by Robert Bevan
Tim took a defensive position behind Cooper. Cooper didn’t even bother shielding himself, except to close his eyes, when Ravenus started flapping.
The bird wasn’t wrong. Cooper felt the splatter of hundreds of tiny shit-gobs pelting him as Ravenus attempted to take flight.
“Hey guys. I’m here,” said Dave, huffing and puffing like he’d just outrun a pack of wolves. “Where are the Dorit– Oh shit! What the fuck is – Oh God, stop already! Ugh, it’s in my mouth!”
Seeing that was worth risking a little shit in the eyes. Cooper opened his eyes.
Dave had entered the clearing right next to where Ravenus was flapping. He looked like he’d just been standing next to a shit-grenade. His beard and leopard-furred forearm were caked in it. Cooper didn’t know that much shit could fit in his hand.
Julian lowered his serape and pointed a thumb behind his shoulder. “Ravenus went that way.”
Cooper led the way, ripping through vines, brambles, and small branches with the force of his girth, clearing a path for the others.
About ten minutes later, they came upon Ravenus, splashing in the edge of a crystal clear pool of water. His feathers were shiny black, with no trace of half-orc shit. There wasn’t even a floating circle of filth around him.
“This is lovely,” said Julian, pulling his serape up over his head.
“A little too lovely if you ask me,” said Dave. “It doesn’t really fit with the tone of this dreary forest.”
Tim jumped in to where the water came up to his knees. Somehow, he’d managed to get completely undressed in the time it took Dave to bitch about how lovely the water was.
Naked but for his hip flask, Tim dropped to his bare ass. The pristine surface of the water barely rippled, and did nothing to hide his tiny halfling dick.
He took a swig from his flask. “Guys, you need to get in here. It’s fucking heated. And the ground feels like I’m walking on baby asses.” He squinted downward. “I can almost see through it.”
Julian kept his pants on as he stepped into the water. When he got up to mid-shin, he sighed in a way that sounded like what Cooper finally being able to scratch his ass had felt like.
After staring thoughtfully at his feet for a moment, Julian dipped one hand into the water, then pulled it back out. “Look at this,” he said, holding his hands side by side. “I didn’t even realize how filthy I was.”
The hand he had dipped in the water was pale white, making the rest of him look like a darker race.
Tim leaned back, submerging himself completely underwater, except for the hand holding his flask. When he resurfaced, he looked like a freshly-scrubbed, hairy-chested toddler wearing a brown glove.
“This isn’t natural,” said Dave. “We’re in a forest. The water shouldn’t be that clean. There should be bears and wolves pissing in it all the time.”
“It must have some kind of magical cleansing properties or something,” said Julian.
“I’m pissing in it right now,” said Tim, staring a his crotch. He looked up and shrugged. “You can’t even tell.”
Julian grabbed Ravenus and waded to the opposite side of the pool.
Dave shook his head. “You’re not really selling me on the idea as well as you think you might be.”
Tim sucked down some more stonepiss from his flask. “I don’t give a fuck if you come in here or not. You can stay covered in Cooper’s shit for the rest of your life for all I care. Why don’t you go give him a good salad-toss right now?”
“Come on, man,” said Julian. “I don’t need that image in my head.”
Dave started to unbuckle his armor. “Fine. I’ll come in.”
“I honestly wasn’t trying to convince you,” said Tim. “Whoa! Hold on.” He was now looking at Cooper.
Cooper stopped pulling down his loincloth. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
Cooper considered that there might be more to the question than the very very obvious, but he was in no mood for riddles. “I’m getting undressed.”
“Well could you maybe... not?”
“Why the fuck not?” asked Cooper. “Nobody objected to you flapping your little wang all over the place.”
Tim frowned as though what he said next wouldn’t be well-received. “I meant, could you not get in the pool.”
“It was your fucking idea, shithead! You told me I should wash my ass.”
“I mean, just not yet.” Tim took a swig from his flask. “Look, Coop. Julian’s probably right about the magical cleansing properties of this pool. But we don’t know how strong that magic is. Your shit is some pretty powerful... well... shit. If it’s strong enough to break the spell or whatever, then that’s no good for anyone.”
