Chapters View Online
1. You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth
The inn was on fire. Lemon Zest ran across the room, surrounded by the blazing aura of a Fire Tornado, trying to ignite as many undead as she could. Indigo swung the battle axe into the skull of another undead, spraying the bits of bone and brain around.
“Stop it!” Indigo shouted, yanking the axe out and turning to face another attacker. “I have no fire resistance!”
“If it’s any consolation, Sugarcoat doesn’t either.” Sour Sweet aimed her bow, shooting one of the undead in the throat. It didn’t faze them at all, though; the pale silhouette charged at them, swiftly avoiding both the fire and Indigo’s axe.
“Do something!” Sugarcoat yelled from under the table, watching as the undead warrior shrugged off all of Sour’s arrows, baring his fangs and hissing at them.
“What?” Indigo asked. “It’s your army, isn’t it?”
“Not mine anymore!” Sugarcoat exclaimed. “Also, where’s Sunny?”
“Here I am!” Sunny dashed from the upstairs, holding a barrel in her hands. She rushed at the undead, hurling the barrel in their direction and quickly running away. “This should teach them!”
“What’s in the barrel?” Sour asked, watching as the barrel knocked their opponent down and rolled further, catching fire. “I swear, if it’s more gunpowder…”
“Nah, it’s, you know, stuff .” Sunny shrugged. “I mean, this probably shouldn’t–”
The barrel hit the wall, breaking and falling apart.
Then, without any warning, the inn exploded.
Twilight looked at the five girls in front of her, watching her with eager anticipation. She had a brief thought of running away; the very fact that she saw Indigo Zap in the library was too much of a shock.
“What do you mean you need a new DM?” Twilight asked, wondering if she’d be caught before she’d be able to hide in the narrow alleys of the geology section. “And why did you go to me?”
“Well, we knew you’d be here.” Sunny Flare looked at her wrist device and tapped the screen a few times. “I took notes of your weekly schedule and–”
“You might want to stop before you get a brand new restraining order,” Sugarcoat muttered. “Also, I don’t think we really need a new DM, but I’m afraid I got outvoted.” She looked at her friends and sighed.
“Well, you’re a good DM,” Sour Sweet said. “But why do you keep killing us?”
“Yeah, we die like, in every session.” Indigo rolled her eyes. “I went through ten different characters during one campaign and I still died in the end.”
“It’s not my fault all your characters are illiterate barbarians with a tendency to charge blindly at every monster,” Sugarcoat replied. “Besides, you didn’t die when we played Call of Cthulhu .”
“Yes, first we went insane,” Lemon Zest said. “Then we died.”
“Well, in Call of Cthulhu that’s pretty much inevitable,” Twilight said, deciding not to run away just yet. “Also, didn’t you play Vampire: Requiem with Lemon as a DM? That was when I was still in Crystal Prep.”
The other girls looked at each other. Indigo winced, to which Sunny responded with a shrug. Eventually, all their gazes focused on Lemon who smiled sheepishly.
“For starters, it was Vampire: The Masquerade ,” Sunny Flare said. “I got it ages ago. Also, somewhere halfway through the campaign it turned out that–”
Sour furrowed her eyebrows. “Hey, we agreed not to talk about that.”
“Who cares,” Sugarcoat replied. “The thing is, halfway through the campaign it turned out that Lemon was trying to turn us into a lesbian vampire posse, which was kind of fun and games until Sour and Sunny almost got into a fight over Indigo.”
“You’re just jealous no one wanted to be with you,” Sunny said. “Also, I was finally adored, you know. And I’d totally give Indigo a makeover, with a side of making out.”
Sugarcoat smirked. “I was playing a Malkavian. I can understand why not even the most depraved posse of disfunctional lesbian vampires in the World of Darkness would want to stick their metaphorical dicks in crazy.”
“And eventually it got awkward, especially when Indigo remembered that she’s straight,” Sour Sweet said. “And since it was late at night and Sunny had one drink too many, she forgot that she’s–” She paused and looked at Sunny. “–whatever she is.”
Sunny pouted. “Indigo almost broke my hand. I couldn’t move it for days.”
“I missed,” Indigo replied. “So anyway, since then we don’t let Lemon be a DM. Also, we wanted to ritually burn the rulebook, but Sunny said it may become valuable one day.”
Twilight shuddered at the very thought of burning a book. “So, how do you want to do it? Do you need some time to create new characters?”
“Owing to Sugarcoat taking sadistic pleasure in killing our characters, I’d say yes,” Sunny said. “Also, there’s plenty of space in my house and it’s already a nerd cave, so be my guest. Do you have any particular campaign in mind?”
“Several.” Twilight’s eyes lit up. “I came up with a fun campaign, but everyone is busy as of late…”
“We’re not.” Sugarcoat smirked and turned to Sunny. “Also, I’d rather make your characters’ lives miserable, but you keep messing it up by dying.”
Indigo walked to Twilight. “What do you mean by fun? Will there be monsters?”
“Plenty of them,” Twilight replied. “Also, pirates.”
“What about ninjas?”
Twilight shrugged. “Could include some ninjas too.”
“Awesome!” Indigo exclaimed. “Okay, I guess I’ll have to get another barbarian, then…”
This particular room in Sunny’s house was dim and looked like it was mostly used to keep stuff she didn’t need at the moment or at least stuff she was rarely coming back to. It was full of discarded, half-dismantled electronics and rolls of fabric. One particular piece of cloth also had electronics on it, though it may have been some kind of Daft Punk cosplay. Twilight most certainly wished it was so – while she’d found out Sunny was in some ways similar to Rarity, her ability to deal with computers was almost uncanny, while Rarity needed garlic, a wooden stake, and the assistance of her sister to deal with anything more complicated than her phone.
“Is that a jet glider?” she asked, looking at the large device lying behind an old armchair.
“Glad you asked,” Sunny replied. “That’s a working replica of a jet glider from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, although I wouldn’t bet on its airworthiness. I actually wanted to try it, but when Sugarcoat told me that she’d send the video to the Darwin Awards guys, I decided to reconsider. At least until I find a willing test subject.”
“Have you tried some forums for weebs?” Indigo suggested.
“Several.” Sunny shrugged. “Turns out, most of them aren’t that stupid.”
“Well, anyway…” Twilight sat down and looked at the table in front of her. It was mostly cleared of electronics, replaced with dice, notes, maps, drinks, and snacks. When it came to organising sessions, Sunny most certainly didn’t bother with half-measures. “Where do we start? I mean, I looked at your character sheets and I have several questions.”
“Here we go,” Sour Sweet muttered.
“Well, actually your elf ranger is fine,” Twilight replied. “Lemon, however…”
“What? Again!?” Lemon exclaimed. “It’s enough I get this from Sugarcoat at the start of every campaign, but you too?”
“No wonder,” Twilight said, looking into her notes. “We agreed not to use any homebrew spells and yet your bard somehow knows Fire Tornado.”
“She likes fireshows,” Lemon replied. “Also, she’s a tiefling. No wonder she has infernal connections.”
“No Fire Tornado.” Twilight sighed. “Also, if you apparently come from a noble family, then how did you end up as a travelling bard?”
“The family didn’t like that either,” Lemon replied. “But hey, they still kinda support me.”
“I noticed.Your equipment is heavier than you, Sugarcoat, and Sunny combined. You even have bagpipes and uhh…” Twilight looked into her notes again. “A pony.”
“I have to travel from town to town,” Lemon replied. “Lots of people want to hear me play the lyre.” She shrugged. “I just realised I forgot to name my pony.”
“Yeah, we’ll get back to that. I would ask since when there were noble tiefling families, but I assume they’re some kind of hell aristocracy.” Twilight turned to Indigo. “So, you’re a human barbarian called Fafhrd. I must say I like that reference.”
“That’s a reference?” Indigo turned to Sugarcoat. “This is some kind of prank, isn’t it?”
“I somehow knew you two cooperated when I saw Sugarcoat’s character was called Gray Mouser.” Twilight smirked. “Though I was surprised it’s not a rogue.”
“A cleric is just as good a profession for a hobbit as any.” Sugarcoat shrugged. “I’m just a simple hobbit trying to make my way in the universe.”
“Halfling,” Twilight said. “There are no hobbits here.”
“I prefer to be called a hobbit.”
“Whatever,” Indigo said. “For me, you could even be a gnome.”
“Speaking of…” Twilight raised her eyebrows. “Sunny, your character is the shortest half-orc I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s because the other half is a gnome.” Sunny shrugged. “Mom told me the party was so hard she was glad I’m not barking.”
“I’m not sure that’s biologically possible…” Twilight shook her head.
“That’s what dad said.”
“We didn’t even start playing and she’s already becoming one with her character.” Sour Sweet shrugged. “Before we finish, she’ll be insane.” She smirked. “Trust me, I know something about this.”
“We know that you know.” Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “So, we have a tiefling bard, a human barbarian, a hobbit cleric–”
“Halfling,” Twilight corrected.
“I can be whatever I want. I’m chaotic evil,” Sugarcoat replied with a smirk. “And to make it all complete, we have a pointy-eared ranger, and uhh… a half-orc, half-gnome artificer. Another win for diversity.”
“Hey, you complained when we all chose the same race in Star Wars: Age of Rebellion, ” Indigo said.
“That’s because you all randomly decided to be Gungans.” Sugarcoat sighed. “At least I managed to give you all a one-way ticket to the Death Star. Well, except for Sunny because she thought she could take on two stormtroopers at once.”
“One of them had asthma,” Sunny replied. “I could hear his breathing. Not my fault the dice hate me.”
Sugarcoat nodded. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”
“So, shall we start?” Twilight asked, pouring herself a glass of water. “Sit comfortably, because we start in an inn…”
“Typical,” Sugarcoat muttered. “I look for the mysterious stranger sitting in a corner.”
Twilight looked into her notes. “We’ll get to that.”
The tavern, just like every evening, was full of creatures of all races. The town of sailors and merchants was open to anyyone who had money. No one would bat an eye on a tiefling bard sitting in the corner and entertaining the patrons with bawdy songs. Dwarves from the northern mines sat in another corner, discussing some shady business with a particularly ugly half-orc.
The large, hulking barbarian took a sip of his beer and looked at the tiefling.
“Chill out, Indigo,” the barbarian's companion muttered. “For gods’ sake, she has horns.”
The barbarian called Indigo looked down – it took a while as his friend was a thin halfling dressed in a black robe, barely visible above the table. “My name’s Fafhrd.”
“And I totally feel like choking on it all the time,” the halfling replied. “At least Gray Mouser is easier to pronounce.”
“Calm down, Sugartits,” Indigo said. “Also, you’re supposedly chaotic evil. What’s wrong about tieflings?”
“Opposites attract.” Gray Mouser pointed at an elf standing by the counter. “Now, if it wasn’t for my religion, I’d totally–”
The elf turned back, furrowing her eyebrows and grabbing a bow. “Listen up, you little shit,” she muttered. “If you don’t stop staring at my ass, you’ll have to get an arrow out of yours.”
“Well, I can’t really look much higher.” The halfling shrugged.
“Sorry for Sugarcoat,” Indigo said. “Me mom found ‘im in the mountains. Ran away from the circus or somethin’.”
“What the hell is that accent?” Sugarcoat whispered.
“I’m a barbarian, after all.” Indigo shrugged. “Me friend prefers to fornicate with elves, rather than tieflings, but–”
“How?” the elf asked. “Does he have a ladder?”
“Unfortunately, he’s an eunuch.” Indigo shrugged. “Religion thing.”
“I’m not!” Sugarcoat exclaimed.
“Or maybe it’s just small, even for a halfling.” Indigo stretched her muscles. “Barbarians from The North, on the other hand...”
“I really need to get some arrows.” The elf rolled her eyes.
“I know a place where you can get anything you want,” Indigo said. She leaned an elbow on the counter, casting the elf a smirky glance. “So anyway, what’s your name?”
“Araralei,” the elf replied, pulling a knife from a scabbard attached to her belt. “And I don’t need any barbarians or lecherous halflings. I’m a strong independent elf. And I’m a hundred years old anyway.”
“Ara–” Indigo groaned. “Can we just call you Sour Sweet?”
“More like Sour Elf.” Sugarcoat chuckled. She stopped when an arrow flew past her, nailing her robe to the floor. “Are you crazy?”
Sour Sweet smirked. “I’m fast.”
“Go be fast somewhere else.” Sugarcoat rolled her eyes and looked around the tavern. “Elves… Why do they even let them in? Armed, at that?”
“Says a halfling.” Sour put her bow down and looked at the dwarves at the table. The discussion got heated; some of them were waving axes at the half-orc. “Hey, what’s going on there?”
“Not your business, you pointy-eared scum!” one of the dwarves exclaimed.
Sour grabbed her bow again. “Say that again, you garden gnome, and they’ll be sending you home in a shoebox.”
“What did you call me?” The dwarf stood up. It wasn’t very impressive, but his axe made up for it.
“Help me!” The half-orc exclaimed. Somehow, he was shorter than the dwarves, and even uglier. “They want to kill me ‘cause of that golden coin!”
“Say no more.” Sour Sweet charged at the dwarf, kicking him and sending him back on his chair, which fell on the floor. Six other dwarves stood up, swinging their axes.
“Finally something fun.” Indigo grabbed a large, two-handed sword and swung, knocking over a lamp and almost hitting an old man drinking his beer at the table behind her.
The man took a long sip of his drink and grabbed a chair. “Watch out, you uncultured swine!”
“Sorry, grandpa!” Indigo charged at the dwarves, knocking over tables and chairs. Sugarcoat followed in her wake. The fight broke out in the whole tavern; some sailors decided to settle matters with the bard, while the dwarves stood in a formation and tried to surround the half-orc. This tactic didn’t quite work out: one of the dwarves ended up with an arrow in his throat while the other got nailed to the wall with Indigo’s sword.
“Can’t pull it out!” Indigo exclaimed.
“That’s what she said!” Sugarcoat replied, tripping one of the sailors. The tiefling bard jumped on the counter and smashed a lute against another sailor’s head.
“Long live rock and roll!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, screw this.” Indigo let go of the sword and grabbed one of the dwarves, throwing him at the sailors. “Guys, let’s get out of here!”
“Wait a minute.” Sugarcoat looked at the dead dwarf by the wall. “I need to–”
“Later!” Indigo yanked her sword out of the wall, narrowly missing Sour Sweet with it. Sour didn’t care; she was too busy massacring the sailors with her bow. Indigo grabbed the half-orc and rushed towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Sugarcoat asked.
“Twilight mentioned–” Indigo stopped for a moment. “I mean, I’ve heard this town has a lot of guards! If they arrive here, we’ll have to fight our way out.”
Sugarcoat shrugged. “First time I see you worried about a fight.”
“Well, if you were the DM, we’d all die,” Indigo replied. “I prefer, uhh… a tactical retreat.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Sugarcoat replied. “If you see the guards, tell them that undead dwarves attacked people in the tavern. We’ll meet later.”
Indigo nodded and ran out of the tavern, still carrying the half-orc. They ran across the town; there were indeed some guards running towards the inn, though none of them cared about a seven-foot tall barbarian running in the opposite direction.
Indigo finally hid in the labyrinth of aisles and alleys surrounding the port. She put the half-orc on the ground and looked down. “I’m surrounded by little shits, really…”
Sunny and Sugarcoat shot Indigo mean looks. Indigo blushed and shrugged. “Hey, at least in this game I’m tall!” she exclaimed.
“To be honest, only I look like my character,” Sour Sweet replied with a smile.
“Keep telling that to yourself, Sour Elf,” Indigo said. “Also, we’re not even an hour in and you’re already killing innocent people.”
“Said someone who nailed a dwarf to the wall.” Sour Sweet winced. “What is wrong with you?”
“Good rolls, I guess.”
Sunny looked at her character sheet. “Can we continue? I’m about to make my grand entrance.”
“Oh no,” Sugarcoat whispered.
“Yeah, let’s do this,” Twilight said, ignoring Sugarcoat. “So, you two ran away from the tavern…”
“What is it all about?” Indigo asked. “Who are you? Why did those dwarves want to turn you into minced meat?”
“I cannae tell!” the half-orc exclaimed. “Name’s Gmork, but I cannae tell. The cursed ship! The sailor dinnae know what that was, but I know! Gonnae ‘no dae that!”
“Then tell me,” Indigo said. “Also, I see you’re doing the accent better than me.”
“Yer accent all but disappeared,” Gmork replied. “I’m but a humble artificer but that sailor…”
“What sailor?” Indigo asked.
“I cannae tell!”
“You can tell me,” Indigo said. “I mean, if you don’t tell me, Su– I mean, Gray Mouser will talk to you. This, however, might be painful and not getting out alive is one of the better options.”
“Gmork can tell,” Gmork replied. “But ma heid’s mince, ye ken…”
“What did you say?” Indigo shrugged. “Speak clearly.”
“I’m a bit dizzy, you dingus.” Gmork cleared his throat. “Anyway, Gmork has a small workshop in town and one day a sailor came to Gmork. A very feart sailor. He showed Gmork this coin.” The half-orc reached into one of his pockets. In fact, his whole outfit seemed to consist solely of pockets and pouches, full of tools and other utensils. Gmork produced a coin and shoved it into Indigo’s face.
It was an ordinary golden coin, although none of the places Indigo had visited used this kind of currency. One side was empty; Indigo turned the coin to see an image of some strange, tentacled creature. The edge of the coin was sharp and it was covered in something that looked like old, dried blood, but aside from that it was a completely normal coin.
“I think I failed a perception check,” Indigo muttered, furrowing her eyebrows.
“Nice, innit?” Gmork chuckled. “Gmork suspected somethin’ but he wanted to go to them dwarves. They know such things. Well, those particular ones don’t know much anymore...”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re ex-dwarves.” Indigo looked around. “Though I don’t see smoke, so–”
She paused when an elf suddenly landed next to her, apparently jumping off the nearby roof. The elf looked around, waving her perfect hair, and turned to Indigo, bowing gracefully.
“The guards are now battling the undead dwarves,” she said. “I suppose your companion will join us soon.”
“Like hell I will…” Sugarcoat ran towards Indigo, panting and sweating. “Damn elves, running on roofs like it’s Assassin’s Creed… Some of us have short legs, you know. And that robe isn’t exactly great for jogging.”
“Cry me a river, halfling.” Sour Sweet rolled her eyes. “Where’s that crazy musician who tried to light the inn on fire?”
Indigo turned to Gmork. “If you want to hang out with us, you need to remember one thing: we always light buildings on fire.”
“Gmork can light things on fire in more ways than ya think are possible.”
Indigo nodded, but before she could reply, she saw a tiefling walking towards them with a pony. The poor animal carried a lot of luggage; Indigo noticed a lyre as well as a dress with a hole for the tail.
“I would light this tavern on fire, but I can’t cast Fire Tornado,” she said. “Still, my workplace is now full of guards and undead dwarves, so I might as well go adventuring with you.”
“Who said we’re going adventuring?” Sour Sweet asked. “I went to a bar, I got ogled by a halfling, then I had to shoot a few guys to save this thing.” She pointed at Gmork. “What are you?”
“Actually, he had this.” Indigo showed her friends the coin. “Can someone take a look at it? I think I failed a perception check on it.”
Sugarcoat took the coin and looked at it. “There’s something written here…”
“How did I miss that?” Indigo asked.
“You gave up intelligence and wisdom for strength,” Sugarcoat replied. “As a result, you can’t read.” She looked at the coin again. “Especially since it’s some weird alphabet.”
“So you can’t read it either?” Indigo rolled her eyes. “Just great. What are halflings good for, then?”
“Well, we have a literal spawn of hell here.” Sugarcoat pointed at Lemon and showed her a coin. “What does it say?”
Lemon shrugged. “Must be a different part of hell because I got nothing. Didn’t Gmork say where he took it from?”
“The sailor,” Gmork replied. “Gmork knows where he lives.”
“Great,” Indigo said, looking at her sword. “Do you think he’ll need us to convince him to talk?”
“Chill out,” Sugarcoat replied. “We’re gonna be diplomatic.”
“Okay, so we’re going with Gmork to the sailor’s house,” Sugarcoat said.
“It could be an ambush.” Sour Sweet looked at Sunny.
“Can’t be,” Indigo smirked. “Sunny is our teammate, right?”
“And there goes my attempt to introduce at least a bit of actual roleplaying.” Sour Sweet sighed, looking at Indigo.
“Gmork will show ye the way!” Sunny exclaimed.
Sour groaned. “You can stop being Gmork for a moment.”
Sunny furrowed her eyebrows. “So when I’m roleplaying it’s bad and when Indigo’s just being herself all the time it’s bad too? Make up your mind.”
“Indigo being Indigo is kinda normal, but when you’re a half-orc, it’s getting kinda creepy.” Sour shook her head. “And it’s me who’s saying that…”
“Hey, at least it’s not lesbian vampires again.” Indigo shuddered. “And I won’t remind you who proposed that we strip to our underwear during the last session.”
“Do I want to know?” Twilight asked, briefly turning away from her notes.
“Only if you’re amused by the fact that Indigo buys bras in the kids section,” Sugarcoat muttered.
“Shut up, Sugarcoat.” Indigo turned to Lemon. “Do you have something constructive to say or are you still thinking of lesbian vampires?”
“I still didn’t name my pony,” Lemon replied.
Indigo groaned. “Let’s just go to this sailor.”
The sailor lived in one of the ramshackle inns in the city outskirts. The bartender shot Gmork a mean look when he entered. The look got even meaner when he saw Sour Sweet and Lemon Zest. He spat on a dirty rag he was holding in his hand and started to polish an equally dirty tankard.
“We don’t serve elves and weirdos here,” he muttered. This soon turned into a scream, when Sour Sweet casually produced a knife and nailed his hand to the counter.
“I see Sour Elf is particularly sour today,” Indigo said and turned to the bartender. “Excuse me, have you seen the sailor called, uhh…”
“Sinbad.” Gmork shrugged. “Sinbad the Sailor, yes.”
“Could be, yeah,” Indigo replied. “We’ve heard he lives here.”
“Upstairs!” the bartender cried, trying to get the knife out of the counter, but it was embedded firmly. “Just take this crazy elf out of here!”
“Don’t worry, we have a cleric here, she’ll heal you,” Lemon said and turned to Sugarcoat. “Actually, is your character male or female? Because I heard that halflings are pretty well endowed, so–”
“I don’t think you can ask such questions these days,” Indigo said. “Also, those rumours aren’t true.”
Sugarcoat cleared her throat. “The sailor.”
“Yes, the sailor.” Indigo nodded and they walked up the creaky stairs. There were several guest rooms there, most of them empty. The corridor was dark; the candles probably hadn’t been changed for at least a century.
“Something stinks here,” Indigo muttered.
“Yeah, probably that big puddle of blood on the floor.” Lemon shrugged. “Interesting.”
“How do you–”
“I’m a tiefling, I see in the darkness,” Lemon replied.
“Something tells me that someone already visited our sailor,” Sugarcoat said, pushing the door of the room open. “Indeed.”
Sinbad the Sailor died in his own bed. Mostly. Indigo almost tripped over his wooden leg, lying on the floor, next to his lung and part of the intestines. Blood and chunks of flesh were splattered on the walls, but the sailor’s head was intact – aside from the fact that someone stuffed a sack with more coins into his mouth.
“Gmork thinks he ain’t gonna tell us nothin’,” Gmork said.
“I wouldn’t say so…” Sugarcoat looked at the corpse. “Do you think he’ll need trachea to talk? I mean, it must be here somewhere.” She looked around the room.
“Accio trachea?” Lemon prompted. Sugarcoat slammed her forehead with her hand.
“Gmork can help,” Gmork said. “We need lightning, copper wires, a fresh corpse…”
“I can do without copper wires.” Sugarcoat walked to the corpse and put her hand on its forehead. “Rise in the name of The Chained God!”
The light outside dimmed a bit and, even though the day was warm, a chill breeze blew across the room. The corpse lifted its hand, showing Sugarcoat a middle finger.
“Seems he wants to stay dead,” Sour said.
“Nah, he just doesn’t have an index finger,” Sugarcoat replied. “Show me your secret!”
The hand turned, pointing at a painting on the wall. It was rather small and dirty, with blood splattered on it, but they could still see that it depicted a storm at sea, with tall waves pushing a small ship on some dark rock.
“Well, hope he doesn’t want to get us interested in art.” Lemon looked at the painting. “Do you think there’s something hidden behind it?”
“A dead guy pointed at it,” Indigo replied. “There must be something in there.”
She removed the painting from the wall, revealing a small metal door behind it.
“Hmm, are there any traps in there?” Indigo shrugged, looking at the door. “I can’t see any.”
“Maybe let someone whose IQ is higher than the shoe size look at it,” Sour Sweet muttered. “Where’s Sunny? I mean… Bhaal dammit, Gmork, you’re an artificer, check that for traps.”
Gmork looked at the door, furrowing his rather bushy eyebrows. “Gmork sees one trap. Move outta the way.”
He opened the metal door and ducked. They heard a sound of some string snapping, followed by a thud when a crossbow bolt flew across the room, embedding itself in the wall above the bed.
“That’s a fine crossbow. Gmork will keep it.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Indigo looked into the cache. “There’s something in there…” She furrowed her eyebrows. “It’s some map, but I can’t read it.”
Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “Give it to me. Also, why are you doing perception checks when you can’t even read?”
Indigo shrugged. “Walking into traps won’t kill me as easily.”
“That’s one thing you’re useful at.” Sugarcoat looked at the map. “Hey, isn’t it the same rock as on the painting?”
Lemon looked at the map, comparing it with a painting. “Same one. I can tell, I’m an artist.”
“Musician,” Sour said.
“That’s still an artist, Sour Elf,” Lemon replied. “So, uhh… We got a map to a mysterious rock hidden in a cache behind a painting of the same rock, and a corpse of a sailor stuffed with golden coins that make dwarves go crazy. What do we do about it?”
“Gmork thinks we should stay outta it,” Gmork replied.
“Gmork should keep his thoughts to himself,” Indigo said. “We’ll need a ship. Where can we get a ship?”
“The port, obviously,” Sour Sweet replied. “How do you want to get a ship? Hire a crew? Steal one?”
Indigo smirked. “We’ll think of something.”
Twilight looked at the watch. “Guess we’ll have to get to the ship next time.”
“Yeah.” Indigo yawned. “Though on a second thought, we have to kill the bartender.”
“Why?” Lemon asked.
“Exactly, why?” Twilight turned to Indigo. “I mean, I’d understand if Sugarcoat suggested it, but why do you want to kill the bartender?”
“I mean, we walk into the bar, Sour nails his hand to the counter, we ask about the sailor, and when the guy goes upstairs to clean the room or something, he’ll find the sailor’s body parts all over the place. It’s gonna be hard to get a ship if we’re wanted for murder.”
“For a barbarian you think a lot,” Sugarcoat muttered. “Also, if we kill the bartender, it’s gonna look even more suspicious.”
“I can seduce him,” Lemon said.
“No!” Sour exclaimed. “How exactly seducing the bartender will stop him from telling everyone about the dead sailor?”
“I’m a tiefling,” Lemon replied. “I can seduce him so hard that he won’t notice the dead sailor even if we fuck on his bed!”
“Eww…” Twilight winced.
“It doesn’t mean I’ll do that,” Lemon said. “Also, it was you who described to us in great detail in how many pieces the sailor’s liver was when we found it, so don’t be so delicate now.”
“Okay.” Twilight smirked. “Seduce the bartender.”
“Can I just do a charisma check?” Lemon asked.
“No, go on.”
