“Oh shit oh fuck oh shit Charles I don’t know about this Charles!” Sternhad hyperventilated, pausing to shout at a nearby wall. “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know! Do you? Do you know? I don’t! I don’t know what I was doing! What were we doing? There’s fucking monsters with grey skin chasing us, my weapon fell INTO the wall fifteen minutes ago, and now you’re fucking stonewalling me!”

Sternhad threw his hands up in frustration. His battle buddy had been annoyingly quiet for quite some time, and it really got his goat. It didn’t help that every corridor looked exactly the same, either.

“And you!” Sternhad shouted, turning backwards to point accusingly at a tall grey fellow slowly approaching him. “Are you with those grey fuckers? The ones that tried, albeit very half-heartedly, to kill me earlier? He paused as the end of his tirade for a moment, but as the grey figure made no attempt at an answer other than to erratically swing his sword through the air, Sternhad continued.

“Damn it you stupid man, that air ain’t done nothing to you! Didn’t yo mama ever teach you to be nice to others? The golden rule, damn it! Fucking grey men and their stupid lizard skin.”

Despite Sternhad’s continued admonishments, the grey man continued assaulting the air as he lurched towards Sternhad’s general direction until finally, the man lowered his hand and opened his mouth.

“Okay.”

Sternhad blinked at the grey man, shocked that he had finally uttered a word. The two stared at each other, looking at each other straight in the eyes, both trying their hardest to find out, to remember just what the hell they were doing there.

“You know, Mr. Grey Man, I do admit. I have no idea how to approach this situation now.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Yup.” The grey man answered.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Elena paused for a second to catch her breath and prepare her magic as she observed Jim rain a flurry of blows upon the demon, each strike swinging with enough force and speed to crackle as they passed through the air. To the right, slightly behind her and much further away from Jim, Carlos manipulated the orb of water floating over him to send yet another high-pressure jet of water singing towards their enemy, only for it to be gracefully dodged with a flutter of his cloak. Or, at least it was what Elena had initially assumed was a cloak, a mistake she only made once after an attack of hers had taken her too close and the cloak revealed several hundred gaping maws of razor-sharp teeth.

Well, at least we know for sure that the half-elf was indeed collaboration with this dem- no, I suppose he did introduce himself earlier. This Mavier.

It still felt odd to finally put a name to the face of the enemy. Still, it matters not. Elena mused to herself as she blasted another clump of rats away from Carlos, the boy not even bothering to thank her anymore due to the alarming frequency. It shouldn’t even be possible for the rats to reach them.

Elena tensed her legs, and then pushed on the air to gain even more height. The atmosphere screamed around her, almost as if nature itself was taking offence to what her magic-enhanced abilities allowed her to do, but she followed through with the now-familiar motion regardless. Another push of her legs moved her body in position behind Jim. He had the unenviable task of absorbing as much attention from Mavier as possible in a melee, while avoiding a violent death and trying to keep aloft. All of this with only the assistance of a strategy that even Elena wasn’t sure would work when they had initially planned it.

Even now, however, as Elena thought back to their strategy discussion the previous day on horseback, she could appreciate what a total of three minds brought to the table.

”It’s worth a try,” Carlos had said to her after he had explained his idea. “I have a crazy strong proficiency over water magic in particular, right? And I’ve spent some time testing it. Actually, ever since those weirdo’s in robes told us what magic would work best for us back at the castle, I’ve been testing. Who wouldn’t? We fucking have magic! And, ya’ know, the air has water in it. Not much, but it has it. Clouds have more. And if I do this,” Carlos had continued, making sound effects with his mouth as he manipulated his magic. A strange choice, Elena thought, but it would work as a focus. Sound effects were hardly different than making movements with your hands or reciting various phrases.

“And then if I do that, it takes a fair bit of concentration and a decent amount of magic, but I can sort of solidify it if I add minute amounts of dirt. But it’s still water, aside from the pieces of dust in it! Crazy, right? Maybe not solid enough to pull a Jesus and straight out walk on it, but if I throw this stuff around the air when we fight, and you put enough pressure on it the stuff solidifies for barely even a second – just long enough that if you put some buffs on like you said you could an jump with enough force, you could stay in the air if you kept doing it. It’s Oobleck, but almost completely made out of water and really hard to see unless you are specifically looking for slightly darker than normal air. Also really hard to keep up.”

After Carlos had explained to her what in the hell Oobleck actually was (a fluid that hardens in response to physical impacts, and something she probably had missed in the various science classes she had always slept through), the blocks began to fit in place. She had already explained to the two of the basic formation they would be taking, but it this worked it would allow them to ignore any traps the demons had set up or any terrain issues. Plus, if the demons couldn’t figure it out, then they would have a serious height advantage. Even though it was apparently quite difficult for Carlos to maintain, it wouldn’t matter as he was going to be in the backline either way, allowing for her to be a shield and for Jim to protect him if it really got that dicey.

