Chapter 13

  By the time I returned from talking with Bill and Ted, the two Voormis we had beat up, my expression had soured. Joan picked up on my reaction and looked at me with concern.

  After the fight, we had helped them into the speakeasy where things were amicable, for the most part. Just inside the door were a couple of seats that had been reserved for the bouncers, Bill and Ted. After the seats, was a stairway leading down into the rest of the speakeasy. We propped the beaten up Voormis in the chairs before I spoke to them in the rough barking language that only Voormis and people with the Eldritch Whisperer could speak. From where we stood, we couldn't see the rest of the speakeasy, so it was best to get as much information as possible before making our grand entrance.

  "I can tell by your face, it's not good news." Joan frowned, preparing for the worst. "Are we going to be swarmed as soon as we go downstairs? Is there nobody here that can answer our questions?"

  "Worse..." My shoulders drooped, afraid to put the contents of my discussion with Bill and Ted to words.

  "It's alright. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together." She was being unusually supportive. She even placed a hand on my shoulder. Dalos had been nuzzling my ankle the whole time, so I felt I had enough support.

  "It's Ted..." I glanced over my shoulder at the Voormi bouncer. He was still painfully favoring the part of his anatomy that I had walloped with a magical weapon. "Him and his wife Stephanie were trying for a baby..."

  "What?" Joan removed her hand from my shoulder. Apparently, she didn't feel nearly as guilty about this turn of events as I did.

  "They'd already been having trouble. He was having ED issues, so it's been a rough time. But after this..." I sighed, regretting my choice of going for a nut shot instead of actually attacking like a normal human. "I might have ruined their chance at happiness."

  A familiar red outline appeared around Joan as I noticed a pen had been summoned into her hand. I had to applaud her self control, because the red outline made it clear what she intended to do with that pen, and it rhymed with girder flea.

  "You need him to translate..." She muttered to herself as she shook with either extreme frustration or need to use the restroom.

  "Also, they complimented Dalos on his healthy coat of miasma." I said as Dalos yipped in response.

  "What about something important? What did you find out." She was seething.

  "I don't know about you, Joan, but Ted's challenges in having a baby is important to him and Stephanie. Bill too, since Stephanie's his little sister." I stated, wondering how she could be so cold.

  "Focus!" Her words caused me to immediately straighten.

  "They didn't alert anyone, so we won't have any issues entering the speakeasy. Everyone downstairs will just assume we got in normally. Their boss is in the back room, but we'll need to speak with the bartender, Rufus, to gain access." I spat the information at Joan as if I were a private responding to their drill sergeant.

  "Anything else?" Joan relaxed slightly, getting the sort of information she had been requesting.

  "Bill says we should try the chocolate martini." The response was apparently not what Joan wanted, which resulted in a Homer-strangling-Bart moment that definitely didn't result in Bill having to help pull Joan off me.

  I didn't point out the obvious to Joan, invoking Cathy's name at the door did nothing other than trigger an attack. Once they realized we weren't agents of The Siren of the Deep, they had no issue in letting us pass. It also helped that I gave Ted some future pointers to help spice things up in the bedroom. Fun trivia, since Voormis were already covered in hair, they didn't have furries, instead they have fleshies. I couldn't remember how the conversation went that specific direction, but it definitely did. If things went south, Joan and I could try to pass ourselves off as a couple of fleshy fetishists.

  We made out way down the narrow stairway, leading to a second door. When we stepped through the door at the bottom of the stairs, we were met with an impressive sight. The speakeasy was nearly as big as three blue whales tied side-by-side. I was not sure what that would be in meters since I was an American.

  Just inside the door, to the left, was a fairly elaborate bar. Behind the bar were rows and rows of liquor. Even though this was supposed to be Prohibition Era, none of the liquor appeared to be bootleg. Seeing the spread, I started to wonder if I should order one of those chocolate martinis Bill had suggested. A quick glance at Joan reminded me that I should probably keep my chocolate martini cravings in check.

  To the right of the door was a casino with slot machines, craps, poker, black jack, Smash Bros Melee tournaments on the Game Cube, and roulette wheels. One of those things seemed a little out of place for the time, I wasn't sure exactly if slot machines existed in the 30s.

  The entire back half of the space was some sort of arena with a large twenty sided cage in the middle. Rows of seats and benches surrounded the cage, and nearly every seat was packed with Voormis. If I had to guess, I would think it was some sort of stage for spelling bees, but I could have been wrong. I couldn't get a good look from where I stood, but it looks like they were cleaning up a tomato juice spill in the center of the cage, while helping move a sleeping spelling bee contestant to an area outside the cage.

