The horse caught two crossbow bolts. One in the neck, and the other in the eye. It was dead before it had a chance to scream. It vanished, and the two bolts clattered onto the threshold between dimensions.

"Sorry!" said a balding gnome sitting on the side of the bed with a crossbow and a hard-on threatening to tear a hole in his little pants. "That was my fault."

"I was only following his lead," said the similarly equipped elf sitting next to him.

Julian stumbled across the threshold and looked at Ravenus, who was perched on the headboard. "Who the hell are these people?"

Ravenus squawked something. Tim shook his head.

The elf on the bed glared at Ravenus. "He neglected to mention that it involved a group of men and a horse."

"Why would you tell them that?" asked Julian.

Ravenus flapped his wings and squawked defensively.

Tim harrumphed. "That figures. What a bunch of assholes. Tell them your friends are in danger and nobody gives a shit. But tell them there's a free sex show, and you might snag a couple of gullible fuckwits."

"Hey!" said the gnome.

Cooper picked up one of the crossbow bolts, darkened and slick with horse blood. "If you were expecting a parade of hookers to walk out the door, why the fuck was your first instinct to shoot us?"

"I did apologize for that," said the elf. "We are not, after all," He looked down at Tim. "How did you put it, a couple of gullible fuckwits? In this day and age, you can't go around trusting everything a talking bird in a tavern tells you. When we couldn't get the door open, we wondered if he might be luring us into some kind of trap."

"We did that poor creature a favor," said the gnome. "Look at you! All sweaty and wobbly-kneed, covered in bites and scratches. It's disgusting!"

Julian gasped. "We weren't –"

"Save it, elf." The gnome raised his hands, palms out to Julian. "Whatever you want to do with each other is your own business, but don't involve innocent animals in your twisted erotic rituals."

"Screw you, fuckface," said Tim. "You followed a bird to a stranger's inn room to watch a free sex show, and you're going to judge us? I see what's happening here. It's called deflection. You're ashamed of yourselves for being creepy-ass perverts, and cheap ones at that. So you project your own insecurities onto us, making up stories about us fucking a horse, a horse that you murdered, without a scrap of evidence."

"Hold the door, guys!" called Dave from inside Kristanya's chamber. "I had to get my pants." He waddled through the doorway with hoofprints on his breastplate and a drop of nut sauce still hanging from his limp dwarf schlong.

The gnome smiled expectantly at Tim. "You were saying?"

Julian started to say something, but Cooper put a hand on his shoulder. "Let them have this one. Let's go get a drink."


Thank you for your amazing generosity.

"So why us?" asked Tim, still bitter over his swollen hand. He downed a shot of stonepiss, then set the empty shot glass upside down beside two others, forming the beginning of a pyramid. Other patrons, sipping fancier drinks from ornately decorated tankards, occasionally frowned disapprovingly at their table. The Golden Goblet wasn't the sort of place Tim and his friends usually frequented, but they served a decent stonepiss. As long as someone else was paying, that's all that really mattered.

The young woman buying them drinks smiled sympathetically at him. She might be pretty if she didn't insist on dressing like a Puritan and wearing her hair tied up in a grandma bun.

"I have a task which requires your various talents, and which I will pay you handsomely for."

"Bullshit, lady. This isn't my first day in the game. We've been sent on enough quests from strangers in taverns to know that what you need is a group of expendable drunks to run off and do something that's too stupid or too dangerous for you to do yourself."

"Perhaps I should do the talking?" said Julian. The tips of his long elf ears were already pink from the half a glass of beer he'd drunk.

Tim necked back another shot, then set the glass down atop the row of empties to start the next tier of his pyramid. "We don't need your Diplomacy skill right now. She came to us." He turned back to the woman. "You've got until I pass out and piss my pants to make your pitch, so start pitching."

"You need not fear any risk that I would not be willing to face alongside you, halfling. For it is my intention to accompany you on this quest. And not one of you is expendable. Like I said, it is your individual talents which led me to request your assistance. I have been watching you from a distance since early in the evening when you tried to pick my pocket."

Tim held up his bandaged hand, unable to give her the finger because they were all too puffy and full of venom. "That's my unique talent you need? The one you personally witnessed me fucking up?"

"That wasn't your fault." She placed her hand on the table, and a small black snake slithered out of her sleeve. "How were you to know that little Simon here was in my pocket? I didn't feel your hand at all. Until you screamed, I hadn't the slightest idea you were there."

Tim grimaced at the snake. "Just keep Simon the fuck away from me."

Ula clicked her tongue, and Simon slithered back up her sleeve.

"Are you a sorcerer?" asked Julian.

"Sorceress," the woman corrected him. "My name is Ula Wilmott. I am touched with the gift of sorcery, but I have yet to develop my powers as you have yours."

"Ha!" said Dave. "Julian, a powerful sorcerer? She really is blowing smoke up our asses."

"Let's cut to the chase," said Tim. "You need Cooper's Strength, Julian's Charisma and sorcery, Dave's healing magic –"

"And Wisdom," said Dave.

"Whatever. And my superior Intelligence and Dexterity." Tim downed another shot. "This sounds like it has the potential to be a dangerous mission. What kind of crazy scheme do you need us to help you pull off?"

"Crazy?" Ula's left eye twitched. Her teacup rattled as she placed it on the saucer. She rested her trembling hand on her fork. "Would a crazy person do this?" Quick as a viper, she grabbed the fork and pinned Tim's already wounded hand to the table.

"YEOWWW!" cried Tim.

Cooper and Julian gawked uselessly while Dave yanked the fork out, then touched Tim's bleeding hand. "I heal thee!"

Tim shuddered with relief, cradling his re-abused hand and looking into Ula's calm eyes as she sipped her tea. "Yes, as a matter of fact. That's precisely the sort of thing a crazy person would do." He was ready to jump out of the way of a second attack, but she quietly set her teacup down again, making no move for any cutlery.

"Then if one suspects another of being crazy, it would make sense for one to not insult that person to their face."

Tim was still a little too freaked out to try and make sense of that logic without another shot of stonepiss to settle his nerves.

"Back to the question," said Julian. "What exactly do you need us to do?"

Ula looked up from her tea and smiled sweetly at him. "I need you to take the lives of my brothers."

Dave choked on his beer.

Tim spat out his stonepiss. "Are you fucking ins–" He stopped himself just short of getting stabbed again, but Ula was looking at him expectantly, daring him to finish his sentence. "–urance salesmen?"

Ula raised her eyebrows. "I beg your pardon?"

"Never mind. I was thinking of something else."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," said Julian. "But I don't think we're the guys you're looking for."

"On the contrary. You're perfect."

"We're not murderers for hire."

"Oh, my." Ula looked aghast at the suggestion. "I would never ask you to murder anyone."

"But you said –"

"In fact, I'll be doing all of the work. I'm not asking you to do very much at all, apart from just being there."

"I don't get it," said Dave. "If you're going to 'do all the work'," he accentuated the phrase with air quotes, "then what do you need us for? To move the bodies or something?"

Ula thought for a moment, then smiled at Dave. "In a manner of speaking."

Money. Not a lot of work. Watching this crazy bitch attack her brothers with a fork might even count for entertainment.

"How much money are we talking about here?" asked Tim.

Julian glared at Tim.

"Two hundred gold pieces."

Dave let out a long low whistle.

Julian glared at Dave.

"Each."

Cooper let out a long low fart.

Everyone glared at Cooper.

"If you could excuse us for a moment," Tim said to Ula. "My friends and I would like a moment to speak privately."

"Of course," said Ula, quickly rising from the table. "Take all the time you need." She walked briskly toward the exit like she'd just started the timer on a bomb inside the place.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been more polite for the rest of them to leave her at the table, but Tim could tell that she was eager to get out of Cooper's fart cloud.

"What's there to talk about?" Julian demanded as soon as Ula was out of sight. "We're not doing this."

"Let's not be hasty," said Tim. "We should at least discuss it."

"This is accessory to murder!"

"Save it for Law & Order, Dick Wolf. This is Caverns & Creatures. People murder each other all the time. They don't have CSI shit. The odds of us getting caught are infinitesimal."

"That's not the only reason to not assist murderers."

"We're not assisting shit. We're just moving bodies. If we don't do it, that money's just going to go to the next lowlife pieces of shit she approaches."

"But our consciences, at least my conscience, will be clean."

That was just the in Tim needed. "Will it? Knowing that you let this woman get away with murder when you could have stopped it, or at least brought her to justice?"

Julian frowned, clearly suspicious. "What are you getting at?"

"We go with her and check out the situation. Maybe her brothers deserve to die. Maybe they beat her, or abuse her in some other way."

"It's not our place to –"

"Hear me out. Maybe it's a money thing, and she's just a greedy bitch. We don't know, which is why we should go with her and see what's going on. She thinks we're a bunch of lowlifes."

"I can't fault her for that."

"Exactly. We don't come off as very heroic or virtuous, so she thinks we'll do anything for a buck. She won't be expecting us to interfere."

Julian narrowed his eyes at Tim. "So you're in this strictly as a matter of altruism."

"Not necessarily. There's also the possibility that we are either unwilling or unable to interfere, in which case we collect our money and do what we were hired to do."

"That's precisely what I don't –"

Tim raised a finger. "But after that's done, we send an anonymous letter to the authorities with her address and the exact location of where the bodies are dumped. She goes to prison, or gets hanged, or burnt at the stake, or whatever the fuck they do here, her dead brothers are avenged, and we get paid. You think any of the other assholes in this tavern would go to that kind of trouble?"

Julian was clearly trying to think of a counter-argument, but coming up short. He needed a little bit more of a nudge.

"Think about us, and the rest of the folks at the Whore's Head Inn," said Tim. "Eight hundred gold pieces could go a long way toward the kind of magical research that could get us out of this shitty world and back in our real bodies."

An hour later, they were in a hired carriage passing through North Gate. Ula paid the driver a gold piece in advance, which was likely well more than the standard fare. The purse she'd taken the coin from was weighty in her hand, like there was plenty more where that had come from.

