The Chronicle of Heloise and Grimple – A Serial Adventure (Part 3)

For those who dig fun, rollicking fantasy adventures, we hereby present Part 3 of The Chronicle of Heloise and Grimple! Be sure to check out Part 1: All’s Well That Begins Well and Part 2: Off to See (and Hog Tie, and Coerce) the Wizard! 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 path our heroes take. So pay attention and choose (un)wisely—the next such decision point comes at the end of this very chapter!

Oh, What a Tangled Web We Bludgeon…

I stepped back, nervous, as a form began to emerge from the magical cloud that had enveloped Grimple. I squeezed the handle of my dagger as I squinted, peering through the arcane haze, and as the smoke cleared, I saw…

A sickly gnome. The same sickly gnome Grimple had been before Kevil, the not evil, but apparently incompetent, wizard had tried to reverse the enchantment that masked Grimple’s true form, that of a very large hill giant.

I looked at Kevil, eyebrow raised. “Well, you get what you pay for. Or don’t get what you don’t pay for, I guess.” I sighed and motioned to my companion. “Come on, Grimple—we’ll have to think of something else.” I turned away and started to walk toward the front of the house.

“I say, by Jove, what the deuce has happened?”

I stopped walking. The voice was rich and pleasant, cultured and modulated. It was somewhere between a bass and a baritone. It was…

I turned around. It was Grimple!

“Pip pip, tally ho, and all that rubbish,” said my formerly mute partner, the voice completely at odds with his gnomish face (gnomes, incidentally, usually sound like chickens squawking underwater). “What news?”

I looked at Kevil, who could offer nothing by way of explanation, save for a very unhelpful shrug. “At least he can talk now, eh?”

“That’s not him!” I sputtered. “That’s some…some fancy-talking, uh, fancy talker!” Words were failing me, even as they appeared to be coming to Grimple more easily than they ever had.

“I assure you, Mistress Heloise, that he is I, and I am he.” Grimple stepped fully clear of the mist, and I noted that his cheeks seemed less sunken, the pallor was gone, and he hadn’t coughed once in the past minute. So, at least he had that going for him.

“Fascinating,” said Kevil, moving closer and rubbing his chin as he looked Grimple over. “Who did you say cast this enchantment?”

“This little bastard of a gnome illusionist,” I said, forgetting, for an instant, that I no longer needed to speak for Grimple. “I think it was because we beat him to a treasure.”

“Must not have been a very big treasure, given that you have nothing with which to pay me,” muttered Kevil as he circled around behind Grimple.

“Heloise, dear,” said Grimple in what I could only describe as a sheepish manner. I looked at him in shock. The only thing sheepish about him heretofore was his desire to play ram-the-lamb-with-ding-dong with a group of lady hill giants for the purpose of producing a host of little Grimples. “Your characterization of the situation, while possessed of some truth in the broad strokes, is not entirely accurate in the particulars—a result, I’m afraid, of some calculated dissembling on my part.”

“Oh, gods in Erethia…I can’t even…what did you even just say?” Prior to his transformation, getting Grimple to string together three two-syllable words was a feat; now he was tossing out two gold piece words like they were half coppers.

“What I’m saying, by Jove, is that there was something rather, shall we say, unusual about the illusionist.”

“What?” asked Kevil.

“Simply that he was, to put it tactfully, for fear of offending his people, post-living.”

“Post-living…he was a lich?” Kevil stepped back.

Grimple nodded. “Just so, and quite right.”

I shook my head. “So, wait—the gnome illusionist who enchanted you was an undead wizard?”

Grimple smiled again, patiently, and not, I thought, a little patronizingly. “No, dear—he wasn’t a gnome in the slightest. An elf, actually—well, formerly an elf. Dead now. Or undead, rather. Partially a skeleton, really—lots of ribs, hips, remnants of viscera, and other important inner workings of that nature quite visible.”

I suppose it would be important to note that I hadn’t actually seen Grimple get transformed. Clearly, my companion had played fast and loose with the truth when he had pantomimed to me what had happened. “I think we need the full truth, Grimple.” I grimaced. “And can you tone down the ridiculous accent? You sound like a Flandorian nobleman quoting Trembleswordian sonnets to impress some flouncing ditz of a courtesan.”

