Granny Trudy vs the side quests

Merunas had dusted off the scrying ball and shook it a few times to get a better picture. The image he saw when the magic static cleared pleased him. They had finally located the second one. He knew the boy would be as good as his word.

“Bit lazy, are we?” the skull on his desk said, rolling pale grey lights in its eyes to peek into the scrying ball too.

Sitting back in his purple armchair, the wizard waved the remark of his ghostly companion away. “I vowed to the master I would get the Children to the capital. Not how. This is more efficient. Unless of course you’d like to offer your extensive suggestions?”

The skull would have shrugged, had someone had the foresight to also curse its shoulders. “Don’t look at me, I’m just a spirit forever bound to this skull.”

Merunas nodded smugly. “That’s what I thought. I’m more of a manager, me. Outsourcing, that’s what it’s called. It’s in all the brochures from the merchants’ guild.”

“In any other brochure it’s called letting someone else do the dirty work.” The skull rolled its ghostly lit eye sockets. “You’d think the GAOs could just hop on this plane without all this rigmarole.”

“The what?”

“GAOs. Great Ancient Ones. It’s called an acronym, I’m sure there’s a brochure on that somewhere. Good thing they’re not called Great Old Ones, or it’d be shortened to GOO.”

The wizard massaged his temples and resisted a growing urge to chuck the bewitched blabbermouth out the window. The neighbours were complaining enough as it was. “As I’ve explained to you eight times, dimensional travel requires an anchor, which is why those Children were sent in the first place. No one could have known that atmospheric pressure would have them land so far apart …”

“Sure, can’t expect a GAO to know, they’ve only been around for what, a few millennia give or take …”

With a grunt, Merunas took the velvet covering from the scrying ball and dropped it over the annoying skull instead, ignoring the muffled complaints as he followed young Munck’s route.

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The next morning, Munck insisted on an early start. The former adventurer rushed about for a few minutes, collecting this weapon or that helmet, while Trudy and Hungerford scoured the neglected kitchen for anything they might use as travel rations. The rolling pin stayed shoved into her apron pocket. After all, she might have use of it.

A half hour later, Mole had hidden the cabin key under an old flowerpot and the three of them set out northwest on what Munck swore was the right road.

“No, Munck, friend, we’ll stop by Rossburg and rent a cart,” Mole insisted.

“Finally,” Trudy said. “My feet are killing me. Any more of this walking and the boy will have to do me a flying spell.”

“But,” began Munck, already outvoted.

“And I really do need a change of clothes,” Trudy went on. “Wouldn’t say no to a bathhouse, either.”

“And supplies,” nodded Mole.

“Do you people realise that I’m not made of money?” Hungerford exploded.

“Of course! We’ll have a look at the town board and take a quest or two, that should earn us plenty. This reminds me of the time when Snapper the Ranger had gambled away all our coin, and we had just won it in a pie eating contest at the temple of Gluttunius …”

“Can’t you help?” Munck pleaded at Trudy.

“Shh! He’s getting to the good part. Blueberry or raspberry?”

“Blueberry, naturally,” Mole continued. “So there we were, the four of us cleaned right out, sitting on the street in our underwear because Snapper hat also gambled all our gear, when Mudlip the barbarian comes running up with the town’s notice board ...”

“With the board?” Hungerford interrupted.

“Of course, you can’t expect a barbarian to know how to read. That’s what he had us for. And what do you know, the local wizard offered twice what Snapper lost for bringing back his crystal skull ...”

“Why does he have a crystal skull?” Trudy asked. “What kind of crystal?”

“Family heirloom he said it was.”

“Is it like crystal for a wedding vase or more like a stone?”

“Stone, now that I think about it. Anyway, we go over and offer our services if only he can buy our gear back first, which he does. So we set out to get his skull back from his rival, the Mad Warlock of The Cursed Waste …”

Munck was put in mind of an old song about a road going on and on. The one in front of him seemed suddenly even longer with the endless diatribe next to him.

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Rossburg was a charming merchant town with picturesque streets, quaint timber-framed houses painted many joyful colours, flowers on every windowsill, and the friendliness of its inhabitants had won it the Best Place to Stay a While and Listen Award three years in a row. Munck rushed by everyone and everything in a desperate attempt to get away from Mole. The warrior had not stopped talking once, and Trudy’s interjections made him go on tangents that had tangents wrapped inside them.

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“… we get to his castle, which has a giant carved herring as the entrance gate ...”

“Why?” Trudy said, and Munck was immediately filled with dread.

“Because he’s mad, remember? Anyway, we go in, we interrupt his pudding bath, and demand he give back the crystal skull. Why, he doesn’t know what we’re talking about. And then Snapper says, he says ... he says ...” Mole stopped and doubled over with laughter, which made several locals stare. Some stopped to hear the end. “He says, ‘The thing you’re scrubbing your pits with!’ and the warlock says ... he says, ‘I’ll sell you my sponge for one flamingo’.” Eavesdroppers around them chuckled. “Now you’ll recall we’d received a flamingo earlier for pouring a sack of skunks down Old Man Marvin’s chimney after what he did to the Harlingourts’ flowerbeds, but the halfling rogue had trained it as a mount by this point and wasn’t willing to part with it. What we then did is, we had the wizard cast a sleeping spell on the rogue, we exchange the Pinky the flamingo for the skull, make our way back and sack in a tidy profit.”

Hungerford had kept his polite smile on his face for so long it felt carved in. His jaw was cramping. “How very ... interesting,” he said. In his head he screamed: “This is the stupidest, most convoluted thing I’ve ever heard, and I don’t know how I’ll live through another one!”

Desperately, he kept a look out for the desired town board, newspaper stand, or just an interesting cloud. Whatever it took to keep Mole quiet.

