Chapter 164: A Little Hiccup

“Looks—Looks dumb?!” I gasped. “Looks dumb? You look dumb!” I pointed at him. “With your tiny head and your tiny body. Why is your voice still normal? You’re the dumb one!”

Then doubt crept in. Maybe I did look dumb. Wearing a tunic like this one and combining it with a tiara was, well, unorthodox to say the least. Fashionably questionable at best. Now that I had the means to look good I shouldn’t settle for looking like I looted my outfit off random people I killed. Even if that was partially true. I’d have to sacrifice some comfort and mobility to look good. It was better to be dead than be caught looking ugly, after all. It would also send a strong message to everyone that I was so powerful that I didn’t need to be able to move to destroy them.

“Also,” I continued. “I was just testing it out. Obviously I have a different outfit planned, Bogumir. You will be amazed when you see my new aesthetic. Amazed and jealous and dumb.”

I looked over at Kasia, whose tunic was barely hanging on, what with the big hole and everything. “And Kasia is also getting a new outfit. And Polikarp is getting new shoes and a hat. And you, Bogumir, you will get nothing unless we find some doll’s clothes. How do you like that, huh? Where are your petty insults now?”

“I don’t care,” he said defiantly.

Actually, where did he get clothes from? When he regrew his body he was obviously naked. How did he get tiny new clothes that fast? Maybe he found a tiny doll and took its clothes. Not that it mattered, because what mattered is that I got new clothes.

“Alright, Ola,” I said. “I’m going to need that red dress and some type of unenchanted undergarment that fits in the leg slot.”

She nodded.

“Vasil, Bogumir, I’m going to craft some new runewords. Or old ones. At least I hope I am. I mean, I will if I have the right runestones.”

“You could always wear the dress over your current outfit,” Bogumir unhelpfully said.

“Are you crazy?!” I said, grabbing my hair. “Do you know how awful that would look? And feel? No, I need new runewords and that’s that.”

Vasil closed his eyes for a moment. “You currently still have 24 runestones available to you.”

Unfortunately Bies’ other runewords were out, because I no longer had any Clover runestones. Banda Masvih probably knew how to get some, being a criminal enterprise and all, but they might not like me very much after the incident. It was possible Melchior might have some as well, but he was probably in Prudnik like his note suggested, and I wanted to return to the cathedral before venturing out there. The next possibility was hunting down some inquisitors and hoping one of them carried one, but the odds of that were low enough that it likely wasn’t worth it. The levels on the other hand would be worth it.

“Should I just make another Adder and Delirium?” I asked.

“You cannot,” Vasil said. “Delirium requires Hand, Star or Wave. You only have a single Hand rune, and no Star and Wave. Adder requires Poison, Speed and Hand. You do not have a Speed rune. So you currently cannot make either.”

Well, that was a bummer. I got all excited about my glow-up, not realizing I didn’t have the stones required. I pulled out the list of runewords the shopkeeper in Berava had given me and slid it in front of Vasil.

“Are there any of these I can make? Ones that don’t suck.”

“Hmm,” he said as he scanned the paper. “Let me take a gander.”

“What?” I looked around. “A gander? I don’t see any geese? First it’s chickens, now it’s geese. Do you have some kind of weird bird obsession? I’m trying to upgrade my style and you’re here talking about birds again. Focus, Vasil! Focus!”

He slowly looked up at me, his mouth a flat line. He blinked a couple of times.

“Gander means look,” Kasia said.

“Not where I’m from! Where I’m from that’s an adult male goose!”

“It means both,” Vasil said.

“I’m not so sure. And even if it did, you should have just said look.” I crossed my arms. “You go into monologues about birds so often I don’t know what to believe anymore. You’re more likely to start talking about birds than give me some advice these days.”

Vasil sighed. “The runewords on this list are decent, and if you really want a new outfit I suppose I will not be able to stop you either way, but I do believe there should be better ones available. It might be a waste. Why not try checking your book again?”

“Chicken the book? What chicken book? This obsession has gone too far!”

“I said checking.”

“Yeah, I heard you. It’s about all you say these days. Chicken this, chicken that. Are you sick? Do we need to find you a healer?”

Vasil narrowed his eyes. “You are messing with me.”

“You’re messing with me!” I said, first pointing at him, then at myself for emphasis.

He nodded thoughtfully. “So nothing in the book?”

“No. Only four and they all require a Clover runestone, which we don’t have.”

“That is a shame.”

