The Chronicle of Heloise and Grimple – A Serial Adventure (Part 4)

For those who dig fun, rollicking fantasy adventures, we hereby present Part 4 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 path our heroes take. So pay attention and choose (un)wisely—the next such decision point will come at the end of Part 5!

Where There’s a Well, There’s a…Giant Dragon-Like Thing That Wants to Eat Us

“The Ballad of the Well of Wilkington”

Dramatis Personae

Heloise: a clever, beautiful, honey-voiced, silver-tongued bard of exceptional, perhaps unparalleled, skill

Grimple: a smarter-than-average hill giant (which isn’t saying much) with a penchant for getting enchantments cast on him that make him look like a gnome and for misleading, if not outright lying, to his clever, beautiful, honey-voiced, silver-tongued adventuring partner

Kevil: a not evil, possibly not incompetent wizard

“I neglected to mention this earlier, with all of the pinning me to the ground and talk about undead wizards, but you’re not actually saying my name right.”

“Huh?” Kevil’s words brought me out of my reverie. I shook my head and turned in my saddle to look at the wizard. “What are you talking about?

“It rhymes with ‘bevel,’ not ‘evil.’ I just figured that if you’re making up a song that’s at least partly about me, you could pronounce it right.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked suspiciously at our new companion, who I now suspected of reading my mind. “Who says I’m making up a song?”

“You keep muttering lines out loud, though you don’t seem to be getting much past ‘Dramatis Personae.’” Kevil gave me an annoyed look. “And I’m not incompetent. Just because I can’t undo an enchantment that only a handful of wizards could undo doesn’t make me incompetent. It makes me human.” He spurred his horse and rode ahead. He wasn’t a bad rider for someone who hadn’t spent much time on horseback.

I was glad to see the back of his spurs, as I’m certain my color had risen slightly. I had a bad habit of talking out loud when I was writing songs in my head, and I hated for anyone to hear unfinished work—especially when the work in progress was at its earliest stage, one where I was more focused on melody than words. And particularly when the story about which I was writing a song hadn’t actually happened yet.

To be fair to me, though, other than Kevil’s attempt to restore Grimple to normal—which had, for the most part, failed—I hadn’t seen him work any magic, so he truly might be incompetent, despite his own opinion on the subject. I did feel a little bad about mispronouncing his name, though, even if the way he pronounced it was stupid.

If you’ve got “evil” in your name, it should be pronounced evil.

We’d been on the road for three days, riding as hard as we could on mounts of middling quality (a result of both our lack of extensive funds and a paltry selection of palfreys in Bristow). It would be another two days of hard riding before we reached the Well, the latter part of which would be far from the well-kept (and well-patrolled) roads on which we’d been traveling. It had been a while since Grimple and I had been in a fight, and Kevil never had, so I was curious to see how we would handle skirmishes that might occur (which is a polite euphemism for “not really looking forward to it in the slightest, and, should an encounter occur, would very much prefer to be accosted by a handsome band of gentle centaur masseurs than poked and prodded by a band of marauding orcs” (or, more accurately, a “grope of orcs,” as a collection of orcs is properly called—allegedly, it derives from the orcish word for “group,” but I think we all know why it’s called a grope)). We were still on well-traveled roads frequented by merchant caravans, but I placed my hand on the hilt of my favorite dagger nonetheless, comforted by its stabby presence.

After another night of roadside camping (the surrounding area was safe, and it saved us from having to spend funds in taverns unlikely to be receptive to an offer of service from a traveling bard, no matter how talented and comely she may be), we rose and road hard toward our goal, knowing that the going would be much slower as we entered the forest in which we would find the Well.

Why, an astute reader might ask—and I’ve no doubt you are exactly that, given that you have such good taste in literature, as you are reading a tale penned by the preeminent storyteller in all of Balachor—would a Well be found in the middle of a forest, rather than in the midst of a town, where it would serve an actual, useful purpose? Excellent question, and the answer requires a brief digression of the type in which we bards specialize.

The Well of Wilkington started out as a normal well (uncapitalized), dug for the usual reasons—that is, to provide water to a thriving town—a thousand years ago. The well did its job, as wells do, and no one really thought much about it except when they were thirsty or needed to wash clothes or had some other water-related need that necessitated a trip to the old well. I say old because, by this point, some 800 years after it was first dug, it was pretty old. About 200 years ago, people stopped using the well regularly. Over time, a well might dry up, or a town might grow in a different direction and use a well less and less until it becomes abandoned or is filled in. Such was not the case with the Well of Wilkington, however. Rather, the well fell into disuse because it started causing weird things to happen.

