Critical Failures VII

by Robert Bevan

  Chaz and Fazul froze and stared excitedly in the direction Julian was pointing.

  “What is it?” said Fazul. “Do you see the women?”

  As hard as he squinted, Chaz could also find nothing to justify Julian's excitement.

  “What are we supposed to be looking at?”

  “There's a stream,” said Julian.

  Chaz sighed. “Oh good. I was just thinking I'm not wet enough.”

  “The others will have had to seek out a source of fresh water, right? I'm willing to bet this stream will lead us right to them.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” Chaz grudgingly admitted, though he still couldn't bring himself to share Julian's optimism. He stared doubtfully at the swiftly running water when they approached the bank. It was wider than he expected, and presumably deeper. More like a small river than a stream thanks to the heavy rain. “Do we search upstream first, or downstream?”

  “Given how little information we have, I'd say one is as good as the other.” Julian picked off a piece of bark from a small log. “Rough side, we go upstream. Smooth side, we go downstream.” He flipped the bark in the air. It landed in the water, which whisked it quickly out of sight.

  “Downstream it is,” said Chaz.

  Julian frowned. “I'm pretty sure it landed rough side up.”

  “Indeed it did,” said Fazul. “I saw it.”

  Chaz picked up the log Julian had taken the bark from. “I don't give a fuck how it landed. We'll cover twice as much ground with very little work searching downstream first.” He handed the log to Julian, then found another one for Fazul. For his own buoyancy concerns, he would rely on his pixie-crafted lute case. He took it off his back, hugged it, and jumped.

  “Chaz!” cried Julian.

  If he followed that up with anything, it was lost when Chaz splashed down in the water. He knew he'd made the right decision when he was submerged in the cleansing coolness. He was tired of walking and sweating and generally feeling shitty. This water was invigorating. His ass bounced lightly on the sandy creek bed, then his air-tight lute case brought him up to the surface like a fishing bobber.

  Putting his feet down, he found the water to be up to his nipples. He was about twenty feet downstream of where he'd jumped in, but the strong current wouldn't allow him to stand there for long. Julian and Fazul stared at him like dipshits holding their logs on the bank.

  “Come on!” he called out to them through the rain and rush of running water. “What are you waiting for?”

  Julian took a step closer to the edge. “I'm just not sure how wise it is to give up control of our movement to the whim of the current. What if there's a waterfall or something?”

  “Fuck waterfalls!” said Chaz. “It's not that strong. I'm in complete contro–oh shit!” The current swept him off his feet, then around a bend. He lost sight of Julian and Fazul, but they could probably still hear him if he shouted loud enough. “Have a nice walk!”

  “Dammit!” he heard Julian shout. “All right, we're coming!” The next thing he heard was Ravenus squawk before two big splashes.

  Chaz dragged his feet along the creek bed until he spotted Julian and Fazul drifting around the bend. Ravenus, who had been sleeping under Julian's clothes, was now perched on his shoulder.

  “There he is!” said Ravenus.

  “I see him.” Julian sounded annoyed.

  “What's wrong?” said Chaz. “Doesn't the water feel good? Chill out and enjoy yourself for once in your –” His feet lost contact with the bed, and he rapidly drifted away from Julian and Fazul with increasing speed. To his right, he saw that another stream merged with this one, and they combined to make a respectable-sized river. “Shit! Julian!”

  “This is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about,” Julian groaned as he and Fazul got propelled into the churning, swifter currents. “We're completely helpless. We have no idea where we are or what's waiting for us just around the next –” His face froze mid-word.

  As much as Chaz didn't want to listen to any more of Julian's bitching, this was not the most opportune time for him to behaving an aneurysm.

  “Dude, are you okay?”

  “Shut up. I hear something.” Julian's lips slowly broadened into a smile. “It's them! The Whore's Head gang!”

  “Whores?” said Fazul, his interest suddenly piqued.

  Julian pointed to his right. “They're over there somewhere.” His finger drifted back as the current took him past whatever he'd heard.

  “What were they saying?” asked Chaz, feeling vindicated about his idea despite not being able to discontinue drifting further downriver.

