A Monk's Tail by Kyle Spencer

Author:Kyle Spencer [Spencer, Kyle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-09T18:30:00+00:00

Under the Opera House

This is the third year in a row that this bastard bought out all the chocolate sauce and champagne. I keep telling you that we need to increase our supply! Sooner or later others are going to wise up and undercut us. Fix it.

- Internal Memo at an Aquarian merchant house

“Oh gods what do we do?!” Celeste cries.

Behind us the tunnel resounds with the deranged gibbering of minds trying to grasp at forgotten speech. The sound almost strikes me as funny; it reminds me of a past run-in with a rather inept morphling. Morphlings aren’t necessarily dangerous, they just try to steal food and valuables and such. They do so by changing into a form they think its prey would be familiar with. Hence, I encountered a very alluring firefox on one of my travels. And morphlings cannot be distinguished from the real thing by sight, smell, taste, or touch (heh, good times). But the one thing they can’t replicate is language. It knew Common well enough (who names a language ‘Common’ anyways?), but when I tried to strike up a conversation in my native tongue - Firefoxish? Firefoxxi? Whatever. - it became frazzled and started spouting a bunch of nonsense at me. So rule of thumb: know a few obscure languages just in case.

But that’s what this sounds like: a herd of morphlings blabbering down a dark tunnel. But they aren’t morphlings. They’re nuns bitten by mythic vampyres and turned into blind raging thralls intent on ripping us apart, which is considerably worse than morphlings.

“Whatever we do, it better be quick.” I figure the nun horde will descend upon us within the minute.

“Professor Zott, please ready your hammer.” Talia steps to the pile of rubble blocking our way.

“Yes my dear.” Archy wheezes and hoists his hammer. His grip is a bit shaky. Talia lays both paws on the stones and takes a few deep breathes. Soon fog comes out with each exhale and she starts to shiver. The stones in front of her take on a thick glaze of ice. Tiny flowers of frost blossom on her fur as the ice thickens and turns opaque. The stones begin to groan and crack with the temperature change until a series of gunshots makes all of us jump.

The ice has split a lot of the larger stones.

Talia steps back and lets Zott have at it with his hammer. A few solid swings shatters the obstruction enough that all of us can squeeze through with our bear alchemist being the last one. He stumbles out of the narrow passage he made and whirls back around just as the first nun turns the corner.

In the dim light her habit looks soaked in oil. Her eyes are gleaming mirrors of hate and madness. She bares her teeth, broken and bloody, and scrambles towards the opening. Archy roars and wails against the upper stones. They shatter into flakes of rock and ice and a low rumble echoes through the tunnels. The rest of us back away as the savage sister begins to claw her way through the shrinking hole.

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