*****
NAT WAS STEAMING. The incursion of the tracksuited tyrants had upset her so much so that she’d taken to venting her frustrations on the nearest inanimate object.
“Is she okay?” asked Neville, as she lay into a helpless tree.
“She’ll be fine,” replied Terry. “She just needs to get it out of her system.”
Nat continued her path of destruction, kicking up great clods of dirt until she saw something that stopped her in her tracks. Something lying in the brush, lifeless and still.
Terry heard Nat’s scream and came running. There, lying face-down in the mud, was a man. He was dressed in a fur-trimmed ranger’s cloak and wore a sword scabbard on his belt. Upon his upper arm was a distinctive, ivy tattoo, inked onto a bicep so thick it looked as though the plant were climbing a stone pillar.
“What is it now?” demanded Clive, arriving on the scene. He clocked the outfit the fallen figure was wearing. “Who’s this guy? Don’t tell me there’s another LARP crew operating around here?”
“I’d rather know what he’s doing passed out in the mud,” said Nat.
“You okay, buddy?” asked Terry, but got nothing back for his trouble.
Neville pointed to the suede water skin strung over the figure’s shoulder. “Something tells me that’s not a weak lemon drink he’s got in there,” he said, adding a drinky-drinky motion.
Clive found a loose stick and gave him a poke in the ribs. “Wakey wakey, pal,” he shouted, but still the man lay still. “He feels weird,” he reported. “Kind of squidgy.”
“Do you think he’s dead?” said Terry. “There’s an old feller at the pub my dad goes to who swears the London gangsters dump their bodies around here.”
“Why would some mob victim be done up like Strider?” asked Neville, making a solid point.
Nat had heard enough. Kneeling by the fallen figure, she leant over and pulled aside the clump of matted hair that clung to his brow. Upon revealing the profile of his face, she immediately noticed two things. Firstly, the man seemed very much dead. Secondly, there was something wrong with his ears, in that they weren’t shaped like normal, human ones. Instead, they were tapered at the top, much like Terry’s ears, only these ones weren’t made of rubber. Nat gasped. “What the hell is going on?” she asked, but before anyone could offer an answer, the stranger’s eyes flicked open, causing the onlookers to trip over themselves, so brisk was their retreat.
“Please, you’re our only chance,” the stranger rasped. “Take my blade and kill Drensila the Black.” Having delivered his message, he spasmed briefly then went still again, the last vestiges of life gone from his body.
“Christ Almighty,” said Terry, eyes agape.
“He told us to take his blade,” said Nev, panicking. “Why would he do that?”
“Is it real?” asked Terry. “Like an actual, metal sword?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Clive, and reached down to snatch it.
There was a hissing sound as Clive’s grip tightened on the weapon’s hilt, followed by a string of profanities as he dropped the weapon and nursed his scorched hand. Blisters had already begun to swell on his palm, bulbous and yellow. “It’s boiling hot!” he cried.
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Nat. She licked a fingertip and prodded the sword. It was cold to the touch. “Nothing,” she remarked, then gingerly plucked the weapon from its scabbard.
It was a real sword alright, and it felt as good in her hand as it looked. If Nat didn’t know any better she’d have sworn the sword was part of her, pulsating in her hand with a rhythm that matched the beat of her own heart. It seemed so natural in her hand, even more than a hockey stick did, and she’d spent years wielding one of those. She held the weapon up to examine the blade and marvelled at its craftsmanship. Its balance was perfect and its diamond-edged metal gleamed in the sunlight like a silver mirror.
“Coooooool,” she said, enjoying herself for the first time that day.
She examined the sword closer. Adorning the blade, just above the crossguard, was the embossed relief of a face. It was a man’s face, chubby-cheeked and sporting a rugby player’s nose. “Who’s this guy?” Nat wondered, and began to speculate on the provenance of the cartoonish little fellow.
Terry interrupted her reverie. “Guys, you have to see this,” he said, directing the group’s attention elsewhere.
