Elena’s eyes fluttered open to see she was seated in a ring of mushrooms. This ring was centered in a small clearing of trees. She looked around feverishly for the others. Her father was nowhere to be found. CJ and Monty were likewise absent. She clutched onto the handle of her chainsaw as she rose to her feet. The magician said this was some kind of testing ground. They were about to find out what this Latina was all about.
There was some light flickering through the trees to her left, so she decided that would be a good place to start looking for the others. After years of working for her father’s tree service business, she was no stranger to climbing. Only in this case she wished she still had her climbing gear. With her weapon strapped to her back she made her way up a particularly tall Elm tree. From her vantage point she could see a well-manicured garden filled with topiaries. Small trees and shrubbery cut in visually pleasing patterns. Beyond them was a wall surrounding a miniature castle. It’s second floor seemed to be all one room while the ground floor was standard brown brick work. There was a gate that led into the town, but two guards were facing this way. They seemed odd to Elena. She checked the notification she received before waking up in the circle of mushrooms.
The notification didn’t say anything about keeping the guards alive. With that clarified she made her way down the tree and advanced on the front gate. The two guards had oddly shaped heads with eye stalks jutting out of their helmets. They each held a spear. As Elena got closer, she began to realize they were slug like from the waist down. That made her skin crawl. She pulled the cord on her trusty weapon; the noise shocked the two guards into action. They both lowered their spears and slithered forward. Elena dodged their clumsy stabs before burying her saw into the side of the slug on her left. Chucks of slimy meat flew in every direction as she was splattered with slug goop. The slug curdling screams of his partner broke something inside him and the second guard dropped his weapon. He slurped at sprint speeds into the woods and didn’t look back.
The first guard lay bisected at Elna’s feet. His fluids staining the front of her clothes. She couldn’t believe she just did that or how effective it was. She was shaken from her reverie by the ringing of a bell. Squatting down quickly, she snatched up the key ring the guard dropped. She made it to the gate just as several torches were lit in thatch roofed homes that dotted the interior of the walls. Elena managed to get the gate open and slip in to see a line of slug guards and townsfolk with pitch forks mustering to the right of her position. One of the townsfolk pointed in Elena’s direction and a see of eye stalks swiveled to meet her gaze. There were too many to fight by herself. She quickly remembered the only way out was to steal something from the queens’ chambers. She darted toward the main castle hoping to outrun her pursuers. The roads glistened with slug goo, but her combat boots found purchase in the moist soil below. Happy with her sure footedness, Elena barely noticed that no lanterns were lit in the castle despite the commotion outside. She reached the entrance to the castle to find that it was wedged open with a rock. With half town chasing her down, she didn’t have time truly consider the lack of security here. She booted the door open wide, chainsaw buzzing the whole way.
Once inside, she was laser focused on how to get upstairs. Fortunately for her there was a large ramp in the middle of the foyer that led to a landing for the second floor. It was slick with slug juice, but Elena just hugged the edges as she made her way up. Once she made it to the second floor, she could hear the unruly mob making their way to the front entrance. That was when Elena heard a bellowing scream from ahead of her. It almost sounded like livestock being slaughtered. She sprinted forward to an already open door to the queen’s bed chambers. At the side of the ostentatious bed stood slug draped in a black cloak repeatedly stabbing down at prone slug on the bed. The slug on the bed was easily twice the size of any she’d seen up until this point. The fabric hanging above the bed was splattered in its blood. While slug fluids began to pool at the foot of the bed.
“You’re too late. She’s dead. We are free!” exclaimed the assassin.
“Like I care,” replied Elena as she snatched a few gold coins from a bowl on the table next to the door.
The world went black, and Elena found herself in a dark chamber that had one pedestal illuminated by a cone of light from the ceiling above.
