How to Be an Adventurer- World of Gimmok

by Damien Hanson

  There was a quiet pause as the masked cleric/thief reached to and grabbed a hold of the pull string.

  “You know, I’d think that door would pull up, ya know?” whispered the half-orc to Tracy. “It’s almost as if—”

  Alarm bells rang through his head as his danger sense kicked in.

  “Stoooo—”

  The door flew open fast and hard, with something shiny slapping down onto the elven cleric beneath.

  “Ahh!” screamed Wex.

  “Ahh!” screamed Svein, even harder.

  “What is that!” shouted Carric.

  A skeleton had landed, feet first, onto the shoulders of Wex, knocking the masked cleric to the floor. It did not crackle or cackle, though, as such things are often suspected of doing and have been witnessed as having done. Indeed, its body seemed shiny and smooth, perhaps even oiled. And it looked to be made of gold.

  “Gold!” a surprised and delighted Bern practically squealed. “That could feed an orphanage for a week. And buy me some nice company besides!”

  “It’s heavy. Oh gods, it’s heavy!” Wex wailed.

  Yenrab looked at Wex and then stepped forward, striking while the iron was hot. Slash and slap, his one axe struck and stuck into a rib, the other bashing the side of its skull with the side of the bladed head. A bit of gold broke off, revealing it to be a light covering, effective only to the initial assault. It reacted, swinging a yellow metallic arm at the barbarian’s face, its fingers sharp like claws. Yenrab bent backward, and it narrowly missed him, scything through the air over his face.

  Bern rolled under and to the side, slashing twice at the thing’s leg from a crouch behind it, and Svein screamed with hatred as he charged the graveyard cretin in a sort of forced bravado. Gold chipped and broke, falling off here and there and allowing the adventurers to dig into the bone underneath, cracking it to powder.

  From afar, Carric had his crossbow expertly propped over one arm, making precision shots into the gaps created by the melee fighters. And Tracy blasted it with sizzling arcs of arcane energy.

  It all happened in just a few moments, though times like these tend to slow down and feel like an eternity. The combined attack ended when the creature’s head imploded under the blows, putting the undead creature to a final rest.

  The adventurers paused to gain their breath.

  “That was, well, easy!” Carric Smith exclaimed, a bit winded.

  “Yeah, good job there, friend Carric,” smiled Tracy, clapping hir hand onto his shoulder. “Good job, everybody!”

  They all smiled at each other, except for Wex who was still lying there under the weight of the broken skeleton.

  “It’s great that we’re getting along. And it gives me the smiles,” Yenrab Atsittab said to them with his arms wide and his face expressive. “But, really, this door doesn’t close, and so I think, you know, that maybe we need to get moving.”

  “Ugh. Your mom needs to get moving,” Wex groaned, jokily, from his place beneath the defeated monster.

  Yenrab considered his strange observation.

  “My mom’s dead. If she got moving, things wouldn’t be good.”

  “Ugh. Uh. Your mom is good, hee hee,” the cleric answered, far from lucid. His eyes no longer faced in the same direction.

  “Someone sing some magical sense into Wex,” Yenrab ordered.

  Jenn Eric jumped to his feet, doing a jig accompanied by a light tune on his lute. When he finished, the cleric stood up, looking quite refreshed.

  “Well, that’s that, then,” Tracy observed, the followed with the question. “But what are we going to do next?”

  His gaze was at that opening in the ceiling, and the idea of it sent shivers through them all.

  ***

  The party waited at the opening, letting the minutes tick by.

  “I don’t think this is working,” observed Tracy with plain-faced innocence. “In fact, I think this might be a stupid idea.”

  “Why is it a stupid idea, Tracy?” Carric grumped, feeling more and more put upon by the party. “We wait for something to fall in, and we kill it. Do you want to jump on up there and go looking for destiny?”

  Yenrab intervened, “Well, guys, we might have to. Ya know, I’m not looking forward to it, but we really can’t stay here forever.”

  “How about just a couple of days?” Jenn Eric Enpeasea in a voice laced with hope.

