4d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  “Very good, sir.”

  Julian didn’t have a good view of the path they took. He was too preoccupied with hugging a monster who wanted to feed him to his enemies to pay much attention to his surroundings. All he could tell for certain was that they were riding fast, gradually ascending along a gradual clockwise curve, and that bugbear hair was prickly and smelled like fermented garbage.

  Some time between forty-five minutes to an hour later, the rhythm of hooves slowed as the pounding of horse ass against his balls grew less and less severe. They must have been close, because the harpy’s song was loud and clear, so much so that Julian didn’t feel the need to be particularly quiet.

  “Are we planning to fight the harpies?” asked Julian.

  “Until not one of their wretched hearts still beat.” Raggart stopped the horse and dismounted. “I’ve never tasted harpy before.” He licked his lips.

  “Do you have a plan of attack?”

  “I shall hack away at them until they no longer continue to live.”

  Julian frowned. “That’s nice and uncomplicated.”

  “These beasts are far too dangerous to try to capture alive.”

  “That wasn’t my primary concern.”

  Raggart looked at Julian, inviting him to continue.

  “I’m more worried that they outnumber us at least three to one, and I’m not much good in a fight.”

  “I have seen you conjure up a living horse with your sorcery. Surely you can melt their faces off.”

  Julian wondered briefly if Melt Face Off was actually a spell in the game, then focused his attention on the task of avoiding a suicide mission without having to admit that he was both unarmed and out of spells. “I was thinking more along the lines of a diplomatic approach. Get a lay of the land, so to speak, maybe find a tactical advantage before we dive headlong into stabbing and face-melting.”

  “Your methods are unconventional, elf. But you have proved yourself both cunning and capable. I shall follow your lead... for now.”

  “Okay, good. Now here’s how I think we should –” Julian heard voices other than the harpy song. It was the other two bugbears.

  “Me first!”

  “No, me!”

  “Shut up! I can’t hear the song!”

  “You shut up!”

  “Okay,” said Julian. “We come out non-threateningly, as if we were also entranced by the song.”

  Raggart nodded.

  Julian chanced a peek over the rock he was hiding behind. The mountaintop was wide, flat and rocky, spotted here and there with dried pools of blood. He didn’t see any harpies, but he saw where Horrig and Flargarf were scrambling onto the scene. Horrig was up first, and Julian noticed he was pitching a major tent under his hide pants.

  “There you are, sir.”

  Julian ducked back behind his rock, trying to stifle a heart attack. “Ravenus! Keep it down.” He looked up at Raggart. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re not going to believe we’re entranced if we don’t have erections.”

  “Not a problem,” said Raggart. He closed his eyes. “I shall recall the time I deflowered my niece.”

  Julian grimaced. “That’s... um... lovely.”

  “At the time, it was. But we were caught, and she was deemed unfit for marriage. We ate her.”

  Raggart’s short tale of incest, murder, and cannibalism threw any chance of Julian’s ability to conjure up an erection on the spot right out the window. Desperate times. Desperate measures. He looked down at his familiar.

  “Ravenus. I need a favor.”

  “Anything, master!”

  “I need you to be my... worm and berries.”

  Ravenus stood a little straighter, staring at Julian’s crotch. “You mean your... junk, sir?”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m flattered, sir. But I don’t even know if we’re compatible. Physically, I mean.”

  “What? No! I just need you to perch on my belt and keep still under my serape, providing the illusion that my junk is larger than it actually is.”

  “Are you attempting to seduce the harpies, sir? Once you get a close look at them, you may have a change of heart.”

  “Just get in here and hold still until I tell you otherwise.” Julian pulled back one side of his serape.

  “My my, gentlemen,” said a voice that Julian assumed was one of the harpies that wasn’t the one singing. “What a strapping bunch of visitors we have here today.” Her voice was raspier than the singer’s. Maybe it was her grandmother or something. “Do you think we’re... pretty?”

  Eager responses came from everyone.

