How to Be an Adventurer- World of Gimmok

by Damien Hanson

  “Mebbe, mask are bad for berry. Me help!”

  The barbarian made to tear off his mask, but from there, two things occurred. One, the vine cried for help. Tracy had begun to wither and destroy its body, and its psionic scream blasted into its new slaves/seed repositories. Carric wailed in anger and grief. Jenn Eric twitched a bit from the ground, but otherwise remained quite out of it, conscious but barely so. And Yenrab, well, he responded in an instant, dropping the cleric and starting to bound toward the unfazed sorcerer, who saw him coming but was not at all alarmed. He looked at the charging man, and then looked to the right of him.

  The second thing to happen was a bullet train called Bern Sandros. The rogue slammed into Yenrab hard with a slapping sound, knocking him off his feet and into the wall.

  “You’ve been Berned, Yenrab!” the human exclaimed before the half-orc slugged him in the face.

  “Bern is want fruit eat! Yes!” the half-orc screamed, angry and violent.

  “I want my braai, bro,” the assassin responded, kicking him hard in the crotch. Though blood flowed scarlet from his nose and down his chin, the man was well ready to brave this fight with the biggest and most massive being he’d ever encountered.

  As the barbarian bowed in response to his sudden possible lack of future children, Bern kneed him in the face. As Yenrab elevated his torso in response to being kneed in the face, Bern kicked him in the balls again.

  “I can do this all day, bro!” Bern said, lightly hopping out of punch distance.

  Yenrab roared, raging, and he charged. And then, again, the vines, more than half dead now, screamed for help. He fell, gripping his head between his hands and bawling in pain and loss.

  “Gaaaaaaa! Out! Need out! Now!”

  Bern leaped upon him, binding him again and again as the barbarian screamed in agony, and as the plant died, until, finally, he was out of rope.

  “Wex, I’ve got him!”

  “Good,” the battered elf rasped, his neck already turning black and blue from the trauma that Yenrab had inflicted upon him. “Both of you hold them together as I check the woods. I hope to the gods that there is something here to help save them. If not, we just have to hope they can kill the seeds on their own!”

  ***

  Wex was a wood elf. One of those many of his race who refused to bow to the whims of some king or ruler and, instead, remained outside of the peripheries of modern civilizations. They chose to live a life in which they were the masters of themselves. These elves collected into small tribes all over the Reaches and sometimes even within the vast mountain ranges. They couldn’t be described as barbarians, like some of their rougher kin, for they stayed completely away from the world nations as often as was feasible, generally fleeing instead of fighting and migrating further and further away as the lands became more and more settled. And, like Wex, they sometimes succumbed and stopped running away, joining into the world that their fathers and forefathers had so reviled, or else fought and ultimately lost their matches to the resources of empires.

  Because of this illustrious heritage, Wex, a man who hailed from a tribe of the Eastern Reaches, was well-schooled about the life of these particular woodlands. He could remember going on long walks with his father, the man willowy and soft-spoken but so full of life before settlers had taken him. His father taught him about everything that lived, moving or unmoving, in the trees and occasional clearings that made up their world. He showed a young Wex what the moss on the side of trees meant and whether the arc of a bird’s flight meant a change in the weather or the coming of some horrendous danger. He learned to track, hunt, and hide, his lessons taught haphazardly here and there through the century of his youth as the group moved place to place throughout that wilderness they called home.

  His father, so long-lived and robust to his end, had been amazingly wise and quite intelligent. He had died before he could teach all he knew, if indeed, that had ever been a possibility. But he had given the child a well-planned head start for life in the biosphere. Everything was about balance, the man had told him. Even the death of patriarchs, he whispered, as blood-flecked lips spat their life out onto the crisp and eternal snow of winter about them. For everything that harmed someone, there was something in the forest that helped someone. The gods made the world, but the forest made itself, and that land always sought a balance of harmony. Wex had an evil to cure and he knew that the forest would provide it. He just had to find it, and quickly.

