5d6 (Caverns and Creatures) Read online

  5d6

  A Caverns and Creatures Mini-Adventure Collection

  By Robert Bevan

  Copyright 2017 Robert Bevan

  This is a collection of the fifth six Caverns and Creatures Mini-Adventures. It includes:

  They Fight Three Giants

  From the Bowels of Hell Hounds

  Tossing the Salaad

  The Fuccubus

  Fistin’ the Furious

  Pixie Dicks

  No new content has been added. Nothing in the stories has been changed. If you’ve already purchased these stories, there’s little need for you to purchase the e-version of this collection.

  Acknowledgements:

  First, I’d like to thank Joan Reginaldo for her invaluable criticism. It’s tough to find a good beta-reader. I went through a few before I met Joan. I can’t stress enough how important it is to find someone who understands your vision and is able to help you achieve it. There’s so much more involved than pointing out misplaced commas (though she did a lot of that, too). Go take a look at Joan’s blog if you have a chance. She’s got some good tips on writing. Leave a comment. She likes comments.

  Next, I’d like to thank my beautiful wife, No Young Sook, for her constant support, and for getting up to get the kids ready for school every morning because I left early to go to the office to write some books.

  Next in line to be thanked is my brother-in-law, No Hyun Jun. Every cover of mine you see is the end product of a communication struggle, his English being about on par with my Korean. But the guy can work some Photoshop magic. And he also helps out with the kids quite a bit. Thanks, Hyun Jun.

  Finally, I’d like to thank all of you wonderful people who like my Facebook page.

  They Fight Three Giants

  (Original Publication Date: May 26, 2017)

  For Vickie and Travis, whose adventure is just beginning,

  And the Johns, who made high school just a little less shitty,

  And Jeff Hollingsworth, for being so generous.

  “So you're here all alone?” said Hollingsworth, the sorcerer who had been plying them with drinks all night. Though he was only a couple of feet away from Dave, his voice sounded distant and echoing. “No friends? No family?”

  Dave stifled a yawn. “I've got friends, man. Take a look around.” His vision blurred as he turned his head to look at Tim. He could only focus enough to tell that Tim was passed out face down on the table.

  Turning his head to the right, slowly and deliberately so that his vision could keep up, he found Julian likewise asleep, his head hanging back with a string of drool hanging out the corner of his mouth.

  This guy was feeding them some strong shit. It hadn't tasted that strong. Kinda fruity, but it really sneaked up on them.

  A slight shift further to the right, and Dave was surprised to see Cooper sitting right next to him. He was even awake... kind of.

  “Hey, man!” said Dave. He wasn't sure if he was swaying or if Cooper was. “Whassup?”

  Cooper's bloodshot eyes opened a little wider, like he'd been in a state of semi-consciousness which Dave had just fully awakened him from.

  “Whassup? Did you just say whassup to me? Who the fuck do you think you –”

  It started with a belch rising from the depths of his stomach. Dave experienced it in slow motion, hearing every reverberating micro-syllable in rhythm with the to-and-fro flapping of Cooper's half-orc cheeks as the stench of partially digested food and booze washed over his face.

  Dave's reflexes were far behind his heightened awareness, however. When the vomit started to flow, Dave saw it come out of Cooper's mouth in what seemed like a series of six frames of animation, but was unable to turn his head in time to avoid a direct blast to the face.

  “NOOOO–” He was also not able to stop himself from screaming. The taste was similar to what they'd been drinking all night, but more acidic and studded with chunks of ham.

  Dave felt the contents of his own stomach rising like an elevator with an out of control counterweight. He hosed down Cooper's man tits with his own boozy ham-studded vomit.

  “Are you two gentlemen quite all right?” asked Hollingsworth.

  “Never been better,” said Cooper. “Second wind! Let's get a waiter.” As much as Dave hated to admit it, Cooper was right. All of Dave's sensory perception was back to normal. His vision was no longer blurred. He could hear the hustle and bustle of the lunch crowd in the tavern at normal speed and volume. Ejecting so much of that shit they were drinking must have cleared his head. He also felt like he could go another round.

