Don't Dip Squirrels in Your Bourbon - 2

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“Woah! Easy there, Rusty!” Lortlebee raised his hands slowly as his mind raced. “This doesn’t need to get out of hand. Just let her go.”

“Only if I get to teach you a lesson, you smartass little shitface!” Rusty growled back. His knife was pressed against Shelby’s throat so tightly that a thin trail of blood had started dripping down her neck.

“Yes, of course, God-dammit, whatever! Just put the knife away, Rusty!” Lortlebee pleaded.

Rusty chortled triumphantly. “That’s what I thought, you pansy-ass, ugly, yellow-bellied coward!”

“Yup, that’s me. Yellow-bellied and ugly to the core. Now let Shelby go so you can whoop my ass with both hands. I know you remember how, seeing as you did it just last spring at the Harvest Festival,” Lortlebee said evenly. He had the beginnings of a hastily conceived plan to escape; assuming Rusty didn’t slit Shelby’s throat for shits and giggles.

Rusty tossed Shelby aside. She fell to the dirty floor and let out a stifled sob. Unfortunately for Lortlebee, Shelby looked up from crying into her hands just in time to see him discreetly shoot a fireball at Rusty’s pant leg. Granted, it wasn’t much of a fireball, but it was enough to set Rusty’s trousers burning and everyone else had been staring at Rusty.

“I’m going to enjoy this you ugly hillfolk - hey! What the hell is burning?” Rusty glanced down at his burning pants and yelped like an old woman who’d just spied a spyder.

Mac the bartender returned from the cellar and sighed grouchily. “Dammit, Rusty. What have you done now?”

Rusty was hopping up and down, continuing to squeal and kick his legs furiously. Not surprisingly, not a single person in the bar leapt to his aid. The good folks of Walton’s End took the philosophy of letting their neighbors reap what they had sown to heart. Also, Rusty was an asshole.

“Take your pants off, dumbass!” Lortlebee finally shouted as the fire continued to spread.

Rusty, still hopping and kicking, now attempted to unlace his trousers. He was not particularly successful and his antics were making the fire spread faster. Rusty was going to burn alive if Lortlebee didn’t put a stop to this.

Lortlebee rolled his eyes and gave Rusty a hefty shove towards the door. “It’s raining outside, just go stand in the street for a second!”

Rusty scampered through the door and faceplanted into the muddy street outside. The patrons of Dead Man’s Blunder chuckled to themselves and resumed their drinking.

“How the hell did he manage to set himself on fire?” Mac asked as he handed Lortlebee the bottle of bourbon he had ordered.

Lortlebee shrugged. He handed Mac twenty coppers for the bourbon. “How does he do any of the damn fool things he does?”

Mac grunted his agreement and went back to pouring ale.

Shelby was still staring at Lortlebee from where she sat on the floor. Lortlebee grabbed a clean looking towel off the counter and knelt beside Shelby. He wiped the blood off her neck then pressed it against the wound.

“Keep pressure on that or it will keep bleeding,” Lortlebee told her.

Shelby nodded and put her hand on the towel to keep it in place. Her brown eyes were still staring blankly at Lortlebee.

“Are you okay? Do you need me to walk you home?” Lortlebee asked. If she had understood what she had seen with the fireball then he was going to be in some serious trouble. The Mage Council paid an abundance of gold for the identity of a new mage and Shelby’s family definitely needed the money.

Shelby shook her head. “No, thank you. I need to finish my shift.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lortlebee objected. “You almost died!”

Shelby stood up and brushed herself off. “And yet the show must go on. My family needs money to eat.”

Lortlebee sighed. “Very well. Be careful and if you run into any trouble know that you can hide out at my cabin.”

Shelby laughed, finally shaking the blank expression off her face. “Yeah, a shack in the woods with Old Man Yelton, that ought to keep me safe.”

Lortlebee rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. I’m here to help.”

“I know. You’re sweet. Now you better run along to your grandfather. God knows what would happen if he ran out of bourbon and started to sober up.”

Lortlebee frowned pensively. Should he pretend like he didn’t know Shelby had seen him use magic and hope she had been too dazed to understand? Or should he ask for her discretion?

1. Keep your mouth shut and hope for the best. You know you’re no good with words and saying anything will most likely make the situation worse rather than better.
2. You know she saw you use magic and you know her family really needs that Mage Council bounty money. Try to convince her not to turn you in.

Don't Dip Squirrels In Your Bourbon - 1

“No, no, no, that’s all wrong! Where’s your fire? Where’s your reckless abandon? Blast the target into oblivion like it’s your mooching hell-bitch ex-wife!”

Lortlebee Strange frowned. Not only did he not have a mooching hell-bitch ex-wife, he knew for a fact that his maternal grandmother was a lovely woman who had kicked his grandfather out of their home for being a belligerent drunkard and misogynist. Nevertheless, he gathered up the meager fury his heart possessed and willed it into a fireball that shot forth from his palm and barely singed the scarecrow his grandfather had set up as a target for Lortlebee to practice his magic on.

“Horrible.” Grandpa Yelton took a swig from his flask and groaned irritably. “A prancing little Rancon City homo could do better! What kind of mage can’t even blow up a straw man?”

Lortlebee cocked his head to the side quizzically. He regarded his grandfather for a moment, wondering if perhaps he had misunderstood his assignment. Had his grandfather not wanted him to practice his fire magic? It was the element he was least able to use effectively. Lortlebee had assumed that practicing his weak skills had been the point of the exercise, but now it seemed that Grandpa Yelton only wanted him to demonstrate his ability to make objects explode. Lortlebee often had difficulty deciphering what his grandfather actually wanted from him.

