Princesses Don't Play Nice Page 5

  "I heard that!" Max's voice came from the direction of the salad bar. The pizza shop's owner was busy cleaning and wiping, but she spared a moment to wag a finger their way. "And I don't recall you guys complaining at the time."

  "Eh, we were all in college," said Uncle, as if that were explanation enough. "None of us had much sense yet. Anyhoo..." he continued, flipping through his list of pre-planned encounters. "It looks like Isabel and Cassandrella are in for some more adventure after all..."

  She hadn't yet dared to voice her feelings completely, but Princess Cassandrella was rightly fed up with this little adventure. Her late-night mental fog had burned away under the solar glare of Izzy's bad decisions, and as far as she was concerned the first and most important question was, how was she going to get out of this?

  Well okay, the real first question was how to bring up the topic with her cousin in a way that the paladin would not yet again dismiss out of hand, like she had on the last few occasions. The second was how to deal with the broken arm and cracked ribs, all of which complained more loudly than she ever could. Not even the bright light of the full moon above could lift her spirits, because even on its lowest gait Izzy's mare was still a bumpy ride.

  "There's a hospitality house not far ahead," Izzy reassured her, not for the first time. "It was marked on all the old maps." There was a quavering in the paladin's voice when she said it, though. "Not much longer, and we'll have you safe and sound."

  Cassandrella was all set to say her important words, tell her cousin exactly what she thought, late though it was in coming. Her mouth was open to form the words, but a low-hanging branch of a passing tree interrupted. Isabel ducked her head to avoid it cleanly, and Cassie did so as well, only the length of gnarled wood suddenly reached down and plucked the moon princess off the back of the saddle.

  "Izzy!" she screamed. Her cry ended in a pained squeak as finger-like branches closed around her and squeezed tight. Up, up, up into the air she went, swung around as wood creaked and groaned like a choir of tortured souls. Her eyes spun, her stomach lurched, and she wished now that the moonlight were not so bright and clear, because she was not alone, high in the tree. There was a metal cage braced against the trunk, and it was not empty. Withered hands still clutched at the bars, and a mouldering face was just barely visible as she was brought in close. Its lips were pulled back in an eternal grimace, and it had long since lost its nose and ears to the carrion birds, but its eyes burned with a life that had no place in the waking world.

  Despite the pain and the vertigo, Cassandrella found the power within her to scream once more. She didn't stop for the longest time.

  "Cassie!" Isabel cried as her cousin was snatched away into the night. She reined her mare around to face the tree, whose skeletal trunk and branches cut the moonlit horizon like a stab wound. Around its roots, the earth pulsed and trembled, and as she dismounted and charged in, she could see grasping hands and other assorted bits coming together to form gruesome, patchwork things.

  The sight of it all was, if anything, too unnatural. Her eyes took it in, but her mind refused to see it all, and that above everything else helped her to stay calm. A stubborn part of her monkey brain was solidly convinced that nothing that strange could possibly be real, no matter how solid a -thunk- her sword made when she whacked. She could have been facing one of her temple's animated practice dummies, for all the lack of fear she felt in that moment. No, she thought as an excited smile played across her face, this was no danger at all, merely the chance to show the glory of the Sun.

  Several yards above, her cousin gave another piercing shriek. First things first, Isabel decided.

  "Sun's Burning Ray!" She hurled the words and the bolt of fiery light at the trunk of the tree, then cheered gleefully as it exploded against the bark in a cloud of sparks. The gnarled thing shivered from its roots to the highest branch, and then there was silence.

  And then there was a high-pitched shriek as Cassandrella was dropped from twenty feet up in the air. Isabel managed to catch her successfully, with a groan from her cousin which suggested that perhaps the ground may have been the softer option. The paladin's legs tottered and trembled, but she managed to deposit the moon princess on the ground without planting her own armored bum in the heathered turf as well.

  "O! warm and life-giving Sun," she quickly mumbled through the basic prayer. "Bestow your healing touch!" All the gentle heat of a sunny spring day seemed to gather beneath her fingertips, to flow into Cassandrella's damaged body and ease her pain. The cleric's breathing became less troubled, and her myriad scratches ceased bleeding.

