All Bets Are Final

by ~reido

“Ramis:  no.”  Phia’s nondescript voice floated across the tavern’s front room to me.

The young girl he was speaking to, Ramis—her voice was naturally quite a bit higher and even easier to hear:  “Look, I bloody know what I’m doing.  Fuck off.”

“Kid, if you play that damned card, they’re going to roll you.”

“Fuck off, grandpa.”

I tried to let the din of the room drown out my companions’ argument.  I failed miserably, closed my eyes, and muttered something obscene; my profanities were a lot more subtle than the girl’s.

“Look, I’m telling you, Ram:  don’t play that card.  Please.”

“And I’m telling you, pops, I know what I’m doing.”

Judging by Phia’s gargled groan, she played the card.  Judging by the cheers from the table Ramis was playing at, Phia had been right.  There was a moment of silence, then.  I opened one eye and scanned across the room:  Ramis was sitting coolly in her chair, holding up a palm and letting her long idiotically-bright yellow sleeve slip down her arm.  I didn’t need to see the front of it to know that it was the hand with the black tattoo across the palm which arched down around her wrist and forearm.  The tattoo that labeled her as a—

“Majus!” somebody shouted, panicking immediately.  A woman screamed.  A baby cried.  Thunder crashed and horses screamed outside.  You get the picture.  Without even picking up their rather significant winnings, the people sitting at Ramis’ table bolted right out the door with the rest of the inn’s patronage for the night, save for Phia and myself.  I let out a small sigh and stood up, walking over to them.

Phia was rubbing his temples.  “Damn it, Ramis.  We could have pulled way more than this.  The guy in the cape was a duke in disguise; he had a lot more money in his pockets, not to mention in the pockets of the bodyguard who was sitting at the bar.”

“One day, someone’s gonna realize that that tat’s a fake and you two are going to get yourselves killed,” I said, slipping into a chair at the now-vacant table.  “Magelings are pretty scary, but not mass-hysteria inducing.  Not like the Majus.”

The bickering lovers (I’m speaking sarcastically; Ramis is entirely too young for Phia) ignored me completely.  Phia stood up and threw his arms in the air.  “We’re trying to make a profit here!  You’ve barely pulled in what we bet in the first place!”

A month ago, when we escaped from the dungeon of Keops the Tenth, anyone watching us would have bet that I would have gotten fed up with Ramis much quicker than Phia.  My partner—Phia, that is—is a lot more level-headed than I am.  But for some reason, the girl didn’t grate on my nerves after she’d punched me in the stomach.  She reminds me of myself—only, vulgar and angry.

Surprisingly enough, the usually-wordy kid was simply staring at Phia as he berated her, smirking.  Phia stopped the chastising.  “What?” he and I asked simultaneously.

Ramis snapped her fingers, and a small, brown imp--a sort of humanoid demon--climbed out from under the table, three heavy bags of coins slung over his diminutive shoulder.  A second imp, this one green, ambled over from the bar, an especially large pouch on his back.  The two imps piled their respective bags at the center of the table and, in a poof of yellow, foul-smelling smoke, vanished.

“It must not be hard for someone who can summon up a dragon to conjure a couple of imps, huh?” I asked, an eyebrow arched.

Phia was downright dumbfounded.  “Elly, I can’t work like this.  I hate all this cloak-and-enchanted-dagger crap.”

“Eh, fuck you,” Ramis muttered under her breath; she glanced around to be sure that the whole of the inn’s patrons had left, then set to work pouring out the pouches.  Soon, the center of the table was covered in money and jewels.  She looked up at Phia.  “I don’t think El’ deserves a cut of this shit.  She didn’t help, after all.”

“Hey!” I shouted.  “Whatever happened to equal shares?”

“Well, maybe if you’d bloody helped, you’d be getting your damned share.”  The child—she was only thirteen—glared up at me.  “The equal shares agreement was for the tomb-raiding.  Right, pops?”  Ramis turned to face Phia, doing her best to look innocent.

“No deal, kid.  Elly gets her share.”

Ramis sighed; as she started sorting the “winnings”, we could hear her muttering:  “You’re both a couple of ass-holes, y’know?  You both just stand around and don’t do anything, and I do all the fucking work, and yet I’ve got to share my god-damned prize with you two idiots.”  She continued on for several minutes, but I stopped listening.  Ramis had a tendency to talk her own ear off.

