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Methodology

-All injections were created by mixing saliva from the control group subject with fresh blood from the test species.  All individual animals used were healthy and in the prime of life, sourced from reputable zoological preserves across the globe to minimize suspicions.  Test subjects were healthy males between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five, sourced from across the globe to minimize suspicions.  Test subjects were restrained for injections and then placed in a control room with a variety of stimuli including live bait consisting of rejected test subjects.  Each test species injection received a minimum of five test subjects before results were tabulated; three of which were euthanized for autopsy and two of which were retained for further observation. 

Report

Canis lupus

-Control group subject.  Consistent and known results of increased speed, strength, durability, acute allergic reaction to Ag, and uncontrolled aggression.  Outcomes are all desirable if separable; but combined package is of only limited use as terror weapon due to widespread folk knowledge of vulnerabilities.  Hollywood is our enemy here, and it’s too deep-rooted to fight. 

Carcharhinus melanopterus

-Subject proved incapable of respiration in either air OR water.  Probably a good thing we didn’t try this on C. carcharias first if that’s the kind of results we’re going to be getting; my only regret is we didn’t go even cheaper and try a goldfish first. 

Cervis Canadensis

-The first herbivorous test species.  Subject nonetheless became aggressive and carnivorous similar to the control group.  Antlers hypertrophied to a staggering degree, slowing the subject down increasingly over the course of its existence and causing rapid brittleness in the subject’s skeleton due to calcium loss.  Size and muscle greatly increased from the control group, although it lost the ability to walk on hind legs and the hooves caused loss of manual dexterity in the forelimbs.  Results suggest we limit testing quadrupeds with reduced digits bar exceptional species. 

Crocodylus niloticus

-Greatly improved size, burst speed, and jaw strength, with major losses in limb size and stamina.  Ag produced no allergic reaction, even when bullets were directed into the fleshy tissues of the mouth (subject’s scales were resistant even to armour-piercing rounds).  Subject expired during stamina testing due to fatal buildup of lactic acids; if we can’t temper the aggression reflex these poor bastards will literally hunt themselves to death.  A fixer-upper, but unless a real surprise comes along, this is probably going to be our amphibious assault product. 

Culex pipens

-Subject’s bones dissolved and subject’s body was covered in a frail, glass-like membrane that split apart under its own weight.  Recommend no further testing using any invertebrates, especially those with exoskeletons. 

Elephas maximus

-Unknown, as test was followed by the total loss of Lab A along with all records and eyewitnesses.  In retrospect, we probably should’ve expected something like this.  Subject is still at large and apprehension should only be attempted on moonless nights.   Real big fuckup here, let’s just hope it’s still small enough to sweep under the rug.  Worth remembering this one if we fix the aggression problem, but that’s a common thread with most of them, isn’t it?

Homo sapiens

-No change visible, no apparent reaction to Ag.  Not sure what we expected here, which is precisely why we tried it.  Question of whether or not there is no change because it is ineffective or if there is no change because humans are already aggressive and dangerous humanlike monsters is academically outside the scope of this study. 

Ophiophagus hannah

-Subject’s torso elongated and arms withered, but did not develop sufficient muscle control for propulsion, leaving us with a scaled, deadly venomous, giant man-noodle that rolled around the test chamber hissing at us.  Snakes are not recommended if this is what we’re going to get. 

Panthera leo

-P. concolor results encouraged further investigation into felids; results exceeded expectations – massive size, powerful muscles.  Further testing required to learn if P. leo social instincts are retained by the subject: we may have found our super soldier here. 

Pan troglodytes

-Deeply, deeply disturbing, extremely strong, and almost hysterically aggressive.  Like watching a 19^th-century conception of a caveman come to life and thirst for your blood.  Subject almost took the test chamber doors off its hinges before being euthanized.  No reaction to Ag.  May be worth investigating due to full retention of opposable thumbs etc. but only if aggression problem is well-solved ground in other subjects – this is a truly nasty customer.  Alternative: experiment with Gorilla gorilla and see if results are less histrionic. 

Puma concolor

-Strong similarity to control group, with much-improved climbing capabilities.  No reaction to Ag, apparent reduction in stamina but increase in speed and stealth capabilities reflecting ambush vs. endurance hunting strategies in P. concolor and C. lupus respectively.  Excellent alternative to C. lupus for terror weapon.

