Author's Note:

Hey all! If you enjoyed reading PAC book 1 (which... I hope you did, or else I have some questions as to how you made it this far. Spite reading?) can you please give PAC a rating/review on Amazon/Audible? The very second rating I got was a 1 star, no review, which kinda did bad things to my rating.

ON TO THE CHAPTER

 

“Look, I’m sorry we hurt your monster attack bear but she shouldn't be hitting people,” the Chosen One was saying to the inconsolable bandits.

 

“It ain’t right, you hitting a girl like that!” the leader said, full of the righteous indignation of someone who hadn’t just tried to set a giant bear on a bunch of peaceful travellers.

 

“If it helps, you could tell them that Sexy Screamy Spider Lady also shot her, and she’s a girl,” Qube suggested to the Hero.

 

Fortunately the reins of the conversation were quickly taken over by the two most qualified of the party.

 

“My sincerest of apologies!” Sencha Bard said, sweeping his deepest bow to Edwina the Bear Mage. “In the heat of the battle, I didn’t perceive your glowing beauty. Of course, had I known you were a lady, I would have instantly demanded no harm come to one as delicate as yourself.”

 

Edwina reared onto her two back legs and gave a mournful roar.

 

“Edwina, darling, don’t let these silly boys fill your head with such nonsense,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady said. “Not allowed to hit you — what, do they think you’re a delicate flower who can’t survive a single scratch? No! Look at you! You’re a fearsome beast, possibly even a mama bear one day if you so choose, which is known to be the fiercest creature alive, and any man who doesn’t try to kill you is just refusing to acknowledge your strength!”

 

“And you!” Sencha Bard said, turning on the Bandits. “How could you allow her to take the front line like that? You put her directly in harm’s way while you three stood back! And you call yourselves men? You should be ashamed of yourselves for letting a delicate lady like this engage in hand to hand combat!”

 

“How dare they try and hold you back by stopping the fight!” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady continued. “If you want to fight to the death trying to maul someone, it’s your right!”

 

Qube wasn’t sure which of the two messages were stranger, but the combined efforts of the Bard and the Hunter worked to soothe both the bear and her bandits, or at least confuse them enough that they weren’t hostile anymore. In fact, the Bandits were trying to apologise simultaneously to the two party members telling them off, and to Edwina.

 

“I’m sorry we let you get hurt,” the leader said mournfully. “And that we tried to hold you back from your true potential.”

 

“Sorry,” the big one said. “Bad.”

 

“Yeah, yeah! Sorry Miss Edwina,” the little one added. “We’ll let you cut whomever you want, and stop anyone from cutting you.”

 

“Well,” Qube said, trying to find a compromise, “she did seem to have Mage powers last time we met her. Maybe they could try training her up on her Mage abilities, so she can still fight whomever she wants without always being on the front line? That way she can fight and be safe.”

 

Neither Sencha Bard nor Sexy Screamy Spider Lady were completely satisfied with that suggestion, but neither outright hated it, which was the sign of a successful compromise.

 

The Bandits, on the other hand, were ecstatic with the idea.

 

“If we get her proper trained up as a Mage, she’d be able to throw fire, like him,” the leader said, nearly jumping in excitement and pointing at Definitely Bad Guy.

 

“I assure you, it will take many years of training before she will be able to wield even a fraction of the power I’m capable of,” Definitely Bad Guy said at his most pompous.

 

“Yeah she can do it! She’ll blow you all up good!” the little one said happily.

 

“No blowing people up,” the Chosen One said sternly to Edwina. “That’s just rude. How did you like it when you were set on fire, huh? You didn’t like it at all.”

 

Edwina made a sad sound. Squiggles, who’d been pried free of the beast, approached the substantially larger creature with caution. She reached out a tentacle and, very gently, patted the bear on her muzzle.

 

Edwina snapped at her. Squiggles retracted her limb and hissed, rearing up onto the tips of her tentacles.

 

“Keep that thing away from our Edwina!” the leader snapped, pulling out a blade. Sencha Bard responded by pulling out his rapier.

