Written in the Cards Part 12

Kevin twitched and nearly sent the dice rolling off the table when someone pounded on the town door of the gatehouse. "What the fuck?" he complained, wondering why anyone was out in the storm.

"Are you going to get that?" Thomas asked as he tossed a couple of coins into the pot in the middle of the table.

"What the fuck do you want?!" George demanded, not interested in getting up since it would mean taking his eyes off the pile of coins in the middle of the table.

"Booty call!" a female voice shouted from outside.

"Fuck yeah," Thomas said as he scrambled to his feet and ran over to the door, figuring one of the brothels had sent one of the girls to entertain them as a bribe, since it was fairly common.

"At least the job has perks," George replied as Thomas opened the door.

"Yeah-shit!" Kevin shouted when a green hand reached out of the night, grabbed Thomas and pulled him outside. He'd barely stood up and grabbed his sword when he heard Thomas squeal like a stuck pig.

Nutcracker stomped on the guard's nuts a second time then tossed herself into the guard tower and kicked Kevin in the nuts, lifting him off his feet and sending him crashing into the ceiling. "Crack!"

Snot tossed the large rock she'd grabbed and gave George a concussion, causing him to fall backwards over his chair. "You have issues."

Nutcracker gleefully lunged forward and stomped on George's groin, breaking the chair in the process then kicked Kevin in the groin again, sending him skipping across the stone floor and causing his neck to snap when his head hit the wall with a solid thunk. "Don't care," she replied as she walked over and stomped on George's nuts a second time, shattering his pelvis and causing him to black out with the pain.

Knockers walked into the guardhouse with the mirror and pulled the blanket off. "Grab their weapons and toss the bodies and the chairs in the mirror," she ordered her collection of goblins, causing the gobos to swarm the room.

"And the coins," Snot ordered, figuring the boss would appreciate the loot.

"Loot, loot, loot!" several of the goblins chanted as they went about looting everything they could get their hands on.

Knockers picked up the broken chair and pulled the legs off, handing each of the legs to one of the goblins that needed weapons. "The rest of the knights are going to be tougher."

Spanks walked over and grabbed the sword from Kevin's corpse. "Just remember the boss said not to kill the innocents."

"How do we tell the difference?" Nibbles asked as she watched the goblins haul the knights into the mirror, wondering which of the knights would taste better once they roasted them over a fire.

"If they're chained up they're probably innocent," Knockers pointed out.

"No killing children," Snot ordered.

"What if they're really annoying?" Nutcracker asked.

Snot frowned as she considered the question for a couple of seconds. "Let the boss deal with it."

"What about if they're cute?" Knockers asked.

"Tie them up and toss them in the mirror?" Spanks suggested thoughtfully.

"Good idea," Snot agreed as she walked over to the door that 'protected' the path that led up to the mayor's mansion. "Okay, we're going to charge up the path, kick the shit out of the knights and steal their weapons."

"Then what?" Nibbles asked.

"Then we split up, toss everyone outside that isn't evil and burn it to the ground!" Nutcracker declared.

"Loot then burn!" Snot snapped, wanting to make sure they didn't accidentally burn something important, like the library or any cards the mayor might have.

"No disappointing the boss!" Knockers ordered, glaring at the collection of goblins.

"No screaming until they see us and start screaming," Snot ordered.

"No problem, Boss!" several goblins assured her, making Snot less confident of the entire plan.

0o0o0

"Kill them!" Sir Gregory Stonewall, otherwise known as the Mayor shouted in rage as he glared down at the goblins that were rampaging in his home and stealing everything they could grab, including the curtains and even some of the marble floor tiles they'd managed to pry up.

"Charge!" Sir Hector shouted as he ran down the stairs from the second floor, promptly slipping and crashing the rest of the way down thanks to the grease one of the goblins had covered a couple of the stairs with.

"So much for stealth," Knockers said cheerfully as she threw an ugly bust of an arrogant looking man at the next knight on the stairs, causing his armor to crumple when it hit him with the force of a cannon ball.

"Fuck them up!" Spanks shouted as she tossed the knife that she'd stolen off the gate guard at the asshole that looked like all of the statues, burying the knife up to the hilt in the man's armored shoulder and causing a shower of sparks as his magical shield failed.

