Ah the Shimmerlands, the one place I have been repeatedly, religiously, indisputably told not to go, and, coincidentally, the very place I happened to be riding through. Everyone gets so hung up on magic blowing up when used in the Shimmerlands, but I—clutching a semi-auto shotgun—didn’t mind that quite so much. Gods can ban guns, but they can’t take them from me here! (As a… [former?] American, I am obligated to say some variation of that phrase. Cold, dead hands, etc.)

Magic going splodey is still quite an inconvenience, however. The frustrating thing is… it’s inconsistent, kinda. If a spell works once, it will work every time, if cast in the same way. Unfortunately, the only way to test this is to put your hide on the line and cast it your damn self. If you roll a 99 or 100, congratulations! You have a spell you can use. If not, then it’s nuke-meet-face. (I am told the explosion is enough to reduce a log cabin to splinters...)

This leaves a disappointingly small list of magic that is available in non-splodey form. Vitally to me, this includes featherweight, if cast outside the Shimmerlands. This spell—while not applied to myself due to prohibitive duration—is enchanted onto every piece of equipment I’m carrying, reducing several hundred pounds of kit to about forty. Other spells relevant to me are beacon-stones and their connected compasses, which are my guides to the Tomb of Instability; and placebo-grade healing potions, which, arguably, aren’t actually magical.

The rest of the spells I either don’t know and cannot learn fast enough or can’t use outright. Next, some (1/3 or so) creatures with innate—'organic' magic as hippiemancers put it—can use their abilities. The rule of thumb on that is: If it's in the Shimmerlands, it hasn't exploded, therefore it's good. Dormant magic is all but guaranteed to last until used, then you roll the dice on whether it's splodey. And, finally, any magic item looted in the Shimmerlands works as it should… until removed from the Shimmerlands, at which point you can’t take it back in without risking you-know-what. On top of that, magic items of meaningful power levels are only found in the Tomb of Instability, and are regularly cursed to boot.

All of that together makes me so incredibly grateful for Drominnus’ insane little spell that looks through the connection between Earth and Nassur, then creates items from Earth. Thanks to him, I have a shotgun exactly like my uncle’s that I learned to shoot with, and about enough other military-grade surprises to level a small castle (actually, probably not). It feels so nice to have some modern boomsticks in my possession, and even better to flip off all four gods that banned the things.

My mule was being very good too. He always understood how not-serious most of our jobs were, so he recognized my somber tone immediately and swapped his strong silence for determined silence. I have no idea what that means, or why I tried to communicate it, but I can feel the difference and that’s all that matters.

My mind wandered, a poor decision but one all-too-easy in the endless, dusty flats commonly found in the Shimmerlands. I couldn’t exactly stay engaged while doing the equivalent of holding W for 6 hours. My eyes went up and scanned the horizon. For the 800th time that day, I saw nothing but dry haze as I rubbed my finger around the safety of the shotgun. I looked back down, taking a sip of water from my trusty vault 13 canteen. It seemed an appropriate paint job to give the thing while I waited for Dro to finish assembling my kit.

“What’s a handsome man and his steed doing here?” asked a gloopy, vaguely feminine voice to my right.

“AHH SLIMEGIRL!” BANG

A cloud of buckshot deleted her translucent blue head to little reaction. Bits of slime spattered onto my mule and I, harmlessly rolling off to fall on the ground. My mule started to run, only for a wall of blue slime to spring up before us. We banked left, as the wall became a gigantic ring, trapping us in an arena 60-ft across. The slimegirl reformed her head with far less detail. She addressed me in a much more hateful tone.

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to get this face ready? Presentable? Hours! Hours you asshole! And you just blast it away like it’s nothing! I could have reused this for my next meal, but noooo, you have to go and be twitchy with whatever that thing is in your hand. Do you have anything to say before I fucking dissolve you?”

During her rant, I had spied her slimy core—the equivalent to a heart and brain—resting in her chest. “Yeah! How about: Fuck you, shitbag!”

