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Dungeon of Crawling
Written on commission for Toyapup
By Psudo Argyraspides
“You guys want me to scout ahead again, or should we just walk on in together…?” Toya said, looking around to the other three members of his group, all of whom seemed to shake their heads in unison.
“I dunno if that’s a good idea,” Farix said, looking over at the decrepit stone pillars, collapsed buttresses and great arching dome that had once been some sort of religious institution, but now simply provided a convenient location marker for easily the most frustrating contract of the team’s career, “Remember how easily he can mess with our perceptions. I’d suggest we hold hands, but that would be weird…”
“Yeah, I have total confidence in you, Toya, but I don’t think we should take any chances with this one,” Anzu said, agreeing, and, far from his previous recalcitrance, the wolf nodded without hesitation.
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to go unless you guys insisted…” Toya said, blushing and rubbing the back of his head, “Not that I’m scared or nuffin… Erm, let’s just go out and get this over with, okay?”
“Right,” everyone said at once, and, weapons drawn, they began to approach the temple with the utmost caution, spread out in a skirmish line with five paces between them, and even Matteo holding his solid oak lute like a club, as though he might bash the fae on the head if it jumped out from behind any pillars like a children’s toy. As before, the entrance to the dungeon made itself visible in the form a a half-collapsed archway, one that had a wooden overhang above it to keep the rain from pouring in, when Farix stopped in front.
“Wait, what if this is just a trap? Why would he show us how to get into the dungeon, unless he wanted us to come this way?” Farix said, much to everyone else’s disquieting unease. There was much nervous quivering of tails and glancing around the clearing. “Hey, Toya? You’re our scouty scout, see if you can find any conventionally hidden trapdoors around here, the rest of you, too. Smash stuff if you have to, he already knows we’re here. I’ll see what I can do in the magical spectrum.”
Farix’s confidence put some reassurance back in the team, and, with a will, they went about smashing up and overturning everything they could get their hands on, despite the ancient ruin’s clear archaeological value. In reality, most of the smashing was done by Anzu, who had the only real smash-capable weapon, but, if it didn’t render visible any secret tunnels or passageways, watching the enormous crow burn out days of pent up frustration on the landscape and scenery with his sword, the enchantments keeping it sharp and undamaged more than up to the task of bashing through marble, brought a much needed, mature, masculine morale-boost to the other three members of the group. Even Farix waited, not really expecting Anzu to find anything, until he had tired himself out and sat down in the newly reduced rubble before switching on his faerie-specs and taking a look around.
If there was anything magically mischievous hiding around the upper clearing, it wasn’t immediately visible. Or maybe Anzu had smashed it, but that wasn’t to be fixed if, indeed, that had been the case. A few minutes later, after inspecting much of the surrounding area, Farix shrugged and looked at the rest of the team, “Well, if he didn’t already know we’re coming, he knows now. Who wants to take point?”
“Erm, I think I’ll pass…” Toya muttered, alongside the other two members of the group, so, exasperated, Farix rolled his eyes and began descending the steps of the temple, having to speed up to encourage the rest of the party, all of whom were dawdling. They got to the door, passed it without trouble, then continued downward carrying a torch for another twenty minutes, seemingly shorter than before. When, finally, they reached the bottom, it didn’t level out into a hallway, as they had all remembered from their dream, but, rather, into the enormous temple room with the trapped door that they had all fallen for the first time around.
With no small amount of reluctance, Farix, Anzu, Toya and Matteo stepped into the room, weapons drawn and at the ready, and circling around the edges so as to avoid any more shenanigans, if indeed any were planned. As they moved around the room, the torches along the edge of the circular chamber lit suddenly, until, eventually, the dais on the final wall was illuminated, and, upon it, sat the fae.
“Well, at least you’re learning,” The owl said, reclining luxuriously in a sort of throne that had appeared to have been carved out of the very rock itself, “I suppose you have questions, then? You all look completely adorable in those diapers, by the way.”
“Shut up,” Anzu said, pointing his sword up the small stairway and glaring violently alongside it, “We don’t want to hear anything you have to say. What do you think you’re doing? Messing with random people’s minds like that… You’re seriously screwed up in the head, and I’m going to be damn glad to put you out of our misery.”
