Sleepless Streets: O Brother, My Brother

[aithne]

It was the Tuesday after we had learned how to take over the world. We met for breakfast like usual, all of us very carefully not saying anything about floating cities or druids or what have you, and as always the food was excellent. I'm not certain civilization exists without waffles and honey. At least, if it does, it's probably not worth visiting.

So we ate, and talked, and Gaetana called us about the time we were finishing up. "I've got something for you," she told us. "Meet me down at the station in the elven district." She paused, and then cleared her throat. "The elves asked for you especially. I would prepare accordingly."

The little image of her sitting with her elbows leaning on what looked like thin air flickered and vanished. "Are you guys feeling properly armed?"

Electra reached down and patted the bag that she usually wore and had shoved under her chair while we were eating. "Everything I need's in here." Mallory, who was draped across her shoulders and showed no more inclination to grow legs than she had when she was much tinier than she was now, hissed in evident agreement. I had my staff, Poi, and Iola, and was feeling reasonably confident.

So we walked in the morning sun to the elven district, to the station that was located near the edge of the really swanky area. When we got there, Gaetana escorted us in to a small inner room, windowless and really somewhat airless. We were a lot of people to fit in such a room. "This may be a trap," Gaetana told us. "Like I said, the elves asked for you. Remember that mage tower that blew up a little while ago?" We had kind of caused that, though Gaetana didn't know that; we nodded and kept our mouths shut. "It had a library associated that didn't get blown up, the place where the things go everyone wants to kind of forget about. There was a break-in there last night. One of the books is missing."

There was a pause there, where it felt like Gaetana expected us to ask, all of this fuss over a book? We know better, by now.

After a moment, Gaetana continued, "I don't know much more. You're to meet a woman named Helsa over by the library. She's part of the elven special forces."

"The elven special forces that aren't supposed to exist?" I asked.

"Exactly," she said. "In fact, you're late. Good luck, all of you."

There wasn't much more for it but to get our butts over to the library. On the way over, we all worried a bit. Why someone from the elven special forces? Were we about to be disappeared? Well, Basil wasn't worried, and Argos seemed to be having more trouble remembering exactly what he was doing than usual. He kept asking us where we were going, and who we were supposed to meet. He even asked us who Gaetana was, once.

Fortunately, it looked like everything was on the level when we arrived. Helsa was a tall elf with that air about her that people who are in the military most of their lives get, like everything is laid out before them all crisp and clean like fresh snow. She told us that we were going to meet the librarian, Samuel, inside. "Be sure you face Samuel when you talk, he's deaf," she said. "I'll tell you about what was stolen when we're inside."

She led us in, and into cacophony.

It looked less like a library than a prison for criminally insane literature. There was a small, neat reception area, behind which an elf sat reading. He looked up from his book when the light from the opening door fell on him. Behind him...

There was a cavernous hall lined with shelves. All of the books were restless, moving and wriggling on their shelves, and as some of the books nearer to us seemed to realize we were there, there was a fuss made, with cover-snappings and strange wails and eerie growls. A set of books no larger than my palm closed tried to fly at us, straining at the chains that held them, little red covers madly flapping.

"Samuel found the book missing," Helsa said. "The book contains the spirit of a dead mage, a serial killer even worse than Dada. He got trapped in the book two hundred years ago, and he's been kept here ever since."

"How many people did he kill?" Basil wanted to know, his eyes shining. Oh, right. Basil hadn't been around for our encounters with Dada.

Helsa shrugged. "A lot," she said shortly. "You know those stories about the bogeyman, the monster who hides with knives under the bed? Based on a real guy. He especially liked to spend time with kids. Come on, Samuel and I will take you down."

They escorted us through the cacophonous hall, and down into the library. Each successive level was louder, and I could see why someone deaf might have a better time working here. Iola had her hands over her ears, looking pained, growling when a book snapped too close to her.

We passed through four levels of noise, and then went down one more set of steps into a silence that seemed oppressive after the noise above. Samuel unlocked a door, escorted us through, and closed it behind us.

Helsa was left on the other side of the door, having said earlier that was where she would leave us. Samuel picked up a book off of a podium next to the door and turned it towards Electra. "A logbook," she said, after inspecting it. "Three people have been down here in the last year. Eleven mage named Dunlop, four months ago. Elven female named Novia...oh. I see. Part of the royal family. A month and a half ago. Then Cherilyn, a human female, two weeks ago. Says here she gave one Argos Littlewheel as a reference..."

"Cherilyn?" Argos said, perking up. "I, ah...yes, I remember her! Friend of the family. She's a watchmaker, too. Takes on repair work mostly."

Basil was already in the middle of the room, inspecting the pedestal that had until recently held the book with the soul of a serial killer in it. There was a glass case on pedestal, and the remnants of what looked to be mechanical bits and pieces lying around it. "Someone did a good job on the traps on this one," he reported.

