Critical Failures IV

by Robert Bevan

  The beast ran at her, beak open and arms spread wide like she was its long lost lover. She kept her own mouth open and her right arm raised, purposely telegraphing an impending bite or slash. But when it was close enough, she gave it a foot in the crotch.

  Katherine was gambling on it being male and mammalian enough to have a set of testicles buried somewhere under the tangle of fur and feathers between its legs, and from the way the thing doubled over, her gamble had paid off. Now that its head was within reach, she drove her middle three fingers into its left eye, reached up for its skull from the inside, and pulled it toward her. She tore into its neck with her teeth, ripping away a mouthful of fur, feathers, and flesh.

  With the angle she was gripping the beast, her arm was out of its beak’s reach. It made a wild punch at her side. Katherine barely felt it. The blood was flowing, and she was gulping it down. The pain in her left arm subsided and she found she was able to move her fingers again.

  With every gulp of hot, salty blood, Katherine grew stronger as the beast’s desperate punches grew less and less substantial until it stopped punching altogether. By the time it was no longer able to stand, Katherine’s left arm was fully functional again, and she supported its great weight with both hands until she felt bloated with blood.

  She let the body fall on the ground, and pulled the eyeball she’d been gripping out of the creature’s head. It came out with a goopy trail of bloody nerves. She stared at the eye in her hand and thought of Ravenus. He’d made good on his word, and even hung around to see that she wasn’t disturbed, so long as one didn’t count being urinated and defecated on in your sleep disturbing. He was a good bird, and Julian was lucky to have him as a friend. She decided to save the eye for when they finally caught up to him.

  The Bag of Holding would be as good as Tupperware for food storage. Katherine opened the bag and put the eye inside.

  “Gwaaaa…” groaned the creature on the ground.

  Shit. It’s still alive. Katherine looked at it and had a second thought. Or it’s alive again.

  If this giant asshole vamped out on her, their differences in size might put her at a disadvantage.

  It was too heavy to lift up and smash its head open against a tree trunk. Katherine looked around for a decent sized rock to brain it with, but came up wanting.

  “Waaaaaarrrg…”

  “Shut the fuck up!” said Katherine. “I’m trying to think.” She looked at the moaning creature, riding the line between life and death, or possibly death and life, and found the solution was staring her right in the face. It was an icky solution, but only slightly ickier than ripping out its eyeball had been.

  Katherine rolled up the sleeve on her right arm. She pinned the beast down by the throat with her left hand, thankfully cutting off its ability to continue groaning, and plunged her right fist into the open eye socket.

  The creature’s body convulsed wildly as she invaded its skull. She dug her fingers deep into what felt like a combination of cake and Jell-O, grabbed a hefty fistful, and pulled her arm back out. The creature lay still as Katherine held what must have been a good third of its brain in her hand.

  She considered saving this for Ravenus as well, but wasn’t sure if he was into brains or not. She decided against it, and tossed it away.

  Discarding the brain didn’t bother her as much as leaving behind all the blood still left in the thing’s massive body. She didn’t know how fresh blood had to be in order to nourish her, but it felt irresponsible to let all of this extra blood go to waste. Who knew when she’d be in another emergency?

  Katherine opened the Bag of Holding. It was going to be a tight squeeze. She decided to go feet first. The feet were curios things. They were padded on the bottom, like paws, but the toes were scaly, more closely resembling bird talons than bear claws. But then, what the fuck did she know? She shoved both feet into the bag and started pulling the mouth up its legs like a pair of pants.

  The creature’s waist stretched the limits of the bag’s opening, making it clear that its significantly broader chest wasn’t going to happen.

  “Shit,” said Katherine, then thought for a moment.

  If she broke the ribcage, she could probably squeeze enough air out of its lungs to lessen his girth. It was worth a shot.

  Katherine straddled the beast over the abdomen and rained down both fists in a flurry of punches, smashing ribs like they were made of wicker.

  The creature let out one final lifeless groan as Katherine sat on its chest, pressing the air past its vocal cords. Tugging on the bag, she found her plan had worked. With some effort, she was just able to stuff the chest into the bag’s stretched opening. That is, until she got to its arms.

