Thorandell had been walking for hours in the Churult Forest. The golden-haired barbarian left the stinking suburbs of Samurgolde almost a fortnight before and supplies were running out.
Yet he knew that his goal was close. For the silver medallion—a gift from the sage Tira Threskaal—was trembling on his chest as, beyond the fog enveloping the forest, the intrepid hero felt a presence watching his progress. In the shade of a willow tree covered with moss, he recognized his former lover. “Elisabelle?” Thorandell murmured. No. It wasn’t her. Just a cursed illusion escaped from the world of the night. A ruse from his mysterious enemy using his only weakness against him: the woman he couldn’t save. The woman he was trying to bring back from the dead.
Later, the warrior had a further proof that he was on the right path. On the other side of a twisted black bush, a curious creature was fading. It resembled a boar, but its gray and coarse hair had fallen under the effect of an odious curse. Bloody red bubbles appeared on its ribs. At the sight of the hero, they popped before leaving dozens of white eyes pointing in his direction.
“By the skull of Wulghor! It is now time to put an end to this madness!” Thorandell yelled as he dashed forward.
The fight was brief, but not without danger. The poor beast died quickly from his broadsword. Alas, it wasn’t Thorandell’s only opponent. Evil magic was at work in his mind. He couldn’t stay another day in the swampy bocage, or his soul would be lost forever.
The creature’s blood flowed on the warm earth, digging a glowing furrow with a strange trajectory. The boar’s corpse decomposed in front of the barbarian’s astonished eyes as appeared a narrow passage of red rock. The fetid gut was sinking into the bowels of the forest. One had to get inside it, crawl into this oozing gorge from which the infamous smell of rottenness was coming up.
Thorandell ignored the dread that gripped his heart and rushed into it without hesitation. It was similar to diving into a dragon’s guts, a feat that had made him a hero in the past. He feared nothing, for he had his steel sword and the protection of the Emerald Flame.
At the end of the tunnel, Thorandell had reached his goal: the Citadel of Eyes, a brutal construction of flesh and bloody chitin. As the name suggested, white globes of all sizes, but without lids, swam here and there on the surface of the macabre monument.
“Who’s coming?” The voice resulted from an aberration; a hunchbacked and dying soul who was guarding the bridge leading to the castle. His head had grown in the middle of his torso, spreading his shoulders backwards. Ironically for these ungodly places, he seemed blind.
“My name is Thorandell,” said the barbarian, grasping his weapon. “And I have come to challenge Balmorya, the Goddess of Eyes.”
“Shall the Glorious Eye respond to your request,” the homunculus chuckled before his own laughter put an end to his own pitiful existence.
There was a thunderclap originating from the highest cubic tower of the keep. Immediately, the thousands of eyes covering the citadel focused on Thorandell. Their scarlet pupils shone with cruelty and madness. The hero’s head spun, but his mind didn’t waver. He couldn’t fail now. Victory had to ensue after this too long quest that had cost so many lives.
“Show yourself, devil of misfortune!” Thorandell barked. “Come to me and know your end here!” But his blade suddenly disappeared like a mist. His hands also began to vaporize before his eyes. “Illusion!”
He had heard himself shouting and his voice resounded like an echo. His vision was blurred and when he got it back, his medallion was on the ground. Broken. Fortunately, his glorious sword anchored with magic runes was still between his fingers.
Balmorya, the Goddess of Eye, appeared behind him before floating towards her castle. Her long silver hair wove around her face of naked flesh. On her head hovered her crown of abominable eyes. She had a voice full of vices as every word was a spell that had to be countered: “Poor mortal, Thoril’s insect! You dare challenge me here? In what foolish crusade has the Emerald Flame embarked you?”
Thorandell cast a protective charm on himself and enchanted his sword with an elven scroll from Elisabelle. Taking a deep breath, he attacked the cursed aberration. “Die! By the steel!”
The barbarian made a series of offensives but Balmorya kept shielded herself. With a simple swipe of the claws, she sent him to the ground before setting his blade ablaze. The enchantment had been easily thwarted.
Thorandell has been careless. A ray struck him where the medallion of Tira Threskaal had previously been, right on his heart. He felt Balmorya’s will overwhelming him. On his forearms, gaping wounds opened up before eyes sprang from his raw flesh. She was in him. He was no longer in control.
Visions of chaos began to cloud his mind. He saw Elisabelle in her beautiful dawn-colored dress. He watched her dancing with him at King Kaiuss’s wedding. Again, he witnessed her death at the hands of the Iron Warriors; her lifeless body subjected to a thousand outrages.
“Pathetic! You cling to the past! A purulent scar open to all the infections of the soul!” croaked his opponent as she came to stick her face to his.
