5d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  The End.

  From the Bowels of Hell Hounds

  (Original Publication Date: July 7, 2017)

  For Brian Butkus.

  Thank you for your amazing generosity.

  Tim had been the one to sell the party on taking this job by describing it as “taking a stroll through the woods and hoping they didn't get mauled by monsters”, and argued that “Since that describes pretty much every day we've been in this shitty fantasy world, and remains preferable to the even shittier existence we led back in the real world, we might as well make a little booze money from it.”

  Julian found it ironic, then, that Tim sat in the back of the wagon, swigging stonepiss from his flask, while Julian, Cooper, and Dave struggled to push the wagon through the mud while the gods of this world saw fit to piss down a torrential rainstorm on them.

  In his role as the “face” of the party, owing to his high Charisma score, Julian had convinced their current employer, Mr. Butkus, that they were a competent group of mercenaries capable of escorting him and his wares safely to his destination, so he supposed his thoughts of criticism toward Tim weren't coming from much of a moral high ground.

  Ravenus landed on the wagon roof and shook the rain from his feathers. “Moving along, are we sir?”

  “Fantastic,” said Cooper. “One more fucking freeloader.”

  Julian shot Cooper a warning glance. “Just take it easy, huh? He weighs next to nothing, and at least he's serving a purpose.”

  “That's right,” said Tim. “I'm keeping lookout. When you don't get torn apart by owlbears or raped by manticores or some shit, you'll have me to thank for giving you the heads up.”

  “I was talking about Ravenus,” said Julian. “You're just a lazy asshole.”

  “I'm a goddamn halfling! I could barely reach the back of the wagon. How am I supposed to help?”

  Cooper grunted as the three of them heaved the back wheels of the wagon over a tree root. “Shutting up would be a step in the right direction.”

  The wagon started moving again, albeit slowly, now that the horses up front were able to do their jobs. Each hoofstep was a squelch and plop. The wagon wheels cut deep ruts into the mushy ground which soon closed back in on themselves.

  Now that his hands were free, Julian grabbed the ends of his serape and flapped as much water as he could out of it. For no reason he could think of, he began to feel slightly aroused. He looked up at Ravenus, with whom he shared an Empathic Link.

  “Are you...” Julian cleared his throat. “... feeling okay?”

  “Please pardon my lack of control, sir,” said Ravenus. “You reminded me of a mating ritual I once witnessed between two tropical birds.”

  Dave and Tim snickered as blood that had been headed toward Julian's dick changed course and rushed up toward his cheeks.

  “What's so funny?” asked Cooper, who was unable to understand the Elven tongue, the only language Ravenus was capable of speaking.

  Dave squeezed a gallon of rain and sweat out of his beard. “I think Julian is giving himself a hardon via Ravenus.”

  Cooper made a face like he was trying to figure out the square root of negative pi. “This is the sort of shit that happens when you take away people's internet porn.”

  Julian wrapped his still waterlogged serape double layered over his crotch and glared up at Ravenus. “Have you seen anything?”

  “Yes, sir. That's why I'm here,” said Ravenus enthusiastically. “I've spotted the tower!”

  Tim sighed. “Oh thank fuck.”

  “What are you so relieved about?” asked Dave. “You've done nothing but drink this entire trip.”

  “And so it stands to reason that I'm nearly out.” Tim picked up a clear glass bottle with a long spiraling neck from among the merchant's wares. “Is it wine? Is it lamp oil? Is it... I don't know, fucking unicorn piss? For a second there, I thought I just might have to find out.”

  Julian slogged ahead to the front of the wagon. “Mr. Butkus! I have good news!”

  Collected rain flowed off the sturdy brim of Butkus's black conical hat when he turned to look down at Julian.

  “Tell me it be a break in the weather. This rain chills me to the bones.” He produced a silver hip flask from an inner pocket of his thick leather coat and took a swig of the contents.

  Julian's first thoughts went back to Tim. Sure, Butkus was their employer, and was serving a purpose insofar as someone had to steer the horses, but it seemed like kind of a dick move to complain about the weather when they were all at least as soaked as he was, and having to slog through the mud lifting the wagon over tree roots as well.

