Unruined

     “Me too,” Brynn said, throwing the curtains open. “Let’s get some coffee and protein, it’ll make us feel better.”

     Once again, Brynn was secretly the more positive of the two. Hanso would’ve been mad about it if it wasn’t so charming.

     Peeling himself off the floor at sunrise pretty much confirmed his suspicion that Fun Hanso had slept far too badly to come to the phone right now, let alone stay at the phone for the entire four-hour ride to the Haunted Woods. Thankfully, hooves don’t actually make that clip-clopping sound when they’re not on cobblestones, so Hanso got to space out for a while and felt the breeze on his face as they drew closer to the treeline, and the dawning sky slowly got dark again.

     Hanso slowed his Alabriss. “Jeremiah’s up there. Get the bribe out.”

     The main Thieves’ Guild sect in the Haunted Woods was Siobhan’s Specters. They’d encountered these specific sentries many times over the years: an old necromancer in a rocking chair on the porch of an abandoned house. In his hand, he held a leash with a wraith on the end of it.

     As much as Brynn hated the idea of it, they were paying the Specters on Fyora’s orders. Everybody entering the Woods had to pay the sentries, no exceptions, and the potential violence of dodging the toll was deemed more expensive than just forking the money over.

     The wraith slipped free, leash trailing, and trotted up to them, sniffing gently. In the early days of their work, this had been the main stress test of their steeds. Grail was as nonchalant as his rider was. Slim Shady—

     Okay, so, Slim Shady was a Whinny that wasn’t even supposed to be an option for Brynn to ride. He kept breaking out of his enclosure, into buildings, and his favorite hobby was to walk right up to the side of the road and pretend to be dead. Brynn loved this horrible animal dearly.

     Anyway, Slim Shady stomped on that wraith with no hesitation. The wraith was fine, it reformed immediately, but Slim Shady’s bloodlust bears mentioning nonetheless.

     Jeremiah didn’t notice any of this.

     Hanso rolled his eyes. “Jeremiah. Jeremiiiah…!”

     Nothing. Brynn leaned over. “Is he…?”

     Hanso took a deep breath.

     “ICE CREAAAM!”

     The old Gelert jolted so hard that the dust on his fur flew. “Ben, I—!” His face fell when he realized that Hanso was not, in fact, the ice cream man who tended to travel this road. “Oh, it’s just you.”

     “Hi, Jerry,” Hanso said, trying to bring his steed close enough to hand Jeremiah the money without dismounting. Jeremiah’s wraith wasn’t deadly, but even right now, it was hopping up and down to try and bite his ankles. “Wanna do your job?”

     “Yeah, yeah, gimme a minute. Siobhan wanted me to tell y’all somethin’...” He rooted around in his pockets and found a crumpled piece of paper.

     Hanso shared a glance with Brynn. Sure, he’d lived his own life of crime, but at least he’d had a work ethic about it.

     “Ah. Right, right.”

     “Well?”

     “We’re terminatin’ our business agreement,” Jeremiah said, and reached out.

     Hanso didn’t immediately recognize the shift in his body, but by the time he did, it was already too late, and he was crumpling to the ground.

     “Shouldn’t have eaten the jelly.”

     And then everything went black.

     ———

     Xandra had woken up in bizarre situations a lot more than anyone would hope for in a lifetime, and the top three had occurred in this room. You would think that she’d be used to it by now, and to a certain extent, she was. But nothing can prepare you for waking up, and a Whinny is just standing there.

     Facts about Xandra’s tower:

     It was a tower.

     Even with Brynnso gone, there were still armed guards outside the door.

     The locked door.

     What.

     The guards were equally mystified, but less surprised to see Slim Shady, who was so much like Hanso that it was just common sense that Brynn wanted to ride him. What did surprise them was when he refused to leave.

     “Why don’t you just get Brynn in here? He’ll listen to her, right?”

     “Haven’t you heard?”

     Brynn and Hanso’s steeds had returned without their riders.

     ———

     Okay. Listen. It wasn’t like she liked them or anything—

     Xandra considered as she approached the border to the Haunted Woods.

     —but they could be manipulated, and she knew she could make that work. Also, she’d already stolen Grail, so if she changed her mind at this juncture, nobody would be able to vouch for her.

     Not the best logic in the world, but she’d done more for less.

     It was suspiciously easy for her to leave. She suspected, disdainfully, that Fyora had seen her, and told the guards to let her go.

     She approached the sentry.

     “You, sentry. I’ve journeyed from afar to retrieve my associates from the clutches of the crime lord Siobhan and her specters. If you do not allow me passage, I will use my sorcerous powers to—”

     “SURE.”

     “Whoa,” Xandra said, her Alabriss backing away a bit. Xandra had never seen an Alabriss raise an eyebrow before, so this day was full of surprises.

