Wasteland Warlords Episode 4: Chapter 2 - Warlord’s Favor

“It is true!” Bacon Bits threw her massive blue body drunkenly in front of Clay as the blow fell. He had to jerk his head back to keep from being smacked in the face with her undulating tail. She’d been pounding fruity drinks ever since they got back from the Haunt Topic, and even in her enormous true form, she couldn’t hold her liquor any better than she had as a tiny teacup pig. “Leader of the Shieldwall Dragonkin, hic, hear me, Bacon Bits the Greater Blue Wyrm of Venge—hic—vengeance! I was trapped in a ZombiePop by a fool of a dungeon lord. Alex saved me—with some assistance from Clay and Joe and Griff. They were only in your, hic, territory to gain the necessary magical weaponry to rescue me!”

With a put-upon sigh, the Warlord lowered his sword a fraction.

“Listen, greater booze wyrm, I don’t want to be here chopping some douchebag’s head off any more than you do. I have plenty of my own shit to take care of. But it’s kill or be killed out here. The second I stop doing that because oh, he had a good reason”—he pitched his voice high and minced his hands around sarcastically—“everybody’ll smell blood in the water, and then I become the killee. I didn’t run this bitch of a wasteland for twenty years to end up dead just because three more asswipe Incants were fucking around on my turf.”

Clay gently pushed Bacon Bits back and handed care of the overgrown guard wyrm off to Alex. The pint-sized tank hugged Bacon Bits, calming her down.

“Setting aside the fact that I wasn’t an Incant at the time,” Clay said, “wouldn’t it look better for you as a Warlord if you had three Incants working for you? If there’s something we can do to help you out, we’ll do it—assuming it clears up our debt to you.” Then it caught up to him exactly what the Warlord had said. “You said ‘three more Incants.’ You’ve been having trouble with Incants… uh, besides us I mean?”

The Warlord facepalmed like Clay’s request for an explanation was tantamount to somebody telling him he had to pick up that warbeast tow truck and pack it to the nearest car wash. Clay hadn’t seen somebody throw a fit like that since the last teenager Alex had kicked out of her karate class. He wouldn’t have expected it from a grown man, let alone the one who’d been ruling LA for the last two decades.

“When you’re the top dog, everybody’s always trying to chew your ass,” the Warlord said. “Incants, mobs, fucking government groups from every stupid country on this stupid planet… Let’s just say I’ve got my fingers in a lot of cold wars at the moment without you destabilizing my shit, asshole.”

Griff stepped up.

“These kids are the real deal,” the old weed said. “When they offer to help, they mean it. They’re the ones who took out Gearhead.”

PwnrBwner looked down his nose at them. “Seriously? I thought they were working for Shitblade and Skaterdoof.”

“Nope, just the opposite,” Griff said. “You oughta give ’em a shot working for you. Like the lad said, you’ll look more like a true Warlord with powerful folks as your underlings. Worst comes to worst, Cassidy and Rhett’ll kill ’em, and you won’t have to.” Griff shrugged. “But if it comes out like I think it might, the Jaegar squad’ll take out the Hexblade and the Madlad. Either way, it’s less work for you.”

The blue light blade disappeared entirely. The Warlord crossed his arms over his chest with a scraping of glass on glass. He paused and scratched absently at his chin.

“Yeah, all right,” he finally agreed, “if you numbnuts take out the Incants down in Malibu for me, I won’t turn you into meat paste. Plus, it’ll prove you weren’t kicking up shit in my territory so they could move in.”

A prompt offering the quest appeared before Clay’s eyes.

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Warlord’s Mercy

PwnrBwner, Warlord of the West, has offered you a deal you n00bs best not refuse—kill Cassidy Morgan the Hexblade Incant and Rhett Cameron the Madlad Incant for him. In return you won’t face terrible, life-ending retribution for your recent destabilizing actions in the Warlord’s territory. Cassidy and Rhett are located in the Temple of the Dew, just off the PCH in Malibu. During this quest, you will have the Blessing of the Bwner, which grants you safe passage with all Shieldwall-allied creatures. Succeed and you might not get murdered to death, plus you will be granted the “privilege” of becoming the Warlord’s Greater Vassals.

Objective: Kill Morgan Cassidy and Rhett Cameron.

Secondary Objective: Wreck those dickweeds from Triple-S.

Bonus Objective: ???

Reward: Your life, Greater Vassalhood, unknown Warlord Boon

Failure: Reject the quest or fail to kill Morgan Cassidy and Rhett Cameron

Penalty: The Warlord isn’t the forgiving type… Don’t screw the pooch.

Restrictions: None

Accept quest? Yes/No

An honest man works hard for what he wants; a smart man gets somebody else to work hard for him.

