by Ray Bossert
in Issue 85, February 2019
By the mouth of a cave, a large ogress rested an elbow on her club, scratching her coarse chin as she considered the party of four travelers standing before her. One of the party, in gleaming white body armor and a white cape, stood forward from the rest. A weighty mace hung by her side. She was conducting introductions.
“And this is Sir Alec,” she said, gesturing to a man behind her. He was wearing plated armor and studying a small book. “Genius Knight.”
“M’Lady,” Alec said, barely looking up from his book.
“His friends call him ‘Smart Alec,’” laughed a large, strapping woman of nearly seven feet–almost as tall and broad-shouldered as the ogress herself. Her face was shadowed by the cowl of a cloak.
“Such people are not my friends,” said Alec.
“And this is Bruda the Mighty,” the woman in white armor continued, waving towards the larger woman behind her. “Our sorceress.”
“Sorceress?” the ogre asked.
“Yes.”
“The mighty?”
“I take a lot of exercise,” Bruda said.
“I see,” said the ogress. “And who are you again?”
“My friends call me Nuddle. And they are my friends that call me that. I’m a healer. I’m afraid I don’t excel at it, though.”
“But she has the best bedside manner,” said Alec.
“Very charming,” said the ogress.
“Oh, and I should also introduce you to Reynard the Adamant.” Nuddle stepped aside so the ogress could get a better look at Reynard chewing on his own furry ankle.
“Isn’t that a kobold?” asked the ogress.
“Oh, no. He’s an elf who was turned into a kobold. Or at least we think so. His ears look particularly pointy for a kobold, don’t they?”
“Yes, well, this is all very good, but I think I’d rather get on with killing you now.”
“Really? There’s no need for violence. Now that we know each other, let’s talk out our differences.” Nuddle punctuated her proposal with a dimpled smile.
“Differences?” said the ogress. “What’s our differences?”
“Oh, you know, whatever it is that caused you to set upon us. If we intruded somehow, we’d be happy to make amends…”
“Our differences is that you walked by me cave and I’m hungry and I want to eat you.”
“In that case, I’m sure we have food that we could share, don’t we?”
“I always carry a variety of comestibles on a journey,” Alec said.
“Good. I can eat those after I eat you.”
“That’s not quite the spirit of the thing…” Nuddle said.
“Forget it, Nud. I’m gonna waste ’er,” said Bruda, spinning her hands in a circle.
Reynard wagged his tail and panted.
“As you wish,” sighed Nuddle, walking back to the party.
Alec shut his little book with a snap, stuffed it in a pouch, and drew his sword.
The ogress took a wide stance and raised her club.
Bruda manifested a ghostly blue ball of fire in her hands and propelled it towards the ogress. The ogress, for her part, braced herself for the blast…but found herself not even the slightest bit singed.
“Pollywogs!” cursed Bruda. Only she didn’t say “pollywogs.”
“Oh, Bruda,” said Alec. “We went over that spell at least a hundred times.”
“Not now, Alec,” said Bruda.
The ogress roared and brought down her club. The party scattered…all but Reynard…who took the brunt of the stroke square on his canine skull. A cloud of leaves and dust rose up at the impact site.
“Reynard!” cried Nuddle, as she unlatched her mace.
The ogress dragged her club back up and turned to face Nuddle. She began a slow plod, and Nuddle stepped back between trees. Bruda closed her eyes, began an incantation, and swirled her hands again. Meanwhile, Alec strolled towards the ogress, whistling.
“Now, really,” said Alec. “Nuddle is far too sweet for a first course. Why not try something a little more savory!”
And Alec swept his blade at the ogress’s calf. It glanced off her thick skin.
“You call that a stroke?” called Bruda. “I thought we were working on your upper body strength.”
“Not now, Bruda,” said Alec, as the ogress peered down over her shoulder at him. “Besides, your banter has spoilt your spell.”
Bruda discovered that her second fireball had become a goopy, hot mess in her hands.
The ogress had turned fully away from Nuddle and was frowning at Alec. It was his turn to stagger back as the ogress lifted her club with two hands over her head. He leapt to the side as the head of the club cratered the ground on which he had just stood.
“Anyone in favor of running away?” asked Nuddle.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” said Alec as he scrambled.
“Hold on,” said Bruda, as she tried once more to conjure a spell. This time the vague shape of a spectral dagger was manifesting along her right arm (her hands were still covered in steaming goop). “I got this.”