The ride was awkward and mostly silent. Ula tried to make light conversation a few times, but everyone answered her questions briefly and succinctly.

Only Ravenus seemed to be enjoying the trip, flying in wide circles high above the carriage, occasionally diving down to murder a rabbit or field mouse, no doubt just gobbling up their eyes and leaving the rest of the body to rot.

Finally, the carriage stopped. Once everyone had gotten out, the driver tipped his hat to Ula, turned his carriage around, and headed back for the city. Tim wondered if Ula had a cart handy for them to put the bodies in. Julian could summon some horses if they needed to, but did she know that?

As was fashionable among these older houses on the bank of the Bluerun River on the northern side of Cardinia, the property the carriage stopped in front of was surrounded by a wrought-iron gate crawling with rose bushes. The bars of this fence, however, pointed in different directions and odd angles, as if the rose bushes were all that was holding them up, rather than vice-versa.

Even the roses looked off somehow. Most of the houses they'd passed sported healthy and robust bushes, bursting with shiny green vines and flowers of vibrant reds, oranges, purples, and pinks, filling the air with their sweet perfume. The leaves here were a much darker shade of green, and the vines were studded with long sharp thorns. The flowers' sepals were disproportionately large compared to the petals, which were an ugly shade of nicotine yellow. They smelled faintly of spoiled milk.

Ula stopped at the gate and turned to face them. A sagging rose touched her shoulder gently, and she swatted it away like it was an annoying horsefly.

"I beg you'll pardon the state of the house. I'm not the tidiest of homemakers."

They were going to watch a multiple homicide. Tim didn't give a fuck about the state of her house, but he smiled politely. "I can assure you, we've all seen much worse."

As if to strengthen Tim's claim, Cooper chose that precise moment to fart out a blob of greenish-brown shit on the ground. "Excuse me."

"Are you ill, Mr. Cooper?" asked Ula. She swatted a little more violently at the rose which the breeze had caused to graze her shoulder again.

Cooper shook his head and panted, holding his eyes shut until a healthier and drier fart escaped. "No, it's cool. Just my Charisma acting up."

Ula gave him a pleasant smile and a slight bow. "Very well. And thank you for being so under– FOR THE LOVE OF –" She grabbed the sagging vice supporting the rose which had dared touch her a third time, and pulled it with both hands, not even seeming to notice the thorns tearing into her skin. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? YOU MADE ME DO THIS!" She wrapped the vine around both hands, then pulled upward like she was trying to pull a loved one out of quicksand. "DIE! DIE! DIE!"

The ground finally let go of a large clump of dirt and root, which Ula used as a flail to beat the ground with. When she was satisfied that the offending plant was dead enough, she let the vine drop to the ground. It was soaked in her blood, which was dripping profusely from her hands.

Regaining her composure, she blew at a lock of hair that had fallen out of place and was touching her forehead. It fell back down on her forehead, and Tim feared she was going to start ripping her hair out.

Instead, she brushed it back with her hand. The smear of blood kept it in place, which was at least as horrifying.

Dave cleared his throat. "Would you like a healing spell?"

Ula looked down at her hands. "I suppose the house is enough of a mess. That would be lovely, thank you." She extended her hands toward him, and he touched the least bloody part of her wrist.

"I heal thee."

Ula's chest heaved as she closed her eyes and inhaled ecstatically. When the blood stopped dripping from her hands, she opened her eyes and looked down at Dave. "You have quite the magical touch." She ran a finger along the leopard fur on Dave's forearm. "I wonder what it would feel like... inside."

Tim couldn't think of a reason Dave's Cure Light Wounds spell might feel better indoors, but he hoped there was some explanation to what she said other than the only one he could come up with. What kind of person, on the day they've picked to murder their family in cold blood, gets distracted by fantasizing about getting fisted by a dwarf? Also, what kind of vag was she packing if it could accommodate Dave's whole forearm? Tim's little halfling dick wouldn't stand a chance of touching the sides, not that she'd shown any interest.

"Shall we go inside now?" asked Ula.

Everyone glanced at each other before giving reluctant nods, then followed her toward the front door.

"Do you still feel like this was a good idea?" Julian whispered to Tim as they trailed behind Dave and Cooper.

"Hang on." Tim pulled out his flask and gulped back some stonepiss. "Yeah. Let's go."

The front lawn had a distinct redneck vibe to it, with its tall grass, overgrown hedges, and random junk strewn about. All it was missing was a rusty old pickup truck.

Just before reaching the porch, Ula stopped to dip her blood-covered hands in a stone birdbath which looked like it might fall over any minute. The algae-green water turned brown as she rubbed the blood from her hands.

"Please," said Dave. "Allow me." He dipped a finger in the water, touching her hand gently. "I purify thee." The water instantly turned crystal clear, with not a trace of algae or blood.

Tim couldn't believe what he was seeing. Dave had obviously picked up on the same fisting innuendo as he had and was actually trying to keep that door open. Was he hoping to squeeze that in before or after the murders? Was he hoping that it would lead to a long term relationship? Was he that starved for a woman's affection? Whatever his motivations, if there was anything more stomach-turning than that rose bush incident, it was watching Dave trying to act suave.

Ula smiled at him. "Oh, my!"

Again, Tim was bewildered. She was genuinely eating this shit up. What could she possibly see in Dave? Or maybe she was just into dwarves. Maybe they're known to give good fist. He'd have to ask some locals next time he was in a tavern.

"This way, gentlemen." Ula walked up the rickety front porch steps of what looked to have once been a beautiful mansion, but had fallen into decades of disrepair. As soon as she set foot on the top step, the large wooden doors opened slowly, seemingly of their own accord.

"Jesus!" said Cooper, expressing what Tim was barely able to keep from saying out loud himself. Just on the other side of the door stood a grotesquely deformed elderly man to greet them.

His good eye was brown, and as large as the patch covering his other eye. It was also slightly higher on his head. His ears were large and pointed, but not like an elf's. Instead of being long and slender, like Julian's, they were wide like a pig's, poking out sideways. Calling him human might have been generous, but he was certainly no elf.

Tim glanced up at Ravenus, perched on Julian's shoulder. Sure enough, he was staring open-beaked at that freakishly big eye.

The old man smiled at his guests, showing off his three yellow teeth poking out of swollen gums. Not wanting to be rude, Tim's gaze fell to the man's hands, each of which had an extra thumb, because of course they did.

"Be not alarmed, little halfling," said Ula."This is my brother, Matthias."

They looked to be at least eight generations apart. Tim was genuinely curious about how their mom had popped out a second kid at the age of three hundred and eight, but he was already in deep enough shit from the obviously horrified expression on his face.

"I wasn't alarmed," said Tim. "Quite the contrary, in fact. I was admiring..." Tim searched for something to credibly finish that sentence with. "...his ring!" He might have oversold his excitement, but at least the ring looked interesting enough to sell the story. The ring itself, like its owner, looked old and tarnished. But it was adorned with three shiny pearls the size of Peanut M&M's. One orange, one white, and one blue.

"Do you like it?" wheezed Matthias. "It's one of my own inventions."

"You invented the ring?" asked Tim. He guessed it was plausible. Motherfucker certainly looked old enough. Hell, for all Tim knew, this guy could have invented the circle.

"Matthias is very clever," said Ula. "This self-opening door is another one of his inventions." She certainly had a lot of praise for someone she was about to murder.

Matthias pointed at a small blob of shit between Cooper's feet.

"Um..." said Cooper. "That was already there."

"There's a panel under the top step!" Matthias shouted. It wasn't an angry shout. It was more like he thought everyone else was as deaf as he was.

Cooper frowned. "Do you want me to get that for you? Or..."

"It triggers the door!"

"Oooooh," said Tim, Dave, and Julian. They clapped politely, pretending to be impressed at his Walmart technology.

Ula stepped inside and gestured for Tim and his friends to follow. "Come in and meet my other brothers."

Tim dared not look at Julian as he got the creeping feeling that they might be making a huge mistake. "How many brothers do you have?"

"Four, including Matthias. They'll be thrilled to finally meet you."

What the hell did that mean? Tim could practically feel Julian's accusatory stare stabbing him in the back of the head. "Were they expecting – Holy fucking shit."

What was once a living room was now a storage pit for broken furniture, dust, and spider webs. Standing in the middle were three of the most horribly disfigured human beings Tim had ever seen.

"This is Dunder," said Ula, gesturing at the monstrosity on the left. "Say hello, Dunder."

"Yaaaaaaa," said Dunder, dressed only in a filthy blood-smeared leather butcher's apron. His jaw appeared to be immobile, leaving his mouth permanently open, consequently leaving him unable to form consonants. Having failed to say the word, he settled for waving the two baby arms sprouting out of his right shoulder.

Ula nodded, then turned her attention to the next freak. "This is Figg."

Figg was a squat blob of a man. He was naked, but his skin was completely covered with long grizzled white hair, like fur made out of old man pubes.

"He–lloooo," said a gravelly voice that Tim could only assume was Figg's. The long pube fur hung down over his mouth, making it impossible to tell for sure that he was the one talking.

"And this," Ula walked over and placed a gentle hand on the bare shoulder of the monstrosity on the right, "is Momo."

"MOMO!" said Momo, looking up at Tim with wild milky eyes. Thick black chains attached his wrists to his ankles, severely limiting his movement and no doubt causing the enormous hunch in his back. He held a large iron ball attached to a chain that ran through a ring on his wrist and ankle chains, then up to an iron collar around his neck. His legs were about the size of Dave's, but his torso and arms were bigger than Cooper's when he was in Barbarian Rage mode.

Ula rested a hand on his massive bald head. "Say hello to our guests, Momo."

"MOMO!"

"Bad Momo." She slapped him on the head, then squeezed his cheeks together with each syllable as she said, "Hello."

"MOMO!"

She slapped him again. "No! Hello."

"MOMO!"

Ula clenched her hands and pounded Momo on the head with both fists. "HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! BAD, STUPID MOMO! HELLO!"

Momo banged on the floor with his iron ball, denting the old but surprisingly sturdy wood. "MOMO! MOMO! MOMO!"

