WHERE THE THIEVES ARE US
The Primal Orbs were kept in an enormous seven-sided chamber in the heart of the mountain. The seven orbs formed a circle in the air, glowing each with a different color of the rainbow, as they moved in a circle with an eerie soft music generated from their motion. The chamber was illuminated by hundreds of wax candles in each corner while the seven corners of the chamber each contained a robed statue of a human male or female of differing ethnicities.
Notably, one of the statues looked vaguely similar to me and another to Entropicus. I didn’t recognize any of the others, which bothered me to an extent, as you’d think I would have met the other Chosen Ones. Merciful wasn’t up there either, which surprised me since he’d been the Chosen of Life. Apparently, he’d either been a temp in the position or the Primal of Life had chosen someone to replace him.
It didn’t take long to see who was the party going to steal the Primal Orbs since there were only two other individuals in the chamber. The first of them looked a bit like a male model had stolen Captain Malcolm Reynolds wardrobe and added a sheath for a Warhammer 40K chainsword to it. He wasn’t quite as good looking as Agent G, not that I paid attention to that sort of thing *cough* but definitely had a kind of messy gorgeousness. The second person was holding the Book of Midnight, the cursed book of everything, and apparently trying some sort of incantation.
Mandy.
“God dammit,” I said, walking down the steps. “Gabrielle did you know my wife was behind this?”
“Maybe,” Gabrielle said, pausing. “Actually, yes, that would be why I knew what was going to happen.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mandy, you can’t steal the magic orbs because that will cause Entropicus to automatically win. Also, who is the space dude?”
The man pulled out his sword and rather than a chainsaw blade, it produced a crackle of blue white electricity around its blade. “I am Cassius Mass, Count of the Archduchy of Crius. Who are you?”
“What? No you killed my father, prepare to die?” I asked.
Mandy felt her face.
Cassius shrugged. “Eh, if you killed my father, I’d be thanking you.”
“Ah, daddy issues,” I said, nodding. “That’s always the thing with space opera heroes.”
Cassius looked back at Mandy. “Who is he and what is he talking about?”
“Gary Karkofsky a.k.a Merciless,” Mandy said, not putting down the Book of Midnight. “He’s my husband and I wouldn’t recommend trying to make sense of anything he says. He’s basically what the internet would be like if it was intelligent with less porn.”
“I resent that remark,” I said, frowning. “I have plenty of porn.”
Mandy shut the book and pointed at Gabrielle. “Gabrielle is wrong. There is a way we can win this contest by stealing the orbs.”
“How’s that?” I asked, wondering what I’d stepped into and whether I should automatically be supporting my wife in this.
“We can use the Primal Orbs to kill Entropicus and the worst of his lieutenants, preventing us from needing to go through this tournament,” Mandy said, brimming with confidence. “We can end this now and not have to play by the villain’s rules.”
“And you decided to break the rules, my forte, with Captain Tightpants here instead of me?” I asked, offended.
“Gary!” Gabrielle said. “We need to stop—”
“Hold up,” I said, raising a hand.
“I’m standing right here,” Cassius said. “As for how she recruited me, it was at the bar.”
“There’s a bar here?” I asked, appalled. “No one told me that!”
“I recognized him from Lucifer’s Star,” Mandy said, shrugging. “I love that movie.”
“The crappy SyFy channel original picture?” I asked. “You couldn’t go with Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk?”
“I feel insulted for multiple reasons,” Cassius said, pausing. “Either way, I refuse to be a champion of any cause I believe to be unjust. I did it once before and it shall not happen again.”
“Okay, Ned Stark, that’s great,” I said, walking forward to him. “But let’s point out the obvious fact that there’s no security here. No ancient Chinese curses, giant golems, or multicolored ninjas.”
“There’s some pretty hefty magic around here,” Mandy said, now looking suspicious. “What do you think, Cass?”
“I don’t know, I don’t have magic in my world,” Cassius said. “Just extremely advanced science.”
“Really, none whatsoever?” I asked, shaking my head. “That’s terrible! We need to cross pollinate your world and G-man’s with Jane’s. Get you some vampires, werewolves, demons, and other stuff.”
“I’ll pass,” Cassius said.
Gabrielle stepped in front of me, raising a glowing fist. “I have to stop you from endangering the world!”
“Gary, have you been egging her on?” Mandy asked.
“I swear, I haven’t” I said, raising my hands. “I’ve just been asking if she’s been happy!”
