4d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  Dude, I’m literally right here, asshole.

  “As stupid and impulsive as he is, I would guess he’s gotten himself lost,” said Morgan. “The others are holding up torches because halflings can’t see in the dark. Should we acquire his head, I may keep it in a jar.”

  That sick twisted fuck. Tim glanced down at his crossbow and toyed with the idea of shooting them each in the junk and running like a motherfucker, but he doubted he’d get very far. Then he spotted what he’d been looking for all along. Near a trash pile at the outer edge of his vision, a wight trudged aimlessly away from the fire pit.

  Tim searched the garbage pile next to him for something to throw. He needed something small enough to grip in one hand, but with a bit of weight to it. He settled on the skull of what was either a child or a halfling, feeling a little bad that he couldn’t tell the difference. But he couldn’t have asked for a better projectile. With a thumb through one of the eye-holes, it was as if it were made to be thrown.

  “Alas, poor Yorick,” Tim whispered as he hurled the skull halfway between the wight and the two assholes. “Get thee to a nunnery!”

  The wight stopped dead in its tracks and looked in the direction of the sound.

  “What’s that?” said Morgan.

  The wight let out a howl like a velociraptor who’d just stepped on a Lego.

  “It’s one of them!” said Balroth.

  “Behold the power of Dionys, wretched creature!”

  The wight hissed, its eyes filled with terror. It turned and fled into the darkness.

  Balroth sighed. “Must you do that every time?”

  “I didn’t hear you complaining when the wight dropped dead instantly.”

  “That happened once.”

  “Quit your moaning,” said Morgan. “We’re doing the gods’ work. Now hurry up. It’s getting away.”

  As soon as Tim heard their footsteps, he hurried the other way around his garbage pile and darted to the one they had been hiding behind. Just as he’d hoped, their burlap sack-o-heads was just sitting there unattended. He estimated it to have at least twice the number of heads that he and his friends had collected.

  “Well done, gentlemen,” murmured Tim. “And thank you.”

  The bag was heavier than he’d expected, forcing Tim to drag it on the ground. Unable to rely upon Stealth, he had to instead rely upon the wight keeping Morgan and Balroth busy for a while.

  “Ravenus!” Tim grunted as he dragged.

  “Right here, sir.” Ravenus was flying in tight circles over Tim’s head. He flew down and landed on the bag.

  “Go tell Cooper to get over here and help me. And tell the others to put out their torches and start moving counter-clockwise around the fire pit. We’ll catch up to them.”

  “I’m afraid Cooper and I don’t communicate very well.”

  “Then tell Julian to tell Cooper, dipshit. This isn’t that complicated.”

  Ravenus ruffled his feathers. “I don’t appreciate being talked to that way.”

  Tim sighed. “I’m really sorry. Okay?”

  “Okay. Apology accepted.”

  “Great. Now get your fat ass in the air and go.”

  Ravenus dug his talons deep into the burlap. “I... have... a... cloaca!”

  “Jesus Christ, Ravenus. Would you please get your fat-ass cloaca in the air and go?”

  “Hmph!” said Ravenus, flapping off into the darkness.

  Tim felt sweat running down both sides of his face as he dragged the sack. He was exhausted, but running on spite. “Stupid fucking bird thinks I’m going to apologize for –” A moist glob of something landed on his head. “The fuck?”

  “My cloaca sends its regards, sir.” Ravenus’s voice was headed in the direction of his friends.

  “Why you son of a...” Tim dropped the bag and aimed his crossbow at the night sky. He couldn’t see Ravenus, but he pulled the trigger anyway.

  “OW!” cried Cooper’s faint voice a couple of seconds later.

  Oops. Natural 1. Tim grabbed the lip of the bag again and started dragging.

  A few minutes later, his friends’ torches all went out. It was full dark now. If any wights or gelatinous cubes attacked him, he wouldn’t know it until they were right on top of him. Knowing this, Tim was more comfortable in the dark than fearful of it. There were only two creatures out there who would actively be seeking him when they discovered their missing bag, and neither of them could see in the dark any better than he could.

  “Tim!” Cooper called out.