"This would be easier if we had actual weapons," one of the goblins complained as she grabbed an ugly vase off a table to use as a club.

"Less complaining, more fucking!" Nutcracker said as she grabbed the knight that had tumbled down the stairs, lifted him up and slammed his crotch into the banister, making the knight squeal like a stuck pig and shattering the banister.

Spanks grabbed the fat cook as he ran out of the kitchen and tossed him through the broken window, not actually sure if he was innocent or not since he hadn't tried to kill them unlike the rat faced woman that had been screaming about filthy orcs as she tried to hit one of the minions with a cleaver showing she was in no way innocent and had poor eyesight.

Nibble scowled at the broken window. "Should have tossed him in the mirror, he'd be good eating."

"I'm not eating a tub of lard!" Spanks complained as she threw a kitchen knife at the large knight coming down the stairs, causing the hilt of the knife to bounce off the knight's magical chest plate, leaving it with a fist sized dent from the impact.

"You can cut the fat off!" Nibbles argued as she picked up a bronze statue of the mayor and threw it at the knight that charged out of one of the hallways, knocking him off his feet and sending him flying back down the hallway.

"Not enough muscle," Spanks argued as she tossed a vial of sleeping gas at a cute and young looking maid that the boss would probably want, causing the blonde girl that had peeked her head out of a solid oak door to drop unconscious when she inhaled the fumes.

"Kill them!" Sir Gregory shouted as he crawled away from the edge of the balcony so that he could retreat without getting killed, shocked that the monster had been able to hurt him despite his magical armor as it should have been able to stop a rampaging troll without issues.

The goblin with a vase threw it at the man in robes when he stepped up to the balcony, causing the mage's shield spell to flash as the spell was overloaded and knocking him unconscious from the backlash. "It got the mage!"

Snot grabbed the goblin and tossed him up to the balcony, causing the goblin to squeal in delight. "Grab the mage and haul him into the mirror alive!"

"Got it," the goblin shouted as he grabbed the mage and tossed him to a group of goblins on the ground floor. "Catch!"

"Not what I meant," Snot muttered as the goblin turned to look at something in the hallway. She winced as a knight in rune carved black armor appeared out of nowhere and slammed his shield into the goblin, sending him crashing through the balcony and into the far wall.

"Filth!" Sir Devin Blackwater shouted as he activated his Black Fire ability, causing his conjured blade to ignite with black flames that would drain the life from anyone they hit.

Spanks picked up the slightly larger than life sized bronze statue of the mayor and flung it at the black knight as hard as she could, causing a crash of thunder as the statue canonballed into the knight and his shield exploded, sending the knight shooting down the hallway. She jumped up to the balcony to finish him off.

Devin used his Reposition skill as he flew past the mayor, instantly finding himself back on his feet right by his charge with all of his momentum gone. He dismissed his summoned sword then reached down and grabbed the mayor with his free hand, doing his best to ignore the pain from his broken arm. "Unlimited release, escape!" he called out, activating the emergency escape talisman that the duke had supplied him with in case something showed up that he couldn't handle, like a dragon or an archmage that could ignore his magic resistant armor.

"Shit!" Snot cursed when she watched the black knight and the mayor vanish. She threw a knife through the area where the knight had been on the off chance that he'd just turned invisible and frowned slightly when the knife went through the door at the end of the hallway like paper and she heard a scream. "Shit, that better not be one of the innocents," she muttered under her breath as she stalked down the hallway, pissed about letting the mayor escape. She was relieved when she pushed the door open that the dead person was a fat older woman with a badge on the front of her uniform and not someone the boss would care about since the old maid had been on her list of acceptable targets. She smirked when she saw several silver candlestick holders that looked like they'd make good loot.

"I need a team!" she called out as she checked the next door, finding a pair of naked red haired teenage girls tied up on the bed. "Make that two teams!" she called out as she headed to the next door. She grinned when she realized that it was in fact a two story library filled with old books the mayor had probably never actually read. "I found the library!"

"Fuck yeah!" Knockers called out as she grabbed the mirror and jumped up to the balcony, easily clearing the distance. "The boss is going to fuck us tonight!"

"Loot and fucking!" half of the goblins started chanting as they continued stripping the mansion of anything valable.