It started innocently enough, or so the story goes. One of the townspeople was drawing water from the well when he happened to exclaim to a nearby friend, “I wish this bucket of water was ale.” Now, most anyone who’s not an idiot knows that using the phrase “I wish” is always a dangerous proposition, regardless of circumstance. Too much stray magic floating around waiting to be activated by those very words. Still, perhaps we can forgive this man for his momentary lapse of reason, particularly given his apparently extreme level of thirst.

Fortunately for him, his words not only didn’t bring him harm, they brought him beer. A big, sudsy, frothy-headed bucket of it. He didn’t notice at first, his mind elsewhere as he hauled the bucket up from the bottom of the well, but as soon as he pulled the bucket close, the white, foamy top caught his eye. He brought it close to his face, sniffed it, and shrugged. Looked like ale. Smelled like ale. Only one way to find out if it actually WAS ale…

He brought the bucket to his lips and sipped slowly; a second later, his eyes lit up as the ale, dark and hoppy, hit the back of his throat and filled him with warmth. Naturally, this development led to some rather excited reactions (the man’s friends, apparently, being as thirsty as he) and an assumption that the man himself had somehow developed magical powers. When subsequent attempts to turn other objects into beer failed, however, one of the slightly less inebriated, but considerably more hungry, onlookers thought to approach the well. He looked inside the deep well, dark at the bottom where the sun’s waning rays couldn’t reach and said, very understandably yet regrettably, “I wish you’d make me a fish sandwich.”

Needless to say, the man’s transformation into the object of his stomach’s desire startled his companions, who ran screaming away from the well (it’s unclear whether any of them considered eating the sandwich, perhaps fearing it might be considered cannibalism), and a legend was born.

Over the next several years, the legend spread, and visitors came from far and wide to test the well, now known as the Well of Wilkington (Wilkington being the name of the town in which the Well resided; let us award no points for creativity to the denizens of that now-defunct village for their naming of troublesome magical wells). Results, as you might imagine, were mixed—some people’s wishes were fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams, while others experienced mishaps ranging from minor inconvenience to death by raccoon consumption (as happened to the poor man who just wanted a fish sandwich). As the decades passed, fewer and fewer people came to try their luck at the Well, and the town of Wilkington began to shrink in fortune and popularity until, ultimately, it was abandoned by even its hardiest and most long-tenured families.

Now, it’s as much legend as anything, and only occasionally do those brave—or foolhardy—enough seek it out, especially given that the forest around it has grown dangerous.

And it was into that forest that Grimple, Kevil, and I now rode. Dapples of sunlight ricocheted through the thick forest canopy to create a patchwork of illuminated lattices amidst the darkened gloom of the primeval wood.

(Gods of Erithea…who says things like, “Dapples of sunlight ricocheted through the thick forest canopy to create a patchwork of illuminated lattices amidst the darkened gloom of the primeval wood?” Pretentious windbags, that’s who. Let me try that again.)

Only a little bit of sunlight could get through the trees, which made things pretty spooky.

(That’s better. Sometimes I get carried away, and then I realize that drunken morons have no idea what dapples are—and drunken morons are my core audience.)

The first half of the day was uneventful, and we came to a stop near a small stream. I was hesitant to let the horses drink from it, but Kevil led his straight to it. “It’s not the woods that are evil, Heloise,” he said, patting his horse’s neck. “It’s the evil monsters that live in them. So, unless they all conspire to take giant, evil poops at the source of this stream, this water should be safe to drink.”

“I’ve seen giant poops,” I said, looking toward Grimple, who, in his hill giant days, had had few reservations about going whenever he needed to go, regardless of where that might be and who might be around, “and I can tell you that I wouldn’t drink anything I found within a league of them.”

Kevil shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Grimple suddenly raised his hand and shushed us. He looked warily around, holding a finger to his lips.

I frowned. I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, and, with my keen half-elven ears (the top half, I should note—pointy as could be), my hearing was much sharper than his. After looking around for a moment, Grimple reached into his pocket and put something on his face. “Where did you get spectacles?!” I hissed, “and why are you wearing them?”

Grimple shushed me again, a stern look on his stupid gnome face as he looked and listened. I was beginning to loathe that big little bastard.

