Thank you for your amazing generosity.

Tim had been the one to sell the party on taking this job by describing it as "taking a stroll through the woods and hoping they didn't get mauled by monsters", and argued that "Since that describes pretty much every day we've been in this shitty fantasy world, and remains preferable to the even shittier existence we led back in the real world, we might as well make a little booze money from it."

Julian found it ironic, then, that Tim sat in the back of the wagon, swigging stonepiss from his flask, while Julian, Cooper, and Dave struggled to push the wagon through the mud while the gods of this world saw fit to piss down a torrential rainstorm on them.

In his role as the "face" of the party, owing to his high Charisma score, Julian had convinced their current employer, Mr. Butkus, that they were a competent group of mercenaries capable of escorting him and his wares safely to his destination, so he supposed his thoughts of criticism toward Tim weren't coming from much of a moral high ground.

Ravenus landed on the wagon roof and shook the rain from his feathers. "Moving along, are we sir?"

"Fantastic," said Cooper. "One more fucking freeloader."

Julian shot Cooper a warning glance. "Just take it easy, huh? He weighs next to nothing, and at least he's serving a purpose."

"That's right," said Tim. "I'm keeping lookout. When you don't get torn apart by owlbears or raped by manticores or some shit, you'll have me to thank for giving you the heads up."

"I was talking about Ravenus," said Julian. "You're just a lazy asshole."

"I'm a goddamn halfling! I could barely reach the back of the wagon. How am I supposed to help?"

Cooper grunted as the three of them heaved the back wheels of the wagon over a tree root. "Shutting up would be a step in the right direction."

The wagon started moving again, albeit slowly, now that the horses up front were able to do their jobs. Each hoofstep was a squelch and plop. The wagon wheels cut deep ruts into the mushy ground which soon closed back in on themselves.

Now that his hands were free, Julian grabbed the ends of his serape and flapped as much water as he could out of it. For no reason he could think of, he began to feel slightly aroused. He looked up at Ravenus, with whom he shared an Empathic Link.

"Are you..." Julian cleared his throat. "... feeling okay?"

"Please pardon my lack of control, sir," said Ravenus. "You reminded me of a mating ritual I once witnessed between two tropical birds."

Dave and Tim snickered as blood that had been headed toward Julian's dick changed course and rushed up toward his cheeks.

"What's so funny?" asked Cooper, who was unable to understand the Elven tongue, the only language Ravenus was capable of speaking.

Dave squeezed a gallon of rain and sweat out of his beard. "I think Julian is giving himself a hardon via Ravenus."

Cooper made a face like he was trying to figure out the square root of negative pi. "This is the sort of shit that happens when you take away people's internet porn."

Julian wrapped his still waterlogged serape double layered over his crotch and glared up at Ravenus. "Have you seen anything?"

"Yes, sir. That's why I'm here," said Ravenus enthusiastically. "I've spotted the tower!"

Tim sighed. "Oh thank fuck."

"What are you so relieved about?" asked Dave. "You've done nothing but drink this entire trip."

"And so it stands to reason that I'm nearly out." Tim picked up a clear glass bottle with a long spiraling neck from among the merchant's wares. "Is it wine? Is it lamp oil? Is it... I don't know, fucking unicorn piss? For a second there, I thought I just might have to find out."

Julian slogged ahead to the front of the wagon. "Mr. Butkus! I have good news!"

Collected rain flowed off the sturdy brim of Butkus's black conical hat when he turned to look down at Julian.

"Tell me it be a break in the weather. This rain chills me to the bones." He produced a silver hip flask from an inner pocket of his thick leather coat and took a swig of the contents.

Julian's first thoughts went back to Tim. Sure, Butkus was their employer, and was serving a purpose insofar as someone had to steer the horses, but it seemed like kind of a dick move to complain about the weather when they were all at least as soaked as he was, and having to slog through the mud lifting the wagon over tree roots as well.

"Better than that," said Julian, walking along at the wagon's pace. "My familiar has spotted Count Fabulazzo's tower."

"Aye, that is good news, lad. All this travel has me longing for a rest."

Julian searched his mind for a response other than 'Go fuck yourself''. Taking in Butkus's floppy conical hat and the strange assortment of random liquids, powders, herbs, and things he wasn't able to identify at a casual glance or sniff, Julian had a thought.

"Are you a wizard?" It couldn't hurt to talk shop with a fellow student of the arcane arts.

"Ha!" said Butkus. "Me, a wizard? Mercy of the gods no, boy. I am but a humble courier. I collect what goods I'm told to collect, and deliver them where I'm told to –."

A crack of thunder seemed to split the dark sky, and the accompanying lightning briefly made clear a black tower silhouetted against the clouds. It was like a giant rook, towering over the treetops.

It didn't seem all that far away, but the horses trudged through the semi-liquid terrain for at least another hour before they finally pulled up to the iron gates.

The gate, as well as the fence which stretched out from either side of it, forming a fifty yard perimeter around the tower, were anything but inviting. Barbed spikes topped each vertical bar.

Julian looked for a rope, or a button, or anything that might serve as a doorbell. The gate appeared to be latched, but not locked.

"Open the gate already!" barked Butkus. "Have you not noticed it be pissing down rain?"

"Actually, I have noticed that," Julian snapped back. He had quite a few ranks in the Diplomacy skill, but he was to exhausted at present to bother using it on Butkus. "My clothes are heavier than I am right now. But I wondered if it was rude to just let ourselves in."

"No ruder than forcing our host to come out in this weather."

Julian begrudgingly supposed that was fair. The gate made a small clanging sound when he touched the latch, but that was soon drowned out by the vicious barking of what sounded like a pack of rabid dire Dobermans.

He let go of the latch like it was made out of AIDS-infected spiders and jumped back from the gate.

The horses didn't seem to like the fast-approaching barking any more than Julian did, whinnying and splashing mud with their restless hooves.

"Holy shit!" said Cooper from the back end of the wagon. It was too delayed to have been a reaction to the barking, but what else could –

Then Julian saw them. Three sets of glowing red eyes bouncing up and down and moving toward him from the other side of the gate as the barking grew louder. Mesmerized, he took another step back, hoping the gate was strong enough to keep whatever those eyes belonged to safely contained.

It wasn't until they were almost right up on the gate that Julian could make out their forms, and was kind of relieved to find out they actually had forms at all.

Three dogs, covered in reddish-brown fur, jumped up against the gate bars like their asses were on fire. Their abdomens were thin, like Greyhounds, but their chests and hind legs bulged with muscles like Rottweilers who hit the gym six days a week.

Fortunately, the gate was doing its job, keeping those red-eyed monster dogs on their side of it. Still, Julian thought he might flex his Charisma score and try to calm the beasts down with an untrained Handle Animal check.

He put up his hands non-threateningly. "Hey guys, take it easy. We don't mean any – FUCK!"

Julian dove for cover behind the horses as two of the three dogs stopped barking and vomited plumes of fire at him.

The remaining dog's barking was drowned out by equine screams as orange light illuminated the mud around him. The heat of the flames was just short of unbearable. The back of Julian's drenched serape felt like it was near boiling.

"Stop that!" shouted a voice from behind the dogs. "Yippy! Pippy! Skippy! SIT!"

The dogs reluctantly stopped barking and breathing fire. Just in time, too. The horses, having provided all the cover they were going to provide, collapsed on top of each other in a pile of scorched hair and exposed, charred bones.

"Jesus Christ, Julian!" said Cooper, appearing from the other side of the wagon. "What the fuck did you do to those horses?"

"I didn't do anything!"

Butkus glared down at Julian. "That will be coming out of your pay, elf."

"With all due respect, sir. I was trying to save my life."

"And you did so at the expense of my horses. It only be fair that you –"

"Please, please, gentlemen!" said the middle-aged man on the other side of the gate. He looked like a younger Jack Palance, if Jack Palance were ever inclined to wear a shiny green shirt and golden MC Hammer pants. The three red-eyed dogs sat calmly at his feet, staring at Julian through a circular curtain of rainwater flowing off the edge of an invisible circular disc above the man's head. "I shall compensate you for the horses. Now please, come in."

"Are you Mr. Fabulazzo?" asked Julian.

"Count Fabulazzo," corrected the count. "Please come in out of the rain and warm yourselves by my hearth."

"Your dogs," said Julian. "Are they..."

"Hell hounds," said Count Fabulazzo. "It's an unfortunate name for such gentle creatures."

Julian looked down at the smoldering horse remains, catching Ravenus beak deep in an eye socket.

"I'm in the process of training them," the count explained. "They tend to get excited at the sight of new faces. I assure you they will do you no harm."

Julian would have preferred it if the count would lock the dogs in a kennel or something, but he was in no position to make such demands of their host. His word would have to be good enough.

When Julian touched the latch again, one of the dogs snarled as it snorted small flames from its nostrils.

"Hush, Pippy!" snapped the count. The hell hound whined and lay down.

As satisfied as he felt he was likely to be, Julian unlatched the gate. The iron hinges screamed as he pushed it open. To his great relief, the hell hounds remained at their master's feet.

Butkus strolled through the gate. "You lads can unload the wagon. I'd move it closer to the tower for you, but thanks to the cowardly elf, I've no horses with which to pull it."

"It's not cowardly to avoid being roasted alive," said Julian.

"A fine lot of good your excuses will do us when it comes time to travel back to Cardinia in the morning."

"I've got it covered."

"Is that right? You plan to pull the wagon yourself? You look about as strong as you are brave."

That was about as much as Julian could tolerate. "You want a horse? I'll give you a goddamn horse." He pointed at the ground in front of Butkus. "Horse!"

A beautiful white stallion popped into existence right in front of Butkus.

As if a switch had been flipped, all three hell hounds sprang to their feet and bounded at the magically summoned horse.

"No!" cried Julian, but the hell hounds weren't taking orders from him.

The horse screamed and reared up on its hind legs, inadvertently making it easier for the first hound to bite it right in the junk. The second one jumped up and grabbed the horse by the throat.

That was more than the horse could take. It disappeared just as the third hound lunged for its hind leg, passed through the suddenly horseless space and hurtled straight at Butkus.

