“Where is Pan?” Athena asked. She wanted to hit the succubus once more while it was silenced and prone. It’s always the way of it, male developers putting half naked, busty women in their games. Not everyone had the body type for leotards and dramatic capes strung from the arms. This was much less the case for her, now that she was sporting the female Hoplite body, but the resentment still clung.

She turned around, the action answering her own question. There, as suspicious as a snowman in summer, sat a beautiful Grecian vase, designs done in white, black, and bronze. Crisp lines depicted stylized men, each of them broad shouldered and thick muscled, doing something sporty. A purple haze about the bottom of the large jar somewhat ruined the effect.

“It wasn’t there when we camped,” Apollo explained, to which Athena rolled her eyes.

“What are mimics weak against?” she asked.

Ignoring the new question in favor of a more complete answer for a previous one, Apollo said, “I quite think he did this to himself.”

“You think he…I don’t know this game’s terminology…Destiny Bonded himself to the succubus? Everything that happens to her happens to him?”

Apollo nodded. “And maybe vice versa. If you hadn’t been in such a rush to finish her off,” here he jerked a thumb to the still squirming vampiress and let the criticism hang in the air.

Instead of getting angry, like he had expected, she looked contemplative. She said idly, “Whatever. If he’s still bonded to her, and we want to save him at all, we need to act quickly.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she just ran out of HP.”

And indeed, the succubus and her accompanying cloud of purple haze particulated and evaporated.

“You don’t think he’s-?” Apollo started, but at the same time, a soft clink sounded as the jar had wobbled somehow.

“Press buttons until something sticks?” Apollo asked.

“It’s gotten me through worse.”

“I don’t think you can actually say that any more, now that we’re living it.”

A curved blade, the very essence of alacrity, appeared in her hand as a Slash card flashed. “All I need you to do is to keep giving me my extra action point,” she said as she charged the jar.

“But that’s how Pan got into this mess, remember?” he shouted impotently. He knew she had stopped listening.

“Spells, spells,” he muttered as he leafed through the invisible cards in front of him. “How about a little fire, scarecrow?”

He knew the reference didn’t suit the circumstance, but his audience didn’t really care. There was none to witness. But he liked this spell, and, yes, fire was involved.

To Athena he shouted, “I’ll put a little pepper on this one!”

And with that, a Firebolt card flashed, resulting in a trans-atmospheric comet to appear and hurl itself at the vase.

****

Pan was in hell. More specifically, he felt like he was the only one not enjoying himself at the Rubber Hose, Eel, and Snake orgy. He was being steadily suffocated – in addition to the silence – by Cthullu’s beard.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

It hurt, and more than a little.

Through the constantly squirming binding, which seemed to be actively trying to digest him, he heard a muffled cry. He recognized it as what he had heard just before meeting the siblings. It was slightly muffled, being on the outside of the living vase he was currently occupying.

With a thunk, he felt the container rock, probably resisting a blow from who he was increasingly thinking of as Xena, Warrior Princess.

In the hair curling moment following that, there came a roaring blast. It didn’t enter the jar, but it did send the container backwards. The tentacles invading his personal space and trying to wring him like a damp towel had to stop what they were doing, extricate themselves from the vase, and absorb the shock.

He looked around for a hand of cards, but none were to be seen.

****

Without the vase, Apollo and Athena were treated to the horrific ordeal of watching what looked like a black octopus reach its many tendrils out the top of the vase to keep the thing from toppling.

“I know we didn’t see any of these in this grove before,” Apollo said. “How random is that? A mimic out in the woods?”

“I dunno, maybe it can change form. Maybe it’s a chameleon.”

Another card flashed in front of Apollo, depicting jagged rocks, titled Earth Spike.

He stomped the ground mightily, sending a tectonic tremor towards the monster. Very much like the card depicted, a bouquet of rock spikes welled beneath the vase before subsiding.

“Did you draw that thing you bought yet? I’m out of actions.” he called to his sister.

“I’ve still got this basic crap to work through. It’s not up at bat yet.”

“Pity,” he said. “It’d be useful here.”

“I think your earth attack cracked it,” she said. “I haven’t built up any Shield, but maybe it needs impact attacks. I’ll try a Shield Bash.”

A card flashed, a bronze buckler appearing over her bracer. Stepping close, she put her weight behind the shield and shoved.

There was a ringing like a bell.

“We’re trying to save him, not deafen him!” Apollo cried.

“He’s lucky we stuck around! I’m starting to suspect he’s the reason for the monsters!”

The vase recoiled from the impact, reeling backwards on its many tentacles. Athena went down. And then went back up.

“Wooaaahh!” she cried.

“Athena!” Apollo cried.

A tentacle had wrapped around her ankle, and now was arching over the battleground, the warrior girl trailing behind.

A card appeared in front of the vase. Bash 15.

Athena twirled gracefully in a brief spiral before being hurled bodily into the trunk of a tree. It knocked the wind out of her completely, and she slumped like a mannequin.

“You motherf-“ Apollo growled, though the rest of the foul sentence was cut off by the roar of wind.

****

Pan was clinging desperately to what consciousness remained in his suffocating brain. He barely even noticed five purple cards rise one by one out of his left bracer.

He looked through them idly.

That one looks neat. The thought drifted along on the crest of a blackout.

The card, the picture a swirling torrent of blue and white, titled Vortex, vanished before him.

****

Apollo raced to his sister.

“You’re gonna want to hold on,” he said. With one arm he gripped her around the waist, and the other he wrapped around a low bough.

The clouds above were swirling suddenly. Bits of debris were flying, and the trees were shaking their branches like nobody’s business.

A cone of swirly air reached down to the vase as Apollo struggled to hold himself and his sister in place. She grunted and moaned as the wind pulled at them both.

The black, white, and bronze monstrosity, its tentacles hanging out the top, was lifted into the air by the swirling air. It clutched at the ground, but was unable to find enough purchase. Once free of the gravity that had moored it, it started to spin.

A branch, broken from some tree, smacked Apollo in the face and he had to renew his grip.

The vase, when he had a chance to look at it again, was spinning violently now. The black tentacles were completely outstretched, unable to pull themselves back in. Still it rose steadily higher.

The larger detritus seemed to focus on the vase, spinning around it at the same height. Apollo thought it was all getting closer.

Chips of ceramic began to fly off the creature, now completely helpless.

How long would the effect last, Apollo seemed to ask.

Then, all at once, the jar exploded. The orbiting rocks had buffeted it, sapping its integrity, and the rotational velocity finally pulled it apart.

A writhing mass of tentacles and one big squid eye were revealed as its shell flew apart, and then just as quickly the body began to dissolve.

And so, coincidentally, did the wind.

Apollo had considered letting the tree and his sister go, as the one remaining bit in the writhing mass of the monster remained. In the end, he decided against it, and Pan hit the ground with a meaty thud.