by Robert Bevan
Soft pink and green light emanated from sconces near the ceiling, casting a soft, multi-colored glow on the table and benches below, reflecting and refracting on the fancy glassware.
That was as much as Tim had time to notice before Dave shouted, “YOOOOOOOOO!”
He was standing on the bench, opposite Julian and the stranger, his left hand raised over his head in devil horns, and his right hand holding an empty glass bottle upside down like a microphone.
“His name is Cooper! He’s always in a stupor! He’s late for the party cuz he was in the pooper!”
“Please make this stop,” said Tim, as Dave made a poor attempt at beatbox noises.
“His strength is super! So call a state trooper! If you wanna battle him, you can –”
Cooper ended Dave’s rap career with a swift, controlled punch in the face. Dave collapsed neatly into a sitting position. Cooper shoved his unconscious body to the side and took a seat next to him.
“Can someone please fill me in on what’s been going on since I went out for a dump?”
Tim gestured at the stranger. “This man, Mr…”
“Please, just call me Colin.”
“He’s buying us drinks in exchange for us listening to his bullshit.”
Cooper scratched behind his ear. “Is this like a timeshare pitch?”
“No,” said Tim. “It’s something about his sick kid who we’re absolutely not going to help.”
“Fuck,” said Cooper. “That sounds depressing as shit. Better hook me up with some of whatever Dave was drinking.”
Julian stuck to beer, either genuinely interested in Colin’s blathering about curses and witches and drinking water, or doing a hell of a job of feigning it.
Tim was tempted to join Cooper in drinking whatever Dave had gotten so trashed on, but he didn’t have as high a Constitution score as either of those two. Any drink that made Dave think he could rap was sure to put Tim in a coma. He wasn’t quite ready for that just yet, so he also stuck to beer.
The night carried on and the drinks kept flowing. Julian held the party true to their word by listening to Colin drone on about his problems while Tim and Cooper looked through the half-open curtain and discussed which of the tavern’s patrons they’d most like to have sex with.
Without an abundance of mammalian females in the establishment, Tim and Cooper’s conversation devolved into which of the patrons they’d be willing to have sex with in a pinch, and then if continued civilization depended on it.
“That’s not what I said,” Cooper explained as he poured the remaining contents of a bottle into his glass. “I said it’s not gay if you get halfway through before you find out it’s a dude, like in Thailand.”
Tim, halfway through his fifth mug of beer, forgot what argument he had been trying to make, and nodded his surrender to Cooper. The beer was taking its toll, and Tim’s eyelids were getting heavy.
“Dude!” said Cooper. “Don’t fall asleep! This is important, man!” He lightly slapped Tim on the cheek.
Tim shook himself out of sleep’s grasp. “I’m awake! I’m awake!”
Cooper gulped back the rest of his drink. “I know what you need.”
“Huh?”
“Some music.”
“No, I don’t –”
Cooper pulled the curtain all the way open and stepped out of the booth. “Let’s get this party started!”
“What is he doing?” cried Colin. “Get him back in here this instant!”
The tavern’s patrons watched in stunned silence as Cooper tried to sing YMCA. He obviously didn’t know any of the lyrics. The only words he articulated were “Young man” and “YMCA.” Being illiterate, he didn’t even know what the letters looked like, so his accompanying dance resembled something more like PTX4. He made it all the way to a second X before a glass flew out of the crowd and smashed him in the forehead. Cooper went down like a chopped tree, and conversations picked up where they’d left off.
Colin and Julian dragged Cooper back inside and sat him down next to Dave.
Colin pulled the curtain shut. “Well, that was… interesting.”
“Maybe it’s time we call it a night,” said Julian.
“But I have not yet finished my tale.”
“I think we’ve heard enough.”
“I haven’t heard shit,” said Tim. There was no way he was leaving without having a taste of whatever this stuff was that made Dave and Cooper think they could sing. Dave still had a nearly full glass in front of him. “Let him talk a bit more.”
“How am I supposed to get all of you assholes back to the Whore’s Head?”