"I'm going to check the wine cellar," Nibbles said as she headed for the kitchen.

"Have fun!" Nutcracker told her as she headed down the hallway in search of more knights to cripple and riches to loot.

0o0o0

"Werewolves in London or some type of romantic comedy?" Molly asked as Mist walked over to where the group was sitting at the picnic table.

"I need more context but probably involves werewolves," Mist replied as he walked over and sat down next to Molly. "What's up?"

"We're trying to figure out the best stories to use while our phones still have a charge," Eric explained. "I voted for Star Trek but they vetoed it because of Q."

Mist turned to look at Eric. "I'm not opening a portal to a world with god-like creatures that like interfering in the world which rules out a decent collection of stories, including Star Trek. Unless you have a copy of Practical Magic or something, I'm not wasting my only portal on a romantic comedy either."

"What's wrong with romantic comedies?" Molly asked.

Mist scowled as he thought about some of the movies he'd caught bits and pieces of crap over the years and the stories that turned stupid after the main characters fell in love. "They usually involve a lot of dancing around their emotions in a way that makes me want to slap people, morally bankrupt characters when it comes to sex or situations that are played for laughs that should result in broken bones or people getting stabbed."

"That's fair," Molly admitted. "What about science fiction?"

Mist shrugged. "Most of it has technology that is either too advanced or not advanced enough to make it worth it compared to what we can get from magic or a world where they can awaken everyone's psionic talents."

"I don't think I have anything that is going to work," Molly admitted.

Eric shook his head. "Sorry, the only movies or stories I have on my phone are horror stories."

Mist shook his head. "Sorry, I'm not particularly interested in opening a portal to a world that works on horror movie logic and the other subtype generally involves doing really stupid stuff in a lab, which I'd just assume avoid."

"What about a generic magic girl story?" Sarah asked thoughtfully.

Mist turned and looked at Sarah. "Do you have any stories that don't involve tentacles, evil monsters or twisted gods?"

"I'd have to check," Sarah admitted as she started looking through her collection of stories to see if she could find something useful. "Nope, tentacles, love powered magic… more tentacles, magic girls and evil witches, friendly succubi."

"Tentacles and demon girls?" Molly teased.

Sarah laughed. "Don't start, you have a bunch of stories about a necromancer that runs around fucking corpses."

"Seriously?" Eric sputtered.

Molly playfully flipped Sarah off. "Two of her boyfriends are vampires, she doesn't actually have sex with the zombies she raises."

"No vampires," Mist told them, wondering if some of the stories were worth reading. "What else do we have?"

"Does anyone have Westerns?" Eric asked.

"Not enough tech or magic," Mist argued, not particularly interested in wasting his portal on a mundane world.

"Fantasy, adventure or portal fantasy?" Ted asked, wishing he'd actually downloaded a bunch of stories rather than just reading them on various websites.

"I wish," Tiffany admitted. "I'd love the ability to get home, as long as it didn't cost me the ability to use magic."

"Same," Mist assured her. "Does anyone have anything that fits?"

"Nothing I'd trust," Derrick admitted, knowing most of the stories he had didn't have reliable dimensional travel. "The only Dungeons and Dragons story I have involves the God of Murder running around which means it's not worth it. We also don't have a convenient way to learn the magic and they have evil gods running around."

Sarah shook her head. "Most of the stories I have are slice of life or adventure against monsters which we're trying to avoid."

Tiffany nodded. "I've got a couple of Humanity Yes stories that would give us future tech."

"How many of them have homicidal aliens or a useless galactic council?" Mist asked, not seeing a point in picking stories where they'd have to deal with a corrupt galactic council which was yet another reason to avoid Star Wars.

"Most of them," Tiffany admitted after taking a few seconds to glance over the collection of stories on her phone. "If we ignore the stories that have major problems, I'm left with a story about exploring alien worlds with a sexy blue alien girl and a short story about a futuristic star empire that uses a strange schizo-tech stardrive that requires the energy given off during sex to work, it's sort of a slice of life story."

Molly laughed. "If it's the story I'm thinking about, it's like twenty percent story and eighty percent smut."

"It's a really good stardrive," Tiffany argued.

"It's also something everyone has, right?" Molly asked, wanting to make sure she was thinking about the right story.

