“Stop worrying, you shaven sow,” said Whiska, picking up the nearest statue and dropping it on the brick floor, where it exploded into pieces. “Magical items are tougher than most.” She picked up another statue and shattered it alongside its unfortunate predecessor. A third soon followed. “Whichever one doesn’t break is the one we’re looking for.”
“I can…help.” With one mighty sweep of his massive arm, Borg sent a dozen statues tumbling to the floor; every one shattered. He smiled. “Nope.” He moved to another shelf and cleared it with the same result.
“Are we really sure this is the best way to find it?” asked Rummy, wincing as Borg sent another ten statues to their doom.
“You got a better idea?” replied Whiska, smashing a statue.
“Well, no, but maybe you’ve got a detect magic spell, or something that might—”
“Found it!” Whiska sang out, scooping up a statue Borg had dropped that didn’t show the slightest crack or dent.
“Are you sure that’s it?” asked Nadi.
Whiska shrugged. “What’s it supposed to do?”
“Cure illness and disease.”
Whiska scratched her ear with her tail. “Can’t really test that easily.”
“No.” Nadi furrowed her brow. “You can’t think of any magical ways to figure out whether this is really the right statue?”
“What do I look like, an oracle?”
“Not really,” replied Rummy. “I always picture them having wings. And maybe the face of a cat or lion.”
“You’re thinking of a sphinx, you ninny.”
“Really? Huh.” Rummy scratched his head. “I need to bone up on my sooth-saying beings.”
“Can we focus?” asked Nadi, exasperated. “I’d rather not have to come back down and do this again.”
“If we ever do do this again, Nadi, maybe we can get our employer to draw us a picture,” said Rummy.
“Let’s just take the statue and get out of here,” said Whiska. “The smells down here are making me hungry—I need to get something to eat.”
“That statue,” said Borg, gesturing to the one Whiska held, “didn’t break. When it fell.”
“Right you are, Borg,” Nadi sighed. “Come on—let’s go.”
After another long slog through feces and other, even less savory things, our heroes returned to the surface and stopped by their inn to cleanse themselves (though short of burning off their skin, there was no way to get rid of the stench that clung to them entirely), change their clothes, and, in Whiska’s case, inhale a plate of leftovers that the innkeeper managed to find in the kitchen. They then headed to a quiet home in one of the tonier neighborhoods of the city to deliver the statue to their employer.
He opened the door himself when Nadi knocked, which surprised her; given the size of his house, she had expected a servant to greet them. “Come in, come in,” said the man, hale and hearty despite his gray hair and wrinkles, motioning them inside. He wrinkled his nose as they passed, a testament to the lingering stench of adventuring success, but didn’t comment. He closed the door quickly once they were inside and clasped his hands together, his eyes shining eagerly. He eyed the bundle of rags Nadi cradled to her chest. “Is that it?” The man reached for it, but she turned deftly, and subtly, away.
“We believe it is, Doctor, but there was an…unexpected complication in retrieving it.”
“What? What was it?” The man’s tone shifted from warm and friendly to sharp and shrill, and his sudden twitchiness contrasted sharply with the geniality he had displayed when he had hired Nadi the previous day to retrieve the statue.
“Your directions to the statue’s location were very helpful, and, we believe, proved correct, in that we found a statue,” said Nadi.
“And we got to wade through shit to get to it, too, which was great,” added Whiska.
The doctor blinked. “Perhaps I’m just not very familiar with Ratarians, but do you not know how to include a particular inflection in your voice when you say something sarcastic?”
“Who said anything sarcastic?” replied Whiska. “I love shit. Smelling it, rolling in it, taking a little taste…all of it. It’s all good.”
Whiska looked around, but no one could quite bring themselves to make eye contact with her. “Well, this is awkward,” muttered Rummy. “Rolling in it? Really?”
“You said you found a statue,” said the doctor, clearly eager to get the conversation back on track. “Did you find my statue? Show me!”
Nadi looked taken aback by the doctor’s intensity, but nodded and unwrapped the statue. “We found dozens of identical statues, maybe even hundreds. We relied on the counsel of our, ah, wizard,”—she inclined her head toward Whiska—“to determine which was the one we were looking for, and we believe this is the right one.”
The doctor practically ripped the statue out of Nadi’s hands, pulling it close and holding it up before his face. He muttered a couple of unintelligible words and the statue began to glow red. The doctor threw his head back and laughed, a joyous roar that echoed off the walls.
“You’ve got admirable enthusiasm for helping people, Doctor,” said Rummy. “A real passion for curing the sick. That’s what this thing does, right? Because I’ve got this bunion…”
“FOOLS!” roared the doctor before throwing his head back and laughing again. “You have no idea what you’ve done!”
“Not quite what I pictured when you called him a ‘nice old man,’ Nadi,” said Rummy.
Nadi drew her sword. “What’s going on?”
“This statue can no more heal your bunion, dwarf, than it can the common cold,” said the doctor.
“Half-dwarf,” said Rummy. “Half-halfling. It’s the beard that throws people off.”
“Then what does it do?” asked Nadi, dropping into a battle stance.
“This!” bellowed the doctor, pointing the statue at Nadi, who dove to the side just as a bolt of energy whistled out of the statue’s mouth and immolated a credenza that had, a second before, stood behind her.
“The doctor…is not a…nice old man,” said Borg.
“Whiska—now!” Nadi yelled as she rolled back to her feet.
Whiska muttered an incantation and held out her fingers, unleashing a torrent of magical projectiles at the doctor. She cackled with glee as they struck him, but stopped when the doctor, too, started laughing before pointing the statue at her, seemingly unfazed by the barrage of magical energy that had just exploded against his chest.
“Mother fu—” The rest of Whiska’s eloquent response was drowned out by a rush of energy from the statue, which blasted her in the stomach, and her own screams of pain.
Nadi surged forward, sword leading, and hacked at the doctor, who grinned as the sword bounced off his thigh without doing any damage. “That’s not good,” she muttered.
The doctor turned the statue in her direction and unleashed its power; fortunately for Nadi, Rummy was a step faster, diving into her and bringing her to the ground just before the blast reached her. Nadi grunted as she hit the floor, the wind knocked out of her, and Rummy moaned and grabbed a very bruised right elbow.