I fired four shots in rapid succession, spewing hot lead pellets toward her and emptying what I had loaded in the extended magazine. She flinched and the core disappeared into the ground. She reformed an even more crude face as I shoved a deep-blue shotshell into the tube, which was then instantly loaded into the chamber with a snap.

“Human filth! No more talk, only eating!” she shouted.

The walls grew some crude, slow tendrils to whip at us, but my mule simply took us away from them. She was remarkably slow, all-in-all. I finished loading the tube with the blue rounds and leveled the sights on her central form.

“Not hungry! Maybe the smell of barbeque will change that!” I quipped as I blasted her.

Her feminine voice turned to a shriek as a 50-50 mix of magnesium and white phosphorus embedded in her humanoid form. In a panic, she was ejecting the shavings one-by-one, or, trying to. The magnesium kept burning regardless, and the willy-pete would immediately reignite the moment it touched air, which would fuse it to her surface layer before she could throw it out. While she was distracted with that horribleness, I fired the seven remaining custom super-dragon’s-breath into an area of the wall she’d made.

Unlike the central humanoid—which she clearly cared about a lot—the wall was an afterthought and burned down/evaporated in moments. A nice big section collapsed from the wall and my mule did a running jump, getting us free and clear. I flipped her off as we escaped.

“Burn in hell!”

……

I sat in my hammock watching the moon for a minute. It was time for bed… in theory. I’d eaten my dinner of room-temperature canned ravioli, buried my business in the latrine, and set the motion sensors around the perimeter. I had even tested the sensors and gotten good pings back to my watch. Then I’d applied the bug spray to the hammock legs of polished adamantite. Yet I still felt some small sense of dread. I tapped my finger on my thigh, trying to figure out how to put myself at ease.

The slimegirl thing was still on my mind. She struck me as… vindictive… obsessive? I didn’t feel safe, even with a good five-hour ride separating us. I looked at the distant cliff. It was only about 15 feet high, but we had taken the time to find an acceptable ramp down… I ran my mind over it again, thinking about how water would flow down it. After a moment more, I got up from my bed.

With the extradimensional shoulder bag at my hip, I left our little dip in the ground and jogged some 700 paces over to the ramp we’d taken. Once there, I took out a rod of firebolt (trap edition) and buried it in the ground handle-first. And when only the tip poked out of the ground, I took the long string attached to the cover and backed away until it was taut. I got prone and put on my helmet, then yanked the string. The cover popped off and I instantly ducked down, but my concern was—for once—unjustified. Without the cover, the rod was primed and ready to explode violently the moment the magic within woke from dormancy (cabin to splinters, right?). I sighed with relief and crawled a short distance away before walking back to my hammock.

I addressed my mule. “Alright, buddy-boy. I’ve never seen you sleep, so you get first watch. Wake me up if you see anything bad... or when you need a nap, if you actually can zonk out.”

……

A vibration traveled up my spine. A fraction of a second later, a pressure wave washed over me, kicking up dust, sending my ears ringing, and setting me on full alert. I scrambled out of the hammock, causing it to flip over and dump me on the ground. I reached into the bag and pulled out the helmet, then pulled down the night-vision goggles. Unfortunately, there was a damn cloud of dust in the way. It was decision time: Pack up fast and run, or stand and fight…

My mule sniffed the air, then looked at me funny and trotted off toward the cliff. I was speechless! He broke character sometimes, but that was completely out of left field. I considered switching weapons, but super-dragon’s-breath felt like the right choice… I followed him into the darkness, gun up and safety off.

It didn’t take long to spot the problem. Hard to miss ten feet of angry slimegirl. She was trudging toward me menacingly.

“There you are, bitch! Now that I’ve dissolved your mule, you can’t run!” she gloated.

I glanced down, seeing a perfectly-intact mule being dragged along inside of her… I dunno, it looked kinda like the train of a wedding dress, but made of slime and massively inflated. I’ll just call it her dump truck ass. It kinda looked like my mule was chewing as well… a general notion of his plan was forming in my head. I started to backpedal.

