Critical Failures II (Caverns and Creatures Book 2)

by Bevan, Robert

  “Satisfied?” Tim asked Dave.

  “No!” said Dave.

  Tim frowned. “Well if you’ve got any better ideas, feel free to share them. In the meantime, I’m going to get some rest. You get your healing spells back at dawn, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well then you have until then to come up with something better. Otherwise, you patch up Stuart in the morning, and we get the hell out of here.”

  “Millard’s fort, you mean?”

  “With any luck, that’s not what I mean at all.”

  Chapter 21

  Cooper had just taken the first bite out of the biggest hot dog he’d ever eaten. It was a good six feet long, and as thick as a fat man’s neck, but somehow he was able to open his mouth wide enough to take that first bite. The bun was made of interwoven strips of bacon, and it crunched when he bit into it. It was a moment of bliss.

  As he chewed that first bite, he heard some kind of buzzing in his ear, like a mosquito had gotten stuck in there. His body shook back and forth, and his hot dog escaped his grasp.

  “No!” he cried. The hot dog hovered in front of him. The two halves of the bacon-bun stretched out to either side and morphed into crispy, bacon-colored bat wings. A head began to sprout out of the frank where he’d bitten into it. A human head. Millard’s head.

  “No!” Cooper cried again. He thought it might be a good idea to spit out the bit he had in his mouth, but opted to swallow it instead.

  Hot dog Millard grinned down at him as he flapped his bacon wings. The buzzing in Cooper’s ear grew louder. The sound began to take form.

  “Cooper!” the mosquito buzzed. “Cooper, wake up!”

  “Huh? What?” Cooper blinked. He was on a stone floor. Tim was standing over him, pushing and kicking him.

  “Fucking vampires,” said Cooper. “All I wanted was a hot dog.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” asked Tim. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

  “Right,” said Cooper. He got to his feet. He felt a little better than he had the night before, but still pretty shitty. “So did you guys come up with a plan?”

  “Yeah,” said Dave bitterly. “We’re all going to get in the Bag of Holding, and Stuart’s going to chuck us out the window.”

  “Sweet!” said Cooper. “That’s brilliant. Whose idea was that?”

  “Mine,” said Julian.

  “Well done, man!”

  Dave hung his head. “Un-fucking-believable.”

  Stuart was twisting, stretching, and being generally annoying, like he was getting ready for a ballet recital. “The fuck’s up with him?”

  “He’s limbering up,” said Tim. “We’re all going to take the express bus, but Stuart, being the one to throw the bag out the window, has to climb down the cliff the old fashioned way.” He turned to Stuart. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Not a problem,” said Stuart, one leg raised high over his head. “I’ve got eight ranks in the Climb skill. The surface is rough. Plenty of handholds and footholds. The Difficulty Check shouldn’t be too bad.”

  “It’s a long way down, though.”

  “In real life, I’m shockingly afraid of heights,” said Stuart. “It’s kind of refreshing not to be. I’m looking forward to this.”

  “What if you roll a 1?” asked Dave.

  Stuart shrugged. “Catch me?”

  “I’m sorry I stabbed you,” said Cooper.

  “Are you really?”

  “Well,” Cooper scratched his head. “I was when I thought you were going to die. But now that you’re okay, I feel better about it. I’ve wanted to stab you for a while now.”

  “Okay,” said Tim. “Well, time’s wasting. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it.”

  “Is there still an if option left?” asked Dave.

  “Did you come up with anything?”

  Dave scowled. “No.”

  “Well,” said Tim. “There’s your answer. Get in the bag.” He took a knee and opened the bag.

  “This is so stupid,” said Dave. He stepped into the bag and appeared to sink straight into the floor. When the tip of his helmet sank below the rim, he disappeared completely.

  “Awesome,” said Cooper.

  “Who’s next?” asked Tim.

  “I’ve been in there before,” said Julian. “I’ll go.” Julian stepped into the bag.

  “Please get me out of here,” said Katherine’s bard friend. He crossed the room in three strides and leapt into the bag.