"Whaaa!" cried Butkus as the confused demon dog flew into him. He fell to the ground covering his face with his forearms. "Please! No! Make it stop!" The dog had clearly been in the mood for some fresh horse meat, and had no interest in Butkus except to lift up its leg and pee on him.

Smoke rose from the piss where it landed on Butkus's thick leather coat.

"Yippy!" snapped Count Fabulazzo. "Stop that. Get back here right now."

All three dogs returned to their master, who squatted down to stroke their fur and tell them what good boys they were.

Butkus struggled to stand up on his shaking legs. He pointed accusingly at Julian. "Y-y-you did that on p-p-purpose!"

"I most certainly did not," said Julian. "But I commend you on how bravely you handled yourself."

Butkus gasped at the still-smoldering pee stain on his jacket, which hadn't quite burnt all the way through the thick leather. He patted it out with his rain-soaked hat until it stopped smoking, then glared at Julian.

"That's coming out of your pay."

"Like fuck it is." Julian had used all of the Diplomacy skill that he was going to use on this guy. "We escorted you here, pushed your wagon, and delivered your goods safely to their destination."

"Not all of them," said Cooper, standing at the back of the wagon. The expression on his face said, "We might have a bit of a problem."

"What is it now?" said Julian as he, Dave, and Butkus joined Cooper.

Tim lay on the wagon floor, his eyes unfocused, grinning back at them with his hand down his pants.

Flask in one hand and dick in the other, he said, "Hey, man."

"I think he drank some of the yellow liquid in that bottle," said Cooper.

Butkus gasped again. "Not the unicorn piss!"

"Wow," said Dave. "Tim called that one."

"Do you know how rare and difficult to collect that is?"

"How do you even approach a unicorn about that?" asked Cooper.

Butkus scowled at Tim. "This is coming out of your pay!"

Tim grinned at him. "I love you, man."

"Friends!" said Count Fabulazzo. "Let us not bicker over a few drops of unicorn urine. I shall feed my hounds with your dead horses and we'll call it even. You are all weary from travel and irritable from the inclement weather. Please come inside, dry off, and fill your bellies. Then we shall see how much there is to quarrel over."

Julian and Butkus begrudgingly nodded at one another, then Julian turned to Cooper to deal with some practical matters.

"Do you think you could throw these horses over the fence and pull the wagon up closer to the tower?"

"Sure." Cooper sighed. "I'm really angry." His muscles inflated like his body was sucking back in a week's worth of farts. Once his Barbarian Rage had taken full effect, he grabbed one of the horses by its front hooves and started to spin around.

The hell hounds' fire had burnt a gaping hole in the horse's skin, allowing horse innards to fly out as Cooper gathered the momentum he needed to hurl it over the fence.

"Goddammit, Cooper," said Dave, his face, beard, and chest slick with horse guts.

The other horse had taken most of the fire to the face and, thankfully, its brain didn't fly out as Cooper threw it over the fence.

The hell hounds were elated when Count Fabulazzo gave them the green light to tear into the horse carcasses. Expecting them to rip the meat from the bone as most animals would, Julian was surprised to see the dogs devour random parts of the horses indiscriminately. Their powerful jaws crunched through bones like they were no more than almonds inside a piece of chocolate.

Satisfied that the dogs were distracted, Count Fabulazzo motioned for Cooper to pull the wagon through the gate, then hurried to close and latch it again once everyone had come through.

By the time Cooper had backed the wagon to the large side door of the tower, there was nothing left of the horses but eight hooves. One of the hounds looked at Julian and burped out a small flame.

Cooper came out of his Barbarian Rage with a long, mostly steady fart. It was interrupted a few times by "more than fart," which splattered and plopped between his feet, adding blobs of yellow to the otherwise brown muddy earth.

"By the gods!" cried Butkus. "Have you no decency?"

"He has a low Charisma score," Julian explained. "And he tends to get a little gassy when he comes out of a Barbarian Rage." For all his efforts to appear unaffected, Julian could feel his own eyes watering. This was a particularly ripe one.

Fabulazzo coughed for a moment, then slapped Cooper on the back. "I, for one, am impressed! But just so you're aware, we do have a room for this in the tower. My servants have left for the night, and I would appreciate not having to clean up too much in the morning."

Cooper nodded. "I understand."

"What's that wonderful smell?" asked Tim. His one hand was still down the front of his pants, and Dave was guiding him by the other arm.

"Jesus, Cooper," said Dave. "Are you trying to win a contest?"

"Fuck you, Dave. I'm..." Cooper's eyes focused beyond the others. "... humbled."

Julian turned around to find one of the hounds in the process of taking a shit. Cooper was right. It was certainly something to behold.

The turd flowed out of the creature's ass like magma seeping through a crack in the earth's surface. It was slow, steady, and on fire. It formed a neat pile, like a flaming Hershey's Kiss the size of one of Cooper's fists. The rain sizzled on the pile after the dog moved, putting out the flames and changing the color of the pile from glowing red to black almost instantaneously. Julian wondered if it had a crispy outer shell.

Count Fabulazzo cleared his throat, and everyone seemed to awaken simultaneously to the fact that they were all staring at dog shit.

"Perhaps you'd like to come inside? I have roasted elk and Barrier Island rum."

Julian smiled gratefully. "That sounds wonderful. We'd love to come in."

"You forget your place, elf," said Butkus. "You are hired hands. How about you finish the job you're being paid to do?"

Cooper grabbed his crotch. "How about you eat a dick?"

"These boxes aren't going anywhere," said Count Fabulazzo. "Come inside and rest for a bit. The wagon can be unloaded any time."

Butkus was right that they had been hired to do a job. If there was any drinking to be done tonight, Julian certainly didn't want to rely on his friends to get any work done once the Barrier Island rum started flowing.

"Between the four of us," said Julian, "it shouldn't take us long to move these boxes."

Count Fabulazzo looked disdainfully at Butkus, then smiled at Julian. "Just put them there on the shelves wherever there's space. When you're finished, change out of those wet clothes and put on one of these cloaks." He indicated several stacks of folded purple laundry on the shelves. "You should all be able to find one that fits."

"It's very courteous to have those ready for your guests," said Julian.

"To tell you the truth, I don't receive that many visitors." Count Fabulazzo gestured to the cloaks again. "Aside from the Trog'bahar cultists, of course."

Dave looked confused. "The cultists hike all the way up this mountain to bring you clothes?"

"Not exactly. They come here to convert me to their religion. They're the whole reason I purchased the hell hounds in the first place."

"Oh," said Dave.

"The hounds get fed, and I get free cloaks. Everybody wins." He clapped his hands together. "That reminds me, I must see the hounds to their kennel. Butkus, would you care to join me?"

Butkus jumped at the sound of his own name, then seemed to have to piece together everything the count had said after it. "No, thank you. So kind of you to offer, but I think I'll stay here and help the lads unload the wagon."

To Julian's surprise, Butkus actually did help unload the boxes. It helped him avoid eye contact with everyone after his latest display of cowardice. Julian was grateful for the help, seeing as they were effectively a man short, what with Tim lying in the corner with his hand down his pants again.

"Samantha," Tim groaned in a state of semi-consciousness. "Angela!"

Cooper stopped mid-stride on his way from the wagon to the shelves. "Is he whacking it to Who's the Boss??"

"Moooooooooona!" Tim moaned.

Julian, Cooper, and Dave cringed at the grisly confirmation of Cooper's theory. Butkus shook his head and continued working.

The wagon was nearly empty by the time Count Fabulazzo returned from herding his hounds to their kennels.

When the last box was placed on the shelf, everyone sorted through the folded rose petal scented cloaks to find ones large or small enough to fit their various body styles.

Julian found a long and slender cloak. Close inspection revealed irregular seams and faint brown stains, suggesting it had been ripped to shreds, bled through profusely, then mended and washed. On the bright side, it was warm, dry, and comfortable.

After everyone else had changed, they went to work on Tim. When Cooper started wrestling Tim's hand out of his pants, Julian knew that it was up to either him or Dave to pull Tim's pants off.

He walked briskly back to the shelves announcing, "I'll find a cloak to fit him."

It wasn't until he returned that Dave, pulling off Tim's pants while looking away from his junk, shot Julian a scornful glare, having finally discovered his motives.

Cooper removed Tim's vest and shirt, leaving Tim's hands free to go straight back to his crotch.

"Sophia," Tim groaned as Julian pulled the cloak down over his head.

Julian thought back on what old TV show Tim might have switched over to. "Is he having a go at The Golden Girls now?"

"There was a Sophia he had a thing for in high school," said Dave.

"I never understood what he saw in her," said Cooper. "I think I might have preferred the Golden Girl."

Julian pulled the cloak down over Tim's shoulders. "Maybe let's not bother putting his arms through the sleeves, lest he be a danger to himself and others.

Trog'bahar's cultists must have been primarily human. Julian's cloak fit well enough, but was a bit loose. Cooper and Dave's cloaks stretched tight around their considerably broader chests, making them look like discount street hookers. Tim, with the bottom of his cloak going far lower than his feet, and his hands doing whatever they were doing to his junk, looked like a purple worm with an erratic heartbeat.

Count Fabulazzo led them into the interior of the tower. Rather than go back out into the rain, they entered through what Julian thought of as the garage, where they'd unloaded the wagon. In the kitchen, a large elk carcass butterflied on a solid oak table, among a set of bloodied butcher's tools. Most of the internal organs were missing, as were the ribs and most of the muscles on its left side.

"This fine fellow is what we'll be eating tonight," said Count Fabulazzo. "I brought him down myself a week ago."

Julian found it strange that the carcass wasn't crawling with maggots. If it was producing any foul odor, it didn't compete with Cooper.

"What do you do to preserve the meat?" asked Dave, apparently having the same concerns as Julian.

Count Fabulazzo shrugged. "I've never pressed my cook on the issue, but I expect he uses the same methods that anyone does."

"Salt? Refrigeration?"

The count frowned quizzically at Dave. "Necromancy."

Julian and Dave glanced at Butkus, who nodded with halfhearted interest. He'd looked appropriately horrified at the announcement of where their cloaks had come from, so Julian felt a little better about the explanation of how the meat was preserved.

