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“Hail, travellers,” said the wizard. In his octagonal onyx chamber he gazed at them across a dais of iron skulls, his face shrouded by a cloak of scarlet, the blackness within illuminated only by the glow of his five eyes like glittering emeralds. “You are the sellswords I have summoned from the City of the Falconer beyond the Crystal Cataracts of Cazenduil?"
“Yeah, hail,” said Patella, giving a little wave. The self-appointed leader of the trio of adventurers, she met his smoldering gaze and tried her best to return it. Since rangers lack the force of charisma to make their eyes glow, her sister Lenzi wondered why Patella was looking at the wizard like a diner that tasted a hair in a mouthful of stew inspecting the bowl for more. The McGee sisters’ shared squire Dev recognized Patella’s task and made a mental note to find out if there were any inexpensive amulets that made the wearer’s eyes iridesce—it would be a useful tool in a business like theirs.
“Okay, great,” the wizard replied. He leaned back into his desk chair and rummaged through the paperwork strewn across the dais before he finally found the forms he had filled out to hire the team. “Simple job, I think, which in my younger years I should have undertaken myself, but the years stoop my shoulders and buckle my knees. Also, I just don’t feel like it. Dr. Quincunx, pleased to meet you.” He extended his withered claws and shook hands with each of the party members. “A ranger, a thief, and an apprentice fighter. Athletics, trickery, and punching. As the arch-mage of the Hidden Academy, I confess wonder at your lack of a proper spellcaster.”
“You let us worry about that, sir,” Patella said, looking over the form. “If nothing else, my sister always packs a full contingent of potions.” Lenzi spread her coat to reveal a fraction of her stash.
“It’s gotten us through every time so far,” she told the wizard.
“Also, I think you might not realize just how hard I can punch,” the squire added.
“Oh, that’s true. As a spell-caster commanding eldritch powers beyond mortal reckoning, I always forget how useful punching is,” the wizard said. “Well, I see at least you brought a portable portal to a pocket-dimensional arsenal.”
“What, this?” she asked, jostling her fanny-pack. “Nah, the weapons are in a duffel bag in the car. This is just corn chips.” She unzipped it and demonstrated, crunching a few. “You want some? They’re Cool Ranch.” The wizard shrugged and accepted one, tossing it into the black void of his hooded face.
“Truly awful,” he mused. “Here I thought I knew true darkness, yet I have never crossed paths with a fiend so foul it could turn good honest corn into something like that. I marvel daily at the horrors of the mundane world beyond the gates of the Hidden Academy.”
“I have to say, it wasn’t very well hidden,” Lenzi said. “We walked right through the front gate and a receptionist told us how to get down here.”
“Oh. Right. I keep forgetting we dispelled the Unfindability Field when the school was bought out by FalCorp,” the wizard sighed. “I guess we’re just ‘The Academy’ now. Apparently hiding your school behind blinding mists on top of a secret mountain peak is, ugh, ‘bad for admissions numbers’. I told Jerry, I said, Jerry, I imbue my pupils with the forbidden secret wisdom of the ages. I don’t want high admissions numbers. But try telling Jerry that. He was all like—”
“Well, you seem busy, sir, so if you could just brief us on this quest, we can be on our way,” Patella said.
“Sorry, sorry,” Dr. Quincunx said. “I normally have a cup of extremely strong coffee every morning, but today I spilled it all down my favorite robe this morning.” They waited for more.
“So the quest—?” Patella asked.
“Get me a new robe, obviously,” the wizard said.
“You contacted the Falcopolis Guild of Idolclastors to fetch your drycleaning?” said Lenzi.
“Ha! No. When I say I spilled strong coffee, I mean it ate quite through the denim.” Lenzi had absently grabbed a cup of coffee when the receptionist offered it, but now frowned at the steaming brew.
“The Academy’s arch-mage’s robe was denim?”