“Uhh…” Lemon shrugged. “We have a nice day, right? I mean, aside from random elves, it’s a totally nice day.” She smiled. “Have you ever gotten a blowjob from a tiefling?”
Twilight raised her eyebrows. “I think we’ll go for a charisma check.”
“If you’re into it, I can kick your ass and shout mean things in infernal,” Lemon said.
Twilight rolled the dice. “He’s into it, as long as the elf joins you.”
Sour Sweet froze. “I changed my mind. We should kill him.”
Twilight smirked. “Good luck with this one…”
The wharf smelled of rotting fish and old timber. It was late afternoon, so most sailors were either drunk or looking for an occasion to drink. Some of them were standing by the decrepit bars, flirting with local whores or playing dice on the ground.
Fafhrd the Mighty smiled at the whores, earning a disapproving glare from his companion, a black-robed halfling known as Gray Mouser. The halfling kicked Fafhrd in the ankle and walked forward, smacking sailors with a cane.
They walked to a large ship moored to the wharf. The caravel had seen better days, but according to the rumours they heard in the port, the captain needed new crewmen. There was, however, one problem.
“I talked to the bos’n,” Gmork said, emerging from between the barrels awaiting to be loaded onto the ship. “They’re goin’ to Cold Run.”
“Great,” Fafhrd the Powerful said. “Where is it?”
“In a completely different direction, you insufferable moron,” Gray Mouser replied. “One’d think you know. You wrote in your character sheet that this is where you come from.”
“Awesome. I always wanted to visit auntie Brunhild,” Fafhrd the Not-So-Wise said.
“That’s great, but we don’t want to go there!” Gray Mouser rolled her eyes. “Golden coins, remember?” He turned back to see the most peculiar pair: an elf archer in a green coat and leather gloves called Araralei but otherwise known to the world as Sour Elf and a pony-riding tiefling bard whose infernal name could not be spoken in bright light and thus she just used “Lemon” as her nom de guerre as well as nom de plume.
“Did you kill the bartender?” Fafhrd the Ever-Practical asked.
“Nah,” Lemon replied. “We tied him up, gagged him, robbed the inn, and told the first patrol of the guards we met that the guy has an illegal brothel.”
“Oh, just great.” Gray Mouser facepalmed. “Now the whole town will start looking for you. We need to get on the ship.”
“Don’t worry, no one will know it was us,” Sour said.
“I don’t know if you noticed, but an elf and a tiefling walking together and talking about illegal brothels are rather distinctive,” Gray Mouser muttered. “Maybe in the forest you come from it wouldn’t be weird, but in here, elves are kept in ghettos, Sour Elf.”
“Shut up, Sugarcoat,” Sour replied, grabbing her bow. “We’re not going to stay in town for much longer.”
“Exactly,” Gmork said. “I’m gonna bring the captain. He’s a one-armed dwarf.”
“I wonder if he’s throwing dice along the wharf.” Lemon shrugged.
“Gmork Gartenzwerg!” They heard a voice from the ship. The captain was indeed a one-armed dwarf with a hook for a missing hand. He was slightly taller than Gmork and Gray Mouser; still, he had to stand on the deck of the ship to look Fafhrd in the eyes. “Those are the new sailors you talked about?”
“Aye, captain,” Gmork replied. “They’re a bit green, but look how strong this one is!”
“I see.” The dwarf looked at Fafhrd. “What’s your name and why do you want to sail under my command?”
“Well, I’m Indigo– I mean, Fafhrd the Barbarian, son of Onan the Barbarian–”
Gray Mouser chuckled. “Did you think this name through?”
“What do you mean?” Indigo asked. “It’s like this guy from the book, right?”
“Wrong book.” Gray Mouser sighed. “Unless you really want to say your father was slain by God for–” The halfling climbed on a barrel and whispered into the barbarian’s ear.
“Eww!” Indigo exclaimed. “How do you know such things?”
“I’m a cleric, I read holy books.”
“This reminds me,” the captain said. “Why’d I need a halfling cleric on my ship?”
“Ballast,” Gmork suggested.
“Your crew may need spiritual advice,” Gray Mouser replied.
The captain furrowed his eyebrows, looking at the cleric’s black robe. “What god are you a cleric of?”
“Is this really important right now?” Sour asked. “All gods are equal or something. Also, before you ask, elves are great sailors. Have you ever heard of Earendil the Mariner?”
“I don’t think The Silmarillion exists in this universe,” Gray Mouser whispered.
“I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome my persuasion check was,” Sour replied.
“Right…” The captain scratched his beard and looked at Lemon. “What about you? I thought demons are afraid of water.”
Lemon smirked. “I’m but a humble tiefling. But if you allow me to join your crew, you won’t regret…” She winked at him.
“Is she trying to seduce him again?” Fafhrd the Ever-Insightful asked.
“Not really,” Gray Mouser replied. “‘Trying’ implies the possibility of failure.”
Twilight sighed. “So, one way or another you managed to get on the ship. Also, I’m not sure if I should present you with any moral choices for a while.”
“Why?” Sugarcoat asked.
“You always choose the least moral option,” Twilight replied. “What exactly are you planning to do about the ship not going where you want it to?”
“Seduce everyone?” Lemon asked. She was getting more into her character; she brought an acoustic guitar to the session, occasionally strumming a chord or two to add some weight to her words.
“Well, we were planning to organise a mutiny.” Indigo shrugged. “If that’s any help, Sugarcoat’s initial plan involved turning the whole crew into the undead.”
“That’s still our backup plan,” Sugarcoat said. “In case you somehow manage to stop our first four plans. Also, when all you have is necromancy, every problem starts looking like someone who needs to stop breathing.”
“I prefer the version with ‘when all you have is a battle axe, every problem starts looking like an orc’s head.” Indigo turned to Sunny. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Sunny replied.
Lemon chuckled. “When all you have are tiefling boobs–”
“Don’t finish this sentence or I’ll have to explain the resulting mess to my therapist,” Sour Sweet muttered. She’d brought a bow to the session, which Twilight found far more dangerous. At least she didn’t have any arrows.
“Okay,” Lemon said. “By the way, I kinda want to name my pony ‘Lyra Heartstrings’.”
Twilight furrowed her eyebrows. “You know there’s Lyra Heartstrings in Canterlot High?”
“Really?” Lemon asked. “I just wanted something musical.”
“You may even know her,” Twilight said. “I mean, Octavia is your neighbour, right? I think they recently started some crazy jazz band together.”
“You mean that mean girl who plays the piano?” Lemon asked.
“Nah, that’d be Bon Bon,” Twilight replied. “Lyra plays the piano too, but she usually plays the lyre and other strange string instruments.”
Lemon nodded. “Ah, this one. We smoked weed in the basement once and she told me some very fun things about horses. Did you know that horses produce about ten gallons of saliva a day?”
“I really didn’t need that mental image,” Indigo muttered. “Can we get back to the ship?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure horse saliva can wait,” Twilight said, looking into her notes. “So, you’re at sea for two days…”
An arrow hit the apple, almost splitting it in half, and nailed it to the mast. Sour smirked and walked to it, trying to get the arrow out. As it was firmly embedded in the wood, it took a while.
“I shouldn’t be using broadheads for training,” Sour said, looking at the arrowhead and groaning. “I need hardened bodkin tips. Better for piercing armour too.”
“Gmork will see what Gmork can do,” Gmork replied, looking through his equipment. “For now, ye have them blunts.”
“Yes, but they don’t get stuck in the mast and I keep losing them,” Sour replied. “If you get bodkins made of really hard steel, it may even penetrate plate armour.”
“Can you stop talking about penetrating with your hard tips?” Indigo alias Fafhrd asked. She was cleaning a suit of plate armour, but it kept getting covered in salt. This whole situation made her feel rather un-fafhrdy. “Also, we were supposed to plan a mutiny.”
“Sugarcoat is working on it,” Lemon replied. “Though I’m not sure if she’s not just teaching everyone to play dragonchess.”
“She’d better start doing something, or we’ll have to fight everyone by ourselves.” Indigo groaned. “By the way, Sunny, do you have those bombs?”
“Who’s Sunny?”
Indigo rolled her eyes. “Gmork, do you have the bombs?”
“Gmork is working on ‘em,” Gmork replied. “Still, we ain’t wanna sink the ship, right?”
“Yeah.” Indigo shuddered when a dead seagull fell on the deck next to her, pierced by a broadhead. “Stop doing that! Aren’t elves supposed to be friends of all living things?”
“Yes, unless we need to hunt for food.” Sour walked to the seagull and sniffed it. “Besides, those fuckers piss me off. When will we leave the coast so they get lost?”
“We’re just cruising along the coast to avoid giant squids, I guess.” Lemon shrugged. “Though there’s always a possibility we hit the rock.”
“I prefer giant squids.” Indigo looked at her sword. “You can’t reason with rocks.”
“And by ‘reason’ you mean stab them full of holes?” Sour asked. “I like this.”
“On a side note, I’m a bard and I haven’t sung any song yet,” Lemon said. “How about ‘You are a Pirate’?”
Sour briefly aimed the bow at her, but then put it down. “I’d rather look for Sugarcoat.”
“Excuse me,” Sugarcoat, also known as Gray Mouser, walked to two sailors busy with cleaning the deck. “Can you spare a moment to talk about our lord and saviour Tharizdun?”
“Bugger off,” one of the sailors replied.
“Everyone says that, but when death is near, you’re all looking for the gods’ help,” Sugarcoat replied. “Tharizdun can make you immortal.”
“Isn’t he slightly insane?” the shorter of the sailors asked.
“That’s lies and slander,” Sugarcoat replied. “The sailor’s life is often dangerous. Where will you go if you need advice or spiritual help?”
“We have vodka.”
“You do?” Sugarcoat smirked. “Will you help a poor cleric in need?”
Sour walked through the shadows, sneaking past the sailors without a noise. Her elf ears were catching the slightest noises, she didn’t like what she heard.
Cursing under her breath, she burst into the mess. No sailor noticed her – she could be pretty stealthy when she wanted, though it was also made easier by the fact that everyone was drunk. And in the middle of the whole party, there was a slurring halfling in a dishevelled black robe.
“Hello, Sour Elf!” Sugarcoat exclaimed, raising a glass of rum. She spoke in an overly clear way, like someone trying hard not to devolve into incoherent blather. “I just got Tharizdun like, ten new followers! That means we’re an officially recognised religious minority on this ship and we can, uhh… get an altar and uhh… They know we’re planning a mutiny. But I didn’t tell them about the coins! They think we’re gonna find the Gems of Tharizdun!”
Sour groaned. “By the holy pants of Solonor Thelandira, why did you tell them, you idiot? Someone will tell the captain.”
“I failed all the rolls,” Sugarcoat replied. “Who knew hobbits are such lightweights…”
“You’re a fucking halfling, not a fucking hobbit!” Sour yelled. “Or rather you’re an ex-halfling! We’ll all be dead if they keelhaul us!”
One of the sailors chuckled. “For an elf, you have an interesting vocabulary.”
Sour grabbed her bow. “Oh, shut up!” she exclaimed. “Next person to speak will get shot!”
“Sour, chill out.” Sugarcoat stood on the table. “There’s no need to–” She was rudely interrupted by an arrow hitting a bottle of rum she was holding. “Oh, come on!” She raised her hands, trying to cast a fire bolt, but the spell failed horribly; all it did was making the air around her a bit hotter. She tried again, but one of the sailors grabbed a chair and hit her, knocking her out.
“Damn drunk halfling,” he muttered. “A mutineer too. Can we cast this thing overboard?”
“I don’t mind,” Sour replied.
Another sailor stood up. “Actually, we should hang him from the yardarm.”
“I don’t mind that either.” Sour shrugged. More sailors stood up, grabbing Sugarcoat and carrying her out of the mess.
The group was just approaching the nearest mast when Indigo and Lemon stood in front of them. “Hey, what’s going on here?” Indigo asked.
“We’re gonna hang the halfling,” a sailor replied.
“Why?”
“Mutiny, casting dark magic, religious propaganda, and being a drunken twat,” Sour said.
“Mutiny?” Indigo asked. “But we were supposed to–”
“Shut up or we’ll be next,” Sour whispered. “Don’t worry, it’s all a part of my plan.”
Lemon looked at the sailors, who were just wondering how much rope they should use. “What’s the plan?”
“Kill Sugarcoat, make her get a new character, and then I’ll think of something,” Sour replied.
“What does Sugarcoat think about this plan?” Indigo looked at her sword and started counting the sailors.
“Not much. She’s unconscious.” Sour smirked. “That’s the beauty of it.”
The sailors were about to start tying the rope to the yardarm, when someone blew a horn, causing them to stop, cover their ears and look around to find the source of the noise. It turned out to be Gmork, who stood by the helm.
“Gmork brought the captain,” he said.
“Right on time,” the captain said, furrowing his eyebrows. “As far as I know, I’m the captain of this ship. No one’s getting hanged on this ship without my knowledge. What did the halfling do?”
“Gray Mouser didn’t want to mutiny!” Indigo exclaimed. “He always gets dumb ideas when drunk. It’s a halfling, after all.”
“He did want to cast some spell.” Another sailor shrugged. “Maybe burn the ship down. Also, a cleric turned me into a newt once.”
“Ya got better?” Gmork asked.
“Clearly,” the sailor replied. “So, does anyone know how to hang a halfling?”
“Slowly,” Sour said. “They’re too light to die immediately.”
Sugarcoat opened her eyes, rubbing her head. “And you’re supposed to be my friends?” She groaned.
“You’ll ask philosophical questions to Tharizdun when you meet him.” Sour smirked, grabbing a rope.
“Oh, come on!” Sugarcoat exclaimed. “You’re going to hang me because of some failed rolls?”
“Well, technically you went drinking with the sailors on your own,” Twilight replied.
“This seemed like a good idea at the time.” Sugarcoat shrugged and turned to Sour. “Also, why do you even insist on hanging me?”
Sour looked into her character sheet. “When I was a young elf, I got thrown into the mud by three halflings in a coat who pretended to be one big guy. Since then, I hate them.”
“That was a hundred years ago,” Indigo said.
“Also, my character hates clerics of Tharizdun, drunks, seawater, sand, and Sugarcoat in particular.” Sour shrugged. “I hope her new character is an elf.”
Twilight smirked. “You might want to wait for that. As the crew is about to hang the hapless halfling, the lookouts in the crow’s nest start to scream. They spotted black sails on the horizon–”
“A random encounter!” Indigo exclaimed.
“Deus ex machina?” Sour Sweet looked at Sugarcoat.
“Tharizdun ex machina, more like.” Sugarcoat shrugged. “Untie me! I’m a drunk necromancer out for blood!”
Lemon hit the strings of her guitar. “Do what you want, ‘cause a pirate is free!”
Sunny smirked. “Gmork has a crossbow. And a gunpowder barrel.”
The swift carrack quickly caught up with the battered caravel. The pirates were getting closer. Some of them were already waving cutlasses and preparing hooks to board the ship.
“Sour Elf!” Indigo exclaimed. “What do your elf eyes see?”
“Old memes.” Sour raised her bow and shot. The arrow went through some unfortunate pirate’s throat and pinned him to the mast. “One.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” Indigo muttered.
“Gmork has an idea,” Gmork said. “Just don’t light the pirate ship on fire.”
“Why?” Lemon asked. “I was just going to try if my Fire Tornado works.”
“Not when Twilight is a DM,” Sugarcoat said. The sailors untied her, letting her sit on the yardarm, from where she could fire spells at the incoming pirates. “Also, bring it. I feel like doing some casting under influence.”
“Just aim carefully,” Sour said. “Or I’ll pop an arrow in your hairy feet.”
Sugarcoat responded with a traditional middle finger salute. Below her, the sailors grabbed knives and cutlasses, ready to meet the boarding party. Most of them, however, decided to stay away from Indigo, either intimidated by a huge barbarian, or realising that the words “collateral damage” didn’t exist in the dictionary of someone who used a zweihander one-handed.
Sour fired another arrow, causing the pirate lookout to fall out of the crow’s nest and hit the deck with the nasty sound of breaking bones. “Two.”
Indigo groaned. “Can they board a bit faster?”
Her wish quickly came true. The pirate ship approached the starboard, first pirates throwing hooks to tie the both ships together. As Indigo noticed, the boarding party consisted mostly of orcs, although to her surprise, she saw a one-eyed halfling among them.
The orcs jumped on the deck. The first one got hit with an arrow and dropped back to the sea, but two of his companions rushed towards Indigo, who swung her sword, beheading one of the pirates. Another one managed to parry the first blow; another one rang against the old armour he was wearing, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Indigo let out a powerful scream and stabbed the pirate, crushing the armour and piercing their chest.
“Nice!” Sugarcoat exclaimed, hiccuping. “Uhh… Inflict wounds?”
Nothing happened. Sugarcoat furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh, I hate doing this…”
She jumped from the yardarm, landing on some pirate’s head. This time, the spell worked; the pirate’s skin started to rot and he screamed, trying to shake her off.
“Doing well?” Indigo asked, cutting another pirate with her sword. “Six! How are you doing, Sour?”
“Seventeen!” Sour exclaimed, stabbing a pirate with a dagger. “Eighteen!”
“What?” Indigo yelled. “You lucky, motherfucking weasel!” She dodged a pirate and hit him in the crotch with her sword, causing him to scream and fall down. “Busted, lol.”
“Out of the way!” Gmork exclaimed, pushing some sailors away. Indigo jumped back, right in time to see the half-orc hurl a barrel at the incoming pirates.
“I’ve played enough video games to know where this is going…” Indigo muttered, covering her ears. The barrel exploded, tossing the pirates, as well as some sailors, overboard. When Indigo opened her eyes, she saw just one pirate, desperately trying to shake Sugarcoat off his back.
“Woohoo!” Gmork exclaimed. “Gmork blew them all!”
Sour Sweet winced. “Don’t say that again, please…”
“Impressive.” Lemon nodded. “What do we do now?”
“Board the ship!” Sugarcoat exclaimed.
“We’re already on board,” Indigo replied.
“Not this ship!” Sugarcoat punched the pirate again, trying to get him to walk towards the railing. “The pirate ship!”
“Why?” Indigo asked.
“We take it for ourselves, you idiot!” Sugarcoat jumped off the pirate’s back. “Someone throw me on the deck!”
Sour ran to her and kicked her, sending her across the gap between the two ships. Sugarcoat rolled on the deck, landing in front of those pirates who stayed on their ship in case the first boarding party failed.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour, Tharizdun?”
The pirates looked at each other. Most of them were experienced sailors, but halflings landing on their ship to preach about the Chained God weren’t something that happened every day. Their surprise wasn’t long – one of them dropped on the ground with an arrow in his forehead while the other got hit by a thrown sword, big enough to have its own postal code.
“Geronimo!” Sour Sweet exclaimed, jumping onto the pirate ship with a frontflip.
“Leeroy Jenkins!” Indigo dropped on the deck with a terrifying sound of wooden boards cracking under the weight of the plate armour. She yanked her sword out of the dead pirate’s body and swung it, nearly cutting off Sour’s head.
“Banzai!” Lemon jumped on the deck, pushing one of the pirates into the sea. The pony known as Lyra Heartstrings followed her with a loud whinny, kicking the nearby enemies.
Everyone looked at Gmork, who was still on the deck of the merchant ship, carrying a backpack full of things that couldn’t possibly fit in it and yet somehow they did, including several gunpowder barrels.
“Jump!” Indigo exclaimed.
“Uhh…” Gmork shrugged. “Deus Vult!” WIth these words he jumped, barely reaching the pirate ship. For a moment the half-orc was balancing on the edge of the deck, until Lemon pulled him forward.
The pirates quickly realised that the tables turned. They produced a variety of weapons, from ancient crossbows, to cutlasses and battle axes. This was, however, not enough for Indigo who charged at them with great enthusiasm, yelling curses and swinging her sword around.
“Watch out!” Lemon exclaimed when Indigo nearly hit her. “I’m trying to do some healing here!”
“Sorry!” Indigo shouted. “This is not a close quarters weapon, you know…”
“You should name it ‘Collateral Damage’,” Lemon muttered, facing the pirates. “Stand back, or I shall taunt you, you scurvy dogs!”
“I have something more effective!” Sour Sweet kicked one of the pirates and shot another; she then jumped onto the yardarm, grabbing more arrows from the quiver.
Below her, Indigo had problems. She managed to kill most of the pirates around her, but suddenly her sword hit something hard, nearly bouncing back into her face.
Indigo furrowed her eyebrows, looking for the unseen enemy. Suddenly, someone kicked her in the shin, but when she looked down, there was no one there.
“Indigo!” Sugarcoat exclaimed. “Behind you!”
Indigo looked back and saw a halfling with an eyepatch and a short sword. She remembered that he was one of the few pirates from the boarding party that survived the massacre on the merchant ship.
“Bonjour, ” the halfling said, saluting with his sword.
“What the actual fuck?” Indigo asked. This question, however, didn’t bother her barbarian mind for too long. She raised her sword, which was bigger than her opponent, and slashed down. It cut the air and hit the boards of the deck with a loud thud. Indigo got another kick in the shins for her trouble and spun around with a loud scream.
“You little– Aargh!” Indigo darted back when the halfling dodged her attack and stabbed her in the foot. “Sour! Shoot this son of a bitch or he’ll kill us all!”
“I can’t!” Sour replied, when the halfling dodged three arrows fired in rapid succession. She jumped off the yardarm, grabbing a dagger. “I hate halflings!” she exclaimed, stabbing the air. The halfling pirate was already somewhere else, running her thigh through with a sword. She screamed and dropped on the deck.
“Someone do something!” Sugarcoat exclaimed. “I’m still drunk and I can’t cast a magic missile!”
“Umm…” Lemon shrugged. “Can I seduce him?”
“Don’t even try!” Indigo flailed the sword wildly, trying to pin the halfling to the ground. All she achieved was smacking Sour in the back of the head, knocking her down.
“Fire Tornado?” Lemon thought for a moment. “A little voice in my head that sounds exactly like Twilight tells me I can’t use it. What about vicious mockery?”
“Do whatever that works!” Gmork exclaimed. “Or Gmork will blow the whole ship up to get rid of him.”
“Okay.” Lemon licked her lips and looked at the halfling, who stood in front of them and smirked. “Come and fight like a real man, you son of a mongrel and a syphilitic orc whore! What kind of knight are you if you can’t slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? I fart in your general direction you–” She paused to take a breath.
“Catamite of Tartary,” Sugarcoat prompted. “Hangman of Kamyanets!”
“Ketamine? I find it overrated.” Lemon shrugged.
The halfling only smirked and saluted Lemon with his middle finger.
“I get the feeling the dice want us dead,” Indigo muttered. “Wait, isn’t he a halfling? Can I just grab him and cast the fucker overboard?”
“Maybe if we distract him for long enough,” Lemon replied, tripping over Sour Sweet. “Hmm, I should also heal Sour.”
“Combine the two or something!” Sugarcoat exclaimed.
Lemon looked at Sugarcoat and a sudden smirk adorned her face. Then she leaned over to Sour and kissed her, prompting a quiet gasp from Twilight, who quickly rolled the dice.
“You’ve distracted the halfling,” Twilight said. She looked at Indigo. “What are you doing?”
There was no response.
Twilight sighed. “It seems that you’ve also distracted Indigo.”
“You can stop kissing now,” Sunny said. “I’m pretty sure Sour is already healed. Although if you’re interested, I’m pretty sure Gmork needs healing too.” She looked at Lemon and Sour who finally broke the kiss. “I’ll be in the toilet. I need, to, uhh… brush my teeth.”
“Do you happen to have an electric toothbrush?” Sugarcoat asked.
Sunny furrowed her eyebrows. “Not your business.”
Twilight cleared her throat. “I guess we all got distracted by this unusual display of, umm… healing. Indigo, what do you do to the halfling?”
“I kick him in his sorry ass,” Indigo replied.
Twilight rolled the dice. “He survived, but you managed to punt him all the way to the merchant ship. He landed on the deck, and got attacked by the sailors.”
“They’re really after hobbits, aren’t they?” Sugarcoat shrugged. “I mean, they still have the rope.”
“Halflings,” Sour muttered.
“Who gives a shit,” Sugarcoat replied. “Let’s cut the ropes and steal this ship!”
“Gmork grabs the helm!” Sunny exclaimed. “Yarr! Come on, all ye scurvy dogs, we’re comin’ for yer booty!”
“Can we not turn it into Vampire again?” Indigo asked.
Twilight shook her head. “You successfully steal the pirate ship, leaving your former crewmen stunned and dumbfounded. However, you’re kinda drifting erratically as there’s just five of you, none of them have any sailing experience and–”
“Are the bodies of the pirates still on the ship?” Sugarcoat asked.
“Yes, but–”
“Okay.” Sugarcoat smirked. “Let’s see if we can do it with the skeleton crew…”
3. A Little Town with a Dark Secret
Lemon hit the strings of her lute for the last time and took a large swig from the bottle of rum. Next to her, Gmork hiccuped, watching the skeletons dancing on the deck of the ship. One of them spun the helm, causing the ship to take a sharp turn, but it didn’t seem to bother the rest of the dancing skeletons.
Lemon started to play the lute again, this time using the bottle as a slide. Next to her, a skeleton ran his fingers across his ribs, making them sound like a washboard. Gmork chuckled and gave the skeleton his bottle of rum. The skeleton took a sip, causing alcohol to spill down his spine.
“Hey, watch out!” Gmork laughed. “Do you think they can play their bones like a vibraphone?”
“Vibraphone?” Lemon shrugged. “Is that even an instrument or some kind of a battery-powered Trenderhoof?”
“Nah, it’s like a xylophone on steroids.” Gmork shrugged. “Wait, why Trenderhoof?”
“Why not?” Lemon asked.
“You’re gay.”
“And you’re allegedly straight, but that doesn’t stop you from ogling Fleur whenever you have a chance,” Lemon replied. “Why Fleur, though? I mean, that’s some really bad taste.”
“I’ll tell you if you tell me why Trenderhoof.” Gmork’s character faded a bit, revealing Sunny Flare, though she kept speaking with an accent. “I mean, you say Fleur is a mark of bad taste?”
“You had a crush on Trenderhoof yourself!” Lemon exclaimed. “I mean, didn’t you two–”
“No, he almost ran away halfway through the first episode of Elfen Lied ,” Sunny replied. “I’d rather get a battery-powered version, though.” She took another sip from her bottle. “And then it got worse. I showed him my fanfiction.”
“Smooth,” Lemon muttered. “Was it the one with a horse?”
“No, the one with a tank full of dying schoolgirls.” Sunny smirked. “With fire and bowels, and everything.”
“Never show someone your fanfiction on a first date.” Lemon downed her bottle and burped. “Though I’m not an expert on relationships. I ended up with Sour Sweet.”
“Eww…” Sunny winced. “I mean, I don’t mind, but still, eww. Let’s change the topic before I throw up, okay?”
“Sure thing.” Lemon shrugged. “So, what do you want to talk about?”
“I recently played some online chess and I sacrificed my queen three times in a row.”
Lemon furrowed her eyebrows, trying to focus. Reading the label on the bottle of rum helped, but only slightly. “Did it work?” she asked.
“Twice, but in the third game I didn’t calculate that my opponent can just decline the sacrifice, I ended up down the exchange and two pawns, but I sacrificed the other rook as well and got a draw by threefold repetition.”
Lemon nodded slowly. “Dude, I have no idea what you’ve just said.” She scratched her head. “I mean, like, I know some of these words.”
“Only Sugarcoat understands me.” Sunny wept, wiping her nose with Lemon’s sleeve. “Isn’t that sad?”