╠═╦╬╧╪

That line about the secondary objective got Clay’s attention first. The Triple-S were elite, black-ops mercenaries who did contract work beyond the wall, mostly on behalf of the US government. Going toe-to-toe with a couple of Incants was one thing—mixing it up with operatives who had connections with the CIA and the Division of the Interior was asking for trouble. His real question was, what business did Triple-S have with the other Incants and why were they so deep into the wasteland? He also was intrigued by that third Bonus Objective, which was only a series of question marks.

His brother had a very different question in mind.

“What’s a Greater Vassal?” Joe asked.

“The next best thing to being a baller-ass Warlord,” PwnrBwner said, shrugging one shoulder with a no big deal, except yeah, it’s a huge deal air. “You get all kinds of perks you can’t get anywhere else, unlimited supplies and awesome shit from Shieldwall’s armory, plus you’re allied with me, which ups your wasteland street cred by like a million.”

Joe whistled. “I gotta say, that’s a lotta cred.”

“Yeah, and you can spend it exactly nowhere,” Alex said. “Vassals were the people in medieval times who had to answer to their kings, right?”

“I think I know a little something about Medieval Times, short stack. I worked there for almost a month.”

“How about we argue about that later, guys,” Clay said, dismissing the prompt and looking from the Warlord to Griff. “Cassidy Morgan and Rhett Cameron—they’re the same Incants who hung around Camp Liberty, right?”

“Only when they were meeting their shadyass contacts from across the wall,” the Warlord said. “Or when they wanted to show off. Most of the time, they’re down in Malibu. They’ve got a major mining op set up, enslaving the settlers down there and making ’em farm gold and magical items so they can sell it across the wall. Evil shit like that. That Aussie asshole was making potions and mechanical shit for them, too, until you guys pwned him—which was good work, if it’s true. So they’re probably already looking for you.”

“Gearhead was part of this, too?”

“There’s this old saying—trouble comes in threes. That’s true for dipshits too,” PwnrBwner said, pointedly eyeing Clay, Alex, and Joe.

Alex rolled her eyes. “So, what, you’ve got two brothers with the same terrible personality as you?”

Joe grinned. “Watch out, Bonerlord, she’s got the hip cocked. She’ll flap your jack good!”

Clay braced himself for all hell to break loose. Joe and Alex were acting like the Warlord was just some random wastelander instead of a walking, talking tactical nuke with a bad attitude.

Alex pointed an accusing finger at PwnrBwner. “What I want to know is if you’re such a badass and these Incants are so evil, then how come you haven’t gone in and wiped them off the face of the Earth yet?”

“Because fuck you, that’s why,” the Warlord snapped. “It’s not my job to deal with every buttmunch who goes Dark Side out here in the IZ.”

She raised a dubious eyebrow. “But it is your job to rumble us for some tiny inter-dungeon squabble?”

“Listen, lady, I don’t need your nagging,” the Warlord said, slashing a gauntleted hand through the air in a negative motion. “I’ve already got a girlfriend.”

Alex made a move, but Clay and Joe stepped in front of her at the same time, blocking her path. This asshole was a better button-pusher than Joe, and with shockingly less tact. Ten minutes ago, Clay wouldn’t have even thought that was possible.

“My girlfriend’s the whole reason I can’t go after those chucklefucks right now, anyway.” PwnrBwner shrugged his massive pauldrons. “We’ve got another little warlord on the way, and she doesn’t want me running off to kill those shitstains until after it’s born. Forget that I’m the OP-est motherfucker on the planet; she’s scared I’ll end up dead or some shit. Basically I’m indisposed for the next, like, six months, but I need these jackholes dealt with now.”

Alex stopped fighting to go after him.

“Why’d you wait until now?” she muttered, her voice softening so imperceptibly that Clay was sure he was the only one who could sense the change. “You obviously knew they were a problem before.”

“Obviously.” The Warlord tugged off his gauntlets and shoved them into his chest plate. “But it’s like this: about a year ago, the Taintwrinkle Trio of Cassidy, Rhett, and Lynes take over the Temple of the Dew in Malibu. They act all friendly, no threat to me, don’t want to rub the great Warlord the wrong way, so I’m like, ‘Whatever. Don’t fuck around in my sandbox, and I won’t nuke you from orbit.’” He waved a hand at Griff. “By the time I’d found out they were enslaving a shit-ton of people, Griff’s stupid kid had gone missing, so I had to pull my punches until he could get that crap straightened out.”

“Griff’s what now?” Joe said, cupping a hand behind his ear.

“He said—hic—Griff’s stupid child.” Bacon Bits belched a little puff of blue flame, then curled around Alex’s legs. In the stunned silence, she tucked her huge snout beneath her tail and began snoring.

