“No, sir,” the apprentice replied. “Not at all, sir. I’ll get showered quickly, sir.”
“Thoroughly, Rimpertuz,” he called after his departing apprentice.
“Well,” he continued, talking to an approaching ostrich, “this may end up easier than I’d anticipated.”
The ostrich crackled in response.
“Agreed,” Treneth said, nodding his head. “Agreed.”
GORGAN
Gorgan was a massive land. It had to be to fit the size of its inhabitants. The smallest gorgan Whizzfiddle could recall was still larger than the largest giant he’d ever seen.
Various texts described how a group of wizards remodeled this area of Ononokin as a testament to the power of combined transfigurations. In one particular historical recollection, notes in the margin pointed out how the newly grown gorgans accidentally stomped out the wizards as they ran around looking for giant fig leaves to cover themselves up with.
The trees stood hundreds of feet tall and the shrubbery was tens of feet high. It was often too much for the average mind to accept, so Whizzfiddle just pretended the shrubs were the trees and the trees were a figment of his imagination. It worked for him.
“Well done, Gungren,” Whizzfiddle said in a nasty tone. “Your recklessness has just landed us in one of the most dangerous places in the Upperworld.”
Gungren kicked at the dirt as Bekner patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. “I not do it on purpose.”
“Oh? Did the button press itself then?”
“No.”
“No,” Whizzfiddle agreed, “it didn’t. You did, and now we are in the land of the real giants until the portal activates again.”
“Real giants?” Orophin asked, his face holding a look of awe.
“Yes,” Whizzfiddle said as he rummaged through his bag to top off a mug of ale. “Not the fifteen footers like Gungren here should be, but the thirty to forty footers that have a standing rule when they see any little biped: kill it.”
Whizzfiddle drank deeply, letting the power flow through his veins. He kept his eyes closed and counted silently to ten and back down again.
He wasn’t even a day into this adventure and things were already falling apart. It had to be him. Every quest he’d ever been a part of ran into all sorts of difficulties. Even the small ones.
He recalled one assignment where all he had to do was help a child find a lost doll. It had taken two weeks and a trip to Flaymtahk Island, which meant he had to cross the ocean, and he so despised the ocean. Then he had picked his way through Kesper’s Range, traveled through Dahl, where he was coerced by Treneth’s parents to take the young man on as an apprentice, then through Metrian, and finally back to the child’s home in Argan. He had nothing to show for his journey other than a few scars and feeling of unmitigated failure. As Whizzfiddle arrived, the child came running outside with the doll in hand, saying it had been under her bed. The parents explained that she had found it only minutes after Whizzfiddle had left to begin the quest and that they had no way to get a hold of him.
“We’ll be here for weeks,” Whizzfiddle hissed.
He sighed and took another shot of ale. Who knew that a simple dolly quest could have wreaked so much havoc in a wizard’s life, and have such far reaching consequences?
“Yes, Zel,” Whizzfiddle said, sensing Zel’s hand was up.
“Did you say weeks, sir?”
“That’s what I said. It could be weeks. A portal doesn’t stay open after you use it. Something to do with charging or whatever. I’m not a technician.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Orophin said. “Certainly a lot of people use these things.”
“Portal locations are on the power grid,” said Whizzfiddle. “So when you land, it is immediately recharged. But that’s in the Underworld. Most of the Upperworld ones are hidden, as you may recall when we searched for the one outside of Rangmoon. These require more time to recharge.” He pointed at a set of shiny squares that sat on the top of the portal. “These things collect the rays of the sun or something like that. Again, I’m not technical.”
“Can we force it open?” Bekner said.
“I’ve never known anyone that could,” Whizzfiddle replied. “Even if you could, it may not have enough juice to get us back anyway.”
“You could,” Gungren said.
“I could what?”
“Use magic to make portal have juice.”
“Hmmph.”