“No, it means you’re both in the chess club.” Lemon sighed and looked at the empty bottle. “Do you have more of that?”
Suddenly, the door of the mess opened and Fafhrd the Clueless Barbarian walked in with an expression suggesting that he was rather pleased with himself. “Sorry, girls,” he said. “Traffic jams.”
Indigo furrowed her eyebrows, noticing that Lemon and Sunny were half-sitting, half-lying on the floor, watching a video of dancing skeletons on one of Sunny’s numerous laptops, and surrounded by empty bottles of rum-flavoured beer. She shook her head and poked Sunny with her foot. “We only got here twenty minutes late and you already got drunk?”
“We wouldn’t get late if you didn’t insist on getting snacks,” Twilight said, walking into the room with Sour Sweet, Sugarcoat, and a thin girl with glasses neither Sunny nor Lemon recognised. Which, given their state, came as no surprise.
“Hey, I didn’t want to get hungry,” Indigo replied. “I’m not myself when I’m hungry.”
“Well, maybe then you’d finally be your character,” Sugarcoat said. “Though I agree on the snacks. This session is already shaping up to be great.” She looked at the girl next to Twilight and sighed. “So far, the highlight of the day was you ordering them.”
Indigo smiled sheepishly. “Well, what can I say…”
“Two large burritos, six tacos, some nachos, large diet coke…” Indigo turned away from the blue-skinned girl standing behind the counter and looked at Sugarcoat. “Do you want something?”
“I guess I’ll settle on a burrito.” Sugarcoat shrugged. “Jalapeño sauce and pork.”
“Habanero for me,” Indigo said. “Unless you have–”
“No, you’re not taking Carolina Reaper.” Sugarcoat looked at the girl behind the counter. “She’s an anonymous chillihead. Nothing more than three hundred and fifty thousand on the Scoville Scale for her.”
Indigo groaned. “Hey, I’m–”
Sugarcoat crossed her arms. “Do I have to remind you what happened when we went to Mexico on vacation, we accidentally met Rainbow Dash in the middle of Tijuana and you two idiots ate the Carolina Reaper peppers on a dare?”
“Hey, it was fine!”
“Eating it, yes.” Sugarcoat chuckled. “Later, though… ‘Indigo, what are you doing in the toilet for so long?’ ‘Dying, I hope’.” She shook her head. “And I thought this trip couldn’t get any dumber after you asked me why the air in Mexico isn’t tinted orange like in the movies.”
“Shut up, Sugarcoat.” Indigo looked at the menu. “Do you think we should buy Twilight a quesadilla?”
Sugarcoat shook her head. “Unless you want a disaster bigger than you and Carolina Reaper, then sure, why not. Otherwise, have you ever heard of a thing called lactose intolerance?”
“No, I’m not a fan of grindcore,” Indigo replied. “Unless it’s a metalcore band, then I can maybe check it out.”
Sugarcoat groaned. “Tharizdun, give me strength…”
“Okay.” Twilight shook her head and grabbed a taco. “Maybe we’ll start? Last time you stole a pirate ship and turned the dead crewmen into skeletons, which is probably why Sunny’s mom thinks we come here to worship Satan. Anyway, you sail towards–”
“Wait.” Sunny lifted her finger. “Can we, like, address the elephant in the room?” She turned to the bespectacled girl next to Twilight. “Not that I think you’re fat, it’s just a rhetorical figure.” She hiccuped. “Who the hell are you?”
“Oh, I forgot to mention.” Twilight smiled sheepishly. “This is Juniper Montage. She wants to take part in a casting to some fantasy movie and she wanted to train by playing NPCs. Juniper, this is Sunny Flare.”
“My uncle works with her mom,” Juniper said. “We’ve met before, although right now she probably doesn’t remember.”
“Yesh, perhaps.” Sunny shrugged, looking at the empty bottle of beer.
“You don’t have to introduce me,” Sugarcoat said. “I mean, my boyfriend is her cousin and we’ve met before. Like, what idiot brings his own cousin to a date?”
“Knowing Sandalwood, he hoped for a threesome.” Indigo chuckled. “Also, I remember you, Juniper. You turned into a demon and almost ruined the mall, didn’t you?”
“Long story.” Juniper chuckled. “And it wasn’t really my fault.”
“Happens to all of us.” Lemon walked to Juniper and tried to hug her, only for Juniper to wiggle out quickly. “I mean, who in this town didn’t turn into a demon?”
“No, Sour Sweet on her period doesn’t count.” Sugarcoat dragged Lemon away from Juniper.
“Fuck off, Sugarcoat,” Sour muttered. “Also, Juniper, don’t ever let Lemon play Vampire with you. Or if you do, tell me about it.”
“What do they mean by playing Vampire?” Juniper whispered to Twilight.
Twilight sighed. “You’ll regret finding out.” She sat down and looked into her notes. “Okay then. After a week of an uneventful cruise–”
The arrow split the apple on the skeleton’s head in half and embedded itself in the mast. Araralei the Sour Elf smirked and put her bow down. She was getting better and better at aiming; this time she only put an arrow through the skeleton’s eye socket once. He didn’t seem to mind, as he kept smiling at her.
“Hey, check this out!” Fafhrd the Totally-Not-Indigo walked to her with an axe in his hands. “Gmork got me this. It’s my weapon for close combat, so I don’t accidentally hit everything with the sword.”
Sour looked at the axe. It was only a bit shorter than the sword. “Do you even know what close combat is?”
“Do you?” Fafhrd shrugged. “I mean, you’re an archer, so–”
“I carry more daggers than you can count,” Sour replied. “If I had a crossbow, I’d put a bayonet on it.”
“Try to put one on the bow.”
“I’d ask Gmork for it, but well, he’s not in the mood for doing that right now.” Sour pointed at the half-orc, who was currently dancing with Lemon and several skeletons. “Also, where’s Gray Mouser?”
“Under the deck, performing some ritual.” Fafhrd shrugged. “Guess controlling so many undead is straining her a bit.”
“I think she gave some of them some autonomy.” Sour looked at the skeleton who tried to eat an apple, but it kept falling out of his mouth.
Suddenly, another skeleton fell from the crow’s nest and smashed on the deck. Sour looked at the broken hand which raised its finger and pointed at the front of the ship. She looked there and furrowed her eyebrows.
“What do your elf eyes see?” Fafhrd asked.
Before Sour could reply, Lemon walked to her, staggering and strumming the strings of her lute. “Roses are red, running is hard…” She hiccuped. “They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard!”
“Can I shoot her?” Sour asked.
“Be my guest,” Fafhrd replied, gently pushing the drunken tiefling away. Gently for a barbarian, anyway.
Lemon tripped over the broken skeleton and collapsed, but this didn’t faze her; she grabbed the skull and smiled at it. “Hello, handsome.”
“Let’s toss her overboard.” Sour sighed. “Also, I can see the land. With a big, black spire looming over it.”
“Guess this is our destination,” Fafhrd said. “Is there anything else in there?”
“There’s a coastal town that seems to be in the shadow of the spire. Which is odd, since the sun is behind us, so it’s not possible.”
Fafhrd furrowed his bushy, ginger eyebrows and looked at the sun. “What does it have to do with anything?”
“The shadow of this thing should be behind it, not in front of it.” Sour rolled her eyes.
“So this is something dangerous and magical?” Fafhrd asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s go there.”
When the ship entered the port, nobody was there. The pier was completely devoid of life and not even an old, one-eyed sailor-turned-beggar witnessed the ship full of skeletons that stopped by the mooring. The colourful band of travellers that walked out of it also received no attention.
“What will we do with all these skeletons?” Araralei the Sour Elf asked.
“Oh, they can take this ship wherever they want,” Gray Mouser replied. “When we get back, we’ll be rich enough to buy an entire fleet.”
The skeletons raised the sails and the ship started to slowly move forwards.
“Hmm, we should have maybe left it as a getaway vehicle?” Sour asked. “Or as a weapon. Remember that one time when we played Call of Cthulhu and Indigo rammed the altar with a monster truck full of explosives and proceeded to shoot the cultists with an AK-74 until everything exploded? Would be awesome if someone did this with a ship.”
“If I recall correctly, it was IWI Tavor.” Indigo chuckled, dropping her Fafhrd accent. “I mean, Sugarcoat keeps giving me Israeli rifles for some reason, and I also dual-wielded UZIs after I ran out of ammo.” She smirked. “Man, my best death ever.”
“You’ll have more of that when I’m back as a DM,” Gray Mouser chuckled. “Okay, we need to find some locals. This town seems too quiet…”
“Yeah, let’s find an inn and get wasted!” Gmork exclaimed, slurring a bit.
“You’re already wasted, idiot.” Sour muttered, walking down the pier. “Come on. Maybe we’ll find someone who isn’t retarded.”
Suddenly, they saw some woman in rags running towards them. She dropped on her knees in front of Sour and bowed. “Great elf warrior!” she exclaimed. “Great warriors! Finally! Oh, great elf warrior, we’ve been waiting for you!”
Sour rolled her eyes. “I said, ‘someone who isn’t retarded’.”
“Hey, if you don’t like my acting, you can fu–”
Sour grabbed a bow and shot at the woman, who dropped dead in front of her.
“Remind me, what part of true neutral are you?” Gray Mouser asked, walking to the woman’s body. “Hmm, I think I can help her.”
“Using necromancy?” Sour furrowed her eyebrows and looking around in case there were any witnesses.
“Hey, that’s better than shooting a random woman because you didn’t like her acting.” Gray Mouser rolled his eyes. “Now the rest of the citizens will fuck us up and we don’t have a ship.”
Lemon hiccuped. “Wait, where’s our ship?”
“Did you fall asleep?” Sour asked. “Sugarcoat sent it back because she thought we’d become rich!”
“I may have fallen asleep for a moment.” Lemon pointed at the dead woman. “But her hair smelled nice and she had a very soft shoulder…”
“What?” Indigo asked.
“I can confirm,” Juniper said. “She spent the last fifteen minutes sleeping on my shoulder, but she just looked too cute to wake her up.” She turned to Sour. “Also, did your parents drop you on your head when you were a baby? Why did you shoot me?”
Sour’s lips formed a smirk that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh, you know nothing about my head, honey. Do you want to find out?”
“Do I?” Juniper whispered to Sunny.
“Nah, she’s a crazy bitch.” Sunny shrugged and grabbed a bottle of beer. “Want some?”
Sour stood up. “How about shoving that bottle up your–”
“Enough!” Twilight exclaimed. “Lemon, stop falling asleep! Sour, stop shooting NPCs and threatening people! Sugarcoat–”
“I did nothing wrong,” Sugarcoat said.
“For once.” Twilight sighed. “And Sunny, I want some.”
“What?” Sunny asked.
“Some beer, of course.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I know how many more bottles you have stuffed there.”
“I know, I just never thought you’d be the type to do some underage drinking.” Sunny shrugged. “Though on the other hand, everyone thinks Indigo is constantly drunk, but that’s just how she rolls.”
“Hey, let’s not forget about seventh grade,” Indigo said. “I don’t know what was the idea behind Twilight and Moondancer’s chemistry project, but they started making booze and got drunk on fumes or some shit, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Sunny shuddered. “I still have nightmares about Moondancer chasing me with a syringe and yelling that she’ll give me cancer.” She turned to Twilight. “What exactly was in that syringe?”
Twilight took a large sip of her beer. “It may have been urine for all I know. Moondancer wasn’t exactly stable back then.”
“Implying she is now,” Sour Sweet muttered. “I’m not the one to talk, but at least I don’t have a plan to kill everyone I met.”
“Interesting,” Juniper said. “I need to talk to her one day.”
Sour Sweet shook her head. “You really want to become an anonymous corpse in some back alley one day, don’t you?”
“Been there, done that,” Juniper replied. “I played a corpse in one show. I just had to shoot a few flashbacks and then I had Stormy Flare standing this close to me–” She made a wide gesture with her hands, “–flip her sunglasses and say ‘looks like the jig is up’. You know, because I was an Irish burglar beaten to death with a banjo.”
“Ah, those later episodes really got ridiculous,” Sugarcoat muttered.
“On a side note, lying on the autopsy table in your underwear is not fun,” Juniper said. “It was cold and my back hurt.”
“Underwear, you say?” Lemon asked. “What was it?”
Twilight took another sip of her beer. “Lemon, shut your mouth. Let’s get back to the game.”
Sour woke up with a terrible headache. The light was shining through the bars in the window, making her unable to focus, even despite the fact that she was an elf. Also, it seemed to shine in her eyes only; the streets below were still covered in the shadow of the black spire.
She looked around. Her bow was missing and so were the arrows. When she rolled on her back, she found out that at least one of her knives was still in its place.
“I thought you’d never woke up,” Gray Mouser said, looking at her. “Rise and shine, Sour Elf, before they hang us.”
“Why would they hang us?” Sour asked.
“You killed that woman at the pier, remember?” The halfling rolled his eyes.
“Didn’t you bring her back to life?” Sour asked. “I mean, un-life, but no one noticed the difference so far.”
“Yes, but it turns out they don’t like elves here,” Gray Mouser replied. “Or any magic user. They wanted to arrest Lemon too, but she sang them a song and seduced the commander of the guard.”
“Typical Lemon.” Sour groaned. “And what about the rest? Are they plotting to get us out?”
“Don’t worry, after a while you can get used to getting hanged.” Gray Mouser smirked. “Also, I wouldn’t count on that. They were pretending they didn’t know who killed that woman until the mayor said he’d give a thousand golden coins to anyone who knew something about this case. Gmork whacked you over the head with a stick bigger than him.”
“Fucking halfling.” Sour got up and started pacing around the cell. “When I get out of here, I’m gonna feed him his balls.”
Gray Mouser raised his hand. “I’d like to point out he’s a half-orc.”
“And half-halfling.” Sour shrugged. “So, uhhh… a quarterling?”
“Half-gnome.” Gray Mouser rolled his eyes. “Please, don’t confuse gnomes and halflings. Halflings are respectable members of modern society, while gnomes are Mother Nature’s half-baked bastards.”
“What’s the difference?” Sour asked. “It’s all a bunch of little shits.”
“Halflings life in comfortable burrows, although mine is currently a bit less comfortable after my compatriots tried to burn it.” She shrugged. “I only brought a dead kid back to life, why did everyone act like it was a big deal? Meanwhile, gnomes live in mines and other shitholes, their cooking tastes like crap and they think they’re some kind of dwarves or something.”
“In my forest, we call dwarves ‘target practice’,” Sour said.
Gray Mouser nodded. “Well, then you’re always welcome in my burrow. It’s pretty cozy if you don’t mind rat bones. Also, I think the villagers destroyed my pentagram.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever see the light of day again,” Sour replied. “Unless our friends are planning to bust us out of prison. I wonder where they are…”
The small castle on the city outskirts was basically a ruin, with half of the roof missing and an actual tree growing in the middle of one of the rooms. Its sole inhabitant, however, was an actual sorcerer. A balding man in a black robe with multiple patches had been banished from the town a long time ago, but he still remembered the day when the dark spire appeared on the horizon.
“It must’ve been the deed of some powerful god,” he said. “It just appeared overnight and the cultists came soon after. Sometimes they’d pay for advice or wares with coins like this one.” He looked at the coin Gmork showed to him. “However, soon their numbers grew and they started to kidnap kids and desecrate graves… We sent twelve greatest warriors, along with a thirteenth one who wasn’t from here, but they never came back.”
“Hey, I know this one!” Indigo exclaimed, startling a ginger cat which was walking on the table and hissing at Lemon. “I watched The 13th Warrior with my sister.”
“Hard times started for our town,” the sorcerer continued. “Those cultists are preparing something. The merchants started to disappear and soon we may starve.”
“What ‘bout the king?” Gmork asked, taking a sip of beer. “There must be sum king ‘ere.”
“The king doesn’t care about our little town.” The sorcerer shook his head. “I wanted to hire an army of adventurers, but I need gold for that. If I only caught them…”
“Who?” Lemon asked.
“Little blue creatures,” the sorcerer replied. “I could use them to make gold.”
“Gold, you say?” Lemon’s eyes lit up. “Little, blue creatures? Too bad we already sold Sugarcoat to the mayor and Gmork is more green than blue, although Sunny–”
“Hey, maybe he means Nac Mac Feegle?” Gmork asked.
“Wait.” Indigo stood up. “Don’t you get it? The way this guy looks, that ruin we’re in… I might be a barbarian, but I’m not helping Gargamel to catch Smurfs! One has to have rules!”
“Dude, what?” Lemon asked.
Indigo raised her eyebrows. “Why is everyone so surprised that I know things?”
“It’s because the only reference you’ve caught so far is Smurfs, of all things.” Gmork hiccuped. “Even funnier because I didn’t, but well, I’m slightly tipsy.”
Indigo sighed and turned to the sorcerer. “Okay, Juniper… Wait, I can just call you Gargamel, because why not. We’ll beat the crap out of these cultists for all the money we find in their fortress. Deal?”
“You and who else?” the sorcerer asked. “I mean, your friends don’t exactly look like warriors.”
“Well, we have an elf archer and a pocket-sized necromancer, but–” Indigo slammed her forehead. “Oh, crap, I forgot they’re imprisoned.”
“Just great.” Gmork sighed. “They may have been hanged, for all we know.”
“It was your idea, you bloody runt.” Indigo slipped into barbarian mode, grabbing an axe and waving it over the half-orc’s head. “We’d better go before it’s too late!”
“We can always seduce the cultists!” Lemon exclaimed.
“I’ll seduce your ass with this if you don’t move!” Indigo shouted, waving her axe.
“Kinky,” Lemon muttered.
“Oh, shut up!” Indigo exclaimed.
The mayor of the town knew how to keep his approval ratings high. In a place ravaged by cultists and forgotten by gods and monarchs alike, a public execution or two was enough to keep morale in check. Especially since, at least in this part of the world, seeing an elf being hanged was a rare treat. A halfling was even rarer, although this came with a few technical difficulties.
“I’m gonna need more chairs,” the executioner said, looking at Gray Mouser. “Also, how much do you weigh?”
“I don’t know, last time I was getting hanged, they wanted to go with a short drop,” the necromancer replied. “Also, I can revive your assistants, if you want.”
“Nah, they were bad anyway.” The executioner looked back. Two of his assistants were lying dead on the floor. while two more restrained Araralei the Sour Elf. “Where did she hide that knife?”
“Elf secrets,” Gray Mouser replied. “I’d watch out, she probably has a few more.”
“You’re not helping!” Sour exclaimed. “Also, I’m not telling you how much I weigh!”
“Short drop, then,” the executioner said. “Just for show. We have quite a large audience outside and most of them are betting whether elves shit themselves when they die or not.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Do they?”
“Come closer and I’ll tell you,” Sour replied.
“No thanks.” The executioner looked at his dead assistants. “We’re running late anyway and–”
Suddenly, the door burst open, slamming the executioner in the back and pushing him on Sour, who didn’t waste time, freeing herself from the assistants’ grasp and stabbing him in the throat with another knife. She spun in place, kicking one of the assistants and sending him flying towards the wall. The other one dodged the initial blow, but then he didn’t even notice when Sour stabbed him in the eye, proving once and for all that elves were superior when it came to speed.
“We came here to negotiate!” Fafhrd the Barbarian exclaimed.
“With whom?” Gray Mouser asked, looking at the executioner. “Though then, he wears a hood. No one will notice that he’s a zombie.”
“We were going to tell the mayor that we can free them from the cultists and that we need you for that. You’d be free if you survived,” Lemon replied.
“Exactly, like in Dirty Dozen, ” Fafhrd the Barbarian said. “Though we may not tell the mayor that his executioners are currently unavailable.”
“I’m working on it!” Gray Mouser replied. “Also, Sour, stop trying to stab Gmork, okay?”
“That treacherous little motherfucker?” Sour exclaimed. “Why would I?”
“For an elf, you have an interesting vocabulary,” Gmork said.
“There are no words in Quenya or Sindarin to express what I feel about you,” Sour spat.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Gray Mouser got up and looked at the executioner, who stood up and saluted in an oddly stilted manner. “Now, let’s find the mayor. We need someone to tell people that the show is cancelled.”
“Knowing the mayor, he’ll want to hang someone else or the audience may get pissed,” Lemon said. “Trust me, I got to know him a bit.”
Gray Mouser snickered. “In the biblical sense?”
“Shut up, Sugarcoat.” Lemon rolled her eyes. “I’ll better talk to him. Even when you’re sober, you all have diplomatic skills of a baboon with a pair of cymbals.”
Gmork hiccuped. “Don’t take too long! The guy is old, he may not survive that.”
Lemon only sighed.
Twilight took a sip of her third beer and rolled the dice. “Okay, you successfully convinced the mayor that it’s better to set your friends free so you can help the town get rid of the cultists.”
“That’s it?” Lemon asked. “I hoped I’d get to roleplay with Juniper a bit.”
“It’d take too long,” Twilight replied. “And it’s getting late too.”
“Yes, and despite what you may think, I don’t really swing that way.” Juniper moved her chair away from Lemon. “I mean, you’re cute and stuff, but come on.”
“I wanted to engage in some diplomatic relations,” Lemon replied.
“Yeah, sure,” Indigo said. “Sunny’s mom already thinks we’re trying to summon Satan here. Let’s not convince her that we’re shooting porn instead.”
“She already thought that when we tried to shoot an anti-drug PSA, remember?” Sunny chuckled. “Also, Twilight, don’t you think it’s enough?”
“Of the game?” Twilight asked. “I mean, you’re leaving the town, so we may as well–”
“I meant beer, but whatever,” Sunny replied. “Are you sure you’re fine?”
“Yes,” Twilight said, a bit too quickly. “Also, we’re a bit behind the schedule because of you all constantly trying to screw each other over, so if you want to continue, then why not.”
“Well, we gained some money recently, so we may as well visit a merchant first,” Indigo said. “I’d need better armour. And a helmet. And I guess we should all get horses, because so far only Lemon has a pony.”
“I’d like to remind you that all the merchants in town were slaughtered by the cultists,” Sour Sweet said.
“Right.” Indigo sighed. “What about Sunny? She’s the artificer, right? We need some magical items.”
“Trust me, you’ll get magical items,” Sunny replied. “Also, in case magic fails, I always have good, old barrels of gunpowder. Perfect for any cultist in any universe.”
“Fine,” Indigo said. “Let’s go, then!”
Author's Note
If someone asks when in the It's the End of the World As We Know It timeline this story takes place, my answer is "don't think about it too hard".
The road led them through deep forests and shadowed meadows full of plants they’d never seen before – well, maybe except of Araralei the Sour Elf, who was more in touch with nature. Tall, impassable mountains surrounded the valley, still bathed in the grim, overwhelming shadow of the tall, dark spire. Nevertheless, the valley was full of life; bees were buzzing, rabbits were hopping in the grass. Occasionally, one could hear a distant roar of a bear.
A proud deer walked from beneath the tree cover; it smelled some strange, unfamiliar smell and decided to check what was that before running away along with the rest of the herd. It sniffed the air, walking along the ridge, overgrown with moss and reddish grass. The strange smell all but disappeared. The deer was about to turn back and leave the scene, when an arrow flew from behind the bushes, hitting in between the eyes.
“Dinner’s ready,” Sour said, lowering her bow and watching the deer collapse.
“I always thought elves were vegetarians?” Fafhrd the Clueless Barbarian asked.
“Yeah, and we invented archery because we were bored.” Sour rolled her eyes and grabbed the knife. “Let’s skin the son of a bitch.”
“Son of a doe, more like.” Fafhrd chuckled, grabbing a large hunting knife. “Gmork made this one for me. It has some runes built into it, but I’m not sure if it’s for making meat softer or better aim while throwing.”
Sour groaned. “I wonder why Gmork gave Lemon a crossbow with a sighting spell and I got nothing. She can’t even shoot a crossbow.”
“Well, it’s not a particularly good crossbow,” Fafhrd replied, walking to the deer and watching the huge antlers. “It sometimes shoots backwards. Also, I don’t think Gmork will get you anything after you promised you’d feed him his balls.”
“Still, I’d like some upgrades.” Sour looked at her knife before castrating the dead deer with a one, swift motion. “Who knows how many cultists are there.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”
After the dinner, consisting of roasted deer and scrambled eggs – provided by Lemon who mentioned something about singing with some, unfortunately deceased bird – the party embarked on the further journey. Soon, however, they had to stop as it turned out that Gray Mouser was lagging behind.
“Well, now we’ll have to carry the halfling, I guess.” Lemon shook her head. “Or stay here for night. At least we can throw him at the incoming enemy.”
“Shut up,” Gray Mouser replied. “I’m the rear guard. It seems that someone is following us.”
“I can’t hear anything,” Sour said.
Gray Mouser shook his head. “I sense them on a different plane. They may not be alive.”
“The mayor realised that ‘is executioner and all of ‘is assistants are zombies, huh?” Gmork chuckled. “Well, they probably smell better than when they were alive.”
“Nah, that’s something else,” the necromancer replied. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Then keep guarding our rears.” Fafhrd smirked. “Your head is at the perfect height for that. In fact, we can as well crash here. It’s getting dark.”
“If I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open.”
“Good thing I don’t need to sleep,” Sour said. “If only our artificer would give me something that’d work against the undead…”
“I’m not suicidal, okay?” Gmork rolled his eyes. “I ain’t gonna give you an occasion to rip me arse off.”
“I don’t need an occasion.” Sour smirked in a decidedly un-elflike way. “You’d better watch out, little shi–”
An arrow hit Gmork’s foot, piercing the boot and nailing the half-orc to the ground.
“It wasn’t me!” Sour spun in place, grabbing her bow. She heard a war cry somewhere from behind the bushes and shot there, causing the cry to end in a choke, followed by the sound of a body hitting the ground.
Several people, clad in dark coats jumped from the tall grass, surrounding the party. Fafhrd the Barbarian smirked, producing his sword and spinning it around.
“Random encounter!” he exclaimed, attacking the nearest enemy. The cultist parried the first blow with a long, curved blade, and jumped back. Fafhrd followed, but had to back up when the cultist gained momentum and counterattacked, almost giving the barbarian a new scar across his face.
Araralei the Sour Elf yelled something in her native language. To Gray Mouser’s surprise, the cultist also spoke back in Elvish, chuckling in a rather cruel way.
“What’s going on?” the halfling asked Lemon.
“They’re drows,” Lemon replied. “My Elvish is shit, but I think they’re exchanging compliments.”
Sour shot at one of the drows; he dodged, but the arrow hit one of his companions in the arm. He yelled something, to which Sour showed him her middle and index finger.
“He said he’d cut off the fingers she uses to draw the bow and she showed him those fingers,” Lemon said. “It’s a traditional rude gesture in–”
“I don’t need a lesson in Elves’ culture.” Gray Mouser raised his hand and fired a magic missile at one of the drows. “Go and help Fafhrd!” She pointed at the barbarian, who was trying to defend himself from five cultists surrounding him.
“Okay,” Lemon replied. “Hey, guys, wanna hang out?”
Two drows stood still and looked at her, their mouths agape. This was enough for the barbarian – one of the drows suddenly parted with his head, while the other got nearly cut in half by Fafhrd’s enormous sword.
“Thanks,” Fafhrd said, parrying the blow of the third drow. “Why didn’t it work on all of them? What are they, gay?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’d help them.” Lemon grabbed one of the drows and pulled him away from Fafhrd. “When I seduce you, you’re gonna be seduced, understood?!”