The ogress, meanwhile, was lifting her club out of the pit she had made, but this time, she only raised it halfway. She began to swing a wide arc towards Alec. As slow as she was, her reach was long enough that Alec had little chance of running outside of its radius.
Then, out of the ground, wriggled Reynard the Adamant, his leather jerkin wrinkled and dusty. He gripped onto the ogress’s club as it passed overhead, scampered up her arm, and began clawing at her cheeks and chomping her nose. This led her to abort her swing, and gave Alec time to dive behind a sizable rock.
“Yay, Reynard!” cried Nuddle.
Bruda launched her spectral dagger at the ogress.
It flew passed its mark and struck Alec’s helm as he peered over his defenses.
“Bru-da!” Alec yelled, falling back.
The spectral dagger ricocheted. Towards Nuddle.
Nuddle batted it away with her mace, and it struck the ogress in the small of her back. There it glimmered for half a second and faded away.
The ogress dropped to one knee and tried to rip Reynard from her face.
Bruda was stunned and looked at her own gooey hands. “I did it!”
Alec pulled himself up onto his rock, just in time to see Nuddle march towards the ogress. Nuddle shook her head, hoisted up her mace, and brought it down on the ogress’ skull.
The ogress collapsed. Reynard crawled out from under her wide head and wiped his muzzle.
“She’ll come to eventually,” Nuddle said. “We should…keep…moving…”
But by now her three companions were running into the ogress’ cave looking for spoils.
“We’ll have to rename you,” said Bruda, letting the light from the campfire play on a gold bracelet she had claimed from the ogress’ lair. “I had thought you were Nuddle the Charming. But you might be Nuddle the Quick. I can’t believe you made that hit.”
“More like Nuddle the Lucky,” said Nuddle, rubbing a healing ointment on Reynard’s scalp. His left leg batted the turf. “Don’t expect to see a repeat of that performance, Bruda. You’ll have to hit your next target yourself, my friend.”
“Are you so sure she missed?” said Alec, inspecting a few newly-acquired scrolls. “Don’t forget who sent Bruda’s magic dagger your way.”
“Yeah, way to use your head,” said Bruda.
“I always use my head,” Alec said, still looking down at his scrolls. “That’s how I keep it on.”
“To keeping our heads,” said Nuddle, raising a cup.
Everyone took a sip. Except for Reynard, who lapped from a bowl.
“To finishing this job,” said Bruda, raising a cup.
“To finishing this job,” repeated Nuddle and Alec.
Nuddle’s eyes grew heavy. Jobs, she thought. Always jobs. When she had pledged herself to the Order of Battle Maidens, she had thought she was destined for more than just jobs. She had imagined herself a healer on the field, giving balms and aid…and sometimes a final solace to brave warriors. But her order had collapsed, wrenched apart from within by corruption and the pride of her superiors. And, so, she found herself a mercenary healer, hired, years ago, along with a handful of others for petty jobs—rooting out goblin nests, reclaiming lost livestock, assisting on treasure hunts, mindlessly sustaining apprentice warriors as they hacked apart seemingly endless numbers of vermin that came from who knows where in the border wastelands. Nothing all that meaningful. She grew particularly accustomed to a few of her fellows, and she eventually invited them to form a group. Alec and Bruda were all that was left. They had picked up Reynard along the way.
The job this time was to recover the corpse of a lost explorer. Presumed corpse, anyway. He was carrying some magic supplies of moderate value, and his wife wanted them back. The explorer’s return was optional.
“This is the place,” said Nuddle, at the mouth of another cave.
“Are you sure it’s the place?”
“It’s the place according to the map.”
“I never trust magic maps,” said Bruda.
“You are a sorceress,” said Alec. “How can you be skeptical of magic maps?”
“I’m skeptical of magic maps because I’m a sorceress. If you saw how hippocampus pudding was made, you’d probably never eat it again.”
“Fair enough,” said Alec, marching forward into the cave, pulling a torch from under his cape and trying to light a tinder box with his other hand.
The cave presented little in the way of peril. Just some natural, non-sentient denizens that were easily dispatched. Eventually, the party reached an extraordinarily long corridor which appeared to stop at a dead end. As they considered what this meant, Reynard still had the remains of a salamander smouldering out of the side of his mouth.
“This is not a natural formation,” said Alec, sliding the fingers of his gauntlet along the surface. “We should probably be careful.”
They slowly crept forward.
Then they crept some more.
And more creeping still.
“I feel stupid,” said Bruda.