  “Goddammit!”

  She’d gone too far to give up now. The solution this time was a simple one. Those fucking arms were coming off. The joints came out of the sockets easily enough, but it took a bit of gnawing to separate the sinew and flesh.

  Once the arms were off, the rest of the creature’s body slid into the bag with ease. Satisfied with her accomplishment and a belly full of blood, Katherine took her giant bat form and started flying northward up the road as fast as her wings could take her. At the rate Stacy and Julian had been traveling before, she figured she’d catch up with them in no time.

  Chapter 10

  As the only member of the party who could perform healing magic, Dave resented being lumped together with Chaz as a couple of useless spare parts. Sure, he wasn’t fast or stealthy, but he wasn’t supposed to be. He was a cleric. His role was to fight and heal, which, now that he thought about it, seemed kind of contradictory. He was good for a hell of a lot more than belting out a Dolly Parton tune.

  Tony the Elf might be a little more appreciative of having him along if they ran into some monsters out here. No more of this I suppose you can tag along with me if you promise to shut up and stay out of my way business. He’d be more like Oh, Dave! I need your healing!, to which Dave would reply Your mom needed my healing last night after I poked her with my dwarf dick! No, that sounded stupid. Tony the Elf would say Oh, Dave! Please lay your hands on me!, and Dave would come back with –

  “What do you think?” asked Tony the Elf.

  “How ‘bout I lay my balls on you?”

  Tony the Elf and Chaz stared blankly at him.

  “I’m sorry,” said Dave. “I was thinking about something else.”

  Tony the Elf looked down at Dave with the air of a babysitter who isn’t getting paid enough. “Which way do you think we should go?” He spoke loudly, over-annunciating every word, as if English wasn’t Dave’s first language.

  “How should I know?” asked Dave. “You’re the tracker.”

  “We haven’t picked up any trails yet. It’s tough to track when all the quarries are flying. I figure we should keep to the road so that we have a better view of the sky. You’ve got a high Wisdom score. Do you think we should travel north or south?”

  They had come from the Horsemen’s villa back to the main road. Dave looked north and south, but saw nothing but trees. “With our chances of finding anyone equally dismal in either direction, I vote we travel north. We know what’s in that direction at least, and we may intercept Cooper and Tim along the way.”

  “Some incentive.”

  “You asked for my opinion.”

  “Fine,” said Tony the Elf. “We head north.”

  Dave had no trouble keeping up with Tony the Elf, who stopped frequently to examine an errant animal turd or make a judgement on the freshness of a footprint on the road. More than once, they’d all gotten their hopes up when Dave the dog started sniffing at the base of a particular tree, but all he ever did was piss on it and move on.

  They’d been traveling for over an hour when the dog jerked his head up and let out a sharp bark. Before anyone had time to react, it charged off into the woods.

  “Dave!” Tony the Elf called out after it. After a few seconds without a response, he darted into the woods himse
lf.

  The night felt a lot scarier with only Chaz to rely on for mutual protection.

  Dave looked up at Chaz. “Should we –”

  “Yeah,” said Chaz, apparently feeling the same way about the protection Dave had to offer him. He took off into the woods after Tony the Elf.

  Dave waddled after him. “Hey, man! Wait up!”

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to walk far to find where the others had stopped. Dave the dog was approaching from the opposite direction dragging an arm behind him. The arm was about the size of a gorilla’s arm, and covered with a mix of fur and feathers. The dog lay it down at Tony the Elf’s feet and excitedly wagged his tail.

  “Holy shit!” said Chaz. “What level is that fucking dog?”

  Tony the Elf ruffled his dog’s shaggy fur as he examined the arm. “Dave didn’t do this. Let’s go find the rest of the body.”

  Seeking out a creature big enough to tear the limbs off a creature as big as the one this arm had once been attached to hardly seemed like a wise idea to Dave, but he knew it was the closest thing they had to a lead, and it was pointless to argue with Tony the Elf now that he might finally be able to use his Tracking skill. He followed in terrified silence as Dave the dog led them deeper into the woods.