“Just one more drink,” said Tim, eyeing Dave’s glass.
Julian sighed. “Fine, but that’s it.”
As Colin started talking again, Tim sniffed Dave’s drink. It smelled like citrus. He took a sip. It was sweet and made his mouth tingle.
“Fantastic,” he mumbled to himself before gulping back the rest of the glass.
“Okay,” said Julian. “That was nice and quick. Now let’s get out of here. Thank you for a wonderful night, Mr. Colin. We’re sorry we can’t help youuuuuuuuuuuu…”
Time slowed down. Tim’s vision was suddenly in polarized shades of blue and orange. The rest of the night was like a series of shuffled photographs.
Julian screamed, clutching his forearm.
Colin’s face elongated and became covered in fur. He had fangs and glowing red eyes. Sweet!
Ravenus was flapping around, scratching Colin in the face. Blue feathers everywhere.
Tim was standing on top of the table, singing My Sharona.
Gnolls carried them all outside and dumped them on the street.
*
Tim awoke to the sound of a loud, hacking cough. He was wet and cold and uncomfortable. He opened his eyes and found that his vision was no longer made up of vivid oranges and blues. In fact, he may have lost all sense of color completely. All he could see was grey. The sky. It was raining.
The cough again.
Tim turned his head, and his face came in contact with Cooper’s slimy wet skin. Ew. He turned his head the other way, and his nose rubbed against rough wood. The sound of wooden wheels rolling through mud registered in his mind. They were in the back of a cart. He sat up.
A muddy trail flowed beneath them like a river. After a second’s consideration, Tim reasoned that they, rather than the trail, were the ones moving.
Cough. Cough.
It was Dave. He was lying on Cooper’s arm, hacking like a two-pack-a-day smoker and reaching down for a nonexistent blanket.
Tim stretched his back and neck to look behind him and saw that Julian was riding the horse that was pulling the cart. At least it looked like Julian from behind. The brim of his sombrero sagged down with water, obscuring his head. Tim had no reason to believe it wasn’t Julian, but could think of no reason for them all to be on a cart headed for who-knew-where at the ass crack of dawn in the rain.
“Dave!” Tim whispered.
“I’m ready when you are, baby,” said Dave. He gave up on the blanket and placed a hand over Cooper’s nipple.
When Tim got over his initial fit of gagging, he retrieved his dagger from the sheath beneath his vest, held it by the blade, and reached over to clonk Dave on the helmet with the pommel.
“What!” said Dave. “Okay, I’m up. I’m just… give me a sec, okay.”
“Oh good,” said Julian. “You guys are awake? Hold on. I’ve only got maybe thirty minutes left on this Mount spell. I’m going to pick up the pace a bit.”
“Jesus!” cried Dave, coming to terms that he’d been caressing Cooper’s man-tit in his sleep. He sprang to his feet like reverse footage of a marionette being dropped. The cart jolted forward, and Dave lost his balance. He fell right off the back, splashing into the mud.
“Julian!” shouted Tim. “Stop the cart! We lost Dave!”
“Dammit!” said Julian. “Whoa!” The cart stopped moving and Julian turned around. �
��I told you guys to hang on.”
Cooper sat up. “What’s going on? Why is my nipple hard?” His eyes went wide. “Shit! Mudman!” He leapt off the back of the cart and tackled Dave, who was covered in mud and stumbling toward them.
“Get off me!” said Dave, struggling under Cooper’s weight.
“Knock it off, Cooper,” said Tim. “That’s Dave, and you know it.”
Cooper stood up. “It could’ve been a mudman.”
“That’s not even a thing.”
“I hope you guys are happy,” said Julian, his boots squishing in the mud as he joined the others at the rear of the cart. “Our first horse just timed out.”
Dave sat up in his muddy puddle. “Where are we? What are we even doing out here?” He glared up at Julian. “We’re on a quest, aren’t we? I told you this would happen! I said let’s go back to the Whore’s Head, but nobody listened to me. You and your stupid bleeding heart had to –”
“It’s not my heart that’s bleeding, Vanilla Ice,” said Julian. “It’s my arm.” He pulled his left arm out from beneath his serape. He had a purple bruise, about the size of a baseball, on the underside of his forearm. In the middle of it was a football-shaped pattern of puncture wounds. He’d been bitten.