“You’ll feel more stupid with a poison dart in your neck,” said Alec.
“I feel stupid, too,” said Nuddle, and she picked up her pace.
Bruda followed her lead.
Then Reynard.
“Oh, fine,” said Alec.
“Actually, I think I see a turn up ahead,” said Nuddle.
And, in fact, the corridor was not a complete dead end, but instead opened to their right. The party paused before reaching the opening.
“Reynard is acting nervous,” said Bruda.
“When is the last time he went?” asked Alec.
“I thought he went before we entered the cave,” said Nuddle.
“In that case, stay here. I’ll take a look,” said Alec.
He held up a tube with a curved tip, on the end of which sat a crystal. He edged up to the corner, stretched out his tube by several feet, and slowly maneuvered the crystal into the opening.
“What do you see?” asked Nuddle.
“A chamber. Looks like a body in there. Could be the body. Broken pottery. Late Beruvian, I think. Some kind of art on the wall. Possibly depicting the sacrifice of Taurex. In the style of Plito the…”
“Alec,” said Bruda.
“Sorry, sorry. Oh, and a chest.”
“Any armed guards or monsters?” asked Nuddle.
“Not that I can see.”
“All right, let’s go,” said Bruda.
They swiveled around the corner and into the chamber.
“Is this our guy?” asked Alec, looking at the corpse.
“Fits the description,” said Nuddle.
“Reynard is still freaking out,” said Bruda.
Nuddle did not like the implications of that. “Can you tell what killed him?”
Alec inspected the body. It was lying face down. Then he flipped it over with the toe of his boot.
“Not a clue,” said Alec.
“See if he’s got the stuff on him,” said Bruda.
Alec pointed to himself.
“Don’t get all squeamish,” said Bruda.
“Not squeamish. We still don’t know what killed him.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure I could heal you,” said Nuddle.
“Physic heal thyself,” said Alec.
“Where do you get these sayings from?” asked Bruda.
“I don’t know. They just sort of come to me,” said Alec.
“Fine,” Nuddle squatted down and began to rifle through the expired explorer’s sack. She tossed out some decayed rations, some rope, some small books which Alec snatched up. Then she patted the body. “Nothing.”
Bruda pointed to the wooden chest in the room. “What do you think?”
“A distinct possibility,” said Alec.
They stared at it. Except for Reynard, who was sniffing at a particularly upright example of Beruvian pottery.
“Do you think it’s booby-trapped?” said Alec.
“Could you not say that?” asked Nuddle.
“Say what?”
“Just say ‘trapped.’ The other way sounds, I don’t know. It’s probably offensive somehow.”
“Okay. Do you think it’s trapped? No. That doesn’t sound right, does it? Do you think?”
“You’re right, it does sound a little off.”
“Like the thing itself is trapped…like somebody locked the chest inside of something else and now the chest cannot get out no matter how hard it tries.”
“Yeah. But I just don’t like the other way of saying it.”
“Maybe ‘rigged?’” said Bruda.
“Do you think it’s rigged?”
“Better,” said Nuddle.
“Do you think there’s something bad going to happen to us if we open it?” said Alec.
“Too long,” said Bruda.
“I wish Dagger were here,” said Nuddle. “Traps were kind of his thing.”
Dagger the Wise was a thief. He left the party fairly early on.
“Oooh, Re-e-eynard,” called Alec.
Reynard looked over.
“Would you like to see what’s in the pretty treasure box?”
Reynard shook his head in agreement.
“Be my guest,” said Alec, taking several steps back.
But it was empty. No treasure. No traps. Just air.
Until Reynard climbed inside it and cuddled up.
“Hmmm,” said Nuddle.
“Anti-climactic,” said Alec.
Bruda said something more colorful and expressive.
Later, at camp, Alec sat by the fire flipping through the books they had found on the corpse. One seemed to be a journal. The other was a collection of old legends. Or maybe ancient history. It was often hard to tell the difference in a land populated by ogres and dragons and magicians.
Bruda watched Alec open one book at its last pages and flip quickly back towards the beginning.
“Even I know that’s not where you start a book,” she said.
“In our vulgar text, that’s true. Although there are plenty of writing systems that move in the opposite direction of our own common tongue. Not that this is the case here…”
“Uh-huh,” Bruda said.
“The real point is that it’s strange. You’d think, if he was journaling his quest, then the last entry might describe what he thought he would find…the excitement and anticipation of concluding his quest…but it doesn’t.”