Count Fabulazzo, carrying the basket with all of their wet clothes, continued through the door leading out of the kitchen. "I apologize for such a modest dinner. I sent all the servants home to get ahead of the storm, and I wasn't sure whether you'd make it here or not."

The room they were in now was nearly completely circular, taking up all of the tower's ground floor which wasn't taken up by the kitchen and garage. An impressively large hearth housed a roaring fire directly opposite the kitchen door.

Count Fabulazzo pulled down a large U-shaped wrought iron bar until it came to rest perpendicular to the wall. Julian guessed its purpose was to support a curtain which would contain the fire's heat to an area big enough to provide warmth for two or three people if one didn't want to burn enough fuel to heat the entire tower. But the count had a different use in mind for it now. He began hanging up their wet foul-smelling clothes, and Julian rushed to help him, taking in the rest of the room as he did so.

To the left of the hearth, shelves lined the curved wall. There were a number of books, scrolls, bottles, and various other odds and ends scattered about, but there was plenty of shelf space left. Julian hypothesized that the count might be a mid-level spellcaster working his way up.

At the base of the shelves was a large desk which appeared to have been carved out of a single block of black granite. A luxurious egg-shaped chair, carved out of the same black granite, was upholstered on the hollowed inside with puffy black leather. It looked like a remarkably heavy piece of furniture, which accentuated the impressiveness of the fact that it was floating two inches off the floor.

Cooper seemed less impressed with the chair than Julian, taking little more interest in it than as a place to dump Tim. The chair turned easily and silently as he pivoted it to face the desk, presumably so no one had to watch Tim continue to fondle himself and drool.

In the center of the room stood a table that didn't seem to match with the rest of the furniture, like it was put there specifically for its current purpose, to hold the modest dinner the count had laid out for his guests who may or may not be showing up. Sliced elk meat, which Julian was thankful to see was cooked, three logs of cheese, each a slightly different shade of yellow, and loaves of brown-crusted bread, each about as big as Julian's head.

"Please help yourselves," said Count Fabulazzo when he and Julian had finished hanging up the wet clothes.

Cooper didn't need to be told twice. Ignoring the two-pronged silver forks and dishes which had been laid out, he ripped a loaf of bread apart, grabbed a handful of elk, and cut slices of cheese off two of the cheese logs.

Count Fabulazzo watched in fascination as Cooper placed the top half of the bread atop the pile of meat and cheese, completing his sandwich.

"How delightfully barbaric!" squealed the count, clapping his hands giddily. He picked up a loaf of bread and made growling noises as he ripped it in half. Julian, Dave, and Butkus followed suit, but only Butkus seemed to take anywhere near the same level of childlike delight in it that Count Fabulazzo did.

Butkus and the count tore into their sandwiches like rabid wolves, really hamming up the barbaric savagery inherent, to them at least, in eating layered food.

When the first round of sandwiches were done, Count Fabulazzo went into the kitchen and returned with a tray full of glasses and a large glass decanter filled with caramel-brown liquid.

The Barrier Island rum was rich with spices, almost like a liquid pumpkin pie that got you drunk. It was smooth going down, and did more to warm Julian's insides than the roaring fire in the hearth.

While they drank, Count Fabulazzo hounded Cooper with questions about his homeland. Instead of making something up, Cooper responded with stories about people he knew in Mississippi. It was a surprisingly plausible description of a barbarian upbringing.

When the bottle had no more rum to give, Butkus declared it was time to retire for the night. The rain had stopped, and traveling downhill would almost certainly be easier than going up, but it would be best to waste as little daylight as possible.

Count Fabulazzo led them up four flights of stairs running along the interior curved wall of the tower to the guest bedrooms, of which there were two. Upon entering one of the rooms, Julian's eyes were immediately drawn to the curtains and bedsheets, which were obviously made from repurposed robes of former devotees of Trog'bahar.

Butkus decreed that one bedroom was for him alone, and the other was for "the help." It was a needlessly dickish gesture, as each room had a bed large enough to accommodate three grown men comfortably.

But nobody complained about not getting to share a bed with Butkus. Cooper was more comfortable sleeping on the floor anyway. Julian, being an elf, required no sleep. Dave and Tim were short enough to sleep sideways on the bed and there was enough space between them that they might as well have been in different time zones.

Cooper and Dave fell asleep pretty quickly, and Tim had passed out during dinner. Julian hadn't seen Ravenus since they unloaded the wagon, but a few otherwise inexplicable tingly sensations in his genital area told him that Ravenus had met a number of nice female birds in the area. Good for him. Wherever he was right now, their Empathic Link reassured Julian that he was safe and content.

Julian sat on the floor, alone with his thoughts, until his mind drifted off to the sound of Cooper's rhythmic snoring. Four hours later, he came out of the trance, which passed for sleep among elves, to the sensation of pins and needles in his ass.

Cooper had gassed up the room pretty bad by that point, so Julian decided to go for a walk and see what there was to see during the wee hours of the morning. Count Fabulazzo had granted them permission to explore the tower as much as they liked, as long as they didn't try to force open any doors which were locked.

Julian had no interest in snooping around some guy's house, but he was curious as to what the view was like from the top of the tower. So he climbed five more flights of stairs until the stairwell ended in a room about the size of a small closet with a wooden door at the far end.

The door opened with a gentle push, and Julian was taken aback by the magnificence of the star-filled sky. On top of a tower on top of a mountain, the view was so much more dazzling from here than it was from ground level.

Beholding the vast wonder of the infinite beyond made Julian feel tiny and insignificant. It made him feel at peace to know that whatever mistakes he made in life, the universe would keep on existing. It made his testicles ache.

Julian was considering the universe's effect on his testicles when a voice startled him from behind.

"Hello, sir." The joviality in Ravenus's voice seemed a little forced.

Julian turned around and looked down at his familiar. "There you are. I've been wondering where you'd gone." He looked back up at the sky. "Have you taken in this view? It's positively stunning."

"It was lovely, sir."

"Is there something on your mind, Ravenus? You seem... I don't know. Preoccupied?"

"I was actually enjoying the company of a lady, if you take my meaning, sir." Ravenus looked back and Julian followed his gaze. A brown hawk was hiding shyly in the shadow of the crenelated wall. She raised a wing when Julian spotted her.

"'Sup?" was all Julian could think to say in response.

"She became … startled when the door opened, sir."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Julian thought for a moment, then Ravenus's meaning clicked in his mind. "Ooooh... That explains my balls."

Ravenus cocked his head sideways, then shook off the curiosity. "Of course it does, sir. If we might discuss that at a later –"

"I'm going, I'm going." Julian waved to Ravenus and his lady friend before entering the stairwell and closing the door behind him.

Two hundred and forty-seven steps later, Julian was at the bottom of the tower. He let himself out through the side door where the wagon was parked. The night sky was still dazzling, but not as vast and infinite with so much of it blotted out by the tower and surrounding trees.

He considered going for a walk further up the road to see if he could find a nice clearing from which he could take in more of the sky while he prepared his spells for the coming day, but he stopped at the gate. If he tried to leave, the sound of the gate might set off the dogs and wake everyone up. Besides, the woods were bound to be crawling with monsters which might shy away from a party of five, but would be quick to attack a lone elf.

Looking through the gate, Julian was pleasantly surprised that the road seemed to have mostly dried up. The rainwater had apparently hauled ass down the mountain after the storm cleared. If the weather stayed like it currently was, they should have an easy ride home in the morning.

Julian sighed. Morning was still hours away. With nothing to read, not a lot of area to explore, and not even Ravenus around to keep him company, he decided to use his time as productively as he could. He'd transcribe some of his unused spells for the day onto scrolls, either to be used later or to be sold for a few silver pieces to spellcasters even crappier than he was.

The the wagon had some recently cleared shelf space he could use as a desk. He made his way back to the tower's "garage" and found his bag, along with his friends' bags, in the back of the wagon. He pulled out his scroll tube and flattened a blank sheet of paper on one of the shelves. The shelf, unfortunately, was too high for him to sit, but too low for him to stand while scribing. Even with his elven Low Light Vision, the near complete darkness strained his eyes as he penned the magical symbols floating around in his mind onto the page.

It was uncomfortable and tedious work, and for the lackluster benefit of having one more shitty Magic Missile spell at his disposal, but at least it killed the time. He was about three quarters of the way through it when he heard the tower door open.

Butkus looked as surprised to see Julian as Julian felt at seeing him.

"Elf," said Butkus. "What are you doing here?"

Julian shrugged. "Killing time. Elves don't sleep."

"Listen, I apologize if our exchange became a tad heated yesterday. It was just the road weariness talking, you know?" Butkus offered what Julian assumed was supposed to be a friendly smile. A glint of gold shone from one of his teeth not visible behind his default scowl.

"Think nothing of it," said Julian. "I understand. We both said things that weren't very nice. Water under the bridge."

Butkus nodded. "A fine saying. Does that come from your people?"

"You could say that."

"The weather seems to have cleared, but I think it best not to tempt the fates. We should set off back to Cardinia as soon as possible."

Julian rolled up his half-completed scroll and shoved it back into the tube. "You'll find no argument here."

"Then would you mind conjuring up a couple of those horses for me? I'll get them hitched up and you can go up and wake your friends."

"Sounds good," said Julian. He hopped out of the back of the wagon and walked to the front. "Horse!"

A sturdy brown horse appeared between Julian and Butkus.

"Horse!" he repeated, and a white horse appeared.

Julian stood in front of the two horses and placed a palm on each of their cheeks. "Butkus is going to hitch you to the wagon. You two behave yourselves and do as he asks, okay?"

When he caught Butkus staring at him, he felt the compulsion to explain. "They're magical horses. They're sometimes uncooperative with people other than the one who summons them if they aren't explicitly instructed not to –"

A shrill scream tore through the otherwise silent night air. It came from somewhere in the middle of the tower.

"Shit," said Julian. "I'd better go see what happened."

Butkus nodded vigorously. "You do that, elf." He hurriedly started hitching the horses to his wagon.

Julian swung open the tower door, sprinted through the kitchen, and raced up the stairs. When he got to the third floor, he found Tim and Count Fabulazzo standing outside a door that Julian remembered having been closed before.