Clay and the others turned to the old weed for an explanation.

“You seriously didn’t tell them?” PwnrBwner said. “What the hell, dude?”

Griff pawed awkwardly at the back of his neck. “It never came up. Ain’t exactly the sorta thing you start a conversation with, now is it?”

“How about you tell us now?” Clay said, anger creeping into his voice. An ulterior motive was exactly the reason he’d been suspicious when Griff was suddenly so helpful back when they were trying to save Alex.

Griff sighed. “It’s like he said, I’ve got a daughter. Never could make it work with her mother—guess I’m not much the settlin’ down type, and faefolk can have a nasty temper on ’em—but the lass and I got along like a pair a’ lava kelpies in a caldera. Right up until she started running with Cassidy. I warned her the Hexblade and his ilk were bad company, but by then she wouldn’t listen to a word I said. Then one day, she was gone.”

He glared into the middle distance, mouth twisted like he had an awful taste in it.

“Cassidy gave me some story about her running off to see what life was like outside the wall, but it was all nonsense. She woulda told me—and even if she wouldn’t’ve, she woulda taken some of her stuff with her. Everything she owned was still in her room. ’Til I confronted Cassidy, that is. Next day, her place mysteriously burnt to the ground.”

“Are you thinking Cassidy killed her?” Alex asked, her voice soft.

Griff flinched like she’d hit him. “I sure hope not, lass. But any parent who’s had a child go missing’ll tell ya, eventually you just want to know the truth, no matter how bad it is, so’s your heart and mind can rest.”

“So all that stuff about being a better class of Incant, somebody who wasn’t in it for themselves, it was all just bullshit,” Clay said. “All along, you were setting us up to beat the truth out of Cassidy for you, is that it? Or are we your convenient way to get revenge? Just a bunch of expendable tumbleweeds you can point at the Hexblade and pull the trigger?”

“I s’pose it looks an awful lot like that,” Griff said. “Truth is, by the time you three tumbled into town, I’d given up on ever getting Ella back—on ever even finding out what’d happened to her. Wasn’t doing much more’n drinking and feeling sorry for myself by then.”

“You quit looking for her?” Alex asked gently, slipping a hand into Griff’s scarred old mitt.

“I’ve been around long enough to have a couple tricks up my sleeve when I can’t avoid a fight, lass, but at the end of the day, I’m just an NPC.” The old weed scuffed a boot in the dirt, staring down at it shamefaced. “Hell, I’ve still got the level cap from Hearthworld. The one time I tried to confront Cassidy head-on, he nearly killed me. There’ve been plenty of times since then I wished he had, but the thought of dying without ever finding out what happened to my kid…” He swallowed and shook his head, letting the unfinished thought hang in the open air.

The look on the old weed’s face punched Clay right in the gut. If Alex had disappeared and there was no hope of ever finding out what happened to her, he would’ve gone crazy.

“You should’ve told us,” Clay said. “We would’ve tried to help out. Sooner, anyway.”

The old weed frowned up at him.

And it wasn’t just Griff. Everybody excluding the snoring Greater Blue Wyrm was staring at Clay.

Aside from PwnrBwner, Clay, Alex, and Joe were probably the only people in the IZ who stood a chance taking on Cassidy and Rhett. And even if they couldn’t, walking away wasn’t an option. These guys had to be made to answer for the disappearance of Griff’s daughter. And not only that, but for enslaving people so they could get rich. Regular folks who had probably come to the wasteland for the same reasons Clay, Alex, and Joe had decided to stay, only to have that freedom stolen from them by a couple of power-hungry douchebags.

Clay had serious reservations about this quest, especially knowing the Triple-S were involved, but he also knew as well as anybody that justice didn’t serve itself. He believed in his heart that they’d been given these Incant powers for a reason, and they sure as hell weren’t going to turn a blind eye to the evil going on right in front of them. It wasn’t just enough to survive—he needed to be able to live with himself, and he couldn’t do that if they walked away from this. Clay reopened the prompt from the Warlord, noting as he did that the mysterious bonus objective had been filled in with search for clues about Griff’s missing daughter, Ella.

He accepted the quest.

“We’ll break up Cassidy and Rhett’s slave operation and get them out of Malibu one way or another,” Clay told PwnrBwner. Then he turned to Griff. “And we’ll do whatever we can to help you find out what happened to your daughter.”

Griff took a deep breath like he was steeling himself against getting his hopes up. Slowly, he nodded.

“Much obliged to ya.” He stuck out one leathery hand and shook with Clay.

Clay clapped the old weed on the shoulder.

“All right,” PwnrBwner said, “now that we got all the hugging and kissing out of the way, let’s get on the road. Those dipshits ain’t gonna kill themselves.”