“You say you don’t want to hear anything I have to say, and then you ask me a question. Tish,” the owl said, waving a wing in perfect unconcern. As before, Farix registered that he was dressed in a fairly elaborate set of mage’s robes, not unlike the ones that he himself wore on most occasions, albeit with allowances made for his avian anatomy. However, unlike before, he was actually carrying a sword, its basket hilt sticking out of his belt and hanging off the side of the throne. He didn’t bother to switch back on his magical sight, but even so there was a sort of subtle, radiant magic to it, and enchanted weapons were rarely something you wanted to go head to head with. He waved a hand idly, as though this were some sort of unpleasant chore that needed doing before any real business could be done. “Oh, skip the speech crinklebutt, I’ve probably heard-”
Anzu took two quick steps forward and brought his sword down on the throne and the other bird, still reclining upon it. There was a ferocious crash, and the entire stone edifice cracked in half, shattering under the force of the magically augmented weapon before sinking a foot into the harder stone beneath their feet, having carried all the way through only to stop abruptly upon hitting something it couldn’t pierce.
However, despite all the ruin he had wrought of the throne itself, there was neither a bloody corpse, nor even a lick of lost fabric where a bloody corpse should have been. Anzu, and everyone else for that matter, had very clearly seen the sword pass through the fae, but it had done exactly that: passed through, as though through smoke, and had done no visible damage to anything but the masonry. However, the masonry proved perfectly capable of doing damage to them, or at least indirectly. With surprising speed, the stones of the mantle and throne began to piece back together, every fragment and particle of dust slipping back into place. The smaller left side of the shattered throne slid back upright, into its original position, and fused as though it were a liquid, sending shudders up the paladin’s sword until he reasserted his grip, and tried to pull it free; in vain.
“Um, what just happened?” Matteo said, still holding his lute as though he might bash the faerie over the head with it if opportunity arose. However, rather comically, Anzu was now struggling with the pommel of his weapon, the stone having sealed so perfectly over it, with such speed, that it now proved impossible to dislodge. “Did we get him…?”
“No, Matteo, we didn’t get him,” Farix said in exasperation, blinking and looking around the room, then realized what he’d forgotten, and, wholly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought to do this, yet, he muttered the spell for magical sight, allowing the usual colored filter to slip over his vision and show him what was going on in the arcane spectrum.
“Boo,” the faerie said, several inches in front of Farix’s nose, so close that he could feel the bird’s breath on his face, and, very indignantly, the skunk peeped in surprise, stumbled backward and tripped down onto his crinkly backside; it was considerably warmer and wetter than it had been the last time he checked. “If I may ask, why haven’t you been going around with that on… you know, all the time? All of these puzzles have had very simple tricks to them that you could easily have used if you’d been paying attention.”
“Farix, what’s going on?” Toya said, jogging across from where he had been helping Anzu fail to dislodge his sword towards where the startled Farix had fallen. However, the Faerie had interposed himself between them, and, before the skunk could get out a warning, the owl, who was invisible to everyone but the mage, stepped out of the way casually and stuck a foot out, tripping the wolf’s legs up and causing him to stumble indignantly into the heap of Farix. “Owww… Hey, what the hell did I trip on…?”
“The… faerie, he’s right behind you, dumb ass…” Farix grunted, holding his bruised chest and groaning where Toya had practically head butted him. To give the wolf some sense of aim, the skunk jerked his nose very slightly in the owl’s exact direction, glaring at him with the hope that that the wolf would take his meaning. Toya rapidly flicked his eyes in that direction twice, a silent request for confirmation, and Farix nodded ever so slightly.
To his credit, Toya was by all accounts a damn good knife-fighter, and that extended to the throwing of knives, as well as the more up-close and personal sort. In a maneuver that was almost too fast to see, he rolled to one side, over onto one hand, whipped a knife out of his hip-sabard and threw it very nearly at the center of the faerie’s chest. Barely a yard separated them, and, had that been any sort of ordinary creature, the blade would have sank several inches into flesh and organs, very likely right up to the hilt, and killed it. Farix would have thought that maybe a vampire might have been able to dodge it, or some other creature with superhuman reflexes, but nothing in the skunk’s research had mentioned the fae being particularly strong, fast or tough. Intelligence and guile were more their sort of thing, along with a healthy dose of magical talent and a natural tendency toward trickery and deceit.
However, whatever Farix’s expectations had been, they didn’t come true. The faerie stepped with casual grace to one side, allowing the spinning dagger to pass an inch or two from his robes, and clang against the stone of the wall some distance away. “Not a bad throw. If I were anyone else, you probably would have got me,” it said, in a voice that was intended to carry. Toya still had the other knife in his hand, but had no intentions of throwing himself against an invisible opponent.
“Where is he now?” Toya growled, his hackles raised over white teeth, all the anger and frustration of having endured what felt like weeks of degrading forced regression manifesting itself where anxiety had been before.