"Want to give it a sniff?" I asked Iola, who was looking bored.

She grinned, slipped out of her dress, and changed into her half-form. She crouched and sniffed at the ground. "Helsa. The librarian. Someone...else." Her deep growl of a voice slipped into a whine. "Masked scent..."

She minced over to me, rolling her shoulders and rubbing her coarse-furred body against mine. Her pupils were dilated, catching the light strangely. "Masked with what?"

She took a deep breath. "Smell of sex. Wolf sex."

"Someone knew we were coming down here, and that we'd use you to sniff them out," I said. "Guys, I'll be back in a few minutes." I took her hand and led her up the stairs and out into the fresh air. The scent wore off quickly enough, though I had to remind her several times that we were working, in public, and as such she was going to have to wait until later. I convinced her to change back and get dressed and left her out in the fresh air, telling her I'd be back up in a little bit, and she hunkered down and prepared to wait. I kind of hated leaving her up here by herself--the few passersby were giving her unfriendly looks--but I wanted to see what we could find.

When I got back down to the empty room at the bottom of the stairs, I found Basil, Argos, and Electra puzzling over something they'd found--a balloon, of the kind Argos sometimes uses in his experiments. They're uncommon and difficult to make, but they can be made lighter than air. "There were a lot of traps on the case," Basil reported. "It had to have taken a mage and someone good with mechanical traps to get it open.

"Well?" I said. "We have names. Might as well try to use that."

We at least knew where Novia would be, since she was a member of the elven royal family. We encountered some difficulty getting into the palace grounds (we had to go up the chain of command about four levels to find someone who both knew who we were and was authorized to let us into the ground proper) but once we were there Novia was easy to find. She was blonde and extremely buxom for an elf, to the point that made one wonder if she'd had some work done. It was rumored that the royal family kept a number of cosmetic mages around. For a bunch of people whose aging process is nearly invisible to anyone but themselves, they certainly employ a lot of people whose job it is to make them look good.

Novia smiled at all of us. "What can I help you with?" Iola pressed against my back, setting her chin on my shoulder. I stroked her hair absently, and felt her vibrate with the beginnings of a growl.

"You're on record as having gone to the fifth level of the library that nobody admits exists, to see a book that has the soul of the bogeyman in it," I said. "Were you?"

She nodded. "Yes, why?"

"What did you go there for?

Novia rolled her shoulders, showing off her considerable assets. "I like the macabre. That book is about as macabre as it gets. I thought I might be able to get into it, but...the locks were a little too tough for me. I thought I'd go practice for a bit and come back later."

"How did you hear about the book?" I asked.

"Dunlop told me about it. Pillow talk. You know." She was trying that sweet smile on all of the males in turn. I could feel Iola bristle.

We talked to her for a little while, but she didn't have too much more useful to say. There was a lot going on in that head of hers, but she wasn't about to let us in on it. She spent a bit of time flirting with Basil, and handed him a key--I assumed it was to her rooms. We got Dunlop's address from her--he lived just outside the palace walls--and went to talk to him.

Dunlop was short, with a bit of a pot belly and very nice robes that looked rumpled, like he had slept in them. "I was curious about the book," he said. "I read about it, and wanted to see for myself."

"Do you remember if you did anything there?" Electra asked.

He looked briefly confused. "I...yes. I did. Three days ago. I cast some spells on the case that held the book. And then I...aged Novia's signature, changed the date. Then aged mine. I came back, last night...I aged the watchmaker's signature..." He was looking deeply baffled now.

"Why?" I asked. "Why did you do all that?"

"I don't remember..." He trailed off. "There were orders. I have them. I was...paid."

"Do you have those orders?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. Just a moment." Dunlop went to a desk in the front room, opened a drawer, and pulled out a sheaf of parchment. "Here. What's happened? Why didn't I remember what I'd done until you asked?" He shook his head. "The book calls. Loudly."

Basil was examining the parchment. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "This handwriting looks familiar. Argos? Did you write this?"

The watchmaker looked startled, and snatched the parchment out of the kender's hands. "It's my handwriting! But I didn't write it. At least, I don't remember."

"I think we should go see Cherilyn," I said. I was starting to have suspicions about what might have happened here, and the fact that Argos was being a lot more forgetful than usual wasn't helping. We thanked Dunlop and walked over to the halfling section, where Cherilyn lived and worked.

She was a woman about my age, with graying brown hair and a vest with many pockets in it. "Hello, Argos!" she said cheerfully. "Thanks for the job, but I'm afraid your directions were a little strange. I was supposed to fix the traps, but I think I ended up making them even more broken than they already were..."

Argos was staring at her, baffled. Electra said, carefully, "Do you happen to have those instructions?"