  “Ha. No. If we make destiny come to get us, things are going to be a lot worse I imagine,” the half-human barbarian mused. “No, we have to move forward.”

  “We are going to need the element of surprise, and a good deal more intelligence, before we do that,” Svein advised.

  “Wuss,” Wex responded.

  “I say we make Wex do it since he is so good at everything,” Carric said with a scowl.

  “Bros and Tracy, let me handle this. I’ve got skills,” Bern said with extreme confidence. His eyes gleamed in excitement at the challenge that lay ahead.

  “Yeah. Alright, let’s let Bern sneak on up and out so we can know what we are dealing with,” Yenrab decided, the others murmuring or otherwise showing assent with his words. Bern gave them a half-cocked grin and then faded into seriousness as he crept to the aperture.

  The whole party was tense, watching him move up on what could well be the thing the god of the goblins had warned them away from.

  The assassin adjusted his midnight-blue cloak this way and that to give himself the best advantage of being unseen. The act took some time, but it was wonderful to watch. Like a magic show, the man was there one moment, and then the next, he was gone. And yet, look out the side of your eye, strain hard, and imagine, and yes, he was and had been there the whole time. Wex had skills, to be sure, but Bern Sandros had mastery.

  His concealed body popped halfway out of the hatch hole, creeping forward in a sure and steady way. His hood was draped over his face, but a series of small holes allowed him to see this way or that without crinkling the fabric when he turned his head. The rogue paused once out of the hatchway and scanned the place, staying still as he did so.

  Dawn had arrived outside, and it pushed to this place through various cracks and deficiencies, as well as the wanted windows and openings of this once-grand building. Here and there, he saw rot and ruin. Once this place was home to wooden scaffolding, stairs, and planks that led to the light at its top. But now most of it was dust and rubble, with a solid stone shell. There were stairs that were missing here and there and that showed great weakness in their existence. A tremendous space gaped at him between the one section of steps and the other starting at the fourth floor. Beyond that, there was nothing. It was just rotted chaos, left now without purpose.

  The rogue crept to the edge of the tower.

  There was a door here. One bathed in the triangular shadows of tower decay.

  Yeah, mate, I’m staying well away from that, he thought to himself as he continued to probe the area.

  Moving prone, he performed a very slow but methodical low crawl to the wall of this circular place. It seemed to take forever, though he most probably accomplished the goal in less than five spikes of the candle.

  Reaching his place, he turned over, and sat with his back to the wall.

  Alright. I’m here. I better let them know, he thought.

  Bern Sandros performed one more very methodical scan and then whistled.

  The party looked at one another.

  “What’s in the seven hells is that supposed to mean?” asked Svein. “Did we agree on any sort of whistling signal?”

  “Maybe he’s trying to use bard magic. I bet he’d make a better bard than Carric here,” Wex ribbed.

  Carric’s eyes narrowed in for the kill. “He’s certainly a better thief than you are, mister. I was this close to being a nasty hag’s dinner. Where did you learn your thieving skills? On your knees in that cage begging for your life? Why are you wearing a mask? Because your god does not want to have to face having to admit that you are an adhe
rent?” Carric retorted.

  Wex opened his mouth, voiceless for the first time, burned well beyond what he was used to.

  “I, uhm, ur, wow, Carric! When you get warmed up, you get interesting!”

  Carric smiled. “I do what I can.”

  Bern whistled more urgently. The party continued to ignore him to debate amongst themselves the meaning of his new unrehearsed signal.

  “Maybe he is trying to hide himself from danger by using bird songs and recreating the sounds of the forest? I bet I could instruct him in the basics in just a week or two under the open sky.” Yenrab grinned, thinking of the joy he got in teaching others.

  Tracy offered his own theory. “In Elfsmeet, there exists the stout engle, whose mating call sounds very much like the sound that this human is now making with his mouth. I suggest that, maybe, he has met a mate or is in heat and looking for one?”

  “Bwahahaha!” the rest of the group laughed, though they kept it somewhat quiet.