“Really, now? I just wanted to have a nice conversation with you all before we get back to playing. A heart to heart, so to speak. Do you want to be cubs again so badly that you feel the need to incite me so… violently?” The owl said in his most playfully condescending tone. Toya’s eyes were darting around the room, looking for some shimmer or break in the illusion that he might get another strike in at. Farix, once Toya had gotten off of him, had gotten to his hands and knees and begun crawling away, as of yet unable to stand.
“If you just wanted to talk, why did you start messing with our dreams when we… showed up here…?” Farix said, muttering another spell to aid his healing and dull the pain of his bruised sternum and winded lungs. With that, he used his staff to aid him to his feet, and glare daggers at the owl, wondering if he’d be able to dodge elemental magic the same way he had the knife.
“Oh, I’m still messing with your dreams. The four of you are dreaming right now, I’ve just bound you all together so that we can have this little talk before you wake up,” he said, rather casually dispelling his camoflage and walking back up the stairs to his throne, and, in the process, startling the still struggling crow senseless.
“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on just a tick,” Farix said, startled at the prospect that, indeed, the faerie had just that sort of control over them, “Bullshit, I’d be able to tell if you were messing with our heads. And… And I put up wards, last night while we were in that inn!”
“Ah, yes. You put up wards in your dream, which would indeed have protected you if my goal had been to put you within a dream, within a dream, but let’s not get all Inception now. The fact of the matter is that you’re all in a collective dream, instigated by me, right now. Even if you did manage to kill me, it would gain you nothing,” despite the shocked glares of all four of the party members, who had gathered protectively together in a clutch around the base of the dais again, the faerie slung one taloned foot over the arm of his throne again and made himself comfortable, “So. If any of you had any questions for me, think of this as your Q&A period. I’ll answer honestly, but not completely, if any of you know how Celtic sparring works.”
Farix did know how Celtic sparring worked, but that was far from the front of his mind, right then. Even before he’d stepped forward to speak, the skunk realized that everyone else had backed off, clearly in anticipation that he would do just that. He sighed, then started off with the obvious question. “Inception…?”
The faerie looked surprised, and actually sat up again, looking down at Farix with some interest. “Fictional universe from a different plane of reality, it was a reference to amuse the beings of the Fourth Wall. Don’t ask me any more about that, or else I’ll be explaining things all night. Next question.”
“Okaaayy…” Farix said, and took his deliberate time in thinking of and formulating his next question, since he wanted it to be answered honestly. In the mean time, he took a more particular interest in the owl’s magical anatomy. He was, indeed, far from a being of mere flesh and blood. Those things were present, definitely, but they were merely an organic husk which he inhabited, bound to the physical realm by innumerable tiny magical knots of the sort that he himself was capable of crafting, though in a number and configuration so infinitely complex that he doubted he’d be able to decypher them in a thousand years, even with all the liberty and knowledge needed to do so. In the end, Farix simply settled with, “Well… What is your name, to start off with? You know all of us.”
This was a calculated question, much more so than it seemed on the surface. Names, to the magical community, were powerful. In many cases they took on some manner of their owner’s character, and helped give an insight into their life and intentions, if another mage was keen enough to ferret them out. The owl didn’t look particularly shocked at the request, nor terribly reluctant to share, but he didn’t respond immediately, either, which could mean any number of things. When he did speak, it was with a cool, emotionless voice, the sort that only the truly old could manage. “I have been called many things, but in your language I have been called Silver. You go by Farix, yes? Is that the name you were born with?”
Farix blinked in surprise, having been just in the middle of fiddling with the answer he’d gotten when, unexpectedly, the owl had posed a question of his own. The skunk had given no similar assurances of honesty or candor, so, in the technical sense, there was nothing stopping him from lying through his teeth, but that would violate the spirit of the game, if not the letter of it, so he didn’t. “No, Farix is my chosen name.”
It was, at least, the truth, and Farix thought he had come out the better in this particular round of questioning. If he could keep the fae’s focus on himself, rather than on anyone else in the group, none of whom had any sort of training or experience for this sort of contest, that would certainly be for the best. If they lied, or said something stupid, it could end the game and, with it, any chance Farix had of getting any more information from him.
“Why did you put us through that… regression hell of a dungeon?” Farix said, thinking he might get a general idea, and, from there, dig down to more specific answers, even if the faerie chose to be dodgy about the whole thing. He did, and, just to prove he was more clever than the skunk, answered only half the question.
