Raven finished unpacking the crates of basic supplies she and Cody had brought back in the wagon and took a long look around the destroyed sales floor. “There is a lot to do really fast. Chadwick almost has that road done through the forest.”
“Yeah, I plan to start tidying up right after I go and take a weird cat shit,” Cody chuckled, stretching his arms over his head. “I plan to build a fucking me-sized litter box and everything.”
“What’s a litter box?” Raven asked, stretching out her shoulders and pulling her heavy pack off.
“It's where cats shit in our world,” Cody said, dropping his own packs onto the linoleum.
“But you’re like... person-sized.” Raven laughed, shaking her head. “And after all that food at Wangs…”
“It’s going to be magnificent.” Cody jerked a furry thumb toward the door. “I’m gonna go take a dump in Dick Gorge to christen it. Wanna join?”
Raven chuckled, genuinely amused by the absurdity of these humans. “Nah, I prefer to shit in peace. I’ll take the back.”
“Then we need to get going on this place when we're done,” Cody said, moving toward the front doors with a hurried stiffness that suggested he wasn’t sure he could hold it. “BRB.”
Raven shook her head. People from that world kept saying that, but she still didn’t know what it meant.
She walked through the messy back room to the heavy metal rear door, propping it open. She hopped down the five-foot drop into the subterranean dirt tunnel she and Sara had used earlier. If she was going to shit, she wanted to shit where she felt most comfortable: underground.
The rocky path she chose wasn’t long. It meandered a bit and broke off into two sections. The left fork had an almost perfect hole in the stone that led down into a rushing subterranean river, judging by the sound echoing up. Perfect.
Raven undid her pants and squatted over the hole, letting the cool, damp air of the cave wash over her. She thought about everything that had brought her to this place. She thought about Chadwick, Sara, Mark, and the looming threat of Craig, before she realized she had completed her task.
Using three smooth seashells she found sitting inexplicably on a small stone ledge, she cleaned herself, pulled up her pants, and started back up the path.
Suddenly, she heard a faint, deliberate scraping sound coming from the right fork of the tunnel.
Before she could even turn to look, she heard the voice.
“Matron Mother Muninn demands your presence.”
A shadowy figure detached itself from the darkness of the cave wall, clothed in the standard, basic-ass purple and black leathers of a House Muninn scout.
“April,” Raven sighed, her blood instantly boiling. “I already told Mother I’m not coming back. I fought like hell to get out.”
“Then I have permission to kill you,” April said coldly, drawing a wicked, curved stiletto from her belt.
Raven rolled her pale eyes. Not this shit again. “You know you’re not even the one after me anyway. Savannah is.”
April lunged, moving with terrifying Drow speed, her stiletto thrusting directly for Raven’s heart.
And then it happened. Just like every time. Something broke in the younger sister's form. Raven didn't even reach for a weapon. She dropped her center of gravity, smoothly sidestepping the lethal thrust, and grabbed April’s wrist with one hand. With fluid, brutal precision, Raven slammed her open palm squarely into the center of her sister’s chest, sending a shockwave of kinetic force through the leather armor. April gasped, the air leaving her lungs instantly, and dropped hard to the stone floor.
Raven leaned down, effortlessly kicking the fallen dagger away into the dark, and grabbed April by the collar of her shirt, hauling her halfway off the ground.
“You’re lucky I want away from this life, or I would…” Raven stopped herself, forcing the Plunderdark cruelty back down. “No. Leave. If you come back, I won’t let you live a second time.”
April fell from Raven’s grasp, scrambling backward across the dirt, genuine fear painting her sharp features. “You betray the Spider Queen! I’ll… I’ll get you for this!”
She turned and dashed back into the deeper cave system, swallowed by the shadows.
Fuck. She would have to seal that tunnel later.
Raven stood, dusted off her knees, composed herself, and climbed back up into the shop.
She found Cody, done with his dump, in the Kid Cutters quarters next door, which still only had three beds built. “So, what do you have in mind for the rest of the day?”
Cody turned to her as he was arranging a shelf of Earth supplies near his bed. “Why don’t we go get Chadwick and check out the Bridge of Guaranteed Death?”
Raven felt a deep, instinctual pull of dread at the name. “It’s still so hard to understand that the name has meant absolutely nothing all this time. Mark just made it up as a joke. And still, so many people from this world have died there.”
“Yeah,” Cody said, slinging a pack over his leather-clad back. “Funny how the mind can create what’s not actually there. You coming?”
“Yeah,” Raven nodded, pushing the fear down. “Of course. Chadwick should be due back soon anyway. It only takes him a few minutes each way. Minotaurs are fucking quick when they're training.”
“So, how long have you two been friends?” Cody asked as they headed out of the shop and down the parking lot toward the newly forming road.
“Oh,” she said. “Just since working at Pizza Hut together. So, about a year. Ah, here’s our boy.”
In the distance, Chadwick was a thundering presence, drumming up the gray grass and soil as he crested the hill, his long, flowing blond hair trailing behind him. He had carved a massive, two-wagon-wide dirt path straight through the symmetrical trees. It only took him another moment to come to a halt just in front of them, barely out of breath. “Hey! Welcome back, bros!”
Raven dapped Chadwick up, taking a look up and down his massive frame. “Damn, looks like you been dirty bulking this run, huh? You’re looking shredded.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works,” Cody mumbled.
“I guess living off liquor store food does that,” Chadwick chuckled, wiping sweat from his brow. “Good to see you, Cody, bro! Your delivery wagons will be here in about an hour.”
