Granny Trudy vs the Ancient Ones

“Of course it’s a new Golden Age. For them.” Merunas jabbed a thumb at the congealing mass of ancient evil. “Didn’t Balgimantas ever mention that part?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“You’re young, Munck, you don’t understand these things. I’m getting on in years. Sure, wizards live longer, but the mind’s not coming along for the ride. And all the aches and pains on top of it. That’s not how I pictured life, thank you. So I’m trading in this world for eternal life and a body that won’t fail if you look at it wrong. Toodles!”

Merunas toodled, or rather jogged, out of the chapel while Munck was left staring mouth agape at the things that crept out of the portal which looked suspiciously like four and twenty black clouds.

“Well that’s a fine mess,” Trudy summed it up, weighing her rolling pin in her hand. “Was this supposed to happen? Can’t you close the thingy?”

“I don’t know!”

“Would it kill you to try?”

Hungerford ignored her, not even out of ill intent, but because his brain was spiralling towards the abyss of madness like on the world’s worst roller-coaster. “Am I to understand that you summoned the Ancient Ones with a nursery rhyme?”

This at least answered the question of why old children’s rhymes were as a rule gruesome and disturbing.

“We were supposed to do this at least sixty years earlier, remember?” Trudy reminded him, as she did daily.

“I can’t believe the summoning spell was a nursery rhyme!”

Mole shrugged enormous shoulders. “In hindsight, that should have been obvious. This reminds me of the time we accidentally called a demon lord with a sigil our bard drew on a sandwich with the sauce, he just thought it was a pretty pattern …”

“Not now!”

“What I don’t understand,” continued Mole. “Are we supposed to summon the Ancient Ones or kick them back to their plane. Both?”

“I don’t know! There’s no details in the prophecy!”

“I think a kicking is in order, I don’t like those oozy things one bit!” Trudy decided as the oozy things gained ever more shapes and an octopus-like tentacled head surmounting a grotesque and scaly body was beginning to look in her general direction.

If the last weeks had taught her anything, it was that a proper chosen one of prophecy could deal with most anything and come out alive, but punching an Ancient Whatever was bound to hurt somewhat more than punching a dragon. Trudy dug the rheumatism ointment out of her apron and sighed. She only had enough for one last application.

The earth shook and groaned as glutinous tentacles shot up to the ceiling and through it, the aftershocks could surely be felt throughout the city. Mole pushed Dolly out of the way of falling statue heads, while ancient evil heaved its gelatinous immensity into reality, covering every inch of the chapel in purple goo the origins of which no one wanted to guess at and that smelled like the docks at low tide.

“Stay behind me!” Advancing, Munck grabbed his spell book and raised a shaky staff. “Fireball!”

From the tip of his staff, an enormous glowing rock shot out, coming in hot for the very centre of the monstrosity. The air around it wavered, burning a trench through the goo. The creature, half-formed and half-alive, had nowhere to run.

Munck’s fireball vanished inside it with a sickeningly wet fisss.

“Uh… Lightning Storm!”

At least the spell lent enough light to see Dolly engaged in a tug-of-war for her guitar with a tentacle. Mole had succeeded in sawing through another, but what with their sheer number he was soon overwhelmed.

“Uh… Hideous Laughter?”

It seemed to have some effect; at least the creature seemed amused as the crew was swept up by the flabby tentacles. Munck struggled until the otherworldly thing had him encased as tightly as peaches in gelatine and all he could do was gaze beneath himself into a maw like a black hole.

By all accounts, being seconds away from getting devoured by an ancient cosmic horror is the worst time to reminisce. Naturally, Munck picked this moment.

He tried to turn his head to Trudy next to him as they hung suspended in the air and decided his last words should be gracious. “All the way from the bakery to here, I never dreamed of having such adventures. And if I had known for one second how it’s going to end I’d have stayed in my dorm room!

Trudy, on her end, had finally worked the rheumatism ointment into her knuckles. “Ah, shut up. And duck!”

The shoulder drew back. The arm swung around.

Trudy’s fist connected with wet tissue, as pleasant a feeling as cleaning out a drain, and shot right through it. Munck found himself falling, and by an inch avoided becoming a snack. He dropped hard on the ground, soon joined there by Mole, who had hacked himself through with two daggers. He looked up to see Trudy punch Dolly free and had to cover his ears as the creature howled like a thousand rusty metal coffins.

Trudy landed inelegantly with the rest of them, a steaming pile of rage, dragged to safety behind a severed tentacle. “I’ve just about had it with this thing!”

“I, I, I can try one more spell …”

“Will it explode the creature?”