“Hey, don’t seduce me by accident.” The barbarian shuddered, seeing the drow fall limply to the ground with one hand buried in his trousers, while unsuccessfully trying to keep his innards from spilling out with the other. Two other drows backed off upon that sight; it was enough for Fafhrd – he threw the sword at them and when the first one blocked it with his own blade, Fafhrd grabbed the axe and buried it in the drow’s skull.
“Get one alive!” Gmork exclaimed.
“Okay.” Fafhrd nodded and smacked the last of his enemies with a handle of his axe before swinging it and cutting off one of the cultist’s legs. Screaming, the cultist collapsed.
More magic missiles swung in the air, hitting the other drows, as well as the ones hiding on the trees and shooting their bows. Several arrows bounced off Fafhrd’s armour. Lemon dodged them, but one of the arrows brushed her arm.
“Why can’t I use Fire Tornado?” she asked. “I’d fry all those motherfuckers.”
“Yes, and us with them.” Gray Mouser shot another spell at a drow who dropped on the ground right in front of him, and finished the opponent off with a small, silver dagger. “Go and tell Lolth that you got offed by a hobbit with a paper knife. Maybe the old spider will shit herself laughing.”
“No time for one-liners!” Fafhrd exclaimed. He’d regained his sword and was just trying to pierce a drow with a morgenstern with it. “They keep shooting at us!”
“Can someone get this out?” Gmork pointed at his foot. “I need to get to my backpack.”
“No problem.” Sour yanked the arrow out without much care, looked at it for a moment, and shot it at one of the drow archers. “Enjoy your half-orc HIV!” she exclaimed.
“Rude,” Gmork muttered, rushing to the backpack. He opened it and produced some object wrapped in canvas, as well as a box full of black, steel balls. Then he took one of the balls, lit the fuse connected to it and rushed towards the drows hiding in the darkness.
“Okay!” he exclaimed. “This is my new slingshot, firin’ small balls full of gunpowder! Let me show ye its features!”
“You should chill out with youtube,” Gray Mouser muttered. Gmork shot the slingshot. The projectile hit one of the drows in the head and exploded. It wasn’t a big explosion, just enough for the cast iron shrapnel to give the drow a nasty scar and wound a few of his companions.
“That’s it?” Sour asked. “I expected something bigger.”
A dead drow with a morgenstern sticking out of his back landed in front of Gmork, followed by Fafhrd, who looked at the half-orc and yanked the box with bombs out of his hands.
“Gray Mouser!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “Here!” With these words, the barbarian threw the box at the drow archers. The diminutive cleric emerged from the darkness and raised his hands, hitting the box with a magic missile and propelling it forwards.
It exploded among the archers, showering them with remains of the wooden box and iron shrapnel. The tree some of the drows were sitting on burst into flames; Sour shot a few arrows at the burning archers, but then she lowered her bows.
“Eh, no use wasting arrows if they’re frying anyway,” she muttered, watching the remaining handful of archers escape. “Hmm, we need only one to tell the tale, right?” She raised her bow again and shot one of the retreating drows.
“Optimally none of them,” Gray Mouser replied. “Or else they’ll send more of their friends.”
“Well, if no one came back, they’d send another party to see what happened with the first one,” Lemon said. “Does anyone need healing?”
“Me.” Gmork pointed at his foot.
“And me.” Fafhrd examined a few arrows sticking out of his armour.
“And this guy.” Sour pointed at the drow with one leg, who was trying to crawl away. “Where are you going, sweetheart?” she asked, producing a knife. “You have a great future. How long it’ll be depends on what you’ll tell us.”
“Why do we even need to bother with an alive guy?” Gray Mouser asked. “Some of those could be very talkative.” He looked at the nearest corpse. “Not this one. Our friendly neighbourhood barbarian turned his skull into a fucking jigsaw puzzle.”
“When it comes to talking, alive guys are more convenient.” Lemon walked to the drow. “So, here’s the deal: you either talk on your own, or I’ll talk to you. Or, if you’re into this sort of thing, Sour will talk to you.”
The pale drow looked at Sour, who licked the blade of her knife, then at Lemon, then at his eviscerated companion who still had a smile on his face, and then at Lemon again. “If I bleed out, I won’t tell you anything,” he said, pointing at his leg.
“And that’s where you’re wrong.” Gray Mouser chuckled.
“Baboon!” Juniper exclaimed. Lemon and Sour looked at each other and shrugged, turning back to her.
“What?” Sour asked. “I mean, I don’t have anything against baboons, but that was kinda random.”
“I know.” Juniper blushed. “I mean, you were going to torture that drow, so I, uhh… I just kinda said my safeword.”
Lemon chuckled. “You have a safeword?”
“You don’t?” Juniper asked.
“We’re, like, in high school, come on.” Sour shook her head. “Also, who needs a safeword anyway? All in or not at all, huh?”
Sugarcoat rolled her eyes behind Sour’s back. “That’s funny, by the way, because I have the same safeword. I mean, Sandalwood came up with it and he’s your cousin, so–” She furrowed her eyebrows, making some kind of rapid mental calculation. “Fuck.”
“Nice.” Sunny smirked. “I really didn’t need that mental image, but if you all insist…”
“I didn’t even have that mental image before you mentioned it.” Twilight shuddered and finished her beer in one gulp. “Thanks, I hate it.”
“What’s a safeword?” Indigo asked.
“I’ll tell you when you grow up,” Sugarcoat replied, turning to Juniper. “So, about your cousin…”
“The answer is ‘no’,” Juniper replied.
“I need to make a phone call,” Sugarcoat said.
“Does it have something to do with the mysterious drow cult Juniper was a part of before I cut off her leg and left her with Sour the Sadistic Elf?” Indigo asked.
Sugarcoat sighed. “No.”
“Then we should get back to the game,” Indigo said. “Come on, right when the plot thickens, you start to wonder who safeworded his cousin.”
“You mean. we finally started to kick ass.” Sunny looked at her character card. “Also, you owe me a box full of bombs.”
“Bombs?” Indigo chuckled. “That was, at best, a firecracker.”
“I’d say it was closer to a petard,” Sugarcoat said. “The word works in a medieval context and, if Sunny ever gets herself killed with this, we can say she was hoist by her own petard, Shakespeare-style.” She looked at Juniper. “Guess you’d appreciate that. On a side note, did you know that the word ‘petard’ comes from a French word for fart?”
Indigo looked at Sunny and burst out into laughter. “So you’re saying she’d be killed by her own farts?” she asked, almost dropping under the table.
“Mentally, you’re still six years old.” Sugarcoat shook her head and grabbed her phone. “And now excuse me, I need to make this call. Meanwhile, you can torture Juniper, maybe Sandalwood will hear that.”
Lemon and Sour looked at each other and smirked.
“Are you taking notes?” Lemon asked. As a tiefling, she was deeply disappointed by their drow prisoner. Upon seeing her and Sour, he started to quickly tell them his whole life story which, as he was about two hundred years old, turned out to be pretty long.
“So, you decided to tell Lolth to bite her old, spider ass and found yourselves a new master, right?” Sour asked. “Are all of you drows?”
“No, there are creatures of all races there,” the drow replied. “Dwarves, tieflings, orcs, you name it. Our master loves all his children equally.”
“Interesting example of tolerance,” Sour muttered. “What is the name of your master, then? Also, I don’t recall any god who’d use a kraken as his symbol.” She looked into the pouch of one of the dead drows and grabbed a handful of coins, similar to the one Gmork owned.
“Asmodeus,” the drow replied.
Lemon chuckled. “Please. I know Asmodeus and he’d eat all of you imbeciles for breakfast. Also, I see a distinct lack of humans among your friends…” She looked at the corpses and shrugged. “So unless the old Assie decided to start a Sunday school, you’re not convincing me.”
“Did you just call the Lord of Hell ‘Assie’?” Sour asked. “I mean, I don’t know much about how you roll in Hell, but that sounds–”
“I sang ‘Rock Me, Asmodeus’ during the family gatherings,” Lemon replied. “Being a tiefling aristocracy has its merits.”
Sour shook her head. “One day this bullshit will backfire at you.” She turned back to the drow. “And you, don’t think you can lie to us. Or else Lemon will ask uncle Asmodeus about your sorry ass.”
“He’s not my uncle!” Lemon whispered.
“Still, I’m pretty sure in his big, bad, lawful evil code of conduct, there’s a punishment for pretending to be his follower.” Sour shrugged. “What is it? A thousand years in blasting furnaces of Hell?”
“My master’s prize is worth all the suffering you can bring on me,” the drow replied. “Your move.”
Sour and Lemon looked at each other. “Who said anything about suffering?” Lemon asked.
“What did he say?” Fafhrd the Barbarian asked. He, Gmork, and Gray Mouser decided to wait until Sour and Lemon were finished – not because of squeamishness, but rather because they didn’t want to get hit by the side effects of Lemon’s charisma. Also, in case the guards ever interrogated them, they could all say that they’d seen nothing. Not to mention that, last but not least, Gmork needed peace to search through the items they took from the dead cultists, including several sets of robes.
“The dice hate me,” Lemon replied.
“Welcome to my world.” Fafhrd the Barbarian smirked. “What exactly happened?”
“Who’d know that a leg amputation can weaken someone so much.” Lemon sighed. “I unbuttoned my shirt and he just kinda died.”
“Really?” Gray Mouser asked. “Maybe I could–”
“His head exploded,” Sour said. “I think there’s still some on my shoes. Also, we’d better get out of here. First they sent drows. Next time they’ll send the same thing that messed up Sinbad the Sailor.”
“At night?” Fafhrd asked. “I mean, I have no problems with that, but–”
“Don’t worry, I’ll go first so you don’t walk into a gelatinous cube,” Sour said.
“Yeah, nothing wrong can happen,” Gmork muttered. “Also, what evil thing can await us on this swamp?” He pointed at the road in front of them.
“An ogre telling us to get the fuck out of his swamp?” Fafhrd chuckled.
“Nah, I think he found his princess already,” Lemon replied. “If someone is afraid of darkness, I can sing a song.”
“Yeah, and alarm every creature in a ten-mile radius.” Sour rolled her eyes. “Move your asses, guys. We’d better get across the swamp till morning.”
They walked across the muddy meadow, smelling of dead, decaying plants and a distant note of a campfire. It was quiet; the calmness of the night was disturbed only by the sounds of owls and loud jingling of Fafhrd’s armour whenever the barbarian tripped.
“Could you be quiet?” Sour whispered.
“Unlike you, I can’t see in the dark,” Fafhrd muttered. “Fucking swamp. I wanted gold, not pneumonia.”
“Shut up.” Gray Mouser looked around. “What if the ogre came back?”
“Then I’ll rip him a new one,” Fafhrd replied.
They continued to walk in silence. After an hour or so, they heard an echo of a bloodcurdling scream coming from somewhere behind them.
“Something is feasting on those dead drows,” Sour whispered.
"Crows?" Fafhrd asked. "Drow-eating crows?"
“I have a feeling that this something has friends closer to us.” Gray Mouser looked around. “Maybe we should light a torch or something?”
“I don’t need a torch and I can assure you that I don’t see anything,” Sour replied. “Unless I’m failing a spot check, which is almost impossible.”
Suddenly, she heard a dull, metallic thud. “Fafhrd, you moron, what did you walk into this time?”
“A boulder,” the barbarian replied. “Some slimy, awful boulder.” She knocked at the rock a few times. “Strange. It seems like this rock is filled with jelly. Funny, isn’t it?”
Sour’s eyes widened when she looked at Fafhrd. “If you don’t stop poking it, either I’ll kill you or it will,” she whispered. “Now, for the love of Solonor Thelandira, back off, quietly.”
“What is it?” Fafhrd asked.
“A chuul,” Sour whispered. “You just poked him in the ass.”
“Well, shit.” The barbarian backed off a bit too quickly and slipped in the ankle-deep water. Sour only sighed when he fell, splashing the water around and landing right in front of another chuul.
“I prefer ogres!” Fafhrd exclaimed seeing two large pincers right above him. He grabbed the axe and rolled away, getting on his feet. The chuul hissed, trying to reach the barbarian with its tentacles. Two arrows bounced off its carapace.
“Damn!” Sour exclaimed. Gray Mouser raised his hands and shot the magic missile at the chuul. More hissing followed from everywhere around.
“Congratulations, you woke up all the chuuls in this valley,” Gmork muttered, diving for his supplies. In front of them, Fafhrd managed to hit the chuul with his axe, but it got stuck in the pincer. What was worse, the other chuul woke up and the barbarian decided to flee.
“Do you have something stronger?” he asked Gray Mouser. “A fireball or something?”
“Throw me at them,” the halfling replied.
“Wha–”
“I said, throw me at them!” Gray Mouser exclaimed. “Before Lemon comes up with something dumb like seducing a chuul.”
“Can I do that?” Lemon looked at the beasts in front of them. “Or not. Gotta have standards.” She shrugged. “If I only could cast Fire Tornado…”
“Oh, fuck it.” Gray Mouser ran at the chuuls. “Here I am, fuckers!”
One of the chuuls raised its pincers, trying to nail the halfling to the ground, but he slipped out of the creatures’ grasp and grabbed one of its legs.
“By the power of Tharizdun!” Gray Mouser exclaimed. “I inflict wounds upon thee!”
The chuul hissed, waving its leg and dropping the halfling on his back. The armour in the place touched by Gray Mouser turned dark; it cracked in a few places, causing ooze to leak from the wounds.
“For the Chained God!” Gray Mouser grabbed the beast’s neck. Sour shot a few arrows in the tentacles of the other chuul, but more were coming; she could see them crawling out of the darkness.
“We’d better run,” Sour said.
“Wait, we can kill at least one!” Fafhrd exclaimed, piercing the chuul’s chest with his sword; it didn’t do much, but cracks appeared around the wound. The barbarian dodged the tentacles and yanked the sword out.
“You won’t loot it anyway!” Sour aimed at the chuul Gray Mouser was riding, but she lowered her bow; the chuul was staggering erratically, its limbs and torso decaying in many places. Still, however, it was dangerous. It managed to shake the necromancer off and raised its pincers to kill him, when it suddenly froze and started to make a sound that could only be described as laughter – assuming the giant mutated lobster could laugh.
Sour looked at Lemon. “Did you just cast Hideous Laughter at it?”
“Why not?” Lemon shrugged. “Now someone kill it before it shakes the spell off.”
“We should run to the hills,” Gmork said. He’d been peppering the chuuls with crossbow bolts, but with not much effects. “Less water there. Also, I’m gonna leave ‘em a surprise.” He grabbed a barrel of gunpowder.
“Yeah, we’d better get out of here,” Sour replied. “Come on, Fafhrd, we’re leaving!”
“I need to escort the halfling to safety!” the barbarian replied, swinging his sword in a desperate attempt to fend the incoming chuuls off. Next to him, Gray Mouser was running between the creatures, barely avoiding their pincers and tentacles.
Suddenly, the necromancer missed a beat and staggered for a moment. One of the chuuls charged at him, smacking him with a tentacle. The monster hissed triumphantly, but Fafhrd ran to him, cutting some of the tentacles off and causing the chuul to back off with a terrible screech.
“You okay there, Sugarcoat?” the barbarian asked.
“I may have convinced him to become Tharizdun follower,” Gray Mouser whispered and collapsed with the distinct sound of a failed constitution roll.
“The team is doing great,” Fafhrd muttered, holding the sword with one hand and grabbing the unconscious halfling by the legs with the other. Then, seeing as more chuuls emerged from the darkness, he decided to do the only reasonable thing left – which was fleeing.
On his way up the hill, he saw a barrel rolling in the opposite direction. He shrugged it off; the barrel was not a chuul, so it posed no immediate threat. For him, at least – he only managed to run a few more steps uphill, when the powerful explosion threw him on the ground.
“That’ll show ‘em!” Gmork exclaimed.
“It certainly showed me…” Fafhrd muttered, getting up and trying to climb. “My armour got charred.”
“Behind you!” Lemon screamed.
Fafhrd turned back to see the only chuul desperate enough to follow them up the hill. Judging by the decaying, burned carapace, full of cuts and cracks in the plates, with several arrows sticking from it, it was the same one Gray Mouser had been riding earlier. It was limping and half of its left pincer was missing, but its mouth was still full of tentacles and it was out to get them.
Fafhrd looked around and realised that his sword was lying in the grass a few feet away from him. He had the axe on his back, but then he realised he had a better weapon at hand.
Letting out a powerful war cry of the barbarians, he charged at the chuul, raising his arm and smacking the chuul over the head with the unconscious body of Gray Mouser. Something cracked. The chuul twitched and staggered, dropping on the ground and rolling down the hill, crushing the bushes on its way. Finally, it hit a large boulder and twitched for the last time before resting limply with its legs spread at weird angles.
“Did you smear me against its tentacles?” Gray Mouser whispered before passing out again.
“Maybe.” Fafhrd shrugged. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Just as the sun rises, you cross the ridge and see that down in the valley there’s a village,” Twilight said, yawning. “Just a few straw huts and a wooden inn–”
“Well, I can’t see anything, because I’m unconscious and down to one hit point,” Sugarcoat muttered, turning to Indigo. “Are you mental or what? Hobbits aren’t an improvised weapon.”
“Hey, this worked.” Indigo chuckled.
“Also, for the last time, you’re a halfling.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “Unless you want a C&D from Tolkien’s estate.”
“I identify as a hobbit,” Sugarcoat replied.
“For me, you can even be a kender.” Sour Sweet rolled her eyes. “Just the one who steals bodies instead of money.”
“Shut up, Sour,” Sugarcoat said. “If you call me a kender once again, I’m gonna turn you into a zombie.”
“What’s a kender?” Juniper asked.
“The black sheep of the hobbit family,” Sugarcoat replied. “They steal, wander around being annoying, steal more, sing songs, and play accordions.”
“Don’t you think it’s very suspicious?” Sunny asked, walking into an empty inn. She looked under the table, but only found some empty bottles of beer. “Cultists are swarming in this place like kenders around a bag of coins, there’s a swamp full of chuuls right behind the hill, all the merchants wind up dead and yet there’s a village here. Unburned and everything, complete with an inn.”
“Yeah, very odd,” Indigo muttered. “But we need rest and healing, so we may as well take a peek.”
“Famous last words,” Lemon said.
“Maybe,” Indigo replied, looking at her phone. “But I guess it’s something for the next session. If we stay here any longer, it’ll turn into a sleepover.”
“Why don’t we have sleepovers anymore?” Lemon asked.
“Because we’re not thirteen,” Sour Sweet replied. “Though I must admit it was quite fun when we were playing Truth or Dare in my house and my sister walked in–”
“Which one?” Lemon asked. “Because if Sweeten Sour, then it was indeed when we were thirteen. But if it was Sweet Dreams, then it was two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but we weren’t playing Truth or Dare two weeks ago.” Sour blushed. “And it was just the two of us. And, uhh… I’ll stop digging myself deeper.”
“History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.” Juniper chuckled. “Do you often forget about locking your door?”
“I can’t lock my door since the twins took over Sweeten Sour’s room and she ended up in mine.” Sour rolled her eyes. “Also, didn’t you hear that curiosity killed the cat?”
“Strange, I always thought it was Indigo’s motorbike.” Sugarcoat shrugged and got up from her seat. “Okay, let’s go before it turns catastrophic.”
“So, am I driving everyone home again?” Indigo asked.
“Well, since you’re conveniently not drinking…” Twilight looked at the empty bottles in front of her. “Why did I even drink this? I’m gonna be sick tomorrow…”
Indigo only sighed.
A white pawn moved to h4. Sunny looked on the screen and shook her head in disbelief and captured the audacious pawn with her queen, smirking to herself. The game was definitely going well. She chuckled when her opponent offered to trade bishop; with two pawns up, all trades were going in her favour.
She moved her queen, forcing the white knight back and pushed her own knight forward, launching a counterattack on the weakened king’s position. Her opponent only pushed a pawn, far away from all the action. Sunny moved the queen again, threatening checkmate, to which her opponent pushed the pawn in front of the king one square forward.
Sunny clicked on the knight, preparing a check when she spotted another move. A much better one.
“Oh, you don’t see that coming,” she muttered to herself. “I just capture the knight with the rook and you can’t take back because then the g-pawn is hanging and once it falls, you’re getting checkmated on the next move. And if you don’t take the rook, then I’ll sacrifice it on g3 anyway and if you don’t take it then, I’ll shove it up your throat until you choke.”
She clicked on the rook and moved it to capture the knight. As she expected, her opponent took the rook.
“Of course, you’re a twelve-year-old who gets ADHD whenever playing online.” Sunny shook her head and captured the pawn with her queen, forcing the king into the corner, where he got checkmated on the next move.
“You have a computer that goes faster than a Ferrari and you use it to play chess?”
A chill ran down Sunny’s spine. She turned around to see Indigo who apparently had walked into her room when she was playing. “Oh, not only chess,” she replied. “Dwarf Fortress, Simutrans… Dating sims…”
“Sims?” Indigo chuckled. “I once tried to remove the ladder from the swimming pool and I somehow lit it on fire.” She sighed. “How do you light a swimming pool on fire?”
“Knowing you, you filled it with gasoline, somehow.” Sunny looked at the screen, wondering whether to play a rematch before the rest of her friends would arrive.
Indigo followed her gaze. “Crazy_Glue666?” she asked. “Isn’t it that creepy twelve-year-old who beat you at the finals of Crystal Prep Queen of Blitz Tournament?” she asked.
“Don’t even mention it,” Sunny hissed, aggressively clicking the rematch button.
“You have white this time?” Indigo asked. “What is this?”
“Budapest gambit,” Sunny replied. “She probably knows what to do when I capture on e5, so I’ll push d5 instead.”
“I’ll make an intelligent expression and pretend that I know what you just said,” Indigo replied.
“Be quiet,” Sunny muttered. “I’m just declining her bishop this diagonal in case she goes for some bishop takes on f2 ideas.”
Indigo nodded slowly and shrugged.
“I mean, she doesn’t gain anything by capturing on f2, but it’s a blitz game.”
“Yes,” Indigo muttered. “I agree with all my heart.”
“And she blundered a pawn.” Sunny shook her head. “Again, no concept of pinned pieces. Not to mention this knight is now in trouble.”
“Of course, everyone could see this coming.” Indigo looked at the door, wondering when the rest of her friends would arrive. Of course, Sunny was fine, but sometimes Indigo felt that sitting with her alone was like that moment in a horror movie when the creepy piano music would go slightly faster.
“Now that was just panic.” Sunny shrugged. “She traded her bishop for my knight and now my queen is also attacking her knight.”
Indigo looked at the screen. “Did she just give you her queen?”
“I don’t get that either.” Sunny sighed. “Either she’s tilted or I’m on fire today.”
“Maybe both.” Indigo replied.
“Possibly,” Sunny said. “Now my plan is simply to exchange everything and win.”
“If I recall correctly, you once had a queen against a rook with her in that last game of Queen of Blitz and it was a draw. Which was all she needed.”
Sunny’s eye twitched. “I told you not to mention that!”
Indigo started to look around Sunny’s room, searching for something that could serve as a weapon in case Sunny turned ballistic. However, it didn’t last long.
“Never mind, she walked into a checkmate,” Sunny said. “Someone call some human rights guys, it’s probably illegal to own kids like that.”
Indigo sighed and shook her head. Luckily for her, the door opened and Sugarcoat walked in, followed by Sour, Lemon, Twilight, and Juniper.
“I have good news and bad news,” Sugarcoat said. “Good news is, Lemon drove the girls here, so she’ll stay sober today. The bad news, however…” She walked to Indigo. “Why did I have to take the bus today?”
“I told you my car is broken,” Indigo replied.
“While Lemon’s Yugo is in the working condition?” Sugarcoat shook her head. “Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Well, turns out that in my car you can’t just dismantle the carburetor and put it back together like in my dad’s truck or Lemon’s Yugo,” Indigo replied. “I saw a lot of electronics and it turned out it was fuel injection. And it turns out they only make those in Taiwan.”
“You still got here by motorbike,” Sugarcoat said.
“Yes, but you don’t like it anyway,” Indigo replied. “You said something like, ‘I don’t fancy becoming an organ donor’ last time I offered to drive you home. And, before you ask, Bulk won’t let me borrow his truck since that one time when I tried to help his father with timber and drove the damn thing into a bog.”
“How did you even do that?” Sugarcoat asked.
“It’s roughly the size of battleship Yamato.” Indigo smirked. “And this bog looked like the legit road. Then I was suddenly axle-deep in mud, suffering chuul-related flashbacks.”
“I can totally see that.” Sour rubbed her back. “Also, I prefer your car. I think the company that made Lemon’s car also made guns, right? They sure do know how to inflict pain.”
“It’s because they never assumed people can grow that big.” Juniper said, looking at Sour. “I mean, have you ever considered a career in mo– aargh!” She jumped on one leg, rubbing her ankle, and looked at Indigo. “Why did you kick me?”
“Trust me, I’m saving your ass,” Indigo replied, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Don’t mention modelling around Sour or else you’ll see how sour she can get.”
“Do I want to know why?”
“No,” Twilight replied. “Also, are we getting to the game now, or does anyone need anything they’re addicted to? Like food, chess, beer, cigarettes, or snarky comments?”
“You’re not getting beer today, by the way,” Sunny said. “Your brother asked me if we were drinking together and he really wasn’t happy. He thinks I have a bad influence on you, even though you went to a school full of junkies.”
Twilight sighed. “You can’t just stay sober when someone kills a chuul using a halfling as a makeshift flail.”
“Amen to that.” Sunny nodded, turning away from her computer and walking to the door. “Onwards to the role-playing cave.”
They walked downstairs, to Sunny’s basement-turned-gaming lair. Not much changed there since their last visit. The jet glider model was on the floor with its cover partially removed to reveal some electronics underneath. One of the old closets was open, its contents spilling on the floor.
“Hey, what’s this?” Indigo asked. “Beneath all those old uniforms?”
“It’s most definitely not a body pillow,” Sunny replied, pushing the old uniforms and most definitely not a body pillow back into the closet.
“Ah, okay.” Indigo shrugged. “Was that girl on it even legal?”
“She was,” Sunny replied. “I mean, I bought– I mean, I totally didn’t buy it from a very talented artist at a con I most definitely didn’t go to.”
“Ah, I remember,” Lemon said. “I didn’t go to that con with you too and I remember I didn’t start to doubt your taste when you didn’t buy it.”
Juniper rubbed her temples. “My head hurts just from hearing that and I have a lot of acting to do today. Also, Katyusha? Seriously?”
“Shut up,” Sunny muttered, blushing.
“Can we talk about which Chinese cartoon is better later?” Indigo asked, searching through the contents of a paper bag she’d brought with her. “Anyone want spring rolls? Or sweet and sour chicken?”
“Chinese cartoon?” Sunny hissed.
Juniper furrowed her eyebrows. “Chinese cartoon?”
Sugarcoat chuckled. “Chinese cartoon. Good one, Indy.”
“My sister made chicken for you?” Sour asked. “Watch out, her cooking is rather poisonous.”
Indigo sighed. “I said ‘sweet and sour chicken’, not ‘Sweeten Sour’s chicken’. Who came up with that name anyway?”
“Keep digging, Indigo, there are at least three people in this room you didn’t offend yet,” Sugarcoat said. “Or maybe two because I’m still mad at you for using me to beat a chuul to death.”
“Oh, chill out,” Indigo replied. “We’re gonna heal you soon.”
“Unless we ended up in some shithole where everything tries to kill us.” Sugarcoat looked at Twilight. “Which seems to be the case.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Twilight smirked, opening a file with her notes.
Indigo frowned, seeing a pile of papers that nearly spilled from it. “What is this?”