  “Better than that,” said Julian, walking along at the wagon's pace. “My familiar has spotted Count Fabulazzo's tower.”

  “Aye, that is good news, lad. All this travel has me longing for a rest.”

  Julian searched his mind for a response other than 'Go fuck yourself''. Taking in Butkus's floppy conical hat and the strange assortment of random liquids, powders, herbs, and things he wasn't able to identify at a casual glance or sniff, Julian had a thought.

  “Are you a wizard?” It couldn't hurt to talk shop with a fellow student of the arcane arts.

  “Ha!” said Butkus. “Me, a wizard? Mercy of the gods no, boy. I am but a humble courier. I collect what goods I'm told to collect, and deliver them where I'm told to –.”

  A crack of thunder seemed to split the dark sky, and the accompanying lightning briefly made clear a black tower silhouetted against the clouds. It was like a giant rook, towering over the treetops.

  It didn't seem all that far away, but the horses trudged through the semi-liquid terrain for at least another hour before they finally pulled up to the iron gates.

  The gate, as well as the fence which stretched out from either side of it, forming a fifty yard perimeter around the tower, were anything but inviting. Barbed spikes topped each vertical bar.

  Julian looked for a rope, or a button, or anything that might serve as a doorbell. The gate appeared to be latched, but not locked.

  “Open the gate already!” barked Butkus. “Have you not noticed it be pissing down rain?”

  “Actually, I have noticed that,” Julian snapped back. He had quite a few ranks in the Diplomacy skill, but he was to exhausted at present to bother using it on Butkus. “My clothes are heavier than I am right now. But I wondered if it was rude to just let ourselves in.”

  “No ruder than forcing our host to come out in this weather.”

  Julian begrudgingly supposed that was fair. The gate made a small clanging sound when he touched the latch, but that was soon drowned out by the vicious barking of what sounded like a pack of rabid dire Dobermans.

  He let go of the latch like it was made out of AIDS-infected spiders and jumped back from the gate.

  The horses didn't seem to like the fast-approaching barking any more than Julian did, whinnying and splashing mud with their restless hooves.

  “Holy shit!” said Cooper from the back end of the wagon. It was too delayed to have been a reaction to the barking, but what else could –

  Then Julian saw them. Three sets of glowing red eyes bouncing up and down and moving toward him from the other side of the gate as the barking grew louder. Mesmerized, he took another step back, hoping the gate was strong enough to keep whatever those eyes belonged to safely contained.

  It wasn't until they were almost right up on the gate that Julian could make out their forms, and was kind of relieved to find out they actually had forms at all.

  Three dogs, covered in reddish-brown fur, jumped up against the gate bars like their asses were on fire. Their abdomens were thin, like Greyhounds, but their chests and hind legs bulged with muscles like Rottweilers who hit the gym six days a week.

  Fortunately, the gate was doing its job, keeping those red-eyed monster dogs on their side of it. Still, Julian thought he might flex his Charisma score and try to calm the beasts down with an untrained Handle Animal check.

 
He put up his hands non-threateningly. “Hey guys, take it easy. We don't mean any – FUCK!”

  Julian dove for cover behind the horses as two of the three dogs stopped barking and vomited plumes of fire at him.

  The remaining dog's barking was drowned out by equine screams as orange light illuminated the mud around him. The heat of the flames was just short of unbearable. The back of Julian's drenched serape felt like it was near boiling.

  “Stop that!” shouted a voice from behind the dogs. “Yippy! Pippy! Skippy! SIT!”

  The dogs reluctantly stopped barking and breathing fire. Just in time, too. The horses, having provided all the cover they were going to provide, collapsed on top of each other in a pile of scorched hair and exposed, charred bones.

  “Jesus Christ, Julian!” said Cooper, appearing from the other side of the wagon. “What the fuck did you do to those horses?”

  “I didn't do anything!”

  Butkus glared down at Julian. “That will be coming out of your pay, elf.”

  “With all due respect, sir. I was trying to save my life.”

