3d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  “It’s magic,” said Julian. His eyes were glowing bright white. He was using a Detect Magic spell. “There’s a powerful magical field surrounding the whole fence. It’s about a foot thick on both sides.”

  Tim looked at Dave. “That would explain why the dinosaurs don’t just knock it down. They can’t get near it without getting the shit zapped out of them.”

  “You should have used the handle,” said Julian, extending his hand cautiously toward the gate’s handle. “There’s a hole in the aura.” Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t going to kill himself, he reached all the way in, grabbed the handle, and turned it until it clicked. The gate swung open an inch toward him.

  The group backed up like they were riding a shockwave, giving Julian plenty of room to swing the gate the rest of the way open.

  Compared to the charred wasteland and dinosaur-infested jungle, the area inside the fence looked like a recreated Eden. There were fruit trees, a colorful vegetable garden, and separate pens for goats and pigs.

  In the center stood a large, but quaint, wooden house, built eight feet above the ground, supported by four living trees. A retractable staircase, currently raised, would give the occupants some means of protection against all but the biggest dinosaurs if their fence ever failed them.

  The house rested in its tree supports above what looked like a miniature version of itself, minus the porch. Judging by all the noise coming out of it, the smaller house at ground level was a chicken coop.

  Julian held out some pieces of dried fig to one of the goats, which eagerly licked them right out of his hand. “Hey there. You’re a hungry little guy, aren’t you?”

  “Why ain’t you more upset about your stupid bird?” asked Cooper.

  “Ravenus is fine.”

  “You’re never away from that thing for more than five minutes at a time, and the last time you saw him was when he flew off to fight a fuckin’ tyrannosaurus almost an hour ago. How can you be so sure he’s fine?”

  “I told you. Ravenus and I have an empathic link. If he was in trouble, I’d know. Right now I sense that, wherever he is, he’s very content.”

  “Maybe he’s fucking the T-rex.”

  “Don’t be vulgar,” said Julian. “He’s probably just flying around, enjoying the tropical sea air.” He patted the goat on the head and looked at the vegetable garden. “I love this place. This is exactly the kind of place I want to live in when I retire.”

  Tim thought of the Chicken Hut. Even after having stabbed a pteranodon to death, the concept of ever being able to retire was so foreign to him. He’d always pictured himself continuing to line the arteries of rednecks until his own tired old heart finally gave in to despair, and he fell face-first into the –

  From just outside the gate, the all too familiar sound of screaming horse, accompanied by the snarl and growl of whatever was tearing said horse apart, ripped Tim away from his self-pitying thoughts. All but one of the chickens inside the coop immediately stopped squawking and clucking.

  “Polly!” cried Julian, taking a step toward the gate.

  Tim blocked his path. “Don’t even think about it.” As an afterthought, he added, “And stop naming them.”

  In order to close the gate, someone would have to go outside and carefully pull it back around so as to avoid getting electrocuted. That wasn’t going to happen. Tim scanned the yard for a place to hide.

  “Behind the chicken coop!” Tim analyzed his choice of hiding place while he led his friends there. It was as good a chance as they had. The coop was big enough for all of them to hide behind, and that one retarded chicken who didn’t take the hint to shut up might actually end up doing them a favor. “When the raptor busts into the coop to eat all the chickens, that’s when we make a break for it.”

  His back up against the wall of the chicken coop, Tim could hear the soft, nervous clucking of the occupants, with the exception of the one which was still squawking away without a care in the world. The rest of them sensed danger.

  Gilda grabbed Tim’s left hand with both of hers. Her skin felt like rhino hide. “I’m scared.”

  “I told you there were fucking velociraptors.” Tim felt like he had just failed a Willpower saving throw, because as much as he knew he shouldn’t peek around the side of the coop, he couldn’t force himself to not do just that.

  When one of the goats bleated, Tim took his chance. It was a raptor, all right. Unsurprisingly, it was just as terrifying in real life as it had been on the big screen. Fortunately, it was facing away from him, its cold, vicious eyes fixed on the goat Julian had been feeding.

