Questing Sucks! Book II (24 page)

“Who did that?” she asked, scowling. The other mages quieted while she spoke, confusion on their faces.

Sehn stood up and pointed a finger at Bara. “He did it! I saw it.”

Bara’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me? I’ve done no such thing.”

“Yes you did,” Sehn said. “Do not lie! I saw it with my own two eyes. While that woman wasn’t looking, you picked up a rock and said, ‘Wow, this bitch won’t shut up about safety. I’m going to throw a rock at her face because she has an opinion and she’s also a woman.’”

The young woman glared at her elven comrade. “Bara! Surely you would know better than to act like a rude child over a mere disagreement? And honestly, since when are you such a misogynistic pig?”

The other mages all turned to look at Bara. He shook his head furiously while holding out both of his hands as if signaling for a stop. “W-w-wait! I would never do that to you, Maya. How could I have thrown a rock at the back of your head in the first place? You’re
facing
me!”

“You could’ve used magic,” Maya said.

“But why would I?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because in your mind I’m just some
woman
who doesn’t deserve to get a say in things?”

Sehn walked over to the human girl, Maya, and put an arm around her shoulder. While still holding her, he spat at the ground in front of Bara’s feet. “You are a discredit to elves everywhere, Bara. Women are our equals and should be treated as such.”

The mages who were of elven descent applauded. Bara looked ready to pull the hair out of his head. His mouth was open wide enough that Sehn could see his tonsils. The surprised outrage on his face reminded Sehn of the look Patrick sometimes wore after falling victim to one of Sehn’s awesome pranks.

“I would
never even
dream
of
doing or saying something like that to you, Maya. I swear it in the name of Goddess Helena! It wasn’t me!”

“Sure it wasn’t,” Sehn said. “You know what else I heard him say about you, Maya?”

She narrowed her eyes at Bara while answering. Her voice dropped to a chilling whisper. “What did he say?”

“It’s quite bad. Are you sure you want me to repeat it?”

“What did he say?” she asked again, this time more forcefully. “I promise not to hold you responsible for
his
words.”

Sehn let out a sigh. “He said…” For dramatic effect, he paused and gulped, then continued. “He said that if your brains were as big as your ass, you might actually be able to come up with a decent plan to get us out of here. He also said your breasts are uneven and that you’re so fat not even a team of horses could pull you up a hill without breaking their backs, which is why he doesn’t want you crossing the air bridge, because if not even a noble steed can hold your big-fat ass, what chance does air have?”

“He said all that?” she shouted. Before anyone had time to react, she mumbled a spell Sehn wasn’t familiar with, and a sword sprung into existence from out of nowhere, appearing in her hand. By looks alone, the sword wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, just a medium-length rapier, but it was a spell Sehn decided he’d like to learn regardless.

It was usually at this point—if Sehn had been acting for just the fun of it—that Cah’lia would step in and calm everyone down before giving Sehn an earful. But this time, however, she was actually
condoning
this, and Sehn noticed a smile tugging at her lips from where she stood next to Orellia, Kellar, and Shina.

Bara took a step back. “Wait, please, you’re making a mistake. I didn’t say any of those things. I swear on Helena!”

Sehn huffed. “How
dare
you insult our Goddess by lying in her name?”

“Yeah,” said another elven mage, “you’ve got some nerve using her name in vain like that.”

“But I’m not…” he mumbled. Sehn almost felt bad for Bara, because the pleading look in his eyes gave way to pure desperation. “I didn’t…”

“How dare you insult her,” said another two elves. Several others tried to approach the trembling elf, and the human mages had to hold them back.

“Everyone, calm down,” Sehn said, raising his voice so that all could hear. “This elf, Bara, he doesn’t mean to insult Helena. In fact, when we were all eating lunch in the prison’s kitchens, I heard him say that Goddess Helena is the most important of all the Gods, and that the Gods humans believe in aren’t real and only she should be worshipped.”

“He said what?” nearly every human mage shouted.

“Please, take that back, Bara,” Benjamin said. “We worship Goddess Helena too, but she is only a minor Goddess. Everyone knows that Raurum is the most important God.”

“That is a lie!” a small elven woman shouted. “Raurum is a wonderful God, but he is subservient to Helena!”

“Not so,” Benjamin said. “Helena serves Raurum. It’s in the doctrine.”

“No,” shouted another elf. “If you read the
real
doctrine you’d know that Helena came first.”

Benjamin held his head high. “My doctrine
is
the real doctrine!” he shouted melodiously. “For it’s the only doctrine worth following.”

The elves—most of them, at least—let out one loud, collective gasp, and now the mages began segregating themselves based on race until the argument shifted entirely from their next course of action into a full-on heated debate about which God was more powerful: Raurum or Helena.

Sehn stared at all of this in awe. He had no idea how easily elves and humans could be manipulated just by insulting their religion. This was amazing. Still, he needed to take things one step further. He disguised his voice, imitating a Koringrathian accent that would be unmistakable as human. He made sure he stood off to the side, and using a trick his father had taught him to carry his voice, he drew a deep breath and added the finishing touch.

“GODDESS HELENA SUCKS ASS!” he shouted. “RAURUM IS THE STRONGEST GOD, AND HE IS MORE POWERFUL. ELVES SUCK! PRINCE SAERITH IS A LITTLE BITCH.”

The effect was so efficient that Sehn actually found it staggering. The mages broke out into a screaming war. It was almost as if they were competing to see who could yell the loudest, which Sehn realized meant that he too needed to compete. He prepared to draw yet another breath.

How dare they challenge me to a screaming-war
!

He felt a hand grab his own, pulling him away. Sehn awkwardly spun around, almost tripping as Cah’lia dragged him to a corner of the island where Shina, Orellia, and Kellar were waiting.

