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Riz Gukgak won’t go to sleep.
It’s… inconvenient.
From the shadows, Kalina watches him suck down another double-shot of espresso and go right on tacking clues to one of his bulletin boards, sorting through old files about Kalvaxus and the Crown of the Nightmare King and whatever other bullshit he’s digging into. Normal boys his age spend all day playing games on their crystal and jerking off. This kid thinks he’s fucking Columbo or something.
The thing is that if the kid doesn’t sleep he doesn’t dream, and if he won’t dream he won’t have nightmares, and if he can’t have nightmares then she and her employer can’t get at him. Where’s the chink in his armor? Where does she have an in?
She finally gets an idea from one of the little pirate boy’s nightmares, what looks like a distorted memory of a darkened graveyard. How do you draw out a rat? You make a sexy rat. Something to entice the creature you’re trying to capture.
So how do you capture a goblin? You make a sexy goblin.
When she mentions her latest plan to one of her associates, he frowns. “You’re going to honey-trap a minor?”
“Grow a spine, Porter,” she snaps. “These aren’t children, they’re obstacles.”
She presents her findings to the Nightmare King and entreats Him to create an illusory lover designed specifically to appeal to the things Riz Gukgak would find attractive in a mate.
Days later, the Nightmare King calls to her to announce what He’s created. “I made him,” He says, “from a lie and a truth.”
Him? Figures the kid’d turn out gay, since his first kiss was with that carpet-munching corn cleric. “A lie and a truth, huh?”
She senses rather than sees the Nightmare King nod His massive head. He is not quite tangible yet, but His voice and spirit are becoming clearer. “A lie Riz Gukgak told,” the Nightmare King says. “And a truth he will not name.” And then He presents a tall gilded mirror. Kalina gets the sense that if she peers for too long at the swirling patterns around the edges she’ll be staring for quite some time.
It’s always disconcerting standing in front of a mirror. She casts no reflection naturally, has to put in effort to create the illusion. (Makes it a bitch to check her mascara, though.) As she stares, she does see a figure appear in the mirror. It doesn’t look like her.
It has spindly mannequin arms and legs, and outdated outfit, bone-white skin like shiny plastic. Long hair falls in ringlets, like cornsilk on a doll, and its massive ears and small stature make it seem like it’s meant to be some kind of fucked-up goblin. Its eyes are black holes. It has too many teeth, and they all look like they might be attached in one big line.
“Fuck, okay, this is why you don’t ask a god of fear to do a god of seduction’s job,” she grouses to herself, putting a hand on the glass of the mirror. The mannequin goblin thing puts his hand up against hers. It feels kind of sticky. “My King, this is the… alluring mate meant to entice Riz Gukgak?”
“Riz Gukgak is attracted to nothing so much as a mystery,” the Nightmare King replies. “You cannot say that Baron from the Baronies lacks mystery.”
Kalina thinks that maybe, after all these years, she’s starting to understand Riz.
He’s irritating. Irritating in the same way that Pok used to be, when she would make a little joke about sleeping with him and instead of blushing and getting flustered he would just give her a cold look.
She feels stupid now for believing that the Nightmare King could whip up a sexy lamp of a goblin for the boy, some enticing illusion that would draw him close enough for Kalina to sink her claws in. The kid has no imagination, no passion. His greatest desire is simply a thing that cannot be easily explained. A crossword puzzle inside a funhouse mirror.
It’s infuriating.
She’s more glad than ever to use him as a sacrifice.
“Is it almost time?” the creepy thing in the mirror asks.
Kalina hides a flinch. Holy shit, this thing makes her skin crawl. “Yes, yes, you’ll get to go and seduce your loverboy tomorrow night,” she promises.
Baron tilts his head to the side. “Riz Gukgak,” it says, tasting the name in its mouth. “My romance partner.”
“I’m not sure the kid’s gonna be all that romantic, just so you know,” she says, rolling up her map of the Elmville Mall. Getting the tiefling girl to trap her father is honestly the easier endeavor, right now. Pride, wrath, self-pity… these are easy enough for the Nightmare King to spin and twist.
Whatever Pok’s annoying son has going on is something else. It should be easy to control him through desire, but apparently he has none. Feelings of worthlessness, rage, loneliness… every other angle seemingly falls flat. The kid is exasperatingly well-adjusted.
“I will make him see,” Baron from the Baronies says. “I will win his heart.”
“You could just shoot him with a gun,” Kalina says. “I’m honestly not that picky at this point.”
Baron’s head twists even further, until it’s upside-down. He smiles. Frowns? And then he twists the other 180 degrees until his head is right-side-up again. “I won’t harm a hair on his head,” he says. “I will leave that to you and your demons.”
“Great. Awesome.” She needs a drink. She’s needed a drink since her inception. She knows it’s never coming. Being incorporeal is a real bitch.
“Mistress?”
“Yeah?”
“What will become of me once my romance partner is dead in the ground?”
Kalina stares at the thing in the mirror. This terrible eldritch construct that should not exist and, more importantly, should not be bothering her with dumbass questions. “I don’t know,” she says. “You’ll go back to mirror-world.”
“Is that where I’m from?”
“You’re from nowhere,” she says. “You’re not real.”
He frowns. “I want to be real.”
“I don’t care.” She doesn’t care. She really doesn’t.
She definitely isn’t thinking, Me too, kid.