  With a nod, Princess Isabel Cœur de Lion Solaire turned back to the real, important business at hand: destroying as many undead as possible. She could hardly wait to report back to Prior Matthias about what tremendous blows she had dealt against the enemies of the Sun!

  "You're going back into the melee?" Uncle managed to somehow be astounded and yet not surprised at all by this development. "Cassie's on the ground there in critical condition..." On the board, the moon princess's pearly-painted chess pawn was knocked over. Claire had rolled an amazingly bad series of numbers from her sapphire-colored dice, and her girl had already been in the red health-wise when he'd taken pity and fudged a roll from behind his screen to let her escape the grasp of the death tree. He'd even arranged the little tokens for the zombies in such a way as to provide a clear avenue of escape.

  He probably shouldn't be so nice. In fact, he probably would not have been so nice if a similar situation had occurred in the very first game session. There were some players and some groups that thrived on imaginary bloodshed and total party kills, much as they complained, and he was certain by this point that these girls were not narrative masochists. They wanted fantasy and excitement, and probably would not mind a character death if it was happened in a suitably awesome manner, like getting exploded by ninjas or something. But this... two girls half-surrounded by zombies, and one of them in the negative hit-point range; that was not the right way to go.

  But he was darned like an old sock if he could think of a way to get them out of this situation without resorting to pure deus ex game-master, and that sort of save would be almost as unsatisfactory. "Just to confirm," he said, hoping that the girl took the hint and the second chance. "You're going to charge at the undead and try to hack 'em to bits?"

  "Yeah!" came the enthusiastic shout. Natalie was bouncing up and down in her seat, in a way that wasn't just connected to the amount of caffeine she'd had so far that afternoon -- at least, not directly connected. "Um, I'm gonna run to the little girls' room," she announced over the gurgling of her stomach. "Might take a few, so she'll just keep at it unless something gets too close to Cassie, 'kay?"

  "Alright," he sighed.

  Everyone watched her skip and slosh her way to the restrooms on the other side of the restaurant, then turned their attention back to the matter at hand. "We've got two rounds before we arrive," Helen said. "Think you can hold out till then?"

  "Maybe?" replied Claire. "I'm not sure how much I can do, honestly."

  Uncle made some quick rolls for Isabel, then rearranged game pieces appropriately. He'd taken the liberty of doing a wisdom check on the paladin, and as a result Isabel had yet to realize that the undead were drawing her farther around the other side of the little hill crowned by the dead tree. Her horse, he noted, had actually rolled higher on wisdom, and was now far, far away from the action.

  "To answer your question," he said when he was done, "not much. The only reason Cassie's still alive and reasonably alert is because she's got a high constitution score and is a lot tougher than she looks, but even so... She'd probably take lethal damage from sneezing too hard, what with the state she's in. Your only real options are to lay there and wait, and maybe pray."

  Dark brown eyes, magnified many times by Claire's thick glasses, crossed with concentration. "Well, she's a priestess, so maybe prayer's what we need. Didn't we agree that Cassie and her goddess we
re closer on a full moon night?"

  "That we did." Of all the girls, Claire had sent him the most emails over the past week to discuss possible things to work into the story. Uncle wondered if the little animaniac were headed in the direction he thought she was.

  "Okay!" Claire stood up on her seat and leaned across the table to look him in the face. "I'm tired of Cassie having to be saved all the time. I'm tired of her getting pulled along into stupid hijinks without being able to say no. She's the Princess of the Moon, goshdarnit, and it's about time she made use of that. So she'll be praying her fuzzy bunny slippers off while the full moon's still in the sky," she announced, slapping two Hero Cards down on the table by her fallen chess piece. "And she really, really means it."

  "Can you even use two of those at a time?" Helen asked.

  "Usually no," said Uncle, "except in an effort to cheat death, which I certainly think is the case here. Well," he added, returning Claire's challenging stare, "I'm all for moving our little timetable up an adventure or two, but you're gonna have to roll for it. Those Hero Cards add a big bonus for you, but it'll still be a hard one. Ready?"

