Critical Failures VI (Caverns and Creatures Book 6)

by Robert Bevan

  She waved to get Randy's attention. He was still shivering on the floor, but he slid himself closer to the bars between her cage and his.

  “We're going to bust through these bars and jump her while her guard is down,” she whispered. “Wait for my count, then we'll all hit a bar at the same time to minimize the noise. Pass it on to Denise.”

  Randy rubbed warmth into his arms as he hobbled to the other side of his cell, where he relayed Katherine's plan.

  Denise nodded as he listened, then looked at Katherine and gave her a more resolute nod and a thumbs-up.

  Katherine and Randy readied themselves for a kick, while Denise got on her knees and cocked her arm back for a punch.

  When everyone was in position, Katherine counted down silently with her fingers. 3... 2... 1... Attack!

  She was glad she was wearing thick boots, because she really laid into one of the bars, and it didn't give so much as a nanometer. The Eye of Rasha put out some powerful magic indeed. This was no ordinary ice. It was strong as fuck.

  “Son of a motherfucker!” cried Denise, cradling her hurt hand.

  “Are you okay?” asked Randy. “You might want to put some ice on that.”

  Denise glared at him with her lower lip poking out. “Real fuckin' funny, Randy! You ought to take that show on the road.”

  “I'm sorry. I ain't meant it like that. My brain's still thawing out, I think.”

  Think. That's what Katherine needed to do right now. She'd been locked in her share of cells during her time in this world, and she'd always managed to figure out a way to escape. She sat down, closed her eyes, and imagined her mind as a freshly erased whiteboard ready to be filled with fresh ideas.

  She wasn't a vampire anymore, so turning into a cloud of mist was off the table.

  There was no door, so there wasn't any point in thinking up ways to fiddle with a lock.

  Her Bag of Holding was gone, so she couldn't get Randy to bag her up, shove her between the bars and –

  “What happened to your cloak?” asked Randy, throwing a brick wall in front of Katherine's train of thought.

  “What?” she snapped back.

  “I'm sorry. Just makin' small talk is all. It looks like you got a hole in your cloak.”

  Katherine looked down at her cloak flattened out on the floor. There was a perfectly square hole in the fabric. Recognition hit her like a time delay bomb.

  “My hole!” She had completely forgotten about the Portable Hole she'd confiscated from the pervy dwarf who'd been using it to watch her take a bath.

  “The fuck you guys talkin' bout over there?” asked Denise.

  “Randy discovered my hole!”

  Denise shrugged. “First time for everything, I s'pose. Congratulations to you both, but I ain't given up on bustin' out of here just yet. I'm working on an idea.”

  “What is it?” asked Randy.

  “You just stay focused on her hole. I gotta take a dump.”

  The first phase of Denise's plan didn't sound very promising to Katherine. She peeled the Portable Hole from her cloak and flattened it against one of the icicle bars. When she removed her hand, it fluttered to the floor. She tried again, but got the same result. She tried the other side, but it wouldn't adhere to the ice.

  “Shit,” she said aloud.

  “What's wrong?” asked Randy. “What's that thing you got?”

  “It's a Portable Hole. The air elementals missed it when they were looting us. I thought I could get through the bars with it, but it's not working.”

  “Come here,” said Denise. “Come on, you fat scaly son of a bitch. It's snack time.” She was on her hands and knees beckoning through the bars between her cell and Basil's. In front of her, on Basil's side of the bars, sat something small and brown.

  “What's wrong with you, Denise?” asked Randy.

  “Keep your big girl panties on. This ain't what it looks like. Just you watch.”

  “Don't you tell me that! You're trying to feed Basil a turd. Basil, you stay away from that!”

  Basil moved in for a sniff, but seemed to assess Denise's offering just as Randy had. He groaned and turned away.

  “Hey!” said Denise. “You get back here and eat that!”

  Katherine shook her head. “You might have better luck if you hold it out to him.”

  Denise thought for a moment. “That could... But no. He'd bite my whole goddamn arm... Oh, hardy harr har. You're as much of a hoot as ol' Randy here.”