As her other brothers stood by indifferently, and Tim and his friends stood by dumbstruck and terrified, Ula screamed as she jumped onto Momo's back, then sank her teeth into the back of his head as her fists rained down on top of it.

"What the fuck is going on?" asked Cooper, scratching his balls. "Are we back in Mississippi?"

Tim wondered if this was how she planned to murder all of her brothers.

Eventually, Ula's punches grew weaker. The energy it took to try to bite through her brother's skull was only maintainable for so long. She slid off his hunched back and composed herself. Her hair was wild, her face soaked with sweat, her mouth dripping with Momo's blood, and her left tit had fallen out the top of her dress.

"You'll have to forgive Momo." She cupped her right hand over the side of her mouth and tapped her left temple. "He's not right in the head."

"Mooomooo," Momo groaned sadly, swaying on his squat legs.

"Oh dear," said Julian suddenly. "I've just remembered that today is my niece's birthday party."

"Birthday party?" said Ula.

"You have a niece?" said Cooper. Dave nudged him.

Julian frowned, looking at his wrist. "We're already late. I'm afraid we'll have to take a rain check."

Cooper scratched his balls more aggressively. "May I use the restroom first?" Tim now had doubts as to if whatever was going on under Cooper's loincloth was indeed ball-scratching.

"No!" said Tim. "We're late for Jennifer's birthday party. We need to leave right now."

"Fine." Cooper sulked as he removed his hand from under his loincloth.

Tim turned back toward the front doors, which were still wide open. Matthias's frail disfigured silhouette was a blemish in the sunlight.

"I'm afraid we cannot allow you to leave," said Matthias, stepping on random parts of the floor with his left foot. He finally stopped when the doors slammed shut behind him. He narrowed his eye at them and added, "ever." It would have been more dramatic if he'd had a better sense of exactly where the door trigger on the floor was.

"Stand down, old man!" Julian wasn't normally one to make threats, being a scrawny elf. But Tim had to admit he could hear the Charisma bonus to his Intimidation check in his voice.

Matthias's giant eye blinked. "You don't want to threaten me, lad."

"Why the fuck not?"

Damn, Julian. Breaking out the f-bombs.

"Because this!"

Tim shook his head. Because this? Dude really needed to work on his one-liners.

Matthias lifted his eye patch, setting free his other, normal-sized eye. It shot out of his head toward Tim and his friends, trailed by yards and yards of optic nerve.

"JESUS!" cried Tim, too grossed out to jump out of the way as it wrapped around their legs, arms, and necks.

"What the hell is this?" said Dave. "Get it off me! Get it off me!"

Matthias lowered his eye patch and laughed at them.

"Yaayaaaayaya," Dunder joined in the laughter, clapping his baby hands together excitedly.

Figg's whole body jiggled, causing ripples in his pube fur.

"MOMO!" said Momo excitedly, pounding the floor with his iron ball.

Cooper struggled against their bindings, jostling Tim around like a rag doll tied to his back. "This is so fucking gross."

"Calm yourselves, new friends," said Matthias once the laughter subsided. "It's only rope. I spruced it up with a bit of illusory magic. I'm an inventor, you see."

"Yes," said Julian. "You mentioned that."

The illusion faded, and the rope looked like ordinary, non-nervy rope. It was still binding them all together, but Tim felt like he might be able to free a hand with a little effort.

"Tut tut," said Ula, looking down at Tim. She pinched a pin on the back of Momo's collar. "Please don't make me loosen Momo's chains. He makes such a mess."

"MOMO!" said Momo.

Tim stopped struggling.

Ula smiled at him, then looked up at Matthias. "Let's hurry this along, shall we?"

Matthias plucked the blue pearl from his ring and rolled it like a tiny bowling ball toward Tim and his friends.

Matthias's giant eye squinted into the cavity in his ring where the blue pearl had been mounted. "Oh yes, that's right." He looked up and grinned at Tim. "Sleep."

Blue smoke flowed out of the orb. It smelled sweet and intoxicating.

"Cooper!" Tim shouted, ready to risk Momo's wrath in order to avoid being asleep and vulnerable to these crazy assholes. "Use your Barbarian Rage!"

"I'm... really..." Cooper yawned. "...ang..." The snore and fart that followed were not encouraging.

The smoke stung Tim's eyes, forcing them shut. But it was oddly soothing to his lungs as he breathed it in.

This isn't so bad. What was I so worried about? Where does worrying ever get you anyway? Bartender, can I have another shot of...


Tim woke up, sober and with a massive headache. It wasn't the first time, and he knew the cure. It was in a flask in his vest pocket. Unfortunately, he found he was unable to move his arms.

"The fuck?" he said as he struggled to move.

Though he didn't like the idea of opening his eyes to a new day without a bit of liquid motivation, he felt it prudent to assess his unusual situation before acting upon it.

Opening his eyes, he discovered that he was held down by thick leather straps. Julian, Dave, and Cooper were likewise strapped to wooden tables, and still sound asleep. Ravenus lay asleep in a rusty iron birdcage hanging from a hook above Cooper's table.

Judging by the musty air, the upward leading stairs outside the arched entryway to the room, and the faint evening light seeping in through the small barred windows near the ceiling, Tim guessed they were in some kind of dungeon.

Against the wall opposite the one their tables were lined up against stood a small cage, about the size of two phone booths, with thick iron bars and what Tim appraised from a distance to be a pretty high-end lock. Even with quality tools, he would likely have a hard time picking it.

Fortunately, the cage was empty and all Tim had to deal with was a leather restraint. With a bit of effort, and help from his high Dexterity score and the ranks he'd put into Escape Artist skill, he managed to coax the end of the strap backward through the buckle with the tips of his fingers. His right arm finally free, he dug his hip flask out from the inside pocket of his vest. He needed a clear head in order to get some real thinking done.

A few gulps of stonepiss did the job nicely, and Tim's situation didn't seem quite as grim as it had a moment before. He began to formulate a plan which wasn't much more complicated than getting everyone else awake and untied, then getting the fuck out of this place. It seemed like an obvious and simplistic plan for Tim's high Intelligence score, but anything more complicated would likely be screwed up by his dumbshit friends. He was swallowing back another gulp of stonepiss when he heard footsteps approaching outside the wooden door opposite the stairs. He tucked his hand back through the loosened leather strap, turned his head away from the door, and pretended to still be asleep.

"The first hour draws near," said Ula's voice after the door opened. "Which of them do you prefer?"

"I've given it some thought," said Matthias, far louder than necessary. "My power is in my mind. The halfling would suit me fine. I could make use of his nimble fingers."

Tim opened his eyes. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? He supposed that, on the surface, it was better than if he'd expressed interest in his tiny halfling asshole, but at least then there wouldn't be the added layer of ambiguity.

"Perhaps you'd consider the elf?" said Ula.

Tim was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Julian's eyes popped open. He had apparently also been faking sleep. Tim shook his head gently. If Ula and Matthias thought everyone else was asleep, there was a chance they might let slip a secret that could later be used against them. Julian closed his eyes again and pretended to sleep.

"The elf, you say?" Matthias's tone sounded like he suspected some ulterior motive. "Interesting."

"It's just that Momo is so rough and unpredictable. I thought we'd give the halfling to him."

"The fuck you will!" Tim opened his eyes wide. Being raped to death by Momo was where he drew the line.

Ula smiled at him, wearing nothing but a thin green semi-translucent robe, hanging open at the front and leaving very little to the imagination. She may have been batshit insane, but titties were titties.

"You're finally awake. I imagine you're very confused right now."

Tim stared unashamedly at her nipples, visible through the robe. "I was."

Matthias hobbled over to Julian's table and began to drag it to the other side of the room. He was old, and the wheels screamed their thirst for oil, so it was kind of slow going. Tim noticed that the orange pearl was now missing from Matthias's ring, leaving only the white one.

"What are you doing with me?" asked Julian, no longer feigning sleep. "Tim! Help!"

Tim thought back to what Matthias had said about making use of his nimble fingers. If all he wanted was a handjob, it might be worth letting Julian just go through with it to avoid risking all their lives. He would wait to free his other hand.

Tim glared at Ula, his gaze struggling to stay on her face. "This isn't what we signed up for."

"Of course it is," said Ula.

"Like fuck it is." He looked at Matthias. "She hired us to kill you and your brothers. Or at least to watch her do it. Now that I think back on it, it should have raised some red flags."

Ula smiled. "I hired you to take my brothers' lives, which is precisely what you're about to do. You see, I wish to bear a child."

"I don't understand what you're talking about," said Tim. "But it just got a whole lot creepier just the same."

"The Wilmotts have not bred outside our own family for nine generations. Do you know what that makes us?"

"Republicans?"

Cooper laughed through his nose, then tried unconvincingly to pass it off as a snore.

"Pure!" said Ula. "Purer than the gods themselves. And so they punished us with disfigurement and ailments of the mind. Still, our house maintained its purity of name and blood, continuing to share our love before their spiteful eyes. And do you know what they did then?"

Tim shrugged. "Threw up?"

"They made me barren!"

"I'm so sorry to hear that," said Julian. "But what does that have to do with us?" It was probably for the best that he took over. Tim couldn't fake giving a shit about this woman's problems.

"Matthias here has discovered a way in which we can maintain our family's purity and beat the gods at their own petty game."

"I don't mean to nitpick, but you haven't actually answered my question."

Matthias left Julian's table next to the cage and limped excitedly back toward the wooden door. He looked positively giddy.

Ula smiled at her much much older brother, then down at Julian. "Your question will be answered very shortly."

Matthias rushed back out of the room carrying what looked like an old-fashioned perfume bottle with a tube and bulb atomizer. Before reaching Julian, he made an unexpected turn into the cage and closed the door behind him.

Ula strutted to the cage, pulled a steel key out from the pocket of her robe, and inserted it into the cell door's keyhole. The unmistakable sound of a clicking lock did little to reassure Tim that one of their problems had inexplicably just up and decided to solve itself.

She slipped the key back into her pocket, then accepted the perfume bottle as Matthias handed it to her through the bars.

