Chapter Seventeen

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Chapter Seventeen

Count Traumedy cackled as he rose from his throne, arms spread like he wanted to hug us. “Are you surprised to see m—”

“What?” I gasped, one hand going to my forehead. “You were the bad guy all along? No freaking way!”

Something began to snake its way down from the bottom of Lord Traumedy’s mask. It was his tongue, I realized as my stomach did a backflip in disgust. The black, rubbery appendage stretched all the way to the floor, dripping long, thick trails of snot-colored drool onto the floor that sent up clouds of acrid-smelling smoke with an audible hsssss wherever it landed.

“Guys!” I exclaimed, spinning toward Yin and Hamstring. “Count Traumedy was the bad guy! Are your minds not blown?”

His tongue curled upwards, delicately removing the mask before tossing it aside. I couldn't help but cringe when I saw his face. Somehow he managed to look dried out like a sentient beef jerky man, and moist and swollen like a diseased water balloon at the same time. He grinned wickedly, his lips creaking like worn leather from the effort and a little bit of something squirting out of his cheek when his muscles bunched up.

“Yes,” he gurgle-rasped in a voice like a rattlesnake who had been adopted by a family of eels, “as you no doubt have guessed, I was the one who—”

“Yin! Hamstring!” I screamed, grabbing two big handfuls of my hair and pulling on them. “You need to catch me before I faint from the complete and total shock I'm in right now!”

“I was the one who—”

“THIS IS THE PLOT TWIST LITTLE PLOT TWISTS DREAM OF GROWING UP TO BE, ONLY TO BECOME BITTER AND JADED PLOT TWISTS WHEN THEY REALIZE THEY CAN NEVER MATCH ITS PERFECTLY CRAFTED SKILL, MAJESTY, AND EYE-MELTING BEAUTY!”

“I was the one who…”

I fell to my knees and thrust my fists into the air. “ALL PRAISE THE PLOT TWIIIIIIIST!”

With one last exultant cry, I threw myself face down on the floor. Silence filled the throne room.

“You're not taking this seriously at all, are you?” Brother Fossilicious finally asked, speaking through the lick's mouth.

I raised my head. “Not in the slightest.”

Scowling at me, Count Traumedy balled his fists and stomped his foot. “You young people have no idea how much work and planning goes into setting up a campaign like this! Do you know just how many nights I sat awake thinking all of this up?”

“Well, let's be fair here,” Hamstring broke in. “The entire campaign consisted of us being given a quest, one encounter right outside the bad guy's lair, and then the final boss. I can't imagine that took a ton of effort.”

“Of course you wouldn't think so!” Brother Fossilicious whined. “Kids today have no concept of hard work! All you have to do is ask your phones for a BnB campaign, and have some AI do all the thinking for you!”

“I don't—”

“Well, not me! My campaign was made the old fashioned way: with blood, sweat, and tears! And dreams! More dreams than your undeveloped little minds could even imagine! Not that you can imagine much, since video games have turned your brains into scrambled eggs, but—”

“Okay, all right,” Yin interrupted him, raising her hands in surrender. “We're sorry. You clearly put a lot of work into this. Let's just get back to enjoying the game, all right?”

Brother Fossilicious drew himself up and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, it was in Count Traumedy’s voice.

“Yes, foolish adventurers!” he declared, pointing at us dramatically as thunder boomed outside. “I was Lingua Oris, the most feared lick in the land, this entire time! And you have fallen into my trap, just as so many others have before you!”

“How many times have you done this?” Hamstring asked.

“So many times that even I can not recall them!”

“Starting to lose your memory?” I asked. “Yeah, getting old must suck.”

“You're still not taking this seriously!”

“Right. Sorry.” Raising my hands, I wailed, “Oh, great and mighty lick! What have you done with this kingdom's princess?”

“Fool! Do you still not realize?” He spread his arms again, letting us bathe in his gloriously evil body odor. “There was never a princess for you to rescue! This was all a ploy to bring you out here so that I could destroy you!”

“Why?”

His arms fell to his sides. “Why what?”

“Why make up a story about a kidnapped princess and send us on a bogus quest just to bring us to your castle and kill us?” I asked. “Why not just, you know, kill us?”

“And why do you want to kill us in the first place?” Hamstring asked.

“Guys,” Yin whispered. “Are you sure antagonizing the boss and the RM is a good idea?”

“SILENCE!”

Lingua Oris waved his arms, sending bolts of lightning cascading up and down the throne room.

“I am a master of evil!” He roared. “I need no motivation for what I do other than evil itself!”

“Okay, but what do you get out of killing us?” Hamstring persisted.

