The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight in association with The Sailor Moon Expanded Project presents: Sailor Moon Expanded Gaiden AN AMERICAN WIZARD IN QUEEN BERYL'S COURT by W. Samuel Ashley Chapter 3: Things To Do On Shaizaar When You're Doomed "If human villainy and human life shall wax in due proportion, if the son shall always grow in wickedness past his father, the gods must add another world to this that all the sinners shall have space enough." --Euripides, _Hippolytus_ Churgaville, Southwestern Sherath Zoisium 19, YE 2052 1900 hrs. SST (January 15, 1990; 6:15 AM PST) By human standards, the Gutted Graxat was an indescribable hellhole. As far as the local youma were concerned, it was a nice quiet place to have a drink. The Graxat was an odd combination of saloon, trading post, gambling den, crack house, bordello, inn...well, actually it was the _only_ place of business in Churgaville. The reason behind that stood behind the bar: the proprietor, Wellorck. Nine feet tall, ogrish in build, he was the toughest youma in the region and absolutely loathed the idea of anyone other than himself making a profit. On anything. Competitors tended to drop like flies. Since Wellorck didn't trust his subordinates farther than he could see them, all transactions were conducted under this one roof. So, if you were an independent hunter-trapper in this particular part of the world, the Graxat was the only place to sell your stock and purchase the necessities and luxuries of life; unless you had the good fortune to be a teleporter with enough carrying capacity to make commuting an option. It was another typical night. The ceiling was lost in a haze of green smoke, acrid stench of burning zoraweed competing with the sickly-sweet scent of j'mara. Cries of passion and/or pain from the privacy booths on the far wall were ignored by those intent on less direct forms of entertainment; youma of all shapes and sizes clustered around tables, gaming pits, and the central bar. Hieronymous Bosch would have loved this place... I'd just unloaded the week's take of spiker armorplate and spindizzy cocoons at Wellorck's standard rate (i.e., around one-tenth of what he'd get for them out in Kel Fashon), and was now blending in with the locals (i.e. getting plastered on darkfruit brandy and gambling away most of my profits). Most youma didn't have the patience or the intellect for any remotely subtle games of chance or skill; there were quite a few locals betting on the local versions of cockfighting or bear-baiting, or outright slugfests. Still, a few held out for higher things. There were card games of all kinds, dice, even what was instantly recognizable as chess; the pieces went by different names, but it was without question the same Game of Kings to which Jerran devoted an entire appendix of the Codex (and which we'd reintroduced to the world in old India a couple thousand years back). Some of the locals favored a game involving stones in two rows of pits; they called it Queenstithe, but I was pretty sure it was what Earthers knew as the ancient African game of mancala. I bypassed all of these and went for something, to my mind, rather more interesting. The game was Darkrealms, something like mah-jongg and something like go, played with beautifully-carved and decorated tiles made from reddish-gold ivory--where the ivory came from I'd no idea. The value of one's tiles depended not only on their faces but on the patterns one created with them-- laid out primarily face-down, so one had to guess from the general layout and the few visible tiles what designs one's opponents were building. My fellow players were an odd bunch even as youma measured it. To my left was Myrgath: tall, black-furred, skinnier than my own human form, sort of a bat-man with toasters sticking out of his shoulders. Hell of a guy, Myrgath. Wouldn't stab you in the back unless he was one hundred percent certain he'd profit by it. For a youma he was practically a paladin. As I was generally a big loser at Darkrealms, he took some slight interest in my continued survival. Just the way I wanted it. Across the table sat the inaptly named Narkissos. He fancied himself Metallia's gift to females, but truth be told everyone in town considered him an obnoxious little weasel. Literally, though only I had ever seen a real mustelidean for comparison purposes and I wasn't about to bring it up. We all knew he was really Jadeite's number-one spy in southwestern Sherath, and he had no idea we knew. Nor did he suspect that Jadeite had absolutely no interest in southwestern Sherath and had assigned him here to get him out of the way until such time as he might actually be needed. It was all some folks could do not to snicker as he walked past. We put up with him because he was even worse at Darkrealms than me. Over on the right, Nurakh the Unspeakable held his...its...tiles in a sheaf of tentacles. I'm not even going to try to describe...him. Use your imagination. Better yet, try not to think about it. We didn't. He (?) was in on the game mostly because no one dared tell him to leave. As Myrgath dealt the tiles for the next round, the Graxat's doors swung open and the whole place went quiet. This wasn't the normal kind of sizing-up-the-new-meat quiet, the sort that had greeted me when I first walked in two months ago. It was more of an oh-crap-don't-draw-attention-to-yourself quiet, what you might expect if Zoisite were to show up. I tried to get an unobtrusive glimpse of the new- comer through the crowd... ...and several important sectors of my brain shorted out, while others threw a party... She was five-eleven or so, around medium height for a youma. Her skin was the color of a ripe orange, her long straight hair red as fire, her eyes a shocking neon pink. She had the delicately beautiful face of an anime elf, fairly common among female youma but I'd never seen any like _this_... I was dimly aware that the other gamers were reacting much as the rest of the place. Even Narkissos was intent on his tiles, apparently too spooked to try anything. Hell, even _Nurakh_, whose behavior in such situations normally qualified it for a part in the next tentacle-porn anime, just sat there and quivered slightly. She didn't _dress_ like a high-ranking Legionnaire; in purple spinsilks with white fur trim, she looked much like an ordinary hunter--if one was to believe that anything about this woman could ever be ordinary. She was in fact towing a sledge laden with chitin, cocoons, and other products of the Pallid Jungle, heading over to the trading-post counter. Wellorck himself hurried to meet her, elbowing his assistant aside and looking very nearly _frightened_... As she and Wellorck began to dicker over prices (something else that _never_ happened), life slowly returned to the Graxat. As crowd noise built, I discreetly elbowed Myrgath. "Who in the Abyss is _that_?!" Myrg glanced over, slightly startled by the question. "You mean you haven't run into her yet?" "If I had," I replied reasonably, "I wouldn't have asked, now would I? What's the deal with her?" He shook his head, nearly hitting me with an ear. "You're working Freegel's old territory, right? Well, she's got the land just north of yours staked out, and if you ever meet her, don't do _anything_ to make her mad. That, m'friend, is B'dekka, and if you ever cross her you're dust." "If she's that dangerous, what in Beryl's name is she doing _here_?" "No idea," Myrg shrugged. "Best not to ask, really. I'm serious, Varg-- don't even _touch_ her without written permission. Anyone who tries, just drops dead on the spot..." Death touch. Nasty. And extremely useful; that woman should have been serving in one of the Legions, not eking out a living on the edge of civilization. What _was_ she doing here? And why was I beginning to care so much?! A poem by Thomas Ford began bubbling into my mind, and I was afraid I knew. _There is a lady, sweet and kind..._ Oh no. Don't do this, not here, not now, not _her_...she's a _youma_! Sweet and kind? Try evil incarnate! _...Was never face so pleased my mind;_ ...all right, true, but that doesn't exactly make up for the rest of the package, _stop this right now_... _I did but see her passing by..._ ...no, no, don't say it, don't _think_ it... _...And yet I love her till I die._ I was in deep, deep trouble...