  “There ain't no reason for this,” said Randy. “I always tried to be as understanding as I could with you, in spite of a lot of bad things you done, but this is where I draw the line, Denise. This ain't nothin' but cruelty for the sake of cruelty. If you feed that turd to Basil, you and I is done for good.”

  “Dammit, Randy. I'm tellin' you, this ain't – Oh shit!” Denise backed away from the bars and made an unconvincing attempt at looking casual as footsteps approached from outside the room.

  Katherine slapped the Portable Hole back on the bottom of her cloak, toward the rear so that the square hole would be less visible.

  The Ice Queen stepped back into the room. This time, instead of her usual air elemental companions, she was accompanied by a filthy, sweaty, wild-eyed dwarf wearing torn and threadbare overalls with nothing underneath. He looked like someone out of the Gulfport Walmart.

  She smirked at Katherine. “I trust you've tried to break the bars a few times by now?”

  Katherine responded only with as steely a glare as she could muster.

  “My magic is far too powerful. I would have told you before, but I like to give my new recruits an opportunity to learn that for themselves, work it out of their system if you will.”

  Her steely glare accomplishing nothing but making her eyes tired, Katherine sighed and gave into curiosity.

  “Who's your friend?”

  “Loyalty is rewarded in Nazere. Gabrok here has worked tirelessly in the mithril mines for over a decade and trained hundreds of new recruits. But however expertly a non-dwarf is trained, they'll never match a dwarf in terms of efficiency and productivity. Sadly, dwarves tend to dislike sea travel, and too precious few end up here. Once the she-dwarf gives birth to her scorpionfolk babies, Gabrok will put dwarf babies inside her. But until that time, I shall reward his loyalty and service by allowing him to copulate with her strictly for pleasure.”

  Randy pressed his face between two of the icy bars. “That's goin' too far, lady. I can't allow you to –”

  “Shut up, Randy,” said Denise. She leered at the filthy drooling dwarf who was gawking at her. “Hey there, big feller.” She winked and squeezed her tits together. “You like what you see?”

  Gabrok nodded enthusiastically and drooled some more.

  Katherine had been in some low places in life, and at times struggled with self-esteem issues. She'd done some things she was now ashamed to recall. But even at her lowest, she never came close to reaching the depths of desperation that Denise was proudly showcasing right now.

  “Step away from the bars, dwarf,” said the Ice Queen.

  Denise wagged her ass back and forth as she walked, glancing back lustily at Gabrok. A waddle-sashay is a tricky combination to pull off, and she was light years away from doing so. Or maybe she wasn't. Gabrok was pitching a pretty solid tent. Maybe a decade of loneliness and slave labor were aphrodisiac enough to make Denise, who had only a few minutes before taken a dump on the floor and handled one of the turds with her own bare hands, seem something other than completely and utterly repulsive.

  When Denise was at the far corner of her cell, bent over with her hands against the wall and her ass thrust out invitingly, the Ice Queen pointed her scepter at the section of Denise's cell between Randy's and Basil's. Two of the icicle bars liquefied and were reabsorbed into the ceiling.

  Gabrok waddled in, grunting and with a maddened hungry gleam in his eyes. Once he was in Denise's cell, the icicles lowered to the floor again.

  “Come on, Deni
se,” pleaded Randy. “You don't have to do this. You're better than this.”

  Not that she wanted to witness what was about to happen, but Katherine thought Randy might be giving Denise a little too much credit.

  Denise grinned at Randy while Gabrok fondled her ass. “Just you watch, Randy. You're about to witness the beauty of love between a man and a woman the way that God intended it.”

  Katherine steadied herself against her cell bars and concentrated on not throwing up. She'd toughened up some during her time in this world, but she wasn't sure she could handle this.

  “Please,” she pleaded with the Ice Queen, not even caring about giving her the satisfaction of watching her beg. “This is too cruel, even for you. Can't you bring them somewhere else? I don't want to watch this.”

  The Ice Queen cringed, then turned away from the two dwarves engaged in something that involved a lot of moaning and slurping.