Theoretically, that was true. But no matter how many spells he had tried to get the blasted portals opened after they’d shut down, he had never succeeded. Typically, he would just sag to the ground, thank The Twelve for giving him enough foresight to pack extra ale and foodstuffs, and then he’d lay low for a while. The problem was that he had only a month to accomplish this mission or he faced a long time of watching others practice magic while he stood on the sidelines.
Whizzfiddle turned his back on them and dug into his pack for another helping of ale and an apple.
Idoon’s apples were the best and they always seemed to bring him some calm. He would have sworn that they were enhanced with something pleasant. Idoon always gave away the first apple, then you had to start paying for them. Worth every silver, Whizzfiddle thought as he chewed.
His brain ached from all this thinking and working, but he had to come up with options.
They could walk out, but that would be a trying expedition.
The Gorgan mountains were a good hundred miles away and they were huge and crawling with creatures large enough for gorgans to call pets.
Beyond the mountains lay the Modan Republic, and that was not a place for sane people to travel. Looking around he decided that sanity may not be much of a deterrent. Modan had a unique water supply system that kept everyone smiling. Actually, it would prove an interesting place for Whizzfiddle to spend the remainder of his years if he lost his guild status.
They could keep to the coast and get as far as Natix, but that would take longer than just waiting for the portal to reengage, and they’d likely get hit by highwaymen along the way.
The fact was that beyond waiting it out, they had little choice.
It was going to be dark soon. Animals would start looking for a way to feed. He would have to cast a spell of protection. He just wondered over whom the spell of protection was worthy.
“What is that?” Orophin said.
“It looks like a finger or something,” Bekner replied.
Whizzfiddle tried to ignore them as he thought of options.
He could try casting a flame on the shiny top of the portal. If the squares got their charge from the heat of the sun, that may be all that was required. It was one thing he’d thought about before, but had never tried.
“That a nail, yep.”
“Aye, lad, it is.”
He remembered why it wouldn’t work. The sun’s heat was tempered due to the distance and protection from the atmosphere. If Whizzfiddle put a magical flame on the portal it’d just melt, and he didn’t have the wherewithal to hold a constant low-grade heat over a few hours.
“If that’s a nail…” Orophin started.
“…then it must be a finger,” Zel finished.
“That’s after being a big finger.”
Whizzfiddle really wished that this questing party would just shut up and give him time to think. Here they were in the middle of a predicament and all they could talk about was some gigantic finger.
“Oh damn,” he said as he bolted up and dove toward Gungren, dragging him away from the monstrous digit.
He pushed them all back.
“You do not sneak up on a gorgan, Gungren,” Whizzfiddle said in a whisper, the words nearly twisting in on themselves. “Even at your fullest height you’d be but a child compared to that thing. Our best course of action would be to move swiftly and silently away.”
“Who up der?” a booming voice sounded.
Whizzfiddle hushed them all.
“Somebody
up der?”
Swinging his arm in a circle and pointing, Whizzfiddle guided them all to the closest grouping of dense foliage he could find.
“Sound like little people,” the voice said. “I not hurt little people. I need help.”
“Damn,” Whizzfiddle said, stopping in his tracks.
There was nothing worse than the sound of a gorgan in distress. In all their hugeness, they were as innocent as children at heart. The only reason they killed the “little people” these days was because gorgans were somewhat of a sport for other races. Fealty quests nearly always involved gorgans or dragons (which gorgans referred to as “widdle birdies wif big teef dat burped fire”), or both. So they had learned to be vicious. But when an agreement of peace was in place, they were as gentle as butterflies, and not those butterflies the Hubintegler gnomes in the Underworld genetically spliced with crocodiles either.
“Please?”
The elderly wizard slunk to the finger and found it bent at a ninety-degree angle. He peered over the edge and was met with brown eyes the size of ponds.
“Hello, little people,” the gorgan said. “I named Nern.”
“Nern,” Whizzfiddle said with a nod. “It seems you are in a bit of a predicament.”
“If that mean Nern in trouble, dat about right.”