The Goddess of Eyes made him grasp his sword firmly then led him in his gesture. He felt her icy skin on his wrist as the steel blade was now tightly held against his own throat. The hero never took his gaze off the daemon; even when he slowly sliced his own flesh.
Thorandell had lost. He had been defeated.
“Oh, man! This game’s fucking lame!” Ali shouted, throwing the virtual reality helmet so violently against the monitor that one of the lenses was ejected onto the nearby arcade cabinet.
“Indeed,” I conceded with my eyes on the irritating ‘Game Over’ screen. “Your concubine the elf has left you quite an ineffective enchantment…”
“Fuck! Do I need a cheat code or what?” my partner cursed.
Ali was fulminating. She had been wasting our dollar-credits for days trying to beat that hidden boss from Forgotten Quest, the Monsters&Mazes video game. It was her new fad since she broke Benàn’s VR set on Dragon’s Lair.
The arcade had become our home. Ali spent so much time there that she no longer wore her pink jacket nor her jumpsuit. She was haunting the premise in her stretch out Fred Flintstones pajama top. But this time, we had to leave. The machine was booked by a teenager and his girlfriend thanks to the quarter placed against the coin box, as was the custom.
“Fucking elves!” my Homo erectus cursed on our way out.
“Language.”
“Eat my shorts!”
“You don’t wear any.”
Video games always made her cantankerous. But it never lasted too long. Ali quickly smirked and gave me a friendly pat on the head. As her stomach rumbled at the same time as mine, a knowing look validated our next activity.
The city and its high cylindrical towers covered the entire surface of Thebe, awarding Jupiter’s fourth moon with one of the densest metropolises in the system. Yet, this living organism of concrete and steel had never stopped growing. When the high-rises soon reached the limits of the artificial atmosphere, humans began to drill underneath the celestial body. This gave birth to the dozens of chasms, deep inside its inner shell. Thebe had become the City of Wells. And these were home to the most radioactive nightlife of any Giants’ orbit.
Thebe’s eternal night was all about drugs, sex, video games, food and shows. Bars and restaurants displayed unmistakable fragrances; casinos and arcades were covered with titanic neon lights; cabarets, theaters, operas and open-air discos welcomed the best singing androids and electro-swing’s bands of the Outer Worlds; Host and Hostess clubs, brothels, holosex booths and sex shops promoted freedom and debauchery between shady liquor stores and strip-club shooting ranges. They all huddled together on the rotary walls of the mines, veritable beehives of roaring taxicabs, nutrigel delivery drones and flying limousines full of bikini-bimbos, movie stars and Techno-politicians.
“Do you remember a good place for a quick snack?” I asked as I jumped onto the highest pedestrian walkway under the windy void.
It was always dark in Thebe’s shafts but the blazing signs and giant provocative holograms provided enough light to see clearly. Despite the hustle and bustle, the footbridges were silent as the chasm absorbed the noise. But the smells of grindage weren’t lost in the void! A soft warm breeze brought me the Mexican flavors of a nearby Naugles restaurant.
“Wait a sec’! I’m looking! It’s a critical process!” Ali replied, plugging her implant into a public terminal. “This city’s freaky tubular!”
“Tubular? What does ‘tubular’ even mean?” I meowed. “You should take a break from MTV, girl.”
She wasn’t listening to me, her eyes again glued to a screen. Sometimes, it was worse than her necessary sugar addiction.
I seized the opportunity to borrow a cigarette from a pretty sapiens stumbling from a holosex booth. A minty smoke in my mouth, I sat on one of the benches outside the skater shop before an android offered me some fire coming from his left thumb. “Appreciated, my good fellow,” I whispered, bending my head.
But when the white flame was within reach, we were interrupted by several shots. The bursting echoed from the platform just below us. Through the wired mesh flooring, I saw a group of men in black suits with implants covered faces chasing someone: a barefoot young woman wearing a silvery dress and a plastic charm necklace.
“You’re poisoning yourself with that garbage. Didn’t want you to stop?” Ali asked me, a portion of Salsa Shark in hand.
“Living with you is my poison, human. But more importantly, where did you get those Doritos?”
“On the ground…”
Another shot rang out. Underneath, the young woman slalomed between passers-by, spilling wine and tapas on her beautiful dress. The shooting stopped when she joined a denser crowd at the entrance of a S’mores Shop. The men, apparently Chinese gangsters from the local Triad, dispersed to look for her. As she reached the end of the railing, we knew she was doomed.
“The Thebe Triad? Didn’t the Fongs space them all?” I asked while we had positioned ourselves just above, swallowing the tortilla chips while enjoying the free show.
“C$50 they’re gonna throw her off the cliff,” Ali bet.
