Chapter Eighteen

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Chapter Eighteen

Lingua Oris chuckled darkly, waiting for Hamstring to make his move. I could see the gears spinning behind my friend's eyes as he plotted out his next turn with cold, machine-like brutality from atop his familiar's back.

Then, to my surprise, his swung his leg over Clodhopper's side and dismounted.

“Since Clodhopper gets his own turn, independent of mine,” he said, not bothering to explain what he was planning, “I'll have him perform a sneak attack!”

The lick blinked. “Wait, wha—”

Suddenly, Clodhopper appeared out of nowhere behind Lingua Oris like the perfect hulking woodland ninja he was

“Perception check: failed,” Lingua Oris has just enough time to say. “Apparently I did not see that coming.”

Then Clodhopper's back legs connected with his chest, blasting him across the throne room a second time.

“And for my turn,” Hamstring announced, “I'll summon an explosive barrel right…there!”

He pointed, and another plume of purple smoke erupted from the floor. When it cleared, a wooden barrel, painted bright red with the word “KABOOM!” written on the side, had appeared—just in time for the lick to fly straight into it.

Kaboom, indeed.

With the explosion ringing in my ears and my eyes struggling to focus after the flash, it took me almost a minute to spot Lingua Oris plastered to the wall, making a second brick-angel right next to the one he had made during Hamstring's first turn. Gingerly, he pried himself free and shook himself.

“Fifteen damage,” he announced, his voice even gravellier than before. With a shaking hand, he pointed at Yin. “Y- Your turn.”

“Come on, Yin!” Hamstring yelled encouragingly. “That's forty nine damage against him. If I'm right, it should only take one more point to kill him!”

“You can do it!” I cheered. “Finish him off!”

“With pleasure!” Yin drew her hand back and then whipped it forward as if she were pitching a fastball. A rope of black and white handkerchiefs shot out of her sleeve, making a beeline for Lingua Oris. “Hampering Hankies!”

“Dexterity roll: fail!” the lick said as the rope wrapped itself around and around him, binding him firmly in place.

I pumped my fist in the air. He was trapped!

“And now I'll use Running Gag to take another action!” said Yin.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them again they were glowing with an eerie purple light.

“I cast the Pierrot’s Forbidden Spell,” she said, her voice going all echoey and cool sounding. “Summoning forth the darkness of the maiam caged within my heart, I take that which is yours and claim it as my own. Color Drain!”

The purple light began to reach out toward Lingua Oris, using the handkerchief rope as a bridge.

“I will roll a D20,” she explained in her awesomely evil voice. “And whatever number I get, I will drain you for that many Color Points and heal myself for that same—”

“I Know You Are, But What Am I?”

Yin blinked, the light going out in her eyes. “Wh- What?”

“It's a spell!” the lick laughed. “If I roll higher than you, then whatever spell you just cast will be reflected back at you!”

“You can't do that!” I yelled, instinctively trying to throw myself at him and finding my body, of course, unable to move. “It's not your turn!”

“It doesn't have to be!” Lingua Oris corrected me with sadistic satisfaction. “I Know You Are But What Am I is a Scathing Retort, meaning I can cast it as a reaction to someone else's spell!”

A haunted look came into Yin's eyes. “What did I roll?”

Lingua Oris smiled. “An eighteen.”

My insides unclenched a bit. An eighteen was a good roll—no, it was a great roll! The chances of this creep rolling higher was tiny, almost microscopic…

So why was he grinning at her like that?

“And I rolled,” he said slowly, savoring the suspense, “a natural twenty!”

“NO!” Hamstring shouted as the Hampering Hankies leaped from Lingua Oris' body and proceeded to wrap themselves around Yin instead. Once she was good and hampered, the lick’s tongue shot out of his mouth, wrapping around Yin’s throat.

Light began to travel from her to Lingua Oris, and she screamed. I could only watch, horrified, as Yin had the life sucked right out of her body. What little color she had disappeared, her whites and blacks fading until they were almost identical shades of gray. She fell to her knees, and on the other side of the room, Lingua Oris stood up, suddenly looking about eighteen Color Points healthier.

“Ahh, much better!” he crooned, grinning as he dusted off his robes. “That was dangerously close. Thank you very much for that. And given that it's my turn now…”

My blood turned to ice when I saw the gleam of sadistic humor in his eyes.

“…I think I'll finish what you started!”

His tongue slid out of his mouth again, curling around his shoulders and arching over the top of his head like a pet cobra.

“Leave her alone!” Hamstring yelled, but just like me, he couldn't move an inch until his next turn came.

I looked from Lingua Oris to my friend. Yin was still on her knees, struggling to get up, but having her CP drained had left her weak. Being a genie, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the first time she had ever truly experienced pain. In the real world, her body was just a shell she conjured up to give herself a physical form. If that shell got damaged, she could just will the damage away before the pain registered. I don't even know if she even could feel pain.