  “I couldn't make it out exactly. They sounded scared and panicky.”

  “Oh. That's probably not good.” Chaz turned to face the direction they were heading and looked for something he could grab on to. The river wasn't enormously wide, but the current kept them right in the middle of it. He felt like if he made a good enough Swim check, he could reach the bank, but that would involve letting go of his lute case. It shouldn't be too hard to throw it onto the shore ahead of him, but if he failed that Swim check, he'd be up a different creek entirely.

  Fortunately, an alternative presented itself in the form of a sickly-looking vine hanging from one of the lower branches of a large dead tree on the bank. He hoped it was stronger than it looked.

  “I'm going to grab that vine!” he shouted back to Julian and Fazul. “Take my hand as you pass!”

  Julian and Fazul nodded, then Chaz turned back around to catch the vine.

  It hung slightly to the right of his path, so he had to kick like a bastard, but the effort was worth it when he wrapped his fingers around it.

  “HA!” he cried triumphantly.

  SNAP!

  CRACK!

  CREEEEEEEAAAAAAK!

  “FUCK!”

  The branch that the vine was suspended from snapped off and hit the water right next to Chaz's head, which was startling enough. But when the whole tree started falling, Chaz was grateful that his crotch was submerged in water.

  “Get out of the way!” cried Julian. “Go under!”

  Chaz hurled his lute case toward the shore as hard as he could, then dived under the water. He didn't get too far before the falling tree knocked the shit out of him, but it was far enough to survive the hit.

  Squirming his way back to the surface through the dead tree's branches, he found most of them snapped right off. This big bastard of a tree had probably died years before the Ice Queen arrived.

  “Julian!” he called out when he surfaced. “Fazul?” He couldn't see either of them in the water, and he really hoped he hadn't killed them.

  “Over here,” said Julian. He and Fazul were standing on the bank. Fazul drank deeply from his bottle, and Julian held up Chaz's lute case. “Nice work. Now get your ass moving.”

  The tree had fallen all the way across the river, which probably accounted for Chaz still being alive right now. The bridge it formed wouldn't last long. The trunk was rotted to the core, and had large cracks in several places from the fall. He scrambled along it as quickly as he could to join Julian and Fazul.

  They trudged through the mud, following the river back the way they'd come from. Chaz did his best to mitigate the squelching of his boots so that Julian could listen for their friends' voices, but all that seemed to do was slow him down.

  “Can you please just send your bird out to find them?” pleaded Chaz. “We know they're not far.”

  “Exactly,” said Julian. “So it's not worth taking the risk.”

  Fazul snickered. “You are too protective of your familiar. What is the point of having one if you keep it so close to your chest at all times?”

  “We've had some bad experiences in the past. I just want to keep him safe.”

  “Safe from what? He'll be in the air. For all we know, this place could be crawling with gorillas and leopards and shit. We could be putting ourselves all at risk by not finding the others as soon as possibl
e. Or we might be putting them at risk by not showing up as soon as possible. You said yourself they sounded scared and panicky about something.”

  “So they'll be that much easier to hear if you shut up and let me –” Julian's head turned sharply away from the river. “That way. They're over there.”

  There was no running to be done on this muddy ground, but they trudged as fast as they could. Before long, Chaz could hear voices ahead of them.

  “That sounds like a large proportion of men,” said Fazul.

  Chaz wasn't ready to flat out tell him they'd deceived him. A wizard of his level might be helpful when dealing with Mordred. He thought up another plausible stretch of truth.

  “Well, you know what happens when word gets out about a place.”

  Fazul took another swig from his bottle, noticed Chaz staring, then curtly shoved the cork in it. Chaz couldn't blame him. He was missing out on Crescent Shadow hookers to trudge through the rain.

  Maybe a song would cheer him up. The Whore's Head folks could probably do with a little spirit lifting as well. He took out his lute and began to strum.

  “Hot August night...”

  “THERE!” cried a distantly familiar voice before an arrow thudded into a tree next to Chaz's head.

  “Stop!” demanded a more familiar voice. “Hold your fire!” It was Frank. “Who's out there?” he called in their direction. “Step out of the trees slowly with your hands up.”

