Epic 247

Damn, you thought you escaped me huh?

Tsk tsk.

There is no escape. Only Puns.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CHPSlafkpPwF9PLgWa53mFezGlEvnVmqHstgiQBZi0w/edit?usp=sharing

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Cois caught a smear of grey fur and a glint of gold as the rat king lunged. 

Its eyes bled into a darker shade of red, a clear sign of the frustration that comes when a local apex predator realizes its dinner isn't running away. Life in the Secret Garden had been soft for the rodent, allowing it to develop a sense of entitlement that didn't account for a goblin with a bad attitude. It moved with a heavy, unrefined aggression, banking on the idea that its size alone was enough to settle the matter.

Cois had a fireball primed and hissing, but the swamp had other plans. He lost his footing on a slime-coated log and went down hard, his heat dying with a pathetic splash in the stagnant water. 

The rat king didn't miss the opening, diving in with the frantic energy of a hunter who smelled an easy kill. Before the teeth could close, Fera stepped into the gap. She drove a heavy iron frying pan upward with a bone-jarring crack. The impact with the rat’s gold-plated teeth kicked off a spray of sparks that lit up the mud, the ringing of metal on bone echoing through the reeds.

“We’re all under Delta’s roof,” Fera spat, her boots sinking into the muck as she braced against the beast’s weight. “Who gave a pest like you permission to start trouble?”

The rat king pushed back, his breath smelling of old rot and swamp gas. 

“Do not put us in the same category. You’re just the house pets she keeps in the dry halls to look pretty. We’re the ones born in the wild garden, the actual teeth of this place. You’re just exotic toys swaddled in her personal quarters while we’re the beasts of burden meant for the real work. When the harvest comes or the war starts, we’re the tools she uses. We aren't ‘soft’ monsters playing dress-up in the pretty halls,” he spoke with a harsh but firm pride.

He put more pressure on the pan, his gold teeth screeching against the seasoned iron. The tension in the mud was thick, and the rat king clearly intended to show them exactly how blunt a 'tool' could be. 

Cois scrambled to his feet in the background, coughing up swamp water and looking for an opening, while Fera stared into the rat’s crimson eyes with a direct, lethal focus that suggested she wasn't nearly as 'soft' as he assumed.

Fera didn't wait for a rebuttal. She tucked her chin and drove a heavy right hook into the side of the rat king’s face. The punch landed with a meaty thud, rattling the creature's bone crown and sending its crimson eyes into a disoriented spin. 

The recovery was too fast for something that size, though. The beast whipped around, its thick, wormy tail catching Fera across the ribs with the force of a falling tree. She was tossed backward, smashing through a soft, rotting log and disappearing into the tall grass of the swamp.

“As expected. Even the house pets have a little bit of fight in them,” the rat scowled. He lifted a small, twitching paw to gingerly rub at his jaw, his gaze shifting over to where Cois was standing in the mud.

“She even brought a little minion along. Maybe we can find some common ground once she understands her place in things,” the king started to laugh, the sound a wet, rasping wheeze. The joke died in his throat as his entire head vanished in a sudden, violent burst of orange flame. Cois hadn't bothered with the flowery language of a chant; he simply slammed the base of his staff into the muck and let his temper do the talking.

The flash of heat scorched the surrounding reeds to a crisp, instantly turning the swamp’s thick humidity into a blinding wall of white steam. Cois stood in the center of the haze, his knuckles white as he choked the wood of his staff. His breathing came in ragged, shallow bursts, his lungs burning with the scent of singed fur and ozone.

Nobody punted Fera. Not on his watch, and not while he still had a drop of mana to burn.

In his head, the rules were simple and absolute. Fera was the best of them and the worst of them all at once, a constant fixture in his life that he took for granted right up until someone tried to remove her. 

Only Cois was allowed to be a persistent pain in her backside with his various antics. Maybe Numb, Billy, Hob, and Gob could get away with it on a good day. Fran, of course, had a permanent pass, and Jeb the troll might be able to push his luck. But those were family matters.