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Rubio stumbled backward after tripping over something. Last thing he remembered was covering their six as they ran across the street. There was a cicada jumping at them and he could have sworn it had a playing card wedged between two of its grasping mandibular facial features. He was positive it was an ace of spades. His training taught him to stay on mission and right now he was standing in a garden without his daughter looking at a list of objectives being shown to him by his slate. Elena was his number one priority, after that he’d worry about the rules of this twisted new world. If he were lucky, maybe the whining magician would still be with her. At least the rabbit could fight. If he gets out of this place, he’s really going to have to teach that boy how to defend himself. Although that magic stuff seemed pretty powerful.
Rubio decided to get the lay of the land. He lay prone for a few minutes getting his bearing. To his left was a brick wall with several torches lit every few feet. To his right was a forest of trees. He needed to get to some higher ground to improve sightlines and make a plan. Rubio then noticed some motion coming from his twelve o’clock. Two guards were lazily standing in front of a gate. He wouldn’t have noticed them if one didn’t just sneeze, ejecting fluid out in front of him, then causing his body to rock back and forth. Rubio brought up his rifle, stock firm into shoulder. The guards haven’t seemed to notice him. The wall was going to be his only vantage point, but he would need find a spot between the lanterns. Rubio would go under the assumption that Elena was in the castle that jutted up above the wall. Rubio crawled out of the garden and made it to the wall where he pressed himself firmly against it. The wall was crumbling and obviously ill kept. He could make it over this thing with no issues at all. Now he just needed to find the right spot.
Now that he was closer to the wall he got a good look at the guards. They were both facing out towards the road leading into the woods. They also had no legs. From the waist down it looked like they had slug bodies. Their heads were strange as well. They wore helmets with holes cut out so eye stalks could fit through. They had maws that extended forward with jowls on either side of their mouths. All together a nightmare of a creature that Rubio would be happy to shoot. Outside of their grotesque features, they were shit guards. Rubio had been standing under a torch light for the last minute and neither of them even looked down the length of the wall. At this point Rubio wondered if he shouldn’t just climb the wall and douse one of these torches. He did just that.
Unfortunately, on the other side of the wall there were small homes dotted here and there. The home just beneath the dangling left leg of Rubio had someone standing in front of it with a lamp lighters stick ready to rekindle the torch that just went out.
“Intruder! We have an intruder with legs!” yelled the lamp lighter.
That warning earned the slug man a bullet. As a bell started to ring in the distance, Rubio swiveled and two pops later the guards at the gate went down. He dropped to the ground on the inside of the wall as lights began flickering on inside several of the little homes. Rubio decided to make a dash for the castle. As he came around the back of a home with no fire light, he found the bell that was ringing. Two slug guards were calling out to the towns folk to meet with them to repel invaders. Two shots later and the bell grew silent. That didn’t stop the towns folk from grabbing whatever they could from their homes and racing into the night to defend the town. Rubio almost respected that level of unity. Getting to the doors from here would put him in the path of the gathering mob. Instead, Rubio noticed a rope attached to a winch on the second floor. Apparently, they were hanging some banners on the outer walls of the castle. Rubio slung his rifle over his shoulder, set fire to the house he was hiding behind, then sprinted for the rope. Maybe a raging fire would distract them long enough he could get up onto the second floor of the castle.
As a tree surgeon he’s spent the last two decades climbing up and down trees. Scaling a wall with rope assistance was child’s play. He was halfway up when the mob finally noticed the house was on fire. They quickly broke up into a fire brigade foregoing their lynching mentality. No sooner did Rubio reach the second floor of the castle did he hear a bellow of pain in a feminine voice so deep it would shock Barry White. Rifle up, Rubio scrambled over to one of the large windows to look inside. He could see a slug person dressed in black furiously stabbing into a bed. Rubio took aim and fired. Two in the chest before bursting through the window and rolling up to his feet. The enormous slug woman on the bed was dead and the assassin was laying on the ground with a hand over his chest. He downed a red liquid from a vile in his left hand and the bullet wounds began to glow.
Rubio took aim, this time targeting the assassins head before he realized this must be the queen’s bedroom. He quickly grabbed a candelabra before his vision went black and resolved into a dark chamber with a pedestal in the center illuminated by a bright light.