Critical Failures VI (Caverns and Creatures Book 6)

by Robert Bevan

  When he came out of his trance, he heard heavy fast-paced breathing. He was about to whisper to Stacy again, but she snored again, and it came from an entirely different direction that they strange breathing.

  Maybe he'd been wrong about what had happened last night after he passed out. He was suddenly a lot more curious as to where he currently was, and who he was currently with. He felt around on the ground until he found a chipped piece of stone large enough to enchant. Before he could talk himself out of doing so, for there was no guarantee that seeing his surroundings would better his situation, he blurted out, “Light!”

  Vertical steel bars reflected the stone's light. Julian and Stacy were in a five-foot by ten-foot cell. Stacy was on the other side of their cell, curled up asleep in the corner. In the cell across from theirs, a young malnourished-looking dwarf girl was also asleep. In the aisle between the two rows of cells, a young dwarf boy who Julian recognized as Orgol and Grella's son, Rorrick, had his pants around his ankles and his dick in his hand, furiously jacking it off while staring at Stacy. It was a lot to take in all at once, especially when there was only a split-second before everything went all to hell.

  “Huh! Wuh! Hoo!” said Rorrick, stepping back suddenly and tripping backwards over his pants. He landed hard on his back with his dick still in his hand.

  The dwarf girl opened her eyes, saw Rorrick lying almost face-to-face with her on the other side of the bars, and screamed.

  Stacy yawned like a lion as she sat up. “What's going on in – Oh my god!”

  Rorrick removed his hand from his dick, and frantically fiddled with a gold ring on his chubby dwarf finger until he finally slipped it off. When he slipped it back on again, he disappeared.

  Julian's heart skipped a beat. He patted his pocket, felt something small, hard, and round, and sighed with relief. But the thing in his pocket didn't seem to have a hole in it. In a panic, he reached in and pulled out a silver coin. It was the coin that Darton had thrown at him in the restaurant.

  “Hey!” said Julian, looking at the space where Rorrick had just been. “That's my ring!” He listened for sounds of Rorrick getting up and fleeing the scene, but all he heard was more panting. Was he still trying to finish the job? Julian remembered being a teenager. He likely wouldn't ever have gotten himself into these sorts of circumstances, but once in them he'd probably have done the same thing. He pointed at the panting noise. “Web!”

  The pinpoint accuracy hadn't really been necessary. Web was a pretty wide-reaching spell.

  “By the gods!” said the unnaturally skinny dwarf girl. “Please tell me that was a Web spell.”

  Julian cringed at what she must have assumed the alternative to be. “Don't worry! It was!”

  “Excuse me,” said Stacy. “Can someone please tell me what's going on here?”

  “Well, I don't know why we're locked in cells,” said Julian. “But our hosts' son, Rorrick, stole my ring for his sneaking-out-of-the-house wanking sessions.”

  Stacy shook her head. “That poor girl.”

  Julian cleared his throat. “Actually, when I caught him, he was looking at you.”

  “Please,” pleaded Rorrick, still invisible and, judging by the rhythm of moving web, still jacking it. “Don't tell Mother I was pleasuring myself to the cattle.” Rorrick had clearly not taken many ranks in Diplomacy.

  “Who the fuck are you calling cattle, runt?” Stacy's glare lessened in intensity as she turned to Julian. “Oh yeah, that reminds me. We're in cages because this is a village of cannibals.”

  “What?” Julian thought back to the night before. “So last night, that meat we were eating. Was it...”

  “You were probably eating goat,” said the dwarf girl as she groped in the webs through the bars of her cell. “They don't get enough visitors to feed their own demand, and they don't see you as real people.” She caught a hold of part of Rorrick, as evidenced by his yelp, then slammed it repeatedly on the hard stone floor until he stopped making noise and the webs near where Julian guessed his crotch was stopped moving. She then reached down that way and picked up talking where she'd left off. “You're lower than a dwarf in their eyes, but higher than what they refer to as the baser animals. In other words, you're quality meat, fit for a dwarf.”

