Only Broken Things Are Free (A Pygmalion Fail Book 3) Read online

  ONLY BROKEN THINGS ARE FREE

  A Pygmalion Fail, Book Three

  by Casey Matthews

  Text © 2016 Casey Matthews

  For James. Missed you at Episode VII. Also, Bill Watterson—miss you too, but in different ways.

  NOT EASY BEIN’ GREEN

  “There’s not a woman here who hasn’t had an orc try to cut her to ribbons,” Tammagan said. “Dakrith makes them jumpy, and I don’t want someone skewering your friend because he loses his temper.” She looked at Dak. “It’s for your own protection.”

  “Bullshit,” he muttered.

  “Do you have a ‘Captain’ before your name?” Tammagan asked.

  Dak shook his head and unstrapped his sword and its sheath, tossing them onto the table. “Oh look. Scared white people just disarmed the colored dude. That’s never fucking happened before.”

  If my Uncle Scott were here, he’d have a Second Amendment–flavored conniption, but I doubted a lecture would get Dak his sword back. Instead, I glanced around the small room. “For the record, the most dangerous person on this boat isn’t Dak. It’s me.”

  They all stared.

  “I can use a pencil and a piece of paper to kill everyone here. It’d be easy. I can summon rune stones; I blew off a dragon’s head; I killed a guy with the same exact power as me using a cat full of razor blades. Dak is my best friend, and I love him more than all of you combined. So maybe you shouldn’t skewer him by accident. Just food for thought.”

  I’d never threatened anyone before. Kyra smiled my way, but the Akarri who didn’t know me glanced at Tammagan to confirm whether I was lying.

  “He’s not wrong,” Tammagan said. “Anyone who harms the orc will answer to Magister Grawflefox and then me.” She picked up Dak’s iSword.

  We decided to take our food to go.

  Chapter One: When Last We Left Our Intrepid Band…

  There is no good way to pull fourteen crossbow bolts from an orc’s chest. Not if he’s alive, and sober, and the person who put them there looked remarkably like you.

  It was Eliandra who first alerted me to the Wookiee-like disagreeability of orc-kind. “Friend or not,” the elven Queen informed me, “the pain will trigger his orcish rage. He’ll crack you in half like a dry twig.” She snapped her fingers to emphasize.

  The snap summoned the hour-old memory of Eliandra breaking her clone’s neck. My stomach turned and I tried to shake the ghastly vision. “It’ll be fine.”

  Our party scaled the cliff beside a waterfall. The dungeon full of traps and mirror-generated clones had deposited us two-thirds of the way up; it seemed more prudent to go up than down.

  Eliandra seized a handhold, dragging her lean body gracefully to the next plateau. She glanced at my human struggling. “Like a twig.” Another finger snap.

  “You just love making drama,” I groused. Though it did take my mind mostly off the long drop. The drama and, of course, the safety line secured to my waist. The other end was fastened to my bodyguard, Ronin, who was forty feet above me. If I fell, her unearthly strong hands would cling fast, so instead I conserved my worry for Dak, who’d gone pallid from blood loss and seemed in pain at each step of the climb.

  But that rugged orcish body my best friend had adopted didn’t waver; it just chugged onward and upward.

  “It’ll be fine to pull the arrows,” I told Eliandra. She was the only one near enough to speak with. “He’s almost immune to pain.”

  “Almost is the key word in that sentence. He’s got the orcish tolerance for pain, their language, their skills with weapons; why not their blood rage as well?”

  Scrabbling over the lip of the cliff at last, I glanced down at the glorious green canopies stretched below, heart thundering in my chest and skin greased by cool sweat, pebbled with grit. Panting, I realized something: in the last week or so I’d conquered an ocean, a cavern, and a two-hundred-foot wall of stone. The elation had me close to giddy, my aching joints and scrapes forgotten.

  I noticed Ronin was staring off the precipice nearby, gaze lost in the contours of the land. The raven-haired samurai was a study in contrasts: strong, but svelte; older than us all, but her hard face dusted with the freckles of a girl; her full mouth never smiled. I liked women with animated features and eyes that communicated whole books of feeling. That was how I’d painted Eliandra.