Phia watched the girl sorting the money and gems, insuring our shares, as I walked back over to the bar.  The barkeep had run off with his customers in the panic, so I helped myself to a flagon of ale that he had been in the middle of preparing.  Behind me, the door opened, and a heavily-cloaked figure shuffled in.  Judging from the sudden pause, and the movement of the cloak’s hood, which covered the newcomer’s face, the cloaked person was glancing around the room.

“Empty place, huh?” said a deep, but feminine voice from under the hood.

I nodded, making my way back to my partners, and said to the woman:  “Help yourself; the owners won’t be back for a couple hours.”  I leaned against a table next to Phia.

“We need to move, Elly; the locals’ll be back soon enough, with the pitchforks and torches and whatnot.”

“Any idea where to go?”

“We could hit Ito.  There are supposed to be some caves up in the mountains just full to the brim with dwarf gold.”

I frowned.  “Are there dwarves with this dwarf gold?”

“Probably.”

“Are we gonna end up in jail again?”

“Probably,” Phia replied.

“Fuck!” Ramis squeaked, standing up so quickly she knocked her chair over.  Phia and I both turned to face her, frowning—

“Oh, god damn it,” Phia muttered.  He was looking past the table at the cloaked woman.  My own eyes were locked on the winnings on the table as they one-by-one vanished into thin air.  When I looked up at the woman, I could see the money appearing on the bar in front of her.  She was waving her sleeves at us, her hands still hidden in them.

Ramis followed my line of vision and let out an angry howl, rushing at the woman without thinking.  To Ramis, money was everything.  As such, she didn’t even bother to check, with the magic she possessed, for any traps between us and the mage-person at the bar.  When the thirteen-year-old smashed into the then-invisible field that separated us from the thief, she bounced and smashed through a table, quite unconscious.  The field, forming a wide cylinder around us, flashed and glowed blue.

“Hey, hey, wait, that’s ours!” I shouted, stepping forward but stopping before the now-glowing, blue barrier.  “You can’t just take it—”

“Oh, dear, I’m hardly just taking it,” the woman replied, pulling her hood down from her face.

“Whoa,” Phia muttered.

“What, her?” I asked.  “We both know you’ve seen better-looking.”

“No, ‘whoa’ the other way.”

“Oh, yeah, hideous.”  I couldn’t help but grin.  I'm hardly a looker, but this lady--woof!  Humor in the face of insurmountable odds is sort of a trademark of ours.

The ugly woman glared at us, biting back harsh words.  “Can I continue?”

“Sorry, yeah; go ahead,” I replied.

“As I was saying, I’m not simply taking the treasure from you, Elliopia.  I’m fully planning on returning it to its rightful owners.  I even know which goes to whom.”

“Oh, god damn it!” Phia groaned, exasperated.  “Not again!”

“A thief’s life ain’t easy,” I muttered, smiling.  “We’ve really got to do something about those wanted posters, Phia.  At least get my name on them changed to just ‘Elly’.”

“Or just take them all down.”

“That too.”

“They’ve upped the bounty on your head, now that you’re traveling with that little brat, Ramis.  She’s wanted for murder, and you’re both wanted for the assist.”

“You got a plan?” I whispered.  I wasn’t listening to the woman mage anymore.

“Working on it,” my partner replied, glancing around the room.

The woman continued, not really paying attention to us.  It took quite a bit of concentration to keep up the barrier and transport the treasure across the room.  “You’re to be taken to the prison at Aldretch, where you’ll stand trial for thievery and assisted murder, as well as for deceiving people about the nature of your dragon ‘slaying’.  Claiming to have felled a magical beast of such a nature is frowned upon.  If we’re not careful, we’ll have every yahoo between here and Ito hunting and slaying dragons, and pretty soon they’ll all be extinct.”

“So you guys found about how we did that, huh?”

“We just had to investigate the scene.  A dragon with only one wound, right in his eye?  Pretty fishy stuff.”

I smiled my sweetest smile.  “So I guess that, and the fact that you’re taking us to Aldretch, means…”  I glanced at Phia, but he was kneeling over Ramis now.  “Hey, what does that mean?”

Phia didn’t look up.  “It means she’s a Majus.  An enforcer-Majus, no less.”

“It means you’re a Majus, and not just a regular mage, right?”

The woman pulled back her sleeve, exposing a tattoo very much like the one Ramis was sporting.  The woman’s, I assumed, was actually real.  The action completed, she turned her attention fully on her spell-casting and ignored us completely.

“Got it,” Phis whispered.  “You wanna approve the plan this time?”

“Yes.  I don’t want to end up facing a dragon again.”