  A few minutes later, they arrived at the scene of… something. All Dave saw, with his untrained eyes, was another fur-and-feather-covered arm lying on the ground. Tony the Elf, however, barely even glanced at the arm. He was more interested in scratches on a nearby tree trunk, flattened saplings, and fresh footprints.

  “Combatant A took a defensive position here,” said Tony the Elf, placing his own feet inside a set of footprints near the scratched tree. “While combatant B approached from where Chaz is standing.”

  Chaz looked at the ground at his feet, then took a step to the left.

  Tony the Elf did a few squats, kicks, twirls, and air-sword swings, recreating a hypothetical battle in his mind. Finally, he straightened.

  “Gentlemen, I have good news.”

  Dave was skeptical, but he’d take what he could get. “What is it?”

  “The battle which took place here was between an owlbear and a high-level paladin, and the paladin was the victor.”

  “How is that good news?” asked Dave. “At best, it seems like inconsequential news. We’re not looking for a paladin.”

  “It means that somewhere, perhaps very close by, there is a strong force on the side of goodness. He may be able to help us. Maybe he’s seen someone in our group.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Chaz. “How could you possibly know it was a paladin? Was that like a game thing, where you rolled high and the information just popped into your head? Or did you reason this out on your own?”

  “Just a bit of detective work,” said Tony the Elf. “If you pay close enough attention, there are clues everywhere.”

  Chaz put his hands on his hips. “I’m listening.”

  “The owlbear was easy enough to figure out just by looking at the arms.”

  “I have no idea what the fuck that is, but go on.”

  Tony the Elf pointed to a spot on the tree trunk. “You’ll notice there’s blood here, but not as much as there should be for such a vicious battle. Between that, and the lack of the rest of a body, what happened here is pretty obvious.”

  Chaz looked at Dave. Dave shrugged.

  “Here’s how it went down,” said Tony the Elf, sounding more exasperated than Dave thought was fair. “The owlbear attacked the paladin here where I’m standing. It gripped the tree with its right hand while taking a swing at the paladin with its left.” He ducked, twirled, and swung an imaginary sword down hard with both hands on an imaginary owlbear. “Then he cut the owlbear’s entire left arm off at the shoulder.”

  “Like King Arthur and the Black Knight?” asked Dave.

  “Exactly,” said Tony the Elf. “And just like the Black Knight, the owlbear kept on coming. They’re known for being wildly ferocious. The paladin waited for the attack, stepped out of the way of a frenzied, desperate charge, and chopped off the other arm.”

  “You sound very sure of yourself,” said Dave.

  “Do you have a better explanation?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Dave. “Your theory is plausible, I guess. But it doesn’t concern you that it seems heavily influenced by a Monty Python movie?”

  “And I still don’t get how this all adds up to a paladin,” said Chaz. “Why not a fighter or barbarian?”

  “Allow me to continue,” said Tony the Elf. “The owlbear, having lost both of its arms, probably dropped below zero Hit Points, and collapsed here.” He gestured to the flattened saplings. “Where a fighter or barbarian would have just finished the thing off, a paladin might show mercy on his fallen foe. He used his healing powers to stop the creature from bleeding to death, at which point the owlbear woke up, recognized it was outmatched, and ran away. That explains the relatively little blood and the complete lack of a body.”

  Dave nodded his head slowly, considering Tony the Elf’s theory.

  “That’s fucking retarded,” said Chaz.

  “Do you have an alternative theory you’d like to share?”asked Tony the Elf.

  “No, but just because I don’t know for a fact what actually happened, it doesn’t mean I have to accept the first crackpot theory somebody pulls out of their ass. That’s how religions are formed.”

  Tony the Elf cocked his head to one side. “Shut up.”

  “And that’s how they’re perpetuated,” said Dave.

  “Seriously, you two. Shut up and listen. Do you hear that?”