“I shall happily provide a full accounting of my transformation, but I fear the accent is beyond my control.” Grimple looked at Kevil. “Is there anything you can do, Master Kevil? Pip pip and all that with the magic?” He waggled his fingers.

Kevil shook his head. “I don’t think so. The enchantment you’re under is…highly unusual. I need to know more about what happened.” Kevil’s irritation at our invasion of his home and manhandling of his person seemed to have lessened, though I think it was only because he was so fascinated by Grimple’s condition. I wasn’t about to complain, though. The last thing I needed as we tried to sort out this mess was an apparently not evil, probably not incompetent wizard flinging spells at me.

“Alas. I did try, Heloise, dear.”

“At least stop calling me dear—I’m older than you. By three decades.”

“Can’t be helped, dear. Seems to be coming with the accent, I’m afraid. By Jove.”

I sighed. “Fine. Just tell us what happened.”

“Ah, yes, well…it seems there was the little matter of a gambling debt. You’ll recall, Heloise, dear, when I lost my Banger?” “Banger” was what Grimple called his club. He looked mournful recalling his dear Banger, so much so that I could almost overlook the “dear” thing.

“Yes…you told me that you had to part with the club to cover a debt, but that was all you said.”

“I may, perhaps, have committed a lie of omission, then.”

I ground my teeth in frustration. “We’re supposed to be partners! We trust each other with our lives!” I shook my head. “Dammit, Grimple. Well, what’s the rest of the story?”

“I say, I truly am sorry, Heloise, dear. I did not mean to—”

“Stuff it, Grimple.”

“Tally ho. As I say, my Banger was part of the debt I owed, but my opponent, to whom I owed a rather substantial sum by the end of the night, indicated that my dear club was not sufficient restitution.”

“Wait, why on earth were you gambling with a lich in the first place?” Kevil looked perplexed. “You know, don’t grab the pointy end of a knife, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t gamble with undead wizards…these just seem like common sense life principles.”

“You pose an excellent question, Master Kevil, and I assure you that I would never have gambled with the creature had I known its true nature.”

Kevil nodded. “Disguised itself with an illusion, did it? What form did it take?”

“Well, I rather think that what form it took is unimportant, and perhaps if I can just move on to—”

“Grimple—out with it.” I tapped my foot impatiently.

Grimple sighed. “Well, if it’s absolutely imperative to the narrative…heh. Say, that’s rather a fetching rhyme, isn’t it?

“GRIMPLE!”

“Sorry, by Jove. The lich…well, he took the form of a rather, ah, well-proportioned hill giantess.”

I smacked my forehead. “Once again, your banger gets you into trouble.”

“I say, didn’t you mean to say ‘Banger’?”

“No—I wasn’t talking about your club. Not that one, anyway.”

“Fair enough. At any rate, when my opponent indicated that I owed a further debt and suggested that we meet the following night at a discreet location, I assumed that I might, perhaps, be asked to use my amorous skills to work off the remainder of my obligation. Needless to say, I am never one to welch on a bet, and so I met her…well, him, rather. It? What is the proper pronoun for a now-dead elven cross-gender illusioning arch lich?”

“Proper and polite form of address would be to ask the creature’s preference,” murmured Kevil absently as he continued to stroke his chin. He shook his head, as if bringing himself out of a trance. “So, that’s when the creature cast the enchantment on you?”

“Quite right,” said Grimple. “I met…the creature…at the appointed place; when I arrived, I saw its true nature, and before I could react—that is to say, run like hell—it uttered arcane syllables, pointed a wand at me, and, well, ‘poof,’ I believe, is the technical term. I became what you see before you, though I retain all of my strength.” He looked down at himself and shrugged. “I owe you a debt, Master Kevil, for restoring my voice. Such as it is, by Jove.”