"Pretty much," Tiffany agreed. "It's the only thing they have that can go faster than light."

"Which means that we wouldn't have an advantage," Molly argued.

Tiffany shrugged. "Other than the magic we're bringing in."

Molly shook her head. "We don't have enough information on the economy or the culture beyond the fact that you need to get all sorts of medical tests when you get back from shore leave, mostly because the crew will fuck just about anything with a pulse and that they use some type of galactic credit. Don't get me wrong, the author is really good at writing smut but a bit more plot wouldn't have hurt."

"That's fair," Tiffany admitted as she went back to looking over her story folder.

"I have something that might work," Sarah offered.

"What do you have?" Derrick asked, not looking up from the list of stories that he'd grabbed for his hike since the cell reception was shit on the trail.

"It's a story about a magical academy that turned a bunch of assholes into teenage magic girls so they could get their enrollment up after the corrupt school board changed the rules and so they'd have people to toss at the tentacle monsters that no one cared about."

Mist shook his head. "That sounds dubious at best."

"To be fair, the school board had been bribed by a villain and the staff told most of the other students ahead of time so it was like a big reality show they didn't know they were on. The school also filed life insurance policies on the assholes, so they had more than enough money to upgrade the library at the end of the year and get a pool."

Mist laughed. "Forget dubious and I'll raise you sketchy as hell."

"Just a bit," Sarah agreed. "There are a bunch of magic schools around the country and the world doesn't have any godlike beings running around so it wouldn't be the worst place to end up. Heck, even the tentacle monsters are only around because they were using a rift to farm them so we won't have to worry about them as long as we're not in Japan."

"What's the tech level?" Eric asked, not seeing a problem with having a bunch of magic girls around.

"They're using video tapes so somewhere in the 80's or 90's," Sarah admitted.

"Did they have a way to give people magic that doesn't require turning them into girls?" Eric asked, rather attached to his bits, thank you very much.

"Nope," Sarah admitted. "But we already have magic so that part shouldn't matter."

Mist shook his head. "I'm not going to assume the magic is compatible but we'll put it on the list if we can't find something better."

"I might have a couple of ideas," Derrick offered.

"What do you have?" Mist asked, hoping the idea was better than something that sounded like the plot of a hentai.

"One of them involves a couple of time travelers and a version of North and South America covered by magical fog that creates monsters. If we kill Columbus' crew, we'd probably have at least a decade to claim everything before anyone from Eurupe gets there," Derrick suggested.

"Time travel?" Mist asked warily, wanting to avoid any world that included working time travel on general principle.

"Basically a group of feminists steal a time machine and go back in time so they can stick a couple of women on his crew so that the people that discovered America weren't all men. They end up setting off an Aztec ritual on one of the stops."

"Why were they anywhere near the Aztecs?" Mist asked, knowing his first trip wasn't even close to where the Aztecs lived.

"It turns out that being able to read a GPS doesn't translate to being able to read an ancient navigation chart and she didn't want to admit it. The backlash from the ritual ends up covering North and South America with a magical fog that creates monsters. Cut to two hundred years later when the fog started to dissipate and you have magical westerns without the natives but a lot of monsters."

"That sounds like a nightmare, time travel, Aztec rituals that can cover two continents with magical fog and no toilet paper," Mist complained.

"Yeah, not interested, I want a decent supply of toilet paper," Molly argued, rather happy that she'd found several rolls of toilet paper in the ink school since it kept her from having to resort to drastic measures.

"The other suggestion involves a series of short stories about a group of lawyers at a quirky law firm that deals with magical cases, every story jumps a couple of years or decades until the last couple of stories have them in space in a dome on Mars."

"Magic in space?" Molly asked thoughtfully.

"It was basically a side story that involved some relatives of the main cast, they were only involved in the contract work to buy the dome," Derrick explained. "The dome isn't important, the important part is that the series starts in 2050. They've got good medical tech and they'd made a lot of strides into making solar power viable before what they call the crash happened."

"Let me guess, everything crashed for some reason?" Molly asked.

"No, an alien race in another dimension was transporting a dungeon core and something went wrong with the stardrive, the ship shifted to the dimension Earth was in when their jump drive exploded. The chances of the ship landing in any particular dimension was insanely small but the story isn't about the other worlds and it's the only time it happened in the whole series so we shouldn't have to worry about the other dimension."