  Any giant murder-lizard would have been frightening enough, but when it took a step toward the goat, raising its foot above the potato plants which had been obscuring it from view, Tim was reminded of the most defining feature of the velociraptor; the giant, hooked claws on its feet. This one happened to be dripping with fresh horse blood as well, which didn’t ease Tim’s anxiety at all.

  Tim gasped.

  Realizing that he’d just gasped, he pulled his head back just as the raptor pivoted toward him.

  “Is it a raptor?” asked Dave.

  “Of course it’s a fucking raptor.”

  Julian was tugging on his ears. “Did it see you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Tim strained to hear some clue as to what the dinosaur was doing. What he really hoped to hear was a goat scream, which would mean the raptor had lost interest in him. But all he could hear was that one goddamn chicken that still refused to shut the fuck up.

  “Gods be damned!” came a deep male voice from the porch above them. British. Probably an elf. “Alonzo! Fetch my wand. We’ve got a velociraptor in the potato patch.”

  “How’d it get through the barrier?” another elven voice responded.

  “From the looks of it, she just wandered in through the open gate.”

  Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Clever girl.”

  “Do be careful, Felix,” said the voice that Tim assumed belonged to Alonzo. “I don’t want to have to rub another salve into your skin.”

  “Indeed not!” said Felix. “I’d much prefer you to rub one out.” The two men laughed heartily.

  Tim, Cooper, Dave, and Julian stared slack-jawed at the floor above them.

  “Well I’ll be a mother fucker,” said Cooper. “Those two are –”

  “Tim!” cried Gilda. “Watch out!”

  Tim turned his head to find himself staring into the nostrils of the velociraptor. It sprayed his face with a steamy bloodmist. Tim rolled away as a hooked claw sliced the air above him, taking a head-sized chunk out of the corner of the chicken coop.

  The only sound that could compete with the sudden explosion of clucking was Cooper going into his Barbarian Rage.

  “I’m really angry!”

  The raptor took a swipe at Cooper, but Cooper caught it by the ankle and punched it in the face. The combination of Cooper’s Rage-enhanced punch and being caught on one leg was enough to send the raptor tumbling to the ground.

  It didn’t stay down for long. The raptor leapt to its feet, shook its head, and gave Cooper a hard, scrutinizing stare. Cooper jerked his head to each side, cracking his neck, and stared back at his reptilian adversary.

  The raptor screamed like a pack of jaguars. Cooper screamed back like a drunk rhinoceros.

  Having demonstrated an equal capacity for verbal sparring, the two beasts lunged at each other. Even with Cooper’s Rage-induced extra girth, the velociraptor outweighed him considerably. The two of them rolled out into the potato garden until Cooper, combining the force of his legs and the raptor’s own inertia, kicked the dinosaur off of him and sent it flying into the magically electrified fence.

  Blue electricity surrounded the raptor, crackling, hissing, but ultimately releasing it.

  The upper right quarter of Cooper’s back bled from a series of puncture wounds that looked like a butcher’s diagram of where to cut the shoulder meat. The raptor’s skin was patc
hed with smoking electrical burns. They both took a moment to breathe.

  “Finish it off!” Dave called through a cloud of feathers emanating from the hole in the corner of the chicken coop.

  Tim held up his crossbow and tried to line up a shot, but a dwarf ass stepped into his line of fire.

  “By Lothar’s hammer!” Gilda had swiped Dave’s mace, and was charge-waddling toward the injured raptor.

  “Get out of the way!” cried Tim. There was no way she could have heard him over her own battle cry, and the continued squawking of the chickens, which were still losing their shit inside the coop.

  A long whistle pierced through the air, rising and then lowering in pitch, like a slide whistle, bringing all action in the yard to a sudden halt. Gilda stopped running. The raptor turned its head. Cooper’s body deflated. Even the chickens ceased squawking and clucking, except for that one.