  “Oh yes!”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Lady, I’ve got more blood in my dick than in my head right now.”

  Julian waved Ravenus forward. “Hurry up!”

  Ravenus hopped onto Julian’s crotch and gripped his belt with his talons. Julian stood up and covered Ravenus with his serape.

  “That’s no good. They’ll never believe my dick’s that big. Here. Go between my legs so that only your head is poking out.” Julian reached down and helped Ravenus into position.

  “Shall I grip you by the junk, sir?”

  “Hell no!” said Julian. “You keep those talons away from my junk. I’ll just hold you snug between my thighs.” Every part of that sounded wrong.

  “But there are more of you than there are of us,” said the raspy harpy. “How will we ever choose who gets to mate with us?”

  Shit was about to go down. It was time for Julian and Raggart to make their move. Julian looked at Raggart, who was still concentrating, but already had a passable bulge going on. “You about ready?”

  Raggart’s eyes were shut tight. His fists were clenched. “Don’t worry. They’ll never find us. The danger is what makes it exciting.”

  Julian cleared his throat.

  Raggart awoke from his memory. “Oh. Yes. Let’s go.”

  Julian spread his arms and looked down at his crotch. “How do I look?”

  Raggart also looked at Julian’s crotch, but seemed uncomfortable. “Um... great.” He must have been pretty deep into that memory, but the awkwardness of the moment confirmed in Julian’s mind that Ravenus was doing a satisfactory job of passing for a penis.

  “All right,” said Julian. “Remember. We’re madly, desperately in love with them.” He turned around, grabbed his horse’s lead rope, and started walking. With Ravenus between his legs, he had to walk like he was holding in a fart.

  “What’s wrong with your legs?” asked Raggart.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He shuffled out from the rock and found Tim, Cooper, and the two bugbears standing at attention. Okay Julian. Time to put that Charisma score to the test. “Oh, what sweet, beautiful music is this? I am entranced by the –”

  These were truly the most horrifying creatures Julian had ever seen. They offended his eyes in every way imaginable. The singing one’s face was completely covered in brown, dry blood, crusted and cracked all the way down her neck to the tops of her sagging, old-lady breasts. Her hair was a tangled mess, also caked with dried blood. Her bat wings were folded back, as she stood on scaly reptilian legs. Around her neck she wore a long necklace which consisted of a thin hempen cord sewn through a collection of dried, shriveled penises of varying lengths and states of decomposition.

  The other two were pretty much the same, the main differences being the fresh red blood covering the lower halves of their faces, and the recently-severed giant ogre penises on each of their necklaces.

  “My my, Lucinda,” said the raspy harpy. “Two more players. We shall have to think of a new game.”

  Raggart whispered to himself. “The danger is what makes it exciting. The danger is what makes it exciting. The danger is what makes it exciting.” He was understandably having difficulty maintaining his erection.

  The harpy Julian assumed was named Lucinda clapped her hands together
. “Oh fun! I love new games! And have you ever seen an elf so well-endowed? I must have that one for my collection.”

  Julian’s body involuntarily stiffened, including his thighs.

  “KWAA!” cried Julian’s junk.

  Julian cleared his throat. “Excuse me.”

  “I know a game,” said Horrig. “It’s a card game called ‘Pok‘Har’.

  The raspy harpy sneered at him. “I was thinking of something more along the lines of clawing all your eyes out and forcing you to blindly fight to the death.”

  “Yes!” said Cooper. “That sounds fucking awesome!”

  The song, which the third harpy had been singing this whole time until it was unnoticeable background noise, came to a sudden halt.

  Flargarf and Horrig screamed something in their native Goblin tongue as the two harpies who hadn’t been singing screeched and flew backward, just out of everyone’s immediate reach.

  “Fuck!” cried Cooper.

  “Jesus Christ!” shouted Tim. “Couldn’t you have at least made good on your promise to claw our eyes out?”

