Chapter Fifteen

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Chapter Fifteen

“WONK! WONK WONK WONK!”

“Maybe it’s just because I’m a genius,” I whispered, “but I'm starting to think we could have found this place even without a map.”

“WONK? WONKWONK WONK!”

Hamstring, Yin, and I were hiding behind a cobweb bush, doing our best to keep one eye on the small army of penguimps nearby, and the other on the little eight legged berries that would have loved nothing more than to scuttle right up the legs of our pants. The brightly colored candy cane forest had been replaced by what I can only describe as black licorice trees that had suffered a bad breakup and really let themselves go. The balloon fruits now sagged on their branches, bulbous, gray and leaking a suspicious yellow liquid. Where squirbs and beer had once frolicked, now long-necked snurtles peeked suspiciously around the tree trunks, hissing threateningly when they saw me looking back at them. At one point, I swore I’d even seen a giragon fly above us, though Hamstring claimed it was just your run-of-the-mill flying pig.

“There must be at least forty of them,” Yin said, ducking back behind the bush.

I peered between the web-covered branches as best I could, and grimaced. Half penguin, half goblin, penguimps were about three feet tall and had long, wart-covered ears, sinus infection-colored feathers, wickedly sharp beaks, and talons long enough to filet a beer with one strike. They waddled this way and that, wonking up a storm like someone had given kazoos to a horde of zombie ducks. They were some of the lowest level enemies in BnB, but even to a group of seasoned adventurers they could still be dangerous if they all attacked at the same time.

And knowing Brother Fossilicious, that was exactly what he had planned.

“WONK-A WONK, WONK-A WONK,” one of them sang to itself as it absentmindedly weeble-wobbled its way across the yard, its tiny featherbrain lost somewhere up in the clouds. “WONK-A WONK-A WONK-A WO—”

Its song was abruptly cut off when it bumbled straight into another penguimp. Both squawked, flapping their flightless wings in a pointless attempt to save themselves before they crashed beak-first down into the dirt below.

“WONK WONK WONK?” the second one demanded angrily, springing back to its feet.

The first one drew itself up indignantly. “WONK WONK? WONK WONK WONK!”

“WONKWONK!” the second one wonked.

“WONK?” the first wonked back, looking deeply offended. “WONK WONKWONK WONK WONK!”

“WOOOOONK?” the second shrieked, and the two of them began to slap each other with their flippers, wonking cacophonously the whole time.

“Well,” I said, reaching for Splartacus, “let's get this over—”

Hamstring grabbed my wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I blinked in surprise. “I'm…about to go kill those penguimps?”

“Wha—” He looked from me, to Yin, then to the penguimp nest. “Why?”

“Why what?” I asked, confused.

“There are literally a thousand different ways we could go about doing this,” he said, “and your first reaction is to pick a fight we can’t possibly win?”

“What did Hamstring tell you about being a murderhobo?” Yin demanded.

“Um,” I gestured at my ragged overalls and patchy bowler hat, “I am a murder hobo, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Rhyen!” Hamstring put his face in his hands. “Have you already forgotten what Brother Fossilicious said? If we die in the game, we die in real life!”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I watch anime too.”

“Then act like it! We only get one shot at this, so—”

“You know what else we only get one shot at?” I cut him off. “Real life! And I seem to remember a certain somebody jumping off a chicken fried skyscraper just a couple days ago so we could fight a maiam!”

“Yeah,” he said, pointing accusingly at me. “You! I was only there because you dragged me along!”

I slapped his hands away. “My point is, we do dangerous stuff every other freaking day! So why are you suddenly acting like you’d wet your pants if a ladybug flew past you?”

“Have you seen the ladybugs around here?” Hamstring asked dryly. “I’d rather cuddle up with a hornet than one of those things!”

“The fact of the matter is,” Yin interrupted, “that this isn’t the real world. Out there, we all know what we’re capable of—and more importantly, what we aren’t capable of. In here, we’re stuck obeying Brother Fossilicious’ rules, and we don’t even have a solid grasp on what those rules are yet. So, the longer we can avoid getting into any real danger, the more we’ll be able to figure things out in a somewhat safe environment.”

I turned to her and opened my mouth, then closed it again when I couldn’t think of anything to say. Stupid best friend, caring about my wellbeing and trying not to let me get killed…

“Fine,” I reluctantly agreed. “If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear it!”

Hamstring and Yin glanced at each other.

“Maybe we can negotiate with them?” Hamstring suggested. “I mean, what would a bunch of penguimps want with a key to a castle they’ll never live in, anyway?”

“Worth a try,” Yin agreed, then turned to me. “What do we have in our inventory?”

“A hammer thirsty for penguimp blood.”

“RHYEN!”

I rolled my eyes and took Splartacus from my shoulder and laid her on the ground. I had a magic handkerchief tied to the end, just beneath her head, that let me carry around all of our stuff. I untied it, reaching into the unnaturally spacious void inside, and laid our meager possessions out on the ground one piece at a time.

“One can of silly net,” I said. “One bag of itching powder. A bottle of flaming seltzer—thanks for that, by the way.”

Yin glared at me.

“One cherry soda for each of us,” I went on, setting the cans down next to each other. “One blue raspberry soda, one bottled fart, three spiked juggling pins, five flashbang juggling balls, one bike horn imbued with a zukkokeru spell, and a whipped cream and dynamite pie.”

“Half of that is stuff they won’t care at all about,” Yin said, frowning, “and the other half are things they’d probably just attack us with the second we handed it over.”

For a minute, we all stared at the random junk piled in front of us. My eyes flicked toward the pie a couple times, but I didn’t let myself touch it. Nothing ruined a good pie like gunpowder.

