As the only uninjured and reasonably collected member of the group, it fell on Mongrel to get everyone else squared away and ready for travel. Of course. Sometimes, he wanted to kick himself for being so reliable.
First up was Oatmeal. Two chimps holding the lad down, Mongrel popped his left arm back into its socket. He squealed and cried and thrashed like a baby throughout and for a while after, but soon settled into sullen silence again. He was hugging Price's tall blade to himself in a somewhat comedic imitation of the departed mercenary. The why of it was anyone's guess.
As a consolation, Mongrel went and fetched him a fresh change of clothes from the half-ruined packing, so the lad could at least change out of his piss-soaked drawers. He found the sheriff's revolver in the process and stuck it through his belt. About time he got himself some real firepower. He'd thought it a terrible inequality for some time that Will was the only one with a gun.
"It doesn't work," Oatmeal muttered from his spot propped against a pine.
"How would you know?" Mongrel asked, and took the six-shooter back out to regard the thing. It was an old-timey cowboy style piece—single-action—only of a heavier and larger make than anything he had ever seen. Not that he had much experience beyond half-remembered spaghetti westerns to pull from.
"Magpie gave it to me before she bailed," Oatmeal said. "I tried to use it against that werewolf… thing, but it wouldn't shoot."
"Huh. You probably just did it wrong." Mongrel checked the cylinder to make sure it was loaded, then aimed it off into the woods, cocked back the hammer, and pulled the trigger.
Tried to pull the trigger. It was stiff as the dead, refusing to budge a hair no matter how hard he squeezed.
An electric sensation traveled up his hand, and someone whispered in his ear.
He instantly threw the gun away, spitting oaths after it. "Damn thing is cursed!" he said, and left the revolver in the undergrowth as he stalked off. It reminded him too much of Will's fool sword. Not worth the trouble.
Next on his list was Gug, who had wandered off to the edge of the clearing and was having a minor panic attack, rhythmically headbutting a tree trunk and moaning in a mentally vacant sort of way.
The beast did not respond to Mongrel's calls, so that he was eventually forced to shout. "Hey, genius!" he said, and broke a stick off the back of the troll's left calf.
The troll slowly came away from his meaningless task; flat green nose runny with snot, eyes red-rimmed with tears. "Huh?" he said.
"Why are you doing that?" Mongrel asked.
Gug's gaze flitted over to the shallow dent he had left in the woodbark, and back onto Mongrel. "It was very very scary in there. I didn't like it at all."
"Well, you made it out all right, so there's nothing to worry about anymore."
"Actually, I am injured." Gug held up a meaty forearm. Part of the sleeve had been burnt away; the exposed skin was crispy and flaking and burn-dark. "It hurts."
Mongrel crossed his arms, unimpressed. "It doesn't look too bad. And you heal quick, remember? Quit your whining and get back with the others so we—"
"Also, my suit is ruined," Gug continued, and tugged insistently at the bad sleeve. "My suit is dirty and tattered and I lost my hat somewhere and I am not handsome anymore."
"All right, all right," Mongrel said, motioning for quiet. He realized that he would have to be a bit more tactful about this. "I get it, genius, I do. But hey, you wanna know something?"
"What?"
Mongrel quirked a finger, and the troll slowly leaned down until their heads were conspiratorially close. "You're a writer, aren't you?"
"Yes?" The troll chewed on his outthrust tongue, trying to figure the point of where this was headed.
"You know what all good writers have in common?"
"Um…"
"They do their research, big fella. And what better research than an adventure like this? So even if things get scary, or hard, or you get a bit dirty, you've gotta keep your head on straight. Just think of all this as material to put in your book or whatever."
"I see." Gug rose up to his full height, wiped his upper lip, and gave a slow, long nod. "Thank you, Friend Matt. I understand now."
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Mongrel began to walk away, and waved for the troll to follow. "Good. Because I need your help."
Thankfully, Gug complied, and made a big green shadow for him as they walked up the shallow incline of the clearing toward its center.
Number One was tending to the girl. He had stripped her out of her ruined tunic and undershirt, and covered her in a thin, clean blanket. Number Five sat nearby on a rock watching with a smoking pipe in his hand.
'Hurt bad,' Number One observed when Mongrel got close.
'I know,' Mongrel signed one-handed.
'What do?'
'Fuck if I know. Hope we find Freetown soon, I guess.'
Mongrel crouched by the girl's other shoulder. She blinked up at him, wearing a dazed frown.
"Don't talk over me," she said. "I'm right here."
"Or what?" Mongrel asked. "You gonna get up and kick my ass?"
"Don't tempt me, old man," she said with a tired chuckle, but there was no real threat to her words. She wasn't in much of a condition to stand at the moment.
He tossed back the blanket to have a closer look at what they were dealing with.
"Hey!" Sam protested.
