“Any progress with the pipes?” Grom asked Syril in his Raphael disguise the next morning as they ate breakfast.

  “I got the hang of attractive rodents—unfortunately,” he said. “It seems that’s the easiest feature of this magic. Other creatures take a little more doing.”

  “You’ll—” Grom began, but whatever he was to say next was lost in the commotion as the door of the tavern collapsed inward.

  A giant of a woman stepped in, long hair down to her waist, wearing a man’s tunic of poor fit. She had a stricken look of terror and confusion on her face, and her busting of the door surprised her nearly as much as the patrons.

  “Grom!” his girlfriend screamed from behind the bar.

  Grom and Syril were already up, ready to act should this turn violent.

  “Sherry! Grom! Syril!” the woman shouted. “It’s me!”

  “Sherry?” Syril whispered to Grom, “Who the hells is—”

  “Sherry!” Grom said aloud with joy, looking at his girlfriend who was looking back at him confused.

  “What?! Do something!” she shouted.

  Full of joy at finally learning the name of his beloved, regardless of the odd situation, Grom drew on the well of increasingly familiar power, and cast a binding spell on the hulking woman.

  She went rigid, stiffening and then falling to the floor.

  Syril and Grom tied her up, enduring her unintelligible grunts and mumbled shouts all the while.

  “Listen ma’am,” Syril said. “We don’t know who you are, but you can’t just come bursting into establishments shouting, ‘it’s me’ and expect to face no consequences.”

  This was met with even more sounds.

  Once she was secured, the pair tried to lift her into a chair, but found they couldn’t budge her. Instead, they rolled her onto her back and put a piece of debris under her head as a substitute for a pillow.

  Grom held up one hand with four fingers to Syril, out of the woman’s sight, and counted down the spell’s duration.

  At one, the struggling resumed.

  “You idiots!” she shouted. “It’s me, BILL!”

  With hardly an effort, she flexed, and all the cords binding her snapped.

  Grom and Syril both jumped back in surprise until the words sunk in.

  “Bill?” they said in unison.

  ***

  By the time Ellen arrived, Bill had gotten extremely drunk.

  “I told ya,” he, she… they slurred. “I went ta sssleep and woke up— hic— like this.”

  “The belt was cursed,” Ellen said.

  “That’s my guess,” Grom agreed.

  “But ya examed… examed… exom… checked it,” Bill said.

  “I said I thought they were okay, but I didn’t get a real solid answer,” Grom said, and even in his female and inebriated state he could detect the lack of falsity in the words.

  “Good news is his armor won’t fit anymore so you two won’t match,” Syril said, trying to lighten the mood.

  This only earned another groan from Bill.

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  “Don’t worry,” Grom said, “I can remove the curse.”

  Grom extended a hand to Bill, uttering a prayer of cleansing.

  He felt the divine magic flood through him, into Bill, and then unexpectedly back into Grom.

  Distantly he heard the sound of a woman laughing.

  “I’d rather not,” she said. “This is quite entertaining.”

  “Ummm,” Grom said, giving Ellen a meaningful look. “It didn’t work.”

  “No,” Ellen said. “I didn’t expect that it would on this particular curse.”

  Panic set in on Bill’s face once more, But Ellen calmed him quickly.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “That’s why wizards exist. We can actually control magic, not just beg our betters for handouts.”

  Ellen muttered some words and moved her hand over Bill in a warding motion, and when she was done, he had returned to his normal form.

  “Thank you!” he boomed, enveloping her in a hug.

  Grom and Syril panicked, thinking Ellen was about to be squeezed to a pulp, but it seemed that with the curse too went the magic strength that Bill had little control of—as evidenced by all the crushed mugs.

  Bill pulled the belt out of his bag and threw it on the table.

  “How can we destroy this vile thing,” he demanded.

  Syril got a thoughtful look in his eye and then reached for the belt.

  “Let me handle that,” he said.

  “No one tell Linar,” Bill said, sobering slightly at the thought.

  “Oh, no chance of us not tellin him” Grom said merrily.

  That morning’s disaster already resolved, with Bill agreeing to pay for the repairs on the door, the group returned to their primary objective.

  “So… this cult,” Ellen said.

  As if summoned, Linar stepped into the booth’s view.

  “Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with any leads on the destination of those candles,” Linar said.

  “Nothing?” Syril asked. “You couldn’t find anything ?”

  “Oh, I found a lot. A lot of dead ends.” Linar said, sitting down and waiving for a drink.

  “Every person I traced the shipments to was dead, and they were a bunch of familiar faces,” he continued.

  “What do you mean?” Syril asked.

  “A lot of those missing people on the boards we never found,” Linar said. “They were the recipients of candle shipments and then vanished.”

  “Did you check out their homes?” Syril asked. “Find any evidence like Sal had?”

  Linar put his hand on his chest, feigning aghast.

  “Are you suggesting that I commit a crime ?”

  Syril rolled his eyes, not saying anything.

  “Fine,” Linar said, dropping the act. “Yeah, a few of them had some items I would consider cult-like-paraphernalia, but not all.”

  “So, this cult is sacrificing their own?” Grom asked.

  Linar shrugged.

  “Not again,” Sherry said from where she was listening.

  “What?” Grom asked.

  “This is the second time my boss joined a cult and left,” Sherry said.

  “It’ll be alright,” Grom said, patting her back because he had no idea how else to respond to that statement. “Its…ah, a very common problem.”

  “New plan,” Syril said. “I have an idea to investigate the Count more closely, but it will take me a week or so to prepare. In the meantime, I need you all to follow up on any missing people, investigate their homes thoroughly”— he gave a meaningful look at Linar at that —“and see if you can get any leads.”

  “Why do we need to look into the Count more?” Ellen asked. “It seems like the devils are after him. He doesn’t seem to have a blood dungeon anymore. Why can’t we just focus on the cult?”

  “Something isn’t sitting right with me, but I can’t put my finger on it,” Syril said.

  “Oh good,” Ellen said. “I was worried you had an actual reason for your suspicion.”

  ?

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