Tim was confused and angry, hopping around like a caterpillar who'd been interrupted mid-metamorphasis. Count Fabulazzo, who had obviously been the one doing all the screaming, was staring into the room stricken with horror.

"What's going on?" asked Julian.

"That's a good fucking question," said Tim. "Why are we all dressed in fucking Snuggies, and why are my hands glued to my balls?"

Julian joined the count at the door and discovered Cooper sitting atop a large red porcelain jar. He was surrounded by burning candles and several paintings of the same elderly woman. In every picture she was portrayed wearing dresses that would make Puritans look like whores. The creases on her face were well-defined from a lifetime of scowling. Her eyes, however, were not entirely unlike the count's.

"Would you guys mind giving me a little privacy," asked Cooper. "I'm almost done in here."

"GET OUT OF THIS ROOM AT ONCE!" demanded Count Fabulazzo.

Cooper let out one last wet ass-spray before standing up. Count Fabulazzo gasped as he hurried into the room and looked into the jar Cooper had just risen from.

"Mother!" he said, choking back tears.

Cooper peered into the jar alongside him. "Is that some kind of Horshack test interpretation?"

"You!" Count Fabulazzo's eyes burned with the reflection of the two fireballs which had just appeared in his hands. "I take you into my home. I clothe and feed you. I share with you my finest Barrier Island rum and give you shelter for the night. And this is how you repay my generosity? You defecate in my mother's urn?"

Julian gasped.

"Do you have anymore of that rum left?" asked Tim.

Cooper backed away from the count. "Sorry, dude. I thought it was a toilet."

The count's voice shook as he spoke. "Why would I surround a toilet with portraits of my late mother?"

"How the fuck was I supposed to know it was your mother?" asked Cooper. "I thought those were just there for something to whack off to while you're on the shitter."

"Cooper!" cried Julian. "What the hell are you talking about? Who whacks off on the shitter?"

"I just did."

Julian pulled on his ears. "To a painting of an old woman?"

"Whoa," said Cooper. "Take it down a notch. That's this dude's mother you're talking about."

The flames in Count Fabulazzo's hands grew more intense as he glared at Cooper. "It's common courtesy to not go snooping around in locked rooms when you're a guest in someone's home. But just to make the matter crystal clear, I gave you explicit instructions not to do that. Your disobedience shall cost you your life."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" asked Cooper. "The door wasn't even locked."

"Of course it was! It is always locked. No one but me is allowed into this room EVER!"

Tim shuffled over and squinted into the door's keyhole. "This lock has been picked."

"There, you see!"

"Cooper can't pick a lock," said Julian. "He doesn't have the Dexterity or the skill ranks."

"That's right," said Cooper. "I can barely wipe my own ass." Evidence of Cooper's claim dripped on the floor between his feet.

Julian could tell that the count was anything but a hothead. Most people, having the means, would have blasted Cooper to hell long before now in similar circumstances. On the other hand, Julian considered that he was wearing evidence that the count was well capable of murder. He might listen to reason if Julian was able to articulate his thoughts quickly enough.

"When Cooper wants to get through a locked door, he uses..." Julian was about to go on about Cooper's high Strength score, but then he remembered Count Fabulazzo's fixation with Cooper's barbarian upbringing. "He uses the methods passed down by his barbarian ancestors. Zuglar the Mighty would never have reigned over the Tribes of... um..."

"Picayune," suggested Cooper.

"Picayune," Julian repeated, "if his warriors ever witnessed him trying to pick a lock. Likewise, if Cooper wanted to get through a locked door, it would be torn off the hinges and smashed to splinters."

Julian took a deep breath, satisfied with his massive tale of bullshit.

Count Fabulazzo nodded slowly as the fireballs in his hands dimmed, but didn't go out completely. "If not Cooper, then which one of you picked the lock?" He narrowed his eyes at Tim.

"Don't look at me," said Tim. "My hands are still stuck to my nuts."

"And if not for the sole purpose of soiling my dear mother's ashes," the count continued as he peered into the room, "then for what pur–" His eyes grew wide with horror. "Mother!"

Julian and Tim exchanged glances. Tim shrugged.

Count Fabulazzo stood in front of the urn and looked up at a glass display case. "She's gone!"

Tim looked at Julian and nodded toward the count. Julian took it to mean that he should go in there and say something encouraging.

Julian did his best. "Her spirit will always live on in your heart and in your memory."

"No!" cried the count. "Her spirit lives on inside the amulet. I imprisoned her there before I strangled the life out of her body."

"Oh," said Julian and Tim simultaneously.

Cooper nodded. "That was thoughtful."

"Hey guys," said Dave as he descended the stairs from the fourth floor. "Where is –"

"What have you done with my mother?" cried the count. The flames in his hands flickered and grew.

Dave stopped mid-step. "Nothing! I was just upstairs taking a dump." After a moment of thought, he added, "alone."

"Settle an argument, would you?" Cooper asked Dave. "And be honest. Did you whack it on the shitter?"

Dave grimaced at Cooper for a second before continuing his thought from earlier. "Where is Butkus going? Weren't we supposed to get a ride back with him?"

"What are you talking about?" Julian's heart sank as he began to piece together the obvious answer to the question.

"Butkus!" said the count. "Of course! I knew he couldn't be trusted." He extinguished the flames in his hands and ran past Dave up the stairs.

"Where the fuck is he going?" asked Cooper.

Tim's eyes lit up. "Maybe he's going to Fireball Butkus from the top of the tower!"

"That would be badass," said Cooper.

Tim hopped up and down, the current extent of his mobility options. "Pick me up and follow him!"

Cooper scooped up Tim and started running up the stairs.

Count Fabulazzo appeared again, running in the opposite direction and carrying a large bundle of purple cloth. He flicked his wrist, sending Cooper and Tim flying off the staircase and landing on Dave. Without so much as a pause or an 'excuse me', he continued down the stairs with a focus and determination Julian had never witnessed anyone have toward doing laundry. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, or something like Lady Macbeth washing her hands.

"Hey guys," said Julian. "I think we should get out of here while the count is distracted. I think he's cracking up, and I don't think we'll want to be around when he finally goes whole hog on losing his shit." He smiled. "Also, I'm looking forward to seeing Butkus's face when we catch up to him."

Dave frowned. "He's long gone. I'm sorry guys, but I was on the can for a good fifteen minutes after I saw Butkus go. I think it's got something to do with that necromantically preserved elk meat. It was really running through me."

Cooper rubbed his belly. "I know, right?"

Julian had stopped for a squat or two while walking around outside as well, but he felt no need to share this information. Instead, he started walking down the stairs. "As much as I'd love to stand here and listen to you two talk about your bowel movements, we should probably go get dressed, track down that weasel, and get paid."

Cooper picked up Tim and followed.

"Screw our clothes," said Dave, taking the rear. "If you think there's a chance we can catch up to Butkus, shouldn't we waste as little time as possible?"

"We've got all the time in the world. Those horses pulling Butkus's wagon were summoned by me."

"I know your magical horses have a tendency to die horrible untimely deaths," said Tim. "But it's kind of creepy that you're banking on it now."

Julian stepped behind his serape, warm and dry hanging on the bar around the hearth, and pulled off his purple robe. "I'm not banking on the horses dying. I'm banking on their spell duration timing out."

"Oh yeah. They live that long so infrequently that I forgot it was a thing."

Cooper held Tim's robe by the hood and shook it until Tim fell out of the bottom. Mercifully, his hands were still stuck to his junk.

Julian turned around and started pulling on his dry clothes. "He won't have more than two hours before those horses disappear, leaving him stranded in his wagon. Considering that he tried to rip us off, I won't feel bad extorting three times our agreed-upon payment out of him."

Once they were all finished getting dressed, Julian led the way through the front door of the tower, which was open a crack. He looked left and right, but saw no sign of Count Fabulazzo.

"Do you think it's rude to just leave without saying goodbye?" Julian wondered aloud.

"No ruder than shitting in his mother's urn," said Tim. "This guy's unstable. Every interaction we have with him is just one more chance for us to accidentally piss him off. Let's just leave him to his laundry and get the fuck out of here."

Tim ran stealthily toward the gate, looked around, then waved the rest of them over.

Julian wasn't sure why they were sneaking around. He supposed it was natural for Tim, being a rogue, but he found himself running as quietly as he could, keeping his weight on the balls of his feet.

Dave lagged behind, as usual, his movement barely qualifying as running. And Cooper ran about as stealthily as a charging rhino.

"No, Cooper! Wait!" cried Tim as Cooper came barreling toward the gate. Miraculously, Cooper seemed to hear him and slowed down.

Tim sighed with relief. "We need to wait for Dave before we open the –"

The iron gate's hinges screamed as Cooper leaned against it to catch his breath.

"Fuck," said Tim.

Tim's concerns were justified almost immediately as the three hell hounds barked like a stadium full of crazed wolves. In the early morning darkness, Julian could see the glow of their fiery breath coming from just around the other side of the tower.

"Hurry up, Dave!" cried Julian.

Dave pumped his stubby dwarf legs, moving with all the swiftness of an elderly power walker at the mall, while Tim and Cooper stood poised to slam the gate shut as soon as he made it through.

The dogs were fast as they came around the tower, but Dave was more than halfway there. It was going to be close.

Julian gripped two bars and pressed his face between them. "He's going to make it."

"I don't think he is, sir," said Ravenus, who had just flapped down to perch atop the fence.

"I've got to agree with Ravenus on this one," said Tim. "Dave's fucked."

As the painful-to-watch race continued, it became clear that Ravenus and Tim's objective assessments were going to prevail over Julian's wishful thinking.

"Shit," said Tim. "Where the hell are our weapons?"

Julian had seen them less than an hour ago. "In the wagon."

Cooper gripped the gate's bars with both hands. "I'm really angry!" With the added Strength bonus from his Barbarian Rage, he ripped the gate off its hinges, held it over his head, and flipped it around so that the pointy tips at the top of the bars were aimed down at the approaching hounds.

Julian supposed he'd better do something as well. He was thinking about whether a Magic Missile or a Mount spell would be more conducive to keeping him and his friends alive when something strange happened.

