Grak_Private Instigator Read online

  Now, that was an incentive!

  It was the stuff from which dreams were made.

  For that kind of reward, I would change the orbit of the sun, or burn my arms off trying.

  Now, I just had to find people crazy enough to ruin everyone’s good time, people short-sighted enough to force their views on others.

  This was the real challenge, because it described just about every person and organization in the city.

  But I had an idea where to start, nonetheless.

  I was getting thirsty already.

  3

  The Undercity is far nicer and more welcoming than many believe.

  Sure, the city has its fair share of yawning abysses, sulfurous vents and spewing fumaroles, seething lava tubes, horror-infested caves, haunted passages, maniacal magicians hatching nefarious schemes from hidden lairs, extradimensional monstrosities lurking in somber shadows, demented cults fueled by devotion to irrational causes, and forgotten byways inhabited by soul-consuming terrors. But those are merely adventure zones to be avoided by the faint of heart and enjoyed by those seeking excitement, betterment, and reward.

  The Undercity also has teeming bazaars filled with creatures from across the macroverse, thriving shops lining cavernous boulevards carved from the bones of the mountain, institutions dedicated to learning and improvement, serene caverns lit by phosphorescent fungi and luminous crystal formations, vast freshwater lakes for congregation and leisure, vegetation-filled parks for exercise, relaxation, and appreciation of nature, soothing hot water springs to cure what ails you, and diverse communities making their lives in homes molded from the raw rock.

  And most of it is done fairly peaceably.

  There is something here for everyone and everything.

  And most of it will not kill you.

  At least on first sight.

  I headed home.

  I have heard many people say that home is where the heart is.

  My home is a small cavern roughly carved into the naked rock of Alyon’s Undercity.

  My heart is not there.

  I don’t think it would fit.

  I can walk across the space in about four steps.

  Not strides.

  Steps.

  Short ones.

  Aside from a small restroom only big enough to stand in, there are no other separate rooms in my house. My bed folds into the stone wall to the right side of the entry door and has the distinction of doubling as a couch. This leaves enough room to open the front door or go into the restroom if the cot is out.

  I have no kitchen, per se, only a counter on which food is summoned and prepared magically by an assortment of obscure Paratechnological devices. I have the low-grade units. This means the food is palatable, but I never have guests lining up outside to come over for dinner.

  On the unlikely chance someone does come over, I have two chairs.

  I do not have a closet.

  I have a small extradimensional pocket dimension inside a small pouch at my waist that I use to store my things.

  My brother also lives in there.

  I keep him close and take care of him, just like my mother asked.

  In fact, his place is far nicer and more spacious than mine.

  I try not to get jealous.

  Even though he gets more visitors than I do.

  Inside a pouch.

  There is a mirror on the outside of the bathroom door. It is intended to make the space look bigger. This is an impossibility. I doubt even the world’s greatest archmage could do that. Instead, it reflects me.

  This probably scares off the few guests who are brave or desperate enough to visit me.

  For my part, I consider myself handsome in an unhewn block sort of way.

  My green skin has the healthy pallor of decaying flesh, my fangs are strong enough to crush bone, my browline is so treacherous that it would give the most experienced mountaineers cause to turn around, my shoulders are too wide for most thoughtfully designed doors, and my fists are the size of small boulders.

  As far as orcs go, I am a fine specimen.

  As far as minuscule apartments go, I am a nightmare.

  All garbage, except me, is disposed of magically in the bathroom by the same devices that clean me. I eat other people’s reconstituted wastes and some of my own. The devices are good enough that I can barely tell.

  I’m truly living the dream.

  What kind of dream I’m living is a different question.

  Which is, in part, why I spend so much time at the bar.

  Having room to stretch out is another.

  I have one lonely book propped on my kitchen counter. It’s not just any book, however. This book gives me access to just about any information I could want, including other books.

  If I want, I can access almost any information stored in the dataverse on it. Usually I don’t, because it puts me to sleep.

  Draypheus, my roommate, loves reading so much that the book is one of his favorite resting spots.

  I also have a projection system. It is nothing fancy. The entertainment system does not have any immersion, interactive haptic, or augmented reality capabilities. The system just projects three-dimensional representations of images with sound and lets me connect with the dataverse.

  These generally do not put me to sleep.

  I do not have any dedicated synthetic intelligences, either. I am barely intelligent myself and do not need an artificial intelligence making me feel less so.

  My brother has one, but that is his. My house has none.

  Despite my home’s limitations, it’s where I live.

  And, more importantly, I can afford it.

  Mostly because I own the place and taxes are low.

  That is a major selling point.

  Thankfully, I no longer need to buy.

  I also have a roommate, although in my case I would say that term is something of an exaggeration. He does share my room and he does eat my food without asking, so on those grounds, he does qualify as a typical roommate.

  But those two things are about all he does.

  I have seen moss collections more exciting than my roommate.

  My roommate’s name is Draypheus.

  He’s the world’s laziest fairy dragon.

  Most fairy dragons are zippy and full of life, darting around through the air excitedly, exhaling rainbows and farting stardust.

