Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  Katherine bared her fangs at Dave the dog. “This rug is getting too crowded. I’ll just fly separately.” Stacy couldn’t help noticing that Katherine seemed to harbor some kind of special resentment toward this poor dog which couldn’t be entirely explained by the mere fact that she was a hateful bitch.“I’ll be outside,” said Katherine. She turned into a bat and flew through the open roof.

  The assembled crowd oohed and aahed, like they’d never seen a bitch turn into a bat before. They were only slightly less impressed when Julian pulled a giant, rolled up carpet out of a bag much too small to physically contain it. They backed out to give him room as he unrolled it on the floor.

  By the time Stacy, Julian, Tim, Cooper, Dave, Chaz, Tony the Elf, and his dog took their seats, Stacy confessed to herself that Katherine had been right about it being too crowded. It didn’t help that Cooper and Tim smelled like bus station toilets.

  Julian placed his palm flat on the surface of the carpet, then raised it slowly. As he did so, the carpet lifted off the floor, soliciting another round of oohs and aahs.

  “You kids be careful,” said Frank, saluting at Julian.

  Julian returned his salute, then traced his finger in a clockwise, circular pattern on the surface of the carpet, causing it to rotate until they were facing east. Moving his hand, he positioned the carpet so that they weren’t under any part of the roof that had already been completed. Once he was satisfied that they were clear, he raised the carpet at least thirty feet in the air.

  In spite of the smell, everyone huddled a little closer to the center.

  “Whoa!” said Stacy, taking in the aerial view of the city. It was still early enough in the evening for her to make out the streets and buildings, and just getting dark enough to notice all the street lamps were lit. “Do those run on electricity?”

  “Magic,” said Julian. “Inside each lamp is a permanently enchanted Light stone.”

  “You wanna get this thing moving?” said Tim. “I’ve got a whiz to throw as soon as we clear the city walls.”

  Stacy considered telling him to just pee his pants again, but she held her tongue. It was a little too mean, and she didn’t want to risk the chance of him taking her up on the suggestion.

  Julian slid his hand forward on the carpet, and they started moving. It was a slow start, like a car in first gear. But unlike a car, the carpet remained crawling through the air at a snail’s pace. Katherine and Ravenus flew in circles around the carpet like little moons until Katherine finally broke free from her orbit.

  She landed on the roof of a building just ahead of them and morphed into her standard form.“What’s with this funeral procession bullshit?”

  Julian slid his palm forward a couple more times. “I’m giving it all she’s got.”

  Cooper farted. “I could walk faster than this.”

  That sounded like a fine idea to Stacy. She tried in vain to wave away the cloud of fart that surrounded them. “You might have to do that,” she said. “We’re carrying too much weight.”

  “How do you know?” asked Tim.

  “When the Horsemen first caught me, they’d already done some adventuring that day. We were flying slowly like this until they started dumping treasure over the side.”

  Julian held up the Bag of Holding. “Anyone feel like riding in here?”

  Everyone looked at Chaz.

  Chaz shook his head. “No fucking way, man.”

  “All right,” said Julian. “I’m taking her down.” The carpet descended until it was hovering three feet above the street. They’d only made it about two hundred yards from the Whore’s Head Inn. “Hop down, Cooper.”

  “Dude!” said Cooper. “You’re making me fucking walk?”

  “Of course not,” said Julian. “We’re in a hurry. Horse.”

  Stacy was confused by the last part of what Julian said until she turned her head and saw a big brown horse staring back at her.

  “That’s more like it,”said Cooper. He stepped off of the carpet and mounted the horse.

  “Let’s see if that’s enough,” said Julian. He stroked the carpet. It crept slowly forward. “Apparently not. We’ll have to dump someone else.”

  All eyes turned to Chaz again.

  “Seriously,” said Chaz. “Screw you guys.”

  “Cooper,” said Stacy.

  “Huh?”

  “Catch!” She grabbed an unsuspecting Tim under the arms and tossed him at Cooper.