The hell hounds caught up to Dave, but then ran past him. Tim and Cooper watched confusedly as the manically barking hounds ran through the opening in the fence and carried on down the road.

Having run forty yards, Dave was breathing like he'd just been held underwater for two minutes.

"Stop!" cried Count Fabulazzo from the other side of the tower where the dogs had just come from. "Come back here! Yippy! Pippy! Skip–" He stopped when he saw them, his eyes burning with angry frustration. "What have you done to my gate?"

Cooper's Barbarian Rage flowed out through his anus in a long wet fart as his muscles deflated back down to their normal size. He set the gate down. "That was a misunderstanding."

The count stomped toward them with his fists full of fire once again. "Have you any idea what you've done?"

Behind him, an invisible floating disc carried a pile of chains and a bundle of purple cloth.

"I'm very sorry," said Julian. "We didn't want to bother you while you were doing laundry, so we thought we'd let ourselves –"

"Laundry? Why would I be doing laundry when my mother's spirit has just been stolen?"

Julian was in an awkward spot. His choices boiled down to admitting that his reasoning involved Count Fabulazzo being batshit insane or making himself seem catastrophically stupid. He decided to go with the latter.

"I saw the cloth, and just assumed..."

"These are Butkus's bed sheets. I took them so that the hounds could get a good sniff and track down that dirty thieving scoundrel!"

"Oh," said Julian. "Well done then. It looks like they're hot on his trail."

"And precious little good that does me!" Count Fabulazzo grabbed a fistful of chain from the invisible disc. "I hadn't attached their leashes yet."

"Holy shit!" said Tim. "Were you going to ride the disc while the dogs pulled you?"

Count Fabulazzo scowled down at Tim. "That was the plan."

"That would have been epic."

"Now my mother is gone. My sweet pups are gone. I fear I may never get that smell out of my tower. May the gods damn the day I invited you cretins into my home."

Julian tried to think of a use for his Diplomacy skill that would allow them to leave as quickly as possible.

"We don't want to cause you any more trouble," said Dave. "So I guess we'll be going now." He hadn't allotted any skill points to Diplomacy, and it showed.

The flames surrounding Count Fabulazzo's fists intensified. "The only place you're going is to the kennels. Once I acquire some new hell hounds, I'll use you to train them."

Cooper frowned. "None of us have any ranks in Animal Handling."

Dave frowned harder. "I don't think that's what he has in mind."

"I have an alternative suggestion," said Julian.

Count Fabulazzo raised his eyebrows, indicating that he was willing to hear it.

"What if we made this right? What if we agreed to get your amulet back for you?" Cooper, Dave, and Tim nodded enthusiastically at the suggestion.

"And what assurances do I have that you won't simply flee once I let you go?"

Julian thought for a moment. "Is there some magical way you could compel us? I seem to remember reading about a higher level spell that –"

"A Geas!" cried Count Fabulazzo.

"I beg your pardon?" said Cooper.

"Is that how it's really pronounced?" asked Dave.

"Shit," muttered Tim, no doubt hoping Julian was going to convince the count to trust them, and then immediately betray his trust.

Count Fabulazzo reached into one of the pockets lining the inside of his robe and said, "Geas." He pulled out a rolled up piece of paper much bigger than what the pocket should have allowed for. "It's been so long since I've placed a Geas on someone."

"That's some very peculiar phrasing." Cooper belched out some anxiety. "One of those cultists might have been up for it if you'd given them a chance."

The count opened the scroll and read an incantation that was above Julian's arcane understanding. After he was done, he rolled the paper back up and addressed Julian and his friends. "You are hereby compelled to return the amulet containing my mother's spirit to me."

"Okay," said Julian. "I guess we'll get started on –"

"In addition," said the count. "You will return my three hell hounds."

"Shit," Tim expressed Julian's thoughts aloud.

"Upon completing this quest, you will be free."

Cooper scratched his ass nervously. "So, is that in addition to you placing your gay ass upon us? Or do we get to choose?"

Count Fabulazzo considered Cooper's question, but apparently considered it too stupid to address. "Should you voluntarily abandon the quest given to you, your bodies and minds will deteriorate every day until there's nothing left of you but quivering imbecilic mounds of flesh."

The count's words were harsh, but Julian appreciated that his description of what they would become was lower than his current assessment of what they were.

Parting ways with someone who was on the fence about straight up murdering them all was never easy. There were no right words. Simply turning around and walking away, while awkward, was usually the best course of action.

Julian led his friends through the gate and onto the road, grateful to not be incinerated. When they had walked for about twenty minutes, Julian sent Ravenus ahead to scout for Butkus's wagon and the hell hounds, but instructed him not to interfere.

"Should we ride?" asked Dave. Julian suspected his reason for asking had more to do with laziness than enthusiasm for the quest.

"Not unless you know how we're going to capture three hell hounds once we get there. We can rush things along once we have a plan."

"I've been thinking about that. He didn't say we had to bring the dogs back alive. How does this sound? Tim sets a snare. Julian summons a horse to use as bait. When one of them gets pulled up into the air, we'll beat it to death before it can breathe fire on the rope. Rinse and repeat."

Julian glared at Dave. "Every part of that plan sounds horrible. Those are somebody's pets."

"Those are fire breathing monsters," said Dave. "They've been raised from pups for the sole purpose of murdering innocent people who annoy that psychopath."

"And that psychopath who murders people who annoy him, that's the guy you want to get into a game of semantics with?" Julian lowered his voice and continued with his best Dave impression. "Sorry we shat in your mom's urn, sir. Here, we also killed your dogs."

"None of this matters," said Tim. "I can't set up a snare without a rope, and all of our shit is in the wagon."

They spent close to an hour arguing over how best to subdue the hell hounds without actually killing them, but the fire breathing part nixed most of their proposed plans.

"I've spotted the wagon, sir," said Ravenus as he landed on the branch of a nearby tree. "It took a bit of effort as it seems to have rolled off the road, and was difficult to spot from the air."

Julian nodded impatiently. "Where is it?"

"Just around that bend, sir."

Tim took the lead, but the benefit of his Stealth was dampened by his insistence that Cooper stay at least forty feet behind him in case any hell hounds jumped out of the woods.

The wagon was just as Ravenus had reported. The horses were gone, and so was Butkus.

"Our shit's still here," said Tim from the back of the wagon. He rummaged through their belongings and grabbed a handful of crossbow bolts. "Except my crossbow is missing."

"Here it is under the wagon," said Julian. He picked up the crossbow and handed it to Tim, who looked very relieved to have it.

Dave looked nervously around at their surroundings. "Are there any amulets in there?"

Tim gave the wagon a brief scan as he loaded a bolt into his crossbow. "None that I can see."

Julian scanned the ground for hoof prints and thought aloud. "So Butkus hears the hounds approaching, unhitches the horses, and rides off into the woods."

"Why would he unhitch both of the horses?" asked Dave.

Julian glared at him. As long as it made no difference to their situation, Julian wanted to think of a scenario in which the horses might have lived the full duration of the spell. "To create a diversion. Hopefully get one or two of the hell hounds off his ass. Why don't you see if you can find some kind of clue as to which way Butkus went?"

"There's also the possibility that both horses got mauled to death by hell hounds," said Cooper, squatting behind some undergrowth on the other side of the road.

"Of course that's a possibility," said Julian. "But not necessarily a conclusion we have to jump to without any evidence."

"Does a bunch of blood splattered all over the place count as evidence?"

Julian rushed to the road. "Yes!" He stopped just short of peering into the bushes where Cooper was taking a dump.

"Dude, could you give me a second?"

"Why are you shitting in the evidence?" asked Julian.

"Because of that fucking elk meat."

"Guys!" cried Tim from inside the wagon. "I think I found some more evidence."

Glowing red eyes peered out from the trees on the other side of the road, accompanied by a low menacing growl. As the single hell hound limped into view, snarling at Tim, Julian spotted a bolt sticking out from the base of its neck.

"Tim," Julian whispered as calmly as he could. "Put the crossbow down."

"No fucking way," Tim whispered back considerably less calmly. "Count Fabulazzo can go fuck himself." He raised his voice, addressing the dog. "You stay back!"

The hell hound's growls turned into barks as tiny flames spurted out from its nostrils.

Recognizing the futility of trying to get either one of them to back down, Julian saw no other option than to blow one of his spells.

"Rock-a-bye, and good night..." That was all it took for such a ferocious beast to curl up on the ground in a peaceful slumber. Poor little pooch must have been exhausted.

Tim sighed. "Nice job." He took a coil of rope out of his pack, hopped down from the back of the wagon, and started binding the hound's feet together.

"Dave," said Julian. "You should get over here and heal it."

"Why?" asked Dave. "It's alive enough. Why would I want to waste a Heal spell on a hell hound when there are two more out there who could still burn and eat us? Count Fabulazzo can't hold us accountable for Butkus shooting his dog."

Julian folded his arms and raised his eyebrows at Dave. "Are you sure about that?"

Dave frowned. "Maybe you're right." He looked at Tim. "You sure those knots are going to hold him?"

Tim nodded.

Dave placed one hand on the hound's shoulder and gripped the bolt with the other. "One, two..." He yanked the bolt out.

The hell hound yelped and bit Dave hard on his leopard fur covered forearm. It's neck was more flexible than any of them had anticipated.

"FUCK!" cried Dave. "It burns!"

Tim scrambled backward and reached for his crossbow in the wagon. Cooper, having finished his dump, took Tim's place near the furious hell hound and punched it in the head, eliciting a sharper cry from Dave, who still had the dog's teeth in his arm, but knocking the beast out cold.

The pattern of tooth marks on Dave's arm surrounded a blackened and blistered patch of skin and scorched leopard fur.

"Son of a bitch," said Dave through clenched teeth. He touched a fingertip to his arm just below the wound. "I heal me." He let out a long relieved groan as the burn faded, the punctures closed up, and the fur grew back.

"Feel better?" asked Julian.

Dave frowned. "Yeah, but I was hoping that might have gotten rid of the fur."

"Good. Now the dog."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" cried Dave. "Did you not just see what that thing did to me?"

