Nadi’s brow furrowed for a brief second before her eyes shot wide open. “Come on!” she shouted, racing down the corridor and looking frantically left and right. The rest of the group followed, confused by her sudden urgency and struggling to keep up. Eventually, however, they found Nadi standing in the center of a large chamber. She had her sword out and a grim look on her face. “Circle up—Rummy on my left, Whiska on my right, Borg at my back.”
“What’s going on?” asked Rummy, dutifully trotting to his designated spot.
Borg followed suit, though Whiska took her time, pausing to extract something from her whiskers, sniff it, and then pop it into her mouth. “What?” she said in response to Nadi’s disgusted look. “Part of a grasshopper.”
“Never mind—just get in position. We’re about to have company.”
Whiska shrugged and took her place, and the four waited silently. Nothing happened. They waited another minute, tense and ready. Still, nothing happened.
“Um, Nadi?” asked Rummy.
“Quiet!”
“Sure, but, uh, any idea what we’re waiting for?”
Nadi relaxed slightly. “I thought I heard something.”
“Was it rats?” asked Whiska. “You think it was rats.”
“Well, Whiska,” said Rummy, “we are in a sewer, and they do tend to…”
“It wasn’t rats,” interjected Nadi. “At least, not just rats—though I think I heard some of those too.”
“You humans…always so afraid of the rats!” Whiska grunted. “As well you should be—a single rat could gnaw your leg off, given enough time.”
“I’m not a human!” yelled Nadi, instantly regretting it.
“Hairless pinkie. Hmmph.”
“Just be quiet! All of you!”
The four of them looked around, seeking the source of Nadi’s concern, but they still heard nothing.
“I…wasn’t making…noise,” said Borg a moment later.
Nadi ground her teeth and relaxed her stance. She was about to tell her companions that they should start moving again when all four of them heard a long, low growl. Nadi whirled around. “Tell me you all heard that, at least.”
Rummy nodded. “What was that?”
“It was…that giant…cat bush,” said Borg, pointing toward where they’d entered the chamber.
The creature they faced looked like a cross between a panther and a shrubbery, all sleek black muscles and twiggy, leaf-covered spikes. Or, something that looked like leaves, anyway—they were actually razor-sharp projectiles that could be hurled by the beast and regrown over the course of a few days. Not exactly the kind of thing you want to run into in a dark sewer tunnel, or anywhere else for that matter.
“Okay,” amended Rummy, “what is that?”
The creature shot a pair of leaves toward the group, which Borg stepped in front to deflect, the missiles bouncing off him and doing no apparent harm. Nadi, sword at the ready, circled around Borg and yelled, “I don’t know, but maybe let’s figure it out after it stops trying to kill us!” as she rushed the beast.
“Relax,” said Whiska, sifting through pouches at her belt for spell components, “it’s just a bushlinks.”
“Really looks more like a panther than a lynx to me,” said Rummy, looking doubtfully at his tiny mace and then at their foe.
“Links—with a ‘k,’ you mostly hairless twit!” Whiska yelled in concession to Rummy’s beard. “Subterranean scavengers, mostly. They’ve got sensitive eyes, so they really hate it when you do this.” Whiska muttered two syllables and then hurled a handful of powder toward the creature’s feet. The instant the powder landed, a bright light flashed through the cavern, searing the retinas of everyone unfortunate enough to be looking at it, which was everyone except for Whiska, who had closed her eyes. “Close your eyes!” she shouted.
Rummy, clawing at his eyes, screamed, “Why not just punch me in the face and then tell me to duck?! Instructions come first, Whiska—instructions come first!”
“Oops,” said the Ratarian sheepishly, offering a shrug no one could see.
Nadi, who had closed swiftly on the creature, lashed out blindly with her sword in the beast’s general direction, which was fairly easy to locate due to its furious yowls. She felt the tip of her sword strike home, so she readjusted the angle of her blade and thrust forward hard, feeling it sink deeply into something soft and yielding. The creature’s yowls turned to yelps and Nadi opened her stinging eyes, blinking back tears as she twisted her sword and pushed in deeper.
A moment later, the beast’s yelps became whimpers; shortly after that, it ceased making noise entirely.
“Well,” said Rummy, rubbing his eyes and blinking rapidly, “I guess that’s one way to take care of a bushlinks. Bushlink? What’s the singular form?”
“I’m more concerned with whether there are any others nearby,” replied Nadi, squinting as she looked around the chamber.
Whiska shook her head. “Bushlinks travel alone—they’re very territorial.”
“How do you know all this stuff about bushlinks?” asked Rummy, curious.
“Oh, I don’t know, because I’m not a moron? Because I’ve read a book? Because if you don’t know how to kill what wants to kill you, you end up getting killed?”
“All good reasons,” replied Rummy cheerily. “Shall we?” He motioned for Nadi to continue on.
Nadi blinked her eyes one more time and nodded, resuming her position at the point and leading her companions on as directed by the map.
Over the course of the next two hours, they killed two snakes (neither of which was poisonous); got peed on by a snizzard (a breed of lizard that likes to hang out in urban subterranean areas and is known for both its disproportionately large and prominent genitalia and exceedingly voluminous bladders—yes, bladders, plural); heard some goblins snickering but didn’t see them; trudged through excrement and waste that was, at times, hip-deep for a less-than-thrilled half-dwarf, half-halfling; and found treasure that amounted to three buttons, a broken wine glass, half a spool of string, a few rotten apple cores, and two copper pieces, both of which Whiska gleefully laid claim to despite the party’s preexisting agreement to split all treasure equally. (Two coppers, incidentally, would be just about sufficient to purchase the apples they found the remains of, so it wasn’t exactly a windfall for the wizard; it probably had more to do with Ratarians’ love of shiny things, which they defensively insisted had nothing to do with their rodent heritage.)
There’s a saying amongst adventurers: it’s not a quest until you’re covered in snizzard pee and have shit on your knees.
Finally, tired and smelling like a furyak’s breath in the morning, the brave heroes reached the chamber that the map indicated held the statue they sought. They burst in, weapons and spells at the ready, expecting some fierce guardian, only to find dust, cobwebs, and about one hundred and fifty statues of similar size and appearance.
“Dragon balls,” muttered Nadi as she looked around in a vain effort to identify the statue. “I was sort of hoping it would be the only thing in here, or have a note on it or something. Is that too much to ask after wading through feces for the past few hours?”