  Tim looked for the source of the sound. A blond elf stood in front of the goat pen like an oiled god or a cover model for a trashy elven romance novel. He was naked but for a dead black mink that hung from his waist. Its hind legs were splayed out like a Y along the top of his pelvis, the tail hanging forward like a furry phallus. Tim suspected his actual phallus was running down the animal’s body, and couldn’t help but wonder how far down it went toward the mink’s head, which swung like a pendulum below his knees.

  The mink wasn’t the only small, furry mammal this elf was potentially violating. Armed with nothing but a brown hare, cradling it in his left arm and stroking it between the ears with his right hand, he stared intently at the velociraptor. He raised the hare to his mouth, whispered a single word in its ear, and set it gently on the ground.

  Upon being released, the hare darted out of the gate like its ass was on fire. The raptor ran after it, slapping Cooper in the face with its tail on the way out.

  “Greetings, travelers!” said the elf, whose voice Tim recognized as belonging to Felix. He placed his palm atop a wooden post which stood, seemingly purposeless, between the goat pen and the gate. The top of the post glowed with a pale green light, and the gate began to swing slowly around.

  Feeling safe enough to emerge from the psychological protection of the chicken coop, Tim saw that the staircase on the porch was also sliding down.

  “You must be Felix?”

  “I am!” said Felix. “And how may I address the young lad with such fine ears?”

  Tim’s face became suddenly very warm. He tore his gaze away from the swinging mink head. “Any way but that, please.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tim’s fine,” said Tim. “Look, I’m sorry about the damage we’ve caused.”

  “Think nothing of it! A few potatoes is no great loss. I only hope that raptor recovers from her wounds.”

  “Who gives a shit about the raptor?” said Cooper. “What about –”

  “You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats animals,” said Gilda.

  “Especially minks,” Tim muttered a little louder than he’d meant to.

  Felix flashed Tim a quick grin before addressing Gilda once again. “When you take away the trappings of man, the buildings and clothes and such, we’re all beasts.”

  “I completely agree,” said Gilda, looking up at him all doe-eyed.

  Tim looked away, a cocktail of negative emotions bubbling up inside him. The beast under his clothes wouldn’t be able to stuff a field mouse.

  “Speaking of animals,” said Felix. “Something seems to be amiss with one of our chickens.”

  “It’s been squawking like that since we got here,” said Dave.

  Felix opened the front door of the chicken coop.

  “Jesus!” shrieked Julian. “Stay out! Stay out!”

  Everyone turned to look at him. He looked like he’d just seen the ghost of his naked grandmother.

  “Hey man,” said Tim. “Are you okay?”

  “Huh?” said Julian. His eyes returned to normal and he looked down at Tim. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over –” His eyes darted up toward the chicken coop. “Ravenus!”

  Tim turned around. Ravenus was hobbling unsteadily out of the coop like a drunk on the deck of a ship. The front of him was covered in white feathers. Reaching the entrance, he promptly fell face-first on the ground. He didn’t even try to get up.

  “Ravenus!” said Julian. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll be fine, sir,” said Ravenus. “Just need a bit of a nap is all.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Seems I bit off more than I could chew, sir. That one in there’s insatiable, she is.”

  Julian looked into the coop, then frowned down at Ravenus. “She’s a little… huskier than what you usually go for, eh?”

  Ravenus raised a wing. “Any port in a storm, sir.” He looked at Tim. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Wha?” said Tim. Stupid fucking bird! He glanced at Gilda. Shit! Why did I do that? Gilda glared back at him. Abort! Abort! “I, um… I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Very well then!” said Felix. He closed up the chicken coop and started walking toward the staircase. “Come inside. Make yourselves at home. We shall provide you with food, drink, and shelter for the night.”

  “That sounds fantastic,” said Dave, wasting no time following Felix. Julian scooped up Ravenus, tucked him under his serape, and the rest of the group followed Dave.

  Having reached the top of the stairs, Felix turned around. “And you can smoke my pole.”