Tursiops truncatus

-Subject lost almost all limb function while gaining little improvement in aquatic capabilities and nearly drowned over the course of testing.  In combination with O. hannah results,  we should take this as evidence to not mess with anything that has reduced or unorthodox limbs.  

Ursus arctos horribilis

-Subject destroyed half of Lab B and killed half the staff before being brought down by nerve agents.  A costly lesson, but still a good thing we did this after E. maximus: we now know the security measures we put in place following Lab A – although eventually effective – were still somewhat lacking.   No reaction to Ag.

Analysis

-The fatal allergic reaction to Ag appears to be specific to C. lupus subjects, although the reason for this is not known.  Application of elements with similar atomic mass and number produced no similar results. 

Air-breathing vertebrates are functionally the only viable sources of test species.  No fish, no insects.  The hominid body shape is also somewhat sensitive to limb arrangement: reduced limb size, reduced number of digits, or the presence of flippers in the test species can inhibit viable locomotive morphology in the subject, sometimes to a prohibitive degree.  Stay away from hooved animals unless we’re comfortable with giving up bipedalism and manual dexterity in the subjects; stay away from marine mammals; stay away from snakes, and take things like alligators on a case-by-case basis. 

The high aggression and prey drive within the subjects is present regardless of test species, although its enthusiasm varies in intensity.  This is the greatest obstacle to further utilization of these phenomena: without control, what use are any of the benefits?

Conclusion

-Although there is great financial potential for alter-humanoid morphs in combat and geriatrics and this study has done much to establish a strong foundation and discovered many avenues for future inquiries, fully establishing a marketable product is not possible at this time without additional research and testing.  More funding is needed.

We still haven’t found the damned elephant. 

I crawled through the crunching snow on my belly, each handhold careful, each movement furtive.  I might as well have stood up and played an entire one-woman brass band: the calving was in full swing mere meters away and the roars and grumbles of the herd covered a multitude of sins, from my errant feet and odd curse to the thud-and-clunk of the rustlers setting up their gear not a stone’s-throw from me.  A stone thrown prone, from the ground. 

Really I was more than near enough.  Might as well just let them finish doing my job for me.  The mechanism clicked, their sapper stood and ducked, the ice shook, and all other noises were erased by the calving of a fresh bergie bit, peeled from the flank of my glacier like smoked meat from a rib rack.  A neat job, very tidy, very clear.  Maybe they’d been a professional before. 

In the ringing silence that followed, I stood clear up and pointed – one hand at my badge, one hand with my reelgun – and coughed politely. 

“Antipolar Berg Marshall Everard.  You’re under arrest.”

And that was the simple part done. 

***

The second-simplest part happened when one of them tried to run.  The sapper and the skipper – laden down with their gear and apparatuses – didn’t try it, but the climber made a dash for the freshly-calved cliff face.  I put the reelshot through their parka and let them dangle from the glacier while I disarmed the other two rustlers.  A large-bore for the big seals and some iceblades used as much as pitons as for weaponry; either these were real professionals or real amateurs to wander around so lightly armed.  The attempted escape suggested the latter, the careful timing of the bergrustle (just as the main herd was being calved and tagged on the other side of the bay) suggested the former.  Maybe they were just stupid and lucky. 

“Now what?” asked the sapper.  He was a younger one by his voice, all awkward and hesitant and half the age of his tools.  They were in good shape, mind – he knew his trade at least. 

“You brought these idiots into this without letting them know the consequences?” I asked the skipper. 

She didn’t even look at me, eyes on the waves and the skies and the ice.  I wasn’t her job. 

“We’re going to float this stolen ice of yours across the bay, to the rest of the harvest-ground,” I told the sapper.  “And then you folks are going to the jail, and then to a jury of your berg-harvesting peers, and then when you’re found guilty of bergrustling – which you will be, thanks to this armful of evidence – you will be sentenced.  And the sentence is being granted this berg you’ve chiseled and set adrift on it.  Without a steering apparatus.  Or weapons.   Or food.”

The sapper’s face fell a little bit farther with every word I spoke.  

“Now you two get over to your pal’s tether and hoist him up here.  I don’t want him to slip free of my line and land in the water before he faces justice.”