  “Don’t forget Butter Nuts,” said Cooper, carrying Katherine’s wolf. It voiced its annoyance with a small growl, but didn’t make a move to bite Cooper’s face off, for which Cooper was thankful. He set the wolf down in the open bag. It let out a small yelp before its head disappeared.

  “Coop?” said Tim.

  “After you.”

  Tim shrugged and jumped in.

  “See you on the bottom,” Cooper said to Stuart. “Don’t take too long to throw the bag. We’ve only got ten minutes in there, and the clock is already ticking.”

  Stuart jumped up and down three times with his arms stretched out sideways. “Well then you’d better get moving.”

  Cooper, putting his trust in a guy who had made him shove a giant dildo up his own ass, grabbed the Bag of Holding and pulled it over his head.

  The universe was completely dark as Cooper floated in space. There was no up or down. He waved his arms around and occasionally brushed against small metallic objects floating by him. He managed to grab one. Feeling it between his thumb and forefinger, he determined it was a coin.

  “Bwah!” Cooper recognized the voice as Dave’s. “What’s that smell?”

  “I think Cooper made it,” said Tim’s voice. “That you, Coop?”

  “Uh…” Cooper was uncomfortable talking to people he couldn’t see. “Yeah.”

  “Julian,” said Tim. “Can we get some light in here?”

  “Good idea,” said Julian’s voice. A brief pause followed, then “Light.”

  Cooper was struck with awe that he felt inadequate to describe. It was stunning. They were floating in what seemed like an infinite void of inky blackness, but Julian’s light shone off of hundreds, maybe thousands of floating coins. Some gold. Some silver. Some copper. A few precious stones reflected and refracted the light as well. It was almost like a child’s misinformed vision of what it might be like to float around in space among the stars.

  “Oh my god!” cried the bard, who had apparently only just realized that he was stuck in a perpetual somersault. He waved his arms and legs around, but was unable to keep himself from spinning head over foot. “I think I’m going to be sick.” This proved prophetic as he spewed a spiral of vomit which radiated from his spinning form.

  “Oh man,” said Dave. “That’s so –” Dave then contributed his own stream of puke.

  Between the bard’s galactic spiral of puke and Dave’s vomit comet, the interior was looking more like space with each passing second.

  “Jesus, guys!” said Katherine. “Try a little self-control, why don’t you?”

  “Maybe the light was a bad idea,” said Tim. He was looking a little green himself as he floated, from Cooper’s perspective, upside-down.

  “Do you want me to put it out?” asked Julian, who seemed to be handling the lack of gravity and orientation quite well.

  “No,” said Cooper. “Wait.” His eyes had been casually following Dave’s stream of vomit as it followed a straight and true course away from Dave. The front end of it suddenly disappeared into the blackness, as if it had reached the end of the universe. “Did you see that?”

  “What?” asked Julian.

  “Dave’s puke,” said Cooper. “It’s gone. It just disappeared.”

  “Well that’s a good thing, right?” said Katherine.

  “I don’t know,” said Cooper. He was getting panicky. He wanted out of this bag. He looked around, trying to keep track of where the glittering coins
turned into void, so that he could keep well away from that border. He tried to turn around, but couldn’t. This made him more nervous. He finally managed to turn a little bit so that he could see behind him. Dave’s puke train splattered him right in the face.

  “Bwaaahh!” Cooper cried, but that only resulted in him getting some of it in his mouth.

  “Shit,” said Dave. “Sorry, dude.”

  Cooper did his best to wipe the puke off of his face and spit it out of his mouth. Having someone throw up on his face was normally the sort of thing that would piss Cooper off. Especially if it was Dave. But strangely enough, Cooper found himself much more at peace than he had been just a moment ago.

  “This is…” said Cooper. “I think this might be kind of awesome.” He reached out to Tim, who was floating just out of reach. “Come here, I want to try something.”

  “Blegh,” said Tim, looking at Cooper’s vomit-covered outstretched hand. “No.”

  “Oh right,” said Cooper. “Sorry.” He hastily waved his hand on his loincloth and reached for Tim again. “Come on, man.”

  “Fine,” said Tim. Hesitantly, he reached his tiny arm out and allowed Cooper to take hold of his hand.

