Misfits of Fantasy

by

R.J. Dale

Prologue

The general entered his tent and was overwhelmed by the smell of old molding tarpaulin. Prepping for war is hard enough, he thought morosely, without having to work with this bloody rotted equipment. He surveyed his ready room, a table sat in the middle of the command tent which was covered with numerous inch high figurines that designated the various armies slated to fight in the upcoming battle. The white figures represented the humans, his forces, and they were the most abundant on the table. There were one hundred of them all together with each individual piece signifying a total of one hundred warriors. Thus, he currently had one thousand men to command at his immediate disposal. They were not nearly enough for his liking. Given his druthers, he would have wanted a hundred times that number even though he knew that the amount of men still wouldn’t be enough for what he needed to do.

There, beside them, were the green sculptures that stood in for the elves, which were about half of the number of the humans on the table. Finally, he came to the half-inch brown models that symbolized the dwarves. They numbered about the same as the green pieces. This meant that he had roughly two thousand warriors ready to give their lives in the defense of the realm, and he knew that he was going to use every last one of them for that purpose; including himself.

It was not nearly enough, he thought grimly. The other half of the board held five hundred black pieces. Pieces that corresponded to every race of evil you could think of including orcs, ogres, dark elves, beastmen, trolls, and other horrible things too nasty to contemplate. It was not their numbers that scared him. Those races were highly unorganized, and although they fought with a feral ferocity that could not be matched, they could not compare to the organized and highly trained troops at his disposal. No, the thing that worried him was the piece that stood behind all the miniature black statuettes. It was a blood-red carving of a robe-wearing skeleton that towered five inches tall. It made his stomach drop whenever he looked at it. It drove all thoughts of courage and victory from his mind. It made him want to get on his horse and ride to the other side of the world where he might die of old age before it finally made its way to him. He sighed; it wasn’t that he was a coward, far from it. The truth was he was wise enough to know when he was engaging in a battle that no one could win.

It was Malus, the undying, that crushed his spirit with so minor a representation as to the red skeleton that rested on his table behind the black pieces. He could not see going head-to-head with that horror in real life. No god, man, beast, fish, nor fowl could stand against him. Nothing could harm him, aside from the most potent of magics and even then it only slowed him down. He was said to be the greatest spellcaster that had ever unlived, and that he had mastered the arcane art to such a degree that he could undo every spell that had ever been made. Rumor had it, as did multiple reports found in top-secret dossiers, that simply looking at him could drive one into a state of complete madness, and his very touch brought instant death to anything allied with the forces of light. It didn’t do a lot for the forces of darkness, either.

His spells, reconnaissance said, could reach a distance of miles rather than feet and his aura of fear touched the heart of any living creature that saw him regardless of how far away they were. The general could attest to the fact that just the simple representation of the undying warlord that sat on his map scared him. Malus was a scourge that nothing could stop. One’s best hope, when opposing him, was to throw enough bodies at him that he grew bored and would fall into a century-long slumber. That was how his ancestors had stopped him, but it had cost them millions of lives, and their numbers had still not recovered from their last encounter with the living nightmare. If the price in lives were as high this time then his was not only a suicidal mission but a genocidal one as well. They would run out of bodies long before Malus closed his eyes in boredom.

He shuddered as he recounted his history. Prior to his people’s sacrifice, roughly five hundred years ago, Malus had gone on a rampage that ravaged the land and nearly extinguished all life on their continent. He was barely banished from this plane by the act of the great deity, Astech, the god of war. A war god who was never seen nor heard from again five hundred years hence; a god to whom all prayers, both sincere and apathetic, went unanswered. A god who was unquestioningly dead, and yet, Malus still lived. He returned after a mere four centuries as if nothing had happened. Legends said that he had spent some time on the Negative Material Plane for a few centuries just relaxing before coming back.