“I’ve got tenure,” he shrugged with a faceless grin. “Now about my new robe. Formerly the Denim Dominion exported their wares, but of recent they have ceased, likely due to the Seventh Lord-Falconer inheriting his position at the helm of your dear city’s economy and tightening import taxes. This realm is not without haberdashers skilled enough to create a decent jobe (jeans robe), but the off-the-rack ones always take me strange aeons to break in and get comfortable, so I’m sending you to steal one from a cleric of the vile jod (jeans god) whose cult rules the Denim Dominion. When you arrive, it should not take you long to find them—or them to find you, they are famously hostile to outsiders—they will challenge your right to be there and attack you, and once you have one of their robes, re-activate the portal key I will give you here and you will be returned.”
“So, like…a whole plane made of jeans?” Dev asked.
“It is a blasted heath where no life may thrive save that it is rugged and independent,” Dr. Quincunx said. “So yes, mostly. You will see jorrors (jeans horrors) beyond belief!”
“And beat them up,” said Lenzi. “To get you a robe. Because you’re too good for store-bought.”
“Yes! Exactly, I am. Finally, someone else said it,” the wizard said. “Ha! I sense you scoff and think me a fusspot and a dandy, but through the centuries I have accrued a fortune to make a dragon’s scaly cloaca pucker, and if I wish to pay adventurers a chest full of gems to save myself the trouble of a starched and ill-fitted robe, I may do so. If you complete the task and think you have not earned your gold, refuse it or donate it to a poor widow or stand upon the highest tower in the Falcopolis and chuck the coins at passers-by. The Arch-Mage of the Hidden Academy gives not a fuck.”
Once Dev had returned from the car with her rucksack of weaponry (and lock up the signed paperwork so they didn’t have to carry it into battle), Dr. Quincunx shooed them through a portal to the Denim Dominion and closed it behind them so he could go make himself another cup of coffee before he got back to work grading papers without being bothered by any jorrors trying to sneak back through. The trio found themselves at the foot of a rubble-strewn canyon of jagged red and orange stone. The sky above them was dry and sunless grey, and a gritty wind blew. Near them stood a small cluster of blue cactus, dotted with copper rivets.
“This is the stupidest fucking quest I’ve ever been on,” Lenzi muttered.
“I wonder how many other fabrics have quasi-elemental planes,” Dev said.
“No idea how long this is going to take,” said Patella, surveying the terrain while the other two milled and moped. “Man, I wish I had some kind of steed so I could do some real scouting. Big rabbit or something that could clear some distance…horns for handlebars. Ugh. These rocks are going to be rough going, plus tracks won’t show so we won’t be able to track anything. I don’t see any signs of civilization, unless these jactuses are hand-made.”
“Sounds like a good time for a luck potion,” Lenzi said, fishing around in her pockets. Her every garment was replete with pouches loaded with potions. She quaffed a flask of green glistening liquid and waited for the effects to kick in.
“Hey, as a squire, I’m supposed to ask questions, right? So Dr. Quincunx. He’s evil, right? Don’t good wizards usually have a long beard and kindly eyes? Are we worried that our reward being ‘a chest full of gems’ might mean he magically packs our torsos with quartz crystals until we explode?”
“Good observation, youthful squire. Glowing eyes under a face-hiding hood usually aren’t a great sign,” Lenzi said, “but as long as the glowing eyes aren’t red, wizards are usually fine. Other colors are usually okay, at least with wizards. Sorcerers are hit-or-miss; it’s warlocks you’ve got to watch out for. It’s, like, in their contracts or something.”
“And speaking of contracts, I’m faithful we’ll get paid properly since he filed a proper request with the Guild of Idolclastors,” Patella said, squinting at the horizon. She thought she’d seen movement, but it was just a couple of denim-winged moths disturbed by their voices fluttering away. “He might spend his time messing with forces beyond mortal ken, but I’m sure he knows better to mess with the monster-hunters’ trade union. Captain Gorgon is scarier than any psychobenthic squid-messiah.”