  But Ronin? Her veiled demeanor was as mysterious as when she’d worn her demon mask.

  She caught my stare and I glanced sharply away, cheeks firing. She approached and my breath caught. Her hands touched my hips, and for a charged instant my skin sensitized head to toe.

  She wordlessly untied her rope from around my waist.

  I’d created this whole world and Eliandra specifically. Dak insisted the samurai untying me was mine too—an archetypal concentration of every strong-yet-beautiful female warrior I’d ever drawn, my id’s fantasies made manifest. As my creation, any attempt to kiss her would be perverse, which made her proximity a torture of conflicted feelings. I couldn’t decide whether to wonder if she liked me, to hope she didn’t, or to tally the reasons to believe I’d created her at all.

  I had two mental tally sheets. On sheet “Kiss her, stupid” was the fact that I’d never actually painted Ronin—and in truth, the more I studied her, the more she felt like the work of a superior artist. The disparate pieces didn’t fit the whole: how could eyes so blue possess such smoky intensity? I’d have made her eyes gray and dragged a scar over her cheek instead of freckles. But there it was.

  On sheet “You’ll go to hell if you do” was the fact that the attraction at times seemed mutual—such as how her fingers briefly lingered on my hip bones before dragging the rope line clear. My legs wobbled and she turned to stride away before I could otherwise react. Had it been intentional? If it was, Dak’s accusation rang true: You made her with your dick, and you made her like you. Women like that did not fall for guys like me. Girls who liked me went for the humor, the dimples, or maybe the tall-and-skinny look. I’d attracted my share of shy artists and fellow nerds; never sporty girls, never women as stunning or physically competent as Ronin. Under no remotely normal circumstance should that woman be attracted to me.

  Unless she was just bored with tough guys and charming badasses and, in her ancient wisdom, had decided to give dorks a try. I mean, it could happen, right?

  Ronin snaked the rope into her cloak’s memory fabric, striding for Eliandra. “We’ll make camp in the trees. Isaac: deal with your friend’s wounds and find us.”

  I blinked. “You’re not going to observe?” I was ashamed for thinking it, but I wanted her close in case my best friend tried to fold me like origami.

  “I’ve no desire to hear the orc cry,” Ronin said.

  Dak was bent over and wheezing, but still managed an extended middle finger in salutation of the retreating females.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “A bolt re-punctured my lung. Keeps tearing a new hole and closing.” He shuddered. “Regeneration sucks. Kind of realizing why Wolverine is so angry all the time.”

  My stomach knotted. “Will it hurt you long term?”

  “Doubt it. Orcs regenerate until they’re dead. So are you going to worry about that blood-rage nonsense or help me out?”

  “You heard?”

  “Eliandra knows how good my hearing is. She said it just loud enough. You’re right about her liking drama.”

  “And she’s right about you speaking orcish. She could be right about orcish rage. Wasn’t it part of your write-up on the species?” Dak had created Northern Spine orcs for Rune before becoming one himself.<
br />
  “I can control my temper,” he muttered. “And it’s kind of racist to assume I’ll flip out because I’m green.”

  I swallowed. “How do we do this?”

  We decided on Dak sitting, back to a boulder, both arms locked onto the stone behind him. The issue was that he’d healed around the shafts, which meant ripping the barbs through freshly regenerated skin. New skin was unusually sensitive on orcs. In short, they’d hurt worse coming out than they had going in.

  “Okay, brace and pull in one go,” Dak directed.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to sound racist, but—”

  “Then don’t say it.” His stare cut through me. Before turning green, Dak had been brown and from eastern Ohio; I couldn’t blame him for never forgetting those facts since so many kids had never ceased reminding him.

  “This isn’t like a ‘Black people are dangerous’ worry,” I said. “You made a racial capsule for orcs that included berserker rage. It’s more congruous with being an alien than a different color.” I held up my hands. “Not that I think you or aliens are bad.”

  “I won’t go into a rage.” He sounded sure.