“That could be messy.”
“Yeah. Coriolis is a bitch,” my partner said before taking my cigarette away and tossing it into the void. Its trajectory made a curve before hitting a singing Mac Tonight animatronic.
“The cops will put an end to it anyway.”
As this kind of show wasn’t rare on Thebe, the use of firearms was strongly discouraged. The local robotic militia and their drones weren’t very soft on offenders.
However, once her holographic costume was partially removed because of a glitch, we realized that the arrival of the police would have been bad news for the young woman. She turned out to be this good old androgynous kleptomaniac and maybe our only friend in the entire system. This time, she had camouflaged her smell with a fair amount of Exclamation perfume and Aqua Net hair spray.
“Angel Face!” Ali shouted.
The thief startled before raising her eyes without reflection in our direction. My sapiens contorted herself to reach out her hand to our friend below. Zéphyr took advantage of a crowd movement to be pulled onto our platform without being seen by her pursuers even if fighting against the centrifugal force wasn’t an easy task. Once in security, the cyborg finally changed her holographic appearance again to look like a hip-hop singer with a huge cap and black sunglasses.
“What kind of embarrassing situation did you find yourself in with the Triad?” I asked, handing her the last crisp.
The thief ignored me as she caught her breath. Her plastic lungs were about to explode.
“Need help to zero those thugs?” my partner pursued.
“What? No!” continued Zéphyr, refusing the salsa-covered nacho that Ali swallowed without further ado. “I was about to escape anyway…”
“Your girlfriend bet C$50 you wouldn’t,” I snitched.
“She what?” Zéphyr falsely gasped.
In response, my partner just flipped her spice-stained finger at us.
Back at the Kitty half a Martian hour later, Eazy-E’s clone told us about her misadventure. She had been on Thebe for more than a month, tracking down the old associates of a certain King Xiao; formerly known as the Emperor of the Outer Worlds.
At his peak, Xiao was the greatest godfather of all the Triads beyond the belt, or Tak Khuun. He was described as a giant with prodigious strength and corrupted by all possible vices. Vices that he could afford thanks to his limitless fortune. Nevertheless, Xiao vanished overnight a long time ago. Unverified sources mentioned a deal that went south with the Moon; others believed in a mutiny within Xiao’s own clan. The scoundrel would take advantage of his retirement somewhere in the system, on Byblos Gates or Caliban as many Triads under his control were dismantled.
“I now remember the story of the bracelet on Ceres City. It contained a microfilm that belonged to the Lost Triads, right? What artifact do you want to steal this time?”
“Aren’t you aiming too high?” Ali worried, confirming my thoughts. “I mean… I read this lunatic was a hell of a nutjob! And a Lunar puppet.”
“You can read?” I said before receiving a smack on my head. “Anyway, this guy is surely flatlined by now. Mobsters don’t retire. Especially when they tend to fly too close to the Moon.”
Zéphyr swiped away our comments by waving her hand. “I know from a very trustable source that Xiao is alive and well. And thanks to the last information stolen tonight, I found where he’s hiding! Hence the idea of a robbery that could implicate you.”
“Once again, we’re not bandits,” I retorted. “The Alliance will inevitably discover our mischief if King Xiao ravages the system in search of what we have misappropriated!”
The cyborg had already played that card two months before by accompanying us incognito during a similar work on a hijacked supercargo. But the data traffickers of the Thanatos Cartel couldn’t be compared to the gruesome Lost Triads.
Yet, Ali intervened to side with Zéphyr. “Stealing from outlaws ain’t a crime, Lee.” My partner had been burying herself into her computer screen again since then. “Besides, this Gods’s ass licker won’t ravage the system if he’s pushing daisies.” To conclude her plea, she put in front of me the still pixelated poster of Zi Xinj Xiao with a bounty of C$1,500,000.
Yes. C$1,500,000! The Wheel of Fortune!
I backtracked. Obviously, this was a risky idea. Could we trust the Data Maiden on this? But after all, how long had Xiao been retired? He would have been about ninety. Who wouldn’t kill a hundred-year-old grandpa for that much?
“And where is our Alzheimer’s Emperor?” I asked.
“Europa,” Zéphyr replied after finally switching back to her true appearance. “In a bunker at the bottom of an ocean coated with an ice dome that is physically impenetrable unless you have a safe passage…”
“Won’t he expect us after your little… show, tonight?”
“No way. I was smart enough to cover my tracks. Plus, I designed a foolproof plan!”
Our cocky friend passed a steel orb between her thin fingers. The ball opened in two, revealing a miniature hologram projector. Two scantily clad young women suddenly emerged between the three of us. While grossly kissing as two snails copulating, they held the name and address of a “geisha” agency.
