Chapter 14

"Blessed be the Only Ones who Break bread with the wearY TraveleRs And Provide reSpite. HEaR ThE callS of your neighbor and Take in the Outsider. the sun comes uP aNd down fOr all of us, even THose  IN the Graces OF fortune’s faVor. ALl life has valUE from the SmallesT creature tO the mightiest. Please be a kind and MercIful frieND and Take not more than wHat you arE willing to give. For life may seem a pUZZle, but we can all Solve iT with a little bit Of helP."

A Hypothetical
Have you ever been in a situation where you think you are on top of the world? Where you outsmarted your foes and cowed your problems so thoroughly that it’s physically impossible for them to bother you ever again? Where you see your life ahead of you and it’s nothing but clear skies and good food? Only to have your problems rise up screaming, and now suddenly you’re in bigger trouble than you ever thought possible?

Imagine having that happen to you twice.

Let me elaborate.

I thought Operation BugSpray had been a smashing success. Yes, there was that splitting headache we all got right before the brain creature behind the zombie turned to ash, and that ominous threat of “you will never defeat The Buggo Bed Bugs,” NOT TO MENTION the time we spent being chased around planes and the fact that my sense of smell is like permanently fucked now, but that’s peanuts compared to what we had accomplished. Vanquishing a foe that had bested several literal armies! How does one even do that? (You be us)

The minor celebrity/folk hero status I thought I enjoyed after egging Lord Joystick pales in comparison to the reception we got upon returning to Chez Alia. Alia’s hospitality (and food, and potables, and soft soft beds) was unlike anything I thought I could possibly experience in my lifetime. Plus, she brought with her correspondence from Little Lumberjane!

I had my life laid out, like before: party, return home to Hibernation, and slip back into relative obscurity, the rumors of my legacy carried by the wind.

That’s not what happened with Operation Tough L’oeuff. It’s also not what happened with BS.

No sooner had we finished the pre-feast feast that the trouble started. Friendly Fire decided that enough was enough, he was mad as hell and he wasn’t going to take it anymore, and decided to pick a bow fight with our host. She deserved it, but that’s neither here nor there. (I tried to pilfer her pockets to take her down a notch and bruise her ego but not herself, but I guess she was on edge and I was, not gonna lie, a lil sloshy.) I had left the party to clear my head when Thoughts and Prayers caught up to me. Apparently FF had disappeared in his fury and who knows who else he might try to fight. I agreed to go along. We tried to enlist Somber Swings, but he flat out refused. He was leaving forever, and we were not to go looking for him. It was an absurd idea, until he told us why. Apparently he was being hunted down by evil duo of witch and ruler, and that he would bring destruction upon all who called him an ally. A familiar predicament. We (okay I) offered to help him strike his problems at the root, and he asked for a day to think about it. It’s coming close to the 24 hour mark. I wonder if...

ANYWAY. TP and I were down an axe man, but we luckily ran into Porridge Penmanship and Bark n' Bake, who were much more keen to offer their assistance.

We found FF in the Turn Tables, a place he probably wouldn’t be caught dead in if he weren’t cursed by a bow. He was in the middle of attacking some guard who looked at him funny when we showed up. We entered into a stalemate, which was very nearly ruined by some more guards showing up (I got them to notice me and then turn away which has never happened before in my life), and definitely ruined when we started fighting each other.

We avoided an all out brawl by engaging the most effective tactic: poking someone’s ego. FF told us that we were getting in the way of his destiny as the best of all elves, and we told him to prove it by trancing. Not only did he take us up on it, but he actually did the trance thing! And it bought us enough time to channel a pocket dimension and place him in it overnight! And additional enough time to channel another portal into the Scouring Pits and throw away the cursed bow! We’re such geniuses. (Geniuses who forgot to throw in food, whoops.)

The next morning, we brought an elaborate apology breakfast to the pocket dimension, where TP did his thinking and praying thing and broke the curse over FF, and we all had to spend the next hour listening to how we were shitty acquaintances who forced him to eat spiders. Because that’s the absolute worst thing we’ve ever done to one another.

End of everyone’s problems, right? We’re all friends who can go back to our awesome celebration?

Hah.

Doomsday Duster was waiting for us when we got back into town, in a real fervor, and very keen for us to tell him everything about the Bug. A plane-gobbling, havoc-wreaking entity that we shouldn’t have to worry about, because a) we’re not on an elemental plane and b) we already KILLED THE THING.

PP had a response to the first point. He had recently caught up with a colleague and, over a few drinks, the two of them came up with a winkleboop (I know) that this plane is an elemental plane after all. One of Void. A totally sensible theory, even though I have questions about how it can be tested. Anyway. If true, this makes us living on a prime big diet once more.

BUT THAT SHOULDN’T EVEN MATTER, right, on account of our thorough bug extermination efforts? Well. It turns out that the Bug unleashes not one attack, but several, over the course of a hundred years until that plane basically ceases to exist. Reader, did you know that there used to be an elemental plane of CANDY? An elemental plane of BACON??

If true, this means that Operation BugSpray is not a one-and-done gig, but an uphill battle that we’ll have to deal with for the rest of our now very short lives.

Oh yeah, DD also sprinkled some (incriminating) powder on us that caused us to glow weirdly, since he didn’t believe how many different dimensions we had been to recently. (Now that I don’t get nightmares about the The Abyss anymore, it’s like we were never even there.) Apparently we were all interplanar as fuck, and that means there are probably some shadow creatures after us, whatever. By that point, I was too busy staring down my fate.

I try not to get intimidated or caught up in slim odds, reader, because then I would never be able to do either I do. The thought of leaving my home and my family forever was a shock to my system that I’m still processing. But I did it, with the stern resignation that it was the right thing to do. Better to be a perpetual fugitive than to put the people you love in danger just by existing. I knew what I had to do and painful as it fucking was, I did it. I’m at a loss for what do do in this situation. What can we even do? Will it be effective? Is our entire plane basically on the run now? The letter that I gave to DD to give to LL now seems so silly and futile.

Futility notwithstanding, we did have a party to go to later that evening (And an AWESOME water park to kill time in- my swan dives keep getting better). We cleaned up, and I picked  up my souped up new leathers and put on a dress for the first time in years. I HAD TO GIVE A SPEECH AND EVERYONE WAS LOOKING AT ME WHILE I DID IT. “The best thing about all of us being alive is that we get to eat delicious food.” A common saying in Annendell, now tinged bittersweet.

The food was really good though.

There’s nothing better than a good soup dumpling, even if you eat it the wrong way (like SS and BB did). Even if the recipe tastes like it was lifted out of your mom’s cookbook, despite the fact that your mom only writes in Halfling Short Speak and how could a human read it and replicate it so easily and how did it get all the way over here from Trips anyway.

No I absolutely did not spy on the chef in the kitchen what are you insinuating don’t be a narc.

He looked real shifty in there. And he took some package or something! with him when he went back into the dining room! Reader, you know I had to investigate.

One fake spider distraction (thanks BB) and a loose pocket later, I now hold a mysterious letter in my hand. I haven’t opened it yet. (I was going to but then - no joke - I got commissioned to write out a recap of our misadventures. Easiest and most challenging 25 GP I’ve ever gotten.) I don’t know what’s in the letter, or what it’s purpose is. I don’t know what the purpose of this letter is. Reader, I don’t even know who you are. I'm not usually this verbose in my correspondences; it's bad form. Hopefully if our entire plane of existence is kaput, this survives. Maybe this will be my legacy. One where I can call neither person nor place by name. Old habits die hard.

Yours,

Little Ledger