  Too sure. “Is this like the time you promised not to post that video of me laughing so hard I sneezed half a Mr. Pibb onto my cat?”

  “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Because that went viral. I got hate mail from animal lovers for thirteen months. I’m pretty sure those PETA guys on campus whisper every time I walk by.”

  “I will not orc-rage if you pull these arrows out. I’m in control.”

  I took firm hold on a bolt, its fletching slippery with blood. I used both hands, bracing my foot on Dak’s abdomen. “You’re certain?”

  “I am one hundred percent certain I will not—”

  I yanked with all my strength.

  “—RIP YOUR SKULL OUT THROUGH YOUR SCREAMING LIP HOLE.”

  I held a gory bolt in my fist. “Was that a little testiness I just heard?”

  “…was totally messing with you,” he panted. “It’s cool, grab another.”

  I tightly clutched a new bundle of fletching. “Sounded authentic to me.”

  “I’ve been honing my acting skills. That pretty theater major suggested I try for—”

  I ripped and blood squirted across my cheek.

  “—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “What you told me to!”

  “PRETTY SURE I DIDN’T ASK YOU TO PULL OFF HALF MY NIPPLE.”

  A strip of glistening orc flesh dangled from the bolt and I wanted to vomit.

  “Not even the whole nipple!” He sealed his palm to the hole in his chest plate. “Half! I can feel where you tore it!”

  “This is feeling mildly rage-y.”

  Dak’s irises were dilated and his nostrils flared wide enough I could have stuck quarters in either one. “I’m perfectly calm,” he roared. “Pull another out.”

  “I’m having the same sinking feeling as I did with the Mr. Pibb incident.”

  He seized my vest in one mighty fist and dragged me close. “I am the picture of stoic calm.”

  I gripped two bolts at once and they popped free with a wet squelch.

  “I WILL SNEEZE YOUR PULPED VISCERA ALL OVER THE CAT AND SEND VIDEO TO PETA.”

  I scooted back several steps. “That’s definitely orcish blood rage.”

  “I didn’t say pull two at once!”

  This was pretty much how it went for ten more bolts. Dak never technically blood-raged, he informed me, because his eyes never turned solid black. But he taught me all the orcish words for blood and dismemberment. Their word for the type of blood that’s full of meaty chunks, the likes of which you see from smashed skulls or people exploding, was raflak. Not coincidentally, raflak is also the orcish word for salsa-style dips, and he used the double meaning pretty creatively.

  When we finished, he tossed his breastplate aside. It had enough holes to make a good strainer. “Your armor wasn’t up to code. You should draw me the orc version of Boba Fett armor.”

  “You mean armor that makes you an overhyped side character who Han Solo kills by accident?”

  “I mean armor that actually works. You know, the opposite of bad-guy armor. I want protagonist armor.”

  “Bad orc. Greedy.”

  “Greedy? I have suffered at your hands. I should get the prettiest guilt armor you can illustrate.”

  “Suffered at my hands? You told me to pull the bolts out.”

  “Your evil clone put them in me.”

  “You’re pain tolerant.”

  “They hurt my feelings.”

  We bickered on our way to the forest’s edge until Dak froze and scanned the horizon. Dark shapes in a V formation soared there. Dak shoved me into the brush and hunkered nearby. We quieted as a dozen dragons flew overhead, their wings periodically cracking the breeze like unfurled laundry, the sound so much closer than the creatures.

  My pulse wouldn’t slow until they receded into the distance. “They didn’t see us.”

  “They weren’t looking,” Ronin said from behind us.

  We stood and faced the samurai, who stared grimly at the sky.

  Eliandra strode toward us all. “That’s likely just a piece of Dracon’s forces. There will be thirty flocks roosting in Amyss by now. My capital is likely buried under three feet of dragon shit.” Her voice dripped with malice. “When I’m through, it will be three feet of their blood.”

  “We aren’t going to Amyss,” Ronin said. “We follow the river west.”

  Eliandra crossed her arms. “Last I checked, it was my kingdom and my sky ship.”

  “Right now it’s Dracon’s kingdom,” Ronin said.

  “Not if we take it back!”