“Okay, so we’re trusting him,” Dev said. “So now I’m wondering about his advice. Like he said, most parties have a real spell-caster of some kind, right? Do those potions really take the place? Don’t you have to have a lot of them? Doesn’t that get expensive?”
“It would, except, you know, thief,” Lenzi said. “Markets…shops…Arch-Mage’s offices…” She tossed Dev a pen she had swiped off the wizard’s desk.
“If we’re going to rely on them instead of spells, I just wish you’d quit stealing from the sketchy shops,” Patella said. “Remember when you thought you’d slipped a goblin barbarian a Potion of Dispel Aggression and it turned out to just be Liquid Rictus? There’s a tip, youthful squire: slipping goblins potions to make them expose more of their teeth is a bad idea.”
“Well, I’m sorry, it’s a compulsion. Sometimes I don’t even notice I’m doing it when I pocket potions,” Lenzi said. “Meanwhile, if you’re ever in doubt about a situation, youthful squire, just chug a luck potion. Hell, if they could find a way to make the effects stack, there’d be no reason to carry anything else. I’d just bathe in that shit and nothing bad would ever happen.”
“Is it a potion of good luck, or just luck in general?” Dev asked.
“Huh,” Lenzi said. “Well, I’m not dead yet, so I guess it balances out.”
“Maybe we’ll find out when that gets down here,” said Patella, looking up. Above the crest of the cliff an eye on a thick stalk was staring at them. When they looked up, it darted back behind the rock.
“See, squire? Good luck, bad luck, whatever. It all gets things moving,” Lenzi smirked as she readied her weapons of choice, a pair of Knuckledusters of Chakra Alignment. Besides leaving painful and decorative bruises, they also forcibly adjusted the victim’s attitude to something more peaceful, depleting their aggression. It might not have been the best option for an alien plane of unknown alignment, but her armory of potions were specialized in use. “What’ll you be strapping on for battle today, youthful squire? Sword? Axe?”
“Let’s see,” said Dev, quickly digging in her bag of weapons. “I’ve got a saw, a box of nails, a brick…”
“I thought you said you had weapons in there.”
“Anything’s a weapon if you hit somebody with it, and squires don’t get paid shit,” Dev explained. “So, I could have spent my whole paycheck on a shortsword, a shield, a bow, arrows, whatever. Boring. Instead I blew my whole budget on a Wing-Ring and then, inspired your example, Mistress Lenzi, snuck onto a construction site and stole a bunch of shit.”
“Really?!” Patella spat. She had begun the quest with her shortsword drawn, but was in the process of readying an arrow to her collapsible longbow. “Geez, dude. Am I the only lawful person around here?”
“Yeah, but I’ll pay them back,” Dev said. “Here it is! The only valuable thing I took was this Slap-Hammer.” She gave it a few swings, testing its weight. “It’s basically a nail-gun on the end of a club, so every time you bash a fucker with it, you leave a two-inch roofing nail at the impact site. Brutal shit. Oh, right, the Wing-Ring.” She tapped it on the circular-saw blade the way the shopkeeper had shown her to attune its magical effects, and set the blade to spinning through a slow orbit around her, settling behind her head like a halo in a painting.
“Holy shit,” Lenzi laughed. “Remind me not to fuck with you when you level up.”
“You won’t have to be reminded,” Dev snarled with a smirk.
“I really hope you know how to use that thing,” Patella said. “The noise is attracting more of them.” Above them three more eyes had appeared. “Maybe it’s for the best; the more we can spread out the less likely you lose control of that thing and hit one of us.”
“Unless it’s one thing with four eyes,” Lenzi said.
“True!” Patella said. “Okay, I’m seeing legs. You two don’t forget to watch your flanks.”
“I know, mom,” Dev grinned. Above them, it looked like the eyes came in pairs—two of some kind of many-legged creature made entirely of denim, clambering on legs like so many pairs of jeans. “Joctopus (jeans octopus)?”
