Quest

Chapter 19

The fairies buzzed up a winding labyrinth of streets, the Hollywood Hills. The view was nice enough, but my mind was aflame with all the things I was going to do to this fucker. I tried to imagine the Dark Lord's face. Did he wear some fucked up mask? Probably. Did he have horns? Part demon? I was ready to take him on no matter what. I imagined his creepy, weird party. There were probably all sorts of sacrifices and people using spells to get all horned up and people doing weird sex stuff. Man, I was ready for a goddamn show down.

My expectations faltered when I saw our destination. The house was pretty modern, one of those concrete ones with really clean lines and stuff. I hated that.

"You good, baby?" Mud called after me once he realized I was slowing down.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said and grit my teeth. I was getting in the fucking zone, dude. I gripped my wand tightly.

Thudding music poured down the street from the house, then a chattering crowd. I could already see through the windows, the place was packed. Anticipation was hot.

We pushed through the glass doors and into the party, which was shoulder to shoulder with every sort of person imaginable. The fairies immediately began flying off in pursuit of some hot bod. "Hey! My necklace!" I shouted after them.

"Oh, yeah. I don't care about this!" Mud threw the necklace back and I grabbed it by the string. At least that was taken care of. I slipped it back on and pushed in.

Clearly, my rampant high school partying hadn't prepared me for the Los Angeles party scene. There were more orcs, dwarves, gnomes, centaurs, trolls and way more other shit in this single room than I had seen in the entirety of my first eighteen years. People were going nuts, drinking and doing spell shit and just having a wild time. I didn't think these sort of things actually happened outside of movies.

No one was really paying me any mind, but I could tell a few bone hungry dudes were looking in my direction. There was no time for that, I had a Dark Lord to find.

I pushed further. There were fewer human sacrifices and black magic than I expected, but I didn't let that phase me. The house was flanked by large window that provided a panoramic of the city. Under any other circumstance, this would have been crazy impressive. Views like this didn't exist where I was from. I made a mental note to appreciate the wonders of nature at a later date.

The party got wilder downstairs. There were two gnomish servers floating above the party and pouring tequila into people's mouth. I wasn't one to turn down a drink, so I let them take a pour when they floated in my direction. That was my last drink, probably.

I kept my eyes peeled for the darkest looking dude in the room. I didn't really have much to keep an eye out for, so my criteria was wide open. I quickly realized that I was going nowhere very quickly, and resolved to just ask someone like a normal human being.

"Hey," I shouted after a she-orc with some cool dreads. She shot me a glare and walked away. "Yo!" I tried again with this troll, who took the bait.

"Ya?" the troll responded. This guy was pretty small as trolls come, but still had their deep, growly cadence. "What you want?"

"You know whose party this is?"

"Party? No."

"Whose house this is?"

"No, I no know. You want dance?"

"Ew, no," I backed away from the troll quickly. I once heard you could get troll herpes by touching their skin and was not about test that out.

I tried to ask a few more people, but everyone was either too fucked up or too clueless. It wasn't often that I was the least drunk person in the room, and I didn't like it. Drunk people were annoying and hard to deal with. Screw that.