The skipper did as she was told.  The sapper stood around like a tool until I jiggled my reelgun at him meaningfully.  The climber wasn’t in much shape to do anything but shiver once she was pulled up, clothes wet from the wave-slapped face of the berg.  Her face was a mass of icescarring and when she rearranged her scarf I saw the tip of her nose had been lost to a frost snap. 

“So,” I asked as the skipper set up the bergdrive, “what brings a couple of old hands like you to this idiot pastime?”

The skipper didn’t flinch.   The sapper was one big flinch already.  But the climber glared at me, and ah, that was a crack.  Half this job is about spotting the cracks.  “You’re not novices; this setup was pretty cleanly executed, from summit to even the calving, really.  You’re not overloaded on weaponry, so you planned to avoid a fight and knew you wouldn’t  steer this thing into a big  seal or a teeth whale.  But your actual criminal bona fides?  Absolute shit.  I spotted your sadass excuse for a camouflage sheet across the damned bay without binoculars, and that’s AFTER I saw you setting it up in your boat, which you  hid very nicely until you  actually docked it.  I’m sure it was very well hidden from the ground, but from the glacierside?  Where the people you’re hiding from are standing?  Not very good.  I had to win a game of rock-paper-scissors to be the one to arrest you all, you know that?  A tournament game.”

“It’s not their-” began the sapper.

“Shut up,” said the climber through her teeth. 

“But it was my –”

“Yes, and them learning it won’t help, so shut up.  Don’t give the Marshalls more than they already have.  Ever.”

The bergie bit started rolling, not with the usual mule-kick force but a quiet slide into motion.  A proper skipper then, with some professional pride.  “Yeah,” I added.  “Don’t give me more details, kid.  Like what you must have paid these two idiots with to get them to sign onto your little project.  What was left for profit after you bribed them into this?  Five bits and a chunk?  I’d  hope they wouldn’t settle for less,  not for boosting a nice fat bergie from under the nose of the official Antipolar calving grounds, in the prime of the season.”

“It’s not about the money,” insisted the sapper.
“Shut UP, damnit!”
“No, no!  Maybe if she hears she’ll come around to-”

“Marshalls don’t care about anything but the bottom line, that’s how they are-”

“No, no, no,” I waved a hand, “we care about a good joke too.  This sounds funny.  You shut up yourself; I want to hear what the kid has to say.  Going to be a long trip too, the way captain cautious here is steering us.  Put some pepper in that old flank-steak of an engine, skipper!”

“Aye,” said the skipper – the first words or any sound at all I’d had out of her, and sounding torn and ragged.  Maybe a knife to the throat had been part of her career, but it gave me pause before the sapper honest-to-god cleared his throat. 

“So,” he began, “we actually weren’t going to sell this berg.”
“What, were you planning on donating it?”

“Well, kind of, we were going to give it out as directed by our organization, yes, that’s right.   Right.  Right – could you stop laughing?  I’m trying to tell you something you asked about.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I snorted.  “It’s just…giving away.  Giving away antipolar ice.  You got any idea how much this is worth?”
“Less than a nice green golf course and an overwatered crop of emerald onions and a rack of grain-fed large beef ribs?  This one bergie will meet essential water needs for half a city, and once we show them that, they’ll realize what they’re being robbed of, every time they see those icebergs towed into  the harbour.”

“Ah,” I said.  And snorted.  “Environmentalists.  Really.  You’re an environmentalist?  And you talked two lifelong berg-tenders into your idiot crusade?  Did you use up all your persuasion on them or was someone else doing the talking to get them onboard?”
“I barely had t-”

“SHUT UP!”

“Well anyways, that isn’t the point.  The point.  The point is… the point is that there’s not going to be any ice left.  Just a littlebit is left now, but soon?  Nothing.”
I shrugged.  “Plenty for now.”
“There was plenty of groundwater back in The Stuuk too, but that was fifty years ago and we ran dry just before I was born.  How long before this runs dry too?  What’s next?”
“Desalinzation.   And if my job’s still around by then – patrolling salt pans and running intruders off the water rigs sounds like a thing – I bet yours will be too, so quit worrying.”

