Robin was not a slow runner. He may have been unkind and self-absorbed, but no one could call him lazy. As he ran down the street his footsteps were slowly joined by more and more splashes as he summoned more of his copies to follow him. He could’ve sent them to attack the group of three that were following him, but he was keener on defending himself from possible attacks.
His feet carried him to his father’s castle. He had not lived there for a few years, but Robin was hoping his father would lend some of his guards to defend Robin from his pursuers.
The watery entourage was imposing to all those who saw it at this late hour, and everyone knew to stay out of the way as they barreled through the street. Everyone, except one woman sitting in the center of the street. When she saw the entourage, her eyes lit up and she screamed at the top of her lungs, “I got him.”
The woman had red curly hair, brown eyes, and looked as if she had lost a lot of weight recently. She looked like she ran a bakery, since she was wearing a checkered apron that was covered in flour, carried a rolling pin in her left hand, and a large bag of something in her right. The woman stood to an imposing height, towering over Robin. She then started to beat the rolling pin against her leg.
Robin knew something was wrong, but unfortunately for the woman he was already being chased. So, instead of being intrigued by this display he sent his clones to incapacitate her while he kept running. The woman didn’t even try to stop him, instead she eyed his mass of clones as if they were her priority.
The woman smiled as she watched the young man pass her by. She didn’t have to worry about him. The others would take care of it.
As the mass of clones approached the woman in the apron, she opened the bag she had been carrying. Inside was a dough she had been preparing for tomorrow, she needed to let the dough rise, and she didn’t trust any of her incompetent workers to do it properly.
“A little bit sugar, and a little bit of spice.” As she said sugar and spice, she threw a pinch of each into the dough bag. “Wait for your dough to get bigger, then your enemies will pay the price.” She hated the little chant she had to do to make her gift work. It was embarrassing, but at least her gift was usable.
After her chant, a little bark could be heard from the inside of the bag. And a tiny dog made of dough waddled out of it. It looked at the woman, then at the clones. It wagged its little doughy tail then launched itself at frightening speeds towards the clones.
If the clones could scream, they would have. Once the dough-dog connected with the first clone the dog gained more mass. The dough became a bit wetter, but mostly the dog just grew. Now instead of being puppy-sized, it was fully dog sized. And with every clone it consumed, the dog grew more.
By the time there was only one clone left, the dog was elephant sized and had trouble moving through the street. Though, calling it a dog may have been a bit of a stretch at this point. The dough had become so watered down that the dough could not hold any shape beyond a vaguely round blob with a mouth in the center.
The woman in the apron sighed a little as she saw this. The dough was absolutely ruined and there was no way she was going to be able to serve this to any of her customers tomorrow. But this was the price of her power.
She started walking down the street, following the direction Robin had gone in earlier. And her little doughy monster oozed behind her leaving a wake of mush in the street.
Joy, Theo, and Lillian didn’t see the mush, but they did feel it underneath their shoes. The click and clack of their footsteps started squeaking and squelching on the remnants of dough left throughout the street. Joy didn’t know what the dough had to do with Robin, but he would’ve bet money that if they followed the trail, they would find Robin.
The trail of dough led them down a few streets to an intense battle that seemed to be straight out of a children’s fairy tale. In the middle of the street Robin created as many new clones as he could to keep four monsters at bay. One of the monsters was a round, doughy blob with a mouth hole, and had obviously been whatever was leaving behind the bits of dough. It was using its considerable bulk and inherent stickiness to keep Robin from being able to run.
The other three monsters, however, seemed to be made of shadow. The smallest monster looked almost like a human except with knives for hands and it had no face. This was the least effective of the monsters since the quick thrusts did nothing to the watery copies. The next monster looked like a large octopus, and it used its tentacles to slice through the copies that got too close to it with frightening speed. Unluckily for the octopus, it couldn’t really move well on land and all Robin had to do was stay far enough away from it to be safe. The final one was almost as large as the dough monster and looked like an immense pig. But it was not very invested in getting to Robin. Instead that monster was having all too much fun eating hunks of the dough monster.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Off to the side of the raging battle there stood three figures. Two scrawny men and the tall baker. One of the men seemed to be holding leashes connecting to each of the three shadow monsters though, and he was trying futilely to yank the pig monster away from the dough monster.
The baker and the man without the leashes were paying rapt attention to the battle though and seemed to be discussing something.
Joy motioned to Theo and Lillian to keep quiet and crept closer to the group of three.
“I wish the sins were as effective as your dough familiars.” The scrawny man said.
“Well, that’s the point Evan. They’re embodiments of sins, they’ll never be diligent workers. We just use them so as not to be wasteful with the resources our lord has given us.”