  On a busy day, Draypheus sleeps.

  Unlike those of most fairy dragons, Draypheus’s scales are not imbued with an incandescent iridescent sheen that causes flocks of elvish girls to clap their hands in delight upon catching sight of him. His wings do not scatter sunlight maniacally, like a prism hyped up on pixie dust.

  He is counter-colored.

  And I don’t have nice countertops.

  I can barely tell he’s even on the counter.

  Except my food keeps disappearing.

  So I know he’s there.

  The conniving devil.

  So, I keep my brother in my pocket and have a deadbeat chameleon fairy dragon as a roommate.

  Like my brother, Draypheus also somehow manages to get more visitors than I do.

  Truly, I live in a world of miracles.

  I plopped down on the unmade bed suspended from the wall and turned on the projection system to get caught up on the city’s news, especially the plague of monstrous transformations. I had been at the bar so much lately that life had become something of a blurry fog.

  Fog is great when you don’t want to see, but when you do, you hope for sun.

  I turned on InAction News, Channel 473.2719. This is a gnomish station. I like gnomes because of their sense of humor, lack of clarity, unique points of view, and general weirdness.

  Only a gnome would think a news station called InAction would not be confused with inaction, the exact opposite of what one typically looks for in a news channel dedicated to “promulgating the news from all corners of the macroverse… in action!”

&nbs
p; The gnome, or representation of a gnome—one could never be sure whether the newscasters were autonomous sentiences or physical people—had eyebrows so thick, he could store his cue cards and notes in them. When I turned on the projection, his voluble presence filled my living room, spilled into my kitchen, and took over the space where I was sitting on my bed. Waving his arms wildly, possibly warding off swarms of insects or other fey creatures invisible to me over the live broadcast, he was saying, “Citizens of Alyon continue to report random transmogrifications of an especially irksome nature. For word on the street, let’s send it off to Dizzywhig Goldsnout.”

  Dizzywhig Goldsnout was neither dizzy nor did she have a golden snout. But, surprisingly, she actually was standing on a street, perhaps even one in Alyon. Her eyebrows were elegantly curled to match the ringlets on her head. Perhaps hearkening to her name, she was wearing a shimmering jacket that reflected sunlight brightly into the viewing image.

  It might have been a garbage bag. One could never tell with gnomes.

  Passersby paid her little attention. Not because she was small or unusually dressed, but because they were used to gnomes talking to themselves for no apparent reason. “Thanks, Cogpulley,” she said. Cogpulley was obviously the show’s flailing host, not an apparatus used to hoist the device allowing her to communicate with the audience. “Alyon is in chaos.”

  Judging by the people wandering idly behind her and gawking into the camera, she might be in a different Alyon.

  Aside from the trouble that might ensue if her eyebrows got caught in her hair if a strong wind blew through, there was little chaos to be seen or heard from her vantage.

  “Citizens are seeking shelter as authorities seek to understand the motives of the terrorists behind the recent spate of monstrous transformations and find them before more damage is done.”

  That was something.

  Terrorists.

  Who would benefit from causing turmoil in the city?

  We already had enough problems. We didn’t need any more.

  Despite the city’s generally being at peace, there are many underlying tensions in Alyon. The city is divided into four primary quadrants, each housing groups that historically did not always play nicely with one another. Monsters and their less civilized ilk live with me in the Undercity. Dwarves and some gnomes live in the Undermount, located across the valley from the Undercity. Humans, elves, and assorted other races live in the valley between the two mountains holding the Undermount and the Undercity. And floating serenely above is Alyon, the original cityship that first came to Unea with the great Diaspora from Ea’ae long ago, during the War of Shadows when Ur’Daus, the great Darkness, was sealed away by the combined forces of Light.

  Alyon is the city’s seat of governance, where her most important and wealthy Citizens live and work. It also houses the city’s primary protectors, the Home Guard.

  “While investigators currently have no leads, they are advising Citizens to only eat food and beverages summoned and prepared safely in their homes.”

  That left my place out.

  There was little safe in my food, even without outside magical threats.

  “Edibles that have not been magically summoned appear to be the source of the malaise.”

  This meant goods that were sold and transported were the targets of whoever was causing the outbreak. Things that were made or grown were the likely source of the contamination.

  This meant someone or something was tampering with goods being sold and distributed throughout the city.

  I needed to find out who was doing this and how they were doing it, and put a stop to it before Orthanq went out of business.

  So I could get my reward.

  Piece of cake.

  Speaking of cake, I was hungry.

  But the last thing I wanted to do was eat.

  Here.

  4

  I pounded on my neighbor’s door. “Jumbai, you got any uleru?”

  Jumbai has been my neighbor for a long time.

  We have an understanding. If he needs any faces smashed, he can call me. If I need my stomach filled, I can call him.

  Considering I get my stomach filled far more than I smash faces, at least for him, I’ve come out ahead in the bargain.