     “I DON’T SEE WHY NOT.”

     “Uh, okay. That was easy.”

     “YEAH, MAN, I DON’T WORK HERE. JERRY JUST KINDA GAVE ME MONEY TO SIT IN HIS CHAIR, BUT, LIKE, HE DIDN’T GIVE ME SORCERESS FIGHTIN’ MONEY.”

     “...I don’t know how to ask this in a way that isn’t rude, but do you wear hearing aids? Because if you do, you might need to change the batteries.”

     “SORRY, MY INSURANCE AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE. WANNA BUY SOME ICE CREAM BEFORE YA GO?”

     Xandra bought a creamsicle and rode onwards.

     ———

     The downside of refusing to work with Fyora was that Xandra’s only description of Siobhan’s lair was “spooky manor in the Haunted Woods,” which was about as helpful as “sand on the beach.” Luckily, Grail was on the ball, and took her straight there.

     “Okay. One-two-three—!” Xandra pulled herself about halfway up to the window before her elbows gave out. “Ough.”

     Apparently, her new arm was exactly as strong as her old one, which wasn’t. Grail made a noise that sounded uncannily close to a sigh before he nudged her into the window with his big stupid head.

     “You are Fyora’s bravest soldier,” she said, dusting her dress off. She looked around the dim and stuffy room for a fruit bowl or something. The room was quite standardly antique for a Haunted Woods manor. Xandra felt vaguely disappointed. She’d expected something more interesting of a crime lord.

     No fruit bowl, but there was a plate of jelly. Equines liked sugar, right? She scraped a bit off with a butterknife and offered it to Grail.

     Grail didn’t just turn his head away from the jelly — he full-on whinnied and abandoned ship.

     “What the—?” Too late. He was gone. “Is it really that bad?”

     Now, Xandra wasn’t expecting to seriously find something wrong with the jelly when she sniffed it. She didn’t even like jelly.

     What she really wasn’t expecting was the smell of necromancy.

     Anyone can learn how to cast a spell, but certain magical traits are just genetic. The ability to smell magic is one of them, and everyone’s nose is different, so “what does necromancy smell like” can be a complicated question — except in the case of necromancy, which, for some reason that not even the highest of archmages could figure out, always smelled like parmesan cheese.

     “...Huh.” Jelly was made of gelatin, which was derived from bones, so this made an amount of sense that was both impressive and horrible.

     Before she could consider this further, the door opened.

     Xandra huffed. “Ugh, Hanso! Did you have to break yourself out right when I got here?”

     Hanso smacked her.

     Xandra reeled, clutched her face, half-thinking that it was a joke or a bit or something, but he’d hit her too hard for that, and only stood there with a vacant expression.

     “What the—?! Are you out of your—”

     Blinking, she remembered that in the tower, Hanso had stolen all her jelly.

     He went for another swing, but now that Xandra knew he was a puppet of necromancy, she could predict him. The delivery method was complex, but the animation was crude. Jelly-zombie-Hanso just couldn’t spin up the dexterity required to attack a little rodent woman scuttling around on all fours.

     Finally, she saw an opening — he’d gone into a corner and was struggling to turn around with any sort of speed, and Xandra took this for what it was — a perfect opportunity to cast a counterspell.

     Hanso jerked once. Twice. And then stuck his head in a potted plant.

     “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Xandra said. “How many times are you going to throw up in front of me? I mean, I suppose it’s only been twice, but two nickels.”

     “Oh Fyora, don’t talk… Ouuugh. Why.”

     “Serves you right for stealing other people’s food.”

     “I regret it immensely and I will be doing it again.” Hanso reclined against the bookshelf behind him. “You don’t happen to have seen some actual food anywhere around here, have you?”

     “How are you hungry at a time like this?”

     “I dunno, how are you smiling like that? Seriously, it’s kinda creepy.”

     Xandra hadn’t realized that she was doing that. Stretching the long-unused muscles of her magic had been fantastic. “Don’t worry about that.”

     “...That’s the most suspicious thing I’ve ever heard and you’re lucky that I’m more worried about Brynn right now.”

     “Right, Brynn. She wouldn’t eat the food. Also, how did they get necromancy into my hospital food anyway?”

     “Probably planted a guy in Fyora’s staff. Brynn was worried about that, just with, y’know, poison. Something normal.” His expression darkened. “I don’t remember what happened after they… took control. I’m guessing she’s not with you.”

     “If that were the case, I would’ve left the rescue mission to her.”

     “Then that leaves us without a tank. Don’t suppose you’re good with stealth missions?”

     “With heavy stealth, yes.”

     “What’s heavy stealth?”

     A knock at the door. “Hey! What’s goin’ on in there?”

     Xandra opened the door and blasted the guard through a wall.

     “...”

     “What? No witnesses is no witnesses.”