“I’m still putting you through that regression hell of a dungeon,” he said, grinning in a way that made his face look every bit like the mask that it was, “But, to answer your question… Because I was bored, and these villagers around here don’t put up much sport. So I expanded my dungeon, took the guise of a local noble, and put up an enormous bounty on my own head, knowing that eventually better fun would come to me, and make the chase moot.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Toya said, speaking up for the first time, “You put us through all that just for kicks? Bullshit, I don’t buy that. You’ve got stuff you’re not telling us, so spit it out or I’ll…” The wolf grimaced, wincing suddenly as his diaper got an awful lot saggier in a way that, far from the largely silent messing of before, alerted everyone within earshot of the state of his pampers.
“No, puppy, there you are wrong. Dragging a supposed baddass’s repressed cub side out into the open for everyone to see is actually a long-time hobby of mine. It’s an art form, you see. Pecking away at their adult ego bit by bit. Too far on one side and the cub becomes depressed and sulky, too far on the other and they’ll never trust a word you say. The trick is in keeping them right in the middle ground, and it becomes damn near impossible when there’s more than one cub in question, and they all have different qualities you need to take into consideration…”
“That’s… the sickest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Anzu said, his beak hanging half open at the mere thought of it. Of course, the crow wouldn’t grasp the subtleties of that sort of manipulation, but Farix had heard of these sorts of things before, and only winced at the prospect that he had unwittingly become a subject. “How the hell do you sleep at night?”
“Well, I don’t need a warm bottle of milk and a pacifier, which puts me a damn sight ahead of puppy-bottom there,” the owl said, perfectly willing and able to deflect the rest of the team’s questions as long as they continued throwing them at him, “Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of cubs to play with. You’ve been oodles of fun.”
“What do we have to do get out of this place?” Farix said, his patience growing thin as Anzu and Toya continued to try and speak over him. He looked at Matteo, who had disentangled himself from the entire thing and was now strumming idly to himself a few steps further down. “Can you calm these two brats down for a few minutes so I can finish this conversation, please?” He said, having walked over to the raccoon in exhasperation, and, always happy to oblige, Matteo began playing an old song of calming, letting Anzu and Toya settle into something of a general pout, rather than the immediate desire to throw rocks at the faerie on the dais above them.
“Oh, well that depends entirely on you, my dear crinkle butts,” he said, sitting up and looking down at the four of them affectionately, “I could let you go now, if you wanted, but that wouldn’t do much to help you. I’ve pampered those little cubs inside of you to the point that they’re nice and cozy again. If you leave without finishing, and I will allow it, if you insist, it won’t be long at all before you really do need diapers again, and that’ll be no magic of mine. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night, soggy, searching for a pacifier, or a bottle to nurse, cuddling close to each other like the little family that you are, and yes, that will have some tremendously adorable benefits, but I don’t think wakes up in the middle of the night crying like a bunch of cubs, is the sort of feedback you want getting around the adventurer’s guilds, if you know what I mean.”
Farix clenched his jaw uncomfortably tight, and shot a glare at the crow and wolf when they would have set up a clamor again in protest. The owl was baiting his next question, and, with no other real option, he took the bait. “Alright… What do we have to do to get out of here and not spend the rest of our lives with inner cubs trying to claw their way out at all hours of the night…?” It was probably more specific than he should have been, but it had been said and Farix was confident the faerie would answer candidly, having clearly brought them here to tease them, and, in no small measure, to brag.
“That, you’ll just have to work your way through the dungeon and find out, I’m afraid,” Silver said, grinning, and ending the game with his refusal. Farix had, several moments before, realized that he was growing tired and lethargic, his normally quick mind somewhat more sluggish than usual. He was sleepy, and, by the lack of complaints from the others, he imagined that this was something general amongst the company. “How about the four of you go take yourselves a nice, relaxing nap, and we can talk some more once you’re all down to toddler-size. How about that?” He chuckled softly, standing up from his green limestone chair and walking over to Farix. Far from able to resist, the skunk was spending all of his effort simply trying to remain awake, and looked listlessly up at the owl as he lent down to grin at him, “Nighty night, my adorable little tykes.”
***
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Dungeon of Crawling
Written on commission for Toyapup
By Psudo Argyraspides
“You guys want me to scout ahead again, or should we just walk on in together…?” Toya said, looking around to the other three members of his group, all of whom seemed to shake their heads in unison.
“I dunno if that’s a good idea,” Farix said, looking over at the decrepit stone pillars, collapsed buttresses and great arching dome that had once been some sort of religious institution, but now simply provided a convenient location marker for easily the most frustrating contract of the team’s career, “Remember how easily he can mess with our perceptions. I’d suggest we hold hands, but that would be weird…”
“Yeah, I have total confidence in you, Toya, but I don’t think we should take any chances with this one,” Anzu said, agreeing, and, far from his previous recalcitrance, the wolf nodded without hesitation.
