"What do you mean by ‘you don’t know who I am’?”
With an confused stare of green-gray, Inia repeated her answer to Rashad and said, “I have never met you before, sir. Given your aggressive demeanor towards me, I doubt we’d ever get along.”
The girl kneeled over Jollum and stroked his face as Moira held his prone form. Jollum’s injuries and his condition were getting worse with all the stress in the room and he moaned in discomfort.
“What? You don’t think we’d get along? We’ve been on a date—just last night, we were out on the top floor of the construction site and we kissed. Twice!” Taking her by the shoulders, Rashad said, “Don’t you remember anything? Anything at all?”
“Get your hands off me, buddy!” Inia shouted and pushed Rashad off. “First of all, I wouldn’t go to some damn construction site for a date, ‘cuz Auntie said guys are mean and all of them are liars. With that said, I certainly wouldn’t be going out with you, because you’re both a mean person and a liar.”
“I’m tired of people calling me a liar and I’m TIRED of hearing about that damned auntie of yours,” Rashad yelled. “You don’t have a single original thought—”
“Whoa whoa whoa, there.” Kitty stopped him with a powerful paw, saying, “We’re trying to get her to remember who we are, not make her our enemy. Cut her some slack; maybe she’s suffering from the stress of the day.”
“Yes, Kitty,” Donovan interjected, “but we must get her memory back to where it was before we can get what we want.”
“Get what you want?” Inia looked at the ice mage with a wary eye. “What do you mean by that?”
“Never mind that. First, we must get your mind in order. Do you know who I am?”
Inia shrugged. “I don’t know…some guy asking me questions?”
Sighing, Donovan asked, “Do you recall meeting me before?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Alright. So you know, I’m your boss here at the Egress Bar,” the ice mage clarified. “The name’s Donovan.”
“I don’t work here,” Inia spat back. “I’d never work in a filthy little knothole like this. I work for my Auntie’s friend Moira at the Loom House. I have been for three days now.”
“Yes, she has worked for me during the daytime,” Moira piped up as she held the injured Jollum. “And it’s true: she’d never work here because her aunt would never allow it.”
“If she ever knew about it,” Donovan added, brushing off the comment about his bar. “Okay, so you remember your aunt’s friend Moira. Do you remember anyone else here?”
“C’mon kiddo.” Kitty put on a smile and danced a bit, adding a flourish to her finish and said confidently, “You have to remember me.”
Frowning, the tanned teenager replied, “No, I think I’d remember meeting an attention whore in this small town. Especially if she was an Enigman.”
“Oh…” The humbled cat-woman slinked back to her seat next to Wyle, who said, “You remember me?”
“I’ve seen you in town, but I’ve never met you. I’d have no reason to talk to the likes of you.”
“HOW ABOUT ME?” Barcrab asked, expecting the best.
“Heavens no!” Inia wrinkled her nose at the crab-man saying, “You’re ugly as sin and you smell like fish! By the night sky, who do you people think I am?” She looked about the room and surveyed the other nine people as they stared back at the rude young woman who impatiently asked, “Well?”
“We are your friends!” Rashad said harshly. “We are the ones who saved you from a fate worse than death out there. We saved you from your aunt: the woman you hinge your ideas on is the one responsible for what’s going on past that door.”
A look of shock washed over Inia’s face. “My aunt? She’s got something to do with what’s going on outside?” When Rashad nodded in the affirmative, she replied, “Let me guess…she’s an evil magician who’s bent on destroying the world with that peasant army outside, so she can take her revenge on the world of mankind.” A sarcastic smile spread across her bronze face and she asked mockingly, “Am I even close?”
“You’re very close, little girl. One mistake: they aren’t peasants.” Cyan stood and patted Rashad’s shoulder reassuringly. “They are the undead.”
With an angry stare, Inia said, “The undead? You mean as in walking corpses? HA!” She got up from Jollum’s side and said, “The dead can’t walk, because they’re dead. Dead. As for my aunt Blackheart being the cause of all this, I think you all need to stop telling lies about the person who runs this town. She made this town—”
“And she can break it whenever she wants,” Shuya cut in. “I’ve seen her do it before, and she’s doing it again. Only this time, she’s has foot soldiers to do whatever she wants done. Our “benefactor” didn’t have that luxury in Sumptor.
“Sumptor? That town was destroyed! And you say my aunt did that?” Inia stomped her foot and said, “I am not going to sit here and let you people slander my aunt’s good name in Karmor’s Bend. She’s done far too much good in this town: there’s no crime to speak of in this town because the commoners stay in their places!
“And you rabble are trying to upset that balance with lies,” Inia said as she pointed a slender finger at the group in front of her. “I’m going to tell my aunt about you subversives and see that you are punished justly. I’m leaving, and you can’t stop me.” With a swirl of her cloak, the haughty teenager tromped up the stairs to the upper floor of the bar.
The other survivors in the bar looked at each other with worried looks, thinking that their plan was lost to the whims of an impudent young woman. The only exception to the rule was Donovan, who smiled brightly. Shuya looked at him, asking, “What’s so funny?”