Closing his eyes and focusing the calm, rational energy of the universe, Lortlebee extended his hand again and let lightning fly from his palm. The scarecrow erupted in a flurry of flaming straw and overalls. Lortlebee turned back to smile at his grandfather.

Grandpa Yelton was glowering at Lortlebee. “No one likes a flashy motherfucker who dips squirrels in his bourbon.” He spun around, nearly fell down, and started stalking back towards the dilapidated cabin he shared with Lortlebee. “Now run along to the village to fetch grandpa some more bourbon.”

After all these years, Lortlebee still had no idea at all what dipping squirrels in your bourbon was a metaphor for so he shrugged and started trudging his way towards the little village beyond the forest where he and Grandpa Yelton lived.

Walton’s End was a tiny little burg on the far end of a peninsula in the far northwest corner of the Altian Empire. No one cared about it and no one from there cared about the rest of the empire. As far as Lortlebee could tell, it had no exports or valuable resources other than fish and trees, which were more than plentiful in the rest of the northwest. They all scratched out a living as far away from authority figures as humanly possible, which Lortlebee assumed was why his grandfather had brought him here. Grandpa Yelton had some sort of serious issue with the empire and especially the Mage Enclave that governed all the magic users in the empire. Not that Lortlebee could discern any specifics from his grandfather’s drunken rants about the follies of government and bureaucracy.

It started raining when Lortlebee was halfway from their cabin to Walton’s End. He could very easily have cast a spell that diverted the rain and kept himself dry, but evidently despite their irritation with the empire, the good folks of Walton’s End would sell Lortlebee and Grandpa Yelton to the Mage Enclave faster than Grandpa Yelton could spit out an offensive slur about women if they ever caught them using magic. So Lortlebee continued walking in the rain, getting thoroughly drenched by the downpour.

Lortlebee walked into the Dead Man’s Blunder tavern and immediately had to duck a flagon of ale that was thrown at him from one of the regulars.

“Your kind ain’t welcome here, ya hillfolk idgit!” Rusty George hollered at Lortlebee.

Lortlebee sighed and kept walking up to the bartender. Grandpa Yelton had managed to egregiously insult most, if not all, of the townsfolk back when he had actually bothered coming into the village instead of sending Lortlebee. Needless to say, Lortlebee was not well liked due to his association with his grandfather.

“Old bastard hasn’t drank himself to death yet?” the bartender asked by way of greeting.

“No, sir, not yet,” Lortelbee answered.

“Hey Mac! Don’t serve that hillfolk asshole!” Rusty shouted from his table.

Mac ignored Rusty. “The usual?” he asked.

Lortlebee nodded. Mac headed down to the cellar to get a bottle of his bourbon for Grandpa Yelton. Lortlebee did his best to not make eye contact with any of the other patrons.

“Seems like we’re seeing you in here more and more. You sure he isn’t pouring the stuff down the drain just to get your ugly ass out of the house?” one of the barmaids who was just a few years older than him asked as she nudged his elbow good naturedly. Shelby was eighteen and had been working here to help feed her brothers and sisters ever since her father died while he was out fishing in the middle of a storm four years ago.

“If by drain you mean his throat, then yes,” Lortlebee retorted.

Shelby the barmaid laughed. “Well, I certainly don’t miss him coming in here and pinching my ass every night.” Then Shelby yelped in surprised and spun around.

Rusty was behind her with a lecherous grin on his face. “I suppose that’s because you like me pinching you so much, eh?”

Lortlebee clenched his teeth. Anger was not an emotion he experienced regularly. He was subjected to rudeness on a regular basis and he tended not to give a good God damn about it. Damn near everyone was either an idiot or an asshole and the whole lot of them could burn in hell as far as he was concerned. However, preying on someone forced to put up with your shit like Shelby was, well that was uncalled for.

Lortlebee said nothing, he simply stood up and stepped between Rusty and Shelby.

“What in the God damned hell do you think you’re doing, you scrawny, ugly, gangly piece of shit?” Rusty demanded.

“I’m just admiring the view,” Lortelbee shot back as he stared into Rusty’s eyes. “No rules in this bar about a man standing wherever he wants to.”

“Move your boney ass before it gets moved, hillbilly,” Rusty warned.

Lortlebee smiled. “I feel like there’s an unnecessary hostility here. Why don’t I buy you a drink and then we can be buddies?”

Rusty’s already angry glower soured further. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, I’m not your buddy!”

“A thousand?!?” Lortlebee gasped in mock astonishment. “That’s damn near a gajillionty for an illiterate like you! I’m honored that you would keep a count that high of how many times you’ve talked to me.”

Lortelbee’s teeth would have been knocked in if he hadn’t started ducking as soon as he’d unleashed his smartass remark. Of course Rusty was going to throw a punch, but he was already drunk and he wasn’t moving all that quickly. As he always did, Lortlebee darted away rather than fight back.

Only this time his little game with the local drunk went horribly awry.

Rather than take another wild swing at Lortlebee with his big hairy fist, Rusty pulled a knife and pressed it against Shelby’s neck. “I’ve had it with your games, you slick talking pissant! You either let me and my boys beat your ass until you’ve learned your lesson or I slit her pretty throat. What do you say?”

1. What do you say? You say a bolt of lightning straight to his bastard face!
2. Surrender, you’ve been beaten by these bullies before and one more bruised face is a fair trade for guaranteeing Shelby’s safety.