“What about Dave? He’s covered in the same shit I am.”
“Dave has a thin spattering. You’re coated in, like, a half-inch layer from head to toe, probably thicker around the ass and thigh areas. All I’m saying is, let the rest of us bathe first, then you get the whole pool to yourself. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Cooper folded his arms and sat down hard on a fallen tree. “I hope a fish bites your tiny dick off.”
Dave, now completely naked, waddled his fat, wrinkly dwarven ass into the pool. “Oh man, you guys were right. This is amazing.”
He swam out to the middle of the pool, his head and ass moving in unison above the surface of the water like three pasty and/or hairy islands. When he stood, he was up to his neck in water. He gargled the mouthful that he’d taken in, then spit it out.
“I’ve never tasted water so sweet. It’s like liquid flower petals.”
“You realize, of course,” said Julian, “that this pool is contaminated with our collective filth.”
“And I pissed in it,” added Tim.
Dave sucked up some more water, swished it around in his mouth, and spit it out again. “It’s still a lot less concentrated than the actual shit that was in my mouth.”
Cooper sat angrily thinking about how everyone was complaining about the tiny bit of filth in their clear spring water while he was staring at a puddle of his own urine pool around his feet. He had been weighing the pros and cons of taking a big steamy leak in the pool when his bladder suddenly took that option off the table.
“Whoa!” said Dave. “What the hell is this?”
Cooper looked up. The water at the center of the pool was bubbling, but way too much for it to be a fart that Dave was trying to make an excuse for.
“Sweet!” said Tim. “Somebody turned on the jets.”
Julian frowned. “This isn’t actually a Jacuzzi. We should get out of here.”
As Cooper observed, the water became murkier. He noticed that he could no longer see anyone’s junk.
“It’s getting thicker!” cried Dave. “Wait... what’s going on?” His body was beginning to rotate. As he tried to freestyle swim his way out of the center of the pool, he only managed to throw back a blob of translucent sludge at Tim, who was now revolving slowly around Dave.
“What the fuck is going on?” asked Cooper. The water had become the consistency of glue, and was beginning to funnel in the center.
“How the hell should we know?” asked Tim. “Help us!”
“We’re whirlpooling!” said Julian. With what looked like a massive amount of effort, he lifted his arms out of the swirling liquid, grabbed Ravenus, cocked him back over his head, and threw him at Cooper, hitting him square in the face.
It felt like a big ball of Jell-O when it hit him, but re-liquefied upon impact, running down his face and chest like normal water. With the tip of his tongue, he sampled a bit that had spattered onto his upper lip. No mistaking the taste either. It was water all right. He didn’t taste anything like flower petals, or whatever bullshit Dave had said. In fact, it tasted a little bit dirty, with just a hint of piss.
“Cooper!” shouted Tim. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Fuck!
“I don’t know. What should I do?” They were
swirling around faster now.
“Noooo!” cried Dave, his head barely above the surface. “I can’t braaghhblaagglpppt!”
Cooper wouldn’t be able to reach any of them without getting in. But as soon as he stepped forward, Tim shouted at him again.
“No! Don’t come in!”
“Seriously, dude?” said Cooper. “Now you’re just being an asshole.”
“There’s a rope in my bag. Throw it to me.”
Cooper nodded. “Good call.” He grabbed Tim’s bag and turned back to the pool. “Ready? Catch!”
“What? No!”
Cooper hurled the bag at Tim. His failure to account for the motion of the whirlpool landed the bag out of both Tim and Julian’s reach. Dave had completely disappeared under the surface.
“You fucking moron!” said Tim. “I meant one end of the rope. Not the whole goddamn bag!”
“I’m sorry!” said Cooper. “You should have been more specific.”
“Fuck yuhggbgliglub...” Tim’s head disappeared under the surface, leaving only his right hand raised, middle finger extended, orbiting the center of the pool at an increasingly high speed.
The whirlpool coned deeper downward into the earth.
