Part 35: Falling

Chapter 29: Falling

Stealing is better than sex.

I mean it. Nothing compares to the thrill of breaking through the latest high-tech security system, taking some self-important rich bastard's most prized possessions and getting away with it. Plus, it's taught me a lot about the world: namely, that there are a whole lot of stupid rich people in it and I can outsmart every one of them.

Don't get me wrong, it's not about the money. My favourite thing to steal is art. Anyone who's stupid enough to pay ten million mesetas for a bit of paint some dead guy splashed on a canvas a hundred years ago doesn't deserve to have it.

Yeah, I hate rich people. What of it? I've got plenty of good reasons to. For starters, my parents named me Dulcinea. I must have known that was a stupid name even when I was a little kid, because I could never say it right, so it came out sounding like Shir. That's what I've been called ever since. Anyway, after Dad saddled me with that ridiculous name, he spent every waking hour at work and I barely saw him. If he was like that before I was born, I'm surprised he and Mom ever found the time to fuck.

The funny thing is, I couldn't even tell you what exact job he did because nobody ever bothered to tell me and I never cared enough to ask.

And don't get me started about Mom. She was a vain floozy whose highest ambition was to be a trophy wife. I was just a parasite taking time away from their perfect lives. Well, Mom and Dad, I've become the best damn parasite I can be. Are you proud?



Rolf is just like my dad; all work and no play. He thinks he's so great because he used to work for the government of Mota, but all that ever really meant was that he took orders from a guy with more grey hairs and a fancier uniform than him. Now that he's out of a job on account of being public enemy number one, he's ordering us all to go to Zosa and search for some legendary weapons on the say-so of a crazy hermit living on Dezo.

And now he says he's in love with me. How could an agent like him love a thief like me? We have nothing in common. It's absurd.

Still, I guess he's got a few good qualities. He's passionate about what he does. Sometimes I envy him for that. And he's loyal, and smart, and, well, kinda hot -- but none of that matters. He's an emotionally crippled jerk and he'll only hurt me if I let him get too close. I have to remember that.



The latest leg of Rolf's journey led us to a tiny granite building high up in the mountains, where it's way too fucking cold and windy for normal people to ever want to go. Just our luck that the natives of this planet love the cold. Well, at least this building looks like it only has one floor, so we shouldn't be here too long.



Looks like this place has a basement. Someone went to a hell of a lot of effort carving all these statues for such a tiny building; I wonder what it was built for.

I looked down into one of the holes in the floor, but the light was too dim to see much. Well, only one way to find out if there's anything down there. One by one, we walked up to the edge of the rightmost hole, lowered ourselves down and dropped to the floor below.



This floor was easily twice the size of the ground floor, and judging by all the big holes in the floor there was more below. It was kind of fitting for natives of Dezo to model a building after an iceberg. We might be here for longer than I'd first thought. For now, though, all we could do was pick a hole and jump down it.



wait



what



this



isn't



good.

"What the hell just happened?" Rolf asked, picking himself up off the floor.

"Exactly what we wanted to happen," I said. "We fell down a pit. It was just a bit deeper than expected."

Amy's eyes and mouth opened wide in her usual stunned-fish impression. "We must have fallen five or six floors. How did we even survive that without any broken bones?"

Anna shrugged. "Does it matter? We're alive. We should keep moving before anything living down here finds us."



Too late. Ten feet of skin and bones in a red cloak strode toward us, chanting in a horrible gravelly voice. Flames shot from his clawed hands and danced around Rolf's body. Rolf didn't even flinch before cutting the dark wizard's withered body in half, but I could see he was badly burned.

Rolf, you idiot. Always so obsessed with being all stoic and macho. It's okay to show pain when someone sets you on fire! And as always, Amy was all too willing to heal his wounds. Those two deserve each other.



The bottom floor of this place (at least, I sure hoped it was the bottom floor) was huge, and completely empty. On the far eastern end, we found a spiral staircase leading back up.



A long spiral staircase.



A very long spiral staircase.



I think my legs are cramping up.



I wonder if I could get Rolf to carry me the rest of the way. The way he's been acting lately, I'm not so sure he'd say no.



Before I got around to asking him, we reached the ground floor.



And of course, once we were back up there, we jumped right back down to start all over again.



This was the most inconveniently designed place ever. The only way to get anywhere was to jump down a pit, and the wrong pits led all the way to the bottom. Could the people who designed this building fly or something?



Hell, maybe it had been built by dragons. That made as much sense as anything else on this crazy planet. Maybe the dragons were the rightful owners of this place and we were trespassing on their land and killing them off when they tried to stop us. Wouldn't that be just hilarious?