“I…get to eliminate the only three heroes in the land who are powerful enough to oppose me!”

“But we never would have opposed you if you hadn't sent us on this quest.”

“Uh…”

I couldn't help but grin. I'd been on the receiving end of Hamstring’s ironclad, laser-focused logic enough times to know how frustrating it could be to deal with, and that only made watching Brother Fossilicious squirm all the more satisfying.

“And your plan was to bring the only three people who pose you any sort of threat straight into your lair, and you don't think that's going to end with us killing you?”

“SHUT UP!”

“Look, as a part time RM myself, I sympathize,” Hamstring went on. “But you really need to clean up your plot holes.”

“My campaign does not have plot holes!”

While they argued, an idea occurred to me. I looked at them, making sure their attention was fully focused on each other, and then I began to creep toward Lingua Oris.

“The quest—if you can even call it that—has no structure, the story has barely begun and it's already almost over, and your villain's motivations make no sense,” Hamstring counted on his fingers. “Look, I'm going to be completely honest here: you're not a very good RM. Have you ever actually led a game before?”

Slowly, I raised a hand toward Splartacus.

“It's not my fault if the rest of the Brotherhood doesn't appreciate the sophisticated level of entertainment that only a game of Bigtops and Boogeymen can—”

“SNEAK ATTACK!” I yelled, swinging Splartacus as hard as I could—and froze before she could even touch his nasty old face.

“Roll for it—with disadvantage, since you’re using a hammer roughly the size of Australia,” Brother Fossilicious said. “Six. You fail.”

Time suddenly kicked back into motion, and Lingua Oris dodged with way more dexterity than someone who was basically a leather-wrapped skeleton should have had. Cackling madly, he glided backwards out of my reach.

“A feisty one!” he said, grinning. “I like that! Roll for initiative, then!”

I hefted Splartacus. “Just so that everything is clear, once we kill this Ligma creep—”

“DON'T CALL MY VILLAIN LIGMA!”

“—then this stupid Trial is over, right?”

Lingua Oris hesitated, then nodded, scowling at me like I’d insulted his mother’s cooking.

“You guys ready?” I asked, turning to face Yin and Hamstring.

“We’re with you,” Hamstring promised,

“Very well! Then let the final battle begin!” Lingua Oris pointed at Hamstring. “You are up first!”

Mushroom tortellini! I cursed inside my head. The urge to wallop this geezer was almost more than I could bear, but I could already guess how that would go. Frozen in time just like before until he decided to let me go. Like it or not, Brother Fossilicious was the one in charge here, so there was no point in trying to do things any way but his.

“I’ll start the fight by summoning my animal familiar!” Hamstring declared, raising a hand above his head. “Come to me, Clodhopper the Majestic!”

He threw his hand toward the floor, and a cloud of purple smoke exploded at his feet, rising to obscure him. It only lasted for a few seconds, and when it blew away Hamstring was sitting on the back of an enormous, musclebound moose.

“OHMYGOUDA!” I squealed as soon as I saw him, jumping up and down like a little girl at a boy band concert. “CLODHOPPERRRRR!”

If it wasn’t obvious, I was Clodhopper’s biggest fangirl. I mean, have you ever seen a moose? They’re clearly God’s most perfect creatures! They’re sixteen hundred pounds of fur, muscle, and attitude. To think I was finally getting to meet him, in the flesh, instead of just listening to Hamstring talk about him. Best! Day! Ever!

“Bring him over here!” I begged him. “I wanna pet him! Pleaaaaase?”

Hamstring ignored me, which I reluctantly had to admit was for the best. Letting me pet Clodhopper would have counted as his action for this turn, and as much as I would have treasured the memory of running my hands through his thick, stinky fur, I guess it would have been a waste not to use him for his intended purpose.

That purpose being to flatten stupid creepy licks.

“Clodhopper, charge!” Hamstring commanded him, and the beautiful moose lowered his head and galloped across the throne room. His hooves thundered on the stone floor, and Lingua Oris could only raise his hands to shield him.

“Dexterity saving throw,” he croaked. “Failed!”

Clodhopper slammed into Lingua Oris like an out of control train, picking him up off the floor with his antlers and carrying him across the throne room. I let out a whoop when a resounding CRASH echoed through the castle, and the lick was driven straight into the wall on the far end of the room. Clodhopper trotted back to his starting position, looking proud of himself—and who could blame him?—while Lingua Oris remained where he was, stuck to the wall.

