The Chronicle of Heloise and Grimple – A Serial Adventure (Part 2)

For those who dig fun, rollicking fantasy adventures, we hereby present Part 2 of The Chronicle of Heloise and Grimple (for more background on the series and to read Part 1: All’s Well That Begins Well, click here). Periodically throughout the series, you, Dear Readers, will be presented with decision points at the end of installments, and it is YOUR collective feedback that will help determine the fates of our heroes. So pay attention and choose (un)wisely—your next series of choices will be presented at the end of Part 3!

On with our tale…

Part 2: Off to See (and Hog Tie, and Coerce) the Wizard!

Grimple cocked his head to the side, weighing our options. After a moment, he held up three fingers, pantomimed swinging his club, and coughed.

“Kidnap a wizard…well, it IS the most direct course of action, though clubbing one in the head probably isn’t going to be helpful, consciousness being necessary for spellcasting and all that.” I flicked the reins, spurring my horse into a trot. “All right. Let’s continue on to Bristow as we planned—I’ll perform tonight to cover our room, and then we’ll hunt down a wizard tomorrow. Sound good?”

Grimple nodded. Truth be told, I was coming to like this mute version of my companion—he never had been the most sparkling of conversationalists, and his voice sounded a little bit like a rockslide spewing out of a vomiting frog. Maybe I would pull the wizard aside and see if he could make Grimple look like himself to restore his very useful intimidating qualities, but still keep him quiet…

I wouldn’t actually do that, incidentally. I would just think about it. Really hard.

We reached Bristow a few hours later, just as afternoon was turning to dusk. There was an inn with the less-than-savory-sounding name of The Wicked Wench that I’d performed at a few times in the past, and I figured it was as good a place to head as any. After a brief negotiation with the proprietor (he proposed rooming arrangements that would have included his sleeping on top of me; I threatened to remove the head from his favorite ale, if you know what I mean—and not by blowing it off; he laughed; I discreetly slid a very sharp knife through his breeches until its tip came into contact with a much softer tip; he laughed again, nervously; he sweated; he peed a little; we agreed to very generous terms, including room, board, and half of the receipts from the entry fee he would charge for patrons to hear my performance; I cleaned my knife thoroughly—all in all, a pretty standard arrangement), we retired to our room to freshen up before the evening’s performance.

Grimple and I enjoyed a simple but filling stew before the show, and as the patrons filed in, I tried to do a little intelligence gathering. It seemed wizards were in short supply in Bristow, but there was one who lived in a cottage just north of the main section of the town who sounded promising—something of a hermit, relatively young but with well-regarded skills, and currently in town and not out adventuring (based on an eyewitness sighting earlier that day). Grimple and I nodded to each other, our target set, and I proceeded to turn The Wicked Wench into the Cacophonous Courtesan. No soft and stirring elven ballads in a place like this; tonight was all about drinking songs, and the louder—and more repetitive—the better. Sometimes you’ve got to give the people what they want.

After (too) many toasts to my unmatched skill by patrons both infatuated and inebriated, we retired to our room, slept soundly, and awoke the next morning ready to hog-tie ourselves a wizard.

We departed the inn shortly after sunrise, following a hearty breakfast of porridge, quail eggs, and freshly baked bread, and headed toward the northern end of town, which, at this time of morning, was eerily quiet. Nearly all of Bristow’s activity—social and commercial—was concentrated around the town square, so this was a quiet residential neighborhood that, based on the quality of the dwellings, housed some of the town’s more prosperous citizens.

“Quaint surroundings for a wizard.” I looked at Grimple, who coughed into his hand. “Well, according to the portly gentleman we spoke with, his house should be right at the end of this…there. That must be the place.” I pointed to a sign that hung amidst a group of plants and shrubs in the house’s front yard, a sign that said, “evil Wizard.”

“No respect for proper capitalization, these evil wizards.” I clucked my tongue. “Or, maybe he just thinks he’s some sort of magical ee cummings.” I shrugged. “I feel less bad about assaulting someone who affirmatively identifies as evil and shows wanton disregard for the rules of grammar, however. Come on…let’s case the place.”