  The man desperately clawed through soil in search of the counter, the forest’s answer to such an obvious horror. There were a couple of answers, really, if his sharp eyes could spot them in time. The besch root was a riot when soaked with alcohol, as it would cause amazing flashes of light and song to inundate the mind, but without such libations, it acted as quite the antitoxin. Still, the telltale signs were nonexistent. There was not a root to be found. Nor were there any petaled liza weed, whose gigglish smoke also allowed for a great relaxation that often simply killed off the monstrous seed, which relied upon a strong nervous system to maintain control and also to use the host body to promote itself. But, unsurprisingly, there was nothing. The weed was now a bit out of season. Measuring the ticks in his head, Wex stood straight up and sighed. He had failed in his quick and frantic search, and it was now certainly a matter exclusive to the men lying there and the gods that oversaw them. He returned to the party with a face full of shock and dismay.

  “There’s nothing, mate. Nothing that I could find, and looking longer isn’t going to help these fine folks.”

  “What can we do, Wex?” Bern asked, addressing the masked face with concern.

  “All we can do now is wait.”

  Bern took in a deep breath in response. Wex nodded, and lapsed back into memories of things he had, for so long now, tried to forget.

  ***

  “Wex, what is this?” said the lean and dexterous wood elf, looking upon his son in expectance.

  “That is david moss,” said Wex, now shorter, thinner, and more fair-skinned.

  “Good,” said the elf. “What does david moss do?”

  “If digested, it provides clarity of thought, and you see reality closer to what it is, giving the eater profound insight,” said Wex in a now higher, flutier voice.

  “For how long?” the robust, leanly muscled figure asked with a kind smile.

  “A minute at most, Adar,” Wex replied quickly, his own pronounced forest lore showing itself well.

  “What is this one, over here?” His father beamed at the concentrated look upon the young elf’s face, and shook his long mane of hair to free some errant leaf that had fallen within.

  The lithe and panther-like hunter held out a green stem, with green leaves, with dark ball-shaped berries upon them.

  Wex’s forehead furrowed. “I’m not sure; are they cherries?”

  “No, my son, you are dead,” said the man shaking his head in mock disapproval. “It is belladonna, a poison. You have to be more careful, you cannot make these kinds of mistakes.”

  “But, it can’t be belladonna. Belladonna grows in the hotter climes well south of here—you cheat!” Wex laughed, dropping down and locking his father’s leg with his own. The man laughed heartily as he fell to the soft, loamy, leaf-strewn dirt beneath them.

  “Well, so I do,” the huntsman said from the dirt. “But it is wise, is it not, to not assume to know the be-all and end-all of your surroundings about you. What if, indeed, belladonna somehow came to grow up here in a century or two? It’s wise to prepare for such things. There are many changes in the centuries that mark our lives.”

  “How are you so wise, Adar?” the elven boy, soon to hit puberty in his early second century of life, asked, as his father got up from his place on the ground.

  “I listened to my father, you little crinkle berry. Now, listen, this is serious. The world is always changing, and if you ever stop learning and think that you know your wood, something horrible could happen. Stay alert and stay alive. Always
pay attention.”

  Wex stood up as well, looking with awestruck curiosity into the face of his patriarch. And then he reactively cringed alongside his father as a battle cry sounded from some place of concealment, and arrows began to fly.

  ***

  The bound party members were moved together. Svein had now been released, the pheromones of the demonic plant no longer an issue. He stood guard, pacing his rounds, while Bern and Tracy comforted the sick and, perhaps, dying. Yenrab had passed out and was burning with fever, while Carric was awake and in a state of delirium, calling out shades of his past and reliving moments of tension.

  “No, Mom, I don’t want to farm. Mom, I want to sing! Why doesn’t Diana like me? It is like she had never heard poetry before? No, I am not staying home and helping out, Father. I am going away to college, and you can’t stop me,” Carric ranted on and on.

  Jenn Eric looked black and blue all over his body, and his breathing was shallow. Unlike the other two, Jenn’s skin was ice-cold.

  “Tracy, sorcerer, is there a potion that you can brew that might be of use?” Bern asked, a bit mournfully.