That’s when I heard it—and saw it. A cloud of…of…bats! Hundreds—no, thousands—of bats! They were headed straight toward us, flying low, beneath the cover of the trees. They’d be on top of us in a matter of seconds.

Grimple brandished his club, waving it about with a ferocity that was normally very intimidating, but looked ridiculous coming from a gnome. Kevil threw himself on the ground and pulled a blanket over his head. I was glad to see he was displaying such bravery in the face of danger.

I ducked down, but wasn’t particularly concerned. I mean, they were bats. Unless they were stupid bats, they’d use their sonar, realize we were humans (or, in the case of Grimple, human-like), and fly around us. My primary goal was not getting bat poop in my hair because that stuff takes forever to get out.

No, I was much more concerned about what was driving the bats toward us.

The wave of bats swept over us and, as I’d expected, passed right by. Save for a little incidental contact with wing or leg, I remained unscathed (and, thankfully, unpooped upon—though Kevil’s blanket wasn’t so lucky). Grimple, acting as hill giants tend to act in these situations, swung his club mightily and took down at least a half dozen bats with each swing. Once the bats noted the movement, they gave him a wide berth. A moment later, they were gone.

“It’s okay, Kevil,” I said. “You can come out now, our not-evil, possibly incompetent, clearly cowardly wizard.”

Kevil threw the blanket back and stood up, looking much less terrified than I imagined he would. “I wasn’t afraid; I just didn’t want to get pooped on.”

Hmmm. Kevil, the not-evil, possibly incompetent, eminently sensible wizard. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but we keep peeling back new layers. “Smart man.” I made a mental note to keep a blanket handy on all future adventures that presented even the slightest chance of encountering bats (or, as happened one time, flying elephants…a suit of armor would have been better than a blanket in that instance, though).

I turned to Grimple. “Are you all right, Mighty Hunter? Any wounds sustained in the heroic slaying of tiny fruit bats?”

“I’ll have you know, dear Heloise, that it is entirely possible that any number of those bats could have been vampires in disguise.”

“And your hitting them with an ordinary club would have done what, exactly?”

Grimple pushed the spectacles, which had begun to slip, up his nose. “It would have, ah, forced them to reveal their true form. Eh what?”

“Thereby starting a fight with vampires who might otherwise have left us alone. Brilliant.”

“What do you think stirred up the bats?” asked Kevil, looking around.

“Whatever it is, I doubt it’s something we want to tangle with.” I stopped and listened for a moment, but couldn’t hear anything that might have prompted the bats’ flight. “Let’s keep moving so we can…Gods of Erithea! The horses!” In all of the confusion, we’d failed to notice that our (stupidly) untethered mounts had fled. Crap.

“Well, bollocks,” said Grimple, taking off his spectacles, huffing a breath on them, and polishing them with his shirt.

“STOP IT WITH THE ACCENT!”

“You know he can’t, right?” said Kevil. Rather irritatingly, I might add. “Like I said before, it’s a strange effect of the attempt to dispel the enchantment having to do with an obscure application of Madras’s Fourth Principle of—”

“STOP IT WITH THE EXPLANATIONS.” I shook my head. “I need a moment to think.”

With no mounts, we were at least a few hours’ hike from the Well, based on my limited understanding of the geography and a rough map I’d sketched with the help of someone who had (allegedly) once visited the Well. I didn’t mind that prospect, but we still didn’t know what had spooked the bats, and we needed to get back to civilization afterward. That was going to be a long walk—especially without the extra rations stored in the horses’ saddlebags.

I sighed and shouldered my pack. “Come on—if we walk fast, we can probably reach the Well by nightfall. Without knowing what sent the bats scurrying we—”

“Shhhh!” Kevil held up his hand. Now the HUMAN was shushing me. I need to get my hearing checked.

“Look,” said Kevil a moment later, entirely too calmly, when a purple-and-blue wyvern—that’s a miniature dragon (and when I say miniature, I mean only 20 feet long), people—flew up over the trees and, following the same path as the bats, made straight for us. Unlike the bats, however, wyverns like to snack on humans.

Even Gimple looked unsure what to do, raising his club but looking at me for direction. “RUN!” I shouted, veering away from the clearing and diving into the nearest thicket of bushes that might provide some cover. Wyverns, fortunately, don’t have breath weapons—that is, fire or acid—like dragons, so I figured the bushes might at least make it harder for it to eat me.