“Too rigid—I’m thinking Jiders (Jeans Spiders). Watch out for jebs (jeans webs),” Patella said. “Gee whiz, I wish my favored enemy were extraplanars.”
“Wouldn’t that be ‘J’piders’?” Lenzi asked.
“I dunno; assuming we live, you can ask Dr. Quincunx when we bring him his stupid robe,” Patella replied.
“It’s called a ‘jobe’,” said Dev. Whatever they were, the creatures leapt the last thirty feet down the cliffside; one went straight for Patella, while the other landed directly between Dev and Lenzi. The ranger’s bow of little use at close range, so she went back to her shortsword in one hand, a serrated hunting-knife in the other, ripping at the thick blue hide. Dev used the Wing-Ring to whip the spinning saw-blade dancing through the air and took one of its legs off at a blow; with a cry like ripping fabric the monster struck at her in the chest with a leg tipped in a massive copper rivet, sending the squire reeling. Its attention turned, Lenzi gave the thing a few blows with her crystal-tipped knuckles, but seeing it did little good, swapped them out for a spray-bottle of Phlogiston. Setting it on fire just seemed to enrage it further, and it pounced on her. Dev tried to knock it away with the Slap-Hammer, but it seemed to ignore the blows.
“Beasts! Be gone!” cried another voice, a figure trotting from along the cliff. He waved his arms and a bolt of liquid energy shot from his hands, blasting first the one off Lenzi, then the other from Patella. Sizzling and shrieking, the creatures left and the adventurers steadied themselves to meet the newcomer.
“We had it under control, but thank you,” Patella said, extending a hand. Their rescuer responded in kind, extending from a billowing denim sleeve a bony blue hand—a skeleton whose rough hue suggested even he was being transmuted to suit the Dominion’s theme.
“Hail and well met, outsiders,” he smiled as broadly as he might with his skull. “I am Jassius the Acid-Washer, a cleric of this realm. Are you wounded?”
“Nothing major,” said Lenzi. “Sorry, did you say you’re a cleric?”
“Indeed,” he said solemnly, bowing his head. “In life I journeyed here with hate and anger in my heart to seek my fortune, for in those days the Denim Dominion was ruled by a tyrannical Jeirophant (Jeans Heirophant). Of late the realm’s patron deity has seen that a hardened heart is no blessing, and the new Jeirophant has turned our order peaceful and benevolent, and all those slain of old were revived as first-level Jlerics (Jeans Clerics) of our Jod.”
“Oh,” said Lenzi. “So…you won’t attack us?”
“Indeed not, my lady,” Jassius said. “But why have you journeyed to our realm? This is no idle valley for holidaying.”
“We were actually sent here to obtain one of your robes,” Patella said.
“You mean jobes? Ah! Of course,” the skeleton replied. “Your humble servant would only be too happy to assist. Come, I will take you to our Jemple. It’s just over that ridge. The new Jeirophant always loves to meet outsiders.”
The Jemple was formidible redoubt of carved local stones and curious blue crystals, ornamented with fine tall jactuses. More skeleton Jlerics were supervising a crew of simple animated trousers doing menial tasks, sweeping the floors and brushing rock dust from the denim tapestries.
“So does being here turn things into jeans, or is someone doing it?” Dev asked Jassius.
“All that which resides within the Denim Dominion is converted or expelled, according to the will of our Jod,” the Jleric explained. “You will be safe here for a short stay; if you tarry you may begin to notice some bluing of your equipment first, then your flesh, but it should be a simple fix with healing magicks in your home realm.”
“When you say ‘short stay’, are we talking days, hours, what?” Lenzi asked.
“Well, the simplest way to obtain the jobe you seek would be to join our order,” he explained. “Such a life is not for everyone, however. It is the wishes of our Jod that all visitors be shown the wisdom of our ways, but if you decline, you will of course be welcome to return home once you have rested and eaten.”