  Rorrick appeared, unconscious or dead with his head bleeding on the floor and his dick in his hand. Julian was impressed with his dedication to complete the task.

  The dwarf girl was holding his ring.

  Stacy's eyes went wide. She frantically patted her pockets, then hung her head and kicked the cell bars. She didn't need to say it. They'd taken the die.

  “I'm sorry,” said Julian to the dwarf girl. “We haven't been properly introduced. I'm Julian. This is Stacy. And you are...”

  “My name is Magra. I wandered away from my tribe, got lost in the mountains, and stumbled into this village. Do you have any food?”

  “Sorry,” said Stacy. “We didn't have time to prepare before we started traveling. They don't feed you in here?”

  “They've offered me human, halfling, and half-elf. They say it's a rite of passage, so I may be deemed fit to be a member of the village. I've refused so far. If I hold out for one more week, they say they'll feed me to Old Edna. I guess she's their leader or something?”

  “Actually, she's a dire crocodile they keep in a moat on the southern border of the village,” said Julian. “Could we maybe talk about all this later? We've got one of theirs lying here, perhaps dead, with his dick in his hand. If we don't figure out a way to get out of her, we'll all be fed to Old Edna.”

  “I've got an idea,” said Stacy. “Magra, put on that ring.”

  Julian felt a reminder was in order. “That's my ring!”

  “Shut up, Julian.”

  “I want it back later.”

  Magra slipped on the ring and disappeared. A second later, something clunked against the bars of her cell.

  Stacy rolled her eyes. “It makes you invisible, dear. Not incorporeal.”

  “Then what good is it?” said Magra.

  “Next time someone comes in here, we'll say that Rorrick was... pleasuring himself... to you, and you just went totally apeshit on him.”

  “Totally apeshit?”

  “That's right. Then you grabbed something from his pocket and used it to pick the lock and escaped. When they open the cell door, you jump them for real.”

  Julian nodded. “Impressive. We're literally spelling out exactly how we're going to escape in order to trick them into helping us do it.”

  “There's just one problem,” said Magra.

  Julian and Stacy looked at her, or at least in her general direction.

  “What's that?” asked Stacy.

  “Why are they going to open the cell door?”

  Julian frowned. That was a good point.

  “Rifle through his pockets,” said Stacy. “Maybe you can find something that will look like a clue they'd want to investigate, or –”

  A door creaked from above, letting some natural light in from the stairwell outside the kennels.

  Julian turned to Stacy.

  She shrugged. “Just go with the plan we've got.”

  “What's this? Why's it so bright down here?” It was Orgol's voice. The door above closed, blocking out the early morning light in the stairwell.

  Julian thought it might have been a good idea to cover his enchanted chip of stone, but it was too late now. He heard Orgol's heavy erratic footsteps on the stairs, but only saw a strange shimmer when Orgol should have been emerging into the room.

  “Mercy of the gods!” The barely visible shimmering figure swatted at the decaying strands of webbing between the cells. “What is all of this – Rorrick!”

  It was Diplomacy time. Julian cleared his throat. “Sir, we're very sorry for your –”

  “Shut up, elf!” shouted Orgol, becoming partly visible as he lowered the hood of Stacy's Cloak of Elvenkind. “What happened here?”

  That was unnecessari
ly confusing. Was Julian supposed to shut up or answer the question.

  “I'll tell you what happened,” Stacy snapped at him. “He came down here and pulled his little dwarf sausage out at the young woman you had locked in there. Then she beat the shit out of him, grabbed his keys, and let herself out.”

  “Shut your lying whore mouth, human. Rorrick doesn't have the keys.” He pulled a key ring off his belt to show her. “Only I –” His hand punched between the cell bars like it had a mind of its own, and the rest of him followed.

  Magra was flickering back into visibility, both of her hands gripped firmly on Orgol's wrist. She could have gone for the keys, but she clearly wanted more than just to escape. When Orgol's face slammed into the bars, she bit down hard on his forearm.

  Orgol screamed as his blood first trickled, then flowed down Magra's chin and puddled on the floor. The keys dropped by her feet, but she only bit down more ferociously. Finally, she tore away a horrifically large chunk of skin and muscle, then spat out what wasn't still dangling from his arm.

