The Cracked Keg
It was nearly midnight when Anthony arrived in Syndril. It was nearly midnight because he was on a quest, and quests of importance must always start sometime in the middle of the night. Why? Well because that's just a lot more impressive than if Anthony had simply left early in the morning, had an uneventful ride through the mountains, and arrived in town early enough that it would have been daylight, and someone might have warned him away from the Cracked Keg, but that would have been boring.
So it was nearly midnight, and Anthony rode a mare black as coal, and wore a cape black as night, with crushed red velvet trim and a sword with a name more impressive than his horse. She was called Rachel. The sword was called Vorsiminith, which meant something complicated in draconic and was probably talked about in several grim prophecies, none of which had the audacity to ask why a sword might be named something in draconic in the first place, or why a dragon would even think to wield a sword. Anthony had never asked this either, because he was stupid and overly confident and that is why he stepped into the Cracked Keg without so much as a thought to the contrary, threw open his arms and shouted, "BLAST!"
Then someone smashed his head in with a half-empty bottle of Dwarvish Delight.
"Third one this week," Thogg boasted proudly. He was the bartender, and owner of the Cracked Keg. Had Anthony arrived in the day, he might have noticed the goblin standing watch outside, or the gargoyle roosting on the roof. But Anthony had not noticed, and now he was dead. He did notice now, as his soul left the smashed up bits of his body and floated through the roof, and it occurred to him that perhaps this whole ordeal was a bad idea from the start. He was still trying to determine where he had gone wrong when something came and took him away.
He made a mistake about a half day's ride back, when he came to a fork in the road, and confused Syndril with Syndroll. Syndroll was well-known for its pretty ladies, fast horses, and a fortune-teller had once declared that in three-hundred years it would be the home to FastCar, a sort of racing game played with carriages but no horses, chasing each other around in a circle. She was promptly put to death, upon the discovery that she was a real-estate prospector.
Bernard Forsyth had made the same mistake as Anthony Charisman, but Bernard was a little smarter than Anthony, and this is why he was alive and well, sipping ale in the back corner of the Cracked Keg wearing a carrot atop his nose, and little pointed ears cut from the cloth of his pockets, which now had two big holes in them. Thogg squinted at him as he came through the door.
"What're you?" the old troll asked.
Bernard started to sweat immediately. "I'm a one-nosed gurt?" he said, sounding more like he was asking than declaring.
"Never heard of a one-nosed gurt," Thogg answered, rubbing his chin.
"Well, you have now," Bernard said, chuckling. At that moment there were two thoughts in is head. No, three thoughts.
His first thought was that he should've said he was a halfling. A tall halfling. More of a three-quarterling. That's half-halfling, half wholeling, for the mathematicians in the audience, whom will be burned at the stake later for suggesting the world is causal. (Ale will be served, please RSVP)
His second thought was that maybe he should have just gone back the other way, but that meant a night without ale, and well, on a quest like this it was hard to imagine not drinking ale. Of course, Bernard didn't realize he was on a quest yet, but soon would, and that was enough to give the man the idea that he ought to be drinking.
The third thought was something akin to screaming, and Bernard's own voice shouting over and over again WE ARE GOING TO DIE.
But he didn't die, Anthony did, and then everyone forgot the one-nosed whatever sitting in the corner. It was an easy thing to do, ignoring Bernard. He didn't even have a cape, or a fancy sword like the one Anthony had brought. A rock golem was sitting in the fireplace was using it to pick his teeth. He looked like a bald man now, the mossy patch that had looked like it was supposed to be his hair had burned away. No one thought to ask him why he was sitting in the fireplace, thought Bernard nearly jumped out of his fake nose when it spoke to him.
"Try the dragon ale," he, it, had said. "It'll put fire in your belly." Then the rock golem burped up a flame.
"Thanks, I'll uhm, remember that," Bernard said, staring. Then a roach skittered past, and the rock golem plucked it from the ground and ate it in two bites. Unfortunately when he finished, Bernard was still standing there, staring. There was a brief moment of silence as the two tried to figure each other out.