"That doesn't change our situation. We don't want to piss off Count Fabulazzo any more than we already have."

Dave's face shook with anger and frustration. "Fine." He crawled as far back away from the hound as he could and still be within stretching distance from its head. Barely touching the tip of one of the dog's ears, he said his incantation. "I heal thee."

The hound groaned happily. It opened its eyes and licked Dave's hand.

Dave jerked his hand back. "Shit! That still burns."

As the hole in the dog's shoulder closed over with fresh skin, a long and gentle fart flowed out from its ass. Gentle, that is, except for the fact that it was on fire. Julian smiled at Dave. "Speaking of shit that still burns."

"Whoa," said Cooper. "I could seriously watch that all day."

As if to reward them for healing its wound, the dog followed through with a nice long magma turd. Julian and his friends stared in awe.

Because the hound's legs were tied and it couldn't stand up, the turd lacked the conical swirl of the first one they'd witnessed, but Julian noticed another, arguably less superficial difference as well. This dog turd had something in it. A glint of gold, it looked like, but too small to be a coin.

"As much as I hate to admit it," said Tim. "I could watch this all day as well. But if we don't want to start withering away, we should try to find Butkus before his trail gets too cold."

Julian swallowed. "I think I just found him." Just as he recognized the shape of a tooth, it began to melt into an amorphous golden blob, seeping between the cracks of the dog turd's blackening outer shell. He had little hope left that his horses had reached the end of their spell durations.

"I've got some bad news and some worse news," said Julian.

"What's the worse news?" asked Tim.

"That way doesn't work. If I tell you the worse news first, it kind of spills the beans on the bad news."

"I'm way too sober for this shit. Just say what you've got to say."

"Butkus is dead."

Tim frowned thoughtfully. "I'm feeling pretty indifferent to that news. Hit us with the worse."

"I think one of the hell hounds may have eaten the amulet."

"Are you kidding?" said Tim. "That's fantastic news!"

"How do you figure?"

"The amulet has been destroyed. The hounds fucked Fabulazzo's Geas!"

Cooper paused in the scratching of his balls. "When did that happen? Why didn't you wake me up?"

"We still have to get the hounds back to him." said Dave.

"You think he's up for Round 2 this soon?" Cooper rubbed his ass cheeks with both hands. "I don't know if I'd be able to even sit down for at least a week."

The time it would have taken to explain to Cooper what Geas meant, and more importantly what it didn't mean, was time better spent getting rid of the Geas.

Julian asked the question he already knew the obviously horrible answer to. "How should we go about rounding up the other two – Wait a second..." He sniffed the air. "Do you guys smell something?"

Tim and Dave sniffed. "Nothing unusual."

Cooper leaned over and put his hands on his knees. "You're about to. I'm never going to look at another goddamn elk again."

"That's not what I'm talking about," said Julian. "I think I smell smoke." He ran a few steps into the woods, where the rainwater flowing down the mountain had swept fallen leaves into wavy patterns on the ground, leaving them piled high against some of the larger tree trunks. Out of one such pile of leaves, Julian spotted a small ribbon of white smoke rising.

"Dude, wait up!" called Cooper as he stomped through the woods behind Julian.

The leaf pile was damp, but glowing orange flickers within it suggested that a big blaze wasn't far off.

"Those dogs are going to set this whole forest on fire if we don't catch them soon," said Julian as he scattered the leaves with his quarterstaff. Cooper stomped out the scattered clusters of burning leaves.

At the bottom of the pile, Julian found exactly what he'd been expecting to find, but not all that he was hoping for. The smoldering dog turd was studded with steel buttons from Butkus's jacket, but there was no sign of the amulet. Julian didn't share Tim's confidence that the amulet had been destroyed. Magic powerful enough to contain a person's soul would not easily succumb to even the strongest of digestive tracts.

A low growl took Julian's attention away from the dog turd. He turned around.

Fortunately, the hell hound wasn't growling at him. It was tearing scorching claw marks into the trunk of a tree and barking up at something.

"Help me!" cried a man's voice from higher up in the tree. A chubby, purple-robed man was hanging from a branch by his arms and legs, neither of which seemed to have enough muscle to hold his fat body up there for long. "I beg you, please help me! Save me from this wretched creature of the Abyss! In the name of Trog'bahar, I implore you to – WHA–!" His situation sorted itself out when he fell out of the tree and flattened the hell hound between the ground and his own girth.

"Jesus Christ," said Cooper. "Are you okay, dude?"

"I am!" cried the fat cultist as he stood up and looked down at the unconscious dog embedded in the ground. "Trog'bahar has heard my prayer and spared my life!"

Julian frowned. "That's one possible explanation for what just happened."

Cooper scooped up the dog and held its chest to his ear. "I think it's still alive."

The fat man clapped his hands joyfully. "Trog'bahar is a merciful god!"

"Who are you?" asked Julian. "What are you doing out here in the woods by yourself?"

"My name is Sinas. My people roam the wilderness spreading the Good News of Trog'bahar!"

Cooper scrunched up his nostrils. "Your name is Sinus? Like the snot cavity in your face?"

"Come on, Cooper," said Julian. "Let's get back to the others before this dog wakes up."

"Others?" said Sinas. "Are you all familiar with the teachings of Trog'bahar?"

Julian started walking. "We're not interested, thank you."

"How does eternal salvation not interest you, wicked sinners?" Sinas was following them.

"Now you're just being an asshole," said Cooper, looking grimly ahead as he walked more briskly than usual. He looked like he was considering shaking the dog awake and setting him loose on this guy.

"I meant no insult to you, friend in unworthiness. I myself aspire to one day be worthy to be a parasite inside of a hookworm in Trog'bahar's stool. And yet you have witnessed with your own eyes the divine mercy he has shown unto me! What say you to that?"

Cooper belched long and loud. "I don't know. It's good to have goals?"

"Take heart, new friends, for you too may bask in Trog'bahar's glorious light."

"You know who might want to bask in Troglabar's stool?" said Cooper. "Our friend Dave. He's a cleric."

Julian smiled to himself. What a dick move to pull on poor unsuspecting Dave.

"Is that so?" asked Sinas enthusiastically. "Which god does he serve?"

"I don't think he serves any," said Julian. He felt a little bad about participating in this, but the real damage had already been done.

"Excellent! Where is this Dave of whom you speak?"

"Right up there." Cooper shifted the hell hound's weight on his shoulder and raised his arm to wave. "Hey Dave!"

Dave waved back hesitantly, no doubt put off by Cooper's uncharacteristic friendliness toward him.

Sinas ran ahead and grabbed a very surprised Dave by the shoulders. "Praise be this day, unworthy maggot!"

"W-W-What?"

"You got another hound," said Tim. "Nice work. Who the fuck is this guy?"

Cooper laid the unconscious dog in front of Tim, who got to work binding its legs together.

Julian dug through his bag in the back of the wagon looking for his nearly empty waterskin. "Some guy we met in the woods. He's one of those Trog'bahar cultists that Fabulazzo likes to murder and steal clothes from." He gulped back what remained of his water, hoping that the count would allow him to refill it before they left. This hope, of course, was conditional on the count not deciding to murder them all.

"And that's when I was saved!" said Sinas, wrapping up a tale which, if Dave's face was a reliable metric, had been as boring as a non-flaming pile of dog shit.

Dave sighed. "Fascinating." He caught Julian's slight smile. "Hey, maybe it's about time we lure in that last hell hound."

Julian supposed he deserved a bit of retaliatory dickishness from Dave, but an innocent magical horse didn't deserve it. But with only one hell hound left to subdue, and five people to cover it, he wouldn't necessarily be setting this horse up for instantaneous slaughter.

"Okay," said Julian. He pointed at the ground. "I'm going to summon a horse here. We don't know which way the hell hound is going to be coming from, so I need everyone to –"

"Excuse me, sir," Ravenus called from a branch above Julian's head.

Julian looked up. "Yes, Ravenus?"

"If it provides any tactical help, I believe the hound will approach from that direction." He nodded toward the rising sun.

"What makes you think that?"

"Because it's over there right now."

Tim shook his head. "Useless fucking bird."

Julian glared down at him. "Watch it!"

"I'm using American English. He can't understand me."

"Something appears to be amiss with it, sir," said Ravenus.

"Like what?" said Julian. "Is it injured? Does it have arrows sticking out of it?"

"I don't believe so, sir. It appears to be dragging its ass."

"Metaphorically? Like it's procrastinating or something?"

"No, sir. Quite literally."

Julian looked at Dave and Sinas. "You two stay here and mind the hounds. We'll go check out this last one."

"What if they wake up?" asked Dave.

Sinas slapped Dave on the back. "Fear not, unbeliever. Stay and pray with me. Trog'bahar's mercy shall keep these soulless hell-beasts in their unholy slumber!"

Dave's eyes begged not to be left alone with Sinas.

"If they wake up, hit them with your mace. But remember to specify that you want to administer subdual damage." Julian started walking east, feeling satisfied.

"There it is," said Tim. Ravenus wasn't wrong. The hell hound scooted itself forward with its front legs, dragging its ass along the leaves.

Julian motioned for them to fan out, then move in on the dog from different directions. Tim and Cooper approached from its flanks, while Julian moved cautiously, but directly, toward it head on.

It didn't take long for the hound to spot Julian. But instead of a growl, snarl, or bark. It let out a tiny flaming whimper.

"What's wrong, little guy?" asked Julian, feeling bad about the fact that he was about to clobber it over the head with his quarterstaff.

"The amulet is stuck in its ass," said Tim, approaching from the left. "I can see the chain dragging behind it."

"Should we..." Julian cringed at what he was about to suggest. "Should we just give it a good yank?"

Tim flinched like a vampire accidentally pulling up a window shade in the morning. "Fuck no! Not before that dog and I are both properly shitfaced."

"I've got a better idea," said Cooper.

"Statistically speaking, the chances of that are..." Tim smiled. "You know what? My curiosity is piqued. I really want to hear this great idea of yours."

Cooper reached down the front of his loincloth.

Tim turned around. "But I don't want to see it."

Thankfully, when Cooper removed his hand, he wasn't holding his dick. Instead, he had four or five slices of elk meat.