  “Shit!” cried both Tim and Cooper. Cooper caught Tim and placed him on the horse in front of himself.

  “What the hell was that for?” asked Tim.

  Stacy shrugged. “We had too much weight.You two can ride together.”

  “I barely fucking weigh anything!” Tim protested. “You should know. You just fucking threw me. How big a difference could I possibly make?”

  Stacy turned to Julian. “Give it a try?”

  Julian slid his hand forward. The carpet moved so fast that Dave fell off the back.

  “FU—” It was a short fall.

  “I guess that answers that,” said Julian. He ran his hand backwards on the carpet, and they flew back to pick Dave up. “Sorry about that, Dave. Still getting a feel for this thing.”

  “You okay?” asked Stacy.

  Dave stood on trembling legs. “If we had been higher up…”

  Stacy offered him her hand. “Don’t think like that.” She pulled him back onto the carpet. “Just sit tight and don’t look down. You can hold my hand if you want.”

  Dave nodded and held her hand tightly.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Tim. “Why don’t you breastfeed him while you’re at it?”

  Stacy ignored Tim, satisfied with his reaction.

  “Let’s move!” said Tony the Elf. “We’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

  Julian raised the carpet high enough so that they could see over the rooftops, but he flew along the streets so that Cooper and Tim could follow on horseback.

  Once they passed over the city walls, Katherine took the form of a much larger bat, comparable in size to the horse Julian had called into existence. Where she had been struggling to keep up before, she now overtook the horse and carpet with ease.

  Stacy was able to spot her place of captivity long before she’d expected to, and her heart sank. It was the one on fire.

  Chapter 5

  The fire was big for sure, but not quite so big as Julian had first thought. Now that they were closer, he could see that a portion of the flames he’d thought he was seeing was actually the reflection from the surface of a large swimming pool next to the house.

  Chaz whistled. “Sweet digs.”

  “Not so sweet anymore,” said Stacy. “It looks like we’re too late.”

  Julian frowned. “Maybe we should have visited here before spending the night getting shitfaced.”

  “Don’t fucking pin this on me,” said Tim. “I’m the one who thought to come here.”

  “I’m not trying to pin anything on you. I’m just –”

  “Shut up, the both of you,” said Tony the Elf. “What’s done is done. Bring us down next to the pool and we’ll form a bucket brigade. We don’t know how long this fire has been going. There may yet be something we can salvage, if only a clue as to where Mordred may have gone from here.”

  “Ravenus!” Julian called out.

  “Up here, sir.”

  Julian looked up. Ravenus was perched atop his quarterstaff.

  “Oh, good.Ravenus, I want youto circle the perimeter and see if you can spot Mordred.”

  “At once, sir! What does he look like?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Right!”Ravenus nodded his head decisively. “I’m on it!” He flapped off into the night sky.

  Julian brought the carpet down on the opposite side of the pool from the burning building. The heat given off by the flames was pretty intense, and the smoke stung his eyes.

  Having no bucket, Dave volunteered his breastplate. It wou
ld hold a decent amount of water, and maybe keep him from baking alive inside his armor.

  Cooper took the position closest to the pool, followed by Dave, then Tony the Elf, and ending with Stacy. She was as close to the fire as anyone dared get. Much to Julian’s surprise, it looked like it might work. Cooper scooped up as much water as he could, and they only lost about half of it by the end of the chain, at which point Stacy hurled whatever was left into the fire and tossed the breastplate back to Cooper. She was stronger than she looked, and barely breaking a sweat next to the raging fire.

  “What should I do?” asked Chaz.

  “Play a song!” said Tony the Elf.

  Chaz folded his arms. “I know I’m not the most useful member of the party or whatever. But I want to help. You don’t have to be a dick.”

  Tony the Elf’s eyes were tearing up from the smoke. He passed Dave’s breastplate to Stacy. “If you want to help, then play a goddamn song!” While waiting for the breastplate to cycle back to him, he wiped sweat and soot from his face with his sleeve. “You’re a bard. Your purpose is to play music to bring out the best in others. Give us a rhythm to work to.”

