Sabine was a princess pursued by the sorcerer Dahkhal until she managed to turn the tables on him. She exchanged the world’s memory of her existence to trap Dahkhal as a tiny jellyfish in a
Sabine was a princess pursued by the sorcerer Dahkhal until she managed to turn the tables on him. She exchanged the world’s memory of her existence to trap Dahkhal as a tiny jellyfish in a ring on her finger. In an ironic twist, Dahkhal was the only person who remembered who she was, and they became friends. That is, until the ring was stolen from her by Deacon Struct. Now she’s set off to find her lost ring. To read the previous adventures of Sabine, click here. To support us on Patreon, click here. The story continues below.
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Even measured against the rest of Sabine’s day, the sight on the tavern’s second floor proved surreal. Deacon Struct, back in his human form, stood before her, his arms extended in frustration. Far more striking, however, was an enormous table and chair, the latter of which had wheels, for some reason. Seated there was another massive sloth, easily five times the size of Struct’s transformed state. Upon his face he wore a pair of spectacles, on the desk before him sat a long tool covered in different runes, and in front of him stood a flat portal that shined with ethereal light. The sloth slowly typed on the rune board as he paid only a little mind to Struct and none to Sabine and Dahkhal in the doorway.
“I told you; I am the great indolent one’s most loyal acolyte,” Struct said. “If you don’t know who I am, then you are clearly not my god.”
“Mmm,” the giant sloth said. “If it helps you sleep at night.” He spoke with a rough, nasally voice, as though he was badly congested.
“It doesn’t, now tell me where my lord is!”
Sabine leaned over to Dahkhal. “Is that really Barphurmuir?”
“I don’t know,” Dahkhal said. “But every time I’ve ever heard of a disciple meeting their god, it’s sounded disappointing. So, maybe.”
“Listen here, I’ve made my offerings and I’ve done my worship. My world is ready to be torn asunder!”
The enormous sloth stopped typing, uttered a long, ragged sigh, and rolled his seat around. Upon his chest he wore a shirt with writing across the center, something none of the group before him had any familiarity with. It read, “Chicks kneel before me.”
“All right look… you.”
“Struct!” The deacon threw up his arms in exasperated anger. “Deacon Deacon Struct!”
The sloth and, still hidden in the doorway, Sabine and Dahkhal asked, “What?”
“It’s my first name as well as my title. My mother was a soothsayer, she was setting me up for success.”
Dahkhal rolled his eyes, the sloth mumbled, “That’s dumb,” and Sabine slapped a hand over her mouth to conceal her laughter.
“All right, whatever.” The sloth rolled back around to his flat portal and pressed a few rune-marked keys. “Struct… Struct… you’re from Serek?” Again, he let out a long, frustrated groan. “Why do you want me to rip up that craphole? You guys haven’t even figured out electricity yet, there’s not even any terrible movies to complain about.”
“I have dedicated my life to seeing the world torn asunder. It is too whimsical, too ridiculous, too—too—too damn silly!”
Sabine leaned over to Dahkhal. “What’s wrong with this guy? Because the big guy is right, it is a pit back there.”
Dahkhal shrugged. “For all his blustering, he’s pretty ridiculous himself.”
“You think we should be doing something, by the way?”
With a noncommittal shake of his head, Dahkhal said, “I’m not convinced anything in this plane of existence would stick. Beating him probably has to wait until we’re back in our physical forms. And, frankly, I’ve gotten used to just observing from the sidelines while an idiot makes terrible decisions.” Dahkhal sighed after he said it. “Mmm, my heart wasn’t even really in that one. You’d have at least stumbled toward some way to be victorious by now. Struct may as well be trying to milk an acorn.”
“Look, if I trash your world, will you leave me alone?” The sloth resumed typing at his rune board. “The guy who runs the website I’m a part of expects me to have four more lists about why everyone’s favorite movies are bad done by tomorrow.” At the same time he said this, the sloth brought a mug marked, “World’s Best Boss,” to his lips.
“I’m not even convinced you could.” Struct threw open his arms in indignation. “If you’re so almighty, why don’t you give me a single reason to believe it? And furthermore—”
As Struct slipped into a rant, the sloth made a few more taps on his board. “Move this here, remove a couple of these… and…”
He turned the flat portal before him toward Struct. On the opposite side of the portal sat the hills that housed Struct’s chapel. The surrounding forest and The Stubborn Ass Tavern within view. It was still noon back in Serek, and a crisp, lovely spring day. With one of his claws extended, the sloth pressed a button on the board marked, “Enter.”
In an instant, the sky went a vile, yellow color like stale beer. Trees that stood still and quiet a moment before jerked their branches about and screamed at the sudden agony of existence. Birds fell from the sky as fish leapt from the spring at hill’s base and took flight just before the water caught fire. But the fish were cut off in their ascent, caught in the mouths of dogs and cats as they rained from the sky.
Struct’s demeanor changed as fast as the world’s plunge into armageddon. His outrage melted away and a sinister smile crossed his face. The deacon fell to his knees. “Yes, it is glorious! Hail, Barphurmuir, hail the great indolent one!”
“Oh hells, girl, looks like we waited too long.” Dahkhal said. “Damn it, not the tavern, we need that place! All right, look, if we’re going to stop this, we have to be mindful, we have to be tactical, we have to—”
Sabine rushed out the doorway and threw Struct to the floor with a tackle. The deacon wheezed as he recognized her and demanded, “What?! How did you piece your mind back together?”
“Not important,” Sabine spoke with a snarl. “Like you said, Serek and The Stubborn Ass might be crapholes, but damn it, they’re my crapholes!” She raised her hand and her spiritual energy manifested as a copy of the athame. Struct struggled in her grip as she drove the blade down into him, and for a moment, everything went still.
