4d6 (Caverns and Creatures)

by Robert Bevan

  They walked for a long time down the earthen-walled tunnel. It probably wasn’t as far as it seemed, though. These web-footed assholes could swim like motherfuckers, but were at least as slow as Dave on land. Cooper was tempted to punch one just to break up the monotony of their flopping footsteps.

  Wait. Wait. Wait.

  Eventually they came to a small cell. The entrance was an iron gate held into place by what appeared to be a big stone doughnut. It didn’t seem to have much more thought or care put into it than the scraped out walls of the tunnel, but it looked solid enough. Probably the work of a Stone Shape spell. He might be able to dig his way around it, but there was no way to tell how far the stone was embedded in the earth.

  Swamp Thing pulled a key off his chest that, along with the thin rope that it hung from around his neck, had been hidden by his constant secretion of mucus. After shaking most of the slime off, he inserted the key into the gate lock, opened the gate barely wide enough for Cooper to slip through, puckered his big fish lips, and looked expectantly at Cooper.

  Go in the easy way, or have his fishfucker thugs force him in? No point in getting the shit beat out of him now. Not until he’d come up with a plan. He stepped through the open gate, into an empty cell that was barely big enough for him to lie down in.

  As Swamp Thing locked the gate, Cooper noticed that there wasn’t even a bucket for him to shit in. They were prepared to house prisoners, but not for any extended length of time. Cooper was proud of himself for coming up with this conclusion, but felt it didn’t bode well for him or his friends.

  Swamp Thing slipped the key rope back over his head, and it was almost immediately engulfed in mucus again.

  Cooper gave the bars a token shake. “What are you going to do with me? What have you done with my friends? Where am I supposed to shit?”

  Swamp Thing spit a stream of brownish-green slime-water at Cooper’s face. He and the others shared a laugh and started walking back toward the large chamber.

  The limit for how much shit he was willing to take from these assholes having been reached, Cooper employed his Barbarian Rage.

  “I’m really angry!”

  The flopping of the fish-men’s feet was drowned out by the rush of blood flowing through Cooper’s ears. His vision turned pink as his hands grew larger around the shrinking cell door.

  “UnnnnggggggGraah!” The hinges popped in rapid succession, and Cooper found himself standing outside of the cell, door in his hands, face-to-face with a wide-eyed Swamp Thing.

  “Wrrraaaahhh!” said Cooper as he shoved the bottom of the door into Swamp Thing’s chest, impaling him with two of the iron bars. If the scaly bastard survived being run through with a door, he surely didn’t fare so well after Cooper trampled over him, and the door, on his way to confront the rest of them.

  The first one was waiting for him, fist cocked, ready to deliver a slime-cannon to Cooper’s face. Cooper took a knee and ducked under the blow. He brought his own fist up to meet the fish-man’s nutsack. Or was it a fish-woman’s nutsack? Because there was no nutsack. His fist was just sort of... in there. Was he fisting a fish-chick? Maybe they had cloacas. Either way, it was awkward.

  Keep your head in the game. Don’t lose the Rage.

  Cooper’s opponent grabbed him by both ears and bit him on top of the head. Motherfucker had a lot of teeth in that big mouth.

  “Yeeeooooowww!” Cooper screamed as he removed his hand from the fish-person’s orifice. Rather than try to rip his head from its grasp outright, he rolled backward. It let go as it fell behind him, but now he was flanked, a situation he had been meaning to avoid.

  His violated opponent on the ground for the time being, Cooper focused his attention on the next one in line. It lunged at him, both webbed hands and mouth open. Cooper opened his own hand and palmed the creature in the face. He was packing a lot more slime than he’d expected. It was a mix of green and red and brown, like someone took a dump in the Christmas Jell-O.

  The fish-monster reeled back, not so much from the force of Cooper’s slap, he expected, but from the horror of what was seeping into its eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

  The immediate threat temporarily blinded by... whatever, Cooper turned back to find the creature he’d inadvertently entered was back up on its feet and crouched to spring.

  Even in his Rage and with the threat of impending death, Cooper wanted to avoid punching a girl in the face if he could. When it sprang at him, Cooper grabbed it by the throat and hurled it backward.

