5d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  Cooper approached the hell hound warily. When it made no move to bite or breathe fire on him, he set the meat down in front of it.

  Tim gagged as the dog greedily gobbled up Cooper's ballsweat-marinated offering.

  When Cooper gently scooped up the dog in his arms, it groaned in obvious discomfort, but still made no move to attack him.

  “If this elk meat treats him like it treated me, that amulet won't be stuck for long.”

  Tim nodded appreciatively. “As disgusting as that is, it wasn't actually a bad idea.”

  When they got back to the road, Dave was sitting on the back of the wagon, engaged in his conversation with Sinas.

  “My testicles hung like purple grapefruits, and I knew then that I had sinned in the eyes of Trog'bahar.”

  “Or maybe you should have washed your hands after you handled that raw meat. How do your giant infected balls prove the existence of –” Dave made eye contact with Julian. “Oh thank fuck!” He hopped down off the wagon and waddled toward them, pausing when he got close to Cooper. “Cooper, that one's still awake!”

  “He's fine,” said Cooper. “Just having some gastrointestinal issues.”

  Julian looked down at Tim. “We should still tie him up.”

  Tim stepped back and raised his hands. “I'm not tying shit until that thing's asleep.”

  “Fine. Cooper, turn this way so I can put a Sleep spell on him.”

  Cooper turned toward Julian, smacking Dave in the face with the dog's tail. “Hey, I feel a rumble in his belly. Maybe it's working.”

  “Maybe what's working?” asked Dave.

  Dave's answer came in the form of a shit-covered amulet launched out of the hound's ass and into his forehead. That was enough to stun him, but the literally explosive diarrhea splatter that followed brought him back.

  “Fuck! Fuck! FUUUUCK!” cried Dave. “It burns!”

  “Rejoice!” said Sinas. “For you have been blessed by Trog'bahar!”

  Blinded by magma shit, Dave turned toward Sinas's voice and rammed his face straight into Sinas's gut, grabbing his robe by the sides to keep the pressure on.

  Sinas hugged Dave in return. “Yes! We are brothers in the grace of Trog'bahar.”

  When the shit fire on Dave's face had been extinguished, he stepped back and touched himself on the temple. “I heal me.”

  Dave's burns healed immediately, but the shit remained.

  Sinas clapped his hands over his mouth. “A miracle! Truly you are a favored son of Trog'bahar!”

  “What can I say?” said Dave. “You're a hell of an evangelist. Thank you for showing me his holy light.”

  Tim nudged Julian on the leg and whispered, “Is Dave full of shit right now?”

  Julian shrugged, wondering the exact same thing.

  Dave took Sinas's shaking hand. “Trog'bahar's healing powers are needed elsewhere. But alas, I must first deliver this wagon, these hounds, and this holy amulet to the tower at the top of this mountain.”

  Sinas's eyes widened. “The tower of Count Fabulazzo!”

  “That's the one.”

  Julian suddenly realized what was going on. “Dave, no!”

  “I was traveling there when your friends discovered me,” said Sinas.

  Dave nodded. “I thought you might have been. It seems our meeting was preordained.”

  “It has long been a goal of the Servants of Trog'bahar to convert him. Allow me to shoulder your burden brother. Go spread Trog'bahar's healing light, and I shall convert the heathen wizard!”

  Julian glared at Dave, then looked at Sinas. “Listen to me. If you go to that tower, the count is going to murder you and feed you to these dogs.”

  Sinas touched Julian's face gently and gazed sympathetically into his eyes. “Poor ignorant child. You have seen Trog'bahar protect me, and yet you are still blind to his truth.”

  “You're making it really difficult for me to continue to try to talk you out of this.”

  “Your will is no match for the will of Trog'bahar.”

  “He's a grown-ass man,” said Tim. “He can make his own decisions.”

  Julian glared down at Tim. “You too? You really want to send this guy to his death so that we don't have to make another trip up the mountain?”