  Hollingsworth frowned at the chunky orange vomit pooled on the table, the floor, the seats, and dripping off of Dave and Cooper. “Perhaps it would be wiser to continue this conversation at a different venue.”

  “How about one for the road, then?” asked Cooper.

  Hollingsworth's eyes darted nervously out of the booth as he fidgeted in his plain brown woolen robes for something. With a sigh of relief, he produced a small piece of what appeared to be green chalk.

  “I was thinking we might leave before one of the tavern workers sees this mess.”

  “You mean like dine n' dash?” asked Dave. The only way in and out of this place was on the other side of the bar. He and Cooper weren't exactly the stealthiest ones in the party either.

  “Heave it n' leave it,” said Cooper. “Fuck yeah, let's roll!”

  Dave didn't like where this was going. “I just don't think it's worth the risk. Tim and Julian aren't even conscious. How are we supposed to drag them out of here without being seen?”

  “Leave that to me,” said Hollingsworth, grinning confidently while holding up his tiny piece of chalk. “Would you mind scooting forward a bit?”

  Dave held back any further objections and scooted forward in his seat until his breastplate touched the table.

  Hollingsworth crawled behind him until he was at the back of the booth between Dave and Cooper. He craned his neck to look over the booth, then turned his attention to the tapestry hanging on the back wall behind Cooper's seat.

  Similar tapestries hung at the back of every booth in the tavern. They depicted scenes of heroes fighting fantasy creatures. The artwork wasn't particularly impressive, but it made for better tavern atmosphere than the bare walls at the Whore's Head Inn.

  The tapestry at the back of their booth, which Hollingsworth suddenly seemed so interested in, showed a knight on horseback facing off against a bald, grey-skinned giant. The giant was twice as tall as the mounted knight, and wielded a stone above his head, ready to hurl.

  Dave wiped some half-digested ham chunks out of his beard and concentrated on calming his insides, lest he also be ready to hurl.

  When Hollingsworth determined the coast was clear, he pulled the tapestry away from the wall, revealing a chalk-drawn diagram on the wall. A large pentagon with trapezoids on each side of it. Inside four of the trapezoids were symbols that Dave didn't recognize. Magical runes or something?

  Hollingsworth drew one such mysterious symbol in the remaining trapezoid, and the whole diagram flashed with green light for a moment.

  “Grab your friends. We must hurry!”

  “I'd feel your sense of urgency more if you hadn't just stopped to finish the world's shittiest graffiti on the wall,” said Cooper. He lifted his right ass cheek and squeaked out a fart. “On second thought, now time's a factor.”

  “You do not understand, my half-orc friend. For what I have drawn on the wall is a portal to E'cha.” Hollingsworth put his hand through the wall to demonstrate. His arm went in up to the elbow with no resistance, as if the wood was merely an illusion.

  “Whoa!” said Dave. “That's incredible.” He glanced
around to make sure none of the tavern staff was around before standing up on his seat. He touched the wall with both hands, or at least attempted to. His hands went through it as if it wasn't even there. He leaned forward, trying to keep his eyes open as he put his face through, but he couldn't resist closing them. That much accounted for his loss of sight, but his sudden loss of hearing was inexplicable.

  “What the fuck?” he said, relieved that he could hear himself say it. He wasn't deaf. He was merely in a much quieter place than the tavern. At least his head was. He opened his eyes.

  Dave had assumed that they were going to some other tavern, but the portal's destination was like a lunar landscape, grey and rocky. He squinted in reaction to the glaring sun, which reminded him that they'd started drinking in the late morning. There wasn't a pub in sight. He noticed that his head and hands were poking out of the side of a massive boulder, and framed by an identical chalk diagram drawn onto the stone.

