Critical Failures VI (Caverns and Creatures Book 6)

by Robert Bevan

  “Really, I wish I could play something for you. But I'm much better with string instruments than I am with wind instruments.”

  “I've got a wind instrument,” said Cooper. He squatted and let out an impressively long and controlled fart.

  The pixie called Hickory Nut appeared above Cooper, then flew even higher. “How is it that you could possibly have anything left to expel after what we just witnessed?”

  When a group of pixies had raised their concerns about the smell of Cooper's shits, Hollywhirl had assigned Hickory Nut and two other unfortunate pixies to escort him out of the glade to do his business.

  “Please, bard,” said Zanzifurl, holding out his pipes. “Delight us all with a song.”

  Chaz thought for a moment on what might have prompted Zanzifurl's sudden change of heart. Then he remembered how shittily he'd performed the previous day. It was good enough to light up an acorn, but it was far from entertaining. This goatman asshole wanted to watch him fail in front of an excited crowd. Then whatever mediocre melody he performed afterward would be all the more appreciated.

  “Yes!” said Dimplethorn. “Please play us a song.” Other pixies made themselves visible around her, sitting cross-legged in the grass. Even Hollywhirl watched curiously, her arms crossed as she hovered above them.

  Shit.

  Chaz accepted the pipes from a smirking Zanzifurl. What a shithead. Why couldn't he have an instrument that didn't require a mouth to play. Chaz wouldn't be able to play and sing at the same time. He tried to think of something with a lot of harmonica in it. Like a Rolling Stone. Could he pull off Dylan? He was one hundred percent sure that he couldn't. At least not for anyone who'd ever heard the song before. He was no Dylan and these wooden satyr pipes were no substitute for a harmonica, and a band full of musicians and other instruments. But maybe, if he rolled well enough, he could pull off a version of the song that would entertain this group of forest-dwelling fey folk who'd never even heard the shit that passed for music in their own world, much less actual real music.

  He blew the pipes quietly at first to get a feel for them again. As random sounds gradually morphed into something like the tune that he was going for, he blew louder and more confidently.

  Most of the assembled crowd exchanged awkward glances as he played, but Dimplethorn was laser focused on him. She closed her eyes and smiled, like she was trying to meet him halfway, maybe trying to imagine what it might sound like if performed properly with a band and a singer who could remember more than seventy percent of the lyrics.

  When he came around to the chorus a second time, the other pixies began to pay more attention, like they were now starting to recognize the structure of the song. As he progressed into the third and fourth verses with bolstered confidence, he felt something like a mixture of two familiar feelings flowing out of him at once. One was the rush that came from a crowd digging his music. The other feeling, the release of magical energy he felt whenever he cast a spell, wasn't really separate from the first. It had always been there, even when he'd played in bars or rocked the shit on karaoke night back home. There was power in music, and he was only beginning to learn how to harness it.

  The song ended with a round of applause as thunderous as was possible from two dozen tiny bug people.

  Chaz wanted to coolly toss the pipes back to Zanzifurl, but repeatedly lifting them to his mouth had taken a lot out of him. Instead, he waited for the satyr to come and retrieve them.

  “I am humbled by your performance,” said Zanzifurl, bowing as he accepted his instrument. “I have never heard music like that before.”

  “Thank you.” Chaz was moved by Zanzifurl's words, and thankful that he had opted not to tell him to go fuck himself when he handed back the pipes.

  “Be it the will of the gods that we return from tomorrow's journey alive, I would be honored if we could exchange our knowledge of music.”

  “That sounds awesome,” said Chaz. “Maybe when I get myself a new lute, we could jam together.”

  Zanzifurl's smile faltered. “Of course. We could do that as well.”

  “Neither bush nor vine yields fruit without bees to pollinate their flowers,” said Hollywhirl in a peculiar interruption and change of subject. “Until the Dark Lord and his minions are driven from this wood, no one will make jam together.”