“Great, you followed me, congratulations! You like the welcome gift?”

She snarled. “Are you insane? I’m lucky that explosions suck against me! Come here! Agh, I’m so hungry from all my bits you blew everywhere! I’m not going to be able to find them all you know!” She swung at me, missing hilariously. Downside of being shaped like a slug was that she moved about as fast as one.

“I’m going to catch you, and I’m going to go cell-by-cell and…”

……

“When I’m done with the nervous system, I’ll finally dissolve your brain and…”

……

“Then, when I’ve found your family I’ll…”

……

“After I’m done with your hometown, I’m going to get you resurrected and DO IT ALL AGAIN! GET OVER HERE!”

I flipped my night-vision goggles up, as the morning sun was in full force. “Are you sure you can pull all that off? You really don’t seem smart enough for it.”

She slammed a hand against the ground, causing it to splatter and need reforming. “STOP INSULTING MY INTELLIGENCE! I AM VERY SMART FOR MY BRAIN SIZE!”

I stopped backpedaling for a moment. “Ohh, that tennis-ball looking bit? That explains a lot.”

“I’M SMART AND YOU CAN’T TELL ME OTHERWISE!”

“God, you shout like my boomer grandpa at Thanksgiving. You’re smart as slimes go, but you really do need to pay more attention…”

For once, she paused and appeared to think. My words were laced with enough subtext to fatally poison an English teacher. She turned around and recoiled at the sight of my mule polishing off the last few bites of her dump truck.

“AHH! I ate you! No, wait, you’re eating me! Give that back!” She reached down and shoved an arm down his throat, trying to grab at the contents of his stomach. He bit down and removed the arm, trotting off with his head held high as she shrieked.

While she was distracted with that, I chucked a thermate grenade square into her back. The fuse burned down and the canister exploded into a mess of molten red-hot goodness. She completely lost her composure and flailed in place, utterly overwhelmed by the heat. I sat down and watched her world burn.

When the fire finally went out, and the screaming had turned to a whimper, I stood up. I had nothing but ill will toward her, yet it still seemed pretty horrible. Her core was a continuing no-show, so—remembering how she hid it before—I assumed it to be underground. I fished out a catch-orb and readied it.

“Clear blast area!” I shouted as I chucked it and hit the deck.

There was a short little scream, but no explosion. Moments later, I dared to look over my shoulder, seeing the shining little marble wobble on the ground. After a minute or two of nothing, I tentatively approached and picked it up.

The image of a tiny little slimegirl pounded on the inside. “Let me out of here!” she pleaded in a smol voice.

I laughed heartily. “That was supposed to kill you. I didn’t know these work correctly in the Shimmerlands. So no, not a chance.”

She punched the interior unconvincingly. “I’m going to get out, and I’m going to do all that stuff I said!”

I looked at her with contempt. “Tell you what. I’m gonna turn you over to the League of Conspicuous Evil, have them run you through all the obedience spells, then have you cook me a nice steak dinner and EAT IT IN FRONT OF YOU!” I snapped the lead cover over the orb and shoved it in my pocket.

“Fucking psycho,” I grumbled as I moseyed back to camp alongside my belching mule.

……

The next day was pleasantly quiet as I rode along half-asleep from my early-morning jog. Not being eaten was a great motivator at the time, but—as with all short-term boosts—you pay for it in the long run. We made camp in a depression at the top of a hill, from which I could see some sort of marshland. After 2-days of assorted canned garbage, I was starting to regret not bringing fire tablets, the kind that don’t give off any light. Oh well, it was my fault for skimping on that for another brick of C4.

I woke late in the night to an odd noise. It sounded like some sort of skittering mass… and munching. I gently peered over the side to see thousands of carnivorous roaches below my hammock, trying and failing to climb the legs. It was the literal exact scenario I had the thing built for, even down to polishing the legs to a slippery shine. I then saw my mule, conspicuously untouched, slowly munching away one mouthful of roaches at a time.