Matthias turned his attention to Julian, still strapped to his table and looking terrified. He bent over so that their faces were right next to each other. Julian winced. It was anybody's guess as to when that old fucker had last brushed his three teeth.

Ula stretched her arms out to hold the perfume bottle between their faces, then gave the bulb at the end of the tube a small squeeze. A small cloud of purple mist sprayed out of the bottle, which Matthias breathed in deeply, then promptly collapsed to the floor.

"Ha ha!" cried Julian. "I did it!"

While Tim wondered what the hell Julian was so excited about, Ula set the bottle between Julian's legs, unfastened his left arm restraint, and strode back to the wooden door which she and her brother had recently entered through. Placing her hand on the door handle, she turned back to Julian.

"Don't keep me waiting long."

Julian frantically went to work on his restraints, and Ula seemed surprisingly unbothered that her brother mysteriously collapsed and that one of her prisoners was setting himself free. Logic dictated that Tim should get busy with the rest of his own restraints now that nothing made fuck-all sense, but a gut feeling told him that was the wrong move.

While Julian unfastened his ankle restraints, Matthias slowly climbed the cage bars, lifting himself off the ground. Tim was actually glad the old guy wasn't dead. He was clearly suffering from some kind of dementia.

"I feel amazing!" said Julian, leaping off the table. He stretched his arms and legs like he was about to run a marathon.

"I'm happy to hear that, sir," said Ravenus from his cage. "But I'm getting more of a sense of weakness and confusion."

"What's happening?" said Matthias. He put his hand over his ear. "What happened to my ears?" His voice was louder now. He looked down at his right arm. "Why is my arm sticky?" His already massive eye grew even wider when he saw the ring on his finger. "What the fuck?"

Julian stopped stretching. His face was suddenly pale and his eyes were wide. "My ring!"

Matthias held the ring close to his eye and squinted.

"NO! DON'T!" cried Julian.

"Fireball?"

Tim's world erupted in an explosion of light, warmth, and the sound of something like chunks meat slapping against a wall. He felt his table slam into Dave's, which slammed into Cooper's, which slammed into the wall. Ears ringing and temporarily blinded, he decided his gut feeling could go fuck itself and began unfastening his left wrist restraint. When his vision returned, he found everything and everyone in the room coated in a film of blood and bits of gore.

Julian sat on the floor against the wall, crying and cradling a human leg in his arms. Blackened bone poked out from a partially cooked ass cheek.

Matthias slumped in the corner of his tiny cage, either dead or merely unconscious.

Tim's blurred gaze continuing counterclockwise around the room, he found Ula, or at least what was left of her. She appeared to be standing in a deep pool of blood, except Tim knew it was just a puddle. Everything below the tits was gone.

"What the fuck just happened?" asked Cooper.

His left hand freed, Tim sat up. "I think Ula just exploded."

Dave lifted his head and looked over at Ula's grisly remains. "That was unexpected."

"Fuck it," said Tim, freeing his ankles. "That's two down as far as I'm concerned. Let's get the fuck out of here." He felt a little awkward walking around Dave's table to release Cooper next, but if the rest of the family came down the stairs to investigate the explosion, Cooper would be more immediately valuable. No one came down, so Tim unbuckled Dave's straps as well.

Cooper looked down at Julian, still sobbing on the floor and cradling the leg. "Dude, get a hold of yourself. Put down that fucking leg and let's go."

Julian nodded, forced himself to stop crying, then set aside the leg. "Yes. We must abscond at once."

Tim paused. That was an un-Julian-like choice of vocabulary. But what the hell. It was kind of a fucked up situation. "Yeah, let's get to absconding."

"What's wrong with him?" asked Ravenus from his mangled, but still locked cage on the floor under Cooper's table. "What language is that?"

"Tiiiiim," a weary voice called out from the cage.

Tim turned around to find Matthias reaching out for him. He jumped back.

"Keep your two-thumbed hands away from me, inbred freak!"

"It's m-m-mee," groaned Matthias. "J-J-J-Julian."

"What?" Crazy as it seemed, it might explain a lot of the crazier shit that had happened in the past few minutes.

"He lies!" cried Julian. "His evil heart is filled with deceit! We must hurry, before –"

"Hooooorse," croaked Matthias. A grey riding horse appeared in the cage, flattening Matthias against the bars.

Holy shit. It was really true. Somehow, they had –

"Fuck you!" Cooper punched fake Julian in the face, dropping him to the floor. Fucking up a Mount spell like that had left zero doubt as to Julian's true identity, even in the smallest of minds.

"How dare you!" cried Ravenus, trying fruitlessly to bend his cage bars apart with his talons.

Tim turned to the ancient freakshow being crushed by a horse in a cage. "What happened? How did you..."

"The bottle," Julian croaked, pointing one of his superfluous thumbs down at the bottle on the floor. "We... breathed in the vapor and... I don't know... swapped souls or whatever." He groaned as the horse shifted its weight. "Give me... the bottle... and bring my body... close to the cage."

"Have you not done enough," said fake Julian, rubbing his eye where Cooper had punched him. "Toying with magic you don't understand. You killed my sister!"

Freakshow Julian got on his hands and knees so he could breathe a little easier and the horse wasn't quite as uncomfortable.

"I did no such thing!" said Julian. "I don't even know what happened to her." He scanned the room with his giant eye. "I mean, besides the obvious."

"You read the incantation to activate the pearl," said Tim. "It must have come loose inside her when they were..." he tried to find a delicate way to express his theory, "...in the other room."

Dave and Cooper shuddered.

"Is that why my arm is sticky up to my elbow?" asked Julian.

"Jesus!" said Tim. "Details!"

Julian looked at fake Julian. "Why wouldn't you take your ring off first?"

Fake Julian was hugging Ula's leg again. "That's how she liked it. She said it enhanced her pleasure."

"Enough!" said Tim. "I don't want to hear any more. Cooper, punch out Asshole Julian again and lay him down next to Freakshow Julian."

"No!" said Freakshow Julian. "That's my body. I'm going to feel that when we switch back."

"Who gives a shit?"

"Can I at least try a more Diplomatic approach first?"

Tim grimaced. "I think your Charisma score might not be operating at full capacity right now."

Julian ignored him, focusing his big eye on his real body. "I'm taking my body back. You understand that there's nothing you can do to stop that, right?"

Fake Julian scowled and nodded.

"Then you'd want to make things as painless as possible for yourself, wouldn't you?"

"Aye." Fake Julian dropped to his knees in front of Freak Julian and put his hands behind his back.

Julian looked at Tim. "I think we can trust him to behave."

Tim rolled his eyes. "Whatever. If he tries anything, at least we'll get to beat the shit out of him." Keeping a wary eye on Fake Julian, he handed the perfume bottle to Freak Julian. "You know this magic shit better than I do."

Julian accepted the bottle. "Okay, now stand ba– Shit!" His extra thumb fumbled the bottle.

Tim instinctively reached out and caught it by the bulb atomizer. A small puff of purple vapor came out, and Tim's consciousness suddenly blinked.

As if someone had turned the volume all the way down, he found he could barely hear anything. His mouth tasted like spoiled meat and ass. His vision was sharp but lacked depth perception. But the strangest thing of all was that he was looking at himself.

"Oh, thank God!" said Julian. "I'm me again! I'm..." He rubbed the side of his face. "Jesus, Cooper. Did you have to hit me so – UGH!"

Tim saw himself, his body, punch Julian in the nuts, then run past Cooper and up the stairs.

"Get him!" Tim shouted in a hoarse voice that he could barely hear himself. He tried to stand, but his head hit something soft and furry. A second later, his entire left side was soaked with what felt like the initial water from a hose which had been left out in the sun all day, but which smelled like horse piss. A quick glance to the left confirmed his nose's theory.

"Goddammit, motherfucking son of a bitch!"

Julian and Dave looked down at him. "Tim?"

"Yes!" said Tim. "Matthias is in my body! He's getting away!"

"Ow!" Cooper dropped Ravenus's birdcage, sending it rolling across the floor, then sucked on a finger. "I was trying to let you out, asshole."

Once the birdcage stopped rolling and Ravenus oriented himself, he stepped on the bars, moving the cage back toward Cooper like he was in a hamster wheel. "That was for punching my master! There's more where that came from!"

"Ravenus!" said Julian. "Stop!"

Ravenus stopped his cage in front of Tim's and looked up at Julian. "Master, you're okay! It's so good to hear your voice again!"

"Leave Ravenus here," said Tim, shouting so that he could hear his own voice. "I need his help. Go get my body!"

Julian nodded, then took off up the stairs. Dave followed after him.

"Since when are we taking orders from this prick?" asked Cooper.

"Come on!" said Dave, stopping under the arch to look at Cooper. "The prick is inside Tim's body."

Cooper's jaw dropped open. "They're cornholing him?" He pushed Dave out of the way and ran up the stairs. "I'm coming for you, buddy!"

Dave got back on his feet and waddled after Cooper.

"Ravenus," Tim rasped in his best old man British accent.

"Don't speak to me!" said the bird. "I must go and help my master." He started hamster wheeling it to the stairs, but Tim caught the cage.

Ravenus pecked and clawed at his fingers. Tim winced but didn't let go of the cage.

"I'm Tim!"

Ravenus stopped pecking and scratching long enough to look Tim up and down. "No you're not." He resumed his attack.

Tim grabbed one of Ravenus's talons and talked to him in order to better ignore the pain of his forearm being torn to shreds. Wincing in pain with nearly every other word, he tried to explain. "The... old... freak... switched bodies... with Julian. Then he... switched... bodies with... me."

Tim had never seen a birdcage with a lock that required a key before, but he supposed that pets in the Caverns & Creatures world tended to be a little cleverer than pets back home. Still, it wasn't nearly as good a lock as the one on Tim's cage door, and Ravenus's talon made a suitable lock pick. When the door opened, Tim pulled his hands back through the bars.

Ravenus limped out of the cage and fell on his back, breathing heavily. He turned his head to Tim. "Were you telling the truth?"

Tim nodded.

"Oh," said Ravenus. "Sorry about your arm then."

