It'll Be Fine

Should have seen that coming, I thought to myself as I dodged between two oak trees, narrowly avoiding a burst of purple fire thrown by an angry witch. This is why you never trust a gremlin.

“Hey, I heard that!” shouted the psychic little cloaca. “I heard that, too! There's no need to be so vulgar.”

I spared a glance at the hairy little green wannabe pixie dodging through the forest beside me while dragging a jagged knife with the heart of whatever poor sap had agreed to be the witches' sacrifice still impaled on it.

How's this for vulgar? I thought before mentally throwing every disgusting insult I could come up with at him, along with some fairly graphic mental images to accompany them, as we ducked under

a fallen tree just in time to not get hit by a transmogrify spell. A very confused caterpillar fell off the tree as we passed under it, expanding out into something I didn't stick around to see, though knowing witches, I'd guess it was a toad.

I idly wondered if life would be easier for it as a toad or a caterpillar as I slipped into a hole in the root system of a tree large enough that it had probably outlasted a few empires. I gave Lemmy the Gremlin a sharp thought to join me and throw together a quick blending spell so we could use the ancient life-force of the tree to hide from the witches' extra senses.

The gremlin darted into the hole behind me, forcing me to crawl back into the root system of the tree and wonder how much further I could go before being swallowed up by the dirt. It already kind of felt like the dirt was closing in around me and I could still clearly see light filtering through the mouth of the hole past the pint sized punk.

“Oh, yeah, this is good,” Lemmy said as he cast the minor magic necessary to obscure our presence. “The witches will never find us here. It'll be fine.”

It'll be fine, I thought to myself scornfully as the words reminded me how we got here in the first place. Yeah, just like sneaking into the witches' camp was fine, right?

“Oh, come on,” Lemmy whispered in exasperation. “That was fine. We're still alive aren't we?”

That's not exactly a high bar for things being okay, Lemmy! I practically shouted in my head. You said this job was a simple matter of stealing a family heirloom from the client's estranged sister! Just a quick in and out job, you said! It'll be fine!

I know he could hear the bitterness in my thoughts and apparently finally realized that even whispers can carry far enough for a powerful witch to hear them as he responded with thoughts.

It is just a quick in and out job stealing a family heirloom, Lemmy protested. And it will be fine! We've just got to wait out the coven.

Right, out wait the coven, I thought, not even trying to hide my anger with the malformed gnome.

That's just speciesist, man! Gnomes aren't even related to gremlins, he thought at me.

Well, maybe if you'd told me the estranged sisters were witches and the heirloom was a god-forsaken ceremonial knife filled with dark magic and innocent souls, I'd be a bit more generous with my thoughts about you! I screamed at him with my mind.

If I'd told you that, would you have taken the job in the first place? Lemmy asked with much calmer thoughts than I was managing before kicking me in the head with his steel toed boots. And scoot back further, would ya? Hiding our life-force won't do much good if the witches see my handsome mug poking out of this hole.

I scooted back as he asked, thinking, Of course I wouldn't have taken the job! What kind of idiot willingly robs a witch?

The same kind of idiot that takes a job from an inherently magical creature without assuming there would be magic involved, Lemmy answered, clearly not thinking about how easy it would be for me to push him out of the hole and then pretend I was enthralled during the heist in the hopes that the witches wouldn't choose to use me in their next sacrifice.

Oh, yeah, good luck convincing them of that, Lemmy thought with a snort. Witches believing that a gremlin could enthrall a human? Ha!

As much as I hated to admit it, the gremlin had a point there. Gremlins weren't known for being powerful so much as slippery, and witches weren't known for respecting anyone's power but their own regardless.

It's still the best plan I've got if they catch us, I thought just before his boot hit me directly above the ear.

Well if you don't want to find out how bad of a plan that is, keeping scooting back! Lemmy thought at me forcefully.

I rolled my eyes in the dark as I begrudgingly did as the gremlin told me to, earning a psychic rebuke despite him not being able to see me. I was about to retort when my foot hit a root that offered the slightest bit of resistance before sliding to the side with a click.

Oh, that can't be good, I thought as I felt the ground beneath me shift in uncomfortable ways.

What did you do? Lemmy thought at me as the dirt dropped away and we tumbled through the darkness into a cavern illuminated by glowing mushrooms growing out of the roots that formed the

walls.

“What you told me to!” I answered out loud, no longer worried about the witches hearing us. “I kept backing up, and this is where it got us!”

I took a closer look at the cavern, hoping to see some sort of passageway we could use to escape, or at the very least easily climbable roots to get us back where we were, but with no luck.

The roots all appeared slick, with the only useful looking handholds being the mushrooms that I didn't really trust not to break off if we tried to use them that way. Even that was assuming they weren't so

toxic that just touching them would kill us, which was never really a safe bet with subterranean flora in general, and that was doubly true for mushrooms, especially glowing ones.