  Tim looked toward the fire pit and found Cooper’s silhouette facing him. He dropped the bag and placed a finger over his mouth as severely as he could.

  Tiny lights shone from his left. Lamp lights. Shit.

  “Goddammit, Cooper!”

  Cooper jogged toward Tim, and Tim dragged the bag to close as much of the distance between them as possible.

  “Damn,” said Cooper when he reached Tim. “They’ve got a shit-ton of heads.”

  “They’ll have two more if we don’t high-tail it out of here. Pick me up and let’s go.”

  Cooper held the sack of heads over his right shoulder and Tim under his left arm. The ride was turbulent and the stench nearly unbearable, not entirely unlike traveling by bus.

  “Over here!” said Dave after what seemed like an eternity of nauseous bouncing.

  Cooper dropped Tim and the bag.

  “Nice haul,” said Julian. “They must have a good system worked out. There’s half of them as there are of us, and it looks like they have at least twice as many heads. Mung was right. We should have worked together. We might have cleaned this whole place up and learned one or two things about strategy in the meantime.”

  “Mung can eat my ass,” said Tim. He peered back in the direction they had just come from. The lamp lights were farther away than they’d been before, but not as far as they should be at the rate Cooper was running. Morgan and Balroth were slower, but still headed in their direction. “We have to move the heads from their bag to ours, then throw their bag in the fire.”

  Cooper snorted, looking down at one of the heads which had rolled out of the bag. “Someone drew a dick on that one.”

  Tim looked at the head. There did indeed appear to be a phallus on its forehead, though it was burned into the taut, decayed skin rather than drawn on. “That’s weird. Who would burn a dick into someone’s forehead? I mean, besides us?”

  “That’s the symbol of Dionys,” said Dave. “I noticed the same image on Morgan’s holy symbol.”

  “Damn it!” said Tim. “They’re marking their bounties in case someone tries to steal them.”

  Cooper frowned. “What a couple of assholes.”

  “Can you rub it off?” asked Julian.

  “No. It’s too deep, probably seared right into the skull.” Tim lifted the lip of the bag to peek in at the rest of the heads. “They’re all like that.”

  Julian squinted out at the approaching lamp lights. “What are we going to do? Give them back?”

  “Fuck that,” said Tim. He kicked the one head back into the bag and looked up at Cooper. “Chuck it into the fire pit and we’ll pretend we never saw it.”

  Julian and Dave both appeared to have objections on the tips of their tongues, but neither of them spoke any aloud.

  Cooper grabbed the top of the sack, swung it around his head once, and hurled it deep into the middle of the fire pit.

  “OOMF!” cried a voice from the bottom of the pit.

  Julian looked at the rest of them. “Did you guys just hear –”

  “Yeah, I fucking heard it,” said Tim. “Who the hell is down there?”

  Dave stood on the edge of the fire pit. “Tim, give me your rope.”

  Tim’s curiosity was piqued enough for him to grant Dave’s request without question. He pulled the rope out of his backpack and handed it over.

  Dave held the coil in one hand while he fed the rope, one loop at a time, into the pit.

  “Are
you trying to rescue him?” asked Cooper.

  “No,” said Dave, continuing to feed the rope down. “I have a theory. I suspect that Julian was right about this being a magical fire, but I think it’s all magic and no fire.”

  “Jesus, Dave,” said Tim. “You’re managing to make both magic and fire boring as shit. Just get to the point, will you?”

  “It’s simple. If the rope doesn’t burn, then the fire is merely an ill– SHIT!”

  Before anyone had time to react, the coil tightened around Dave’s hand, and he was pulled into the pit, disappearing into the flames. The sound of his armor crashing into dirt came a second and a half later. His voice rose above the flames. “Ow.”

  “Holy shit!” said Julian. “Dave’s on fire! What do we do?”

  “Take it easy,” said Tim. “He’s fine. People on fire don’t say ‘Ow’ or ‘Oomf’. That’s what he was just trying to tell us. The fire is an illusion.”

  “Well something just yanked him into the pit.”

  Tim nodded. “That’s true.” He looked down into the pit. “Dave? You okay?”