"Why, of course!" She peered at Basil, Electra, Iola, and I, with an expression of slight bewilderment. "Oh, these must be your friends, the ones you were telling me about." She ducked under the counter that she was standing behind, and brought out a sheet of paper that was crumpled and, apparently, had had tea spilled on it at some point in the past. She handed it to Electra.

Electra looked it over, turned the paper around, looked at it again. "Can't make heads or tails of this," she said, and handed it to Argos.

He studied it, and then frowned. "It's mine, and she's right, this would break the traps instead of fixing them. But why don't I remember?"

I jerked my head towards the door. "Let's go." Once we were outside, I said, "Okay, Argos, stand still, I'm going to look at you. Something isn't right here."

That was an understatement. It turned out that Argos had, at some point in the last few days, had forgetfulness spells cast on him. Basil was scratching his head. "You left the other Argos home today?" Argos nodded, telling us that it had been his turn to spend the night with his wife last night, and that the other Argos had slept on the couch in the workshop, as usual.

"I didn't see him before I left, I thought he was sleeping in," he told us. "I don't remember having anything to do with writing these directions, but maybe I did and I don't remember...oh, dear."

We thought at this point that it would be prudent to check in on Mrs. Littlewheel, whose first name I don't recall ever hearing. Argos's house was nearby, so we took a bit of a walk over there.

When we go there, the door was hanging open a little bit. Not a good sign. When we got inside, we saw even more not-good signs, the rucked up house evidence of what must have been what Basil termed "a rumpus". Neither Argos the Second (we had determined at this point that this was Argos the First we were dealing with, though it really didn't make much difference either way) nor Mrs. Littlewheel were in evidence.

Also missing were a good number of the inventions from the basement lab, Mrs. Littlewheel's walking shoes, and most of the contents of the icebox. Inside the icebox, "HELP" was spelled in carrot sticks, laid out in neat letters. "That has to be me," Argos muttered. "Only I would leave a message for myself in the icebox. It's where I always leave my keys. And my pens."

In the meantime, Iola had changed again and was sniffing around. I hadn't been keeping an eye on her. I only figured out she'd taken some initiative in the sniffing department when I was abruptly knocked to the ground by a large, furry, familiar form. Iola, evidently, thought I was wearing altogether too much clothing, and was proceeding to do something about it.

"Iola!" I snapped, managing to catch one of her wrists. "Stop that. We've talked about this, remember? Only human form, not in public."

She growl-whined in response. "Smell..."

I wrinkled my nose. Sniffed. Suddenly turned scarlet. "I can smell that," I said. "It's that cologne that that perfume demon made me. I, uh, don't wear it out of the house any more."

I managed to disentangle myself from Iola, and by that time someone had had the very clever idea of tracing Argos the Second's tunneling wind box, which the little compass that Argos the First had devised could do. It was thought that if we found the tunneling wind box, we would find the wayward (and in need of help?) Argos.

Well, it worked. To a point.

The point it worked to was that we discovered the tunneling wind box. It was in an old building in the human district, tied to a very angry and scared-looking Mrs. Littlewheel, who was herself tied to what appeared to be a large amount of what I believe is technically called "stuff what blows up real good". There was a triggering device, which had a little clock on it. Mrs. Littlewheel, on seeing Argos, started swearing and spitting like a wet cat until she realized that it wasn't the husband who'd tied her up and left her here, at which point she got real quiet real quick.

There were three minutes left on the clock when we arrived. At two minutes, Argos had determined that if it was disturbed too much it would blow up early, and Basil had determined it was going to take him longer to disarm than he had. The building looked largely abandoned, and we didn't have time to evacuate the surrounding premises. All there really was time to do was for me to cast a couple of plane shifts.

I spoke the last syllable of the spell, and felt an unfamiliar feeling in the pit of my stomach, a sort of dislocation. And then there was--

--light.

And sound.

Mrs. Littlewheel was clinging to my hand, and fortunately it looked like the spell had worked as advertised; all of us where here. Once the building and the two on either side finished blowing up, we took a bit of a walk in the ethereal and I cast another plane shifting spell to get us back home. The cops were double-timing it to the scene of the explosion, and I thought we might have some explaining to do later. Right now, we needed to find out what happened.

Mrs. Littlewheel looked calm, but it looked a lot like the calm of shock. "Argos," she started, and then shook her head. "The other Argos came to me after this one left for the day. He was rather, ah, frisky. He wanted to play a bondage game, and well, once he'd gotten me tied up he hauled me out. He said that you'd be by soon to get me."

"Did he say what he was doing?" Electra asked.

She shook her head. "He had a large book with him. He said he was going to be late delivering it if he didn't hurry."

Large book. Damnit!

We dropped Mrs. Littlewheel off at home. Argos tried to kiss her goodbye but got an angry hmph in return. "You'd better bring flowers when you come home," I told him.

