by Sean Gibson
Whiska shrugged. “What’s it supposed to do?”
“Cure illness and disease.”
Whiska scratched her ear with her tail. “Can’t really test that easily.”
“No.” Nadi furrowed her brow. “You can’t think of any magical ways to figure out whether this is really the right statue?”
“What do I look like, an oracle?”
“Not really,” replied Rummy. “I always picture them having wings. And maybe the face of a cat or lion.”
“You’re thinking of a sphinx, you ninny.”
“Really? Huh.” Rummy scratched his head. “I need to bone up on my sooth-saying beings.”
“Can we focus?” asked Nadi, exasperated. “I’d rather not have to come back down and do this again.”
“If we ever do do this again, Nadi, maybe we can get our employer to draw us a picture,” said Rummy.
“Let’s just take the statue and get out of here,” said Whiska. “The smells down here are making me hungry—I need to get something to eat.”
“That statue,” said Borg, gesturing to the one Whiska held, “didn’t break. When it fell.”
“Right you are, Borg,” Nadi sighed. “Come on—let’s go.”
After another long slog through feces and other, even less savory things, our heroes returned to the surface and stopped by their inn to cleanse themselves (though short of burning off their skin, there was no way to get rid of the stench that clung to them entirely), change their clothes, and, in Whiska’s case, inhale a plate of leftovers that the innkeeper managed to find in the kitchen. They then headed to a quiet home in one of the tonier neighborhoods of the city to deliver the statue to their employer.
He opened the door himself when Nadi knocked, which surprised her; given the size of his house, she had expected a servant to greet them. “Come in, come in,” said the man, hale and hearty despite his gray hair and wrinkles, motioning them inside. He wrinkled his nose as they passed, a testament to the lingering stench of adventuring success, but didn’t comment. He closed the door quickly once they were inside and clasped his hands together, his eyes shining eagerly. He eyed the bundle of rags Nadi cradled to her chest. “Is that it?” The man reached for it, but she turned deftly, and subtly, away.
“We believe it is, Doctor, but there was an…unexpected complication in retrieving it.”
“What? What was it?” The man’s tone shifted from warm and friendly to sharp and shrill, and his sudden twitchiness contrasted sharply with the geniality he had displayed when he had hired Nadi the previous day to retrieve the statue.
“Your directions to the statue’s location were very helpful, and, we believe, proved correct, in that we found a statue,” said Nadi.
“And we got to wade through shit to get to it, too, which was great,” added Whiska.
The doctor blinked. “Perhaps I’m just not very familiar with Ratarians, but do you not know how to include a particular inflection in your voice when you say something sarcastic?”
“Who said anything sarcastic?” replied Whiska. “I love shit. Smelling it, rolling in it, taking a little taste…all of it. It’s all good.”
Whiska looked around, but no one could quite bring themselves to make eye contact with her. “Well, this is awkward,” muttered Rummy. “Rolling in it? Really?”
“You said you found a statue,” said the doctor, clearly eager to get the conversation back on track. “Did you find my statue? Show me!”
Nadi looked taken aback by the doctor’s intensity, but nodded and unwrapped the statue. “We found dozens of identical statues, maybe even hundreds. We relied on the counsel of our, ah, wizard,”—she inclined her head toward Whiska—“to determine which was the one we were looking for, and we believe this is the right one.”
The doctor practically ripped the statue out of Nadi’s hands, pulling it close and holding it up before his face. He muttered a couple of unintelligible words and the statue began to glow red. The doctor threw his head back and laughed, a joyous roar that echoed off the walls.
“You’ve got admirable enthusiasm for helping people, Doctor,” said Rummy. “A real passion for curing the sick. That’s what this thing does, right? Because I’ve got this bunion…”
“FOOLS!” roared the doctor before throwing his head back and laughing again. “You have no idea what you’ve done!”
“Not quite what I pictured when you called him a ‘nice old man,’ Nadi,” said Rummy.
Nadi drew her sword. “What’s going on?”
“This statue can no more heal your bunion, dwarf, than it can the common cold,” said the doctor.