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to go unless you guys insisted…” Toya said, blushing and rubbing the back of his head, “Not that I’m scared or nuffin… Erm, let’s just go out and get this over with, okay?”
“Right,” everyone said at once, and, weapons drawn, they began to approach the temple with the utmost caution, spread out in a skirmish line with five paces between them, and even Matteo holding his solid oak lute like a club, as though he might bash the fae on the head if it jumped out from behind any pillars like a children’s toy. As before, the entrance to the dungeon made itself visible in the form a a half-collapsed archway, one that had a wooden overhang above it to keep the rain from pouring in, when Farix stopped in front.
“Wait, what if this is just a trap? Why would he show us how to get into the dungeon, unless he wanted us to come this way?” Farix said, much to everyone else’s disquieting unease. There was much nervous quivering of tails and glancing around the clearing. “Hey, Toya? You’re our scouty scout, see if you can find any conventionally hidden trapdoors around here, the rest of you, too. Smash stuff if you have to, he already knows we’re here. I’ll see what I can do in the magical spectrum.”
Farix’s confidence put some reassurance back in the team, and, with a will, they went about smashing up and overturning everything they could get their hands on, despite the ancient ruin’s clear archaeological value. In reality, most of the smashing was done by Anzu, who had the only real smash-capable weapon, but, if it didn’t render visible any secret tunnels or passageways, watching the enormous crow burn out days of pent up frustration on the landscape and scenery with his sword, the enchantments keeping it sharp and undamaged more than up to the task of bashing through marble, brought a much needed, mature, masculine morale-boost to the other three members of the group. Even Farix waited, not really expecting Anzu to find anything, until he had tired himself out and sat down in the newly reduced rubble before switching on his faerie-specs and taking a look around.
If there was anything magically mischievous hiding around the upper clearing, it wasn’t immediately visible. Or maybe Anzu had smashed it, but that wasn’t to be fixed if, indeed, that had been the case. A few minutes later, after inspecting much of the surrounding area, Farix shrugged and looked at the rest of the team, “Well, if he didn’t already know we’re coming, he knows now. Who wants to take point?”
“Erm, I think I’ll pass…” Toya muttered, alongside the other two members of the group, so, exasperated, Farix rolled his eyes and began descending the steps of the temple, having to speed up to encourage the rest of the party, all of whom were dawdling. They got to the door, passed it without trouble, then continued downward carrying a torch for another twenty minutes, seemingly shorter than before. When, finally, they reached the bottom, it didn’t level out into a hallway, as they had all remembered from their dream, but, rather, into the enormous temple room with the trapped door that they had all fallen for the first time around.
With no small amount of reluctance, Farix, Anzu, Toya and Matteo stepped into the room, weapons drawn and at the ready, and circling around the edges so as to avoid any more shenanigans, if indeed any were planned. As they moved around the room, the torches along the edge of the circular chamber lit suddenly, until, eventually, the dais on the final wall was illuminated, and, upon it, sat the fae.
“Well, at least you’re learning,” The owl said, reclining luxuriously in a sort of throne that had appeared to have been carved out of the very rock itself, “I suppose you have questions, then? You all look completely adorable in those diapers, by the way.”
“Shut up,” Anzu said, pointing his sword up the small stairway and glaring violently alongside it, “We don’t want to hear anything you have to say. What do you think you’re doing? Messing with random people’s minds like that… You’re seriously screwed up in the head, and I’m going to be damn glad to put you out of our misery.”
“You say you don’t want to hear anything I have to say, and then you ask me a question. Tish,” the owl said, waving a wing in perfect unconcern. As before, Farix registered that he was dressed in a fairly elaborate set of mage’s robes, not unlike the ones that he himself wore on most occasions, albeit with allowances made for his avian anatomy. However, unlike before, he was actually carrying a sword, its basket hilt sticking out of his belt and hanging off the side of the throne. He didn’t bother to switch back on his magical sight, but even so there was a sort of subtle, radiant magic to it, and enchanted weapons were rarely something you wanted to go head to head with. He waved a hand idly, as though this were some sort of unpleasant chore that needed doing before any real business could be done. “Oh, skip the speech crinklebutt, I’ve probably heard-”
Anzu took two quick steps forward and brought his sword down on the throne and the other bird, still reclining upon it. There was a ferocious crash, and the entire stone edifice cracked in half, shattering under the force of the magically augmented weapon before sinking a foot into the harder stone beneath their feet, having carried all the way through only to stop abruptly upon hitting something it couldn’t pierce.