The wall of steam thinned out just enough to show the rat king stepping back into the light. The fire had taken his silver whiskers, leaving nothing but blackened stubs near a singed muzzle. The crown of bone was covered in soot, but the creature didn't look cowed or any more careful than before he got a fireball to the face.

“You will pay for that,” he said, his voice dropping into a flat, icy calm that carried more weight than his previous screaming. He flexed his front paws, and ten obsidian-like claws slid out from the fur, dark and jagged against the mud.

“What? No gold caps for your little toesies? Did the budget run out after you finished the teeth?” Cois shot back. He wasn't sure how the reborn mechanics functioned in this part of the dungeon. 

This was the Secret Garden, a place that felt like the raw, messy space between Delta’s polished floors. The rules for coming back might be different here, or they might not exist at all.

Regardless of the mechanics, Cois was finished with the conversation. His personal pride was at stake, and it demanded that these charred rat skewers ended up on Fera’s bar menu with a generous side of extra hot sauce.

“I’m afraid not, Goblin. You see, I invest in help as well. Luckily for me, they take their payment in fresh meat,” the rat king hissed. 

The soot-stained bone crown on his head pulsed, bleeding out a thick, oily black aura. Cois glanced toward the reeds, expecting a tide of actual vermin to come scurrying out, but the reality was much worse. The darkness seeped into the landscape itself, soaking into the stagnant water, the thick mud, and the crumbling, rotting wood.

Drip by drip, the swamp began to stand up. Shapes pulled themselves out of the muck, mirroring the king’s hunched form but on a smaller, uglier scale. There were rats made of packed mud, twitching constructs of swamp grass, and heavy, jagged things formed from stone, all of them opening eyes that burned with that same bruised crimson light.

“Swarm,” the king commanded, his tone shifting into something relaxed and bored.

He sat back in the filth, his obsidian claws digging into a log as he watched his makeshift army settle the score. Cois was surrounded by a dozen versions of the very ground he was standing on, each one eager to pull him down into the rot.

The first wave of mud-rats never reached Cois. Instead, they were erased in a sequence of harsh, violent bursts of fire that tore through the humidity. 

The rolling crack of thunder announced Fera’s return before she even cleared the reeds. She stepped out into the open, gripping a Boomstick that she’d produced from her gear. Her clawed hand worked the underbarrel with a practiced, heavy click, and the fire crystal embedded near the grip pulsed with a hateful orange light.

“Sorry for the wait. I landed on a Swamp Squid that tried to take a piece of me. It was very helpful, it gave me a great idea for a new batch of squid dumplings,” she said. Her voice was a low growl, and while she was dripping with stagnant water, she looked remarkably solid.

“You should be broken in half,” the rat king hissed, his obsidian claws digging into the rot of his log. “The force of my tail alone should have ended you.”

Fera didn't blink. “I’ve had worse hits from a bad bout of acid reflux.”

The standoff tightened. On one side, the patchwork army of mud and rot bristled, hackles rising in unison; on the other, the faint click of Fera’s trigger and Cois' staff humming, snapping through the damp air.

“Enough,” a calm voice cut through the stagnant air. The rat king’s reaction was immediate, his round ears pinned flat against his skull, and his crimson eyes flared with a sudden, sharp edge of alarm. The aggression drained out of him as the swarm began to lose its shape. 

Seconds later, the mini-rats slumped back into the muck, dissolving into piles of ordinary silt and weeds. The swamp itself began to shift. Across the water’s surface and over every rotting reed, mushrooms unfurled with a frantic, wet popping sound. They spread in a vibrant, overlapping carpet of red, green, white, and black, effectively redecorating the grim scenery in a matter of heartbeats.

This floral display rolled out across the mud like a ceremonial rug, signaling the arrival of a power that made the rat king’s obsidian claws look pathetic.

The reeds pulled away from one another, the thick stalks sliding through the mud with a deliberate, rustling sound that suggested they were being told to move. A man stepped into the open, his posture relaxed and his hands clasped behind his back. 

A thick mane of flowering mushrooms grew from his scalp, framing a face with soft orange eyes that seemed to see right through the lingering smoke of the battle. He wore a tunic of intricate, hand-woven fibers that hummed with a grounded energy, matching the vibrant fungal carpet beneath his feet. 

