We entered the Sleem cavern and jetted up the elevator shaft toward Quadrum’s lair. The beholder’s glow grew as we neared the top, and they were on us the instant I set Axle down.

“BEHOLD!” Quadrum roared, flitting from us to the hole in his floor. “BEHOLD! WHERE ARE MY SLEEM!”

The beholder plunged out of sight down the tunnel.

“Quadrum, wait!” Axle shouted.

“BEHOLD!” Quadrum’s voice echoed as they receded down the tunnel. “BEHOLD! NO SLEEM!”

The voice roared from below, and a harsh light began to grow in the tunnel as Quadrum returned.

Axle pulled off his mask, as the blazing beholder emerged in the room with us again. “BEHOLD!” they roared. “BAD SERVANTS!”

The light from the creature flared so bright my eyes simply went out. My helmet blasted away in a cloud of dead nanobots, and I felt a moment of intense burning from my eyes, then nothing but numb cold and the sudden onset of my painkiller.

I fell over backwards and heard Axle howl in agony. My suit deployed tendrils and hurriedly removed both of my eyes, before replacements were sent up. Internal tendrils welded my new nerves to the ones Quadrum had just burned out, and my vision returned as the fresh eyeball was being slid into place. 

The sensation of the tendrils sliding out of my brain was indescribable.

“BE NOT AFRAID, BAD SERVANTS!” Quadrum roared, never less believable. “FAILED SERVANTS!”

I knew a little about what this creature did to its servants, having been the hand that wiped out their last group. At the beholder’s direct behest.

“Quadrum, no!” Axle shouted, his voice ragged with pain. “We found your Sleem! They are in our yarsp hive, we’re having them contained for retrieval now, all will be well soon.” He rolled over with a groan, on the floor at my side.

I looked, and his eyes were burned husks. He whined deep in the back of his throat and raised a hand to gingerly scrape at the scorched flesh around his eyes. I contained the urge to fly at the monster hovering in the room with us. My helmet wasn’t responding, and for all I knew, the next tantrum Quadrum had would be the last thing my friend ever experienced.

Axle contained his pain well, for a long moment while I held my breath. We awaited the beholder's judgment.

“GOOD,” Quadrum roared. “ACCEPTABLE!” 

The beholder turned away immediately, and extended manipulator tentacles to begin interacting with a piece of its stored equipment. The machine lit up, and I heard the door at the top of the room slide open.

“Help me?” Axle whispered, his voice shaking. “Please?”

I didn’t answer him, just slipped an arm around him, and helped him gently to his feet. Then I turned my friend in the right direction and started helping him walk. The oversized Knowle leaned heavily on me, and his breathing was ragged with pained whines.

We stumbled and staggered up the stairs, and out into the hallway where Jada was waiting. Her eyes shot wide as she saw us, and I yelled down the hallway at her, “Call Dr. Miles! Wake him up! Axle’s hurt bad!”

Jada snarled in anger, but the wall behind us slid closed with a snap. She pulled out her own phone and rushed to help me carry Axle.

He sighed as he felt her arm slip in around his back. “I’m okay, Jada. It’s just my eyes. I just can’t see, I’m alright,” he slurred.

“Hey,” he exclaimed drunkenly. We paused bundling him into the elevator, but he languidly swiped at the air in front of himself and smiled. “We finished our Afflqwst.”

Jada and I both grunted in exasperation and moved him carefully into place. I pressed the button for the top floor and then pulled up my own Afflqwst to check. He was right.

Quest – Calm the irritation of your beholder guest, before it turns to wrath, and they harm your affiliate.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. (Complete) Negotiate with beholder. Chance of success is high.
2. (Optional) Kill the beholder. Chance of success is very low.

Quest complete. Your affiliate’s beholder guest is temporarily calmed. REWARD – Item coupon. Be aware this quest may repeat.

Axle passed out in the elevator, and we dragged him to the hovercraft. Jada slammed the door and turned to shine a light at her mate’s scorched eyes, while I went to get the pilot moving. Her nose crinkled and she grimaced.

Within a few short minutes, we were landing on the roof of the building Dr. Miles worked from, in downtown Prescott. A squad of hobbs was waiting for us, with an oversized stretcher for Axle.

They piled into the elevator while Jada and I rushed down the stairs, meeting them a few floors down, on Dr. Miles’ level.

He was up, wearing tussled clothing and a fresh lab coat. Axle woke up as we carefully pushed his stretcher into the room.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t really know.”

A quick moment of thinking, and I had a lie ready. Flimsy, but better than telling him and a squad of our hobbs the truth.

“We were exploring underground. Found some other affiliate’s trap, I guess. Just a giant bright light, it burned out both of our eyes,” I told him.

You are reading story BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit at novel35.com

He glanced at my fresh replacements and nodded. “Axle, I need to run some tests before we can put you under, are you ready?”

The Knowle whimpered and licked his nose but nodded.