However, despite all the ruin he had wrought of the throne itself, there was neither a bloody corpse, nor even a lick of lost fabric where a bloody corpse should have been. Anzu, and everyone else for that matter, had very clearly seen the sword pass through the fae, but it had done exactly that: passed through, as though through smoke, and had done no visible damage to anything but the masonry. However, the masonry proved perfectly capable of doing damage to them, or at least indirectly. With surprising speed, the stones of the mantle and throne began to piece back together, every fragment and particle of dust slipping back into place. The smaller left side of the shattered throne slid back upright, into its original position, and fused as though it were a liquid, sending shudders up the paladin’s sword until he reasserted his grip, and tried to pull it free; in vain.
“Um, what just happened?” Matteo said, still holding his lute as though he might bash the faerie over the head with it if opportunity arose. However, rather comically, Anzu was now struggling with the pommel of his weapon, the stone having sealed so perfectly over it, with such speed, that it now proved impossible to dislodge. “Did we get him…?”
“No, Matteo, we didn’t get him,” Farix said in exasperation, blinking and looking around the room, then realized what he’d forgotten, and, wholly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought to do this, yet, he muttered the spell for magical sight, allowing the usual colored filter to slip over his vision and show him what was going on in the arcane spectrum.
“Boo,” the faerie said, several inches in front of Farix’s nose, so close that he could feel the bird’s breath on his face, and, very indignantly, the skunk peeped in surprise, stumbled backward and tripped down onto his crinkly backside; it was considerably warmer and wetter than it had been the last time he checked. “If I may ask, why haven’t you been going around with that on… you know, all the time? All of these puzzles have had very simple tricks to them that you could easily have used if you’d been paying attention.”
“Farix, what’s going on?” Toya said, jogging across from where he had been helping Anzu fail to dislodge his sword towards where the startled Farix had fallen. However, the Faerie had interposed himself between them, and, before the skunk could get out a warning, the owl, who was invisible to everyone but the mage, stepped out of the way casually and stuck a foot out, tripping the wolf’s legs up and causing him to stumble indignantly into the heap of Farix. “Owww… Hey, what the hell did I trip on…?”
“The… faerie, he’s right behind you, dumb ass…” Farix grunted, holding his bruised chest and groaning where Toya had practically head butted him. To give the wolf some sense of aim, the skunk jerked his nose very slightly in the owl’s exact direction, glaring at him with the hope that that the wolf would take his meaning. Toya rapidly flicked his eyes in that direction twice, a silent request for confirmation, and Farix nodded ever so slightly.
To his credit, Toya was by all accounts a damn good knife-fighter, and that extended to the throwing of knives, as well as the more up-close and personal sort. In a maneuver that was almost too fast to see, he rolled to one side, over onto one hand, whipped a knife out of his hip-sabard and threw it very nearly at the center of the faerie’s chest. Barely a yard separated them, and, had that been any sort of ordinary creature, the blade would have sank several inches into flesh and organs, very likely right up to the hilt, and killed it. Farix would have thought that maybe a vampire might have been able to dodge it, or some other creature with superhuman reflexes, but nothing in the skunk’s research had mentioned the fae being particularly strong, fast or tough. Intelligence and guile were more their sort of thing, along with a healthy dose of magical talent and a natural tendency toward trickery and deceit.
However, whatever Farix’s expectations had been, they didn’t come true. The faerie stepped with casual grace to one side, allowing the spinning dagger to pass an inch or two from his robes, and clang against the stone of the wall some distance away. “Not a bad throw. If I were anyone else, you probably would have got me,” it said, in a voice that was intended to carry. Toya still had the other knife in his hand, but had no intentions of throwing himself against an invisible opponent.
“Where is he now?” Toya growled, his hackles raised over white teeth, all the anger and frustration of having endured what felt like weeks of degrading forced regression manifesting itself where anxiety had been before.
“Really, now? I just wanted to have a nice conversation with you all before we get back to playing. A heart to heart, so to speak. Do you want to be cubs again so badly that you feel the need to incite me so… violently?” The owl said in his most playfully condescending tone. Toya’s eyes were darting around the room, looking for some shimmer or break in the illusion that he might get another strike in at. Farix, once Toya had gotten off of him, had gotten to his hands and knees and begun crawling away, as of yet unable to stand.
“If you just wanted to talk, why did you start messing with our dreams when we… showed up here…?” Farix said, muttering another spell to aid his healing and dull the pain of his bruised sternum and winded lungs. With that, he used his staff to aid him to his feet, and glare daggers at the owl, wondering if he’d be able to dodge elemental magic the same way he had the knife.