  “Learn how to wipe!”

  The creature howled in agony as the top bars of the cage door burst out of its belly and chest. It flapped its webbed appendages until they went limp.

  It was time to stop fucking around. His friends were still around here somewhere. Cooper turned around, once again only threatened on one side. His immediate threat was sobbing while trying to scrape the vag-shit out of its eyes.

  “FUCK YOU!” shouted Cooper. He kicked it in the gut, sending it flying into the fish-monster behind it.

  The last fish-person in line turned tail and ran, it’s webbed feet flopping loudly on the dirt floor of the tunnel. In hot pursuit, Cooper trampled the two on the ground, but one of them grabbed his ankle, tripping him. He hit the ground hard, then looked back to see the fish-monster without shit all over its face climbing up his left leg.

  Cooper didn’t have time for this shit. If he let one of these fuckers get away, they might raise an alarm, calling forth a whole army of watery assholes. With his right leg, he drove his foot down hard, relishing the crunch of face beneath his heel. His left leg was suddenly free of the creature’s grasp.

  His fears of the creature’s escape proved unfounded. These things couldn’t run for shit on land. Cooper caught up with the fleeing fish-person just as the opening of the tunnel came into view. He tackled it and punched it in the back of the head until it stopped moving.

  With the immediate threat neutralized, Cooper’s Barbarian Rage subsided, and his bulging muscles deflated back into flab. He felt for the creature’s pulse through the mucus on its neck. Its heart was still beating. He hadn’t killed it.

  Cooper had two choices. He could kill this thing dead and go look for his friends on his own, or he could keep it alive and beat some answers out of it. The interrogation option felt more ethical. He grabbed the fish-person by the foot and dragged it toward the pool outside of the tunnel.

  Barbarian Rage had sapped a lot of his energy, and Cooper was a sweaty exhausted mess by the time he made it to the pool.

  “No time to rest,” Cooper grumbled to himself. His friends needed him.

  Positioning the unconscious fish-monster face down at the edge of the pool, Cooper sat on its back and dunked its face in the water. After a few seconds, he pulled the head up by its slimy hair.

  The fish-person’s eyes were wide open.

  “Ready to talk, asshole?” said Cooper.

  “Wha wahh waaa whaa wa,” said the fish-monster.

  “English, motherfucker!” Cooper shoved the creature’s head back down into the water. After counting slowly to ten, he pulled the head back again. “Where the fuck are my friends?”

  “Whaa wa waa wha wa!”

  “I can’t understand your crazy fish language!” Cooper shoved its head underwater again. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississ–”

  “Cooper!” Tim’s voice came from behind him.

  Cooper turned around. “Tim?”

  Tim was naked and sopping wet. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I have a prisoner. I was interrogating him.”

  “It’s not going to do you any good,” said Tim. “He doesn’t speak the Common tongue. And besides that, he’s amphibious.”

  Cooper concentrated for a moment. “He’s neither right nor left handed?”

  “No, dumbass. That’s ambidextrous.”

  “He’s into dudes?”

  “Jesus, Cooper.” Tim’s voice was starting to take on that famil
iar ‘Please punch me in the throat’ tone. “He can breathe underwater.”

  “What?” Cooper pulled the creature’s head out of the water again. Its face betrayed less distress than Cooper thought appropriate, considering that he’d lost track of time while he was talking to Tim. “That’s cheating!”

  “Hey guys,” said Julian, emerging from the tunnel adjacent to the one Tim had come from. He had Ravenus with him and, for reasons beyond any Cooper could guess, also a horse. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t ‘What’s gong on?’ me,” said Tim. “Why the hell did you summon a horse down here?”

  “This is Gilbert,” said Julian. “He kicked open the cell door for me.”

  Tim nodded. “That was actually pretty resourceful. Well done.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “I picked the lock. As soon as those fishface fuckers started closing in on us, I grabbed my lock picks out of the bag that Cooper was stupid enough to throw at me.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Cooper. “How did either one of you two pansies fight your way through the guards?”

  Tim and Julian looked at each other, then back at Cooper.