  Chaz pulled the lute off his back and bit his lower lip. Finally, he looked up. “I think I’ve got something.” When he started picking at the strings, the tune wasn’t entirely unfamiliar.

  “Nice one!” said Stacy.

  Two lines into the lyrics, Cooper stopped mid-scoop. “Nine to Five?” he said. “Fucking Dolly Parton? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  “Cooper!” Stacy shouted.

  Cooper resumed the task at hand, and they actually seemed to become more efficient, the breastplate moving more smoothly and quickly from person to person, and spilling less water.

  “Well how about that?” said Julian.

  “It’s still going to take forever,” said Katherine, startling Julian. He hadn’t even realized she was standing right behind him. “Take us up over the house. I’ve got an idea.”

  “Me too,” said Tim, hopping back onto the carpet as Julianguided it into the air.

  “Okay,” said Katherine once the carpet was directly above the house. “Stop here.”

  As she rummaged through her bag, Tim pulled his idea out of the front of his pants and stood at the carpet’s edge. “Suck it, fire!”

  “Workin’ nine to– Hey, man! What the fuck!”

  Tim looked over the side. “Oh shit. Sorry! It got caught in the wind!”

  “Get out of the way,” said Katherine, holding a silver pitcher. When she tipped it over, a small, but steady stream of water flowed out.

  Julian maneuvered the carpet to adjust for the wind until the stream was pouring right into the fire. It wasn’t going to make a huge difference, but he guessed every little bit helped.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tim. “Don’t you know that thing has different settings?”

  “Settings?”

  “Here, give me that.”

  “Wash your hands first.”

  Tim rolled his eyes and rubbed his hands together as Katherine poured water over them. “Satisfied?”

  Katherine handed over the pitcher.

  “Back up the carpet,” Tim told Julian. As Julian backed up, Tim nodded and grinned. “Now get a load of this shit.” He aimed the pitcher down, its mouth pointed directly at the fire. “Geyser!”

  A second later, Tim disappeared, having been replaced with a jet of water and the word “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

  “Tim!” cried Katherine.

  Julian followed the collapsing trail of the stream. Tim was lying motionless on his back, in the middle of a field, the silver pitcher resting next to him. Julian guided the carpet down.

  Katherine didn’t waste any time. She jumped down off the carpet without even bothering to transform into anything. She hit the ground running and was at her brother’s side in seconds. “Tim! Are you okay?”

  Tim sat up slowly. “Fuck, that hurt.”

  “That was really stupid of you!” Katherine scolded him.

  “I’m too small,” said Tim. He looked up at Julian.

  Julian nodded, and they both spoke in unison. “Cooper.”

  Katherine and Tim climbed back aboard the carpet, and Julian ferried them back to the swimming pool.

  “Cooper!” Tim shouted as they approached.

  “Huh?” said Cooper, turning toward him. Dave’s breastplate hit him in the back of the head and fell into the pool. “Ow!” He looked down at the sinking breastplate. “Shit!”

  “Leave it,” said Tim. He held out the pitcher. “Try this.”

  “Dude,” said Cooper. “I don’t want to be judgmental about your drinking problem or whatever, but we’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

  “What? I don’t… Fuck you. Just point this at the fire and brace yourself.”

  Cooper took the pitcher and held the opening out toward the fire. “Now what?”

  “Say geyser.”

  “Geyser?” The force nearly knocked Cooper back into the swimming pool, but he managed to steady himself and hold the pitcher firmly as a torrent of water blasted continuously out of it. “Oh hell yes!”

  After a minute, Tim could already see the flames receding. The heat was noticeably less intense.

  Stacy stood back and smiled, her white teeth and eyes shining from her blackened, sooty face. “Way to go, Tim!”

  Tim’s face turned red as he smiled back at her, looking quite pleased with himself. Julian was happy for him. If anyone needed a win, it was –

  Tim snapped his fingers. “It’s still not enough. I’ve got another idea.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Katherine. “Is it better than your pissing-on-Chaz idea?”