That obviously wasn't the case in here. Even if Hamstring were to make his second wish here and now, she was cut off from her genie powers, making her just as mortal as the two of us.

Mortal…and two Color Points away from death.

You let this happen, a cruel voice whispered in my mind. You should have sent her away. You should have sent them both away! But you were so afraid of facing these Trials alone that you were willing to put them in harm's way. And now look where that's gotten Yin, you cowardly, selfish, spineless—

“She isn't the Hunter!” Hamstring yelled. “She's just here to help!”

“You both entered this Trial knowing full well that your lives would be in danger,” said Lingua Oris. “You have no one to blame for your fate but yourselves. And now, wasting no more time…”

His tongue erupted into green flames. I gritted my teeth, heart pounding and sweat pouring down my brow. He wasn't bluffing. He really was going to finish her off! And with only two Color Points left and no way to act or move during someone else's turn, she had no way of defending herself.

Lingua Oris' tongue rose higher and higher until it was almost touching the throne room’s arched stone ceiling in preparation for the final blow…

“I cast Yo Mama!”

Lingua Oris froze, so surprised that he slurped his tongue back into his mouth.

“That's a Scathing Retort too!” I explained before he could argue. “If it succeeds, you can only target me for your next turn!”

“Rhyen,” Hamstring said softly, “you only have thirteen points left. Are you sure you can—”

“Yo Mama is so stupid,” I interrupted him, “she stared at a jug of orange juice for twelve hours because it said concentrate!”

Everything went silent.

“So,” I said a few seconds later, “did it—”

“PERSECUTING POULTRY OF POLYISOPRENE!”

There was a flash of light, and something long and yellow materialized in Lingua Oris' hands. I had to rub my eyes, convinced that they were playing tricks on me. But when I opened them again, it was still there, just as mind bogglingly ridiculous as I had thought.

A rubber chicken the size of a claymore.

“My mother,” Lingua Oris roared, “was a saint among licks!”

He drew the chicken back like a baseball bat, and I closed my eyes to wait for what was coming next…

“SQUAWNK!”

My vision went white as pain exploded inside my skull, and a sense of weightlessness came over me. Somewhere in the back of my head, I realized I was flying across the throne room. I braced myself as best I could before—

I hit the stone wall on the far side of the room and crumpled to the floor in a pile of pain and regret.

“Ten points of damage!” Lingua Oris called. “That brings you down to your last three!”

Slowly, I forced my body to move. His turn was over, and that meant I was up.

“Rhyen, use one of the cherry sodas in your bindle!” Hamstring said.

The sodas! I reached toward the bandana that was tied to Splartacus. A cherry soda could heal me for ten CP. With shaking fingers, I started to untie the bindle…

Then I stopped.

“No,” I said.

“What?” Hamstring demanded. “Why not?”

“Because that will count as my turn,” I said, shaking my head. “Yin is tied up, so she won't be able to take her turn, and if this bread heel gets to go again, he'll kill her. You know he will! That means that if I don’t use my turn to attack, you'll have to deal nineteen points of damage in one hit. Can you do that?”

“I can think of something!”

I spun to face him. “Can you do that?”

“I…” Hamstring wilted. “I don't know.”

“Then we can't risk it. But if you and I both attack, then chances are good we'll be able to finish him off before his next turn!”

“But Rhyen—”

“But nothing!” I tightened my grip on Splartacus. “I'm not sacrificing Yin to save my own life.”

“But Rhyen,” he insisted, despair filling his voice, “you're still poisoned! If you let yourself take those three points of damage…”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Three Color Points left. Three points of damage coming my way. There was only one way this was going to end.

My family appeared in my mind’s eye. Mom. Dad. Grandpa Teddy. If I died here, then what was going to happen to them? Would Ichabod still kill them if I wasn't around to suffer for it? I wanted to believe he would let them go, but I knew that slimy ball of cheese whiz better than that. Letting them go would be too big of a risk. What if they told someone what he had done? What if Grandpa Teddy used his position on the Council of Shnoob to act against him? He wasn't the kind of klaon to leave loose ends untied like that.

And that was assuming he didn't just kill them all in a fit of impotent rage.

But they weren't here right now, and Yin was. I couldn't do anything to save them, but I could save my best friend. To do otherwise would have been to turn my back on her, and…I just couldn't do that. Not even for my own family.

I opened my eyes and turned to Hamstring.

“Then finish this moldy crouton off and get her out of here for me,” I said softly.

Tears pricked at my eyes, but I refused to let them out. Fighting a bad guy? Saving my friend's life? This was as good a death as I could hope for. I just wished I could look at Hamstring's real face one more time…call him by his true name…

No.

I shut those thoughts out and turned to Lingua Oris. This was no time to get emotional. That would only distract me, possibly make me screw up, and that was the last thing I needed right now. I raised Splartacus and charged at my enemy.

This was for Yin.

This was for Hamstring.

This was for—”

“Natural one,” Lingua Oris said.

I fell flat on my face.

NEXT CHAPTER 11/12/25