Standing less than twenty feet away was something incredible: an oval gateway constructed from interweaved tree roots that revealed a window to another place. To another world. The gang had been so transfixed by the elf that they’d failed to notice this textbook-defying aberration that flipped the periodic table upside down and spat in Einstein’s mouth.
Neville was the first to speak. “Either I’m super high right now or reality broke.”
The view through the portal was incredible. A forest made of colours so rich and bright that they seemed to bleed into the very air. The bark of the trees were a deep chocolate brown and the greens of their leaves looked as though they’d been poured from a raver’s glow stick. This was an altogether different place than their own. A primeval place. A magical place.
Nat continued to stare through the doorway at the world beyond, jaw slack as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Could this really be? Was she actually peering through a hole into another dimension, or was this some mirage brought on by being shut inside that hotboxed van? Or perhaps the whole thing was in her head. Perhaps she’d overheated from too much studying and was back home, face-down on her desk in a fugue state.
But no.
This wasn’t some drug-induced freakout or psychotic break. This was discovery. This would be her making. “We have to get in there,” Nat declared, mentally rehearsing her Nobel Prize speech.
“You know it,” said Ashley, equally awed. “Let’s bounce.”
“Are you mental?” Clive sputtered. “You have no idea what’ll happen if you step inside that thing. For all you know you could come out the other side diced into little cubes.”
“He’s right,” agreed Terry. “Anything could happen.”
Nat couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Anything could happen?” she chided. “This is your big chance, guys! Instead of coming out here every weekend pretending to be adventurers, you can actually be one.” She strapped the elf’s sword to her hip and fixed the buckle. “So what’s it going to be? Are you going to carry on hiding from life or are you going to man up and do something real?”
The boys looked to one another, undecided.
Nat shrugged. “How about this then?” she said. “Last one to the magic kingdom’s not a nerd.”
And with that, she leapt through the portal.
Chapter Three: Non Player Characters
“OH. MY. GOD,” gasped Nat as she stepped beyond the pale and witnessed the scene that lay in wait.
She’d arrived in an otherworldly forest so gorgeous it made her head swim. Luscious ferns sprouted from soil so rich it looked edible, majestic redwoods stood like giant sentinels, and above it all floated clouds so white and fluffy you'd think they'd been jazzed up on Photoshop. The air smelled of sugar and tasted like it had never been breathed before. Everything was perfect… at least until the boys showed up to put a dampener on the whole shebang.
“I don’t know about this,” said Terry, stepping through the portal and glancing about nervously. “I think we should go back.”
Clive examined his surroundings with contempt. “Ugh, I’m going to die here, aren’t I?”
“Don’t be daft,” Nat replied, stroking a pelt of mink-soft moss that clung to a tree halfway between a sequoia and something from the Congo. “Just look at this place. Nothing’s going to hurt you here.”
A tiny creature flitted into Nat’s periphery. At first she took it for a bird, but it turned out to be something entirely more exotic. The creature was a miniature woman, flamingo pink in colour and borne upon a pair of gossamer-thin butterfly wings. As Nat watched in rap
t silence, the fairy performed a lavish aerial dance, leaving a spiralling trail of glitter in her wake.
“Wow,” was all Nat could say.
“What is that?” asked Neville.
“If I remember my monster manual correctly… and I do,” declared Clive, “that is a wood sprite.”
“Is it friendly?” Nat asked.
“Wood sprites are Good in alignment, so yes.”
The winged creature finished its display then hovered before Nat, allowing her a closer look. She was absolutely precious Nat thought. Tinkerbell had nothing on this little minx. The creature performed a couple of loop-the-loops and set down Nat’s outstretched hand, beckoning her forward with a curled finger.
“What do I do?” she asked, excitedly.
“I think she wants you to follow her,” replied Terry.
