Valthor: A Pirate With A Vision

Valthor hadn't honestly expected to like the admiral, but then he'd been surprised before and at least this one was pleasant. Borith Cove was practically designed to be a pirate city, with a narrow, defensible channel leading into a sheltered cove and plenty of ships and crews to defend it. It had plenty of docks, plus its own shipyards -- and, it turned out, a whole set of farm plots run by widows whose husbands had been lost at sea. It wasn't quite enough to make island self-sufficient, but it looked to be well on its way. 

They'd found the admiral in the inn on one of the pair of islands at the center of the cove, and almost accidentally had confirmed that Captain Razin of the Gloamshine -- the boat they were currently traveling on -- counted himself among the pirates. As far as Valthor was concerned, that was fine; as freebooters went, they didn't seem to be especially evil or destructive. They'd certainly worked hard enough in trying to get the elves and orcs to their negotiations.

So now the four of them -- he, Rrhorask, and Tizrin of the Adventurer's Guild, along with a priest named Sy -- were exploring the town at the admiral's instruction. In person, she had turned out to be a drow elf -- which might have been awkward at sea, but worked well enough since her particular admiralty was over the town of Borith itself. Or, possibly, the whole island, but Valthor didn't think so.

So far, they'd met the captain of the Widows' Farms -- a rather friendly halfling -- and the captain of NewTown, which ironically was no longer especially new. She was a Tortle, already older than anything Valthor expected to live to see, and apparently the center of a network of information-gathering. Now they were on their way to where the admiral was having the old fort atop the hill rebuilt. He was looking forward to seeing it.

 

MV2: Meet With The Mortals

"They're insistent," Mr. Carillo told him, and Andy chuckled, then managed not to sigh. "They want to meet with you in person. Make sure you're not some kind of AI hoax."

"Where?"

"My supervisor is suggesting that we go long and try Charleston. Keep them, and you, well away from here. Plus, if your maker is still looking for you, he's unlikely to look east."

Andy considered that. "Not the worst idea I've ever heard. Any chance we can get the original team to oversee the meet -- Steve, Veronica, and Rodney?"

Mr. Carillo shook his head. "They're busy with something else. There's another crew available, though. Well-rated, reliable."

"Fine." Oh, this is such a bad idea and I so very much do not want to do this. "Let's get it over with."

Mr. Carillo studied him for a long moment. "All right. I'll call it in and get it set up. Anybody you want to take with you?"

This time, Andy sighed loudly. "No. Nobody here I'd want to put at risk."

He sat back and closed his eyes as Mr. Carillo solidified and picked up the phone on his desk. In half an hour it was settled: a meeting, two weeks from now, in London Fish in Charleston, South Carolina. Andy would be taking a private plane, so he wouldn't have to go through airport security or present any sort of identification; the security team would meet him when he boarded. And meanwhile Amy's family would get a free trip to another city, which... he hoped they weren't too far gone to appreciate it. He'd never been to Charleston himself, but it sounded lovely.

MV2: Progress

The early-evening Spades game expanded to include the wolves Jürgen and Sam W, the ghost in the trench coat and fedora who called himself Ace -- "from A.C., as in Air Conditioning" -- and a vampire who was calling herself 2 Claudia as if she were a book in the bible. When Y.T. joined as well, Andy found that he could rotate himself out, or let one of the others do it instead if they didn't feel like playing.

Online classes remained one of the more pleasurable parts of his nights; he hadn't been lying about enjoying school.  He'd raced through the early bits, and caught up to his current studies, then kept going. Mr. Carillo was pleased with his progress; so was Andy. He'd even added a couple of extra courses on the side. 

Self-Defense For Monsters was interesting. The shared curriculum was pretty standard: unarmed combat, a mix of striking and grappling; melee with a variety of weapons, starting with knives, bats, and staves; and finally guns. Trainer Jim would then split them off into more specific things: fangs, for those who might make bite attacks; claws, for those who had them; and making use of incorporeality for Dana Z, the ghost in the class. Maria OG and Tom started showing up as well, and it turned out that Maria could call out very effective claws, while the black-eyed child Tom... 