  Jumbai’s door opened with a creak. A swirling wall of smoke held its place in the air, delineating where the door had been moments before in its normal closed position. The smoke was as mind-bending as it was thick; flashes of indigo, emerald, and scarlet arced through its billowing recesses like a kaleidoscopic lightning storm.

  I made sure not to enter.

  Otherwise, I might forget about the case entirely.

  Along with everything else.

  Deep wataani music was thrumming through the air, the primal chords calling to something deep inside me. It certainly did not make me want to dance, unless it was on the field of battle, with a battleaxe or warhammer in hand.

  At times like these, I was glad I had thick stone walls separating my cave from his.

  “Just a minute, Grak! I’m gettin’ a bucket o’ th’ good stuff for ya!”

  Sadly, I might need to wait to eat it.

  With all Jumbai’s special seasonings, the soup might render me as incapacitated as breathing the air in his room.

  “I’ll wait here!”

  I could get lost going in there.

  I heard pans rattling and pots dropping.

  If I hadn’t known any better, I would say Jumbai couldn’t see what he was doing.

  Even if he couldn’t, being a troll, I was sure he could smell what he was doing.

  Plus, trolls, like Orcs, can get around fairly well without light, thanks to our dark vision.

  Haze vision is another issue entirely.

  Jumbai finally emerged from the miasma like an undersea leviathan breaking the surface of the ocean. He was hunched over in the doorway as he held the bucket of savory slop out to me.

  Poor Jumbai has to crawl on his hands and knees to get out of his apartment.

  I have no idea how he goes to the bathroom and do not ask.

  Jumbai is about half again my height and almost as broad. His dark green skin is the color of verdant moss on an ancient forest floor. Long dreadlocks rope like vines from his misshapen head, only partially covering eyes that blaze a fiery orange from within the obscuring smoke.

  Jumbai is a jungle troll, and he brings a little bit of the wilds with him wherever he goes.

  “Here ya go, man! Enjoy!” Jumbai’s voice is deep, almost as deep as the wataani reverberating out from his chamber.

  “Thanks, Jumbai. This looks like a great batch!” I could see succulent bits of rat, scorpions, leeches, and other assorted delicacies floating in the thick ebon broth. Some morsels even looked to still be alive, but that could just be a trick of the soup’s convection.

  Either way, I was in for a real treat.

  “Come over later and let me know what ya think!”

  I smiled and nodded as Jumbai shut the door.

  I didn’t bother going back to my room to eat.

  Nor did I wait.

  Tipping the bucket back, held tightly between my two gnarled hands, I slurped the goo down with reckless abandon.

  After I finally finished, marking my triumph with a belch almost as loud as the wataani coming from Jumbai’s apartment, I set Jumbai’s slop bucket back down by his door.

  His cleaning spells would get the bucket clean before I got around to it.

  If not, I didn’t think much could survive in the gruel, anyway.

  My belly full and my mind focused, I headed off to the warehouse district.

  If the monstrous outbreak was associated with the source of supply, then I needed to visit the source.

  5

  I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the full sunlight of mid-day as I left the comfort and security of the Undercity behind.

  There is nothing wrong with the Center City or being outside.

  But they are not hom
e.

  Denizens of the Undercity scowl naturally; grimaces are often grins.

  In the Center City, the sweeping utopia in the valley between the steep slopes of the Dwimmer Mounts, people smile as though their lives depend on it, laughing and joking for no discernable reason.

  It’s unnatural.

  What is there to be so happy about all the time?

  It was soon obvious that an uncontrolled outbreak of monstrous attacks from former friends and neighbors had done little to dampen the mood.

  Utter insanity.

  Behind me, the sheer face of the mountain rose heavenward, its precipitous climb only interrupted by a verdant blanket of trees, irregular rocky outcroppings, the occasional cave entrance leading back into the Undercity, and byways leading from inside the mountain to the valley beyond. The mountain’s still, unyielding exterior belied all the life and activity thrumming within.

  Before me, in the heart of the Dwimmer Mounts, in the valley between the lofty mountains holding the Undercity beneath one side and the Undermount beneath the other, the Center City formed a patchwork urban mosaic blending naturally with the rich forest, the wandering dells, shimmering waterways, and open meadows. Rising incandescently from the trees, the sparse buildings of the Center City appeared to be made of spun glass and unbroken dreams.

  There was far more of the city hidden from view within extradimensional spaces, pocket dimensions, and spatial extensions. This extended Center City’s reach far beyond the confines of the valley below.

  Past the Center City on the valley’s far side, the Undermount, home to dwarves and gnomes, rose imposingly skyward, every bit as lofty as the range of peaks holding the Undercity. While the mountains hosting the Undercity had been left natural and were largely unadorned, the cavernous entrances into the Undercity’s depths appearing to be of natural origin, the Undermount was in no way untouched. The entrances to the homes of the dwarves and gnomes were formidable indeed, with vast battlements and siege engines arrayed around awesome gates, reinforced bridges and portcullises ready to cut the mountain off from the outside world. Massive statuary flanked the gates, gigantic depictions of gnome and dwarf heroes carved into or from the mountain guarding the many entries.