Come on, think! I told myself. You’ve been playing this game since you were in the third grade. What would you normally do in this situation?

You know, besides murder everything in your way?

A thought came to me, and I perked up a little. Could it really be that easy? There was only one way to find out…

“I roll for intelligence,” I announced.

Hamstring turned to me, his eyebrow raised. “You wha—”

“Eighteen,” said Brother Fossilicious, his crusty, wrinkly face appearing out of the cobweb bush.

Hamstring nearly jumped out of his oversized pants. “Jeez!”

“But you have an intelligence modifier of negative five,” the old fart went on, “so it comes out as thirteen.”

“And is that enough?” I asked.

“You tell me!” he said, and vanished back into the bush.

“What was that about?” Yin asked.

I didn’t answer, folding my arms and performing that most blasphemous of rituals: thinking.

Out in the yard, the fight came to an end when one penguimp—I don't know if it was the first or the second one—knocked its opponent to the ground and proceeded to sit on its head and let out an explosive fart.

“WONKWONKWONKWONKWONK!” the entire horde tilted their beaks back and laughed.

And suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do.

“Guys!” I exclaimed. “This is a game made by klaons for klaons!”

Hamstring’s green lips curled downward in a scowl, wrinkling his white-painted skin. “Yeah, we noticed.”

“What’s your point?” Yin asked, looking up from her inspection of the dynamite pie.

“We don’t have to trade them for anything!” I said.

“Then what are we going to do?” Hamstring asked.

I stood up, grinning at them. “We’re going to make them laugh. Follow my lead!”

Without giving myself time to think about what I was about to do, I marched as confidently as I could right into the penguimps’ midst.

“RHYEN!” Hamstring and Yin called in horror at the same time.

The moment I came into view, time seemed to freeze. I could feel eighty pairs of dull little eyes boring into me from every direction, and as I drew nearer to the gate, it dawned on me that the only reason I was still alive was that I had surprised them. Their tiny, peanut-sized brains were all grinding their tiny, peanut-sized gears to figure out why this beautiful and mysterious hobo had just wandered into their home. Why wasn't I attacking them? That, at least, would have been something they could understand. But this? I may as well have tried explaining quantum physics in pig latin for all the sense this made to them.

Two pairs of footsteps came rushing up behind me. My first instinct was to turn around and wallop the penguimps trying to ambush me, but I stopped myself. Instead, I glanced over my shoulder, and sighed in relief when I saw it was just Hamstring and Yin.

“You had better know what you're doing,” Hamstring growled under his breath.

“Of course I do,” I lied, and continued onward.

We were about ten feet away from the gate when a penguimp finally decided to block our way. I clenched my teeth. It was the one who had just won the fight a minute ago. That was either exactly what we wanted, or the last thing on earth we wanted, and there was only one way to figure out which.

“Well, hi there!” I said as cheerfully as I could. “What’s your name, little guy?”

“WONK WONK WONK!” it wonked in response, pointing one of its wings at me. “WONK WONK?”

“He says that we are trespassers on his lord's most holy land,” Yin whispered, “and asks why he shouldn't have us all eviscerated right now.”

I turned to look at her in surprise. “You speak penguimp?”

She shrugged, her eyes never leaving the penguimp in front of us. “There aren’t many languages out there that I can’t speak, Rhyen.”

“WONK WONK!”

“And he wants you to stop ignoring him,” she added.

I swallowed nervously. This was it. Time to gamble everything on one of the stupidest ideas I’d ever had.

I put my hands on my hips and smiled at it. “I want to tell you a joke!”

Behind me, I heard Yin and Hamstring both slap their foreheads.

“WONK WONK WONK?” the penguimp asked suspiciously.

“He wants to know why you came all this way just to tell him a joke.”

I grinned. “Is it that hard to believe that I just wanted to be neighborly?”

“WONK.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, fair enough,” I sighed. “I want to make a deal with you. We know you have the key to this gate. If I can make you laugh, then in exchange I want you to let us through.”

“Rhyen, that’s a terrible deal!” Hamstring objected.

I looked back at him and shrugged. “You said it yourself, what are they even going to do with it? These fine…”

I glanced at the swarm that was rapidly gathering around us.

“...um, gentlemen clearly have a refined taste in humor, and we’re a traveling band of professional jokesters, so I’m sure they’ll recognize how generous an offer this is.”

The penguimp cocked its head at me, and if it’d had eyebrows I got the feeling it would have raised one. My heart was pounding in my throat, and the urge to draw Splartacus and make penguimp soup was almost more than I could resist.

Finally, the penguimp opened its beak and, doing a perfect impression of Brother Fossilicious’, said, “Interesting. Roll for persuasion.”

I waited for a moment. This was all starting to feel just a little too normal.

“Eleven.”

“Okay, and is that high enough to—”

“WONK WONK,” wonked the penguimp. “WONK WONKWONKWONK WONK.”

“He says this is highly unusual, but he’ll allow it,” Yin translated. “All three of us may tell one joke. If we can make him laugh, he'll let us pass into his master's domain unharmed.”

“And let me guess,” Hamstring said darkly, “if we fail…”

“They’ll cut us into ribbons and then slurp those ribbons up like spaghetti.”

Hamstring and I both looked at Yin, and she shrugged.

“His words, not mine,” she said defensively.

“Well, you two don’t have to worry about a thing,” I said.

I turned to face the penguimp, giving him my most confident smirk, and cracked my knuckles.

“I know exactly what these guys think is funny!”

NEXT CHAPTER 10/22/25