5d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

Julian raised Cooper's hand. “I'd like to get out of Cooper's body. It's kind of gross in here.” He looked down at Ravenus-Cooper. “No offense.”

  “Fuck you, dude,” said Ravenus-Cooper. “At least you're a fucking mammal.”

  Tim shook his head. “That would put Pube-Freak in Cooper's body, which he could use to beat the shit out of the rest of us. Let's get Coop sorted out first.”

  “You make a good point,” said Julian. He picked up Ravenus-Cooper and placed him on his shoulder.

  Ravenus-Cooper steadied himself with a wing on Cooper-Julian's head and shut his eyes tightly. A gushing sound came from behind him. He squawked. “How's that for gross?”

  Julian shrugged. “It's your back.”

  “Shit, that's right.”

  “Can we please get on with this?” said Tim. “Squat down so I can squirt you in the face.”

  Cooper-Julian squatted, and Tim squirted.

  “Wow,” said Ravenus-Julian. “This is an interesting sensation.” He jumped off Cooper's shoulder and flapped his wings in such a way that didn't even slow his short descent to the floor. “Not as easy as it looks.”

  Cooper, still squatting, farted and reached under his loincloth. “Damn, it's good to have balls again.”

  Julian hopped away from Cooper's fart zone as fast as his bird legs could take him.

  “You two stay together,” said Tim. “Cooper, hold Julian so that Figg doesn't freak out when he suddenly wakes up as a bird.”

  Julian had only gotten in three hops before he planted his beak into the floor. Cooper reached him in two steps, but that was enough for Tim to spot the white streak of bird shit running down his back.

  While Cooper grabbed Ravenus-Julian, Tim walked over to Julian's body. Something seemed out of place, but he couldn't put his finger exactly on what it was. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting his friends in their right bodies and getting the fuck out of this house.

  “Hurry up and get over here.”

  Cooper held Julian firmly with both hands and put his beak right in Julian's face.

  Tim looked at the bottle. “There's not much juice left in this thing. Not a lot of room for fucking up, so hold your breath.” He held his own breath and gave it a squirt.

  Ravenus-Figg, as expected, immediately started freaking out. “What? Who? Momo?” He turned his head left. “Ula?”

  Ula? Ula!

  Matthias-Ravenus had been unconscious right next to Julian, but Ula's body wasn't there anymore.

  “Summon Ape!” said a woman’s voice.

  When Tim looked in her direction, he found Ula standing over Matthias’s body, holding Matthias’s pearl-less ring. Next to her stood a confused-looking gorilla.

  “Shit,” said Tim.

  Ula-Matthias pointed at Tim. “You have three seconds to hand over that potion before this ape comes and takes it from you.”

  It seemed odd that he would bother with an ultimatum. Why not just skip that part and send the gorilla after him?

  “Three!”

  Tim looked at the bottle in his hands, then up at the gorilla's hands. That was it. That massive motherfucker couldn't be trusted retrieving something so fragile.

  “Two!”

  “Cooper!” said Tim. “Throw Ravenus at Matthias!”

  “What?”

  “Just do it!”

  “NO!” cried Julian, evidently having figured out what Tim had in mind. It was risky, sure. There was only a twenty-five percent chance that Ravenus would go back to his proper body, but there was also a twenty-five percent chance that he'd turn into a gorilla, which would be awesome. Then again, there was a fifty percent chance that he'd turn into a deformed geriatric asshole. But it was a chance Tim was willing to take.

  “One!”

  “Now!” said Tim.

  Cooper cocked his arm back like he had a man open in the end zone, then launched Ravenus's body at Matthias's. It was a nice spiral throw, and Figg screamed an inarticulate caw until his beak hit Matthias's hump.

  Tim hurled the potion after Ravenus, then slapped his hands over his mouth. Julian and Dave did likewise. Cooper shoved two fingers up his nostrils and clamped his lips shut with his other hand. Ula-Matthias made a desperate attempt at catching it, but he was too old, too slow, and likely too preoccupied with the thought of slipping away for some private time to check out his new wrinkly tits.