Tom could reshape flesh, take control of minds, and do other things as well. Physically, he was as frail as the child he resembled, but Andy noted that Trainer Jim was careful not to put him in direct combat. "He says I should keep my distance," Tom explained, as they were heading back to the dormitory near dawn. "I can shoot people, or use powers, but I shouldn't try to hit people or wrestle or anything like that."

"Makes sense," Andy had admitted. "That's some powerful stuff."

Tom had looked proud, and Maria OG had looked grateful.

It turned out the Academy kept a herd of cattle behind the main complex, mostly cows but some sheep as well. It was part of how they funded the place, but it also allowed a lot of the monsters to feed without the need to rotate regular humans in and out the way the Authority had done for him at the hospital. For Andy, that was a profound relief; he could age a cow just a bit, not worry about overdoing it with a human or another monster, and still be reasonably well-fed. 

The wolves, the two nature spirits, and the black-eyed child could all eat regular food and be satisfied with that. The vampires could drain blood from the cattle, and Agrat B could drain their life force without killing them -- much the same as he and Y.T. could.  Maria OG was the odd one out there: as a ghoul, she needed dead flesh, preferably human, to sustain her. The small cemetery at the edge of the property wouldn't have supported her for more than a week -- it was mainly used for wights and similar to speak to the dead, or raise them temporarily. 

Andy had no idea what sort of arrangement the Authority had come up with, but while Maria OG was willing to tell him about her needs, she always ate in private and she always looked... sad, afterwards. Andy wished he had any idea how to comfort her about that, but he didn't. The best he could do was not judge her.

MV2: Amy's Family

"We have an... interesting issue," Mr. Carillo said quietly. They were sitting in his office, a small room in the central building of the compound.

Andy waited. 

"It's your girlfriend's family: they're asking to see you. They want to hear the story from you."

"No."

Mr. Carillo sighed. "We told them it wasn't safe, but they say they don't care. They're not dropping anything until you meet with them."

"I could call them, but meeting in person? They know I'm being hunted, right?"

"Our people did try to explain."

Andy sighed. "Would the Authority even be willing to set that up? I mean, we'd need a safe location, security, I don't even know what else. Some ethical way to keep me fed, I guess. That's money and resources."

"And still a risk," Mr. Carillo added softly. "It might be the only way to get them off your family's back, though."

"Could we set up a video call?"

Mr. Carillo cocked his head at that. "...I'll ask."

Andy nodded. He didn't want to see Amy's family -- didn't want to talk to them at all. Her death was a dull, persistent ache in his chest, and the thought of hashing it out with them just made the pain more acute. But if that was what it took, he'd do it.

MV2: Rebuilding

"You don't actually have to do that," Trainer Jim said, and Andy turned to face him. "I can just order more. They aren't that expensive."

Andy shrugged. "It makes me feel better, especially since I didn't get permission before I broke them." He was in the woodshop, carving and fitting another pair of training dummies to replace the ones he'd broken.  

"Ah," said Trainer Jim. "Then you're not going to want me to help out with them, either."

"Nope." Andy shook his head. "They're... kind of crude, but they should still work."

"They'll be fine."

When Andy looked up a few minutes later, the trainer was gone.  

MV2: Spirits and Spades

Maria OG opted out of the game, claiming to prefer watching a bit more television to playing cards, which surprised Andy a little bit. He was less surprised when Tłʼóoʼdi suddenly appeared and took a seat at the table. She was dressed in a bright green skirt and top, with a cape of feathers thrown over her shoulders, and she studied Andy for a long moment as he cut the cards. He was suddenly very aware that he was dealing with newborn spirits here; it wasn't like the wolves, who'd all had prior life experience and then become monsters."Everybody good with numbers?" he asked quietly. 