  “We will.” Ronin motioned to me. “Isaac is what Dracon’s after. He’s baiting a trap for us. But I know a place to hide him. We coordinate a counterattack when the wizard is safe. Perhaps give him time to unleash a few horrors upon Dracon with his pen and paper.”

  If wars were won by hiding and making awesome pictures, I was prepared to make that sacrifice.

  “Of course,” Eliandra bit off. “Let’s rely on the glorious Magister Grawflefox.” She still favored the goofy wizard pseudonym I’d adopted, caring not an ounce for my Earthly identity. “Surely he’ll save us.”

  “Are you mad at him or jealous?” Dak asked.

  “Excuse me?” Eliandra’s voice had gone up an octave.

  “Since the dungeon, you’ve accused me of being a slave to my orcish nature and gone off on Isaac like a bad imitation of Jan Brady. I get it. We all saw how you snapped your clone’s neck back there. That room showed us messed-up stuff, and you were the only one whose dirty laundry got aired in front of everyone at once.”

  It was true. Eliandra’s clone hadn’t been so much “evil” as servile and pliant, a dutiful young woman who’d given up on the life’s mission that inspired Eliandra: saving her birth mother from Dracon. Instead, the clone had treated Ronin’s doppelganger as her real mother and become, as a result, a supplicant daughter. We’d all seen it, and how Eliandra reacted, brutally killing the illusion with her bare hands.

  “Guess what?” Dak asked. “We were all staring down our worst fears. Isaac’s clone was a whiny munchkin with power armor; Ronin’s was—I don’t know—slightly more Ronin-y? I wasn’t totally clear on that. Maybe the lesson was Ronin is only afraid of herself.”

  Ronin shrugged.

  “And what of you?” Eliandra glowered. “What did you fear?”

  Dak held one hand to his chest. “I was an emotionally abused enabler; so blinded by my emo swoop that I almost shot my best friend.”

  Eliandra took a step toward the orc. “Leave us. Ronin and I have war plans to discuss.”

  We gave the two space, leaving them to stare one another down. Something was communicated in that stare, in the long stretch of silence, and in the way I heard Eliandra continue once we were mostly out of earshot: “Fine. You’re right.”

  The
grudging respect made me smile.

  Dak and I found some boulders to sit on, unwilling to build a fire with dragons flying around. When the women returned with their battle plan, the Queen sank onto a nearby stone with a look of worried defeat.

  “Didn’t go well for you?” Dak asked.

  She sucked on something bitter. “Ronin is right. But my kingdom, for the moment, is under Dracon’s thumb. I know what that bastard is capable of, and I fear for my people.” She had the eyes of a woman who’d seen things.

  Chapter Two: Head in the Clouds

  Ronin summoned the sky ship with a handheld beacon and it bore down on our general location within a few hours. Eliandra fired a signal shot to draw it closer. Its glinting sails appeared on the horizon.

  “Wait,” Dak said. “It looks like a regular boat but in the sky.”

  I grinned. “Cool, huh?”

  “Until you need to shoot down,” he scowled.

  “We have you to blame for that?” Eliandra gasped. “Do you know how many sky ships we’ve lost to dragons? All they have to do is fly at us from below and we’re helpless.”

  “Why didn’t you redesign them?” Dak shouted at the Queen, almost tearing his hair out. Nothing angered a power gamer more than sacrificing combat efficiency for aesthetics. “Did no one get the memo that aerial combat happens in three fucking dimensions?”

  “Sky ships were discovered, not designed,” Eliandra said. “We’ve reverse engineered them, but all the new designs have been failures.”

  “It’s my fault.” I sighed. “I drew a world with ships like this. This world’s magic defends my designs by sabotaging every new effort, the same way it fabricates justifications for all my creative choices.”

  “This cannot stand.” Dak pointed at me. “Put my new armor on the back burner. We’re fixing the sky ships.”

  I tried to explain that it didn’t work that way—I could summon things, but couldn’t just change the world while still in it. Before we could debate, the sky ship coasted over a clearing and we had to take turns snatching the dropped line and being reeled aboard.