  “I'll do you this much, but ask no more of me.” She swept her scepter from Katherine's cell to Randy's. The icicles between their cells remained as they were, but the ones on the outside thickened until they formed solid walls. They weren't exactly opaque, but the outside now resembled the TV screen when Katherine and Tim used to try to watch HBO when they were kids and didn't have premium cable. They dampened the sound a little as well, which was nice. A small window was left open facing the entrance to the room, presumably so that Katherine and Randy could breathe. Also a thoughtful gesture.

  “Thank you,” said Katherine humbly. I'm choosing my battles and laying the groundwork for what may turn out to be a long-game strategy. I am NOT succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome.

  “I shall return in ten minutes, Gabrok,” said the Ice Queen. “I expect that will be plenty of time for you to satisfy your...” The uninterrupted slurping and grunting noises suggested Gabrok wasn't even listening to her. “Ten minutes,” she repeated flatly, then hurried from the room.

  Katherine and Randy stared at the floor, purposely not making eye contact. Katherine feared she may never be able to become sexually aroused again as the sounds of dwarven lovemaking continued.

  “Give it to me, Gabby!” cried Denise. “Oh yeah! Don't hold back! Oh! Oh! OH! Wait, stop.”

  Gabrok let out a warning grunt.

  “No, it ain't like that, Gabby. I just want that fat dwarf dong in my mouth.”

  Gabrok grunted more understandingly.

  “Oh man. Just look at them big hairy stones of yours. I bet you shoot a load like a jizz-breathin' dragon.”

  By the quickening rhythm of Gabrok's breathing, Katherine suspected Denise had about ten seconds before she found out whether or not his load would live up to her expectations.

  “I'm almost sorry I got to do this,” said Denise.

  Gabrok's panting suddenly turned into a howl. It didn't sound erotic to Katherine, but neither had any of the sounds they'd been making this whole time.

  “I'm really angry!”

  The grunts and slaps and thuds that followed were almost certainly fighting. They had to be. At least that's what Katherine told herself.

  “Denise?” said Randy. “You alright? Did he touch you in a way that you didn't –”

  “Waaaaaaaaaaaaa!” croaked Gabrok.

  Through her small window, Katherine could see the two naked dwarves. Denise was all hulked out, pressing Gabrok against the cell bars and strangling him in a choke hold. Gabrok's erect penis pointed right at Basil, who was sniffing and turning his head to face it.

  “Hey, Denise,” said Katherine. “I don't know if this is one of your weird sexual fetishes or whatever, but Basil's about to bite your new friend's dick off.”

  “NO!” shouted Denise. She grabbed Gabrok by the matted, bug-riddled hair on the back of his head and slammed his face into the cell bars until he stopped resisting. She dragged her unconscious lover away from the bars and out of Katherine's field of view just in time to deny Basil a dwarven sausage.

  Randy sat on the floor and looked up at the small window in his cell. “Whatever he did to you in there is your business. But I just want you to know I'm here in case you need to talk about it.”

  “Jesus, Randy. Would you shut the fuck up?” Denise had come out of her rage. “And you! Get your dumb reptilian ass away from them bars. I offered you a snack before.”

  Either Basil understood what Denise had said to him or, more likely, he didn't want to be near the turd Denise had left for him. He moseyed on his eight legs to the other side of his cell.

  Denise dragged her unconscious conjugal visitor back into view, then reached through the bars to retrieve her turd, which she put in Gabrok's mouth.

  Reacting to whatever facial expressions Katherine was unconsciously making, Randy stood up and looked out his window. “I understand you been through a traumatic experience. But is that really necessary? I reckon he's a prisoner here just like the rest of us.”

  “Whether he is or he ain't he drools like a motherfucker, and I need to wash this thing off.” Denise closed Gabrok's mouth, squeezed his cheeks in and out, and moved his head back and forth.

  Katherine thought she was going to be sick. She wanted to be sick. That would be the normal thing to do in this situation. She was watching a fat naked bearded woman slosh a turd around in the mouth of a fat naked bearded man. The fact that she wasn't puking her guts out right now suggested that this sort of thing was becoming her new normal.

  When Denise took the turd out of Gabrok's mouth, Katherine was surprised to see that it had remained rigidly solid, and seemed to be a shade lighter than it was before.