  “I meant...” Chaz changed his mind and decided to let it go. He was too exhausted to teach English colloquialisms, even if not doing so meant they'd think he had some weird fixation on making liquified fruit. “It's not just the jam. It's the whole ecosystem. The absence of berries throws the whole food chain out of whack.” He thought that had been a good save, but Hollywhirl was staring at him with what felt like contempt for his idiocy.

  “Thank you for your performance,” she finally said, though there was little warmth in her tone. “It was both entertaining and thought provoking. Perhaps you would entertain us again sometime, but for now you must rest. We have a long day of travel ahead of us.”

  “That sounds fine by me,” said Cooper. “I'm about to rest like a motherfucker.” He collapsed right where he was standing, dead center of the perimeter of Light Wards, which is precisely where Chaz had meant to sleep, having determined it the safest possible place if a Dark One should happen into the glade.

  He tried to think of some reason to ask Cooper to sleep somewhere else, but the best he could come up with was You should sleep in a more dangerous place because I don't want to die or have to smell you. That wasn't likely to go over well, so it came down to a choice between sleeping next to Cooper and having to smell him all night, or putting his own life more at risk. That was the kind of decision that put one's logic-forcing into overdrive.

  If a Dark One were to enter the glade, it would do so from a random point along the perimeter. If Chaz were sleeping near the perimeter, there would be more points of entry further from him than the perimeter's radius, which would be the distance it would have to travel if Chaz was sleeping at the center, than there would be nearer him. So logically, the safest place he could sleep would be at a random point along the edge.

  Does that make sense? That makes sense. Fuck, I'm tired.

  Chaz crawled from the stump he'd been sitting on toward the edge of the glade.

  “You there! Bard!” said Hollywhirl. “You'll be safer in the center of the glade, next to your friend.”

  He looked up in the direction her voice was coming from, but she, along with most of the other pixies, had turned invisible again. “No, you see. A random point on the perimeter... The radius of the glade is shorter... This was easier to articulate in my head. If you consider that –”

  “We have limited resources with which to protect you. You're easier to watch over if you're all together. Now you and the satyr should lie down next to the half-orc before you further test my patience.”

  Chaz glanced over at Zanzifurl who had also decided to try his luck on the edge of the glade. With resigned sighs, they both shuffled toward Cooper.

  “Hickory Nut, Wildflower,” said Hollywhirl. “Retrieve the half-orc's axe.”

  Cooper opened his eyes. “Seriously? You let me carry it around all evening. What do you think I'm going to do while I'm sleeping?”

  “Believe me, half-orc, when I say I am not frightened of you. But if that is truly my sister, then the way you sleep with her makes me uncomfortable.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You're cuddling it.”

  Cooper sat up and pushed the axe a couple of inches away from him. “No, I wasn't.” As the axe floated away from him, he shouted up after it. “You know, this isn't cool, man! It's fine if you want to take the axe away, but don't make me out to be some kind of fucking axe molester. It's not like I was dry-humping it or shoving the handle up my ass.”

  “I'm not accusing you of anything,” explained Hollywhirl. “The Children of the Forest do not judge others' sexual habits. We are a sensually enlightened people. In fact, most of us
are currently enjoying the acts of love as I speak.”

  Chaz felt something warm and wet drip onto the back of his neck as he crawled toward Cooper. He sat up, wiped it off, then looked at his fingers. It looked like glitter glue.

  “What the fuck? Is this...” he whispered to himself. He almost had a heart attack when two invisible hands grabbed him by the wrist. Then an invisible tongue licked the substance he sincerely hoped he'd misidentified from his fingers. “Who is that?”

  “It tastes like Dandelion,” Dimplethorn whispered back, remaining invisible. “But it could be Huckleberry.”

  “Those Dark Ones really took it out of me,” Chaz called out to anyone who was listening. “I'll be there in a second.” He whispered to Dimplethorn. “You know the taste of each of these guys' splooge?”

  “I'd like to know the taste of your splooge.”