“Cooper!” said Julian as he spiraled down into the center. “Take care of Ravenus!”
Ravenus screeched as Julian’s head submerged.
“What? Your fucking bird? I don’t even... Fuck this!” Cooper raced toward the swirling vortex and dove straight for the center. While he was in midair, the translucent sludge instantaneously changed back into a clear, still pool. He bellyflopped on the surface, but it didn’t even sting. The water was warm and soothing, almost to the point of making him forget that his friends had all just drowned.
He shook off the tranquility of the pool when he saw Ravenus waddling toward it.
“Stop! It’s too dangerous. Julian told me to take care of you. If I’m just following him to his death, I can at least grant his dying request.”
Ravenus paused for a moment, then started toward the pool again. Of course. The stupid bird didn’t understand English. He only knew that bullshit they spoke in England. Maybe pantomiming would work.
Cooper put out his palm toward Ravenus. “Stop!” Ravenus stopped.
Okay. Now they were getting somewhere.
Cooper pinched the tips of his ears and pulled them upward. “Julian.” He dragged a thumb across his neck. “Dead.” He shrugged. “Maybe.”
Ravenus shook his head.
“How the fuck do you know?” Cooper thought about how he could best convey that question best through pantomime. It came to him in a flash of brilliance. He shrugged. “How...” He raised his middle finger at Ravenus. “... the FUCK do YOU...” He pointed at his own head. “...know?” Perhaps he was diluting the meaning of a shrug, but it should have been clear in context.
Ravenus stubbornly continued waddling toward him.
“Goddammit, Ravenus! Don’t you understand sign language? I said FUCK OFF!” Cooper cocked back his arm, his palm halfway submerged in the water, and prepared to send a tsunami of a splash at the bird. When he shoved his hand forward, however, the water barely rippled around it.
“What the fuck?” This was not how water was supposed to behave. Of course, it also wasn’t supposed to coalesce into slime and swallow his friends. So maybe, in a big picture sort of way, the splash thing wasn’t so weird.
It didn’t matter. If Julian could throw Ravenus out of the pool, Cooper could launch that feathered shitball into the stratosphere.
He started wading toward the bird. Each step was more laborious than the last. Ravenus was veering to the left like he was out of alignment, or like one of them was drunk.
Ravenus hopped into the water, which Cooper now noticed was beginning to thicken. The bird wasn’t veering. He was. Now both of them were swirling in a vat of lube, orbiting the center which was funneling downward again.
Cooper gave up on trying to save Ravenus. If the bird wanted to die with him, so be it. He relaxed and let himself float like a fibrous turd in a bus station toilet. When the rotations became faster and close enough to the center, he took a deep breath.
A few seconds after the thick liquid engulfed him completely, Cooper felt the sensation of falling through air. His eyes were glued together with slime, but he was able to open his mouth to take one more breath before he bellyflopped again. This time it stung like water was supposed to sting.
Underwater, he rubbed the slime out of his eyes. When he opened them, some kind of scaly green fish-man was swimming right at him. He barely had time to scream out a torrent of bubbles and punch the fucker in its slimy face.
A mixture of snot and blood squirted out of the creature’s nostrils and hung suspended in the water like astronaut puke.
The fish-man covered his face with webbed hands. Cooper started to swim forward to ride the advantage he’d just created, but more webbed hands grabbed his arms and legs from behind.
Cooper was a strong swimmer. Because Swim was one of the few Strength-based skills in the game, he’d dumped as many skill points into it as he could. But in spite of that, his efforts to struggle free were in vain. These slimy assholes were strong as fuck, and made for the water. Even with his Barbarian Rage, he didn’t think he’d be able to break free. He would wait and see if they tried to drown him before testing that theory.
Fortunately, the fish-men dragged him up toward the surface.
As Cooper sucked in his fill of stagnant subterranean air, the fish-men let go of his limbs and surfaced around him. The message was clear. He wasn’t going anywhere.