  “I am a human, Tracy, and I have never heard a human whistle for a mate,” Svein said with solid assurance.

  Everyone else stared at him in surprise.

  “Bro, I’m an elf, and I know that humans do that,” Wex said matter-of-factly.

  “Yeah, when I’m more woman than man, I definitely get whistled at by humans,” Tracy confided. “Usually at night when everyone is drinking. Or during the day when everyone is not drinking. Or when I’m walking. Or sitting. Or standing. Or—huh. Human males seem to be in heat quite often. Is that why they often tell me that smiling makes me pretty? Was that not a compliment?”

  “Tracy, what about when you are a man? Do you whistle?” Carric was always looking to expand his worldly knowledge.

  In the distance, the whistling stopped. The party didn’t even notice.

  “Well, I don’t, but I guess I could. Should I also tell women that they would look prettier if they smiled?”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Carric said. “In Icegard, women are likely to stab you in the balls if you whistle, make false compliments, or grope them while in your cups. I once saw an outlander get kneed in the balls and have his lips cut off for his whistle. She claimed afterward that she thought he was turning into a werewolf. Rough place, my homeland.”

  “Was he?” Yenrab asked.

  “Was he what?”

  “Was he turning into a werewolf?”

  “What? No, of course not!”

  “In my tribe, men and women show each other that they like each other in many, many ways,” Yenrab told them. “We don’t really have a standard way. I guess guys sometimes whistle. But the ladies do it right back.”

  Svein butted back in, “Guys, I really just can’t understand it. I expect one would lose their lips to frostbite were they to constantly whistle at women rather than court them with flowers, gifts, poetry, a well-groomed presence, and bundles of heartfelt poetry.”

  The party was surprised again.

  “I may well need to visit your homeland, Svein,” Tracy answered wistfully. And then they were all interrupted from above, each of them jumping a bit as they realized that none of them had paid attention to keeping guard.

  “Hey, ya bunch of twats.”

  Bern Sandros was not in a good mood.

  “Today, I’m a cock,” Tracy interrupted.

  “Whatever. What in the seven hells? I’ve been signaling you for at least ten minutes!” the assassin reprimanded them.

  “And then I had to crawl all the way back here to tell you idiots that, what, it’s time to come up? I could have been killed! What are you doing?” Bern questioned and groused, looking at each of them with disapproval.

  “Oh, ya know, just trying to take a guess at what you meant by whistling. And then one thing led to another, and then, well, you came on over and now we’re talking,” Yenrab replied with a grin and a bit of amusement.

  “Yeah. Right. Okay. Well,” Bern said in an annoyed voice, “I am going to crawl back out there, watching myself the entire time. And when I whistle, that means for the love of the gods above, please crawl on out here.”

  “What if I don’t love the gods, or don’t even believe in them,” Tracy added, joining in on the fun.

  “Then you just stay here and live your life forever in the basement of a monster-infested room.” Bern paused. “Do you really not believe in the gods?”

  “Oh, I know they exist,” Tracy replied with a confident smile. “And Coraellon has given me a powerful blessing by which to enjoy this world. But he also asks that we do and be judged by our own deeds and not waste the gifts he gives us. I believe in the gods but not as much as I believe in myself.”

  “Interesting answer,” Carric replied. “Maybe we do make our own destiny after all.”

  Chapter 33: Arachnophobia

  When Bern whistled this time, the party was prepared and ready to go. First came Wex, moving in that manner common to thieves, shifty and often undetectable as he came forth from below. He was followed by Yenrab, who as large as he was, was also a man of the forest and tundra—one who knew how to tread softly and how to camouflage well in forest surroundings. He wasn’t all that great in urban places or within buildings, but he still had some ideas on how to carry himself. Svein followed him, with a bit of natural balance that he had perfected in ambushes upon pirates and the living dead back home on the frosty beaches of Corster. And following him was Carric, a man who was a jack of all trades but a master of few. He had learned how to crouch and tiptoe in Stealth 101 back in Bard College, and some of the lessons had stuck. Jenn Eric and Tracy were still waiting their turn when the inevitable occurred.