Cois felt the immediate weight of the figure’s presence and retreated a few steps, his boots squelching in the muck as the air grew thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming spores.

“Hero,” the rat king chittered, his voice thin and trembling. The obsidian claws vanished back into his paws, and he pressed his belly into the dirt, looking like a common gutter rat despite the bone crown on his head.

“Rupert, what are you doing?” the Raid Monster asked. He raised a brow made of golden fibers, his voice holding the dry, weary tone of a gardener finding a particularly stubborn weed in his flowerbed.

Cois felt a muscle in his neck twitch as he slowly turned his head to stare at the cowering rodent. The internal weight of the fight collapsed instantly, replaced by a searing sense of personal offense.

“Rupert?” Cois repeated, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.

The outrage hit him harder than the rat's tail ever could have. He had been ready to go down in a blaze of mana against a legendary terror of the Secret Garden, but the name 'Rupert' stripped away every bit of the encounter's dignity. 

Cois stared at the gold-toothed beast, feeling the heat of an intense embarrassment rising in his chest. He had nearly been turned into a snack by a creature called bloody ‘Rupert’!

Hero turned his orange gaze toward the Goblins, his initial surprise quickly melting into a warm, genuine smile.

“We have guests. Why was I not informed?” he asked, his voice filled with a light, airy delight. The mood shifted instantly as he focused on the singed rodent at his feet. His expression went flat. “You haven’t been indulging in that superior nonsense again, have you? You are well aware that while we grow here, we are under the authority of Prim. Delta is not the one holding your leash in this garden.”

Rupert’s composure vanished. He scrambled for words, his obsidian claws retracting so fast he nearly tripped over his own paws. 

“I would never. No! No… I was just… doing a routine patrol…” He trailed off, casting a pleading look toward Cois and Fera. 

The rat’s eyes were wide and frantic, practically begging for them to stay quiet. He looked like a creature who understood that bridges could be gapped and alliances formed, provided they didn't bury him right here in the muck.

Fera didn't hesitate.

“He called himself the Rat King, tried to make a mid-morning snack out of us, punted me into a squid, and then tried to bury us under a swarm of mud-clones,” she reported. Her voice was flat and clinical, devoid of any sympathy for the creature in the dirt. “He even dirtied my apron,” she added, and the mention of her ruined clothes caused Hero’s face to harden into a mask of quiet rage.

“Rupert!” Hero said. The name rang out through the swamp, loud without the need for a shout, carrying the absolute authority of the garden’s true caretaker. The rat cowered instantly, his bone crown looking heavy and ridiculous as he pressed his singed muzzle into the muck. 

“I’ll be informing Merry,” he said. The threat acted like a physical blow. Rupert’s posture collapsed entirely, and he looked like he was trying to fold his massive bulk into the gaps between the atoms of the air.

“Please, not big bro,” he pleaded, his voice a pathetic, high-pitched rasp.

Cois just stared.

What did Merry of the First Floor, chaos mouse and fellow card player have anything to do with the stronger but nerdly named ‘Rupert’?

---

Delta had a lot of sticks.

The entirety of her second floor consisted of trees and mushrooms, providing a near-infinite supply of timber, yet none of it resonated with Alpha. He was looking for a specific sensation, a certain internal click that Quiss insisted would be unmistakable. 

Delta, however, felt that Quiss’ wizardly advice needed serious refinement. She was still struggling to translate his description of the right wood, something about it feeling like one’s kidneys were romancing their humors, into a set of searchable parameters. 

Alpha had moved past the ordinary timber and begun experimenting with the exotic.

“I don’t think this is it,” he said with a sigh, handing a circus skeleton’s femur back to its owner. The skeleton took the bone and scurried off to rejoin Renny’s routine, leaving Alpha to stare at the rest of his failures. 

A small pile of rejected materials lay in the grass: rods of solidified honey that refused to melt, intricate braids of bird feathers, and tangled weavings of ‘blessed’ Delta vines. 

