“But you’re all the way up on the stage,” Gary said. “And we’re down here. You know how I feel about stairs, Sam. Beings with four legs shouldn’t have to try and navigate stairs—”
“Godsdammit,” I muttered. “Rage momentum ruined. Thanks, Gary.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Everyone! Everyone. I’m so sorry my speech was ruined. It was going to end awesome and you were all going to feel bad about turning against me and then we were all probably going to group hug and stuff and maybe cry on each other’s shoulders. Then I would have said I was on the road to forgiving all of you or whatever. It would have been totes awesome and would have gone down in the annals—”
“Heh,” Kevin said. “I’d go down in your annals—”
“Kevin. Shut. Up. I’m trying to be serious!”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.”
“Dammit, now I forgot what I was say—wait. Hold on. Group hugs, crying, forgiving, me being wonderful, annals—okay! And then I would have announced we have a plan—sort of—to take back what’s ours, and blah, blah, blah, we would have ended the night in semidrunken revelry, and everything would have been just swell.” I glared at the man in stone. “But then this guy had to ruin that. Dude, I am not very happy with you right now.”
“In the name of Myrin!” he shrieked. “We will return for—”
I snapped my fingers, and the stone crawled up, covering his mouth. I thought about raising it to his nose, but I didn’t.
“Okay!” I said, clapping my hands. “Who’s ready to kick some ass and take some names? I know I am. Going to kick some ass… and take. Um. Names. Or. Whatever. You know what? Doesn’t even matter. I’m here, I’m queer, and I am super pissed off. It’s time to take back what’s ours.”
“Yaaaayyy?” someone in the audience said.
“See if I ever try to give a stirring speech again,” I muttered. “You all suck balls.”
III: The City of Lockes
Chapter 9: Always Go to Confession Before a Gangbang
“YEAH, I’M not going in there,” I said. “Nope. I refuse. Absolutely not. Do you need me to say it in Elvish? Glaarka-darkk-fuggit. Or however their language sounds. I don’t know, I can’t speak Elvish.”
“We don’t have another choice,” Justin said, sounding annoyed. And in a remarkably deeper voice too, seeing as how I’d magically modified his face and voice so now he resembled a rotund balding man who maybe smoked too many cigars. He wasn’t very happy with me for that. “The sewers are the only way into the City of Lockes. We talked about this. It’s part of the plan.”
“Well maybe we need a new plan,” I retorted. “Do you smell that? That is shit. That smell is actual shit. I don’t want to walk around in someone else’s fecal matter. I already spent a year in the woods having to poop into holes and then cover it up.”
“That was probably too much information,” Ryan said, stroking his chest-length beard as he was wont to do since I’d grown it for him. His skin was almost as dark as mine now, and while I thought I should have changed him a little more, I couldn’t convince myself to get rid of dat ass or dem biceps, so that was as far as it went. “And there are walkways in the sewers. We’re not actually going to be walking in… anything.”
“But the smell—”
“Maybe you should have stayed back at camp with the others since you’re so incapable,” Lady Tina said snidely. Or rather, Dark wizard Tim said, because she was my greatest creation. We’d decided that only four of us would enter the City of Lockes, with the others remaining in Camp HaveHeart. Gary, Tiggy, and Kevin hadn’t been pleased being left behind, but I couldn’t transmogrify them into something that wouldn’t give us away. And it seemed easier to keep the number of people involved low just in case things went sour.
I’d argued against Justin going, saying he needed to stay with our people, to be the face of the Resistance in case something happened to the rest of us. He’d shot that down instantly. It was his father we were rescuing, and if I thought he’d stay behind and let the rest of us muck it up, then I was mistaken. He’d been rather fiery about the whole thing, and I was impressed.
For almost thirty seconds.
Because then he wondered aloud if I should be the one to stay behind, given that Myrin had already been informed of my return. I’d responded that Myrin wouldn’t expect me to come to the City of Lockes so soon. I didn’t really know if that were true, because I didn’t really know how Myrin thought, but I tried to put myself in his position. I wouldn’t expect me either.
Justin just rolled his eyes.
But when it was decided that Lady Tina would be the fourth member of our party, both Ryan and Justin in agreement, I did the only thing I could.
I made her boyish.
Er. Mannish.
She was totally a dude.
She had a scraggly beard and a terrible bowl haircut and looked as if she wouldn’t be out of place at St. Bernadine’s Home for the Criminally Insane and Wayward Adults, a psychiatric facility in one of the lower wards of the City of Lockes. She still sounded like Lady Tina, but through the filter of a rough, cracking voice. Also, she had an egregious overbite, because I was an asshole and she was my mortal enemy.
I looked amazing, of course. My beard was long and luxuriant, my hair settling on my shoulders like the great mane of some fierce and wild creature. I made myself a foot taller and my chest a little bigger, and grinned at myself in the mirror at the sight of the new and improved Sam of Dragons.
The others weren’t very pleased with me.
I’d told them that my magic reacted to how they were on the inside.
Which was total bullshit, but still. The horrified looks on Justin’s and Lady Tina’s faces had been so worth it.
We were all as dressed down as possible, given that we’d be ditching the clothes after coming out of the sewers. The smell would most likely cling to the fabrics and would be a dead giveaway. Each of us carried a pack with our disguises and assorted weapons. Ryan, Tina, and Justin all had their swords at their sides, the brutish amateurs.
But we were virtually unrecognizable.
All thanks to me.
Which is why I felt that I was well within my rights to not want to wallow in poop.
“We could just stroll through the front gate,” I muttered. “It’d be easier, and I wouldn’t have to potentially throw up a lot.”
“I told you,” Justin said. “Entering the City of Lockes now requires identification papers that we don’t have. We don’t even know what they look like since they change biweekly, so we couldn’t have you forge any. This way, we get into the City undetected.”
“And what if we’re stopped inside?” I asked.
“I suppose we’ll see if any of the time in the woods made you capable of running faster.”
“Hey! I can run fast. Like, so fast. Do you know how many times I’ve had to run for my life?”
“This isn’t going to go well,” Lady Tina muttered.
“Then you can stay behind,” I snapped at her.
“Sam,” Ryan warned.
I groaned. “Sorry. I’m still not used to standing near her without making plans to punch her in the tit. It’s hard to shift my worldview in such a short amount of time.”
“Try harder,” Justin said, peering down into the sewer grate. “Because it’s getting closer to dawn. We need to be holed up in the slums by the time the sun rises so we can rest for entering the castle later tonight. Nut up, Haversford, and get your ass into the godsdamn sewer before I stab you in the throat.”
“Am I allowed to be turned-on by that?” I whispered to Ryan.
“No,” he whispered back.
“Crap. Okay.”
“If you two are done whispering sweet nothings to each other, could we please get this grate off now?” Justin asked.
Oh. Right. That was me. “Stand back,” I told them. “My magic is a powerful thing, and I wouldn’t want two-thirds of you caught in the backlash.”