  Tim, Dave, Cooper, Julian, and Gilda stopped simultaneously, like somebody hit the ‘pause’ button.

  Dave turned around to face the rest of them and whispered conspiratorially. “How badly do you guys want to stay here tonight?”

  Tim didn’t like the idea of being torn apart and eaten by dinosaurs, but he wondered if he’d like gobbling this fucker’s mink-meat even less. “Do we all have to smoke his pole?”

  “No way,” said Cooper. “I spent my birthday last year at the Lady Slipper, and wound up hitting big on one of the video poker machines at the bar.”

  Dave put his hands on his head. “And this is relevant how?”

  Cooper ignored him. “So I walk out of the Slipper with a thousand bucks. It’s my birthday. I’m feeling good, like the stars aligned or some shit, right? Naturally, I take my good fortune with me to Come to Papa’s.”

  Tim grimaced. “That’s the strip joint off 603?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The one made out of three FEMA trailers?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What’s a FEMA trailer?” asked Gilda.

  “Come on guys,” said Cooper. “Time is a factor here.”

  Tim nodded. “Just hurry up and get to the point.”

  “So I drop some cash, and get two of the less reputable strippers to come spend the night in a motel with me.”

  Julian shivered and hugged himself. “Are there really tiers of reputability among the strippers at Come to Papa’s?”

  “I thought I was going to be spraying jizz like Willy the Water Bug all night long.”

  Dave tugged on his beard. “What does any of this have to do with –”

  “I’d been out of the game for a while, and I splooged as soon as the first girl put her hand down my pants.”

  Tim finally broke the unexpected silence to follow.

  “Is that the end of your story?”

  “Pretty much,” said Cooper. “Those two bitches played chess while I tried to will my dick back to life. It wasn’t happening. After thirty minutes, I just went home, broke, ashamed, and sticky.”

  Julian cocked an eyebrow. “They had a chess board at the motel?”

  “The girls brought a travel set with them, like they’d been through this sort of thing before.”

  “Dude!” said Dave, twisting his beard. “Does this story have a point?”

  “The point is that your brain chemistry – or whatever – changes right after you shoot your lo
ad. Like, you know when you whack it to the spring break pics that your cousin posts on Facebook, and then you feel so gross about it just after the fact?”

  Tim, Julian, and Dave shared awkward, silent glances. Gilda just looked confused.

  “Fuck you guys!” said Cooper. “I’m telling you, no matter how much heat that dude’s packing in his fucking weasel-cannon, he’s only got one round in the chamber. The rest of us will get a pass.”

  “So just what are you suggesting?” asked Tim.

  “I don’t know,” said Cooper. “We draw straws, or play Rock Paper Scissors or some shit.”

  “And we never speak of it again,” said Julian. He grabbed Cooper by the ear and looked square into his eyes. “You don’t get to give anyone shit about this. You got that?”

  Cooper yanked his ear out of Julian’s grasp. “Yeah, I got it.”

  Dave was nearly pulling his beard out. He looked like he might be about to cry. “I don’t want to smoke his pole.”

  Gilda sighed and looked up at Felix. “I’d be happy to smoke your pole.”

  “Nice try, Sugarnips,” said Cooper. “But I don’t think you’re what he –”

  “Outstanding!” said Felix. “Now all of you stop lollygagging on the stairs and come inside.”

  Julian grinned sheepishly. “That was unexpected.”

  “Gilda,” said Tim. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  “Dude, shut up!” said Dave. “Yes she does.”

  “It’s okay,” said Gilda, looking directly and deliberately into Tim’s eyes. “I really really want to.” She turned and continued walking up the stairs.

  Tim skulked up the stairs behind the rest of the group, trying to reason with himself that this was a good thing. He was dodging a bullet, right? Why did he feel like he was losing a battle, on multiple fronts, in a war that he didn’t want to be involved in?

  “Is it weird if we want to watch?” asked Cooper.

  The wood that the stairs were constructed from was as rough as the wood making up the outer fence and animal pens, but the porch and house proper were sanded smooth.