  “And you did so at the expense of my horses. It only be fair that you –”

  “Please, please, gentlemen!” said the middle-aged man on the other side of the gate. He looked like a younger Jack Palance, if Jack Palance were ever inclined to wear a shiny green shirt and golden MC Hammer pants. The three red-eyed dogs sat calmly at his feet, staring at Julian through a circular curtain of rainwater flowing off the edge of an invisible circular disc above the man's head. “I shall compensate you for the horses. Now please, come in.”

  “Are you Mr. Fabulazzo?” asked Julian.

  “Count Fabulazzo,” corrected the count. “Please come in out of the rain and warm yourselves by my hearth.”

  “Your dogs,” said Julian. “Are they...”

  “Hell hounds,” said Count Fabulazzo. “It's an unfortunate name for such gentle creatures.”

  Julian looked down at the smoldering horse remains, catching Ravenus beak deep in an eye socket.

  “I'm in the process of training them,” the count explained. “They tend to get excited at the sight of new faces. I assure you they will do you no harm.”

  Julian would have preferred it if the count would lock the dogs in a kennel or something, but he was in no position to make such demands of their host. His word would have to be good enough.

  When Julian touched the latch again, one of the dogs snarled as it snorted small flames from its nostrils.

  “Hush, Pippy!” snapped the count. The hell hound whined and lay down.

  As satisfied as he felt he was likely to be, Julian unlatched the gate. The iron hinges screamed as he pushed it open. To his great relief, the hell hounds remained at their master's feet.

  Butkus strolled through the gate. “You lads can unload the wagon. I'd move it closer to the tower for you, but thanks to the cowardly elf, I've no horses with which to pull it.”

  “It's not cowardly to avoid being roasted alive,” said Julian.

  “A fine lot of good your excuses will do us when it comes time to travel back to Cardinia in the morning.”

  “I've got it covered.”

  “Is that right? You plan to pull the wagon yourself? You look about as strong as you are brave.”

  That was about as much as Julian could tolerate. “You want a horse? I'll give you a goddamn horse.” He pointed at the ground in front of Butkus. “Horse!”

  A beautiful white stallion popped into existence right in front of Butkus.

  As if a switch had been flipped, all three hell hounds sprang to their feet and bounded at the magically summoned horse.

  “No!” cried Julian, but the hell hounds weren't taking orders from him.

  The horse screamed and reared up on its hind legs, inadvertently making it easier for the first hound to bite it right in the junk. The second one jumped up and grabbed the horse by the throat.

  That was more than the horse could take. It disappeared just as the third hound lunged for its hind leg, passed through the suddenly horseless space and hurtled straight at Butkus.

  “Whaaa!” cried Butkus as the confused demon dog flew into him. He fell to the ground covering his face with his forearms. “Please! No! Make it stop!” The dog had clearly been in the mood for some fresh horse meat, and had no interest in Butkus except to lift up its leg and pee on him.

  Smoke rose from the piss where it landed on Butkus's thick leather coat.

  “Yippy!” snapped Count Fabulazzo. “Stop that. Get back here right now.”

  All three dogs returned to their master, who squatted down to stroke their fur and tell them what good boys they were.

  Butkus struggled to stand up on his shaking legs. He pointed accusingly at Julian. “Y-y-you did that on p-p-purpose!”

  “I most certainly did not,” said Julian. “But I commend you on how bravely you handled yourself.”

  Butkus gasped at the still-smoldering pee stain on his jacket, which hadn't quite burnt all the way through the thick leather. He patted it out with his rain-soaked hat until it stopped smoking, then glared at Julian.

  “That's coming out of your pay.”

  “Like fuck it is.” Julian had used all of the Diplomacy skill that he was going to use on this guy. “We escorted you here, pushed your wagon, and delivered your goods safely to their destination.”

  “Not all of them,” said Cooper, standing at the back of the wagon. The expression on his face said, “We might have a bit of a problem.”

  “What is it now?” said Julian as he, Dave, and Butkus joined Cooper.