“What if he wasn’t trying to find anything?” asked Nuddle.
“Why would he be in a cave near a chest if he wasn’t trying to find…oh. Oh. Of course. What if he wasn’t trying to find something. But hide something.”
“So…hide what?” asked Nuddle.
“That’s a good question,” said Alec, flipping more intently through pages.
“What else do the books say? Are there any clues to who might have killed him? Do you think we could find the killer?” asked Nuddle.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Alec. “Let his wife report it to the constable if she wants. This job doesn’t pay enough for all that.”
Alec began to take his armor off and put on bedclothes.
“You should leave your armor on,” said Bruda.
“Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to sleep in armor?” asked Alec.
“What if we get attacked?”
“We aren’t going to get attacked at this point. The universe isn’t that cruel.”
Later that same evening…
Nuddle and Reynard slept as Alec kept the first watch. Or rather, Bruda kept the first watch because she knew Alec well enough not to trust him with keeping any watches, first, second, or otherwise.
“Hmmm,” hmmmed Alec, adjusting his nightgown as he continued to thumb through pages of the books that they had recovered from the cave.
“That is your concerned ‘hmmm,’” said Bruda. “What did you find?”
“Something doesn’t quite make sense. I think there’s a code in this journal. Here, read these letters that I’ve marked.”
“Why?”
“Because you have magic. I don’t. This isn’t a simple scroll. I think it’s more arcane.”
“What’s going to happen to me if I read it?”
“What?”
“What’s going to happen to me? Is this thing cursed? You just don’t want to get cursed.”
“Cursed? No. No. Nothing like that. I think this is an activation spell. It has to be cast. If I’m right, then other words will magically appear on the page.”
“You aren’t lying to me, are you?”
“Bruda. Please.”
She stared at him for a moment, and then she sounded out words from the letters he had marked. As he had predicted, shimmering orange runes formed in the white spaces between the text.
“All right,” said Alec, taking back the book. “Now let’s see what kind of spells this book contains…”
Alec’s gleeful smile turned sour. “Oh…oh, no…no, no, no. We have to get rid of this. Now. Nuddle was right. He wasn’t there to find a magic item. He was there to hide this.”
“Why would he want to hide this, Alec? Why would he want to hide it?”
“It’s the Book of the Necrosian Death Cult.”
“And we just…” Bruda began.
In a flash of ghostly blue light a circle of hooded cultists appeared around the camp, pointing various wands towards the party.
Nuddle and Reynard were roused from their sleep, each blinking.
“What’s going on?” asked Nuddle.
“I should have kept my armor on,” said Alec.
One of the hooded figures chanted, and the camp, the woods, and all of their equipment vanished in an instant—replaced instead with a stone floor and walls and the distant sounds of screams.
“Take the sorcerer to the Chamber of Silence,” said the leader of the hooded figures. “The Seneschal will want to interrogate him…personally.”
They began to drag away Alec. “You idiots, I’m not a sorcerer…I’m just wearing my…wait…I mean…uhm…Fine, take me to your so-called Chamber of Silence! It will not constrain my powers!”
“And these two?”
“They’ll have nothing for us. Disarm the barbarian and take her to the mill dungeon. Ehn. Throw the little girl in there with her, too. She looks like she has a strong enough back.”
“The dog in the clothes?”
“The vivisection hall.”
“He’s an elf,” Nuddle muttered.
So Alec was taken to the Chamber of Silence, an enchanted room that, quite contrary to its name, was perpetually emanating an ear-splitting, mind-numbing din. He was bound to a steel table, his fingers individually locked into place with torturous wire gloves, and his mouth gagged. It was meant to keep any magicians from practicing their arts–all but the magician who built it, the Seneschal himself.
Meanwhile, Reynard was muzzled, each of his limbs bound by cords to a table, and a series of fell-looking tools laid out beside him.
And as all this was going on, Bruda and Nuddle found themselves collared and enchained to a vast mill-wheel with several other brutish looking beings, each pushing hard on a wheel spoke in front of them, employing their strength to power some contraption elsewhere in the tower.
After about a third-of-an-hour’s time had passed, a mob of large, angry creatures burst out of the mill-dungeon door, bodies bruised and cut and knuckles bloodied. Some carried the broken weapons of their once-captors and guards. They searched with their eyes for some passage to freedom or some skull to smash. Slowly stepping out of the door behind them were Bruda and Nuddle, looking far less wild and haggard, but no less bloodied.
