Chapter 15: I Can’t Believe My Bouncers Are Like This.

Gambling dens in Elcon usually follow a certain pattern. A denizen enters a gambling den with a full money pouch, seeing one of the games or events that is of interest, this denizen places a bet. Several other denizen will place a bet on that bet, and a bet on the bet on that bet and so on. There will of course be several bets on the nature of what will happen when the result of what was bet on happens.

The result will happen or not happen, usually a fight of some sort will ensue. People will collect their prizes, and if the den still stands, continue betting, this will continue until the denizen has lost all money and ends up having to scavenge vegetation from the streets for food. Now, sometimes, a denizen will win big!

This lucky personage will sometimes even stop while they are ahead and leave the gambling den, it is at that time they will likely be set upon by muggers and have all their gains stolen. Then those muggers will enter the den until they win or lose and then come out and get mugged. So it can be said that there is only one true winner; whoever owns the den.

This whole cycle continues until a fight big enough to destroy the gambling den occurs. This is the natural life cycle of the Elconic gambling den. So why is it that denizens are foolish enough to enter into such a despoiler of wealth?

Some mages have postulated that gambling dens are living parasites that send out mind beams to enchant the common denizen. Others just say that in general denizens are pretty stupid.

Golbassy and Habi, had ordered Eadam and his motley crew to lead them to a gambling den where the Niard had been sighted. Cozzlanga being a town filled with scurrilous types had a thriving collection of gambling dens, as an aged whale might have many barnacles or a foot have fungus.

Eadam and his lot had heard a lot of rumours about a cloaked blue lizardy person claiming to be the Niard hitting the gambling dens and causing a lot of trouble. The trouble was, they had heard a lot of dens had been hit. So, not wanting to invoke the wrath of their new mistresses, they picked one at random.

It was as it turned out, the fourth biggest one in Cozzlanga. The Mauve Beanbag was its name. It seemed a moderately classy joint. Though really it was a bit awkward how the ground of the alleyway it was in was paved with mauve beanbags. It was quite possible that the strange state of the ground was due to a duel between mages.

The entrance of the Mauve Beanbag was a massive square opening with no door. Instead of a door, blocking the way in and out was a pair of bouncers, the occupation, rather than the being.

One was a rebcubre, and that wasn’t surprising, rebcubres gravitated to such jobs due to their physical attributes.

The other bouncer however, was one of a kind, not that Golbassy and Habi’s gang knew it.

He was a tall segmented being with blue-grey fur, claws lined his sides, and his long body ended in some rather fierce pincers. His head was perhaps a tad feline, and had a little smugness to it. Blossoming from his forehead was two long tentacles, each as furred as his body. Gripped in each of these was a luminous green wide curved sword. Sorcerer’s steel swords, a rather natural choice for a fighter considering how easily they could allow someone to use sword techniques on magic.

He had two cat eyes. One green one resting below his tentacles and one orange one resting above his tentacles. He was the Setlerlung. His friends called him Set.

Set definitely looked like something that someone would not want to mess with, unless you were the type to be seeking out tough battles. In which case you’d probably be overjoyed.

“Hrm, these ones look like trouble Hobblewart.” Set commented, gazing at the misfit gang with one eye.

“That they do Set, why that has got to be the fourth fanciest robe I’ve ever seen” Hobblewart the rebcubre said.

“Probably shouldn’t let them in. Mama Viggs been in a bad mood, what with this business with some fool pretending to be the Niard. Besides, the rest of them look kinda scuffy bet they don’t have a single gem between them” Set said.

“They could be pick pockets, been a lot of pick pocketings lately” Hobblewart mused.

Set brought both eyes to bear on the gang.

“Nah, they look far too clumsy and stupid to be pickpockets” Set decided.

“But what if that was only what they want you to think?” Hobblewart insisted.

Set gave Hobblewart a doubtful look, he stared at the gang intently again.

“Hobblewart, one of them has boxing gloves and one is a rock”

“They could be expert pickpockets!”

Set thought about this for a while.

Deciding that they’d be stuck outside if they didn’t do something, Golbassy decided to speak.

She muttered into Habi.

“We aren’t pick pockets” Habi said.

“Oh, alright then” Set said, and he moved out of the way.

Hobblewart had a confused expression on his face, like he had forgotten something important, still, he also stepped out of the way. The gang quickly entered the den.

Moments later when Hobblewart and the Setlerlung were back blocking the entrance, Hobblewart spoke.

“Wait, should we have let them in even if they weren’t pickpockets?”

“Bit late for that now Hobblewart, I’m sure nothing will come of it anyway” Set comforted himself.

* * * * *

The inside of the den was packed, it was littered with game tables and denizens. Minor scuffles, murders and jostling went on in the teeming mass of gamblers. Badly played jazz-like music wafted over everything, though no musicians or instruments could be seen. The two most popular attractions were the scuttling race and the table for Cozzlanga roulette.