Hungerford had been thinking about opening another portal and hopefully persuading the creature to use it, somehow, with the promise of better victims, some of which may be equipped to handle its kind. “Uh… not as such?”

Trudy, ever ladylike, growled. “My way, then. Dolly, did you ever play bat-the-ball?”

“Youth league.”

“Mole, did you ever throw a seventy-year-old woman of around Dolly’s size up in a straight line?”

“First time for everything.”

Trudy unearthed a paper bag from her apron. “We only get one inning, team,” she said with pathos as she unwrapped the last pudding tart.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Dolly looked at her doubtfully. “And that’s absolutely gonna work?”

“Let’s say I have a hunch.”

Munck pulled his hat over his eyes. “Oh, we’re dead.”

Trudy left him to his panic attack and positioned her companions amidst the thrashing tentacles and unearthly groans that shook the very ground they stood on. Mole grabbed hold of Dolly’s ample hips, and Dolly was uncharacteristically too focussed on her guitar swing to make a remark about it.

“Ready, Mole? On three. One, two, three … toss the biddy!”

“Here we g…aaaaah!” Mole’s heroic last effort before his back seized into the texture of one of the surrounding stone statues launched Dolly into the air.

Trudy’s aching hand pitched the pudding tart. Dolly’s guitar swung. Four and twenty black clouds heaved and dove down.

Dolly’s youth league swing batted the tart inside the star-glittering maw.

The tart vanished much like Munck’s fireball. The wizard dropped to his knees and began a frantic prayer to any god who might take last-minute requests as the creature grew in immensity, knocking against the chapel roof, sprouting more tentacles.

And kept growing. And growing until the group was forced back against the far wall. And if Munck had looked up from his near-death experience for a second, he’d notice that it had stopped moving and instead started spluttering.

The sound was very much, but not exactly, like letting the air out of a thousand balloons.

None of the four ducked in time.

The explosion plastered the however many Ancient Ones across all available walls. The portal spluttered nauseatingly and plopped out of existence with a tiny wet sound from the king’s corpse.

Hungerford sat up where the exploding alien had landed him, rubbed space goo out of his eyes and immediately wanted to close them again at the sight of disgusting gelatinous chaos.

“Will you look at that?” Trudy took in her ruined dress and apron. “That’ll never come out! I’ll never get this clean again.”

“It’s not so bad,” Dolly shrugged, mushing the purple goo into her hair. “Free hair dye!”

“For the love of some god, Dolly, wash that out before you get possessed!”

“You’re no fun.”

“Speaking of,” said a slimy pile of Mole from the floor.

“Alright,” Trudy sighed and went to work with the unscathed rolling pin while a trembling Hungerford dared to emerge on the scene.

“You killed it with a pudding tart?!”

“Stands to reason,” Trudy nodded over the sounds of Mole’s muscles realigning themselves. “If they’re the incarnation of all that is terrible, they’ll surely be allergic to something as good and amazing as my pudding tarts. They’re made with love, after all.”

“I can’t believe that worked,” Hungerford looked like he needed a lie-down, for a good year and a half.

“It’s known to happen,” Mole was keen to educate. “Ha, this reminds me when we were rescuing the princess of Skyff and the combined anger of her and her betrothed made the otherworldly evil overlord explode …”

Hungerford dropped to the floor, a depressed and slimy sack of magic, while Mole’s story came to an end.

Trudy rolled around to his side. “How are you doing, Ford?”

“Spectacular.” Munck’s eye twitched as he looked down on his spellbook. With shaky hands, he methodically began to tear out pages. “Just coming to terms with the fact that my old master was trying to unleash unspeakable horrors into the world and that I helped him do it … makes me think what if I had stalled some twenty or thirty years more … Maybe it was benevolent fate that he was too scatterbrained to finish his mission, and I royally messed things up …”

“It wasn’t your fault, boy. You didn’t know it was unspeakable horrors. Did you?”

“No.”

At this moment, the chapel doors opened, and the king entered. He looked all about the room and nodded to one of the persons he had brought along. “I see what you mean, chamberlain.”

Behind them, Munck spotted Merunas straining against chains, flanked on either side by guards.

“Oh, someone’s still alive,” the king beckoned.

“Pardon me, your majesty,” Mole began, limping. “But weren’t you dead?”

The king chuckled as if the pain-riddled adventurer had made an amusing mistake. “Oh no, I made my brother take my place. Seeing as he was on his fifteenth intrigue to dethrone me, I thought, have some fun and make him king for a day. It appears Merunas didn’t know that when he stabbed him.”