Bernard had never been a lucky man, which is why the golem took his slack-jawed stare to be an expression of hunger, and tossed a sizable beetle into it. Wide-eyed, Bernard had only just barely managed to snap his mouth closed in time to avoid the thing. It landed on his nose and crawled through his hair and down the back of his shirt.
"Saving it for later, good plan, good plan!" the rock golem said, and Bernard walked stiffly to a table in the back. He was trapped now, in a tavern of monsters. Not a single human in sight, save the dead one on the floor. He thought he spotted one at first, and nearly slid into a chair across from her, but then when he tried to introduce himself he tripped over the young lady's considerable tail. It was long enough to stretch all the way out the door if she not had the emerald and black tail curled up beneath her table. She giggled and smacked him on the butt with the whip-like tip of it as he hurried past, red-faced.
When he finally found a table alone, in the deepest, darkest corner, he was met with his second problem of the night. Yes, the ale. Yes it was important enough to stay. No one came into a tavern and didn't order something to drink. It was an insult of the highest order, akin to calling a man a horse-thief, stealing his daughter away in the middle of the night, or only tipping 5% on a 20 silver meal, because the server did the same amount of work as the one that brought the 10 silver meal.
The barmaiden turned out to be a satyr. She was young and pretty and full-figured and had a pair of horns sprouting from the top of her head. She made a dainty little "click click" as she walked about on her little cloven hooves. Bernard smiled dumbly at her, thinking how pretty she looked. This was part of the magic of course, and he should have known better, but what fun would an adventure be if everyone didn't do things just because they knew better. Why, people might simply sit outside of a dungeon and wait for the denizens to come out for food. That was hardly heroic. Bernard was not heroic, but he liked to fancy that he could be if he needed to be. So he smiled at the waitress and said hello, and so had to be asked a second time what he wanted.
"Oh uhm... uhm...." he stumbled over his words. What did they even serve in monster taverns? Oh, right. "Dragon Ale."
"Dragon ale...?" she asked, arching a brow at him.
"It puts fire in your belly!" he added, pounding his chest to look manly. It worked. He managed to hit right atop one of the brass buttons in his coat, and jammed the stud of it into his skin hard enough to make a little bead of blood rise from the divot. He forced a painfully transparent pained grin at her.
She smiled back and winked. "I'm sure it does," she said, and left to fill the order.
Bernard was so relieved when she came back, that he drank the entire bottle before she came back around, and then another. He went to bed with the third.
It wash not a good idea, sheeping in the monser tav... tav... place, but.... Bernard! Yes, Bernard, didn't care. It wash better than sheeping outshide, with the sheep. oh yesh, sheep, he should shee them now, bouncing, bouncing, turning into kangaroos and bouncing shome more.
In the morning, Bernard was hung over. In fact he was hanging over the side of the bed, having managed to sleep on it sideways with his legs dangling off one side and his head off the other. He also had a headache, from the booze. So he drank the rest of the third bottle, which he found lying on the bed with him. Only it was laid out like an infant, with the mouth of it lying on the pillow, and the sheets drawn up around it, neatly tucked in. This was good, because it meant he somehow didn't spill it in his drunken stupor the night before.
Bernard guzzled the rest of the bottle in one go, belched, and slammed his fist on the bedside table in victory. He also slapped his spade hard enough against the floor to make someone below start pounding on the ceiling with a broom. Well, that felt odd.
Slowly he turned and inspected the new appendage. It was long and red, with a cream underside, and nearly as long as he was tall. It tapered down until it flared into a fleshy spade, characteristic of the local sort of dragon. He burped again, and this time the vapors caught fire, nearly singing off his eyebrows as he wobbled forward, feeling quite dizzy.
"It'll put fire in your belly!" someone said. It was Bernard. He put his hand on his belly and groaned, his innards were churning like the time he ate some bad chili. His shirt grew taut, and split along the hand-stitched seams. The stitching on his boots was thicker, more robust. Each little stitch popped open with an audible popping, like the cords of a sail caught in too high a gale. His eyes sank down and he looked at the savage claws that had slid through his boots like a knife through hot butter. A sharp knife through hot butter. A hot, sharp knife through hot butter. He wiggled his toes and giggled drunkenly as the deep maroon talons squirmed in the air.