“Half-dwarf,” said Rummy. “Half-halfling. It’s the beard that throws people off.”
“Then what does it do?” asked Nadi, dropping into a battle stance.
“This!” bellowed the doctor, pointing the statue at Nadi, who dove to the side just as a bolt of energy whistled out of the statue’s mouth and immolated a credenza that had, a second before, stood behind her.
“The doctor…is not a…nice old man,” said Borg.
“Whiska—now!” Nadi yelled as she rolled back to her feet.
Whiska muttered an incantation and held out her fingers, unleashing a torrent of magical projectiles at the doctor. She cackled with glee as they struck him, but stopped when the doctor, too, started laughing before pointing the statue at her, seemingly unfazed by the barrage of magical energy that had just exploded against his chest.
“Mother fu—” The rest of Whiska’s eloquent response was drowned out by a rush of energy from the statue, which blasted her in the stomach, and her own screams of pain.
Nadi surged forward, sword leading, and hacked at the doctor, who grinned as the sword bounced off his thigh without doing any damage. “That’s not good,” she muttered.
The doctor turned the statue in her direction and unleashed its power; fortunately for Nadi, Rummy was a step faster, diving into her and bringing her to the ground just before the blast reached her. Nadi grunted as she hit the floor, the wind knocked out of her, and Rummy moaned and grabbed a very bruised right elbow.
“Borg,” Nadi managed to gasp, “help!”
Borg nodded and moved slowly to stand before the doctor, who smirked. “You’ll fall just as hard and as quickly, you overgrown pebble!” The statue glowed and released its energy once more, striking Borg squarely in the chest.
“Heh. Tickles…a little,” he said, looking down curiously at where eldritch energy crackled down toward his abdomen. “Stings, too.”
The doctor looked confused. “What are you?”
“What are you, you maniac?” growled Whiska, climbing slowly, and painfully, to her feet. “You owe us money!”
“Maybe,” said Rummy, cradling his injured arm against his body, “we worry less about the debt the good Doctor owes us and more about our ability to remain alive, without which, I’m told, it’s difficult to spend money anyway.”
“No way! This sack of excrement owes us gold. We’re not leaving here until—” The rest of Whiska’s comment was cut off once again as a tendril of energy snaked around Borg’s blocking body and hit her tail, making it spasm and twitch as she yowled. “Fine! We’ll do it your way!” She bolted for the front door.
“I think our rodent friend has the right idea, Nadi.” Rummy backed slowly toward the door, his mace clutched in his hand, though, for the second time that day, he looked down at it and shook his head, thinking that he would be just as well equipped for this fight if he were holding the rotting carcass of a particularly ugly muskrat. “Come on!”
“I’m not leaving Borg!” Nadi circled around the rock giant and stabbed with her sword; in return, she took a hit from the statue that sent her tumbling. She came to rest at Rummy’s feet.
“You mean the guy who said that the thing that just knocked you on your backside tickles? I think he’ll be fine. Come on.” Rummy grimaced as he reached down to help Nadi to her feet, the energy from the statue coursing up his arm
and giving him a painful jolt.
“That’s it…run, little dwarfling, and take your haughty companion with you!”
“Haughty? Really?” Rummy shook his head in a rare display of disgust. “Do you want to call me industrious and avaricious while you’re at it? Because all elves and dwarves have the same character traits, right, you power-mad racist? Well, the joke’s on you, because I’m not even a little industrious.” He looked at Nadi. “I’m not such a big fan of this guy. Why did we agree to work for him?”
Nadi gritted her teeth as she got back up. “It’s not my fault! He came highly recommended—he was supposed to be one of the city’s most prominent leaders, a doctor known for his kindness and efforts to help the poor!”
“Oh, I plan to help them, all right—help them to die in agony! Ahahahahaha!” The doctor threw his head back and cackled, honestly cackled, in the way that only a delighted and insane wizard, or maybe a hen laying a double egg, can.
“Borg!” yelled Nadi. “We need to go—you’ve got to get out of there!”
“I don’t think…the wizard…is going…to pay us,” replied Borg.