  “I didn’t,” said Tim. “I waited for them to leave.”

  “Me too,” said Julian. “Those things are strong as hell, and we’re unarmed. What did you fight them with?”

  “The cell door.”

  Tim looked down at the fish-person pinned under Cooper. “Can you hurry up and kill this one so we can get the hell out of here?”

  “I’m not going to kill it. Can’t we just tie it up or something?”

  “With what? Our dicks?”

  “Certainly not yours.” The tip of Tim’s halfling dick barely poked out from his massive pube nest.

  “Fuck you,” said Tim.

  “Shut up,” said Julian.

  Tim gave him the finger. “Fuck you too.”

  “No, seriously. Shut up for a second. I think I hear something.” Julian cupped a hand next to one of his ridiculously long elf ears. “Two more,” he whispered. “Coming this way from the big tunnel.” Silently, he gestured for Cooper to travel counter-clockwise around the pool while he and Tim went the other way, and they’d meet on either side of the tunnel’s opening. He was much better at improvisational sign language than Cooper was.

  “What about this asshole?” asked Tim, pointing down to Cooper’s captive.

  Cooper gave it a solid punch in the back of the head. It hadn’t been struggling, but the sudden lack of tension in its muscles led Cooper to believe it was genuinely unconscious. He let the head drop back down into the water.

  “He’ll be okay, right? On account of him being an Albanian?”

  Julian squinted at him. “A what?”

  “Amphibian,” said Tim. “He’s fine. Let’s go.”

  Cooper didn’t worry about being too quiet. He figured no one could bitch at him as long as he made less noise than Julian’s goddamn horse. It was only when they had met on the other side of the pool at their respective sides of the large tunnel’s entrance, and everyone stopped moving, that Cooper was finally able to hear the flopping of wet webbed feet against hard-packed earth. This was Julian’s plan. Cooper looked to him for further instructions.

  Julian pointed at Cooper, then punched the air. He pointed at himself, then threw his hands forward in a gesture which suggested a magical spell way more powerful than any he could perform. He pointed at Tim, then shrugged. Tim responded with a jerking off gesture, equally generous with regard to what he had to work with.

  Julian’s horse seemed to be picking up on the increasing tension in the air. It pawed its hooves on the ground restlessly and grunted and snorted.

  “Okay, Tim,” said Julian. “Your job can be keeping Gilbert calm.”

  “Do I look like the fucking horse whisperer to you? Why don’t you just dispel it?”

  “That would be wasteful. Now be quiet and stroke his mane. He likes that.”

  “I’m only three goddamn feet tall. All I could stroke is his dick.”

  Cooper nodded to himself. It was a solid plan. Surely there was no sight more distracting than a naked midget jerking off a horse. The fish-men would be caught entirely off guard. He would put the first one in a choke hold while Julian – Wait... What the fuck were they doing now?

  Julian picked up Tim and placed him on the horse’s saddle. When he turned around again, Cooper waved for his attention.

  Julian mouthed the word, “What?”

  The flopping footsteps were getting closer. Cooper didn’t have time to carefully think through a pantomime. He did his best. He started with a shrug, then a jerking off gesture with his left hand, and finally a choke hold with his right arm.

  By the look on Julian’s face, he guessed his attempt at non-verbal communication had once again failed. He couldn’t blame Julian. Now that he considered it, he probably looked like he was trying to give a reach around to an unwilling bear.

  Ah well. At least the horse seemed to have calmed down.

  Flop. Flop. Flop. The footsteps were very close now.

  Julian nodded at Cooper. Cooper nodded back. Julian held up one finger, then two. With the third finger, he jumped in front of the tunnel entrance.

  “Magic Miss–” His spell was interrupted by a bucket to the face. Magic sparked and crackled ineffectively from his right hand.

  Cooper, only now realizing the significance of Julian’s counting, lunged for the fish-person who had bucketed Julian. He was intercepted mid-lunge with a bucket in his own face.

  “Son of a bitch, that hurts!” said Cooper. It couldn’t have done more than a couple Hit Points’ worth of damage to him, but goddamn. What kind of assholes fight exclusively with buckets?