His belly rumbled again, and he tried to take a step, then sank to the floor and purred drunkenly as he grew. His tail thrashed around like a snake, knocking over books and candlesticks and all those other sorts of things that seemed too refined to be in a room in a monster tavern, but maybe monsters had better taste than he had first thought? or maybe they were just on the shelves to be knocked over. Monsters liked knocking things over. Bernard liked knocking things over.
He had almost managed to hit a neatly positioned candle stick when the new paws squirmed out of his growing belly and raked the air with his new talons. He purred drunkenly in approval, and his forked tongue flicked from his mouth and tasted the air. Yes, good, a dragon. He could knock over a lot of things as a dragon. Wait. No. The feeling of his skin crawling stopped short, right around his waist. Half dragon. Half as fun? No, no this was okay. He had four legs, and a dragon's tail, and a dragon's pudgy belly. Plenty of room for more of that delightful ale, and a tail with more hitting force than an angry bull, but not more than an angry chimera, because some of those had dragon tails.
Bernard very abruptly sobered up, as the dragon ale in his human stomach drained neatly into his dragon stomach and the added mass brought his BAC down, so he felt more sober, despite having drank no less.
At this time we would like to ask if anyone has followed the aforementioned calculations. If so, please raise your hand, and an executioner will be with you shortly. No one? What about you in the back. Yes, you. Ah, good, well you seem to uhm... well we won't execute you. Unless... do you have a fancy sword? Oh, you don't? Well that's a pity. Fancy a pint?
We rejoin our not-a-hero downstairs in the pub, where he's finding it's harder to navigate stairs with four legs than a housecat makes it look. After collecting himself from a heap at the bottom of the stairs he found his way to the bar, leaving a trail of banged up red scales in his wake. They looked like blood. Or rose petals. Since it was not a wedding, we'll go with blood. Sparkling shards of crystallized blood, like a dragon's scales after falling down the stairs.
"What's the meaning of this?!" Bernard demanded. The little satyr girl smiled back.
"Fire in belly!" she said, pointing and grinning.
Bernard fumed. His tail thumped on the ground. "I know that!"
The satyr girl looked puzzled. "Isn't that why you ordered it?"
Bernard looked puzzled back. "What?"
"You were in that goofy disguise. I figured, now you can fit in," she said, and grinned again, then held up a bottle, swirling its amber contents around.
Bernard felt his forked tongue seek out the little droplets of it still left in his mouth. He did want another drink, but felt that might be the tongue's way of finding a more dragony muzzle to fit a dragony tongue into. This made sense.
What didn't make sense was that the satyr girl was actually not half-human. She was half-fox, and half-goat. As was the naga girl, now that he thought about it. Then Bernard realized that he too was half fox. Was he before? He didn't think so. Ah, no, he wasn't. He could tell because his tail felt so strange, swaying behind him like that. He felt it would feel different if he hadn't had one before. It was a sign. "A tell-tail sign." he said aloud. The satyr giggled.
"You talk funny," she said.
Bernard tipped his hat to her, and strode outside. Things like his happened for a reason. In this case the reason was he had accidentally drank three liters of dragon ale on an empty stomach. Wasn't that odd? He started with an empty stomach, and ended up with an empty stomach, and one full one. The ale sloshed in his draconic belly. He burped again, it caught fire. He vowed never to burp again. Then burped again, this time burning the feather off his hat. He took off his nose and ate it.
In the distance, rising high into the sky was a monolithic tower of white marble. As Bernard looked at it, it began to snow all around him. He was half-human again, but still half-dragon. Then the snow stopped, and his foxyness returned.
"What do you suppose that means?" he asked.
"It's a battle, of mages," someone said, but he wasn't important enough for a name.