Tim looked at his arm and smiled. It was torn to ribbons from elbow to wrist and bleeding like a stuck pig that was also menstruating. Ravenus had fucked it up good. "It'll be worth it when we switch back. How's your leg?"

Ravenus walked in a circle, limping a little less with each step. "I think I'll pull through."

"Good. Listen, Ravenus. Ula had a key. I need you to help me find it."

"Which one was Ula?"

"The one that exploded."

Ravenus nodded. "Very good."

Tim scanned the room, stopping at the empty doorway where the wooden door had been. "Check in there first."

Ravenus flew into the room, and Tim crawled around on the cage floor, contemplating murdering his equine cellmate. He saw a conspicuously shaped lump in the gore, plastered to the wall by a chunk of uterus or spleen or gall bladder or some shit. He wasn't a doctor. Reaching through the bars, he was just able to touch it with the tip of his finger.

The gore peeled off the wall, landing on the floor with a splat and a clink.

The key!

Since it was barely within his reach, Tim was extra careful not to push the key further away. He pulled gently on the chunk of Ula meat it was still stuck to until it was close enough to grab. He peeled it free from its fleshy casing, shook some of the gore off, then crawled to the cell door. The lock turned easily, and the door swung open.

Julian's magical horse dropped a couple of turds for its captors to remember it by, then strutted gratefully out of the cage.

Tim was disappointed in how unsatisfying it was to finally be able to stand up. He was still in an old man's body with arthritis in all of his joints and a severe case of scoliosis.

He shuffled carefully across the floor past the top third of Ula's dead body, wary of the large blood puddle surrounding it. The last thing he needed right now was to fall and break a hip. The door lay on the floor, slathered in liquid Ula. The room beyond, while not exactly cleaner, was at least less bloody. Ravenus was on the floor, pecking at the exposed meat at the top of Ula's other leg.

"Ravenus!" said Tim.

Ravenus squawked and froze.

"You were supposed to be looking for the key!"

"I've determined it's not inside this leg."

"That's because it's in my hand, shithead. Come on, we've got to –" Tim's monocular gaze was drawn to the bed where Ula had obviously intended her brothers to boink her with Tim and his friends' dicks. Never one to turn down sex when it was available, Tim had developed a fairly high tolerance for where he was willing to do the deed. But even the filthiest basement futon his bare skin had touched in the name of getting laid seemed as pristine as a hospital operating table compared to the crime scene that was this bedroom.

It smelled heavily of ass, body odor, and Tim's current right arm. The bed's rusted iron frame made his dick want to retract inside him. The mattress, insofar as a giant amorphous roughspun sack of feathers can be called a mattress, looked like it hadn't been washed in... well, ever. It was covered in stains ranging in color from yellow to near black. The freshest was a large wet spot right in the middle, presumably where Matthias had just 'warmed up' Ula. Tim desperately wanted to wash his hands.

His giant eye already having taken in more than he wanted it to, Tim turned away from the bed. He saw a table in the corner of the room with a wooden box on top of it. Hoping it was full of disinfectant, or at least hard liquor, he opened the lid.

Inside the box, nestled in one of two identical indentations atop a padded silk cushion, was another perfume bottle just like the one Matthias had swapped their souls with, likewise filled with purple liquid. Another one of those might come in handy. He carefully removed it from the box and slipped it into Matthias's pocket.

"Let's go find the others."

Tim shuffled across the floor from the bedchamber to the archway, where Julian's horse was blocking the way and looking curiously up the stairs.

"You, stay here," he said to the horse, then turned his head as far as it would go back to Ravenus, who was perched on his hunch. "You, be quiet."

"Righto!"

"Shh!"

Tim's Move Silently skill was impaired by his current body's compromised Dexterity score, but he felt he was making a solid effort at minimizing the noise as he climbed up the stairs. Of course, that could also have to do with his shitty hearing.

The stairs ended in an open hatch, the door of which had planks running off the edge which, when closed, would fit into the missing floorboards. It would be difficult to spot for someone not specifically looking for it.

Tim's old knees ached as he climbed out of the stairwell and into a room full of portraits hanging on the walls. It was like a study in the effects of inbreeding. He thought that, given enough time, he could sort the pictures in chronological order based on how fucked up their faces were.

This room was cleaner than the living room, which Tim recognized through the open door. Cautiously peeking out, he found the living room empty. The door directly across from the one he was standing in was also open.


The sound of breaking porcelain. Maybe a vase or a large dish.

"Shit," said Cooper.

"Watch where you're going!" said Dave.

"Shhhhh!" said Julian.

Tim shook his head. He was nearly deaf and could hear those three idiots two rooms away. They stepped out into the living room and stopped dead in their tracks when they saw Tim.

"Sorry," said Julian. "You startled me for a second." He pointed his thumb back at the room they'd just come from. "Looks like a dining room, or at least it was at one time. No sign of anyone in there."

"What happened to your arm?" asked Dave.

"Ravenus and I had a little misunderstanding."

"Do you want me to heal that?"

"Fuck no."

Julian's gaze shifted up to where Ravenus was still perched on Tim's hump. "Are you okay?"

"Never been better, sir!"

"Keep your voice down!" Tim snapped, feeling more than ever like an old man.

"I don't get why we're sneaking around," said Dave. "What's the point?"

Tim wheezed out a shallow laugh. "No point at all the way you guys are doing it. You might as well be playing trumpets and drums."

"They know we're here, and that we've freed ourselves from the table straps. They'd expect us to go up the stairs. What the hell else would we do?"

"So where are they?" asked Julian.

"They're probably hiding somewhere. Regrouping. It's pretty clear that Ula was the leader. Matthias has a functioning brain in his head, but he lacks the experience to effectively lead his dimwitted brothers. He's trying to think up a plan to take us out, and we need to find him before he's able to."

"He's trying to take us alive, isn't he? He wants our bodies to swap his brothers into, right?"

Tim eased his weary old ass down on a rickety wooden stool. "Not necessarily. Ula was the mother of invention here. Now that her plans are off the table, as is any possibility of continuing their pure family lineage, Matthias might decide to follow a new path. His brothers, whatever bodies they're in, might only drag him down." He paused to reflect on how depressing the whole situation was. He remembered how Matthias had cradled Ula's leg, and another thought occurred to him. "And he's no doubt still pissed at us for blowing up his sister."

Dave nodded. "Matthias was pretty keen on calling himself an inventor. He probably has a lab or a workshop or something. We should rule out all the upstairs rooms first, then poke around for hidden doors down here."

Tim dreaded the thought of more stairs, but Dave's reasoning was sound.

As he hobbled up the stairs even more slowly than Dave, Tim thought of another idea. "Dave, do you have any stonepiss?"

"Jesus, Tim. Can you give it a rest for once?"

"I was just thinking it might be a good idea to get this body nice and shitfaced before we switch it back. If we're able to escape, and they decided to come after us, it would make sense to get the only one of them who could find their own ass with a compass and a map falling down drunk, would it not?"

"That's some impressive rationalizing." Dave pulled a short glass bottle out of his bag. "Try this. I swiped it from the dining room."

Tim uncorked the bottle and swigged back some of the contents. It burned going down, like cheap whiskey. Tim felt the effects almost immediately. He was buzzed before he reached the top of the stairs. Ol' Matthias didn't have a very high tolerance for alcohol. That was for damn sure.

Julian had reached the top of the stairs well before him and was already listening at a door. He whispered something.

"Speak up!" said Tim. "I can't hear you!"

Julian glared at him, as did Cooper and Dave.

"Shit. Was that too loud?"

"So much for the element of surprise," said Julian, taking a step back from the door. "Cooper?"

Cooper pulled his finger out of his nose. "What?"

Tim gulped back another shot of terrible booze. "Grab my body and pin it to the floor."

"What the fuck is he drinking?" asked Cooper. "He went from stone cold sober to blurting out suppressed rape fantasies in less than a minute."

"Not this body, fuckhead! My real body. You hold him down, I'll switch us back to normal, and we'll hightail it out of here."

Cooper sighed in relief. "You had me going there for a second. I was thinking about how we used to wrestle at the pool, and –"

"Will you just kick down the goddamn door?"

"Okay." Cooper planted his heel right into the door, which swung wide open, appearing to not have been locked in the first place. "FUCK YOU MOTHERFU– um..."

The room was mostly empty, decorated solely with manacles hanging on the walls. Its single occupant sat on the floor with a filthy cloth gag in her mouth, her wrists manacled and raised over her head. She looked like a female version of Matthias, just as wizened and malformed, with extra thumbs and one disproportionately large eye. But instead of an eye patch, she had another normal-sized eye. She looked at Tim with horror on her freakish wrinkly face. At her side sat the maggot-ridden corpse of a ten-foot-long boa constrictor.

Tim cringed at the patches of scraggly grey hair flowing down from her mostly bald head. "Who the fuck is this?"

"It's Ula," said Julian.

Tim took a moment to consider Julian's theory, then looked down at the dead snake. "Then that must be Simon."

Cooper squeaked out a small fart. "Sorry. I'm confused. Thinking too hard makes me gassy."

"It's not that complicated," said Julian. "The Ula we met had already swapped souls with a younger woman. That's why she looked so much different than her brothers. This woman here, who should look like the woman who brought us here, is in Ula's real body." He ran over and pulled the gag out of her mouth.

The old woman coughed as tears streaked down her cheeks. "Who are you people?" She looked at Tim. "You are not Matthias, are you?"

Tim shook his head. "I'm Tim. Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Enna. I am a traveling warrior. I found this old woman on the side of the road and offered to escort her home. The next thing I knew, I –"

"Yeah, yeah. We get it. I hope you've learned a valuable lesson about helping old people."

"Is that how they lured you here as well?"

"No. Ula said she'd pay us for –" Tim stopped himself, thinking about how the truth sounded when spoken aloud. He thought up a quick alternative. "– sex."

Enna gasped.

Julian gave Tim a 'what the fuck' look, but didn't bother changing the story. "We didn't actually go through with it."

Tim tried his cell door key and found that it worked on the manacles as well.

Enna wrung the paper-thin skin of her ancient wrists. "For twenty-three years I've kept my vow. My body has never known the touch of a man."