“And the expense of that?  The water shortages?  The toll in mining, land repurposing, the destruction of coastal fisheries to feed more water in?”
“Oh please.  It won’t all be bad, just some of it.  The water’ll get to those who need it.”
“Like this bergie will, right?”
“Right.”

“Do you really believe a single bit of water from this ice will go anywhere near a person in actual need?”
“As long as they have the money, sure.”
“And if they don’t?  What’s left – left for them then?”
“Hey, there’s always room for more coworkers.”
“Right.  If they pass the background checks.”
“Tough luck, some of us didn’t shoplift in high school.”
“Some of us had no choice if we wanted lunch!  You can’t afford to plan that far ahead if-”
“For the love of all things that live and breathe SHUT UP,” the climber yelled in the sapper’s face, over the roar of the engine.  “SHUT YOUR BOUGIE LITTLE ASS UP OR I”LL BITE IT OFF AND PUT MY LEG THROUGH IT SIDEWAYS!  She’s PLAYING with you, you self-important little turd!”

“Not… not right.  Not right!  I was just trying to-”

The climber punched him, which was underselling that haymaker.  A big, slow, stupid roundhouse blow, the clumsiest explosion of rage I’d ever seen launch itself out of someone’s shoulder and into someone else’s stomach.  But it slammed into the boy’s brisket with a clang and sent him skittering across the ice towards the rear of the bergie, and damnit, damnit, damnit, there’s no bounty for bringing back a corpse for trial,  not since that one pontiff had his predecessor dug up and shoved into the stand, so I grabbed him with one  hand and levelled my reelgun at the climber with the other and with my mouth I said “no fighting.  Any head gets busted here, it’s my doing.”

The climber said something, but I couldn’t hear it over the screaming engine. 

“Speak up!”
“GET DOWN,” yelled the sapper in my ear, and instead of doing that I looked up, up, up at the Garhorss Glacier, the calving grounds for the finest  high-quality antipolar ice, which we were heading towards at such a pell-mell pace that there was an honest  to god bow wave athwart our bows. 

Dead ahead  was a small  chasm, the  kind I’d seen  a lot of in my training.  The kind that went way farther than you knew, and that if you disturbed, tended to shatter.  And I was so busy staring that that would’ve been that and then some if the skipper hadn’t thrown out her elbow as she slid  past me and knocked me flat out  on my ass by way of my chin, making something in my jaw pop and crack and my mouth yowl and the first bits of frozen  shrapnel whiz over my  head instead of  through it.  That woman’s bones were solid diamond, I swear, and she grabbed  me one-handed and dragged me down into the lea of the bergie and threw me into the back  of the boat (climber and sapper already present, my long-absent  tactical awareness helpfully  reported).  The boat was a pile of garbage but she sang into action like a racehorse and as we sped  away I could just  make out – through the spray and  the crash and the tears – the storage warehouse for the entire stock of calving tools  for the Garhorss Glacier sailing away into the ocean like a fleck of sea-spray in a whitecap.  A tiny crumb beside it could have been the headquarters of the Antipolar Berg Marshalls, or maybe not.  I blinked before I was sure, and they weren’t there anymore. 

“Nice aim,” said the sapper two noisy, frightening miles later. 

“Good directions,” said the skipper from the depths of her throat. 

“Too many directions,” said the climber snidely from safely belowdeck, rattling amongst tins and cans.  “All those rights and lefts and god damnit just say go one way and then change your mind once it needs changing.”
“We needed a very hard right.”
“Mass murderers,” I attempted to say, instead saying ‘maaa mardaurrur’ and hurting my mouth very badly.

The sapper dug around inside his parka and pulled loose a plastic buoyancy-liner with a perfect knuckle-imprint in it, wincing as he inspected it.   “No, no.  I was watching over your shoulder, and they saw us coming well before you caught on.  Most of them should have gotten out, and forgive me if few will mourn the passing of anyone with business inside the Antipolar Justice Tribunal.   A lot of orphans and widows and widowers will sleep soft tonight.”

“uck uuu.”

“If you’d looked anywhere but at us when I started that fight you’d have had plenty of time to stop us,” said the climber peevishly, “so don’t go pointing the finger of blame at anyone else on the boat.  Maybe you know how to look for cracks, but you’re not the only one.  Speaking of looking…skipper?  Rightwards if you please.  I think I see a bergie bit.   Not the BEST, of course, but we put that one to good  use and I believe that this is an acceptable second place.”