What hope did they, mere mortals, have against a god killer? Aside from another bout of divine intervention they were doomed. That was unlikely of ever happening again. What god or gods would face Malus when they knew it would result in their erasure from history. He looked to his right and saw his trusted aide de camp, Lieutenant Bristol, standing at attention. He was not in his armor, even though the general was in his. Instead, he wore his military uniform of blue and red. His waistcoat was blue and had large cuffs at the wrists. His breeches were red, with a white stripe down the side of each leg that ended at the knee, white leggings, and cuffed knee-high black boots. Bristol's face was almost average, with the exception of two things; the first being his nose. It was large and triangular, and if you looked at it long enough you would begin to think its base was as wide as his mouth. The other distinguishing feature was the great bushy mustache that hung below his nose. It looked like a patch of red bristly weeds had taken root below his massive inhaler, and decided to grow straight from the left and right of each nostril. It made it seem as if someone had shoved a small push broom up his nasal cavity for safe keeping. The scary thing was that it wriggled, from time to time, like a squirrel caught in glue. It wriggled as if it was an alive and independent thing that acted on a will separate from Bristol himself. Bristol could lay claim to possessing the mustache, but he could not be said to own it.

The moment that Bristol recognized that he had been noticed the heels of his boots cracked together like the snap of a whip, and he shouted, "Suh!" The general nodded and sat down on a small piece of firewood that stood in for a stool. "At ease, Lieutenant," he sighed as he sat. He pronounced the word as LEFT-TENANT, as he despised saying LOU-TENANT. In truth, he had always felt like he was saying Loo-tenant as if he were addressing someone who gave orders from a latrine. Considering that Bristol's face looked like he could easily scrub a toilet with the ease of a wire brush soaked in muriatic acid with his mustache, the general really did not want to begin using the word Loo around him.

He looked over at Bristol, and the man relaxed. He reached down and picked up a stack of papers, and then resumed his ready position. The general waved a lazy hand, indicating for the man to proceed. "Report please, Bristol." His voice was old, tired, and sounded like it really needed an hour at the bar to come to grips with the day's travails.

The mustachioed man held the papers up to begin to read, but before he could utter a word the general stopped him. "Just tell me our situation, son. No need to rattle off all of the gooble-de-gook on those pages. Give me the condensed version."

Bristol hesitated for a moment, smiled, put the papers back onto the war table, went to speak, hesitated again, and coughed.

"Dammit, Bristol. Report"

The nasally voice cut through the air like an assassin's blade cutting butter. "Mmmm, yes suh. Our situation is dire, suh. Very dire," he emphasized.

"Elaborate."

"Well, suh, our hopes of another act of divine intervention have been dashed on the craggy shores of fickle fate. It seems that the very gods themselves have decreed that neither they nor any of their earthly instruments, i.e. their clerical personnel, will participate in the upcoming battle against the forces of darkness." He stopped and caught his breath, "Furthermore, all of our envoys into the other eleven kingdoms, have returned empty-handed. We have no reinforcements, no additional supplies, and no more funding. In essence, suh, we are royally fu. . ."

Rising from his upright log, the general interrupted him, "You mean to say that we are to go into this battle without healers? Without divine protection? Unsupplied and pitifully outmanned?" The disbelief on his face was plain. It was inconceivable that the gods would abandon them to the point that they would refuse healing to his troops.

Without missing a beat Bristol smiled, "Jolly good, suh. I do believe that you have a complete grasp of the situation."

The general grimaced. "Then we have no hope," he whispered. His face dropped, and his eyes sought answers on the earthen floor of his tent. Answers he knew that his boots could not provide, no matter how much he had polished them.

The left side of Bristol's mouth scrunched inward as he had just sucked on a very sour lemon in that side of his mouth. "I would not say that, suh." The general looked up, dubious, but full of hope. "Explain yourself man, and be quick. I think I may have some serious drinking to do this evening," he said as he pulled his flask full of his favorite brand of whiskey, Dragon Piss. Dragon Piss could take the edge off, most of the sides too, for that matter. It had never let him down when he wanted to get drunk fast, and thereafter it rarely let him get back up.