  “Waa wa wha wa wa!” said the fish-person who had hit Julian.

  Tim whistled. “Hey! Shithead!”

  “Wha wa?” said the fish-person, turning around to face Tim just before receiving two hooves to the chest. With a simultaneous squelch and crunch, the creature flew backwards. The bucket in its left hand connected with Cooper’s ear.

  “Goddammit!” Cooper shouted.

  The standing fish-man held his buckets in front of him defensively. “Please! Wait!” he said in a croaky voice.

  “Give me that!” said Cooper, ripping one of the buckets out of the creature’s webbed hand. He pounded it over the head with the bucket repeatedly as he shouted, “How. Do. You. Fucking. Like. That. Asshole!”

  “Cooper!” cried Julian. “Stop!”

  Cooper stopped, not because Julian had told him to, but because his bucket was smashed to pieces.

  Julian forced himself between Cooper and the cowering fish-person.

  “Get out of the way,” said Cooper. “He’s still got one more bucket. I want to beat the shit out of him some more.”

  “Didn’t you hear him?” asked Julian. “He said ‘Please! Wait!’.”

  “Who gives a shit? You can’t call ‘Time Out’ in the middle of a fight.”

  “No, you dolt! Think for a minute. He speaks the... What do you call it in the game? The International Language?”

  Cooper scratched his head. “Love?”

  “The Common Tongue,” said Tim. “Good call, Julian.” He hopped down from the horse and stood before the creature. It was bleeding more than its bucket wounds should have accounted for, and in places he hadn’t even been hit. Its mucus coating was thin to the point of being nonexistent, and the skin underneath was pale and cracked. “Cooper, what the hell did you do to it?”

  “I didn’t do anything! Well, aside from beat it with a bucket, but –”

  “Waaa...teeerr,” the fish-person croaked weakly.

  “You’re thirsty?” asked Cooper.

  “My... skin. It’s too... dry.”

  “His skin needs moisture,” said Julian. “Like a beached whale. We need to get him to the pool.”

  “Not so fast,” said Tim. “First he can answer some questions. Who are you? And why di
d you lock us up?”

  “We are scum. We obey the master’s commands.”

  Julian pulled Tim and Cooper away from the creature. “This guy’s been through a lot. Maybe we should go easy on him.”

  “He tried to kill me with a bucket!” said Cooper.

  “I think you got adequate revenge for that. He’s obviously in some kind of abusive Theon Greyjoy Stockholm Syndrome type of relationship with his so-called master. He called himself scum.”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “That’s skum, spelled with a ‘k’.”

  “No it isn’t,” said Julian. “Where the hell did you go to school?”

  “It’s a type of creature, dumbass. It’s in the Monster Manual.”

  “Oh.” Julian frowned. “Well I still think we should put him in the water. What we’re doing here is torture. Aren’t we too good of people for that.”

  Cooper thought of his previous attempt at interrogation. “Maybe not too good for, but also not good at.”

  “Just pick him up and drop him in the pool before –”

  “We’re too late,” said Tim.

  Cooper and Julian looked back. The two skum were sprawled on the ground, their skin as dry and thin as paper. The one who had gotten kicked by the horse was missing its eyes, and Ravenus was perched on the head of the one who had spoken English.

  “Ravenus!” said Julian. “Don’t you dare!”

  Ravenus squawked and flapped his wings.

  “You don’t know that. He might only be unconscious.”

  Tim knelt down next to the dead-looking skum and slapped it lightly on the face. “Come on, man. Wake up! If Dave can bring his Hit Points to more than zero, he might be able to... Hey, where the hell is Dave?” He looked up at Cooper and Julian. “Oh shit. Did we forget about Dave?”

  Julian looked down at his feet. “I um... thought we were looking for him.”

  Cooper scratched his ass. “If I’m honest, I forgot about Dave.”

  “This is no use,” said Tim. “Cooper. Pick him up and throw him in the pool.”

  Cooper bent over and slid his forearms under the skum’s neck and knees, picking him up forklift style. The body was cool and surprisingly dry. He walked over to the edge of the pool and launched the body in a somersaulting arc into the middle of the pool, where it landed face down with a moderate splash.