“Do you have regular food or just jood?” Dev asked. Patella shoved her and hissed to be respectful, but Jassius laughed.
“The question is a fair one! A Jemple full of skeletons has little call for traditional viands, but fortunately a cleric of any deity worth worshipping has little trouble conjuring food and drink. Edible food and drink. Just through here is the reception hall where the Jeirophant awaits you; the Jod alerted him to the presence of outsiders in our Dominion, so he is expecting you.”
“Hail, visitors from another realm!” called a robed figure from a denim-swathed dais. The chamber was high-vaulted and richly upholstered in alternating stripes of dark and light denim, and the Jeirophant stood and greeted them from below a tremendous jidol (jeans idol) depicting the Jod in bas-relief as a square-jawed old cowboy. Unlike the skeletal Jlerics, the Jeirophant appeared alive—his skin was denim, yes, but it was skin and not just bones, and his eyes shone a rich orange-gold. His jobe was embroidered in bright looping brocades in every color, one of the few splashes of color in the Jemple. “What do you seek from our humble order?”
“A great enchanter bade us come in seek of a robe, your holiness,” Patella said in her customer-service voice, unsure if she should bow or kneel or what. “When your wares were sold in the markets of the broader realms, he was impressed by their quality, and is dismayed to find your trade hampered by the policies of the new lord of the Falcopolis.”
“I see,” the Jeirophant smiled. “I was once a pilgrim from that realm myself, seeking solace here in the order from the chaotic world abroad. My antecedent at the head of the order built up quite a business across the many realms; our products are, after all, exemplars of determination, grit, and independence, durable yet comfortable. It is true that your new Lord-Falconer closed the doors to our realm, and I am pleased to know that we have allies in the Falcopolis hungry for us. Nonetheless, I am afraid you may not find what you seek here, and it has nothing to do with tarriffs and such mundane matters.” He motioned up to the jidol. “Our Jod is jealous; the former Jeirophant did much to fill our coffers, but little to glory our patron, without whom the order would produce nothing. It was the wish of our Jod that the Jobe of the Jeirophant fall to a new wearer, a new way of thinking; no sooner had I arrived as a pilgrim and supplicant than the eyes of the Jod raised me to this place.”
(“This is suspicious as hell, right?” Dev hissed to Lenzi.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” she whispered back.)
“The Jobes of the Jlerics are no longer for sale to the public like any common shirt or trouser, but an exclusive benefit for worshippers and priests of the Jod,” said the Jeirophant. “We stand together alone, independent, tough and hardy, yet casual, at ease at work or at play. Would you consider joining us, travellers?”
“Truly, your ways are wise and, um, nice, but…” Patella began. She was prepared for a lot of things from an undead cult, but not being asked politely to join.
“Say no more,” the Jeirophant smiled with a wave of his hand, denim skin and copper nails. “We speak of independence and you show it. You are adventurers at heart, travellers and monster-slayers with little wish to sit idle in some stuffy Jemple. Though clad in flesh, your chests truly beat with the greatest of jearts (jeans hearts). Let us speak of other things; how came you here? We have had few visitors since the Lord-Falconer banned travel between our realms.”
“He did?” Lenzi asked.
“He did,” the Jeirophant said. “I assume he was merely worried that our superior wares and ways would lure away customers from his precious FalCorp’s garment division—“
“Rightly so, I would wager,” smiled Jassius, or possibly some other jobe-clad skeleton. The Jleric had left the trio to speak with the Jeirophant, but had returned with a number of other acolytes and their animated trouser wards and shut the door behind them.
“Indeed! With a number of powerful mages hired, I believe, from your own Guild of Idolclastors, the Denim Dominion was sealed and all transit of goods and individuals was barred through heavy magicks. Your patron mage must have been either very powerful or very sneaky to get you here. I see that beyond the ranger’s limited abilities, none of you are true spell-casters; may I ask how you intended to return home?” None said anything. “You may speak. I vow I will do you no harm.”