  “This is going to be awesome,” said Cooper. He pulled Tim toward him and held him firmly by the shoulders.

  “Cooper,” said Tim. His eyes were wide with worry. “What are you –”

  Cooper pushed Tim away from him as hard as he could.

  “FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…” Tim’s voice trailed off as he flew away like a bullet, while Cooper only floated back a couple of inches. It was a perfect demonstration of Newtonian physics.

  Then, just as Cooper had predicted, Tim disappeared.

  Julian gasped. “What the –”

  “…uuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…” said Tim as he popped back into existence somewhere below Cooper and to his side. He continued flying backward in a straight path, past the crowd of his floating friends, until he winked out of existence again.

  “That’s incredible,” said Dave.

  “…uuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…” said Tim. This time he came from straight above them, and flew past as if he had come in through the ceiling and exited through the floor.

  “That’s enough, dude.” Said Julian.

  “…uuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUCK!” said Tim, as Cooper grabbed him on his next pass. The two of them spun around like dancers in a space ballet.

  “You okay?” said Cooper when they began to slow down.

  “That fucking rocked!” said Tim. “Do it again!”

  “Hang on, guys,” said Julian. “I just thought of something.”

  “What is it?” asked Tim. His huge grin shrank to a cautious smile.”

  “There’s enough air in here for ten minutes, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Tim. “So what? That’s plenty of time for Stuart to throw us out the window and Ravenus to come fetch us. Hell, we’re probably safely on the ground already.”

  “But that ten minutes,” Julian continued. “That’s just for one person, right?”

  Tim’s smile evaporated completely. “Shit,” he said. “There’s six of us.”

  “Six,” said Katherine. “Don’t forget Butterbean.”

  “I was counting Butterbean,” said Tim. “I wasn’t counting you.”

  “Fuck you, jerk!”

  “You’re a vampire,” said Tim. “You don’t breathe.”

  “Oh, right,” said Katherine. She looked down at her feet. “Sorry.”

  “These may be my last words,” said Dave. “And I’d like to use them to point out that I thought this was a monumentally stupid idea from the beginning.”

  “Fuck you, Dave,” said Cooper. He scooped up some of Dave’s puke from his neck and threw it at Dave.

  “Hey!” said Dave, waving his hands helplessly at the approaching vomit glob. He managed to slap it, and it exploded into a billion tiny specks, radiating out in every direction.

  “Maybe,” Julian said. There was a certain edge to his voice. “Instead of shouting at one another, we should be trying to conserve our breath.”

  Cooper instinctively considered suggesting that maybe Julian could suck his balls, but he held his tongue. Julian was right.

  Everyone floated silently, looking at each other with worried expressions on their faces. Now that he thought about it, the air was noticeably stuffier in the bag.

  “Just so you know,” said Katherine. “If you guys die and I wind up stuck in here, I’m going to have to eat you.”

  “I’m okay with that,” said Cooper.

  “Ew,” said Katherine. “You’ll be last, trust me. And that’s if I don’t choose to starve first.”

  “Wha!” said Julian.

  When Cooper turned his head to where Julian was floating, he saw nothing but empty space. “Where the fuck did he – Yo!”

  Cooper lay on the soft, rich earth, looking up at the speck of a fort atop the high cliff face. He filled his lungs slowly, savoring the crisp morning air. “Fuck, that’s high,” he said as he exhaled.

  “Get off of me,” said a muffled voice beneath him.

  “Oh shit,” said Cooper. “I’m sorry.” He helped Julian to his feet. “Thanks.”

  Ravenus was perched on a low branch of a nearby tree. The plan wouldn’t have succeeded without him.

  “Ravenus,” Cooper said, begrudgingly acknowledging the bird.

  Ravenus went berserk with ear-stabbing screeches and caws, hopping up and down on the branch and flapping his wings wildly about.

  “What the fuck is up with him?”

  “He said ‘Your friends are still inside the bag, you big idiot!’ His words.”

  “Shit, that’s right,” said Cooper. He reached into the bag. “Tim!”