  Something struck me as odd about the spelling bee contestant. They had a mullet and seemed too old to be in a spelling bee. Also, they were human and covered in pretty nasty wounds. The might have also been wearing a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt.

  Suddenly, I recalled either Bill or Ted saying something about meeting their quota for humans before I'd antagonized them by using Cathy's name. Perhaps it wasn't just a throw-away comment, but actually meant they had humans inside... Or at least one human. Since Lynyrd Skynyrd wasn't around in the 30s, I had to guess that this human might be a player.

  "Hey Joan, what year did Lynyrd Skynyrd form?" I asked.

  "1964, although they were called My Backyard. It wasn't until 1968 that they changed their name to Lynyrd Skynyrd." Joan answered without a moment's delay.

  For a moment, I was too stunned by her intimate knowledge of the famous rock band that my mind went blank.

  "So... Not the 1930s?" I inquired like a moron.

  "Is there a point to your line of questioning?" She responded with a look of annoyance.

  "Just trying to figure out if that human corpse was a player or an NPC." I casually replied. "Maybe we should go check it out before you get a chocolate martini, what do you think?"

  The palm of her hand slapping the back of my head was an appropriate response. We quickly hurried over to the arena to inspect the body. As we got closer, it seemed that I'd jumped to conclusions. The body was only mostly dead (like the man in the Monty Python Bring out Yer Dead scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, not like the parrot from their Parrot Sketch), but I was right about them having a mullet and Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt.

  "Players?" The Skynyrd fan said weakly, barely able to form words.

  "I'm Joan, and this walking disappointment is Clay." While accurate, her introductions never failed to hurt. I awkwardly waved.

  "Rhett..." He barely got the name out before he broke into a fit of coughs. I was no doctor, but I didn't think coughs were supposed to contain that much blood. Channeling my inner Doctor House, I had to assume he had Lupus. He reached into his pocket and retrieved what appeared to be a piece of beef jerky. He put it in his mouth and struggled to chew it.

  I liked beef jerky as much as the next guy, but there was a time and place, bro.

  Oddly enough, his condition seemed to improve. It must have been good jerky.

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  "What happened?" Joan asked. We both looked around, noticing the crowd and staff were completely ignoring him. Instead, the employees were cleaning the floor inside the cage. They had priorities... Clean first, first aid never.

  "Got my ass handed to me in the cage." He chuckled. I guessed he found it funny. "A couple of those bigfoot-lookin' dudes beat the ever livin' shit out of me."

  "That's a really violent way to resolve a spelling bee." I responded. Two pairs of eyes looked at me like I was an idiot.

  "What?" Rhett blurted out.

  "Don't mind him, he's an idiot." Joan explained before turning to me. "It's some sort of underground fighting ring. From the looks of things, it's their biggest source of income."

  That made much more sense than what I was thinking. It would have been hard for Rhett to compete in a spelling bee since he couldn't speak the language. That also explained the red stuff in the ring, and all his injuries. The worst injury I'd ever seen at a spelling bee was that one kid who passed out while spelling alopecoid, then that little badass stood back up and spelled it correctly...

  "A-L-O-P..." I started before a slap at the back of my head silenced me. I swear I was going to spell it properly if I hadn't been assaulted by a violent blonde lady.

  "Like I said... Idiot." She gestured to me. "Are you free to roam around? Or are you a prisoner or something?"

  "No fuckin' clue." He painfully sat up thanks to Joan's help. He looked around, and nobody seemed to be paying attention to them. "I think they thought I was dead."

  "You wanna get a drink? I hear the chocolate martini's are the bomb diggity." I chimed in. Joan glared, but Rhett laughed.

  "Sure thing." He responded as he held out his hand for me to pull him to his feet. "I like you. You're crazy... Want some jerky?"

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few pieces of jerky. I would have been more disgusted if I didn't notice he had a Ziploc bag in his pocket, so it wasn't like I was going to be getting lint-coated jerky.

  "Thanks, I'll eat it with my drink." I happily grabbed a piece and put it in my shorts pocket. It might be lint covered, but it'd be my lint.

  He turned to Joan, and offered some jerky. She took a cautious look at it, and shook her head. I caught her eyes looking at me as if she was trying to tell me something like Don't eat jerky from strangers. Rhett started to offer Joan's piece to Dalos, but I spoke up to stop him.

  "He'd love it, but he doesn't actually eat. He'd just tear it to shreds and waste it." At my advice, Rhett returned the jerky to his pocket. Dalos looked at me, what was that look?.. Betrayal? "He's a Tindalos Hound puppy, so as much as he loves snacks and head pats, I'd advise against it for your safety."