  “Stay back, foul beast!” said Dave. “The power of... uh... my holy symbol compels you!”

  “I guess probably not then.” Tim let himself hang from the edge of the pit and carefully slid down the steep, but not completely vertical wall. Sliding into the fire, he was relieved at the feeling of not being burned alive.

  Now that the illusion was successfully challenged, Tim found he could see through the fire just fine. He could still see that it was there, but now it looked more like just a semi-transparent representation of fire. Other things – real things – were plainly visible, such as Dave holding out his holy symbol, and the wight crouched down and cowering before it at the base of the wall.

  “You turned the undead,” said Tim. “Way to go.”

  “Thanks,” said Dave. “Now what do we do with it?”

  Tim called up to Cooper and Julian, who he was surprised he could see almost clearly standing at the edge of the pit. “It’s safe, guys. Come on down.”

  Julian slid down the side, not quite so gracefully as Tim had, with Ravenus flapping down behind him.

  “Cannonball!” shouted Cooper, grabbing his knees as he jumped into the pit.

  The wight’s bones crunched under Cooper’s considerable weight. Blood and guts splattered out like a popped meat balloon.

  Tim shook his head. “I guess that answers the wight question.”

  “Are you okay, Cooper?” asked Julian.

  Cooper stood up and looked at the dead pile of bones, dust and suddenly rotting meat beneath him. “Lucky he was there to break my fall. In retrospect, that was kind of a dumb thing to do.”

  “Just chop its head off and put it in the...” Tim looked at Cooper, then at Julian. “Did you guys leave the bag up there?”

  Julian looked up at the edge of the pit, then back down at Tim. “We were in a hurry. We thought Dave was –”

  “You there!” said a voice like a man’s whose balls had just been slammed in a car door.

  Tim turned around. He’d been so preoccupied with their immediate situation that he hadn’t yet scoped out the rest of this pit. Standing next to an altar in the middle of the pit was a bald man with a black, pointed goatee. On his left arm he wore a small round shield, adorned with a red skeletal hand against a black background.

  The shield immediately struck Tim as out of place, as it was the only form of physical armor he wore. His black and red robes appeared to have been hastily designed to match is shield by an inexperienced apprentice tailor. Where the shield’s hand was menacing and kind of badass, the hands on the robes looked like they had been painted on the same way a child draws their first Thanksgiving turkey.

  “Dude,” said Dave. “It’s the guy from Manos: The Hands of Fate!”

  “Silence, dwarf!” said the mysterious trash pit dweller, spreading the arms of his robes out dramatically, causing pages of the large book on his altar to turn. “Speak not of my hands!”

  Tim wouldn’t have noticed if the guy hadn’t brought it up, but he did have tiny, delicate hands. Out of the corner of his eye, Tim also noticed Julian whispering something to Ravenus, once again tucked under his serape.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Dave. He lifted up his own left arm. “I’ve got this weird leopard fur thing going on, so don’t feel –”

  “I said silence!” said the strange man, pounding his little fist on the table. He looked down behind the altar. “No, not you. I’m sorry. Did Daddy scare you? Come on up here.” He crouched down behind the altar.

  “Go! Now!” whispered Julian. Ravenus sprang out of his chest like a black feathered xenomorph and flew out into the night.

  When the man rose from behind the altar, he placed a black cat on top of it. The side of the cat’s fur also bore a crudely painted red hand. Tim felt bad for it.

  “Now,” said the man, gesturing down at the spilled sack of heads by his feet. “Who is responsible for this?”

  “Not us!” said Tim. “We found those like that.” He wondered if he had to make a Bluff check on telling the truth if the truth sounded like complete horseshit. Better just to move the dialogue along. “So... Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

  “I am Grand Wizard Dominus Traldar! Commander of wights!”

  Julian cringed. “Grand Wizard? Really?”

  “What?” asked the Grand Wizard. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It just carries sort of unpleasant connotations where we’re from.”

  “More unpleasant than necromancy?”

  Julian looked at Tim, who just shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s a tough one. Let’s just call it different unpleasant.”