Also clear were these things’ horrible faces. Through the haze of murky water, the dude Cooper had punched looked like your run-of-the-mill fish-man monster. But in the sharp clarity of viewing them in open air, and the dim light shining through the watery anus in the ceiling, the mucus coating that Cooper had felt on his fist glimmered on their deformed fish faces. They looked like burn victims whose skin was overcompensating. The one he had punched was identifiable by the two streams of blood still running from its nostrils to its big fish lips.
“Hey, um... Swamp Thing. Sorry about that. You startled me. No hard feelings?”
The fish-man responded in a language that sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher.
“I don’t know what you’re –” Something like a giant wet turd landed on Cooper’s head. “What the fuck?”
The fish-men laughed while Cooper wiped the slimy mass off his head. In the water before him, a slime-encapsulated Ravenus writhed and flapped while the gelatinous coating dissolved.
“Oh, hey Ravenus,” said Cooper. “What’s up?”
Having shed most of the slime, Ravenus looked around at their captors, then flapped and squawked more vigorously.
After the fish-men exchanged a few words in their nasally fish language, the one Cooper had punched licked his big fish lips while gawking at Ravenus with hungry eyes.
Cooper had just enough time to grab Ravenus and throw him up in the air before the fish-man caught him. “Fly, Ravenus! Find Jul–”
FWUMP!
Cooper’s face felt like it had been hit by a flying log covered in snot. “Mother fucker!” Two images of Swamp Thing merged into one as Cooper wiped blood from under his nose. “What the fuck was that for?”
Swamp Thing shouted nonsense while pointing at his own nose.
“Oh, I see how it is. I hit you, so you gotta hit me. That’s real fucking mature. Haven’t you ever heard of ‘Turn the other cheek’, asshole?” Cooper felt a familiar tug in his guts. All the stress from worrying about his friends and getting captured by fish monsters, in addition to the strain of treading water for so long, was giving him gas.
As a torrent of relief flowed out of Cooper’s ass, the surface of the water erupted with bubbles like it was being carpet bombed.
The fish-men scowled and backed away from him, though not far enough for him to escape.
“Sorry, guys,”
said Cooper. “I was... um... turning my other cheeks.”
Swamp Thing honked out some orders, and two of the other fish-men broke off from the group. They swam toward the edge of the pool where four wooden pails were sitting. They each filled two of the pails and walked off down a wide corridor.
The rest of the group closed in a tighter circle around Cooper. Swamp Thing swam backwards toward the opposite edge of the pool from where the buckets had been, and gestured for Cooper to follow him.
Not having to tread water anymore sounded just fine to Cooper, so he raised no argument. The others followed close behind him.
Outside of the pool, Cooper had a better view of his surroundings. The main chamber was an irregular blob in shape, carved out of layered clay and earth. At the top, of course, there was some kind of pulsating sphincter which fed would-be bathers into the large, rectangular pool below. Tunnels lined the base of the walls. One of the tunnels, the one the two bucket-carrying fish-men retreated into, was significantly larger than all of the others, large enough to drive a bus through. The other tunnels were much smaller, and all seemed to lead downward, unlike the larger tunnel which seemed to stay level with the main chamber. On the whole, the place looked much like what Cooper imagined the inside of an ant colony must look like, except bigger... and with a swimming pool. Maybe a luxury ant colony.
Swamp Thing led Cooper toward one of the smaller tunnels. The fish-men were noticeably less graceful on land than they were in the water. They plodded along with their big webbed feet flopping on the ground, like men trying to walk in swim fins.
The tunnel was only wide enough for them to walk single file. It sloped downward at an angle that might have made a cool water slide, but would likely only rub his ass raw if he tried to slide on it dry. Cooper briefly considered the tactical advantage of walking single file. If he caught Swamp Thing by surprise with a kick in the nuts, sending him tumbling down the tunnel a bit, he would only have to face the other four one at a time. But then Swamp Thing would, in a best-case scenario, only be out of the fight for a couple of rounds, and then return with sore nuts. That dude was a big believer in retaliation. For the sake of his own nuts, he decided to hold off for a while, and use this opportunity to observe and consider alternative strategies.