Chapter 13: Yellow and Purple blurs, Good Honest Work

Lofan and his party set off in pursuit of the bats, but it was slower going climbing the icy snowy mountainside while the bats flew in the skies. Soon the bats had passed from their sight. Lofan could see the gaudy arrow in vision made by Petil’s enchantment on him, he could see that the bats were heading right to it.

Lofan didn’t believe the bats knew where the Kindling was, so he hoped they would be delayed in their search. Lofan sighed.

“well, we aren’t going to go fast enough to catch up to those bats, slow down guys, better to be safe and make sure nobody slips off the mountainside”

Dookie was grateful, she still couldn’t manage that level of physical exertion. She resolved to learn how to control the movement of her bubble, so that in the future she could simply float to the top of a mountain.

“Those bats just don’t give up” Hammer fumed.

“Isn’t it um… your fault they are even… ah here?” Dookie drily remarked.

Hammer pretended not to hear.

“Think we’ll see Sir Nitup again?” He asked.

“hopefully not” Lofan said.

“Quite!” Dookie added “A thoroughly, ah, disreputable creature I’m not… um sorry to see the… er last of”

They continued their climb, Hammer having an easy time of it and Dookie huffing and puffing her way up.

“Hey, we defeated a Hydra” Hammer realised.

“oh yeah, we did”

“I mean, we defeated a hydra, I’m going to brag so much about this when we get back to the belly up hider”

“I wouldn’t uh… brag too much. Normally, um, hydras have all kinds of ah… natural defences inside them”

“firelord minions must have cleared them out or something” Lofan supposed.

“A hydra is still a hydra” Hammer grumbled.

Still further did they climb.

“I must, um, say I’m not sure how those, er… thugs managed to… ah clear out the hydra. That ah… mage didn’t seem very… uh strong.”

“Well you are one to talk with only being able to make one bubble” Hammer said meanly.

“Excuse me ruffian! I’ll have you know that I am a specialist! My nigh-invincible bubble is the product of much painstaking study and research! My magic is wholly bound up in it! I need nothing else as it is glorious in defence, offence and in utility!”

“except for the fact it can be defeated by anything sufficiently pin-like” Lofan accidentally muttered out loud, thankfully for him Dookie managed not to hear, in spite of Lofan being so near to her ears.

“Well, it can make explosions so I suppose it isn’t that bad” Hammer conceded.

Dookie sighed.

Then, as they ascended, they saw something. The head of a bat lying on the ground! Dookie and Lofan both gasped. Hammer of course wasn’t too surprised. On closer examination it was revealed that it was not a severed bat head, but a unconscious, though moaning bat buried up to its head in the ground. Madog happily sniffed and licked the bat.

“how did this even happen?”

“Earth magic?” Dookie wondered “I don’t uh… sense magic about, em, this though.”

“Maybe he wanted to go to sleep, but didn’t want to leave his body uncovered? I can’t stand to sleep without a quilt or something covering my body” Hammer posited.

Dookie and Lofan stared at Hammer.

“Sometimes I take my head off and hold it, I think I get nicer dreams if I do that.” He continued obliviously.

“Well, anyway should we… uh, just leave her, err, here?”

Lofan decided that he couldn’t leave someone trapped in the ground on a mountain, even if they were a probably vicious gang member, but at least a vicious gang member wasn’t a denizen eater.

“i guess we’ll dig him up”

So they did, though Hammer had to be convinced to not to try unearthing the poor bat with an explosion.

They continued on and found a furious struggling sack. They released the bat that was trapped inside. Who thanked them but refused to talk about what had happened. A little further there was few bats strapped together on some branches, Lofan realized that they were forming a face.

They loosed these bats too, but they also refused to speak of their experiences, flying off in a fright when asked to do so.

Next, they came upon a pair of bats stuffed into the same clothing. This time they didn’t let them loose until the bats spoke of what had happened to them. The begged and pleaded to just be freed, but eventually they broke down.

“There was… a yellow and purple blur” One of them said.

“a yellow and purple blur” Lofan repeated blankly.

“It was smiling, with great white teeth, and shining glaring white eyes.” The other bat shivered.

“I, uh… guess we’ll just have to… uh watch out for, um, blurs then” Dookie joked.

“It picked us off one by one, we kept catching glimpses of it out of the corner of our eyes”

Madog put a sympathetic paw on one of the unfortunate bats.

“I’m going to become a farmer good honest work!, I’ll never fly again! I mean how did that thing catch us? IT DID’T EVEN HAVE WINGS!”

They let the bats free, one shakily flew away, the other began her waddle down the mountain and into farmerhood.

As they continued on their way up they became a bit nervous.

They encountered a bat built into a snowman, a bat who was convinced he was a gloat and a bat shaved of all his fur trussed up and hanging from a tree. All of the bats were very thankful for their release, including the gloat who Lofan convinced was not a gloat (he pointed out that gloats do not go “I am a gloat”). All of them vowed to live non-criminal lives, in fact they vowed to live lives that did not involve travelling and encountering things at all.

“ok, stop” Lofan commanded.

“Something wrong dude?” Hammer asked.

“before we go any further we should have a plan for dealing with… whatever that thing was.” he explained.

They all thought about it for a while.

“I could… throw up a bubble, uh, around me if it got… um close” Dookie sheepishly offered.

“I’m an explodahead” Hammer simply said.

Madog yapped.

Lofan sighed. He really didn’t know enough about the threat to make a good plan.

“well ok, brute force it is, just keep an eye out for smiling purple and yellow blurs”

“Right, great, easy” Dookie muttered.

They climbed on, with the sun nearly set and the pumpkin moon beginning to rise.

“AH!” Hammer cried “I see one, a blur!”

“yes, so do we” Lofan said flatly.

Indeed before Lofan, Dookie, Hammer and Madog was a huge four winged, four footed, two chested and two headed bat wearing a black suit and masks. Darting around this double bat was a purple and yellow blur. Behind these two was the entrance to a cave, and Lofan could see the arrow was inside it. They were so close to the Kindling.

One of the heads of the doublebat noticed Lofan and his group.

“I’LL TAKE YOU ALL ON, I’M BATBAT!” The two heads shouted in a voice that sounded like he was chewing gravel.

Laughter came from the blur.

“Ekekeke! Well, this works fine for me, I’ll take you down when you get distracted, and then take those new intruders down!”

“well, that could have gone better” Lofan complained.