  The bottom of the diagram was about ten feet above the rocky ground below. A series of footholds had been chiseled into the boulder from the ground to the bottom of the chalk outline. It would be awkward, but Dave thought he could climb down if he wanted to.

  But did he want to? What was the point of skipping out on a bar tab only to be stuck in some barren wasteland? No. It would make much more sense to just pay the bill and hope they could get out of there before anyone saw the mess they'd – “OW!”

  A sharp blow to the ass broke Dave's concentration. Cooper's elbow. Already leaning forward, Dave grasped at illusory stone, then tried to step back, slipped in his own vomit, and fell forward.

  “SHIIIIIIIT!” He did half a somersault before hitting the ground hard on his back. It hurt a lot, and knocked the wind out of him, but he'd pull through.

  With all the strength he could muster, Dave rolled over and pushed himself up. “Stupid asshole. He didn't know what was on the other side of that portal. I might have been –”

  SMASH

  A force from above flattened Dave face down on the ground.

  “Ow!” said Tim, awakened from his drunken slumber. “What the fuck, Dave?”

  “I didn't –”

  “Why is your face full of puke?” Tim looked around. “Where the hell are we?”

  Dave sat up. “I don't know. We were drinking with that guy we met in the market.” He got on one knee and started to push himself up to his feet. “He wanted to skip out on paying the bar tab, so he –”

  “You take your filthy hands off him this instant!” cried Ravenus from above. Flapping his black wings hard, he charged back into the stone.

  SMACK

  Whether it was because he didn't recognize the significance of the chalk drawing or because he was still blind drunk, Ravenus smashed beak-first into the solid part of the stone and fell to the ground. “Son of a bitch that hurt!”

  “–AVENUS!” cried Julian as he flew out of the stone clutching his face.

  “Fuck,” said Dave just before Julian crashed into him.

  Julian rolled away from Dave before Cooper followed. Dave didn't even bother with a Reflex save. He just shielded his face and waited to be punished for existing.

  “E'CHA, motherfuckers!” To Dave's amazement, Cooper landed on his feet, one foot on each side of his head.

  Dave breathed a sigh of relief as he uncovered his face. He got a quick view of Cooper's junk before a brown blob hit him in the face, obscuring his vision once again.

  “Sorry about that,” said Cooper. “I didn't see you down there. Interdimensional travel gives me the shits.”

  Dave sat up and wiped the shit out of his eyes. “Fuck you.”

  Hollingsworth came out of the stone feet first, carefully feeling for the footholds. What an asshole.

  “Welcome, gentlemen, to E'cha!” he said when he reached the stony ground.

  Cooper walked to the stone and reached up for the portal. “That's a pretty good trick. What is that? Magic chalk?”

  Hollingsworth covered his hands with the long sleeves of his robe and pulled Cooper away by the arm. “Indeed it is. And it's very expensive. If the line is broken, the portal will close. I need that to get back.”

  “You need it?” asked Julian. “What about the rest of us?”

  “We need it,” Hollingsworth said with a grin. “Did I say I? Of course I meant we.”

  Tim trudged over to a large pile of boulders. “I could use a wee. What is this place? Why are we here?”

  “I think it's supposed to be a pub,” said Cooper. He looked around at the bare expanse of dirt and rocks surrounding them all. “Kind of minimalist in the décor.”

  “It'll have some color once you start shitting all over the –” Tim's voice caught in his throat as the pile of rocks he was pissing on shifted and began to rise, taking on a familiar form.

  It wasn't a pile of rocks at all, but rather an extremely well-camouflaged naked man, now standing at least four times Tim's height.

  “I'm so sorry, sir,” said Tim, staring up at a dong as big as one of his own legs. “I didn't know you were –”

  The giant yawned with a sound like the Death Star getting ready to fire and scratched his boulder-like balls. Though his skin appeared flexible, the sound of his fingers against his sack was exactly like stone scraping against stone.

  When his itchy balls were tended to, he stared down at Dave and his companions with a stern, but not exactly angry, expression on his face, which reminded Dave of an Easter Island statue.

