His name was Floret Diobhan, and he was currently trying to fight his way past an alarming number of seedstalkers, i.e., at least one seedstalker. The sound of a ticking clock echoed through the forest, and he could swear that he kept seeing a silhouette following him, one carrying a scythe. He’d already lost one boot – which had promptly been devoured by one of the unsettlingly mobile carnivorous plants that were hot on his tail – and he’d had to sacrifice a sleeve of his tunic to bind a wound on his arm.
Floret could trace all of his current misfortune to one single event, and every spare synapse in his brain not already dedicated to keeping him moving and alive cursed his decision.
One day before, Floret had woken up, not realizing that he was, that day, going to do something incredibly stupid. To him, the day seemed completely normal – offensively normal, even. He ate his breakfast, then went to his job as the apprentice to a local blast pig farmer. Floret had taken the job under the assumption that any work that involved animals that detonated at a moment’s notice could scarcely be boring, and as it turned out he could not have been any less correct. The farmer, an octogenarian who nevertheless was spryer than Floret himself, gave Floret the task of keeping the blast pigs cool.
This largely involved shoveling mud onto them, then shoveling mud onto them some more.
To say that Floret was not thrilled with his job would be an understatement, but, as he was acutely aware, it paid. He’d tried everything he could think of to liven it up: shoveling the mud on one leg, seeing how quickly he could shovel the mud, seeing how slowly he could shovel the mud… Nothing stuck. And so, after roughly six hours of moving mud back and forth, he made a last ditch effort: he prayed to Duximas, the goddess of danger and adventure, hoping for an infusion of life into his day-to-day grind.
This was his mistake.
The pantheon, a full twenty strong, stayed in the Centrality, an extraplanar location from which they held the fates of the people of Ennen in their hands and hand-analogues. Most of the deities remained in the Centrality full-time, though a few of them made trips down to mortal lands for various and sundry reasons. This included Tzarth, the goddess of death and life, who was there any time a mortal died, ready to sever their soul from their body, and Duximas, who spent a good chunk of her free time exploring the places mortals couldn’t go.
At this specific moment, both Duximas and Tzarth were in the Centrality. This was rare enough, but it coincided perfectly with Duximas receiving a prayer from a mortal unlike any she had gotten before.
“This mortal wants me t’… make his job more interestin’?” Duximas muttered to herself. She was seated on a bench in the Centrality’s gym, where she had been lifting weights. Her normal armor rested in a corner of the room, leaving her in more suitable workout clothes. Even though, as deities, they didn’t strictly need to sweat, Duximas was sweating from the exercise. Sometimes it was just how things were done.
Tzarth stared at Duximas blankly. “He wants you to what?” She was spotting Duximas; the two had traded places on the weight bench a few times already that day. Ordinarily, Tzarth wouldn’t be Duximas’ partner of choice, but after losing a bet, Duximas owed her a few favors.
“Why would he come t’ me to make his job more fun?” Duximas spawned in her hands a scroll with the prayer written on it and read it a few more times, worrying that she was missing something. “He’s gotta know my domain is danger.”
“Well, why not give him a taste?” Tzarth asked, a sly smile crossing her face. “Let him have his thrill. Then maybe he’ll learn his lesson.”
“Maybe…”
“Great. It’s settled.” Tzarth snapped her fingers and her scythe appeared in her hands. “By the way, I want in on this.”
“What? Why?”
“Never you mind. I’ll wipe out the rest of the favors you owe me, though.”
“Can’t argue with that, I guess.”
The next day, Floret arrived as normal at the blast pig farm at the crack of dawn, when the mist still clung to the ground. The blast pigs themselves were asleep, and the farmer usually took a few hours to get out of the house in the mornings. Therefore, he was slightly surprised to see another person standing outside the barn.
She was shorter than Floret but well-built, wearing a regal-looking dress picked out in oranges and reds. Her eyes were a piercing red, and the stare she was levelling at Floret was almost enough to make him recoil.
Nevertheless, Floret approached. “G’morning,” he said, “is there something I can do for you? Only Farmer Retregrad won’t be up for a little while longer.”
“Naw… no, it is ya-you I’m lookin’-looking for.” Her voice was rough and coarse, and she kept backtracking over her own words like she was uncomfortable with them. “Floret Diobhan, your services are required. I am in need a’ rescue. Of rescue.” It was then that Floret realized that she was flickering slightly, as if she was just an image. He didn’t dare touch her to find out. “You must brave the trials of the Forest of Mortality and halt the machinations of the Dark Lady Tza—the Dark Lady.”
Floret’s eyes lit up. This was exactly the sort of thing he’d been waiting for. He knew that he was destined for greater things, and here greater things were – in the form of a princess, or at least someone of equivalent rank. “Yes, milady, of course. You can count on me.” He unsheathed the short sword he kept on his person just in case one of the blast pigs got out of line. Most swords made a satisfying ‘shing’ noise upon being drawn; Floret’s went ‘parrp.’ “Where might I find the, uh, Forest of Mortality?”