It was a good day for fishing.  The sky was blue, the sea was blue, the boat was a sort of off-colour rusted grey, and the air wasn’t blue and didn’t taste so much of tin and boot as usual. 

It wasn’t a great day for fish, but that was normal. 

Bruce popped his beer and set out his line and dipped his net and to his great startlement found that there was a tug, then another, and he was so shocked he almost dropped the line instead of his beer.  But he dug in his heels and gritted his teeth and pulled and heaved and hauled and strained and swayed until his sweat ruined his shirt and at last he heaved in a tunny of all things, taller than he was and gasping for water through its gills, a real relic of the past and too tasty to be true. 

“Well THAT’S a big lunch,” said Bruce once he’d got his own breath back; he was scarcely less tuckered than the fish. 

“Please no,” said the tunny.  “Please don’t eat me.”
“A talking fish!” said Bruce.  “Two surprises in one day, that’s enough for me.”
“Not just a talking fish: a magical fish.  I am the very last of all tunas, and am imbued with the power that can only be invested in the last of one’s kind, the power to create a better future for another.”

“What if the better future for another is for me to have a very big lunch?” asked Bruce, cunningly. 

“Think bigger, please!” implored the tunny, “If you set me free, friend fisherman, I shall grant you any wish you desire.  And surely you can see the value in this, suffer as we both do from the pains and pollutions of the skies that have led to the warming of the waves and the deaths of all my kin?  I can give you a wish, and with that wish you can solve both our problems at a single stroke!”

Bruce was deeply impressed by this, and the prospect of more lunches to come.  But a tuna in the hand was worth two in the sea, surely, and he despaired at the thought of all this time spent fishing being wasted so he’d have to spend MORE time fishing later.  Then a brilliant thought came to him.

“I wish…” said Bruce.

“Yes!” said the tunny.

“…for two wishes,” he finished. 

“Oh no oh dear,” muttered the tunny. 

“What’s the problem?” demanded Bruce.  “I can use one wish for fixing the seas and skies again, and the other for myself.  Surely that’s not greedy, since I’m going to be the person saving the seas and skies.”
“But I am but a simple magical tuna, and cannot grant more than one wish,” said the tunny, which would be crying if it could.

“Well, shucks,” said Bruce.  “But are you SURE?”
“Wait!” said the tunny.  “I know of another magical fish, the last of her kind, who may be powerful enough to grant you two wishes!  Release me and I will find her for you!”
“And you’re SURE this isn’t all a ploy to not be my lunch?” asked Bruce. 

“I swear upon my blue fins,” said the tunny. 

Slowly, carefully, gently, begrudgingly, Bruce cut loose the line and removed the hook and released the fish into the sea, where it slipped away like mercury into groundwater.   Then he drove back home and went to the pub for a lunch of cricket brisket, grumbling at the expense all the while. 

“No fish, Bruce?” said the man on the stool next to him.   “No luck on such a fine day, Bruce?  Finally going to have to get a real job, Bruce?”

“Just you wait,” said Bruce, chuckling.  “Just you wait.”

***

The next day dawned cloudy and hazy, with light white fog over the water, but Bruce was impatient and puttered through it without slowing, casting a pale froth behind his boat that was only slightly tinted from the dying metal of its hull.  He cast over his line and cast out his net and pulled out his beer and dropped it. 

“That was unnecessary,” said the great white shark, in her breathy voice.  The net made a rather awkward hat on her big sleek head, and it didn’t quite cover her big black eyes, although the shiny hooks on it certainly accentuated her big sharp teeth. 

“Hello,” said Bruce, coherently.  The shark was only a little shorter in length than his boat, and he wondered at how well the tunny had played him for a fool.  “Are you magical?”
“Very,” said the great white shark.  “I am the last of my kind, and the last of all sharks besides, so my power is greater than that of the last of the tunas.  Two wishes I can grant you, for my freedom from this net (for appearance’s sake).  You will hold the power to mend the seas and clear the air and maybe even tend to the ravaged soil of the land with but a single generously-worded command, and still have one wish remaining as your reward beyond those wonderful fruits of renewal and salvation that you will partake in with all.”