“How about your army of undead clerics, will they?” Patella asked.
“Haha. As the leader of a sect celebrating individuality and gumption, I would hesitate to speak for any of them,” the Jeirophant smirked. “Likely you were sent with some kind of token to return? A touchstone to open a portal? Perhaps some kind of key?”
“You guys ready to get out of here?” Patella said quietly to her sister and squire. “Meet up outside. You’re going to be taking down some Jlerics on your way, so grab a jobe if you can, but don’t break your neck trying to get it; I’d rather go home empty-handed than get one of us killed in a realm this stupid.”
“I can hear you, you know,” the Jeirophant said. “Jlerics? Sieze—“ He was cut off suddenly by Dev’s Wing-Ring-attuned brick flying upside his head, but the Jlerics got the message anyway and rushed on them. Patella’s blades did little against the attackers’ jones (jeans bones), but once she had a grip on them they were quite easy to throw around; Lenzi downed another luck potion and started flinging bottles of Pitch Darkness into the crowd, leaving spheres of lightlessness. The spray-bottle of phlogiston would be dangerous in such close quarters, so she swapped the nozzle onto something unlabeled and sprayed it in a skeleton’s face, trusting to her luck.
“Oof! Ow! My jones!” the Jleric howled, recoiling in pain.
“I always thought this stuff was a joke,” she mused.
Dev, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the situation as a learning opportunity. The brick had worked reasonably well and she would switch to the saw-blade if she needed to, but first she took out the box of nails and attuned it; with the Wing-Ring’s power, she could make the box dart and careen through the air, but not explode as she had hoped. She had heard of a Dancing Bow that could string and fire itself in aid of its owner, which suggested the magic could affect multi-part weapons, so she remained hopeful as she opened the box manually by hitting it as hard as she could with the Slap-Hammer. As she had hoped, the nails obeyed her commands. The skeletons took little notice of the damage they left, but as long as she concentrated she was able to guide the airborn nails to pin the Jlerics’ jobes to their limbs, binding them and the animated pairs of jeans like jurritos (jean burritos).
Patella found herself faced with Jassius the Acid-Washer and the Jeirophant, whose copper eyes were smoldering. “Give me the portal-key,” he demanded. “Your Lord-Falconer trapped me here and denied the Jod proper tribute! We will march forth on holy mission! Behold, the Jod senses a time of reckoning!” Above them the Jidol was changing; the cowboy had gained a second set of eyes and a number of fangs as the denim writhed, giving form to the thing within. “Enough of this. Hold Person!” Patella found herself frozen as Jassius searched her for the key. “Quickly now, the Jod draws my strength to take form and my spell will not hold her for long. That old fool I replaced knew nothing of what he was dealing with. When I came here from the Falcopolis and killed him to take his place, it was mere greed, but the Jod filled my heart and we endeavored together to spread the jult (jeans cult) to all the realms!”
“She doesn’t have the key, your holiness,” Jassius said.
“I don’t?” she spat.
“You know. Thief,” Lenzi said, right behind the Jeirophant. With the Knuckleduster she hit the Jeirophant in the back of the head hard enough to knock him off the dais. “Potions of Longstrider all around?” She downed her own and tossed one to her sister and another to Dev. “Now let’s—“ She cut off with a screech as the effects hit, a cheap effort by a third-rate alchemist. Painfully her legs extended to double their normal length, thinning to spindles as the cells redistributed. She screamed as they could no longer support her weight, rolling onto her side just in time to prevent the slender bones from snapping like twigs.
“Shit! Coblenzia!” Patella shouted. Before her enemies could react she splashed the potion Lenzi had thrown her into Jassius’ face and dodged a thrashing acid attack as he doubled in height but halved in strength. The Jleric’s acid hit the Jeirophant head-on and he stumbled away howling; the lingering effects of his Hold spell kept Patella from rushing to her sister’s aid. Above them the Jod was taking form, its head split into a pair of roaring demonic grimaces and snaking denim tendrils emerging from the sides of the square idol. “Dev, do something!”