I’d be lying if I said this was the first time Grimple and I had engaged in the time-honored art of breaking-and-entering, but the less said about our particular experience, the better, particularly given that we may or may not still have outstanding bounties on our heads. In short, however, I had no concerns about our ability to force our way—stealthily—into the wizard’s home. The evil wizard’s home. What a tosser.

Grimple could move with surprising stealth when necessary, and we made a quick circuit of the house. A window on the east side, which appeared to open into a guest bedroom, seemed the best point of entry. Of course, our first task was to figure out whether the wizard had set magical wards, which we assumed he had.

I reached into my pack and pulled out a long, winged rod with a two snake-like pieces of rubber wrapped around it—properly called a caduceus, but only scholars and douche bags call it that, so I’ll just call it a long, winged rod with two snake-like pieces of rubber wrapped around it. The rubber was enchanted so that in the presence of any magical wards, it would begin to…ah, yes—do exactly that. The snakes writhed up and down the rod, looking very much like, well, the type of dancers gainfully employed by establishments that proper ladies don’t frequent, but Grimple does. Interestingly, it’s not because he enjoys the sight of human ladies grinding against shiny metal poles…he actually just admires the poles, and is always trying to talk proprietors of such establishments into giving him one to take as a weapon. Grimple is a bit off, even for a hill giant.

Grimple gestured toward the house and raised an eyebrow as he watched my rod twitch.

Let me rephrase that.

Grimple gestured toward the house and raised an eyebrow as he watched my magical ward detector detect a magical ward. “Don’t worry,” I said, stuffing the rod deep into my bag (come on, people…I can’t rephrase everything), “I’ve got this.” I reached down into a pouch on my belt and pulled out a gold ring, slipping it onto my left middle finger (it was a bit big, and owing to that finger having once been broken in a bar fight, it had an enlarged knuckle suited for the task). I murmured a few words of elvish, which caused the ring to glow bright blue…a moment later, the wards around the house turned blue in turn before disappointing away into nothingness. Handy thing, this ring. Too bad it’s only got two more charges left.

“Should be clear now,” I said, “let’s go.” I pushed gingerly against the window frame, perhaps not quite as confident in my magic ring as I sounded. Fortunately, it seemed to have done the trick, as I was neither jolted into oblivion nor transformed into a salamander upon making contact with the house (what’s the deal with wizards and turning things into amphibians, anyway?). With the help of a small crowbar, I managed to jimmy the window open enough to slip inside. Normally, Grimple wouldn’t have been able to follow through such a small opening, but, in his current state, he had an even easier time of it than I did.

We found ourselves standing in the midst of one of the coziest and most welcoming rooms I’d ever been in. A beautiful bed, complete with a soft mattress and fluffy feather pillows, sat in the center of the room next to a stunning vanity. Little touches made the place feel charmingly homey—tiny lavender soaps, miniature knick knacks, a bowl of mixed nuts, complete with a nutcracker…for an evil wizard, this guy sure knew how to make a houseguest feel welcome.

Ignoring the incongruity of the room with the homeowner’s chosen profession, we crept into the hall. Up ahead, in what I assumed was the main living area, we heard a muffled voice muttering and cursing. I turned to Grimple and put a finger to my lips; he rolled his eyes, as if to say, “I’m a hill giant, not a verbeeg—I know enough to be quiet, you idiot.” I shrugged. You can never be too careful around evil wizards. Or hill giants.

We moved the rest of the way down the hall and I peered around the corner—sure enough, there was our man, stupid conical hat and all. His back was to us and he appeared to be examining a scroll. I pulled a gag from my bag (hmmm…there may be a song in there somewhere) and nodded to Grimple, who led the charge.

We burst into the room and, before the wizard could sputter out even a single confused syllable, Grimple had him in an unbreakable grip, arms pinned to his sides, and I was slipping the gag expertly into his mouth (it’s probably best not to ask why I’m so skilled at this particular activity). As Grimple held him, I took out some fine silk rope and looped it around his arms, handing it over to Grimple to make sure it was tied tightly. A moment later, Grimple nodded, satisfied, as the bound and gagged wizard lay flopping around on the floor like an angry mackerel, his ridiculous hat having rolled away the moment he hit the floor.

