Ch: 9.5 Orphans Show No Mercy

In the morning when the little band was ready to move out, Mikkel took Liam’s promise that camp would be ‘taken care of by Gary’ at face value.

Their first quarry was a mundane boar, a commuter, coming in from the hills to rummage in garden beds at night.

Any ordinary hunter might have taken it and claimed the small reward. Since they were going that way, Mikkel picked it up. There was a job board that any journeyman or any accredited team of apprentices could claim jobs from.

Local nuisances to be hunted or odd jobs of an adventuring sort, like gathering herbs and minerals from the wilds. More serious threats like true monsters or bandits were taken to the temples of War or Order respectively.

Otho flushed the boar onto Liam’s spear and it wrapped up quickly, leading to a haul of pork and a much more intact boar skin.

After that it was a small arboreal creature. A coconut crab on four goat hooves with a scorpion tail and huge pincers, it was hideous but after the trapdoor, Gary was only mildly terrified.

Tallum teed off on the aggressive scuttling nasty with his club and reduced it to a crumpled pile. A reeking mess which Otho ate with delight.

Ivy seemed less enthusiastic about the flavor. “Can you make a ring for smell and taste?” She asked, while Otho was grooming his tender, hard to reach areas.

“Noted sister of mine.” Gary replied, while a still exhausted Shai curled up on him after lunch.

“Ye slept poorly last night again boy o mine” she said, softly so that only he heard. “I didnae sleep at all fer the aftertaste. Ye did nae much better.”

Into her hair he mumbled. “Just bad dreams, I can't even remember it.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s like I'm forgetting something important.”

He thought for a while as they marched heading higher into the hills. “I landed out this way” He whispered to Shai.

“A few miles east of here. Maybe that’s it, I never made a marker for Z, I did promise.” That seemed to settle his mind.

That afternoon they stopped in a little dip in the landscape, not quite a dell. “Do whatever it is you do kid.” Mikkel said, plopping down on a rock to smoke. Ivy settled like a vulture, watching closely to his every move.

Her stare made him self conscious so he closed his eyes and began to clap, a rock solid four four beat. Shai’s bells started, then her tambourine. Ivy joined in on her drum, low thudding beat picking up Gary’s rhythm. She was still watching though.

When he materialized his new mandolin and started in on ‘I’m A Believer’, she got caught up and missed the point where the tents and trees appeared, again. They were always where she was just looking, a moment before.

Mikkel grinned and got off his rock. “Ok, we have two zero threat jobs. A death's head locust and spore wasps.” They all groaned except Gary. “What's up Shai?” She shook her head.

“It be the wasps, they be troublesome for a thing so harmless. The spores do flutter and drift, mindless save staying aloft near the hive. An someone damage the hive, they do all rush back blindly and sting the fool tae the edge of madness.”

She shook her head, “The sting do burn and itch fer some hours but does nae real harm. The night of the sting ye be plagued with nightmares born o the wasp venom, they be odd and uncomfortable but do nae harm.”

Half an hour later, Otho startled a grasshopper the size of a small deer out of a tree. Ivy swatted it with her staff, sending it spinning onto Shai’s shorter sword.

The bug was quite fragile, being mostly hollow to allow it to make short flights. It was the elusive death's head locust the group had been looking for.

They ate the inner bark of fruit trees and laid eggs in the holes. The eggs didn't hatch because monsters don't reproduce; they would just rot into a poisonous slime that would kill the tree.

On Mikkel’s recommendation Gary collected the whole body of the beast. “You are in for a treat!” He said.

The sun was still high when they stopped at a low hill, less than a quarter mile from their camp. Fluttering gray green somethings flitted about, drifting sporadically. They made a loose net on the hilltop around a tree infected with a bloated greenish mass.

They gathered around, outside the range of the farthest drifting mote. “Normally we would burn the tree, but it's too dry up here, so someone has to go in and get it.” Liam said, looking unhappy.