"Did you steal that?" asked Julian.

"It's not stealing. He offered it to us. I thought we might get hungry on the ride back home."

Tim grimaced. "We? Who the fuck wants to eat elk meat that's been rubbing against your junk all morning?"

Cooper gave Tim the finger. "There's a pouch sewn into the front of my loincloth."

That was only marginally less gross, considering the state of Cooper's loincloth, but Julian didn't see any need to bring that up right now.

Cooper approached the hell hound warily. When it made no move to bite or breathe fire on him, he set the meat down in front of it.

Tim gagged as the dog greedily gobbled up Cooper's ballsweat-marinated offering.

When Cooper gently scooped up the dog in his arms, it groaned in obvious discomfort, but still made no move to attack him.

"If this elk meat treats him like it treated me, that amulet won't be stuck for long."

Tim nodded appreciatively. "As disgusting as that is, it wasn't actually a bad idea."

When they got back to the road, Dave was sitting on the back of the wagon, engaged in his conversation with Sinas.

"My testicles hung like purple grapefruits, and I knew then that I had sinned in the eyes of Trog'bahar."

"Or maybe you should have washed your hands after you handled that raw meat. How do your giant infected balls prove the existence of –" Dave made eye contact with Julian. "Oh thank fuck!" He hopped down off the wagon and waddled toward them, pausing when he got close to Cooper. "Cooper, that one's still awake!"

"He's fine," said Cooper. "Just having some gastrointestinal issues."

Julian looked down at Tim. "We should still tie him up."

Tim stepped back and raised his hands. "I'm not tying shit until that thing's asleep."

"Fine. Cooper, turn this way so I can put a Sleep spell on him."

Cooper turned toward Julian, smacking Dave in the face with the dog's tail. "Hey, I feel a rumble in his belly. Maybe it's working."

"Maybe what's working?" asked Dave.

Dave's answer came in the form of a shit-covered amulet launched out of the hound's ass and into his forehead. That was enough to stun him, but the literally explosive diarrhea splatter that followed brought him back.

"Fuck! Fuck! FUUUUCK!" cried Dave. "It burns!"

"Rejoice!" said Sinas. "For you have been blessed by Trog'bahar!"

Blinded by magma shit, Dave turned toward Sinas's voice and rammed his face straight into Sinas's gut, grabbing his robe by the sides to keep the pressure on.

Sinas hugged Dave in return. "Yes! We are brothers in the grace of Trog'bahar."

When the shit fire on Dave's face had been extinguished, he stepped back and touched himself on the temple. "I heal me."

Dave's burns healed immediately, but the shit remained.

Sinas clapped his hands over his mouth. "A miracle! Truly you are a favored son of Trog'bahar!"

"What can I say?" said Dave. "You're a hell of an evangelist. Thank you for showing me his holy light."

Tim nudged Julian on the leg and whispered, "Is Dave full of shit right now?"

Julian shrugged, wondering the exact same thing.

Dave took Sinas's shaking hand. "Trog'bahar's healing powers are needed elsewhere. But alas, I must first deliver this wagon, these hounds, and this holy amulet to the tower at the top of this mountain."

Sinas's eyes widened. "The tower of Count Fabulazzo!"

"That's the one."

Julian suddenly realized what was going on. "Dave, no!"

"I was traveling there when your friends discovered me," said Sinas.

Dave nodded. "I thought you might have been. It seems our meeting was preordained."

"It has long been a goal of the Servants of Trog'bahar to convert him. Allow me to shoulder your burden brother. Go spread Trog'bahar's healing light, and I shall convert the heathen wizard!"

Julian glared at Dave, then looked at Sinas. "Listen to me. If you go to that tower, the count is going to murder you and feed you to these dogs."

Sinas touched Julian's face gently and gazed sympathetically into his eyes. "Poor ignorant child. You have seen Trog'bahar protect me, and yet you are still blind to his truth."

"You're making it really difficult for me to continue to try to talk you out of this."

"Your will is no match for the will of Trog'bahar."

"He's a grown-ass man," said Tim. "He can make his own decisions."

Julian glared down at Tim. "You too? You really want to send this guy to his death so that we don't have to make another trip up the mountain?"

Tim grabbed Julian's serape, led him a few steps away, then pulled him down to his level. "Someone has to turn up at Fabulazzo's place and hand over his mother's soul caked in dog shit. Unless we tie that fat fucker up and keep him locked in the cellar at the Whore's Head Inn for the rest of his miserable life, he's going to go to that tower with or without your permission."

"Speak your poisonous words aloud, cowardly cretins," Sinas called out. "Your weak-minded lies matter not to Trog'bahar."

Julian nodded. "You know what? Fuck it. Here, I'll even throw in some horses."

When the hell hounds were bound and the horses were hitched, Sinas rode off happily toward his certain death.

"Now that that's all over," said Tim. "Would anyone mind telling me what the fuck happened last night?"

Julian looked at Dave and Cooper. They nodded.

"You got high on unicorn piss and spent the whole night masturbating."

"Unicorn piss?" Tim looked appropriately shocked. "Are you serious?"

Julian, Dave, and Cooper nodded.

Tim pumped a fist. "I fucking called that shit!"


Thank you for your amazing generosity.

"You shouldn't have gone off by yourself like that," said Dave. "You're lucky to be alive."

Tim gulped back a swig of stonepiss from his flask, but it still wasn't enough to make Dave shut up. "I'm alive because I was alone. You guys would have blown my cover."

Tim's high Dexterity score, along with all the ranks he'd invested in the Move Silently skill, didn't count for shit when he had three noisy assholes and a talking bird tagging along.

"We could have trailed behind you," said Julian. "Far enough back not to be heard, but close enough to move in if you got into trouble. Ravenus could have followed you and relayed your position back to us."

"I can be very discreet," said Ravenus. His shrill British accent was about as discreet as an ice pick in the ear.

Tim looked doubtfully up at Julian's familiar, perched on the top of Julian's quarterstaff. "That's all I need. Ringo the Bird blabbering in my ear while I'm trying to remain unseen. And if I did get into any trouble, I could all but guarantee that he'd be off bumping cloacas with a dire finch or some shit."

Cooper let loose a fart which sent normal-sized finches scattering from the nearby trees. "Jesus, that feels better."

"That's exactly the sort of shit I'm talking about," said Tim. Cooper's ass cloud assaulted his eyes and nose the way Ravenus's voice had done his ears. "If you guys had been with me, I never would have been able to follow Koestner the Healer and find his secret crop."

Dave looked back over his shoulder. "Maybe that would've been for the best. Ripping off a cleric doesn't sound very wise to me."

"He's not a cleric. He's a healer. I don't think he has any divine magic, just a bunch of ranks in the Heal skill. And he knows his way around herbs and shit."

"So it's about as dangerous as ripping off a pot farmer back home." Dave sighed with sarcastic relief. "I feel a lot better now."

Tim brushed some branches out of his face and continued his uphill journey through the forest. "This isn't some old assault rifle toting hippy. He's just some boring asshole I met in a bar who couldn't stop droning on about his job. I could have been an asshole about it and told him to fuck off, but instead I chose to be a decent human being and feign interest in what he had to say."

Dave huffed and puffed as he tried to keep up with the rest of them. Tim suspected Dave's short dwarf legs were a large part of his motives for bitching.

"Are you seriously trying to tell me that using your Gather Information skill to trick a guy into helping you rip him off makes you a decent human being?"

"No," said Tim. "What I'm seriously trying to tell you is shut the fuck up."

Julian and Cooper shared a chuckle, and Tim felt better that at least they were starting to lighten up a little bit.

"And besides," Tim continued. "we're not ripping anyone off. This isn't his property. He's not farming belladonna. He just found a spot where it happens to be thriving in the wild, and I followed him to it."

"I guess it doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way," said Julian. "We were just worried about you."

"It was a goddamn week ago! Let's move on with our lives, huh?"

"What, exactly, is farming?" asked Cooper, emphasizing the word with air quotes. "And who's this Bella Donna chick?"

"Farming is farming," said Tim. "And belladonna is a plant."

Cooper frowned thoughtfully. "A plant that you put your dick in?"

"Jesus Christ, Cooper! I meant farming in the most literal, non-euphemistic terms possible. And you most certainly do not want your dick anywhere near this shit. It's extremely toxic."

"So what do we want with it?" asked Julian.

Tim smiled. Finally someone was asking an intelligent question. "It also goes by the name Wolfsbane."

Julian wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. "Whew. Finally all of our wolf-related problems will be behind us." This elicited a chuckle from Dave and Cooper.

"You guys are a bunch of dumb assholes," said Tim. "Wolfsbane is a last line of defense against contracting lycanthropy."

"That's the disease that turns you into a werewolf?" asked Julian.

"Or a werebear or weretiger or wererat. There's a bunch of were-creatures in this game. People will pay a fortune to not risk waking up and discovering they've murdered and eaten their entire family."

"What a decent human being," said Dave. "So we're going to extort money out of sick people? That's your plan?"

"Of course not. We have neither an established healing practice, nor the proper networking arrangements in place. We're going to sell it to established healers in Cardinia for a fair market price. They can extort money out of sick people." Tim took another sip from his flask and nearly choked on the stonepiss when he spotted a cluster of the purple berries in the nearby underbrush.

"Here it is!" He spread his arms out to keep everyone from coming in contact with the plant, then produced four empty sacks and four sets of lambskin gloves from his backpack. He slipped on the smallest set of gloves, then carefully tore sprigs of the belladonna plant off the main stalk and put them in his sack.

"Awesome," said Dave. "Can we go home now?"

"Fuck no!" Tim passed out the other sacks and gloves. "This is just an outlier. That means we're getting close. Wait until you see how much of this shit is growing on top of the cliff."

Julian cleared his throat. "Cliff? You didn't mention anything about a cliff."

"Because it wasn't worth mentioning. We don't have to go near the edge."

"We just don't have a really good track record with potential dangers which most people could easily avoid with a modicum of common sense."

"If you don't want to come along, then don't." Tim continued up the gradually inclining forest floor. And of course, the rest of them followed.

