Installment 36 [https://squirrel.dogphilosophy.net/Installment036.png]
The keep had a more unreal feeling for Al than before on this visit. The layout seemed both familiar and different at the same time. The steps down into the cellar went far deeper than he remembered. The cavern walls flickered in the blood-red glow of the torch. Whispering voices echoed, pleading, threatening, mocking, complaining.
"Says it's going to eat your face", Gruntle told him one was saying.
"Says it has money for you." Gruntle said of another.
"Says you should walk faster."
"Says not to look up."
"Says to tie your shoelaces."
Al frowned, his boots didn't have laces. He looked down at his bare feet, cold on the cobblestones of the road. Well, that's embarrassing. Hopefully nobody will notice.
He idly wondered why he left Bote, Wikwocket, and Gruntle back at the camp, but then thought no more about it as the feeling that he was getting near his destination grew intense. He began to run. The tree-lined dirt road through the forest sped by, and he hopped up the steps to the door that led to the sitting-room at home.
He paused in a moment of confusion and doubt.
"Ah, there's my favorite son! Well, don't just stand there like an idiot, come in and give your mother a hug," the voice of his mother demanded from inside.
It was at that moment that lucidity hit. Al groaned softly.
"Mom, you know it makes me uncomfortable when you do this," he complained as he opened the door.
"Well, you haven't written or visited since you left weeks ago, how else am I to find out how my hatchling is doing?" asked the shining red-and-gold dragon lounging on a house-sized pile of gold coins inside.
"Moooooom!" Al complained again, and in that sudden way that only happens in dreams, there was just his actual human mother, sitting at the family's parlor table with a cup of tea and laughing at him good-naturedly.
"You should have seen the look on your imaginary face! What good is having a child if you can't tease them once in a while?" She said, setting down the teacup and strolling over for the demanded hug. Al obliged - as intense as she could be at times, he was fond of his mother. His imaginary ribs creaked.
They parted, and his mother bade him to sit at the table. "Sit, sit! Have some imaginary tea and tell me how you're doing. I want to hear all the exciting details! Have you left any cities burning in the wake of your passage yet? Commanded the obedience of any demons? Slain any terrible monsters?" she asked him with a teasing smirk.
Al smirked back. "Well, now that you ask, we have, in fact, done at least one of those things. We've slain the...ahem...Demonic Flesh-beast of Henhaven this very night!"
His mother raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Demonic Flesh-beast. Of Henhaven."
"That's right. Well, Wikwocket is the one who decided to call it that. It was murdering villagers in the village of Henhaven, and the four of us tracked it down and killed it. We still don't know exactly what was happening but my hunch is it was a man who made a foolish pact with something that corrupted him. Demons were involved, it was quite an experience. We're planning to go back where we found it and investigate further in the morning, but we wanted to get some rest and let the villagers know they're safe now, first."
His mother leaned forward with interest. "Don't tease your mother, Aloysius. Now, go back to the beginning and tell me the rest! When you left, there was only you, that enthusiastic gnomish woman, and that inscrutable dwarfish person. There are four of you now?"
Al smiled eagerly, it was so rare that he had an opportunity to truly shock his mother.
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"Oh, that's right, you haven't met Gruntle yet. He's a very large, action-oriented, down-to-earth sort of person, I think you'd probably like him. Though, maybe not. Most people aren't comfortable dealing with his kind."
Al's dream-self paused and slowly sipped at his imaginary cup of tea. He looked into the ripples on the steaming greenish-gold contents, admiring quietly. Then he sipped again as his mother began to glare at him.
Al's mother lightly slammed her fist onto the table. "What did I just say about teasing your mother?"
"You tease me all the time!"
"I'm your mother, it's allowed. What is it about this person's kind that you think I wouldn't be comfortable with?"
"Well, he's half-demonic himself, for one thing."
Al's mother scoffed. "That's the big secret? That isn't so uncommon. I've met several people who appear to have the influence of some ancestral dalliance with the infernal. Most half-humans aren't any less decent than full-blooded human folk."
"I didn't say his other half was human."
"Pedantry does not impress me, young man! Elvish, dwarfish, gnomish, whatever. Humanish, it's all the same to me."