My stomach turned. “How are you still hungry?” I asked, to no response.

I laid back and waited out the rest of the night, sleepless. The munching continued until sunrise when the swarm scattered. I… didn’t eat breakfast.

……

Swamps. Ugh. I really regretted only bringing 1 can of bug spray. It was so bad I had actually put my shotgun in the saddle-scabbard to swat flies. What do they eat when they can’t get hobbit human?

A massive splash of water sprayed me as something leapt at us from the right. I raised my leg and narrowly avoided a bite. Instead, the giant armored eel creature latched its jaws onto my mule’s leg. I snatched the shotgun and blasted it twice in the head to no effect.

“FUCKEN SHIT!” I yelled as I pulled out two green shotshells and shoved them into the tube, then pulled the bolt to chamber a slug.

BANG BANG

The beast went limp as two tungsten slugs perforated its braincase. My mule kicked free of the jaws unharmed and snootily shook his head as we pushed on into the mist.

……

Dense fog nipped at us as we pressed through the foliage, all but supplanting the shimmer. The mud was oppressive, the reeds thick. The trees grew ever denser, with beards of moss hanging from their branches, gently swaying in the nearly dead breeze. And it was quiet. Barely a whisper of wind, not one bird to sing, and no buzzing little bugs. I clutched my shotgun close; a lack of sound in nature was never good. I checked the red compass again. It pointed forward and so we persisted. Something was about to go wrong, I knew it deep in my gut.

And yet, it remained silent. I kept looking left and right, wondering what the catch would be. As the minutes ticked by, I took a risk. The shotgun went in the scabbard and I reached into my bag, pulling from it a large, clunky hunk of electronics; a high-definition thermal imaging camera. As I powered it up to look through, I expected the worst. Perhaps a hundred invisible monkey monsters in the trees, or an endless loop of the same terrain repeating just beyond view.

But no. The FLIR cam cut deep into the mist, more than thrice what my eyes could see. There was nothing but mossy trees and soft, muddy grass. I hated everything about it. After a deep breath, I switched the camera off and hung if around my neck via the lanyard. Minutes passed evermore as I felt the itch in my trigger finger. The feeling was not leaving; I was not alone. It was distant at first, but then it was enough for me to notice.

“Can you hear that?” I whispered. “It sounds like buzzing.”

We halted as I raised the camera. There were tiny little dots of heat moving around ahead. I zoomed in and saw… something small flying about. Quite a few somethings, actually. I caught a glimpse of the form for a tiny moment. It looked… like a 4 or 5 inches tall humanoid with a big (for its size) insect abdomen hanging off the back.

“Honeybee sprites?” I muttered. “No, those like birdsong. I’m thinking… wasps. Let’s see about going around.”

I fastened down my helmet and made sure the gunshot noise-cancellation was working as I exchanged buckshot for birdshot. We tried to move quietly, keeping a low profile as we went. I used the camera to see ahead, steering clear of the occasional sighting. But sight and sound weren’t the only ways to find us. Soon enough, there was a splat against my leather riding coat. A small voice emanated from some little thing that clung to my arm.

“Stinky on the outside,” the little fae commented.

I reflexively snatched her off my arm and she looked mildly surprised in my hand. I held her from her shoulders to her knees. She had smallish compound eyes, antennae, some wings that were folded under my fingers, and a black-orange color scheme on her little leafy clothes, hair, and abdomen. And in her hand was a little spear made of a sharpened twig.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She did not answer my question, instead opting to open her mouth to reveal rows of tiny, sharp teeth.

She bit into my hand, bypassing the riding gloves and drawing a small amount of blood. “TASTY ON THE INSI—” she started to shout into the mist.

In one swift motion, I brought my other hand down on her head, crushing her spine and caving in her skull. Dead on the spot.

“Tasty on the inside!” echoed two voices as I heard them buzz away into the mist.