“She’s never gonna get past that ice wall I put up.” Donovan laughed and said, “Somebody go get her.”
Wyle stood and went upstairs to find the upper bar empty. “Inia?” he called. Suddenly, he saw a bit of movement pass by the window closest to the frozen barrier. Wyle couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Inia pass by the frost-edged window. He ran to the window and said, “Inia! Come back!!”
A snarling ghoul replaced the sight of a retreating Inia. Wyle jumped back in shock and made a beeline for the underground bar, yelling, “She got out, man! She’s headed for Blackheart Estates!”
“How the Hells…” was all Donovan could manage at first. “If that little twit broke any of my windows—”
“Ain’t no windows broke, Don. She did something though, and she’s gonna get the Benefactor on us! We’re stuck in this trap!” Wyle ran down to Shuya and Rashad and said, “We’ve gottta get out of here! We gotta move or we’re gonna get killed!!!”
Cyan reached over and slapped Wyle twice, saying, “That’s two out of three statements right: we have to move or we will be killed. But we aren’t trapped.” Turning he said, “Donovan, is there another way out of here?”
“Yeah, the back door. I sealed that with ice.” The ice mage stroked his white goatee. “I can unseal that back door…”
“Ah!” the halfling exclaimed in excitement. “You see where I’m going with this, right?”
“Yeah. I clear us a path and we all escape, leaving Karmor’s Bend behind. But to where…”
“By Toren, we’re not leaving without her!” Rashad looked pointedly at his fellow survivors and said, “Something is wrong with Inia, and I think that Blackheart the Benefactor has something to do with it. I’m not going to leave her to the mercy of that evil woman any longer!”
Cyan looked at the two dark-skinned humans with an equal amount of confusion and said, “The both of you are wrong about my plan.” Looking at Shuya, he explained, “I want Donovan to make a way through the undead creatures out there with his ice magic. We’re gonna go to Shuya’s house and get the rest of her gear, get my gear and then we deal with this necromancer. Are we clear on this?”
“This man’s injured,” Moira said. “He can’t be moved. We must stay here…”
A rattling cough stopped the seamstress and the foreman Jollum spoke. “Don’t worry about me, lass. You’ve got to get out of here, y’hear?”
“B-but if you stay here alone you’ll die, Jollum!” Shuya said. “We’ll take you to my house—”
“I’m already dead inside…” Jollum coughed a glob of phlegm, swirled dark red and yellow-green. It sat in his beard as he said, “That woman on the hill has had me wrapped about her finger…since the days of Sumptor. This damned disease…and my foolish wants of living forever were…were the cause of so much pain and suffering.”
Jollum turned to Shuya and said, “I sold out all of Sumptor for a new life, free of disease and all I had to do…was open the gate. Please forgive me my errors, little one…if you can …” Turning away from a wide-eyed Shuya, the Halfling foreman rasped to Moira, “Hear…she has you too…you must…get free…” The hacking coughs rattled his body and spittle flew from his mouth as Jollum breathed his last.
“No…” Shuya sobbed as she fell to her knees in frustration. “Why, why, why…”
“Ey,” Cyan said. “You can’t cry over this traitor, Shuya. You have to go on.” Wyle picked the bartender off the floor and got her to her feet. “Sumptor and this town were your towns too, human,” Cyan said to Wyle, “and I say it’s high time we paid the foul Blackheart back. Are you with me?”
“Yeah, and Shuya’s in too, even if she can’t say it,” Wyle said.
“I’m in,” Rashad said. “I’ve got a bone to pick with her.”
“ME TOO” Barcrab added.
“I will help you in your mission,” Donovan said. “You’ll need it.”
Cyan turned to Kitty and said, “Kitty? You with us?”
The Enigman cat-woman sat on the edge of the stage, looking at the floor in contemplation. She had been thinking about what Inia said when she heard her name and she said, “Something’s not right with her…wait, what?”
“We’re gonna put a stop to the woman who’s changed your little buddy. You coming with?”
Kitty got up wearily and said, “Yeah, I’m in.”
Moira looked around at the other people, ready to go and asked openly, “What of me, good sir?”
Cyan turned to her and said, “You’ve got no choice but to come with us.” Before Moira could protest, he said, “I heard what the foreman said. ‘She’s got you too’ he said. How’s she got you? We’ll have to find out when you come with us, ‘cuz you’re certainly not going to go out there alone.
“No buts,” Cyan cut in over Moira’s second protest. “We’re leaving now. Donovan, are you ready with your plan?”
“Yes,” Donovan said as he hefted his ice axe onto his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
With a wave of his hand, the back door leading to the back lot of the Egress Bar opened and the group filed up the stairs through it to street level. No ghouls were in the back lot, so Donovan cast his spell. While the eight survivors headed to Shuya’s house under a protective spell, the basement of the Egress Bar filled with a cloying smell of death and decay as Jollum’s rotting body decomposed at a supernaturally fast rate. Moments after Shuya cried over his dead body, all that was left of Jollum the foreman was the fine jacket coated in a muddy mixture of dark bloody phlegm and brown dust.