Thinking that a mage might be able to help him, Bernard took off toward the tower. Though it was very tall, and the walk took some number of days, the mages were still battling when he arrived. This meant the fight was very important, for mages were not known to sit around lobbing spells at each other for days on end unless it was very important. When Bernard arrived at the foot of the tower, there was a girl standing outside.
It started to snow again. The girl turned human, then the snow stopped, and the girl turned back into a vixen. She waved a little at Bernard, and then squinted up at the top of the tower, where red and blue magic shot back and forth.
"Any idea what's going on up there?" Bernard asked.
The girl shrugged. A fireball rocketed down like a comet and hit her, exploding into a million little bits of sparkling light Bernard shrieked in terror and stumbled back. He fell on his rump and tumbled all the way over backward, then scurried to get all four legs back beneath him.
His companion seemed alright. She was still standing, uninjured, though her plain gray skirt was all shredded around the edges. She frowned down at something, and a forked tongue slipped from her mouth. They both just looked at each other in bewilderment.
"Are you okay...?" Bernard asked.
"I..." the girl started, then yelped as she shot up about three feet, a massive snake's tail sprawling from her hips. It was black and silver and glossy, matching the grey of her eyes.
Bernard stood transfixed at the new naga.
"I'm going to come back later..." the girl said, seeming more irritated than anything, and slithered away.
Bernard thought to go after her, but decided she probably knew better. He didn't. He went inside.
The problem with tall towers, is that they're very tall. Though they look quite nice, and Bernard often got a nice view of the land as he tumbled past, being not very good at climbing stairs still. By the time he reached the top, his tail was dragging and the spade made a little thump-thump-thump as it slumped against each step.
The top floor, where mages traditionally had overwrought battles with colorful lights and more fire than a volcano could muster, was covered in a thin haze of mist and fog and smoke that seemed like it would never clear.
"Uhm... is anyone here?" he asked.
Something shot past, it was blue and moving quickly, leaving a trail of feathers in her wake. A grey fox raced after her, with a magic wand in his hand.
"WINTER FOREVER!" the little blue thing called.
"WINTER NEVER!" the fox mage shouted, chasing her around the room. This went on for another twenty minutes, with Bernard looking on in dismay. Until at last the fox pinned the little blue thing in a corner.
"Now it's going to be spring!" Virmir declared and unloaded a volley of raging red comets from his wand.
"I am the cold wind of winteRNK!" Feather answered, then took a blast of magic to the chest. She tried to duck for cover, and spun around with a mirror. The second and third bolts slammed into it and bounced back at Virmir. He dodged the first one neatly, watching it skate by.
"HA HA! EN GARDRRNK!" The third got him right in the chest.
The little blue one started to drag herself away by the forelegs, as her hindquarters were drawn up by magic. She writhed and squirmed as her hindlegs were drawn together and a long body of jet black and sapphire blue scales sprawled from her waist.
She rose from the ground, her muzzle shortening a little and her wings flaring out even bigger than before. She turned to Virmir and put her hand on her hips, where soft blue fur gave way to dark scales. Her chest took on a curved aspect that made Bernard blush.
Virmir's chest took on a curved aspect that made Virmir blush. Then she rose up to the winged mage's height, not by choice, but because a lengthy serpent's body had whisked out of her waist so quickly that it carried her vulpine half up faster than it could sprawl out behind her. "TREES! Look what you did! Why were you even up here?!"
"YOU WERE MELTING ALL THE NICE SNOW!"
The two half-snakes glared at each other, one glaring fireballs, the other, ice-daggers. Not literally, of course, but Bernard somehow sensed this is what they would be using.
"HEY!" Bernard shouted, stamping his foot and slapping the floor hard enough with the flat of his spade to make it sting. "OW!" he barked.
"WHAT?!" the mages shouted back in unison.
"It's spring, it's supposed to melt," Bernard said, suddenly feeling that it was a very bad thing to have garnered their attention at this particular moment.
"SEE?! He agrees!" Virmir said, pointing. Unfortunately this was done with the hand still clutching the wand, and Bernard got a brand new tell-tale tail.
*No actual noses were harmed in this story, Bernard was still wearing the carrot.