“Go, run!” I ordered my mule as we abandoned stealth. Two would quickly turn to a thousand.

Why do all the cute ones have to be such vicious little fucks?

……

We ran and ran for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t need the FLIR camera anymore, as I very much knew where the hornet pixies were. Behind us, a persistent buzzing of wings was slowly growing louder by the minute. They didn’t even need to see us; I was trailing a huge wafting cloud of bug repellent, which didn’t work so well against smart bug-people. I had just finished donning the gas mask in order to protect my face from stinging.

The shotgun went in its sheath and I whipped out the big boy: A compact flamethrower. Dro had kindly provided me with an adamantine fuel tank, which was about the size of a football and strong enough to have 50 gallons of napalm squeezed into it. It was heavy even with featherweight applied, and I had a feeling it would get lighter reeeaaaal soon. I set the nozzle to a wider setting, hoping to throw a nice cone of roasty-toasty death. Not killing fae was a rule of mine, but the Shimmerlands are a worthy exception.

I leaned forward. “You’re driving, bud, I’m turning around! Neigh if I need to duck a branch!”

I flipped around and faced the oncoming doom. It wasn’t long until I saw the dark blob of color fade in from the mist. “Meat! Meat!” they chanted.

The moment they got close I blasted the center of the swarm, then spiraled out. Hundreds of hungry pixies dropped to the ground aflame and they all scattered, but not to retreat. They split off to attack from every angle. I flamed the swarms coming from above and to the right, but the left hit me hard before I could counter. Spears and stingers stabbed into me, many being caught by my clothes, but plenty got through.

I swiped off my arm, but it didn’t last. As a dozen were bulldozed away, thirty more took their place. I let go of the flamethrower and it fell to rest on its sling as I reached for my tactical vest. I swatted away pixies from my chest as I pulled a tube of thunder from it. I pulled the pin and let the spoon fly. I counted only a half-second before throwing it a few feet straight up.

“Look, meat!” I yelled, causing many to look straight up at the lovely device.

There was a terrible concussion and—though I looked away— everything flashed white. My ears rang and my whole body felt woozy, but there was no new pain. I felt them falling off me by the dozens as I dared to peek. All stunned or worse, I easily brushed away those still clinging on. We made distance and I readied for the second round, but it never came. The mist thinned and we made it to some flats. I heard birdsong again.

Minutes later, the stings were starting to swell; an issue to address the moment I felt safe enough to dive into my medkit. Something wriggled in my coat pocket. I was silent for a moment, then I patted the pocket and finally retrieved the poor pixie. I had slapped her quite hard; she was broken-winged and had multiple bone fractures.

“It hurts. Make it… stop,” she whimpered.

I gulped, seeing her with some degree of sympathy. But there was only one reasonable solution in my position. A grab, a twist, and her neck snapped. The pain stopped. I held the small, lifeless form in my grasp for a moment. My hand trembled as I slowly tipped her remains into the bog-waters below.

We made camp somewhere quiet that night. I set up security screens and did another pass of antiseptic on any of the wounds where the band-aids came off. For the last few days I had been idly chatting to my mule, but that night and even the next day, I said nothing. There was nothing to say. We trekked on through the newfound grassland.

……

I laid prone as I looked down from our high ridge. The compass pointed onward, but I was using my binoculars for something much closer. The downward angle bypassed much of the shimmering, allowing me to pluck details with ease. There was a town of thatch and logs. Smoke streamed skyward in thin columns and people moved along the few streets. Beyoned that were teepees and farmland. Further still were boneyards containing the stripped remains of several large creatures. It was not a difficult leap of logic to explain the presence of large monster remains. All I had to do was get a good look at the people.

Orcs.

Going off my decent knowledge of them, I guessed them to be somewhere between B+ and straight A-grade. They had metal shields, a smithy, visibly old people, and—most importantly—farmland. The chance of peaceful interaction goes through the roof as the orcs get smarter, so my hopes were up. It was the perfect town location too; a fertile valley of bottomland with a creek and some long sightlines. I crawled back and mounted up.