The woman pointed at the forest off to the side of the farm.
“I, um, didn’t know that that was the Forest of Mortality,” Floret said. “I always thought it was just the woods.”
“Look, just get your tail into the forest already,” the woman snapped, “or else I’ll force it in there for ya.”
Floret found it a compelling argument.
There had never been a trail through the forest before, Floret knew that for certain. He also knew that, even if there had been a trail, it hadn’t been littered with wild animals pacing back and forth between beaten-up treasure chests.
A solitary seedstalker idled in front of a chest nearby. Floret knew to keep his distance from seedstalkers. They were plants, certainly, but they were plants with a taste for meat and they could reach surprising speeds on those roots of theirs. Floret watched it for a moment, then smacked it with the broad side of his sword. The seedstalker screeched at him and fled into the brush.
When Floret opened the chest, he found only an amulet and a scrap of paper, which read “Amulet of Placebo.” He didn’t know where ‘Placebo’ was, but he shrugged and put it on, feeling slightly more powerful.
It was only when he closed the chest again that Floret heard it – a heavy ‘tick, tock’ that filled the air. Haze billowed across the path, and what little sunlight had broken through the canopy faded away. Then, laughter – or what should have been laughter; Floret thought it sounded more like someone was saying the words “ha, ha, ha,” and trying to make it dramatic. “Foolish hero,” came a voice from nowhere and everywhere all at once. It was deep and raspy, and it too sounded like the person who owned it wasn’t quite used to it. “You stand no chance of succeeding. I will strike you down where you stand.”
“What—” It wasn’t Floret who responded; rather, the princess’ voice came out of nowhere too. “That wasn’t—” A figure appeared in front of Floret, this one looming and shadowy, clad in red armor, a scythe in one hand. This last detail became relevant quickly as the figure – the Dark Lady, Floret guessed – swung their scythe in a wide arc, opening up a slash on Floret’s arm.
It was a shallow cut, but it still stung, and Floret winced as he tore some of his sleeve to bind the wound. Floret was no stranger to getting hurt on the job, but usually the blast pigs didn’t mean it. “Hero! Run!” said the princess, her voice echoing across the path. Floret needed no further encouragement.
“You shall not escape me,” the Dark Lady said, less as a threat and more as a statement of fact. She disappeared into the shadows of the forest, but just as quickly as she was gone, a seedstalker crossed Floret’s path. He recognized it as the one he’d hit earlier – the bruise on the side of its body spoke to that – and he ducked around it, but it let out an ear-rending shriek and was immediately joined by several of its comrades. They began to give chase faster than Floret had ever seen something with roots move. He stumbled over a tree root, his foot slipping from its boot; the sounds of the seedstalkers devouring the boot were enough to convince him not to turn around.
“Enough!” The Dark Lady reappeared directly in his path and shoved him to the ground; the seedstalkers spread out in a circle around him, some sort of saliva-ish liquid oozing from what acted as their mouths. She raised her scythe with a noise that was decidedly not ‘parrp’ and swung it forward, directly at Floret’s heart.
The scythe pinged off of the amulet, which promptly disintegrated. The Dark Lady scowled, and Floret found a small pocket of courage within himself. “Ha! See that, Dark Lady?” he crowed. “Evil can’t defeat a force of good!”
“I don’t know about all that,” the Dark Lady said. “See, I can just try again.” Another noise that wasn’t ‘parrp’, another swing, and—
The princess appeared in front of Floret, his sword in her hand, blocking the Dark Lady’s strike. “What’re ya doin’?” the princess growled. “This wasn’t part’a the script, Tza—Dark Lady.”
The Dark Lady laughed, genuine laughter this time. “Oh, calm down, princess. It’s all in fun.”
“Um,” Floret said.
“Deal’s off,” the princess continued. She took a step forward and knocked the scythe out of the Dark Lady’s hand. “We’re done here.”
“Fine, fine.” The Dark Lady held her hands up. “Whatever you say. This was all worth it for the look of terror on this pipsqueak’s face.” She snickered to herself, then disappeared into the shadows.
The princess groaned and shook her head. “What a bust.” She extended a hand towards Floret, and it took him a moment to realize she was offering to help him up. He grabbed it and stood. “That’s that,” the princess said, then she, too, disappeared.
Floret stood in the middle of the path, blinking confusedly. The seedstalkers had all disappeared too, leaving him alone. “Oh,” he said. There wasn’t much more he could say.
***
The next day, as Duximas went through the backlog of prayer that had stacked up, she found another one from Floret. This one just read, “Same again?”
Jocelyn P. Blair 