 

“No harm shall come to Lady Squiggles as long as I draw breath,” he declared dramatically.

 

“They should go to the Royal Bestiary in Cobbletown and see if they know how to train a Bear Mage,” Qube continued, keeping an eye on her pet, ready to shield as needed. “If that doesn’t work, then do you think she could go to the Wizard's Academy?” she asked Definitely Bad Guy.

 

To her surprise the human Mage had moved, and was now standing directly behind Squiggles, staring down the Bear Mage that had just snapped at the mascot. The icy blue that outlined his tattoos were slowly burning brighter as he calmly watched the byplay between the two animals. Red and blue flames played between his fingers.

 

“Perhaps if she spends several years studying full time, she will be able to command a tenth of the destruction I hold at my fingertips at this very moment,” Definitely Bad Guy said, the flames flaring slightly. “Power that I am ready and willing to use to defend any participant on this quest.”

 

While Qube didn’t think that it would really take that long to throw a few fireballs, her heart still warmed at the sight of the Mage stepping up to protect Squiggles. The sharktopus didn’t seem to notice the threat the Mage had delivered, but Edwina certainly did. The bear snarled at the Mage, but backed away from the still-hissing mascot.

 

Eventually they managed to direct the Bandits towards Cobbletown.

 

“Tell them to watch out for the Evil Emperor; he might still be in the plaza,” Qube told the party.

 

“So we just gotta take our dame to this animal man and he’ll train her up into a proper wizard?” the leader asked.

 

“Sure,” the Chosen One said, “or at least something interesting will happen. If that doesn’t work, try and find the Wizard’s Academy.” The Hero blinked a few times as a thought occurred to him. “Huh. I just realised that you’ll have to come back to Cobbletown if you can’t find the Wizard’s Academy, otherwise we won’t be able to find you to show you how to get there. Weird.”

 

“That’s normal, Chosen One,” Qube said. “The odd thing is your ability to track people.”

 

“It just seems so inconvenient,” the Hero groused. 

 

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“Well there are spells that allow mind-to-mind communication, but I don’t think any of us know anything like that,” Qube said dubiously. Nor, she internally confessed to herself, would she be particularly enthused to engage in mind-to-mind communication with any of the Bandits. Edwina was the only one she wouldn’t object to, and that was mostly because she wanted to ask the Bear Mage a million questions about how she’d become a Bear Mage, why she needed more training, how she’d even started on her journey towards Magehood, and, if she hadn’t already been the Bandits’ pet/mascot like they seemed to imply, why she’d decided to join up with them.

 

“Nah, just meet us at Cobbletown if you can’t get into the Royal Stables and we’ll show you how to get to the Wizard’s school,” the Chosen One said.

 

“I do not know if the Academy would house them all,” Definitely Bad Guy said, “but if they conduct themselves correctly I may be able to recommend the bear to them, at least.”

 

“Hear that, Miss Eddie? You’re gonna be a real Wizard lady!” the leader said to Edwina, who roared. “And we’re all gonna go to school!”

 

“That is not at all what I said,” Definitely Bad Guy protested.

 

“Thanks you lot, glad we didn’t kill youse like we were going to!” the leader said, waving a hand as the Bandits and their Bear Mage walked past them towards Cobbletown.

 

“Hurr, bye-bye,” the big one said as he waved at them.

 

“Yeah, we coulda cut you good! Maybe we’ll cut you later!” The small one bounced along after the bear.

 

“I swear,” the Chosen One said, staring after the quad. “This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I love it, but man. Can you imagine trying to explain this to everyone outside?”

 

Qube blinked at the Hero.

 

“Is it more unusual than the normal oddities?” she asked curiously.

 

“The fact that the bear met up with unconnected people after we threw her out of the cave, decided to join them, they named her, and have totally folded her into their group? It’s wild.” The Hero was still watching the Bandits walk away as the party resumed their own journey. The smaller Bandit was loudly threatening to cut any particularly overhanging tree branches they walked under.