"He's none of those things," Al said, eager to get to the punchline. "I suppose beast is more of an appropriate descriptor for his other half."
His mother gave him a glare of impatience. Al met her gaze defiantly.
"I mean, that's what gnolls are, right?" He said, keeping eye contact as he sipped his tea once more.
He was gratified at the startled look of confusion he got in return. It was replaced quickly with stern disapproval.
"You're getting better, I couldn't tell if you were lying to me. However, the ability to deceive your mother is not something you should be proud of!"
"I'm not lying, it's true!"
His mother's disapproving look intensified. "This isn't funny, young man. I may not be as academic as your father, but I'm far from ignorant. Gnolls aren't people, dear, they are demonic, mindless..."
"...murderously violent beasts, yes," Al finished for her, "I know, but there are some nuances. In a way, our whole party is gnolls now."
He realized he'd pushed too far with that as his mother's the wrath of the very gods face was turned on him, gouts of flame shooting from her dream-self's nostrils as she shouted.
"Aloysius Zenthraxis Arcanisen! If you've taken up a life of marauding your father and I will fetch you right back home and you'll be banished to your room for...!"
Al frantically waved his arms in apologetic surrender. "Mom! Mom! It's not like that, let me explain!"
Abandoning all coyness, he described for his mother how they arrived in Silveroak, the posting they'd gone to answer, how their first meeting with Gruntle had transpired, and their decision to bring him on. His mother's disapproval turned to interest as he went through the events.
"You were prepared to beat a gnoll to death?" his mother asked, impressed. She patted him on the head. "Well, you are my son, and your heart is in the right place. Do try to be more mindful in the future though, a gnoll would tear you apart and eat the pieces."
"Don't be so sure, I've learned a few things. They've even talked me into starting to learn how to use wizardry as a weapon. I'm probably going to have to do more of that."
They dreamed of drinking tea as Al told his mother about their deadly battle with the bandits, their arrival in Henhaven, and their adventure in the mysterious keep where the beast had been hiding.
"I see," she said with an approving smile. "you've been a very busy boy these last few days. I think I approve of your companions, you must promise me that you'll bring them for a proper visit soon. I wonder what your father will think."
"He'll think I'm being lazy for not having learned to speak the gnollish language already, and would ask when I'm going to publish," Al said with a grin.
"Yes, that does sound like Franklin. Speaking of whom, is there anything you'd like to tell him before you return to a proper sleep?"
Al thought for a moment. "Yes, tell him that I think I may have come up with some improvements for the textbook floating disk spell and that I promise to write up my results when I try them. Oh, and let him know that I have a pre-print draft of Melissa Browne's publication about the gnolls."
"He'll be pleased to know you haven't lost your scholarly instincts. I'll tell him."
"Oh...one more thing..."
Al fidgeted.
"I think I need to educate myself about more infernal matters now. I know you and Father have always said that it's too dangerous of a subject for me to investigate, but now I'm in charge of a half-demonic creature and I've already had some conflict with real ones. I think I can handle it, I'm not a child any more."
"Yes, now you're old and wise enough to be deceived by demons into believing that you are resistant to being deceived by demons," she warned him. "But, I'll talk to your father about it."
"Thanks, Mom."
She set down her teacup and stood up, walking around the table to stand next to her son. She slapped him enthusiastically on the back, making his dream-self lurch forward and imagine spilling what was left of his tea.
"Keep up the good work! We're proud of you, dear. Be careful. Write to us soon, and come visit when you can."
Al winced, embarrassed, as she leaned down to kiss him on the forehead.
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Agatha Arcanisen smiled, opened her eyes, and sat up. Her husband was already awake next to her, well into reading one of the codices from this morning's stack of research. He set his thumb on the page to mark where he left off so he could lean over to kiss her on the cheek, before going right back to his reading.
"Good morning, darling," he said to her without looking up. "You look happy, did you speak to our son?"
"Yes, he seems to be doing quite well and is having an exciting time. He's a gnoll now."
"Hmm," her husband said distractedly, as he turned to the next page. "Is he speaking their native language properly yet?"