  "No shit?!" He looked between Dalos and me with respect, like when you found out your friend got an N64 with Goldeneye.

  We continued to chat as we made our way over to the bar. I'd offered my shoulder to help him walk, and he didn't decline the offer. Joan walked nearby with a much more cautious disposition. I was the guy who got into the Free Candy van, she was the one who reported it to the cops. In my defense, sometimes the van just actually had free candy and no nefarious motivations. (This book's publisher does not share Clay's opinions. We do not advise entering strange vans offering free candy.)

  Sitting at the bar, I'd gotten a chocolate martini and Rhett got a beer. Like with the beef jerky, Joan turned down the option to get a drink. I was stuck ordering the drinks since nobody else could speak Voormi.

  "You actually speak that weird dog-bark language?" He couldn't believe what he was seeing. "That would have really helped earlier."

  "That reminds me, we never found out how you ended up in the fighting ring here." Joan chimed in. I felt she was judging me for enjoying a delicious drink. I'd have to thank Bill for his expert drink suggestion.

  "I followed a couple of leads that brought me here. But when they just barked at me when I knocked at the door, I decided to force myself in." He shrugged. It wasn't hard to tell how that went for him. "I don't really know what they said, but they threw me in a room for a while before dragging me into the cage."

  "Were you here by yourself, or do you have a party?" I asked. He hadn't mentioned anyone else, but that didn't mean there wasn't someone locked away in a side room awaiting the next scheduled fight.

  "Just me..." His expression darkened. "I got dragged into this place with my wife, Nona. She died the first day..."

  I was never good at knowing how to respond to these kinds of social situations. He shifted on his bar stool uncomfortably before grabbing a piece of jerky from his pocket and chewing on it. It seemed to raise his spirits.

  "You can tag along with us, if you want." I took a sip of my chocolaty drink to stave off my awkwardness. "It's safer that way."

  I could immediately see Joan scowling. She tried to hide her frustrations from Rhett, but I realized this wasn't my most popular idea. To be honest, it was hard to blame her. She was right, bringing anyone into our party was beyond high risk. We'd found out the hard way that the other players were prepared to kill me, so why would Rhett be any different? Maybe if we hid the fact that I was the unwelcome presence, it would be fine.

  "What's your occupation in this world?" Joan spoke up, she didn't seem happy, but she was at least trying to consider the option of letting him join us. She'd vet him, and if he passed the interview, we'd have a new entry level employee in our detective agency.

  "Oh the thing in that book? I'm The Exterminator, but that's just what my job was in real life." He answered directly. For the first time in a while, I saw a notification pop up.

  Player is being honest with User.

  "I'm The Insurance Adjuster." I felt bad lying, but we couldn't afford spreading my actual identity, especially with the current bounty on my head. "Get this, would you believe Joan is The Playwright? She says that's her job in real life, but we're not in Shakespeare times, I'm not gullible enough to believe that's still a thing. Right?"

  "One of Nona's friends was the high school drama teacher..." He looked at me, not sure if I was joking or just an idiot. "I mean, no offense, but plays aren't something I'd be caught dead going to see, but they are a thing."

  Joan was conflicted at the response. Rhett managed to casually insult both of us at once. I didn't sense malice, and I he didn't seem like the artsy type.

  "You the ones Bill said were looking to talk to the boss?" Cutting into our conversation, a large Voormi leaned uncomfortably close to us. Joan and Rhett both turned to me since all they could hear was a weird barking noise. I was the only one who could actually understand and answer the man.

  "I'm guessing you're Rufus?" I asked. The only reason I remembered his name was because that god had some weird Bill and Ted theme going on with the names in here.

  "The boss'll meet with you..." He looked over our group, including Dalos. "But you'll have to win a fight in the Icosagon first. Gotta earn it."

  "What's an icosagon?" I asked to Joan and Rhett. "Is it some sort of special Lovecraftian thing?"

  "It's a shape with twenty sides." Joan replied as if it were common knowledge. "So like that cage over there, I didn't count, but I'd guess it has around twenty sides."

  That god was definitely a nerd. I had to fight the sense of kinship, since knowing the term for twenty-sided things would definitely be in my wheelhouse. I owned an embarrassing number of icosa...hedrons? I guessed that would be the name for the shape of a D20.

  "You want us to fight? Who's our opponent?" I wasn't too keen on the idea of voluntarily getting into a boss battle, but it was likely the only way we'd see the boss. The other alternative would be trying to force our way in, which would result in us fighting our opponent and everyone else in the speakeasy.