  “They've already started shooting at us,” Chaz said to Julian. “Maybe you should do the talking.” He looked back at Fazul. “These are our friends, so please don't kill anyone.”

  Fazul agreed, and Chaz and Julian walked out of the clearing with their hands raised high.

  “It's just us, Frank,” said Julian. “We're unarmed.”

  Five elves had bows nocked and pointed in their direction. Frank stood in front of them, squinting at Julian and Chaz. He had a bit of a tan and had less of that Hitler-in-the-bunker look in his eyes that Chaz associated with him. The sunlight had done him some good.

  “Julian?” he said. “Chad?”

  Chaz sighed. “It's Chaz.”

  Frank waved down the archers behind him. “Lower your weapons.” He turned back to Chaz and Julian. “How the hell did you get here?” Frank turned to Chaz. “What's with the getup? You look like Elvis fell in the toilet on his way out.”

  “We teleported here.” Julian stepped aside to reveal Fazul. “This is our friend, Fazul.”

  “Are you sure that's his name?” asked Frank with a heavy dose of innuendo in his tone. “Are you sure it's not something else? Perhaps something that starts with M?”

  Julian laughed. “It's not Mordred. We actually had a run in with one of Mordred's avatars on the Crescent Shadow. Fazul teleported us to safety.”

  “That was very generous of him.” Frank's tone hadn't changed. “It's not often I hear of such charitable deeds done for complete strangers asking nothing in return.”

  “He's a fan of my music,” Chaz explained. “We've entered into a business arrangement. We're breaking into the entertainment industry.”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “That's just dumb enough to be believable. Sorry for the cold reception. Our crew on the beach just arrived with some disturbing news. You didn't happen to see a forty-foot-tall creature made out of water, did you?”

  “No,” said Chaz. “I don't think so.” Julian and Fazul both shook their heads.

  “I'm telling you what I saw,” said one of the elves who had been pointing a bow at them. “I wasn't the only one.”

  The other elves agreed.

  “I believe you,” said Frank. “I just don't know what it means or what we can do about it.”

  Rhonda stood up from the rock she was sitting on and joined them. “Creatures like that usually have some kind of weakness related to what they're made of.”

  “That's right!” said Julian excitedly. “I heard about one made of fire that was instantly destroyed when it was doused in water.”

  “That probably won't work in reverse,” said Rhonda. “But yeah, that's the idea. What would a water creature's weakness be?”

  Fazul frowned at Rhonda. “Is this one of the women I was promised?”

  Rhonda glared at Chaz. “He was what?”

  “I didn't promise him anything!” said Chaz. “I simply stated that there were women on this island, which is a fact.”

  “Woman,” said Fazul. “For I see only one. And though she may be the size of four, that doesn't count as plural.”

  Rhonda started to stomp closer, but Julian waved her back. He turned to Fazul.

  “I know you've had a lot to drink, but I can't let you talk about one of our friends like that. It could affect our professional relationship.”

  Fazul laughed. “I have fulfilled my end of the bargain, elf. Our professional relationship is sealed.”

  “Stay focused, everyone,” said Frank. “This is exactly the sort of squabbling that always gets us caught with our pants down. We can settle this after we tackle the bigger threat headed our way. Now what's the best way to fight water?”

  Chaz tried to think of something, but the only thing that came to mind was napkins. He kept that suggestion to himself.

  “Baby aspirin?” suggested Julian, drawing everyone's stupefied eyes his way. “People take that to decrease their risk of heart attacks. It thins the blood. Maybe it would do the same thing to water.”

  Chaz didn't feel so bad about his napkin idea now. “How much fucking baby aspirin do you have on you?”

  “None. That was just a thought. There must be other things that thin water.”

  “Earth?” said Rhonda.

  Julian shook his head and looked down at his muddy boots. “If anything, that only makes water thicker.”

  “I wasn't following up on your brilliant baby aspirin idea. I was thinking that maybe there's some kind of paper rock scissors relationship in this world between the classical elements. Earth, fire, air, water. We know water defeats fire. If we rule out fire, does earth or air seem more likely to defeat water?”

