Polynya

“Like fick I do!” Hiccup plops down onto the couch, evacuates his colon, widens his eyes as he scoots around to see if he made a mess in his britches, realizes he didn’t, and equips a dog-eared copy of The Well of Loneliness. “This conversation is over.” A pair of reading glasses appears over the bridge of his nose and he focuses on the book.

“Fine, fine.” FeeTwix looks around for a place to lay out his weapons. Enway’s home is cluttered, full of books and small boxes covered in a layer of dust. He wipes away the surface of a side table and equips two shooting irons, one of which Ryuk has seen before. “Remember this one, babe?”

He places his bolonet rifle on the table. The blunderbuss fires a net made of diamond razor wire, which they used back in Sotla to pin Zaena down before she joined up.

“How could I forget the time you netted me?”

“Is that like ‘you had me at hello?’” FeeTwix asks. He smiles at her, and she returns his smile.

The next weapon is shaped like a primitive arcade gun. It’s orange, appears to be made of plastic, and as FeeTwix loads the magazine in, a circular light above the grip flashes blue.

“And that is?” Ryuk asks.

“This something I had custom made in Dead City. It’s supposed to look like the Duck Hunter gun. It fires a bullet that imbeds a GPS tracker in the assaultee’s body. Then you run your finger over the blue light to track it. Hiccup, care to test this out with me?”

“I swear on the Empress and her oversized mammaries,” Hiccup grits, “if you shoot me with that thing, we’ll have real problems, Twixy.” He looks at the Swede over the rim of his reading glasses. “I’ll split your chalupa with my tomahawk while you sleep.”

“Chalupas are already split,” Enway says as she enters the room. “I’ve fed Yangu–”

“Snowballs!”

“And he fell asleep next to his food bowl.”

“Young dragons always need more sleep than older ones.” FeeTwix’s bolonet lifts into the air, seemingly of its own volition.

“Careful!” he tells Zaena as she aims the muzzle at Hiccup.

“Liz, same thing I told Twixy applies to you,” the goblin growls without looking up from his book. “Now quit distracting me, I’m trying to read about lesbians. Everyone in this guild needs to get woke.” He waves his copy of the Well of Loneliness at her.

Get woke? Ryuk shakes his head. The damn goblin is always rattling off about something.

“What about the gun you had that shoots automatically?” Zaena asks.

“Ah, my remote sentry weapon.” FeeTwix shrugs. “I’d love to use that, but there could be friendlies in the area, sheep too. So we’re going to go old school!” A pizza box-sized electronic device materializes in front of him. It features a single unit in the middle anchored by four downward facing propellers. “A drone from the 2030s!”

“That is old school,” Ryuk says as he approaches the drone.

FeeTwix sets it on the ground and produces his remote control and presses a big red button labeled “auto.” The auto-drone lifts, accompanied by a buzzing sound. “The Eye in the Sky will help us spot and track the wolf. And you can be our other eye in the sky, Ryuk, by going to one of the terraces that surround the farms and using that Extreme Focus skill of yours. I’ll stay more or less in the center and when we see the wolf, I’ll try to bolo it. If that doesn’t work, I’ll peg it with a GPS bullet. Then we’ll follow it back to its lair and slaughter it.”

“What about us?” Zaena asks.

“I’m good here,” Hiccup says.

“He’s right. You two stay here for now, as soon as I net the wolf or peg it, spawn at my location and help me take it down.”

Zaena’s face hardens. “I want to be part of the hunting party.”

“You are, dear, trust me, but too many chefs spoil the soup.”

“He has a point.” Hiccup closes his book and yanks a healing potion out of thin air. He pops the top off the generic healing potion, takes his first sip, and cringes. “Oh yeah, that’s right, these ones ain’t half bad. Not Hopkins’, but what the fick can you do? Gotta save the good stuff for later. And don’t you say shit about me wasting a potion, Marbles, it’s prophylactic.”

The goblin guzzles the potion, jams his tongue inside to pick up any leftover residue, and once he’s finished, drops the potion onto the couch and returns his focus to his erotic novel. “Love me some lesbians,” he says as he licks his lips.

“We’ll be ready to spawn as soon as you give the signal,” Zaena nods. “I look forward to it.”

“Speak for yourself, Liz, although wolf meat ain’t half bad. You have to cure it right, but that’s a cinch.”

Enway clears her throat. “I’ll come with them as well – this sounds like it will be interesting!”