  Chaz's dick was threatening to burst through the front of his shiny golden pants, which disturbed him for all sorts of reasons. They weren't even the same species. What the hell could they even do together? Would his dick fit inside her? If it did, then it would mean that either he had a tiny dick or she had a vag like a subway tunnel. Did she even stop at pixies? If she wanted to fuck him, who's to say she hadn't fucked wolves and bears? He already had one foot in the grave without throwing bear AIDS onto his pile of health issues.

  Or maybe she wasn't talking about intercourse. Maybe she just wanted to jerk him off because she was genuinely curious as to what his splooge tasted like. But those tiny hands would make it like getting a handjob from an infant. And where the hell would they do it? Out here in the grass? Cooper would never let him live that down.

  “You may have your axe in the morning,” Hollywhirl said to Cooper. “Should we discover that Nabi's spirit dwells within it, and she personally gives her consent for you to lay with her, then you may.”

  “I'm not trying to bone your fucking sister!”

  Chaz felt Dimplethorn's hands reach under his pants. His elbows went wobbly, causing him to lose balance and plant his face in the moist grass. There was no stopping it now. It was happening.

  Just hang on a little longer, man. Don't shoot your load as soon as she touches your –

  He shot his load as soon as she touched his dick.

  “What you and my sister do is none of my concern,” Hollywhirl continued. “If she chooses to lay with a half-orc, that makes no more difference to me than Dimplethorn's decision to caress the bard's penis to ejaculation.”

  Cooper stared wide-eyed at Chaz.

  “No!” cried Chaz. “She didn't... I...”

  “He's right,” said Dimplethorn, though the sound of her voice right next to him did little to corroborate her denial. “I barely touched it.”

  Cooper snorted and gawked at Chaz's crotch. Dimplethorn had taken most of his load when she removed her hand, but he still felt a little sticky, and there was a visible wet spot on the crotch of his pants.

  “It's been a while since I've been with anyone, okay?”

  “It's saltier than I expected,” Dimplethorn whispered in his ear. “I'm going to save some in a jar.”

  As disturbing as that was, Chaz was even more disturbed by the fact that, in the very near future, perhaps ten minutes from now when his post-squirt hormones died down, he would probably be aroused by knowing a tiny winged woman was keeping a sample of his jizz in a jar.

  He scrambled the rest of the way to the center of the glade on his weak hands and knees and collapsed face down on the grass, mostly because he was too exhausted to do anything else, but also with the purpose of covering his junk.

  “Did you touch her tits?” Cooper said in a lousy attempt at a whisper.

  Chaz covered his head with his arms. “Shut up! Let me go to sleep!”

  “We're going to sleep now,” Cooper announced to the seemingly empty air above them. “Good night!”

  After a few seconds of silence, he non-whispered to Chaz, “I don't want to alarm you, but there's no way I'm getting to sleep now without rubbing one out. I'll turn the other way and try to make it quick, but fair warning, I might get a little gassy.”

  Chaz willed himself to fall asleep, which he found surprisingly effective. He faded out to the sound of soft grunting.

  Chapter 32

  “Come on, guys,” Dave complained. His back ached and his fingers were beginning to blister. “Isn't this deep enough? It's not like this place is going to be crawling with cops and corpse-sniffing dogs. Nobody even knows Murkwort was here.” He was also a little creeped out that he was now in over his head inside the grave he was digging. He was depending on Frank, Rhonda, and Tony the Elf to help him out once he finished, but he couldn't be one hundred percent sure that they weren't just planning to bury him alive. He had fucked everyone over pretty good, and he was a liability. And on top of all that, he suddenly realized, he was whining.

  Frank peeked over the edge. “You're the one who told Cooper to go seven feet deep when he buried Mordred, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Because it was Cooper. I was intentionally being a dick.” Dave felt a chill run up his spine. He'd been aware, of course, that the avatar of Mordred that Tim had murdered was buried right next to the hole he was digging. They'd chosen that spot because it was out of the way and there wouldn't be a lot of foot traffic or curious eyeballs. A second body now made this area the Whore's Head Inn's official body dump. But now that Frank actually said it aloud, Dave couldn't help but be acutely aware that he was less than a foot away from Mordred's worm-ridden festering corpse.