Nat cautiously proceeded after the fairy, followed closely by the boys. Taking the creature’s lead, Nat arrived at a curtain of vines, which she was instructed to pass through. Accepting the invitation, she parted the curtain and crossed to the other side. Beyond was an untrammelled biblical paradise; a Garden of Eden bathed in golden sunlight and blanketed by a juicy bed of lush, springy grass. Buttercups and daffodils and wildflowers Nat had never seen before enriched the glade with their aromatic perfumes, and there wasn’t a weed in sight. Except one.
A giant bush squatted in the centre of the clearing, ten feet high and twice as wide. It was composed of spiky green leaves shaped like flattened, six-fingered hands that gave off a smell like hops and fresh citrus.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Ashley, nostrils twitching.
“Sweet sensimilla,” squealed Neville, and began furiously wheeling his chair in the direction of the plant.
“Wait up,” cautioned Terry, but he was too late.
Nev had already arrived at the object of his affection and gone to pluck the forbidden fruit. Reaching out a pair of grasping hands, he snatched hungrily at the leaves of the plant. They were not to be snatched. Creepers sprang from the bush, yanking him from his chair and whipping him into the air. This was not the sticky icky Neville had had in mind. “Help me, you bastards!” he suggested.
Before anyone could intervene, the plant’s hand-shaped leaves collapsed flat on the ground like a dropped skirt, revealing a prickly trunk, slick with a syrupy orange sap. Though the party weren’t yet familiar with the flora of the Whispering Woods, the fairy knew all too well what had snared Neville. It was known as a deadly creeper, a predatory plant that secreted a digestive juice that turned its prey to a jellied mush. It absorbed this for nourishment, and having lured another unwitting fool into the creeper’s trap, the fairy would feast upon the scraps of its table.
“Stupid humans,” she hissed, baring a mouthful of razor-sharp fangs and darting out of reach.
“That’s no wood sprite!” barked Terry, digging Clive in the arm.
“What do we do?” asked Ashley.
“We surrender,” Clive replied, putting his hands together and pleading with the plant for mercy.
“I don’t think that’s going to cut it,” Nat scolded. “Come on, we’ve got to get Nev out of there.”
Nat went to the rescue, and though Clive stayed still, the rest of the gang followed suit. The three of them charged into the fray, weapons raised, all for one and one for all.
It was not a winning strategy.
A dozen more creepers sprang from the tree trunk, lashing out in search of fresh victims. The party went at the appendages but their rubber swords ricocheted off them harmlessly, or worse, broke clean in half. Ashley was the next to find himself ensnared. One tendril had away with his carpet tile helmet, while a second hooked him about the throat, cutting off his air supply. Terry didn’t fare much better, wrapped in a mess of tendrils as tough as copper wire and swept off his feet, arms pinned to his sides. Nat was caught by the ankle and dragged along the rough ground, her palms scraped raw as she fought the plant’s pull. Having reeled her in, it flipped her over and hung her upside down like a prize turkey.
The fairy fluttered back into view and hovered before the plant’s captives. “I’ll suck the marrow from your bones,” she promised.
“Help us,” Nat yelled at Clive, but instead of coming to their aid, he whimpered, ducked behind a tree and adopted a foetal position.
Two spare creepers grabbed Ashley by the arms, dragged him to the plant’s trunk and pressed him into its acid sap. A squeak of horror made it through his constricted windpipe as his carpet tile outfit began to liquefy. Just as Nat had suspected, the only thing that dumb armour was capable of keeping intact was its owner’s virginity.
The others fought but there was nothing they could do. The sap burned through Ashley’s armour and got to work on the flesh underneath. There was a horrifying hiss and a smell like bad barbeque as his meat began to cook. Nat turned away in horror. Soon his fizzing body would break down completely, melted into a disgusting goo, leaving only charred bones behind. Ashley let out a full-bodied scream. It was so loud that Nat didn’t hear an insistent humming sound. Thankfully, she felt a throb though. It came from the scabbard on her hip, which pulsed like a phone set to vibrate, begging for attention. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought to draw her real weapon?
