Chapter 8: Why you shouldn’t play with pillars of ice

Dookie of course raised a bubble, so she and Lofan were perfectly fine, she even managed to catch the pilldogs in her bubble. Somehow, she managed not to catch Hammer. Lofan would have thought it deliberate but he liked to think the best of people, or at least he liked to do that when it was safe to do so.

So it was that Hammer continued sailing through the air as majestically as one does after experiencing many body flinging explosions, well, he might have done so if it wasn’t for the fact that he was an explodahead, and had no need to prepare his body for hitting the ground.

Instead Hammer kind of flailed through the air, arms spinning almost like he was trying to fly, cackling madly. As it happened he didn’t hit the ground anyway, he smacked head first (causing his head to detach) into a pillar of ice. Before he slid down from this position the sledslab, which had followed him in his flight, slapped onto him.

This second impact broke the ice pillar from the ground, and Hammer, on top of the pillar with the slab resting on his back went sliding into another pillar.

“YES!” Hammer screamed “THIS IS AWESOME! IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN!”

This second pillar of course broke. There was quite a number of these curious pillars at the foot of the mountains.

Hammer bounced and careened into about six of these icy pillars, thoroughly enjoying himself before Dookie decided to catch him in a bubble. When she released him the pilldogs ran over to him, crowding an nuzzling him while yapping. Hammer liberally applied ear scratchings and belly rubs.

Lofan looked up, the magical arrow was still in his vision, and wasn’t moving, though it was closer than it had been before.

“good thing we don’t need the sled anymore” he mentioned, trying to pick out something resembling a path up the jagged twisting mountain sides. He was not successful, he hoped that it wasn’t as treacherous as it looked.

Dookie however wasn’t listening, she was examining one of the icy pillars, and Hammer was busy being buried under a pile of pilldogs and their pills.

It was not that strange to find formations of ice in elcon, but evidentially something had bothered Dookie about them. Lofan decided that rather than just telling his adventurers to move on, he would help with investigating the pillars. Besides, he didn’t have the heart to tell Hamme to stop playing with the pilldogs.

“something bothering you about those pillars Dookie?” Lofan questioned.

“Yes, I think they may not be natural, there is the scent of magic about them, look you see the patterns the ice make there?” Dookie spoke smoothly and sharply, she was clearly focused by this mystery.

Lofan tried to see, but he was too far away on Dookie’s head to see the ice up close to make out the shapes of the patterns, but in looking, he felt somehow unnerved by the ice.

“I can’t make it out, but, there is definitely something strange about them” Lofan admitted.

“They aren’t in the usual patterns, they are more like twisting ropes than anything else.”

Dookie put a gloved paw to the ice, wiping its frosty surface.

Both she and Lofan gasped.

“It is a rock” Hammer said, having come over to see what his companions were fussing over.

The pilldogs were collected around him, and a green and purple one lay over his shoulders.

“Yes, a rock” Dookie confirmed.

“totally a rock” Lofan said, putting the matter to rest.

“Why is there a rock inside a pillar of ice?” Hammer said, confused.

“well, it might be a rock, instead of a rock”

“Ah, yes a rock, hmm. Presumably something or someone froze this rock! OH-HOHOHOHO! See, I have solved this mystery with my magical knowledge!” Dookie claimed, success going to her head.

“is there more rocks in the other pillars?” Lofan wondered.

They checked an indeed in each pillar was a rock.

Hammer took his hoopstick away from one of the pilldogs that was worrying it.

“But what was a heap of rocks doing out here?”

“they could be from cozzlanga” Lofan postulated.

“But how did they get so far ahead of us?” Dookie protested.

“i don’t know, rolling really fast?”

The west wind whistled aimlessly past Lofan, Hammer and Dookie as they took in what they discovered.

“Well, uh… what do we, um do now that err… we know this?”

Lofan thought for a moment.

“bear in mind there is something that freezes things and move on” Lofan said resolutely.