“Here’s hoping they’re friendly, buuuut… just to be safe…”

……

I finished swapping the shells and grenades for magazines of 9x39mm hollow-points just in time to wave at the watchtower near the edge of town. An AS Val integrally-suppressed assault rifle rested against my chest, the primary implement I chose for numerous soft targets… such as orcs (not specifically orcs, just an example; I’m not a speciest). The watchtower rang a bell and I neither slowed nor accelerated. A small crowd formed at the edge of town, armed but not particularly armored. Only when 50 feet away did I slow down.

After a silent moment of posturing, I dusted off my orcish. “Spare a bed for a journeying warrior?”

They murmured amongst themselves for a moment, then an elderly orc stepped forward. “Those who succeed the Test of Wisdom may pass!” he announced to cheers.

Oh good, I know that one. “I accept! Bare-chested, pantaloons and shoes only!”

The elder paused. He had not even told me that I could dictate the amount of armor worn, but I’d participated in such traditions before and he quickly put that together. I dismounted, doffed my bag, coat, shirt, helmet, gloves, and undershirt, then grabbed my shotgun. I unloaded the buckshot and stuffed it in my pocket. Then, it was time for the shells I thought I wouldn’t need (but was glad to have).

We soon stared each other down, surrounded by a circle of orcs. The elder—who had introduced himself as Rutor—was across from me with a ball mace and a mean look in his eye. Orc men and women cheered him on, but I was not about to let the home team win. I hoped he wasn’t a prideful man because it was going to be a shotgun-induced beatdown.

“This is going to be loud!” I bellowed. While most did not heed it, they could no longer claim that I didn’t warn them.

The whistle sounded and Rutor charged. I raised my shotgun and fired the first of eight beanbag rounds (Mike-Tyson-in-a-can as my uncle called it) directly into his gut. He stopped as I pulled the charging handle and hit him again, then again, and again. Shot #5 put him on his knees, giving me ample opportunity to run up and introduce the buttstock to his face. Rutor dramatically fell back and hit the ground out cold. The crowd was silent as I breathed slowly, calmly.

Rutor woke up with a start and hopped to his feet with the skill of a rehearsed warrior. “What in all the grasses is that weapon?” he demanded.

I patted the receiver of the auto-5. “One so great and terrible that to wield it within the view of the gods would invite them to strike you down. Luckily, they do not see us here in the Shimmerlands. I’ll tell you more over… lunch?”

……

Orc cuisine is a roll of the dice. You never know if it’ll be a feast of epic proportions or the worst slop you ever had the misfortune of encountering. All I can say about today is… fuck yeah! Smoked salmon with spices and baked yams with butter. That’s good home cooking right there. Between bites, I was describing the basics of the shotgun, as that was the condition on them feeding me.

“And then the explosive powder gets trapped in this metal pipe and slings out the pellets. It’s really strong metal, because it’d explode in your face if it’s even slightly brittle. Some of the parts are spring steel as well, which I have no idea how to make.”

I could tell their smiths were taking figurative notes, but I doubted they would get anywhere.

Rutor unglued his eyes from the A5. “An impressive weapon, human. Still, it is a surprise to see you travel alone.”

The last of the yam disappeared off my plate as I felt satisfied with my meal and grateful to my hosts. “I agree that it’s not smart, but that’s what life has given me. I’m loaded for bear and heading that-a-way.” I pointed in the general direction of the Tomb.

The orcs shared a look between themselves as a warrior stepped up. “That would be unwise. The Shimmerlands changed some weeks ago and there is a river near the town now. A terrible beast lurks those waters. We have found no way to cross without being attacked.” He gestured to the salmon roasting over the fire. “We only caught these with exceptionally long fishing lines to use from a cliff.”

I nodded slowly. “Is the monster humanoid or able to speak?”

“No, it is not,” the warrior answered.

A strange sense of relief washed over me. “Good, cuz if it’s in my way… I’m going to kill it.”