Bristol nodded and gave a slight flash of teeth, in what would have been a toothy smile in anyone else, beneath his wiry mustache. "Well, suh. Army intelligence may have discovered a way to stop Malus,” he paused dramatically and let his mustache wriggle back and forth for several seconds before he finally said, “Permanently." Those words hung in the air like a man standing on the trapdoor of a gallows; there was always the hope that the executioner had called in sick for the day. The general, a man generally never at a loss for words, simply looked at Bristol with a slightly turned head. Bristol mused that he had seen his dog turn his head like that on occasion, usually when he was introduced to something that was well beyond his doggy intellect.

"Suh?"

The general snapped back to reality, "What did you say?"

Bristol spoke softly and slowly as if he were addressing a child, "I said, suh, that intelligence believes that it has found a way to put a permanent end to the blight that is generally referred to as Black Malus."

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All the general could do was stammer for a moment before spitting out the sole word, "H-h-h--how?" Hope seemed to slowly fill his face, and some light returned to his eyes.

Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and moved around the table. He stopped about a foot from the general, who was clad in his golden plate mail armor that bore the insignia of a lion sitting atop a man whose head was a few inches from his body. All bloody good in proper on the battlefield, but leaving something to be desired at cocktail parties.

"Well, you do recall Corporal Newton? Top-notch researcher, that one is, suh. He’s a right jolly crackerjack at discovering things.” He sniffed and his eyebrows shot up as he continued to explain, “It seems he was stationed in the elvish city of Paresan, otherwise known as the Shining City. While there he found an old library. Being the inquisitive type, he spent most of his free time perusing the various tomes and texts held within its heart.”

Bristol picked up a clipboard and lifted several pages one at a time until he found what he was looking for, “Quite by accident, or so I am told, he discovered a passage regarding the one weakness of the being known as Malus while he was eating a cream cheese sandwich." He paused, took a breath, and continued as he set the clipboard down, "The scroll he from which he was reading from detailed an artifact of great power known as the Malus Maledictum. The maledictum is a device that is reputed to actually be the very heart of Malus himself. And, it further stated that if it was destroyed then the monstrous malevolence himself will crumble to ash and never return."

The general looked slightly crestfallen, "So, now we must find this artifact? How? We have no time. Malus and his horde of darkness will be here in, what, three days?"

Bristol gave a quick grin, "No, suh. Newton's diligence is without measure. After a bit of hunting, he found the maledictum in the library's lost and found section. It was under an old pair of socks.” Realizing his mistake, Bristol quickly added, “Suh." Thankfully, the general hadn’t noticed his faux pas.

Color came back into the general's pale face, and his eyes lit up as if a raging fire of blue coal burned behind them. "Well then, bring this mally dictus thing here, and I'll crush it myself with my war hammer and put this whole thing behind us! His voice was a shout, but one filled with exuberance. He all but laughed as he said it. He scanned the room looking for his weapon, chuckling as he did so.

Bristol made his lemon-sucking face again. "I am sorry, suh, but that will not be possible."

The general looked incredulous. For a moment Bristol thought he was going to pass out, it was obvious his emotions were being drawn and quartered by a huge flaming draft horse from hell, and his body could not withstand the pulling much longer.

"Why not?" The general asked in a deflated voice.

"Fate has decreed that the heart may only be destroyed by immersing it in the icy waters of the Pool of Shadows."

Afraid to ask, the general wiped a gauntleted hand across his face, "And where would that be?"

Bristol swallowed, one hand coming from behind his back to pull his collar away from his neck. "Ah, that's the thing, suh. The Pool of Shadows is in Moredoom."

The general fell back and sat, quite by accident, back onto his log. "Moredoom is the home of Malus. It is where he naps and has a cuddle with his girlfriend, Death when he isn’t busy. Moredoom sits behind him, and every other one of his bloodthirsty minions. We have no hope of fighting our way through their ranks, getting past him, and then into Moredoom. This is a bloody false hope you have just given me, Bristol. False hope, indeed,” he spat. “We have no chance. None at all. We are just as doomed now as we were when we started this discussion."

"Well, suh, I must admit, it does seem that way. However," he emphasized, "that is not exactly the case."