  Tim lay on the wagon floor, his eyes unfocused, grinning back at them with his hand down his pants.

  Flask in one hand and dick in the other, he said, “Hey, man.”

  “I think he drank some of the yellow liquid in that bottle,” said Cooper.

  Butkus gasped again. “Not the unicorn piss!”

  “Wow,” said Dave. “Tim called that one.”

  “Do you know how rare and difficult to collect that is?”

  “How do you even approach a unicorn about that?” asked Cooper.

  Butkus scowled at Tim. “This is coming out of your pay!”

  Tim grinned at him. “I love you, man.”

  “Friends!” said Count Fabulazzo. “Let us not bicker over a few drops of unicorn urine. I shall feed my hounds with your dead horses and we'll call it even. You are all weary from travel and irritable from the inclement weather. Please come inside, dry off, and fill your bellies. Then we shall see how much there is to quarrel over.”

  Julian and Butkus begrudgingly nodded at one another, then Julian turned to Cooper to deal with some practical matters.

  “Do you think you could throw these horses over the fence and pull the wagon up closer to the tower?”

  “Sure.” Cooper sighed. “I'm really angry.” His muscles inflated like his body was sucking back in a week's worth of farts. Once his Barbarian Rage had taken full effect, he grabbed one of the horses by its front hooves and started to spin around.

  The hell hounds' fire had burnt a gaping hole in the horse's skin, allowing horse innards to fly out as Cooper gathered the momentum he needed to hurl it over the fence.

  “Goddammit, Cooper,” said Dave, his face, beard, and chest slick with horse guts.

  The other horse had taken most of the fire to the face and, thankfully, its brain didn't fly out as Cooper threw it over the fence.

  The hell hounds were elated when Count Fabulazzo gave them the green light to tear into the horse carcasses. Expecting them to rip the meat from the bone as most animals would, Julian was surprised to see the dogs devour random parts of the horses indiscriminately. Their powerful jaws crunched through bones like they were no more than almonds inside a piece of chocolate.

  Satisfied that the dogs were distracted, Count Fabulazzo motioned for Cooper to pull the wagon through the gate, then hurried to close and latch it again once everyone had come through.

&
nbsp; By the time Cooper had backed the wagon to the large side door of the tower, there was nothing left of the horses but eight hooves. One of the hounds looked at Julian and burped out a small flame.

  Cooper came out of his Barbarian Rage with a long, mostly steady fart. It was interrupted a few times by “more than fart,” which splattered and plopped between his feet, adding blobs of yellow to the otherwise brown muddy earth.

  “By the gods!” cried Butkus. “Have you no decency?”

  “He has a low Charisma score,” Julian explained. “And he tends to get a little gassy when he comes out of a Barbarian Rage.” For all his efforts to appear unaffected, Julian could feel his own eyes watering. This was a particularly ripe one.

  Fabulazzo coughed for a moment, then slapped Cooper on the back. “I, for one, am impressed! But just so you're aware, we do have a room for this in the tower. My servants have left for the night, and I would appreciate not having to clean up too much in the morning.”

  Cooper nodded. “I understand.”

  “What's that wonderful smell?” asked Tim. His one hand was still down the front of his pants, and Dave was guiding him by the other arm.

  “Jesus, Cooper,” said Dave. “Are you trying to win a contest?”

  “Fuck you, Dave. I'm...” Cooper's eyes focused beyond the others. “... humbled.”

  Julian turned around to find one of the hounds in the process of taking a shit. Cooper was right. It was certainly something to behold.

  The turd flowed out of the creature's ass like magma seeping through a crack in the earth's surface. It was slow, steady, and on fire. It formed a neat pile, like a flaming Hershey's Kiss the size of one of Cooper's fists. The rain sizzled on the pile after the dog moved, putting out the flames and changing the color of the pile from glowing red to black almost instantaneously. Julian wondered if it had a crispy outer shell.

  Count Fabulazzo cleared his throat, and everyone seemed to awaken simultaneously to the fact that they were all staring at dog shit.

  “Perhaps you'd like to come inside? I have roasted elk and Barrier Island rum.”