“Borg’s keen powers of observation appear to remain intact even when he’s under duress,” noted Rummy as he ducked out the front door.
Nadi reached into a pouch on her belt and pulled out a tiny pellet. “Borg, when I say now, run!”
The wizard cackled again as he hit Borg with another jolt of energy; this time, the giant grunted, apparently beginning to feel the cumulative effect of so much magical energy. “Running is…hard.”
“Just do it!” She threw the pellet at the doctor’s feet; smoke exploded from it, obscuring everything in the room and turning the doctor’s shrieks of laughter into coughs. “Now!”
Nadi hurried toward the door, holding her breath and waving her hand in front of her face to try to clear her stinging eyes. A moment later, she emerged into the night air, coughing and hacking and looking anxiously behind her.
Whiska and Rummy were nearby, weapons at the ready. “Where’s Borg?” asked Rummy.
“He should be right behind me—I told him to run.”
“You know that a rock giant’s top speed is about as fast as a snail’s saunter, right?” replied Rummy.
“Come on, Borg,” muttered Nadi. “Come on!”
Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the rock giant’s massive silhouette appeared in the doorway and he strode toward them. “Smoky,” he said.
“Let’s not dilly-dally, shall we?” said Rummy.
Nadi stared hard at the house; smoke billowed from the front door and obscured the view through the windows. “Where is he?”
“Taking a smoke break?” Rummy looked at his companions. “Come on, that’s funny!” He shook his head when no one laughed. “Let’s go.”
“Hold on,” said Whiska. She held her staff up and pointed it toward the door, launching a massive fireball that exploded when it hit the doorframe. “Heh heh. Fire.”
“Coming, Nadi?” said Rummy.
Nadinta tore her gaze from the house. “We need to stop him.”
“Look, generally speaking, you know I’m on board with righting the wrongs and stopping the bad guys. It’s why I decided to give this adventuring thing a go. Well, that and the treasure…though we haven’t found much of that. And some of us are hoarding what little bit we’ve found.” Rummy looked pointedly at Whiska, who sniffed and harrumphed. “But…this guy’s out of our league. If it hadn’t been for the fact that we’re traveling with a giant rock”—he inclined his head toward Borg—“we’d all be smoking corpses right now. I know we haven’t been doing this very long, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that sometimes you just need to walk away and live to fight…or run away again, I guess…another day.”
“I hate to say it, but pube-beard is right,” said Whiska.
“Pube-beard?” muttered Rummy. “I admit that it’s not as thick as a full-blooded dwarf, but I think that’s a little bit—”
“I don’t think any of my magic is going to be much good against the old bag of skin,” said Whiska, ignoring Rummy, “and I’m the most powerful weapon we’ve got. We need to run, Nadi.”
Nadi ground her teeth. “What do you think, Borg?”
“Smoke break. Heh. That’s…funny.”
“See? I told you,” said Rummy.
Nadi rolled her eyes. “Fine, but we’re coming back at some point. We just gave a lunatic a weapon of immense power, and every single person he hurts with it is on us.”
“Maybe we need a better vetting process when it comes to our potential employers…”
“Not now, Rummy. Come on—before he comes after us.” Nadi sheathed her sword and strode off at a brisk pace, matched by Whiska, with Rummy and his little legs, and Borg and his inability to move with anything resembling haste, struggling to keep up.
Chapter 7
A CLARION CALL FOR NOBLE AND HEROIC WARRIORS
The steadfast and resilient residents of the village of Skendrick sent forth a call for aid and succor from a band of heroic adventurers whose might and courage would enable them to sally forth and seek out the mighty wyrm in its lair and, by virtue of their strength at arms and magical might, slay the awesome beast and lay claim to its treasure hoard.
Far and wide went the call, and many famed adventuring bands, from the Company of the Dancing Scimitar to ThreeD (the Death-Dealing Dwarves) to the Barbarian Horde of North Babador, heard the summons and considered whether they could help the good people of Skendrick in their hour of need.
But, while the task was worthy of the most renowned adventurers, many of those noble bands of heroes were already engaged in epic quests of their own, and so it was that a lesser-known band of hearty warriors would ultimately come to answer the call, their desire to build a name for themselves as a distinguished adventuring company surpassed only by their desire to ensure the safety of the people of Skendrick.