  “If you idiots would stop murdering people on the premises, you wouldn't have this problem.”

  “That's not fair! I'm as upset about this as anyone. More so, even. I'm in just as deep of shit as you are now, and I have a disease that turns me into a fucking rat monster!”

  “Life isn't fair.”

  What an asshole.

  “Come on, Frank. I need to see a cleric. There still might be time to reverse this.”

  “We can discuss that when there isn't a goddamn dead body in the inn. Now quit your bitching and keep digging.” Frank backed out of sight.

  The cool moisture of exposed deep earth provided a little relief from the afternoon sun, but Dave was still a gritty sweaty mess. It would almost be a relief to get buried in here, to lie down and let the dirt cool his exposed skin. The relief wouldn't last long once he wasn't able to breathe, of course.

  How much more relieving would it be to bury that little gnome fucker down here though? As he flung a shovelful of dirt out of the hole, Dave fantasized about connecting the business end of the shovel with Frank's head. Then he considered what a fucked up thing that was to fantasize about. Then he reasoned that there wasn't any harm in a little fucked up fantasizing. After all, Dave hadn't killed Murkwort on purpose. He didn't know he was a wererat at the time. But Frank knew that Dave had recently contracted lycanthropy and was denying him the opportunity to get treated. Each hour that passed might be making the treatment that much more difficult, or even impossible. And here he was spending those precious hours digging a fucking hole. This was slave labor.

  Dave wondered again, and a little more seriously this time, if they might be planning to bury him alive. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. This hole wasn't only for Murkwort. He was digging his own grave. When Frank the Fuhrer determined it was deep enough, Tony the Elf and Rhonda would simply toss Murkwort's body down in here with him and start shoveling in dirt.

  No. That wasn't how Dave was going to go down. He'd been shit on enough, and he wasn't going to let these three assholes have the final shits. It was time to turn the tables. He would bite all three of them, then throw them in the hole. He would relish their sudden changes of heart about going to see a cleric, and then he'd have a nice long piss on them before he started throwing in handfuls of dirt. But first, he had to figure out a way to get the drop on them, and that meant getting out of this hole. He kept shoveling as he thought, so as not
to arouse any suspicion.

  If he started digging sideways and diagonally upward, he'd be able to dig himself a ramp that he could climb out of. But he wouldn't be able to do that quickly enough before someone noticed.

  He might have a spell that would ease his escape, but the time was an issue there as well. There was no way they would let him sit and pray uninterrupted for an hour to prepare his spells.

  Then the obvious answer hit him. He was a wererat. His dwarf/rat hybrid form would likely give him a bonus to his Dexterity, and his changed form might make climbing out of a hole easier. It couldn't hurt. For all their knowledge of digging tunnels and dwelling in underground caverns, dwarf bodies were the worst design possible for climbing out of holes.

  How did it work? Did he have to say a trigger phrase like Rat Form? Best to rule out other options first. If anyone heard him say that, and it didn't work, they'd be done with making him suffer the agony and humiliation of digging his own grave and start raining down the dirt on him right then and there.

  Deciding to give sheer force of Willpower a shot, he shoveled one more scoop of dirt, then set the shovel down.

  He shut his eyes and focused on what the transformation from dwarf to hybrid rat form might feel like. His fingers and toes started to tingle first, then started to hurt. The pain grew excruciating as his bones stretched. He knew he could make the pain stop anytime he wanted, but forced himself to think about how much worse it would feel to breathe in that first lungful of dirt. Choking with no oxygen coming in until he finally succumbed to an agonizing death. He could deal with some stretching bones. It wouldn't last long.

  The tingling sensation ran through his hands and feet, then up to his elbows and knees. The knees were the worst, but he willed himself to fight through the pain. He had an easier time when it reached his hips and shoulders. It still hurt a lot, but he was learning how to deal with it better, or so he thought.

  When his internal organs started to change and shift themselves around, he wanted to scream, but his face was elongating and he had no control over his lungs. Likewise, his control over his sphincter muscle failed him, and he felt squishy warmth fill the back of his pants.