  “There, I've tried it,” she said, her mouth dripping with blood. She spat out as much as she could. “I'm afraid it's still not to my liking.”

  Orgol moaned, dropped to his knees, and pissed himself.

  Stacy sighed. “I wouldn't mind if at least some of my cloak wasn't soaked with liquid Orgol.”

  Julian had what he deemed more pressing concerns. “If he keeps moaning like that, someone might hear him.”

  Despite her current physical state, Magra pushed and pulled Orgol's arm, repeatedly slamming his head into the bars until he stopped moaning, or moving, or probably breathing. Julian couldn't blame her. He had no idea how he'd handle prolonged starvation, and hoped he'd never have to find out, but damn she was intense.

  When she was satisfied that Orgol's voluntary noises would be quieter than the noise of his head repeatedly banging against the steel bars of her cell, or perhaps when it just ceased being enjoyable for her, Magra let him collapse onto the floor. She picked up the key ring and unlocked her cell door. Then she gave Julian a good hard look in the eye. It was unsettling not only because her face was still dripping with fresh murder blood, but also because Julian, until now, had taken for granted that she was going to spring them from their cell as well.

  “I need to keep this ring,” she said.

  “Fuckin' A!” Julian blurted out. It's not what he normally would have went with, but he was so overwhelmed with relief about her stipulation that it just came out. “I mean, of course. I wouldn't dream of taking it back from you after what you've been through.”

  She spent a second, which felt like a month, thinking it over further, then tossed the keyring to him.

  Julian gratefully unlocked the door to their cell and pocketed the keys. It wasn't much, but any effort he could put forth to make it more difficult to lock people in cages to be eaten was worth putting forth.

  Careful to step around blood and pee, Stacy relieved Orgol of her Cloak of Elvenkind, then patted him down. “Fuck,” she said. “The die isn't on him.”

  “It must be back at the house.” Julian turned to Magra, who had apparently turned invisible again. “Magra, would it be okay if we borrowed that ring just one more time before –”

  The door at the top of the stairs creaked open.

  “Shit!” whispered Stacy. “Somebody else is coming. What do we do?”

  Julian looked around frantically trying to think of a plan in the five seconds it would take for someone to descend the stairs. “You and I hide on either side of the doorway. Magra can just hang out here. As soon as they step through, we all jump them.”

  Stacy nodded. “Good plan.”

  Magra made no indication that she understood the plan. But as plans go, it was a pretty simple one, and Julian was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Julian and Stacy waited in their positions for five seconds, then ten, then fifteen. Around twenty seconds in, Julian found it odd that he couldn't even hear footsteps.

  “Magra?” said Stacy, not bothering to keep her voice down.

  Julian glared at her and pressed his finger against his lips.

  “She's not here. The door opening wasn't someone coming in. It was Magra leaving. She ditched us.”

  “Ah, well.” Julian had made peace with losing his ring. With all Magra had been through, he would have let her keep it even if she wasn't holding the threat of letting a bunch of dwarves eat him over his head. “Good for her. I hope she finds her fam–”

  A faint scream came from outside, then cut off.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Julian.

  Stacy nodded. “Sounds like Grella.” She pulled up her hood and turned almost invisible, then blurred past Julian and through the doorway.

  Julian followed her up the stairs wishing he wasn't the only clearly visible escaped convict running around this village. But it was still early, and he couldn't think of much to do in a village of cannibalistic dwarves that would necessitate getting out of bed before the sun had properly risen.

  Fortunately, it was only a short sprint across the grass from the root cellar prison to the house, and he didn't see anyone wandering around outside.

  The back door was open, and Julian walked in on a grisly scene in the kitchen. Grella lay dead on the floor with a hatchet still lodged in her skull and a still-expanding pool of blood spilling under it.

  Stacy pulled down her hood and became visible.

  “Did you...” Julian dared not finish.