“Ha! That reminds me of the time your father …”

“You will tell me about that later at the banquet, won’t you? Now … the four of you are our heroes of prophecy who slew these monstrosities, yes? Or was it only one monstrosity, a very big one? It’s … hard to tell.”

“Uh…” said Hungerford, how didn’t have the foggiest either and thought it best to remain a mystery.

“Of course we are,” Dolly elbowed Hungerford out of the way. “Ain’t we the picture of heroism that’s worth a big glittering reward?”

While Dolly detailed every sort of valuable gem she knew, Trudy ignored the lot of them and turned to walk out of the chapel.

“Good mother, are you not well?” the king called after her.

Trudy scoffed at the ‘good mother’ part but answered almost graciously. “Indeed I’m not, your majesty. I’m seventy years old, I just punched out a monster from a Something Something Realm, I want a bath, a laundry, and a cookie.”

“It has been a long day,” Mole agreed.

“Let the adoring public see you once, good heroes, and then you shall have the best rooms of my palace and tonight, we’ll dine like ki… well, like me.”

A few minutes later, they were standing on a balcony.

“So … seems we saved the world?” Munck scratched his head as he stepped out into the sunlight. “Not that anyone will ever know, I’m sure. Don’t think anyone even noti… oh.”

The capital was in a state of chaos no one wanted to deal with fresh after battle.

“Maybe we should help clean up?” Munck suggested to the sight of citizens digging themselves out of the remains of exploded tentacles and the general purple slimy hue that lent the city the air of modern art, the kind that’s only useful and appreciated as a tax-deductible.

Trudy nodded. “You go do that, I’m getting my hand fixed and taking a nap.”

“Yes, help out a bit, my old back’s going again.”

“Hips for me,” Dolly added. “Also, I don’t want to.”

The king gave a rousing speech to the slime-covered populace, which was met with polite applause first and absolutely explosive applause at the proclamation of a public holiday and free beer for all.

----------------------------------------

Hungerford looked at his work and, satisfied, snipped the thread. With the new buttons, he’d finally be able to close his trousers again. Five days of feasting had given him a stomach akin to Mole’s treat vault.

What a week. So many things had happened. Nearly causing the end of the world, saving the world; Dolly being caught trying to steal things at least seven times, every time claiming she didn’t remember and once feigning madness by pretending to be the Duchess of Boingo; Mole regaling his majesty with every tale even slightly connected to members of the monarchy; and Trudy sneaking off to become head chef at the palace kitchens for three days before being caught and returned to the celebrations, to many tears of the actual palace chef.

The cart was packed heavy with travel food, new clothes for all, monetary rewards disguised as boring items such as books to dissuade Dolly.

Mole heaved the last crates onto the cart as Hungerford clambered on. “Everyone got their sightseeing done? Good.” The wizard paused hopefully. “Anyone feeling like a holiday? I don’t mind if we…”

“Ford, you promised to take me straight home, and that’s what you’ll do,” came Trudy’s tern voice from the back. “My family will be sick with worry, no doubt, and my late husband’s grave will need care, and for all I know they’ve forgotten all my recipes, and the town will be in ruins just because I wasn’t there…”

“Alright, alright! Dolly, I’m scared to ask … should I bring you back to your town?”

Dolly scratched her lavender head. “Nah, don’t think so. I’ve nothing to miss me there except some decorative plates.”

“Mole, can you direct me to your cabin?”

“Sure. You can wait outside while I pack.”

“Huh?”

“In hindsight, it’s a little lonely out there,” Mole admitted as the cart rumpled forward. “Too easy a target for assassins. I’m thinking of moving to Arlburg.”

“Doesn’t sound bad,” Dolly conceded.

“Neither of you are to wreak havoc in my bakery or embarrass me in front of the neighbours,” Trudy said primly. “Or I’ll run you out of town personally.”

Dolly and Mole exchanged a look. “I’ll keep the big menace in check,” Dolly nodded. When her back was turned, Mole mouthed “I’ll keep an eye on her” and winked.

“Now, you know what this reminds me of?” Mole said aloud.

“Oh, what the hells? It’s a long journey,” Munck said under his breath. “No, Mole, what?”

“So there we were, travelling back to the tavern after the victory over the ghoul hordes, and part of our group at the time was a fella named Egbert the Obscure, a sorcerer so untalented he couldn’t cast a shadow, but he was our rogue’s cousin twice removed or something similar, anyway, Egbert sorts through the loot and finds this black amulet, so he says ‘I wonder what that’s good for’, and of course he doesn’t check it for spells or curses, so we get teleported right into the Archlich’s deathly lair and …”