“That’s egging her on!” Mandy asked. “She’s a superhero! They don’t do anything by halves!”
“You’re a superhero!” I said, turning to Gabrielle.
Gabrielle had started glowing a brilliant shade of gold as she prepared an Ultra-Force blast that would knock Mandy cold. I had to make a choice now whether to go against her or my wife who was possibly doing something really stupid.
That was when Cassius took the choice out of my hands. “Forget this hero vs. hero crap! I’m going after the plunder!”
He then turned his sword against the orbs and swung at the circle they were floating in. He struck an invisible force shield that shattered in every direction, sending out a glowing rainbow of light.
“No!” I shouted, covering my face in my cloak. “Prismatic Spray is the most deceptively dangerous of all Dungeons and Dragons spells!”
The glowing blasts of red, green, blue, purple, orange, black, and gold went in every direction. The blasts bounced against the walls and statues, Cassius slicing through the red blast with his sword while the black disappeared into my cloak. The orange blast struck Gabrielle in the chest, sending her spiraling backward against the stairs while Mandy dodged the blue blast only to be hit in the chest by the white one. The remaining balls of light proceeded to vanish in midair, as if some hidden agenda was accomplished.
I looked up from my cloak. “Anybody dead?”
Gabrielle was moaning behind me while Mandy was scrambling to her feet, her hair stringy and covering her face while she growled. Cassius, the only person in the room I didn’t actually give a crap about, was uninjured.
“No,” Cassius said.
“That was a stupid plan,” I said, glaring at him.
“I have a general belief that whenever people get bogged down in talking, it’s best to dramatically act,” Cassius said, sheathing his sword.
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” I said, staring at him. “Who are you, Anakin Skywalker?”
“The future Darth Vader?” Cassius asked, looking like he was trying to parse out the reference. “An odd choice.”
“Wait, you have Star Wars in the future?” I asked, deciding this guy might be alright after all.
“Well, it is a classic of Old Earth mythology, even in the thirty-first century,” Cassius said.
“Yes!” I shook my fist. “Reality has some hope after all! I hadn’t had any hope for Star Wars’ future since The Last Jedi came out.”
Mandy growled some more.
“Oh hell, she’s going to be evil or berserk now. I just know it,” I muttered turning to my wife.
Mandy’s face had twisted and contorted into something grossly inhuman with shark-like teeth instead of fangs and glowing white eyes. Her fingernails had turned black and extended outward like velociraptor-esque claws. Her skin had also become sallow and corpse-like with none of the vibrancy that differed her from other vampires.
“Gabrielle, could you—” I started to say before turning around and seeing Gabrielle was staring at me with pure hate in her eyes. Her golden aura had turned a darker shade with orange flames flickering against it every few seconds.
“That doesn’t look good,” Cassius said, drawing his pistol.
“You could say that,” I said. “I don’t suppose you have any planet punching powers?”
“No,” Cassius said. “Just an energy shield, a sword, and fusion pistol.”
“Well, we are boned.”
That was when Entropicus’ gravelly voice spoke throughout the room. “Double-elimination match! Two on two battle!”
“Wait, what?” I said, looking up.
“FIGHT!” Entropicus shouted.
I barely managed to maneuver before Gabrielle jumped forward and punched me across the face with a glowing fist. She had to be holding back since, as the inheritor of the Ultra-Force, she could have easily taken my head off in one blow. Mandy, by contrast, went after Cassius who blasted her with a blue energy wave that I assumed to be stun. Sadly, as anyone who knew anything about the undead could tell you, they weren’t creatures easily subdued.
Gabrielle conjured a glowing orange-yellow scythe, which I felt was ripping me off then swung it in my general direction. I turned insubstantial and went down below her. Normally, this was when I went behind my opponent, but I stayed put and Gabrielle swung around in that direction. Coming up behind her by not moving in the slightest, I mentally apologized to her, and unleashed a torrent of Sith-like lightning.
I’d expanded my power’s variety to include the equivalent of third-level spells but with significantly more wallop when I drew from Death. I was terrified of accidentally killing her but didn’t want to die either so I gradually turned up the electricity in hopes of using the minimum amount to disable her. A minimum amount which, it turned out, didn’t seem to exist.
Ultragoddess screamed but it was more a roar of rage than a cry of pain. The Ultragod Family was vulnerable to magic, one of their few vulnerabilities, but it was more in the context of not having any extra defenses against it versus being invulnerable to anything else. Watching her all but shrug off the power plant I was throwing at her and start marching toward me, I wondered if they’d made up that vulnerability to sucker wizards like me into thinking they had a chance.