 

“But that’s exactly what happened with Squiggles, and that’s perfectly normal,” Qube said, watching as the sharktopus rode along the giant arachnid Hunter’s back, occasionally reaching out and tapping Sencha Bard with a tentacle when she wanted attention from him.

 

The Chosen One turned and looked at the party and gave a rueful smile.

 

“Of course,” he said, “you’re right. It’s all perfectly normal.”

 

“I doubt they will behave themselves enough to be allowed into even the Royal Bestiary, nevermind the Royal Stable,” Definitely Bad Guy muttered to himself. He looked down at Squiggles, who slowly reached out with another tentacle and gently tapped the Mage.

 

He ignored her.

 

Amidst this by-play the party continued along the path towards the mysterious location the Chosen One had marked on his invisible map. The change was slow. The brown and white of the tree trunks around them were progressively leeched of colour, turning into a dull grey. The bushes that had once been thick enough to obscure not only a band of Bandits, but their bear too, grew bare and sparse, their leaves withering away until they were only sickly-looking branches.

 

Even the road was slowly bleeding out all colour. The various suns set, and the multitude of stars came out to light the path, increasing the feeling of unease. It was also far too soon for the suns to be setting. Qube suspected some kind of environmental spell.

 

The air was getting cooler; not in the crisp, biting cold of the snowy mountains near the Air Temple, or the wet, misty cold around Lake Fear, but rather the cool clamminess of someone’s sweaty palm rubbing against one’s head while one was frozen in place, unable to move.

 

Not that Qube was drawing that particular metaphor from very recent experience or anything.

 

It started as a smudge in the distance, at the end of a long, straight stretch of the now completely grey road. As they got closer, they could see it was a fenced-in field, housing a white house of some kind, surrounded by dead trees, and a bunch of strange, grey, upright slabs of rock covered in dead vines.

 

It was only once they had arrived at the rusty metal gate that Qube recognised the slabs. Not that she was to be blamed for not immediately knowing what they were.

 

After all, Qube had never seen gravestones before.

 

“Wow, they really went all out on the creepiness factor, didn’t they?” the Chosen One asked quietly.

 

“In order to secure the death of the Evil Emperor, we must travel into the heart of death itself,” Sencha Bard intoned solemnly. The Hero gave him a suspicious look.

 

“That sounds like Fiona,” he muttered. “She always did have a gothic streak.”

 

“Some of these aren’t even real names,” Qube said, staring at the cracked epitaph nearest the entrance. The Chosen One shouldered open the gate and wandered into the cemetery without any ceremony.

 

“It’s probably references,” he said dismissively.

 

“Look!” Qube said, excited. “This one is for someone named Alex! And a bee! Why would you make a gravestone for a bee? Oh! Maybe it’s for Bianca-Dev! Wait, are they dead?”

 

“Nah, like I said, they probably put them there as fun references,” the Chosen One said, approaching the white building in the centre of the graveyard. When Qube looked at it, she suddenly remembered what a mausoleum was.

 

“I don’t think that would be a very fun reference,” Qube said quietly as she joined the rest of the party clustered behind the Hero as he examined the outside of the mausoleum. Large, curved pillars stood guard next to a pitch-black open doorway, for all the world like a gaping mouth attempting to scream.

 

It was always disconcerting realising just how much of an influence the Devs had on her world. While she knew the Temples had been housed to protect either the Bestowals or the gems needed to defeat the Evil Emperor, the fact that the Devs had made even the names of the gravestones was a level of control that made her very uneasy for reasons she couldn’t quite grasp.

 

The Chosen One touched a Save Point next to the entrance of the white building and turned to the rest of the party.

 

“Everyone ready?” he asked, in a truly leaderly fashion. As everyone affirmed their readiness to walk amongst the unliving he grinned and, gesturing them to get closer to him, he stepped forward, immediately swallowed up by the darkness. 

 

With a feeling of dread Qube followed, and felt the familiar tug of teleportation as she was pulled into the house of the dead.

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