  The glass bottle shattered, forming a cloud of mist too small to fill a space much larger than what Matthias-Ravenus, Ula-Matthias, Ravenus-Figg, and the gorilla were occupying.

  The gorilla had a panicked expression on its face. It looked at Tim, then Julian.

  Julian gasped. “Ravenus?”

  The gorilla roared, its eyes wide with terror.

  “No!” said Julian. “Ravenus!”

  “Down here, sir,” said the bird, stumbling as he walked back toward them. “Why am I so dizzy?”

  Julian sighed. “Oh, thank goodness! You're –”

  The gorilla scooped up Ravenus in his massive black hand and growled some incomprehensible nonsense at Julian.

  “Put him down,” said Julian. “What's done is done. We're not going to solve anything by –”

  The gorilla vanished. Ravenus hit the floor before he could get in a single flap.

  “Wow,” said Dave. “Magical gorillas don't hang around as long as magical horses do.”

  Julian picked up Ravenus and cradled him under his serape. “It's a different spell.”

  “Why me Ula?” said Figg, wasting no time squeezing his new wrinkly tits. “Why?”

  Matthias groaned as he awakened. It was a hybrid groan between old man and primate, both pitiful and unsettling.

  Julian put a hand on Dave's shoulder. “Why don't you go heal his arm?”

  “Fuck his arm,” said Tim. “Which room did you find that liquor in? Are there any more bottles in there?”

  “The gorilla didn't ask for this. He was an innocent victim. It's bad enough we put him in a human body. The least we could do is patch it up a bit.”

  Dave waddled cautiously to Matthias-Gorilla, took a knee, and touched him on the head. “I heal thee.”

  The deep talon wounds on Matthias-Gorilla’s forearm sealed themselves up like zipper bags. Matthias-Gorilla let out another, more soothing groan, and opened his freakishly giant eye.

  Dave smiled. “Feeling better, big guy?”

  With a primal scream Matthias shouldn't have had the lung capacity for, he punched Dave in the side of the head, got up on his old legs, and started tearing his clothes off.

  “Are we done now?” asked Tim. “I need a drink.”

  “Do you ever think you might have a problem?” Dave sat up and rubbed his face where he'd just been punched. “I mean, we just destroyed a family.”

  Tim expressed his concern for the Wilmott family with an exaggerated wanking gesture.

  “You killed an innocent girl.”

  “Ula? Innocent? Need I remind you that she was planning to use us to rape herself? Besides, it was Julian who detonated her uterus.”

  “I was talking about Enna.”

  Tim took a moment to remember who Enna was.

  “What ever happened to her?” asked Cooper.

  Tim looked at Ula, crying and playing with her tits. Definitely Figg.

  “She was obviously in the horse,” said Dave.

  Tim glanced around the room. After accounting for everyone else, he concluded that Dave's theory was sound. “Shit. My bad.”

  “That's all you've got to say? I killed a girl. Nothing a little booze can't fix.”

  “Fuck you, Dave. I've got the taste of Momo's dick in my mouth.”

  Dave glanced at Momo, cradling his dick wound and moaning his own name while Matthias-Gorilla, now completely naked, screamed and flung shit at him. Dave pointed to the room opposite the family portrait room.

  “There are some more bottles in the cabinet.”

  The End.

  Pixie Dicks

 
(Original Publication Date: September 4, 2017)

  For Black, Joey, David, and Kim

  “Fuck this place,” said Tim. He was crankier than usual because the day's adventure had taken twice as long as they'd expected, yielded exactly zero treasure, and he hadn't packed an adequate supply of stonepiss. “Fuck this meadow. Fuck these flowers. Fuck this whole fucking fantasy world.”

  “Can we take a five-minute break?” Dave asked when they came upon a smooth-topped tree stump. It was almost like he was just begging for some verbal abuse.

  “Fuck you, Dave.” Tim did not disappoint.

  Trying to keep up with an alcoholic halfling on the way to a bar was testing everyone's endurance, but Dave's short dwarven legs were particularly ill-suited to long brisk walks.

  “You guys go ahead, then,” said Dave. “I'll catch up.”

