robert asprin - myth-taken identity

We hammered down the ramp into the Rat Hole.

"One Card to Rule The Mall, One Card to Charge it..." Rattila had reached the mound ahead of us. Chanting, he dug his paw into the rotting trash and came up with a gleaming rectangle of gold. Suddenly, the black rat was replaced by a glowing golden wyvern. It spat a stream of acid at us. Chumley caught a whole load in the chest. Howling in pain, he beat at the spreading blob of blackness in the middle of his purple fur. Massha flew to his aid.

Rattila let go with another gob. It splashed at my feet, burning a few holes in my pants hems.

I was too furious to care. This whole adventure started with me getting fireballs thrown in my general direction. This was the being to blame for my partner's damaged reputation, for the trouble we'd all been through. I wasn't about to let him get away again, no matter how much punishment I had to take to get to him. I stepped over the acid and advanced on him.

Massha was ready with a few tricks of her own. Like trying to see one tree in a thick forest, I had never noticed one particular piece of jewelry or another in her formidable ensemble. The solid gold lemon was new to me.

"Here comes the spoiler," she called. She waved it, and the spurting acid turned into huge potted plants, which landed with a thud on the cluttered floor. I laughed. Rattila snarled and changed shape. I growled now; he had transformed himself into the attractive Pervect I had first seen in Rimbaldi's shop.

Evidently the original had had a purseful of heavy-duty hardware. Rattila dipped into the handbag and came up with a fully automatic repeating crossbow. We all dove for cover as the armor-piercing rounds sprayed out.

I took advantage of the muzzle flash blinding my adversary to start crawling, commando fashion, to my left. Once his sight cleared Rattila was looking where I had been, not where I was. He let the enchantress's image drop. I was glad; the mangy SOB didn't deserve to wear a Pervect face.

I figured two or three or four could play at the identity-theft game.

"Massha," I hissed, "disguise me as him. All of us!"

"One special coming up!" Massha announced.

I couldn't see the change in myself, but suddenly there was a big black rat hovering in midair, one lifting an end table to use as a missile, and another one sneaking up behind Rattila.

Eskina had entered the field of battle now. She had a pair of handcuffs dangling from one hand as she crawled up the mound. I stood up, making as much noise as I could. Rattila stared at me, then at Chumley and Massha. He looked shocked and angry; then he grinned, showing all his teeth.

"So, you like my face," he smirked. "Well, I like yours, too!" Beginning the interminable chant again, he changed into the image of Massha. "Don't I look pretty? An oversized Jahk with garish taste in clothes?"

"Not everyone looks good in basic black, you scum," Massha retorted furiously, clasping her hands together.

Rattila's face contorted as he started to choke. Abruptly he recovered, and an evil grin spread across his face. "How do you like turnabout, Jahk?" He closed his/her hands, and the floating rat that was Massha began to cough, clutching her throat. "And your pathetic little toys—those aren't real power!" Her necklaces and bracelets began to shatter. The fragments rained down. "Yes, that one, too!" Her flying belt disappeared. She thumped to the ground.

Chumley heaved the end table at him. He dodged it. I flung myself forward. Eskina scrambled the rest of the way up to the peak of the mound.

Rattila heard the jingle, and spun. Massha stopped coughing. Now Eskina was suffocating. Her handcuffs went flying. I closed the rest of the distance.

Rattila couldn't keep his mind on more than one thing at a time. I put him in a judo hold and tripped him over on his back. As soon as I grabbed him, Eskina fell down, gasping for breath. Chumley joined us, holding on to the figure's kicking feet.

"Some world-ruler you are," I scoffed in Rattila's face. "You lose focus too easily. I bet all your spells fall apart like that." I reached for the gold card.

Roaring out his rhyme, Rattila squirmed out of my grasp in the shape of a gigantic serpent. Chumley reached around with both arms and locked my arms in the corners of the serpent's jaw so he couldn't sink his fangs into anyone. I spotted the Master Card on a tiny chain around the snake's neck, and started to shinny up the writhing, muscular length toward it.

"Mmmph mmmph mmm mmm mmm mmmph, mmmmph mmm mmm mmm mmph," Rattila-the-snake muttered around my arms.

In the next second I was grasping a bright yellow, six-foot fish covered with five-inch-long spines.

"Yeowch!" I yelled. It was an effort, but I held on.

"I'll take care of it, honey," Massha called. I don't know how she did it, but the spines became rubbery and soft. We wrestled Rattila to the ground by his fins and dragged him by inches down the slope toward Eskina and the handcuffs. His flukes flopped furiously, trying to make me let go.

"No way, vermin," I snarled. Eskina jumped on top of him and fastened the cuffs around one fin. The open mouth goggled a few times. We collapsed on top of a nest of thin tentacles like pink spaghetti. They whipped around us with astonishing strength and dragged us up toward a maw filled with incurving teeth.

"You don't know the power of the Master Card," Rattila slavered.

I braced myself off a bundle of the writhing tentacles and came around with both hands joined in a double fist. I smashed it into the grinning face. The tentacles contorted painfully as the face collapsed in pain.

"I don't believe in credit cards," I informed him, giving him a solid kick, and followed it up with an uppercut.

Eskina sank her teeth into the tentacle holding her. Chumley, uncommonly furious for a being of his temperament, knotted the writhing legs together in a gigantic macrame plant holder.

"Gives other people too much power over you."

Rattila wailed in pain. I recognized the chant again.

"I no longer need to control you," he yelled, changing into a Troll the exact likeness of Chumley. "I've got power over all your friends!" He lifted each of us in one hand and threw us down the mound. "Where are my mall-rats?" he roared, stomping toward the showroom.

Massha staggered to her feet. "They're not coming," she announced, dusting herself off. "They got a better offer."

The Troll spun on his heel, gawking in astonishment.

I wanted an explanation from Massha, too, but it would have to wait.

Chumley was there and ready for him.

"You do not deserve to wear my face," he informed Rattila, wrapping one meaty arm around the other's head.

If you've never seen two Trolls fight, let me tell you it is not a lot different than watching two avalanches rolling toward one another. The collateral damage to the location, furnishings, and anyone unlucky enough to be within range of a limb or thrown object is usually considerable. Most insurance policies written in dimensions where there is a lot of D-hopping specifically exclude damage sustained involving a Troll, a lot like the dragon-fire exclusion. I had always found it amusing that insurance never covered anything that was likely to cost the most to repair.

Massha, Eskina, and I followed the battle as it progressed around the overstuffed Rat Hole and up the ramp out into The Volcano. Roars, howls, and thuds warned the curious listeners in the store overhead to get the hell out of the way and retreat to a safe distance by the time Chumley and his impostor rolled through the curtained doorway.

"Should we not help Chumley?" Eskina inquired.

"We're far more likely to get in the way," I informed her. "If Chumley needs our help, he'll ask."

One Troll was clearly flagging. He heaved up a low platform, brought it down on his opponent's head, and stopped to pant. The other staggered backward, then came running at the first one with his head down. The first went flying back into a rack of clothes.