Whew. Step one accomplished. Now, for step two.

“Listen up, ‘evil Wizard,’” I said, kneeling down and cupping his chin to force him to look up at me. “We need you to cast a spell. Do as we ask and we won’t harm you; refuse, and my friend here—who is not, in fact, a gnome, but is, rather, a very perturbed hill giant who is under a permanent illusion enchantment, will pop your head off like the cork of a fine bottle of elvish bubbly. Only your head probably won’t bounce off the wall; more likely, it will splat. Not that you’ll feel it at that point.” The wizard’s eyes were wide. I smiled. I rather enjoy playing the heavy every once in a while.

“Now then,” I said, “clearly, I don’t want to remove that gag until we’re sure you’re going to cooperate, particularly since I wouldn’t trust an evil wizard any farther than I can throw one—though probably as far as Grimple could throw one. Which is pretty far, based on how far he can throw an undead cow.” The wizard raised an eyebrow. “Yes, they’re a thing.” I sighed. “Anyway, evil wizard, we need you to dispel the enchantment so that he—”

The wizard began angrily screaming through his gag; it sounded vaguely like he was saying, “meeville gizzard.” I looked at Grimple, who shook his head. The wizard persisted, thrashing and shouting. I slipped a knife out of my boot and held it to his throat, which calmed him down considerably. “Against my better judgment, I’m going to lower your gag…but, if you say one word in a language I don’t understand, this knife slides into your throat. Got it?”

The wizard nodded slightly, wincing as the tip of my knife dug into his pale flesh. “Good.” Grimple held his arms even tighter as I reached out and slowly slid the gag down.

“I’m not an evil wizard!” screamed the evil wizard.

I smirked. Always big and bad until they have a knife at their throats. “Oh? Then the sign out front, the one with the poor grammar, is just a funny joke?” I shook my head. “Look, you can be evil, but that doesn’t mean you should flout the rules of capitalization. Why, if anything, I would think that, as a wizard, you—”

The wizard cut me off. “What on earth are you talking ab…ah! I know what happened. Damn those little bastards! I’ll turn them into newts, all of them!”

“Seriously, what IS the obsession with lizards? And what do you mean ‘little bastards’?”

The evil wizard tried to rise to his feet, but Grimple held him firmly. “Release me at once! You can’t just break into a man’s home and treat him like some sort of thug. Take me outside and I can clear this up. Damn those kids!”

“Kids?” I looked at Grimple, who shrugged. It was such an odd request that I was inclined to grant it. “All right—walk slowly…if this blade isn’t touching your neck at any point, I start getting stabby.” The wizard let out a resigned sigh and nodded slightly again. Grimple let him get up and loosened the rope, though still held his arms, and I walked next to him, the point of my knife pressed against his jugular. He led us first to another room, a workshop; there, he asked permission to pick up a rag that he doused with a strong-smelling substance. After that, he directed us toward the front door and, a moment later, the three of us stood in front of his sign. “‘evil Wizard’ I read again. Seems pretty straightforward.”

The wizard stuck his toe out and moved a giant weed to the side, revealing a previously obscured comma. “evil, Wizard” the sign now read.

“Huh. You’re even worse at grammar than I thought.” I began to worry that a wizard this careless with punctuation wouldn’t be powerful enough to remove Grimple’s enchantment.

“Here,” he said, holding out the rag. “Use this to clean the spot on the sign next to ‘evil.’” I gave him a dubious look. “Put the gag back in if you want to! Just do it.”

I set the gag back in place, took the rag, and proceeded to clean. A layer of paint quickly coated the rag, its removal revealing the emergence of the letter “K.” “Kevil, Wizard,” I said. “What’s a Kevil?”