The vine-stick sat in the muck, its five eyes blinking in slow, rhythmic intervals. It wasn't alive in the traditional sense, but it was certainly watching the proceedings with a dull, vacant interest.

“There is the garden on the third floor, and the troll’s respawn room should have some tough wood,” Delta suggested. The idea of failing to provide for Alpha when he had finally asked for assistance didn't sit well with her.

“We’re close, I think my liver is tingling,” Alpha said, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration as he waited for the internal click.

“...We’ll get Doctor to check that out before you go,” Delta replied after a brief, concerned pause. She pursed her lips, reconsidering the wisdom of Quiss’s metaphors. If Alpha was interpreting magical resonance as organ failure, the training was moving in a precarious direction.

She was about to suggest a trip to the Pygmies when a ping resonated from the third floor, a formal invitation that demanded her attention.

“One moment,” she told Alpha before vanishing from the second floor. Leaving him alone wasn't a concern; she knew he was physically stronger than the vast majority of her monsters once he pushed past his own self-doubt. Beyond his strength, there was the simple reality that nothing in the dungeon would allow harm to reach him. Every creature in this home held its own specific kind of affection for the teen.

Delta suspected she might have influenced that collective protectiveness, but she was fairly certain it was Alpha’s own character doing the heavy lifting. The monsters genuinely liked Alpha for his blunt, no-nonsense mannerisms. He simply existed alongside them with a direct, quiet sincerity.

Delta reappeared in a pocket of the dungeon where her influence felt thin and frayed, a direct contrast to the absolute control she held elsewhere. 

Runilac the Demon Smith sensed her arrival instantly, setting his heavy hammer onto the anvil with a dull, metallic ring. In the shadows of the forge, the puppet he called ‘Robin’ sat perfectly still, her wooden joints locked in a seated position. 

The doll appeared inert, but Delta felt the latent threat behind the craftsmanship; if Runilac gave the word, those limbs would become a blur of swirling blades with mercy being entirely optional. 

The internal weight of the demon's presence was always difficult to grasp, a mixture of ancient craftsmanship and the lingering trauma of his captivity under Mharia. He stood there, framed by the orange glow of the embers, looking every bit the legendary smith, even if his conversational skills remained a work in progress.

Delta looked around the room, taking in the half-finished armaments and the strange tools that cluttered the benches. The forge was a place of blunt, physical reality, where the abstract nature of the dungeon's magic was hammered into something sharp and tangible.

“You got my attention,” the demon proclaimed, his voice rasping through the heat-shimmer of the room.

Delta blinked, her confusion breaking the heavy atmosphere of the workshop. “...Didn’t you get my attention?” she asked, pointing a thumb at her own chest.

“Hmph! You’ve been broadcasting a grand project. A weapon, a tool fit for someone of significance, I can sense it,” Runilac declared, his voice echoing against the soot-stained walls. “Smithing Demons are drawn to work of this scale. An apprentice might settle for any hack job, but I only feel the pull of kings and tyrants. What are you searching for?”

Delta held her hands out, marking a vague, empty space in the air between them.

“Magic stick. About this big. Does magic stuff,” she explained.

Runilac leaned over his anvil, his eyes narrowing in the heat of the forge. “...How magical?”

Delta hesitated. If Alpha was the one holding it, she wasn't interested in half-measures or budget materials. She wanted the absolute limit of what her dungeon could provide.

“The most magic that ever magicked inside a stick that won't ever break?” she offered.

Runilac grunted, crossing his massive, scarred arms. “I’ll haggle for a mostly unbreakable stick with a lot of magic.”

“Most magic and very hard to break,” Delta refuted. She stood her ground, her gaze direct and unyielding.

“You sure you don’t want me to just make you a protector servant like Robin? I only ever made two of them in my life. Robin and her sister I gave away to some rich family with a mute kid. They can sing, they can dance, they can behead and make a bed?” he tempted and Delta looked at the demure and unsettling doll nearby.

“...I’ll take the stick of unfathomable power please,” Delta said politely.

Runilac scoffed, turning away and muttering something about ‘not taste for art’.

That was fair, Delta had seen her own artwork.