  “Maybe. Julian, give me the Bag of Holding.”

  Julian brought the carpet down next to Tim.

  Katherine narrowed her eyes. “This plan better not involve me.”

  Without a word, Tim took the bag from Julian and jumped into the swimming pool.

  “Hmph,” said Julian. “That was underwhelming. I was expecting something… I don’t know. A little more –”

  “Holy shit!” said Dave. “Check it out!”

  Julian looked over the edge of the carpet. The swimming pool had turned into a swirling vortex of water, with Tim at the center of it. On the sides of the pool, he could see the water level rapidly receding.

  As quickly as the water was draining into the Bag of Holding, it still took over a minute for Tim’s purple face to break the surface. He sucked in as much air as his little lungs could hold, then breathed heavily until the water leveled off with the mouth of the bag.

  “Give me a lift?” he called up to Julian.

  Julian took the carpet down and Tim climbed aboard. They flew back up over the house, and Julian helped Tim hold the bag upside down. He braced himself for upward force as Tim reached up into the bag’s mouth.

  “All the water!” shouted Tim.

  Much to Julian’s relief, the Bag of Holding didn’t propel him into the sky. The water didn’t shoot out like it did out of the magical pitcher. Instead it just flowed out as gravity allowed. The mouth of the bag, however, was much wider than that of the pitcher, and made short work of the fire on the second story of the building.

  By the time all of the pool water was spent, Cooper had gotten the fire on the bottom story of the building under control enough so that the group on the ground could start to make their way into the building.

  As the smoke dissipated, Julian could see that the fire on the second floor had actually been fueled by the floor itself. The rooms were empty. They were either never furnished to begin with, or all of the furniture had been used to act as fuel for the main fire downstairs. Made of sturdier beams than the roof, the floor hadn’t completely burned away, but there was still a wide enough hole to guide the carpet down through.

  Chaz said something into Cooper’s ear that Julian couldn’t make out over the rush of the water. Shortly after, the geyser slowed to a trickle
. Charred debris floated in pools and puddles all over the floor, but it wasn’t hard to reconstruct the scene. The walls of one corner of the room were completely blackened. It was also this corner from which the second floor had burned away. Everything had been piled up here and set aflame.

  “He wasn’t trying to burn the house down,” said Dave. “The fire was too focused. What was he doing?”

  “Getting rid of stuff,” said Katherine, looking down at them from the edge of what was left of the second floor.

  “What stuff?” asked Tim.

  “All the stuff. Remember when Robby dumped me and I burned all of his shit in the backyard?”

  “Of course I remember. You took down half the fence.”

  Katherine nodded. “That’s what went down here. Spite burn.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Tony the Elf. “He had to know that, once we got our heads out of our collective asses, this is one of the first places we’d come looking for him. Why waste all that time? Judging by the state of that fire, we only missed him by a couple of hours as it is. He couldn’t afford to take that kind of risk.”

  Stacy picked up a warped, blackened sword blade. “He couldn’t afford not to. Look at this.”

  “What about it?” said Tony the Elf.“It looks like it used to be part of a katana or something. You’d need an Exotic Weapon Proficiency to use it, not that it makes much difference in its current state.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Stacy. “This place was cluttered with all kinds of magical weapons, potions, trinkets, you name it.”

  “So he burned it?” asked Tony the Elf. “That stuff is worth a fortune.”

  “Which is why he couldn’t let us get our hands on it,” said Dave. “He armed himself to the teeth, packed up as much as he could carry, and burned the rest.”

  “Detect Magic,” Julian mumbled to himself. His vision grew darker, and he could see the remnants of magical auras everywhere. The blade in Stacy’s hands was emitting a soft purple vapor glow as the last of its magic drained out. The burnt rubbish heap at the site of the main fire was cloudy with a mix of different colored auras.

  “Stacy and Dave are right,” he said. “There was a whole lot of magic around here, but it’s dissipating even as we speak.”