It would, however, take the heroic efforts of one of Erithea’s most celebrated bards to bring the adventurers to the good people who so desperately needed their assistance.
Chapter 8
A CLARION CALL IS MET WITH INDIFFERENCE, BUT FINALLY ANSWERED IN AN UNEXPECTED WAY
It’s true that a who’s-who of adventuring companies heard about Skendrick’s call for help, albeit weeks later and after the dragon had ravaged the surrounding countryside a few more times. But reactions to the desperate plea were indifferent at best. The Company of the Dancing Scimitar, for example, snorted at the lack of reward and then went back to snorting various narcotic powders. The Death-Dealing Dwarves were too drunk to do anything more than giggle over the word “Skendrick,” which, in the dialect of the dwarven stronghold from which they hailed, referred to the very special (and odiferous) type of sweat that builds up beneath a dwarf’s nethers after a hard day at the forge, as in, “Ach! It’s been a long day workin’ the bellows, and me giggleberries be covered in skendrick; might be that it’s time for a washin’ before the alehouse.” And, while the Barbarian Horde of North Babador discussed the matter seriously, they concluded by raising a toast to the dragon in recognition of its might and contemplating the prospect of looting the corpses of the villagers if the dragon made a particularly deadly assault.
In short, powerful adventurers weren’t exactly stepping on each other’s mother’s throats for the chance to help the good people of Skendrick. So, the Skendrickians waited, and it was in their hour of greatest need that they showed their true spirit. Alderman Wooddunny called a townage hall meeting to address everyone’s concerns.
“Gi’ th’ blurnin’ widdah the wee burn a’ th’ stake afore th’ beast strikes agin! It’s all hur doin’, what wi’ sayin’ nay t’ doin’ a wee bit o’ th’ double-backed beast wi’ a man’s as honest as a day’s long, and him bein’ twice as much so!” exclaimed Farmer Benton heatedly to start the proceedings.
“While we appreciate your opinion, as always, Farmer Benton,” replied the Alderman sm
oothly, “I’m quite sure that it’s not the Widow Gershon’s unwillingness to, ah, lie with you that’s causing the dragon to attack. As such, burning her at the stake is unlikely to resolve our situation.”
“Ach! How do ye ken fer suren? Might culd be her munthly bleed!”
“I haven’t had a monthly bleed in fifteen years, you tiny-todgered pig lover!”
“Thank you, Widow Gershon.” Alderman Wooddunny massaged his temples. “Now then, does anyone have any, ah, more constructive suggestions as to how we might find some capable, or at least willing, adventurers to come to our assistance?”
The citizens of Skendrick looked at each other blankly. Finally, after several moments of awkward silence in which the snuffling and snorting of a piglet in Farmer Benton’s lap lent credence to the Widow Gershon’s accusation of porcine affection and prompted a “Likes ‘em young, you see?” comment from the Widow, a young man stood, cleared his throat nervously, and said, quietly, “Maybe we could…I dunno…offer a bit more of a reward?”
“Now, that’s not an unreasonable solution to propose, Goodman Youngman,” replied the Alderman, “but, I’m afraid our coffers are, ah, rather less well apportioned than would be ideal—due in large part to the lost sales of the crops the dragon has destroyed.”
“Th’ harrible crecher took a shine ta th’ Brussels in me field, it did! Wiped ‘em but clean,” said a bewildered Farmer Benton, apparently, and perhaps justifiably, mystified by the dragon’s particular focus on his fields of Brussels sprouts.
“Yes, well, be that as it may,” replied the Alderman, “I fear that offering more money is, ah, not an option we can pursue.” He paused and looked slowly around the room. “Does anyone else have an idea? Anyone?”
More awkward silence followed, broken only by a pig’s squeal, an urgent shushing sound, and a low rumbling from the seat of Goodman Breakwind.
Alderman Wooddunny sighed. “Very well, then. I suppose we shall, ah, just continue to wait and hope that the missives we sent out will—”