  “It doesn't matter,” said Chaz. “What the hell are we going to do? Throw dirt at it? Blow on it really hard?”

  “What about electricity?” said Fritz, the little gnome who'd crafted Cooper's dildo stake.

  Frank nodded. “Good suggestion. Do we have any electricity?” He scanned the crowd of shaking heads.

  “It's too bad Randy's not here,” said Tony the Elf with a slight chuckle.

  “Hey, y'all!” Randy called out. He and Denise were approaching from the other direction. Denise was cradling some kind of slimy black bug and shielding it from the rain.

  “Jesus!” said Frank. “Where did you two come from? How did you get here?”

  “By boat,” said Randy. “Thank goodness we found you in time. There's a big water elemental headed this way.”

  Frank nodded. “We've heard. Tony the Elf thinks you might be able to help us with that.”

  All eyes turned to a petrified Tony the Elf.

  “I was just making a joke.”

  “Well what was it?” asked Frank. “Maybe there's something to it that we could bounce other ideas off of.”

  “I was going to say he could make flour fall down from the heavens and turn the water elemental into a giant wad of dough.”

  Randy shook his head. “No. I can't do that.”

  Tony the Elf sighed. “I know. Like I said, it was a joke.”

  “It weren't a very good one,” said Denise.

  Frank cringed at her. “Should I even ask what that thing is you're carrying?”

  “This is my baby. It's name is Fatty.”

  “Adorable.”

  “There was supposed to be seven more, but Randy fed them to his lizard.”

  If anything could divert everyone's attention from Tony the Elf's lame joke, it was that.

  “I didn't feed them to him!” said Randy, looking like he might burst into tears. “It was an accident!�
��

  Everyone continued to stare at Randy in stunned silence.

  “This must be another of the beautiful island women you spoke of,” said Fazul. “She has more hair on her tits than I have on my face.”

  “Who the fuck asked you, Rasputin?” said Denise, then her disgusting bug baby started crying. “Aw shit. Now you done it.” She held out the baby to Randy. “Stop crying and hold Fatty. I'm gonna teach this motherfucker a lesson on how to talk to a woman.”

  “Will everyone please shut up?” Frank shouted so loud it even stopped Denise in her tracks. Her baby, however, only cried louder. “Would it kill you people to stay focused for more than twenty seconds? There's something big coming after us, and I think it's a pretty safe bet Mordred's behind it.”

  “No he ain't,” said Denise. “It's just some fuckin' pirate captain who's pissed on account of Katherine stealing his daddy's sword.”

  Frank's people murmured like what Denise said made sense to them.

  Frank breathed a sigh of relief. “That guy. Okay, maybe we can get through this with a little Diplomacy. We'll get Katherine to give back the sword. We'll give back the other weapons we took. Hopefully we can part ways peacefully. Where is Katherine, anyway?”

  “Oooh,” said Fazul. “Who is Katherine?”

  Everyone looked around. Eventually their gazes all fell on Tanner, the half-drow who she'd been hanging around with a lot lately.

  “I haven't seen her,” he said as he laced the front of his pants and yawned. “But then, I only just woke up. Maybe she went down to feed Mordred.”

  “I assure you,” said a voice that ran a chill up Chaz's spine. “I am quite capable of feeding myself.”

  Mordred, the dwarven Mordred from Glittersprinkles Grove, stood nakedly at the edge of a strangely smooth crater in the ground.

  Fazul leaned close to Chaz. “That pit the naked man just climbed out of. Is that where you keep the whores?”

  Chapter 49

  “Where is Katherine?” Tanner demanded stomping toward Mordred. “What have you done with –”

  “SILENCE!” Mordred hit Tanner with a spell that shut him up and dropped him to his knees with a squelch. “Your little girlfriend is taking a nap. I was kind enough to offer her my own accommodations.” He turned to address the rest of the crowd with more confidence than his naked hobo appearance should have allowed for. “You don't know how much it pleases me to find so many of you here at...” He squinted through the rain in confusion. “For the life of me, I don't recognize this place.”