“Don’t tell me you were about to join in that fight,” Cah’lia muttered. “I saw the look on your face.”

Cah’lia led him over to the others, and Sehn craned his neck to look behind him. “Are they going to shed blood over this?” he asked.

“No,” Orellia said. “Despite how angry they are, they’re still well-trained mages who will not hurt each other. Maya may have summoned her sword, but it was more to show her anger than to cause harm.” With a smile, she added, “Good work, Sehn.”

Sehn waved a hand at her. “Think nothing of it, for I shall charge you for my services later. Now, what do we do next? Do you really have a way of getting us out of here?”

Orellia nodded. “Yes. We’re going to jump off the side of the island.”

“And that’s a metaphor for…what, exactly?”

“It’s not a metaphor. We’re going to jump off the island.”

This was becoming annoying. “Spare me your word games, fool,” he demanded. “What does ‘jump off the island’ symbolize? Are we going to take a daring risk? Are we going to—?”

“No, no, we’re literally going to
jump
off the side of the island.”

Sehn blinked. He waited a few seconds to see if there was anything else she had to say, something that would clear up what she meant by “literally.” But when she stared at him, her expression blank, he realized she was actually serious. She
really
planned to have them
jump
off the island and into the open sky.

“Are you fucking nuts?” he shouted at her. “By ‘getting out of here’ I didn’t think you meant we should kill ourselves. The Great Sehn might be down on his luck, but he is not
that
down on his luck that—”

“Relax,” Shina said, interrupting him. “We’re going to float down.”

Sehn, grabbing onto a tree that teetered dangerously close to the edge of the island, leaned forward slightly and looked down. They were so high up that Sehn couldn’t see the surface below him: only more clouds.

“This is insane.”

“I agree with you,” Cah’lia said, “but we need to trust Shina and Orellia.”

“And me,” Kellar added with a laugh.

“Yes, and you.”

Sehn released the tree. The thought of leaping off the edge of the island sent butterflies into his stomach. Still, he wouldn’t allow himself to look like a coward in front of everyone, so he let out a nervous laugh.

“Hurray,” he said weakly. “This looks like so much fun. May we all plummet to our deaths, as dying is not at all frightening.”

Orellia whispered something under breath. Then she said, “Good, because your distraction won’t last forever. It’s time to go.” With that, she walked backwards, arms extended wide. She gave a cocky smile, which Sehn assumed to be directed at him, and then she allowed herself to fall backwards and over the edge.

“She actually did it!” Sehn grabbed the sides of his head. “Shina? What are you—
hey!
”

Shina ran forward and jumped next, disappearing a moment after. She was followed by Cah’lia and then Kellar a moment later. And with that, the four of them were gone, leaving him here with fear in his belly. Wait, fear? No, not fear. The Great Sehn feared nothing. It was just that the idea of jumping off a sky island and falling to the surface of the planet…it sort of made him so excited and happy that his legs began to vibrate because of how badly they wanted him to run off the ledge and fall to his death along with everyone else.

Now that he was alone—except for the close to fifty mages still debating theology—Sehn realized that death would be better than getting left behind with these people. In fact, if he didn’t act soon, he
would
be left stranded here.

“Elf, what are you doing?” one of them called. Slowly, close to a dozen faces—then two dozen—spun around to look at him. “Where are the others? Stay right there!”

Dammit
.

He really didn’t want to do this. But it didn’t look like he had a choice any longer. Curse those fools for making him choose between suicide and being trapped up here with these stuck-up mages.

If I actually die because of this
,
I’ll kill myself for being so stupid
!

“So, Helena,” he muttered in a silent prayer as over twenty mages began advancing towards him. “You know I was just kidding about all that shit I said about you, yes? If this is to be my end, please remember that I did attend your services once or twice.”

With his prayer said, Sehn ran forward and jumped. As soon as his feet left the ground, he knew there was no going back. The mages called out to him, yelling his name, asking him what in the Gods he was doing, a question he himself wished he had an answer to.

His nerves increased tenfold as he reached the apogee of his jump. Then his upward motion stopped. He hoped Cah’lia and the others couldn’t hear him, because he let out a girly, shrill cry as he began to fall.

The sensation of plummeting through the sky was at first agonizing. It was similar to the children’s water slides built in Elvar that ran for several hundred feet, except this was so much worse—beyond compare, even. Wind slammed into his face as
he
free-fell through a world of blue and white. He looked up, and he could see the bottom of the prison island, and in the distance, the vague outline of Magia.

Things changed quickly. What was at first the single most terrifying experience Sehn had ever known became the most liberating after the initial fear had passed. A sense of freedom and power passed over him. He spread out his arms and legs, then let out a victorious cheer as the wind breathed new life into him.

He saw Cah’lia and the others as tiny, but rapidly growing dots below him. He could also see the shape of the valley’s surface. Sehn felt a prickly wave of electricity crawl over his skin as he came closer to his four companions, and he knew it must’ve been his sister’s doing. It seemed as though they wouldn’t be dying today after all.

Eventually his speed cut in half, and Sehn was now close enough to communicate, though he needed to shout to be heard. “This is amazing!” he admitted. “I demand that we do this at least once a week from now on!”

Orellia laughed and shouted back, “Get us those Items, Sehn, and I’ll make that dream a reality for you.”

Sehn looked over to Cah’lia. Her smile was the broadest, and Sehn hadn’t seen her this happy for some time. She was beautiful; the wind whipped back her hair, and her eyes glowed with the sense of adventure.

Sehn found he could somewhat control his movement depending on the position of his arms. Not caring who saw him, he closed the distance between himself and Cah’lia, then grabbed her. If she was surprised by his touch, she didn’t show it.