Tim glanced at his right arm but kept his mouth shut.

"You must help me return to my true body before those wicked people can defile it."

Tim, Julian, Cooper, and Dave, all managed to find something fascinating to look at on the floor.

"That may pose a bit of a challenge," said Tim. "What if we found you a new body? Some smokin' hot girl who, for whatever reason, doesn't deserve to live?"

"Why? What's wrong with my body?"

"Nothing," Tim lied. "I was just spitballing ideas." He offered his elderly disfigured hand to hers to help her to her feet. "Let's find the inbrednecks before we make any rash decisions."

"Who?"

"The people who live in this dump. Do you know where they might be hiding?"

Enna shrugged.

Making sure to keep everyone in the group together, lest one of them get soul-swapped and infiltrate them, they searched the remaining three rooms upstairs. They found nothing but rats and spiders.

"There are still a few more rooms to search downstairs," said Dave.

Cooper and Julian led the way down the stairs. Tim and Enna followed, supporting each other's old and weary bodies. Dave took the rear, still organizing the search aloud.

"I think we should try the kitchen next. They might be hiding in a big pantry or something, where they'd have enough food and water to wait until they –"

"Stay where you are," said a voice similar to, but not exactly like Tim's, coming out of Tim's mouth. Tim's body stood pantsless at the other side of the living room, holding a dagger to Tim's tiny dick. Matthias's carny brothers stood on either side of him.

Tim contemplated taking off his own pants but had neither a desire to see Matthias's junk, nor a dagger to threaten it with. He took a small step forward.

"What are you doing, Matthias? You and I both know you're not going to cut my dick off. Why would you? It's your dick now, right?" If he could just get close enough, he could use the spray to switch them back.

"It's hardly significant enough to make a credible threat."

That was unnecessary. "Oh as if you're packing some monster schlong." Tim reached down Matthias's pants. Admittedly, Matthias bested Tim in both length and girth and… number of testicles? His scrotum felt like a crumpled paper bag full of marbles. "Jesus Christ, dude. How many fucking balls do you have?"

"More of the gods' cruel irony. In my prime I could produce gallons of seed, and yet it all fell on barren ground. Not that it matters anymore. What use have I for this worthless appendage now that you've ended our family line?"

"It can still be fun to play with. It's helpful when you need to take a piss. And cutting it off would be incredibly painful, I'd imagine." Tim took another step forward, hoping that it would indeed be too painful to follow through with if this was, as he suspected, a last ditch effort bluff.

"You feel the agony I've felt since birth, living in that grotesque body. You think I can't handle a little pain? I never planned to keep this useless body anyway. Now I can walk among the normal folk without arousing suspicion. I'll find a man with the kind of body I truly desire."

Tim stopped walking. Matthias was making a convincing case for being willing to cut his own dick off.

"You're into dudes?" said Cooper. "Is that why you couldn't knock up your sister?"

"How dare you bring up my sister! Ula is dead because of you fools!"

"Dead?" said Enna. She hobbled across the living room, evidently less concerned with the fate of Tim's dick than Tim was. "What happened? Where is my body?"

Matthias backed up and brandished the dagger at her. "Stay back! I'm warning you!"

This was the best chance Tim had to make his move. He hobbled after Enna, swigging back as much of the terrible booze as he could choke down and digging in his pocket for Matthias's potion.

"MOMO!" said Momo, slamming his iron ball down on Matthias's foot. That was going to hurt. Tim hoped that Dave had a healing spell ready to go.

Matthias shrieked in pain and dropped the dagger. "She isn't our sister, Momo! Our sister is dead!"

Enna picked up the dagger just as Tim pulled out the potion.


Distracted by Julian's horse announcing its presence, and the fact that he still wasn't used to having extra thumbs, Tim dropped the potion.

Matthias-Tim's eyes, already wide with the pain and surprise of having his foot crushed, went even wider as they followed the glass bottle to the floor, where it shattered, letting out a thick purple cloud of vapor.

Suddenly, Tim's hearing amped up to eleven, and his vision was binocular again.

People were screaming, falling over each other, making horse noises. It was complete bedlam.

Hunched over and standing on all fours, Tim briefly worried that he'd switched bodies with the horse, but when he tried to stand straight, he discovered that his hands were chained to his ankles.

Shit! I'm Momo!

"What the fuck?" said Ravenus in a distinctly non-British accent. He waddled past Tim, flapping his wings in such a way that would never lift him off the ground.

Just beyond Ravenus, Julian stood as if in a trance, mesmerized by his own forearms. He felt them up and down, then ran his fingertips down the sides of his face. Tears welled up in his eyes. If Tim had to guess, he was actually Figg, who had never experienced having smooth skin. His hairless bliss was cut short when Ula lunged at him and wrapped her old double-thumbed hands around his throat.

Tim scanned the room for his own body and found it sitting on the floor and cradling its foot.

"Yaaa! Yayaaha! Ha? Hoo? Helloooo. Hellooooo! Hellllooooooo!" With an excitement that can only be gained by suddenly being able to pronounce consonants, Dunder seemed to forget about the pain in Tim's foot. "Hellooooooooo!"

Should he attack Dunder? He felt like he should attack somebody, and would have preferred to attack someone who was both his enemy and also residing in the body of one of his other enemies.

He wouldn't be able to attack anyone until he got this goddamn chain off.

Lifting the ball to his neck, he was able to reach the pin on his collar which loosened the chains.

Fuck yeah! Tim now had the brains, the brawn, and a big ass iron ball on a chain. He looked for a target.

Dunder, the guy with the immovable jaw, was indiscriminately punching people with his left fist, clapping his two right baby hands together, and shouting "Yoyo!" through his permanently-set open mouth. That had to be Momo.

Tim felt kind of bad for Momo, but he fit all of the target requirements Tim was looking for. Tim swung the ball over his head, then released it in Dunder-Momo's direction. Dunder-Momo ducked just in time, and the ball slammed into the horse's screaming face. The horse vanished. Tim hoped that it hadn't been part of this mess.

"Damn it!" said Cooper, a pretty good indication that he was actually Julian.

Matthias stumbled around, flapping his arms up and down like someone had just removed his straitjacket. He looked even drunker than Tim's booze-guzzling body sabotage should have accounted for.

"My wings!" he cried in a gravelly British accent. "What's happening to me? What's blaaaaaauuuuurrrrrgggggh..." He threw up a puddle of brown booze and chunks of who knows what all over the floor and collapsed face-first into it.

Shit. Sorry, Ravenus.

Cooper, still having trouble walking on bird legs, fell forward and pushed himself toward Tim-Dunder, using his wings like a sea turtle on the beach.

"Dude," he said to Tim-Dunder. "What the fuck is going on here?"

"Hellllloooooooo!" said Tim-Dunder. He let go of his foot and grabbed Ravenus's body with both hands. Ecstatic to have a working jaw, he bit down hard on one of Ravenus's wings.

"FUCK!" said Ravenus-Cooper. He fought back ineffectively with his talons and remaining wing, but Tim-Dunder only bit down harder.

"I'm really angry!" Cooper squawked. His black feathers bristled as he grew to the size of a turkey jacked up on illegal steroids. When he finally achieved functional use of his talons, they looked like fists full of black daggers as they ripped into Tim's arm and face.

"Son of a bitch," said Tim. He was definitely going to feel that when he switched back to his own body.

Tim-Dunder screamed, releasing Cooper's wing, and kicked him away. Cooper made a solid effort to flap his monstrous wings but landed with a thud in front of Dave, who appeared to be having some kind of seizure.

"Dave!" said Ravenus-Cooper. "Tim just bit the shit out of me. Slap me some Hit Points, would you?"

"YEEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE!" Dave whinnied.

"Seriously?" said Figg, who Tim now guessed was actually Dave, through the grizzled white pubes obscuring his mouth. "The fucking horse?"

Tim pulled in the ball connected to his chain to ready himself for another attack. But in all the chaos, it was difficult to keep track of who was who. He knew that a Wilmott was in his body, but he didn't like the idea of smashing his own face in with an iron ball.

Cooper-Julian grabbed Figg's flabby body by its pube-furred man-tits. "Who are you?"

"Ow! I'm Dave!"

"Julian!" said Tim. "Who gives a shit? Let's you and me just start knocking motherfuckers out. We'll sort it out later."

"YOYO!" screamed Dunder-Momo, just before taking a swing at Tim. He might have actually hit if he hadn't announced it first. Tim dodged the attack, dropped the ball, and grabbed Dunder-Momo by the leg and throat. Dunder wasn't exactly a waif of a man, but Momo's body was strong as fuck. Tim easily lifted Dunder-Momo over his head and looked for someone to throw him at.

"Helllooooooo!" said Tim-Dunder, just before biting Tim in his giant Momo dick.

"YEEEEOOOOOOWWWW!" cried Tim, losing his grip on Dunder-Momo, who dropped down hard on Tim's body, taking a chunk of dick skin with him as he went down.

Tim groaned, bleeding from the dick, while Cooper-Julian punched out whoever was inhabiting Ula's body, who was still strangling his own.

"I'm sorry!" said Cooper-Julian.

"Cooper!" cried Ravenus, rising out of his vomit puddle on Matthias's wobbly legs. "I can understand you!"

Julian's body breathed in deeply, his throat free of Ula's choking grasp.

With a regretful look in Cooper's eyes, Julian punched himself in the face. "I'm really sorry."

Ravenus, clearly not fully appreciating that he wasn't currently a bird, flapped Matthias's arms and ran at Cooper-Julian as fast as his arthritic knees would carry him. "You son of a bitch! I warned you!" He leaped into the air, flapping his arms even harder and thrusting both feet forward, then came down hard on his old hunched back. It looked so agonizing that Tim forgot about his own dick pain for a fraction of a second.

With most of the punching having subsided, Figg-Dave stepped up behind Cooper-Julian. "Does anyone need a healing sp–"

Cooper-Julian whirled around and punched Figg-Dave in the face. "Shit! I'm sorry. You shouldn't have sneaked up on me like that."

"Asshole!" Dave honked out through Figg's broken nose, now locatable from the reddening pubes beneath it.