“Ouch,” said Tim. “That looks bad.” Fractured memories of the previous night flashed in his head.
“Ya think?”
“That Colin guy. Did he turn into a wolf at some point? Or did I dream that?”
“He’s a werewolf,” said Julian. “And if we don’t bring him some golden figurine from some stupid ancient shrine before the next full moon, I’m going to be a werewolf too.”
“Sweet!” said Cooper.
“It’s not sweet,” said Julian. “I don’t want to be a fucking werewolf!”
“Why not? Think about it.” Cooper counted off the justifications for his position on his fingers. “You’d have a super sense of smell. Girls would line up for miles to ride your wolf dick. Ummm… you’d be awesome at basketball.”
“Cooper,” said Tim. “Could you please shut the fuck up for a minute.”
“Yeah, all right.”
Tim wiped the rain off of his face and looked up at Julian. “Don’t listen to Cooper. You most certainly do not want to be a werewolf. You’ll have to make a whole bunch of Saving Throws every time there’s a full moon, or you’ll lose control of yourself and go on a murderous rampage. That’s almost certainly grounds for Frank kicking us out of the Whore’s Head.”
“You guys,” said Dave, still sitting in the mud. “If there’s a remedy available, why don’t we just go back into town and buy it?”
Tim and Cooper looked at Julian.
“You honestly think that wouldn’t occur to me?” asked Julian. “Colin said the only cure was to drink a vial of blood from the same creature who bit me. I guess it works like a vaccine or something.”
“Something’s not right,” said Dave. “I don’t remember anything about that from the Monster Manual.”
“What do you remember?”
“Not much,” Dave admitted. “Lycanthropy was complicated. You had to keep track of moon cycles, Saving Throws, Willpower checks, and a whole bunch of other shit, so we never really used them much in our games.”
“Come on,” said Julian. “You guys have been playing this game for years. One of you must remember something about werewolves.”
Tim thought hard, grasping for any recollection. “I remember they have Damage Resistance to anything but silver or magical weapons.”
“Okay great! Now how about something useful?”
Tim, Dave, and Cooper exchanged shameful glances before turning back to Julian.
“Seriously? Nothing?”
“Dave’s right,” said Cooper. “The lycanthropy rules are too complicated. Who wants to keep track of all that shit? We just wanted to drink beer and roll dice.”
Julian shook his head. “You must be the worst group of gamers in the history of Caverns and Creatures.”
Tim squished some mud between his toes. “How much time do we have? When’s the next full moon?”
“What do I look like?” Julian snapped. “A fucking astrologer?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m just a little freaked out by all this. A dude bit me, and I’ve got his infected spit flowing around in my blood.”
“Yeah, that’s fucked up,” said Cooper.
Julian looked skyward. “I couldn’t see the moon because of the clouds. I could have anywhere from a day to the better part of a month.”
Tim nodded. “Best not take any chances.”
“Right. So everyone hop back on the cart, and I’ll summon another horse.”
Dave stood up. “When did we get a cart?”
“I think we stole it,” said Julian. “It was parked on the street outside the tavern when we got thrown out. Colin helped me load you guys onto it and told me to take it. I wasn’t exactly in a position to argue.”
The rain continued to fall as Julian used up the rest of his Mount spells. The trail led into dense jungle that no party of low level adventurers had any business going into. The trees themselves looked like they might reach out and grab Tim if he let his guard down for a second. The roots slowed the cart to almost walking speed. The one nice thing about the rain was that he didn’t have to step off the trail in order to pee. His clothes were already soaking wet, and he could piss himself without anyone knowing. Then again, judging by the hours they’d spent on the trail already with no one calling for a pee break, his friends had likely come to the same conclusion.