Even finding the "right" pit to jump into just sent us down to a bigger, deeper level of this place. It's a good thing for Rolf that I can't give up on a real challenge, or I would have walked away from this bullshit long ago. It's not like I'd stick around for his sake or anything.



Now we were getting somewhere. This hall looked important, at least judging by all the rows of statues.



A giant sword made of black metal flew around the corner and down the hallway toward us. Those things creep me the fuck out even more than all the other weird monsters here. Swords shouldn't just fly around on their own. It's unnatural.



On a pedestal at the end of the hallway was a long, narrow jewel-encrusted box. Inside was a slasher made of dark reddish-violet metal.



How come Anna gets all the cool weapons, anyway? Just because she's the professionally-trained killer, she gets to do all the fighting? Life isn't fair.



She didn't even seem to enjoy it. Oh, sure, she acts all pleased with herself when she gets a new weapon, and satisfied after she makes a kill. But I've had enough experience to tell when people are faking it. She's going through the motions because she doesn't know what else to do.



The next pit took us down to the bottom floor again, where there were more of those robed freaks waiting to shoot lightning at us. Breaking into mansions was a cinch compared to this.

There was no way I was walking all the way back up again.

"Rolf," I said, in my best plaintive tone, "my legs are so sore from the cold and all of this walking. Could you carry me upstairs? Please?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You can use Hinas," he said. "Why don't you just teleport us out?"

Nuts. You win this round, Rolf.



Of course, Rolf thought there were still more weapons in here, so back down we went, into the middle pit this time.



On the bright side, all this falling into pits probably helps to stave off altitude sickness.



Fuck



you



Rolf



you



asshole.

Why do I put up with this shit? Getting us all hunted down by the whole damn Palman government was bad enough. Did he really have to lead us to a place where we don't know if we'll freeze to death, fall to our deaths or get killed by monsters?

Oh well. Life is short; ours might just be shorter than most. And this has been the biggest challenge I've had in a long time, even if it's for all the wrong reasons.



This time, we took a different pit and avoided falling all the way to the bottom. There was a little box in one corner of the room, made of polished Dezorian pine.



Some eyeless musclebound freak had taken up residence here, and didn't like us going after what he apparently considered his treasure. He spat on Rolf, who slumped to the floor and started snoring like a buzzsaw. We all had to shake him to wake him up after the fight was over.



Hey, finally, a weapon I can use! Awesome!



It looked kinda blunt, though.



What the fuck? This is the most worthless weapon ever! What am I supposed to do with a Laconian butter knife?



At least we managed to get down another floor safely this time.



Well, "safely" might be overstating it. The swords were appearing in packs now. We were tired and wounded, and at this rate we were going to get slaughtered.



Or we would have been, if Amy hadn't stepped up to the plate with the most powerful healing technique I'd ever seen. Everyone's wounds closed up straight away.

Rolf and Anna can fight, Amy can heal, and I just stand around using an old helmet as a weapon, flailing at dragons with butter knives and occasionally teleporting us out of trouble when Rolf can't or won't do the same. I guess Rolf must really be in love with me after all, because there's sure as hell no other reason he'd want my help.



Speaking of useless things, we found an old pulse cannon hidden away at the end of a long, twisty corridor.



There's no way I'm walking all the way back to the nearest pit, and it's probably just going to take us all the way to the bottom anyway. Fuck that. I'm teleporting us out of here.



And because Rolf is a glutton for punishment and I'm too damn stubborn to leave him, we're going to go back in and see what's past the left pit. My prediction: even more pits.



I must be psychic.



So far, so good. I mean, not being here at all would be better, but failing that, not falling six floors all at once is the best I can hope for.



Another resounding success. I have no idea if we're getting any closer to any of the legendary weapons, but at worst this means one less floor to fall if we wind up going all the way down again.



Oh



for



fuck's



sake.

Okay, time to teleport out, retrace our steps and take a different pit from that room.



Success! If winding up in another big room full of statues and pits instead of an even bigger room full of nothing at all counts as "success".



Let's see if this pit leads somewhere interesting.



"Hey, Rolf," I said, "did you see that? While we were falling, I saw a big iron chest in the room we fell through. I bet there's something important in it, unless of course it's another butter knife. We should try to find a way back into that room."

Rolf smiled. "Well-spotted, Shir. You're a real help."

"I don't need your approval, you grinning oaf. I just want you to find what you came here for so we can get out of this hellhole."