  Claire didn't even bother to dignify that with a response. Instead, she held her sapphire-colored die up, and, after everyone had had a chance to blow on it for good luck, she let it fall...

  Princess Cassandrella had thought she'd known a good deal about fear. She'd been afraid when they'd all fought the bug warriors, though she'd overcome it then. Then again, in Princess Rosalind's garden of thorns, she'd been scared out of her bunny slippers, and had barely been any help at all. Just that day alone, she'd been scared of the thunder lizards, the ghostly suit of armor with its booming echo, and the thing in the tree. Those were easy sorts of fears to work with, but then there was the fear of being caught doing something naughty, the fear of speaking her mind to her cousin, the fear of not living up to the expectations of her temple...

  Well, as she lay there on the cold ground, her body chilled and achy, all those fears didn't seem so bad, seemed instead to be minor little things to be overcome or laughed at. They all bled away, to be replaced by something much stronger and colder still.

  She wasn't scared now; she was terrified. Even as the rest of her was paralyzed by fatigue and pain, her heart beat like a caged animal trying to burst free. Any moment now, she was sure, it would smash a hole through her ribs.

  Somewhere off in the night, she could hear her cousin fighting, and elsewhere there was the groaning and shuffling feet of the restless dead. She wanted to shut her eyes tight and pretend it all away, but the Moon would not let her. Its pale, calm beauty lay low on the horizon, almost kissing the top of the moor, and it was straight in her line of sight now.

  -Please- she prayed silently, not trusting in her own voice. -O Loving Moon, who watches over us all, help me. Save me.-

  The Moon glowed back stoically. -Why should I?- the soft light seemed to say in its quiet glimmer. -My light falls on the just and the wicked, on the living and the dead.-

  -I know- she thought.

  -My light is equal and unbiased, but it is not fair- said the Moon. -Do you accept that?-

  -Yes-

  -That bad things may be done under My light?-

  -Yes-

  -That you may have to do those bad things one day?-

  If she had the breath to spare in her lungs, it would have caught in her throat just then. Was this conversation really happening, or was it all a product of confusion and blood loss messing with her head? She could not tell. Perhaps she was past the point of caring. Instead, she just answered: -Yes-

  -That the way of the Moon is the way of change?-

  -Yes-

  -The way of order?-

  -Yes-

  -The way of life and of death? The way of violence and of peace?-

  -Yes-

  -And you shall serve willingly, with all your heart and soul, in all aspects and phases of the Moon's light?-

  -YES- Never had a silent word been so emphatic.

  -Then so be it-

  The light of the setting Moon flared, brighter to her than the Sun in that instant, but cooler, softer, like the familiar embrace of silk sheets and coverlets on her bed back in Selunika. It wrapped around her, comforted and soothed her, and she willingly let herself dissolve into its presence.

  There was a new figurine on the table now. Four sets of eyes stared at it, confused. A fifth set beamed happily from behind thick glasses. "Yes! Yes!" Claire crowed as Uncle unveiled the newcomer. "Now the butt-kicking may commence! Full Moon Mangle! Moonlit Mayhem! Lucha de la Luna!"

  "...what is it?" Katelyn asked.

  "And a 'Why?', too," said Cynthia. "Maybe a 'When?' to top it off. Like, when did this get decided?"

  Uncle waved them down. "Everyone sent me all sorts of ideas for their princesses, remember? Well, Claire and I tossed some stuff around about how to power up a moon princess, and this was one. Now granted, neither of us expected to have the opportunity to fit it into the story quite so soon, but it's not like the rest of the session's gone as expected, either. Speaking of which..." There was the rattle of dice behind the game master's screen. "Isabel just failed her spot check. Like, utterly. So don't tell Natalie what's happened unless she asks in-character, okay?"

  Now five sets of eyes all winked conspiratorially.