  "It'd be the three of you... You, the lady, and the Tidalos Hound. Your buddy there already fought and I doubt he can even stand on his own." Rufus answered. "There's a special opponent set aside just for you unwelcome presence."

  My eyes opened wide. His voice changed for a moment when saying the familiar phrase. It sounded almost like a person doing a really poor dub job over a vocal track that someone else had recorded.

  So this was a trap.

  I mean, I already knew this was a trap... But I'd let my guard down since the confrontation at the door. Everything had been going a little too smoothly. Still, at least this time we'd be able to prepare for a fight. We still had our buffed stats from Joan's Ramen Chef ability, and Dalos would be able to join us. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I had to ask Joan first, this wasn't a decision to make on my own.

  "If we want to meet the boss, we'd need to fight in the arena... You, me, and Dalos. Not Rhett because they might be monsters, but they're not monsters." I explained to Joan while Rhett listened in. "It's a trap. They already have an opponent set aside for us, like they were waiting."

  "Why would they plot something just for you?" Rhett asked. I had slipped up, talking a little too much, I managed to make him suspicious.

  "I think it's just because we asked to see the boss. If you'd done the same, I bet you'd have gotten the same response." Joan saved my butt with her quick thinking. After appeasing Rhett, she turned to me. "We don't have a choice unless we just want to give up, right?"

  "I don't see a better option. We need to see this boss to advance the investigation, so we might as well get it over with. Plus we still have Ramen Chef working, right?" I knew mine was still active, but Joan had eaten her ramen before me. If hers hadn't met the two hour time limit, it would be coming soon.

  "We'll need to hurry. But it's still working for the time being." She answered.

  Rhett was struggling to follow the conversation, but since he didn't need to take part in the fight, he was refraining from interrupting. I spun on my stool to face the umber-furred bartender.

  "We'll do it. What do we need to do?" I met his sunken, beady eyes.

  "Very well. As soon as you enter the Icosagon, the fight will automatically start." He motioned toward the cage.

  "It's now or never..." I said to Joan as I turned to face her. She nodded in response.

  The entire situation seemed horribly paced. If it were a real underground fighting arena, they wouldn't just have a crowd sitting around with no scheduled fights. We should have had to wait for a few fights to finish before we'd get our chance, but instead the ring had been empty since Rhett's ass-whooping.

  Regardless of that god's lazy writing, it was actually a bonus that we could hurry and get the fight started. Joan seemed to agree because she led the way across the large room toward the cage's entrance. As we passed by the crowd, they all seemed to turn to us. It was creepy as hell. Everything was just a little too quiet.

  The three of us entered the cage, and I closed the door behind us. Dalos nudged my leg, acting much more on-edge than I'd ever seen him. While Joan and I summoned our weapons of choice, it started to sink in that this might have been a very bad idea. Before I had much of a chance to stew in my growing dread, a booming voice blasted through the arena in English. Of course, my mind immediately criticized that god because it wouldn't make sense for an English announcement to be made for a crowd of creatures who didn't speak the language. For them, it must have been like that time I tried to watch Ashita no Joe without subtitles because I couldn't find a version that had them.

  "For our main event, we have a grudge match! A real blast from the past! In one of the twenty corners, are the challengers." I half expected the voice to belong to that god, but it surprisingly was more of a Michael Buffer sounding voice. Even from another world, this game might get sued if the voice did his Let's Get Ready to Rumble catchphrase. "Two ugly humans and a puppy."

  Did we really look at ugly to the Voormis? Bill and Ted had said something similar when we first met them. I mean, I was no Derek Zoolander, but Joan was very much a Hansel.

  "And in one of the other corners... Because these cheating bastards found some loophole to avoid it last time..."

  Oh no. I had a very very bad feeling. I knew exactly what we'd be fighting... No, fighting wasn't the right word. We were going to be trapped in the cage with...

  "Fresh from another dimension, let's all give it up for our champion... The Dimensional Shambler!"

  The previously silent crowd exploded in excitement. The space around us started to distort uncomfortably. Dalos whimpered, hiding behind me as if I was going to be able to do anything to protect him.

  Then with a tearing of dimensions, it stepped into the Icosagon.

  "I liked him better when he was just a pile of guts..." I said to Joan. For once, she didn't criticize me. She just stared wide-eyed and nodded her head.

  "Me too, Clay. Me too."

  heroes be able to survive the battle with the Dimensional Shambler? The fight starts next chapter.