"I can count," Tom said quietly, then glanced nervously at the other two. 

They nodded, so Andy asked, "And how a standard deck of cards is counted?"

Tłʼóoʼdi looked puzzled, so Andy launched into an explanation of the suits, the numbers, the face cards... and how all that fit into the rules for Spades. "So the way this works is that four of us are two teams. I'm sitting across from Tłʼóoʼdi, so we're one team. Divvy and Tom, you're the other team. What you need to do now is make your best guess about how many hands you can win with the cards you're holding; that's your bid. There's a rule called 'sandbagging' where you lose points if you win too much more than you predicted, but we're going to ignore that for now."

He dealt the cards, then sat back to let everybody write down their bids. Tom nodded seriously, studying his cards, then turned them towards Andy. "What should I do with this?"

Ahhhhh... Andy shook his head. "I mean, first of all, you're really not supposed to show your cards to anyone else, especially the opposing team. But all right, first time out, we'll just walk through it." He laid his own cards out on the table, face up. "With what I'm holding here, I think I can take three hands. Tłʼóoʼdi, will you show us your cards?"

She laid hers down just as he had, and cocked her head as she studied him. 

"All right," he said. "With what you're holding, I'd say you can probably take four. Tom, if you play it right I think you can do the same. Divvy, do you want to show us, or keep yours hidden?"

"Hidden," said the spirit. "That's what keep the game interesting, right? Not knowing what the other players are holding?"

"It is," Andy acknowledged, "but since this is our first game there's nothing wrong with looking at the strategies openly."

"Even so," said Divvy. "I believe I can take five."

"All right," said Andy, and wrote it down on the notepad he'd grabbed from the shelves. "Let's find out."

He picked his cards back up, and Tłʼóoʼdi and Tom did as well.  

"Trust your partners," he advised. "You don't have to put down the card you think is most likely to win a hand, if you think your partner has one that will do it or if you think what they already put down will take it. If you're sure your team is going to lose a particular hand, you can use it to get rid of low-value cards that you know won't win anything."

He wasn't terribly surprised when Tom and Divvy took the first game. Advantage of surprise, and all that, he thought, smiling. "Well done," he said. "Tłʼóoʼdi, well played. It didn't go our way, but you have the idea now. When we play again, nobody shows their cards -- and maybe we can kick their asses, metaphorically speaking."

The woman in the cape of feathers smiled at him. 

MV2: Spirits of the Land

"Oh, hi," Andy said automatically, stopping to study the dark-skinned man in the hallway. 

He was dressed in a swallow-tailed coat and a top had, with an enormous, garish feather affixed to it. Of the two newborn nature spirits, he was the one most often visible; the other one preferred to remain unseen most of the time. 

The man hesitated. "You're a wight," he said. 

Andy nodded. "Andy." They'd been over this in their early-evening group meetings, but maybe it needed to be reiterated. "And you're Divvy."

The spirit nodded. Like the black-eyed child Tom, he had a solid, physical presence despite his origins; the hand he offered felt like, well, a hand when Andy clasped it. "Where you at on environmental stuff?" he asked. 

Andy chose his words carefully. "Conservationist," he said after a moment. "I mean, leave some room for camping and hiking, but keep the natural beauty in place. Otherwise, why bother with the camping and hiking?"

Divvy nodded and grinned. "Baby steps," he agreed. "Like to see the whole continent returned to its natural state, but that ain't gonna happen."

Andy nodded softly. "Does seem a pity sometimes. You up for a game of cards? Maria OG and Tom are usually up by now, and I've been trying to teach them to play Spades."

Divvy laughed. "Sure, I'm in. All you had to do was ask."

Andy chuckled. "I've been trying to take it slow," he said. "Several reasons."

"No need to explain," answered the spirit. "Come on. If your friends don't want to play, maybe you can show me and Tłʼóoʼdi."