“Must…destroy…you,” Gabrielle said, making a glowing chainsaw out of her powers. “You are Merciful! Betrayer!”
Oh, great, she was convinced I was my doppelganger. Before I could react, a glowing cage appeared around me of the Ultra-Force. Gabrielle stepped through the bars as if they weren’t there. I proceeded then to blast hellfire outward that disintegrated the cage and her chainsaw. I checked on her the moment the blast was done and saw aside from some singing to her hair, she didn’t even look injured.
“Roargh!” Ultragoddess cried out, conjuring a suit of armor straight from Dark Souls and aiming her sword at me before fireball after fireball shot forth. I once more hid in the floor, only for her to start smashing through the area above me to get at me. This was not a fight I could win hand-to-hand, magic-to-magic. I was both underleveled and under-geared.
“Gabrielle, it’s me!” I shouted, trying to think of something special. “Your favorite literary character is Katniss Everdeen, you love coffee ice cream, and you have the highest score of anyone on the planet with Tekken. A game you know I hate because I’m a Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat man. Plus, you hate the fact they consistently nerfed Ultragoddess whenever she’s a guest fighter!”
“Argh!” Ultragoddess hissed, ripping away all the rock between us. “You lie!”
So, there was something of her left over. It required me to say something that was so shocking and terrible that it would break her away. “Gabrielle, I really think you should find a relationship with someone else. I love you and always will but our lives have just moved in opposite directions. You’re too wonderful a person to not find someone else who is going to make you happy.”
Gabrielle momentarily broke free. “Wait, what? You think I’ve been mooning over you for, what, a decade? Or maybe a few years? Time has been pretty wonky lately. I’ve had dozens of relationships since then and just because I still like you and I recently had a night of pity sex—”
“Distraction-fu attack!” I said, blasting her with my ice powers.
Gabrielle was trapped in a huge block of ice and looked decidedly cross with me. I didn’t blame her. That was a cheap shot. She could, of course, easily break free but what was the point when we had no reason to fight? It turned out there was a very good reason as a gong resounded through the temple, signifying an elimination. Entropicus had decided, apparently, this qualified as Gabrielle being defeated.
“Awesome, I won!” I said, glad at winning on a technicality before the weight of that fell on my shoulders. “Which means, oh crap, I’ve just removed the single most powerful hero from the tournament and made it that much easier for Entropicus to destroy the multiverse.”
I didn’t get a chance to contemplate the monumental nature of my screw up because Mandy leapt on my back and started going for my throat. Nearby, I could see Cassius lying on the ground, trying to hold the blood back in his neck as he used a future laser of some kind to treat a bite wound. He hadn’t been eliminated yet but that was only because Entropicus hadn’t called a stop to the contest yet.
“Dammit, Mandy!” I said, spinning around and trying to avoid getting my head ripped off. “I do not want to hurt you!”
“Too bad!” Mandy said, her voice having a shrill Evil Dead witch-esque quality. “I will swallow your heart!”
“Must not do any double-entendres,” I muttered, before turning insubstantial and letting her fall through me onto the ground. “I will not say she wants inside me, that she’s inside me, that she loves sucking, she wants my fluid, that she’s naturally cold but I warm her up—”
Mandy shook her head, a moment of lucidity appearing on her face. “Oh Gary, shut up!”
“Sorry, Mandy,” I said, grabbing the Book of Midnight off the ground and smacking her across the face with the leather-bound Bible-sized tome. It sent her spiraling backward against Gabrielle’s ice block where I proceeded to freeze her over. Unlike Gabrielle, I was pretty sure Mandy didn’t have the ability to break free. Sure enough, a second gong sounded and I had the dubious satisfaction of having eliminated the smartest most dangerous woman alive from the tournament. Yay me! God, Death chose a crappy champion.
“That’s the plan,” Death whispered in my mind.
Wait, what?
“No ice puns?” Cassius asked, standing up, a big scar on his neck and some blood on his outfit but otherwise unharmed.
“Please, I have some standards,” I said, huffing. “Though I’m glad I got both women to chill.”
“Oh for hell’s sake,” Cassius muttered, covering his face with his right hand.
I was about to make a few more when Gabrielle shattered her icy prison as the orange fire returned to her eyes and she clocked me in the jaw, sending me flying, and landing in the middle of the orbs.
The orbs glowed, and everything went white.