“Oh, I’m still messing with your dreams. The four of you are dreaming right now, I’ve just bound you all together so that we can have this little talk before you wake up,” he said, rather casually dispelling his camoflage and walking back up the stairs to his throne, and, in the process, startling the still struggling crow senseless.
“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on just a tick,” Farix said, startled at the prospect that, indeed, the faerie had just that sort of control over them, “Bullshit, I’d be able to tell if you were messing with our heads. And… And I put up wards, last night while we were in that inn!”
“Ah, yes. You put up wards in your dream, which would indeed have protected you if my goal had been to put you within a dream, within a dream, but let’s not get all Inception now. The fact of the matter is that you’re all in a collective dream, instigated by me, right now. Even if you did manage to kill me, it would gain you nothing,” despite the shocked glares of all four of the party members, who had gathered protectively together in a clutch around the base of the dais again, the faerie slung one taloned foot over the arm of his throne again and made himself comfortable, “So. If any of you had any questions for me, think of this as your Q&A period. I’ll answer honestly, but not completely, if any of you know how Celtic sparring works.”
Farix did know how Celtic sparring worked, but that was far from the front of his mind, right then. Even before he’d stepped forward to speak, the skunk realized that everyone else had backed off, clearly in anticipation that he would do just that. He sighed, then started off with the obvious question. “Inception…?”
The faerie looked surprised, and actually sat up again, looking down at Farix with some interest. “Fictional universe from a different plane of reality, it was a reference to amuse the beings of the Fourth Wall. Don’t ask me any more about that, or else I’ll be explaining things all night. Next question.”
“Okaaayy…” Farix said, and took his deliberate time in thinking of and formulating his next question, since he wanted it to be answered honestly. In the mean time, he took a more particular interest in the owl’s magical anatomy. He was, indeed, far from a being of mere flesh and blood. Those things were present, definitely, but they were merely an organic husk which he inhabited, bound to the physical realm by innumerable tiny magical knots of the sort that he himself was capable of crafting, though in a number and configuration so infinitely complex that he doubted he’d be able to decypher them in a thousand years, even with all the liberty and knowledge needed to do so. In the end, Farix simply settled with, “Well… What is your name, to start off with? You know all of us.”
This was a calculated question, much more so than it seemed on the surface. Names, to the magical community, were powerful. In many cases they took on some manner of their owner’s character, and helped give an insight into their life and intentions, if another mage was keen enough to ferret them out. The owl didn’t look particularly shocked at the request, nor terribly reluctant to share, but he didn’t respond immediately, either, which could mean any number of things. When he did speak, it was with a cool, emotionless voice, the sort that only the truly old could manage. “I have been called many things, but in your language I have been called Silver. You go by Farix, yes? Is that the name you were born with?”
Farix blinked in surprise, having been just in the middle of fiddling with the answer he’d gotten when, unexpectedly, the owl had posed a question of his own. The skunk had given no similar assurances of honesty or candor, so, in the technical sense, there was nothing stopping him from lying through his teeth, but that would violate the spirit of the game, if not the letter of it, so he didn’t. “No, Farix is my chosen name.”
It was, at least, the truth, and Farix thought he had come out the better in this particular round of questioning. If he could keep the fae’s focus on himself, rather than on anyone else in the group, none of whom had any sort of training or experience for this sort of contest, that would certainly be for the best. If they lied, or said something stupid, it could end the game and, with it, any chance Farix had of getting any more information from him.
“Why did you put us through that… regression hell of a dungeon?” Farix said, thinking he might get a general idea, and, from there, dig down to more specific answers, even if the faerie chose to be dodgy about the whole thing. He did, and, just to prove he was more clever than the skunk, answered only half the question.
“I’m still putting you through that regression hell of a dungeon,” he said, grinning in a way that made his face look every bit like the mask that it was, “But, to answer your question… Because I was bored, and these villagers around here don’t put up much sport. So I expanded my dungeon, took the guise of a local noble, and put up an enormous bounty on my own head, knowing that eventually better fun would come to me, and make the chase moot.”
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Toya said, speaking up for the first time, “You put us through all that just for kicks? Bullshit, I don’t buy that. You’ve got stuff you’re not telling us, so spit it out or I’ll…” The wolf grimaced, wincing suddenly as his diaper got an awful lot saggier in a way that, far from the largely silent messing of before, alerted everyone within earshot of the state of his pampers.