"Relax," Mongrel replied, and flicked her on the nose for good measure. "If you had any tits to begin with, they woulda got burned off back there."
"That doesn't mean you get to peep."
"Fuck's sake." He snapped his fingers at the troll who was standing gormlessly nearby. "You. First, take a step to the left. You're in my light. Second, go ahead and cast a Power Word [Sleep] on this one, if you wouldn't mind, since she's decided to be a fussy little baby."
"You shouldn't use Power Words on friends without asking permission," Gug replied flatly. "It's rude." Then he looked down at his own feet, and sidled along to the left, removing his big shadow from Mongrel's work area. "Best Friend Sam, do you mind if I use Power Word [Sleep] on you?"
"I do mind, actually," Sam replied in a weakly triumphant tone of voice. "Thank you for asking, Gug."
Mongrel rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "What did I ever do to deserve being reincarnated into a world where everyone but me is a crazy person? I need a drink." He motioned at Number Five. "You, go get me one." Then, when the young chimp got up to do as he was bid, Mongrel pointed to the lit pipe and added: "And give me that."
Number Five deposited the pipe into his waiting hand with a disappointed murmur, then waddled off. Indifferent, Mongrel sucked greedily at the thin wooden stem, and blew twin streams of thin smoke out his nostrils. "Fine," he said, and plucked a pair of fallen leaves off the ground to place over Sam's breasts. "Garden of Eden chic good enough?"
"Better than nothing," Sam replied.
Mongrel nodded. He could at last assess her injuries properly. Her torso was a blackened mess, flesh stripped away in layers so that fibrous muscle tissue showed in places. Her right arm was equally bad, having taken a lot of heat from the cyclops's energy beam attack.
He called out to Number Five that he wanted some water brought over as well. A minute later, the young chimp returned with a water flask that had survived all the manhandling inside the Monster Mansion, as well as a battered canteen of the good stuff.
Mongrel had a healthy pull of vodka, another puff of the pipe, then handed both over for Number Five to hold; on standby at his shoulder until they were needed again. He had Number One hold onto the apparently vital nipple coverings while he poured water out over the young woman's torso and rubbed away some of the soot. The girl did not make a sound, but she winced with pain every so often.
Number One handed Mongrel a cloth, which he used to dry Sam's torso off as best as possible. He cleaned his hands with it, then discarded it beside him.
The burns caused by the cyclops looked nasty, especially across the shoulders and chest and right hand, but none of it looked life-threatening. The cuts and bite marks she had sustained, on the other hand, were of a more worrying nature. Many of the wounds were still bleeding by trickles, and the bandaging he had applied to some of the more dire ones were soaked red and sticky.
"How do you feel?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral so as to avoid revealing a niggling sense of worry.
"Well, it hurts," Sam replied, blinking up at the sky, "but I've had worse."
"And?"
"And I feel a little dizzy, I guess. Kinda cold."
Mongrel took another mouthful of vodka, gritted his teeth at the burn. It seemed she had lost a good deal of blood. He would have liked to simply do nothing and let the girl's Healing Factor mend her back up, but he wasn't completely sure that would be good enough.
Finishing his assessment, Mongrel stood and signed over responsibility to Number One to clean and suture and dress the wounds to the best of his abilities. Meanwhile, he assembled the group and repacked their belongings from unusably torn bags to ones that were still good, and threw away goods that had been spoiled by rough handling inside the semblance.
Without Zero to carry much of their gear, and Sam in no health to take on any loads, their burdens were more heavily distributed out across everyone else. He designated two of the chimps to bag duty—Number One, Number Two, and Number Five—while the remaining pair would continue to keep watch from the trees in customary fashion. He would have asked Number Three instead of Number Five, since he had the strongest back of them all, but that grump had been in a foul mood lately, and Mongrel didn't feel like poking that particular hornet's nest at the moment.
"Do you remember what direction we were headed before all the commotion?" he asked Oatmeal once the lad was finally done wallowing in melancholy and back on his feet.
"Sure," Oatmeal replied, and nodded off into the woods. "West by northwest-ish."
"That'll have to do. We don't have time to fart around all day and hope Magpie comes back, especially with the state the girl is in, so you'll be leading the way from now on. Let's just hope Freetown is close, and that our course is good."
Oatmeal looked like he wanted to say something self-deprecating in protest, but Mongrel moved on before he could get a word out. He had enough doubts about the lad as it was—he did not need him adding to them.
Number One got Sam reasonably patched up and back on her feet, but blood spotted her new shirt almost at once, and she swayed like a drunkard. Mongrel tried to convince the girl to let Gug carry her, but she insisted that she could walk on her own.
They moved out, leaving behind a pile of things they would not be bringing along, and Mongrel found himself thinking about a certain demoness—as though his mind wasn't troubled enough.
I wonder what she's wearing right now, he thought idly, and nearly tripped on an exposed root. Damn that woman.