“Ten damage,” he said, peeling himself free like a cartoon character and falling face down onto the floor. I was a little disappointed that Clodhopper’s walloping hadn’t left him as flat as a pancake, but I would take what I could get. He raised a hand and pointed at Yin. “Her turn!”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Yin reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of thin, colorful strings. Raising her fist to her mouth, she blew into it, and the strings expanded into thick, shiny sausages. Then, in a flurry of motion, she began to bend and twist them until…

“I cast Balloon Guardians!” she said, hurling three brightly colored balloon animals onto the battlefield. They seemed to inflate even more as they flew through the air, and when they hit the ground they were the size of the real animals they were modeled off of—an orange tiger, a blue horse, and a brown monkey.

“Atta girl!” I cheered as she leaped onto the horse’s back.

“My tiger and monkey attack together!” she said next, pointing at the lick.

With a disturbingly realistic roar, the tiger crouched down and pounced at Lingua Oris. It struck him head on, knocking him to the floor, and buried its fangs into his throat…somehow. Lingua Oris cried out in pain as it thrashed its head from side to side. While it was doing that, the monkey also sprang into motion. Darting across the throne room, it leaped into the air and landed on the lick’s shoulders. Then, letting out a scream of pure, rabid bloodlust, it began to beat on his head with both rubbery fists.

This went on for a few more brutal seconds, and then Yin snapped her fingers, calling her guardians back to her side.

“Seven damage!” said Lingua Oris, getting back to his feet. “Which would make it…”

He turned toward me, and I felt the thrill of excitement course through my veins. I was going to show this half-dead goon exactly what happened when you stood between me and my family!

“…my turn!”

I blinked. “Wait, wha—”

“Tongue Lashing!”

His mouth opened, and his grotesquely long tongue came out again, shooting across the distance between us. Greenish-yellow slime covered the entire thing, promising only bad things if I was unlucky enough to let it hit me. I threw myself to the side—or, I tried to, at least. Instead, my body froze yet again.

“Ecks-ewwa-eee aveen woh!” the lick shouted. “Sih! Faee!”

Oh, cheese dip, I thought a split second before time resumed. My body continued the dodge I had just been about to attempt, even though I already knew it was pointless. But before I could hurl myself out of the way, Lingua Oris' tongue slapped me across the side of the face. White-hot pain flashed through my entire body—and something else hidden underneath it.

“Four damage!” Lingua Oris announced, slurping his tongue back into his mouth. “With another three points of poison damage each turn!”

Creme brulee! Old, expired, moldy creme brulee!

The tip of his tongue vanished between his crusty lips, and he pointed at me. “Your turn!”

Groaning in disgust, I wiped the slime off of my face and charged at him. Hamstring and Yin had dealt seventeen points of damage to the lick already. If I could just deal three more, then we were home free—and luckily for us, dealing damage was my specialty!

“Eat this, you mummified veggie burger!” I yelled, drawing Splartacus back like a baseball bat and swinging as hard as I could.

Splartacus hit Lingua Oris right in the dehydrated pile of ugliness that he called his face with a deep, satisfying WHUD!, and he went flying backwards across the room to shatter the throne he had been sitting in just a few minutes ago. Let Yin and Hamstring worry about elaborate strategies and fancy attacks. There was only one thing in the world I was good at, and that was hitting things with hammers really, really hard.

I watched him lay there for a few seconds, and felt my heart leap when he didn't—

He sat up.

“Twelve damage,” he said impassively.

“With a five point modifier, so it's actually seventeen!” I said, pointing at him.

Lingua Oris thought for a second, then nodded. “Fine. Seventeen, then.”

I laughed, thrusting Splartacus up into the air. “Which means that you are dead, you fossilized pretzel stick!”

“Foolish adventurer!” Lingua Oris exclaimed with a wicked laugh. Robes billowing, he floated back to his feet. “Do you think I am a mere penguimp, able to be defeated with but a couple of your measly attacks? I'm a boss encounter! What on earth made you think I only had twenty Color Points?”

Orange juice and toothpaste smoothies, I thought. This might be a little harder than I expected…

“At any rate, your turn is over,” Lingua Oris said, his smirk stretching into an evil grin. “And you know what that means!”

“That it's Hamstring’s turn ag-AAHHH!” I yelped as searing pain coursed through my body. I fell to one knee, gasping for breath as what felt like electrified sewage seeped through my veins.

“Three points of poison damage!” Lingua Oris shouted in evil glee. “Bringing you down to thirteen CP!”

I fought to get back to my feet, but my head was spinning too hard. That was just as well, I suppose, since I wouldn't have been able to do anything until it was my turn again anyway. Instead, I blinked my watering eyes clear and fixed them on Hamstring as the second round of combat began.

NEXT CHAPTER 11/5/25