  While Julian’s eyes were focused on everyone else’s erections withering like time-lapse photography of dying flowers, he didn’t notice everyone staring at his seemingly still-raging boner... until he did. He relaxed his thighs, and his junk fell to the ground with a muffled grunt.

  “Matilda!” snapped the raspy harpy. “Why have you stopped singing?”

  Matilda walked toward Horrig like a Jesus lizard. “I want to know more about this ‘Pok‘Har’. Do you have a deck of cards with you, bugbear?”

  “Uh... uh... of course I do,” said Horrig. He pulled Julian’s deck out of Julian’s bag, glancing briefly at Julian to see if he was going to raise any objections.

  Julian nodded his encouragement, then glanced over to see if Tim was appreciating the value of his cards. He must have been doing a poor job of containing his smugness, as Tim responded with a jerk-off gesture.

  Horrig nervously licked his big lips before turning back to Matilda. “What say we make this interesting?”

  Lucinda hovered low over the ground. “How do you mean?”

  Horrig swallowed hard. “Every time one of us wins a round, the winner is free to go. Every time one of you wins a hand, you get to choose one of us to do with as you will.”

  Julian would have used different terms, but Horrig was desperate and perhaps not as gifted a negotiator. He was doing a pretty good job. If Julian tried to step in now, it might stink of conspiracy. Unbeknownst to Horrig, he might be setting up Julian and his friends with a heavy advantage. If they were bright enough to look to him before discarding, he’d be able to tip them off.

  The raspy harpy scoffed. “Your terms are too one-sided. You offer us nothing we cannot take for ourselves. Continue your song, Matilda.”

  Shit. Julian balled his fists and willed himself to resist the enchanting song.

  “I want to learn the game, mother!”

  The two harpies took to the air, circling around one another, hissing and screeching in some sort of dominance ritual. Finally, they descended and mom gave in to her daughter’s wishes.

  “Very well,” said the mother. “Let me see those cards.”

  Horrig held out the deck in his trembling hand.

  The mother harpy snatched it away and began observing individual cards. “Did a child draw these while being chased by a pack of wolves?”

  Everyone’s a fucking critic.

  “Apologies, ma’am,” said Horrig. “I’m no artist. The beauty of these cards cannot hope to match your own.”

  Well, well. Perhaps ol’ Horrig has taken a few ranks in Diplomacy too.

  The mother harpy’s lips tightened, as if she was trying to mask her satisfaction. “I suppose they are serviceable.” She pulled on a chain around her neck until a glass pendant came up from between her breasts.

  She held the pendant to one eye, squinted through it at a card, then flipped the card over and squinted at the back. “What’s this?”

  Shit.

  The mother harpy flipped through several more cards, observing the fronts and backs, before finally flinging the entire deck to the ground. “Cheater!”

  “What?” said Matilda and Horrig.

  “The bugbear takes us for fools! The cards are marked!”

  Horrig stood dumbfounded.

  Flargarf glared at Julian. “I knew it!”

  Julian could feel Raggart’s eyes burning a hole in the back of his head. He was glad there was a horse between them.

  The mother harpy flapped her wings slowly, descending toward Horrig like an Angel of Death. “We have penalties for those who would deceive us.”

  Julian heard Tim clear his throat, but didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking his way.

  “It wasn’t me!” cried Horrig. “They belong to the elf! This is his bag!” He threw Julian’s bag like it was crawling with spiders. It landed at Julian’s feet.

  Julian looked down at the bag, then up at the mother harpy, who was waiting for a response to the accusation.

  Sorry, Horrig.

  “I’ve never seen this bag or those cards in my life.”

  The mother harpy looked back at Horrig. “More lies!” She grabbed him by his upper arms, restrained them against his body, and flapped her wings harder. “Time for this bird to leave the nest.”

  Lucinda and Matilda screeched gleefully as Horrig’s urine traced a line past the cliff’s edge.

  “Filthy cheater!”

  “Make him fly, mother!”

