CHAPTER 551: WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

When the goblin engineers were mostly dressed and covered in weird tools, they finally lined up behind Lodie.

“OK, gizmatic,” she said, body language jumping from embarrassment to excitement and back again like a malfunctioning machine. “Um, means we’re…all set. Ready? We can go now.”

“Great.” Mason inspected the goblins and couldn’t fight the question, though he regretted it already. “I mean…they’re covered in tools. And there’s more all over the floor. Aren’t those ‘doodads’ or whatever, good enough for the machine?”

The engineers snickered. Even Lodie blinked like he’d asked if the moon was made of cheese.

“Umm…no. All we’ve got is fidgeters, some widgeties. They’re for tinkering. Doodads and gizmos, well, they’re….I mean they’re…more complicated.”

She smiled like he was a cute toddler asking ‘how do you make plastic?’. He definitely regretted asking, shaking his head as he went for the door.

“I remember when I killed every goblin I saw,” he muttered as he walked by the players, to a few subdued snorts of confused approval. He supposed spending your night banging some hot goblin girl took a lot of the species-oriented fire out of you. He tried to think of it as a good thing.

The group of players and engineers walked back out into the ‘street’, and Mason’s mood improved when he saw Annie leaping off a roof to cut a demon in half. Carl appeared and spine-sliced another before warping off. Streak was thrashing something in an alley.

“God damnit that looks so much more fun.”

“Come on, grumpy pants. We got a demon pit to clear.” Becky punched his arm as she walked by, and he glared before he followed. “’Cept, uh, where’s the demon pit at?”

“Down by the lava,” said one of the engineers. “Not really a ‘demon pit’. Really a ‘trash pit’. Just currently filled with demons. And most important gizmos. On top of trash.”

Mason could smell the awful already.

“Lead the way,” he said. When the goblin looked ready to melt into the stone, he rolled his eyes. “Just point where to go.”

It pointed, and he whistled for Streak and took off. The wolf came running from his fun, tongue out and face demon-stained, green eyes glowing in the dark. The engineers all shrieked and grabbed each other or dropped to the ground in terror as he approached, and Mason’s mood improved a little.

“We’re going to the lava,” he shouted for the others, waiting until he saw Carl nod and warp off again. He had no idea if he really needed them, but doubted it. Either way, Carl would tell Phuong, and he’d get them all roaming in the right direction.

In the small ‘town’ it didn’t take long to get to the edge. Mason heard Lodie asking the engineers where everyone else was, and they told her they’d all be locked in their homes.

“Some…didn’t survive,” he said with a shrug. “Mostly who you’d expect.”

Mason turned.

“What does that mean? What do you know about these creatures?”

The engineer’s eyes went wide under Mason’s gaze, and Lodie nodded with encouragement (and urgency) when he looked to her.

“We…about the reds? We know lots…they…we…linked to mountains. Volcanoes. Common knowledge. That’s why we build here.”

John thunder-punched some demon off a rooftop, which dropped and crunched a dozen feet from the goblins. They flinched and stared with horror. Mason snapped his fingers to get their attention back.

“Why would you intentionally build in a place with demons? What did you mean ‘who you’d expect’ didn’t survive?”

The goblin’s confusion matched its alarm.

“Reds…well, they aren’t so bad. At least compared to the dark ones. And full of energy, useful planar magics. Can be harnessed, yes? And…” he shrugged. “when they’re in charge, they er…” he cleared his throat. “Not good for bad goblins. Not so bad for good goblins. Then they…burn out.” He shrugged. “Go away eventually.”

Jesus Christ. Was the ‘Watcher’ telling him the truth? Were the infernal demons ‘evil hunting evil’ or something?

It still didn’t make them good. In fact Mason wasn’t sure it changed a damn thing because they apparently still wanted to destroy the world. You couldn’t just…write off a whole planet because it had some bad people on it. And who decided what was ‘bad’?

Except it was roboGod’s planet. Didn’t that make it ‘evil’? Didn’t creating something on the graves of billions of humans make the whole project instantly worth destroying?

Mason would have said yes in the beginning. But he’d been angry and had so little to lose. Now he didn’t have time for this shit. He really didn’t. He did everything he could to put it from his mind, but he knew he’d lay awake that night.

Sometimes he really wondered how the hell any of these giant problems had become his.

He walked on and heard Streak growling as the animal sensed his mood. He put a hand on its back to calm it down, sensing the heat from below already. The others were breathing harder. The moisture of their sweat obvious on the air.

The goblin dump was like a junkyard on a coast, if instead of the sea you had a giant pool of lava. It was fenced off with metal wire, piles of garbage and metallic refuse scattered everywhere. Flying demons circled overhead, half a dozen giant hounds wandered inside.

“Not so bad,” Demi said beside him, wiping some sweat off her forehead. “If we can avoid getting all the hounds at the same time.”