“Surely meself and Gary will do the thing. An ye shall cover for our sleepless night on the morrow.” Shai offered. “I hae been stung before an it does nae frighten me. Gary is nay so frail as to fear a silly mushroom monster. We shall be sleepless together he and I.”

Liam started to protest, but she halted him. “Tis a common monster among hill folk and tis our tradition that smiths do be the ones tae do for them; as we learn early tae nae fear burns nor pain. Tis the law o my people, an Gary be under me tutelage, smith wise.”

Tallum was nodding and limbering up. “Yup.”

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Shai waved him off. “Two be enough and more, brother. Ye can dig us a hole tae drop the thing in.”

The plan was to slip in close, Shai would slash the thing off the tree and Gary would wrap it in the wallowbear hide to avoid touching it directly. They would run out, dodging the flying drones as best they could, drop the thing in a hole and bury it.

Apparently the monster would latch onto a tree, feed on it until it died and then a mote would attach to a new tree and grow a new monster as the old one died with the tree.

Burying it in a hole would break the cycle as it would die before being able to reestablish itself.

It worked in theory, but Gary’s hide had too many holes and he immediately touched it with his left hand while wrapping it up.

Shai caught one right on the nose as they were making their escape with their oddly light and spongy prize. It was literally a mushroom, only its odd travel ability made it a monster.

Once free of the field of flying spores they were no match in speed for the fleeing Adventurers, loudly cursing in pain. The fluttering things began to gather over their own grave as the Adventurers headed for camp.

#

When grilled, death's head locust tasted like lobster. “Where can we get more of these?” Gary asked. “That was delicious!”

He spent a while admiring the Iridescent blue green carapace with a black grinning skull on the widest part near the head. It would make a beautiful inlay material.

“Anybody mind if I keep the shells?” Nobody minded at all.

“He's very odd..” Mikkel remarked, handing his short clay pipe to Liam while dinner was cleared away.

“He is odd. But Shai likes him.”

Mikkel grunted. “So do you kid. You were just a trembling ball of rage when Otho took you in. You've grown into a fine young man, but that kid is pushing you to try harder and reach farther. You need that. He needs guidance, I swear he fights like he got his first spear six months ago.” Liam laughed at that for some reason.

“It’ll be nice to have young blood in the guild, it's been nothing but old farts for years.” He said, floating with his pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth.

“Are ye nae the oldest living member in Wheatford?” Shai asked sarcastically.

“I’m young at heart, kid.” He grumbled.

“Hey, there's a song about that!” Gary subjected them to a nude acapella golden oldies retrospective that wrapped up on, ‘I Go Out Walking After Midnight’.

“Always end on Patsy Cline if you can.” He opined sagely, enlightening no one.

After only a few minutes in the bath, the burning sting of the mushroom toxin was gone, leaving unblemished skin.

Gary and Shai retired from the bath early and crawled into their magically sound proof tent to sleep. They curled together as though they could not get close enough together and slept.

She was early to the party, terribly early.

Things were set out for a garden party and it looked mostly ready, the least she could do was help set up. The sky was filled with transparent bubbles, strung together on strands of gossamer in a network that defied logic. Beyond the bubbles, galaxies and nebulae whirled in their eternal dance.

A person who was not Gary but almost could have been, stood on a raised platform watching two wheels mounted to his table top spin. He stared as though the fate of nations rode on the outcome of his spinning wheels. He paid her no mind, fixated on his wheels.

From somewhere music was thrumming, bass heavy and repetitive. It had a phrase repeated over and over again but she did not recognize the language. It was right on the edge of being too much to deal with.

At the refreshment tables, there was food laid out and it all looked good, but it was sealed behind some transparent barrier she could not figure out. The only thing open was a tiered fountain of some rich sweet smelling semi liquid. It smelled divine, but the only available utensil was a tray of skewered fruits, bright red and stacked in ranks ready to go.

They were chili peppers of the most virulent sort, they radiated a physical heat in this place, shimmering dangerously.