  The Grand Wizard stroked his pet’s fur. “Perhaps you will not find it so unpleasant once you have joined my army.”

  Tim wondered if their best bet wasn’t to just jump him right there and then. If he was a powerful spellcaster, then he might be able to disintegrate them all before they got anywhere near him. If, on the other hand, he was more like Julian, whose greatest magical feat was the ability to summon a horse, they could just beat the shit out him and be on their way. Unfortunately, the majority of the grey area between those two extremes would likely see one or all of Tim’s group dead.

  “That’s a cute cat,” said Julian. “What’s his name?” Was he stalling for time, or was he oblivious to the potential danger they were in and genuinely interested in this guy’s pet cat? With Julian, it could go either way.

  “His name is Mr. Whiskers.” The Grand Wizard scratched under Mr. Whiskers’s chin. Tim felt bad that the cat had more to be ashamed of than the shitty red hand painted on his fur.

  “How original!” said Julian, unconvincingly. To be fair though, the Difficulty Class on that Bluff check would have been pretty fucking high. “Do you, uh... like music?”

  It was now painfully clear that Julian was stalling for time, and failing miserably. Tim picked up the slack.

  “What is it you plan to do with us?” Tim demanded, already knowing full well what he intended to do with them. His comment about them joining his wight army didn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation.

  “Have no fear, tiny halfling. It will only hurt for a second. Once my wights drain your soul from your body, you’ll feel no more. But you’ll be more powerful than you ever were in life.” The Grand Wizard’s eyes widened. “You’ll have wight power.”

  “Oh come on,” said Julian. “Again, there are so many different ways you could have phrased that.”

  The Grand Wizard put his non-shield hand on his hip. “I’m not sure you’re appreciating the gravity of the situation you’re in. Under the circumstances, your constant nitpicking of my choice of vocabulary is –”

  CRASH

  VWOOOOOOOOOSH

  “HORSE!”

  Unmistakably real fire burst out from the book atop the altar like time lapse video of a blossoming flower... which was made out of fire. Also, a horse
materialized behind the Grand Wizard.

  Mr. Whiskers jumped off the altar.

  A look of horror came over the Grand Wizard’s face as he started toward his burning spellbook. “NOOO – Oomf!”

  Julian’s startled horse kicked the Grand Wizard, sending him flying through the air to land in a heap at Tim’s feet.

  “Hold him!” cried Tim. “Make sure he can’t move his –”

  A fiercely adorable meow rang out, followed shortly after by Dave’s muffled screams. Mr. Whiskers had attached himself to Dave’s face.

  Tim determined that Dave was competent enough to handle a house cat all by himself. He needed to focus on the shield.

  Cooper pounced on the wizard, putting them in a 69 position. He gripped the wizard’s ankles with his hands and pinned the arms down with his knees.

  Tim grabbed the shield and tried to pull it off the wizards’ arm. “And don’t let him speak!”

  “Get off of me this instant, you filthy –”

  The Grand Wizard’s words, and Mr. Whiskers’s feline screams were overpowered by a thunderous wet fart.

  Tim wasn’t at an angle from which he could see the wizard’s face, but judging by the expression on Julian’s, Cooper’s fart was more than a fart. “Did he just...?”

  “Yeah,” said Julian. “He’s probably going to want to wash that off before his next Klan meeting.” Ravenus landed on Julian’s shoulder, and Julian looked relieved for the distraction. “Everything go okay, buddy?”

  “Couldn’t have gone better, sir,” said Ravenus. “They didn’t even know I was there.”

  “You saved our butts. Do you want some eyes?”

  Ravenus looked down at the Grand Wizard, who was gagging and weeping. “They’ve got shit all over them, sir.”

  “I was talking about the heads in the bag. They have the chewy kind you like.”

  Tim wasn’t having any luck trying to pull the shield loose, so he felt around for the buckles.

  Mr. Whiskers’s caterwauling came to an abrupt end.

  “Dude,” said Cooper. “You killed the cat?”

  “No,” said Dave. “I didn’t kill it. I just knocked it out.”

  “What kind of monster are you?”

  “Look at my fucking face?”