  Julian slowed his pace. “Come on, Tim. Five minutes isn't going to make that big a difference.” It was something he felt he should say, but he didn’t really care if Tim hung around or not. The natural beauty of a sunlit meadow and the intoxicatingly sweet scent of the wildflowers were somehow even more beautiful and intoxicating the further away Tim walked.

  Tim gave Julian the finger without even slowing his stride. He was still bitter about Julian refusing to conjure up some horses. But there was plenty of daylight left, and Julian had a limited number of spells. Who knew what they might run into in the forest? He wasn't going to waste all his spells on horses just so Tim could get his drink on that much quicker.

  “Dude,” said Cooper.

  Tim turned around. “What?” he snapped at Cooper. Then his gaze passed both Cooper and Julian, and he started laughing.

  Julian looked back at Dave and found him on his ass, legs in the air, inside the stump, which now appeared to be a hologram or something.

  Cooper joined Tim in laughing as Dave lay flat on his back among the daisies and cosmos.

  “Who would do something like that?” asked Julian.

  “Oh calm your tits,” said Tim. “It's just an illusory tree stump. It's harmless.”

  “That's kind of what I was getting at. It's not only harmless, it's pointless. Who would waste magic to put a fake tree stump in the middle of nowhere? What would be the point?”

  Tim shrugged. “It was funny to watch Dave fall on his ass. Maybe whoever put it there did so just to be a dick.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” said Cooper.

  Julian bit his upper lip in thought. “That sounds reasonable to you two, but think about it from a normal person's perspective.”

  Cooper frowned. “That makes my head hurt.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Tim asked Julian.

  “I don't know. Nothing really. It just seems suspicious.”

  Dave sat up. “What if it wasn't put here to fool people into sitting down on it at all, but rather to inconspicuously mark a place they wanted to come back to at a later date. Maybe there's something buried under this stump.”

  Cooper raised his eyebrows. “Like a body?”

  “No, dumbass,” said Tim. “You don't mark the place where you dump a body. That completely defeats the purpose of dumping a body.”

  “It might have been worth the risk. If you hate someone enough to kill him, you might hate him enough to want to come back and take a piss on his remains every now and again.”

  “Guys,” said Julian. “Not every burial is a body dump. This is a nice meadow. It's peaceful and filled with pretty flowers. Maybe this was someone's favorite place, and they requested to be buried here.”

  Ravenus poked his head out from under Julian's serape. “Are we going to dig up a body? I hope it's fresh.” After a brief pause, he added, “But not too fresh.”

  Tim grimaced, then shook his head. “No, that doesn't make sense. If it was a legitimate grave, why wouldn't they mark it with a gravestone, or like a post with some religious bullshit carved on it?”

  “There could be any number of reasons. This is the Caverns & Creatures world. What if some necromancer comes strolling by and sees a marked grave in the middle of nowhere? 'Sweet! Free dead body!' Next thing you know, Grandma's corpse is a foot soldier in an army of the dead.”

  “What the fuck kind of necromancer goes strolling through meadows?”

  “You're all aware, of course,” said Dave, “that people bury things besides other people.”

  Cooper shoved a finger deep in his ear. “You think it's a dog?”

  “Jesus Christ, no!” said Dave. “I'm talking about treasure.”

  Everyone froze for a moment to consider Dave's suggestion.

  “You're right,” said Tim. “Get your fat ass out of the way and let's start digging.”

  Dave rolled out of the stump, removed his helmet, and used it to dig into the ground. Tim dropped to his knees and started pulling out fistfuls of long grass and flowers by the roots, taking large clumps of topsoil with them. Cooper tore straight into the ground with his massive half-orc hands, rendering Dave and Tim's work largely negligible.

  Julian wasn't as convinced of Dave's theory as everyone else seemed to be. “Maybe we should think about this a little more? We've had, like, three or four different dead body theories, and only one not-a-dead-body theory.”

  “Wah wah wah!” Tim pulled the front of his shirt away from his nipples to make it look like he had tits. In a mocking voice, he said, “My name's Julian. I'm too good to touch a dead body.”