“I’m out of nails, they got my duffel bag, and these bastards keep coming!” she cried back as she was buffeted by slashing claws and blue energy bolts from the Jlerics. “Wait, I know something to try! Throw me the empty bottle! Hard!” Patella threw the bottle she had emptied into Jassius’ face with all the strength she could muster. Dev wished she had taken a luck potion of her own—good luck, specifically—and wound up. With the Wing-Ring she jabbed her fist and punched the bottle into a cloud of glass splinters, all of them dancing and obeying her command. With a scream she sent them at the Jod—or, as she recognized from her lessons on recognizing the major beasts and threats, a demonic force, the Denimogorgon—tearing at the convulsing Jidol, wounds dripping with jichor (jeans ichor). Collecting the Slap-Hammer from where the Jlerics had dropped it, she mounted the dais and began hammering nails into the fabric, pinning it back into place.
Patella crawled over to her sister and performed a perfunctory field-medicine exam; Lenzi would not be able to walk until the ill-made potion’s effects wore off, which neither of them could predict. Patella looked around for supplies to build an emergency stretcher so she and Dev could carry her out and emptied a fallen Jleric from its jobe like it was a sack of corn.
“Lenzi? Stay with me now. We’re going to get you out of here,” Patella said. “If Dr. Quincunx is half the mage he brags about, he can fix this. You’ll be fine.”
“Yeah?” Lenzi said through clenched teeth.
“Sure! Assuming we can carry you out of here before that thing frees itself and lock the door behind us,” Patella said.
“Cool, thanks,” Lenzi hissed. “I’m gonna take a nap now.” With that she relaxed, passed out.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Patella muttered to herself. “Dev! Get down here! A nail-gun on a stick isn’t going to hold a god down!”
“You’re too late for that!” cackled the Jeirophant, stumbling up. His face was badly burned by Jassius’ final acid attack, the fabric burned away from his flesh. “I have the key! The Denimogorgon will ravage the Falcopolis and found a capital jity (jeans city) for an empire of blood-stained denim! All will serve! Gold and souls for thy gaping jaw (jeans maw)! Rise, master! Thy jervant (jeans servant) and jessel (jeans vessel) awaits—“
“ Qq uU Ii eE Tt ,” tolled the Jod’s twin mouths. A thick pleated tenticle reached down from the jidol and ensnarled the Jeirophant, crushing him with a squeal and taking the key for itself. At this point Dev could agree that no amount of nails and broken glass were going to get the job done and she scrambled to the ground, helping Patella break the stands off a couple of blue-flamed candle stands to assemble a double-length stretcher for Lenzi.
“We still have any of that fire-potion from before?” Dev asked Patella.
“I don’t think that’s gonna do it—it just pissed off those spiders or whatever they were,” Patella said. “If she would just label these damn bottles, we might find something useful, but I think at this point we should just get out of the way…wait.” Lenzi’s jacket had fallen open, spilling a few of her secret bottles, including a dark brown liquid with a familiar smell. “Actually, this might do it.” She straightened and readied herself; if this didn’t work, the Denimogorgon would kill her for sure.
“ Oo pP Ee nN , ” the demon snarled. It had the key and was prodding it with its tendrils, slowly prying open a hole in space, but its form was still tethered to the jidol’s square mount on the wall, its other angles echoing the shape with extradimensional resonance that hurt to look at—a hard target for a hard throw.
“Oh, hell, why not,” Patella said. At her sister’s side, she found a luck potion and slammed it. Once the tingling began—twinkling was probably not a resptactable look for a battle-worn ranger, but no time to think about that now—she wound up and threw the flask at the demon. Lenzi had stolen an entire flask of Dr. Quincunx’ powerful coffee without even meaning to, sheer kleptomaniacal compulsion, but for once Patella was glad of it.