Rolf looked downcast and bowed his head silently. Maybe I was a little harsh that time.

No. After what he's done, he deserves it.



Rolf picked the middle pit this time. With the way the underground passages in this place twisted and turned, one pit was as likely as any other to get us where we needed to go.



The only way to get anywhere was trial and error, with an emphasis on the latter. At least we weren't doing so badly so far.



We've been here before. That's probably not a good sign. With our luck, every pit in this room except the one we'd already explored led straight down to the bottom.



On the other hand, it could lead to exactly the room we were looking for. I didn't want to be too optimistic in case all these gargoyles finally decided to come to life and tear us to shreds. It was that kind of a day.



"This is it!" Rolf shouted joyfully, clutching a massive jet-black cannon in his arms. "There's no doubt about it. This must be the legendary Neishot!"

"Okay, hold on a minute," I said. "Let's think rationally about this. Firstly, you're saying that we've found a legendary gun. A legendary sword or shield, sure. A legendary slasher or helmet, maybe. But who ever heard of a legendary gun? Secondly, why the fuck is it named after Nei? She didn't even exist until like two or three years ago. These weapons are sure as hell older than that, and if they were that new, they wouldn't be old enough to be legendary. Thirdly, how did it end up in the depths of this... whatever the hell kind of building this is... on an icy planet that no sane person would ever go to?"

"We just found the most powerful handheld firearm ever built," Rolf said. "Are you really going to split hairs about how we got it?"

Score: Rolf 2, Shir 0. I really had to lift my game here.



While Rolf was still distracted by his new prize, one of those damn swords snuck up behind us. I shouted for Rolf to watch out, and he dropped the cannon, wheeled around and reached for his sword. Instead of stabbing or slashing at him, though, the animated sword started to glow and crackle with energy.



A black bolt flew from the tip of the sword and struck Rolf in the chest. His body fell limply to the floor.

After destroying the sword we tried to wake him, but it was no use. Amy checked his pulse.

"He's dead," she said calmly. "Anna, Shir, stand back."

"Dead?" I said, taking a couple of steps back, more from shock than because of her instructions.

"I'll take care of it. If you want to help, you can keep monsters away from me while I work."

While Amy knelt over Rolf's body, concentrating on whatever she was trying to do, Anna took me aside and whispered in my ear.

"Do you believe that happiness is so common and cheap that you can afford to let it pass you by?"

"Wh... what are you talking about?" I asked.

"I've finally worked you out, Shir. You don't think you deserve to be happy. Well, you're right. Nobody deserves happiness. That's why you have to take it when you have the chance."

"Oh? And how should I do that?"

"Don't play dumb with me. When Amy brings Rolf back to life, her face is going to be the first thing he sees. Doesn't that bother you?"

When she brings him back to life? She can raise the dead now? How the fuck am I supposed to compete with that?

"Why would that bother me?" I asked. "Besides, even if it did, I don't need you telling me how to live my life."

Anna slapped me.

"You stupid girl," she hissed. "You have love and innocence and happiness all within your reach, and you spit on them. You have everything that was taken from me, everything that I would kill to get back, and you want to throw it away. If you lock away your emotions because you can't bear to feel them, you're going to end up like me. You don't want that."



Amy was holding the palm of her hand to Rolf's face. Her hand glowed with a soft white light, and the colour slowly began to return to his skin.

It was purely medical, I reminded myself. Purely medical. And if it wasn't, so what? I didn't care about him, right?



"Ugh." Rolf opened his eyes and sat up. "I feel like I've been hit by a truck. At least now that we've got the Neishot, we can get out of here."

He looked at me.

"Shir, why is your face so red? Did you have a run-in with a dragon while I was out of it?"

"N... yes, that's right. A dragon. A big, fire-breathing dragon, with sharp claws." I laughed nervously. "Like you said, we've got everything we need, so let's get going."



I did the one thing that I'm any good at -- escaping -- and we were teleported safely back to Zosa.



"Hold on for a minute, everyone," I said. "I'm going to go find a native who's stupid enough to pay me for this dagger."



This blunt Laconian dagger... it looks shiny and precious, but it can't do anything when it matters. It's about as useful to me as I am to Rolf. I don't want to end up like Anna. But I couldn't bear to turn Rolf into someone like me, who can't take life seriously and doesn't really care about anything important. I thought he could fix me, but I'm afraid I'll break him instead.

He deserves better. He deserves Amy. They're both nice, law-abiding people at heart, and they're good for each other. If I weren't around, he'd see that.

If I weren't around.

Maybe I should just disappear.