“Yeah. Unless we find more Clover runestones. Then it’s not a shame at all.”

“Man,” Bogumir said with a heavy sigh.

I rolled my eyes. ”If Bogumir is done, can we focus back on the matter at hand? I still need to upgrade my new stuff with some runewords. I can’t be seen walking around with unenchanted clothes. I don’t want people to think I’m lame.”

“I don’t think it’s the clothes that make people think you’re lame.”

“People think I’m lame? No one thinks—”

An unexpected sound interrupted me.

“Hic!”

“No one thinks—”

“Hic!”

I slowly turned my head to the offending sound. I didn’t have to guess who the offender was, since there could only be one person who’d interrupt me with hiccups.

Polikarp smiled nervously. “Hic.”

“Why are you doing that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I—hic.” He put his hands over his mouth.

“By the Goddess, man!” I said, throwing up my hands. “Why?! Why are you like this?”

He closed his eyes and pushed his hands harder over his mouth and his face turned purple, but I still heard a little muffled hiccup.

“The shoe wasn’t enough?” I asked, exasperated. “Does it ever end with you? Why did you even pick that Class? What’s wrong with you? Why would you do that? Turn it off!”

“I—I—hic—can’t! I don’t mean to!”

“Why? Please, make it make sense. Did you only get offered two Classes and was your only other choice [Carpenter]?”

His eyes widened. “How did you… how did you know?”

Poor Polikarp. Poor, poor Polikarp. The deck had been stacked against him from the start. He never had a choice. The gods had been unkind to him. Perhaps he had done bad things in a previous life, but just how bad of a person must one be to be offered [Carpenter] and… this.

I sighed, the anger draining completely out of me as waves of pure pity took its place. I couldn’t even be annoyed. The poor man simply couldn’t win. What could he have done in his previous life? Or was he just super bad as a kid?

“Do you like kicking puppies, Polikarp?” I asked.

“What?” He looked confused.

Maybe Stvora had peered into the future and had seen Polikarp would become my loyal follower. Maybe Stvora had gotten a little jealous and decided to play the cruelest of tricks on little Polikarp. I mean, he was average Polikarp now, but he surely was little when he was little. Which was probably when Stvora decided all of this already.

And why was Stvora jealous of me? I only had a couple handfuls of followers. He probably had millions. It was the hair, wasn’t it? Stvora was jealous of my hair. He was probably balding and refused to accept it. I suppose even gods can’t escape male-pattern baldness. I bet he grew his hair long so he could comb it over. Maybe that’s why he killed all the other gods and locked his brother in the earth somewhere. Because rather than shaving his head like a normal person and rocking his shiny dome with confidence, he’d rather just kill everyone.

It suddenly made a whole lot of sense why no one had seen him in forever. No one kidnapped him. He wasn’t trapped. He was just afraid to show his receding hairline! Then comes along me, who has the best of hair, and a lot of it, too. That just won’t fly in Silesia. Can’t have anything nice here, especially not hair. Especially not when it’s shiny and beautiful.

Then again, Bogumir also had hair. Not great hair, but not the worst hair. Plenty of people here had hair, actually…

I glanced over at Bogumir, hoping he could shed some light on the subject, and noticed he was already staring at me with a big frown.

“What?” I asked, adjusting my tiara. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

His frown deepened. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Talking?”

“Why would Stvora be jealous of your hair?”

“I—Did I say that out loud? It’s just a working theory, Bogumir. So far all the evidence is in favor of this thesis. If you’d like to submit any evidence that disproves the theory you are more than welcome to do so. I’m a scientist at heart, after all.”

“A scientist?” he screamed, grabbing his ears. “Stvora is the creator! Why wouldn't he be able to create a full head of hair?”

“That’s the mystery, isn’t it?” I said, nodding slowly, narrowing my eyes. “I feel like we are missing part of the puzzle. We’re close to cracking the case, but we are missing one piece of vital information.”

“What Hecate is saying does make a lot of sense,” Ola said.

“Yes. I agree,” Polikarp said without any hiccups. “In fact, it’s the only logical explanation.”

“What?!” Bogumir cried.

“Aha!” I snapped my fingers. “Chernobog must have destroyed Stvora’s hair! The other gods probably thought it was funny and Stvora killed them because he felt humiliated. It was rude of them to laugh, but—”

“Hecate,” Vasil interrupted.

“Huh?”

“The runewords?”

“Runewords?” I scratched the back of my head. “Oh. Right. The runewords.”