“Putting aside your probably unforgivably breach of trust, you horse’s ass,” I said pointedly to Grimple, “what do you make of this, Kevil? Why didn’t your spell return him to normal? Not that he deserves it…”

Kevil began to pace, hands behind his back. He seemed to have completely forgotten that it was only moments ago that Grimple was pinning him to the floor. “I have a theory—but only a theory.” He took a few steps, turned, took a few more steps, turned again. “Enchantments cast by lichs are different than those cast by living mages. It’s as though…as though the way they access magic is different. Light is dark, up is down—that sort of thing. Like they’re coming at it from the other side. Which, in a sense, I guess they are. Consequently, when I cast my spell to dispel the illusion, it didn’t react with the enchantment in the way it would have if a living wizard had cast it. Instead, the effect was…unexpected. This situation is a bit like rolling dice—you know generally what the possible outcomes are, but you can’t predict exactly what you’ll get. Even knowing now that the enchantment was originally cast by a lich, I couldn’t do much more to counter the spell. I could try to dispel it again, but that might remove Grimple’s new voice and make, say, his arms revert to their normal appearance, but not the rest of him—which, I think, would be a worse outcome. It’s very tricky.” Kevil reached out and touched Grimple’s arm. “Yet, fascinating.”

“So, there’s no way to get him back to normal?” I asked.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do, no. That’s not to say the spell can’t be reversed, though. There are certain living wizards who have the necessary skills to do it, but they are very few indeed, and the odds of you getting in touch with one willing to help…”

“We don’t have the contacts or the gold. Noted. Any other options?”

“Well, the lich who cast it could certainly reverse it.”

“Grimple—if that is even your real name, you lying sack of hill giant dung—what do you think the odds of that happening are?”

“Oh, quite slim, Heloise, dear,” replied Grimple. “I highly doubt that if we go see the lich, he’ll wiggle his fingers and, ‘poof,’ Bob’s your uncle and I’m back to my normal, handsome self.”

“Well,” said Kevil. “There’s one other way.”

“What’s that?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“If the lich dies—or, rather, is destroyed, since it’s already dead—then the spell will automatically dissipate.”

“Ah, good, simple solutions are always the best. So, we’d just need to kill an impossibly powerful undead wizard.”

“Right.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “Well, that’s just great. I guess you’re stuck, Grimple.”

“But…but…Heloise, dear, if I don’t regain my true form, how are we to continue our adventures effectively?”

“I’m not sure I want to right now, frankly.”

“What about that magical well you mentioned before, eh what? What was it? The Wishing Well of Wilkington? Perhaps that might do the trick.”

Kevil blew out a deep breath. “That’s playing with fire. I’ve heard about the Well, but if you aren’t careful what you wish for…”

“Heloise, dear,” said Grimple, almost gently. “I really must find a way to be myself again. And I need your help. I know that you are angry with me, but think of the song you can write after this quest…”

Dammit. He knew me too well. I hate to say it, but I was already imagining the epic yarn I could spin about us slaying an arch lich, or even the comical tale of visiting the Wishing Well of Wilkington, misphrasing our request, and my erstwhile companion ending up as a giant hill instead of a hill giant (which, at the moment, wouldn’t have bothered me at all).

“This may seem a bit forward, given that we just met, and that you both seem to be horrible people who tried to do me considerable harm, and assumed that I had poor grammar, which still bothers me, because I most certainly not…but, I’d like to come with you,” said Kevil, surprising me. “I’ve never, well, I’ve never been on a proper quest. I’d like to test my skills in the field, if you will.”

“By Jove, good show, Kevil!” Grimple’s eyes gleamed. “What do you say, Heloise, dear? I say, there’s magic in the number three…will you do it? Will you help me?”

I sighed. “Fine. But, we do this my way.”

“By all means, Heloise dear, by all means!” Grimple reached up and clapped me on the shoulder; I stumbled forward after the inadvertently powerful blow. “So, what shall we do? Pursue the lich, or visit the Wishing Well of Wilkington?”

I pursed my lips. Which would make for the better story? And, which would we stand a better chance of surviving? I guess I knew the answer to each question, but that didn’t make the decision any easier.

I was torn. Which path should I choose?

Heloise needs your help, Dear Readers! Should she choose the epic confrontation—and almost certain death that will result—with the lich? Or the sure-to-be-unexpected results of a visit to the Well of Wilkington? Cast your votes by January 10, and come back shortly thereafter for the next incendiary installment of our terrific tale!

Update: continue on to Part 4!!