Dream Makers

In which Bon Bon encounters the mud imps, and laments the fact that she drank too much cider before going to bed.

Bon Bon awoke to the sound of the wind and rain being dashed furiously against the old wooden house.  Satisfied that the place wasn’t about to come down around her ears, she started to wrestle the half-echoes of waves and drumbeats back into muted lullabies.  Despite her best efforts, though, she was betrayed repeatedly by her ears, which had become fixated on the explosive snoring from across the room.

Opening her bleary eyes, Bon Bon lifted her head and waited for the room to stop spinning.  Mountains formed by the shaded angles of haphazardly suspended drapes and lace trembled from the embers glowing inside filigree lanterns and the hanging chains of solar crystals.  She felt a momentary panic before remembering where she was, but by then was too irritated at being awake in the middle of the night to find peace in the chaotic warmth and mystery of the room.

Bon Bon’s irritation worsened with the realisation that she also needed to go to the bathroom.

With a low growl, she climbed from her makeshift burrow of blankets and pillows and trotted across the room, making sure to stamp very loudly.  Not that it made much of a difference—a week of travelling with Cherry Berry had already taught her that her friend slept as deep as she did loud, especially when she was surrounded by the corpses of cider and wine bottles.  It was so unfair.

The air in the landing was in heavy contrast to that of the bedroom; as she walked towards the bathroom door, Bon Bon’s senses were assaulted by the same damp, oppressive air that had filled the living room when they had opened the trapdoor.  She blinked, trying to clear the fuggy haze from her mind in order to process the change in the atmosphere, but the cider had left as much of a stain on her brain as it had her tongue.  Licking dry lips, Bon Bon raised a shaky hoof to open the bathroom door.

“’Oi now, what’s your game then?”

Bon Bon blinked, her vision swimming in compensation as her ears pricked and honed in on the sound.  She rested her hoof against the door and blinked again.  The noise had been of a high enough pitch to have simply been just the stiff hinges on the door, but she was pretty sure doors didn’t speak.

“Yah, tell ‘er, Mud-meister!”

“Stilt-legged monolith!”

“Tail-twitchin’ upstart!”

“Queue-jumper!”

Bon Bon looked over her shoulder as the twinkling chorus of voices grew louder.  They sounded vaguely familiar—some memory or other from her time living in her parents’ dungeon—but she just couldn’t put her hoof on from where.

Seeing nothing in the shadows of the corridor behind her, but hearing the voices relentlessly continue their abuse—Bon Bon dropped her eyes, and then gasped in surprise.

A dozen pairs of compound eyes were staring up at her from beneath her barrel, each pair embedded in an angled face the colour and texture of an orange that had been picked and left to dry in the sun for three weeks.  Those heads sat atop of squat, strong bodies from which protruded varying lengths of quartz, each shimmering with warm, amber light.  Or at least, trying to shimmer; each creature was caked from head to talon with varying amounts of mud and clay.

Bon Bon winced as their chittering continued to drive sharp knives into her brain.  Now she remembered what they were: Mud imps, the long suffering labour force of nearly every wild grown dungeon, always at the bottom of the hierarchy and always harbouring chips on their shoulders as a result.

She recalled the numerous interactions her father had had with them over the years—usually debates over what constituted poor quality or value for money—and quickly scanned the group beneath her.  Mud imp teams could only be communicated with through the Mud-meister; the rest would simply throw abuse and insults (or worse) at her until she retreated.

Which obviously wasn’t going to happen, her bladder calmly instructed her.  Finding the one covered the most by mud—its quartz angles muted and latent—Bon Bon inclined her head towards it.

“Uh... Sorry, didn’t see you there.”  She had briefly considered simply exerting her natural authority over them, but conceded she had no idea yet as to whether she might need assistance in constructing a dungeon space for her shop.  It made no sense burning bridges so soon after arriving.

“I was just hoping to quickly use the bathroom,” she added.  “Then I’ll go back to bed and get out of your way.”

“Huh, we’re all waitin’, aren’t we?” The Mud-meister flexed its mandibles as it pointed to the rest of the imps.  “Scheduled to finish buildin’ a new lair for the insects, aren’t we.  Can’t start til we’re sparklin’, though the Dungeon Keeper wants it finished yesterday.  ’Course, he always does.”

“Yah,” another mud imp squeaked.  “Remember when ‘e—”

The Mud-meister silenced it with a murderous stare, which Bon Bon had been expecting.  Mud imps were notorious gossipers—which nine times out of ten resulted in the banishment, mutilation and death of them and their teams.

“As I was sayin’,” it continued.  “All of us are waitin’, so you’ll ‘ave to get in line.”

“But I—” Bon Bon bit down on her tongue and dutifully trotted to the back of the small queue.  She felt groggy and tired, but was determined to stay polite.  It shouldn’t take too long after all.

But still, how could someplace as perfect as this not have a separate bathroom specifically for mud imps to use? Everybeast knew that mud imp teams had to bathe before starting a shift to ensure easy recognition of the hardest working imp—through mud accumulation, naturally—and thus determining who would be Mud-meister the following day.  Of course, the sheer volume of mud imps working in any one dungeon meant that there was an almost unending procession of teams needing to shower.  No, she would have to petition the Dungeon Keeper to have more bathrooms installed immediately.

Bon Bon fidgeted on the spot for a few minutes as her body kindly reminded her that she was racing against the clock, but there was no movement in the queue; not a single mud imp went in, and not a single mud imp came out.

When it finally felt as though both her bladder and her brain were about to burst, she snapped.

“Does your Dungeon Keeper mind you turning up this late to your shift?” She pointed a hoof downstairs.  “I should make a complaint to him this instant.  I mean, honestly, look at the size of you—how can it take so long to get clean?”

The Mud-meister glared over its shoulder.  “We’re not bathin’, are we!”

“Yes, I can see that!” Bon Bon hissed as red hot needles tap-danced behind her eyes.  “What I want to know is why!”

“There’s a spider in the bath.”  The Mud-meister said this in a tone that suggested it should have been perfectly obvious.

“A Spid—?” Bon Bon shook her head.  “You mean to say that I’ve been standing around for the last fifteen minutes just because some silly mud imps are scared of a spider?”

Ignoring their agitated chittering, Bon Bon stepped over the mud imps and approached the door.

“Shut up,” she barked at them.  “I am far too tired and have had far too much cider to deal with this right now.  I’m going to get rid of this spider and then go to the toilet.  Leisurely.”

She pushed through the door and locked it behind her.  Then she looked around.

The first thing she noticed were the spires and valleys of cobwebs that had not been there earlier in the day, but were now everywhere.

The second thing she noticed was the spider in the bath.

The spider that stood two meters tall and had javelins for legs and scythes for fangs.