“One wish,” said Bruce, rubbing his chin.  “One wish.”  He could get a new house.  He could get a new boat so he could afford a new house.  He could get lunch every day for the rest of his life with a new boat, so that was good too, but it’d be a lot of work.  He could live forever so he could do a lot of work and still have fun, but still.

“What if,” Bruce asked cleverly, “I wished for TWO wishes with my wish?”

The great white shark’s eyes rolled back in its head, from midnight dark to blinding white.  “Your needs are that great?”
“My life’s tough,” said Bruce. 

“My powers cannot be stretched further,” admitted the great white shark.  “But I may know of another, greater than I.  She can manage your three wishes, but no more.   I will go in search of her and bring her to you, so that you may save us all and be granted the reward that you claim as your due.”

“Thanks,” said Bruce, but before he could even cut the net the last of the great white sharks had sunk beneath the surface, snapping it as if it were made of nothing but strands of algae and muck.  He went back to shore fuming at the indignity of it, and the pub had raised prices on the bean burgers again and were serving them with smaller chips besides. 

“No fish, Bruce?” asked the man on the stool next to him, poking him insolently in the shin.  “And with such dedication too, to head out in the fog and murk instead of toiling in the fields with the rest of your pals!  You’re a hard worker for sure, Bruce!  You’re well missed out there!”
“Just you wait,” said Bruce, grumbling.  “Just you wait.”

***

The sky was thick and clotted with curdled grey brooding its way into dark thunderheads, and the waves were as surly and choppy as could be, but Bruce had a hunger in his soul that had nothing to do with lunch for once – at least, for one lunch – and he drove into the teeth of it with a wild grin and a beer already unshackled.  Out to his usual spot he rode, bouncing from peak to peak to point and cackling, until at last he was there. 

He couldn’t cast a line more than an inch in the wind’s teeth, but he didn’t need to.  She was already there. 

“Are you a fish?” he inquired of the whale. 

The whale’s eye was as big as his head.  “By honour, not by birth,” she sang softly to him through the hull of his boat and the waves of the sea and the air he breathed.  “Although by descent we are both tetrapods, and hence sarcopterygians, and thereby fish.”
Bruce nodded in a very professional way.  “Of course,” he said.  “Now, my three wishes?”
“I am the last of the humpbacks,” said the whale, whose great flukes beat the surface softly, churning the storm flat around them, “and the last of the whales, and the last thing in all the seas that is bigger than the great white shark who sent me here.  I have just enough power within me to grant you three wishes: to save the sea and skies and all that live within them and may live again, and two for yourself.”

Bruce thought of all this, and then he thought of himself, and then  he thought of himself and all this. 

“Suppose,” Bruce asked craftily, “I used my two wishes… to ask for two MORE wishes?  Each?”

The whale exhaled, and the spout towered over them both, swept away in the dark of day.  “What you ask is beyond me, fisherman.  You ask what is beyond any of us to give.  We have offered all we can, for our sake and yours, and it is all that will ever be.”

“What if,” theorized Bruce, “I waited for the last living thing in all the oceans?  Wouldn’t that have enough power to do that?”
The whale inhaled, and she dove. 

“Hello?” said Bruce. 

He went back to shore and to bed early without dinner.  His stomach was troubling him.  

***

It was beautiful out again.  The storm had scrubbed away the scum that had crept down from inland into the air and water, and was as close to true blue as could be.  The waves had tuckered themselves out.  Bruce’s boat had more dents than before, but fewer than it could have gotten. 

So Bruce took the last beer in the fridge, and he went out, far enough that the shore was a little dot, and he put out his line. 

He waited. 

And waited. 

And waited some more.

And then he went back to shore. 

The pub was out of fresh food for the week.  Bruce had pickled onions (without garlic). 

“No fish, Bruce?” asked the man on the stool next to him.  “A pity.  The harvest isn’t doing great; and it’d cheer us up some to see new foods on the table.  You reckon you’ll start pulling your weight soon, Bruce?

“Just you wait,” said Bruce.  His hand was tapping on the table; why was it doing that?  When had it started doing that?  “Just you wait.”

