing me something right now, so…” 

Rafiloe rushed up to her friends where they stood, not moving at all. But they were breathing, and their hearts were beating, so it wasn’t as though they would die, but… What Kitty had said was absolutely true. Maggie’s eyes were starting to turn reddish, and Prop’s were already streaming with tears, so unless she undid whatever the fuck she did soon, they’d probably feel pretty damn awful. Aaaaaaand now her headache was back. Smashing. Perfect timing!

“Yeah, okay, so,” Kitty said, his eyes moving back and forth as he read something invisible, “this is… Maybe bad.”

“Which part?” Rafiloe asked, grabbing Maggie’s eyelids to forcefully close them. “Which part of this is only maybe bad?”

“If we can get them out of the room and close the door, it should wear off.” A sharp look from Rafiloe quickly made him add, “That is, my part of the bad. Your part of the bad I have no idea about. But… I think it’s only maybe bad, because since they aren’t moving, we can get them out of the room? Without having to defeat them.”

“Great, yeah, sure,” Rafiloe said, closing Prop’s eyes, “I’ll just drag all our friends out of the door, shut the doors, and that’ll fix this. That’ll undo whatever this is, which, I would like to clarify, shouldn’t be possible! I don’t have divinity. I’ve been off the stuff for over a month now. There isn’t a drop of divinity in my archeries, and yet, this is happening because of me?” Groaning, she grabbed Prop by the arms and began dragging him outside. He was surprisingly light.

“Um… Yeah, actually.”

Too lazy to put him back on his feet, she left Prop lying just beyond the door. “You’re agreeing?” She went back inside and grabbed Maggie, muttering an “I’m sorry,” under her breath before dragging her out. “Wait, are you seriously saying I did this? Not you, the literal god?”

“Exactly.”

She put Maggie next to Prop, arms quivering from the strain, sweat soaking into her robe. But, of course, even though she didn’t have a hat to soak up the sweat, her hair refused to get greasy or yucky. Still perfectly dry and smooth and soft. “Wait,” Gecko said, pausing in front of where Kitty hung. He and his white hair and his white eyes. She put her hands on her hips. “What, exactly, happened last night?”

His eyes darted towards the window. “Um. That’s…” He looked back at her, trying and failing to smile politely. “I’ll tell you once you get Garath out of here, okay?”

“No. You tell me now.”

“It’s really not that easy to explain.”

“It would be very easy for me to walk away now.”

He sucked in a deep breath. “Okay. Alright. It’s not like I’m trying to keep it a secret or anything. Well, um…” He juggled invisibly with his hands. “I guess the short and simple of it is that you got some of my divinity in you, so you’re kind of my apostle now? Not permanently or anything, not unless you want it to be permanent, but like… Yeah.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“I just said—yeah. I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to put it.”

“I’m your apostle?”

“Temporarily.” And then, almost in a whisper, “Unless you want it to be permanent...”

She felt her hands clench and unclench. Sweaty, clammy. A strand of too-soft hair brushed against her face. “How?”

“How, what?”

“How did it happen? How did I… get some of your divinity in me? You make it sound like a fucking accident, but I’m pretty sure that apostleships don’t just happen. There’s some kind of ritual, and there’s a whole deal, and usually there have to be witnesses, and a solemn exchange of vows…”

“That sounds more like a wedding,” Kitty said, scratching absently at the spot right above Garath’s index finger.

“It’s different! It’s way different!”

“Gee, sorry, I just…” He glanced down at her. “Do you have a knife on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I have it?”

“Sure,” Rafiloe said, pulling her knife from her inventory and handing it to Kitty, blade first. It wasn’t until Kitty was holding it next to his arm that it struck her how she had no idea what the hell he was about to use it for. “Wait. What are you—”

He slit a line across his forearm. Which was one thing, of course, she’d already seen him bite off his own fingers, so this wasn’t too bad. But then he bled milk. Or, at least, some kind of thin, white liquid came out, spilling to the floor. Helpfully, Kitty pointed at the open wound, still dripping. “This,” he said, simply. “This is what you drank.”

“Is that milk?”

“Yeah.” He looked thoughtful for a second. “You said it was whole milk, by the taste.”

“I drank that?”

“Just for the record, I did not ask you to drink it. I just gave you a goblet filled with it, and I really should have known you were too drunk for it, because the next second you’d drank it all and your hair was white.”

“You—” She bit her tongue. This required proper words. “You really think you can give me a goblet of milk and not expect me to drink it? I love milk!”

“Well, sure, but—” 

Something tiny and white fell out of his arm, dropping into the puddle of milk on the floor. She looked down at it. “Is that a maggot?”

He looked down at it. “No,” he said, and then another maggot dropped out of his arm, followed by a handful of others. He turned to look her in the eye. “There were no maggots in the milk you drank. You did not eat any maggots.”

“Okay,” Rafiloe said. “I’m going to somehow get Garath to let go of you, and then we’re going to talk more, because I need to know what the fuck is happening to me.”

“That sounds good,” Kitty said, handing her back the knife, hilt-first. She took it, but before doing anything, she looked over the scene again. She did not know how to undo what she had done. She didn’t even know how she’d done it. However, one thing she did know… “Kitty, you wouldn’t die if I beheaded you, right?”

“Nah,” Kitty said.