The coffee had doubtless cooled a bit since it was collected, but the heat had still been tactile through the glass, and in the resultant fragrant splash the demon’s twin faces retracted into its writhing bulk like a snail touching salt. It screeched in chords not normally heard by mortal ears as its denim flesh scorched and contorted.
The key hit the ground and Patella grabbed it, activating it as Dr. Quincunx had shown her how; on the other side of the portal the mage was already waiting for them, interrupted from a meeting with a ponytailed Sun-Elf in a nice suit.
“Friends of yours, professor?” the Elf seethed at the wizard.
“One moment, Dean Jerelius—what’s going on in there?” Dr. Quincunx demanded. “You incomeptent murder-hobos, I’m in a very important meeting just now, can you—“
“No,” Patella said, shoving him aside as she and Dev carried the stretcher through the portal. “You’re a wizard, is there anything you can do for her?” She pulled the jobe from off Lenzi’s elongated legs.
“Oh, ew,” said the Elf. “Doctor, we can talk later. Turning your students to stone to fill up your rosters without having to listen to them is a serious offence against FalCorp’s behavioral guidelines, don’t think you’re getting out of it this easily, but I can see you’ve gone to plenty of trouble here to get rid of me. This afternoon, then?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dr. Quincunx muttered, waving vaguely as the Elf left. “Is this it?” He held up the jobe they had been using for Lenzi’s blanket. “This isn’t my size.”
“Shut up and help her,” Patella snarled.
“Dare ye speak thusly—“ He cut off as she punched him square in the center eye wearing Lenzi’s Knuckledusters of Chakra Adjustment.
“Help her,” she said. She burned with the urge to wipe the tactile darkness inside the wizard’s hood off her hand, but there were more important things to worry about just now.
“My, my, someone’s got a burr in her baldric. Let’s take a look,” he said. He looked Lenzi over up and down; lightly he touched her on the shin, drawing a wince. “How did a Jleric do something like this?”
“They didn’t, it was a cheap Long-Strider Potion,” Patella said.
“Aha! That’s what you get for trusting in alchemists!” he laughed. “I could have told you something like this would happen. Hard to tell how long it will last; if they just used cheap Seven-League Beets, she might be back to normal within the hour, but if they were using powdered Clockroach instead of a better accelerant, it’s hard to say. Here, I’ll cast a calming spell that should get her some decent rest. Get her over to the Healers’ department if you want more; I’m a Master of the Dark Arts, we’re not great at making things hurt less.”
“Captain Gorgon is going to hear about this. You could have mentioned that passage to the Denim Dominion was forbidden by the Lord-Falconer,” Patella snapped.
“I did not expect you would care,” Dr. Quincunx responded. “Idolclastors these days! When I was your age, I was slaying Necro-Putti and Dire Argopelters, and damn what the game-wardens and regional governors had to say about it. Oh well, is this all you brought me back?”
“You should probably take this, too,” Dev said, handing him a palm-sized cube. It was solid denim and smelled like burnt fabric and coffee.
“What’s this?”
“Core essence of the Denimogorgon,” she told him. “All that’s left of the Jod. I don’t know why you’d want it or what you’ll do with it, but since we’re such incompetent murder-hobos, we figured you’d be better qualified to deal with it. If you don’t like that robe, there’s plenty more back in the Denim Dominion; I don’t know if the horde of undead clerics will still fight you for them now that their god is dead, but you can check.”
“We’ll send you the bill for the chest of gems,” Patella said. She and her squire hoisted the ends of the stretcher and carried Lenzi out. Dr. Quincunx leaned back into his office-chair and inspected all that remained of the Denimogorgon.
“An Arcane Jube (Jeans Cube),” he mused, turning it in his fingers. As he did so, the robe he was wearing turned to denim. He inspected it, checked the seams, the fit—all perfect. Some rather extravagant embroidered brocadework had appeared on it as well, not normally the sort of thing he went in for, but somehow he felt that he would get used to it in time.