“Right, well, it’s just you and me; the kid’s out cold.”

“Great.”  I let out a small sigh.  This wasn’t going to be easy.  But then, we had killed a dragon, even if the circumstances involved were slightly suspicious.

Okay, okay, really suspicious.

“I’m going to dig around in her pouches, and get something to hit the barrier with.  Then, once it’s down, we knock out the Majus, grab the girl and the treasure, and run like hell.”

“Phia, that’s your worst plan yet.  Do you even know anything about the stuff in Ramis’ bags?”

“Not a damned thing, Elly.”

“We’re going to prison.”

“Probably.”

“And we’re going to be executed.”

“Exceptionally likely.”  He was already digging in Ramis’ pouches.  “That, or just offed in our cells after being made the playthings of an ogre or something else over-the-top like that.  It is Aldretch we're talking about, after all.”

“And, more than likely, we’re going to hell.  Remind you of anything?”

“Only every single rough-spot the two of us get into.”

I grinned.  “Exactly.”

“Ready?”

“You found something?”

“I have no idea.  We’re about to find out.”

“Well, you two came in here to gamble.”

Phia chuckled.  “Y’know, I hadn’t even thought of that.”  He stood up, an amulet dangling from his gloved hand, and took a deep breath.

“What are you doing?” our attacker asked, suddenly paying attention to us again.  “You don’t want to do that!”

“I know, I know.  I was just telling the kid that.”  With a wicked grin, Phia pressed the amulet against the barrier, stepping over the form of our third, inert partner.  “She didn’t listen either.”

The blue light the barrier had been putting off since Ramis ran into it suddenly turned bright, bright red.  Everyone still conscious took an unconscious step backwards as it grew even brighter.

“You idiots!” the woman screeched, an instant before a fireball shot out of the barrier and hit her dead-center in the chest.  She managed to throw up a shield of some kind, but her ugly ass was sent flying head-over-heels over the bar nonetheless.  I started to say something sarcastic when a squeal from the barrier drowned me out.  Reaching down, I grabbed Ramis by a clump of hair and dragged her back away from the barrier—which was now pumping out random fireballs in all directions.  Phia kicked over a table, reading the amulet which was still in his hand and took shelter behind it.  I dragged Ramis behind and took shelter as well.

“What did you do?!” I shouted over the squeal.

“Foundation burner!” he shouted back.

“It’s gonna take out the whole town!”

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck did you two do?!” Ramis shouted, waking suddenly.

“Foundation burner!” Phia and I shouted at once.

She gestured wildly at the chaos.  “That’s not a god-damned foundation burner, you idiots!  What did you do?!” she screamed at us.

“I stuck it in the barrier!” Phia shouted at her—and we could hear him clearly.  We could have if he had whispered: the squealing had stopped.  In fact, the red glow was gone as well, and I couldn’t hear any fireballs flying.

The three of peeked over the top of our table-slash-shelter, frowning.  The cloaked woman was standing again, where the barrier had been.  Her cloak, at her chest, was burnt.  “Idiot,” she hissed.  She waved the tattooed hand, and Phia passed out on the spot.  “No more random magic from the moron.  I trust you two will come peacefully?”

“Well, shit,” Ramis muttered.  For a moment, the woman faltered, stumbled back a bit, her wounds from the foundation burner or whatever were worse than they appeared, apparently.  I took advantage of the opportunity.

“Ram?” I whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Distract her.  Then, grab the treasure.”

Ramis had obviously had this planned already, because before I had even finished the request a blast of brightly-glowing water shot up out of the floor beneath the woman, sending her flying head-over-heels (again) over the bar.  I grabbed Phia and tossed the skinny man over my shoulder like a sack of grain and bolted clumsily for the door.  Ramis shoveled her winnings into the largest pocket in her cloak, and then ran after me.

“This was your big plan?!” she shouted as we ran down the stairs leading to the inn’s porch.

“Phia makes the pla—”  There was a rumble, and a crackle, so loud that I couldn’t hear myself talking anymore.  Expecting the Majus to come tearing out after us, Ramis and I both spun around.

The inn collapsed, sending a cloud of smoke, dust, and debris flying into the air.  “Holy shit!” we both exclaimed.  I dropped Phia unceremoniously.

“Foundation burner,” I said, panting.  “It worked.”

“Fucking right, it worked,” Ramis replied.

“You think she's is dead?”

“Do you really think I give a damn?”  The girl looked at me like I was an idiot.  “Are we going to carry your boyfriend all the way to those dwarf caves?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I retorted.