Jonathon Worthington: Strangelight Investigator

Case #18: The Mystery of the Purloined Past (Chapter 6)

Lil had to assist me several times on the tricky ropes as we ascended higher into the clustered rigging. I was so dizzy with blood loss that I was almost able to ignore the small pinches on my bottom she snuck in. Almost. I didn't dare try and swat her hand away. Assuming the goblin woman didn't just let me fall to my death for denying her, I was just as likely to unbalance myself and fall screaming as I was to dissuade the amorous creature. And so I endured her attentions, feeling more like a barmaid near closing time on the docks than a powerful arcane instrument pursued by shadowy unknown forces. For the first time I rather missed that.

"Please stop," I slurred, irritated that even my speech was affected by the dizziness plaguing my head.

"Can't stop now, sweet-cheeks," Lil said, sneaking another pinch in while placing my foot in a hidden loop under an innocuous floor plank and taking a long draw on the hooaga she was smoking. The choking fumes tickled my nose with their sickly-sweet cloud, although thankfully the cloud wasn't as heavy as when we'd faced down Orsch. I gave a wheezing cough and nearly put my foot in a different loop before she slapped it back towards the correct placement. "Careful there, we set this area up to hang any muckers trying to chase us up this way. Step wrong and you'll find out how quickly a piece of seemingly random rope becomes a noose."

"Isn't that a bit ... paranoid? Surely gobbers aren't that despised in Five Fingers; after all, your people practically built the entire rigging system."

Lil shined me a crooked grin full of dagger-like teeth, and then spit to the side of her cigar and the ropes. Idly I took note of the heavy stains on her teeth from what must be constant smoking. How she had not burned down the highly-flammable Rigs was a mystery to me, as was the tolerance of her fellows for her flammable habit. "Oh sure, they love them some gobbers all right. But I'm a bogrin, sweet-cheeks. Whole different kettle of fish for them to stew over."

Wonderful. The bogrin were to goblins what cannibalistic hillbillies were to a Caspian, if those same backwoods folk also grew more muscular and larger than their city-bred cousins. Orsch and I had encountered bogrin a few times during our adventures, and to a creature they were always savage and bloodthirsty. Although we had faced far worse we still never underestimated the little monsters; I'd once seen a tribe of them obliterate a swamp horror that had mutated it into something even more terrible and hungry after eating an Orgoth relic. The bogrin emulated dragonfish, swarming the much larger creature with crude spears tipped with potent venom and bringing it down. We had barely escaped with our own skins intact afterwards, although the bogrin had done their best to prevent our egress as we had confiscated the offending relic that spawned the incident.

Lil grinned wider at the look of fright in my eyes.

"Don't worry about it, love. We city bogrin don't take bites out of strangers. Much. Well, in your case I might make an exception."

She cackled in glee, and I smiled uneasily in response, trying to mask my disquiet. Lil certainly didn't look like any other bogrin I'd ever met; she wore the civilized clothing with ease and comfort. While displaying a section of mottled skin in what I hoped wasn't a seductive manner I took note that she had a bandolier of cigars serving as a garter, which was odd as she wore no stockings that needed the support. I sternly reprimanded my mind for the horrific thoughts that followed that observation. The scaled woman was sure to provide enough fodder for unease as the night wore on without any assistance from my own traitorous fears.

To give Lil credit, though, she tamped down on her overbearing urges as we reached a section of the rigging that was trickier than most. Instead of making me fight to keep my demure nature intact the bogrin woman concentrated on helping my increasingly clumsy limbs find the correct handholds and footholds to progress safely. My conscious mind had begun to skip like a rock over water, losing incremental half-seconds as a blackout threatened. If we failed to arrive at our destination in a timely manner I was going to pass out from the blood loss, and no amount of pinches from my guide would wake me.