Chapter Fourteen

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you feel like supporting the author, Henry Rider and the First Hunter’s Hammer is for sale on Amazon in print and on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Henry-Rider-First-Hunters-Hammer/dp/B0F9TLXM27/ref=sr_1_1?crid=380K2FMFN3475&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.rpT8SPLM8scQraYatm3qiT4DtqX_WtvxmT5C4ck1LpDdlB-nRJK6bdCNvjc3KPjEyPJyEQX5BSmv2MB4C6D4Sw.mlHqPxcRBn-4H2sCWBpuhRYClvWLY8xHqV2dqfC_kd4&dib_tag=se&keywords=henry+rider+and+the+first+hunter%27s+hammer&qid=1751745480&sprefix=henry+ri%2Caps%2C807&sr=8-1

Chapter Fourteen

I sat staring down at my hands and trying not to think about my family. Mom…Dad…Grandpa Teddy…did they have any idea what was going on? Had Ichabod told them that he’d turned me into his little errand girl, and that their only hope for survival was for me to steal something from a society so secret it made the Illuminati look like the Boy Scouts? What were they thinking right now?

“It’s been two days already!” I could practically hear Dad saying. “If she really loved us, she would have stolen that hammer before I had to use this bucket as a toilet!”

“She’s always been a lazy girl,” Grandpa Teddy would agree. “And more than a touch selfish.”

Then Mom would say, “Honey, if we don’t die, let’s have another baby. That way we can leave everything to them and write Rhyen out of our will!”

I knew that was ridiculous. My family would never say anything like that, not in a million years. Even Grandpa Teddy, for as little as we were seeing eye to eye lately, would skip rope with a cobra before turning against me. But the thing about thoughts like that is that the lower you get, the easier they are to believe.

And I had never been lower than I was right then.

Clink!

I looked up just as Hamstring set a tall, frosty mug in front of me. It was filled with a thick brown liquid and topped with whipped cream, french fries, and a cherry.

“I don’t want a milkshake,” I mumbled, pushing it away before looking back down at my hands again.

Hamstring, Yin, and I were sitting at a table in the middle of what looked like a combination of a medieval tavern and one of those old soda shoppes from the seventies. The tables were made of wood, yet they gleamed with a reflective chrome surface. Instead of chairs, everyone was sitting on padded, spinning bar stools that had somehow been welded to the floor despite being wooden. Other klaons were gathered around us, talking and laughing while they chugged fizzy drinks in every color of the rainbow. In the corner, a few of them danced as a monkey cranked what looked like some kind of wooden jukebox with a hat full of silver coins at its feet.

Sitting down across from me, Hamstring raised his eyebrows as he pushed a strawberry shake over to Yin. “Huh. Shapeshifters are a pretty high level enemy to be throwing at us this early in the game.”

I frowned and looked back up at him. “What?”

“Rhyen would…” He paused, blinking, then scraped his tongue against his teeth. I didn't blame him. I was still getting used to the wrong words coming out of my mouth every time I tried to say our names too.

My name, I thought slowly, deliberately forming every syllable inside my head, is Rhyen…Rhy…Rhyyyyyy…

Buttered barnacles.

“I think what he’s trying to say,” Yin spoke up with a small, encouraging smile, “is that we know Rhyen, and Rhyen would never turn down a milkshake.”

“Exactly,” said Hamstring. He paused to take a drink of his own shake, a bright green mint and chocolate chip one. “Which means Yin must not have been paying attention, and Rhyen managed to get herself swapped out with a shapeshifter of some kind.”

“Can you blame me?” Yin asked, looking around at the colorful crowd that surrounded us. “I’ve been in dimensions that would make you two bleed from the eyes, and I still haven’t seen anything quite like this before.”

I did my best to ignore them and go back to my gloomy thoughts, but the bright colors and laughter ringing through the air made this a terrible place for brooding. My stomach growled, and my eyes flicked toward the milkshake in front of me. I knew just by smelling it that it would be the richest, sweetest shake I’d had in my life. Trying my best to look reluctant, I reached out and pulled one of the fries from the whipped cream and munched forlornly on it.

Immediately, I felt healthier in an inexplicably eight points-ish kind of way.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” Hamstring said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

“Only Rhyen would order french fries in a milkshake,” Yin said with a giggle. “So the fact that you’re actually eating them must mean you are Rhyen after all.”

I did my best to keep a straight face, but I still couldn’t help but snort. “Don’t judge me! The saltiness goes perfectly with the sweetness.”

“Do you put chocolate syrup on your baked potatoes too?” Hamstring asked.

I flicked the end of my fry at him, landing it right in his whipped cream. “Of course not. You know Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me do…”

And just like that, my momentary good mood was gone.

“Come on,” I said, standing up. “We need to get moving.”

“But we just got here!” Hamstring complained. “It took us five hours of wandering through that stupid balloon forest to find this town. The least we can do is sit down long enough to finish our shakes.”

“Yes, five hours!” I snapped at him. “That puts us five hours closer to our deadline!”

“We’re not going to get anywhere running around like headless chickens,” Hamstring insisted. “You heard Brother Fossilicious: this Trial is supposed to test your creativity and thinking skills. Trying to brute force your way through the adventure is going to have the opposite effect you want!”

“It’s better than sitting around eating ice cream while my…” I paused, glancing around. Brother Fossilicious had said he would always be watching, so I needed to be careful not to spill the beans about what I was really doing here. “…chances of getting Opisthia’s hammer slip through my fingers.”