“You are certainly getting better with your spell-casting,” said Nuddle. “That might have been the best I’ve seen you do, yet!”
“It’s easier when you don’t have a monster swinging a club at you,” said Bruda.
“Well, I guess we should go rescue the boys,” said Nuddle.
Bruda made a loud whistle, and their former co-prisoners stood at attention.
“We have some more friends here,” Nuddle said. “If any of you would like to help us free them, we’d very much appreciate your assistance.”
The anatomists were utterly exhausted from their failed attempts to dissect the kobold/possibly-cursed-elf, and so they did not put up much of a fight when two large wood trolls and Nuddle came charging into the room. Although trolls boast incredible healing abilities, these two possessed a jigsaw of scars made with surgical precision, flanked by innumerable perforations from past sutures. Reynard scampered over the blunted instruments on his way out the door.
Quite a while before Bruda came bursting into the Chamber of Silence to break Alec’s bonds (none too gently, by the way), Alec had at first been terrified. The Seneschal had only made a brief appearance. It was hard to make out his features under his cowl, but Alec might possibly have seen tentacles on the his face. In any event, he definitely reeked of fish. But before the Seneschal had even spoken a word, another hooded figure entered the room, whispered something, and the Seneschal swiftly left.
Alone, Alec was much less terrified.
So he remained constrained to his table, trying to ignore itches, and struggling to think of witty rejoinders should the interrogation ever actually begin. He was sure he could come up with something really staggeringly sharp if given enough time. Usually, he thought of such things after the fact and had to store them away for a similar event in the future. But now he had an opportunity to plan ahead.
He was just starting to formulate what he thought was a very clever and utterly damaging pun on mollusks when Bruda’s aforementioned appearance occurred, and Alec was whisked away into a battle that was taking place throughout the tower.
“Hold on, what’s behind this door?” asked Alec, in the middle of a tumult between death cultists and the escaped prisoners.
“I don’t think we should mess with that,” said Bruda. “We should escape while we have the chance.”
“You’re not the least bit curious, Bruda?” said Nuddle, invigorated by battle. Freeing prisoners. Fighting death cultists. No cheapskate employers making her question her lifechoices. All this chaos and destruction made Nuddle feel more hopeful than she had in years. “I’m with Alec on this. We should check it out. What if someone else is imprisoned in there?”
Reynard did a nervous pace.
“Look at Reynard. Don’t you two think we are a little out of our depth?”
“The last time he did that, we found the book,” said Alec.
“That doesn’t sound like an argument in favor of…”
“Maybe we should just take a peek,” said Nuddle.
Alec pushed on the door and peered inside. He withdrew his head back and turned to the group. “Looks like the Seneschal is reading the book. And there’s a girl.”
“What was she doing while he was reading?” asked Nuddle.
“Nothing.”
“What? Is he just reading it to her like a bedtime story?”
“No. No. She’s asleep. And she isn’t a little child. She’s more like a young woman. A princess, maybe.”
“How can you tell that?” asked Bruda.
“I don’t know. She’s looks…princessy.”
Bruda squinted at him.
“Do you think she needs to be rescued?” asked Nuddle. This was something. Not just a job. No one had even hired them for this. And rescuing princesses? This was the real deal.
“Seems like a safe bet,” said Alec.
“Do you think we could take the Seneschal?” asked Bruda.
“It’s always hard to tell with spellcasters. They hardly ever look powerful at first glance.”
Bruda grunted.
“Present company excepted.”
“Well, let’s take him by surprise then,” Nuddle said.
The party charged into the room.
The Seneschal barely had time to turn and face the party before they set upon him. Reynard lunged at him, and the cultist tripped backwards on his robe, hitting his head on an onyx orb. He was now unconscious.
“What a pushover,” said Bruda.
Alec peered down at the Seneschal. He was gearing up to announce his mollusk pun, but then was disappointed to discover that the tentacles that he had thought he had seen were actually just a pleated beard. So he was also sort of relieved that he hadn’t used the pun prematurely.
“Nuddle, think you can wake up the girl?” Alec asked, still looking at the beard and making sure none of the follicles had suckers.
Nuddle tried. She really tried. Said some incantations. Used a healing touch. Slapped the young woman’s cheeks a bit. Pinched her arms. She turned back to the party, forlorn. “I don’t know. Is somebody supposed to kiss her or something?” asked Nuddle.
“That’s just in fairy tales. Wait,” said Alec, shuffling in his nightgown. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.”
“We’re waiting,” said Bruda.
