“Was that really you, Borg?” I asked, eyes watering.
“Drop it, minotaur!” yelled Nadi, somehow still focused, despite the fact that she was clearly swallowing hard and repeatedly in an attempt to choke back the vomit.
“It wasn’t…me,” said Borg solemnly. “I’ve been…framed.”
The minotaur growled and swung its axe at Nadi, who ducked and danced deftly backward.
“It’s not like him to not own it, Whiska,” I called, moving around behind the minotaur in an effort to try to figure out a way to help Nadi.
“Smell my…butt,” said Borg. “It’s…clean. Or…not that gross…anyway.”
Naturally, the Ratarian did exactly that, leaning in close to our rocky companion’s enormous backside and inhaling deeply. Her eyes widened, and I thought maybe Borg had been lying after all.
“He’s right!” said Whiska, shocked. “It wasn’t him!” She looked at me, eyes narrowed. “I should have known that something that smelled like someone smeared monkey dung on a sweaty ogre’s taint could only have some from a ‘dainty’ woman who never lets these things out!”
“You think that was me??” I called, outraged, as Nadi danced back in to test the minotaur’s defenses with a few tentative strikes, which the beast easily parried.
“Whoever smelt it…” sang Whiska.
“You smelled it, you plague-carrying sewer swimmer!”
“We all smelled it!” yelled Nadi, stabbing at the minotaur again. “Focus!”
“Yeah, but that smelled like an old person threw up yogurt all over a dead skunk!” answered Whiska. “We need to figure out where that came from.”
The minotaur, moving with an agility that belied its bulk, spun around and hacked at a surprised Whiska, who only barely managed to dodge, sparks flying from her staff as it slammed into the ground to keep her upright. The beast’s back was to Nadi now, and that same angry, low rumbling sound returned.
“Argh!” screamed Nadi, dropping her sword and covering her mouth with both hands. “It smells like a hill giant’s morning breath after it ate three dirty dwarves!” She spat, trying to somehow get the taste out of her nose and mouth.
“Dwarves don’t smell any worse than anyone else, you know,” I felt compelled to add, just before the stench washed over me and I had to turn my attention to preventing the mushrooms I’d snacked on earlier from working their way violently back up and out.
“It’s him!” shrieked Whiska, pointing at the minotaur. “He’s the source! Gods! It’s like some horrible creature died inside his colon and is being blown out of his ass by a cyclone!”
“You owe me an apology!” I choked out as I circled around, not for the purpose of gaining a tactical advantage, but in an attempt to find a pocket of fresh air. Unfortunately, when you’re miles underground, there’s not much airflow, and the cavern had quickly turned into a miasma of stink, like someone had dropped an orc’s foot into a pig waller after the pig, who’d been on a steady diet of spicy, rotten lamb, had shat in it.
“I’ll apologize over my dead body!” retorted Whiska, raising her staff for another magical strike on the minotaur.
“Gods willing you’ll get killed right now,” I shot back. “Your festering corpse might actually make the room smell better.” Sometimes adventuring is really, really not glamorous.
“Focus!” roared Nadi again, picking up her sword.
Whiska responded by loosing a purple bolt of energy at the minotaur, who grunted when it hit him in the chest, but it didn’t seem to do much damage. He did, however, glare at Nadi and, in a thick, heavily accented voice that sounded like pebbles slowly rolling down a hill, said, “I have irritable bowels—it’s nothing to be ashamed of!” He raised his axe and hurled it.
Whiska tried to dive out of the way, but the broad side of the axe clipped her on the shoulder. She screamed and tumbled onto her back.
“Bad move, swamp cheeks!” I shouted, hurling my own knife at the minotaur’s back. He turned his glare on me as the knife bounced off his tough hide. He looked kind of mad.
“I was talking about your butt cheeks, by the way,” I said quietly. “Not the cheeks on your face. Which are, um, just lovely.” I smiled sweetly, but even though that same smile has brought emperors to their knees, saved (and destroyed) kingdoms, and gotten me a ten percent discount on coffee, the minotaur didn’t seem even a little bit impressed. Maybe he was blind in addition to being flatulent—that would explain all the squint-glaring.
The minotaur took an intimidating step toward me. I backed away slowly. Okay, well, not that slowly—pretty fast, actually. Unfortunately, I quickly ran out of real estate and had my back literally up against the wall. “Flatulence is cool!” I said, desperately. “I mean, it’s pretty hot! The ladies love it! Wait—are there lady minotaurs? There are, right? Because they must love the smell of rotting fish mixed with severed, gangrenous fingers! It’s nature’s aphrodisiac!”
Look, I’m generally pretty good under pressure. I once did my nails while sitting on the rim of the Palador Volcano, which is the most active volcano in all of Erithea (it actually erupted three times before I finished my pedicure). But, I had a little breakdown as that minotaur bore down on me. I’m not proud of what I did or said. For the record, I really don’t think farts that smell like burnt sloth vomit are even a little arousing. There are a lot of heroes who refuse to compromise their values to survive. Most of them are dead. If I need to tell some hairy cow that his rectal halitosis gets me all hot and bothered in order to make him pause just long enough before he cuts my head off to give the weird rat wizard in my adventuring party an extra minute to hit him with an ice storm so I can escape, I’ll do it every time. Every. Single. Time.
Thankfully, that’s exactly what happened—the axe came up but paused as the minotaur considered my incoherently steady stream of fawning praise recognizing the glory of his gassiness (I can really sling it—and sell it—when I need to; it’s all part of being a performer). At that moment, Whiska hit him with a cone of ice, which, it turns out, minotaurs are highly susceptible to. The beast fell backwards and, mercifully, the cold snap managed to blunt, albeit not eradicate, the stench. Nothing short of an exorcism by the world’s most powerful cleric might manage that, and, even then, my money was on the stink.
The minotaur stumbled and fell hard onto its backside, though the hard landing produced both a grunt and yet another cloud of noxious gas, which quickly overpowered the cold air around the minotaur and raged around the chamber, turning the simple act of respiration into an endurance test the likes of which would leave even the most hardened of mountathoners gasping and crying and begging for the sweet release of painful evisceration. (Mountathoners, incidentally, are those questionably sane health enthusiasts who routinely run—at full speed—up, over, and down mountains that are at least five miles high for no reason other than that it allegedly makes them feel good; not a single one of them is any fun at parties.)
Nadi, however, didn’t hesitate, proving her courage a dozen times over by bursting through the green haze of gut-watering stench, mouth unwisely open in a battle cry, and raising her sword over her head before bringing it crashing down on the minotaur’s neck. At the same moment, Borg sprang into action (I say “sprang” for dramatic effect, “deliberately sauntered” being a more accurate descriptor), grabbing a massive rock from the cavern floor and bringing it down hard on the beast’s face.