"Makes sense," Molly agreed. "The story is about the weird dimension, not all of the dimensions where the ship didn't end up."

Derrick nodded. "Half of the ship crashed into Havana Cuba, wiping out several million people and most of the city. Unfortunately for the residents of Cuba, the dungeon core sunk into the ground and started creating metallic kobolds that spread out over the island. They're basically bullet resistant monsters that can't swim and have claws that can rip apart steel."

"And we want to go anywhere near that, why?" Tiffany asked in disbelief.

"Because they can only lift about a thousand pounds, you can kill them with a decent rifle, they occasionally drop crystals that teach spells before burning out and their hides make really nice enchanted armor," Derrick replied. "Most of the stories don't involve the dungeon as anything other than the source of magic and magical material in the world. Magic bleeds out of the dungeon and the stories get more magical as time marches on."

"Are we talking everything starts turning into monsters or magic just gets easier?" Mist asked.

"Some of the later stories mention magical plants being found in Florida but it takes over a hundred years before there is enough magic to support the plants without someone pushing magic into a greenhouse and Florida is pretty close to Cuba. The tech seems pretty solid and the world isn't a dystopian nightmare."

"Slice of life stories?" Mist asked.

"It's basically written by a pair of writers, one of them does the sex scenes and the other does the world building and character interaction, it works out pretty well," Derrick assured them as he brought up the cover of the book.

"Rachel Greenlay and Victoria Valentine? Obviously pen names," Mist mused as he looked at the cover that showed a broken ship falling through orbit. "Nice cover work at least."

"Doesn't Greenlay write porn?" Eric asked.

"Yeah," Derrick replied with a grin. "Most of her books involve weird plants with aphrodisiac properties, cults with witches, mind control plants or any number of weird magical plants that should give people nightmares when they think about the sheer number of assholes in the world but she's really good at writing characters getting fucked."

"What about religious nutcases?" Molly asked, figuring there had to be something wrong with the world.

"There was a bit of a spike when people figured out that the monsters could give people magic if they used the crystals but one of the main characters of the second book got evidence of a televangelist doing some stuff he really shouldn't be doing with her younger sister and blackmailed him into sending a bunch of people on a 'crusade' to Cuba to kill the source of the monsters so that they could make sure no one had magic. She managed to get almost eight thousand people killed with that little stunt out of the nine and a half thousand people that jumped on the ships he'd hired and went down to Cuba with a hunting party."

"Fifteen hundred people survived?" Tiffany asked in surprise.

"Turns out most of the survivors were retired military and had enough firepower to start and end World War Three, they'd tagged along because they thought it would be fun, not because they were particularly religious," Derrick explained.

"That makes more sense," Tiffany admitted. "How does that tie into the legal side of things?"

"Most of the books have some type of action or spy missions against some company or group and then the rest covers their legal battles," Derrick replied. "I'm pretty sure Victoria is an actual lawyer or went to school to be one since all of the laws and court stuff is pretty solid. It's certainly an interesting look at how magic would change the legal codes in various places and magic doesn't screw with tech which is a nice change from a lot of stories."

"That's looking like a pretty solid choice unless someone has an objection or a better suggestion?" Mist asked, fairly sure Molly's Technopathy could take care of getting everyone valid or at least reasonably valid ID so they could find a place to use as a fallback location in case the nobles came after them and a place where they could get 'modern' supplies.

"Not particularly, I don't have most of my favorite stories on my phone," Sarah complained, knowing it would be different if she had her computer. "I'm really hoping my parents don't check my browser history when they realize I'm gone."

"Same," Molly agreed.

"Speaking of checking things, I was supposed to get someone to swap out for Zora so that she could dry out," Mist admitted.

"I'll do it, I had a summer job driving a wagon for a ren faire," Ted offered as he stood up. "You should probably take a couple of minutes and read the first chapter while everyone tries to come up with stuff and see if you can get a better idea of how their magic works."

"Probably," Mist agreed.

Derrick pulled up the first story and handed Mist the phone. "Read fast, I only have a couple of hours of battery left."

"Sure," Mist replied as he started reading, wanting a better idea of what he was dealing with before he used his last card.