  “I don't sound anything like that.”

  “Sprout yourself a little pair of elf nuts, get down here, and start digging. Otherwise, don't expect to get a share in the treasure.”

  “Fine.” Julian knelt down and listlessly scooped loose dirt out of the growing hole.

  Hours passed. The sun sank beneath the treetops on the western horizon. The woods between them and Cardinia looked darker now, more ominous. Julian wished they were on the other side of them. He looked down in the hole to see if the expedition had turned up anything. It had grown so large that the entire illusory tree stump was floating in the air, and still, they'd found neither treasure nor rotting corpse.

  Cooper was doing most of the work by this point, his head disappearing into the tree stump every time he stood up to toss out another double-handful of dirt. He was the most effective at digging, and anyone else in the hole with him would have just been in his way. Julian was thankful for that when Cooper let rip a fart of epic proportions. Also fortunate was the fact that Cooper's farts tended to be denser than air, and the hole they'd dug seemed to be containing most of it.

  “That one was ripe,” said Cooper, climbing out of the hole. “I'm feeling kind of dizzy. I'm going to take a break.”

  “This is bullshit,” said Tim. Three more wasted hours of sobriety had not lightened his mood. “We could have been home by now! Where's all the treasure, Dave?”

  Dave got to his feet, his fists trembling. He was filthy, sweaty, and looked to be using every ounce of restraint he had in him to not grab Tim and throw him into Cooper's fart hole.

  “I said there might be treasure. You're the one who was so goddamn sure about it.”

  “Are we ready to call it a day now?” asked Julian. He was sitting in the grass next to a pile of dead and eyeless rodents which Ravenus had collected during the excavation. “As long as we've already got a hole dug, I was thinking maybe we could bury these?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” said Ravenus. “I've spent a long time collecting those.”

  “All you do is eat the eyes. It's wasteful.”

  “The rest of it needs to be properly aged. I was thinking perhaps we might bring them back to the tavern and let them sit out on the roof for a few days.”

  “No way,” said Julian. “I'm not putting a bunch of dead possums and rats in my bag. And besides, we're disappointing enough coming back empty-handed without throwing a bunch of dead animals on the roof.”

  “Fuck you and your bird,” said Tim. “You two can jerk off over dead rats as long as you
feel like. I'm going back to the Whore's Head.” He turned southeast and stomped off.

  Dave took one last look down into the hole, then Cooper started pissing in it.

  When he turned to follow Tim, Dave's foot caught on something. He lost his balance, flapped his arms wildly to regain it, but failed. He fell backwards into the hole, landing with a small splash and a hard thud.

  “What the fuck, Dave?” asked Cooper, still pissing in the hole. A second later, he seemed to realize that he was pissing on Dave and changed the direction of his stream to outside the hole.

  Julian got up and ran to the edge of the hole. “Are you okay?”

  Dave choked and gagged. The air down there must have been almost liquid thick with the smell of Cooper's fart and piss.

  He tried to stand, but his feet were tied together with a length of twine. He started to say something, but it came out as more coughing and gagging.

  Cooper reached down and grabbed Dave's outstretched leopard-furred forearm. Dave did his best to assist, feeling around for handholds and footholds, but it was difficult with his feet still tied together.

  Finally, Cooper dragged him out of the hole. He sprawled out flat on the grass and sucked in the fresh flower-scented air. When he got his breathing under control, he sat up and looked in the direction Tim had gone.

  Tim had come back about half the distance he'd traveled when Dave fell in the hole. He was looking back at Dave and shaking his head.

  “What's your problem, man?” Dave said to Tim.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Dave wiggled one of his boots out of the loop of twine, then pulled the twine loop off the other boot and held it up for everyone to see. It appeared to be hand-woven from stems of the same kinds of wildflowers which grew in this very meadow.

  “I'm talking about this. I understand that you're in a bad mood, and you need a drink, and you're just generally an asshole, but did you think this was going to get you back to the Whore's Head any quicker?”

  Tim shrugged. “I see some string. What am I looking at?”

  “You tied my feet together!”

  “I wasn't anywhere near your fucking feet.”