“It'll be fine,” Lemmy said as he came to the same conclusion I did. “I'm sure those roots aren't as slippery as they look. We can climb right on out of here.” He looked directly up at the hole we had fallen through as he added, “And once we're up there we can...”

He trailed off as the roots surrounding the hole seemed to constrict like the magic doors some wizards use as the entrance to their towers, though I'd always felt like they resembled a certain organic

orifice that it's generally considered impolite to bring up. The thought of spending the rest of my life trapped under a tree made mine clench up much like the roots just had.

“I'm sorry, what was that Lemmy? Once we're up there, we can do what exactly?” I asked with sarcasm dripping from my words as I glared at the little menace.

“It'll be fine,” he replied, waving the bloody knife at me.

“This will be fine? Really!?! This?” I asked, about ready to throttle the sentient paperweight.

“Maybe if you spend more time imagining ways to get out of this instead of just thinking up insults and violence, it will be.” Lemmy said as he stuck the blade of the knife into the ground in the middle of the cavern so he could lean on it like a post just tall enough for his pocket sized stature.

I opened my mouth to respond with a rather inventive insult regarding the nocturnal activities of his mother when he let out a yelp of surprise and jumped away from the blade as it sank into the

ground, smashing the still impaled heart between the hilt and the dirt and squeezing out what little blood remained in the process. A deep red glow emanated from the ground where the blood soaked into it.

Lemmy and I exchanged worried glances before both running to the edges of the cavern just as the ground started to shake with a rumble like a demon clearing its throat. The glow around the knife

spread out a few feet in all directions, glowing brighter as it covered more ground before suddenly stopping.

“Ummm...” I muttered as the ground within the glowing circle started shifting, almost as though it had been a body all along and the glow just helped it remember its shape. An arm made of dirt, roots, and rock with stone fingers thicker than my legs lazily lifted itself out of the circle before pressing a palm bigger than my head into the ground and pushing up to lift a body held together with thick roots that closely resembled muscles.

A second arm rose up to help lift the massive dirt monster up as the glow shrank down to lines covering the thick body like veins. I glanced over at Lemmy, intending to ask if he had a plan, only to

see him scrambling up the wall of the cavern.

I started to call Lemmy a spineless little weasel without honor or dignity when the monster let out a roar like a lightning bolt splitting a boulder. I turned back to see a craggy head staring at me with emeralds the size of my fists for eyes and jagged crystal teeth longer than my forearms. A diamond encrusted tongue licked the crystal teeth as the monster took a step towards me on legs thicker than my

torso.

I stared in awe at the fortune of jewels trying to eat me, almost forgetting the danger I was in as I calculated just how many castles could be purchased with the tongue alone. I barely noticed a stone

fist swinging at my head in time to dodge, rolling across the root covered floor before looking up to see Lemmy hanging from a mushroom with a grin. He reached up without even looking and pulled on a

seemingly innocuous root, causing the section of roots next to him to shift just enough to open a passage that traitorous little troll-dropping could slip through.

The anger at seeing him escape combined with the realization that he had known exactly which root to pull froze me in my tracks, a reaction I immediately regretted as I felt stone fingers close around my chest. I tried to slip out of its grasp, but that just made it tighten its grip.

“Oh, you dirty little bas-aarrgghh!” I muttered as the other hand of the dirt monster firmly grasped me, cracking several ribs as in the process.

“Don't worry,” Lemmy said cheerfully from his escape tunnel as the monster lifted me towards its treasure trove of a mouth despite all of my attempts to wriggle out of its grip. The last thing I heard before crystal teeth closed around my neck was Lemmy shouting, “It'll be fine!”

Lemmy the Gremlin climbed easily up the tunnel, not bothered in the slightest by the sound of the witches' pet elemental eating his former associate. Maybe if he hadn't been so ragingly speciesist or

generally unpleasant to be around Lemmy would feel differently, but if that were the case, Lemmy never would have brought him along to be the elemental's first meal.

As agreed, the leader of the coven was waiting at the exit of the tunnel with Lemmy's payment- a saddled magical flying rat, also known as a Pegarat, just the right size for Lemmy to ride with

saddlebags filled with precious stones. Granted, the saddlebags weren't exactly big, but it was still more than sufficient payment for services rendered.

“Pleasure doing business with ya,” Lemmy said as he took the control scroll from the witch and performed the necessary motions to absorb the spell, ensuring the Pegarat would always obey only him.

He hopped on its back and thought, Worth it, as he guided his new mount into the sky. He spent a brief moment wondering what the witches planned to use the elemental for before shrugging to himself and flying off into the sunset, completely ignoring the loud roars and crashes behind him that sounded

suspiciously like an elemental merging with a tree that predated the concept of civilization and taking its first steps on feet bigger than most houses in a kingdom whose primary export was lumber.

“Eh,” Lemmy muttered to himself as the wind blew through his hair and the soft clink of jewels joined with the flapping wings of his Pegarat to give him something approaching music as he soared away, “It'll be fine."