“I can give you something for the pain now,” Dr. Miles said. “Don’t worry. The tests will be quick.”

He moved around the table they set Axle on, gathering a syringe and small bottle.

As soon as the needle was in his arm and the plunger depressed, Axle released a giant sigh and lolled his head. Jada caught him, holding his head between her hands.

“Doctor!” she said.

“It’s fine. He should be lucid, just relaxed,” Dr. Miles replied. He rifled through a nearby drawer before producing a small, handheld scanner.

“Axle, I’m going to flash something in your eyes. You tell me if you can see or feel anything at all, okay?” he said.

Axle’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth, and his tail finally relaxed, rolling out from between his legs.

Jada held his head, and Dr. Miles began scanning his eyes. They were scorched, the skin and hair all burnt on either side of his face.

Dr. Miles shook his head. “Complete retinal damage, looks like it goes up the nerve a ways too. We’re gonna have to get you into an MRI, Axle, are you ready to do that now?”

“Sure thing, doc,” Axle drawled. Jada breathed rapidly and looked up at me, her mouth hanging open as she stress-panted.

“I’ll wait, Jada,” I told her. She clicked her teeth shut and nodded, before helping Axle to his feet. I held the door open for everyone, and Dr. Miles led the procession out of the room.

They all hustled down a hallway, and I went to the waiting room, to collapse into a chair.

I tried to pull up my anti-magic helmet. A thin line of silver formed on my neck, but nothing further. No heads up display full of magic themed nonsense, no nanotech protections against ‘magic.’ But it was healing. I breathed out my nerves and stared across the doctor's waiting area.

A framed picture of a desert rose across from me reflected my face back at me, and I stared at it, alone in the small lobby. Axle had been burned down to the bone, on either side of his eyes. It looked like the same thing had happened to me. The starfish suit had repaired my skin into a raccoon’s mask.

I rubbed a touch of residual soot away and realized I had lost my affiliate’s right hand. Axle did so much around the affiliate for me that I genuinely worried about its ability to operate without him, for even a short period of time.

Quadrum had casually blinded my friend, just by being angry.

I pulled up our affiliate screen, to look at our accounts and get a general sense of where everything was at. We had limited finances, due mostly to operating the city. We’d been drained after taking Los Angeles, the expansion proving more expensive than intended. I’d eaten up all of our savings, and to take a city that wasn’t even financially solvent.

Axle had already scaled back my search and rescue operations, instead reassigning the hobbs to BlueCleave regular rotations. Rayna kept the troops fed and watered from their end of the budget, but the various staff that worked in the city and elevator were all on Silken Sand payroll directly.

Wages cost us most of our income, and our income had taken a significant dip in several key areas. After Kraken took out most of Eurasia with its manufactured earthquake, I lost a good chunk of the clientele running cargo through my elevator. Business there was slow and would slow further as I had security scrutinize each and every shipment from above for reaper hounds.

Food production had slowed to just over sustainable levels, due to the water shortage. That meant our ability to sell food off-world had dried up with no extra crop yield, so our income stream from that was almost nil.

The Sleem farm had also slowed. I could easily tell what Axle had been talking about, just by looking at a trend chart of several days of sales together. The day of the earthquake, there had been a sharp drop in freezer turn-over, and it hadn’t climbed back up since. We’d not disturbed the trail, thankfully, so that was still producing some morties for us, if dramatically reduced.

A handful of affiliates ran small businesses out of Prescott, and I got a direct slice of every mortie they each made. But, like our rental properties, most of them were subsistence living. We made enough off it to keep the properties intact, and well maintained. Some mild income from that entire section could still be counted on, but it followed Prescotts’s financial well-being.

When business was booming for Silken Sands, our subcontractor affiliates made us a lot more than they did when we were slow.

Beyond that, our spider ranch was the one shining beacon of prosperity. Since Dro’erja had helped Drusk win a galaxy-wide competition, our brand recognition had shot through the roof. We couldn’t produce fast enough to meet direct demand, and orders began to stretch out into the coming months and years. Some of our best clients were dark elf noble houses, we specialized in silk for panties that doubled as a garrote. 

A very popular gift item among the upper class.

We had a few million extra to work with, and a handful of needs it could go to. We’d been buying water from the Kuiper belt for the past few days, to supplement our own, unreliable production of freshwater from Los Angeles. I decided to spend a million on another shipment. The plant was down entirely, and the more you ordered from these guys, the less they charged you for the shipment.

Their affiliate did things like resupply and enjoy recreation in Prescott, so they knocked off morties when we knocked off morties on BlueCleave tequila and fresh produce for their comet mining crews. It was starting to become quite the symbiotic business relationship. The million I spent would buy us enough water for a day. Maybe.

A notification for Axle chimed through on the app, and I got a view of it before it logged itself to his account. The television crew wanted a meeting. 

I sighed, unable to turn them down. For Axle’s sake, I hoped a phone conference would work.

 

 

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