"I could use some healing," said Tim.

Figg-Dave looked down at Momo's bleeding dick. "Ouch. I guess you could." He raised a furry arm out for Tim to touch.

"Not this me." Tim rolled Dunders body off of his own, then went through his pockets until he found Matthias's potion bottle. Fortunately, it was still intact. "Maybe we should make sure this works before we start healing anyone."

"Good idea," said Figg-Dave.

Tim handed the bottle to Cooper-Julian. "Don't drop this, or we're all fucked." He worked the chain through the rings on his wrist and ankle restraints, then up through the ring on his collar. "Can somebody pin this?"

Figg-Dave picked up the pin and put it in Momo's collar. Tim cringed at the feel of Figg's finger pubes on his neck.

"Okay," said Tim, lying down on the floor with his head next to his real head. "Hold your breath, give us a small squirt, and get the fuck back."

Cooper's head nodded, and Tim had to remind himself that he wasn't entrusting this to a complete moron.

Cooper-Julian sucked in a deep breath and held it, then squirted a puff of the potion between their faces.


Tim awoke, groggy but feeling strangely refreshed and free of dick pain. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, opened them, and saw Cooper looking down at him.

Had it all been a dream?

"Helllllloooooooo! Helllllooooooowwwww!"

Tim looked to his left. Momo was freaking the fuck out, thrashing in his chains and bleeding from the – SHIT!

He spat out the chunk of dick skin which had been festering in his mouth.

"Can I go next?" asked Figg-Dave. "I'd really like to get that horse out of my body."

Tim took the potion bottle from Cooper-Julian while Figg-Dave the pube monster waddled over to Dave-Horse.

Once Figg-Dave was in position, Tim gave them a good spray in the face and backed away.

Dave sighed and got to his feet. "I never thought I'd be so grateful to be a dwarf again." He put his hand to his neck. "My throat's a little sore from all the neigh–"

Figg-Horse whinnied and kicked Dave in the nuts.

"Dave's back to normal," said Tim. "Who's next?"

Julian raised Cooper's hand. "I'd like to get out of Cooper's body. It's kind of gross in here." He looked down at Ravenus-Cooper. "No offense."

"Fuck you, dude," said Ravenus-Cooper. "At least you're a fucking mammal."

Tim shook his head. "That would put Pube-Freak in Cooper's body, which he could use to beat the shit out of the rest of us. Let's get Coop sorted out first."

"You make a good point," said Julian. He picked up Ravenus-Cooper and placed him on his shoulder.

Ravenus-Cooper steadied himself with a wing on Cooper-Julian's head and shut his eyes tightly. A gushing sound came from behind him. He squawked. "How's that for gross?"

Julian shrugged. "It's your back."

"Shit, that's right."

"Can we please get on with this?" said Tim. "Squat down so I can squirt you in the face."

Cooper-Julian squatted, and Tim squirted.

"Wow," said Ravenus-Julian. "This is an interesting sensation." He jumped off Cooper's shoulder and flapped his wings in such a way that didn't even slow his short descent to the floor. "Not as easy as it looks."

Cooper, still squatting, farted and reached under his loincloth. "Damn, it's good to have balls again."

Julian hopped away from Cooper's fart zone as fast as his bird legs could take him.

"You two stay together," said Tim. "Cooper, hold Julian so that Figg doesn't freak out when he suddenly wakes up as a bird."

Julian had only gotten in three hops before he planted his beak into the floor. Cooper reached him in two steps, but that was enough for Tim to spot the white streak of bird shit running down his back.

While Cooper grabbed Ravenus-Julian, Tim walked over to Julian's body. Something seemed out of place, but he couldn't put his finger exactly on what it was. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting his friends in their right bodies and getting the fuck out of this house.

"Hurry up and get over here."

Cooper held Julian firmly with both hands and put his beak right in Julian's face.

Tim looked at the bottle. "There's not much juice left in this thing. Not a lot of room for fucking up, so hold your breath." He held his own breath and gave it a squirt.

Ravenus-Figg, as expected, immediately started freaking out. "What? Who? Momo?" He turned his head left. "Ula?"

Ula? Ula!

Matthias-Ravenus had been unconscious right next to Julian, but Ula's body wasn't there anymore.

"Summon Ape!" said a woman's voice.

When Tim looked in her direction, he found Ula standing over Matthias's body, holding Matthias's pearl-less ring. Next to her stood a confused-looking gorilla.

"Shit," said Tim.

Ula-Matthias pointed at Tim. "You have three seconds to hand over that potion before this ape comes and takes it from you."

It seemed odd that he would bother with an ultimatum. Why not just skip that part and send the gorilla after him?

"Three!"

Tim looked at the bottle in his hands, then up at the gorilla's hands. That was it. That massive motherfucker couldn't be trusted retrieving something so fragile.

"Two!"

"Cooper!" said Tim. "Throw Ravenus at Matthias!"

"What?"

"Just do it!"

"NO!" cried Julian, evidently having figured out what Tim had in mind. It was risky, sure. There was only a twenty-five percent chance that Ravenus would go back to his proper body, but there was also a twenty-five percent chance that he'd turn into a gorilla, which would be awesome. Then again, there was a fifty percent chance that he'd turn into a deformed geriatric asshole. But it was a chance Tim was willing to take.

"One!"

"Now!" said Tim.

Cooper cocked his arm back like he had a man open in the end zone, then launched Ravenus's body at Matthias's. It was a nice spiral throw, and Figg screamed an inarticulate caw until his beak hit Matthias's hump.

Tim hurled the potion after Ravenus, then slapped his hands over his mouth. Julian and Dave did likewise. Cooper shoved two fingers up his nostrils and clamped his lips shut with his other hand. Ula-Matthias made a desperate attempt at catching it, but he was too old, too slow, and likely too preoccupied with the thought of slipping away for some private time to check out his new wrinkly tits.

The glass bottle shattered, forming a cloud of mist too small to fill a space much larger than what Matthias-Ravenus, Ula-Matthias, Ravenus-Figg, and the gorilla were occupying.

The gorilla had a panicked expression on its face. It looked at Tim, then Julian.

Julian gasped. "Ravenus?"

The gorilla roared, its eyes wide with terror.

"No!" said Julian. "Ravenus!"

"Down here, sir," said the bird, stumbling as he walked back toward them. "Why am I so dizzy?"

Julian sighed. "Oh, thank goodness! You're –"

The gorilla scooped up Ravenus in his massive black hand and growled some incomprehensible nonsense at Julian.

"Put him down," said Julian. "What's done is done. We're not going to solve anything by –"

The gorilla vanished. Ravenus hit the floor before he could get in a single flap.

"Wow," said Dave. "Magical gorillas don't hang around as long as magical horses do."

Julian picked up Ravenus and cradled him under his serape. "It's a different spell."

"Why me Ula?" said Figg, wasting no time squeezing his new wrinkly tits. "Why?"

Matthias groaned as he awakened. It was a hybrid groan between old man and primate, both pitiful and unsettling.

Julian put a hand on Dave's shoulder. "Why don't you go heal his arm?"

"Fuck his arm," said Tim. "Which room did you find that liquor in? Are there any more bottles in there?"

"The gorilla didn't ask for this. He was an innocent victim. It's bad enough we put him in a human body. The least we could do is patch it up a bit."

Dave waddled cautiously to Matthias-Gorilla, took a knee, and touched him on the head. "I heal thee."

The deep talon wounds on Matthias-Gorilla's forearm sealed themselves up like zipper bags. Matthias-Gorilla let out another, more soothing groan, and opened his freakishly giant eye.

Dave smiled. "Feeling better, big guy?"

With a primal scream Matthias shouldn't have had the lung capacity for, he punched Dave in the side of the head, got up on his old legs, and started tearing his clothes off.

"Are we done now?" asked Tim. "I need a drink."

"Do you ever think you might have a problem?" Dave sat up and rubbed his face where he'd just been punched. "I mean, we just destroyed a family."

Tim expressed his concern for the Wilmott family with an exaggerated wanking gesture.

"You killed an innocent girl."

"Ula? Innocent? Need I remind you that she was planning to use us to rape herself? Besides, it was Julian who detonated her uterus."

"I was talking about Enna."

Tim took a moment to remember who Enna was.

"What ever happened to her?" asked Cooper.

Tim looked at Ula, crying and playing with her tits. Definitely Figg.

"She was obviously in the horse," said Dave.

Tim glanced around the room. After accounting for everyone else, he concluded that Dave's theory was sound. "Shit. My bad."

"That's all you've got to say? I killed a girl. Nothing a little booze can't fix."

"Fuck you, Dave. I've got the taste of Momo's dick in my mouth."

Dave glanced at Momo, cradling his dick wound and moaning his own name while Matthias-Gorilla, now completely naked, screamed and flung shit at him. Dave pointed to the room opposite the family portrait room.

"There are some more bottles in the cabinet."


"Fuck this place," said Tim. He was crankier than usual because the day's adventure had taken twice as long as they'd expected, yielded exactly zero treasure, and he hadn't packed an adequate supply of stonepiss. "Fuck this meadow. Fuck these flowers. Fuck this whole fucking fantasy world."

"Can we take a five-minute break?" Dave asked when they came upon a smooth-topped tree stump. It was almost like he was just begging for some verbal abuse.

"Fuck you, Dave." Tim did not disappoint.

Trying to keep up with an alcoholic halfling on the way to a bar was testing everyone's endurance, but Dave's short dwarven legs were particularly ill-suited to long brisk walks.

"You guys go ahead, then," said Dave. "I'll catch up."

Julian slowed his pace. "Come on, Tim. Five minutes isn't going to make that big a difference." It was something he felt he should say, but he didn't really care if Tim hung around or not. The natural beauty of a sunlit meadow and the intoxicatingly sweet scent of the wildflowers were somehow even more beautiful and intoxicating the further away Tim walked.

Tim gave Julian the finger without even slowing his stride. He was still bitter about Julian refusing to conjure up some horses. But there was plenty of daylight left, and Julian had a limited number of spells. Who knew what they might run into in the forest? He wasn't going to waste all his spells on horses just so Tim could get his drink on that much quicker.