“I am Kevil!” shouted the perhaps not evil wizard as I removed the gag once again. “It’s my name. And I’m a wizard. Just not an evil one. And, for the record, I am actually quite a skilled grammarian. The notion that I would both fail to capitalize the first letter of a word on a sign and misuse a comma is preposterous. I’m not ee cummings. More like ee DUMBings, if you ask me.” He smiled, apparently pleased with his attempt at “humor. “Stupid neighborhood kids think it’s so funny to mess with my sign.” He shook his head in disgust.

“Hmmm.” I exchanged glances with Grimple, who looked sheepish. “Well, this didn’t go exactly according to plan.”

“No, I’d say it didn’t,” said the wizard. “In fact, I’d—”

I quickly put the gag in place. “Sorry about that—I just don’t want to be turned into an amphibian of some sort.” Kevil tried to protest, but I held up a hand to shush him. “Save it—all wizards are perverts with amphibian fetishes. I know it to be true.” In fact, I very much knew it NOT to be true, but it kept Kevil off balance and gave me a moment to think.

“All right, we owe you an apology for restraining you against your will. And calling you evil, I suppose, though just because you CLAIM not to be an evil wizard doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not, you know.” I removed the gag from his mouth. “Here’s the deal—we need your help. My friend here, Grimple—as you can probably tell, he’s not exactly your average, run-of-the-mill gnome.” Grimple still had ahold of Kevil so tightly that the wizard’s hands were starting to turn white due to lack of blood flow. “I mentioned my friend’s predicament earlier. We need to undo the enchantment, but we don’t currently have funds to purchase that sort of service.”

“And you thought hog tying me was a good way to get me to cooperate?”

Grimple and I exchanged glances. He coughed. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I get a lot of bad advice from people I’ve never met.”

“Maybe if you’d just tried asking me, you moronic thugs…”

“Would you have said yes?”

Kevil’s harsh expression softened as he looked at Grimple. “I was an orphan…my parents died when I was two. A family of hill giants took me in and raised me as their own. I’d do anything for a hill giant who needed my help.” Grimple relaxed his grip.

“Really?” I said, somewhat incredulous.

Kevil ripped his arms free from Grimple, and, faster than we could react, whipped out a wand. “No! Are you KIDDING me? What family of hill giants would raise a human, you fool? Do hill giants even have families?” He looked at Grimple with distaste. “They’d probably just eat each other if they lived under the same roof!” Kevil brandished the wand. “Now then…let’s see…what should I turn you into…”

I looked at Grimple. “Five gold coins says it’s salamanders.” I looked at Kevil. “Pervert.”

“What? Why, I…what??” he sputtered. “Of course it won’t be salamanders! It will be…it will be…” he trailed off, looking thoughtful.

“It will be…?” I prompted, helpfully. I was curious to know what I was going to live out my remaining days as.

Kevil wrinkled his nose. “This is the longest conversation I’ve had in years.” He didn’t look old; not older than 30, certainly. “Hmmm.”

“Hmmm?”

“Let me just see,” Kevil muttered as he waved his wand around and then barked out an arcane syllable.

“Not geckos!” I shouted as, I shamefully admit, I dove to the floor and covered my head. I really don’t like lizards.

I looked back up a moment later to see Kevil staring at Grimple, stroking his beard. “Strange…very strange. It’s almost as if the enchantment is…bah! Only one way to find out.” He raised the wand again, uttered a few unintelligible words, and pointed the wand at Grimple. A flash of blue light shot from the wand, and Grimple disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

“What did you do??” I shouted. “Do you know how hard it is to find an adventuring partner who has the strength of five men and isn’t remotely interested in bedding me, you idiot?! Where am I going to find a replacement for him? Huh? HUH??”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Kevil. “Look.”

I looked at the spot where Grimple had stood a moment before. As the smoke began to clear, I could see a form starting to emerge from the swirly cloud…

Is Grimple alive?? Is he back to normal? IS HE A NEWT? Keep your eyes (metaphorically, not literally) peeled for our next installment, which will be posted in the next few weeks! In the meantime, Happy Holidays to one and all!

Update: click here for Part 3: Oh, What a Tangled Web We Bludgeon…