The cliff face was bumpy, offering many ledges for Nern to grip and gather himself on. Sadly, gorgans weren’t all that bright and the drop was too steep for the gorgan to survive.
“Use magic,” Gungren said, causing Whizzfiddle to jump and nearly join the gorgan in his exigency.
“You know,” Whizzfiddle said, poking Gungren in the chest, “you’re starting to draw on my last nerve.”
“Hello, little people,” Nern said to Gungren.
“I not little always,” Gungren said. “Just in bad spot now.”
“Nern in bad spot too.”
“Yep.”
Within minutes they were all looking for solutions to Nern’s situation. Orophin pointed out a sundry of ways that the gorgan could climb up but they all relied on the ability to convey delicate information to a gorgan.
“Use magic,” Gungren repeated.
“It may come to that, yes,” Whizzfiddle said. “A wizard uses magic only as a final resort. Nern, I think I know how we can help you.”
“Nern will save them lives if them save Nern’s,” the gorgan said desperately.
Whizzfiddle shooed everyone away and looked down at Nern. Not many people can say that about a thirty-foot creature.
“Okay, Nern,” Whizzfiddle said. “You see that ledge right there?”
He pointed and Nern nodded.
“Can you put your foot on it?”
Nern did.
“Excellent! Now, can you put your other hand up here, next to me?”
Nern slammed his hand up, practically knocking the wizard from his feet.
Whizzfiddle backed away and shouted, “Okay, Nern, pull yourself up.”
“I not know what you mean.”
Whizzfiddle itched at his beard and looked about. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a large apple. He approached the edge.
“Ooh,” said Nern, “a grape!”
Close enough.
“Do you like grapes?”
“Yep, and I hungry now.”
“Would you like to see more grapes, Nern?”
Nern smiled widely. Whizzfiddle went back to his backpack and dumped all the apples onto the ground.
“There are a lot of app...grapes up here,” he said.
A loud grunt signaled that Nern was pulling himself up. He had himself pushed up to his waist, his arms fully locked in position on the cliff’s edge, revealing a crisp white shirt with a tight collar and a dark, patterned vest that was left unbuttoned. Gorgans were known to have a sense of style.
“Woah, he got a big head,” Gungren said.
Coming from a giant, that was saying something.
“Indeed,” Whizzfiddle said. “You should all get clear, just in case.”
“What Nern do now?”
“Ah, well, as to that. Just step up, Nern.”
Nern frowned as he looked around. “Huh?”
“Astonishing,” Orophin said with just a hint of sarcasm.
Obviously, Whizzfiddle was going to have to come up with a different plan.
A TROUBLED BUSINESS
Winchester’s tail was a bit tender as he strolled into the studio.
If he had found fifty reliable people to work with, his magazine would have been on the presses by now and his tail would still be intact. As it was, reliability cost more than he could afford. That meant he got ogres. Ten of them. They did as they were told well enough. The issue was that they were not self-starters. This translated into a bunch of mindless wandering in the attempt to look busy. Sometimes they even took shifts drifting about.
“Oknot,” Winchester said to the closest ogre, “lift me up to my pedestal, if you would.”
Oknot did so and, obviously knowing the routine, clapped his hands. “Decision man here!”
Everyone gathered around.
Another issue working with this lot was that they all acted as if they were in charge as well. Actually, they refused to be considered less than anyone on an organizational chart. They certainly weren’t fond of the term “boss,” unless they were referred to by the same moniker. If they were working for a crime boss, though, they seemed to revel in calling the boss “boss.”
“As you all know,” Winchester said, “we are not yet profitable. That means we’re going to have to make some hard choices. Yes, Blerg?”
“We is or you is?”
“I is...will.”
“Got it,” Blerg said. “Go on.”
“Thank you, Blerg,” Winchester said. “If we don’t get this magazine done and shipped soon, everyone is going to be out of a job.”
“We is or you is?”
“All of us is...are,” Winchester said.
“Got it.”
“So what we need is a really hot model that will do nudes.”