“I know and I’m eternally grateful, but this would go so much faster if Pigsy was willing to just get the job done.”
Joy was just stunned at how unprofessional these people were. They were part of some clandestine cult obviously, and they were just sharing secret information in the middle of the street. If someone was going to be evil, they should at least make sure their minions got the memo about not sharing secrets for any passerby to hear.
The minions were stupid, but not oblivious. So, Joy motioned for Theo and Lillian to follow him to a nearby stack of crates that were just lying in the middle of the street.
They were lucky that the crates were there, but the blatant lack of professionalism shown by crate movers in this section of the city needed to be addressed. How could they leave crates just lying there? Joy was going to write a strongly worded letter to someone about this injustice.
No one deserved to see cults unable to keep secrets, or crates in the middle of the street. Someone needed to fix this broken society Joy lived in.
Anyways, all three of them were ducked down behind the crates and they watched the battle unfold its final act.
Robin had been hoping not to have to use this attack. But these monsters had backed him into a corner. The sword-hands one was getting frighteningly close to him, while the octopus had destroyed most of his clones, but he still had enough for one last desperate gamble.
He gripped the ring tightly in one fist and focused on his last remaining clones. Robin had always felt his father was a fool for never using this ring to its full potential. Not only could it condense physical objects, but it could also condense other gifts on some level. So, as he focused on his clones, he allowed the ring to condense them all together. Instead of a few smaller clones, now a fifteen-foot-tall clone of Robin stood in their place.
It didn’t dwarf the pig and the dough monsters, but it stood taller than them both.
The giant copy of Robin kneeled and allowed Robin to slip inside of it. He stuck his head out of the shoulder and just floated inside of the copy. Allowing it to protect him while it wreaked havoc on the monsters.
A mighty punch sent the knife-hands monster flying across the street and the octopus-monster was smashed underneath the giant’s foot. Then it was the dough monster’s turn, as a flurry of strikes kneaded the dough. The wet loose dough struck repeatedly, until it had been overworked. The overworked dough had lost all the slack that allowed it to move, and the dough monster simply sat there like a normal, massive ball of dough.
The attack on the dough monster had unfortunately drawn the attention of Pigsy. And Pigsy was hungry, always hungry.
Robin was feeling good. His giant had taken care of three of the monsters swiftly, and he felt that this last one would be a piece of cake as well. Then he could get to the baker woman and her two companions and see why they attacked him.
Robin let his clone circle the pig monster, he had been trained to fight mostly human opponents, so he was trying to find an opening to begin attacking the pig shaped nightmare. That was when the pig struck.
For something so large, the pig moved like lightning. It was far more agile than Robin and his massive clone. When the pig slammed into the clone’s legs, the clone toppled over putting Robin on the ground.
The monster snuffled at his clone’s legs, then opened its mouth to take a bite. The teeth inside were sharp and there were far too many of them. The giant kicked out, hoping to get the pig monster away from him. The mouth shut on his leg and disrupted enough water that the clone lost the leg.
The monster seemed to smile, and it spoke in a little girl’s voice, “delicious.”
The clone was ripped apart piece by piece until all that was left was Robin. He was sitting there, soaking wet and shivering from the cold and the fear of Pigsy. That was when the man with the leashes finally was able to pull Pigsy back. As Pigsy was held back the baker and her other companion approached the frightened noble.
“Give us the ring and we’ll just forget this happened.” The baker spoke calmly, but with an implicit threat hidden in her voice.
Robin immediately threw the ring at her, not wanting to find out what her threat was. Under his breath he did whisper, “why does everybody want this stupid thing?”
None of the three paid him any attention as they examined the ring. All seeming quite pleased with it they turned to leave. Once they were out of the way the woman spoke to her companion on the leashes, “let Pigsy eat him to get rid of the evidence.”
The man let go of the leash and Pigsy started ripping Robin Red to shreds, devouring every last morsel. Robin Red had died and there was no fanfare, nor was there any procession announcing his death. It was only heralded by the occasional exclamation of “yum” from the pig monster eating him.
The man on the leashes pulled all three of the monsters back towards him. Then his companion somehow put the large monsters into a small bag. Those two said goodbyes to the baker and they all seemed to go their separate ways. As if this had been some sort of simple errand for them all to run.
Unfortunately for the baker and the ring still in her possession, her route took her right by an inconveniently placed pile of crates. She didn’t know what hit her as her hands were frozen and she was hit upside the head with a rat.
Joy, Theo, and Lillian looked at each other. They needed to get this woman back to the jailhouse and she was much larger than any one of them. It was going to be a long night dragging her back to the prince’s prison.