Belladonna plants grew more and more frequently among the trees, but Tim didn't stop to pick any more. He'd only stopped at that first plant for a demonstration. There was no point in wasting time trying to grab every sprig in the forest when there was plenty more than their bags could hold waiting for them in the clearing just before the land dropped off.

An hour later, they walked out of the forest and into the clearing. The healthy green leaves and purple berries of the belladonna plants showed off their colors in the beautiful afternoon sunlight, giving off a bitter scent similar to unripened tomatoes. Thoughts of the money they were going to make warmed Tim's tiny halfling soul.

"What did I tell you?" said Tim. "Would you look at all of this shit?"

Julian nodded. "It's really very pretty."

"Hell yeah it is. Now come on and help me tear it all down."

Beyond the sea of belladonna plants, eagles soared, swooped, and dove into the canyon.

"Sir," said Ravenus, perched atop Julian's quarterstaff, staring longingly at the eagles.

Julian smiled. "Let me guess. You want to fly like an eagle?"

"Among them, anyway. Just for a bit."

"Go ahead. Let your spirit carry you."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Just don't fly too far away," said Julian. As Ravenus was getting ready to launch himself into the air, he added, "And don't let too much time slip slip slip into the future."

"Are you feeling okay, sir?"

Julian sighed, seeming unfairly disappointed that his bird friend from a fantasy world didn't get his terrible Steve Miller references. "Just go."

While Ravenus flew off in search of sweet eagle cloaca action, Tim and the others worked for hours, filling their sacks with belladonna sprigs and putting a fairly large dent in the supply. Julian raised questions about damaging the local ecosystem by over-harvesting, and Dave raised similar questions about what kind of effects dumping so much product on the market at once might have on prices.

Tim gave a shit about neither of these issues. He wasn't planning to do this for a living. If they didn't tank the price of belladonna, he might consider coming back and picking the rest, or he might not. This was harder work than he'd imagined. He'd be satisfied letting this be a one-time cash grab.

"Can we go back now?" asked Cooper. "I don't feel so hot." He rubbed his belly, then groaned as the back of his loincloth danced in the wind of a long and steady fart.

Tim noticed a spot of purple near Cooper's lips. He threw a cluster of berries, as that was what he happened to have in his hand, at Cooper's head. "Have you been eating the berries?"

"I was hungry."

"Did I not explicitly tell you that those are poisonous?"

"I only had a few," said Cooper. "You said people take this to keep from turning into werewolves."

Tim balled up his fists in frustration. "Are you worried about turning into a fucking werewolf?"

"No, but if it doesn't kill them, right? I've got a pretty high Constitution score."

"But you've got shit for Intelligence," said Tim. "Those berries need to be prepared and diluted by alchemists. Jesus Christ, you're lucky to be alive. Julian, would you mind summoning some horses. We've got to get Cooper to a cleric before he dies of stupidity."

"What about Dave?" said Julian.

"Dave sucks."

"Hey!" said Dave.

"No offense. But if I remember correctly, Neutralize Poison is a Level 4 clerical spell. Is it not?"

"Yeah, but –"

"Can you cast Level 4 spells?" asked Tim, growing impatient.

"No," admitted Dave. "But Delay Poison is only a Level 2 spell."

Tim rolled his eyes and made a jerking-off motion. "Tell me, Dave. Did you happen to prepare a Delay Poison spell this morning?"

"No."

"Well there you go."

"I would have prepared one if I'd known we were going to be picking poisonous berries today," said Dave. "Don't blame me for this. You should have said something."

"I'm not blaming you. I'm merely pointing out the fact that you suck. And for the record, I did say something. I said the berries are poisonous. I was ignored. And then I said that Cooper might die if we don't summon some goddamn horses. And yet here we are, precious minutes later, still completely horseless." Tim looked expectantly at Julian.

"Okay, okay." Julian pointed at the ground in front of Tim. "Horse!" A sturdy black horse appeared, suitable for Tim and Cooper to ride together.

"Would you mind if I rode alone?" asked Dave. "Riding on the back of your horse makes my ass hurt."

Julian shrugged. "I haven't had to use any spells today. That shouldn't be a problem. Does anyone object to me using up another Mount spell?"

Cooper groaned as he lifted his foot to the stirrup. "This sucks so much."

"Who gives a shit?" Tim snapped at Julian. "The clock is ticking. Summon however the fuck many horses you're going to summon, and let's move!"

"We'll move faster if we ride separately." Julian pointed at the ground in front of Dave. "Horse!" A shorter, but stockier, brown horse appeared in front of Dave. Tim had to admit, he was impressed at Julian's improving ability to tailor the spell to suit their specific physical needs.

"Wait!" cried Dave, just as Julian was about to cast his third Mount spell. "Don't!"

"Jesus, Dave," said Tim. "Have I not mentioned that time is a factor here? Make up your goddamn mind already!"

Julian waved dismissively. "It's really no problem. I've got some scrolls in reserve back at the Whore's Head."

"But I think the ground is –"

"Horse!" said Julian. The white stallion in front of Julian was only visible for a second before Tim, his friends, and their mounts crashed through the ground. It was at least a fifteen foot drop, but fortunately, Tim and Cooper's horse absorbed most of the impact before it winked out of existence, having been crushed to death by Cooper's big half-orc ass.

Dave and Julian's horses, being riderless, had survived the fall. They were screaming and shaking their heads, generally being noisy assholes.

"Can you shut them up?" Tim asked Julian, who had stood up and was brushing the dirt off his serape.

"They're startled." Julian looked up at the hole they'd fallen through, then at the smooth dirt walls of the large cavern they were standing in. "What is this place?"

Tim looked around. The cavern was amorphous in shape, with an opening out to the cliff face, and two tunnels leading deeper into the earth. The upper part of the opening jutted out further than the bottom, which would make this place invisible to anyone looking down from the top of the cliff.

"I think someone lives here," said Dave. Being a dwarf, he had knowledge of caves and tunnels and such things, but he usually took a close look at the walls before making such claims.

"How can you tell?" asked Tim.

Dave nudged at a pile of dirt with his boot, revealing thick brown fur underneath. "If I had to guess, I'd guess bear."

Quite a lot of dirt and rocks had fallen in with them. Looking beyond the mess, Tim could see bear fur stretched out over the entire floor of the room.

"Do you think there are bears in here?" asked Julian, sounding concerned.

Tim rolled his eyes. It was difficult being the smartest person in a group by such a large margin. "It's obviously a rug made out of bear hides."

"Oh, right."

"Which means," Tim continued, "that Dave is probably correct in guessing that someone lives here. And that, subsequently, means that we should get our asses out of here before that someone comes home."

He rummaged through his backpack until he found his grappling hook and coil of rope. He swung it around a couple of times before launching it out of the hole in the ceiling. It was a good throw, getting a decent amount of distance outside the hole, which would give the grappling hook a better chance of catching some roots and digging itself solidly into the dirt.

Dragging it back slowly, he found the resistance he needed after only pulling the rope about three feet.

"I'll climb out first since I'm the lightest. Once I'm out, I'll try to find something more solid to attach the rope to. Cooper, put me up on top of this horse to give me a head start."

Cooper nodded, his brow dripping with sweat. He looked like he might throw up or die at any moment. Without a burp or a fart or even a comment about Dave's mom, he lifted Tim onto the horse's back.

"Hang in there, big guy. We're going to get you some –"

"Slargarp furbalf gur blarfarg!" shouted a creature entering the chamber from the tunnel on the left. It was a frog-like humanoid creature which Tim remembered having seen in the Monster Manual, but couldn't remember the name of. It wore a blue, expensive-looking silk robe, which Tim found clashed with its red amphibian skin. But then, with those flabby jowls, and a voice that sounded like a frog engaged in a heated argument while continuously vomiting, who could it have hoped to impress with fashion?

Tim crouched down on the back of the horse as slowly and non-threateningly as he could and whispered, "Does anyone speak, um... whatever the hell language that is?"

Cooper and Dave shook their heads.

While the frog-person continued blathering on, Julian placed his bag down on the ground at his feet and searched through it, slowly and deliberately, until he pulled out a small scroll.

This creature was bigger than Cooper, and quite obviously pissed off. Tim hoped that Julian wasn't about to cast a Magic Missile at it.

"Vocali Comprehendo!" Julian whispered as the arcane writing disappeared from the paper.

"What..." Cooper grunted between shallow breaths. "the fuck... was that?"

"Comprehend Languages," said Julian.

"That's really the incantation?" asked Dave.

"The incantation can be whatever I write onto the scroll. I've started trying to mix things up a bit. Give it a little fantasy flare, you know?"

Tim shook his head. "You should be embarrassed just to have even thought about doing that. Now will you please tell this thing to chill the fuck out?"

Julian frowned. "The spell only allows me to understand what it's saying. It won't understand anything I say."

Tim should have guessed that much. "Fine. What is it saying?"

Julian listened to the creature's ranting for a moment, then began translating. "... invade my home... destroy my ceiling... the dirt all over the rug... dire bear skin... very expensive..."

The frog-person was very animated as it complained about its cave décor, repeatedly pointing at the ceiling and floor with the four-inch-long black claws at the fingertips of his webbed hands.

"I only want to be left alone!" Julian continued his translation, picking up more complete sentences now. "Why are there horses in my living room? Who will clean up this mess?"

Julian took a step forward, placed a hand on his chest, and gestured back at Tim, Dave, and Cooper with the other hand. "We will clean up this mess!" He spoke loudly and extra clearly, like an American tourist in a foreign country.

"He's not deaf, dumbass," said Tim. "Speaking louder isn't going to help. And besides, we're not cleaning shit."

Julian glared back at him. "I'm trying to use my Diplomacy skill."

"Fuck your Diplomacy skill, and fuck Froggy McFuckface. We've got somewhere to be, in case you've forgotten."

"And what do you think he's going to do if we just try to ditch him after we wrecked his house? With a high enough Diplomacy check, I might be able to convince him to let us go."

"You think you're going to do that by shouting at him in a language he doesn't under–"

GWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHRRRRRP!

As big as this bastard was, nothing his size had any business croaking a noise that loud. Tim stood wide-eyed and petrified with fear.