A person, also almost, but Notgary, was standing beside her without moving. Notgary smiled benignly. “A little early, but I don’t mind. Ooo! Don’t mind if I do!”

He took up a shimmering pepper and plunged it into the fountain taking a huge bite. “That's a little spicy!” He said as red blisters formed on his lips, and spread down his throat. To her horror, he began to blow away in dusty puffs until nothing was left.

She stumbled away, to the beverage table, everything was sealed up in strange crates and boxes labeled in three or twenty different languages, she was unsure.

Under the table a shining steel keg was tapped and ready, it was sputtering and fizzing dangerously. With a cautious finger she tasted it. Beer, good beer too. But it was ready to pop.

Notgary calmly strode up with a huge maul and a wooden tap. He placed the new tap and drove it into the old one, which somehow worked, reducing it to a quiet fizz. “That's not gonna hold.” The beer soaked man said.

She heard a sound behind her, a soft wet sound. Looking back, she had left a trail of terrible wet and dirty footprints everywhere she had wandered. Notgary had a wheeled bucket and a mop, diligently trying to clean up.

In horror she took off her filth caked boots and threw them over the garden wall into the void beyond. Her bare feet left equally vile tracks behind her, but Notgary smiled and kept mopping up.

In the garden wall, there were a number of crumbled, broken or leaning sections, each one roped off with a thick green velvet cord on shining brass stanchions. At the gate stood Notgary, dressed in strange, dark clothes that suited him very well. He was holding a wooden board with a steel clip riveted to it. Under the clip was a tiny piece of paper.

On the other side of the rope, stretching off into the distance was a line of eldritch horrors. Each one more mind-bendingly strange and unnatural than the last.

Notgary was telling a shockingly beautiful nude woman, composed entirely of plump white wriggling maggots, that she was “not on the list.”.

As she stepped away, a goat with three human eyes, porcupine quills and oozing sores stepped up. “Sorry, you are not on the list.”. It was followed by a starfish with gently waving tentacles in the thousands and a maw filled with independent teeth that never stopped gnashing and biting at themselves. “Sorry, you are not on the list.”.

Shai snuck closer and peeked at the list.

???

Shai (soon)

Notgary in the dark suit turned and whispered, “You are early Shai.” before telling an entity comprised of smoke, flame and tormented souls, “Sorry, you are not on the list.”. A tentacled monstrosity two horrors back burbled and squealed, emitting a series of foul smells.

“She is on the list asshole, get lost before I tie a knot in you and shove the whole mess into the Devourer of Souls. He's pretty sick of your shit.” Notgary jerked a thumb at a nebula drifting prettily in the near distance, which flashed an angry red and somehow looked hungry. “Sorry, you are not on the list.”.

Among the trees and arbors, Notgary was hanging decorations for some kind of celebration of pumpkins and whimsical skeletons, each one unique. Notgary had a seeping head wound. It was crudely bandaged smearing blood all over the decorations he was hanging with such care.

As he moved on, the blood spots spread and decayed until the paper cutouts and bunting crumbled to drifting ash. He returned to hang new ones, each still unique, with the same result.

She still couldn’t find Gary, and someone was still knocking on the door. Knocking, knocking, knocking… She went inside and looked through the peephole in the door.

She awoke with a shattering scream; hers, but also Gary’s. Hers died out quickly, but he slowly modulated into a hideous burbling chant, repeated again and again, diminishing as he vanished, naked into the night.

Companions and their equipment fell to the grassy dell, as the camp dissolved around them, vanishing into wherever it came from.

In the moonlight they heard Shai call out, “Me boy is gripped in some mushroom dream! Move ye sluggards, Im Fer chasin nae waitin, catch us an ye can.” As she dashed out into the night wearing swords, boots and not much else.

Pursuing that horrid chant into the darkened hills, lashed by brush and slipping over unseen hazards in the moonlight, she chased that awful sound. Soon his voice was lost, leaving only the sound of distant, headlong flight through the sparse woods to guide her.