  Stacy shook her head and pointed to sticky red footprints leading toward the open front door. “Looks like Magra had one last errand to run before she got the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Mumma?” called one of the younger dwarflings from the other room. “I had a bad dream. I heard someone screaming.”

  “You take care of this,” said Stacy. “I'll look for the die.”

  “What? How do I... Shit!” Julian jumped into the doorway just in time to block the tiny dwarf girl from entering the kitchen. He smiled down at her nervously. “Hello.”

  “You're not Mumma.”

  “That's true.” Come on, Diplomacy. You can do better than that.

  “Where's Mumma.”

  “She's, um...”

  “Shit!” said Stacy from another room.

  Julian sighed. “That's right. Mumma's taking a shit. Now run along back to bed.”

  The little girl frowned. “But I'm thirsty.”

  “Stay right here.” Julian glanced back behind him. The pitcher of sweetmilk was still on the table, along with a nearly empty bottle of that NyQuil-like liquor they'd used to knock out him and Stacy. He grabbed the one bowl remaining on the table, presumably the one Orgol had been drinking from, as it still had some residual brown liquid in it. Hopefully it would be enough to put this kid down until noon.

  After filling the bowl with sweetmilk, he handed it down to the little girl. She gulped it back, then returned it to him.

  “Okay,” said Julian. “Back to bed now.”

  “But I need to tinkle.”

  “I told you, Mumma is in there right now. She could be a while. Can't you hold it until you wake up later.”

  The girl crossed her legs and squirmed. “No!”

  “Whoa, kid. Keep your voice down. You don't want to wake everyone up.” Julian thought for a moment, then realized the answer was right there in his hand. He gulped back the pint's worth of sweetmilk that was left in the pitcher, then handed it down to her. “Here. Tinkle in this.”

  She took the pitcher with both hands, looked doubtfully into it, then decided it would have to do and retreated back into her room.

  Julian sighed.

  “I found it!” said Stacy, right behind him, nearly causing him to have a mid-sigh heart attack. “Ready to go?”

  “What about this?” Julian gestured at the dead body on the floor.

  Stacy looked down. “Good idea.” She grabbed the hatchet by the handle and yanked it out of Grella's h
ead. “Can't hurt to have one more weapon. At least we know it works, right?”

  “Jesus, Stacy! I meant what about the body on the floor, and all of this blood? What's going to happen when the kids wake up and see their dead mother?”

  “I don't know. Maybe they'll grow up to be murderers or cannibals or something. Oh, wait. I forgot. They were already headed down that road anyway.”

  “Come on. We can't just –”

  “There's a lot we can't do, Julian. We can't bring her back to life. We can't clean this mess up and bury the body before the village wakes up. And we can't afford to waste any more time before they send a hunting party after us who know their way around these mountains a hell of a lot better than we do. We need to get as long a head start as we can before –”

  “Grella!” said an older woman's voice from outside. “I brought you some of those fried human finger fillets you're always going on –”

  The kindly neighbor stopped in the doorway and dropped her tray of fried human finger snacks. She looked up from Grella's dead body to the bloody hatchet in Stacy's hand.

  Stacy quickly hid the hatchet behind her back. “This isn't what it looks like.”

  The old woman ran away, as much as an old dwarf woman can be said to run, screaming, “Help! Help! The beasts have mauled Grella!”

  “Mauled?” said Stacy. “Like I'm a bear or something? How racist do you have to be to not even credit me with murder?”

  Julian wished he'd prepared a Sleep spell to buy them some more time, but he had to make do with what he had. “Horse!” After he and Stacy climbed on, he slapped the reins and guided the horse out of the village and into the rocky mountain wilderness beyond it. The rising sun was peeking up from between two peaks at his two o'clock. They were traveling east and slightly north, the route they'd take if they wanted to go back to Cardinia. He didn't know if that was what Stacy wanted to do, but they could discuss the matter once they weren't being hunted by a mob of angry dwarves.

  Chapter 44

  Katherine sat on Nightwind's rear deck, staring at the line she had in the water. It was more like rope than the modern fishing line she was used to, easy to see even in the early morning darkness. Fish back in the day must have been dumb as shit.