"Dude," said Cooper.

Tim turned around. "What?" he snapped at Cooper. Then his gaze passed both Cooper and Julian, and he started laughing.

Julian looked back at Dave and found him on his ass, legs in the air, inside the stump, which now appeared to be a hologram or something.

Cooper joined Tim in laughing as Dave lay flat on his back among the daisies and cosmos.

"Who would do something like that?" asked Julian.

"Oh calm your tits," said Tim. "It's just an illusory tree stump. It's harmless."

"That's kind of what I was getting at. It's not only harmless, it's pointless. Who would waste magic to put a fake tree stump in the middle of nowhere? What would be the point?"

Tim shrugged. "It was funny to watch Dave fall on his ass. Maybe whoever put it there did so just to be a dick."

"That sounds reasonable," said Cooper.

Julian bit his upper lip in thought. "That sounds reasonable to you two, but think about it from a normal person's perspective."

Cooper frowned. "That makes my head hurt."

"What did you have in mind?" Tim asked Julian.

"I don't know. Nothing really. It just seems suspicious."

Dave sat up. "What if it wasn't put here to fool people into sitting down on it at all, but rather to inconspicuously mark a place they wanted to come back to at a later date. Maybe there's something buried under this stump."

Cooper raised his eyebrows. "Like a body?"

"No, dumbass," said Tim. "You don't mark the place where you dump a body. That completely defeats the purpose of dumping a body."

"It might have been worth the risk. If you hate someone enough to kill him, you might hate him enough to want to come back and take a piss on his remains every now and again."

"Guys," said Julian. "Not every burial is a body dump. This is a nice meadow. It's peaceful and filled with pretty flowers. Maybe this was someone's favorite place, and they requested to be buried here."

Ravenus poked his head out from under Julian's serape. "Are we going to dig up a body? I hope it's fresh." After a brief pause, he added, "But not too fresh."

Tim grimaced, then shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. If it was a legitimate grave, why wouldn't they mark it with a gravestone, or like a post with some religious bullshit carved on it?"

"There could be any number of reasons. This is the Caverns & Creatures world. What if some necromancer comes strolling by and sees a marked grave in the middle of nowhere? 'Sweet! Free dead body!' Next thing you know, Grandma's corpse is a foot soldier in an army of the dead."

"What the fuck kind of necromancer goes strolling through meadows?"

"You're all aware, of course," said Dave, "that people bury things besides other people."

Cooper shoved a finger deep in his ear. "You think it's a dog?"

"Jesus Christ, no!" said Dave. "I'm talking about treasure."

Everyone froze for a moment to consider Dave's suggestion.

"You're right," said Tim. "Get your fat ass out of the way and let's start digging."

Dave rolled out of the stump, removed his helmet, and used it to dig into the ground. Tim dropped to his knees and started pulling out fistfuls of long grass and flowers by the roots, taking large clumps of topsoil with them. Cooper tore straight into the ground with his massive half-orc hands, rendering Dave and Tim's work largely negligible.

Julian wasn't as convinced of Dave's theory as everyone else seemed to be. "Maybe we should think about this a little more? We've had, like, three or four different dead body theories, and only one not-a-dead-body theory."

"Wah wah wah!" Tim pulled the front of his shirt away from his nipples to make it look like he had tits. In a mocking voice, he said, "My name's Julian. I'm too good to touch a dead body."

"I don't sound anything like that."

"Sprout yourself a little pair of elf nuts, get down here, and start digging. Otherwise, don't expect to get a share in the treasure."

"Fine." Julian knelt down and listlessly scooped loose dirt out of the growing hole.

Hours passed. The sun sank beneath the treetops on the western horizon. The woods between them and Cardinia looked darker now, more ominous. Julian wished they were on the other side of them. He looked down in the hole to see if the expedition had turned up anything. It had grown so large that the entire illusory tree stump was floating in the air, and still, they'd found neither treasure nor rotting corpse.

Cooper was doing most of the work by this point, his head disappearing into the tree stump every time he stood up to toss out another double-handful of dirt. He was the most effective at digging, and anyone else in the hole with him would have just been in his way. Julian was thankful for that when Cooper let rip a fart of epic proportions. Also fortunate was the fact that Cooper's farts tended to be denser than air, and the hole they'd dug seemed to be containing most of it.

"That one was ripe," said Cooper, climbing out of the hole. "I'm feeling kind of dizzy. I'm going to take a break."

"This is bullshit," said Tim. Three more wasted hours of sobriety had not lightened his mood. "We could have been home by now! Where's all the treasure, Dave?"

Dave got to his feet, his fists trembling. He was filthy, sweaty, and looked to be using every ounce of restraint he had in him to not grab Tim and throw him into Cooper's fart hole.

"I said there might be treasure. You're the one who was so goddamn sure about it."

"Are we ready to call it a day now?" asked Julian. He was sitting in the grass next to a pile of dead and eyeless rodents which Ravenus had collected during the excavation. "As long as we've already got a hole dug, I was thinking maybe we could bury these?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?" said Ravenus. "I've spent a long time collecting those."

"All you do is eat the eyes. It's wasteful."

"The rest of it needs to be properly aged. I was thinking perhaps we might bring them back to the tavern and let them sit out on the roof for a few days."

"No way," said Julian. "I'm not putting a bunch of dead possums and rats in my bag. And besides, we're disappointing enough coming back empty-handed without throwing a bunch of dead animals on the roof."

"Fuck you and your bird," said Tim. "You two can jerk off over dead rats as long as you feel like. I'm going back to the Whore's Head." He turned southeast and stomped off.

Dave took one last look down into the hole, then Cooper started pissing in it.

When he turned to follow Tim, Dave's foot caught on something. He lost his balance, flapped his arms wildly to regain it, but failed. He fell backwards into the hole, landing with a small splash and a hard thud.

"What the fuck, Dave?" asked Cooper, still pissing in the hole. A second later, he seemed to realize that he was pissing on Dave and changed the direction of his stream to outside the hole.

Julian got up and ran to the edge of the hole. "Are you okay?"

Dave choked and gagged. The air down there must have been almost liquid thick with the smell of Cooper's fart and piss.

He tried to stand, but his feet were tied together with a length of twine. He started to say something, but it came out as more coughing and gagging.

Cooper reached down and grabbed Dave's outstretched leopard-furred forearm. Dave did his best to assist, feeling around for handholds and footholds, but it was difficult with his feet still tied together.

Finally, Cooper dragged him out of the hole. He sprawled out flat on the grass and sucked in the fresh flower-scented air. When he got his breathing under control, he sat up and looked in the direction Tim had gone.

Tim had come back about half the distance he'd traveled when Dave fell in the hole. He was looking back at Dave and shaking his head.

"What's your problem, man?" Dave said to Tim.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

Dave wiggled one of his boots out of the loop of twine, then pulled the twine loop off the other boot and held it up for everyone to see. It appeared to be hand-woven from stems of the same kinds of wildflowers which grew in this very meadow.

"I'm talking about this. I understand that you're in a bad mood, and you need a drink, and you're just generally an asshole, but did you think this was going to get you back to the Whore's Head any quicker?"

Tim shrugged. "I see some string. What am I looking at?"

"You tied my feet together!"

"I wasn't anywhere near your fucking feet."

"Who else could have done it? You're the rogue, the sneakiest one here."

"I'm not fucking Ninja Batman, am I? I can't sneak up on you in a goddamn meadow while you already know I'm here. Besides, you've already cleared me of a motive. Sure, if I had a full flask of stonepiss, I'd happily sit back and watch you swim around in Cooper's piss puddle all day. But we're currently miles away from the nearest source of booze, and your inability to walk is wasting even more of my time which could be better spent drinking."

Tim was making a lot of sense.

"Then who could have..." Dave lowered the twine, and his helmet flew off his head. He looked up to find it floating two feet above him.

"What the fuck is going on?" asked Cooper.

"I don't know," said Dave, still mesmerized by his levitating helmet.

The helmet jerked to Dave's left, then plummeted through the floating tree stump and splashed into the piss puddle at the bottom of the hole.

"Hey!" Dave shouted at whatever had just tossed his helmet. "Who are you?"

High pitched giggles filled the air above him.

"Were you the ones who put the fake stump there?" Julian called out.

"The stump!" shrieked a voice like an eight-year-old girl who'd just sucked down a balloon full of helium. "When the dwarf tried to sit, we thought that was the end of it, but you took it soooo much farther."

"So that's all it was after all? Just a prank?"

"We were right the first time," said Cooper. "They put it there just to be dicks."

The disembodied voices giggled again. They all sounded very similar, but Julian's sensitive elf ears could make out the subtle differences of at least three distinct voices, maybe four. But he couldn't pinpoint their exact locations. They seemed to be constantly moving.

"Dicks!" cried the same voice that had spoken before. "That was the best part. You actually urinated on the dwarf! I've never even thought to do that. Here's a gift from my dick to you."

A thin arc of pale yellow urine sprouted out of thin air about ten feet above Cooper's head and hit him in the face.

"The fuck?" Cooper weaved left and right, but the stream followed him. He sniffed, then poked his purple tongue out between his lips. "This tastes like honeysuckle." He scratched his head as if distracted by something more pressing than an invisible flying person pissing on his face, then looked up. "Hang on, you're a dude?"

A tiny floating head appeared about a foot above the urine stream, sporting a bright green mustache curled up at the ends and a long thin beard. "Bingbong Fizzbang, at your service." A pair of rapidly flapping purple gossamer wings appeared between the head and the piss stream.

"Fuck you, Tinkerballs!" Cooper jumped and swatted at the semi-invisible creature but didn't even come close to hitting him.

Julian searched the air for other floating heads but stopped when he spotted Tim, eyes fixed on Bingbong Fizzbang, slowly cocking his crossbow behind his back.

While Tim was slowly bringing the crossbow around to his front, Julian shook his head vigorously. He'd heard at least three, they thought nothing of using magic on a prank, and this would only escalate the conflict. But Tim missed the signal; he had his eyes locked on his target.