  It began as a tickle. A wisp of something had made its way through the air, spiraling and flying free, and then it had been sucked up and into the nostrils of the bard. Lodged there in his naval cavity, it made things feel a bit unpleasant.

  He could feel it coming. His head arched back, and he rolled his tongue about in desperation, trying to head it off before it could escape.

  “Ahchoo!” Carric sneezed.

  Everyone froze.

  A danger-ridden whistle sounded from where Bern lay in wait.

  A spider the size of a lion swung past on a sticky cord of web, appearing from somewhere above. It passed by the bard with no sound, getting so close that the ichor of its poison glopped down upon him.

  “Eww!” exclaimed Tracy from behind.

  Bern whistled harder and then simply yelled, “This is bad, mates! Really bad! Back down the hole!” He was looking up in horror. The others instinctively followed his gaze.

  From above, a great deal of the things were slamming down at great speed. They were launching themselves at the adventurers, each triangulating position with expertise before swinging out on lines of web. They spun web as they dropped, keeping themselves attached to some nest way above in the rafters.

  One smashed hard into Yenrab’s chest.

  “Too late to run,” the barbarian screamed, before growling and grunting to work himself into a battle frenzy. He wrapped his arms around the spider, which had bit into him and was even now injecting him with a burning fluid. Feeling the boundaries of its hairy and chitin-like form well within his grasp, he squeezed into himself as hard as he could. Pieces snapped and popped. In the half-orc’s almost berserk mind, the thing squealed and cried. The thought pleased him.

  Yenrab yelled into the sky as he dropped the crushed thing lifeless to the ground in front of him.

  “Yarghash! Gods and demons!”

  The rest of the spiders reacted to this epic presence by pulling back. The party bobbed and weaved, making their way back through the trap door and under the room. Yenrab was the last, calming himself down a bit from the edge of frenzy.

  Not yet, man, Yenrab thought. I’ve gotta save that for when we come back out.

  “This is not going to be easy,” remarked Svein, his face well sober, as they reassembled.

  “Yeah. It is going to be epic. An epic. My epic!” Carric sa
id with tremendous enthusiasm as if he was in a slight panic.

  “It’s going to be a mess is what it is going to be with spiders falling all over us,” Bern said, putting his two coppers in.

  With sudden bravery, Wex added, “I’m ready to go all berserk and smash them with my barbarian might! I ain’t no music-strumming, wimpy bard.”

  Yenrab responded with uncharacteristic reprimand, “Shut it, Wex. I like you, but right now, we all need to concentrate and think. What in the seven hells are we going to do about this? Poisonous spiders, and a lot of them, that also happen to be really big and can practically fly.”

  “I could throw some spells and hope for a surge?” Tracy suggested.

  They all looked at him with a bit of suspicion.

  “What the heck is a surge?” asked Carric, unfamiliar with what a wild mage was. It wasn’t his fault, really, since they were much rarer than any one might expect. The Mage College and other universities generally trained people out of such and into more productive and safer fields.

  “Oh, well, it is when I decide to weave extra magic into my spell to make it better,” Tracy informed them.

  “And?” Carric asked, knowing hir more and more as their comradery grew.

  “And,” said the sorcerer with a giggle, “it might backfire and kill us all.”

  “Next!” sounded Svein immediately, already a bit tired of how dysfunctional this party seemed as compared to the heroes of lore.

  “Guys, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to get myself angry, go run up those stairs as fast and as hard as I can, while screaming and yelling, and get them all after me,” the half-orc strategized. “Then you all pop out of the hole and just start blasting. Missile weapons at first, but be ready to just drop them and switch to blades as soon as necessary. And just ignore me. When I’m berserkergang, I’m a bit out of it.”

  “Yenrab, you can go berserk? But you are such a nice guy!” Tracy put in.

  “Yeah, yeah, ya know, I’m nice until someone messes with my friends,” the barbarian stated with grim resolution written all over his face. “Let’s do this.”