  “Hollingsworth,” he said in a booming gravelly voice. “You kept me waiting. I might have gone home had I not fallen asleep.”

  “I sincerely apologize, Furgal. I needed to make sure they lived up to your demanding specifications.”

  Dave was still pretty drunk and having some trouble putting together what was going on. He suspected Hollingsworth was talking about the four of them, but he couldn't think of what kind of demanding specifications they could possibly live up to.

  Furgal nodded. “They are without friends and family? They will not be missed?”

  “After you spend a few more minutes with them, you'll have no doubt about how little they'll be missed.”

  “Hey!” cried Dave. “Will someone explain what the hell is going on here?” He glared at Hollingsworth as the hazy pieces came together in his mind. “Are you selling us into slavery?”

  Hollingsworth shrugged. “Slavery, prostitution, food, who knows? My place isn't to ask questions.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “I'm not sure how I can make it any plainer.” Hollingsworth though for a moment, then spoke unnecessarily loud and slowly. “I. AM. UNCONCERNED. WITH. YOUR. FATE.”

  “I understood that much,” Dave muttered. “You don't have to be a dick about it. I meant that I don't understand how you could just turn on us like that. We were having a good time. I thought we were friends. How can you live with yourself?”

  Hollingsworth smiled gently at Dave. “Believe me. If you knew how much gold I was promised for this, you would have encouraged me to go through with it.”

  Furgal produced a large moss-covered sack from behind what Dave hoped was an actual pile of boulders rather than another huge naked man. The sack bulged at the bottom, clearly full of something heavy.

  Hollingsworth's eyes teared up. “By the gods, I've never seen so much gold!”

  “And you never will.”

  The childlike joy vanished suddenly from Hollingsworth's face. “I beg your par–”

  CRUNCH

  Dave noticed a distinct lack of jingling as Furgal repeatedly smashed Hollingsworth into sorcerer paste. The sack had been full of rocks all along, suggesting that Furgal had meant to double cross him from the beginning.

  “What the fuck, man?” cried Tim.

  Furgal stopped beating the pulpy remains of Hollingsworth and glared down at Tim. “I care not for such language.”

  “Language?” said Tim. “Language? You just murdered a man in cold blood, and you're
going to give me shit about my language?”

  “A man who would sell his own people into slavery is no man. He had no honor.”

  Julian cleared his throat, still looking appropriately horrified, but now also cautiously optimistic. “Does that mean you're going to let us go home now?”

  “Are you in such a hurry that you would leave poor Hollingsworth to be devoured by wild dogs?” asked Furgal. “Is it not the custom, even among you tiny savages, to bury your dead?”

  Dave, Julian, Cooper, and Tim glanced at each other and nodded their unspoken understanding. Whatever this guy wants, as long as he lets us go afterward.

  “Did you happen to bring a shovel?” Dave asked Furgal.

  Cooper frowned at Hollingsworth's remains. “Or a spatula?”

  “No need for that,” said Furgal. He grinned at Dave. “I will show you a custom of my people, passed down to me by my father. When my sons become men, I shall pass it on to them.”

  “That's nice.”

  “Did you notice how I smashed Hollingsworth's body into the ground?”

  Dave wished that Julian would take back the Diplomacy reins. “I did notice that.”

  “Most of it, anyway,” said Cooper. He peeled a piece of gore – either an ear or a toe from what Dave could make out – off his chest and flung it into the larger pile of Hollingsworth.

  “While I was destroying my foe, the rocks in my sack were getting pulverized to dust.”

  Cooper cringed as his gaze was drawn to Furgal's junk. “Dude, there are better ways of dealing with guilt.”

  Furgal lifted his sack and let the powdered rocks flow out onto Hollingsworth's remains. When the sack was empty, he looked at Dave.

  Dave didn't know why Furgal had taken such a liking to him, but he wished he hadn't. “That is very impressive.”

  “Would you care to say some words?”