Gimple did likewise, but Kevil just stood in the clearing, staff at the ready, his other arm at his side. He looked completely at ease as he studied the creature, which was headed straight for him and closing fast. “Kevil—move!” I shouted (though without leaving the cover of my thicket).

Kevil looked over his shoulder toward me. “For the most part, they’ve done an excellent job.” He raised his staff as the wyvern descended. “The visual is perfect.” The beast shrieked, an ear-splitting noise that left me cringing. “The sound spot is spot-on, too.” The wyvern opened its maw, sharp teeth glinting in the fading sun, and prepared to make Kevil a not evil, possibly incompetent, clearly stupid, and decidedly headless wizard.

“What they forgot, though,” said Kevil as he touched the wyvern with his staff just before it engulfed him, “is the smell.”

The mini dragon disappeared instantly when Kevil’s staff touched it; one moment it was there, the next it was completely gone.

I blinked. “What the…?”

“Oh, good show!” shouted Grimple. “Dear Kevil has slain the nefarious dragon—”

“Wyvern,” corrected Kevil, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Right—wyvern,” said Grimple, nodding. “He has slain the nefarious dragon with his mighty staff!”

“Mighty staff my ass,” I may or may not have mumbled. More loudly, I said, “What in the Seven and a Half Hells just happened?”

“It was an illusion,” replied Kevil with a shrug. “A pretty good one, but, like I said, they forgot to include smell. Wyverns…well, they stink. They’re like the skunks of dragonkin. If you’re within a half mile of one, you know it. When we saw it but couldn’t smell it, I knew it was illusory.” He smiled. “Illusions are kind of my specialty.” He frowned. “Which should, I hope, tell you just how complicated the enchantment Grimple is under is, Heloise.”

Kevil, the not evil, apparently not incompetent, rather resourceful, but decidedly uppity wizard. Well, I’ve had worse traveling companions. “I’m sorry, Kevil—I haven’t given you a fair shake. I guess I’m just frustrated by this whole thing.” I motioned to Grimple. “And by that miniature asshole.”

“By Jove! Heloise, dear, I’ve half a mind to—”

“Hush, Grimple.”

“Righty-o.”

“So, flock of bats, scary wyvern illusion…what’s next?”

Kevil shrugged again. “This is really more your line of work than mine.”

“Well, you’re proving yourself adept.” I looked at the rapidly fading daylight. “I think we’re going to need to find a place to camp. My guess is that we’re still at least a few hours from the Well, and that’s if we’re able to find it without any trouble. Let’s set a watch and get some rest. I’ll see what I can scrounge up for dinner and…what? What’s that look for?”

Kevil looked all around, spinning a complete circle. “Where’s Grimple?”

“Gods!” I pulled my knife from my belt. “Grimple!” I looked at Kevil. “If whatever sent the wyvern hasn’t killed him, I’ll take care of the problem for them.”

“Heloise!” came an annoyingly accented yell.

“Come on!” I shouted to Kevil, racing into the thicker part of the forest, Kevil hard on my heels (or, at least, as hard on my heels as an extremely pasty, pretty out-of-shape wizard could be when chasing after a lithe and winsome gazelle like myself).

We sprinted through the underbrush, thorns snagging our clothing and dead leaves and branches causing us both to stumble. A moment later, as the last of the sun’s rays filtered over the horizon, we entered another clearing, where Grimple stood waiting for us, pushing his spectacles back up his nose. “Grimple! Are you all right?”

“Smashing, dear Heloise, simply smashing.”

“Where did you go?”

“Well, if you really must know, I had to make my toilet, and I figured it would be rather more discreet if I were to distance myself from—”

My eyes went wide. “This enchantment really HAS changed you—normally, I have to bribe you to go poop somewhere else.”

“Yes, well…tally-ho. At any rate, I found this lovely clearing, and, lo and behold.” He waved his hand with a flourish at a stone structure behind him, one I’d failed to notice when we entered the clearing, but one I stared at now.

It was a well.

“Welcome!” came a deep voice from within the well, echoing off the stones. “Care to make a wish? Deposit one gold coin, please!”

Not just A well, apparently—THE Well.

We’d found the Well of Wilkington.

Can the Well restore Grimple to normal? Will Heloise murder him before we have a chance to find out? Does Kevil have any spells to get bat poop out of his blanket? Answers to those questions and more to come in Part 5…coming soon!

Update: continue on to part 5!