“Awesome!” Cody responded. “Have you taken a look at the bridge yet?”
Chadwick stretched his massive arms. “Yeah. It’s a pretty nothing-burger now that I know its story. Just a long, and actually really wide, stone bridge over the bog. We’ll have no problem just claiming it for the toll road.”
“Sweet,” Cody said. “Wanna walk back and check it out with us?”
Chadwick looked back over his shoulder down the long, freshly cleared dirt path. “Yeah. I think I’ve got enough cardio done for right now. I might run back later.”
“Let’s roll,” Raven said, taking the lead and settling into a good jog. “Hope you can keep up!”
“See ya there,” Cody waved dismissively, absolutely not running with her. “Bad ankle from high school.”
It took them about an hour and a half to walk the length of Chadwick's new highway. When the trees finally broke, Raven looked out at the structure spanning the misty gorge, and she couldn’t help but feel a deep, suffocating sense of dread. It was a massive, ancient-looking stone bridge, almost half a mile long, and it could easily fit three wagons abreast with room to spare.
What have I been afraid of this whole time?
“I don’t know, bro,” Chadwick said, scratching at his long, multicolored goatee as he looked at it. “Looks like you can just… walk across it.”
Cody just started walking.
Raven held her breath as he stepped out over the misty gorge. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty.
He stopped, turned around, and shrugged. “Nothing.”
Raven looked at him with awe. “You just… walked?”
“Yeah.” Cody started doing a ridiculous, hip-thrusting dance in the middle of the bridge. “Nothing.”
Raven stood frozen on the edge of the dirt path as Chadwick joined Cody. The two of them started getting a feel for the bridge, pointing out locations and making plans for toll checkpoints.
She looked down at her heavy boots and tried to will them forward onto the stone, but they wouldn’t go. It was still lodged deep in her head that this was a bridge that would result in exactly what its name implied: Certain Death. It was a universally accepted fact in Tawagoto. Every fiber in her being screamed at her to turn back. She couldn't budge her leg.
She couldn’t let them see her weakness.
“You coming?” Cody looked back, now about fifty yards ahead with the Minotaur.
Raven looked around the foggy gorge, her heart pounding, and still she couldn’t move. “Nah. I’m just gonna… watch… for… goblins.”
The two exchanged a few quiet words and walked back to the edge of the forest. Chadwick took the lead. “Bro, what’s up?”
Raven almost flinched. “Nothing. I’m fine. Just tired.”
Cody shook his furry head. “Uh-huh. And I’m an Illithid.”
Raven bit the inside of her lip, squeezing her nails into her palms until they broke the pale skin. “Was your last meal an imbecile?”
“Bro,” Chadwick countered gently, his deep voice soothing. “I know when something’s bothering you. What is it? You know we are part of the Circle of Non-Judgement.”
“That’s a thing?” Cody cocked his head.
“And a spell,” Raven muttered, her shoulders dropping in defeat. “I’m afraid, okay!”
“Of the bridge?” Cody asked. “Or of Certain Death?”
Raven’s mind wrestled with the concept. “I don’t know. ¿Por qué no los dos?”
“Totally understandable, bro,” Chadwick nodded sympathetically. “We’ve been fed a lie about this place for our whole lives.”
“Yeah,” Cody said, his tone turning surprisingly serious. “We know exactly how it is to be lied to for life.”
“You do?” Raven wondered, looking at the Catfolk. “If you’re from the overworld, why would you ever want to come here to this mess?”
“I was slowly dying,” Cody said, looking out over the misty gorge. “The food in our world is literally chemically designed to get you addicted. Our society is so fucked. They tell us shit like ‘it’s for your own good,’ or ‘we have to keep the peace,’ or any number of other bullshit things that are only meant to drive up corporate profits. You could bet your ass if someone from our world had control of this bridge, people would die on it all the time just to justify a budget.”
Raven thought about it for a moment, the concepts foreign but the cruelty familiar. “What do you mean?”
Cody shrugged. “If our government or our corporations needed people to believe that this bridge caused certain death to sell a cure for it, then they would make sure someone died on it every so often to keep the fear alive.”
“They would just… kill a person to keep an image?” Raven felt a sick twist in her stomach. “How fucking cruel are your people?”
“Just like yours, except we pretend to frown on killing,” Cody responded dryly. “It must be a fucking wild-ass ride being from Hazbruhharassin.”
Her eyes pulled wide briefly. Did he know something? “My life… it was nothing but competing for scraps, and not knowing who to get close to because they would just end up dead in a week. The things I did for Lolth just to survive… I despise them.”
“I hear that,” Cody said gently. “Same same, but different. But now that I can? I say fuck the rules. Fuck the stupid bullshit that keeps us held down and afraid.”
Raven mulled it over. Being second in line to become the Matron Mother of House Muninn was a life of pure paranoia and violence that she didn’t want. She liked this life. She liked building roads with a Minotaur. She liked breaking tradition and throwing caution to the wind. She liked Sara.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lifted her boot.
It was time for her to build the life she chose, not the one her elders fed her. She opened her eyes, stepped forward onto the cold stone of the Bridge of Guaranteed Death, and didn't look back. “Let’s do this.”
Character Name: Raven Muninn
Class: Brawler 11
Race: Drow
Stats:
Strength: 22
Dexterity: 20
Constitution: 12
Intelligence: 16
Wisdom: 14
Charisma: 16