“Oh, I did some rewrites to suit your playing style more,” Twilight replied. “Although soon we’ll do some serious dungeon crawling, so be prepared.”
“Okay,” Sunny said, taking her seat. “Bring it.”
Upon closer inspection, the village turned out to be empty.
Well, not completely empty. The huts were abandoned, although at least one of their former inhabitants was currently hanging from the tree, half-eaten by birds or something even worse. There was, however, one building with the smoke still coming from the chimney – the large inn in the middle of the village.
“Odd,” Sour said. “The cultists massacred the village but left the inn intact.”
“Maybe they need to crack open a cold one too,” Fafhrd replied. The barbarian was still carrying unconscious Gray Mouser, who didn’t seem like Lemon’s healing helped him at all.
“That or they’re the new owners,” Lemon said. “Then I’m afraid their choice of drinks may have changed.”
“For once Bloody Mary will have actual blood in it.” Gmork chuckled. “So, do we explore the place?”
“Well, maybe there’s beer inside,” Fafhrd said, walking towards the door. It was slightly ajar, with some marks on it, as if someone tried to break it with an axe. “I sense no traps,” the barbarian said.
“I don’t believe you. You could walk for weeks in the most interesting districts of Bangkok and you wouldn’t find a trap either. ” Sour walked to the door and looked at it. “Okay, there are no traps, but someone is definitely inside.”
Fafhrd raised his hand with unconscious Gray Mouser in it. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
“Dangerous? To whom?” Lemon asked. “Okay, let’s get inside.”
The inn was dark, but didn’t look abandoned otherwise. There was no dust on the floor and the tables were standing neatly, with chairs around them. The air was filled with the smell of beer and, much to the heroes’ surprise, scrambled eggs.
“Get out, whoever you are,” Sour muttered. “In the name of Solonor Thelandira, reveal yourself!”
An overweight, scruffy man emerged from behind the counter. He held a crossbow, but he lowered it when he saw his guests. “Not everyday you hear the names of elf gods in this cursed valley,” he said.
“We noticed,” Fafhrd said, putting the unconscious halfling on one of the tables. “Our friend had an unfortunate meeting with a chuul. Can we stay here for a few days?”
“Don’t count on much to eat,” the bartender replied. “The merchants don’t show up here anymore. Well, not in one piece.”
“We also noticed,” Gmork said.
The bartender looked at Gray Mouser. “Is he a cultist? Wouldn’t be the first halfling among them.”
“Don’t worry, he’s the follower of Tharizdun,” Lemon replied. “I know this is usually not good news, but well, better the devil you know.”
The bartender looked at Lemon. “I see,” he muttered. “As I said, we don’t have much food.”
“We have some deer meat,” Sour replied. “Also, there’s a fried chuul somewhere across the ridge, though I’m not sure whether they’re edible.”
“Maybe for half-orcs.” Gmork shrugged. “I hope ye have some beer at least?”
“Beer? Yes, whatever we managed to hide from the cultists,” the bartender said. “Charlene!”
A short girl with curly hair, dressed in a simple woolen dress walked out of the kitchen. She froze, her eyes widening, when she saw the colourful group of adventurers standing by the counter.
“Bring the beer and something for this little fellow.” The bartender pointed at Gray Mouser. “Where did you find that peculiar creature?”
Fafhrd shrugged. “I was just hanging out in some halfling village, completely without a job, and I saw a poster saying that–”
“Wait, you can read?” Sour asked.
“Another halfling read it for me,” Fafhrd replied, smiling sheepishly. “It said that Jolly Sackville-Baggins would be burned at the stake for necromancy, sorcery, murder, kidnapping, and stealing a set of silver spoons. So naturally I had to take a look at it.”
“And you helped him escape?” Sour asked. “Also, is this some kind of a tradition? Wherever this halfling goes, he ends up at the gallows?”
“Nah.” Fafhrd chuckled. “Bloody halflings can’t burn anyone properly. So I wanted to show them how it’s done, when he kicked me in the nuts and ran away.”
The bartender looked at Fafhrd and then at Gray Mouser. “How could he kick you in the nuts?”
“Maybe it was a headbutt.” Fafhrd shrugged. “Hell only knows. Those halflings are fast.’
Gray Mouser opened one eye and groaned. “Jump, flip, and kick. The ancient art of hobbitsu.”
“Is biting the ankles a part of it?” Sour asked.
“Only when elves are involved,” Gray Mouser replied. “Also, I’ve been wondering–”
“While unconscious?” Lemon asked, looking at the bartender’s daughter who just put a tankard of beer in front of her.
“I can wonder while being unconscious, you know,” Gray Mouser muttered. “I mean, if those cultists put a bog full of chuuls here, they may have something else in store for us. We need more firepower.”
“What about a catapult?” Gmork asked.
“That’s a bad idea,” Sour replied.
“There has never been time in history where a catapult was a bad idea,” Gmork said. “Every problem in the world can be solved with enough catapults.”
“And what will we build them off of?” Fafhrd asked. “And who’s gonna drag them through the mountains?”
“To think about it, we can get an army,” Gray Mouser said.
“No mercenaries,” Lemon replied. “We’d have to share the money and I’m pretty sure those cultists aren’t that rich. Not to mention that seducing all the mercenaries to make them forget that we were supposed to pay them is a lot of work.”
“Not to mention that critical failure always hits when you least expect it.” Fafhrd chuckled, but his laughter died down when he looked at Gray Mouser. “Wait, you’re not planning to bring an army of the undead here?”
Gray Mouser only smirked.
Twilight sighed and looked at Sugarcoat. “Remind me, exactly how many undead can you control at the same time?”
Sugarcoat shrugged. “I think I lost count a while ago. But then, they come and go… I mean, this spell only works for twenty-four hours anyway.”
Twilight shook her head. “Let’s pretend that I believe this. Sunny, how many barrels of gunpowder do you have left?”
“About two,” Sunny replied. “Two-ish. Also, why don’t you ask Sour how many arrows she carries?”
“I know better than to count Sour’s arrows,” Twilight replied. “I just assume I won’t get a straight answer and move on.”
“How many arrows do you have anyway?” Indigo asked.
“Enough,” Sour Sweet replied.
“What I thought.” Twilight sighed. “Also, Sunny, I don’t know how you are planning to bring siege engines into this, but I’d like to see you try.”
“Sure thing.” Sunny chuckled.
“By the way, that reminds me,” Juniper said, grabbing her bag. “Sunny, you’re a fan of sports anime, aren’t you?”
Indigo rolled her eyes. “Damn weebs. Can you just stick to being the innkeeper and his daughter?”
“His daughter is mute, so I don’t have much to do there,” Juniper replied. “Also, my question still stands.”
Sunny shrugged. “Well, sports anime is fine by me. How do you know?”
“From the Girls und Panzer not-body-pillow.” Juniper smirked, producing something from her bag.
“Are tank battles a sport?” Indigo asked.
“The same way Die Hard is a Christmas movie,” Sour replied. “Which it is, and you can’t deny that.”
“I got that ski jumping manga.” Juniper gave Sunny the manga. “Guess you’ll like it.”
“What is ski jumping?” Lemon asked.
“I tried it once,” Indigo said. “It was painful.”
“Exactly what it says on the tin.” Twilight sighed. “Also, are you done talking? I want to know your plans on how to take on the cultists.”
“Yeah, right. To thwart them all?” Indigo chuckled. “We’ve been through this with Sugarcoat. Also, I still wonder by what logic is riding a tank and shooting things a sport? I mean, it sounds fun, but–”
“You should stop playing barbarians,” Sugarcoat said. “You break character, but still stay stupid. I mean, you have running, right? That’s a sport. But you also have car racing, which is a sport too. The idea is the same, but with machines. Now, you also have combat sports. Add machines and what do you get?”
Indigo shrugged. “Robot fights?”
“I don’t know how you do that, but that’s both stupid and awesome.” Sugarcoat shook her head.
“I’m a natural,” Indigo replied.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Can we get back into the game?”
“Sure, go on,” Sunny replied, taking a look at the manga Juniper gave her.
“Gray Mouser, what are we going to do tonight?” Fafhrd asked, watching the halfling read some old tome of, most likely, eldritch lore.
“The same thing as every night,” Gray Mouser replied. “We’re gonna try to fuck up those cultists.”
“Well, I see Gmork is preparing more barrels,” Fafhrd said. “Is it gunpowder or what?”
The half-orc adjusted the protective glasses. “Among other things. I’m putting some spells into it to increase damage. Also, I’m experimenting with other explosives.”
Behind Gmork, one of the empty huts suddenly turned into a ball of fire. Fafhrd ducked; debris and burning planks flew above him, hitting the broad side of the inn.
“Okay, this is a bit unstable,” Gmork muttered. “By the way, are there any glowing rocks in the mountains where ye live? They make ye feel sick if ye keep ‘em for too long.”
“Nah, nothing like that,” the barbarian replied. “Why are you asking?”
“Well, I think that if you get a big enough barrel, fill it with those rocks, put some gunpowder in there and get some dwarf inside so he’d launch the charges when the time comes, the effects could be well beyond what we can imagine. Just enough energy to start the chain reaction and then we’d have an explosion to end all explosions. No castle would resist such a power.”
“What about the dwarf?” Sour asked. She was busy shooting her bow at Charlene, the innkeeper’s daughter, each time missing her by a fraction of an inch and causing the girl to squeal and make rude gestures at her.
“They’d never find the body.”
“I can get behind that,” Sour said, firing another arrow at Charlene, hitting the wall inches from her left hand.
Lemon shook her head. “Have you ever wondered why everyone thinks elves are dicks?”
“No idea.” Sour shrugged. “Guess lesser races just can’t appreciate–”
“I think lesser races really appreciate not being shot at,” Lemon replied. “Leave that poor girl alone.”
“Eh, she’s just an innkeeper’s daughter,” Sour said. “I mean, there’s plenty of innkeepers in the world and most of them have some kind of a daughter. Now, when it comes to elves…”
“For all we know, she might even be a Wu-jen Mystic with Mastery of Fire,” Lemon said. “Elves always judge a book by the cover, not to mention that with this attitude you’re just getting hate from all the other intelligent races.”
“Other races are intelligent?” Sour asked. “Fafhrd needs a map to tie his shoes. Also, how can you tell an innkeeper’s daughter is a Wu-jen Mystic?”
“Mystics have quirks,” Lemon replied. “And she walks barefoot.”
“By this logic, our Jolly Sackville-Baggins is a Mystic.” Sour chuckled. “Or all halflings, for that matter.”
Fafhrd walked to them. “You’re talking about Mystics? I knew one of them. He’d drink vodka and talk to his imaginary friend.”
“Mystics drink vodka?” Lemon asked. “I only met a boring teetotaler, who resisted seducing for far too long.”
“Well, some of them don’t,” Sour replied. “But others only reach mystical state by getting shit-faced.”
“Our Mystics prefer mushrooms,” Fafhrd said. “I ate them once and then I had a dream that I was playing dragonchess with Asmodeus. And I can’t even play dragonchess.”
“I once won against him,” Lemon said. “I mean, he gave me a warrior odds, but still.”
Suddenly, they heard a loud explosion and saw Gmork covered in soot, sitting with the remains of a flask in his hand.
“This was almost stable,” Gmork muttered.
“So our plan so far is blowing up all the cultists?” Gray Mouser asked.
“It worked in Call of Cthulhu ,” Fafhrd replied.
“Yes, but we all died,” Lemon said. “And we don’t want to die here because unlike the poor Call of Cthulhu cultists, those cultists apparently shit gold coins, so we want to get rich and kill everyone so they don’t track and kill us like the late Sinbad the Sailor.”
“So basically, we need an army that will deliver the explosives to the cultists in our stead and won’t ask for money in return.” Gray Mouser smirked. “And I happen to have a solution to both of these problems.”
Sour groaned. “If you brought here an army of the undead, I’ll fucking kill you.”
The halfling smiled sheepishly. “Well, actually…” He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Several undead emerged from behind the bushes. Even more approached from behind the ridge, walking towards the village in an oddly mechanical fashion. The heroes recognised some of them; skeletal pirates walked in a formation with the city’s executioner and his assistant, as well as the woman Sour had shot, with the arrow still sticking from her forehead. There were also older zombies, almost decaying. Some of the skeletons were small, probably belonging to halflings.
All of them were armed with a wide range of weapons, from rusty swords and cutlasses to spears, scythes, and slingshots. Two large orc zombies dragged a catapult behind them. It was as old and decaying as its users, but a skilled artificer could probably bring it back to working condition. What was more, it was followed by more orcs. They were all undead, but it didn’t matter much – they smelled almost the same as when they were alive.
“Hey aren’t those the orcs that besieged that one shithole we lived in?” Fafhrd asked.
“There’d be no siege if you didn’t tell their leader that his mother was a whore and that you’d be his father but a dog was faster than you,” Gray Mouser replied.
“Not my fault.” Fafhrd smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t know the city walls were in ruins.”
“Well, now the whole town is.” Gray Mouser sighed. “But at least I borrowed that orc company you’ve slain and told them to wait in some cold cave so they wouldn’t decompose too much.”
“How do you even control them?” Sour asked. “I mean, you have to roll the dice constantly to keep them under your control, right?”
“Well, yes.” Gray Mouser chuckled nervously, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Sour, for the love of Tharizdun, shut the fuck up before Twilight–”
“Sugarcoat!”
Twilight looked at Sugarcoat, the lenses of her glasses almost glowing. “Are you sure you can control this many undead?”
“Well, under some circumstances…” Sugarcoat smirked, throwing nervous glances around. “I mean, I can neither confirm nor deny that what once thought to be impossible may be now, upon careful consideration, more likely to occur, even though the chance of such an event to happen may seem like it’s impossible, uhh…”
“Tell her you smoked weed but you didn’t inhale,” Lemon prompted.
“Why would I do that?” Sugarcoat asked.
“Yeah, I always inhale too.” Lemon shrugged. “But yeah, a whole army of the undead seems a bit above your level.”
“Bullshit,” Sugarcoat replied. “I can roll the dice to prove it.”
“Okay,” Twilight said. “But if you don’t pass, then all those undead will rebel against you.”
“Make sure she doesn’t use weighted dice,” Juniper whispered. It was a pretty good stage whisper, causing Indigo to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Juniper asked.
“When I was fourteen, I tried to make weighted dice and I blew up the microwave oven,” Indigo replied. “Just my luck. My parents didn’t let me play video games for a month. They thought that I decided to become a terrorist after playing Counter-Strike. ”
“Fascinating,” Twilight said. “Okay, Sugarcoat, show me what you’ve got.”
Sugarcoat rolled her eyes and grabbed the dice. With a groan, she tossed them across the table. They landed on the map, one of them bouncing off Sour’s plastic cup and nearly knocking it over.
“Well, crap.” Sunny looked at the dice and shook her head.
“What’s going on?” Indigo asked. “Not everyone can add all those numbers so fast, you know.”
Sunny sighed and looked at her character sheet. “Well, the situation is normal,” she said. “All fucked up. Bend over, here it comes again.”
Indigo froze. “Ouch…”
Sunny nodded. “Yeah, the dice just killed us all…”
Author's Note
Appropriately, I forgot to post a chapter yesterday because I was giving someone a chess lesson.
Author's Note
6. The Roof is on Fire
Fafhrd the Barbarian yanked his axe out of the undead’s skull and looked around. There were still way too many of them; while the skeletons or dead villagers didn’t pose much of a threat, the orcs were different. Even after death, they still remembered how to form a wall of shields, not to mention the fact that they were armed better than the rest.
“I’ll murder that halfling!” Sour screamed, shooting arrow after arrow at the incoming skeletons. “They will never find the body!”
“Charlene, hide!” the innkeeper exclaimed, producing a long, rusty sword. “No worries, gentlemen. I used to be an adventurer, like you.”
“Did you take an arrow to the knee?” Lemon asked.
“No, I got married,” the innkeeper replied, swinging the sword and cutting a halfling skeleton in half. “On a second thought, an arrow to the knee would’ve been preferable.”
Fafhrd spun the axe, beheading one of the orcs. The head rolled on the ground, but the rest of the body didn’t notice that, still attacking the barbarian. Fafhrd groaned, kicking the orc, who finally dropped to his knees, looking for his head until one of Sour’s arrows finished him off.
“We need to hide inside the inn,” Gmork said, throwing a vial of acid at the attackers. “Then we can make it our fortress.”
“Fortress or a last stand?” Sour asked. “Also, where’s Gray Mouser? I need to kill him before they kill us.”
“I need to get my pony!” Lemon exclaimed.
“Wait, your pony survived the chuul attack?” Fafhrd asked.
“Yes, in my luggage!”
Sour rolled her eyes. “That’s not how ponies work, you know.”
“Whatever!” Lemon shouted. “Hmm, seducing doesn’t work on the undead, right?”
“The relevant organs no longer work.” Fafhrd hit one of the executioner’s assistants in the crotch with his axe. “Or sometimes they don’t have them.”
“If only I could use Fire Tornado,” Lemon muttered. “Maybe I’ll try?”
“This won’t work!” Sour exclaimed. The orcs nearly surrounded her and she was slowly running out of arrows. She threw a knife at one of them, but it only slowed him down. “We’d better get inside and come up with a plan.”
“Run for the inn!” The innkeeper stood alongside Fafhrd with the sword in his hand. “I’ll stop them.”
“For how long?” Fafhrd asked.
“Long enough!” The innkeeper spun in place, beheading two orcs. With another swing of the sword, he crushed a skeleton’s skull, but more and more enemies charged at him. Fafhrd was the last to flee, having gotten a spear to the arm, but the innkeeper still stood, wounded. He let out a battle cry, charging at the incoming enemies as if he was going to bring them all down.
He was instantly proven wrong. A blow of an orc sword chopped his arm off and when he dropped to his knees, the undead immediately overwhelmed him, rushing towards the inn.
Fafhrd closed the door, barricading them with one of the tables. Still, the old planks barely survived the first hit by the incoming mass of zombies. More hits followed; the barbarian held the door, but it was clear it wouldn’t last long.
“What now?” Gmork asked. “The innkeeper’s dead and we’re surrounded here. And of course, we’re fucked once they get inside. And Gray Mouser, of course, is hiding under the table.”
“Where?” Sour exclaimed. She rushed to the table and grabbed the halfling, dropping him on the counter and aiming one of her knives at his eye. “Okay, little shit, I’m gonna give you a choice. Which body part should I cut off first?”
“I won’t help you if I’m dead,” Gray Mouser muttered. “Maybe I can still control them, you know.”
“Until the next time you fail at that?” Sour shouted. “I may just throw you to them, you little–”
“Uhh… A little help here?” Fafhrd asked. The door already had several holes, the undead putting their hands in them. The barbarian managed to cut some of them off, but it was clear the inn wouldn’t hold for much longer.
“I can throw a halfling at them,” Sour replied.
Lemon stood up. “That’s it,” she said. “I’m trying the Fire Tornado.”
“Twilight won’t let you do this,” Fafhrd replied, slamming his axe into the face of some undead. “Unless you get some epic dice roll or something.”
“I’m gonna try.”
Gmork rushed to the stairs. “In case ye fail, I’m bringing my barrels.”
“Okay.” Lemon smirked. “Pass me the dice…”
Twilight shook her head and sighed. “Okay, I’ll let you try that just once. Also, if you fail this roll, your situation won’t improve, I guarantee that.”
“Whatever.” Lemon grabbed the dice and rolled them across the table. “I can’t be worse than Sugarcoat when it comes to bad rolls.”
Twilight looked at the dice and her eyes widened. “Well, you actually succeeded. Somehow.”
Juniper nodded. “So, we’re in the inn surrounded by zombies… But now it’s also on fire?”
“The zombies are on fire too,” Lemon replied. “So that’s good, I think…”
The inn was on fire. The front wall had already collapsed, letting the undead inside. Lemon ran across the room, surrounded by the blazing aura of a Fire Tornado, trying to ignite as many enemies as she could. Fafhrd the Barbarian let out a battle cry and swung the battle axe into the skull of another undead, spraying the bits of bone and brain around.
“Stop it!” Fafhrd shouted, yanking the axe out. “I have no fire resistance!”
“If that’s any consolation, this damn halfling doesn’t either.” Sour aimed her bow, shooting one of the undead in the throat. It didn’t faze them at all, though; the pale silhouette charged at them, swiftly avoiding both the fire and Fafhrd’s axe.
“Do something!” Gray Mouser, left forgotten by Sour, yelled from under the table, watching as the undead warrior shrugged off all of Sour’s arrows, baring his fangs and hissing at them.
“What?” Fafhrd asked. “It’s your army, isn’t it? You’re the undead expert here!”
“Not mine anymore!” the halfling exclaimed. “Also, where’s Gmork?”
“Here I am!” Gmork dashed from the upstairs, holding a barrel in her hands. She rushed at the undead, hurling the barrel in their direction. “This should teach them!”
“What’s in the barrel?” Sour asked, watching as the barrel knocked their opponent down and rolled further, catching fire.
“Ye know, stuff.” Gmork shrugged. “I mean, this probably shouldn’t–”
The barrel hit the wall, breaking and falling apart.
Then, without any warning, the inn exploded.
Twilight looked at the dice and her notes scattered on the table. “Okay, this went better than expected,” she said. “Indigo, you wake up on the tree far away from the inn. Most of your equipment is scattered along the way, but you’re also down to one hit point, so you’d better watch out.”
“Just great,” Indigo muttered. “So, am I the only survivor? I need to find the party to continue the mission, I guess.”
“It’s not that bad,” Twilight replied. “When you regain consciousness, you see Araralei the Sour Elf, her clothes torn and burned, staggering around half-consciously.”
“I’d rather not look,” Indigo muttered. “If I’m down to one hit point, seeing a half-naked elf may kill me.”
“Don’t worry, she’s bleeding and looks definitely unsexy, with a piece of broken beam sticking out of her thigh.”
“The only piece of wood that ever ended up in her.” Lemon chuckled.
“Shut up,” Sour muttered. “Where’s Sugarcoat? I need to check if she’s fine… and then put her out of her misery!”
“You probably won’t have a chance,” Twilight replied. “Charlene also survived and is taking care of her. It seems that she lost an eye, but she should be fine.”
“What about me?” Sunny asked. “I mean, I did want to make a run for the window, but I have short legs and–”
“You’re unconscious, lying under the bodies of two dead orcs,” Twilight said.
Juniper smirked. “New TV show, coming soon: Two and a Half Orcs .”
“I hope you’re not going to become a comedian,” Sunny deadpanned.
“Hey, it was fine,” Sugarcoat said. “Also, at least Lemon got rid of all those undead. Let’s get together and we can–”
“Well, Lemon’s dead,” Twilight said.
“What?” Lemon asked. “How am I dead?”
“Well, you were in the middle of a Fire Tornado when Sunny threw a barrel of gunpowder at it,” Twilight replied. “You’re pretty much all over the place.”
“Oh, come on!” Lemon exclaimed. “Sugarcoat failed a roll, I got an awesome roll and I die while she’s alive!? How did this happen?”
Twilight shrugged. “Well, the dice demanded a sacrifice, I guess.”
“I’m gonna sacrifice Sugarcoat to them!” Lemon stood up. Indigo and Sour grabbed her, pulling her away from Sugarcoat.
“Hey, chill out,” Indigo said. “Violence is not the answer.”
“Yeah, that,” Sugarcoat said. “I mean, it’s not my fault that Lemon decided to use magic that’s well beyond her level…”
“So did you,” Lemon spat.
“Yes, but necromancy is a normal thing. Fire Tornado is a homebrew spell,” Sugarcoat replied. “Of course there was going to be punishment, so you should–”
“Shut up, Sugarcoat,” Sour muttered. “Or I’ll let Lemon go.”
“I might let her go for fun.” Indigo shrugged.
“Hey!” Sunny exclaimed. “No fighting in my house!”
“Yeah, exactly.” Sugarcoat stood up. “Violence is never the– aargh!” she screamed when Lemon pinned her to the ground.
“Why did you let her go?” Twilight asked, watching Sunny trying to separate Lemon and Sugarcoat. The only result she achieved was getting elbowed by Lemon and punched by Sugarcoat, who then proceeded to yank each other’s hair.
Indigo shrugged. “It’s like hockey fights. Lemon has to get rid of negative energy to achieve zen or something.” She looked at Juniper. “It’s called zen, right?”
“Yes,” Juniper replied. “Well, first time I see someone mixing it with hockey, but I guess that’s how you roll.”
“Yeah, I guess we’ll finish for today.” Twilight shook her head, watching the fight. It wasn’t much of a fight anymore – once Sunny managed to regain her breath, she finished it by grabbing a katana from her closet. This alone was enough for Lemon and Sugarcoat to realise that it was time to run for their lives. Sunny with anything sharp was a danger to anyone, including, unfortunately, herself.
“Definitely,” Sunny said. “We’ll meet once Lemon has a new character and everyone learns not to behave like a baboon who found a plane full of cocaine that crashed in the Uruguayan jungle.” She swung the katana and accidentally cut herself in the leg. “Ouch. Do I have to get a tetanus shot again?”
“No,” Sour replied. “You only need one every ten years.”
“Also, baboons live in Africa,” Twilight said. “Not to mention that of all the South American countries, you chose the one with almost no forests.”
“Happens to the best of us.” Sunny shrugged. “Still, Lemon needs a new character.” She looked at her leg again. “Wait, is that blood?”
“I already have an idea,” Lemon said, ignoring the fact that Sunny passed out; Indigo managed to catch her before she fell to the ground. “I mean, the innkeeper’s daughter survived, right?”
“Yes,” Twilight replied.
Lemon’s eyes lit up. “Oh, this is gonna be fun…”
The shopping mall was pretty crowded, although the store Twilight and Sunset went to wasn’t exactly filled with people. Twilight looked around, furrowing her eyebrows, and shot Sunset a glare.
“Okay, I don’t get it,” she said. “Why are we checking out, uhh… lingerie?”
“When you called me, you mentioned Timber and something about a gift.” Sunset shrugged. “You woke me up, so I may have gotten the details wrong.”
Twilight sighed. “I said that Timber called, telling me that it’s Gloriosa’s birthday soon. I mean, I could technically buy her some sexy lingerie, but I’m not sure how would she take it.”
“Oh.” Sunset smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, that’d be pretty awkward, I guess. Not to mention that we don’t know, I’d say, the exact size.” She shrugged.
“Well, the problem is, I have no idea what else can I buy her,” Twilight said. “It’s easier to think what not to buy her, like a trip to the spa, or a new edition of Kill It and Grill It, or–”
“Yeah, that sounds more like something for Applejack.” Sunset chuckled. “As for Gloriosa, I– hey!” She staggered when someone bumped into her, rushing towards Twilight.
“Hi, Twilight!” Lemon exclaimed. “I finally found you. Do you know that your phone doesn’t work? You didn’t pick any of my calls.”
“Well, if you didn’t call me at 3 AM…” Twilight sighed. “What do you want?”
“I came up with a backstory for Charlene,” Lemon replied, opening her backpack and producing a large pile of papers from it. “I mean, her father was an adventurer before becoming an innkeeper, right? So, when he was adventuring, he actually met a female Wu-Jen Mystic and you can read about the rest here.” She smirked. “With details and stuff.”
“Do I want to know?” Sunset asked. “I mean, Juniper mentioned someone called Charlene in one of her more cryptic tweets recently, but I assumed she went full Hollywood and got high or something.”
“Trust me, you don’t,” Twilight replied. “Remember that one time we were playing that game where Rarity and Rainbow Dash got into a fight over who killed a dragon? You said you have something similar at home, didn’t you?”