  Tim grabbed Julian's serape, led him a few steps away, then pulled him down to his level. “Someone has to turn up at Fabulazzo's place and hand over his mother's soul caked in dog shit. Unless we tie that fat fucker up and keep him locked in the cellar at the Whore's Head Inn for the rest of his miserable life, he's going to go to that tower with or without your permission.”

  “Speak your poisonous words aloud, cowardly cretins,” Sinas called out. “Your weak-minded lies matter not to Trog'bahar.”

  Julian nodded. “You know what? Fuck it. Here, I'll even throw in some horses.”

  When the hell hounds were bound and the horses were hitched, Sinas rode off happily toward his certain death.

  “Now that that's all over,” said Tim. “Would anyone mind telling me what the fuck happened last night?”

  Julian looked at Dave and Cooper. They nodded.

  “You got high on unicorn piss and spent the whole night masturbating.”

  “Unicorn piss?” Tim looked appropriately shocked. “Are you serious?”

  Julian, Dave, and Cooper nodded.

  Tim pumped a fist. “I fucking called that shit!”

  The End.

  Tossing the Salaad

  (Original Publication Date: July 21, 2017)

  For Austin Owen Koestner.

  Thank you for your amazing generosity.

  “You shouldn't have gone off by yourself like that,” said Dave. “You're lucky to be alive.”

  Tim gulped back a swig of stonepiss from his flask, but it still wasn't enough to make Dave shut up. “I'm alive because I was alone. You guys would have blown my cover.”

  Tim's high Dexterity score, along with all the ranks he'd invested in the Move Silently skill, didn't count for shit when he had three noisy assholes and a talking bird tagging along.

  “We could have trailed behind you,” said Julian. “Far enough back not to be heard, but close enough to move in if you got into trouble. Ravenus could have followed you and relayed your position back to us.”

  “I can be very discreet,” said Ravenus. His shrill British accent was about as discreet as an ice pick in the ear.

  Tim looked doubtfully up at Julian's familiar, perched on the top of Julian's quarterstaff. “That's all I need. Ringo the Bird blabbering in my ear while I'm trying to remain unseen. And if I did get into any trouble, I could all but guarantee that he'd be off bumping cloacas with a dire finch or some shit.”

  Cooper let loose a fart which sent normal-sized finches scattering from the nearby trees. “Jesus, that feels better.”

  “That's exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about,” said Tim. Cooper's ass cloud assaulted his eyes and nose the way Ravenus's voice had done his ears. “If you guys had been with me, I never would have been able to follow Koestner the Healer and find his secret crop.”

  Dave looked back over his shoulder. “Maybe that would've been for the best. Ripping off a cleric doesn't sound very wise to me.”

  “He's not a cleric. He's a healer. I don't think he has any divine magic, just a bunch of ranks in the Heal skill. And he knows his way around herbs and shit.”

  “So it's about as dangerous as ripping off a pot farmer back home.” Dave sighed with sarcastic relief. “I feel a lot better now.”

  Tim brushed some branches out of his face and continued his uphill journey through the forest. “This isn't some old assault rifle toting hippy. He's just some boring asshole I met in a bar who couldn't stop droning on about his job. I could have been an asshole about it and told him to fuck off, but instead I chose to be a decent human being and feign interest in what he had to say.”

  Dave huffed and puffed as he tried to keep up with the rest of them. Tim suspected Dave's short dwarf legs we
re a large part of his motives for bitching.

  “Are you seriously trying to tell me that using your Gather Information skill to trick a guy into helping you rip him off makes you a decent human being?”

  “No,” said Tim. “What I'm seriously trying to tell you is shut the fuck up.”

  Julian and Cooper shared a chuckle, and Tim felt better that at least they were starting to lighten up a little bit.

  “And besides,” Tim continued. “we're not ripping anyone off. This isn't his property. He's not farming belladonna. He just found a spot where it happens to be thriving in the wild, and I followed him to it.”

  “I guess it doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way,” said Julian. “We were just worried about you.”

  “It was a goddamn week ago! Let's move on with our lives, huh?”

  “What, exactly, is farming?” asked Cooper, emphasizing the word with air quotes. “And who's this Bella Donna chick?”