Then Struct pushed himself up through the wound, reared back his face, and knocked her away with a headbutt. Weapons had no power in the hands of disembodied spirits, the two clashed with all the blunt force of a pair of limp noodles slapped together.
The giant sloth watched this in amused confusion as Dahkhal shook his head, faded into mist, and reappeared atop his desk. The keys on the board before him were enormous, he guessed jumping on them was his best chance to interfere. He crept toward a key on the board marked “escape.”
Dahkhal came close before the sloth frowned and muttered, “Do I smell chicken?” He glanced toward the warlock, scowled and said, “You! You’re the guy who killed Hothwing!”
The warlock raised his hands. “I’m of no threat to you, great one. My powers are diminished; I just want—”
With a swat, the sloth knocked him off the desk. “That punk phoenix owed me twelve bucks, damn you!” Dahkhal screeched as he fell from the giant desk and crashed into the floor. Sabine and Struct continued to grapple, but neither spirit claimed ground over the other. The sloth observed this all with a pinched face. “Stealing the bird’s power, making a ruckus, trying to mess with my build—all right, Struct, you win. I’m gonna wreck up your whole reality now.”
With a devilish grin, the deacon called, “Hail, my lord!”
Sabine smashed him upside the head with the pommel of her athame, pushed back to her feet, and shouted, “No! Don’t do it—you can’t!”
Amused by such an affront to his divinity, the sloth raised an eyebrow. “I can’t?”
“No,” Sabine said. “Because—because—because then you’re just doing what any other god would do! That’s not very deconstructive at all!”
Though the sloth’s finger still hovered over the, “enter” key, his amused eyebrow slowly dropped into something more analytical. “What?”
“The girl is right.” Dahkhal shook out his broken body as he stood back up. “An indolent god who still does what his servant asks doesn’t fit together so well, now does it?”
Struct sputtered, “Who—who even is that one?”
Sabine pressed on. “Destroying my home is just too predictable. It’s already falling apart one day at a time, you don’t want to speed that up, speeding it up is just boring.”
The sloth nodded his head back and forth, as though giving this serious consideration.
“Yes, just go back to whatever you were doing before,” Dahkhal said. “It’s clearly what you want to be doing anyway.”
Struct threw out his hands and fury again tinged his words. “Are you listening to these peons?! That isn’t deconstruction, it’s just a lazy resolution!”
“No.” Sabine’s next words were edged with force and fury. “It’s a deconstruction of a lazy resolution.”
The deacon was prepared to slip into a diatribe that she stop using words she clearly didn’t understand before the sloth returned to his rune board. With one finger on “control” and one finger on, “Z,” the stale beer color vanished from the sky. The screams of the trees ceased all at once, the birds flew out of the spring and ate whatever fish the no-longer raining cats and dogs moved on from.
Struct gawked. “You—you can’t be serious!”
Barphurmuir, the Great Indolent One, shrugged. “They made a good argument.” As though he sensed his servant was about to slip into another tirade, the god cleared his throat and declared, “Now get out of my room, all of you, and let me get back to my game!”
~~~
Like a fish forced from water, Sabine burst from the dark morass that swallowed her. Covered in sludge and fumbling to come to terms with being in her body again, she felt, first to make sure she was in one piece, then to confirm the Dahkhal ring was still on her finger. When she did, she pushed upward. “You still there?”
I am, Dahkhal, again in his jellyfish form said. Gods, that was surreal. Congratulations, Sabine, with the stubbornness of a drunk, you tricked a deity even dumber than you are.
Sabine uttered an exhausted laugh as she started to wipe the grime from her person. “Well, one more time, then, is it really over—”
“Damn you!”
Out from the pool of sludge, the great, demonic sloth she’d battled before emerged again. Struct’s form was unstable and corroded from the shock to his core he’d experienced, but he pressed on. “You ruined everything! Contemptable wench, wretched child, blasphemer!” In the midst of his rant, he threw himself forward. “I’ll show you deconstruction, I’ll rip you—”
Sabine whipped around and responded on instinct. She wrenched the athame from its holster and swung just as the ranting head reached her. The magic blade cut through his fast-disintegrating neck and decapitated him. One last time, the decaying sloth fell and melted away to nothing. A severed bit landed nearby and, after a last moment, the corruption that engulfed it melted away. When it resolved itself, nothing remained but Struct’s furious, ranting, silenced head.
~~~
The trip back down the slope was slow going, but Sabine felt contented. Few words were shared between her and Dahkhal, but she just liked the assurance he was there again after he assured her, You did well, for a fool.
Fish bones covered the forest path as she finally, with an exhausted sigh, stepped back into the Stubborn Ass. All kinds of talk circulated throughout, mostly demands as to what the hells that screaming was and why the sky suddenly went distorted. Sabine didn’t pay any of it any mind as she stumbled up to the bar. “Hey, Slizzer. I’ve had one hell of a day. Can I…” she paused, bit her lip, and considered. “You got anything other than booze back there? Maybe some un-fermented cider?”
The barman flinched. “I got some of this tonic from the apothecary, I suppose.”
“Yeah, give me some of that,” she said. “I just saved the whole kingdom; I’d like to remember this day.”
“Of course you did.” Slizzer rolled his eyes as he uncorked the bottle he’d mentioned. “Did you remember to bring my stock up from the spring?”
Sabine’s satisfied smirk fell away and she paled. “Oh, crap, I knew I was forgetting something.”
Slizzer groaned and laid the drink on the bar anyway. “You really are as useful as a horseback trainer with a pack of centaurs.”
The End
~~~
Sabine of the Ten Rings will return…