When the last magical horse disappeared, they had to abandon the cart and continue on foot. The jungle was alive with strange noises. Creatures snarled, slithered, and hissed from just beyond where Tim could see. His eyes darted left and right as he pointed his trembling crossbow toward every sound he heard.
“Great news, gents!”
Thwang.
“FUCK!”
“Shit,” said Tim. “Sorry, man. I didn’t –”
“Put that thing away!” said Cooper, plucking the bolt out of his ass. He flung it into the dark jungle.
“You found something?” Julian asked Ravenus, who had been the one who’d scared the shit out of Tim.
Ravenus perched atop Julian’s quarterstaff. “A tree decorated with skulls.”
“Under what set of circumstances would that ever be considered great news?” asked Dave.
“It’s the last of the landmarks Colin told me about,” said Julian. “It means we’re almost there. Good work, Ravenus. Stay close, okay?”
After another ten minutes of trudging through the mud, they saw it. Ravenus’s description had not adequately prepared Tim for the horror standing before them. This wasn’t just some lazy goth kid’s Christmas tree. It was a living nightmare.
The trunk was thick and black. Low-hanging branches reached out like tentacles, the ends of which sprouted smaller tentacle fingers tipped with dark purple heart-shaped leaves. Blue-green vines covered the trunk like varicose veins, wrapping around branches, worming through the eyes, noses, and mouths of the skulls.
And there were so many skulls. Different shapes and sizes. Some were human sized. Some were smaller or bigger, ranging from halfling to half-orc. A curious number of them had no eye sockets. Just flat bone where eyes should be.
As disturbing as that was, the thing that frightened Tim most was a relatively fresh dwarven head. It hung upside down by its long, brown beard, staring at Tim with its cloudy hazel eyes.
“This is amazing!” said Julian. “I wish I could take these back home to show my anthropology professor.”
“Yeah,” said Tim. “Me, too. Like, right now.” He felt Julian wasn’t appreciating the message implied by a tree full of skulls. If his anthropology professor was here, he might suggest it was a warning that they should all get the fuck away from this place as quickly as possible.
“I’ve found it, sir,�
� said Ravenus, settling on the branch under the dwarf head. “There’s a clearing to the southeast with a man-made structure at the center.” He pecked out one of the hazel eyes.
“Jesus!” said Dave.
Julian looked away. “Good work, Ravenus.”
Julian led them off the trail, into the thick undergrowth of the jungle. Not a single plant let them pass by without either taking something (blood, skin, bits of fabric from their clothes) or giving something (powder, slime, barbed seeds). They swam through a sea of vegetation, easy prey for anyone, or anything, that might call this place home.
Tim didn’t know if they’d traveled mere yards or full miles when they finally broke free of the jungle’s grasp. The sky, still cloudy as it was, was a welcome sight. It was brighter than Tim expected. How long had they been traveling? How long had it been since he’d slept, the time spent passed out drunk notwithstanding?
“That’s it?” said Cooper.
The clearing was perfectly circular, probably the same area as a football field. The soil was as dark and rich as that of the surrounding jungle, but not a single plant grew within it. At the center of the clearing stood a modest stone structure about the size of a shipping container. It was mostly unadorned, except for a symbol above the entrance, which looked like an empty Venn diagram. The only other thing in the clearing was a large log, about two feet thick and twelve feet long, lying on the ground next to it.
“It’s not much of a temple,” said Julian.
Tim scanned the clearing and put his hand on the grip of his crossbow. “At least it should be easy enough to search.”
“I don’t think so,” said Dave. “That symbol above the doorway. Those are the double rings of Yulu Hari, the goddess of Life and Death. Any temple to her would be round. My guess is this is one of several entrances. The temple itself is underground.”
“Shit,” said Cooper, Julian, and Tim.
“Get down!” Julian whispered.
The four of them crouched at the edge of the jungle as a pale, muscular, almost naked man emerged from the structure. He wore a loincloth nearly as ratty as Cooper’s. His scraggly grey hair hung over his face. He was carrying a wooden pail.
“Do you think he saw us?” whispered Dave.