  “Farming is farming,” said Tim. “And belladonna is a plant.”

  Cooper frowned thoughtfully. “A plant that you put your dick in?”

  “Jesus Christ, Cooper! I meant farming in the most literal, non-euphemistic terms possible. And you most certainly do not want your dick anywhere near this shit. It's extremely toxic.”

  “So what do we want with it?” asked Julian.

  Tim smiled. Finally someone was asking an intelligent question. “It also goes by the name Wolfsbane.”

  Julian wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Whew. Finally all of our wolf-related problems will be behind us.” This elicited a chuckle from Dave and Cooper.

  “You guys are a bunch of dumb assholes,” said Tim. “Wolfsbane is a last line of defense against contracting lycanthropy.”

  “That's the disease that turns you into a werewolf?” asked Julian.

  “Or a werebear or weretiger or wererat. There's a bunch of were-creatures in this game. People will pay a fortune to not risk waking up and discovering they've murdered and eaten their entire family.”

  “What a decent human being,” said Dave. “So we're going to extort money out of sick people? That's your plan?”

  “Of course not. We have neither an established healing practice, nor the proper networking arrangements in place. We're going to sell it to established healers in Cardinia for a fair market price. They can extort money out of sick people.” Tim took another sip from his flask and nearly choked on the stonepiss when he spotted a cluster of the purple berries in the nearby underbrush.

  “Here it is!” He spread his arms out to keep everyone from coming in contact with the plant, then produced four empty sacks and four sets of lambskin gloves from his backpack. He slipped on the smallest set of gloves, then carefully tore sprigs of the belladonna plant off the main stalk and put them in his sack.

  “Awesome,” said Dave. “Can we go home now?”

  “Fuck no!” Tim passed out the other sacks and gloves. “This is just an outlier. That means we're getting close. Wait until you see how much of this shit is growing on top of the cliff.”

  Julian cleared his throat. “Cliff? You didn't mention anything about a cliff.”

  “Because it wasn't worth mentioning. We don't have to go near the edge.”

  “We just don't have a really good track record with potential dangers which most people could easily avoid with a modicum of common sense.”

  “If you don't want to come along, then don't.” Tim continued up the gradually inclining forest floor. And of course, the rest of them followed.

  Belladonna plants grew more and more frequently among the trees, but Tim didn't stop to pick any more. He'd only stopped at that first plant for a demonstration. There was no point in wasting time trying to grab every sprig in the forest when there was plenty more than their bags could hold waiting for them in the clearing just before the land dropped off.

  An hour later, they walked out of the forest and into the clearing. The healthy green leaves and purple berries of the belladonna plants showed off their colors in the beautiful afternoon sunlight, giving off a bitter scent similar to unripened tomatoes. Thoughts of the money they were going to make warmed Tim's tiny halfling soul.

  “What did I tell you?” said Tim. “Would you look at all of this shit?”

  Julian nodded. “It's really very pretty.”

  “Hell yeah it is. Now come on and help me tear it all down.”

  Beyond the sea of belladonna plants, eagles soared, swooped, and dove into the canyon.

  “Sir,” said Ravenus, perched atop Julian's quarterstaff, staring longingly at the eagles.

  Julian smiled. “Let me guess. You want to fly like an eagle?”

  “Among them, anyway. Just for a bit.”

  “Go ahead. Let your spirit carry you.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Just don't fly too far away,” said Julian. As Ravenus was getting ready to launch himself into the air, he added, “And don't let too much time slip slip slip into the future.”

  “Are you feeling okay, sir?”

  Julian sighed, seeming unfairly disappointed that his bird friend from a fantasy world didn't get his terrible Steve Miller references. “Just go.”

  While Ravenus flew off in search of sweet eagle cloaca action, Tim and the others worked for hours, filling their sacks with belladonna sprigs and putting a fairly large dent in the supply. Julian raised questions about damaging the local ecosystem by over-harvesting, and Dave raised similar questions about what kind of effects dumping so much product on the market at once might have on prices.