Scuttlings are crispy pale beings that are mostly tail and a pair of lonesome claws. These creatures appear to exist solely to be eaten by pretty much everything. They have no mouth at all, possessing instead a large mournful eye that varies in colour. What most denizens don’t know is that scuttlings are actually a type of fruit, the eye being the container of the seeds and the rest of it being the skin.

By eating scuttlings, denizens ensure the spread of vase ferns, which in turn hardly ever get removed because of how they make for handy containers, particularly they often get used as bins. Thus, like the gambling dens, the vase fern is very good at using those around it.

Scuttling races tended to have three main outcomes. All the scuttlings losing their eyes (they are not at all securely placed), most of the scuttlings being eaten and one of the scuttlings winning and then being eaten by a joyful or frustrated denizen.

Cozzlanga roulette is not the simplest thing to explain, but it is a bit like if you combined dancing, kicking around a ball and a spinning table with hurdles. Cozzlanga roulette usually resulted in head injuries brought about by falling off the table. Most denizens thought it was distantly related to the sport that the blokkit tribe that founded Cozzlanga played. In reality, it was once a warrior training ritual that the tribe had.

What interested Golbassy and Habi was not the games, but the bar where a number of bartenders tended and behind them, lounging on a mauve beanbag with an unreasonably gaudy and fancy blanket, was Mama Viggs. She was reading a book with the cover obscured while eating a bowl of ice cream. Mint and breadcrumb ice-cream. That happened to be Cozzlanga’s speciality ice-cream, the one that natives agreed never to talk about but always ended up making for curious travellers with more krells than sense.

Mama Viggs herself was a blokkit, though, she was so fat that she nearly escaped the blockiness of all blokkits. Her curling headhair was surprisingly gorgeous though.

Golbassy didn’t need to duck as she passed by the Cozzlanga Roulette table, being relatively small, the player just flew over her head. Eadam just swatted the player back onto the table with his battlepan. In swinging though he noticed he had lost a lot of his gang to the various attractions of the den.

Golbassy settled in front of a blokkit who had seen better days and was just kind of listlessly cleaning a glass.

“Some honeydrink if you please, pour it as slowly as you can” Habi said.

The barman looked at them curiously for a moment, but shrugged and taking out a bottle began pouring. Nothing appeared to be coming out, but after a few moments, some liquid could be seen hanging on the lip of the bottle.

Golbassy made a show of looking around, before focusing on Mama Viggs’ book.

She mumbled into Habi.

“Oh my, that is Duke Tryrune’s ‘I Cannot Believe My Darling Ate My Kingdom’ isn’t it?” Habi remarked.

Mama Viggs peeked over her book.

“OH MY DAHLING, whatever is someone with such refined tastes doing here? Dahling, how did you know it was precious Trytry’s superb work?”

Golbassy muttered into Habi, she had just guessed among the books that she need had to be covered, but she couldn’t tell Mama Viggs that.

“His works just give off an aura, don’t you know?” Habi repeated.

“OH OF COURSE, the romance is just thrilling, the cold cruel Galaham and the distant Hin, so gripping and tragic! Galaham’s delusion that Hin hasn’t eaten his kingdom is the essence of love!”

“Y-yes, tragic. You know, Duke Tryrune wrote a sequel? Not many know about it”

Mama Viggs eyes took on a predatory glint to them.

“I’ve read ICBMDAMK five times, and you tell me there is a sequel? MY DAHLING, you simply must tell me where to get it!”

“I’ve my own copy of it, I could lend it to you… ah no I can’t”

Mama Viggs almost leapt off her bean bag.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN’T YOU MISERABLE LITTLE SCRUMPET? *ahem* I mean, whatever is the problem?”

Finally Golbassy was going to get information from this unpleasant women. She had been worried that Habi would not have been able to act interested in Duke Tryrune’s book, after all they had both read the ghastly thing. There wasn’t a sequel but a complete rewrite, however Tryrune had succumbed to despair when he found out that there was people that were fanatical about his first version, thus he never made that many of the rewrite.

She was about to ask about the Niard when one after the other the two bouncers bounced into den, bowling over the gamblers and smashing through tables. The Setlerlung came to a stop near Golbassy and Mama Viggs.

“Hey Viggs, look I quit!” Set said.

“What? What do you mean? GET BACK OUT THERE AND FIGHT WHATEVER THREW YOU IN”

“Nope, no doing. This is the first time I’ve fought someone I can’t beat, so I’m not going, I’m quitting right now” Set said.

“Golba” Habi began “Don’t panic, but I’m sensing that fierce presence that we ran from, no I’m sensing two!”

Two figures stood in the entrance, one appeared headless, holding a hammer, the other was a dog in the shape of a pill.

“Hey dudes and dudettes, I’m betting that anyone who gets in my way will be blown up!”

The voice came from the hammerhead.