“Rhyen, you should listen to Hamstring,” Yin said, putting her hand on my arm. “We’re playing BnB, right? Look at where we are! Soda Shoppes are where practically every adventure in BnB starts!”

“Exactly,” Hamstring agreed. “Our best bet is to hang tight and wait for something to happen. Maybe bandits will attack the town. Maybe a group of adventurers will be looking for new members. Or maybe—”

“Excuse me,” crooned a dark, greasy voice. “But would you three perchance be looking to make some coin?”

“Or maybe,” Hamstring finished, gesturing to the newcomer, “a mysterious benefactor will show up and offer us some kind of job!”

I turned to look, and saw a tall thin man standing beside our table. He was wearing a black cloak and hood, and beneath it I could see a polished silver mask. The right half of the mask was smiling, while the left half was crying.

“My name,” he said, giving us a grand, sweeping bow, “is Count Traumedy, and I—”

“He’s the bad guy,” I said, standing up and reaching for my weapon. “I’m gonna kill him.”

Count Traumedy stood up, rigid with indignation, and when he spoke again it was Brother Fossilicious’ voice that came out.

“Excuse me!” he snapped, “that is not how the game works!”

“Why not?” I demanded. “He couldn’t be more obviously the villain if you gave him a mustache to twirl!”

“Rhyen…” Yin said nervously.

“Because this is Big Tops and Boogeymen!” Brother Fossilicious interrupted her. “You can’t just decide things like that, you have to roll for insight! You’re supposed to be roleplaying here!”

“I am roleplaying,” I shot back. “I’m roleplaying as someone who can recognize an blatantly evil creep when she sees him, so I—”

“You suddenly develop an allergic reaction to french fries and take fifteen points of damage.”

“Okay, okay!” I yelled. When my insides didn’t try to turn themselves into my outsides, I clenched my fists and glared at the hooded figure. “I roll for insight, or whatever you just said.”

“Three,” said Brother Fossilicious. “You fail.”

“Rhyen, you’re going to ruin your own chance here!” Yin whispered.

“Please,” Hamstring agreed, “for once in your life, don’t play as an insane murderhobo!”

With my face so blue it was practically glowing, I forced myself to sit back down and say through gritted teeth, “Pleased to meet you, Count Traumedy. Yes, my group of fearless adventurers and I are looking to make some money. What did you have in mind?”

Count Traumedy sat down beside Yin, his completely innocent looking black cloak billowing dramatically behind him like a pair of bat wings.

“Less than a day ago,” he whispered conspiratorially, leaning in towards us, “a lick named Lingua Oris kidnapped this kingdom’s princess and took her to its lair in the Somberlands. If you can defeat him and bring our pilfered princess back to us, as her majesty’s royal adviser, I shall shower your party in gold!”

“Gross,” I muttered.

“RHYEN!” Hamstring and Yin snapped at the same time.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it!” Count Traumedy yelled, slamming his fists on the table. “Do you want the job or not?”

“Yes, yes we do!” Hamstring blurted out before I could say anything else. That was probably for the best. “Where can we find this lick?”

Count Traumedy raised a finger, his voice suddenly calm and oily again. “Lingua Oris’ castle is to the north, in the Somberlands, hidden behind a gate forged by gloomsmiths in their catacombs deep beneath the—”

“The gate was forged by what?” I demanded.

“Gloomsmiths. Maiams who are able to manipulate the Gloom and forge it into maiametic steel, a material stronger than diamonds.”

It was my turn to slap the table. “Maiams are mindless monsters, you melodramatic moose! That's like saying a goldfish built you a house!”

“Your smooth, walnut-sized brain might lack the capacity for suspension of disbelief,” Count Traumedy snapped, reverting back to Brother Fossilicious’ voice, “but the rest of us are not! Now may I please get through this part of the campaign, or would you like to interrupt—”

“Why do you have to make stuff up when you have real live monsters to draw inspiration from?” I demanded, taking him up on his generous offer. “Aren't you people supposed to be, like, dedicated to wiping maiams out? Isn't making up a bunch of bullsausage about them the exact opposite of what you should want people to do?”

“No, because this isn't real life, it's Big Tops and Boogeymen!”

“But why—”

“Make a constitution saving throw.”

I blinked. “Make a what?”

“One. Automatic failure.” Brother Fossilicious snapped his fingers. “You immediately succumb to a severe case of SHUT THE HELL UP POX!”

“Mmmph!” I grunted as my mouth snapped closed, my lips pressing against each other so hard they were practically welded together. “MMPHMMM! MMMMPH MMM MMMMPH!”

Count Traumedy turned back to my friends, speaking in his own voice again. “The gate is guarded by a flock of penguimps, who Lingua Oris has pressed into his service. One of them will have the key, but it will be up to you to figure out who!”

Who locks a door and then leaves the key right in front of it, you toadmuffin? I thought furiously, but Hamstring and Yin nodded, only too happy to dive headfirst into this massive pile of cliches.

“So we have to defeat the penguimps, find the key, and take out the lick,” said Hamstring. “Right?”

“Indeed,” said Count Traumedy, steepling his fingers. “It will not be an easy task, but the rewards will be ample should you succeed. Are you up to the task?”

“Mmm mmmph mphmm MMMMMPH!” I mmphed.

“She says just point us in the right direction,” Yin translated with a smile.

“Very well.” Reaching inside his cloak, Count Traumedy produced a map, which he spread across the table in front of us. “You will find what you seek…”

In the deepest, darkest, stupidest corner of the kingdom, I guessed.

He jabbed his finger at the deepest, darkest, stupidest corner of the kingdom.

“HERE!”

NEXT CHAPTER 10/15/25