Still, Elena thought as she watched Mavier jump towards Jim in a flurry of scimitar blows, most of which were slapped away by meaty fists and the rest making shallow cuts in brilliant gold skin, that son of a bitch picked up on it much too fast. Not even a minute into their fight the bastard had looked at them oddly after Carlos had almost got him in the side with a jet of water from twenty feet up in the air. Ten seconds later, and Mavier was springing in between the not-Oobleck (or Notbleck, as Carlos insisted on calling it) to reach them on even terms. And, as much as Elena wanted to shout for Carlos to drop the magic and let the demon fall to death, she knew that with his lack of precise control over the spell that they would fall as well.

It's truly a pity that we couldn’t have a year between their summoning and this fight to have the two trained up. We could have had a fair shot at being the strongest team of heroes after the tenth batch.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“Wow! This is absolutely fuckin’ amazing! To have such top tier ingredients, well, as a chef I couldn’t be prouder!” The stumpy dwarf exclaimed from where he stood on top of his footstool. “Wonderful. Now, as you all must truly know by now, we’ve gotta start with the seasoning. Olive oil!” His footstool cackled in agreement, causing the watching grey men, orcs, and humans to begin howling with laughter.

“Yes! Olive oil! You just want to get a wee bit in there.” The dwarf continued on as he handed his helmet to a nearby gnome. “Yeah, just fill that sucker up. We need just a wee bit, but who knows if we’ll need more when I, Gramsey, get to the real meat of this.”

Beside Gramsey, the gnome followed instructions to the letter, grabbing a knife and cutting into his own side without a shred of hesitation to let his lifeblood gently flow into the grimy helmet.

“Wonderful!” Gramsey muttered as he received the half-full helmet to the sound of scattered applause and the gnome’s body thumping to the ground. “Yeah, just a smidge of olive oil, lads.” He said as he dumped the contents of the helmet into the waiting hands of a demon kneeling next to his footstool. “Right. That looks beautiful. And, as a precaution, I’ll add a dab more of olive oil to our mixture for that rich, full flavor.”

“Now, time for the pièce de resistance! I’ll just take a nice, thick flank steak, season it down well and good with a handful of salt, and then roast it for just, just thirty minutes to get a nice sear on the side of that sucker.”

“Perfect, perfect,” Gramsey said as a demon tore out a chunk of his own ribs to offer Gramsey, and a human in the front row began to methodically pick out molars from the back of his mouth. “Yeah, wow. Fuck me, wow. Wonderful ingredients. Homegrown salt?!” he said, as he handled the teeth excitedly.

Gramsey accepted the rack of ribs and the spare molars, and then turned back to the grey bowl next to his footstool.

“Now, all we gotta do is heat this baby to 300 – no, 450 degrees and it will be the perfect temperature to cook at.” Within seconds a matchbook was procured, and Gramsey carefully built a small fire under the waiting hands of his demonic aide. “Wonderful. Absolutely stupendous!” He and everyone else in that section of the trench screamed at exactly the same time as the growing fire began to melt the flesh off the bottom of the demon’s hands.

“Mmmmmm!” The crowd hooted as they began to smell the scent of cooking flesh, their mouths frothing as they began to scratch at their own skin in anticipation.

“And! Let’s not forget~! Just! A! Tad! Bit! More! Olive! Oil!” Gramsey hollered in pure ecstasy as he scooped handfuls of mud from the walls of the trenches into his mouth.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

“Right, so, what exactly does that mean?” Woller questioned the orc and the demon sitting in a circle with him in a trench. He picked idly at a piece of his kneecap as it sloughed off his leg at an absolutely glacial pace.

“Well,” The demon answered him, playing rock-paper-scissors with the orc and scowling at his own repeated losses. “Usually when I’m unsure, that one guy… forgot what his name was. I think he was important to me? I don’t know. Anyways, he always said that if you’re trying to figure out exactly what something is or what something means, break it down to the simplest possible terms and work your way up from there. Why don’t we do that?”

The cleaver sitting on Woller’s knee kicked his little itty bitty legs into the air and nodded in agreement, which Woller took as permission to continue.

“Well, a cleaver is made up of metal and wood, right?”

The demon and the orc nodded in agreement, while the cleaver piped up in a metallic voice, “And feelings too! Those butcher knife gals, oooohhh man, they really get me into a tizzle, if you know what I mean!”

Woller nodded in understanding, and amended his statement. “Wood, metal, and feelings.”

A metallic voice interrupted again. “You mean the feelings of a lover! I, as a cleaver of culture, am a true Casanova!”

“Rightttt….” Woller smiled. “So three specific things. But I feel like we’re no closer than we were before, to truly understand what you, Jermy, as a cleaver, are. You think, therefore you are, you are a true cleaver of romance, able to woo any woman that crosses your path, but is that all there is in your little heart? Do you truly have no higher ambitions, no wishes for the future other than for hot butcher knife babes?”

“Well,” The orc scratched his head, his look of confusion changing to a grin as he thought of something, grabbing the cleaver (very inappropriately, mind you) by his handle to help prove his point. “He can help his buddies do this!” The orc then made a chopping motion, a second one, and then cut downwards with brutal strength through his own wrist. “Shee?” The orc mumbled as he popped his severed hand into his mouth like a nice afternoon snack.

Woller and the demon nodded in understanding, each feeling like they had broken through to understand the secrets of the universe. Jermy, however, was left to grumble on the orc’s leg about a certain hate crime the orc had just committed and how he was “most definitely going to report it to the orc’s boss.”