The alarm went off and wouldn’t shut up until Lady Duchess Baroness Countess Champion-Captain Magewarden Fist of the Southeast Jessica Dark’ness Damselblade got up and punched it in the nose, sending it scurrying and squeaking back to its house in a huff. 

Stupid thing wasn’t even necessary.  She’d woken up well before it, as usual. 

Three hours of sleep, six days in a row.  Her body hated it but now it demanded it, and she’d been up before dawn weeding her mandrakes and repairing the rents in the vegetable lamb’s pen where the neighborhood basilisk had tried to claw its way inside.  By the time she was done her gleaming +11 Platemail of Plentiful Shining was a muddy mess and the crackling power-gems that roared in her gauntlet were beginning to short out. 

Then the neighborhood basilisk had tried to claw its way inside just as she was finishing the repairs on the fence and all she’d had to hand was her Phillippe’s –head morningscrewdriver. 

Her eyes were burning red – and not from that nasty hellbat scratch last week – and it felt like there was a demented bellringer going bananas inside her brain with a spiked mallet. 

Oh.  That was her doorbell screaming. 

The doorknob was stiff – probably due to Jessica coating it in basilisk ichor on her way in.  She fixed the problem by removing it with her fist, then removing the door with her fist.

There was a peasant on the other side, regarding her fist with some alarm.  Of course.  First quest of the day was always a fucking peasant.  Little shits couldn’t even make it through the night without being imperilled six times over.

“What,” she grunted.

“My deepest, most profound apologies for disturbing you so early, oh Lady Duchess Baroness Countess Champion-Captain Magewarden and Fist of the Southeast,” mumbled the peasant at high speed, eyes downcast to the hem of her awful grubby little tunic, “but wolves have beset our shepherds overnight, and now-”

“You want me to kill twelve of them.”
“Yes please.”

“And?”
The peasant’s mud-brown common eyes stared blankly from her grit-grey common face.  “I’m sorry, Lady Duchess Baro-”

“There’s always something else.  And.  What.  Is.  It.”
“…sixty-three of the sheep have wandered away in the night’s chaos.  Please find them and bring them back from the depths of Armsaw Woods.”

“Aw piss,” said Lady Duchess Baroness Countess Champion-Captain Magewarden Fist of the Southeast Jessica Dark’ness Damselblade, and she slammed her door in the peasant’s face, downed a bag of coffee beans, and was halfway to Armsaw Woods before she remembered she didn’t have a door anymore. 

“Then what did I slam?” she wondered, as she pulled out Dragonsnipper, her third-favourite longblade.  “Aw hellworms.  I punched a hole in the wall again, didn’t I.”

***

At ten in the morning Jessica had a working brunch of raw wolf flank with charred wolf fur cooked over a roaring blaze of damp tinder and soggy branches, washed down with the few coffee crumbs she found and licked up from the very bottom of the bag of beans.   She barely chewed; since she was using her mouth to swear and both her arms and legs to shove sheep.  At last the dim woolly bastards had been ushered, bleating, towards the arms of her shepherds, and Jessica was  about to follow suite when she heard a faint and beautiful melody, woven of laughter and threaded with delight, redolent of dewdrops and starlight and gilded with golden lilies. 

“Oh FUCK,” she groaned.  “Fuck fuck fuck.  Is this more fae shit?  It’s more fae shit.”
“Indeed,” proclaimed a voice that would’ve made any mere mortal singer break down into sobs.  And lo, from the surface of a nearby pond arose a figure robed in petals and crowned in sunbeams, with ferns for lace, bracken for brocade, and lady slippers for lady’s slippers.  “I am Queen Morning-glory, daughter of Hibiscus, mother of Jack-in-the-pulpit, guardian of all that is green and good and great and grand.  Thy hath trespassed upon mine woods and slain mine creatures, and-”

“Weregild in gold or stabbing?”

“-thy DARE-”

“Gold or stabbing?” repeated Jessica, who was currently using Drakesplitter (her fifth-favourite polearm) as a sort of crutch for her entire body.   “Because if it’s gold I’ve got to go home and get it and if it’s stabbing I bet it’s out here in these shitty-ass woods.  Now tell me which it is and be done with this bullshit so I can go home and you can go back to naming your family after your flowerboxes or whatever the fuck.”