He looked at the two females on staff. Neither fit the mold he was looking for.
“PlayDragon can be a reality,” he continued. “Each of us can be sitting in the lap of luxury. Our pockets can be loaded with gold and our plates will never be empty.” He cast his best dragon gaze around. “We have to work together to make it happen.”
Oknot stepped up. “How we do it?”
“We have to find a good-looking orc female.”
“But we try this and it not ever happen. Been long time.”
“Yes,” Winchester agreed. “The problem there is that I’ve been spending all of my time setting up deals and getting layouts and equipment ready. I need to go on the hunt and find that special lady. All it takes is one and we’ll be in business.”
“So, what we do then?”
“Oknot,” Winchester said, “get this place cleaned up. Spotless. The rest of you help him set everything just right, except you three.” He pointed at Blerg, Qayla, and Patty. “Blerg, you’re going to be the muscle that’s gets me into LaHott tonight.”
“Got it.”
“Qayla and Patty, you two get dolled up as best you can. You’ll be walking in with me as my eye candy.”
“Qayla not having candy,” Patty said in a voice deeper than Blerg’s. “Gives her gas.”
“Right,” Winchester said. “Let’s just say that you two will be my date for the night.”
“Oh,” Patty said, eyebrows raised. “Okay, but no funny stuff on first date.”
“Funny stuff good with me,” Qayla argued as they walked toward the dressing room.
“No it not, Qayla,” Patty was saying as they rounded the corner. “You need grow you self-steamer and stop using your body.”
Winchester climbed down and trotted off to his study, barely dodging all the bustling ogre and troll feet. He pushed through the small flap in the door and scurried up to his tiny desk.
&nb
sp; Everything was mapped out. Articles were written by local talent. It wasn’t cheap, but it would be worth it. Most subscribers would look at the pictures and ignore the articles; most subscribers wouldn’t be able to read the articles anyway. But Winchester felt that having hard-hitting journalism fill the pages in conjunction with the nudes, it’d attract even highbrow consumers, or at least give plausible deniability for why they purchased such a publication.
He thumbed through the layouts. The look was far from perfect, but it would do fine for the first issue. It wouldn’t matter how good or bad it looked if there was no cover model.
“Orc-next-door type,” he said to his empty office.
He had worked on getting Yultza from Curdles’s clan, but to no avail. Under all her armor and weaponry was the perfect specimen for PlayDragon. Winchester had never seen beyond the armor, but he could tell by the way she moved. And her face was flawless, as far as orcs go.
Yultza’s response to the suggestion had been to pluck Winchester across the room. His back ached for days.
At this point he would have to settle for a less than perfect specimen.
The stash of gold was almost depleted. Ten shiny discs were all that remained. After tonight there would be half that or it would start doubling exponentially.
Tomorrow morning, Winchester Hargrath Jr. III would either be on his way to the top or he would be a lizard on the run.
THE DATE
Freshly scrubbed and wearing his best suit, Treneth stood patiently at the entrance to The Watchtower Restaurant. It was the only place elegant enough on the west coast of Ononokin, for one of his stature.
“May I seat you, sir?” The host said, offering his hand in greeting.
Treneth pulled his hand back, not wanting to have this young man suddenly interested in courting him. Treneth had smeared magical elixir on his hands so that when Muppy touched him she would find him irresistible. It would affect anyone who touched him, though, so he had to be cautious. It would not do her any harm in any way, of course, nor would it affect her judgment over doing things considered untoward. The amount of alcohol she regularly imbibed would, and likely had, led her down paths of debauchery that Treneth could only shudder at, but this elixir was only a temporary means of making her not find him disgusting. By the time they were done with dinner, the spell would wear off and she would be left with her normal wits, though they would likely be impaired with wine by then. Again, Muppy was known for getting sloshed in a fashion suited to typical wizards, and that would play in to Treneth’s plans perfectly.
Comedic Fantasy Bundle #1: 4 Hilarious Adventures (Tales from the land of Ononokin) Page 8