     Hanso, looking at her sternly, opened the air vent next to him.

     “Oh. Well, if you want to be boring.”

     Now, here’s the thing — Xandra wasn’t claustrophobic. Or, at least, she wasn’t claustrophobic before. And not everyone could be like Hanso, who could eat necromancy jello like a vacuum cleaner and still end the day as a twink.

     So the vent was a tight fit. That didn’t surprise her. What surprised her was the icy, closed-off, you-are-about-to-die-right-this-second feeling that fell on her as soon as she fit her shoulders in.

     “Oi, you back there?” Hanso had gone in first — Xandra was wearing a dress, after all.

     She swallowed hard. “Yes, just give me a second.”

     But Hanso, perceptive jerk that he was, must have noticed something was wrong. “We can find another—”

     “I’m fine—”

     There was a loud bang, which Xandra would’ve attributed to Hanso, if not for the hand that grabbed her ankle and started pulling her backwards.

     Xandra had shrieked. She wasn’t proud of it, but she’d admit it. Besides, she could only cast magic through the prosthetic, so kicking and screaming was about all she could do until her attacker pulled her from the vent fully.

     “I’ll blast your face off!

     “I’d like to see you try!” snarled Brynn.

     “Wh— Brynn?!”

     “Xandra? What were you doing in the vents?”

     “Looking for you! What were you doing—” Xandra gestured frantically. “Not being captured?”

     “I don’t know! I woke up chained to a wall, but they kind of…”

     Brynn raised her hands, which still had manacles on them.

     “...Forgot to bolt the chains down?”

     “What kinda cheap escape room is this?” Hanso echoed from the vent.

     “Why are you in the vents? I mean,” she said as he tried to respond, “why are you still in the vents?”

     “Fun?”

     “Are you stuck?”

     “...Listen—”

     Brynn sighed.

     “The vents here are actually weirdly big. I got overconfident,” he said as Brynn knelt down to reach for his ankles.

     And as that happened, Xandra looked at the room they were in.

     Really looked at it for the first time.

     “Huh,” she said, as Hanso was pulled from the vent, shirt over his head. “Hey. Do you know what room we’re in?”

     “What?”

     “What — is — this — room?”

     “I mean, it’s clearly a parlor or a sitting room or — is that a toilet just sitting in the open?!”

     Yes, it was, and there were two couches pointed at it.

     “Forget the toilet. (“I don’t think I can.”) There’s a modern washing machine in this Neovian house.” Brynn looked in the space between the wall and the machine. “It’s not even hooked up to anything.”

     “It’s almost like this place is—”

     An old Gelert burst through the door. “FOUND YA! TIME TO—”

     “Nuh-nuh-nuh-no,” Xandra said, unamused. “Knock it off. I’ve figured it out.”

     Brynnso, already squared up, looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

     “This is a cheap escape room. It’s all fake.”

     She looked the Gelert dead in the eye.

     “Right, Fyora?”

     For a split, terrifying second of silence, Xandra wondered if she had, in fact, misread the situation.

     Then the Gelert started laughing. And laughing. And laughing. With his mouth open wide. And then he grabbed his top and bottom jaws and peeled the mortal disguise off like a banana.

     “Oh,” Fyora said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I’ve missed this.”

     Judging by the loud groans that Brynnso let out, this was not the first time they’d been punk’d by Her Majesty. Hanso’s groan was particularly offended.

     “What?”

     “I apologize to you both — this was a false flag operation.”

     “What?!”

     “I considered calling in the actors I usually have on standby for these, but—”

     “WHAT?!”

     “Hanso, can you please be quiet?” Brynn said, cringing.

     “I’m not a child, you don’t have to shush me, and I think I’m allowed to be angry that instead of just asking me to help her run a scam — which I totally would’ve done, by the way — my boss puppeted me around like a sock!”

     Xandra shook her head. “Classic faerie nonsense.”

     “As I was saying,” continued Fyora, “you two had already formed a rapport with Xandra, and while Hanso might have been convincing, Brynn’s performance in an undercover setting can be… inconsistent.”

     “In my defense,” Brynn said, “hitting the problem with swords usually works.”

     Hanso narrowed his eyes. “The last time you said that, I was asking you to help me open a pickle jar.”

     “I mean, we did eat them after washing the broken glass off.”

     “We can’t keep doing this every time we buy pickles, Brynn, there’s gotta be a better way.”

     “Then by all means, try to scam the pickles out of the jar. I’d like to see that!”

     “I can’t believe I considered having either of these morons as my right-hand man,” Xandra said.

     Fyora smiled. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to learn to tolerate your new coworkers.”

     A baffled Xandra said the only thing she could think of: “Nuh-uh.”

     “Yuh-huh,” Fyora said sagely, and vanished into sparkles.

     The End.