  Selvi Khan's-daughter did not need any tracking skills for the last leg of their search. The raucous screams were clue enough. The flashes of light as Isabel tossed sunbeams like snowballs, those were hard to miss as well. Among the rolling hills of the wasteland, the old tree made a good landmark, and they'd already been heading in that direction when the sound and light show began, but now they spurred their mounts to their fastest gait. She could only hope they were not too late.

  But, as it turned out, they were just in time for something. What it was, that was harder to say. Around the little hill with its dead, dry tree, a dozen or more misshapen forms lurched in the shadows. Far to the left, almost behind the hill entirely, there was the flash and bang she associated with Princess Isabel. A bit to the right, Cassie lay in a patch of bright moonlight -- unnaturally bright, like the heavenly body had focused everything on that single spot. Her moonsilk and mythril gleamed brightly, and then suddenly there was a most un-moonlike flash that overwhelmed her night vision and left her dizzy for just a moment.

  In the spot where Cassie had lain, there was... something else. Selvi's brain was at a loss to describe what she saw. It looked a bit like a rabbit, in the same way her father's prized dire wolves looked like cute, fluffy puppy dogs. Pure white fur bristled over muscular legs, and long ears swiveled to either side of a glimmering horn that bent back into a sharply curved half-circle. The beast was crouched low to the ground, but even under all that fluff it had to be at least as large as Selvi.

  Nearby, a trio of misshapen, mismatched revenants finished pulling themselves from the ground and shambled towards the rabbit-thing. All three had at the most an ounce of brain matter between them, else they would never have dared. With a shrill scream, the oversized rabbit bowled over the first, sending the rotting skull back underground with its forepaws. Then it kicked back, ripping the second undead in half. The third undead got to experience firsthand what it was like to be a carrot.

  "By the blessed elders..." Selvi muttered under her breath as the brief spat of carnage came to a close.

  "What is that thing?" Gwen had arrived just in time to see those teeth in action, and her face looked a pale green in the moonlight.

  "Pretty sure that's our Cassie, though don't ask me how," the barbarian princess replied. "Hey! You two!" she hissed at Bianca and Flora. "Avoid the bunny for now, but see what you can do 'bout those dead bodies wanderin' round."

  Flora hopped off the broom and pointed. "It's the tree; I can feel it," she said. "Everything that's wrong in this area of the moor is centered on it. If you can keep those shambling things off of us, we might be able to do something about it."

  The ba
rbarian and the ranger grinned at each other in the moonlight. "You heard her," said Gwen. "Time to whack some weeds while they make firewood."

  "Heya, gals!" Natalie announced her return loudly, plopping down beside her cousin. "What's new...wow..." she said as she surveyed the battle map. "That's a lot of zombies. And everyone's all here now?" She pouted. "Darnit, I was hoping to get to the safe house, fair and square."

  "Your princess has been busy," Uncle noted, tapping the girl's chess piece. "Five zombies and counting."

  "Aw yeah!" Natalie punched the air. "Beat that, slowpokes!"

  "It ain't a game," said Cynthia with a scowl. "At least, not like that it ain't. We're all in this together."

  "That doesn't mean we can't keep score! Ooh..." Natalie had just spotted the amateurishly painted vorpal rabbit figurine in the thick of a zombie mob. "Boss monster!"

  Helen was about to correct her, but Uncle shook his head slightly. "It's your turn up next," he told Natalie. "What are you going to do? You don't know anything about this new thing or what it can do. Too busy whacking zombies on the other side of the hill," he explained.

  "I'm gonna run up and smite it!"

  He was unfortunately not surprised, though he felt like pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Anything else? Possibly before the smiting?"

  "Nah. What's there to know? It's a big monster with lots of other monsters around it, and it's not obviously breathing fire or anything, so I should be okay."

  He could almost see the dice rolling inside her head to decide how she'd react, with a penalty to her wisdom score lying on top of a natural 1. Total comprehension failure. Uncle had never seen such a bungled roll in real life, ever, but now he had to deal with it. There was a sort of sigh that only a truly exasperated game master could make, and even if he'd never made it before during one of their sessions, most of the girls recognized it for what it was. Natalie did not. "Well, then," he said. "Guess it's time to roll."