She went for the hilt and the sword responded, meeting her halfway and leaping into her hand. Before she knew what she was doing, Nat had slashed at the tendril holding onto her ankle. Unlike the rubber LARP weapons, the metal blade met zero resistance, slicing through the creeper like a hot knife through butter. Nat hit the dirt with a thump, rolled over and righted herself. What happened next was even more astonishing than the vampire tree devouring her companion.
A gruff, cockney voice issued from the sword. “Go on then,” it said. “Get stuck in.”
Nat’s eyes darted to the weapon. Apparently, the embossed face at the bottom of its blade had come to life and chosen to weigh in on the situation. “That figures,” Nat thought.
“What are you waiting for, love?” the sword barked. “An invitation?”
Choosing to backburner the impossible notion of a talking sword for the time being, Nat got to chopping. The blade made short work of the predatory tree, lopping off its dancing appendages and sending them shooting away like party streamers. It was as though the weapon were an extension of her own arm, wired into her central nervous system, perfectly attuned. She didn’t even need to engage her brain to use the thing, the blade found its mark as easily as her eye fell upon it. Having pruned back the plant’s creepers, Nat hacked away at the creature’s trunk until there was nothing left to hack. By the end of it, the plant looked as though it had been fed through a wood chipper.
The boys lay scattered on the ground, tugging loose tendrils from their bodies and gasping for air. Meanwhile Nat performed an excited shoulder shimmy. “I did it! Aw yis! Deal with it, bitches!”
As she performed her congratulatory dance, the fairy buzzed back into her eyeline and stopped, suspended mid-air.
“You’ll never leave these woods alive,” she screeched, then ejected a set of claws and slashed Nat across the cheek.
The talking sword came up as a reflex, swatting the creature out of the air with the flat of its blade and knocking her into the dirt. The miniature monster shook her head to gather her senses, spat blood, then readied for a return attack.
“Finish her,” demanded the sword.
Nat stomped the thing flat like a house spider. “Eeeeuw,” she grimaced, frantically wiping the sole of her Ugg boot on a patch of grass.
“Nasty piece of work,” the sword agreed, clucking his metal tongue. “Name’s Cleaver by the way.”
*****
THE SHRIEKING MOUNTAIN winds cut through the shattered window of the citadel’s keep like a dagger of ice. Drensila the Black looked out from her demolished minaret at the courtyard below, her gown whipping in the squall. She saw her scorpion appear over the citadel battlements and sheepishly scurry back to his pen. He was no long
er in possession of his right claw she noted, nor did he carry the body of the elf she’d sent him to kill. Even the assassin’s weapon remained unaccounted for. This really was turning into one of those days.
Drensila uttered some eldritch words and a spider’s web formed over the broken window, its sticky weave tightening to form a solid curtain that cut off the gale. Flopping into her chair and kicking off her shoes, she propped her heels on a stool and let out a long sigh.
A woman’s voice emerged from nowhere. “That was a pretty spell,” she said.
Drensila looked down at the rod of power lying in her lap. There, in its crystal orb, was her mother’s smiling face.
“Hello, daughter,” she said.
Apparently, the spell of binding Drensila had cast while she was being battered by a hurricane had gone a little off course. Carnella had been transported back to The Nether as intended, but was now unexpectedly able to communicate from her prison.
“Wonderful,” observed Drensila, wryly.
“I want you to know I don’t blame you for putting me in here,” said Carnella. “In fact I rather respect you for it.”
“Shut up, mother.”
“I did away with my mother too, you know,” Carnella went on. “And my father. Yours as well.” She sighed wistfully at the memory. “Of course I murdered my victims instead of just banishing them, it’s one of the reasons our family is so small. That and your grandfather’s fondness for summoning succubi and sticking his gnarled stump inside of them.”
Drensila ignored her and contemplated her next move. “A latrine,” she jibed. “I’m going to have one built especially and trap your spirit inside of it. Set it in the middle of the courtyard and tell every troll in my army to perform his business in it.”
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