The general squinted his eyes, "What do you mean, left-tenant?"

"Intelligence has come up with a plan, suh."

The general rolled his eyes. "Intelligence? A plan? That will be the day." He sniffled indignantly. He paused for a moment and thought about his options. As things went, he might as well hear what army intelligence had come up with, but he really wished he had another alternative than whatever they had brainstormed. Then he thought of his father, who always asked him if he shat in one hand and wished in the other which would get full first. As a youth, he had always replied that all he could say for certain was that he knew which one smelled better.

"Go ahead, Bristol. Tell me their plan."

"Hurm, yassuh. Intelligence posits they we need two teams. One, a team made up of our best and brightest. True heroes in every sense. Go-gettahs, suh." He gave a big bushy smile and pulled two tokens from his pocket, one yellow and one orange, and sat them on the table. "Then we will select a group of, uh, how to put this. . . ?" He trailed off, lost in thought for a moment, ". . . .Yes, uh, well a squad off inept arseholes who don't have the commonsense the gods gave turkeys." He placed two tokens onto the map, one place keeper on either side of the armies of light.

"The A team, the alphas, will carry the real maledictum. They will be outfitted in our top gear, stocked with magical items, and a map to Moredoom's Pool of Shadows." With that, he tapped the orange token.

"The other team, the Z team, will leave from the other direction. We will give them a forgery of the maledictum, and whatever weapons, armor, and equipment we can spare. We will not even provide them with a map, just a good shove in the right direction so to speak. The Z team's location will have been “accidentally revealed via torture” by some scouts who will be sacrificed in the name of misdirection. The army of darkness will capture them, torture them, and through no fault of their own, they will reveal the Z team's location. You rally can't blame them, suh. No one can withstand the tortures invented by the mind of Malus. Then, the misanthropic monsters will scuttle off in the wrong direction, and eliminate the Z team in short order. Allowing our A team to slip by them, walk into Moredoom, make it to the pool. . ."

"Just a bloody minute, Bristol. Did you say, walk into Moredoom?" He snorted. "One does not simply walk into Moredoom."

Quite non-plussed by the general's outburst, Bristol continued, "Actually, suh, that is the only way into Moredoom. The area they must enter into is underground, so we cannot fly them in on griffins or giant eagles."

"Giant eagles? That's absurd." He sniffled. “Giant eagles seem a bit deus ex-machina, don’t you think?”

"Quite, suh. Also, the area they are to enter is filled with mithral ore; thereby making it impossible for them to burrow or dig their way in."

The general shook his head. "These are men, Bristol. Not bleeding worms or badgers to go trawling through the muck and mire."

"Precisely, suh. Thereby, they are left with the sole option of walking into Moredoom." He straightened his jacket and continued, "One might suppose they could crawl into Moredoom, but they would be, shall we say, unwise. Leaving them vulnerable and whatnot. They also could run in, however, that would more than likely draw unwanted attention their way. Thus, the only possible conclusion is for them to simply walk in. To be certain, they could add a nice military gait to their step if they so desired, and march in."

"Marching would be preferable." The general added hopefully. "I'm surprised that you didn't speculate that they might dance their way in, Bristol."

"Heavens no, suh!" He said, quite taken aback. "We tried that at the battle of Waterlook, and the results were ruddy well disastrous." Then, thinking quickly he added, "As you may remember, suh." He smiled brightly, or so the general supposed, seeing how he could not see the man's mouth.

When the general did not say anything more, he continued where he had left off, ". . . they will then submerge the maledictum, and destroy Malus." As he said this, he slid the yellow marker behind the figure of Malus and then clapped his hands like a little boy who was about to open a huge birthday present.

The general sniffled, rubbed an armored finger under his nose, and said, "That is the dumbest plan that I have ever heard." He stood up and stalked around the table. "Seriously, this is the best thing they could come up with?" He picked up the yellow marker and looked at it dubiously. "What do you think, Bristol?"