  Dave and Chaz stopped talking. Dave knew his ears were no match for Tony the Elf’s, but he strained to pick up any unusual sound he could. All he got was frogs and crickets. He was about to say as much when a faint ringing sound mingled into the croaks and chirps.

  “Are those… bells?” asked Chaz.

  “Hundreds of them,” said Tony the Elf. “It’s coming from Cardinia. Every temple in the city must be ringing them.”

  “Does that happen a lot?” asked Dave.

  Tony the Elf shook his head. “Not once in the whole time I’ve been here.”

  “We should get back on the road,” said Chaz.

  It was all well and good to doubt religions in the real world, where faith was more often than not just a pretext for bigotry. But the gods in this game were real enough to grant Dave magical spells. He hoped that he and Chaz hadn’t pissed them off.

  “Water,” said Dave. A stream of water flowed out of thin air, as if from an invisible pitcher, puddling in the footprints of the alleged paladin.

  “What was that for?” asked Tony the Elf.

  “Just testing a theory.”

  Tony the Elf nodded, as if he understood what Dave was up to. “Good idea. I agree with Chaz. Let’s get back on the road.” He kept his voice low, as if suddenly doubting his own friendly paladin theory.

  Retracing their path back to the road, Dave kept his eyes open for scratches on tree trunks, or any other signs of owlbears, or creatures large enough to tear the arms off owlbears. Fortunately, all of the trees appeared to be relatively unmolested.

  “Continue heading north?” Chaz asked upon reaching the road. “See what those bells are all about?” The night air was still filled with the sound of distant ringing.

  “Absolutely,” said Dave. He was less concerned with bells, and more concerned with getting back behind the city walls. He looked back for confirmation from Tony the Elf, who seemed in much less of a hurry as he fingered a piece of bark on the trunk of a nearby pine tree.

  “Look at this,”said Tony the Elf, fixated on the tree like he’d only just become aware of these tall leafy things growing out of the ground.

  “That’s fascinating,” said Dave. “But we really should go investigate those bells.”

  “How did I miss this before?” Tony the Elf continued as if Dave hadn’t spoken. He flicked the piece of bark off the trunk. “Thi
s bark is loose. And look at the ground. The density of pinecones at the base of this tree is significantly greater than that of the trees in the immediate vicinity.”

  “Come on, man,” said Chaz. “Either give us a reason why we should give a shit, or let’s get moving.”

  “Something hit this tree,” said Tony the Elf. “Hard, and not too long ago.”

  Dave was getting impatient. “Do you want me to heal it?”

  Tony the Elf looked down at Dave with his I-shouldn’t-have-to-deal-with-this-idiocy face. “Of course not.”

  “Then what do you want – Holy crap!” The sky to the south lit up with a ball of fire just above the horizon. It was if a tiny sun had been born and collapsed in on itself in the space of a second. “What the hell was that?”

  Tony the Elf turned around, but the sky was dark again. “What?”

  “You saw it?” said Dave. “Didn’t you, Chaz?”

  Chaz nodded.

  “Was that a Fireball spell?”

  Tony the Elf frowned. “Was it orange and spherical?”

  Dave and Chaz nodded together.

  “That’s a Fireball all right. We’re going the wrong way.”

  Chapter 11

  Randy was able to keep as discreet a distance as he liked, as Denise was all but impossible to lose track of. There were other dwarves on the streets, and no shortage of drunks, but Denise was by far the least coordinated and the most belligerent. Whichever way she stumbled, fearsome creatures and men who looked tough enough to kill her with their thumbs alone, stepped out of her path.

  “What’s the matter with you mother—” She paused to vomit on the street. “—fuckers? Ain’t you never seen a bitch with a beard before?” She swerved her hips and waved her axe above her head like a feather boa. “Who wants to show a lady a good time?”

  It was amazing that her antics hadn’t attracted the attention of local law enforcement before now, but they had presumably been preoccupied with the burst of chaos that had been incited by the clamor of those godawful bells, which had thankfully stopped ringing a short while ago. Her luck had just run out, though. Two soldiers, identically dressed in shining armor and golden cloaks marched briskly toward her.