The perfect apple-red lips of the faerie queen tightened most firmly, and her forest-green eyes glittered just a little colder than midwinter.  “Annihilate the foul hag-witch of the foul Hagwitch Moor,” she said shortly. 

“What, kill one-tenth of her?”
“Your mother was a bitch-hound.”

And with those final mysterious words of parting and a gentle wind that smelled of honeysuckle and raspberries, the elf was gone. 

“Thirty miles if it’s an inch,” groaned Jessica.  She shoved the empty bag of coffee beans in her mouth and chewed it up, muffling many slurs against all the world and existence itself. 

***

At five-twenty-six pm Lady Duchess Baroness Countess Champion-Captain Magewarden Fist of the Southeast Jessica Dark’ness Damselblade’s eighth-favourite broadaxe, Oakfeller, swung in a perfect one-hundred-and-eighty-degree-arc and bowled off the head of the foul hag-witch of the foul Hagwitch Moor. 

“Fool!” croaked the head.  “Twice-fool you!  The spiteful faeries have caused a calamity for the smallfolk in sending you to be my doom!  Now mine spells of slumber have left the barrow-dwellings of this place, and the tombs of the wizard-lord Skullmageddon have been thrown wide!  He will drown the whole word in skeletal death-troops if he be not stopped with all  speed and great force!  Woe!   Woe!  Woe!  Woe!”
“Oh my god shut up.”
“Make me,” cackled the head.  “Woe!  Woe!  Woe woe woe woe woewoewoewoewoewoewoe-”

Jessica kicked the head out the door of the witch’s cottage into her spellbog, and it laughed all the way down. 

“Right,” she muttered, swaying on her feet.  “Right.  Just a Wizardmageddon.  And then home.   And bed.  Right.  No big deal, just like last Wednesday.”  Or was it Tuesday?  Did it matter?  Wait, was Tuesday real?  Maybe she was mixing it up with Thursday –  that was real.  Probably.
“Right!” said Jessica.  And she fell asleep. 

Ten minutes later she woke up in a blind panic and ran pell-mell across the Hagwitch Moor in  such a hurry to catch up with the army of death-troops that she forgot Oakfeller and had to go back for it. 

***

At eleven forty-six pm, with arrows sticking out of every other spot on her body, Jessica got home, opened her front door, staggered to the couch, and remembered she didn’t have a door.  She did, however, have three big holes in the wall. 

“Fucklebuckle,” she mumbled.  “Carpenter’zgonnaeatmealive.  Piratepricing.  Frrmp.”

Her eyes were too tired to close, so they just sort of sat there, pruning up, and it was pure lack of thought that let her ignore the  figure standing in  front of her until it  let out a polite cough. 

Jessica focused, much to her regret.  There was a peasant standing in front of her.  Again.  It  was the same peasant, probably.  Again.  

Of course.  The last quest of the  day is always another goddamned peasant. 

“Excuse my haste and pardon my insolence, oh LadyDuchessBaronessCountessChampion-CaptainMagewardenandFistoftheSoutheast,” rattled the peasant with alarming haste, “but there’s a dragon eating the town and we would be forever grateful if you could do something.”
Jessica stared through the peasant.  

“Lady Duchess Baroness Countess Champion-Captain Magewarden and Fist of the Southeast?”
Jessica sighed, and  it was the sound of someone exhaling their whole life through their mouth and out into the hereafter.  “Sure.  Yeah.  Do something.  Right.  Dragon.  Bye.”

She opened her door and picked up Giantsmasher (her tenth-favourite Warhammer) and opened her door and put on her boots and opened her door and missed and opened her door again and  walked down to the village and into the dragon by mistake and let it eat her on purpose. 

***

The feudal-adventurer system itself lasted only a few more decades, which was scarce a surprise to future historians, rendered dispassionate by distance.  Delegating tasks to dangerous individual heroes may have saved the nobility a lot of work, but the peasantry correctly realized that the best way to keep the home life quiet was to pile on tasks until their protectors were too tired to care about what they were doing, and the increasingly-copious bestowment of titles, gold, and magical weaponry bankrupted many crowns in search of reliable assistance.  In the end the adventurer supply ran out and the species became extinct, soon followed by the complex ecosystem of wizards, monsters, and magic that relied upon them to provide entertainment, handiman’s-work, and nutrition.