  “Bern, my friend, if there were, I’d already have made it,” Tracy noted, but without rancor.

  Wex nodded and then spoke, “We must trust in our friends to do whatever is right for them. If they pass, well, we shall celebrate their arrival to the heaven of their choosing. And if they make it, we should applaud their strength and thank them for choosing to remain along with us.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Tracy added with approval.

  Not long later, Jenn Eric gasped, jerked, and stopped breathing. As the sun lowered to set, casting a blood-red pallor over the hill and its denizens, Wex spoke words of prayer, then closed the bard’s staring eyes. The reluctant hero had moved on into a world unknown to mortals.

  ***

  “Bern? Yenrab?”

  Carric had fallen asleep and gone pale and cold, leaving the party members to wonder if he, maybe, wasn’t going to be next. But, here in the moonlit night, he was suddenly back.

  “Muh? Huh?!” Bern stumbled out of his nightmares and back into reality.

  “Carric? Thank the gods! You’re alive!”

  A broad grin spread across the assassin’s face as he regarded his friend with awe.

  “Am I? Oh, man, I really don’t feel alive. I feel like a thousand-pound demon sat on my shoulder trying to hold me down. It hurt so much. But I think I’ve wrestled it away. I don’t know what that was, but it seems to have cleared my mind, and I now see the world differently.”

  “I have never been happier to hear that,” said a smiling Bern. Then, he pumped his fist up high and clenched, then slapped it down against Carric’s open, but unexpecting, hand. Carric’s face fell in surprise.

  “That’s called a high five, bro. We used them in the human empire. It means that you are my equal and my friend.” Bern smiled broadly and Carric followed suit.

  Wex appeared within the bard’s vision. He knelt at his side and removed his mask, his copper-toned face and green eyes cast in a silver shimmer from the night’s luminosity.

  “Too dumb to die, I see,” he said with a grin. “Welcome back, Carric. We were worried.”

  Carric gave a wan smile back, rethinking his stance on the cleric/rogue.

  “Thanks. How are Yenrab and Jenn Eric?”

  “Jenn Eric didn’t make it. I don’t really think he was ever meant for a life of ruins and monsters.” Tracy butted into view. “It’s really good to see you, Carric.”

  “Yeah, it’s good to be seen ha ha. Oh, this all hurts. And Yenrab?”

  “He’s going to be fine. He’s the darndest being on this planet. He was all feverish, then he started blasting gods-awful stink from his hind end, then came just torrents of liquid dung. And then he was better again. He’s still sleeping, but I don’t doubt that he’ll wake up just like normal come morning,” Wex answered with a grin.

  “Yeah, I think it’d take a weretiger to end Yenrab. Or maybe even a dragon,” Bern said enthusiastically.

  “It might even take two,” Carric said, his grins getting stronger.

  Tracy put his arm around Wex’s shoulders and walked him off a bit. “You know, we joke a lot. It is a good way to let off steam when danger approaches. But we really pull together in times of emergency. I just wanted to tell you how impressed I was by your efforts, Wex. I think you could become a good member of our party if you are interested.”

  “Thanks, Tracy. You don’t think Carric will mind?” asked Wex.

  “Yes, he has a mind, but I don’t think that would stop him from welcoming you,” replied Tracy, smiling.

  “Ha, that might well be a sign that he does not have a mind. Or not a proper one. I’ll take whatever in I can get, though.”

  He laughed.

  “I have a good feeling about you all.” Wex wore a self-reflective grin, clearly thinking about the life that brought him here.

  “You’re an interesting fellow, Tracy. Okay, I will think about it.”

  Chapter 38: Tying Up Loose Ends

  The morning was a fresh one, well chilled with deep fall’s hint of snow. The wind blew hard, blasting deciduous leaves this way and that on a journey of afterlife. I hope they are happy, Yenrab thought as he watched those reds, yellows, and oranges of fall fly through the air and move on to their new place. And I really didn’t know Jenn Eric, but I will pray for his soul.