“Oh”

So, they gathered themselves together and, Lofan quickly finding the direction the arrow from his guiding enchantment was, they set off.

They were almost immediately stopped by a series of ghostly moans. All the pilldogs, except one that appeared to have fallen asleep across Hammer’s shoulders were completely spooked and ran off yelping.

“Nooo, come back dudes!” Hammer wailed. But the pilldogs did not return or look back, and the moaning got louder.

Before Lofan could ask where the sound was coming from it was made clear. The ice pillars that had been broken free from the ground wobbled upright!

“Frisen!” Dookie exclaimed, if she wasn’t covered in white fur, she’d have been white anyway.

The undead in Elcon are referred to as risen, and in particular those that have succumbed to the cold and then returned, but not alive are called the frisen.

“wait, how does being frozen kill a rock?” Lofan complained.

“Magic!” Dookie practically screamed “The ice isn’t natural ice”

A few of the frisen rocks rolled their way to Dookie and Hammer, but a few others seemed to be wobbling away. Lofan spotted this, and deduced what these foul undead were called to.

“hammer! cover dookie while she takes out the ones that are going to break the other pillars free!”

He called out.

His voice was not terribly loud, but Hammer and Dookie heard it, and they obeyed, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Lofan only half-knew however, as he wasn’t sure of Dookie’s offensive capabilities. He was quite surprised then to see how Dookie dealt with her targets. She trapped one of the Frisen in a bubble, then the bubble began to get smaller and smaller. It began to constrict the frozen rock.

” OH-HOHOHOHO, My bubble will not pop from within or without but by one object!”

Dookie ground her teeth, and for a moment it seemed the bubble would not do anything more, but she clapped her paws and the bubble shrank further, crushing the frisen into a mere pebble, then when she popped the bubble the compressed contents of it exploded. This destroyed one of the pillars that was nearby.

While Dookie did this, Hammer was launching his own offensive against the frisen that hadn’t rolled after the other unrisen pillars. He had eaten a number of the pilldog pills, and these had blended together to give him a number of powers.

He arose, hovering in the air, serene, pilldog still on shoulders, he extended his arms, and in the wake of his arms, more arms followed, mirrors to his arms, his head was stuck in his hoopstick, it blazed with a brown fire.

“I am the explosion, the boom and the bang, the fuse and the remains” he said calmly his voice trembling with power.

He moved towards the frisen images of himself trailing behind, then with a flash he was already past them. He appeared to have done nothing to them. He began to laugh, and his laughter was like the crack of a detonation.

Then he promptly fell to the ground. Spasming periodically.

Dookie was in the process of crushing the stray frisen rocks when she and Lofan noticed this.

“Ah, should have told him that it isn’t wise to eat a lot of the pills at once”

“will he be all right?” Lofan worried.

“I’m sure uh, he’ll be, err, fine, he ah… is an explodahead” Dookie dismissed.

“bit odd that he didn’t seem to do anything to the frisen” Lofan observed as the undead rocks converged on Hammer’s twitching form.

“You are… also… the explosion” Hammer managed to get out between spasms.

The frisen around him then exploded in shining pillars of brown fire, becoming mere ashes.

Dookie bubble crushed and bubble exploded the last of her targets, managing to get them all before they got more frisen going. Dookie took more than a few moments to catch her breath. She had struggled a bit with the last few bubbles. She was glad that her training and studying from before she set out to be an adventurer had paid off.

At Lofan’s urging she reluctantly made her way over to where the jerking body of Hammer was.

“how is that pilldog still asleep? For that matter, how is it still on his shoulders?” Lofan groused.

Indeed, the green and purple pilldog was still on Hammer’s shoulders, even as he spasmed.

“I’ll be fine in a bit” He mused “I think I’ll keep this dude”

“What’ll you um… call the dog?” Dookie wondered aloud.

“Madog” he answered.

‘My dog’

Dookie sat down in the snow, sighed and supposed that it was the kind of name one could expect from an explodahead called Hammer. She and Lofan waited for Hammer to have control of his own body again.