“This is too obvious. She’s like a cliché, right?”
“What?” she asked.
“The sleeping princess. This is a cliché.”
“Okay…”
“So maybe she’s not a sleeping princess.”
“Confused.”
“Maybe she’s the bad guy.”
“Ohhh. Because that wouldn’t be cliché?”
“Right.”
“I see.”
“But,” Alec slapped his head. “But now that’s cliché, too.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bruda.
“Now, the cliché has been broken so many times that it’s a cliché to break the cliché.”
“Look, are we rescuing her or not? Because I want out of this place.”
“You really think whoever built this evil tower of death was worried about whether or not they were being too derivative?” asked Nuddle.
“Think, think, think,” said Alec, pounding his head.
“No more thinking, professor,” said Bruda, hoisting up the sleeping woman over her shoulder. “If she’s the damsel-in-distress, we rescue her, maybe get a big reward. If she’s the bad guy, then we kill her when she wakes up. Save the world. Probably get some reward for that, too.”
“There’s a logic to that…” said Alec.
And the party exited the room. A serpent slithered out of the sleeve of the unconscious Seneschal and coiled between the open pages of the Book of the Necrosian Death Cult lying on the floor.
Eventually, the party found their way out of the tower after climbing over the broken wands and bodies of the innumerable cultists who had been overtaken by their former mill workers. They stepped over some of the former prisoners as well. Nuddle was heartbroken for them. She might not have been on the clock, but someone still had to pay wages in the end.
The party passed through a forest surrounding the tower and eventually came to small clearing. They were all exhausted, but none dared to suggest resting just yet. No one knew if there were any cultists left to follow them.
“Hold on,” said Bruda. “I think she’s waking up.”
“It must have been the tower itself that controlled the sleep spell,” said Alec.
“What’s happening?” the young woman asked. “Who are you people?”
“We rescued you!” said Nuddle.
“Rescued me?”
“Yes, we found you under a spell in an evil tower,” said Nuddle.
“And we rescued you!”
“I’m going to kill you all. All of you. And you’re little dog-man, too.”
“He’s an elf,” said Nuddle. “Cursed. We think.”
“See,” Alec said. “It was a fifty-fifty chance she was the bad guy, wasn’t it?”
The door to the tavern swung open, and four weary travelers filed in, backlit by partial moonlight. Covered in ash and soot. They staggered towards a booth.
A man in a badly singed nightgown separated from the group, went to the tavern-keeper, and asked for some hearty beverages. He fumbled about the remnants of his nightgown for a nonexistent purse.
“Here, allow me,” said a knave, tossing coins onto the counter. The knave smiled an uneven smile.
“Is this a Dagger I see before me…” said Alec.
“Smart Alec,” said Dagger the Wise. “I see adventuring is turning as large a profit as ever for you. Let me help you take these drinks back to your table.”
“Dagger!” Nuddle squealed when she saw Alec return with the thief.
Alec and Bruda rolled their eyes. Reynard merely tried to pull his stein closer, but was having trouble getting a grip. He had been turned to stone just prior and hadn’t fully recovered.
“Sweet Nuddle,” Dagger said, sliding into their booth. “Am I mistaken or is that the smell of burning flesh?”
“A recovery job went bad,” said Nuddle. “Aaand-we-might-have-accidently-awoken-a-Necrosian-Death-Cult-deity.”
“It escaped on a dragon,” said Bruda. “The dragon set us on fire.”
“Worst yet, we’ve come back empty-handed,” said Alec.
“Emptiness is all in your perspective,” said Dagger the Wise.
“Sounds like you might have found something better than treasure, Nud.”
“What’s that?” asked Nuddle.
“A quest.”
“A quest?”
“You woke up a sleeping evil. Now, you have got to go stop it.”
Nuddle looked at Dagger. Those old, wise eyes that so uncannily reminded her of her father. He was right. This would be something important. Not just hire-and-salary. This was fighting an insurmountable evil. Something worth doing for its own sake, win or lose. She had found a quest.
“Don’t look at me, though,” said Dagger. “Not my line of work. I’m all fortune, hold the glory.”
Nuddle turned to her companions.
Bruda nudged Alec, who shrugged. Bruda stomped on Alec’s foot. Alec yelped and half-heartedly raised a fist in a ballyhoo cheer.
“We’ll take the job,” Nuddle said.
Reynard yawned with a long, open snout.
©February 2019 Ray Bossert
Ray Bossert‘s has been previously published in The Fantasist. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.