  Winter was fast on their heels now, and they could all feel it. There was a change to not just the heat of the air, but also to its very quality, a kind of inherent stillness despite the strong gusts of wind. A bit of foreboding, perhaps, with a taste of death and a hint of exhaustion.

  “While we’re heading back, we might want to think about our winter lodgings, gang. I don’t think it will be good adventuring weather for much longer. And some very powerful and bad things lurk once the snow blankets the ground,” Yenrab lectured. “We’re gonna have to figure through to at least April, by my reckoning. And in these northern parts, it might be prudent to even plan for May.”

  “You know, that Yenrab Special looked tremendous. I don’t think I’d mind it one bit if we stuck around here for the winter,” Bern said with a look of hunger.

  Yenrab half-smiled and half-frowned.

  “I really feel like I should be consulted before people put my name on things. Still, it did look good.”

  “I don’t know what a Yenrab Special is, but I could really go for some good eats,” said Wex.

  “I could always win us some extra coin playing at the taverns,” Carric piped in.

  “I don’t know if we’d all survive that. You don’t seem to be a fan favorite, friend bard,” Svein noted.

  “They might not like me now, but give it a few months, and I bet we’ll make a killing!”

  “Or they will,” Wex joked.

  “It isn’t a bad plan. Though we’ll have to live cheap, I think. That lighthouse was not a big reaping. I’m starting to think that dungeons like the one we first encountered are not very common,” Yenrab said.

  Wex and Svein looked at him sharply, with greedily envious eyes.

  “You all came into a windfall?!” Wex questioned with rising exclamation.

  “Why, then, were you all playing up the tavern?!” Svein exhaled with clear astonishment.

  “Our windfall fell to the wind,” Tracy noted. He had grown a goatee and was playing with it as he spoke.

  “Ha-ha! That was silly of you all. Well, now I’m here to manage things. Rest assured, all future winnings will be safe with me,” Wex put forth.

  The whole party had a good laugh at that.

  “Well, seriously, we’re going to have to think about it. This isn’t the cheapest town to winter in, I expect. Maybe we could brave one more passage across the Great Lake? Or try to move south as the birds do?” Carric said.

  They each pondered the question in their own way, which wasn’t all that much, as winter was still a little off, and the
re were other things on their minds.

  “Guys, I think that everyone should just leave everything on the table, as it were, and that we all need to keep our ears open. Who knows what is waiting for us back in town? We are bona fide adventurers now, maybe even with an esquire somewhere in the name. Mates, bros, Tracy, opportunity finds us!” Bern ventured forth. Everybody nodded. It certainly wasn’t a bad idea for a lot like themselves.

  ***

  The journey back didn’t take so long, an hour or two at most, and so the adventurers marched back into Rising Action, crusted with blood, muck, and bone dust, at a time when people were just getting busy in the streets, having slept off hangovers and prepped themselves for the day’s chill. Many of the folk simply stopped and stared as the group passed through, Jenn Eric’s limp body slung over Yenrab’s shoulder, its head resting upon the top roll of the massive rucksack.

  “Is that Jenn Eric Enpeasea?” a voice asked quietly here and there. A slow murmur of gossip and rumors was beginning to build in buzz and intensity about them as they made their way to Hub Inn. And a crowd of curious onlookers began to trail and swell behind them.

  Bern looked at the people, and at Jenn Eric, and the people again, and then rolled his eyes.

  “Attention, citizens! Yes, this man, Jenn Eric Enpeasea, died in defense of your wonderful town.” The assassin warmed to it as he ad-libbed. “He fought well for a pansy bard,” he said, winking at Carric, “and he really and truly helped us all out of a jam. He was a man of the people.”

  The rogue leaped up atop of Yenrab’s rucksack. The mountainous strongman groaned.

  “Warn a guy next time, will ya?”

  “Yeah, sure, Yenrab.”

  “To you I consign the body of one Jenn Eric Enpeasea. Long shall his name be remembered.”

  With that, he dropped the body of Enpeasea to the confused but somewhat grateful crowd.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Carric asked when they were away from the mob.

  “I just saved us from having to bury the nob, gods rest him. Power to the People!” Bern answered with a devilish grin.