  Denise grabbed a scrap of Gabrok's clothes, wrapped it around the turd, and rubbed it together between her hands. When she unwrapped it, it was white. Or white-ish, at least. It would take some serious scrubbing to get all the poo off whatever this thing was that Denise had pulled out of her ass.

  She put the hastily cleansed item in Gabrok's left hand, closed his pudgy sausage fingers around it, then shoved his arm through the cell bars.

  “Come on back here, Basil,” she said. “I'm sorry. Here's a tastier treat for you.”

  Katherine couldn't find the words to express what she was feeling. Considering all the fucked-up shit Denise seemed to be into, she couldn't think of what Gabrok could have possibly done to her in the short time they were out of sight that warranted feeding his arm to a hungry basilisk.

  Basil turned back toward Denise.

  “That's right, big feller,” said Denise. “Come n' get it. Fat juicy dwarf arm, fresh as can be.”

  “Basil, no!” said Randy, slapping the icy wall of his cell. “Please, Denise. Don't do this.”

  Denise looked up and winked. “Y'all probably don't want to watch this.”

  Katherine didn't know what Denise was going through right now. Maybe whatever Gabrok had done to her really did warrant losing an arm. There was a lot Katherine could judge Denise for, but she wasn't ready to pass judgment on this until she knew the facts.

  “Hey, Denise? I know we're not best pals or anything. But if you want to tell me what he did to you, woman to woman, I –”

  “He rode me like a fuckin' rodeo bull. It was amazing. I'm sorry I had to cut it short, to be honest. But Basil's got to eat, and I figure it was either my arm or Gabby's. That ain't no choice at all really, when you get down to it.”

  Katherine and Randy exchanged a confused look. Since when did Denise give a shit about Basil's well-being? Something didn't add up, unless...

  “You twisted sadistic piece of fuck!” Katherine didn't care that what she'd said didn't make any sense. “You really enjoy watching people suffer, don't you?”

  Denise shrugged. “Occasionally, but I reckon I'm gonna look the other way for this one. I highly recommend you do the same.”

  Basil sniffed Gabrok's hand and licked his big scaly lizard lips.

  Much to Katherine's surprise, Denise actually turned around, purposely facing away from him.

  Suddenly, things clicked into place, and Katherine
knew what was at the core of Denise's turd.

  “You're a real asshole, you know that?” she said. “You couldn't have given us a clue about what you were doing?”

  Denise laughed. “I warned you not to look, didn't I?”

  “Basil!” cried Randy, still staring through his window and slapping the wall. “Don't you eat that! Back off. We'll feed you soon enough, I promise!”

  “Randy,” said Katherine, approaching the icicles between her cell and his. She crouched down to look at him where the bars weren't as thick. “Come here.”

  Randy reluctantly turned away from the window and came over to crouch down in front of her. “What is it?”

  Katherine put her hands through the bars and covered his ears. “Don't look. Don't listen. Stay here with me. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Her hands might have helped dampen the crunch of Gabrok's arm bones, but she could see in Randy's panicked eyes that it did sweet fuck all to muffle the sound of Gabrok's screams. Having your arm ripped off by a giant lizard must be a hell of a thing to wake up to. Katherine held Randy's head firm between her hands. He grabbed her forearms but didn't try to wrest her hands away. He just needed something to hold on to.

  After a few slurps, smacks, and crunches, Katherine heard the gulp she'd been waiting for. Then Basil let out a long moan. It started soft, then gradually became loud enough to drown out Gabrok's screaming.

  Randy tried to pull his head away, but Katherine held it steady.

  She smiled at him. “Not yet.”

  “Why is you smilin'?” asked Randy. “What the heck is wrong with everybody? Has the whole world gone –”

  “What is all this noise?” cried the Ice Queen from outside the room.

  Katherine gave Randy a reassuring wink and whispered, “Wait for it.”

  The Ice Queen gasped. She was right outside the door. “Gabrok! What did this wretched pig of a woman do to –” Her voice was abruptly replaced with a sound like cracking ice.

  “Speak,” Katherine whispered to herself. Then she called out, “Basil, can you hear me?” Randy was now staring at her like she'd gone completely off the rails, which was a good sign that the spell was working.