“Ogres and Oubliettes , yeah.” Sunset nodded. “Though I liked it more when we let Pinkie be a GM and played that one with vampires in the title. You know, when we all played as murderous vampire clowns and it turned out that it was Pinkie’s plan to lure us into some kind of a clown-themed orgy.”
“We agreed not to speak of this ever again,” Twilight muttered. “As for you, Lemon, I guess I’ll take a look at it. One day. Will Sunny even let us come to her house again?”
“Not exactly,” Lemon replied. “But we can meet on Saturday at my place, you know.”
“That’s great,” Twilight said. “I guess.”
“Cool.” Lemon smirked. “Oh, by the way, if you buy something here, you can put it on when you come to me.”
Twilight facepalmed. “Lemon…”
Unlike Sunny’s basement, Lemon’s room was bright and spacious, lit by numerous lamps resembling Chinese lanterns. Its brick walls were reminding the visitors that before being turned into a loft apartment, the place used to be a sawmill. When Twilight walked inside, she counted at least three guitars and a keyboard. She suspected there were more instruments in the large closet, although her friends had other ideas.
“There’s no giant singing head inside, right?” Sunny asked, putting on a football helmet she found lying on Lemon’s bed and sitting by the keyboard.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lemon replied.
“We had to get rid of the closet,” Sour said. “There wasn’t enough place after the twins got born.”
“That’s why we’re at my place and not yours.” Lemon opened the closet which, as Twilight suspected, contained some more instruments, including a mandolin, assortment of various drums, and a trumpet, as well as some completely random items like a tennis racket and a large collection of beer bottles. Twilight couldn’t remember if she had ever seen Lemon playing tennis.
Indigo sat on the bean bag chair and looked around Lemon’s room. “I’m getting uncomfortable, vampire-related flashbacks,” she said, looking into the bag she’d brought with herself. “Does anyone want some red curry from that new Thai place?”
“Did you decide to check out every single restaurant in this town before we end this campaign?” Sugarcoat asked.
Indigo shrugged. “More for me, then.”
“I didn’t say I don’t want curry.” Sugarcoat rolled her eyes and grabbed a plastic container from Indigo’s bag. “It’s both a fantasy adventure and a culinary one.”
“Speaking of, I hope you’re not allergic to shrimp,” Indigo said.
“Surprisingly not,” Sugarcoat replied. “Those who hoped for a trip to the ER may express their disappointment now.”
Sunny turned to the keyboard and played the four notes that, as far as she could tell, resembled the sad trombone most.
“Okay, are you ready to start?” Twilight asked. “Juniper said she’d be late, but since Lemon took over Charlene’s character, we won’t need her for a while.”
“We can start, yeah,” Lemon said. “By the way, did you read that backstory?”
“I didn’t finish it yet,” Twilight replied.
Lemon smirked. “Good…”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Fafhrd muttered, looking at the black robe. It was far too small for him, not to mention that he couldn’t quite hide all of his weapons under it.
“Well, defeating them with force encountered technical difficulties,” Gray Mouser muttered. The halfling was the only one without a disguise, although his black robe was indistinguishable from the robes they had picked after a fight with the cultists. Still, he used fabric from one of the spare robes to make himself an eyepatch. “We need to be sneaky.”
“As if anyone is going to believe I’m a drow,” Sour muttered.
“Actual elves can join the cult too, I guess.” Gmork replied. “But I’m gonna ask our cultist expert.” He turned to Charlene, who shrugged and looked at the pony named Lyra Heartstrings, who somehow survived the undead attack without a scratch.
“Ironic,” Sour muttered. “The only person who basically lives near those cultists and could tell us more about them is a damn mute.”
Charlene sighed and showed Sour what she thought of her with a middle finger.
“I guess she and her father had some sort of a sign language,” Indigo said.
“We could ask her father, but there isn’t enough of him left,” Gray Mouser muttered, climbing up the hill. “Where is those cultists’ camp? I can’t see it from here.”
“Try with the other eye,” Sour muttered. “Also, what kind of sign language? It’s freaking Middle Ages.”
Fafhrd smirked. “Back in our mountain village, we had a mute warrior who used gestures. I might try them and see if they work.”
“Did you come up with that yourself or was it a dice roll?” Sour asked. “Wait, who am I kidding…”
Fafhrd turned to Charlene and made a few wide gestures.
Charlene gestured back. Tell the fucking elf bitch that I’ll stick one of her arrows up her arse when she falls asleep.
Fafhrd smirked. “She doesn’t like you, Sour Elf.”
“You’re making this up, don’t you?” Sour asked.
Gmork sighed. “Ask ‘er about them cultists.”
Charlene looked at the half-orc and made a few more gestures. Dad never let me try to seduce them. Not that they were interested.
“Her father didn’t want cultist grandkids,” Fafhrd said.
“You’re just making this up.” Sour rolled her eyes. “I can make gestures like this too.” She waved her hands.
“Careful,” Fafhrd muttered. “That’s offensive to both goats and halflings.”
Gray Mouser turned to Sour. “What did you just say?”
“I have no idea!” Sour exclaimed.
“For the sake of our sanity, let’s just assume the barbarian understands what the girl is saying and move on,” Gmork said. “Also, how are we even going to convince the cultists that we’re their friends?”
“With sass and hand gestures.” Sour rolled her eyes and swung her hand randomly.
“No, I don’t think goats can do that,” Fafhrd said. “Also, Charlene asks why do you keep talking about goats.”
Maybe they smell like her house, Charlene gestured.
“That was low.” Fafhrd chuckled. “Guess we’ll do better if we find some cultists ourselves.”
“Assuming we don’t get killed by chuuls or other shit,” Sour muttered.
“If there’s a cultist camp nearby, there shouldn’t be any,” Gray Mouser said. “They probably scare them away, somehow. Or possibly they cooperate.”
“Then we’ll end up as chuul food,” Gmork said.
Fafhrd shook his head. “Always an optimist…”
After a few hours of wandering down the valley, getting closer and closer to the mysterious rock, Sour finally saw the smoke coming from behind a small hill. She produced her bow, just in case the camp was guarded, but then she remembered they were supposed to be one of them. Still, she decided to keep the bow ready, just in case something went wrong.
However, everything was going smoothly. The camp was indeed guarded, although Sour managed to spot the guards before they spotted her. Mainly because they turned out to be a pair of halflings.
“Welcome, brothers and sisters!” one of the halflings raised his hand when the group emerged from the bushes in front of him. His black robe was dirty; Sour identified traces of at least ten meals on it. He was also smoking a pipe he was sharing with his companion. “I don’t think I know you, guys. Are you from Hunzrin’s group?”
“No, not really,” Sour replied.
“Good,” the other halfling said. “Hunzrin is pretty pissed since some bunch of tramps kicked the Chandara’s group’s collective asses. He said that if he finds those tramps, he’ll skin them.”
“Really touchy guys, those drows.” The first halfling shrugged.
“No wonder,” his friend said. “Did you hear what they did to Ghanduar? They cut off his leg and blew his head to smithereens.”
“Oh, Hunzrin doesn’t have to bother anymore,” Sour said. “The chuuls ate those guys. We even stole a pony from them.”
“Nice,” the halfling said. “Hunzrin will be glad to hear that once he comes back from the patrol. What are your names, brothers and sisters?”
“Araralei,” Sour replied.
“Known as the Sour Elf.” Fafhrd smirked. “I’m Fafhrd the former barbarian, who decided to find solace in religion.”
“Gmork, same here,” Gmork said.
“Gray Mouser,” Gray Mouser muttered, hiding behind Fafhrd. “And this is Charlene.”
“Finnan Tealeaf, at your service,” the first halfling said.
“Perrin Tosscobble, Finnan’s second cousin,” the other halfling introduced himself. “What brought you here? Finnan and I never thought we’d join such a cult. I mean, not after–”
“Wait.” Finnan furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Gray Mouser. “Jolly Sackville-Baggins? Is that you? I didn’t recognise you with that eyepatch!”
“Oh, sh–” Gray Mouser cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly. “Finnan? Long time no see! Nice to see you also found the light of, uhh… Whatever our new god is called.”
Perrin stood up, crossing his arms. “Well, I find it surprising to see you here, after you sacrificed little Shaena Tealeaf to Tharizdun. If I recall correctly, we were supposed to burn you but this big guy fucked up and–” He paused and looked at Fafhrd. “Oh.”
“Fucking halflings…” Sour muttered, kicking Perrin Tosscobble in the face. He dropped on the ground, unconscious, while Fafhrd smacked Finnan, sending him flying. The halfling landed in the thorny bushes a few yards away and rolled on the ground where he lay unconscious.
“Do we kill them?” Gmork asked.
“Nah, doesn’t seem right,” Fafhrd said.
“Then what do we do?” Gray Mouser asked. “It’s gonna be hard to explain that to other cultists.”
Sour smirked. “Trust me…”
The camp consisted of a couple of tents standing around the campfire. Most of the cultists were sitting or lying around it, waiting for the food to cook. Only some of them noticed Araralei the Sour Elf as she walked into the camp, her robe waving dramatically in the wind. She was followed by Fafhrd, who was carrying two unconscious halflings, each of them in one hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” Sour exclaimed, kicking the nearest cultist. “What is it? A camp or a fucking school trip? Where’s Hunzrin? I much desire to speak to him.”
“He’s hunting the people who killed Chandara’s group,” one of the cultists replied.
Sour rolled her eyes. “You wanted to say, ‘tries to fix Chandara’s fuck ups’, right? And in the meantime, while surrounded by enemies, you’re chilling out, leaving only mister Teapot and mister Tosspot as the guards?” She pointed at Fafhrd, who dropped the halflings on the ground.
“They volunteered,” a dwarf cultist said.
“Because no one else could be arsed to guard the camp?” Sour pointed at Charlene. “She’s one of the members of the inner circle and she’s very angry, you know? When she starts to yell at you, you’d rather not be here!”
“We have an inner circle?” one of the cultists asked.
“Of course we do!” Gray Mouser exclaimed. “It just isn’t a proper cult without one.”
“Why weren’t we told about it?” another cultist exclaimed.
“It’s supposed to be kept in secret, but you’re a bunch of idiots,” Sour replied. “When will Hunzrin come back? I don’t want to talk with you idiots, but with him and him alone!”
“His group is searching the swamps,” the dwarf cultist said. “It’s kinda hard since at night chuuls get crazy in there.”
“Oh, the chuuls actually claimed your adventurers,” Sour said. “Only this pony survived.”
“I don’t know.” The cultist by the campfire stood up. He was a tiefling, though slightly bigger and less humanlike than Lemon. “If they managed to crush Chandara’s group and almost blow up her ass, I don’t think they’d get eaten by chuuls just like that.”
Isn’t a little bit too intelligent for a cultist? Charlene gestured towards Fafhrd. If he keeps doing that, he’ll either join the inner circle or, if the jig is up, he’ll wake up with Sour’s arrow in his ass.
Fafhrd shrugged and made a short gesture that meant “leave no survivors” in barbarian battle language.
“Well, let’s wait for Hunzrin and see if he did any better.” Sour rolled her eyes and sat by the campfire. “He’d better hurry, or else she’s gonna be really angry.” She looked at Charlene.
“And before he comes, we’re gonna eat something…” Gray Mouser smirked, looking at the cauldron hanging above the campfire.
The door to Lemon’s room opened and Juniper walked in. “Hi girls!” she said. “Nice place, Lemon. Do you have a giant, singing head in your closet?”
Lemon furrowed her eyebrows. “Why do people keep asking me about that?”
“Okay, now I feel old.” Juniper sighed. “I actually remember this song when it came out.”
“So does anyone here, except for Lemon, it seems,” Sugarcoat said. “And, uhh, Sour?”
“Hunzrin.” Sour looked at Juniper and licked her lips. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m fine, thanks for asking.” Juniper looked around nervously and turned to Twilight. “What is wrong with her?” she whispered.
“She got into roleplaying,” Twilight replied. “You’re Hunzrin now, deal with it. You know, the villainous drow leader.”
“Okay, I see no one’s gonna ask me about the casting.” Juniper rolled her eyes.
“How was the casting?” Indigo asked.
“Bad. Turns out, I was mistaken when it came to the genre. Also, there are actually things I won’t do for money, you know,” Juniper said. “Not many of them, but still.”
“After reading that manga you gave me, I doubt it,” Sunny muttered. “Not every day I come for ski jumping and stay for suicide, crossdressing, and love dodecahedrons.”
“Isn’t that, like, every manga ever?” Indigo asked.
“No, most of them don’t have ski jumping,” Sugarcoat replied.
“Yeah.” Juniper smirked. “So, I’m supposed to do Hunzrin, right?”
Lemon chuckled. “Well, if you don’t mind the audience…”
“Well, I usually don’t, but–” Juniper blushed. “Oh, now that I think about it, this sounded much better in my head.”
“I’m sure it’s because of the casting,” Sugarcoat said. “But well, you can do Hunzrin if you please. Just don’t overact. We don’t want Sour to shoot him.”
Juniper cleared her throat. “Okay, let’s do this…”
Hunzrin turned out to be a tall, dark-skinned drow with a long scar splitting his face in half. His black robe was in perfect condition; underneath it, he wore a chainmail adorned with silver ornaments. He looked at Sour, furrowing his eyebrows and putting his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“They’re some big guys from the Rock,” one of the cultists said.
Hunzrin raised his hand, immediately silencing the crowd. He winced slightly and looked at Fafhrd, who missed the cue and kept talking.
“Wait, The Rock is in it too?” the barbarian whispered. “I liked him in Fast and Furious. ”
“I prefer more ambitious movies,” Hunzrin said.
“Yes, and your uncle directed Daring Do and the Marked Thief of Marapore ,” Fafhrd replied, rolling his eyes.
“Enough of this nonsense!” Hunzrin exclaimed. “What news do you bring from The Rock?”
“You may cease searching for the adventurers who massacred Chandara’s group,” Sour replied. “Chuuls got them.”
“Oh really?” Hunzrin raised his eyebrows and smirked. “That’s very interesting because we found a half-fried chuul at the ridge near the village. Something seemed very suspicious, so we went to the village. Guess what we found.”
“Charred ruins and a lot of corpses?” Sour shrugged. “We know way more than you do.”
“Some of those corpses seemed pretty old,” Hunzrin replied. “They couldn’t come to the village on their own, so either someone brought them there or there was some kind of an undead infestation… Which would mean a presence of a skilled necromancer.”
One of the drows from Hunzrin’s guard walked to him, limping slightly. “There was a necromancer in that group,” she said. “Some little piece of shit, like a gnome or a halfling.”
Sour looked at the female drow. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Chandara Tanor’Thal,” the drow replied. “They had another gnome or other shit who threw a bomb at me.” She took her hood off, revealing a nasty burn mark on her face. “Also some archer, a big guy with a sword, and something like a demon or a succubus. When we came back to retrieve the bodies, one of our soldiers was still, uhh… excited. Even though his guts were all over the place.”
“A succubus, you say?” Sour smirked. “Maybe if you didn’t spend your time thinking of succubi, you wouldn’t be so glaringly incompetent.”
“And who are you to say that?!” Chandara exclaimed. “I didn’t spend the last week digging through corpses to listen to some random fucking smartass from The Rock telling me I’m incompetent!”
“Enough, Chandara!” Hunzrin exclaimed. “Adventurers, undead… Someone’s on our ass.”
“Genius.” Sour rolled her eyes. “And yet, when we came to this camp, it was guarded by two pissheads. If it continues, we’ll have to bring you back to the Rock so you’d explain why this place looks like a cheap brothel.”
“Exactly.” Gray Mouser stood up. “In fact, we’d better go there. Those undead are truly an alarming sight.”
“They ripped that old crazy innkeeper to pieces,” Hunzrin said. “But we found no trace of his daughter.”
Charlene looked around and tried to hide behind the pony known as Lyra Heartstrings. Luckily, no one seemed to pay attention to that – Sour was quite good at stealing the spotlight. Some of the cultists decided to gather their belongings and pack their tents, but Hunzrin stopped them with a short gesture.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “My orders say that we must maintain the outposts.”
“And now we change the orders,” Gray Mouser replied, trying to look down at the drow, with predictable results.
Hunzrin winced. “And who are you? I demand written orders from The Rock, not some random halfling.”
“Fafhrd, show him the orders.” Gray Mouser muttered.
The barbarian walked to the drow and punched him. Or rather attempted to do so – Hunzrin dodged with grace and spun, producing a long knife from under his robe. He was about to stab Fafhrd, when something heavy hit him in the knee, knocking him off balance. He didn’t fall, though, but when he recovered, he saw some short humanoid aiming a big, complicated crossbow at his face.
“What the hell?” he asked, looking at the new attacker. “You have goblins at the Rock too?”
“Gmork Gartenzwerg, at your service.” The artificer smirked. “Gmork is a half-orc and this is Gmork’s full-auto crossbow. With one turn of this crank, ye will become a drow pincushion.”
“You’re the ugliest half-orc I’ve ever seen and the bar is already low,” Hunzrin muttered.
Gmork aimed the crossbow. “Shall Gmork show ye its features?”
“Umm…” Gray Mouser looked around. “I don’t want to interrupt, but about a hundred drows are aiming their bows at us.”
“Don’t worry, this baby holds thirty bolts,” Gmork patted the crossbow.
“I said ‘a hundred’,” the halfling muttered. “Sure, we can hope they’ll go full circular firing squad and shoot each other, but I’d rather not be in the middle of all this.”
“Don’t worry, Gmork got this,” Gmork replied. “They won’t shoot their leader.”
Chandara smirked at the half-orc and aimed her bow at Hunzrin. “And that’s where you’re wrong, my little green friend. I’ll gladly take Hunzrin’s–” Her voice drowned in a fit of macabre coughing when Gmork spun the crank of the crossbow, unleashing a torrent of bolts at her. The other drows aimed their bows, but Hunzrin stopped them.
“Good riddance,” he said, looking at Chandara’s body. “Still, my people are aiming at you and if someone here is becoming a pincushion, then I’m afraid it’s you.” He smirked. “Still, this whole story seems absurd.” He sighed. “Guess it’ll be best to take you to the Rock for some questioning…”
“Look on the bright side,” Fafhrd said. “We wanted to go there anyway.”
“Still, not like this.” Sour sighed. They were all tied, lying on a hay wagon pulled by the pony known as Lyra Heartstrings and guarded by no one else but Finnan Tealeaf and Perrin Tosscobble, who took additional effort to gag Gray Mouser and check the ropes binding him every few minutes.
Charlene rolled her eyes. Her hands were tied, but she waved her fingers at Fafhrd. Is the elf bitch ever happy?
“Maybe she doesn’t realise that soon we’ll meet The Rock,” the barbarian replied. “I’d like to ask him a few questions.”
“I can hear this,” Sour muttered.
“How do you know we’re talking about you?” Fafhrd asked. “It’s not like you can understand Charlene.”
“I’m guessing from your tone,” Sour replied. “Also, I’d like to remind you that Sunny and Sugarcoat are dudes and it’s not like Sugarcoat can talk right now.”
“Mhm.” Gray Mouser, also known as Sugarcoat, tossed in his restraints and tried to kick one of their guards.
“I wonder what will they do to us at The Rock,” Gmork muttered, looking at the massive wall of stone getting closer and closer to them. “This place doesn’t look very friendly.”
“It smells of sulfur and dead bodies,” Sour said, sniffing the air. “Which is quite a feat for a bunch of moronic cultists who use a squid as their sigil.”
“Maybe it’s a dead whale.” Fafhrd shrugged. “Those things smell even worse after they explode, you know.”
“The bones around us look more like elephants.” Sour looked around. “Where did they even get elephants here? They just don’t live here.”
“Well, not anymore,” Fafhrd muttered, looking at the rock in front of them. “This looks like a challenge.”
“Only a barbarian could take a look at this and call it a challenge.” Sour shook her head, staring at the large door in the stone wall. It was made of gold, with squid-like engravings on it. It was also covered in what looked like a collection of old blood stains, flies circling around them.
I’d say we are thoroughly fucked, Charlene gestured when Hunzrin walked to the door and knocked. And not in the fun way.
“Don’t worry, we’ll come up with something,” Fafhrd replied.
You will? You mean, you don’t have a plan already? Charlene rolled her eyes.
“That’s how we usually roll.” Fafhrd looked at Finnan Tealeaf and Perrin Tosscobble. “If we don’t know our escape plan, how will they know it?”
This is ridiculous. Charlene sighed.
“Nah, that’s just–” Fafhrd paused as the cart drove past the gate and deeper into the dungeon, illuminated only by a handful of torches. The smell of old blood and rotting flesh was almost unbearable. The barbarian could see something moving in the darkness as they rode across a large, underground hall.
“Trust me, it doesn’t look better with night vision,” Sour muttered.
“Mmmh?” Gray Mouser asked.
“Shut up,” Perrin Tosscoble said. “Soon, you’ll meet the Chancellor and we’ll see if he really sent you.”
“The Chancellor?” Fafhrd asked. “Does he look like The Rock?”
Gods fucking dammit. Charlene shook her head. If my hands weren’t tied, I’d go with a facepalm, but at least I can imply it.
The cart stopped. Several drows walked to it, prompting the adventurers to get it. Gray Mouser got yanked out of the cart and put on his feet, but Gmork stopped the cultists with a hand gesture.
“Gmork will go himself,” he said.
“If someone touches me, they’ll get stabbed.” Sour jumped off the cart gracefully.
“Your hands are tied,” Fafhrd muttered, dropping on the stone floor.
“As if that ever stopped me before.” Sour smirked. “Just wait until–”
“Hunzrin.” The word cut the darkness like a knife made of ice. A tall, slender cultist walked to the drow. His robe looked cleaner and more expensive than those of other cultist; its hood was covering his face. “Why did you come here?”
“He doesn’t look like The Rock,” Fafhrd the Barbarian whispered. “More like Chancellor Palpatine.”
Charlene sighed, moving her tied hands to somehow convey her thoughts with gestures. Well, what did you expect from the guy called The Chancellor? Tool’s bassist?”
“Well, you could make some kickass gig in this hall,” Fafhrd replied.
Shut up and take my hand. Charlene furrowed her eyebrows.
“Those people walked into our camp, claiming that they’re your messengers,” Hunzrin said to the Chancellor. “They beat up the guards and this little, green, uhh…” He looked at Gmork and shrugged. “This goblin killed Chandara with this thing.” He showed Gmork’s crossbow to the Chancellor.
“Good riddance.” The Chancellor took the crossbow and looked at the crank. “The most unusual mechanism. I don’t think any of my artificers could produce such a thing. Also, I don’t recall sending any messengers.”
Fafhrd hissed. A sudden wave of hot air engulfed his hands for a moment, but when it disappeared, he felt that the rope binding them turned into ash and some charred remains. He looked around and saw Charlene, who smirked at him. Her hands were also free.
“Wait, so you are a mystic after all?” he asked.
One more word and I’ll burn your tongue off, Charlene gestured. The tiefling on the left has your sword. Until then, you can use a halfling as your weapon.
“It is very interesting that those guys showed up just when we got reports of these adventurers who defeated Chandara’s group.” The Chancellor furrowed his eyebrows. “Bring them to the torture chamber. I want to know everything about them before we let the beast feed on them.”
“As you wish.” Hunzrin bowed and walked to Fafhrd. “You’ll go first, big guy.”
“Well, there’s one thing…” Fafhrd smiled sheepishly.
“What’s this?” Hunzrin asked.
“Talk to the fist!” Fafhrd exclaimed, punching the drow, who dropped on the ground. The barbarian spun, grabbing Finnan Tealeaf and hitting the nearest guard with him.
One of the cultists screamed, his robe engulfed in flames. Charlene rushed to free Gray Mouser and Gmork while Sour managed to cut her binds with a small knife she had hidden up her sleeve. The knife was currently in the guts of the nearest cultist, who was lying on the ground and coughing violently.
“Run!” Fafhrd tossed Finnan Tealeaf at the tiefling cultist and grabbed his sword. He didn’t have to tell twice; his friends followed him, Charlene burning her way across the crowd.
“Not so fast!” Perrin Tosscoble rushed to Gray Mouser, grabbing his robe. The cleric turned back and at the same moment he got stabbed in the chest. Perrin smirked when Gray Mouser dropped on the ground. “That’s for Shaena Tealeaf,” he muttered.
This was, however, his final blow in this battle. Sour managed to regain her bow and shoot an arrow right at the halfling’s knee causing him to fall next to his victim.
“You missed,” Fafhrd said.
“Nah, someone who killed Sugarcoat deserves to survive.” Sour shrugged. “Maybe he’ll buy an inn now.”
“I’ll better check if she’s alive.” Fafrhd rushed through the crowd of cultists, beheading two of them, and grabbed Gray Mouser’s body. “You okay there?”
The halfling coughed, spraying blood around. “I have a knife in my lung,” he whispered.
“I can take it out,” Fafhrd replied, punching a cultist who got in his way.
“Did you ever listen to Nurse Heartless during the first aid classes?” Gray Mouser rolled his eyes.
“Only when she talked about getting shot,” the barbarian replied. “You know, in case Twilight and Moondancer ever went full Pumped-Up Kicks.” He looked at Gray Mouser. “Are you okay?”
“I’m one death saving throw away from dying and I just heard a tiny voice that sounds exactly like our DM, telling me that you really shouldn’t have mentioned Pumped-Up Kicks.”
“Don’t worry, Lemon will fix you.” Fafhrd smacked his forehead. “Wait, she died already and her new character can only make the world burn. But maybe I can stabilise you?”
“I don’t trust your wisdom checks that much.”
Suddenly, a half-orc cultist charged at Fafhrd, only to fall on the floor, with an arrow sticking from his back. Sour waved to the barbarian, pointing at the dark corridor leading deeper into the mine.
Fafhrd ran towards her. Gmork joined him, somehow managing to overtake him despite much shorter legs. They reached the corridor, followed by cultists and a wall of fire created by Charlene.
“Where do we go now?” Fafhrd asked. “Also, is there a healer in the house?”
“Gray Mouser’s alive?” Sour asked. “I can stabilise him, but we need to get out of there if we want to heal him.”
“Worry not, Gmork found a getaway vehicle.” Gmork pointed at the floor. There were tracks on it, complete with several minecarts standing on a sidetrack.
“Oh great, underground rollercoaster,” Fafhrd said. “Where’s Charlene?”
Suddenly, they saw the innkeeper’s daughter running towards them. She was pale; her eyes were sunken as if she didn’t sleep for days. Behind her, the hall was burning, but some cultists already gathered around Hunzrin and the Chancellor to form a search party.
I need healing. Charlene staggered, resting herself against the minecart. Burning things with your mind is a sure way to get exhausted quickly.
“What is she talking about?” Sour asked.
“It’s hard to burn stuff,” Fafhrd replied. “Also, we need more healing.”
“Later,” Sour said, hopping onto the minecart. “How do you even steer this thing?”
“Ye really don’t,” Gmork replied. “It has brakes and ye can kinda change direction at junctions, but otherwise it’s a fun ride. Ye never know what ye get.”
“Works for me.” Fafhrd jumped into the cart, dropping Gray Mouser on its floor. “I don’t see any seatbelts.”
“Where we’re going, we don’t need seatbelts.” Gmork released the brakes and the cart started to slowly roll forward. The corridor was going down, deeper underground, so it quickly accelerated. However, they could still hear the voices of the cultists and the sound of more carts rolling.
“Okay, hold this.” Sour gave Gmork her bow and looked at Gray Mouser. “How do I even stabilise a stabbed halfling?” She sighed and turned to Fafhrd. “Humming the ER theme doesn’t help, you know.”