"Probably," Argos said. "Well, Iola can't track him, she just gets distracted. A dog, maybe? We can probably pick up one from the human district cop station, it's where we got the one we used before."

We thought the dog idea was a sound one, and went to get the dog and find a scent for it to track. Fortunately, owing to the amount of my cologne(!) Argos the Second was wearing, it was easy enough for us to follow his trail. The dog led us through the dwarven district and the halfling district, into the elven district, into the palace compound. About the time that we got to the walls of the palace, Silas turned up. He didn't really explain his presence, just said that he thought he might be needed.

He was right, too. Damn druids.

Inside the palace, we kept following the trail to the dismay of a number of guards. One of said guards, however, was very helpful, if unintentionally so. He pointed at Argos and asked, "Hey, aren't you the guy who's always in here to see Novia?" The guard next to him sniggered.

Argos the Second...was having an affair? With an elf?

This was proving to be one of the weirder days we'd had in a while.

We did find Argos and Novia, in the middle of casting a spell, the book held between them. I invoked that shield of mine, which, unfortunately, Argos the Second was expecting me to do. He had an item ready that grabbed the energy from the shield and shunted it into his working, which meant that about three seconds after the shield came up, it fell and the two we were pursuing--and the book--disappeared.

Next to me, Silas sighed. "Right. Want to follow?"

We did. Silas set something up that would follow us, and it turned out that Novia and Argos had fled to one of the hell planes. We quick-stepped it through there and followed them back to our plane, to the druid district. What we found there was...kind of disturbing.

There was Argos the Second and Novia, there was the book, and there was this burned-looking guy who might have been a dwarf. He was eating an elf. I wondered, looking at the scene, if I should be glad that the elf was already dead and wasn't being eaten alive. Well, this was why they'd decided to take a walk through a hell plane; I guessed that this guy was the body of the guy in the book. Well, not in the book, any more.

It was one of those moments that makes you doubt your sanity. But then Basil hollered and ran towards Novia, and abruptly we were fighting.

There was, as Basil would say, quite a rumpus. Basil used the key that Novia had given him before to unlock her underwear (her underwear?) and took the opportunity to relieve her of all sorts of magical goodies. Argos the First took on Argos the Second, and after the first few moments it was really hard to figure out which one was which. The rest of us had our hands full with the burned guy.

We killed the guy, which made his soul go back into the book. Novia was pretty much defanged when Basil took her stuff, and Argos the Second was sat on by Argos the First. The book started yelling, and I managed to silence it with one of those spells that come in handy once in a blue moon; Silas decided that was a really good idea and added a permanency to the silence.

It took a bit to get everything untangled. Turned out that Argos the Second, dissatisfied with having to share his wife with another man even if it was himself, had taken to walking around late at night, and met Novia. They'd started an affair, things had gotten a little out of hand, and when Novia had told him about the book it had seemed like an ideal solution. I guess it makes sense if you're Argos.

We handed the book over to the elves and told them to keep a closer eye on it. We tried to hand Novia over to them as well, but they didn't want her. She was no longer welcome in the palace, it seemed. She stomped off, Argos the Second followed, and we followed them.

Argos the First didn't really want to do anything permanent about his wayward other self, so we put tracking devices on both Argos the Second and Novia, and told them we'd send Mallory to eat them if they tried to tamper with them. And that was that, though I think Argos the First is still in trouble with his wife. Iola and Poi and I wandered home, and fortunately we had the whole night to work off the frenzy that being around that cologne all day long had thrown her into. The soreness the next day was very much worth it.

The next day, a pair of kender showed up at breakfast, looking for Basil. They were very, very excited, and wanted to show us something they'd found. Evidently, Basil is getting some measure of fame among his own kind, because this was the grossest thing that Hardin and Wanda had ever seen, and they wanted to share it with them. I suspect Gaetana of having a hand in this somehow.

To make a somewhat long and boring story short, the gross thing turned out to be a huge version of the worms that latch on to the reproductive organs of people who drink elven wine. It was just as gross as the kenders said it was, but we did manage to get some of the eggs that the elves were harvesting from it. We gave them to Poi, who started working on them.

And now we have this wand that will deactivate all of the eggs, as well as effectively neuter the big worm.

This is going to be...interesting.



Quotes:

"If you're distributing pornography in a fantasy world, what media do you use?"
--Derek

"Were you urges satisfied?"
"Yes, but I've never had a halfling before, that might be satisfying."
"I have, it is, feel free to try it. So!"
--Basil, Novia


"They call her Ho-dini."
--Basil

"There's been a rumpus, yes?"
"There's been a kidnapping, it looks like."
"That's what I said."
--Basil, Argos


"We're trying to outwit me."
"On the surface, this is not difficult."
--Argos, Electra