Page 12 of Wanted: Rogues and Bards

“No! Never! I would never poison you!” Maxie cried out, his voice trembling. “I-I only wanted to help. To be a part of your group. I couldn’t poison anyone! I was eating too.”

Fenric’s eyes followed where Maxie motioned to his own plate, where he could see bites taken out of the sausage and one of the biscuits. Maxie wouldn’t have poisoned himself.

A moan trickled from Fenric’s parted lips, and he tumbled out of his chair and to his left before he could finish his thought. It felt like his stomach was going to implode or maybe just flip inside out. He’d been stabbed, shot with an arrow, burned, and even whipped a couple of times in his dangerous line of work, but this definitely felt worse than all of that combined.

“Get. Hapi,” Belstrom groaned.

Fenric wasn’t sure what good the necromancer would do, but at this point, it was better than nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the frantic thud of Maxie’s footsteps through the house and up the stairs. A door slammed open and there was some brief, muffled conversation. He could imagine Hapi threatening the young man and Maxie bursting into desperate tears, finally pulling the groggy elf down the stairs.

“Well…fuck.”

Fenric forced his eyes open again at the closeness of Hapi’s weary voice.

“Fix it, please,” Maxie pleaded.

“I can’t fix it how you’d like me to.”

“Hapi,” Fenric groaned, wanting to urge him to do something. As it was, the pretty blond elf stood over them in a pair of soft pajama pants covered in hand-stitched skulls. He had his long hair pulled up in a messy bun on the top of his head, and his fists rested on his narrow hips as he frowned at them.

Then Hapi’s lips twisted into a smirk. “Didn’t wait for me and this is what you get.”

“Hapi!” Fenric growled, but it turned into a howl of pain as his stomach tried to boil itself in its own acid. Two of his other companions joined his chorus of cries, while Malfas remained disturbingly quiet.

“Fine, fine. Boy, fetch me a long knife out of the kitchen.” The elf waved a careless hand at the other side of the room.

“Are you going to cut the poison out of them?” Maxie inquired, his stumbling footsteps already carrying him to the kitchen space.

“No, definitely not. I have to kill them all.”

“What?!” Maxie shrieked, his high-pitched voice piercing what was left of Fenric’s brain.

Fenric whimpered. He’d been afraid of that.

“I’m not a healer, child. I can’t stop this poison you set in motion. The only option is to kill them and raise them from the dead.”

“What?” Maxie cried out again. “You can’t! They’re your friends. You can’t kill them.”

Hapi huffed an irritated sigh. “They’re going to die regardless of whether or not I do something. The warlock isn’t alive any longer. Stalling just means the rest of them will not die quickly, but rather slowly, writhing in pain. Is that what you wish?”

“Knife. Stabby. Go now,” Rain rasped between pants and moans.

As much as Fenric didn’t like the idea of dying, he really liked this agonizing stomach pain a lot less, along with the growing feeling he was about to suffocate thanks to his rapidly closing throat.

“Get the fucking knife!” Fenric tried to roar, though it came out as another whimper. He squeezed his eyes shut. There were more pounding footsteps on the hardwood floor, followed by moans of pain and another heavy thud that shook the entire house. He had a guess that was Belstrom finally falling out of his chair.

He didn’t know how much time passed. It felt like an eternity before a slender hand grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto his back. He blinked his eyes open to find Maxie standing over him, tears streaking his young face. Hapi knelt beside him, a bloodied knife clenched in his fist and a maniacal grin spread across his blood-splattered face.

“Don’t look so happy, asshole,” Fenric rasped with his last breath.

“Doesn’t everyone enjoy what they’re good at?”

The elf didn’t wait for his answer. The knife slammed down, piercing Fenric’s heart. His body clenched as a new pain screamed through him. No, this was much worse than the stomach cramps, melting organs, and closing throat.

But cold black nothingness quickly slid in, consuming everything, wiping away pain and thought. Death…

Fenric sucked in a deep, ragged breath and shot up from where he’d been lying as if a bolt of lightning had crashed into his aching, tender body. Several harsh breaths rushed through him before the rest of his senses seemed to turn on again. He was alive! He looked around to find Belstrom, Rain, and Malfas lying on the damp grass behind the house, the sun high overhead and the air thick and muggy from the previous night’s storm. As he slowly moved, several skelebabies scurried away from where they’d been staring at him through their vacant black eyeholes. Hapi rarely raised the dead without helpers, and his skelebabies were always his first choice. They understood his process. As they moved, their white bones clicked and clattered, threatening to give Fenric a headache.

Several feet away, Hapi stood wearing the same pajama pants, now splattered with their blood. He looked both exhausted and thoroughly annoyed. Beside him stood Maxie, appearing overjoyed and terrified. His face was blotchy and still streaked with tears, even as a trembling smile stretched his pale pink lips.