“It’d help even less if I went for healing.” Fafhrd rolled his eyes. “Also, you’d better hurry. Gmork can’t shoot a bow that is bigger than him.”
Several bolts flew past them, followed by a spell that hit the wall, causing a few bits of shrapnel to hit the cart.
“They still have Gmork’s crossbow,” Gmork muttered. “At least they won’t know how to reload.”
“I think I have some healing potion somewhere,” Sour muttered. “They didn’t take it.”
“Maybe because you stabbed the first two guys who tried to search you.” Fafhrd turned to Charlene, who’d grabbed his sleeve. “What?”
Charlene waved her hand. I have a potion of supreme healing.
Twilight furrowed her eyebrows and looked at Lemon. “You don’t have a potion of supreme healing.”
“It’s right there, on my equipment list,” Lemon replied, pointing at the large stack of papers in front of Twilight. Only now she noticed that Twilight did may have actually read it – some parts were marked with highlighters in multiple colours and sticky notes.
“It’s not,” Twilight said. “You may have thought that putting your equipment list in the middle of an erotic story featuring Charlene’s parents was a clever move, but I actually got to that part. Well, I actually didn’t expect this story to turn erotic, which made it pretty awkward since I was reading it in the toilet. Also, while you do have some interesting items in your bags, the potion of supreme healing is not one of them.” She grabbed Lemon’s notes. “Other parts I read consist of an unrelated vampire story, featuring a fetish I didn’t know I had, another story of Charlene’s father that features things I never knew existed, several pages of random gibberish which, after reading it backwards turned out to be a salad recipe in French, a detailed plan on how to murder Sugarcoat, Charlene’s statistics and character traits, and a nude portrait of, as far as I can tell, Juniper, sketched with pencil and finished with Conté crayons. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You included several pieces of information we didn’t want to know about,” Juniper replied. “May I see that portrait?”
“Here you go.” Twilight found the right page and passed it to Juniper.
“Not bad.” Juniper turned to Lemon. “Can I keep it?”
Indigo looked at the paper and at Juniper. “Well, they aren’t that big.”
“Like you know anything about, uhh… art.” Juniper rolled her eyes.
“I’m aerodynamic,” Indigo replied. “Speaking of, let’s get back to the mining carts. I’m waiting for the flooded corridors and the giant boulder part.”
“Isn’t that from Daring Do and the Temple of Doom ?” Sunny asked.
“It is, but since we’re already in the mining carts, I expect no less.” Indigo smirked.
Twilight sighed. “Okay, let’s go with that…”
“Too bad no one has a potion of supreme healing.” Sour said, leaning over Gray Mouser. “But we gotta work with what we’ve got.” She reached to her pouch and found an old vial. “Let’s hope it’s not past its expiration date.”
“We’re all gonna expire anyway.” Gmork tossed Sour’s bow to Charlene and pulled the brake lever. “Everyone to the left!”
They rushed to the left, balancing the cart. The wheels screeched as it entered a sharp turn. Behind them, some cultist fell off the cart and dropped into a bottomless pit; his companions, however, were still after them.
“Okay, I hope this works, I don’t want to waste it on a halfling.” Sour poured the contents of the vial into Gray Mouser’s mouth. The necromancer slowly opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling.
“By the power of Tharizdun,” he muttered.
Sour rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you’re welcome.”
“I gained immense wisdom,” Gray Mouser muttered.
“If you turn yourself into a zombie, I’m kicking you out of this cart.” Fafhrd looked around and saw another cart, filled with cultists, approaching them on a parallel track. “Or maybe I’ll throw you to them.”
“No need.” Sour grabbed her bow from Charlene and shot at the cart, hitting some cultist’s arm. “And you could be useful for once,” she muttered. “Can you do the fire thing again?”
Charlene flipped her off and made a few definitely unfriendly gestures.
“She’s too tired after the last one,” Fafhrd said. “Also, she told me to ask if your parents were, by any chance, siblings.”
Sour shot another cultist. “Tell her to eat shit. And fall off her horse, though it seems we left the pony named Lyra Heartstrings back in the hall.”
“Watch out!” Gmork exclaimed.
Two cultists jumped into their cart. One of them was a gnome, who ended up balancing on the rim of the cart. Gmork helped him by pulling the brake, causing him to fall on the track. They heard a sickening crunch; the cart shook, but after a while it sped up, as steady as before.
Half-gnome and a gnome in two halves. Charlene dodged the other cultist, pushing him towards Fafhrd.
This one, however, was a half-orc, and it wasn’t easy to get rid of him. He tackled the barbarian, causing the whole cart to shake and almost pushing Sour out of the vehicle. The half-orc roared when Gray Mouser grabbed his ankle, causing his skin to rot. He raised his leg, trying to shake the halfling off, but then Gmork tripped him. The cultist fell forward, snapping the brake lever.
Letting out a powerful scream, the half-orc got up, but Fafhrd was faster. He grabbed the broken lever and stabbed him in the back. The scream turned into a cough as the half-orc spun around wildly, hitting Sour and knocking her down. Fafhrd grabbed him and after a few painfully long seconds managed to lift him, throwing him at the cultists’ cart.
“Is everybody okay?” Fafhrd asked, watching as the cart derailed, crashing into a pillar.
“I got stomped on by a half-orc.” Gray Mouser coughed. “I’m most definitely not. Gmork, are you crazy?”
“Nah, Gmork spent his whole childhood tripping orcs.” Gmork shrugged. “As ye can guess, Gmork wasn’t exactly popular.”
“I wonder why,” Sour muttered, getting up and shaking her head. “Did we lose them?”
“Yes,” Gmork replied. “We’re also lost, unless we somehow repair the brakes.”
“Aren’t you an artificer?” Sour asked.
“Yes, but he threw away our brake lever.” Gmork pointed at Fafhrd.
“I impaled a half-orc with it!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “I didn’t think you’d need it after that!”
“After cleaning the guts, it’d be a perfectly usable brake lever.” Gmork shrugged.
“I can stop the cart with my boots, like Daring Do,” the barbarian said.
“Who?” Gmork asked.
“The famous, uhh… barbarian.” Fafhrd shrugged. “Not as famous as Conan the Barbarian, a pirate and a mercenary, who later became a governor of California and got his own late-night talk show. He also–”
“Everybody to the right!” Gmork exclaimed. The cart swerved violently, almost derailing at a sharp turn and ran through a set of inclined loops, spiralling deeper into the dungeon. It crashed through a wooden wall, sending splinters around, and slowed down a bit, going up the hill.
“This is the worst day of my life…” Gray Mouser muttered, coughing. “Punctured lung, lousy healing potion, broken ribs, and now this.” He leaned over the rim of the cart to throw up. Charlene immediately pulled him back, as a giant boulder missed his head by a few inches.
“She says ‘mind your head’,” Fafhrd said.
“I’d rather mind my clothes.” The necromancer looked at his robe, now adorned with vomit and blood. “How do we even stop this piece of junk?”
“By crashing it, I guess.” Sour lowered her head; the corridor was getting more and more narrow and it was clear it wasn’t dug with elves or humans in mind. The cart took another sharp turn when the ground suddenly evened out.
Running across a large hall, the cart wobbled on uneven, rusty tracks. It slowed down a bit, but it still hit a buffer stop way harder than it was supposed to. Gmork gasped, squeezed between the cart wall and Fafhrd, who was trying to get back on his feet.
Sour jumped onto the stone tiles and looked around, her eyes adapting to darkness. “I don’t know who lived here, but judging from the frescoes on the walls, they had an unhealthy obsession with fire, elephants, and cheese.” She shrugged. “Seems we met some good dwarves.”
Charlene looked at Fafhrd and made a complicated pattern with her fingers.
“She said those are just dwarf skeletons.” The barbarian picked up a skull lying next to the buffer stop and shrugged.
“Yes, that’s what I mean by good dwarves,” Sour replied. “They’re dead. How’s our friendly neighbourhood necromancer? Maybe they’d tell us what’s going on here.”
“Our necromancer is currently half-dead, lacking three-dimensional vision, and probably still having a hole in the lung.” Gray Mouser coughed. “I may try something, though.” He looked at the dwarven skeletons, trying to find one that was more or less complete, or at least not covered in dust and cobwebs. “Did we get to fucking Moria?”
“If we find a dead guy with a book, then yes, probably,” Gmork replied.
Gray Mouser turned to Fafhrd and pointed at the skull the barbarian was holding. “Give me that. This one looks talkative.”
“How can you tell?” Fafhrd asked.
“He’s smiling,” the halfling replied.
They’re all smiling. I think that’s the part of being a skeleton. Charlene smirked. Also, if the little one tries to make dwarven skeletons his personal army, I’ll have to cut the bitch.”
“What did she say?” Gray Mouser asked.
“Don’t bring back too many dwarves,” the barbarian replied.
“I’ll try.” Gray Mouser turned to the skull. “Okay, Yorick, tell me what the hell happened here.”
The skull moved slowly with an odd, low-pitched buzz and spoke in an oddly stilted manner. “You have. One. Incoming Call. From. The Chained God. Would you like to. Pick up. The call?”
Gray Mouser froze. “Oh shit,” he muttered before passing out.
“I’m considering turning you into a huecuva.” The disembodied voice filled the halfling’s whole mind. Gray Mouser tried to open his eye, but it didn’t change much – the true form of Tharizdun was so incomprehensible that the necromancer could as well stare into complete darkness.
“I’d prefer being a clerical lich, but I’d have to sacrifice an innocent and I’m afraid none of my companions qualify,” Gray Mouser replied. “Unless, of course, Charlene is a virgin, though given who plays her, I don’t have high hopes, so–”
“Shut up!” Tharizdun exclaimed. “Can you imagine a lich of your height? I barely can and I’m a fucking god here. Also, a lich who braids the hair on his feet. Now that’d be new.”
“I stopped braiding hair on my feet.” Gray Mouser blushed. “Around the time I tried to sacrifice a hamster and it didn’t work out. Of course you know this because you’re apparently a fucking god here.”
“Doesn’t stop you from looking like a bundle of sticks.” The Chained God chuckled.
“Of course I could be hallucinating because of blood loss and breathing troubles,” Gray Mouser said. “That’d explain a few things. Will you tell me, oh great Tharizdun, who is behind all this? I’d rather not become a huecuva before learning that.”
“Well, it’s a certain Demon Prince who has the gall to pretend to be Asmodeus to gather enough followers to give the old man a one-way ticket to the moon. Or maybe put him in chains. Wouldn’t be the first one.” The Chained God chuckled. “I’ll leave that for you to figure out. If you do, maybe you’ll become a proper lich one day.”
“That’s not something you hear everyday,” Gray Mouser muttered.
“Just like you don’t see one-eyed halfling liches often, but hey, I’m a fucking god here, right?”
“You’ve already said that,” Gray Mouser replied. “Also, I think I figured it out.”
“Great.” If gods in their true forms were capable of smiling, Tharizdun would most likely do just that. “Now come back and tell your future victims…”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Sunny exclaimed. “I didn’t give Twilight vodka this time.”
Lemon chuckled. “I swear, if she says again that she’s a fucking god, I’m gonna–”
“Would you rather see me as a mad scientist?” Twilight asked. “The thing is, I don’t get to play a god often, so I may be getting a bit drunk with power.”
“Happens to all of us.” Juniper shrugged. “So, what did you figure out, Sugarcoat?”
“Well, which guy we know is a Demon Prince who likes octopuses, tentacles, and other seafood?” Sugarcoat asked.
“I take ‘Cthulhu and friends’ for a thousand dollars,” Indigo said. “I mean, we got killed by the Great Old Ones so many times that I almost learned to pronounce their names.”
“Well, I suspect Dagon,” Sugarcoat replied. “But unless this cave connects to some big underground ocean, I don’t think we’ll see the guy. Now, I wonder why he is recruiting all those odd followers.”
“Maybe he’s preparing some giant sacrifice.” Sour smirked. “One day he’ll drop that mine on everyone’s heads and call it a day, or whatever gods do in such cases. I guess we should grab as much gold as we can and run from this party before this happens. Maybe he plans to turn everyone into merfolk.”
“Yeah, that’s not something we’d want. Sour Elf getting wet.” Indigo chuckled. “Then someone will feed you after midnight and Dagon will be the least of our problems.”
“Oh, Sour gets wet just fine…” Lemon chuckled while Sour nudged her with her elbow.
“I don’t think so,” Indigo replied. “I remember what she said last time we got caught outside by the rain.”
Sour and Lemon looked at each other and laughed, causing Indigo to blush furiously.
“It’s not about the rain, right?” Indigo facepalmed. “You two only think about one thing.”
“Two things, actually.” Sour smirked.
Twilight shook her head. “Well, since Sour and Lemon obviously need to get a room, maybe we’ll continue the game next week? Or anytime they calm down.”
“Now that you put that mental image in my head, I have to agree,” Sugarcoat said. “Shame on you, Lemon. We’re about to unravel the mystery.”
“I thought our objective was to get the money and run before an angry god rips our asses off and turns them into Christmas decorations,” Sunny replied. “Unless you want to kill the god, which will be interesting to watch, though preferably from a safe distance.”
“We’ll see,” Sugarcoat said. “But for now, I’m preparing for a showdown…”
8. The Most Definitely Final Dungeon
“Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring them to your house?” Juniper asked, watching as Twilight put the last of the perfectly sharpened pencils on the table in her room. “Your friends can be a bit, I’d say, uncivilised.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen Shining Armor’s friends playing,” Twilight replied. “And in case something goes wrong, remember that this is my laboratory.” She grabbed a scalpel that was lying on one of the shelves. “Mischief makers will be experimented on.”
“Then I’m already starting to make a cover story in case Lemon or Sugarcoat disappears.” Juniper shook her head. “Maybe alien abduction? Though actual aliens would probably kick Lemon out, once they find out she doesn’t mind being probed. As for Sugarcoat–”
“Wait a minute, I gotta tell Sunny that we’re meeting at my place.” Twilight walked to one of the laptops and turned on the communicator. After a while, she saw the inside of Sunny’s room on the webcam. It wasn’t a pretty sight – empty energy drink cans were everywhere, and Sunny was nodding off with her face on the keyboard, wearing a pink headset with cat ears.
“Hi, thanks for the bits,” Sunny muttered, her eyes shooting open. “Oh, it’s you, Twilight! I’ve been streaming chess for the whole night.”
“Someone pays to watch this?” Juniper asked.
“You have no idea.” Sunny yawned and looked at the energy drink cans, picking some of them up. “Also, I know we’re meeting at your place. Lemon said her carpet had a ‘Friday night accident’, and as you can see, my room met the same fate.”
“Are you spying on Twilight?” Juniper exclaimed.
“People think covering the camera works, but they never remember about the speakers,” Sunny replied.
“It’s okay, I have access to her computer too,” Twilight said. “It’s a bit of a challenge going on for years now.”
“I’d start having trust issues,” Juniper muttered.
“Don’t worry, we don’t know about this video you’ve made with your boyfriend. Also, I hope you’re not allergic to Greek food because my mathematical model says there’s a 99.8% chance that Indigo will bring gyros and baklava.” Sunny took a sip from one of the cans and winced. “Eww, seems I’ve already drank this one.”
“How so?” Twilight asked.
“You know, I didn’t want to leave the computer, so I used the can when I had to–”
Juniper slammed the laptop shut. “Sorry, my supply of brain bleach didn’t arrive yet.”
“You’d better get some before the evening, then,” Twilight said.
Juniper shook her head. “Oh, I surely will!”
Lemon, Sour, and Sunny were the first to arrive – Lemon’s battered Yugo finally got repaired and although driving it was still an unforgettable experience, at least it was in working condition. Sugarcoat arrived soon after, but Indigo was nowhere to be found. Juniper looked at the clock and at the door, but it didn’t bring Indigo to Twilight’s house.
“Does she even know where you live?” Juniper asked.
“Even if she didn’t, she’d somehow get here,” Sugarcoat replied. “You could drop Indigo in the middle of Alaska and she’d find a way back home. Quite unlike Sunny, I’m afraid.”
“If I ended up in Alaska, I’d just get internet connection in the middle of nowhere, call the cavalry, and wait for them while drinking moonshine with grizzly bears,” Sunny replied.
“Moonshine?” Sugarcoat shook her head. “We’re talking Alaska, not Siberia.”
“Joke’s on you, there are no grizzly bears in Siberia,” Sunny replied. “Also, reminds me of a joke, but the punchline is in Russian. As in, a bunch of Americans go hunting with Russians–”
“I hope Indigo comes before it becomes unbearable,” Lemon muttered.
Sour groaned. “You just had to say that, didn’t you? Although while we’re at it, my favourite bears are two white ones.”
“Why?” Juniper asked.
“Because they’re bi-polar.” Sour chuckled. “For the record, only I can tell this one.”
Now it was Juniper’s turn to groan. “Why did I even ask… If you were a guy, you’d get kicked in the ball bearings for this one.”
“One more pun and I’m leaving,” Sugarcoat muttered.
“Exit, pursued by a bear?” Twilight asked. Sugarcoat sent her a death glare.
“–Nyet, my strielali. ” Sunny said. “I guess you didn’t get it?”
“Maybe it’ll be a surprise to you, but the only person I know who spoke Russian was my great-grandmother, and she was so old that she probably learned it from Rasputin.” Sugarcoat shrugged.
“Well, now you know me too,” Sunny said. “I mean, I talked to a hacker from Khanty-Mansiysk a few times, and I started to learn.”
Before Sugarcoat could respond, Lemon’s phone started to ring – or rather, it let out a loud guitar riff. Lemon picked it up. “Indigo? Where are you? Wait, I’ll turn on the speaker.”
“Something stopped me for a moment,” Indigo said. “Do you want some doner kebab? I’d also get borek with feta, but I don’t remember which of you is allergic to feta.”
“Sugarcoat is allergic to everything,” Sunny said, looking at her wrist device and tapping the screen furiously. “Weren’t you supposed to get Greek food today?”
“How do you know?” Indigo asked. “The Greek place was closed, so I went to the Turkish bar just to piss off the Greeks. I think they don’t like each other, right?”
“Huh.” Sugarcoat raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were aware that those countries exist, not to mention the relations between them.”
“I only know because of food and sports,” Indigo replied. “Sour should know that too. There was that Greek dude, Achilles or something? He won a gold medal in archery at the olympics, I think? Then he had a tendon injury.”
“Let’s say you’re in the right geographical region and leave it at that.” Twilight shook her head. “Also, I’ll get mixed sauces, no onion.”
“Same,” Lemon said. “Also, come here quick. The girls are becoming unbearable.”
Sugarcoat sighed. “Lemon, shut up.”
“What took you so long?” Sunny asked when Indigo finally showed up in Twilight’s room, carrying several bags with her. “Did you go to Istanbul to buy this kebab, or what?”
“I got stopped at the border between Greece and Turkey.” Indigo rolled her eyes. “Pork with curry sauce for you, right? Did I miss something?”
“Sunny speaks Russian, somehow,” Sour Sweet replied. “Although I still can’t believe that you and Lemon know sign language. I mean, Lemon is slightly crazy about helping people and stuff, but you?”
“Why is everyone always surprised that I know things?” Indigo asked. “Sugarcoat and Sunny know ten ways to fuck you up whenever you move a chess piece, Lemon can hear a difference between two notes that sound exactly the same, and I know the location of ammo racks in every tank in the world. Also, sign language.” She made a complicated gesture with one hand, holding a kebab in the other.
“Did you just tell Sour to get stuffed?” Lemon asked.
“Maybe.” Indigo smirked. “Let’s get back to the game, okay?”
“Where’s Hunzrin and his jolly company?” Fafhrd asked. The corridor was getting lower and the barbarian kept bumping his head against the ceiling. “I need to kick someone’s ass.”
Gray Mouser coughed. “At this point we may get a beating from an ogre defending his swamp, you know. Not to mention that our enemy is Dagon.”
“Dagon-shmagon,” Sour muttered. “Do you think demons can resist a well-aimed arrow to the face?”
“Actually, they can shove the bow up yer ass before ye even think of shooting it,” Gmork replied. “Gmork means, that’s a bit like shooting a god. Ye get a lightning bolt to the face in return.”
I’d like to see that. Charlene looked at Sour and smirked. The Sour Elf is in a desperate need of getting something shoved up her ass.
“What are you talking about?” Sour asked. “This gesture looked familiar…”
Charlene chuckled.
“She’s very interested in your bow,” Fafhrd said, tripping over something and knocking over a stalagmite. “I stepped into something gross.”
“It’s a rotten skin kite,” Gray Mouser replied. “Must’ve been lying here since the third edition…”
“I also found those funny rocks.” The barbarian said.
“Don’t touch this!” Sour exclaimed, her eyes widening. She grabbed the bow and looked at the ceiling, aiming in the darkest spots.
“Why?” Fafhrd asked.
“Those are hook horror’s eggs, you moron,” Sour replied.
“Shit.” Gmork backpedalled. “Gmork reckons the mommy is somewhere here?”
“The hook horror, the cultists, the whole fucking menagerie,” Sour said, aiming her bow at the ceiling.
Guess it’s time for a tactical retreat. Charlene backpedalled, hiding between the stalagmites. Fafhrd followed her, bumping into more rocks and cursing loudly.
“Shut up,” Sour muttered. “I think the cultists are somewhere here. Not to mention that I can’t see the hook horror.”
“What if we sic the hook horror on the cultists?” Gray Mouser asked. “Two birds with one stone or rather, two heretics with one clawed beasts.”
“No, we’re not doing this!” Sour exclaimed. “We’ll be in the middle of the fight, between the cultists and the hook horrors. Also, how are you even going to steal the eggs from the nest without getting cut to pieces?”
“Well, we’re already here,” Fafhrd said. “Also, in case you don’t know, the omelette made of hook horror’s eggs is a barbarian delicacy, but only if you steal the eggs from the nest yourself. It tastes like hornets and it may kill you, but if you can’t stomach it, then you can’t call yourself a man. Also, it’s good for chest hair.”
“You’ve just made that up,” Sour said.
“Only the bit about hornets. They’re sweeter.” The barbarian smiled sheepishly.
Sour rolled her eyes. “No, we’re still not doing this!”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Hunzrin muttered, picking up a dwarf’s skull and looking at it. “Years of preparations and we have to chase a bunch of idiots across the dungeon.”
“We should’ve had them executed on sight,” Finnan Tealeaf said. He was bruised and battered, but unlike Perrin Tosscobble, he was still able to walk. “Especially Jolly Sackville-Baggins. He’s just evil.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me about being evil.” Hunzrin muttered. “But I agree they’re too dangerous to be kept alive. We’ll find them and skin them, or my name isn’t Hunzrin Hundsfott!”
He spun dramatically, but the mood was immediately ruined by something large and slimy splashing on his head. The rest of his detachment, mostly drows and half-orcs laughed. Hunzrin wiped the slime off his face and winced, looking at it.
“What was that?” Finnan asked. “Some cave bird’s shit?”
“No.” Hunzrin looked at the slime on the floor and saw a small, bug-like creature thrashing in it. “Though now that I think about it, I’d prefer it to be shit.”
“What is it?” Finnan asked.
“The good news is, those guys are already dead,” Hunzrin said. “The bad news is, we’ll soon follow them if–”
He was deafened by an agonising roar, echoing across the caves. He raised his bow, looking at the place the egg fell from while his soldiers backpedalled, keeping the tight formation. They looked around.
Still, the sight of Sour jumping from the corridor above them with a somersault wasn’t something they expected. Especially since she was followed by a huge mass of chitin and long, sharp claws.
“Fafhrd, I’ll kill you!” Sour exclaimed just as the entrance of the tunnel burst into flames. Charlene, Gmork, and Fafhrd darted out of it, followed by two more hook horrors.
“Fire!” Hunzrin shouted, firing the bow at the nearest hook horror. The arrow bounced off the chitin armour, but a few more arrows found its mark and the hook horror thrashed, hitting a few cultists and beheading one of them. Hunzrin turned back and saw Sour shooting more arrows at the hook horror.
“Aren’t you with them?” he asked.
“Well, for once I like not being dead.” Sour replied, firing the arrow at the other hook horror’s eye. It screeched and waved its claws, almost cutting Fafhrd in half. The barbarian dropped to the floor and pierced the monster’s underbelly with his sword, yanking it out and cutting off the hand of a cultist trying to stab him in the back.
“Yeah, I can go with that.” Hunzrin shrugged, slowly reaching for the knife he had up his sleeve. “Maybe you should leave them and–” He grabbed the knife and tried to stab Sour, only to hear his blade hit one of Sour’s hunting knives.
“Cooperation with a side of treason?” Sour smirked. “I’d rather be open about my feelings!” She raised the hunting knife and tried to stab the drow, who jumped back. Sour charged at him, slitting the throat of a cultist trying to stop her. Hunzrin grabbed a sword, barely dodging one of Gmork’s bombs and rushed through flames to reach Sour. She dodged the blow, and jumped over Hunzrin’s head, landing on the hook horror’s back and smirking.
“I think it’s easy to be open about your feelings when you’re standing on the top of a death machine,” Hunzrin muttered, spinning the sword and dodging the hook horror’s claws to sink the blade in the creature’s head. The monster screeched, dropping Sour on the floor.
Letting out a battle cry, Hunzrin ran towards Sour and raised his sword. He was about to stab the elf, when he felt the sword suddenly getting heavier, almost falling out of his hands. He turned back and saw Fafhrd holding his sword down. Flames, dying cultists, and screeching hook horrors made for a nice background for this unforgettable picture.
Hunzrin frowned. “You–”
“My name is Indigo Montoya,” Fafhrd said. “You killed my father. Prepare to die.” With these words, he punched the drow, who flew across the room, hit the wall, and lay there, motionless.
“Did he kill your father?” Sour asked.
“No, but I always wanted to say that.” The barbarian chuckled. “Let’s see how the rest are doing.”
“I see Gmork and Charlene brought in the fireworks.” Sour grabbed her bow and shot at the feeling cultist. “Where’s that Mother Nature’s illegitimate son, Gray Mouser?”
Fafhrd shrugged. “We lost him when running away from the hook horrors.”
“He might be dog food now,” Sour said. “Also, you should totally name your next character Indigo Montoya.”
“We should look for him, though.” Fafhrd dodged a burning cultist running around in circles, and almost tripped over a dead hook horror. “Hmm, is anyone alive here anyway?”
Charlene dropped on her knees in front of the barbarian, panting heavily. She raised her hand – it was almost too shaky to properly express her thoughts. If Gmork doesn’t stop throwing bombs at people on fire while we’re underground, we can choose between getting fried, exploding, getting crushed by the ceiling or suffocating.
“Didn’t you start the fire?” Fafhrd asked.
It was always burning. Charlene smiled sheepishly. Since the world’s been turning.
“A Mystic, indeed.” Fafhrd shook his head. “Where’s Gmork?”
“Gmork found someone alive,” the half-orc said, dragging someone short and clad in a black, torn robe. For a moment Sour, Charlene, and Fafhrd thought it was Gray Mouser, but once Gmork turned the body around to lie on its back, it turned out to be a different halfling.
“Finnan Tealeaf!” Sour exclaimed. “How come people keep dying around you and you still turn up alive?”
“It’s harder to hit a halfling,” Finnan muttered.
Sour turned to Fafhrd and chuckled. “That’d explain why Gray Mouser was your only companion. All the taller ones got hit by missed sword blows.”
“Maybe.” The barbarian groaned. “Anyway, we’ll better find our necromancer.”