  Julian started to feel a tug of guilt. If it meant he and his friends survive, he might have been able to just sit back and let it happen. But Horrig’s death would just mean one less ally against the harpies, now that a fight was looking all but inevitable.

  “Stop!” cried Julian. The harpies all looked at him. “Horrig was telling the truth. I made those cards.”

  The mother harpy glared at Julian and screeched, but didn’t move back to the edge of the cliff. Time to add a little Bluff to the Diplomacy.

  “I only ever intended to use them in the event of an emergency. Judge me if you will, but from one parent to another, is a little deception such a bad thing if it means I get to see my daughters again?”

  The mother harpy’s grimace wavered. “You have daughters?”

  No.

  “Two beautiful baby girls, just like yours... just like Horrig’s.” Julian gestured at the harpy’s terrified captive. “His youngest is only a few weeks old. She’s adorable.”

  The mother harpy frowned at Horrig, then looked back at Julian. “No one appreciates how hard it is to raise two daughters all by yourself.”

  “What happened to your... to their father?”

  She looked down at her necklace of shriveled dicks. “A human father has nothing to teach a harpy chick. Once I had his seed inside me, I unmanned and ate him.”

  “Well that’s... resourceful?” Come on, Julian. You can do better than that. “We have offended you, but I beg you to show mercy on our baby girls.”

  “I would never harm a child,” said the mother harpy. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”

  “Hold on,” said Cooper. “I know this one.” He pressed his fat lips together for a moment while his tiny half-orc brain went into overdrive. “Medium monstrous humanoid!”

  Tim punched Cooper in the hamstring and whispered, “Dude, shut the fuck up!”

  Julian was finally beginning to see some humanity through the crusty mask of dried blood on the harpy mother’s face, and he knew he’d better start talking before Cooper made her start thinking about murder again. “Don’t you think you’d be harming Horrig’s children by taking their father from them?”

  The mother harpy thought for a moment, then finally sighed. “You have touched my heart, elf. All too often, I teach my girls the arts of seduction, maiming, torturing, and killing. Rarely do I teach them about compassion and mercy. As an example for my daughters, I shall set you and y
our friends free.”

  A wave of relief washed over Julian. Finally, he had the courage to look back at Raggart, who gave him a grudging nod.

  Horrig was breathing heavily as the mother harpy flew him back toward the cliff’s edge, and he wasn’t the only one. Someone behind Julian was breathing like they’d just run a marathon in under an hour.

  “I...” *pant* “HOLD...” *pant* “THEE!” *pant pant pant*

  Julian turned around. “Dave?” He’d completely forgotten that Dave had been missing all this time. He must have had a hard time climbing the mountain with his fat little dwarf legs.

  “NOOOOOOOOoooooooooo...”

  Julian turned back to the cliff’s edge. “Horrig?” But Horrig and the mother harpy were nowhere to be seen. From the fading of Horrig’s scream, he had a pretty good idea which way they’d gone.

  “Mother!” cried Matilda. Lucinda merely screeched in horror as the both of them dove out of sight after their falling mother.

  Julian, Cooper, and Raggart ran toward the cliff’s edge to see if there was any chance that the harpy daughters would be able to save their mother and Horrig, but the abrupt end to Horrig’s scream told them all they needed to know before they made it that far.

  “Dave!” said Tim. “What the hell have you done?”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Dave. “I used a Hold Person spell. I thought we were in a fight.”

  “Well we’re sure as shit in one now!”

  “Yah!” shouted Flargarf. He was sitting on Julian’s horse, now looking far less confident than his ‘Yah!’ had sounded. The horse wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Yah!” Flargarf shouted again, with more than a hint of desperation in his voice as he kicked at the stubbornly immobile horse’s sides.

  Raggart shoved Julian aside as he stomped back toward the horse. “You stinking coward! You would leave me here to die with this band of idiots and bird fuckers?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” said Julian. “I needed Ravenus to be my –”

  “EEEEELLLLLLLFFFF!” shouted one of the daughter harpies, her voice getting louder as she drew near.