“No, puppy, there you are wrong. Dragging a supposed baddass’s repressed cub side out into the open for everyone to see is actually a long-time hobby of mine. It’s an art form, you see. Pecking away at their adult ego bit by bit. Too far on one side and the cub becomes depressed and sulky, too far on the other and they’ll never trust a word you say. The trick is in keeping them right in the middle ground, and it becomes damn near impossible when there’s more than one cub in question, and they all have different qualities you need to take into consideration…”
“That’s… the sickest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Anzu said, his beak hanging half open at the mere thought of it. Of course, the crow wouldn’t grasp the subtleties of that sort of manipulation, but Farix had heard of these sorts of things before, and only winced at the prospect that he had unwittingly become a subject. “How the hell do you sleep at night?”
“Well, I don’t need a warm bottle of milk and a pacifier, which puts me a damn sight ahead of puppy-bottom there,” the owl said, perfectly willing and able to deflect the rest of the team’s questions as long as they continued throwing them at him, “Honestly, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of cubs to play with. You’ve been oodles of fun.”
“What do we have to do get out of this place?” Farix said, his patience growing thin as Anzu and Toya continued to try and speak over him. He looked at Matteo, who had disentangled himself from the entire thing and was now strumming idly to himself a few steps further down. “Can you calm these two brats down for a few minutes so I can finish this conversation, please?” He said, having walked over to the raccoon in exhasperation, and, always happy to oblige, Matteo began playing an old song of calming, letting Anzu and Toya settle into something of a general pout, rather than the immediate desire to throw rocks at the faerie on the dais above them.
“Oh, well that depends entirely on you, my dear crinkle butts,” he said, sitting up and looking down at the four of them affectionately, “I could let you go now, if you wanted, but that wouldn’t do much to help you. I’ve pampered those little cubs inside of you to the point that they’re nice and cozy again. If you leave without finishing, and I will allow it, if you insist, it won’t be long at all before you really do need diapers again, and that’ll be no magic of mine. You’ll wake up in the middle of the night, soggy, searching for a pacifier, or a bottle to nurse, cuddling close to each other like the little family that you are, and yes, that will have some tremendously adorable benefits, but I don’t think wakes up in the middle of the night crying like a bunch of cubs, is the sort of feedback you want getting around the adventurer’s guilds, if you know what I mean.”
Farix clenched his jaw uncomfortably tight, and shot a glare at the crow and wolf when they would have set up a clamor again in protest. The owl was baiting his next question, and, with no other real option, he took the bait. “Alright… What do we have to do to get out of here and not spend the rest of our lives with inner cubs trying to claw their way out at all hours of the night…?” It was probably more specific than he should have been, but it had been said and Farix was confident the faerie would answer candidly, having clearly brought them here to tease them, and, in no small measure, to brag.
“That, you’ll just have to work your way through the dungeon and find out, I’m afraid,” Silver said, grinning, and ending the game with his refusal. Farix had, several moments before, realized that he was growing tired and lethargic, his normally quick mind somewhat more sluggish than usual. He was sleepy, and, by the lack of complaints from the others, he imagined that this was something general amongst the company. “How about the four of you go take yourselves a nice, relaxing nap, and we can talk some more once you’re all down to toddler-size. How about that?” He chuckled softly, standing up from his green limestone chair and walking over to Farix. Far from able to resist, the skunk was spending all of his effort simply trying to remain awake, and looked listlessly up at the owl as he lent down to grin at him, “Nighty night, my adorable little tykes.”
***
Part 13 of a commissioned novel for toyapup following four of his characters, Matteo, a raccoon, Toya, a wolf, Farix, a skunk, and Anzu, a crow, all of them experienced adventurers, encountering something of a... little problem in a dungeon they're contracted to clear out, quickly realizing that they've bit off more than they can chew. By far the most extensive case of physical and mental regression I've written to date contained within.
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ORDER OF THE OWL
Dungeon of Crawling
***NOTE This story was intended to be read as a single, 70,000 word piece, but, since I'd be lynched for uploading a story that large, it's been indiscriminately carved into 4,000 word chunks. Each part will pick up where the last one left off, but the chunk beginning and ending points are simply the end of the 4,000 word document rounded to the end of the nearest paragraph. I'll upload the unified document if people want to read it all in one piece once the story is complete. NOTE ***
Category Story / Baby fur
Species Wolf
Gender Any
Size 120 x 120px
Listed in Folders
Firstly, I just wanted to say that this story is amazingly written. Second, how many parts can I look forward to?
Damn this is good. You're an excellent writer.
The suspense in killing me.
I can't wait to read more!
The suspense in killing me.
I can't wait to read more!
Yay more silliness :) And I love the name too, which I don't think I've said before :)
As a being of the fourth wall I am appeased by the reference to Inception.
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