  As soon as he felt Tim’s little arm in his hand, he pulled hard, inadvertently throwing him six feet in the air. He landed a few feet away, gasping deep breaths.

  “Dammit, Cooper!” said Tim.

  Cooper put his arm in the bag again. “What’s the bard’s name?”

  “Wasn’t it something like ‘Jazz’?” asked Julian.

  “Shit,” said Tim. “It’s not ‘Jazz’, but yeah, it’s something like that.”

  “Jizz?” suggested Cooper.

  His suggestion was met only with disapproving glares.

  “Fuck it,” said Cooper. “Bard!” He pulled the bard out of the bag. The air rushing into his mouth sounded like a hurricane wind.

  “Thanks,” the bard said weakly.

  “Butterballs!” said Cooper. The wolf fell out of the bag, panting and sleepy-eyed.

  Tim stroked the wolf’s fur. “You okay, big guy?”

  “Should I let your sister out?” Cooper asked Tim.

  “Get Dave, you ass!”

  “Oh yeah,” Cooper chuckled to himself. “Forgot about Dave.” He reached under his loincloth and gave his ass a good, solid scratch. He sniffed his hand. “Fuck, that’s grim.”

  He reached his ass-hand into the bag. “Dave,” he muttered. He felt Dave’s arm materialize in his hand. Even without having just summoned him, he would have recognized Dave’s arm for it being covered in leopard fur. He pulled him out and dropped him unceremoniously on the ground.

  Dave gasped and sucked in air. When he was able to speak, he croaked out a “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Cooper. He switched the bag to his right hand, and reached in with his left. “Kat.”

  When he felt her cold, slender forearm in his hand, he pulled her out gently. She was only halfway out of the bag when her skin started to blister and smoke.

  “FUCK!” she screamed. “Put me back!”

  Cooper immediately shoved her back in the bag. “What the fuck just happened?”

  “She’s a vampire, you idiot!” said Tim. “She can’t go out in the sunlight.”

  “Sorry,” said Cooper.

  “Let me in there,” said Tim. “I need to see if she’s okay.”


  Cooper held the bag open for Tim.

  “Give me one minute, and then pull me back out.” Tim stepped into the bag and disappeared.

  “Great job, Ravenus,” Julian said to Ravenus. “You really came through for us.”

  “Like fuck he did,” said Cooper. “We almost suffocated in there? What the hell took him so long?”

  Julian talked some gibberish that Cooper couldn’t understand, and Ravenus screeched and cawed his response.

  “He said the bag landed upside down,” explained Julian. “It took him some time to wrestle the opening out from underneath.”

  Cooper grinned and sighed. “Takes me back to the night I spent with Dave’s –”

  Thwack! Cooper found himself staring at the fletching of an arrow poking out of a tree inches away from his face.

  “That was a warning shot,” said a voice behind him. The voice was more calm and confident than Cooper would have liked. “The next one doesn’t have to miss.” Cooper believed the voice. He turned around.

  No one was standing in the patch of forest where the voice had come from. From the looks on the others’ faces, Cooper guessed that they, too, had heard the voice, but were also having trouble identifying the source.

  “Up here,” said the voice. Cooper looked up. A halfling crouched in the branches of a tree. He wore a green and brown cloak, decked out with twigs and leaves. Even though Cooper was staring right at him, the little bastard was nearly invisible against his surroundings. He had an arrow nocked and pointed right at Cooper.

  “What do you want?” asked Cooper.

  “That’s a nifty bag you’ve got there,” said the halfling. “How much do you want for it?”

  “It’s not for sale,” said Julian.

  “Everything’s negotiable.” The halfling chuckled to himself. “But I’m afraid the only currency we’ve got is arrows.” Mirthful chuckles came from at least two other trees, but Cooper dared not take his eyes off the only adversary he’d already spotted, lest he not be able to find him again. “So how many will it take before you’re willing to make a deal?”

  “You’re thieves?” asked Dave.

  “We’re opportunists,” said the halfling. “We were just out for a leisurely hunt, and noticed you gentlemen passing by completely unarmed. I must say, that’s not too wise a practice in this stretch of wood. You might run into someone dangerous.”