“You haven’t done many dungeons,” he said, giving her a look.

“There’ll be something in the lava, won’t there,” she said, shoulders slumping.

“Now you’re getting it. I think we’d better get the others.”

He raised his voice and called for Phuong and Carl, and in a few minutes the roamers had gathered up behind them. They were breathing hard and even more demon-goo’d, but no serious injuries. Alex worked a little magic. Annie drank a Rosa potion.

You can avoid all this, whispered the Watcher’s voice in Mason’s mind. My kind aren’t liars, immortal. We reveal. We strip away the masks of the corrupt. We do not place it there.

“Yeah,” Mason said, shaking his head. “I bet sometimes all we need is a little push. I wonder what a demon like you would do if someone did the same. Who counted as ‘evil’ would probly grow real quick.”

He grinned when the thing shut up. Sometimes logic was better than magic powers.

“Any particular place in that yard we can find your…tools?” he said to the engineers. “We’re pretty fast, and Carl can turn invisible. We could maybe steal them without a fight.”

Again he got the polite smiles and ‘there there’ sort of expressions. Though the goblins at least conferred a moment and argued with gestures and eyerolls before Lodie took a breath.

“We need grand doodads. And a um…Heart-engine. It’s…big. Very heavy. Like as big as two scary hairy things.” She gestured at Streak, and the wolf snorted and turned to see what was behind him.

So. A giant machine. They had to somehow get a giant machine up on top of a swinging, shifting, metallic platform, like two hundred feet above the ground. That was just super.

Mason wasn’t sure he could do it no matter how strong he was. The physics of something that big while climbing just may not work. Could he do it with help from his new boots? Possibly. And maybe with rope and pulleys they could create something to haul it up. He didn’t see a better idea, but then he wasn’t a goblin engineer.

“I assume you have some plan on how we’d get a ‘grand doodad’ up to that heart?”

Yet again the goblins conferred. Eventually one pointed at the scrapyard.

“Plenty to work with. Once clear of demons. We can do, yes. Probably for sure. Though maybe it might take a few days.”

“You’ll have a few hours,” Mason said. “Start re-thinking.”

In truth he expected he could probably get the creatures back to the city, then build/get what they needed and come back. But that wasn’t happening. They were finishing this today, whatever had to be done. He turned to his players.

“Expect reinforcements, and a general shitshow. This ‘Watcher’ can’t really defend himself. Whatever’s down here is probably the final boss, at least the physical one. Up there we’ll likely get mind magic. Maybe summoning.”

Again his players brought him pride—resolved faces and all the hallmarks of courage rippling down the line. He knew it was partly overconfidence. They hadn’t lost anyone in a fight. One day that may come and shake some resolve.

But he believed they’d survive that, too. His key people were like hardened officers now. Carl slapped John on the shoulder and touched a few others as he walked through the pack, the unofficial sergeant of their squad. Phuong oozed silent confidence, no doubt forming his own back up plans.

Becky was a bit like Carl—more worried about everyone else’s morale than herself, grinning and winking with her mace over a shoulder. It was surprising how much it helped to have a pretty girl looking confident and calm, like she was just heading to another day on the farm.

Even the sketchier players Mason had worried about in the past seemed unified, ready.

Tommaso was joking with Garet in the back, playing with some bottle. Seamus popped the collar of his ridiculous robe, looking down at the yard as if planning his spells. Annie had transformed from a scared little girl in the woods to an icy soldier who charged right in.

And me? He thought. What have I become? How do they see me now?

He hoped the answer was ‘the leader required in a terrible time’. He knew his…excesses with women was a flaw. As was his excitement for danger and growing pleasure found in suffering. His lack of patience for civilian or ‘fantasy’ things.

But he’d learned long ago, you couldn’t always just pick out the nice bits. He’d seen the duality of his brother Blake—the flawed man who nonetheless meant to do good, who had the imagination and will to actually do it while so many ‘good’ people did nothing.

In the end, choir boys didn’t build kingdoms. Saints in ivory towers were too pure to stain their hands with the filth of the world. White knights didn’t put down monsters without getting covered in blood.

“Everything OK?” Demi said quietly beside him, those damned insightful eyes and who knew what other powers piercing to his soul. She was the most out of place here, the least used to…all this violence and madness. But whatever they both wanted, she’d learn.

He smiled and met her eyes, giving her hand a squeeze.

“It will be soon. I never really asked about your prestige class, by the way. Got any new powers I should know about?”

Demi’s green eyes sparkled, a mischievous grin stretching across those way too kissable lips.

“A thing you might like. If you ask me nicely.”

Mason laughed, feeling a very inappropriate urge. At some point his ‘fight or flight’ response had exchanged one ‘f word’ for something else. But since he couldn’t do one, it was time to do the other.

He let go of Demi’s hand and summoned his bow, walking towards the junkyard. A dozen pairs of feet followed.

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