  Tim gave a shit about neither of these issues. He wasn't planning to do this for a living. If they didn't tank the price of belladonna, he might consider coming back and picking the rest, or he might not. This was harder work than he'd imagined. He'd be satisfied letting this be a one-time cash grab.

  “Can we go back now?” asked Cooper. “I don't feel so hot.” He rubbed his belly, then groaned as the back of his loincloth danced in the wind of a long and steady fart.

  Tim noticed a spot of purple near Cooper's lips. He threw a cluster of berries, as that was what he happened to have in his hand, at Cooper's head. “Have you been eating the berries?”

  “I was hungry.”

  “Did I not explicitly tell you that those are poisonous?”

  “I only had a few,” said Cooper. “You said people take this to keep from turning into werewolves.”

  Tim balled up his fists in frustration. “Are you worried about turning into a fucking werewolf?”

  “No, but if it doesn't kill them, right? I've got a pretty high Constitution score.”

  “But you've got shit for Intelligence,” said Tim. “Those berries need to be prepared and diluted by alchemists. Jesus Christ, you're lucky to be alive. Julian, would you mind summoning some horses. We've got to get Cooper to a cleric before he dies of stupidity.”

  “What about Dave?” said Julian.

  “Dave sucks.”

  “Hey!” said Dave.

  “No offense. But if I remember correctly, Neutralize Poison is a Level 4 clerical spell. Is it not?”

  “Yeah, but –”

  “Can you cast Level 4 spells?” asked Tim, growing impatient.

  “No,” admitted Dave. “But Delay Poison is only a Level 2 spell.”

  Tim rolled his eyes and made a jerking-off motion. “Tell me, Dave. Did you happen to prepare a Delay Poison spell this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Well there you go.”

  “I would have prepared one if I'd known we were going to be picking poisonous berries today,” said Dave. “Don't blame me for this. You should have said something.”

  “I'm not blaming you. I'm merely pointing out the fact that you suck. And for the record, I did say something. I said the berries are poisonous. I was ignored. And then I said that Cooper might die if we don't summon some goddamn horses. And yet here we are, precious minutes later, still completely horseless.” Ti
m looked expectantly at Julian.

  “Okay, okay.” Julian pointed at the ground in front of Tim. “Horse!” A sturdy black horse appeared, suitable for Tim and Cooper to ride together.

  “Would you mind if I rode alone?” asked Dave. “Riding on the back of your horse makes my ass hurt.”

  Julian shrugged. “I haven't had to use any spells today. That shouldn't be a problem. Does anyone object to me using up another Mount spell?”

  Cooper groaned as he lifted his foot to the stirrup. “This sucks so much.”

  “Who gives a shit?” Tim snapped at Julian. “The clock is ticking. Summon however the fuck many horses you're going to summon, and let's move!”

  “We'll move faster if we ride separately.” Julian pointed at the ground in front of Dave. “Horse!” A shorter, but stockier, brown horse appeared in front of Dave. Tim had to admit, he was impressed at Julian's improving ability to tailor the spell to suit their specific physical needs.

  “Wait!” cried Dave, just as Julian was about to cast his third Mount spell. “Don't!”

  “Jesus, Dave,” said Tim. “Have I not mentioned that time is a factor here? Make up your goddamn mind already!”

  Julian waved dismissively. “It's really no problem. I've got some scrolls in reserve back at the Whore's Head.”

  “But I think the ground is –”

  “Horse!” said Julian. The white stallion in front of Julian was only visible for a second before Tim, his friends, and their mounts crashed through the ground. It was at least a fifteen foot drop, but fortunately, Tim and Cooper's horse absorbed most of the impact before it winked out of existence, having been crushed to death by Cooper's big half-orc ass.

  Dave and Julian's horses, being riderless, had survived the fall. They were screaming and shaking their heads, generally being noisy assholes.

  “Can you shut them up?” Tim asked Julian, who had stood up and was brushing the dirt off his serape.

  “They're startled.” Julian looked up at the hole they'd fallen through, then at the smooth dirt walls of the large cavern they were standing in. “What is this place?”