“And the rogue wasn’t mad?” Trudy continued and Hungerford, who was not far enough away yet, took off his pointy hat and bit into the brim.

“Oh, he was, he called in a favour with the local assassins’ guild, which was why the rest of us had to escape town dressed as vegetables …”

“Look, the notice board!” Munck cried and rushed off towards it. He rifled through the newest sheets in the only quiet half-minute he’d had all morning, which was over too soon.

Mole leafed through the newest murder ballad, then pushed aside pamphlets of the local cults and advertisements for flesh-eating flower bulbs. Amidst “Wolpertingerre whelps free to a goode home” and “Seekinge red dragon scales for resnable price” Mole found things that pleased him.

“There we are, apprehending a giant boar, dealing with bandits in the woods, fetching a tool bag back from the riverbank … that’s a decent start for a growing lad like yourself.” Mole delivered an encouraging pat on Munck’s back that made the wizard almost topple over face first into the murder ballad. “We shall earn glory and travel on like kings! Or at least gentry.”

“We’ll eat first,” Trudy decided. “My stomach thinks my throat’s cut here.”

“Do we have time ...” Munck tried.

“Boy, you need to put some meat on those bones.” Trudy poked him in the side of his too big robes, which made the wizard yelp.

“Aye, if he gets any thinner, we might tie a string ‘round his middle and fly him like a kite.” Mole’s tree trunk-sized arm wrapped around Munck’s bony shoulder. “Don’t worry, lad, we’ll fatten you right up. To the tavern!”

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Hungerford burped discretely. He was almost thankful for the long walk to the riverbank where the tool bag had been supposedly lost. His digestion was being put to the test. Not only had the two elders insisted on a decent meal of fried mincemeat, potatoes, and assorted vegetables, Trudy had pushed at least a third of her meal on his plate because she ‘couldn’t eat as much anymore.’ It hadn’t stopped her from devouring two pieces of cake with cream and coffee afterwards. Hungerford’s wallet was itself hungering for a refill.

Finding the tool bag hadn’t taken long at all. And they were in luck, because the bandits that needed justice delivered to were in the area. Which they found out when they turned around from the riverbank and were faced with the business ends of several daggers.

The five men attached to them stood on business: “Now, laddie, you don’t want anything to happen to your grandparents, do ya?” the tall one in the middle said and performed an in all fairness impressive swirly move with the knife in his right hand. “Your money or your life!”

You’ll have to pry it out of the greasy hands of a tavernkeep, Munck thought, but aloud he said, “Don’t worry, I know just the spell for this situation, now if you could just hold the bag …”

No one seemed inclined to listen, instead the remark earned more dagger brandishing. Next to him, Mole rubbed his hands together. “Five against one! Hardly a fair fight. Where are your other friends, lads?”

“Mole, please, let me handle this.”

“A wizard’s job is to stay behind the man built like a wardrobe, boy. Ready a fireball or something, I’ll deal with …”

Both of them toppled over themselves in an attempt to stop Trudy, who had ventured forward with an unimpressed face. She grabbed a dagger out of a man’s hand, who was too surprised to offer resistance or do anything more than blink. She squinted at it briefly and then pushed her finger onto the blade.

Hungerford broke into a cold sweat. “Miss Trudy, be carefu...”

The blade slid smoothly into the hilt. “This is a toy,” Trudy explained unnecessarily. “You get held up by a toy knife and you call yourself a wizard?”

The supposed head robber pressed one offended hand onto his hips and scoffed loudly. “It’s not a toy, good woman, it’s a requisite!”

The camp accent made Trudy raise an eyebrow. “A prop is what it is. So you’re not bandits, you’re ... actors? That’s worse!” There was exactly one theatre in Trudy’s hometown, and she loved a good play as much as the next old biddy. When business was slow, she sometimes went just to throw peanuts at the less talented thespians.

With embarrassed mumbling, the actors-turned-bandits packed in their props. “See, our play wasn’t doing so well ...” the tall one tried to explain.

Hungerford’s knees had meanwhile stopped shaking. “So you marched into the woods to get into character?”

“No, we very much did mean to rob people,” said one, and there was a chorus of “oh, yes.”

“But you have to admit, Lanser, it’s great practice,” said another.

Trudy crossed her arms and looked the lot of them up and down with stern disappointment. “Do your mums and grandmas know you’re out here making a nuisance out of yourselves?”

As one man, the actors dropped their heads and mumbled an embarrassed “No’m.”

“That’s just as well, they’d die of shame!” Trudy threw the prop she was still holding on the grass and reached into her pocket. “Now, look here, you coop of featherbrains, this is a knife,” she explained as five wannabe robbers drew back from the twelve-inch blade. “And if you look over, Mr Mole has a bigger version called a sword.”

“Please, don’t be so formal. Just Mole will do. Anyway …” Mole said, dutifully drawing his trusty sword that had survived the siege of Hingmadden. “Did you get that from my kitchen, by the way?”

“Yes, it’s very well kept, I thought it might be useful. Since someone” – searing look at Hungerford – “didn’t let me pack a bag.”

“Fair enough,” Mole shrugged and advanced, sword raised.

The theatre group began to practice for the role of ‘frightened damsel’ and clutched each other. A dozen requisite knives against one very real warrior might entertain the crowds on a Saturday, but on a regular Tuesday it was bad news.

Trudy looked at the huddled mass of family disappointments and shook her head. “Now if I were you, I’d follow us to town and turn yourselves in. You might get away with community service.”

The medium-sized would-be robber piped up: “What, like helping at the old folks’ home, sweeping streets and whatnot? Absolutely not!”

The tall one called Lanser looked between sword, Trudy, a lost-looking wizard, and his friends and considered their chances. “Shut up, Zawo, you want to see jail from the inside? Lead on, ma’am.”