Flicker the Fantastical Fearless Flame Thrower fluttered out of the cave and reported to her comrades. “The Duskwalker’s not in there,” she told them, “unless he’s a bear.”
Zulgen the ranger raised an eyebrow. “There’s a bear in there?” It was more conversation than the group usually heard from him at once.
“Bears, plural,” the tiny bard corrected him, “two of them. So I say let’s get on out of here as quick as we can.” Flicker started flying back towards the path.
Chen-Lo, the group’s resident wizard, didn’t follow. He stared curiously at the mouth of the cave. “What were the bears doing?” He asked.
“Sleeping, I guess? Come on.” Flicker did not like the glint in his eye.
Chen looked over at his wife, Elanor. “Are we low on rations?” he asked.
“Not even slightly,” she replied instantly, but her conscience dictated that she double check, so she pulled out the group’s Bag of Holding. The bag technically belonged to her husband–a gift from an archmage they’d rescued–but since Chen had proven terrible at keeping track of what was in it, the group had decided he could no longer be trusted with it. As a cleric of Talos the Storm God, and therefore ostensibly the most responsible person in this extremely irresponsible group, the bag was now Elanor’s charge.
“We have–160 rations,” Elanor confirmed after a quick inventory. She knew exactly what her husband was thinking, and decided to pre-emptively nix it. “We do not need any more.”
Chen nudged the ranger. “Hey man,” he said, “you wanna eat bear for dinner?”
Zulgen raised an interested eyebrow.
Elanor rolled her eyes. “We don’t need the food–or the fight. Who knows what else we’ll run into before we find the Duskwalker.”
“We won’t have to fight them!” Chen insisted.
“Let me guess–you’re gonna chuck a fireball into the cave.”
Chen looked persecuted. “Who says?”
Elanor scoffed. “It’s been your solution to everything since I met you. House full of sleeping vampires? Fireball. Night hag’s windmill that may or may not still be full of kidnapped children? Fireball. Camp full of hostile-but-not-yet-actively-attacking-us gypsies? Fireball! WEREWOLVES? FIREBALL!”
Flicker made a face. “If that’s the plan, I’ll be over here.” She started flying toward a tree several feet away.
Chen seemed completely unphased by his wife’s tirade. “You in?” He asked Zulgen.
“You know my answer,” the ranger replied. “Violence is always the solution.”
“Well, I’m not,” Elanor announced. “I’ll be over here with Flicker.”
“It’ll be fine!” Chen insisted.
“I’m not wasting spells because you picked an unnecessary fight!” Elanor retorted. “Mark my words: you’re gonna wind up fighting flaming bears. And I am not healing you.”
The men watched Elanor storm off and readied their weapons and spells.
Elanor sulked under Flicker’s tree, watching at a distance as Chen tossed a fireball into the cave and it erupted in an echoing boom. The first bear appeared almost instantly, its fur still ablaze.
“There’s one,” counted Flicker.
As Zulgen took aim with his bow, a second bear reared up behind the first, smoke seeping off of its pelt.
“And that’s two,” Elanor finished.
Moments later, with a combination of marksmanship and magic missiles, the two men had one bear down, and the second teetering on the edge of exhaustion. Suddenly, a roar came from the mouth of the cave. A third bear reared up, patches of fur singed and blackened.
“I thought you said there were only two!” Chen yelled in Flicker’s direction, exasperated.
Flicker shrugged. “Guess I miscounted,” she yelled back.
Several hours and miles after the bears were unnecessarily destroyed, the group had seen and heard evidence that they were definitely on the right path to the Duskwalker’s cave. Unfortunately, that path was through a labyrinthine jungle, full of traps, monsters and strange artifacts.
Zulgen was scouting cautiously to the east, with Chen at his side. Chen was pouting a bit. Apparently, his wife thought that post-battle with slobbering acid creatures in the middle of a monster-filled jungle was ‘not romantic’.
“Dead end this way,” Zulgen called as loud as he dared over to Elanor and Flicker. “What about over there?”
Elanor took a few steps south and checked again for traps. She didn’t see any… So she took a cautious step forward.
Instantly, she was launched twenty feet in the air, landing hard on the ground with her armor clattering raucously and the breath knocked from her lungs.
Before she could bring herself to her feet, they were surrounded by small, brown and green goblin-like creatures.
The group groaned in unison.
They’d fought these things before. The creatures were evolved from plants, so they could regenerate when injured. They all remembered that if they injured the creatures in certain ways, the wounds would not heal themselves.
Unfortunately, none of them remembered what those ways were.
Flicker was throwing psychic damage spells at them, hoping it would work. Zulgen was counting on his enchanted sword. Elanor was hacking then apart with her Glorious Bardiche, praying the radiant damage would have some effect.
The creatures kept getting back up.
“Anyone remember what kills these things?” Chen shouted in a panic.
“Fire!” Flicker shouted as she flew in the air to evade a creature’s spear.
“Then CAST SOME FIRE,” Zulgen bellowed.
“I used up my fire spells!” Flicker shouted back.
“Elanor has one!” Chen said, fending off a creature with his sword.
“No I don’t!”
“You managed to perma-kill one of these things last time!”
“With Ice Storm!” Elanor grunted as she slashed at a creature. “I can’t cast it now, it’ll kill us too!” She took a moment to catch her breath before another enemy attacked her. “You’re the one who can shield the rest of us from collateral damage when you cast spells!”
“You’re the one who can LITERALLY CAST FIREBALL,” Flicker added pointedly.
“Yeah,” Zulgen said as he shot a creature point blank in the face, “why is our wizard not casting spells when we need them most?”
“I’m trying to conserve my fireballs!” Chen retorted.
Elanor plunged her greataxe through the torso of the nearest monster, pulled it back out, splattering green blood everywhere, and turned to Chen with a look so murderous it made his testicles shrivel up slightly. “You were FINE,” she growled, “with using one on BEARS.”
Chen looked at his three companions. All of them were exhausted, bloodied, and scowling at him. Sighing, he lobbed a fireball.
Moments later, the group was standing unscathed in the epicenter of a huge blast radius. Monster corpses littered the ground around them. None of them were moving.
Flicker alighted on Elanor’s shoulder. “He couldn’t have just done that in the first place?” She muttered sarcastically.
Elanor scowled in the general direction of her husband. “I want a divorce,” she muttered back under her breath.
Laura Writes 