Bristol's mustache wiggled back and forth in the same manner a rabbit did with its whiskers and the general wondered if the thing had been fed recently, "In this case, suh, I believe that when one is holding an empty cup he should be grateful for whatever is put in it."

"In other words, beggars shouldn't be choosers?"

"Yassuh," he replied flatly.

"Do we have an A-team chosen yet?"

"Yassuh."

The general rolled the yellow chit between his thumb and forefinger. "Who do we have?" His voice was a little hopeful.

The mustache stretched until its hairs were touching each of Bristol's ears. "You will like this, suh. Party leader is Commander Biggles Crispin. . ."

The general's eyes suddenly sparkled. "Wasn't he responsible for stopping the invasion of the rabid extradimensional ogres two years ago?"

"Singlehandedly, suh." Bristol smiled. "We also have Melmac the Alfish, the very head of the Wizard's Order. You may recall you met him at the military meet and beat mixer last year, suh. He had entertained everyone with the fireworks that became naked girls when they exploded."

The general nodded, "He was the one that killed all those vampires with a red curse, right?" He deliberately avoided discussing the fireworks, no sense in being indelicate in front of a subordinate.

Bristol's mustache reached for his jacket collar, indicating he was frowning. Another inch and it would have grabbed it, but he spoke and the mustache lost its bid for freedom. "No, suh. I believe that you are thinking of the wizard Dress-den. Melmac was the fellow who dropped a mountain on the demon horde over in Klash."

The general smiled, he had no mustache, so all of his teeth showed, "Even better, then."

Bristol nodded, and his mustache bucked like it was riding a wild bronco. “Quite right, suh. We have also managed to acquire the best scout in any army, the Elvish ranger, Bugbear Bale Kodine, as well as Cognac the barbarian, and an "acquisition expert" who goes by the name of the Albino Rodent." Bristol chuckled, "A team that could handle just about anything that is thrown at them."

"Dear gods, man. The A team could wipe out half the country of Alabasher in less than a day on their own." The general knew that what he had just said was true. Alabasher was a large country, but it was a land where many retirees went to live later in life. Alabasher was warm, sunny, and had numerous shuffleboards for them to relax with. That didn’t mean the residents were pansies, though. It was expensive living in Alabasher and only the most hardcore pensioners ever earned enough to live there.

Bristol chuckled then gave a mischievous wink, "Don't think we haven't thought of that, suh."

The general nodded, deep in thought. "I would feel better if they had a priest with them, or at the very least, a druid. We really need some divine power here."

Bristol's smile began sneaking away from his ears, and for a moment the general thought it looked like a great fuzzy caterpillar contracting its body. "Sorry to remind the general, but the gods have declared themselves as non-compos praesenti for this particular battle." He looked puzzled, as if he'd forgotten to send a fruitcake to his dying mother for her birthday, realized ‘is error and then quickly added, "Suh."

The general nodded appreciatively. "Who is on the Z-team?"

"Does it really matter, suh?"

The general took off his helm and shook the sweat from his head, "I suppose not," he replied, "just make sure it is comprised of nobody who will be missed." He paused for a moment, as though he was suffering a painful internal debate. Bristol knew this because in those rare moments of moral quandary the general always looked constipated. He never looked that constipated, even when he was actually constipated. "On second thought, use every screw-up, undisciplined, and moronic man that we don't want in this man's army."

Bristol looked gleeful. "Already done, suh. I took the liberty of anticipating your orders and told each group to send their most embarrassing, inept, and unwanted for what amounted to a suicide mission. Naturally, I included your," there was a very long pause and then the word,"....... Son." He coughed a little, and the left half of his mustached stretched back to his ear and tickled it gently, prompting a little giggle from him. "Of course, I told them not to include horrific death bit of information from the selectees."

With that, the lieutenant turned away and performed what the general had come to call the Bristol Stomp. He raised one leg and drove it down with such force that his feet seemed to break the sound barrier and emitted a loud crack as his heels met with a boom and a spark. He then strode from the tent, orders under his left arm, and the general knew that everything they had just talked about would be set into motion immediately.