“Actually…” Finnan chuckled. “My old body sucked already, but after getting trampled by hook horrors it became rather tedious to use. Luckily, I’ve always been preparing for this, so I kinda became the pissed-off ghosts guided by unconditional faith in Tharizdun. And let’s say that poor FInnan Tealeaf failed a charisma check pretty hard…”
“Gray Mouser?” Fafhrd asked. “Huh, now that’s a feat.”
“Fucking halflings are immortal now…” Sour shook her head.
“Is Finnan Tealeaf still there?” Gmork asked, looking at the body.
“Yes, and he’s pissed,” Gray Mouser replied. “So far I basically put him in the basement, but he may get out at some point. Charlene, did you want to say something?” he asked, looking at the innkeeper’s daughter, who furrowed her eyebrows.
“Son of a bitch!” Lemon exclaimed.
“What’s wrong?” Sugarcoat asked.
“When I die, I die for real, but you just get another halfling to play with?!” Lemon groaned and turned to Twilight. “How did she even do that?”
“Well, if I didn’t find Finnan, I’d possess Indigo,” Sugarcoat said. “This was my backup plan in case of death, you know.”
“Why didn’t I have a backup plan in case of death?” Lemon asked.
“You’re not insane,” Sunny replied. “I’m pretty sure Sugarcoat is already planning to screw us over and turn us into zombies or run with the money.”
“I’d say she’s far more pragmatic.” Twilight chuckled. “She’ll turn you into the undead to help her carry the money.”
Juniper smirked. “If you two ever decide to become supervillains, call me. Just get me my mirror back, then I can turn into a huge, angry movie star.”
“Twilight can turn into a demon that rips holes in time and space without the mirror,” Sugarcoat said. “Or at least, she was able to do this before, but then she got struck with the magic friendship beam or something. Just in time to get Lemon a new pair of underwear and go to a party.”
“Hey!” Lemon exclaimed. “If I recall correctly, I wasn’t the one who needed a new pair of underwear.”
“I can tell she spent the whole day wearing the same panties.” Sour gave Sugarcoat a glare. “Anyway, Sugarcoat is kinda undead now, the cultist party got wiped out, and Hunzrin is apparently down to one hit point, somehow. Do we heal him and interrogate him?”
Juniper shuddered. “Last time you and Lemon tried to interrogate me, my head exploded.”
“We’ll be gentle, this time.” Sour smirked in a way that made Juniper think of bathroom doors and fire axes.
“I have a strange sense of deja vu,” Hunzrin muttered, waking up only to find out that his party had been wiped out and that he was lying in the ruins of a scorched underground hall, surrounded by carcasses of dead hook horrors. He looked up and saw two people looking at him – or rather, an elf with a psychotic grin and a plain-looking girl wearing a simple canvas robe. “What do you want?”
“Information,” Sour replied. “I want either information or to put an arrow in your ass and spin it, but the choice is largely up to you. Where do we find Dagon?”
Charlene made a few quick gestures.
“What did she say?” Sour asked.
“Something like, ‘we don’t want to find Dagon, we want to find the gold stash and run as far away from Dagon as possible’,” Fafhrd replied. “Which is also my opinion.”
“Yes, but if we run away with Dagon’s gold, he’ll rip us a new one.” Sour rolled her eyes. “Remember Sinbad?”
“Oh great, so we’ll go to Dagon and let him rip us a new one so he doesn’t have to bother going across half of the world.” Gray Mouser groaned. “Great plan. How exactly do you want to kill Dagon?”
“By having someone more powerful on our side,” Sour replied. “Aren’t you pals with Tharizdun?”
“I think he’s getting more and more amused by my exploits.” Suddenly, Gray Mouser’s left hand raised, flipping Sour off. Gray Mouser looked at it and smacked it with his right hand. “I don’t know why it does this.”
Hunzrin furrowed his eyebrows. “Do all halflings look the same, or are you Finnan Tealeaf?”
“I borrowed his body,” Gray Mouser replied. “And you shut up, unless you can tell us how to kill Dagon or at least convince him not to rip us a new one.”
“Only the Chancellor can talk to Dagon,” Hunzrin replied. “Also, while we are at it, our gold stash is located near the Chancellor’s chambers.”
“How convenient,” Gmork muttered. “So, we just go there, beat up the grandpa, ask him to tell Dagon to bugger off, and take the gold? This should be simple.”
“Tell that to Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, and Kit Fisto,” Fafhrd said.
“Who?”
“The Jedi who tried to arrest the Chancellor with Mace Windu.” The barbarian smiled sheepishly. “Old barbarians said this tale happened a long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away.”
“Chill out,” Sour said. “It’s not Star Wars, he can’t be this dangerous.” She turned to Hunzrin. “Can he?”
“He talks with Dagon as equal,” Hunzrin replied. “Take a guess.”
“Yeah, we should be fine,” Gray Mouser said. “I mean, we can always end up as undead, after which we could do crazy stuff without being afraid of death.”
“Or our souls can be consumed by some insane abomination,” Sour replied. “We need to approach carefully. After getting stabbed in the back a few times, the guy should be a bit easier to defeat.”
“I hate stealth-based missions!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “Also, how can it be stealthy if we have to drag this elf parody around as our guide? He’ll betray us at the first occasion.”
Do we really need him? Charlene ended the signs by snapping her fingers, causing a small flame to appear above her hand.
“What did she say?” Hunzrin asked.
“Gmork has no idea, but he knows she enjoys a good roast,” Gmork replied, smirking. “But I guess this won’t be necessary…”
“Why is it so dark here?” Fafhrd whispered, trying to walk through the narrow corridor with the grace of a battleship navigating its way through a bathtub.
“So inferior humans with no night vision could ask stupid questions,” Sour whispered back. She looked around. “Where’s Hunzrin?”
Charlene waved her hand and pointed at the drow, who was smiling at a large stack of coins. After being forced to drink one of the potions Gmork had in his luggage, walking and smiling at things was the most he could do.
“What did you give to him anyway?” Gray Mouser asked.
“One of Gmork’s failed attempts at creating grease,” Gmork replied. “Gmork means, it works as grease if ye don’t mind seein’ dragons after inhaling it. Also, sometimes it causes bloody diarrhea, but seems drows don’t exhibit these symptoms.”
“If so, he’ll stop being stealthy.” Fafhrd muttered. “Also, look at all those coins!” He grabbed a handful of gold and shoved them under his armour.
“Shut up,” Sour whispered. “And stop ringing with those coins or the Chancellor will hear us.”
“Isn’t this the point?” the barbarian asked.
“No, the point is to see him before he sees us and summons an army of cultists,” Gray Mouser replied. “We ran out of hook horrors, you know.”
“Okay.” Fafhrd looked around. “Where exactly is his office? Or does he have business hours?”
“I can assure you my office is open all the time.” A cold voice echoed across the hall full of coins. “Also, you’d better give me back my money, you stupid oaf.”
The lights turned on, revealing the man clad in dark, stylish robe, carrying a long stick. Sour raised her bow and fired at him, but he blocked the arrow with his weapon effortlessly.
“Nice try.” He chuckled. “I’d even let you go with the money, but it’s a matter of principles, you know. How am I going to terrorise the whole continent if someone hears I paid a bunch of imbeciles to leave me alone? I already had a lot of work with Sinbad.” He rolled his eyes.
“Just great,” Sour muttered. “That’s some fucking bureaucrat.”
“Hardly.” The Chancellor smirked. “Though I admit, taking over the world will probably be impossible without at least some bureaucracy. I already had to gather all that money, as if the power of Dagon wasn’t enough for conquest.”
Charlene turned to Fafhrd. Maybe I should fire him?
“Just try.” The chancellor chuckled.
“Alright, we gotta focus and attack him all at once,” Gray Mouser said. “Or else–”
“Fafhrd, son of Onan!” Fafhrd exclaimed, raising the axe and charging at the chancellor.
The halfling shrugged. “Well, this works too.”
The Chancellor spun his staff, blocking the axe and another of Sour’s arrows. Gmork grabbed a handful of coins and threw them at the opponent, who didn’t even notice this – mainly because Charlene just attacked him with fire.
“Don’t burn us, you idiot!” Sour exclaimed, sliding on a pile of coins and landing in front of Gmork in a definitely not elf-like pose. “Don’t you have something more useful?” she asked. “Like grenades or something? At least a coin launcher.”
“Gmork will see what Gmork can do,” Gmork replied, producing a pouch with some grenades. He took one of them, weighing it in his hand and then tossed the entire pouch in the general direction of flames.
The explosion showered them with coins, ripping a part of the cave’s roof apart. Sour dodged a falling stalactite and dropped on the ground next to Fafhrd, who screamed; he was missing a part of his armour and the blade of his axe was glowing red from the heat.
The barbarian looked around and turned to Gmork. “Before we lost contact, Charlene said something like, ‘this dumb cunt Sunny is trying to kill me again’, you know.”
“Gmork doesn’t know who’s Sunny.” The half-orc shrugged. “Did she at least succeed?”
The flames disappeared. The Chancellor stood in the middle of molten gold, smirking a bit despite horrible burns covering most of his body.
“You fools!” he exclaimed. “Did you think this is my final form?” He closed his eyes and lowered his head as a mass of grotesque tentacles erupted from his body, twitching and coiling around the cave in a twisted mass of deformed flesh.
“Great, Twilight is a fan of Dragon Ball,” Fafhrd muttered. “Brace yourselves, this is gonna be a long fight.”
View Online
9. The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
“Finally, some good instant noodles,” Indigo said, bringing the bowl from the kitchen. “Everyone buys this flavourless piss, but Twilight has a whole drawer full of hot and spicy shrimp ones.”
“Seriously?” Sugarcoat asked. “The guy we’re fighting just turned into a tentacle monster and you’re gonna eat instant noodles? Are you crazy? Wait, that’s a rhetorical question.”
“If we’re gonna pull an all-nighter, I don’t want to be hungry.” Indigo shrugged.
“You’ve already eaten a kebab,” Sugarcoat said. “And borek with spinach and feta. Not to mention that super-sweet cake that gave me diabetes, I think.”
“Well, this was a few hours ago and I have a quick metabolism,” Indigo replied. “It all went through me in an instant. By the way, if anyone feels like going to the toilet–”
“I don’t want to hear the rest of this sentence.” Juniper covered her ears. “Let’s get back to tentacle monsters. I greatly enjoy being one.”
“Well, if you have a choice to be a tentacle monster, always be one,” Sunny said.
“Fucking weebs,” Lemon muttered.
“Do I have to remind you that you once drunkenly claimed that Sailor Moon turned you into a lesbian?” Sugarcoat asked.
Lemon pouted. “That was ages ago!”
“As my old, gossipy aunt Miranda would say, everything you say may be used against you.” Sugarcoat smirked. “Also, even I know that you can’t blame an anime for turning you gay. It’s what you get at birth. Could’ve been worse – just look at Sour.”
“I don’t think it’s exactly ‘blame’,” Twilight said, trying not to pay attention to Indigo and Lemon holding Sour Sweet, preventing her from strangling Sugarcoat. “You usually blame someone for bad things, while, I’d say, Lemon clearly enjoys being a lesbian.”
“Every second of it.” Lemon smirked. “Sour, leave Sugarcoat alone. Her birth package included asthma, poor eyesight, and being a huge bitch.”
“I also enjoy every second of it,” Sugarcoat replied. “Speaking of huge things, let’s get back to tentacle monsters. It’s gonna be even more realistic when Indigo chokes on instant noodles.”
“Good to know you believe in me.” Indigo smirked. “Where did we finish anyway?”
“Final form,” Twilight replied. “You’d better get your sword ready…”
Fafhrd the Barbarian looked at his mighty sword and shook his head. The tentacles were covered in thick, slimy skin and the blade kept bouncing off, no matter what he did. The barbarian dodged another tentacle and dived into a pile of coins where he found Charlene.
“What about you?” he asked. “Can you do something to him?”
This form is resistant to fire. Charlene shrugged. I can flip him off and not much more.
“At least the rest of the guys are still fighting,” Fafhrd muttered. A small silhouette of Gray Mouser poked from behind a pile of coins and threw a magic missile at the mass of tentacles, which shook and thrashed, bringing down half of the wall and sending the coins in all the directions.
“Elbereth Gilthoniel, bitch!” Sour jumped from behind her cover and unleashed a barrage of arrows at the monster in front of her. It did even less than the magic missile; the arrows either bounced or just disappeared in the shapeless mass, as if they sunk in a swamp.
Sour cursed, but it was cut short by a sudden gust of wind as something heavy flew past her. She watched as the bolt the size of a support beam hit the tentacle monster, leaving a nasty, grayish bruise on one of the tentacles.
“What the hell?” she asked, turning back. To her surprise, she saw Gmork standing by a large ballista and trying to reload it quickly – a tough task, given that the bolts were three times his size. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in me luggage,” Gmork replied with a shrug.
“You’ve had a big fucking ballista in your luggage?!” Sour exclaimed. “Where exactly? Not to mention that it was the same luggage we’ve lost to the cultists along with a pony named Lyra Heartstrings?”
“Wait, what happened to the pony?” Gmork asked.
“I don’t give a shit about the pony!” Sour shouted. “Where did you get a ballista and why didn’t you use it earlier? Like, whenever we needed it?”
“It takes a while to put it together.” Gmork shrugged again. He finally managed to recock the ballista and load it, this time tying some bombs to the bolt. “Fire in the hole!”
The bolt flew across the treasury, hitting the mass of tentacles and exploding, sending coins, splinters, and bits of gelatinous tissue around. Sour dodged the incoming projectiles, muttering curses under her breath.
“Where did you get it?!” she exclaimed. “In some sort of gnome Ikea?”
Before Gmork could answer, they heard a scream and Fafhrd hit the ground next to them. Soon, he was followed by Gray Mouser, who landed on Sour’s head, almost knocking her out.
“Gmork, warn us next time you do something like that!” the barbarian exclaimed. “Some of us are melee fighters, you know!”
“Gmork said, ‘fire in the hole’,” the artificer muttered.
“I’ll make some holes in your ass if you try to blow us up again!” Fafhrd exclaimed, his words complimented by the hissing sound as Charlene took advantage of the Chancellor’s wounds and attacked him with fire again. Gray Mouser stood up and fired another magic missile, pushing the burning creature back.
“Now we’ve got him!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “Gmork, fire again! We’ll win this!”
“Remember, he’s either Dagon or his minion,” Gray Mouser said, casually firing another spell at the retreating creature. “If I was the DM, our entrails would already be hanging from the Christmas tree.”
“Nah, he may have turned into a tentacle monster, but it doesn’t mean he can fuck us.” The barbarian spun his sword and chuckled. “Now, I shall finish him off.”
“FOOLS!” The voice not so much echoed across the hall, but rather right inside of their skulls. Suddenly, they felt much heavier, as if someone suddenly cranked up the gravity. The fire went out and the smoke cleared, although not quite; they couldn’t exactly see the Chancellor, but they noticed that the silhouette behind the smoke was no longer a mass of half-burn tentacles. It was grotesque and shapeless, with way too many eyes staring down at them.
What was worse, it looked like not the whole creature was exactly in the same place as them. As if a part of it existed in some other dimension they could vaguely feel, but on the whole, it went under the radar of their senses.
“He’ll destroy us with psychic attacks!” Sour exclaimed, trying to stand up.
“Not on my watch!” Gray Mouser stood up, facing the Chancellor. “I’ll stop him, you get the money and get out.”
“Stop him for how long?” Sour asked. “Two seconds?”
“No worries, Tharizdun is on my side.” Gray Mouser turned to the Chancellor. “Hey, muttonhead! You think you’re so great because you can just fry someone’s brain with your mind? I can do that in my sleep!”
“Ye can’t even contain the halfling whose body ye took over!” Gmork exclaimed.
“That’s no longer a problem,” Gray Mouser replied. “He shat himself mentally and told me ‘you deal with this’ before running away to the darkest corner of my mind. And now, I shall stop this pathetic god’s mind powers.”
As it turned out, two seconds Sour had given the halfling was a generous estimation. Right after Gray Mouser stood up and tried to conjure a shield, his head exploded, spraying bits of skull and brain around. His body didn’t fall to the ground, though. It burst into flames, still standing.
“Okay, anyone else has any ideas?” Sour asked. “We just pissed off a god, so if someone wants to say their prayers, they better do it quickly.”
“Well, I guess Tharizdun didn’t help, so what can we do?” Gmork shrugged. “Gmork can say 'parlay', but Gmork doesn’t think he’ll negotiate with us.”
“Yeah, Sugarcoat would’ve offed us a while ago, so that’s a success,” Indigo said. “Ironically, Sugarcoat is now headless and on fire, which means Twilight will now rip us apart.”
“So what do we do?” Sour asked.
“The same thing as usual: we find Charlene and charge into battle until we become four pairs of smouldering shoes,” Indigo replied. “No one will tell we died while running away.”
“Too bad no bard is there to sing about our idiocy,” Gmork smirked. “Unless Hunzrin can sing, but I’m not sure if he’s even alive somewhere in this clusterfuck.”
“Maybe he is, but who cares.” Indigo stood up. “Well, it’s been an honour.”
“Oh great, I’m gonna die side by side with a barbarian, a freak of nature and a little match girl.” Sour rolled her eyes. “But well… You have my bow, I guess?”
“I also have my axe.” Fafhrd nodded.
And my flames. Charlene raised from the nearby pile of rubble.
Gmork chuckled. “And me ballista… Or what’s left of it.”
“No counting to three, just charge!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “For glory, gold, and reasonably priced whores!”
“Gurth goth rim Tel’Quessir!” Sour screamed, aiming her bow at the vast nothingness in front of them.
“Yippee ki yay, motherfucker!” Gmork aimed the ballista, strapping the last grenades to the bolt. Next to him, Charlene just sighed and flipped the Chancellor off.
Flames shot out of the Gray Mouser’s body, suddenly engulfing the chamber. The coins on the floor started to melt, gold evaporating without a trace. Gmork’s last ballista shot hit the Chancellor, but it could as well fall into a black hole; they didn’t even hear the grenades exploding.
Fafhrd almost stopped mid-charge. He expected to live for about two or three seconds before exploding and becoming yet another forsaken soul of an adventurer, but somehow they kept going. Also, he felt a wave of hot air overtaking him and hitting the incomprehensible body of the Chancellor, sending him backwards.
“Wait, what the–” Sour stopped, furrowing her eyebrows. “This fucking halfling is gonna haunt us from the grave, isn’t he?”
“So far he’s haunting the Chancellor.” Fafhrd lowered his axe as white lightnings shot out of the place where the flames hit the dark void, illuminating the whole cave. “What the hell is going on?”
Maybe he summoned Tharizdun before dying? Charlene shrugged as another wave of lightning bolts engulfed them, followed by a powerful shriek, nearly piercing their skulls.
“So it’s a literal Deus ex machina ?” Sour shrugged. “Just great. Sugarcoat would flip, if she was still alive.”
“Fighting god with another god seems like a reasonable idea.” Fafhrd ducked when the next barrage of fire brought down a part of the wall, destroying Gmork’s ballista in the process.
Wait, isn’t Tharizdun that guy who wants to destroy everything that is? Charlene asked.
“Well, at the moment this doesn’t include us.” Fafhrd grabbed a handful of coins and hissed when they burned his hands. Still, he started to stuff his bag with gold.
“Are you stupid?” Sour asked. “There are the gods fighting around us and all you care about is money.”
“They’re immortal!” Fafhrd exclaimed. “This fight might take a while. Maybe you can wait a few centuries and see who wins, but some of us don’t have that much time, you know.”
“He wants to say that time is money.” Gmork gracefully dodged a large boulder and helped Charlene up. “Lady, I believe we should get enough to build ye a new inn. Possibly in a place where ye can get actual customers.”
“We should really do something,” Sour said. “I mean, why else would we be here, witnessing the clash of gods, which takes place on so many levels that we can’t even comprehend–” She narrowly dodged a lightning bolt that hit coins behind her, turning them into a golden vapour. “You know what? Fuck this. Let’s get out of here before the whole place collapses on our heads.”
Fafhrd stood up. His armour and every single pouch or bag he had with him was filled with gold. Charlene and Gmork did the same, though their load wasn’t as impressive. Sour sighed and shook her head, grabbing a few handfuls of coins that somehow survived the fight and filled her quiver with them. Only then did they leave the cave.
After getting through a narrow corridor, they heard some groaning, nearly drowned in the distant echo of the fight between Tharizdun and the Chancellor. They turned back to see Hunzrin Hundsfott himself, staggering in a charred and bent armour, dragging a bag full of gold behind him.
“I swear, if Sugarcoat took over the drow now, I’m gonna kill her myself,” Sour muttered.
“No, I’m still myself,” Hunzrin replied. “Also, I guess it’s time to retire.” He looked at the bag.
“Yeah, seeing your boss turn into a tentacle monster will do that to you,” Fafhrd said. “Also, the floor starts shaking, so we’d better move.”
They rushed down the corridor, chased by roaring and the clashing of rocks as more and more caves collapsed. Hunzrin soon managed to overtake the whole group – he knew the fortress best and soon he led the party to the surviving minecarts.
What will happen when the gods stop fighting? Charlene asked when they loaded gold onto the minecart.
“Either the winner will destroy the world or they’ll go for a beer,” Fafhrd replied. “Either way, there’ll always be work for adventurers.”
“Screw you and your party,” Sour muttered. “I’ll find myself my own one, with normal elves, who don’t pick up fights with gods for money.”
“Normal elves?” Hunzrin chuckled. “That’s a good one.”
“I can assure ye, no elf would build a catapult out of sticks and shit in five minutes flat,” Gmork said. “Long story.”
I’d rather not hear this one. Charlene hopped onto the cart. So, where are we going? To the town?
“With this, we can buy ourselves a town.” Fafhrd chuckled and pushed the minecart. “Let’s go.”
“So, that’s it?” Sugarcoat asked. “I mean, I’m kinda dead but at least I brought Tharizdun to the party.”
Indigo grabbed a piece of chocolate and threw it into the air, catching it with her mouth. “Well, we got the money and Sugarcoat is dead. What is there to hate? I mean, Sour and Hunzrin will probably kill each other soon because that’s what elves and drows do, but at least Fafhrd can always get a hot girl…”
“Thank you,” Lemon said.
“Don’t get too happy.” Sunny smirked. “Indigo chooses her partners based on how much fire support they can provide. That’s why her boyfriend looks like Heavy from Team Fortress 2.”
“You’re just jealous because your boyfriend is like the Yeti,” Indigo said. “Everyone’s heard of him, but no one has actually seen him.”
“It’s not over,” Twilight said, looking into her notes with a smirk. “I have an epilogue of sorts.”
Sour smirked. “Bring it.”
Since all the cultists mysteriously disappeared, the town got much more lively. It could be partially attributed to the mysterious group of foreigners who got the local economy back on the track, spending large sums of gold in all the taverns, forges, brothels, and stores with magical items.
They were just sitting in the inn, drinking beer and enjoying the warm sun; while the rock was still standing, the shadow previously covering the town with a thick veil disappeared.
“We shouldn’t spend everything on beer and whores,” Sour said. “We still need to buy some ship and get back home. This place is nice, but it’s far away from any civilisation.”
“Said the first elf who walked into a brothel and demanded a kender and a dragonborn,” Fafhrd said. “I didn’t know your racism doesn’t involve sex slaves.”
“At least they didn’t have a kender.” Gmork looked around, just in case some kender showed up around him. “A few of those little shits would steal the whole town.”
“Still, a dragonborn?” Hunzrin shuddered. “Is it true they have two–”
“Totally,” Sour replied. “Also, Gmork, still trying to pick up gnome chicks?”
“Not trying,” Gmork replied. “Actually picking them up.”
“Yet another proof that if you’re rich, you can look like a mutated toad and the girls won’t mind.” Fafhrd chuckled. “Also, why’d we need to buy a ship? Gmork will build us a flying chariot. We’ll fly around the world and I’ll get my own talk show.”
Do they even have talk shows in this universe? Charlene gestured. She actually managed to gain more money since they came back from the rock, mostly by challenging half of the town to a drinking contest and winning.
“Well, Conan had one.” Fafhrd shrugged.
“That’s Conan O’Brien, you imbecile.” Sour sighed and shook her head. “Anyway, I’ll give you a piece of advice before I go to find other elves: you’d better invest this gold in some inn or other shit or else you’ll end up becoming a bunch of murder hobos again and–” She turned back to see a tall man in rags approaching them. “Fair warning: we shoot beggars on sight,” she said, grabbing her bow.
More men in rags stood behind the first one, who smirked and said, “I assure you we’re no beggars.”
“Then who are ye?” Gmork asked.
“We’re former innkeepers called by this gentleman here.” The man pointed at one of his companions. “Your elf friend and her tiefling girlfriend tried to seduce him and left him tied in his inn. When the guards arrived, they also found a corpse of some sailor upstairs. He barely avoided the gallows.”
“Yeah, and what about me?” another man asked. “My inn ended up being infested by undead dwarves!”
“And on our way here, we wanted to visit our old friend in the valley.” Another man furrowed his eyebrows. “We found his inn burned and his body torn to shreds. And now I see his daughter is with you.”
Charlene stood up. Well, to be honest, they’re right. Also, some of those guys are my favourite uncles.
“What is she saying?” Sour asked.
“She’s betraying us,” Fafhrd replied. “Hey, Charlene, don’t do this! We’ve just defeated a god, do you think this Dad’s Army is gonna defeat us?”
Gmork raised his hand. “Well, technically we didn’t–”
“Dad’s Army?” The man in rags chuckled. “Your pointy-eared friend was right about one thing. What do you think, who usually becomes an innkeeper?”
“Former adventurers?” Hunzrin asked. “Also, for the record, I don’t know these people. I’m just a simple drow and I never hurt an innkeeper in my life.”
“Exactly.” The man in rags produced a vorpal sword and effortlessly cut the table in half with it. “You’ve defeated a god, you say? Back in the day, I fucked a goddess. Two, in fact.”
The grey-haired dwarf innkeeper swung the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords. “Have you heard the story of Glortan the Bane of Dragons? If dragons told stories to their young, they’d tell them about Glortan lurking in the darkness and approaching from behind…”
“You can’t be Glortan,” Sour said. "I always assumed he was the size of our Fafhrd."
“Why not?” The dwarf chuckled. “The dragons have a hard time spotting a dwarf until it’s too late, if you know what I mean.”
“Enough of this shit!” Sour exclaimed. “Either tell us what you want or get lost and don’t waste our time!”
The innkeepers all grabbed their weapons – most of them rare or legendary.
“Well, hope you’re happy.” Fafhrd muttered, grabbing his axe. “We’re either gonna become Butch and Sundance or Benny Hill. And knowing our track record, it’ll be the latter.”
“Should I play that song?” Gmork asked.
Sour sighed. “Oh, shut up and run!”
Twilight looked at the girl in front of her, watching her with eager anticipation. She had a brief thought of running away; the very fact that she saw Rainbow Dash in the library when there were no new Daring Do novels coming was too much of a shock.
“So, I’ve heard from Juniper that you’re done with that one campaign,” Rainbow Dash said. “Did you kill everyone?”
“Nah, they’re alive though they wish they weren’t.” Twilight shrugged.
“Oh, that’s good.” Rainbow Dash smirked. “Anyway, if you’re done with them, I’d like to remind you that we didn’t play anything for a while and I just came up with this great barbarian character. I called him Kull the Conqueror. Also, I know that Pinkie wants to be either a lesbian vampire or a slutty bard, so basically typical for her. Fluttershy–”
“Oh no,” Twilight muttered, backpedalling. “Not this again…”
